Grover Underwood

This cave floor does not get more comfortable night after night, despite my hopes.

On the bright side, however, I get the privacy of having my own cave to sleep in because of the sanctity of marriage or whatever? I didn't even know that was a thing in the Greek Pantheon.

Like, sure, Hera is the goddess of marriage and all that, but she's marrked to Zeus.

Zeus.

You know, the god who will fuck whatever breathes?

Yeah, him.

I'm not complaining, though, because I don't have to sleep with a cyclopes.

As I was struggling to fall asleep, I could sense somebody else struggling to fall asleep: my best friend, who I could swear I'd sensed earlier.

Can't sleep, either? I thought towards the link, hoping he'd hear and not also scream from hearing my voice in his head. Is there nobody with you tonight?

It was hard to get a really good read on Percy from so far away, but I could tell he was sad. Tired.

I can't wait to give him a hug again.

Oh yeah, I forgot that you were able to sense that last night. Percy returned my message. There was supposed to be, but things happen. So I no longer have news for you, sorry. Um, on the bright side, we're on our way! Me and Annabeth and Tyson.

I smiled lazily.

I knew they'd give you a quest. Are you feeling okay, though? You sounded sad. Did you go on a bad date or something with somebody you liked?

This time, I was able to feel the twlnge of sadness twist in his chest.

No, my best friend told me. The date was okay. Being yelled at and being told that I'm mentally unstable like it was my only personality trait didn't go so great. So I left. They didn't give us a quest, by the way. Or, we got one, but not from Mr. D. The normal quest was given to Clarisse by Chiron's sub. So she might show up, but she leaves in the morning so I don't know.

You— I'm sorry, Perce, that's actually awful. I responded in the only way I knew how to, hoping he could feel me try and send him a wave of comfort. Not knowing what exactly he could sense, I tried to reach a hand out, but there's no way he'd be able to take it when he's so far away. You're an entire person, Percy, I'm sorry they reduced you down to that and made you feel bad about yourself. I miss you. I can't wait to hang out again.

I'm not sure which is us it came from, but I found myself fighting a wave of emotions.

I miss you, too. I've been a walking ball of anxiety for the last like, two weeks. I'm going to give you the biggest hug you've ever been given in your life.

I couldn't help but smile.

That better be a promise.

A pinkie promise.

In response, I held out my pinkie and mimicked the action of a pinkie promise.

I'd see my friends soon.

I'd see Percy soon.

I missed him so much.

•••
Percy Jackson

I didn't sleep very well, but I was able to sleep after making my pinkie promise with Grover, which I guess is better than not sleeping at all.

It was around 9am the next morning when I received an IM. With how busy the ship was (and since it was travelling in the direction we were heading), we were planning on waiting out the breakfast rush before trying to sneak off again.

Very hesitant, I took the call.

"H— hello?"

It was my dad.

Not like, the sperm donor. I mean Gabe.

"Oh, Dad, hi!" But it's only 9am, so I was honestly hoping that he was calling me for the same reason Annabeth's dad called her lady night. "What's up? Everything okay at home? Is Mom okay?"

"Is... Yes, everything okay." But he didn't even say hello, which made me nervous. "I just ended a conversation with Grandpa D."

"Okay?"

Dad paused.

"Percy," he questioned, his voice neutral. "Where are you?"

I glanced at the bedframe and pillow behind me.

"In bed."

But this wasn't Mom, so Gabe was able to call my half-lie bullshit.

"That's not what camps beds look like, kiddo," my dad reminded me that he's also a demigod that also went to camp. "where, on a map, are you?"

I debated that answer as I saw Annabeth start to wake up from the sound of a strangers voice.

"Wh... Will I be in trouble if I tell you?"

"With me? Probably not." He promised, which was nice to hear for a whole three seconds before he followed it up. "with Grandpa D? I can't promise he won't turn you into a dolphin."

"Are you going to tell Grandpa D where I am?"

Gabe took a moment to respond, thinking to himself.

"Probably not, but I will tell him if I think you're safe or not. If I can get ahold of him again. The Big Man doesn't like us talking, after all."

Sighing, I closed my eyes and felt where our coordinates were.

Yeah, it's a weird power that I discovered this spring when my class went on a mini cruise around the Harbor. A student asked me where we were when we were docking, and I instinctively responded with the bearings or coordinates or whatever you want to call them.

The scary thing? They were right. So thank my bio dad for that, I guess?

Makes being "lost at sea" the most unbelievable lie he could tell somebody, though, so he's still an idiot.

"We're uh... Around the Delaware/Maryland area?" I figured, trying to best imagine a map with latitude and longitude."closed to Maryland, I believe."

My dad blinked, looking down for just a second.

"Did you leave to go on a rescue mission to save Grover?" Dad questioned, though I couldn't tell how he felt by it, which made me anxious.

