Percy
While Annabeth was doing her salt bath, which had been made possible with the help of her amazhang boyfriend (me), I was looking through the photo album I had received from Hazel and Rachel. Suddenly, my mom called me, telling me I "needed to see this". When I reached the living room, she was watching one of those illogical news programs that always start showing the thing you were supposed to see when you come in, even though it has obviously already been running, because otherwise the other person would not have been able to call you.
"A few weeks ago, we told you about the explosion happening in the center of Rome. Now, scientists are ready to begin their decent into the cave. We have a reporter at the site." When the TV showed the explosion crater, I installed recognized it. It was Arachne's cave. "Scientists assume that a deposit of natural gas exists somewhere below and has somehow caught fire and exploded, creating this crater." Apparently, the scientists couldn't tell the difference between an explosion happening below ground and above it. "Is that where you..." my mom began to ask. I nodded. "Now, brave explorers are preparing to enter the cave. Everything appears to be safe at the moment." "We have to stop them!" I said. "We can't have mortals going down there." But I didn't have to do anything since a few seconds later, a gush of hot steam came out of the hole leading down to Tartarus. The 'brave explorers' were suddenly not so brave anymore. That was good. These guys seemed like mortals, so they would follow mortal safety regulations. And mortal safety regulations say that if a hole shoots hot steam at you, you stay away from it until you can make sure it won't happen again, which would hopefully take a few months.
Now the question was where the steam had come from. Maybe my plan had worked and Bob and Damasen were attempting to make an engine. Or maybe it was just a bit of steam occurring naturally. Tartarus sometimes does weird stuff. As I was trying to figure out which was more likely (and failing because all I know about odds is that they're usually against me) I heard Annabeth shouting that she didn't have a towel. "Okay, I'll bring you one" I called back. "Can't you just dry me off with your powers? That would be a lot faster." She was right about that. No surprises there. I walked into the bathroom, tapped her shoulder, and walked back out without seeing anything. A minute or so later, she came out fully dressed. Just in that moment, Nico appeared next to us. "We might need your help" he said. "Something's approaching camp from below and it'd be better to have some good fighters around when it arrives." "Aren't you already a good fighter Nico?" Annabeth pointed out. "In theory yes, but the fact that I just shadow traveled here and will now shadow travel back means that Will will not let me fight. So I need you two there as well. If whatever is coming is coming from where I think it is, we three are the only ones who know how to deal with that." "If you insist. I guess being or dating a big three child comes with some responsibility."
"Yes I insist. By the way Miss Jackson, these cookies are excellent." Nico added with a full mouth before grabbing our hands and pulling us into the darkness.
Annabeth
When it comes to the travel methods utilized by the sons of the big three, I don't know which one is the most uncomfortable. Shadow travel definitely is not comfortable. When we reappeared just outside the border (Nico said shadow traveling through the border was hard and he'd rather just walk) I immediately knew what he was talking about. There was definitely some powerful entity present. It felt old, probably a child of Gaia. Suddenly, a small crack appeared in the ground somewhere between Thalia's tree and the Athena Parthenos. I saw a small shadow emerge from a bush and move towards the crack. A spider! I looked at Percy and he made use of the one weapon that is good for specifically spiders: his foot. Once the beast was squished, I took the time to look around. There was a lot of campers right here, maybe they had all felt that something would rise here. I heard a voice, ancient and inhuman, say "finally, I'm free from this prison. Free from my old cave. And so close to my beautiful statue." That sounded an awful lot like something Arachne would say. And the voice itself also matched hers. How had she regenerated this fast? I saw two thin legs emerging from the crack and I, together with my remaining siblings, started panicking. Then we all let out a perfectly synchronous scream as her entire body left the hole. "And don't think you can just stab me again, child of Poseidon. I was old and weak back then. But now I am much stronger.
