The Mark of Athena

PERCY

Percy had waited eight months . . . Eight months without Annabeth, and now she was coming to him in a Greek war ship and it all felt so unreal, like a dream. But it really was happening.

He stood there in his purple cloak and praetor medal next to Reyna, whose face expression looked the same as his. Anxious. Percy guessed that Reyna and Jason had had a thing going on before the goddess of cows abducted him, so she had good reason to be.

"You ready?" Percy asked her.

"I don't know, it's been so long since I've seen Jason, and I'm not sure how I'm going to take it," Reyna answered stiffly.

Percy smirked. "Believe me, I know."

The ship landed, and Percy could literally feel the tension of the Roman Legion as a Greek came out of a doorway—and this wasn't a doorway as in a house door, this doorway was almost as big as my whole apartment back in New York. The whole ship was fascinating, and as a son of Poseidon I have every right to be interested in anything water-related.

A blond guy with short-trimmed hair and a scar on his lip stepped out first, his hands in the air in an obvious "I come in peace" sign.

"Hey, guys, I'm back," the blond guy said, then introduced himself as Jason Grace, the former praetor.

Dakota, his mouth stained with red Kool-aid, was the first one to greet him.

"Jason! It's good to see you again, bud," Dakota said.

"I see you're still drinking Kool-aid . . . as usual," Jason noticed. Then he hugged the red mouth-stained guy before greeting all the other Romans.

Percy wondered if Camp Half-Blood would be this excited about him if he had returned home. He watched as Hazel made her way to hug Jason.

Then Percy looked up at the Greek ship and his heart stopped as a gray-eyed blonde, with an intense expression on her face, stepped out, turning her head to gaze over the crowd, obviously looking for someone. Percy knew he was the one she was looking for.

Finally she spotted him, and her already-big, beautiful gray eyes widened even more, and she walked toward him.

"Percy?" she whispered.

"Yes, Wise Girl, it's me," Percy said.

She smiled widely before kissing him, right there and then, in front of everyone. Percy felt like his brain was melting.

The Romans and Greeks cheered.

"I missed you so much, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth said.

"I know. I was abducted my aunt alien, otherwise known as Hera," Percy tried to joke.

Annabeth smiled at his dorkinss.

"Ahem," a voice said behind them.

Percy whirled around and saw Hazel, Frank, and two other demigods, a boy and a girl. The boy's face looked Latino, and he acted like he had ants in his pants; he couldn't stop moving his fingers or his eyes. The girl had choppy brown hair and eyes that kept changing color, no doubt an Aphrodite kid from her pretty features.

"Well, aren't you going to introduce us to your girlfriend, Percy?" Hazel asked.

"Right," Percy muttered. "Annabeth, this is Hazel and Frank; I went on a quest with them a week ago. Hazel is a daughter of Pluto—er, Hades, whatever . . . and Frank is a son of Mars."

"So you're Nico's sister?" Annabeth asked.

Hazel's head dropped a bit. "Um, yeah, but . . ."

"Nico was sort of kidnapped by Gaea," Percy explained.

Annabeth immediately offered her condolences.

"It's okay, we'll find him," Frank said firmly, supporting his girlfriend.

Jason walked over to them. "So, this must be the famous Percy Jackson," he said.

"So this must be the famous Jason grace. I've heard a lot about you," Percy said in reply.

"Ditto,"Jason said, and shook his hand. "I see you took the job as praetor."

Percy cringed. "Yeah, sorry about that, but it was either me or Octavian."

"No, it's fine. I'd much rather have someone who has battled a Titan lord than Octavian as praetor," Jason quickly said.

"True." Percy smiled.

"Hey, have you seen Reyna around?" Jason asked. "I haven't seen her since we landed."

Hazel frowned. "I thought she was hanging around. She must have gone back to her office," she said, and Jason took off in search of her.

"Hi, I'm Piper McLean," the girl with the choppy hair introduced herself to me.

"And I'm Leo Valdez, Supreme Commander of the Argo II." Then the Latino dude leaned in and whispered to me, "Dude, your girlfriend is like super hot, you're a lucky guy."

"Ew, Valdez!" Piper said, swatting his arm.

"Hey, I was just being honest, sheesh," Leo said.

Everyone laughed at the two's obvious brother-sister relationship.

Percy looked back to the ship to see people from Camp Half-Blood, his family, waiting to greet him.

"Come on, guys," he said. "This is going to be a long day."