When I woke up, I couldn't see. At first, I thought I had been cursed again, but then I remembered I still had Piper's mask on. I took it off and was immediately hit with that red light, so I put it back on and tried to go back to sleep. Instead of granting me that favor, my brain shifted into a weird overdrive mode which I used to solve the math problem my teacher had failed at yesterday. It really wasn't that complicated after all, all I had to do was find the intersection of the tangent on one point and the normal on another point of the function's third derivative. Just as I got the final result ((17|4)), I heard the click of a light switch, meaning that I could now finally look around the room again without risking a flashback. When I took the mask off, the light was very dim, but still bright enough to be safe. "Piper, by giving me that mask you absolutely saved my night." "I did? Cool" Was the response from a still very sleepy Piper. "You can be very glad Percy's not here right now" "Why?" "Because he'd splash ice cold salt water at your face to 'help' you with waking up." "But Percy's not here so I can stay sleepy as long as I want to" "Piper, stop being so cute, that is my job. Well, technically it's that of Annie and Luisa but that's still closer to me than it is to you" I realized that this was the first time I had actually been around when Piper had just woken up, so I had never known how long it took her (or how cute it was). "I'm not cute. I'm a fear inspiring warrior" Needless to say her voice contradicted that. Suddenly, she had her knife drawn. "Am I still cute?" "Yes, because you're holding the knife the wrong way." She turned it around, but on the wrong axis, such that it was still facing the wrong way. I decided not to say anything. "You're slightly less cute now, but I still have a very strong urge to cuddle with you" "Why not?" I had no idea how this girl would survive being attacked in her sleep, considering how long it took her to properly wake up. Maybe an actual threat situation would make her wake up faster, but I didn't want to test it because I kind of didn't want her to wake up fully. Following Piper's comment, I slipped under her blanket. "I think this is the kind of situation where the average boy would say 'No homo'" "All the homo" "you're right, all the homo" This conversation quickly came to an end when I saw a small shadow crawling below the door. "Stay away from me" I screamed. Piper pulled away from me. "Not you" was all I got out. "Why do I feel like there's a spider here?" I nodded. Piper took my hand. "I just realized something. I trust you enough to feel safer around you, maybe not to the same level as Percy, but still a good bit safer. If I was alone right now, I might be having a panic attack right now, but with you I'm sort of fine. In conclusion, you prevent panic attacks. However, you also have a different effect on me: you tend to give me a bit of bi panic. And I am not even bisexual" "You're not?" "No, I'm biromantic, but demisexual." "Well, demi isn't really a sexuality on its own, it's more like an modifier to your 'main' sexuality, so you might be demi and bi" "Why do you know all this stuff?" "I guess I was born with an innate understanding of love and everything that relates to it." "You could be right about me being bi. I mean I've never been sexually attracted to a girl, but I've only been sexually attracted to one boy ever, so it's not like I have a particularly large sample size"
"It looks like your screaming worked, it stopped moving. Anyways, Imma get ready now, see you in a sec" Piper left the room. I forced myself to look at the door, and saw that the spider had actually stopped moving. Coincidence? I tested it out. "Move in a circle" I said. Amazhangly, the spider followed my words. This might have been fun if I hadn't been so close to a panic attack. "Leave the room" I told the spider, which it did. So I could control spiders now. That was weird, but I was too busy with not having a panic attack to figure out the reason. Moments later, Piper came back. "Okay, let's take this spider now, where is it?" "I told it to go away and then it did. Don't ask me why" "That makes sense, no being that simple could have the willpower to stay in the presence of your 'I saw a spider' scream." "Come on, it's not that bad. Also, I when I told the spider to leave I did so very calmly so it wasn't just afraid of my voice. Also, when I told it to go in a circle, it did that as well, so either I can control spiders or Frank is pulling a really elaborate prank on me" "But why would you be able to do that? Aren't spiders supposed to hate your family?" "I have one potential explanation: throughout history, there have been some instances of kings gaining their status not through inheritance but by killing the previous king. Maybe something similar happened when I defeated Arachne, I got power over all the spiders, as a sort of spoil of battle." "And I thought me having Chione's sword was impressive, but receiving such an amount of power is a whole 'nother level. All the spiders in the world, that's like…" "A few quadrillion. That's way too much for my brain to handle so next topic please." By that I didn't mean that the concept of 1000000000000000 was too much to handle, the problem was that it was spiders. And of course I could theoretically imagine that amount regardless of what it was, but I probably couldn't do it without it ending in a panic attack. "By the way, I figured out how to solve the problem that our teacher failed at. The one with the normal-tangental-intersection. All you had to do was take the graph of f(x)=3x^3-" "Don't even bother explaining it. If our teacher couldn't do it, neither can I. Maybe our teacher will understand if you explain it to her, but I won't" "Fine, I'll tell her next time we have her." The rest of the day went rather well. I impressed my teachers and only had one small flashback that was purely emotional. The Pipabeth rumors had largely subsided and the school was back to its usual 'Yeah sure, of course you have a boyfriend' attitude. I wasn't sure which one I disliked more. At least almost everyone had learned that my supposedly imaginary boyfriend was real enough to keep me from dating anyone else, so the amount of boys,(and also some girls) trying to flirt with me had gone down quite a lot.
