JUST AS A WARNING, A GOOD PORTION OF THIS CHAPTER IS COPIED FROM THE LAST OLYMPIAN BOOK. AGAIN, ALL RIGHTS GO TO RICK RIORDAN.

Chapter 5: Official

The four of us just stood in a loose circle, contemplating this.

"Sooo… what does that—"

"I hear them!" Grover suddenly shouted.

There was a moment of more silence before I finally spoke up.

"Uh, the screams and shouts?"

"No, other satyrs! I know what Mr. D was talking about now!" Grover said, his eyes wide.

The rest of us looked around at each other for another few moments.

"Care to fill us in on the secret?" Thalia asked.

"Oh, right. Well, as far as I can tell, Mr. D was saying that we have followers. At first, I thought he was saying that we had to get people to believe in us for us to be anything, aside from just an immortal." Grover began, "But how can you have followers without already being a god of something?"

I had no idea where he was going, but Annabeth gasped.

"You're saying that you've… we've somehow acquired divine purposes?"

Thalia and I gave each other confused looks as Annabeth and Grover began chattering on about it.

"Are you feeling as clueless as I am, oooor…" I began.

"Yeah, this is a little beyond me." Thalia whispered back.

"No no, it makes sense! We just became the three gods of the Unclaimed!" Annabeth said, the same excited glint in her eyes.

I let that sink in.

"So…" I began, trying to make sense of this new information. "What does that mean?"

"Percy, I don't know how we did it, but when we decided that we would bring the unclaimed demigods back to Camp, I think our immortality responded to those impulses! Now, instead of just being immortal, we have a divine purpose as gods! This is so exciting!" Annabeth said quickly, before beginning to lose herself in plans and thoughts that I had no chance of understanding, and only succeeding in confusing me even more.

Again, I turned to Thalia, who looked like she now understood as well.

"Translation please?" I asked her.

"Zeus = god of Lightning and Heaven. Poseidon = god of Water and Sea. Hades = god of the Underworld and the Dead." Thalia said in short sentences. "We = god and goddesses of the Unclaimed demigods."

"Ooooh, okay, I got it now." I said, grinning.

"Well, that sort of makes sense." We hear a voice behind us. We all turn.

Jordan is standing near Rose, who have both been watching us evidently. Both of them seem already unusually at peace with their world being flipped upside-down. But at a second glance I can see that they still have so many questions they're repressing currently.

"I mean, you guys just popped out of nowhere just as we needed you. It seemed to us like you guys were already experienced in this kinda thing. Like, really experienced."

"Well, with the training you two will receive here, you'll be as good as us, if not better."

"I somehow doubt that, but what the hey." Rose said, grinning.

Suddenly, I felt a sort of dawning realization coming over me. Like something was about to be announced. I saw it on the other's faces too. Rose and Jordan looked at us with concerned expressions.

"Guys? What is that look you're giving each other? Should we be worried?"

The four of us kept looking about us, but we just couldn't put a finger on what the feeling was. Our demigod senses were going crazy as they tried to figure out what they were sensing. Unconsciously we drew our weapons, managing to frighten Rose substantially, but it turned out to be something drastically different than what we expected.

A glowing symbol appeared over Rose's head suddenly. A holographic image of a rainbow in a starry sky. Several other campers crowded around, congratulating her as she tried to figure out what the image over her head meant. Suddenly, I could hear Chiron's voice, calling out over the clearing from where he was beginning to rise, thanks to some medical magic from Apollo.

"All hail Rose Silve, daughter of Iris, goddess of the rainbows." His voice boomed. How he knew her name already, I don't think I'll ever know.

We all knelt, as was custom.

"Psst! Percy!" I heard a voice say behind me. I turned.

Apollo was floating in the air, and I could tell once again that he had turned invisible to all but me and my friends. "You don't have to kneel anymore. Perks, y'know?"

I frowned, but remained kneeling for the time being. Apollo shrugged and hovered there, but his words kept ringing in my ears. The kneeling. How many times had I knelt before when a demigod was claimed? Well, all of them. And I had been at this camp for nearly five or six years. Plenty of time to see many campers claimed.

