HEY AMAZING TRAVELLERS OF THE INTERWEBS! Thank you so much for the reviews! I've been getting a lot of comments about people being confused about the story. That's okay! It's farcical comedy, it's not meant to make much sense. If you have any specific questions, send them to me via review or PM and I will reply just as soon as humanly possible. And yes, this is quickly moving into a longer story, so if you have any ideas or random objects or song titles you want to send me I will probably use them. Enjoy the next chapter and Merry Christmas!

"I am drowning in tulle," Leo yelled behind them. "Literally dying."

"You're asphyxiating, not drowning," Piper said dismissively from the pavilion three steps ahead of him.

"What?"

"Suffocating," she yelled. "SUFFOCATING!"

"I can't hear you, I'm drowning in tulle!"

"Okay, now he's provoking me," Piper mumbled, stomping down the three steps to the garden level.

"What are you going to do?" Annabeth asked in amusement, leaning on the rail encircling the gazebo-like pavilion. New Rome sprawled below them, the gardens of Bacchus around them.

"LEO," Piper howled, coming right up next to him, "DROP THE TULLE AND GANGAM STYLE!"

Leo obeyed, dropping the mountain of white tulle and immediately starting to dance, eyes blank. Piper whipped out a phone and started filming. "Got it," she said triumphantly. "This is being played at the reception."

"No," Annabeth said, rolling her eyes.

Piper sighed. "Fine. Leo, you can stop dancing."

Leo stopped and glared indignantly. "No fair, Beauty Queen. Give me the footage."

"No," she grinned.

"Piper McLean! Gimme!" he lunged for the cell phone, but Piper was too fast for him, even in heels. They were trying out bridesmaid footwear. The dresses were floor length, so it'd be good to get an inch between the hem and the floor, but then there was the debate of whether or not it was more practical to put the girls in flats and have them hitch up the dress every now and then. So far, Piper was pretty good in heels, but that may have been the Aphrodite genes talking.

It was two weeks from the wedding, and the final details were falling into place. It had taken a lot of negotiations to decide not only on a location but the guest list. Percy and Annabeth's families, on the mortal side, anyway, were not allowed at camp or in New Rome. However, they couldn't have a ceremony with a guest list comprised of 95% demigods anywhere else. Camp Half-Blood turned out to be the least flexible option, so New Rome became the location, with Terminues being given a day off for the ceremony. The magical borders would be altered to allow mortals, Norse cousins and even Egyptian magicians in, and the demigod guard around the city doubled, courtesy of the praetors. That was another problem-both praetors were not only on the guest list but in the actual wedding, so who would run Camp Jupiter for the day? The centurions of the First and Fifth cohorts were in the running to take over for 24 hours, with as much adult supervision as humanly possible.

New Rome offered many beautiful wedding locations, but in the end they chose the central pavilion in the gardens. It was made of white marble and it was big enough to fit in two 7x8 rows of chairs on either side of a four-foot aisle. Annabeth had measured it, in a moment of OCD, to the last inch. The pavilion, with it's high, vaulted ceiling, circular shape, and silvery marble, was beautiful. Piper had agreed to decorate the wedding, and with the combination of her own sensibility and Aphrodite genes, it was shaping up to be a classically beautiful ceremony. The reception was to be held under an enormous white tent set up in the field adjacent to the gardens-but that was another matter entirely.

Piper and Annabeth needed a trial run for the spare, elegant amounts of tulle to be wound around the railing, but the guys had tuxedo fittings. Leo, who had finished being measured early, was recruited to haul 35 feet of tulle up to the gardens.

"It's so gorgeous," Annabeth sighed, looking out over the city. She was three weeks pregnant and not a soul knew about it, other than her and Percy. That was going to be a problem on the wedding night-Romans knew how to do wine at receptions, but she couldn't drink (or take Xanathin, as it turned out. She should've checked the bottle).

Her cell phone rang as Piper and Leo struggled up the steps under the mountainous cloud of tulle. "This will barely circle the pavilion," Piper grumbled. "Exactly how fluffy is this stuff?"

Annabeth glanced at her phone and picked up with a roll of her eyes. "Percy, you don't need to call me every hour," she said in a low voice, turning her back on her friends. Piper and Leo started to drape the fabric over the railings.

"I can't help worrying," came the reply. "Shouldn't you be like, lying down or something?"

"My own ADHD would kill me."

"ADHD." She could hear the grin in his voice. "Purple. Tolkien."

"Enough!" She cried, laughing. "In don't even remember it."

"Remember what?" Piper asked suspiciously, suddenly right next to her. Annabeth yelped. "Gotta go," she said, and hung up.

"Hi," she squeaked at Piper, who was arching an eyebrow at her, hands on hips. "Hi," Piper said suspiciously. "Are you okay? Percy's been calling you like, every hour on the hour."

