We continued with our date for a few more hours before waking up. "Morning wise girl. How'd you sleep?" "If compared to the average of the time I was homeless I'd say very good. No nightmares or visions. Well, except for a certain octopus" "You said that you were bored, it's not my fault that…. Uh, not my fault that….. Fine, it was my fault." "Thought so"
Annabeth got a paper from her backpack. Why the Hades did she have that with her. "Do you have a pen?" "Of course, I've been consistently having one for four years" I uncapped and recapped riptide and gave it to her. "Since when can riptide be used as a pen?" "Well, it's probably been possible ever since it became a pen, but you know that it can write. We figured that out at- doesn't matter. Trauma." Of course Annabeth didn't know that riptide could write, she barely remembered anything about Tartarus. "I'd say we start with 'If you're attacked by a monster, read this' on the outside. In Greek of course" "sounds good" Annabeth wrote that down. On the other side of the page we explained to Ellie that if she could read this, she was very likely a Greek demigod and should go to camp half-blood. We then folded everything up into a nice envelope such that only the first sentence was visible from the outside. "Now we just need to get this to Ellie without being suspicious. She or someone else needs to find it after we're gone. If she doesn't know Greek, it's going to be really awkward to explain. It's better if there's no connection between us and the letter." Just as we were about to devise a strategy for that, someone called for breakfast. Everyone came out of their tents and climbed through the culvert to reach the outside. Jimmy was standing outside holding a large plastic bag. "I just went to the bakery and saw an employee throwing this into the trash. I asked why and she replied that they were leftovers from yesterday, too stale to sell. I asked if I could have them and she said yes."
He opened the trash bag, revealing about fifty buns. The bag was passed around, I was the first to get to it. I reached inside and summoned a tiny bit of water, just enough to replace anything that had evaporated since the bread had been baked. I took one and gave the bag to Annabeth. She took one as well and tried it. "How is this considered too dry to sell. It's perfectly normal." She passed the bag on to the next person who confirmed her observation. "I was expecting 'unsellable' bakeware to be dry enough to dry up my mouth like a sponge and make me lose all the water in my body." Ellie laughed at Annabeth's slightly over exaggerated description. "Speaking of losing water, do you have a bathroom somewhere?" "There's a wooden door on the left wall of the cave. There's the bathroom" Annabeth thanked him and went into the culvert. I excused myself as well and followed her.
"Could you really not come up with something better?" "Better how?" "We've been here since yesterday evening, there's no way they're going to believe you don't know where the toilet is after so much time" "But it's true. I actually didn't know where it was until now." A few minutes later, we got the letter from our tent and smuggled it into Ellie's sleeping bag. Then we went back to breakfast. After we finished eating, we said goodbye to our new friends and left for camp half blood, but not without Annabeth giving some tips on how to improve the efficiency of the water wheel in the river.
Annabeth
We arrived at camp half-blood at around nine in the morning as everyone was just finishing breakfast. Piper must have seen (or romantically sensed) our arrival as she came running to the beach to say hello to us. "Where have you been? Didn't you mean to come back like seventeen hours ago? You-" instead of continuing, she gave me a hug. "We just visited some old friends of mine. Accidentally." "How do you accidentally visit someone?" "We needed to spend the night somewhere and she decided to go to a group of homeless people who she happened to know from long ago. Before she met Thalia, so more than nine years" Percy explained. "Okay saying I knew these people isn't exactly correct. Since my last visit, the population has changed so much that I was essentially a figure of legend at that point. From what they told me, I helped them greatly improve their lives by introducing them to the ancient skill of MacGyvering. And no, I didn't make that word up, it, or at least its Greek equivalent, have been around since before this camp existed. Anyways, they offered us shelter and food for the night and