Hello there :D This chapter's shorter, and is sort of Percabeth, and sort of rambling, but it's still a chapter, right? A more substantial one is vcoming up soon, I promise :) Anyway, I still need to know what you think in the reveiws! Otherwise I can't change what you don't like, or continue with what you DO like, or even keep updating! So reviews will be loved and responded to :D

Disclaimer-I don't own the Percy Jackson franchise, or Rick Riordan.

Annabeth's POV

The Stoll brothers were late to our impromptu lunch meeting. I had sent out Juniper to tell everyone I needed to meet us at the beach, and so far we had achieved nothing. The meeting consisted of Percy, Nico, Mira, Juniper, Grover, Travis, Connor, Katie, Rachel and I, and we were supposed to be trying to decipher the new Prophecy. Since nothing bad had happened in the three years since Kronos tried to destroy Olympus, Chiron had decided to let us try to figure it out in our spare time.

Juniper and Grover spent all their staring into each other's eyes and flirting near-silently, Nico and Mira were playing BS, Rachel was doing some Oracle meditating thing, and Percy was being…distracting.

At the moment the Stolls and Katie arrived, he was massaging my shoulders and softly kissing my ear.

"Stop it, Seaweed Brain…I have a meeting to run." I shoved him off and tried to control the blush in my cheeks.

"Okay guys-everyone come over here. We've got some important stuff to talk about."

"Ha! Peanut Butter!"

When we looked at them, Nico was scowling at the ground and putting down three jacks. At the silence, they looked over at us sheepishly and apologized.

"Are you going to join us?"

"It's a beach." Nico rolled his eyes.

"We're not gonna test out luck. Two queens."

"Peanut butter. We'll multitask and listen from here. One king."

I sighed, and left them and their weird, tentative friendship to the cards.

"You all know what we're here for, right?"

"Beer?"

"Katie?" She blushed, and I realized her shirt was on backwards.

"Beach?"

"Words of wisdom?"

"Enchiladas?"

"Prophecy, you numbskulls."

"Right…"

Then, aside from Nico and Mira, everyone mostly stopped their fooling around and paid attention. I had Rachel repeat the Prophecy, and then we broke it down line by line.

"Okay-Doves make the choice to lay with Death."

"Death is obviously Nico or his daddy." The ground rumbled, and Connor paled a little bit, but he continued. "Congrats, bro! You're getting laid!"

Startled, Nico looked up at us, and we all saw him glance at Mira, who was sorting her cards, glance, back at us, then look down, staring intently at the cards in his hand. Connor smirked as was about to saw something, but Travis whacked him upside the head.

"Ow! What was that for?"

"Or it could mean dying literally. Like when you die you're lying with Death, right?"

We all stared at him.

"That was oddly philosophical of you, Perce."

He appeared offended by our comment. "What? I can be deep sometimes."

Rachel rolled her eyes at him which, even though she was the virgin Oracle of Delphi, I still didn't like. Even if we had been going out for three years, I was still a little nervous-possessive about him.

"So our first line roughly translates to doves either die, or sleep with Nico or Lord Hades. Agreed?"

We nodded, and she wrote it down on a notebook.

"But what's 'doves' mean? It can't mean a literal flock of doves…can it?" The first time Katie spoke brought up an important issue.

"Well, it's possible, but it's more likely that it means people who look or act like doves."

"Okay. Next! Six hearts beat to a final breath."

"Six people are going, when the time comes." Point out the obvious, Grover.

"Beat to a final breath? Move as one of them dies?"

"Final doesn't sound so good…"

"Maybe final as in last of its kind? Maybe they're moving to find an almost extinct creature!"

"Like Briareus?"

"No, I don't think he has anything to do with it..."

"BULLSHIT!"

At the same time, we turned to look at Mira and Nico. Mira was taking a giant stack of cards and glaring at Nico with a stare that looked like she was about to burn holes in his skin. He was cackling at her, literally having to hold his sides to keep himself from falling apart.

"You-are-"His words were intercepted by laughs "such-a-bad-liar!"

We decided just to leave them like that.

"Okay-Six people either keep going as they die, or six people try to find an almost extinct creature. Next?"

We went on like this for a good half an hour, going back and debating, but by the end we were all playing cards. Chrion came for us and we hid the cards quickly-we weren't really supposed to have them.

