The last couple of days had felt like a life time in hades. Like some serious fields of punishment level shit. First Sloan, the school bully at Meriwether College Prep, steals the picture Annabeth on her vacation to Washington DC. from my wallet, then these Canadian cannibal giants show up just in time for gym class. The coach says we're going to be playing dodgeball but then the balls start to explode because dodging normal balls is too easy. Of course Annabeth shows up and saves my arse and then I learn she'd been peeking into my bedroom just this morning! While this wasn't as bad as almost dying it was still mortifying but at least I could use it to tease her later on.

Then there's the whole Tyson is a cyclops and also your brother thing. Yep, that was definitely a surprise. A massive, fire proof, one eyed surprise. And then there was the addition of Chiron, the hero training centaur, no longer being at camp, a pair of bronze bulls attacking the border and some arse hole had poisoned Thalia's pine tree.

It was safe to say it was definitely some fields of punishment level manure being shoveled into my life.

Camp wasn't as I remembered. Not only was Chiron gone but he'd been replaced by Tantalus. This guy was literally prisoner numero uno down in the underworld, I hadn't heard the full story but it was something about tricking the gods into eating his own son or stealing nectar from the palace of the gods, Mount Olympus, or possibly both. Who could even keep track of all these different things? I was sure as Hades that it was well beyond my own dyslexic and ADHD racked brain to research and memorise it.

Forgetting whatever reason he was punished for in his first life, I knew what he should be punished for in this one: being a massive dick. I'm pretty sure that the judges of the dead took that into consideration. Annabeth mentioned that William Shakespeare was one the panel and he punished Macbeth in that book he wrote after he was a dick to all those other people, right? I was never that good at paying attention in English literature classes.

Of course camp still looked the same, the cabins, the forest the lake and the sea front still hadn't moved but it no longer felt the same. It felt like the camp wasn't whole without it's wizened horse-man hybrid.

Tantalus hadn't actually changed a lot, not really. He'd made punishments stricter but then the rules had also changed. How strict the new rule were depended on who you were, if Tantalus liked you and the activities director's current mood. He'd also banned anyone leaving the camps boundaries without permission from either himself or Mr D, but then Mr D hated even talking with the campers so that basically made it Tantalus's decision.

The one good thing Tantalus had done in my eyes was reintroducing chariot racing to the camps activities roster. Originally I was going to work with Annabeth but then I'd managed to piss her off, it was normally my fault when Annabeth was angry, so now I was working with Tyson.

The chariot was coming along nicely. We'd designed it together and now Tyson was making it, with some help from Beckendorf the Hephaestus cabin leader. I'd always been useless with a hammer but Beckendorf had been singing Tyson's praises for his skill in the forge.

Apparently the axle was now completed and the whole chariot should take shape in the next two or three days. I was getting quite excited now, even the thought of the unpredictability of the first race was getting my blood pumping.

But right now I wanted to talk to Annabeth.

I didn't like her being annoyed with me, she was my closest friend at camp and all these unsettling dreams about Grover I'd been having recently had really shaken me up. Annabeth was always able to talk sense, the one with all the knowledge and the know how. The one person I'd met who could make a plan under any circumstance and pull it off flawlessly. And more importantly the only person I wanted watching my back in a fight.

I was walking up to cabin 6, the home of all of Athena's brain children. I'd already been to the archery station, where Athena cabin was scheduled to be, but I hadn't been able to find her. Malcolm, Annabeth's half brother, had recommended checking the cabin and then the infirmary, saying she might be coming up plans for the chariot race or capture the flag or looking after wounded campers as she often did both.

When I got there I saw that the door was open and that could only be a good sign, right? It would be very unlikely that some brainiac kid would leave the door open with their very violent rivals, Ares cabin, just across from them. So I walked up to the grey building and poked my head through the door.

What I saw inside would stay with me until my dying day.

Annabeth was inside.