I met a potential demigod." "Why do you think they might be one?" "Well, first of all, her dad left long before she was born, which is a very godly thing to do. Also, her general behavior seemed a lot like what you often see in young demigods. We hid a letter in ancient Greek saying 'if you can read this, you're a demigod. Go to camp half-blood.' Plus a few more sentences. Anyways, we're here now and I have school tomorrow, so I've still got to prepare some things." "So, about that, my dad informed me that the school had a problem with their water pipes and now they can't start the school year until it's fixed" I gave Percy a look that said 'you know what you have to do'. "Do you seriously expect me to waste several hours of my day and endanger the secrecy of Greek mythology just so the school year can start earlier, which is something hundreds of people will dislike?" "Uh, yes" "I'm too nice" Percy muttered to himself after agreeing to do exactly that, but not until tomorrow afternoon. "After classes I'll have blackjack fly me to your school and I'll do my best to fix their problems. But don't think I'll be doing this for free" "Sure, what payment did you have in mind?" "I don't know yet. Anyways, my school was not flooded, so I'll be preparing now"
When he was gone, Piper asked me "He demands payment but doesn't know what. Seriously Annabeth, how do you handle being with him?" "Probably the same way he puts up with my, uh, commentary on star wars: absurd levels of love" "If only my mom could dial down her own annoyingness as well as she does it for you two… . But yes, absurd levels of love is a very accurate description of your relationship. I barely manage to put up with Jason's occasional ''cause every time we touch I feel the static', proceeded by an electrical shock when I'm holding his hand. The first three times it was funny, but now it's just annoying. But I've been practicing judo flips, so next time I can respond with 'and every time we kiss I swear you could fly.' Then I just have to have to hope that he doesn't actually fly away" "I bet you'll be able to be, uh, attractive enough to disable him from focusing on flying. That's how that allo thing works, right?" "Yes, that's more or less how 'that allo thing' works" This was one of those moments when I was glad to be demisexual, not being able to focus because of what someone looked like seemed like a big weakness I was luckily avoiding.
I spent the first half of the day organizing my (and Percy's) school stuff. Then I met Piper in the sword fighting arena. "Let's continue where we left off" She suggested. "If by 'we' you mean you and me and not you and this body, we left off with you telling me I should give up and me being a block of ice, so let's not continue where we left off. I'd say we start a new match" "And I'll join in" Percy shouted from the other end from the arena and came running over. "So, how do we do this?" He asked. "1v1v1?" We agreed to that. "But I want this to be a fair fight. Annabeth's biggest strength is making plans, so we'll give her thirty seconds to do so" Thirty seconds. Not enough to plan for example a military maneuver or a tactic to protect a city, but it was enough for me. Whenever you're faced with multiple enemies, the best thing to do is to make them fight each other. Though difficult normally, the fact that they were both already going to fight either each other or me would make this significantly easier. Piper got her frozen sword ready, I drew my dagger and Percy uncapped riptide. I noticed a strange reflection on riptide's hilt. I looked closer and saw that Percy had summoned ice between his hand and the sword to attach it to his hand more securely. Maybe teaching him about temperature hadn't been such a good idea. An already powerful demigod and another one showing the first how to use his powers more effectively made a way too dangerous combination. But now back to the fight that I was currently involved in. I dodged Piper's sword just in time. The idea I had been waiting for finally appeared. "Have you ever tried controlling her sword?" I asked Percy. He shook his head. When Piper's blade came for him, he blocked it with riptide. Piper tried to swing her sword again but struggled, like it weighed dozens of kilograms. She grabbed the hilt with both hands, but the blade still turned away from Percy. Then it suddenly shot out of Piper's hand into Percy's. I knew Piper wouldn't attempt to attack me before getting her own sword back. Now I just had to get Percy into the same situation.