But it had not gone all the way to zero either, some people still tried their luck, like today after the last lesson when I was putting some stuff into my locker. "Hey Annabeth" "Hi Dustin, what do you want?" "I wanted to ask if you could explain that Okasaki thing to me?" "Yeah sure" We found a quiet corner near the entrance where I explained the concept to him. "Thanks, you might have just saved my mark. Hey, is it possible that it's really hot here, or is that you" I should have expected that. "Well, there's several ways of figuring that out. For example, you could leave this place, and see if the temperature drops. However, if you go somewhere else, many factors will change, like the albedo of the ground or the amount of sunlight coming through the trees. A better solution would be for you to stay here and I go away" I decided to follow my own advice and leave. "Come on Annabeth, do you want to stay single forever?" "For the last time, I have a boyfriend. We've hit our 1 year anniversary a few weeks ago." "Oh, right, your boyfriend, who hasn't shown his face in eight months" "That's because he was kidnapped, he didn't like leave me or anything." Suddenly, the already dark and cloudy sky got just a bit darker and the clouds formed into what looked like a small hurricane or maybe a tornado that was coming for our school. Just before it would have reached the gate, the whirlwind dissolved, revealing none other than Perseus Jackson. He was floating about two meters of the ground and tiny lightning bolts were flashing all over his body. He slowly descended to the ground, then walked over to me in a very dramatic way. "Hello, Annabeth" He said in an equally dramatic voice before giving me a quick kiss. In that same moment, the clouds behind him disappeared, alongside the lightning bolts. "In case anyone still didn't get the memo" He announced. "This girl, Annabeth Chase, has a very real boyfriend." "You came here just in time. I was just in the process of being hit on by this guy" "Sorry, I would have come earlier, but I first had to find a crocodile" "Fight a crocodile? Honestly, I stopped being surprised when you showed up to your own funeral. Speaking of showing up, what the Hades did you just do?" "Did you like it? I wanted to get as much attention to our relationship as possible. He helped with the floating and with the lightning." Percy waved at Jason who was currently kissing his own girlfriend. "Like Percy already said, these two girls are taken, and if anyone disrespects that, something like this will happen" Jason struck a tree with lightning, causing a branch of it to catch on fire. Percy put it back out. "You've seen what we are capable of" "Percy, you can't just use your powers publicly like that." "Why not? The mist covers it all up anyways. Also, why can't they know about what I can do? It's not like they're gonna tell the monsters where I am." "Well, thanks for clarifying my relationship status. Now that I know that they know I'm taken, I can stab the people who hit on me without feeling bad. By the way, Jason, did you know how cute your girlfriend is when she just woke up?" "How would you know?" "We share a room." "Are you sure you girls aren't dating" Someone called over. "I don't see why anyone would think that. We're just sharing a room." "Didn't you also make out in the school bathroom?" "What am I hearing there?" Jason asked. "You're making out with my girlfriend?" "That's not what happened. Annabeth just needed emotional support, and that required me to get really close to her and that might have looked like making out, but I can assure you that nothing happened in that stall, right Annabeth?" "Right" In reality, I had no idea what had or had not happened in that bathroom since someone else had been out, but I just trusted Piper. "Well, we have to get back to our own schools now, see you soon" Jason announced. "You can do this" Percy assured me before flying away with Jason. Him leaving me didn't complete wreck me emotionally, which was great progress.
A bit after that, Piper and I were approached by one of my classmates. "Just so you know" She said. "We're having a party this afternoon." "You mean the kind of party where you drink till you can't think and then bang random people?" "Not how I would have put it, but yes, that kind. 'Drink till you can't think' is a good rhyme though" "That's not exactly my idea of the ideal way to spend the evening, but I'll check it out. What about you Piper" "I'll be there. But you said there'd be alcohol. Isn't that illegal under 21?" "In theory yes, but there's some weird territorial disputes going on on the school grounds, leading to a strange legal situation."
"Thirty minutes until the party, I'd say we start to get ready now" Piper said as we were relaxing in our room a few hours later "Yes, thirty minutes. We'll need maybe two minutes for the way and another thirty seconds or so to put on my shoes and jacket. That's twelve times less time than what we have left" "But you can't go to a party like that. You need to look good" "For whom? The only person I'd ever even consider looking good for is Percy, and here's not here, so why would I look good?" "Fair point. Then I guess I'll be getting ready and you figure out some equations or whatever it is that smart people do for fun" "I don't know what you'd even be doing, you already look great" "You'll see" About twenty minutes later, Piper returned. "So, what do you think? Give me a rating" I analyzed her look for a while before rating it as: "She is beauty. She is grace. She will punch you in the face." "The first one is true. Regarding the third one, why would I be punching people. Stabbing is way more effective. The second one is true in one way but will hopefully be true in another way a few years from now" "How would you be graceful in multiple ways?" "Not necessarily graceful, I meant if I live long enough to get married to Jason, my last name will change to Grace, assuming I take his name of course."
"Anyways, I have to admit it, I was wrong and you do look better than before" She actually looked really good. And it didn't even look like she had tried that hard since ninety percent of what makeup is usually used for, like covering up imperfections or acne, was already happening for her naturally. To my very untrained eye, it was mostly just lipstick and some eye stuff. "So, your eyes change color, right?" "Yes, why are you saying that like your OP brain is not already completely certain?" "I don't know, that's just something people do to direct a conversation to a topic, but can you like control that willingly?" "Not to my knowledge, but I've never really tried it." "Well, you look stunning regardless of whether or not your eye color matches the rest of your style" "Thanks, now let's get to this party"
So, everyone's going to a party now and the Pipabeth energy is very strong. But don't worry, nothing is gonna happen between Percy and Annabeth. I might play around with Pipabeth a bit, but nothing serious will happen. Also, do you think Annabeth will get drunk?