"Valdez in pain," came a muffled voice. Leo was on the floor, buried in tulle. Both girls ignored him.

"Fine," Annabeth said, avoiding Piper's eyes. She hated lying to her best friend.

"Annabeth, should I be worried?" Piper's voice was low, her eyes concerned. "You're acting really weird-like, hormonal. It might be rude to ask, but-are you PMSing?"

"No," Annabeth exclaimed without thinking. "Definitely not."

"When are we wine tasting?" Leo said breathlessly, appearing, wrapped in fabric, next to them. "That's gotta be preferable to this, just sayin'."

"You," Piper informed him, "are not wine tasting. You're just the manual labour. Please go drape." She smiled prettily at him. He glared, but rustled off. Those two were practically siblings at this point.

"Actually, can you go alone?" Annabeth looked apologetic. "Something came up."

"Something more important than your own wedding?" Piper exclaimed. "I'm not wedding obsessed, but even I care about the alcohol at this thing."

"Maybe we could open bar it," Annabeth asked timidly.

"That's really expensive. Why aren't you tasting?" Piper's tone was confused and worried. "Are you, like, not drinking?" Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she yelled, without thinking, "OMIGODS YOU'RE PREGNANT!"

"SHUSH," Annabeth yelled, clapping a hand over Piper's mouth and glancing furtively at Leo, who was thankfully oblivious. "We're not telling anyone yet!"

Piper's eyes were huge. "You're pregnant," she hissed in a whisper. "Aren't you? No. Not really. Are you? Omigods!"

"Maybe," Annabeth mumbled, blushing.

"YOU'RE JOKING!" Piper's hands were flying a mile a minute. "How did this-I mean when-I didn't even know you were, well, you know…"

"We weren't."

"Annabeth, that's physically impossible. Omigods. Wow. I kind of thought you of all people would be prepared enough to avoid this kind of thing, if you know what I mean."

"Well, you're right. We weren't sleeping together. But then we did, and it caught me off guard."

"Wow." Piper stopped pacing, her eyes alight. "This is…this is so unexpected. But this is good, right?"

"This is really good," Annabeth confirmed. "But, Piper, you can tell NO ONE. Not Jason. No one."

"Okay, okay. Trying to keep it under wraps?"

"Until after the honeymoon, at least."

"People are going to do the math."

"Yeah, I figured. No need to be scandalous now, though." She shrugged. "Maybe I'll be lucky and have the baby two weeks late and pass it off as two weeks early."

"I think you're going to want that baby out of you as soon as possible," Piper said drily, still in a low voice, watching Leo warily.

"I don't think it matters," Annabeth exclaimed. "I mean, for Zeus' sake, they let us go on life-threatening quests. They can hardly tell us we're not allowed to sleep together. I mean, you and Jason do, right?"

"I don't kiss and tell." Piper grinned wickedly.

"Like Hades you don't," Annabeth laughed.

"So that's why Percy is calling you."

"Yes."

"And why you're not drinking."

"Yep. You put that together really fast, by the way."

"Aphrodite genes."

"That's reassuring," Annabeth mumbled.

Piper grinned. "So? How are you feeling?"

"Pretty excited," Annabeth admitted, smiling. "A little nauseous at times. Mostly tired, achey, etc."

"Omigods, the dress!" Piper yelled out of nowhere. "Is it going to fit?"

"I'll be four weeks pregnant," Annabeth said drily. "If I'm lucky I won't show until at least twelve weeks. The dress will be fine."

"It's just-such a nice dress," Piper said, indulging in her mother's side of her DNA. "Very classic, very timeless, very you, you know?"

"Of course I do," Annabeth said, clearly amused by how out of character Piper was acting. Any minute now she would start ranting in French.

"I'm just so excited for you!" her best friend whisper squealed. "I feel so old. I can't believe I have friends old enough to not only get married but start a family."

"To put it in perspective, Percy and I have been dating for basically ten years," Annabeth pointed out. "We're long overdue to get married. In Ancient Greek terms I'm well past the threshold of being an old maid. And we fully intended to have kids, by the way."

"I knew that," Piper assured her. She smiled at the ring on her left hand. "Next year, it's my turn, huh?"

"Yep." Annabeth grinned. "I'll either be extremely pregnant or a mom."

"Weird."

"You're telling me!"

They lapsed into comfortable silence. Piper put an arm around her best friend as they gazed out on New Rome.

"You're getting married," she whispered happily.

"So are you," Ananbeth said back, grinning softly.

They watched the sun light up the city.

A more serious chapter for you! The wedding will be next and it will be serious with funny moments, I think. It's hard to formulate a story that's 100% comedy, so if you have anything that you think would be funny, let me know. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!