I really had to start including other people's stupidity into my calculations. The location had been moved three times, so we arrived just barely on time. "Just so you know, I've not really been to this kind of party, partially because Percy doesn't like the smell of alcohol" "I also didn't like it up until a few years ago, but those things change" "Well, 'doesn't like' might not have been the ideal phrasing. You know about smelly Gabe, right?" "Yeah, you told me about him ages ago" "Well, those years have scarred him enough that smelling any alcoholic beverages, mostly beer, can cause anything from stress to full blown panic attacks and flashbacks." "Oh, well, that's a reason not to go to parties. Then I guess I should tell you how things work here. First, if you feel like you might pass out, take your shoes off" "I don't see how that would help against passing out" "Oh, it's not going to help but there's this unwritten rule that if you see someone who is passed out and has shoes on, you are required by law to draw on their face with permanent marker" "How do you know this stuff" "The secret ingredient is not spending a lot of time with a guy who has alcohol related trauma" "Well, thanks for the tip. I don't think I'll need it, but better over prepared than not enough"

When we entered the room, I was instantly hit with a wave of loud music. The next thing I noticed were the lights. There were three different disco lights that were horribly mismatched and out of sync. "Hey, who's in charge of the lighting here" "That would be me" I went over to that guy. "These lights are horribly synced" "Sorry, I'm doing my best" "Can I try?" "If you think you can achieve anything, go ahead. All the controls are on this tablet" About three minutes later, all the lights were synced properly, just in time before an Iris message appeared in front of me. "Hi Percy, how's it going?" "Okay-ish, a bit too much homework and too little time. To be fair, preparing my dramatic entry at your school didn't help that." "Well, it worked, the boys stopped hitting on me for now." "How are you by the way?" "I'm at a school party. You're really lucky that iris messages don't transfer smell because if they did, you'd probably not be able to talk to me right now. I feel like I'm going to get drunk just from breathing" "Whoa, that's a lot of alcohol. You're right, I'd be so deep in a flashback right now. Then I guess you can have your fun partying while I do my homework. Look, I have to calculate all these derivatives" "Oh, that's not hard" I told Percy the solutions. "Thanks, now we can both enjoy the night. See you tomorrow. Bye" "Bye" The Message disappeared, revealing Piper waiting behind it. "How long have you been there?" "I don't know, who needs time?" "Uh, Piper, how many drinks did you have?" "About this much" She put up two fingers. "What, you had twenty four drinks?" Then I realized that Piper was probably not using her fingers in a digit based binary system so two fingers just meant two rather than 11000=24. "Wanna dance?" "Why not?" Piper grabbed my hand and pulled me into the center of the room, but not without grabbing a third glass from one of the nearby tables and more or less successfully drinking it. Due to the amount of alcohol in those drinks, Piper wasn't very good at dancing and kept stepping on my feet. Luckily, she left for the bathroom after not even two minutes. When she returned, a guy with a tray filled with glasses appeared. "Hey girls, I bet you can't drink this stuff" "Lemme try" Piper responded and took a glass. "Wait, we have no idea what's in there. There could be drugs in there or something that makes you pass out." "Did you put the pass out drug stuff in here" Piper asked. Being drunk made her charm speak a bit worse but it was apparently good enough. "I didn't put drugs in there, I just made it harder to drink so I could challenge you" "Well, Challenge accepted" Piper said and took a sip from her cup but quickly spat it back out. "Well, she failed. What about you Annabeth, I bet you can't drink this stuff." "My common sense says don't do it, but my pride says otherwise. I'll at least try." I sipped on my cup. It was spicy, but not too bad. There was no going back now so I emptied the entire thing. It felt like my throat was on fire, but the fire wasn't very big or hot. After a few seconds, my body calmed down again. "Well, that might not have been the best choice in my life but what happened happened. What even was that?" "That was the driest wine I could find combined with chili powder and piperin" "Yes, what about me" "No, not you, piperin, the chemical that makes pepper hot" "I also make hot. You're hot. You're hot. GUESS WHAT, YOU'RE ALL HOT" "Well, thanks for that compliment. Anyways, are my eyes broken or did you just chug a whole cup of my mixture?" "Well, let's just say I've had worse" "That probably wasn't healthy" "Well, tough luck for me I guess. I already drank it and I can't really do anything about that now. It's going to get out eventually so I wouldn't worry too much." "Well bye then. By the way you were the first person to ever drink this stuff" "I love being the first person to do stuff. For example, I was the first to follow the Mark of Athena" "what's that?" "It's basically a treasure hunt game, except it's been around for about as long as the romans and if you don't win you'll probably die a very painful death" "Oh, I wouldn't want to be the first one to do that. Anyways, good bye, I gotta find more vict- uh, I mean customers." "Good luck, that stuff tastes horrible. It's even hotter that Annabeth, but not in a good way" Had Piper just called me hot? Okay, what else had I expected. She had already called me hot while sober and the time we had known each other might have been long enough for her to start thinking about me in such a way. Dam it, I always forget that there people who aren't demi. I realized that I should now probably deal with my mouth turning to leather.

