The Aftermath

University of Rome

 Percy Jackson hated school. After getting kicked out of so many over the years for his behavior, he didn't think it would be as bad. Turns out even a school explicitly made for people like him would still suck.

"Hurry up or we'll be late Percy!" Annabeth yelled.

"Okay, okay, just give me a second."

Percy and Annabeth had started going to the University of Rome where old demigods would yell at them about getting facts wrong on an event they participated in. He hated it miserably. Percy grabbed his bag and textbook and ran out the door.

Annabeth turned to him, "You ready?"

He shook his head and walked with her to Mr. Giano's class. When they arrived, they sat down as the rest of the class filled in.

"Alright everybody, today we are doing our 3 person group project on the Battle of Mount Othrys, or as some of you might know it, the Battle of Manhattan." Mr. Giano turned to the whiteboard, writing down the instructions for their assignment.

Annabeth looked over to Percy. You look for another person, she mouthed.

"Shoot alright."

He looked around. Truthfully, he recognized just about none of them. Sure he's seen them around, and he had talked to them a few times. But Percy didn't know them too well.

"Hey! Do you want to be in a group with me?" Percy asked.

"Um." The other student looked around and shrugged, "Yeah sure, why not."

"Nice. Annabeth, come on, I got another person to work with!" Percy waved Annabeth over, who was looking at something in her textbook.

"I'm Sage, by the way." He held his hand out.

"Percy Jackson, nice to meet you." Percy shook his hand and noticed pale scars running across his fingers, contrasting heavily against his dark skin.

Mr. Giano looked back at the class and cleared his throat, "Your assignment will be on the effects of this battle on our world. This will include an oral presentation that must last at least 10 minutes in which everybody in your group must speak unless unable to. You'll have a month to finish this, good luck to you all."

Annabeth made her way over to Percy, "Okay, so first we need to organize all of the effects of the Battle of Manhattan out, then we can put in the sources and reasoning afterward."

Sage turned to Annabeth. "Don't you mean the Battle of Mount Othrys?"

She looked over at him and shook her head, "We'll figure out what we want to call it later. I'm Annabeth."

He waved at her quickly, "Sage."

"Alright, so we need to start right?" Percy had sat down and started eating a candy bar.

Annabeth nodded, "Yeah, I'll work on the effects on the gods, you can do the impact on demigods, and Sage you look at what happened with the Titans. That work for everyone?"

Percy and Sage nodded and started reading. While reading was easier in Ancient Greek, Percy still didn't enjoy doing it for long amounts of time. Especially over something he already knew perfectly.

After the battle, more Greek demigods were claimed, obviously. They felt like they belonged, and were safer from monster attacks. More kids were brought to camp and were able to learn what they were actually good at over learning how to pickpocket in the Hermes Cabin with the Stolls. Percy opened another bag and continued to look through the book. He didn't know what happened with the Romans after their battle anyways, and he would bet that the teacher would care more about that.

Sage, admitted, was struggling with his part. He didn't know much about the previous wars, he had just joined the Romans a few months ago after starting his training at the Wolf House late.

Looking at his book, the titans Krios, Hyperion, and Kronos all had their essences sent to Tartarus after the war. He knew that much already. Truly that was all the members of his cohort would talk about.

Oh, sorry Sage you wouldn't understand that, it's an inside joke about Mount Othrys!

You should've seen me! I flew through the air and killed it right then and there!

Then Jason toppled his throne, you needed to see it to understand!

He just disappeared and we won, it was glorious!

He continued to read about the motives of the titans, what they wanted, and how they were defeated. Problem was, the books had limited material on the Manhattan side of the battle. Only that the oh, so, great gods had saved themselves with an ultimate show of power; which he doubted based on the accounts he'd heard from visiting Greek demigods.

Annabeth rubbed her eyes, she was tired after last night. She had helped to transfer more demigods between camps when a horde of monsters attacked, in all truth, she was more annoyed than worried. The University work wasn't too hard, but being a transporter for the camps was.

In her book, all she could notice was that the battles caused the gods to 'completely and wholly show their supreme abilities once more.' It was complete bullshit. While she loved New Rome, their undying love for their gods without actually realizing who they were was just sad. Annabeth considered just ignoring the textbook and just using what she knew as a reference. It was much more accurate anyways.

It was true that the Olympians' side won, but there wasn't more than that. They were forced to claim their children by 13 too, but not nearly enough for the troubles, it had caused Camp Half-Blood.

After an hour, all three of them had some of their assignment finished.

Annabeth threw her items into her bag and got up. "Here are our dorm room numbers, so we can discuss the project if needed. You could also send a holo-scroll if you want to, though I'm not as great as Percy is at remembering to answer them."

Sage took the slip of paper from her. "Thanks, see you guys tomorrow then." He waved and walked towards a blue-haired person outside the door.

Percy hugged Annabeth from behind and bent closer to her ear. "I'm so tired, can we just get food or something."

Annabeth laughed and gave him a kiss on the cheek, "Not yet Perce, we need to talk to Grover first. We planned this a week ago, remember?"

Percy shot up, and he dragged Annabeth to the door quickly. "C'mon, we gotta hurry then! I haven't talked to him in forever. Shoot, I need a can."

The couple walked over to a store and continued to the entrance of the camp soon after.

________________________________________________________________________________

Sage threw his bag on the floor.

"Hey, you up to go out right now? Helia and Winn are gonna be there too." Sage's roommate Lincoln was in the doorway.

Sage scrunched his nose up, "I just saw Helia earlier and she said that she was going to be with Laila for the rest of the day, nice try."

Lincoln groaned, "Seriously dude? They just wanna talk to you, stop ignoring them."

"I'll ignore them for however long I want to. I need to work on my Battle of Mount Othrys project anyways." Sage rummaged through his books as he made an excuse.

"Fine, have it your way, I'll be working on new weapons plans in Build and Eat with the others if you need me." Lincoln grabbed a few appears from his desk and walked out.

Sage fell onto his bed and grabbed a small item on his desk. It was a dark blue color and cool to the touch. He turned it over in his hands as he thought about the thing he'd found a week back.

Now, what are your secrets?