It's not like I'm a model citizen or anything, he shouldn't... Like, his expectations aren't that high, but I feel like this is a moral high ground or something.

My best friend is in danger, after all.

"It's technically an authorized quest," I corrected him, and of course that had his attention. "it just wasn't Mr. D that authorized it. That was uh, Mr. Mailman. So if Mr. D is upset that Annabeth, Tyson, and I are all missing, he can—"

knock knock knock

I reached for Riptide, accidentally swiping through the Iris Message and ending the call. Annabeth grabbed her dagger.

"Yeah, no, this room should be empty," I heard a familiar voice on the other side of the door, only being able to place it because I knew he'd be here. "there shouldn't be..."

And, stepping inside the room we'd taken up residence in last night, Luke Castellan seemed to be at a loss as Silena Beuaguard and Clarisse La Rue stood behind him.

Let me really paint this scene for you, reader: Luke was standing in the doorway with a closeted butch/fem lesbian couple behind him who were definitely holding hands (while Clarisse held her new spear in her other hand). In the room itself, Tyson is tinkering with something small on his bed, looking up when he hears the door open. I'm sitting on top of the other bed, in a sweater and shorts, holding a sword.

I'm not even standing.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the room from the door, Annabeth is wearing all of a sports bra and short shorts, holding a dagger in her left hand (she's not left handed) because she'd been in the middle of getting dressed.

Processing the sight of it all, Luke took a step back into the hall and closed the door.

"What... Are they doing here?" Annabeth asked the million dollar question.

"Probably the same thing we are?" I assumed, deciding that it was definitely time to get up now. Annabeth grabbed a shirt from her bag. "Knowing how Silena and Clarisse are, I wouldn't be surprised if Silena somehow convinced Clarisse she needed another person along for the quest."

"Well I'm sure, but that's not..." Annabeth started, at a loss for words. "who I was referring to."

Annabeth, now dressed, walked over and opened the door again. The three older demigods all stood there, Luke looking slightly embarrassed.

"Hi, sorry, I didn't realize anyone was in this—"

"What are you doing here?" The daughter of Athena questioned.

"We could ask you the same thing, smartass." Clarisse jabbed at Annabeth. "You didn't get a quest— why are you here? Not everything is about you and Prissy."

"We got one from Luke's dad last night," I answered. "He pointed out the ship, wanted us to investigate and see if anything was up on our way down to rescue Grover. Failed to consider that none of us have ever been on a normal cruise, though, so I don't know how many monsters is a normal amount of monsters on a ship."

Luke seemed taken back by what I said.

"You talked to my dad?"

I shrugged.

"It was kind of weird, I won't lie," I confirmed, nodding my head and putting Riptide back into my pocket. "I was going to go on a walk after Travis and I uh, shared words, I guess— yesterday was very long and very weird— but on the walk after I'd just gotten done arguing with one of his kids he showed up and offered me a quest."

But Silena had a very important question about the situation.

"You and Travis still hang out?" She asked, which I could see Clarisse also wondering about. "he insisted like, adamantly, that you guys weren't friends. Like, not that long ago."

"Yeah, because I'm supposed to like, die or something, right? So he doesn't want to deal with it or something like that?" I asked, and Annabeth took a step back when I just vaguely mentioned the quest. "what? I'm not deaf, I've heard Chiron talk about it before. There's some prophecy or whatever that they think might be about me? Because of my dad, right? Is that not why everyone's also freaking out about Thalias Tree? Because she was a kid of the Big Three?"

"Wh... I mean, no, it's mostly because of the border situation." Annabeth said. "when did you hear about a prophecy?"

"Wait, hold on," Luke said, tuning into his theatrical abilities. "What's going on with Thalia's Tree? Is the camp okay?"

Annabeth looked at the lesbian couple.

"You guys haven't said anything?'

"We've been here for like 10 minutes," Silena insisted. "We were about to explain the situation, but then we found you guys. How long have you been here?"

I looked at the clock and shrugged.

"10 hours?" I guessed. "We got here well after campfire last night."

"Again, because we were asked to investigate," Annabeth pulled the conversation back closer to where it had began. She looked at Luke again. "I missed you, but what are you doing here? I thought you lived in the New York City now."

And I'll admit it: Silena and I shared a look of panic for a good half second there when Annabeth asked Luke that.

"What... Oh, yeah, I'm taking a summer course on ecology and marine biology so theres like me and four or five other students here. We're supposed to go and observe stuff whenever we dock I think? I don't know, we boarded yesterday and our professor just told us we can do whatever until we dock either tomorrow or the day after. The monsters have been weirdly nice so far, but I also have kept my sword on me so maybe that's why they're nice."

"Yeah, none of them tried to confront us," Silena agreed, looking at me. "Did any of them run after you last night?"

