"Could anybody else do with a break?" Travis asked
"You're tired?" Chiron asked. Travis shook his head.
"Not really but I think I could just use a break and clear my head. Sort of like rejuvenation." Travis explained. Chiron nodded in understanding.
"All right then. Lets all take break. I think everybody needs to sort of declutter a bit." Apollo smiled and started to get up as did the others.
"Nico and Jason, a word?" Grover asked as everybody was getting up. Nico and Jason nodded and followed Grover outside.
"Oh no freaking way." Nico complained, raising his hands up in surrender.
"Come on, its Percy's birthday. You know he's gonna love it." Grover nudged the son of Hades.
"I agree with that and you know I barely dance." Jason shrugged with a grin.
"But this one? Has he literally not done any other dance in his childhood?" Nico complained.
"You know you want to." Jason teased.
"I certainly do not." Nico emphasized.
"But you will?" Grover joined in.
"Oh, I hate you two." Nico sighed. Grover and Jason grinned at each other, knowing Nico conceded.
Nico and Jason joined the others at their table for coffee and snacks and the gang was talking about the craziest mortal stuff they had seen while their parents listened. Honestly, this group could not get more random.
"Honestly, the craziest thing that really had me on the edge of my seat was world war 2." Nico said dryly as he joined. Thalia couldn't help but snort and Percy face palmed while Hades' eyes glittered with dry amusement at his son's comment.
"That was dark, mate. And plus, weren't they demigods?" Percy said.
"Forgot about that." Nico sighed. Then he thought about what was the next most insane thing he had seen mortals do and then he got it while the others looked at him expectantly. "So basically, a couple of months back I found out about this wrestling ring and it turned out to be cage wrestling and mate, it was some crazy shit. Like, I've seen normal wrestling but this shit was mad." He shook his head.
"I honestly thought that cage rings closed down a while back." Thalia frowned.
"Nope. There's one in Canada. And dude, there's always just one winner and his name's too good." Nico said with a grin.
"You've piqued my interest." Jason raised an eyebrow.
"Wolverine." Nico chuckled. Percy whistled and Hades exchanged a look with his brothers who raised their eyebrows as well but said nothing, assuming that the demigods were meant to find out now.
"We're gonna and watch that fight some day." Thalia said to her cousins.
"You guys are insane." Zeus said finally with an amused look in his eyes.
"Hey, different experiences." Thalia defended and shrugged.
"Yeah, I mean totally, you learn different things about the world." Percy added innocently but with a mischievous glint in his eyes and the three elder gods face palmed in unison.
"Anyways, Aunt S planning to come for your birthday?" Jason asked Percy with raised eyebrows. Percy's eyes lit up as he nodded happily.
"Mom's coming and so are Paul and Estelle." He said. "Can't believe my little sis is actually gonna watch me turn 18." He laughed. The demigods snorted in amusement and nodded.
"Its actually a huge thing for a demigod let alone one of the big three to turn 18. I remember there used to be a tradition at Camp Half Blood when whenever a demigod turned 18, there used to be a capture the flag in their honor. In all the years that I've been there, we had about 10. We sort of stopped them because there was this phase when we started to lose too many, both younger and elder." Grover said. The gods winced at that information.
"Yeah, now we just have a sing along though." Percy nodded. "I won't lie to you, Neeks, I actually thought that the prophecy was about you when I found out about your parentage. It genuinely kept me up for nights thinking that the prophecy was going to be placed on you when you were so young and you'd try to change it but also because I was freaked out that if the prophecy wasn't about me then maybe Luke'd find a way to kill me before I turned 18." He admitted and then shrugged and continued drinking his milkshake.
"Trust me, Perce. I actually felt like that prophecy was gonna be on me and after that whole incident with Thorn, I knew that if it was on me, then our whole world was actually gonna be screwed. If you hadn't been there, I don't think that we'd be having this conversation right now." Thalia shook her head and shuddered.
