The next few days were quite normal (well, demigod normal) and sometimes I almost forgot about the diagnosis Piper had given me. It felt like my brain was fighting against that knowledge. Also, none of my "alters" showed themselves to me, so it was easy to deny.
With every passing day, the hills around camp shrank, and two days after the game, they were gone completely. I could only begin to imagine how draining that must have been on Hazel, but at least she didn't completely over exert herself for the good of others like certain other children of Hades/Pluto. Now there wasn't any good reason keeping the Romans here, except friendships that had developed and wanting to give the naiads more time to decide to stay here. That day after dinner, Piper had the idea for ultimate disaster: Monopoly
She reasoned that it would be the only game for more than two people that Hazel and Nico actually knew how to play, so we all agreed to do it. Except Nico. But Will was eventually able to convince him to 'socialize with actual people. Reyna and Hedge don't count because you were sleeping the entire time.' We all got together in Percy's cabin to play, since it was the only empty one that actually had furniture. Even before the game started, there were already bets on who would win. Most people were either for me, because of strategy, or Hazel, because wealth was her dad's area of power. The mist might also help her, so we made her swear not to use it during the game "I swear on the river Styx that I will not use the mist for my advantage during the game." It took a few seconds until thunder sealed the oath, maybe the gods were busy as well. Perhaps Gaia's awakening had also damaged some parts of Olympus. Of course, this would only have affected the building that survived the titan war, since the once I redesigned would withstand Gaia's uprising. "But I didn't say I couldn't use the mist for our common benefit. Nico has told me about these VR things and that just gave me an idea. Say hello to Monopoly: mist edition." I saw white fog accumulating in the room and getting thicker and thicker. "Just wait a bit" Hazel said. "This is far beyond what I'm used to, so this might take a while". After about two minutes, the fog cleared and all 8 of us (The seven minus Leo, Reyna and Nico) found ourselves on GO. This field alone was a about 10 by 10 meters in size, making the entire board almost 70 meters long. Next to us where eight chariots, pulled by metallic horses. It was obvious which chariot was made for whom. Percy and I got blue and grey, for herself and her brother Hazel had a golden chariot and one that was black. "Or maybe.." she said and Nico's chariot turned into a rainbow colored one. For some inexplicable reason, Nico did not like that, so Hazel changed it back. Jason's chariot was of an irregular grey, like storm clouds, and covered with a lightning pattern. No, that wasn't just a pattern, there was actual lighting striking. Reyna had a purple chariot with a silver and a golden horse, mimicking Aurum and Argentum. That left Piper and Frank.
"What do you two want on yours?" Hazel asked. "I'm trying to think of something that involves animals but doesn't look to cruel. How about one made of Kevlar, like Hannibal's armor? I think that was the first animal I ever turned into. And can you make be pulled by elephants instead of horses?" "Sure, why not?" Hazel waved her hand and the requested chariot appeared. "I really have no own ideas, so I guess I'll kind of let my mom decide. I'll go with a pink chariot. And being pulled by oversized doves doesn't sound bad either" Hazel also made that chariot appear.
"Wait, we can pick what pulls us? I want a hippocampus" Percy declared. Reyna then changed her horses to actual dogs, and Nico changed to hellhounds.
When I got into my chariot, I was amazed at what Hazel had come up with. The inside had a miniature display of the board that showed all eight Chariots waiting on the first field. It also had a board that would conveniently hold our money. I heard the sound of dice falling and Nico's chariot moved forward by eight steps. Nico bought the property and constructed a house. Then it was my turn. The two dice materialized in front of me and I rolled a seven, the statistically most common number with two dice. This is due to the fact that there are six different ways of getting it: 1-6 2-5 3-4 4-3 5-2 and 6-1. This gives the seven a 1 in 6 chance of being rolled, as opposed to the average 1/11 chance. The least common numbers are 2 and 12, each with a chance of only 1 in 36. That was science hour with Annabeth, now, back to the game: My chariot moved forward seven spots and came to a halt on a chance square.
We kept playing for a while and it went more or less disaster free. Percy really wanted a swimming pool in his hotel, and at first Hazel granted that wish, but as I expected, accurately simulating the water required too much "processing power" and the entire game became unstable whenever someone looked at it, so it had to be closed off and drained. At this point she also froze the lightning on Jason's chariot.
