Raging Seas [pjo au] || 1

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A few snickers escaped. "Oh, my gods, do you really have a cr–"

Arianna jumped into her space and used both hands to cover her mouth. "Shh! I said not here!" Kali couldn't contain her laughter any longer.

At the end of the night's celebration, Percy went back to cabin three with Kali. The awkward air around them wasn't there anymore. Kali felt comfortable enough to truly be herself around him like she was with her other friends, especially now with the quest done. They'd grown closer because of the action-packed ten days, and grew to know each other better outside of rushing to save the world from a civil war between the gods.

Even her and Annabeth were good friends now. Outside of hanging with her siblings, Annabeth actively sought out Kali and vice versa; and because she got closer to Annabeth, she indirectly saw more of the Stoll brothers because Annabeth and Connor were friends, too, and the two Hermes brothers often dragged Percy into their schemes. But if he couldn't join them, they would attempt to get Kali in on whatever they were planning.

Adelaide eventually stopped being so angry and listened to Kali's apology and explanation for having to fight her dad. Adelaide still wasn't happy about it, but now more at Ares than Kali since she now knew he'd been the one to instigate everything. Clarisse and the rest of her siblings were an entire other story, though, and Kali avoided them to the best of her abilities. At some point, the bucket prank was used on the Ares cabin, excluding Adelaide, and when they questioned Grant and Connor about it, the boys just smirked and laughed.

As the excitement of their return died down, Kali's upbeat mood began to dwindle as well. The thoughts of her father and Ralph that she had put on the back burner during the excitement returned, and because she no longer had a cabin to herself, Kali sought out the solitude at the bottom of the ocean when she needed privacy to just sit and think, and attempted to untangle all of her confusing and conflicting emotions. That was the one good thing of her punishment from Mr. D from before the quest – cleaning the pegasus stables for a week gave her more alone time.

(Although, the pegasi wanted to know about her day every time she went in to clean. They also wanted her to sneak them snacks of all sorts, which she obliged to a few times.)

Then Percy got a letter from his mom that caused a wide and happy grin to form on his face. She hated how it made her feel worse than she already was, and she distracted herself with the naiads and their underwater basket weaving lessons for the rest of that day. Hopefully Percy hadn't noticed her downtrodden mood, but the concerned look she got before bed that night told her otherwise.

+++

July came around, and before Kali knew it, the entire camp was gathered at the beach to celebrate the Fourth of July for a fireworks display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus' kids, they weren't going to settle for a few simple red-white-and-blue explosions. They'd anchored a barge offshore and loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles. The blasts would be sequenced so tightly they'd look like frames of animation across the sky. The finale was a couple of hundred-foot-fall Spartan warriors who would crackle to life above the ocean, fight a battle, then explode into a million colors.

Kali saw it for the first time last year, and she was looking forward to seeing it again.

In the middle of spreading out a picnic blanket with Oliver and Adelaide (they each agreed to let Grant and Arianna have their own, and Arianna occasionally sent Kali and them panicked, betrayed, blushing expressions for leaving her alone with Grant), Kali noticed Grover walking over to Percy and Annabeth at their own blanket. She told her friends that she'd be right back, and hurried over.