Kneeling was a simple act of respect. Couldn't the gods even do that much for their children? Or even for the courtesy to another god's children?

I took a deep breath. The rest of the half-bloods stood, and so did I. Even still the thoughts raced through my head, but I pushed them back for the time being. Anger flowed through me, and it took conscious effort to keep myself from turning to full form for no apparent reason. Annabeth walked up, evidently sensing something was wrong. It didn't take a god to figure out what my expression meant.

"Hey you." She said, plopping down onto the bench beside me as I pondered over Apollo's words. "Whatcha thinking about?"

I looked up from my thoughts, and upon seeing Annabeth, I felt part of my troubles melt away.

"Oh, just…" I said, feeling myself about to give a 'Percy-esque' answer, "…god stuff."

Annabeth smiled as she sat down next to me.

"Well, in any case… Happy birthday." She said, plopping down something that vaguely resembled a giant blue cupcake into my hand. "Make a wish."

"Uh…" I replied, feeling one more dumb reply coming. "…what?"

"It's your birthday Seaweed Brain. August 18th." Annabeth said.

I was stunned. It hadn't even occurred to me, but she was right. I had turned sixteen this morning—the same morning I'd made the choice to give Luke the knife. The prophecy had come true right on schedule, and I hadn't even thought about the fact that it was my birthday.

"What are you waiting for? Make a wish." Annabeth said.

"Did you bake this yourself?" I asked.

"Tyson helped."

"That explains why it looks like a chocolate brick," I said, "with extra blue cement."

We had a laugh about that, before digging in. It was good, heightened by A.) our new godly senses (even though it didn't feel exactly nourishing, it was still good) and B.) The sunset and the crickets chirping in the forest nearby made for a pretty nice setting. When we were done, Annabeth sighed.

"Y'know… You saved the world."

"Uh-uh, miss Chase. We saved the world." I replied.

"And Rachel is our new Oracle. She won't be dating anybody, I suppose." Annabeth said.

"You… don't sound exactly disappointed."

Annabeth shrugged. "Oh, I don't care."

"Mm-hm." I said sarcastically, giving her a suspicious look.

She raised an eyebrow. "You wanna tell me something, Seaweed Brain?"

"You'd probably kick my butt."

"You know I would."

I looked at the sunset for a moment, setting right in front of us. It blazed brightly, but it was like I could see it clearly now. It looked… much like a chariot, fire trailing behind it. I could've sworn I even saw Apollo give me a thumbs-up, before going back to driving his chariot.

I'm not sure what came over me after that, but I just started telling Annabeth all about the River Styx excursion that I had. She had been my lifeline, literally. I also told her about my thought processes on Olympus, when the gods offered me the immortality. Why I decided to give them all immortality too. But at about this time, my throat began to get really, really dry. I wonder what gods did when they got laryngitis, but the thought was pushed away for a later day.

"So, when they asked me about it, I started thinking about…" I said, before I had to stop for a second.

Annabeth gave me a look, before reading what my sentence was about to be. "Anyone in particular?"

I glanced at her, finding that she was trying desperately to hide a smile.

"You're laughing at me!" I complained.

"I am not!"

"You are so not making this easy."

Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. "I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it."

"Oh, I only have all of eternity to look forward to that now." I joked.

"Shut up, Seaweed Brain." She said.

When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.

I could've stayed that way for the rest of forever, except a voice behind us growled, "Well, it's about time!"

When we turned around, we saw that nearly the entire camp had gathered silently behind us, Clarisse at the lead. They all began making their way towards us, hoisting us up onto their shoulders.

"Oh, come on!" I complained. "Is there no privacy?"

"The lovebirds need to cool off!" Clarisse said with glee.

"The canoe lake!" Connor Stoll shouted.

With a huge cheer, they carried us down the hill, but they kept us close enough to hold hands. Annabeth was laughing, and I couldn't help laughing too, even though my face was completely red.

We held hands right up to the moment they dumped us in the water.

Afterwards, however, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends kept waiting for us to come up, but hey—when you're the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry.

And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.