Percy PoV
I sighed, pouring nectar over the gash on my forearm.About a month had passed since we came down to Tartarus to complete the mission, so I still had hoped to make it back to Artemis for our six month anniversary.
By the way, the mission was going, I thought I might actually be able to.
I had been right about where most of the mutated monsters would be.
Unfortunately, the creature who had caused all of the trouble got away.
Once we had popped all of the mutated monsters, we tracked down the creature.
Aphrodite had the not so brilliant idea to walk around naked in attempts to lure out the creature.
The only thing she attracted was cyclopses I had to kill.
Of course, once I killed one monster, more monsters started attacking.
Surprisingly, I wasn't massively injured in this battle.
In the following weeks, I tracked the creature, looked for food other than monster meat, and waved off Aphrodite's advances.
Unfortunately, I was only successful with two of these.
When I got out of Tartarus, I was going to eat lots of non-monster flesh food.
We did end up capturing the creature. I had nothing proper to restrain him with, so I just knocked him out repeatedly.
Currently, I was in the process of trekking back to the portion of Tartarus that we could use our powers over teleportation.
I would probably pray to Hades first and ask what I was supposed to do with the creature.
Aphrodite was obsessively brushing her hair as we came closer to our destination.
"You know, I could use a little help carrying the creature," I suggested. "I seriously doubt Hades is going to care what you look like."
"Maybe not, but I care what I look like," she responded. "I'll leave lugging around that monstrosity to you. We're almost there, anyway."
I saw the same weirdly shaped rock that we passed on the way into Tartarus.
The creature began to regain consciousness and I bashed its head against the aforementioned rock.
I began praying to Hades and he appeared much faster than I was expecting.
"We found the thing that was causing the stuff to happen," I explained. "What are we supposed to do with it?"
Hades cleared his throat. "I'll bring him to the complex Hephaestus built. You go take a shower and burn the clothes you're wearing before you go meet with Artemis."
I nodded and appeared back at my apartment.
I dumped my stuff in the living room and jumped in the shower to wash off the grime and smell.
Being a son of Poseidon, I was able to manipulate the water to do this for me.
The hot water and soap whirled around my body at high speed and pressure, cleaning off the grime and sweat.
Once I deemed myself reasonably clean, I hopped out of the shower and willed myself dry.
I took a quick look in the mirror and found that I was growing a scraggly beard.
Knowing how annoying razor cuts could be, I took my time trimming down and shaving it.
With this complete, I threw on a clean set of clothes.
It was getting late, so Artemis would probably be back home.
I appeared at her palace and found her in the kitchen, pulling what looked like a very large dish of lasagna out of the oven.
After she put the dish down on the
stovetop and took off the gloves, I cleared my throat.
My girlfriend spun around to find the source of the noise and spotted me at the kitchen entrance.
Without hesitation, she sprinted over to greet me, nearly knocking me over in the process.
