This will be a short one.
Blackmail
It was a lovely Saturday morning; the troublesome trio had a sleep over to celebrate the start of the holidays. They ended up staying awake all night to watch some horror movie they had borrowed from the rent shop. They had a fun night eating popcorn, drinking coke and more or less just consuming junk. Eventually, they succumbed to sleep in the wee hours of the morning and slept well into the afternoon.
Thalia, as the first person to wake, was able to procure some, blackmail material, if you will. She had woken up only to find herself in an awkward situation. It seemed that when the trio had fallen asleep, they had leaned into each other seeking warmth, and so Thalia found herself wedged between her cousins as if she was part of a sandwich. As she managed to wriggle herself out, Thalia thought up a devious plan, still sore about the dare they made her do. As soon as she got out, she quickly grabbed her camera and took pictures of the sleeping boys.
In them, the boys were leaning against each other still sleeping and drooling. Nico looked as if he was going to start sucking on his thumb as he had his mouth slightly open and his hand fisted with the thumb sticking out. Percy was in a position just as embarrassing as Nico's. Both his legs were somehow strewn over the top of the couch and he was nearly being squashed by Nico. After she had finished taking sufficient photos, the next thing she did was whip out a blow horn seemingly out of nowhere. Then she pressed the button and off jumped the boys from the couch. While they regained their bearings and tried to clear their ears, Thalia laughed till her sides ached.
It was now time to kick-start her little piece of blackmail and hope it did not backfire on him as most blackmails tended to do. After they had regained their bearings, she showed the pictures she took with a smug face. As horrified as they were, they knew they could do nothing about it, after all, this was Thalia, she would do what she wanted to no matter what you did. The best thing to do was to find out what she wanted and then try to reason with her. Plus the only thing they could do to stop her was to have a tickling fest of some sort; unfortunately, they were in no position to do such a thing.
"Well boys, it's finally time for payback. To make sure that I don't spread these photos to the rest of the world you're going to have to do something for me."
*sigh* "What is it." Percy and Nico asked in unison.
"The next time we visit Camp Half-Blood, I want you both to do something like a parade for me, carry me on your backs with a banner saying 'Thalia is Awesome'. You have no choice in the matter."
"Will you get rid of them afterwards? Promise on the River Styx."
"What and give up on further blackmail opportunities? Never!"
"Well them, we'll have to tell Artemis about that little incident with her bow."
At this, Thalia's face became pale and so she quickly agreed to get rid of the photos. When the boys then tried the same tactic to get her to abort her 'mission' for them, she refused saying that having them do it would make up for whatever punishment Artemis would have for her if she ever found out about the dare.
So the day came when Artemis decided to visit camp once again, this time for purely social reasons. Percy and Nico had prepared in dreadful anticipation for this day. They had made a very 'vibrant' banner with only the words 'Thalia rulz' on it, and if you looked closely, you could see that there were some faint residue of what looked suspiciously like the word 'not' right under those words. They managed to meet her right outside of camp and carried her in, waving the banner, somehow, Thalia had managed to gather a bunch of campers and hunters to take pictures of this phenomenon, but only after she had promised not to use them against the boys.
Once again, the camp was filled with laughter, which was welcome, especially in the times they lived in. There was one thing that every camper no matter who they were could agree on, the three cousins would always manage to bring laughter to camp, and they were grateful for this gift from the gods. Sure they bickered like children, always managed to come up with the most ridiculous pranks and somehow managed to make Mr. D, and at times Chiron, so annoyed that the rest of camp felt the retributions too, they also brought laughter and happiness along with them.