With a precise hit to his wrist, I forced Percy to drop riptide. Piper picked up the sword but I noticed that the missing ice meant it would be harder to handle for her than Chione's sword, which Piper was accustomed to. Percy was in the same situation and I was completely forgotten. They battled for a while before Percy suddenly reached into his pocket. One quick movement, almost too fast to see, and riptide transformed back into its pen form. Percy snatched it from Piper's hand and re extended it, then trapped Piper's neck between the two swords. She was out of the game leaving just me and Percy. But while Percy was somewhat exhausted from fighting and, as he later told me, using his powers to control the ice sword, I had barely done anything in this fight. Percy turned to me, but I was already behind him, my Knife at his throat and my other hand on his, ready to stop him from stabbing behind himself. I walked around him, still keeping my Knife in place, and Percy gave me my daily dose of dopamine, aka a kiss. "What even was that? You can't just barely participate in a fight and win" Percy complained. "First of all, I just did. Also, your statement doesn't apply when there are more than two parties involved in the fight. If that is the case, save your own strength and make them destroy each other." "If you say so" "I don't just say so, I just used that tactic and won" "I never said I doubted it" After a few seconds of silence, he said. "This is almost our last day. School starts tomorrow and then we'll barely see each other." "Well, that's always been the case at the end of summer, and we've always survived. Also, we can Iris message each other" "Isn't that gonna be way too expensive?" Percy asked. "Mom! Your OTP is in danger because they won't be able to communicate. Maybe you'll want to do something about it." Piper called out. "Maybe she'll find a way to solve your problem. I know Gods usually don't care what their kids want, but I've heard that the integrity of your relationship is pretty high on her list of priorities. Don't forget that this is the same goddess who also started the Trojan war because of how much she shipped ParisXHelena."
"Assuming Aphrodite doesn't move me to your school, we only have one more night together. Want to spend it together?" "I'd love to, but Chiron said I can't spend the night in other cabins, especially not if that cabin contains one other boy." "Too bad, who's up for round two?" "Sure thing. Maybe this time without powers" Piper said and looked around the arena. "Hey Jason, wanna join us?" She called over to Jason who was currently decimating straw dummies. He came over. "So, what's the plan? Boys vs girls?" "If you insist." Piper answered. She sounded reluctant, but the look she gave me said something different. I almost expected it to end in a 'If you don't want to, we can do a different arrangement'- 'No, it's fine' – 'are you sure. We can just…' - 'seriously, it's okay' kind of situation, but Jason didn't say anything in that direction. I decided that this was because of Piper influencing him to do so using, uh, micro dosed charm speak and not because he didn't care what Piper thought of his idea.
We began and it quickly became apparent that you should never allow two girls to team up against you. I had been getting better and better at dual wielding my sword and dagger and Piper had mastered her ice sword. Its increased weight (not just from the ice covering it, also from the fact that it was made from metal rather than bone) made dual wielding difficult, but it also gave each hit more power. Each of us was already a good fighter on her own, but we were even better together. Conservation of momentum states that if a heavy object transfers its kinetic energy to a lighter object, that object will reach a high speed. In practice, this means that one hit from Piper's sword turned mine into a missile. This, along with a few other tricks, made us so good that we quickly got bored.
"What do you think, should we allow the boys to use their powers?" I asked Piper. "Well, we do want to give them some kind of chance. But only if I can use charm speak and you can- well, your power is thinking, and that's always allowed anyways. The battle continued, now with powers. Jason barely lasted five minutes before Piper managed to convince him that he didn't want to fight. Gods, I just love charm speak. Unfortunately, Piper was so good at it that I felt myself loosing motivation as well, but as soon as Jason gave up, Piper stopped, my motivation came back and I was able to focus on the fight again. Percy focused his powers into a thin stream, like a pressure washer. I intersected the stream with my dagger, but could only resist the immense pressure for a few seconds. "Hey Pipes, I could use some help here" I called over. When I raised my dagger into the stream again, she supported it from behind using her own sword. Like that, we closed the gap between us and Percy. At about one meter distance, Percy said. "Do you know what happens when you get closer to the source of a water stream? That's right, it gets stronger." Slowly, the water pushed us back.
Suddenly, the water jet stopped. I didn't know why, but that wasn't important right now. What was important was my chance to defeat Percy. I jumped behind him and by the time the water jet came back, my sword was already at his neck. "Fine, you win" He said. "Thanks, but how?" "Piper had the idea to use her dagger to blind me" "Well, it wasn't exactly my idea. It was a combination of Helena and Archimedes. Katoptris literally means mirror, so the idea of using it for this purpose was kind of obvious." "And what does Archimedes have to do with it?" "He used mirrors to reflect sunlight and burn enemy ships"