Okay, let me rephrase that: I stayed near the front to try to step in if anything went wrong and probably fail. Controlling switches was definitely something we needed to improve. Once the plane was safely landed at the beach, I decided to go back to exploring the inner world. I made my way back to the house where everyone lived. This time, I was a lot faster since I (somewhat) knew where it was now. When I arrived there, Chris was still waiting for me. "Hey there, what was it?" he asked. "The body was near the golden gate bridge and since I'm a big architecture nerd, I obviously had to check that out. So, anything else in here you want to show me?" "Well, there is one thing. Follow me." He led me into the house and around the staircase to a door in the back. It led to a short corridor which ended at another door. I wondered what could be behind it since, if my impression of how large the rooms were was correct, we were at the outside wall. I opened the door and saw that I had been correct, since it led into a garden. There was one central gravel pathway with smaller paths going off of it every two meters or so. Between them were little fields. "This is where we grow our food." Chris explained. "You have to grow your own food?" "Well, did you think it would just appear in the fridge? No, we have to do everything ourselves, which makes sense given that there aren't that many people who live in this world, mostly just the alters. But everything grows easily here, so getting enough to eat isn't as much work as you might think. It's definitely easier to get than in my own experience with the outside world. However, said experience consists largely of our time in Tartarus, so maybe my impression of the outside world isn't very accurate." "Hm, it's a bit easier in the mortal world, though probably not as easy as here." Chris showed me around the garden. There were all sorts of plants being grown here, from potatoes to apples and even wheat. "How do you process the wheat?" I asked. "Do you have like a mill somewhere?" "Yes, I'll show you. Oh, that field is just ready for harvest. Want to help me?" "Sure, why not?" Chris grabbed two scythes from a table standing at the edge of the fields and gave one to me. When we reached the field that was ready, he showed me how to use the scythe. Within minutes, we had the field harvested, but it was only 3 by 3 meters anyways. "Now we just gotta collect everything." He stepped to the side and blew over the field, making everything we had cut off move to one side. Of course, this was completely unrealistic, but this world didn't always care about realism.
"So, the next step is to separate out about 5% of the seeds to replant and take the rest to the mill." He quickly divided the pile in two by drawing a line with his foot before putting everything else into a bucket. And when I say everything, I mean everything. Not a single piece remained on the floor, since the individual blades stuck together very well, probably another example of this world favoring practicality over realism. He showed me the way to a small hill with a hole in the top. "Now you just gotta pour everything in" "I really don't know much about agriculture, that's our neighbor's job, but I'm pretty sure we're skipping some steps here, namely separating the seeds from everything else." "Oh, that's what this is for." He pointed into the hole where I saw a sieve of sorts, just big enough for the seeds to fall through. I poured the bucket's contents into the hole and they almost immediately separated. Below, I could hear large stones grinding against each other. "May I ask what is powering the millstones?" "The power comes from a water wheel and is transferred via this shaft. He pointed at the other end of the hill where I could barely make out a rotating metal beam. "The flour will be finished in a few minutes, then we can just take it from here." He led me to the bottom of the hill where I small pipe, maybe 8 centimeters, came out of the hill. The end of it was closed off with a screwed on cap. I decided to take a look at that water wheel Chris had mentioned. I followed the shaft until I found it. The last few meters, I had to walk over a wooden bridge since the shaft lead over a river that ended at a cliff face.
