As we were walking around camp, on our way to the celebration, I noticed a bright light coming from the Infirmary we had just left that. It lasted for about half a minute before disappearing, but before I could think about it, Annabeth said to me "I just realized I didn't actually thank you. For getting me out of the forest." "A normal 'thanks' would have done back then. But with so much time passing in between, and with interest, it's gonna take a little more" I joked. "Well in that case…" Annabeth grabbed my face and pulled me closer. Just as our lips were about to make contact, a silver arrow shot between them, making us pull away. "Hey you two are super cute together, but not under my tree" That could only be Thalia. I suddenly realized something. "Hey Annabeth" I quickly said. "Remember when I said your voice sounded like mine, but with something else mixed in? That was Thalia" But she wasn't even listening, she was already running towards her old friend and giving her a hug. "Whoa, Annabeth. I'm glad to see you as well." "We heard about Orion's attack, and we didn't know if you were still alive" I explained. "I just realized something" Annabeth said "This is the second time I'm standing below this tree and finding out you're not dead." "And I'm still the same age as the last time. But you're three years older. This is so weird to think about. When we first met, I was almost twice as old. Now you're older than me. What are you now, seventeen?" "I guess, but after the lotus casino and the place down there, I'm not too sure. If you count the days since my birth, or rather my appearance, from my perspective, I'll be turning 17" she was silent for a few second, but I could tell she was calculating "I already am. I turned 17 on the first of August. Percy, I know you won't be able to calculate it yourself, for you it would be 9/7." "That's not a very nice assumption. 100 percent true, but still not nice. Anyways, is there any reason you're here? Is there another dangerous ancient being we need to kill?" "No, not that I know. I just wanted to check up on all of you. Is my bro here?" "First of all, only I get to call him bro. Also, yes, I'll get him."
I ran down half-blood hill, while simultaneously looking out for Jason. I spotted him near the big house and turned towards him. I finally came to a stop right before I would have tackled him over. Even after all these years, I still underestimated how fast you get while running down that hill. Or maybe Gaia made the hill steeper. Yeah, that was probably it.
"Hi bro. Thalia is here and asked me to get you." "Thanks bro" he told me before walking up the hill to his sister. About a minute later, Annabeth came walking down the hill. "I think we should be able to kiss now without being interrupted by an aro/ace promotion arrow ace." And so we did, but I couldn't fully enjoy it because my mind was mostly occupied with understanding Annabeth's last sentence. But the fraction of the kiss my brain did process was good enough. "Oh, regarding our birthdays, why don't we celebrate bothof them on the 18th. It's about in the middle of our biological birthdays." "Sure, why not?"
Annabeth
"I wonder where that light came from" I asked. We made our way to the Infirmary to ask Will. "Well, Piper's pants covered up any potential injuries, so she had to change into shorts." "Makes sense, but what does that have to do with light?" Well, she couldn't exactly walk somewhere more private to change, so I summoned what anime fans would probably call the 'magical light of family friendliness'. I then checked everything and gave her some ambrosia. The wounds weren't too bad, so she should be good to go in about 30 minutes." "Well, then I guess we can go celebrate now." Percy said as we left the Infirmary. "And apologize to the gods" I half-joked. "Apologize for what?" "This game was technically a Greek/Roman conflict, so we probably gave them a case of split brain syndrome." I thought about how weird it had been to meet Minerva, she had seemed so confused and just not like I knew her. But then again, my mom was among the gods who had changed the most between Greek and Roman. But she was definitely not the only one suffering from this mental splitting, I had also seen it on Nike. On the other hand, she would probably have escaped, had she not been so confused. Just as confused as I had been yesterday morning. "Maybe that's what's happening to you" Percy suddenly suggested. "Of course, you don't have a Greek and a Roman side, but still." "Could be. But can this even happen in humans or demigods?" All this talk of different versions and identities was giving me a headache. "Percy, I just realized something" I told him. "I know this is completely off topic but what if the word 'ache' comes from the Acheron, the river of pain."
