Chapter 2: Breaking the News

"PERSEUS JACKSON!" My mom shouts in the lobby. As I open the doors of the elevator, I see my mother storming over, Paul at her heels. "YOU DID WHAT!?"

"Mom, I can explain." I began, but she didn't let me continue.

She cried a little as she laughed and gave me a bear-hug. "Honey, you got offered immortality. That's something I don't think you'll ever get again. You don't have to explain anything to me."

I pulled back from my (awesome) mom's bear hug and looked her in the eye.

"Mom," I began, and looked behind her at Paul, "Do you two want immortality too? I can do it now. Just say the word."

My mom and Paul went wide-eyed, and for good reason. Offering immortality to a mortal demigod was already rare enough, but I was pretty sure this was the first case ever of a true mortal getting offered.

Once the initial shock of my request had already set in, my mom surprised me by slowly shaking her head.

"As strange as it may sound, Percy, I want to grow old. I want to experience all those things in life, and I want to do it at the right time. Besides, we don't even know if it will work with me. OR Paul. But I won't speak for him."

Paul looked at my mom, and though it looked like he had been thinking about accepting my offer, all signs suddenly switched tracks.

"Thank you, Percy. Seriously, I wouldn't mind being made a literal god. But that's just not how mortals, TRUE mortals, should work." Paul said, standing by my mom's side. "And besides, wherever Sally is, that's where I want to go too."

I now knew for certain that my mom had picked a good guy. And if he started hurting her, I would now be able to know instantly, and then Paul dies.

I couldn't contain my grin. "Well good luck then. I'll be able to visit you… a lot more often from now on."

I gave them both one more hug, before turning and walking out the building. Immediately, the first person I saw was Nico, dismissing much of the skeleton army Hades had brought with him. He turned as I walked up to him.

"Hey Percy." He said, before suddenly double-taking and glancing back at me with a suspicious look. His look suddenly turned into outright shock as he glanced me over. "What happened?"

I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, so I asked him to elaborate. And elaborate he did.

"Your… mortality. Your own… possibility of death. It's just… gone!" Nico said, realizing what he was actually saying. "Holy crap, Percy, they made you a—"

I nodded. "They sure did."

Nico fell silent. Slowly, I saw his usual personality fall back into place.

"Neat." He said, before turning back to his skeletons.

"Nico, would you like to be one too?" I asked him.

This question nearly seemed like his head would fly off his neck, judging on how fast he spun around.

"You can WHAT NOW?!" he shouted, incredulous.

I nodded again, grinning. "I already changed Annabeth, Thalia, and Grover. You're next on the list."

Nico had the same look as Paul. I fully expected him to say yes, but to my steadily growing surprise, Nico too refused.

"No, but thanks, Percy. I want to be able to follow Bianca's footsteps. I want to experience Elysium. Maybe even the Isles of the Blest, if I'm lucky."

I nodded, and once again I couldn't help but marvel internally at the hidden wisdom in this kid. "I can respect that."

Nico gave me another once-over. "Percy, just swear one thing to me."

"What?" I asked. "Anything."

"Just make sure to be kind. And if someday, gods forbid, you have demigods of your own, just make sure to visit them a bunch. Okay?"

I grinned. "Bro, that's why I chose immortality. Thanks though. I swear it to you."

Nico was satisfied, so I went around, healing a bunch of the broken forms of demigods, as best as I now could. I saw surprised glances from Chiron and a bunch of other friends. Clarisse was back from receiving her praises on Olympus by now, and I walked up.

Clarisse grunted as I approached. "So the punk did alright." She grumbled as she turned back to staring at the large drakon carcass lying in the street.

I suddenly felt, with these new senses of mine, the intense grief radiating off of her. My smile withered as I stopped, just standing there. Clarisse noticed me again. She scowled.

"What do you want!?" she snapped.

"Hey, I'm really sorry about Silena." I said quietly.

Clarisse wavered for a minute, her face falling. "It's… It's okay. I've made my peace with it."

I grinned, trying for a joke. "Did I just hear a child of Ares say 'peace'?"

"Shut up, Jackson."

"All joking aside though," I said, trying this time to actually cheer her up, "I feel pretty confident that she went to Elysium. In the end, she was a hero."

Clarisse looked over at the line of dead demigods, already shrouded, frowning. "You're right on that count. She was a hero. A stupid idiot, but a hero nonetheless."

I didn't really know what to say at that point, so I quietly walked away. Now wasn't the time to reveal my newfound godhood to her. She wasn't ready, and she'd probably take it as gloating. Maybe another time.

Suddenly, I felt Annabeth's… presence, nearby. It was really, really weird to be able to feel it like that. Suddenly, she materialized next to me, grinning.

"Percy, watch this!"

Annabeth clapped her hands, and from the ground right in front of her, a platform appeared, depicting marble buildings and ivory statues, all shrunk down to what I assumed would be a thousandth of their size, knowing Annabeth.

"You've already constructed mini-Olympus?" I asked her.

"Things go faster when you have these kinds of powers." Annabeth said, still smiling. "See, look at the detail I was able to make on this statue of Athena! I can get every single eyelash with that kind of precision! And this temple of Apollo right there will be about three hundred meters tall and have all the—"

"Annabeth, this all looks great." I said, interrupting her before she could really begin her tirade. "But what has everyone been doing? Where are the others?"

"They're at Camp. C'mon!" she said, grabbing my hand. Her mini-Olympus platform disappeared, and suddenly we were on Half-Blood Hill. She ran up to the top of the hill, where the white pine blazed with protective light. The Golden Fleece glittered brightly in the soft light of dusk.

I looked around, and though I could sort of get a feel where the others were, I could tell they were pretty far away. It was as if their auras, their essences, whatever you wanted to call them, were just… scattered. In fact, it felt like I myself was scattered. And if I just pulled all my pieces together…

"Percy, calm down!" Annabeth said, shielding her eyes. I looked down and realized that I was nearly about to reveal a true form. MY true form. My skin was glowing already, and it took me a moment to kill the glow, scattering myself across the surface of the globe.

"Oh. That's what that does." I said, looking up once again. "So, what do you want to do next?"

Annabeth grinned. "I… don't really know. I'm just getting used to this, right now, and I just—don't know!"

She suddenly disappeared and reappeared. She underwent many rapid changes into various other creatures before suddenly adjusting back to her normal form.

"Wow. That was… a lot." I said, cracking a smile.

"I don't really care." Annabeth said, laughing. "I guess I'm just… excited. For what now lies ahead. What I'll be able to do."

The thought finally hit me. This wasn't my life anymore. Not in the sense I had originally thought. Training, fighting, running to survive, foraging for scraps of food from gods-know-where.

But who said it had to be?

Annabeth and I looked at each other, and I saw the look on her face. The same look that told me we had both just had the same idea.

"Of course…" Annabeth said, turning around. "The others…"

"We've gotta bring them back safely." I added.

"Let's do it." Thalia said, appearing next to us, already holding her spear and shield. The sight of it still made me shy away, and her sudden appearance, though I had been acutely aware of it, still made me jump.

"Styx, don't do that!" I shouted, my voice like an octave higher. Annabeth and Thalia doubled over laughing, and when they finally stopped, we filled Thalia in on our plan, though it seemed she too had already had much the same ideas as we did.

So that night we began.