No, that wasn't a joke. Perhaps an over exaggeration, but not completely incorrect. Dry wine contains a substance named tannin that binds to the collagen on your tongue, which causes the protein fibers to stick together. The tannin also prevents bacterial enzymes from breaking down these chains. If done on an animal hide, this process makes the difference between a skin that rots in a few days and long lasting leather. Of course, the actual process is more complicated than just adding tannin. You need several applications of it, along with adding fats, to make it permanent so my mouth wouldn't stay leathery forever, but that didn't mean I couldn't do anything about it. That was science- you know what, I wasn't going to end it yet, there was a lot more science stuff still coming for me. At the buffet, I saw a bowl with cheese crackers, which meant lots of proteins that the tannin could bind to instead of the ones in my mouth, which meant that the tangled fibers would separate again. Now that was science hour with Annabeth. My strategy worked and after a short while, I no longer felt like I hadn't been able to find water for the entire day. Let me tell you, that's not a very good feeling. I've been homeless for a few months year, so I know what I'm talking about. Tartarus had probably put me into similar situations, but I didn't have access to those memories. Just when I thought I had recovered from that drink, the alcohol itself kicked in. It started with me feeling more relaxed. Next, I could almost feel my intelligence drop. Someone handed me another cup. I probably shouldn't drink more of this because I didn't want to get more dru- oops, it was already gone. After that, my memory kind of falls apart. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe I was dissociated or had even switched. I only have some vague bits left, including but not limited to: Calculating how many beer glasses a chair could hold while using sharpie to write the calculations on said chair, trying to use my dagger to cut open a bottle or spending gods know how long gushing about how pretty Piper was. Don't worry, my relationship with Percy isn't in any danger. I also remember some longer fragments like this one.

I looked around and saw Piper sipping on her numbers-are-hard-when-you're-this-drunk-th drink and flirting with another guy. "Your hair looks so cool" She said. "And your eyes are stunning. Hey, do you wanna have some fun?" "That's why I'm here" "Then you're lucky I find you so hot." He started pulling her towards the exit. "Whatever you want to do with her, you can also do it here" I called to him. "Uh, this is the kind of fun you have in private" "Uh, I don't want to have private fun" Piper told him. "Are you sure, you already said yes?" He answered in a not so serious tone. Boys flirting with Piper was sort of fine, but this was going a bit too far. "Leave her alone. I think she'd much rather stay here with me" Without really thinking, I threw my dagger at him. Of course, it passed right through him but he was still shocked enough to let go of Piper and quickly apologize. She picked up my dagger and ran to me to give me a hug. "Thanks, you just saved my life" After that, I again didn't remember much, I must have been heavily dissociated. At some point I melted into a- wait, melted might not even be the right word here. Let's say our system is a molecule, perhaps something like urea, and each alter was an atom. That night, we were plasma. We didn't really know who we were, so we always referred to ourselves as we. The ionized nucleus that had once been Annie wanted to build a pillow fort. Luisa agreed. We felt like we were switching every few seconds. We grabbed some more snacks, which were probably also filled with alcohol. When standing upright became difficult, we followed the tip Piper had given Annabeth and took off our shoes which only took like five minutes. It would have been more if we had not divided the task up among our alter-blob such that we could take off both shoes at the same time. There was only one small problem with that division: some of us thought that we could take off our right shoe while our left foot could hold our weight ( which was already probably not true considering how drunk we were). The rest though the opposite, which led to us falling over where we finally did manage to take our shoes off. I think we just sat on the floor until Piper helped us up. That was very nice of her. I think after that she offered us another dance. She wasn't much better than last time, perhaps even worse, but we were way too dissociated and drunk to care. I think we stopped after Piper crashed into a wall. Or maybe we had been the one to crash, I can't remember.