I shrugged.

"Not really, no— I'm not sure they really noticed us." I added on. "Then again, Tysons also here, so maybe they assumed we're in disguise?"

"You have— oh! I see. Cool." Luke said, nodding at Tyson. "Hi."

Tyson waved, a big smile spreading across his face.

Luke looked back to Annabeth and me as I could see him take an extra moment to relax and calm down.

He must have the same issue Annabeth does with cyclopes.

"Anyways," Luke said. "what's happening with Thalia's Tree? And Grover? Is he not back yet from his search?"

"Somebody... Somebody poisoned Thalia's Tree," Annabeth broke what she thought was new news to the son of Hermes, who— I'll admit, looked shocked enough that I would've thought it was his first time hearing about it. "the camp borders are broken now, more or less, and Chiron had to take the blame so somebody's subbing for fkr him. It's been a mess of a week."

"Somebody... Why did Chiron take the blame?"

"We don't know who did it," Silena, the person who did it, explained to the person who gave her the idea. "but uh, big Z or whatever you want to call him was like, pissed and wanted somebody to blame, so he gave us a time frame. Chiron basically gave up by then."

"Yeah, him and Mr. D were arguing like a married couple about it." Clarisse agreed. "It was tense. Now I've got a quest and a plus one to find the Golden Fleece to heal the tree and hopefully our borders. You wouldn't happen to know anything about the Golden Fleece or it's current location?"

Luke just shrugged.

"It's with Polyphemus, according to the stories," he recalled. "Where's Polyphemus? For all we know, he got relocated to like, an island in Hawaii when the gods moved."

"I— we know where he is," I reminded the others. "Grover gave me coordinates and he said that he can see the Fleece from where he is."

"Okay, but do you even know how to read coordinates on a map? Even so, we're all dyslexic as shit, who's to say if we'll be able to actually locate based on coordinates."

"We're at 37° 15 minutes North and 71° 53 minutes West right now, travelling at around 25 knots, but we were going faster overnight— probably because most people were asleep."

"There's no way..." Annabeth started as I saw Silena pull out her phone and open Google Maps to our precise location.

"You're... You're right." Silena confirmed what I already knew. "Well, I can't confirm our speed, but... How do you know that?"

"What... Guys, he's a son of the sea god," Luke reminded the others. "You're shocked that he's able to locate where he is when on a boat in the ocean? Give Percy some credit, my gods. Thalia was basically a master in meteorology because clouds were her dad's domain. She was never wrong about the weather. I'm weirdly good at giving directions because my dad deals with travelers and transport. Is this really the power you guys are going to doubt?"

"That's why you always asked Thalia about the weather?" Annabeth asked, baffled by this new fact.

Luke just nodded his head, confused at her shock.

"I thought she just would steal the newspaper or look at the news forecast when she'd get our breakfast in the mornings," the daughter of Athena insisted. "I didn't know that was just a demigod thing!"

"Did you... Ever see Thalia read a newspaper, Annie?" The oldest demigod here questioned. "because I certainly never did— even when I told her to because her face was on the front page as a missing child. She told me that unless the article said that they found her brother, she didn't care. Which, did they sent a satyr out for him? The kid has to be around your age."

"Thalia had a brother?" Clarisse asked. "Like, full blooded?"

Nodding once more, Luke explained what little he did know about the youngest and possibly deceased child of Zeus—how Thalia basically had to raise him, and then one day Thalia went to get something from the car when she was out with her Mom and her brother and when she returned her brother was just... Gone. That was her last straw.

She met Luke like three months later, and they found Annabeth two years after that. Grover found them within six months of Annabeth joining their little party.

"And now you're as old as she was when we got to camp," Luke concluded, ruffling Annabeth's hair as a sort of bell started to ring. "Oh, shit, that's breakfast. I gotta go make sure my professor knows I'm not dead, but I'll see you guys later, yeah? Be safe on your quests— kill monsters, get the fleece, and tell Grover I say hi. I don't know what coordinates you were given, but if we're sailing in the wrong direction for you guys, there's definitely some lifeboats you could steal. You didn't hear that from me, though."

Waving a goodbye, Luke had started to walk away, but was quickly stopped when Annabeth ran over to give him a hug.

"Wait, Luke!" Annabeth called, grabbing him in a hug as she buried her head into his chest. "I missed you this year. Do you think you'll be able to visit camp after your class is even? Even for a day?"

Luke returned the hug, but it definitely pained him to think about going back to camp again.

"I'll... See if I can extend my vacation another day or two at work," but Annabeth is Luke's baby sister, so it's hard to just say no. "just let me know when you're back from your quest and I'll try to get a weekend off, okay? No promises, but I do really have to go. I missed you too, Annie."

