"You look nice, want to come to my room?" one of them asked. Annabeth followed her immediately. "Annabeth, what are you doing?" "I'm following her. She seems nice" Trusting someone she didn't know this quickly was about as normal for Annabeth as if she had said that Percy was smarter than her and that she'd be spending her next holidays in Tartarus. Such an extreme shift could only have two causes: a switch or charm speak. "Piper, why don't you come as well?" Yup, charm speak. Well, time to fight fire with fire. "Annabeth, do you have your knife with you" "No, why would I, I'm just here to have some fun with the girls." "But not having it kind of sucks, doesn't it? It makes you feel insecure" "a bit" "A lot, I think. Just think of all the bad things that have happened when you didn't have it, and of all the times it saved you" "What are you doing?" "Now that you say it, I'd kind of prefer to have my knife with me" "It's in our room, just a few meters away" "I think Annabeth would rather go with us" "They do seem great to hang out with" "Well, you can get your knife and join them later" "Okay, I'll do that quickly" She turned away from the girls and towards our room. Once she took the first step, I whispered "run", putting a lot of power into the charm speak. Together, we ran to our room and closed the door behind us. "Uh, what just happened?" Annabeth asked. "Was that charm speak?" "Pretty sure it was" "Then she's probably an Empousa. Those are dangerous if you don't know about their ability" "Knowing about it doesn't seem to help either. They almost got you, I had to use quite a bit of charm speak myself to free you" "They didn't have me. I just acted like it. I'm not that sensitive to charm speak" "yeah, sure. Anyways, there's an Empousa and probably two other monsters here and we ne-" "need a plan? That's my line. First, we need weapons. By the way, my knife was a good idea to bring up. Completely unnecessary of course, as I was completely in control of the situation, but good nevertheless. Annabeth's hubris was showing again, but I decided we had different problems right now. There was at least one monster getting ready to kill us. "I'd say we grab our daggers and hope we don't die" "No, we need a strategy. Okay, what do we have? I could bonk them in the head with my prism, but at that point I might as well stab them. What else do we have? I guess I could throw my hairbrush at them." "That doesn't sound very effective." "Rachel once stopped Kronos with a hair brush while he had the curse of Achilles. In the right hands, a hairbrush can become a very dangerous weapon" "And, your hands are the right ones?" "I'm the right one for almost everything. Except making food. What else do we have?" After gathering up everything that could even remotely be used as a weapon, we went back to meet the girls who had invited us. "Finally" one of them said, the same one that had originally invited us. "How long can it take to find a knife?" She took a step towards me. As expected, her leg made a metallic sound when it touched the ground. "Well, it doesn't matter, now you can join us." The girls took us to their room. The Empousa kept an eye on us as her friends entered the room first. I knew Empousai were hard to kill since they could essentially teleport as soon as the situation got too dangerous. As we were entering the room, I saw the promised hair brush fly by. It didn't hit anyone in the eye like Rachel's had done, but it did hit one of the other girls who let out a short scream. The Empousa was distracted. Not for long, but long enough for my knife to end up in her back. At least that was the plan. In reality, I aimed too low and hit just above her bronze leg. She whirled around, still very much alive and taking my knife with her. Aw, did you try to kill me? Well, it didn't work. My turn now." I saw her getting ready to kick me (having a hoof made this a very dangerous maneuver) but in the last moment, Annabeth threw herself against the Empousa, tackling her to the ground. Before I could see what was happening, she had her knife above her opponents heart (assuming Empousai are anatomically identical to humans in that regard) "Stop" she shouted. "You two don't move a muscle" "Why don't you just kill her" I asked. "Leave this to me. You, what's your name?" "Martha" "I'm Annabeth and I could kill you if I wanted to. Piper, how about you take your knife?" I just assumed that there was a valid reason why Annabeth asked me to do that, so I did, making sure I wouldn't hurt Martha more. "Since I'm still alive, I'm assuming you don't want to kill me." "Correct, I know you want to kill me, but how about we call a truce?" "I'd say we discuss this among ourselves and you should maybe discuss it with your friend" Annabeth and I left the room to discuss. "Okay, what's your plan?" I asked. "Make sure we don't die" "What kind of plan is that? And how does it involve telling these monsters you don't want to kill them? We could defeat them" "That's not part of the plan. If I killed them, I'd genuinely feel sorry for them. So, do you agree that we should let them live?" "Fine, if it's such a problem for you" "Thanks"
