Hello internet.
Yes, writer's block's a bitch.
You can thank S.E. Hinton for giving me my spark back. But, that's a story for another time.
Enjoy.
Annabeth reached out as she and Percy ran side by side.
"Lift?" she breathed and he nodded, gripping her arm and spinning. She tensed as her feet left the ground and she spun too, suddenly flying through the air and hitting a tree trunk, feet first. She dropped then to land evenly on a hellhound's back and slash her knife across the dog's back, slitting its spinal cord. It collapsed as it lost power of its body, landing onto Riptide as Percy came up beneath it, and promptly vanished under her.
They glanced to their left at the next hound, who glared back at them, only to see a silver arrow sink deep into its blood red iris and disintegrate into golden smoke.
Thalia came to a halt beside them, her great silver bow raised in defense in her arms.
"I thought Nico said there were three?" She demanded, slightly breathless from their short sprint over here, not lowering her bow as her eyes darted around the landscape for the missing monster.
"I only saw two; the other must've run away or…" Percy shrugged.
Annabeth frowned. "Hellhounds don't just run away, they're not that intelligent. Their self-preservation isn't as strong as their blood thirst." She fretted, also scanning around for the hiding monster. She was banking on hellhounds not being smart enough to retreat also meaning they weren't smart enough to take advantage of the element of surprise and hide.
"Piper!" They heard Jason yell frantically from a ways away.
"We can't focus on it now- we'll just check with Nico for what we missed." Percy dismissed as they sprinted off again to find what was wrong.
They rounded the corner of the building to see Leo and Jason running the opposite direction, Jason practically dragging a stumbling Leo. They followed and got back to the front steps where a bewildered Hazel was gazing off to the forest, a panicked Jason begging her for something.
"Did you see her-!?"
"No, I wasn't paying attention, but Frank flew off in that direction the second our hound was down. What happened?" She worried, looking concerned but still really confused.
"I lost control of the winds and knocked her off the roof," Jason gasped, panic and all-consuming guilt written all over his face as he made to turn and sprint into the forest where Piper had gone.
"Wait-!" Annabeth grabbed his arm and held him in place as a pool of shadows opened at the base of the steps and they all slipped into defensive positions as a hellhound ripped its way out of the shadows and landed before them.
Half of them made to kill it before Percy recognized that this particular hellhound was wearing a collar.
"Mrs. O'Leary?" He balked and everyone else froze in shock.
"Conveniently placed Hellhound, I'd say." Piper's voice came and they blinked yet again in shock as she leaned around the massive boulder-sized head of what was definitely Mrs. O'Leary now that they got a better look at her. The massive dog just barked happily, shaking the ground with the force of it, and covered Percy with a great big, and very wet, hello kiss.
"Piper!" Jason gasped in relief, lurching forward and meeting her as she slide off the dog's back -and was enveloped in his hug. "I'm so sorry, I-!"
"Nonsense, I was the one who decided to jump when you obviously weren't in control." She brushed off, looking very windswept but still as beautiful as ever and not harmed visibly. "It was stupid, to say the least." She blushed in embarrassment while Jason just hugged her again and Leo gripped her free hand in comfort, relief written on his face as well.
"It was my fault for being out of control in the first place." He muttered, but only Piper heard him and she hugged him back in signal that all was forgiven.
"Well, if anything, one good thing did come of it…" She allowed with a grin starting to grow of her lips.
"Please, we're not talking about it." Frank's voice came and they noticed he was also on Mrs. O'Leary's back. He slid down and was greeted with a curious looking Hazel.
"What happened?" She asked, smirking as Piper fought back her laughter at Frank's mortified expression.
"I tried to catch her is what happened!" He huffed.
"Yes, and Mrs. O'Leary did too." Piper giggled.
"What happened?" Percy repeated.
"Mrs. O'Leary won." Piper burst into a laughing fit while Frank turned bright red.
"Well-! She's a giant dog and I was a bird so…"
"He got stepped on." Piper said in mocking sympathy. Everyone bit their lips to keep from laughing while Frank simply sniffed and tried very hard to ignore all their sympathetic, but obviously amused looks.
"Are you ok?" Hazel asked, the only concerned even thought she was evidently fighting back her own laughter.
Frank sighed and nodded, accepting her hand in his while they others looked back at Mrs. O'Leary.
"How'd you even get here girl?" Percy wondered aloud to his dog as he scratched the back of one of her giant elephant-like ears. Her tail started wagging, enough to generate quite a breeze and rustle the trees behind them.
"Shadows are omnipresent." Nico's voice came, and they saw him standing at the top of the stairs, on the outside of the shadow curtain as it quickly dissipated into nothingness now that he was outside the building, like ice in hot sunlight, letting them all know the danger had passed. "Technically speaking, I could shadow travel back to the present, except I wouldn't have half the power or strength to even get to the next century, much less a couple millennia forward." He explained, looking a bit winded from keeping the shadow curtain up.
"That's probably how the gods got us here in the first place… only fueled by their own powers." Annabeth reasoned, looking interested.
"Which means Hades would have had to have played a bigger part than Apollo let on." Thalia noted.
"That, and that Mrs. O'Leary can travel to wherever she wants to, and since we're here…"
"She popped up here." Hazel finished for Nico, who nodded. "But that doesn't explain why all monsters don't do that…" She wondered.
"No reason I guess." Nico shrugged. "Demigods in one year are the same in any other year. I doubt they care what generation of demigods they attack so long as they attack them."
"Fair enough." Annabeth noted, turning back to the building. "We should go back in…" She prompted, but they others didn't look too eager.
"Are we going to have to explain this to them?" Travis complained.
"Boooooring." Connor muttered.