Waving once more to the rest of us, Luke said he'd see us around and made his way towards the the main sector of the cruise ship.

"Now what?" Silena asked. "I mean, we're all going to the same place, right? Do we... Combine missions? You know where we're going?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, Grover gave a set of coordinates. If we could get on a boat that went a bit faster, it might help."

"No wait, hold on." Annabeth said, her tone changing too much for my liking since her expression was now pointed at me. "Before we debate or do anything else: what prophecy did you hear about that you mentioned? You didn't get a prophecy yesterday, Clarisse did."

"Wh... Yeah, no shit, Wise Girl," I agreed. "It's the prophecy that apparently a lot of people think is about me or that will happen because of me existing— however you want to view it."

"What did it say?"

I shrugged, noticing Silena's confusion behind the daughter of Athena, but Clarisse seemed to understand. She looked torn about how to feel.

"I don't know, Annabeth, something about a hero dying and a kid of the eldest gods turning a certain age— I don't know how old." I went on, not wanting to fight about something I honestly try not to think too much about. "Why do you care, Annabeth?"

"Because it's... Because I do," she articulated. "When did you hear about this? Who... Who told you?"

"Sometime last summer after the quest?" I recalled. "Nobody told me— well, when I asked Travis, he said that he knew that a prophecy was the reason the elder gods stopped having gods, but he didn't know anything else. I'm just not deaf. When you don't have a lot of friends to talk to, it's pretty easy to overhear conversations. But again, why do you care? It's not about you. Do you think I don't deserve to know something that's supposedly about me?"

"We don't even know that you're the person they're referring to in the prophecy, don't make this about—"

"No, I think he's allowed to make this one about himself, Annie," Clarisse interjected, which shocked me, in simple terms. "We treated him like shit after he was claimed last summer because we all assumed that he will be the hero of the prophecy. Don't act like that that's not what happened. You said it yourself at the start of the summer— as long as Percy doesn't kill himself, it'll be him."

She said what?

"As long as I don't..." I looked back at the blonde demigod, feeling a weird sense of betrayal. "As long as I don't what? Why would you say that, Wise Girl? What makes you think... What made you think that I would...?"

But she saw absolutely not issue with what she told everyone else.

"What made me think that? You jumped off the St. Louis Arch content with the idea of killing yourself and then proceeded pick a fight with a god and then have a breakdown about it in the back of a truck." She confirmed the thing that I never knew and had assumed the opposite of when she never seemed to treat me different the next day: Annabeth had heard my breakdown on in the quest. She was awake. "Sure, you could be demigod of the prophecy, but you'd have to live long enough to turn s— to turn however old you have to be for the prophecy to unravel. Would you really let that happen? Or would you kill yourself because you'd at least go out on your own terms?"

She knows the prophecy.

"I'm sorry, back up." I said, breathing through my teeth as I clenched my fists. "When I turn how old? You were going to say it, you were going to say a number. What is it?"

"Wh— no, I wasn't."

"No, you were," I corrected her, feeling a ball start to form in my chest because I don't understand why people can't just tell me things. "if you feel like it's more than okay to tell everyone about how I was having a crisis because I wasn't sure if my mom was alive last summer, then you can tell me about the fucking prophecy that gets me treated like a fucking ticking time bomb at Camp."

"Percy, even if I knew, why would I tell you? It'd just make you—"

But listening to her make excuse after excuse about why she got to know about it and I couldn't caused the rubber ball to push against my chest and start to rise into my throat and it was overwhelming and I couldn't...

"Because it's my fucking death, Annabeth!"

The room fell silent.

"Because I have people in my life, Annabeth," I went on, the frustration boiling over and causing my eyes to water. "I have parents who have already lost a kid and it almost fucking destroyed my dad— I want them to be prepared and I want them to feel a little less lost when I eventually die. This isn't your death, Annabeth, you don't get to..."

"But it doesn't have to be your death, Percy." Annabeth relented. "If we find Thalia's brother or if something happens, maybe it won't even be you. We don't—"

"It's sixteen." Clarisse spit out, her arms crossed. "the first line of the prophecy says that a child of the eldest gods will turn 16. I haven't heard the rest of it, but I know the gist of it. It's hard not to, when you live at camp for so long."

A blanket of silence fell over the five of us as I let that settle in.

"Sixteen?"

The daughter of Ares nodded her head.

"Sixteen."

So I won't graduate.

Probably won't have time to get my license, either. Or go to prom. Or see my mom publish her first novel.

I won't get to see a lot of things.

But I have a little over two years to do what I can.

"If you're—"

"Annabeth, unless you're going to personally find Thalia's little brother and find out that he's my age or older, shut up." I snapped at her. "Come on— we have a Golden Fleece to retrieve and a satyr to rescue. If I only have two years to live, I'm not wasting my time arguing with you anymore."