In that moment Percy said "Grover needs our help. He's where the Minotaur attacked, that's a few hundred meters north of half-blood hill. Sounded like we should hurry up" We all made our way to half-blood hill, crossing it at around halfway to the top. Once I reached the side facing the street, I saw Grover in the distance, fighting a large monster. Okay, maybe fighting wasn't the right word. It was more like trying to make the monsters run slightly slower than him. As we approached, I recognized it as a massive scorpion. "I've had some bad experiences with that one. Percy, you handle this"
Percy
I'll admit it, I wasn't sure whether 'you handle this' referred to fighting the monster or narrating the story, so I decided to do both. I remember how Annabeth had told me about this specific monster. Well, technically it had been Annie, but that wasn't important right now. Now was the time to kill.
I ran towards the scorpion, riptide in my hand. It's poisonous (or was it venomous? I'd ask Annabeth later) tail shot towards me, but I dodged it. I had learned that lesson many years ago. I slid under the monster's stomach and tried to slice its exoskeleton, but my sword couldn't get through. I glanced at Annabeth. She was definitely processing something, and I just hoped it was ways to beat the scorpion and not trauma memories. Only now did I notice why Grover had been on his way to half-blood hill in the first place; a girl, maybe thirteen years old, was doing her best to not get killed. I saw the scorpion's legs bending and rolled away before the monster fell to the ground, crushing my I-didn't-roll-away-AU self below itself. Unfortunately, not being below the scorpion meant being in reach of its stinger. The scorpion noticed this and acted accordingly. The stinger was about to hit me when the new demigod did something so stupid that it could have been my idea. She jumped onto the moving stinger. She looked around and saw Annabeth still trying to find a way to save us all. "Hey Blondie, can I have your sword?" She called to her. Annabeth tossed her sword over, though it might have just been an attempt to impale the new demigod in response to being called Blondie. Whatever the case, she caught the sword and swung it at the end of the stinger, hitting it about ten centimeters from the tip.
Maybe drakon bone was harder than celestial bronze (it had beaten stygian iron easily after all). Maybe the stinger wasn't as well armored as the rest of the body. Maybe it was the speed of the blade. Whatever the reason, her hit managed what mine had not: cut through the scorpion's exoskeleton and separate the stinger. Now, one might think that this caused a drop in danger level comparable to sniper - disarmed sniper, but given the sheer size of the scorpion, it was closer to sniper riding a rabid elephant - disarmed sniper still riding a rabid elephant. Luckily, Annabeth seemed to have finally come up with something. (This makes it sound like it had taken her a long time to do so, but this entire fight had probably not been longer than about 45 seconds.) "We could-"
Before she could finish her sentence, I heard a voice coming from within the border: "Time to test this thing out." I turned to the side and saw Malcolm holding a metal box. He pressed a button and a thin white string shot out of it. It hit one of the scorpion's legs and stuck to it. It tried to walk toward me, but got tangled up in what I assumed was spider silk. Within seconds, it was completely immobile. Annabeth continued: "-try to blow it up from the inside. As an arthropod, it as a trachea based respiratory system, which means said system is somewhat exposed on the abdomen and pressure differences propagate through its body very quickly" "And what does that mean for normal brained people?" "Jason, blow on it really hard from the back. But make sure the pressure doesn't just rise everywhere, only around the abdomen" "If you think it helps, sure"
The beast turned to golden dust. As its head was dissolving, it slammed its tail down. This unfortunately meant that the new demigod crashed into the ground with a very unhealthy sound. We ran over to her. She didn't look like she'd make it much longer. "No, stay with us. Don't die" Piper said, her voice carrying an amount of power I hadn't felt in a long time. "It's my fault" Annabeth said. "If I hadn't told Jason to-" "Don't blame yourself. Even constrained, that beast was so wild, I wouldn't have made it much longer anyways" She closed her eyes for what seemed to be the last time.