I opened the door to the girls' room. "Do you accept the truce?" I asked. "This would entail not killing or seriously injuring each other." "We accept. But could you tell me exactly why you're not killing us" "Well, what would happen if I did kill you?" "I'd turn to dust, then I'd slowly reform in Tartarus, make my way to the exit and then, after multiple years, return to this world and get my revenge" "You mentioned Tartarus. Going there is a fate I wouldn't wish on my worst enemies." "You don't even know what it's like" "You're right. I have no idea what it would be like to wander this place for years. I've only spent two, maybe three days there and that gave me a good idea of how terrible it is. I try to avoid sending monsters there if possible. But just so you know, if you do attack us, I will show no mercy" "Uh sure, we won't attack you and you won't kill us. Sounds great." "Since we're not going to kill each other, we might as well introduce ourselves. I'm Piper and I think you already know Annabeth. Based on the fact that you're neither surprised nor dead, I'm assume you're either a monster or immortal" "And you'd be right on that" one of the other girls said. I'm Jennifer, you can call me Jen. Dracaena, in case you couldn't tell through the mist" "I couldn't, the mist is doing its job pretty well, Annabeth?" "I'm pretty sure I saw something scaly for a split second, but nothing else." "I'm Lily" the third one introduced herself. "Let me see if I can guess what you are. I'd say you're Aphrodite and you're uh, Athena maybe?" "How'd you figure that out?" I asked. "It wasn't that hard. You use charm speak, which only occurs in children of Aphrodite and your friends eyes have a very Athenian shade of grey. I've killed so many demigods over the eons, eventually you learn how to tell them apart." "That is not all concerning" Annabeth said in a very much concerned voice. "Anyways, I guess we're not enemies now. So, how's everything going?" "We're pretty much only here to kill you, but you're apparently a bit too strong for that. If we wanted to kill you, we'd have to come up with a strategy, but given your parentage, you'd probably come up with a better strategy first." "Stop, her ego is already way too big" I said. "My ego is precisely the correct size" "Sounds like someone with a way too big ego would say" "that's fair" "You said your name is Annabeth, right?" "That is correct" "Are you like the Annabeth? Like Percy Jackson's sidekick Annabeth" "I prefer 'girlfriend' and/or 'repeated life saver', but yes, I am that Annabeth." "Cool, you're like a legend among monsters for escaping Tartarus as a mortal. How the Hades did you do that?" "Firstly, I don't like talking about what happened down there. 1.2nd-ly, I don't really remember it. Secondly, if you three start fangirling over me, I might reconsider not killing you" "I'll try to keep it to a minimum" "Good. Well, I'll keep my eye on you, so any murder plots will backfire. See you eventually"
Annabeth and I left and went back to our room." "So, you just trust these monsters now" I asked. "Trust them, why would I trust them? What made you think that?" "Well, you didn't kill them, so you have trust in the fact that they won't kill you" "Oh, that. That's not trust, that's just guilt and a warped perspective on how relevant my own needs are. You know, the usual. Well, technically my issue is not really my perception of said importance but rather my expectations of how others perceive it. You know, the thing I spent over ten minutes trauma dumping about just yesterday. But if I don't have these need fulfillment issues, what else is the reason? Maybe it was just the fact that they were monsters. I was in fight or flight mode the entire conversation, so that might have led to acting just a bit impulsively. Then I guess those are the reasons: fight or flight and guilt or feeling bad for anyone experiencing that place." "Did you know that fight and flight are only two out of four?" "four what?" "The four F's of survival: fighting, fleeing, feeding and mating" "I have dyslexia, but still I'm pretty sure mating doesn't start with an… oh, it's a different word, I get it now. I guess those four are kind of important. Not necessarily the last one though" "I feel like you're taking a bit too much pride in this whole asexuality thing" "Piper, taking too much pride in literally everything is my most prevalent bad personality trait." "Everything?" "Maybe not everything. Just my personal records. Like, if I do okay at something I'm usually great at, I obviously won't take pride in that. But it is a lot of things, there's no denying that." "And it's not just taking pride in everything you do, you also get really defensive of every group you're part of. That's something I observed just yesterday. Well, technically it was Annie, not you. I said something slightly insulting about homeless people and she got really offended" "That's not limited to her though. I also got a bit defensive when Percy didn't want to spend the night with 'a bunch of hobos'. If you insult anything related to me, you are inherently insulting me and if you do that, you are wrong and I will correct you. Actually, informing the other person that they insulted me is usually enough for them to take it back. It's like if you responded to a homophobic rant by saying 'You know I'm gay, right?'"
