I focused my will on my goal, and time paused, leaving only me and the demigod girl unpaused.

She was predictably shocked at what happened. She didn't talk, but she did think, 'What in Tartarus happened?'

"Well," I answered verbally, "I just paused time so you and I can have a chat without an audience gawking at us or time to waste."

I just confused her even more. "Wha-how did you-were you hearing my-"

"Yes, I was listening to your thoughts."

"How?!"

The million dollar question. "Look, even I have no idea how I can freeze time. I just go along with it."

She franticly looked around, trying to process it all. I don't think my casual, apathetic persona helped her stress levels.

"What's going on, how do you have these abilities, what are you?!"

"Well, daughter of Athena, if you were paying attention, you'd know the answer to your first question. But since you felt obliged to ask again, I have to answer it again. You see, I paused time so we could have as long and strange a discussion as you want without drawing attention to ourselves, so that's what's going on."

"I am a demigod, though I don't know who my godly parent is. I only know it's from my father's side, as I remember being born, and it was from a human mother. A combination of my godly heritage and a deal I made gave me these abilities, I think. So' I'm a demigod with an exceptionally powerful parent. Although, with half the bull-slag that's happened to me, I myself am starting to question if I'm still human, so that's what I am. By the way, I never got your name. Would you kindly tell me?"

She spit out, "My name's Annabeth," clearly stressed. She tried to look and sound tough, but it came of as forced. She just ended up looking more scared.

"Whats wrong," I inquired, "not used to being prey? I thought you'd be used to that, having been a demigod and knowing about it for, what, nine years?"

She seemed disturbed at that last part. "How-how did you know how long I've been at Camp Half-Blood?"

"I-really?" I asked, genuinely flabbergasted. "You're wondering how I know how many years you've been at Camp Half-Blood? Glitch-you're literally wearing it on your necklace. All I had to do was count."

My latest statement just shocked the daughter of Athena. I was pausing time, hearing her thoughts, and, for all she knew, learned about her past through something I shouldn't understand the meaning of, yet I was completely casual about it. It shocked her, but it also put her more at ease, as she seemed to realize I was just a teenager under my shell.

She began to ask me, in a much more relaxed but still confused tone, "Okay... How do you know what the beads mean?"

I took out my mother's necklace with ten beads to show her, and her eyes widened when she saw it.

"Wait, you've been to Camp Half-Blood?"

I just rolled my eyes. "No, I haven't. I just heard about it from my mom. This is her necklace. And if you really want to know what I am," I stated as I reached for the open locker door, "then I'll just show you."

Before she could react, I sliced my palm on the sharp end of the locker. It hurt like a mother fragger, but it could prove I was human.

I vaguely heard hear gasp before the aftershock of the wound wore off, then, when pain stopped making me deaf, I heard her start to ask, "Are you okay?! Why would you do that?!"

"To prove I'm human. Look at my palm. See the blood? Monster's don't bleed, but humans do."

She looked at my bloody palm, clearly more concerned about the wound than the proof of humanity.

"Still! Why would you do that?! Here, let me hel-"

"No, it's fine."

Before she could interrupt me again, I pulled a flask from my bag filled with Susie tea I got from the Cyber World. I drank it, and my memories of my adventures with her flooded to me, clearing the pain and mending the gash in my hand. Before I knew it, it was if it was never sliced.

"How did you do that?" she questioned, gawking at my healed but still very bloody hand, "What did you drink? Is that nectar?"

"Nectar? No, what do I look like, a bee? It's a magic tea brew." I figured this explanation was good enough without revealing the Dark World, my world.

The shock of the cut wearing off, she got interested in the tea. "Whoa, how does it work?"

"It works sort of like ambrosia, it uses memories to clear the pain and magic to heal the wound. The difference is that this tea is brewed with a specific person in mind. How much it heals you depends on how you feel about that person, your memories with them, etc."

Nodding in approval, she admitted, "Wow, that's impressive. How do you brew it with a specific person in mind? What if you drink your own tea? What happens if you don't know the person?" She was feeling a lot more comfortable around me, evident by her casual tone and questions.

"Well," I explained, "how it's brewed after a specific person, I have no idea. I didn't make it. As for if you drink your own tea, then it's just water. If you don't know them, then for you, there is no tea. Here, have a sip."

I passed the flask to her, and as she put it to her lips, I made a mental reminder to clean the rim before I drank out of it again. Sure enough, she exclaimed, "Hey, this is empty! Did you drink it all?"

"Nope, you just don't know the person."

She nodded again. "Impressive. If it had more consistent effects, and we could brew it ourselves, this could be a game changer for demigods"

When she finished, I grabbed her shoulder.

"Annabeth, I want you to answer my own questions now. How the hell does your boyfriend have enough EXP to have killed a town's worth of monsters? His LV is way too high, nearly double yours."

"What the Hades are you talking about," she asked, "LV, EXP? Aren't those video game stats?"

"EXP stands for Execution Points. LV stands for LOVE, or Level of Violence. You only get those when you kill. So, tell me, why does your boyfriend have so much of it? As far as I saw, he only had five beads. So how has he killed nearly twice as many monsters as you?"

She tool a second to process this before answering.

"Well, Percy's really powerful, and he has been on a ton of dangerous quests facing a lot of monsters. Why are you so concerned about monsters? Don't you know that they try to kill us every chance they get?

"I'm concerned because I was raised by monsters."

She nearly hit the ground like lead when she heard that.

"You were raised by monsters? How is that possible? Why didn't they kill you??

"I guess I was raised by good monsters.

"Good monsters? Pretty sure I would have heard of them."

Well, I overheard my parents and our priest talking about them vowing to stay out of Olympian affairs of the Olympians stayed out of theirs."

Annabeth considered this. "Well, if they made a vow keeping them and the gods apart, I guess it's plausible that part of that was them staying away from demigods and us staying away from them. But if that's the case, why were you concerned about bad monsters?"

"I don't know," I admitted, "I guess I was concerned with how many he killed."

"It's reasonable to be concerned if you saw someone who had killed tens of thousands of sentient things, even if they are bad. I'd be surprised too if I was in your situation."

We just stood there for a bit, considering the conversation. Eventually, I spoke up.

"Well, since I answered your questions, and you answered mine, how about we go back to actual time?"

"That sounds good. Although, what are we going to tell the other girls?"

"Let's just act like it was a practical joke. Now, I'll unpause time, but I gotta change first. So it'll be a second before we can go back."

"Yeah, I gotta change too."

"Oh, by the way, since we have the time, is coach Hedge a satyr?"

"Yep."

"Alright."

It was a bit of awkward silence as we changed. Then, we hot back into roughly the same pose we were in when I paused time so the others wouldn't notice anything.

"Wait," Annabeth asked, "how are we going to explain our sudden change of cloths."

I snickered at her. "Two words: The Mist."

"Right, Right."

Okay, unpausing in 3, 2, 1."

I unpaused, and we both held a glaring look at each other for a moment, then we started laughing, which was actually genuine.

The other girls were confused, but ignored us.

"Hey, Kris?"

"Yep?"

"Wanna hang out with me and Percy?"

"Can't now. Got plans. Maybe next week?"

"Sure! See ya."

And with that, our little time pause ended.