My mind was racing. I knew I needed a plan, but my brain was occupied with 'Spider. Big spider. Panic time' and my siblings didn't seem to be much better off. "I need you guys." I said inside my head. "Can one of you please take over the job of panicking so I can make a plan?" It sort of worked, my brain went from 99% panic mode to around 80. Enough to make a rudimentary plan. Like I had said, spiders are best killed with feet. But there wasn't anyone here with a foot big enough to squash Arachne. Someone with that shoe size would have to be at least 12 meters tall. Or almost as big as the Athena Parthenos! Now a proper plan began to emerge. "Children of Athena! I shouted, almost surprising myself with how confident I sounded. "This is our battle." I wanted to tell them my strategy, but doing so while the enemy is present is rather stupid, so I had to find some other way. My mind raced with all possible (and impossible) options. A code always involved someone knowing something that enables them to understand the encoded message while those who lack this knowledge can't understand it. What did my siblings know that Arachne didn't? In the short time before she had emerged, my siblings had been Percy crush that other spider below his foot. I looked up at Arachne, who was currently climbing the statue. "I'd get away from that statue" I suggested. "Or Athena will destroy you like Percy just destroyed one of your children" My siblings seemed to understand. As Arachne crawled down from the statue, they worked together to force her in front of its foot. Now Athena just needed to help. And she needed to actually be able to animate the statue. I knew Thalia had control over statues belonging to Zeus, so maybe Zeus had that same ability and maybe so did other gods. There were a lot of maybes involved in my plan, but demigod plans are always like that. When Arachne reached the ideal spot, everyone else stood still around her. I have no idea why my siblings didn't just run away, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't just frozen in shock. "ATHENA, now" I shouted up to the sky, hoping she'd hear me. "What is going on?" Arachne asked. "What is Athena gonna do?" I watched with anticipation as the Athena Parthenos slowly raised its left foot before letting it crash down onto Arachne. She was slightly crushed, but she survived. Now that the immediate danger was gone, the arachnophobia all children of Athena have kicked in and we started running around screaming. I may or may not have been among them. Percy drew riptide. "Let's end this once and for hopefully really long" he said. "So, you think this stuff can hurt me. I'm coming right from Tartarus and that place just so happens to heal monsters like me. I am stronger than ever. Not even a goddess could kill me" Now, I doubted Athena had put all her power into that attack but Arachne was still kind of right. "If a goddess cannot kill you" I heard a voice coming from within the crack. "Then how about a titan. SWEEP" I only knew one person who considered SWEEP to be an adequate battle cry. Bob. A silver broom shot up from the crack and smashed into Arachne, turning her to dust. With the spider below it now missing, the statue's foot landed on the ground, making it fall down half-blood hill. It deserved that. I ran to the crack and looked down. Far below me was Bob, standing on something that looked a bit like the roof of Damasen's hut. "What are you doing there?" I called down. "We kind of got stuck here. Engine broke. You don't happen to have any spare drakon leather? We'll need around half a square meter" "We actually might" I called down before running over to the Ares cabin. "Hey Clarisse" I said. "When you killed the Lydian drakon, did you get any leather from that?" "Let me think. Yes, I have a few square meters somewhere. Why?" "Oh, we need to patch a hole in an interdimensional engine and need around half a square meter" "I'll see what I can do" Clarisse went into her cabin and returned a while later with an appropriately sized piece. I ran back and gave it to Jason, since he was the only one who could fly and safely deliver something into a 100 meter deep crack.
He jumped in and for a while we heard nothing but quiet someone-is-assembling-something-noises. Then, the floor began vibrating, the crack widened and a planetarium sized drakon bone and leather based hut came shooting up. "It worked" I heard Percy say. "It actually worked." The hut/spaceship rose until its roof reached the earth's surface where it stopped and the barrier lit up. Of course, Bob and Damasen were technically monsters. "I, Annabeth chase, allow Bob and Damasen to enter camp half blood. The barrier flickered and the hut left the massive crack. Now I saw that it was supported by what looked like an upside down geyser. The stream of steam died down and the world's most unusual airship slowly began landing next to half-blood hill. A few meters before it reached the ground, a small cat jumped out of the door, but transformed into a sabre tooth tiger before reaching the floor. He hissed at the other campers before noticing Percy and me and running towards us. By the time he reached us, he was a normally sized skeleton-ish cat again. "Hey, small Bob. I've missed you too." I said. "Want me to get lil dam?" Percy asked. "I last saw him at the infirmary" someone called to us. Percy ran away and returned a few minutes later with another half skeleton cat in his arms, which was probably very dangerous, given that said cat could transform into a sabre tooth tiger. "Small Bob, this is small Damasen. Small Damasen, this is small Bob" I introduced the two cats to each other. No, I don't know why I did that, but it was still better than Bob introducing Percy and me to each other rather than to Damasen. Speaking of Damasen, he had now finally managed to land.
The door opened and a six meter tall red skinned giant emerged. "Don't worry, he's friendly. He hates fighting as much as Ares loves it." I said before anyone had a chance to start panicking (or, in the case of my siblings, panic more).Damasen nodded. "Annabeth Chase, are you here? And Percy Jackson?" "We're here, hi Damasen. Did Bob make it?" And seaweed brain was back to asking stupid questions. Of course Bob made it, how else would he have swept Arachne? "He did. And I have something else I think you'll like."
I'd say so far this birthday is going good, with the return of four dead presumably dead friends and 'something Annabeth will like' Of course, the return of Arachne kind of sucked, but they're demigods, they can't just have an entire day without problems. Also, please forgive me for making it canon (within the fic) that Percy and Annabeth are attracted to each other sexually in chapter 16 and then giving them the most ace relationship imaginable, to the point where it's almost comedic, but I'm very bad at writing allo stuff. Consider it force of habit, since the attraction only developed one month ago.