"I actually did that a few times. I love to see their faces when they hear it." "When it comes to phobia, I think I have an even better comeback. Suppose you're stupid and think aces aren't real" "Okay" "Oh, by the way, I'm asexual" "That's not even a thing" "So you're saying I don't exist. I guess you're right about that" She put her Yankees cap on and disappeared. "That's something people most likely won't forget." "That might actually be an even better response than mine, though it is of course highly situational" "Thought so" "Can you please not be invisible while talking to me. It's kind of freaking me out." "Sure" Annabeth reappeared right in front of my face. "Come on, that was mean" "Sorry." "Annabeth, I have a challenge for you. For tomorrow" "Sure" "First of all, I understand that you're very traumatized and that breakdowns and flashbacks are an integral part of healing, but can you not do that before breakfast?" "I'll try my best. And if you're bothered by this, I can-" "Annabeth" "Yes" "Your people-don't-care-about-my-needs-issues are showing again" "Sorry. Or not sorry because not being sorry is kind of the objective here. I guess I'll say sorry because if I don't do it, I won't internalize that these issues are a problem I need to work on. So it's not good to apologize for being a burden, but it's good to apologize for the feeling of being a burden" "Apologizing for your issues sounds an awful lot like survivor's guilt, so maybe don't be doing that." "It's not really survivor's guilt though. More like problems-caused-by-surviving guilt. Also, being sorry for something isn't really guilt. Also also it helps me recover. Also also also the problem with survivor's guilt is that it causes self hatred, which I'm completely immune to" "You're not completely immune, you just think you are because of your hub- well, actually, your hubris is what's making you immune so yeah, you are immune. Then I guess you can apologize for feeling like a burden" "Then I guess I'll be restricting my trauma responses to after breakfast but not any further." "Good. The fact that there's school again tomorrow will probably make that easier. You just get up, get dressed and then you go to breakfast, no time for breakdowns" "Never gonna get it" "What?" "Oh, there's this song where it says 'time for breakdown' and then it says 'never gonna get it', and what you said reminded me of that" "Annabeth Chase, your ability to say the most random schist at any time will never cease to amaze me" "Well, I have ADHD, which makes me jump from one thought to the next very quickly. This multiplies itself with the general increased thinking boost I got from Athena." "The fact that I know how it happens doesn't make it any less amazing" "Good. The more people admire me, the less likely they are to abandon me" I gave Annabeth a look that said "I'd criticize you, but you probably already know what I'm going to criticize". "I know, abandonment issues. Though at this time, it's not really an issue and more of a realistic expectation. People leaving me is just perfectly normal to me, so how can I know that you're different. I mean, I've known you for almost nine months and you haven't left me yet, but for Luke it was five years without any sign of him ever being anything less than my family, but look what happened then" "it's seriously amazing that you're still capable of living"