"I mean I know that CJ lost quite a few campers and that according to the Romans, I was the subject of the prophecy but I honestly think that you guys had it worse. Firstly, the number of campers that you guys lost was absolutely devastating and to think that you guys had been basically fighting the battles of the prophecy for five years and Percy literally since has 12 is insane. Nico faced it when he was 10. I'm grateful that we didn't have it that bad but its painful listening to it happening to you guys." Jason sighed.
"It shook us up for years, man. Its not just those nights during the prophecy that we were awake. At that point, we actually could do something about how the battle would go on but after the war is when all that shit hit us because the friends that we'd lost were already gone and there was nothing that we could have done about it. The damage had been done already. We'd saved the world but it came at a huge cost. Our campers had literally reduced to half if not less by the time it was all over. If lights were out at 9:30 for all of us before the war, it was never after the war despite Chiron still announcing it at 9:30. We may have won the war but many of us lost that day." Percy ran a hand through his hair.
"Honestly, your birthday is definitely a mark of celebration for how much you've been through but I think its also kind of a mark for how far we've all come together." Nico mused.
"Yeah, that's true but I was actually thinking that we'd do something special this year to sort of commemorate everybody who was part of the war. Mum, Estelle and Paul are going to be here till the evening so I was thinking that all the old CHB campers would do something that day." Percy said, looking at Nico, Thalia and Grover. The three of them nodded in agreement.
"I genuinely think that you guys should do this. Even the old CJ campers were planning on something like this but seeing as only a few of us are here at the moment, we all just plan to go to dinner and sort of have a Mythomagic tournament." Jason said with a smile.
"Take Nico with you then." Thalia joked and Nico flipped her off.
The next morning, Poseidon heard a series of rapid knocks on his door at 7 in the morning. He rubbed sleep out of his eyes and got up to open the door only to find the entirety of the demigods and Apollo standing at his door with matching grins and each holding a water gun but Poseidon suspected that it was not water in those guns. He smirked at them and dramatically stepped out of the way to let them in. The crew quickly yet silently went to the first floor while Poseidon, Amphitrite and Triton watched them with amusement and followed them to see just what they'd do.
They opened the door of Percy's room and the demigods went and Apollo gestured to them to surround Percy's bed while the demigod was still sleeping with drool collecting on his pillow. Annabeth and Grover climbed onto Percy's bed carefully without waking him up and on Apollo's quiet countdown to zero they started jumping on the bed while the others readied their guns.
"Seaweed brain!" Annabeth yelled as she jumped.
"Perrcy." Grover bleated as he jumped and the two basically made as much noise as possible. Percy jumped up with his eyes wide and hair looking as if birds had laid eggs in it. Before the demigod could blink, there were more than 10 guns firing blue cherry coke at him. It was absolute carnage. Percy who had been sleeping in a white shirt now looked like he'd gotten a costume change and had just gone and taken a bath in blue cherry coke. The gang was stamping their feet to the beat of 'happy birthday' and yelling it in the most off tune way possible. Percy started to grin and started licking off the blue cherry coke from around his mouth and his grin reminded Poseidon of the 5 year old boy he used to often see from Olympus just to make sure that he was alive.
Annabeth and Grover pulled Percy into a hug and Apollo made sure to click a photo of that as well as the hug between Percy and Tyson as well as the one between Thalia, Nico and Percy and the one with Percy and Jason pretending to look into each other's eyes.
Once the guns had run out of cherry coke, the demigods all wished Percy 'happy birthday' one more time, a few winked at him as if there was something that they knew and he didn't and Thalia told him to get ready quickly. Meanwhile, Poseidon, Amphitrite and Triton were laughing their heads off at what had happened to Percy early in the morning but the demigod seemed thrilled.
"I wish every day for such a beautiful start to breakfast." Percy smirked at them
"Happy birthday, son." Poseidon smiled and pulled Percy into a hug which Amphitrite and Triton also joined. Tyson remembered to take a photo of that before he also joined in and took a selfie.
