As soon as I had finished that thought, more giant spiders appeared. They slowly closed in to kill me. If only Percy was here. And then he was. He came running to me and stopped right next to where I was standing. "Listen" he said. "I can't physically help you in this fight. But I can do this" He kissed me. After pulling away, he reached for my hand and said "You can do this"

"Do you really think your stupid boyfriend can help you here? Even in your own mind, you are still weak" Percy's appearance had cleared enough of the panic to form a few coherent thoughts. Even in my own mind, I was still weak. In my own mind. This was my own mind. I could do whatever I wanted. I was in control here.

I focused on my fear and tried to imagine turning it into a destructive force. After a few seconds, the spider in front of me flew far away. The others quickly met the same fate. A second later, I had to pull away Percy to save him from a sharp bottle swinging at him. "Okay Percy, your turn now" "Well, I'm not exactly on favorable terrain for this fight" Luckily, I had gotten very good at controlling the dream world, so I created a large door behind us. When we walked through, we landed on a beach, the Gabe creature was now standing right in front of us, getting ready to swing his bottle again. I was still holding Percy's hand, so I squeezed it a couple times to assure him I was here. Given the terrified look on his face, this was probably necessary. While swinging down, the bottle transformed to a glowing cigarette butt. Before it could set Percy on fire, it was put out. "You thought you could just defeat me like that" Percy said. "You might have scared me when I was twelve, but now I'm much stronger, and I've got the ocean by my side" The water rose up and crashed into Gabe, pushing him out of sight. "It's done" Percy said before he broke down and started crying. Fine, I'll admit it, I did the same, but that wasn't something a very long hug couldn't fix. "I'm still scared" I admitted. "What if they come back" "That's something I can help you with" Percy got up and drew a large circle around us. "They can't get in here" He promised me. "Says who?" "Says me" "Well, I hope it's true then" "By the way, I loved how you defeated those spiders" "I could not have done it without you" "Annabeth, all I did was hold your hand for a bit. You defeated those spiders all by yourself" "But don't forget that you defeated Gabe all by yourself" "That is true. Oh, I think I'm waking up. I'll see you" Then he disappeared. I stayed in the dream a bit longer, improving Percy's barrier until I eventually woke up as well.

I was woken up by the familiar ringtone of my alarm, which was weird because I should be several kilometers away from it. Had that just been a weird dream? Was this just a dream? I opened my eyes and saw my dorm room, everything was normal. Well, everything except the hand hanging over my shoulder. When I turned to the other side, I saw that it was Percy, still cuddling with me. Even the obligatory drool spot was there. 'This guy is seventeen now' I thought to myself. 'He has defeated gods and titans. He has crossed hell. How does he still manage to be cute?', followed by 'Oh gods, I sound like Piper now' But could you blame me? He was cute after all. And so was Piper. Wait, was that what Piper meant when she was talking about bi panic? Well, time to get up.

It took me a moment to get out of Percy's embrace, but I wasn't too much in a rush, possibly because of the aforementioned embrace. I know, I know, I'm really touch starved. The movement also made Percy wake up. "Morning Annabeth" "Morning Percy. Do you know how we got here? The last thing I remember is us sitting in that boat and cuddling. Did someone else come out" "Nope, only you" "Then what am I doing here?" "Let me explain"

Percy

I was woken up by warm sunlight falling through my window. Wait, my window didn't face east. And this didn't feel like my bed. When I opened my eyes, the memories slowly came back. I was on an old lifeboat, floating on the canoe lake at camp. Annabeth was next to me, still asleep (the sun hadn't reached her face yet). Apparently, we had fallen asleep while we were cuddling. I took out my phone to look at the time. 4:50 am, so I had almost three hours left until school started. I carefully adjusted the blanket such that Annabeth's face would remain in the shadows, then moved the boat to the beach. "Lil dam" I called as quietly as I could. He appeared after just a few seconds. I convinced him to take me and Annabeth to her room. The shadow travel went surprisingly smooth and we both landed in Annabeth's bed.

Somehow, this didn't wake her up. Maybe she was having a particularly good dream that she didn't want to leave. (Does that work that way? Can you choose not to wake up? Well, if anyone could pull this off, it was Annabeth) Looking over, I saw that Piper was already here, also asleep. Well, time to leave for my own school. Wait, no, I couldn't do that, I had a girlfriend with severe abandonment issues. If I just left right now, I might hurt her. Well, guess I had to stay here now until she wakes up. I guess I'll also have to share her bed then. How tragic. I climbed into Annabeth's bed and put the blanket over both of us and once again fell asleep, which brings me back to where Annabeth left off.

I explained what had happened this morning and how I'd gotten her here. "I could have gone home then, but decided that you and your abandonment issues would not like that" "Oh, absolutely not" "And that's why I stayed" "And that's why I love you" "You're doing cute couple stuff again, aren't you?" Piper mumbled. "Yeah, I kissed him" "You woke me up" "How" "Your love is so intense I can feel it while asleep, though I don't stay asleep for very long. Annabeth looked at her clock. "School's starting soon" Annabeth said. "You should leave" "Are you sure that's okay?" "Yes, because it is in my control" She gave me one last hug. "Now go, before I change my mind. See you soon seaweed brain" "See you soon wise girl" I walked out the door. I left the school and called for blackjack.

"Hey boss, thought you forgot about me" "Yeah, sorry, I've been traveling with the girls a lot and you can't take all of us, so I had to find some other way of transportation. But now it's your turn again" I got onto Blackjack's back and he carried me to my school. Once there, I snuck into the cafeteria (all locks at my school were destroyed years ago) and stole a leftover donut from yesterday to give to him. Then I went to my room to get ready for school today.