"Could be. I wonder what other words are derived from Greek mythology. Maybe torture comes from you-know-where." "There's also a lot of characters with phobias named after them" I added "Arachne, Venus, Thalassa, Kronos, for Kronos we also got chronology, chronic, chronicles, the list goes on. Both for phobias and for Kronos. And the word phobia itself comes from another Greek god, Phobos. I hate that guy. Temple of fear and stuff" "I don't exactly like him either. Once stole Ares' chariot from Clarisse. I helped her get it back" "Then I guess we both had our bad experiences with him. And both in the presence of a sister of his." "True, now, let's get to the celebrations before all the blue cookies are gone" Like I said, some things never change. "Oh, hermaphrodite is another one" "And Achilles heel and Achilles tendon"
This time, we reached the big house, where we celebrated our victory, without anything stopping us. (Well technically, the second time we stopped ourselves by asking Will about the light) Despite being the losers, the Romans were also invited. I guess we weren't really celebrating our victory and more so the game's symbolic meaning of connecting the camps. Whatever the exact reason was, we had a lot of fun and ate way too many cookies, though Percy would probably disagree with me on that one. He's convinced that you can never eat too many blue cookies. I feel like he and Sally are as irreplaceable to the food coloring industry as howToBasic is to the egg market.
"So, do you know when you're gonna head back to camp Jupiter?" I asked Frank. "I guess once we undid the damage a certain panda murderer caused. The main thing that needs to be cleaned up is the landscape Gaia destroyed, and Hazel will probably have that cleared by tomorrow. But we also don't want to have to move a bunch of nymphs through the entire country, so we should give them as much time as possible to change their minds. In other words, anytime between tomorrow and the end of summer. Sorry, that's all I know." "It's okay, maybe someone else knows" I saw Hazel who had just appeared behind Frank and decided to leave the two of them alone. I also noticed someone else. Piper was standing in the doorway.
Okay, maybe that sounded a bit dramatic, she had only been in the Infirmary for like 40 minutes. Believe it or not, sometimes I say things that don't make sense. "Hi, I'm back" She announced. "It's gonna take a bit more than a couple ants to take stop me" Through the background noise, which had decreased quite a bit when Piper came, I heard Nico muttering something about Will doing most of the stopping. As per usual, Piper looked good, but without it seeming like she tried to be beautiful. She just looked confident and powerful. After this perhaps slightly overdramatic entrance, Piper walked in and secured herself a batch of cookies. I might understand some things, but this girl isn't one of them. Sometimes I feel like she can't plan ahead for more than ten seconds and just does whatever comes to mind, but usually it works out, especially if we're fighting a giant whose main ability is making machines and plans not work. And even if that didn't work out, you can't expect everyone to be as smart as Athena kids. "Hey Pipes, good to see you're better. These ants tried to eat me once as well." I told her. Plus or minus one or two sentences I had to restart midway. For some reason I couldn't think straight right now. Where was I? Ah, yes, my derailed train of thought. I poured myself a cup of water and noticed that the promise of it being ice cold was almost not a lie. Of course, you couldn't get water to be cold as ice without it turning into ice, unless you added salt or antifreeze to it, both of which you generally don't want in the water that people are supposed to be drinking. I tried warming it up by holding it in my hands, but it was hopeless. Cold and hopeless. Like the Cocytos 'Maybe Leo can warm this up for me' I thought. 'Oh wait, no, he's dead'. Why was I thinking so slowly right now? It felt like my brain was stuffed with cotton. I mean, it was better than not remembering an entire night and finding out the next morning that you apparently acted like a child. Also, this wasn't the first time I experienced something like this, it was just usually not this strong.
Before I knew it, we were done celebrating our victory, partly because the snacks had run out, and the big house started to empty. How much time had passed? I didn't remember. My head was foggier than San Francisco.