A similar problem occurred when Jason wanted a lightning rod for his roof. And storm clouds to supply the lightning. This also had to be taken down. The only addition that got to stay were the pride flags on Nico's hotel, but only because they were perfectly stiff and wouldn't wave in the wind. After Nico added his flag, some others also did. Nico wanted Jason and Percy to put up bi flags, insisting that they were "less straight than him" but they refused. Piper tried to help Nico, but at that point she had already promised not to use charm speak in the game.
Before that, Piper had tried to win by demanding too much money, with charm speak of course, and it took even me a while to notice that the numbers were off and we made her promise to stop using t.
Around ten minutes after the start of the game, I had to pick a card again. I watched as one flew over from the stack, which looked a bit stupid, since the cards where normal size on a board around 400 times normal size. I picked it up and read it. I had to go to jail. Great. And it wasn't even the part of the game yet where jail meant you just got to collect money from all your properties while not having to pay rent yourself. My chariot shot forward and dropped me over a sharp edge. The "just visiting" area was about 4 meters wide, leaving a 6 by 6 meter area for the actual prison.
It took me a few seconds to realize what it was. Hazel had scaled down the entirety of Tartarus down to the 36 square meters she had for the prison. Despite the amount of trauma associated with this place, it was actually kind of fun, being able to cross the place that had held me prisoner for three days in only a few seconds. Like the firefall that had taken me hours to get down was now only as high as my knee. Maybe this was just too abstract to trigger a traumatic response. I descended to the deeper levels, where the doors of death used to be and I think the most impressive thing was how well the mist was able to recreate the absolute Darkness of Nyx' realm. I simply jumped over the chasm and arrived on the actual heart, which was even beating, making the ground below me shake just like the real thing had done. Ok, that hit a little too close to home and I made sure to get away from the heart. Before I knew it, it was my turn again and I noticed I still had a leave prison card, so I used that. An elevator appeared in front of me and transported me back to the surface of the board. Hazel even went so far as to have the elevator play the same song that had played in the real elevator, which was extremely pointless since the elevator ride didn't even take five seconds. When I reached the surface I got back into my chariot and continued on my mission to win this game.
Like some had expected, Hazel and I were the best players in the game. Here, the combo of strategy and wealth were as effective as victory and luck would be in rock paper scissors. (We had once had a game on tie for two hours). Anyways, Hazel and I bankrupted one player after the other and it had been just the two of us for almost half an hour when it was announced that we needed to return to our cabins lest we'd be eaten by the cleaning harpies. We declared a draw and ended the game. The mist lifted, revealing the eight of us in various places and orientations within cabin three. "Wow, that was exhausting. Usually using the mist isn't this draining for me." "Well, usually the illusions you create are on a smaller scale, like the fake vile, or our clothes and Ithaca and don't last…" I checked the clock. "two entire hours. Whoa Hazel. No wonder you're exhausted." "If Will was here he'd kill you" Nico added. "Or at least he would if I were you. I think he might have a crush on me. Speaking of people who like children of Hades, where's Frank?" Frank appeared from in a corner of the room, I assumed he had been a small animal before. "I'm here. You okay Hazel?" "Yes, just a little bit tired" From her voice I guessed she was more than a little bit tired. Half asleep would have been a more accurate description. "Well, looks like someone needs to go to bed" Frank joked. "Nico, cabin 13!" The three of them vanished into darkness, leaving only Percy, Jason, Piper, Reyna and me. "Off you go, lightning McQueen" Percy said "Lightning McQueen?" "Yes. Jason can summon lightning. Piper last name is Mclean and her nickname is beauty queen. Combine that and you get lightning McQueen." Jason and Piper got up and left. At the last moment, Piper said "See you tomorrow Smartwater" "Good thing I'm single" Reyna said as she left. "See you tomorrow seaweed brain. Love you" Then I left his cabin as well. "Well, we can't make a couple name for you, but you're still RA-" She quite literally cut me off by drawing her knife. "See you tomorrow Annabeth. This conversation is over." She said and walked away with the dignity one has after avoiding being called out on a certain song.
Well, I never thought I'd write over 1380 Words about just Monopoly. Well, Monopoly plus a short science hour with Annabeth. What do you think of that idea? Anyways, see you soon. And Btw, denial is a real symptom/part of DID, since the whole point of the disorder is that you don't know that you have it.