The wheel wasn't very big, but it spun very quickly. So quickly in fact, that the rpm had to be reduced to about 1/10 using multiple gears. (Don't ask me how I knew this. Maybe it was because this world was in my head, or it was just my inherit sense for machines) These gears also bridged the gap between the shaft at only a few centimeters above the ground to the wheel, which was about ten meters above us. The water flowing off of it seemed to be the only thing feeding into to the river. The reason it spun so quickly was that it wasn't powered by regular water. Instead, the water came shooting out of a pipe, which led to the cliff just a few meters away, at a ridiculous speed. The stream was easily as powerful as a pressure washer, but much thicker, closer to that of a fire hose. "How do you get it so powerful?" I asked. "Well, this cliff face used to be a waterfall, about half a kilometer tall. However, we have dug out a cylindrical hole within the rock. The water flows into the hole and comes out through the pipe at over 50 times atmospheric pressure. It then goes into the river or into this barrel" He pointed at a wooden tank about 9 meters high and two wide. "From where it flows to the house. This way, we can have high pressure water without any pumps. The water wheel also powers some other mechanisms in this world. Anyways, this pretty much concluded our tour of the house and related infrastructure. However, we still need to return the flour we just made." When we arrived at the hill, Chris took the bucket from before and held it below the exit pipe before opening it up. Fine, white flour came out and almost filled the bucket. "This is far more than we put in, how is that possible?" I asked "The mill usually doesn't just create new resources out of thin air, so the most reasonable explanation is that someone else just forgot to empty it." We walked back to the house and deposited the bucket in a small storage room next to the kitchen.
I explored the surroundings of the house a bit more before suddenly being pushed back to front.
When I came back, I was in bed and just drifting off to sleep. How much time had passed? It seemed that listing of all my alters had been as dangerous to my own control as I had thought when I did it. I took a moment to orient myself. To my left was Percy, so apparently no one had banned us from sleeping together this night. Not that there would have been any reason to do that, there was nothing bad or undesirable that might come from that. Oh, right, the sex thing, they might not want us to do that. But apparently my half lie of being ace had been enough to convince them of what was actually the truth. On my right was Thalia's tent. That had probably also contributed to my parents allowing us to sleep together. I didn't really have any context to what was happening, but since Percy and Thalia were both sleeping, I could be relatively certain I wasn't in danger. I tried to remember what had happened on the outside. I had a vague image of being in a plane, and also a sunset, but not much more. I decided to figure everything out tomorrow, whispered "good night" to Percy so I wouldn't wake him up and went back to sleep.
I was woken up by Percy mumbling something in his sleep. Something about misery and sparing me. I tried to wake him up and it sort of worked, but he still appeared to be stuck in a flashback. "Leave us alone" He said into my general direction. Then he put up his hands and I felt his power flowing through me. All the humidity on my body appeared to move upwards towards my face. An image flashed in my mind; a very old creature, standing in a puddle of a steaming liquid. Percy seemed to be controlling this stuff to flow towards Achlys (that name had also just appeared in my head). If I interpreted this correctly, Percy was having a flashback of his encounter with Achlys and acted out how he had tried to kill her. Unfortunately, his attempts at killing were kind of affecting me. Luckily for me, there wasn't a whole lot of liquid around for him to control. Unfortunately, water is everywhere if you just know where to search. And that is especially true in San Francisco. The humidity in the air began to condense. "Percy!" I called to him. He didn't react. "Percy Jackson, stop. Right now" The humidity made it hard to breathe. "Achlys isn't here, there's no one to be fighting." He stopped controlling the water and slowly he started to come back. "Annabeth, are you okay?" Percy asked. "Did she hurt you?" "Percy, I'm here. I'm okay" I pulled him into a hug. "I don't know what happened, but it's over now. We're safe" He appeared to have fully returned to reality now. "What happened?" He asked me. "Uh, I'd say you had a flashback of when you attacked someone. You acted out the attack and I was hit by some of it." "Achlys" He whispered. "I controlled her Poison. You told me to stop, but I didn't want to. I liked it. I'm a terrible person. What if-" "Percy. Hey Percy, listen to me. Your attack completely soaked me. How about you fix that, and then you're not a terrible person." "I'll do that" He dried me up. Seeing his reaction, I was glad I hadn't told him the truth. I hadn't just gotten