But so was Tantalus.

"Come on, little girl, do what I say and I won't punish you." I heard Tantalus snarl as he made a grab for Annabeth's arm. What I can only presume was years of combat training meant she was able to dodge his first swipe but she'd been back up against her bed and had very little room to maneuver. I took a quick look around the room and saw that Annabeth's knife was on the floor clearly thrown or knocked away and definitely useless to it's owner.

"No! Get away from me!" I could hear her cries from the doorway. I had to do something but I didn't know what to do.

He made another swipe, Annabeth managed to move her arm out of the way again but this time he managed to get a hold of her orange camp half-blood tee shirt.

"Now I've got you, little girl." Tantalus said as he pulled Annabeth towards him, she resisted but the fabric of her shirt wasn't as strong. It started to tear at the seems as Tantalus pulled harder and harder. And as Annabeth gave one last shake of protest as she tried to make the pervert loose his grip it tore completely leaving the young girl's chest bare to the world.

"That's how we like it!" Tantalus shouted as he licked his lips and threw the now useless piece of cloth away.

I still didn't have a plan to stop this but I started to walk towards the pair hoping that a witness would spook Tantalus. Annabeth had seen me now, I made contact with her grey eyes, watching the tears form and roll down her cheeks: I had to stop him from harming her.

I fished my trusty pen Riptide from my pocket, uncapping it as I raised it. I hoped I'd judged the distance between myself and Tantalus because as much as I wanted to stop him I didn't want to kill him.

"Come on, let's get the rest off you, sweetheart." I heard Tantalus purr next to Annabeth's ear. He'd pushed her on to her bed, one hand trying to unbutton her jeans while the other pushed down on her budding teenage breasts holding her to the mattress.

I will admit I lost it then. It had gone to far. I no longer cared what happened to Tantalus, he'd taken far too many liberties with my friend and I was going to stop him.

"Aha, got it." Tantalus cried, it seemed he'd finally got the button undone.

"Too late." I said as I drove my sword through the back of the lower part of his head.

The blood was rushing in my ears, I could feel the adrenaline pump through my veins. I felt it as Tantalus seized up. As all of his muscles simultaneously contracted. The jerk sent through my sword as the muscles around the vertebrae I had just stabbed through.

And then just as suddenly the body of Tantalus relaxed. All of his muscles relaxing from their contracted state. All of Tantalus's weight was how hanging on my sword, the sudden weight was a jarring shock about what I'd just done.

I'd killed a man.

Sure he was a massive dick who had just tried to rape my best friend and had helped make my life a living Hades these passed few days but I'd just killed him. There wasn't any justice in this, it was murder.

The realisation was too much, I couldn't take it. Riptide fell from my hand and along with it, Tantalus's body fell to the floor.

I stared at the person I'd just murdered; my sword reaching out of his gaping mouth, his face was slack no sign of any shock or any perverse enjoyment the man had been feeling the moments before. His face was blank.

Tantalus was dead.

And I'd murdered him.

"Percy?"

Annabeth was still here, I wouldn't have been surprised to see disgust plastered all over her face. I wouldn't have been surprised if she hated me or turned me over to the authorities.

"Percy!" She was shouting at me now. I looked up, trying to decide to meet her eyes or just to study the floor next to Tantalus's body.

But she didn't look angry, or disgusted, or even slightly weary about being so close to a murderer. No, she looked thankful, if worried.

"Percy, are you okay." She'd grabbed my face now steadying it to look at her own. " Percy you need to get going!"

This surprised me.

"What?" Of course I had the intelligent responses ready.

"You just saved me but Mr D won't see it that way! You just stabbed the activities director at Mr D's camp, he's going to be mad at you!" She was quite frantic now, her hands was shaking my head as she said every word.

Of course there was a… downside to all this shaking. I noticed that Annabeth was still topless.

I imagine that my face was doing a very good intimidation of a tomato as I stuttered "Annabeth, y-your shirt."

