Disclaimer:

I do not own the PJO characters.

We arrived at the campfire to find that there were already a bunch of people there. I looked around and located Coral who was riding on Travis's shoulders while Katie ran after them trying to get Travis to stop. The sight of Coral laughing and playing with them made me smile.

I walked over to them, when they spotted me, Travis put Coral on the ground, and she ran to me and hugged my legs. "Well, you look like you're having fun," I chuckled.

"Yeah!" she beamed.

Just then Percy walked over to me, "So, did Leo give you your sword?"

"Yeah."

"Well before the sun sets do you want to get a small round of sparring in?" He said with a grin on his face.

"Sure, I'd like to try out my new sword."

"Nice, now come on, it's going to get dark soon."

"Okay, I'll be right there," I then turned to face Coral, "You stay with Katie and Travis, I'm going to go train with Percy for a little while."

"Okay," she said with a huge smile plastered on her face. She then turned and ran towards Travis who picked her up again and placed her on his shoulders.

I ran off after Percy, I finally reached the arena and Percy already had his armor on and was ready to go. "Over there is your armor if you want to put it on," He said.

"Do I have to, it's heavy," I whined.

"Well, you have to, or you're going to get hurt or something."

"Well, for one, I'm a mortal, so you couldn't cut me with Riptide if you want to, and I could always heal myself," I said.

"But, you said it yourself, when you heal yourself it takes a lot of your energy away from you and it's not good to do battle when you're not a hundred percent."

"Like you always go into a battle one hundred percent," I said rolling my eyes.

"Oh come on, just put the armor on," he whined, obviously getting annoyed.

"Well now you know how Annabeth feels when she has to deal with you."

"You're impossible," he said.

"Oh come on, you couldn't touch me in combat if you tried," I exclaimed.

"Oh really, you haven't had that much training."

"But I do have a few tricks up my sleeve," I said with a smile on my face.

"Fine, we do one round. In that round, you don't have to wear the armor, but if I win then you have to wear it," he said, also with a mischievous smile on his face.

"Deal," I said, readying my sword, I smiled at him and I could feel the light coming from my eyes. Apparently, my eyes will start to catch fire when I'm getting ready for battle or something, cool, I thought.

Percy charged at me with Riptide ready, I close my eyes and focus on the molecules of air around me and pull them closer together. I opened my eyes with a crooked smile on my face. I wasn't trying to be mean, I just thought it was funny. Percy ran right for me and swung his sword just to hit a solid wall of air.

"What the Hades?" he mutters, and tries to attack from another angle, which my wall also deflects. And since I was just something small, I could have kept it up for hours until my energy drained. But unfortunately for me, I didn't have hours till the sun set.

I looked up to see a confused look on Percy's face as he tried to get past my protective barrier. I finally got tired of just standing there, so I lifted my hand and pointed two fingers at Percy, freezing him right as he was about to swing again. Which I had done earlier this morning with Travis. I took my other hand, put my sword back to its pendant form and lifted it up causing Riptide to fly out of Percy's hands and halfway across the arena.

I put down my barrier and let go of Percy, I then took Riptide and brought it over to where we were standing so that Percy could grab it and put it back in his pocket. "Okay, fine, you win, you don't have to wear the armor, but this next round you can't use your curse," said Percy.

"So, you admit defeat?" I asked with a smile on my face.

"Oh come on, you cheated!" Percy whined.

I looked at him and said, "And how did I cheat?"

"I-I don't know, you just did," Percy pouted.

"Wow, you really are a seaweed brain," I said with a smile.

"Hey! Only Annabeth is allowed to call me that!"

"But you've gotta admit, it's a good nickname for you."

"You bet it is," Annabeth said as she came out of the shadows.

"Heeey, lurking in the shadows is Nico's thing," Percy said as he walked over to Annabeth and wrapped an arm around her.

"Wait, so how long have you been standing there?" I asked.

"Well Chiron told me to follow Percy when he saw him run off this way, so I'd say the whole time."

"Oh," I said.

"Also. someone found your shirt and necklace that you left here, so Chiron wanted me to give it to you," she said as she handed me a neatly folded t-shirt with my necklace sitting nicely on top.

"Thanks," I said as I grabbed the shirt out of her hands.

"Well, we should probably wait until tomorrow to finish sparing, it's getting kinda dark," Percy said with his hand still around Annabeth.

"Okay, plus I want to spend some time with my sister." I said as we started to walk out of the arena.

Thanks for reading! This is probably the last chapter I'll do today, I've already done 3 and it's getting kinda late, so I'll be posting chapter 19 tomorrow, well I think that's how many chapters I've done, I've lost count. Anyways thanks again for reading!

-Lou Ellen and Sydney the dnf shipper