"What have you figured out?" I stepped forward with Rachel's notebook.

"Well, some parts we're not exactly sure about, but we think we understood most of it."

He nodded. "Let me hear it."

I swallowed in anticipation, and started, feeling nine pairs of eyes on my back. "Doves-that's one of the parts we don't understand-either die, or sleep with Nico or Lord Hades. Six people either move as they die, or are trying to find a nearly extinct creature. They follow someone or something that stole something of great importance, but 'in the dead of day' we don't quite get either. We thought maybe during an eclipse, where it's dark in the day, but those are few and far between."

He nodded again, urging me to continue. "Certain people will become immortal when the gods decide it. The people were probably some of the six on the quest. A man made of night-we think this, too, means either Nico or Lord Hades, is going to be stuck in a very difficult position. And the thief will return what it stole when doves fall. We're guessing that means when this mysterious 'doves' dies."

"Very good. I'll take that, and you have places to be, I'm guessing."

"We'll finish this later…" Nico and Mira kept their cards with them, and the stack went with Mira.

I was going to be teaching the younger kids Ancient Greek, and Mira would be in the class, since she was new. Not surprisingly, she caught on pretty quickly. She was already translating simple sentences, and was forming her own out of some very toned-down words.

In the past three years since Percy made the gods agree to claim their children, around fifteen younger kids had shown up. Younger as in really young, so young they weren't even really children yet, so we set up a daycare program and had built a special house, attached to the Big House, to take care of them. Once they turned twelve, they would join the regular cabins.

Percy caught up to me after class, covered in sweat and yet without a nick on him. I guess there really are some perks to being pretty much invincible.

"Ares cabin…they have some serious anger problems."

I laughed at him, and saw the sparkle in his beautiful eyes, then blushed just realizing what I thought.

"Hey, so I was wondering…the beach tonight? We could have a campfire, maybe go swimming…"

"And how do you plan on not getting eaten by harpies?"

He gave me a knowing smile. "I have a way."

"There is no scenario I can see where you can keep the harpies away from us."

"Well…let's just say I don't plan on us being on land for long enough for them to catch us."

At that he pulled me into his arms and kissed me, shyly at first, but knowing that's what it would take to make me agree. Let's just say that he had gotten a lot less insecure about our being together and his feelings and all that stuff.

The rest of the day went by in a blur. I trained, I taught, I ate, I sacrificed a portion of my food to Athena-all in all it was pretty normal Tuesday. Then, when we were walking back from dinner, Percy snuck up behind me, placed my invisibility cap on my head, and steered me to the beach.

Once we were finally out of everyone's earshot, I asked him how he had gotten the cap.

"I had Connor steal it for me."

"How long have you been planning this?"

"Yesterday."

I shoved him, and he swiped the cap from my head and kissed me again. It was sweet and playful, both his hands on my waist, and then he picked me up and ran into the water.

"I guess we're vetoing the fire?"

"This was my plan all along!"

Sitting on the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a bubble of air, we talked and fooled around for a little bit, and then a pair of hippocampi came up to us and wanted to play, so Percy brought us to the surface and we rode them out into the water. We raced from one invisible marker to the next, and I won most of them, even though he had the advantage, being a son of Poseidon and all that.

An hour later, we were back on the bottom of the sea, but this time there wasn't much talking going on. Even though our first underwater kiss was pretty amazing, this one was good enough to rival it.

At the very last second, when we were just about to reach the surface of the water, the bubble popped, soaking me completely.

"Ahh!" I sputtered above the waves, freaked out by the complete, utter wetness. I heard a dim laugh to my right, and then we were moving through the water faster than ever.

When we got to shore, Percy was cracking up, watching me standing there sopping wet and freezing.

"You-S-S-Seaweed B-Brain!"

"Don't worry; I know how to fix this." He wrapped his arms around me, and the water started rolling off of me. "We need to get you out of those clothes, and then…" He lowered his lips to mine for a salty, swift kiss. "We need to get you warmed up."

I couldn't help but giggle, and then we were racing over the sand, chasing each other to Percy's cabin, where I would wake the next morning, much to the chagrin of my fellow cabin mates.

But I wasn't thinking about the trouble we would be in later. At the moment, all I was thinking was Percy.

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