Piper

After Annabeth had chugged the entire cup and talked about what was in it, like that stuff that sounded like me and was hotter than Annabeth, I kind of lost track of her. I saw her going in the general direction of the buffet until she vanished among the crowd of people. Well, I'd be able to handle a bit of party life on my own. With all the people here radiating body heat, even more than usually since alcohol dilates your blood vessels which causes more heat loss (Annabeth's random knowledge was starting to rub off onto me) the room was starting to heat up, so I took off my Jacket. After putting everything away in a safe place I would definitely remember tomorrow, (future Piper here, no I did not) I went back to the party. I remember something I had said a while ago, 'I also make hot' and thought that that was a very good idea and cranked up my own attractiveness a bit. I could literally feel the amount of attraction in the room going up. It kind of made me feel powerful; there was no place where my abilities were more potent than in a room filled with horny drugged teenagers. After a while, one of them got the courage to approach me. "Hey, your name's Piper, right?" "Yeah" "Well, I think you're really cute. And also kinda hot." "Well thanks. You're not bad looking either" We continued for a while until: "So Piper, do you want to…" "want to what?" "Idk, make out, maybe a bit more" This was the moment I had been waiting for. "How about no? Why would I?" "But I thought, because we were talking and…" "Can't I compliment someone without wanting to make out?" "Oh, I'm sorry." I'll admit, that was kind of mean, but also kind of fun. I repeated that same conversation schematic with two or three other boys but it kept getting harder for me since as the amount of alcohol went up, the more my mental capacity went down (and so did the time I could leave the toilet for and leaving a boy to go there and actively seeking him out to continue seducing him afterwards was kind of awkward and made the whole 'I was literally just complimenting you' twist far less believable. Because of this, I had to work quickly, but I was almost always fast enough.

One time, I was already too drunk to really follow (or even remember) my goal of turning people down, but the flirting part was going great. The guy I was talking to asked me if I wanted to have fun. Wasn't he already having fun? Maybe he just meant more fun. After that, my memory kind of cuts out for a bit, all I remember is him wanting to have fun in private and a dagger flying through the air. I picked up the dagger and gave it to her Annabeth, then gave her a hug, partially because she had probably just saved me from someone or something and partially because I was having trouble standing straight. "How are you feeling?" I asked. "Switchy as Hades, a bit tired and like I just broke a world record" "Which one?" "Most times someone has gone there in one night" she pointed in the vague direction of the toilet. "Oh, you're not breaking anything. Everyone goes that often when they're drunk, speaking of which…" I had to leave her again.

After that, I don't remember a lot. I might have repeated my flirt-with-guys-then-turn-them-down thingy a few more times but that might also just be my brain saving memories in the wrong order and/or with incorrect faces associated with them. I didn't even want to know how bad it must have been for Annabeth since she already sometimes struggled with amnesia when she was sober. If even my one identify couldn't keep track, how bad would it be for her around five identities who could not even communicate. She had even said that she was feeling very switchy. Speaking of Annabeth, I think I also danced with her at some point until maybe colliding with a wall (I'm very unsure about that part regarding the trustworthiness of my memory.)

I wondered how Jason was doing, apart from the few minutes today, I had not seen him since yesterday morning. If Annabeth could hear me right now, she'd probably go like 'Oh no, you haven't heard from your boyfriend in two days, how terrible. I can't even imagine how it must feel to be separated for this long, let alone SIX MONTHS' Then I'd explain that I wasn't complaining, just wondering, and that she should seriously do something regarding her abandonment related trauma. After seeing what being kidnapped once had done to my dad, I genuinely didn't understand how Annabeth had survived (and stayed sane) past the age of eight. I had discussed this with Leo and Jason since they had also seen my dad like that and they didn't understand it either. I also wondered where Leo was. Was he alright? What was he doing? And, most importantly, was he together with Calypso? (I can't help it, shipping is literally in my genes.) Whatever the case, I was looking forward to him returning, not just because I felt like punching him for making us wait so long. Knowing him, he was probably already making plans on how to make his return to camp as dramatic as possible, probably even more dramatic than the one Jason had pulled off a few hours ago. Well, technically it had been Percy who had had the epic entrance but Jason had been the one doing most of the effects behind the scenes. At least he'd been able to declare me taken and not to be flirted with, which had really helped. Having the goddess of being attractive as your mom often led to a lot of boys and a handful of girls, including ones that were officially straight, hitting on me. It could get a bit annoying, but at least it improved my popularity every time I started at a new school, which had already happened like six times. From what I could tell, Percy and Jason had made enough of an impression to get everyone to leave us alone (at least while sober), but I had only had a few hours to observe, so it was hard to tell whether there actually was a difference or if it was something like the placebo effect, except here, your expectations would only affect your perception of reality rather than reality itself. I'd have to wait and see but now was not the time to do that because my brain just decided that I had done enough thinking for one drunk night and went into only-most-important-functions mode. Committing things to memory was not one of those important functions.

So, that was the party. The chapter is a bit longer than usual since I didn't want to break that scene up. I was initially worried about having Annabeth drink being OOC, but I think the bigger problem was Piper hitting on people and turning them down. But then again, she was very drunk when making that decision.