Percy met everybody in their regular spot which was the breakfast hall. Everybody grinned at him and Percy got a few hugs from Hades, Persephone, Hermes, Chiron, Hestia and Aphrodite. Ares gave Percy a fist bump with a grin and the other gods and goddesses shook hands with him with smiles on their faces as well. Unknown to the people present there, there were houses in Olympus who were also celebrating the birthday of the Hero of Olympus.
Everybody there had already brought their gifts to give to Percy as well. The demigods made Percy sit down and started giving them his gifts. Annabeth gave him a pendant which had a wave shaped locket which on opening had the line 'To hell and back' written on it. She also gave him home-made green cupcakes and a pair of Converse shoes that he had always wanted. Percy grinned widely before he gave her a kiss 'thank you'. Nico had given him a whole hair kit with all the products that he used for his hair because Percy was always asking for them and a whole recipe book of several Italian desserts. Percy's eyes lit up and then he started laughing.
"This is why you never gave me the recipes when I asked for them?" he said and Nico winked at him.
While everybody had also got him some gift or the other, one gift that really took everybody by surprise was the one that Zeus had gotten for Percy.
"Would not have dreamed about this a while back." Nico whispered to Thalia who nodded her head vigorously in agreement.
"Happy birthday, Percy. This one's from Apollo and me." Zeus said as he handed Percy the gift and the demigod ripped the wrapping open like a 5 year old kid on Christmas morning. His eyes widened as he looked at the gift and then at Apollo and Zeus who were grinning identically, reminding everybody that they were father-son.
"No way." Percy breathed.
"You got this, Perce." Apollo grinned.
"What is it?" Thalia asked as she tried peeking over Apollo's shoulders.
"It's a case…for me." Percy said once he recovered from his shock. Everybody whooped at that, knowing just what it meant to Percy. Triton clapped Percy on his shoulder while Poseidon also had the widest grin on his face.
"That's my boyfriend." Annabeth kissed Percy again.
"And there's one more thing that I think might help with this." Hermes grinned and handed Percy a black bag but it wasn't an ordinary one, it was one with an entire three piece suit in it. Percy didn't think his smile could get wider but at that moment it did.
"Oh gods." Percy shook his head as he looked at everybody there just to make sure that this was still his reality. "Thank you all so so much. I love you all." He said as his eyes got watery and he wiped any tears that managed to flow. Thalia punched him in the shoulder.
"Its your birthday, you little shit. You don't say 'thank you'." She chided and Percy laughed. As Thalia was about to say something else, there was a flash of light with a note in mid-air with just two words "Step Back." Everybody immediately took 3 steps backward and then there was a huge wrapped present with another gift which was smaller than the other and there was another note attached to the huge present. Nico removed it and read it out loud and chuckled as did so.
"Happy birthday to the Hero of Olympus. We knew you'd make it. By the way, you can have as many hits as you want so don't hold back."
Signed,
The Fates."
"Looks like they don't hate you." Ares told Percy with a chuckle and Percy grinned.
"Hurry up and open it. I wanna see what it is." Travis complained jokingly. Everybody laughed but looked like they agreed so Percy rushed forward and opened the small one first. That just added to the confusion because it turned out to be a baseball bat. However, it all made sense when he opened the second one. Everybody in the room smirked as they saw it.
"I gotta get a chance at breaking that statue." Poseidon said, cracking his knuckles with a glint in his eyes.
"I'm going first." Percy grinned as he looked Gabe's statue dead in its Medusa'd eyes. He grabbed the baseball bat and swung it with everything he had and firstly hit it in the one place with such force that would prevent even a statue from having kids, causing cheers to erupt from the others. Percy smirked and then swung the bat, separating head from shoulders. Once he was done Kronos-ing the statue, he passed the bat to Poseidon. The bat eventually went around to everybody and then back to Percy who had another go at it before the statue stopped regenerating and it disappeared along with the bat. Percy cracked his knuckles and stretched.
"That. Was fun." He proclaimed with nobody in the room disagreeing.
While eating breakfast, Nico, Grover and Jason made some excuses and snuck away in order to get ready. Will followed them to set up the audio-visual.