a little bit of the attack, Percy had, unknowingly, hit me directly. Even if it had in no way been his fault, I still knew he might not have been able to handle having hurt me. "What if- what if it happens again? Just like right now. What if I accidentally hurt someone?" "Percy, listen, I don't remember exactly what happened, but I know that you did everything you did in self-defense. To protect me. And if you're willing to control rivers of poison" I made a short pause. I knew I was taking a small risk by talking about this situation, since it had also been very traumatic for me, but I had to do this for Percy. "If you're willing to do that to protect me, if you truly love me that much, you cannot be a bad person. You are a nice, loving and loyal person. Everyone can be mean sometimes. When Lady Artemis took the sky from me, what do you think was the first thing I did?" "Considering you've been stuck there for over a day, I'd say you first tried to find the nearest bathroom. At least that's what I would have done." "Was it really that long? Anyways, the first thing apart from finding a toilet: I was so angry that I just grabbed my Knife and killed like ten monsters, not because I was in danger, just because I was so angry. If I had had the powers of for example Hazel, I might have destroyed that entire mountain. So to sum up, everyone can snap under enough pressure. There's nothing for you to be ashamed of." "Really? What about-" "Yes, seaweed brain, really." I checked the clock. "Now, want to go back to sleep? It's like three am." "Like now? Right after a flashback?" "You're right. Too much negative emotion and stuff. But I can fix that" I pretended to be searching for something, then gave him a kiss. After a few seconds, we let go. "Better?" I asked. "Better"
In that moment, Thalia came out of her tent. "I have felt a great disturbance in the force of maidenhood" "Don't worry, we didn't do anything serious. It was just one kiss and that was just for emotional stabilization." "Good, because otherwise I would have to electrocute you on the spot." With that threat in the air, she retrieved back to her tent and left Percy and me to sleep and do nothing else.
That morning, I was gently woken up by Percy. "Hey wise girl time to wake up. It's almost nine." "I don't want to. I think I stayed up late yesterday plus I have a headache." Fine, that was kind of a lie. There was a small headache present, but it wasn't enough to justify not standing up. Maybe there had been some more switching since Percy's flashback. "Well, if you won't get up on your own, I might have to consider…. Other options" From his tone, I knew nothing good was coming. And nothing good indeed came, in the form of ice cold water dripping onto my face. And before any of you wannabe Athena kids start complaining that water cannot be ice cold without actually being ice, there are actually multiple ways of achieving exactly that. The first is to pressurize the water to between about 100 to 2000 atmospheres (very difficult, would not recommend). Another one is by adding salt (very easy, in fact water summoned by Percy already contains salt by default). Now there was just one question left to answer; had this explanation been long enough to qualify as a science hour with Annabeth?
Whatever the case, once the cold water ran over my face I shot into a sitting position. Now, if you're a demigod you eventually learn that things that surprise you are usually to some extent dangerous and deserve to die. That generalization, paired with still being a bit sleepy resulted in a collision between my fist and Percy's face, followed by an apology, which was itself followed by "This is what you get for scaring me so much with your flashback." "It's alright. We just discussed this, everyone does mean things sometimes. Plus, I can heal this with water in like five minutes." I was relieved Percy wasn't too offended. I know last night I said Percy couldn't live with having hurt me, but I wasn't much better in that regard. That was just what makes out a good couple. They should make love songs with mutual trust and maybe a tad bit of helping each other through trauma in mind, rather than the 'she's so hot, I wanna pull a Zeus on her' minotaurschist we had in the radio these days. That wasn't even realistic. Or maybe it was, I'd have to ask Percy about that later. There were many things I understood, but allosexuality wasn't one of them (I might have already mentioned that.).
Well, that was… intense. Somewhat. Please don't hate me for having them hurt each other accidentally. As Annabeth said a few chapters ago, it's the lack of intention that counts. To be honest, I mostly included this scene to fight the stereotype that people with DID have an evil side to them (because to be honest, the main purpose of this story is good DID representation) by showing a character without DID having that trait. In retrospect, that might not have been the best way to achieve that, especially considering that Annabeth, the DID character, than told a story about doing the exact thing I did not want associated with DID. Just remember that DID does not make you evil. Chapter mission achieved.