Percy
As the amount of snacks decreased, so did the amount of people. Eventually, only Annabeth, me and about 5 other people were left. I grabbed the last blue cookie and went to leave, passing Annabeth on my way to the door. At first, she looked like she was thinking about something (when is she ever not thinking about something), but when I stood still in front of her, it took her a good five seconds to notice me. Also, her eyes seemed unfocused and had lost a bit of her typical storminess. I had only seen her like that a few times, and it usually wasn't this extreme. I put my arm around her shoulders and she followed me out of the big house and onto a tree that had fallen over during Gaia's awakening and now served as a natural bench. "Hey Annabeth, you alright?" I asked. It took her a few seconds to respond "Mostly. Except that my train of thought basically derailed. And then it fell into the Grand Canyon. If you know what I mean" "Well, I have seaweed brain syndrome, but derailed trains of thought aren't my specialty. Is there anything I can do to help?" Another pause. "It'll get better. By itself. But other than that…" She opened her arms and I slipped into her hug. For a while, we just sat there, me listening to her heartbeat. Luckily, I was able to do that without being reminded of a certain other heartbeat, since that had been like 50 times slower. I could have stayed like that for hours, but Annabeth pulled away, saying "Thanks, I can think again" she chuckled. "Maybe sometimes all you need is a hug" For once, I disagreed with her "Annabeth, you don't just need a hug, you need a therapist. Actually, we all need one, but you in particular.
"Well, if you insist" Annabeth said and pulled out her phone, a prototype by Leo, designed to not attract any monsters. She dialed a number and I was just barely able to recognize it in time to take her phone away from her before she could start a call. "Calling my mom is not therapy" I told her. "What would the therapist even diagnose me with" she asked. "Pantheon-mix based mind splitting? Does someone like that even happen for humans or demis?" "No idea, do I look like a psychologist to you" Annabeth shook her head. "But maybe Piper knows." I added "Why Piper?" "Oh, just a thought, she was the one who knew what a quasar was, so why not? Also, she grew up with her dad thinking she was mortal, so she was probably allowed to go on the internet and maybe she's heard of such a condition before. I don't want to question your intellect, but I think in the category 'random knowledge that might come in useful in some situations but probably never will' she might actually surpass even you."
"She might" Annabeth agreed, sounding only a tiny bit offended. "Why don't we go ask her?"
We eventually found Piper on the roof of cabin one. Jason was nowhere to be seen, so we decided to join her. "Hey Piper, can we come up?" Annabeth asked "Sure, Jason is busy with some formalities, something about when he made Frank the new praetor in the house of Hades. She tossed down a rope ladder and we climbed up onto the roof. "So, what is it?" Piper asked. "I can tell there's something you're worried about" "You could say that" Annabeth commented "I know it's usually the other way around, but there's something I don't know that you might." "Well, what is it?" Annabeth took a few deep breaths before starting "I don't remember the night leading up to yesterday. I remember the evening, laying in my bed and reading, and the next thing I know I wake up in cabin 3. And according to Percy, I did some weird stuff. Tell her Percy." I explained how Annabeth had acted like a child, and also about how her voice had changed in the lake and Annabeth added that she also had a memory gap for that. She also explained how she had felt after the celebration. All the while, Piper was listening carefully. Annabeth ended with "And since you basically lived as a mortal until less than a year ago, we thought maybe you've hear of something like that before"
Well, will Piper know what is up with her friend? Who knows? I know, but I won't tell you. *maniacal laughter*. But Now the question is, do you know what's up. Write your theories into the comments. Once I find the correct answer, I'll post the next chapter. Or when I run out of patience. That does not mean you shoud just wait for that to happen. Btw, what Annabeth has is actually so common that there is about a 92% Chance at least one of the people reading this has it.
Just a quick update, maybe I will update this before my question is answered, but first I'll give you a hint:
Read the authors note at the end of the first chapter. Look out for things that seem to make sense, but don't when you consider this is the first chapter
Maybe I'll give you more hints later