And then she flushed red as well.

"Here take mine." I said as I took my camp shirt off of my head, slightly out of being noble but it also hid my embarrassment if only for a fraction of a second.

She took it thankfully and slid it over her head before entering planning mode again.

"You need to run, Percy. Mr D will blame you and probably kill you regardless of why you did it." She said at rapid speeds, I just nodded knowing that she'd come up with a much better plan than I could and interrupting her would just slow down the process. "You should go to the sea, your father's domain should protect you from the other gods influence even if Poseidon doesn't allow you to enter his court."

I nodded.

"I would suggest that you beg for whatever help you can get from your father, maybe he'll give you a submarine or a boat that will help you escape." She just carried on, ignoring everything around her: Gods, she was wonderful.

"But what about you?" I asked Annabeth and suddenly she seemed stumped. "Hear me out!" I say but it clear that my friend is just humoring her self. "Don't you think that Mr D might punish you because you were here?" No matter how confident I was with my plan I would always check with Annabeth to check that it would go the way I hoped it would.

"I'll be fine, Mr D won't try anything not with mom looking out for me." She said, "You, on the other hand, are a son of Poseidon. Mr D will hurt you cause Zeus would side with him over your father no matter what happened. You're the one in danger here, Percy. You need to go!" I could see that she was really worried now, her face was all screwed up and she kept playing with her hair. She always did that when she was worried.

"Go, Percy, go to the beach, pray to your dad and run. Please Percy." She begged. "I want you to be safe after all you did for me, not just now but on our quest last year and everything we've done since. You mean a lot to me Percy and I couldn't stand it if you took the fall for saving me from this, this pervert." And then she hugged me. Which was weird. Annabeth wasn't a hugging person. She showed affection with a slap or a punch to the arm.

But it felt nice.

Being hugged that is. Being hugged by Annabeth. Course I'd hugged by my mom and all that but this was different but also better.

"Go, seaweed brain, before someone stumbles in here and finds this mess." She said as she gestured to my sword still impaled through the back of Tantalus's head.

I reached down and took riptide by it's handle and by using my foot to push Tantalus's body away I pulled it from the director's corpse. The blade was covered in blood. This was new, monsters didn't really leave anything behind when you killed them. Maybe there'd be some slime but nothing bad, nothing bloody. Fishing the pen cap from my pocket I capped my sword causing it to become a pen once more. Maybe the whole magic shrinking thing would clean it as well.

I was walking to the door when I thought of something. "I want you to have it." I said, holding out Riptide.

"What?! But it was a gift from your dad! I couldn't take it from you." Annabeth protested.

"He'd understand." I said, waving off her protests. "I never want you to be disarmed again."

Annabeth nodded, not saying anything.

"Bye, Annabeth." I said as I walked back towards the door. "Iris message me!" I called back over my shoulder. As I left the cabin the thought hit me that I was, quite possibly, not going to see any of this again. This could be my last time seeing the cabins, my home of last summer. Even before I left I knew I would miss this place.

"Percy!" I heard shouted from inside the cabin. It was Annabeth, her head now poking out of the doorway. She was crying again but now she had a grin stretched across her face. "Thank you."

A smile at her once more, that lopsided one that my mom says make me look like I'm up to no good. I didn't really know what to say. So I didn't say anything at all. I turned back around and began jogging towards the beach, trying not to make eye contact with any of the campers.

I was attracting a lot of looks though probably because I was missing my shirt, it was an unusual sight for camp unless you were on the beach itself. But then it could have been people thinking I'm a hero after the mess last year with the Lighting Bolt and all that. Course they wouldn't think I was a hero after Annabeth tells them what happened. No matter how grateful she was, I'm still a murderer.

So this is a new idea I've had after the high I was on for finishing Forgotten in Marriage
Let me know what you think and if you want me to keep going.
Thanks for reading

An Average White Writer