As the others continued eating, they heard the very familiar tune of 'Eenie Meenie' by Justin Bieber and Sean Kingston. Everybody turned to look around and they saw Grover and Will holding a huge piece of cloth in front of two people who everybody assumed were Jason and Nico.
As everybody processed what was happening, they heard Jason's voice float through and as he finished the first verse and pre chorus, a holographic video popped up, showing a young Percy, wearing party sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt with Bermuda shorts while singing the same song and busting out some serious dance moves. Everybody's mouths dropped open and Percy burst out laughing at the memory while Thalia ruffled his air teasingly. The sea gang grinned and Percy and Triton winked at him while laughing while everybody else hooted.
"Looking cute, Prissy!" Clarisse called out teasingly and Percy grinned at her.
"Thanks." He called back.
Will and Grover dropped the curtain, revealing what nobody (not Odysseus or Annabeth) would have expected. Jason and Nico stood there, wearing the exact same Hawaiian shirt with exact same Bermuda shorts, the same shoes and were busting out the exact same dance moves. Everybody felt like their jaws could not drop more but they did and then the air filled with hooting and wolf whistles so loud that you'd think a One Direction concert was going on as they continued singing. Actually, it did seem like a One Direction concert as Nico, Jason and the video Percy seemed to be doing the 'Harry shoulder thrust' from when the band sang Viva La Vida. They duo did not miss a single step and Percy eventually got a little teary eyed when Grover also joined them for the rap part because of both the gesture as he knew just how much effort the four (including Will) put into it and also due to it taking him back to his childhood when Gabe wasn't around either. And it also made him realize just how far he had come.
Annabeth noticed that and gave him a tight side hug and squeezed his arm while Percy gave her a watery smile.
"You have no idea how many photos I've taken of those two in that outfit." Thalia muttered to those, making them laugh.
"Tell me you took Grover's too." Annabeth told her and Thalia snorted.
"Of course I did." She scoffed.
As the last chorus started to begin, Percy raced upto the stage and Nico and Jason grinned at him as the three of them did the same steps and not a single person forgot to record that and nor did they forget to click a photo of the side hug that the brothers shared with each other and Percy's bear hug with Grover which was subsequently followed by Percy carrying Grover like a bride, making everybody laugh.
"They turned you to the dark side." Hades whispered ominously to Nico who nodded with equal drama. Hades then looked at his brothers and sisters, missing the times when they did all this for each other although, he wasn't going to sing a Justin Bieber song….nope, he would have had his siblings convinced him enough. He sighed at the thought, both in nostalgia and the misery that he would have to perform a Justin Bieber song looking like somebody who'd drink pineapple juice from an empty coconut with one of those little umbrellas on his straw.
Poseidon gave a small albeit sad smile that he'd missed Percy's childhood when all that he wanted to do was watch him grow up before the prophecy hit him. He'd tried but it just never worked out and he didn't want anybody to know about either Percy or Sally. He didn't want his own desire to be the cause that the two got into trouble when all he wanted to do was protect them.
"We've got just one more performance." Will announced as everybody sat back down.
"Where's Annabeth?" Percy asked Thalia as Grover and Percy went to the table.
"Look front." Thalia smirked at him and when he did, he saw Annabeth standing with a mic.
"You know, I would never do this for anybody except Percy. Happy birthday, Seaweed Brain and happy anniversary." She chuckled. As the tune to 'You Belong with me' by Taylor Swift started to play, Percy gave a light squeal and his eyes widened as he blew a kiss to Annabeth. Percy whooped as soon as Annabeth started singing and even Thalia and Grover started hyping her up.
Percy jumped onto his chair when Annabeth reached the second pre-chorus which was "She wears high heels…" and he yelled the lyrics along with Annabeth at the top of his lungs as he gave small jumps of excitement, making Annabeth grin widely. He then proceeded to hoot for the rest of the song, making everybody smile at the wholesomeness of the situation. Once the song was over, Percy ran all the way to Annabeth and gave her a bone crushing hug which was returned by Annabeth with equal enthusiasm.