On my way to the first lesson, I made sure to look out for anyone violating my rules against bullying, but apart from a singular guy pushing another one, nothing happened. The first guy slipped in a puddle that just so happened to be there, inside the corridor. I wondered how it had gotten there, a leaky pipe perhaps. I continued on my way to breakfast. No one bothered to acknowledge my presence as I got my food. I then made my way to the tables to find a free seat. "Hey Percy" A voice called. I looked over and saw Julia, so I went over to her. She wouldn't have been hard not to see because she was wearing a bright green shirt.

"I saved you a seat" She told me. "Thanks. Wait, shouldn't there be enough chairs for everyone?" "In theory yes, but the conditions here are, both in terms of vandalism and in terms of people just walking in without permission, about as good as in Odysseus' home" "Interesting comparison" "Well, it was something I knew that you were at least aware of because you also referenced it once. Wait, no, that was your girlfriend, not you. Never mind" "Right, the nobody's girlfriend thing" When I pulled my chair back, I got a chance to see the rest of her outfit; white shorts, black shoes, grey socks. Now that I was closer, I also noticed that the upper portion of her shirt was darker than the rest. "Do you like it?" She must have noticed me looking. "Pretty brave" I said. "Do you mean it's meaning or the fact it looks horrible?" "No, I think it looks great" "And I don't have to worry about what people think regarding the meaning because someone banned bullying. Seriously, thank you for that" "No problem. I know what it's like to be bullied and sure, I've seen worse things but it's still not something any innocent person should have to experience. Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, how'd you get the different shades of green?" "That's just a black crop top shining through on the top and a white shirt at the bottom. When I was getting ready today, I was looking at my pride flag and thought 'why not?'" "Believe it or not, Annabeth has done the same thing before, just with the ace flag. Can I take a picture to show her later? Only if it's okay with you of course" "Sure, it's fine. She knows what I look like and I trust that you won't just show this to anyone" "I mean her best friend Piper will probably get to see it as well" "Still fine. Let me just find a place with good lighting, otherwise the camera might miss the difference between the greens. I got my phone out of my bag (don't worry, airplane mode was on) and, once Julia had found a good spot, took a photo and showed it to her.

"Looks good, considering I put it together in like three minutes" "Three minutes. Annabeth would never do that. She'd start planning the outfit like three days in advance" "Is she so slow at making choices or something" "No, she's an absolute genius, but she's also a perfectionist as well as a born strategist, so she can't just do things the simple way. Unless when it comes to societal rules, I think she once said 'Etiquette centers around doing things in especially awkward, skillful and time-consuming ways in order to demonstrate superiority over the people who aren't able to keep up', so I guess she can do things in simple ways sometimes" "Sounds like a complicated person to be with" "She personally thinks that she's not any more complicated than the average norm abiding neurotypical, and honestly, she's probably right. She's complicated in other ways though. Can I even share all of this?" "Probably not" I decided to continue my analysis later when I was with Annabeth. "By the way, where were you yesterday?" "Just hanging out with my girlfriend, nothing special" That wasn't even a lie, killing monsters many times my own size wasn't a special thing for me. "She showed me her favorite place in the school, it's a little pond with an area that is entirely secluded because there's this weeping willow whose hanging branches function like a curtain. It makes her feel safe"

In my first two periods, I had geography where we learned about rivers. Finally something I knew a bit about. In fact, I knew a few of them personally. After the following break, I made my way to my next classroom, getting ready to learn about the functioning of topoisomerase.

I just learned that topoisomerase is not even remotely as fancy as it sounds. All it does is un-spin your DNA. Next, I had math. Last lesson, I had made a good first-ish impression with "my" excellent homework, so I wasn't too worried about the fact that I was a minute late. It's not like the teachers took attendance anyways. They only did that once per week, to make sure no one had just quit or died (not that unlikely considering how broken the stuff on the school playground was. Apparently, this used to be an elementary school, hence also the sandbox, and when they turned it into a high-school, they didn't care enough to make everything more age-appropriate.) I made it through the first half of the math lesson without falling asleep which I personally considered a win. After that, we had a break, which I mostly spent walking around the school, looking for anyone violating rules. I had defeated giants and titans and I had made the behavior of the troubled kids here my next enemy. So far, I seemed to be doing pretty well in this battle.

Halfway through the break, it started raining, so most of us hid in the classrooms or in the roofed areas of the school grounds. I didn't join them as I was more interested in watching how the stuff my geography teacher had taught us about rivers applied to the rain falling within the sandbox. That was until I heard some people arguing from a few meters away. I turned around to see that three guys had cornered a fourth who was a lot shorter than they were. Typical bully behavior, always pick on the weak ones. He gave them something and the guy who seemed to be the leader took it.

Then they turned around and left. Right as they walked below the gutter, it spontaneously decided to stop being attacked to the roof and pour its contents all over them. Technically, that was demolition of property, but that gutter had already exceeded its lifetime anyways and had been leaking for years. I held out my hand to leader guy, who was so surprised he actually gave me what he had stolen. "Next time, you won't get away so easily. Now leave" Surprisingly, they did as I'd said. Maybe they'd heard about what had happened to the former big four bullies. Only now did I check what had actually been stolen. It was an old wallet, made from leather. The button holding it closed was beautifully crafted with a golden symbol that looked like a family crest. As I approached the boy who was now sitting in the corner, I noticed other students looking at us, but a single look was enough to make them mind their own business again.