"Dealing with freaked out civilians, not that's my definition of fun." Thalia sighed sarcastically.
"Now, I know it's not the greatest thing, but we can't just reveal we're demigods, run off and fight, and then just abandon them to freak out by themselves!" Annabeth scolded them as she got several exasperated looks. "We need to go back and just calmly explain that-"
"All hail the children of gods!" A voice echoed out from the Parthenon, and the demigods glanced up in shock as the crowd of mortals were gazing in awe at them.
"Pardon?" Leo squeaked in shock.
"They're not talking about us, right?" Connor said in doubt.
"Well, not you, but I can see why they'd like me." Travis shot back.
"Shut up!" Thalia hissed at them.
"Can that guy make up his mind already?" Percy blurted out, seeing Ireneus was the man who'd spoken.
"Watch it, next minute he'll be trying to kill us again." Thalia smirked and Percy nodded in agreement while Annabeth rolled her eyes.
"Uh, guys!?" Rachel's slightly panicked voice came and they snapped around to see her being supported by two guys, holding her on their shoulders.
"I think they like us." Grover said uncertainly, being held up by two other guys and walked down the steps as if in a parade as the crowd of mortals cheered.
"Did you see those monsters-!?"
"….biggest mutt I've ever-!?"
"…fire, as in without a match or-!"
"… and the winds! The trees were going wild!"
"Just beautiful! Simply wild…!"
"An eagle! I swear! And some strange creature, massive though…"
The excited chatter and ramblings going on around them blurred together, but one things was certain: they were definitely cheering for the demigods. They swooped down in a mass of people, lifting the kids onto their shoulders and celebrating.
"Uh, no thanks…" Frank tried to awkwardly step away from the guys who tried to lift him up, who were both shorter than him. But, somehow, they managed to get him anyway.
"I always thought this'd be cool, but it's kind of weird…" Leo called to the Stolls, who completely ignored him, hamming up their praise and bowing dramatically to the crowd around them.
"Touch me- and you lose that hand!" Thalia growled viciously as two men tried to lift her onto their shoulders, and they quickly backed away.
"Thalia!" Rachel called, also not too fond of the touching, and the Lieutenant went to her rescue and pulled her away from the crowd as well.
"This is strange…" Grover shifted uncomfortably as a set of younger girls were asking questions about his hooves at rapid pace while he tried to squirm out of their grips.
Percy and Jason, who already knew how awkward being lifted up was after being raised onto shields, thus ending them up as Praetors, deftly moved out of the way of the crowd, but hovered close to Piper and Annabeth making sure those who lifted their girlfriends up didn't drop them… or that they weren't too admiring Greek guys…
Nico had vanished altogether, but no one blamed him at this moment. It was a touching, but very strange situation going on all over.
"Tonight, we will have a great feast!" Elpis cried, standing at the top of the stairs, and the mortal crowd cheered. "We welcome the thirteen children of the gods who've graced us with the presence, and honor them tonight with all the greatest food we can find! Spread the word, and tonight- we celebrate!" He cried with a big, happy grin, and everyone went wild.
"You know, awkward as it is, I could get used to this." Annabeth noted with a smirk as Percy pulled her out of the crowd after they let her go.
"I don't know, the awkward part is really, really awkward." Percy mumbled, still blushing as people tried to wave and ogle at them.
"Yeah, well, you're the only one with a modest bone in your body." Thalia snorted, coming up behind them with Rachel protectively under her arm and a sneer already on her lips to ward off the men obviously infatuated with them already.
"I could get used to it if they realized I wasn't interested!" Rachel said, yelling the last part at two guys as they passed too close to them, the obvious lust on their faces. "MAIDEN! Say it with me: MAI- DEN! NO GUYS!" She hollered, but the only thing that truly scared them off was Thalia threateningly glaring at them behind the shorter red head.
"Well, you've got your work cut out for you." Annabeth sighed while Thalia and Rachel shifted defensively at every person coming closer.
"We'll lay down some rules at the feat tonight." Percy comforted them.
"Wait, we're actually going to that?" Hazel said, popping up behind his shoulder, a nervous Frank in tow. Now that they were grouped together in more than a pair, they were gathering more and more attention and people clamoring closer.
"Yes, the appreciation is nice, the attention is not." Frank muttered darkly, glancing about at all the eyes on them and the crowd steadily getting closer.
"Hold on," Nico, suddenly in the middle of their group after appearing out of nowhere, grabbed the front of Percy shirt and hooked his arm into Hazel's, and everyone else instinctively grabbed onto one of them. Darkness swallowed them, and they suddenly stood back in the Parthenon, the rest of the demigods and Grover already there after Nico's impromptu rescue. Everyone looked relieved.
"Anyone else feeling weirded out?" Leo said, raising his hand, and they rolled their eyes at him while the Stolls raised their hands too. They didn't need to raise their hands to all know they agreed with him.
"The question is, how is this supposed to be relaxing?" Jason sighed.
"Perhaps if we stick together… in little groups at least and try to avoid the, uh, scenes we've caused today." Annabeth reasoned. "I mean, we had a decent time today before everyone realized who we were… and now we don't have to worry about keeping it all under wraps."
"Yeah, word will spread to expect weird things, but no one but the mortals outside right now will recognize us." Piper realized.
"Exactly: we just do our thing and relax for a bit, ok?" Annabeth said, looking around for conformation, and everyone shrugged, having no conflict with it.
"There you are!" Ireneus cried from the main entrance once he spotted them, causing the demigods to whip around in surprise, all tensing in response to it.
"Seriously, this guy bugs me." Travis huffed under his breath.
"Ditto." Pretty much everyone else chorused.