"Only for you, Seaweed Brain." She smiled at him. "Love you." She said to him.
"You know I love you too." He grinned back.
The rest of the day went by in everybody surprising him with something or the other. Hermes, Dionysus, Apollo, Ares and Artemis stole Percy from his family and took him to the best pub at Olympus and made him try some of the best wines and then got him sober again. Even though it had been only around 5, the club was still full and people were partying as hard as they would at 11. Hermes told him that it was always like that at the 'Meccaite' which was the name of the club (it was owned by Hermes and Dionysus) and that's why it was the best club as well as the hardest to get into in Olympus.
It was around 6 when Sally, Paul and Estelle came to visit Percy. Sally gave Percy the tightest hug possible and so did Estelle and Paul gave him a proud smile.
"Well done, Percy. You've always given your best at everything and you've always managed to beat the odds even when most of them were stacked against you. I don't have words to say how proud I am of you. I wish I could find a gift that would express all of that but unfortunately, I wasn't. Soo I got you this." Paul grinned at Percy.
"You didn't have to get me anything, you know. You being here was more than enough." Percy said sheepishly yet genuinely.
"I know but I wanted to get you something." Paul smiled and handed him his gift. Percy opened the wrapping and it turned out to be the actual lightsaber that had been used by Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. It wasn't a copy and nor was it a toy. It was the one that had been used by the actor on the set. Percy squealed with joy.
"How did you get this?" he asked Paul incredulously.
"My college roommate was the one in charge of the props of the movies." He grinned. Percy's jaw dropped.
"That's like the coolest thing ever." He said. Paul laughed lightly and clapped Percy on the shoulder.
"This one's from Estelle and me." Sally smiled at Percy as she gave him a huge box. Percy had to keep it on the ground to open it because it was so huge. As soon as Percy opened it, his eyes lit up and he clapped his hands like a little kid on Christmas morning. The box was filled with blue muffins, blue candy and every single blue thing that he ever liked to eat. He closed the box and gave a huge hug to both Sally and Paul and then carried Estelle on his shoulders.
"I am so so proud of you, Percy. Everytime I look at you, I realize just how much I don't regret a single thing that I did. You made everything tolerable for me. I did things to protect you but the whole time you were the one protecting me. I never could have imagined just how much of a caring person you would turn out to be. If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a thing." Sally told him with teary eyes and Percy had tears running down his face as well before he held onto his mom like he used to do when he was 5 and Sally hugged him as long as he needed.
Sally, Paul and Estelle left by 10pm and everybody had gone back to their quarters. However, Percy and Annabeth had planned that they would celebrate their anniversary at 10. Annabeth had planned their anniversary date the last time so this time it was Percy's turn. He went to pick Annabeth and they drove to the biggest bookstore in Olympus with the air hitting them as the windows were down and the sunroof was open.
"Buy anything you want and how much ever you want." Percy smiled at Annabeth who squealed with delight as she saw all the books.
"I can't buy so much, Seaweed brain." She said to him.
"Hey, I didn't give you an anniversary present either. I didn't give you a gift for making me feel like I never have to do anything again. And while I can't give you any gift for the latter, I can give you a gift for our anniversary. You already gave me like 20 gifts." He chuckled. Annabeth gave him a light kiss as both of them then picked out books. Percy paid for them and then teleported both of them to the Long Island beach where he conjured a cake that looked like a brick painted blue in color.
"I requested Tyson to make it." Percy grinned at her. Annabeth's eyes widened as she realized that it looked like the exact same one that she had given to Percy two years back.
"You thinking about anyone in particular?" Percy smirked at her.
"You're laughing at me." Annabeth recalled as Percy chuckled.
"I am not!" Percy grinned.
"You're so not making this easy." Annabeth complained dramatically.
Percy then kissed Annabeth. "I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Wise Girl. Get used to it." He said and then took both of them underwater as he made a bubble around them and kissed her again.
It was pretty much one of the best underwater kisses of all time.