"Not. So. Fast." I heard a voice behind me. I turned around and saw Nico. In his hands was the one thing that could save her now; the one and only Golden Fleece. He threw it onto the girl. "Do you think that will help?" Annabeth asked. "I've never heard of the fleece healing a person who was this close to death. Why are you looking at me like that Percy? Let me guess, I have experienced such a scenario but I don't remember it." "Correct. That makes 99 points. Polyphemus dropped you onto the stone floor and you were almost dead, but the fleece saved your life." "Now that you say it, I do remember having it wrapped around me while on a hippocampus."
As we talked, the girl opened her eyes again. "What happened? Is this the afterlife? And what is this blanket" "I'd leave that one. You're not dead, though you were very close. But then Nico showed up with the Golden Fleece. It has immense healing powers and saved your life. I don't know how long it will take for you to fully heal, but we should still get back to camp ASAP. Jason, can you carry her?" Jason used the wind to pick up- "By the way, what's your name?" "I'm Olivia and thanks for saving me I guess. Who are you?" Jason used the wind to pick up Olivia and the golden fleece.
"Jason Grace" "Piper Mclean" "Annabeth Chase" "Nico di Angelo" "Percy Jackson" "Percy Jackson you say? I swear I've heard that name somewhere. But where?" "I bet you have. I'm like super famous. I've retrieved Zeus' master bolt, found the golden fleece, held the weight of the sky, helped in rescuing Arte-" "Now I know. You're the one who blew up my school's chemistry lab. I believe that was in 2007" "Yes, blowing up chemistry labs is also on my list of achievements." "You're basically a legend at my school. Well, at the school I've been going to up until a few months ago. But I got kicked out. That was my third kick out." "Three? I got five" Piper said. "I think I'm at seven, but to be honest, I lost track" By now, we had reached the top of half-blood hill. "I think I'll give my sister her fleece back, then I'll let will check you up." "Your sister?" "She died on this hill, nine years ago. Our father, Zeus, turned her into this tree. Three years ago, the tree was poisoned, so a team of our bravest demigods traveled through the sea of monsters to find the golden fleece, which not only cured the poison but also brought my sister, Thalia, back." "That makes sense. A bit. Okay, I'll be honest, that doesn't make any sense" "You'll get used to that. Life as a demigod is not only dangerous and often rather short, but first and foremost very confusing. Where was I? Oh, right, the Infirmary. See you later"
After our short rescue mission, we allowed ourselves a slightly less short break. At least that's what I suggested. "But first, I need to know where Malcolm got that spider web cannon from." She dragged me away to her cabin. "Hey Annabeth, what did you think of my new weapon" "I mean, it's great, but what the Hades is it?" "It makes and shoots spider silk" "It makes spider silk? One of the hardest to synthesize proteins in the world?" "Well, not really. See for yourself." He got the box from his cabin and opened it up, revealing a lot of machine parts I didn't understand. In the middle of it was an organic looking white sack of liquid. "Uh, what is that?" "We found it in the opening leading to you know where two days ago. It appears to be a spoil from Arachne, more specifically the organ producing spider silk. Our cabin worked together with the Hephaestus kids to make this silk gun. You can even change the thickness, so in theory, you could even use this for weaving. Well, this is only a prototype and thin strands have a terrible quality, but once we make a better version you'd be able to do that."
Once we had that cleared up, we did have our break. For me, that meant sitting at the bottom of the lake (fine, maybe bottom isn't the right term because it implies that we were at the deepest point, which wasn't possible due to the high pressure, but you know what I mean) with Annabeth. Once our air bubble had landed on the lake floor, we sat in silence for a few minutes, simply enjoying each other's presence. "Want to do anything?" I asked after a few minutes, but Annabeth didn't respond. I turned to her and saw what looked like a switch or at least dissociation. I let her be. I might have been able to get her back to normal, but there wasn't a concrete reason to do so and it seemed like a rather invasive thing to do, even as her boyfriend. Just because I was dating her didn't mean I was entitled to such a deeply personal thing. In fact, I wasn't entitled to much at all, something that Annabeth had made very clear early on in our relationship. Not that it would have been necessary. I respected if she didn't want me to do something, even if I didn't like it (well, most of the time. I did fall into Tartarus for her even though she told me not to), and she did the same for me. Easy as that. Where was I? Right, I was not entitled to trigger her out of dissociation unless there was a very good reason, like a monster attack. Instead, I swam around the bubble in circles while waiting for it to pass on its own, which it did after a few more minutes. "Uh, where am I?" I heard her voice through the water "Percy, are you there?" I swam back to her and entered the air bubble. "I'm here, nothing to worry about, uh, who is this?" "Annie, couldn't you tell by my voice?" For some inexplicable reason, that made her laugh. Well, better not to question the logic of seven year olds.
We stayed in the lake until we were called for dinner. Even though most campers were informed by now, Annie tried her best to act older. After dinner, Chiron announced a game of capture the flag. I don't know exactly when it had happened, but when it came to making the teams, Annabeth was Annabeth again. As per usual, Ares and Athena lead the teams. Since the gods (more or less) respected my wish to claim all of their children, the Hermes cabin was a lot emptier than it used to be, which had destroyed their advantage of being able to request ridiculous prices for joining a team.
But Percy, why didn't you join Annabeth's team?
Here's the thing about the Athena cabin: they like to make plans. Unfortunately, making around 80 Greek demigods work together to execute said plan tends to not work out. And when a plan doesn't work out, it tends to make the one who made the plan angry. Believe me, you do not want Annabeth angry at you. In conclusion, working against Annabeth is usually the safer option.
Annabeth was eventually able to convince me over to her side. To be honest, it's not like I had actually intended to join the Ares side, but why not make Annabeth think she won me over. It also got me some free kisses. To be honest, she probably knows what game I'm playing, but the question is does she know that I know that she knows. We also got Jason on our side, but Ares got Nico. Two of the little three were enough anyways. We also had Demeter on our team and I couldn't wait for her children to start a real life plants versus zombies match against Nico.
We were given ten minutes to prepare and Annabeth seemed determined to use every last second of it. "Let's begin with the elephant in the room. Wait no that would be Frank. I meant let's begin with the biggest problem: Nico. He can just shadow travel to the flag, snatch it and shadow travel back. If we're not careful, we'll lose this in about thirty seconds. Any suggestions?" "It's called shadow travel, does that mean it requires shadow to work? If yes all we need to do is put the flag on a clearing." "It does require a shadow to work. However, Nico can also create darkness, so we'd need a lot of light to stop him." "I think we have a very bright light in bunker nine. I could quickly modify it to find places where darkness is trying to form and turn to that direction." Nyssa suggested. "The problem is that bunker 9 is on enemy territory." "The light is easily portable. If I go get it now, I'll be back before the game begins."
"Do you know if there's any rules on who can participate in the game? I mean, apart from demigods" Someone asked from behind. "I don't know about any rules, but Tyson was always allowed, so it's definitely not strictly exclusive to demigods. Why are you asking?" Annabeth answered. "If you say so. Also, you will see" "I'm not so sure I like that ans- oh, he already left"
About one minute before the game began, Nyssa returned with the lamp. "Now we just need a way to power it. Jason?" Jason created a small lightning bolt within the power plug. I noticed that the lamp was, as promised, very bright. "That should be able to stop Nico. It might not have been enough three months ago, but as Percy will probably confirm, Tartarus does some long term damage to your strength, which includes powers." "Can confirm. That place isn't good for you in any regard" I noticed that this was the first time Annabeth had managed to say Tartarus first try, but before I could think about it more, the game began.
And the chapter ended. Because I know how much you love cliffhangers.
