The Warfighter, the Storm, and the Moon

Chapter 48: Pettiness

'Pettiness'

20-Nov-2030, 2300U

Annabeth Chase, Hero of Olympus, Daughter of Athena

Joint Operation with Task Force 101 and Legio XII Fulminata

Oakland, California, USA

I wasn't looking forward to this at all: my mother, the Big Three, and Percy all being in the same room. And worse, they all had to collaborate for the sake of this absolutely outlandish prophecy spat out by the Oracle of Delphi a week ago. And I already hated that fucking bitch (the actual Oracle, I mean, not its vessel... the vessel herself is fine).

And here's another oddity to add to the chaos: the version of Mother present was a combination of Athena and Minerva. I personally saw a bit more of Minerva in her, but Athena was undoubtedly present. After the Athena Parthenos was returned (so to speak) to Camp Half-Blood, the goddess of wisdom had undergone a drastic reformation. She was still the same omniscient goddess as always, but she'd managed to go from utterly insane (which I saw right before the whole Mark of Athena episode) to one of the more clear-minded Olympians when it came to resolving her Greek and Roman halves.

In other words, while Mother was now probably just a Minerva that had taken her antipsychotic medication and had all of Athena's combat experience and knowledge, she was still a completely different goddess from both the intelligent-yet-arrogant Athena and calculating-yet-batshit insane Minerva I'd met in the past. She was both and neither at the same time... I can't even put it into words, to be honest with you.

Adding to the bullshit was the fact that, for the past week, Nico, Jason, Piper, and I had been receiving instruction from a couple of Korean-Americans at "Rockies' Range" in Arizona... where Reyna, Frank, Hazel, and Leo had been apparently learning gunfighting ever since September. And when our instructors Kyung and Nai weren't teaching us, our Roman friends plus Leo ended up running us through additional training that we would use on a few... missions, so to speak. We weren't Delta Force, SEAL Team 6, or full-time SWAT operators by any means, but we at least had managed to grasp the basics of shooting, moving, and communicating fairly quickly... one of the benefits of immortality, I suppose.

But why the hell didn't Percy tell us about this? Why did he keep his so-called "fireteam concept" a secret?

But there wasn't time to worry about that now. Now, I was just praying that nobody killed each other, particularly Mother, Neptune (or Poseidon... fuck it, I don't care anymore), and Percy. Heck, I was hoping that this was all just a bad dream.

"Okay, let's go over the prophecy again so I'm understanding it," Percy said as we gathered around the table in the big conference room in the Principia. The select Olympians, Trivia, Great Prophecy questers, Nico, Reyna, Task Force 101's leadership, and 12th Legion's leadership—which evidently included "Evocatus Percy Jackson," who was treated by the Romans like he was a second legate, or even a general—were present in the room.

And yet somehow, that wasn't nearly as weird as the sight of myself, my fellow young immortals, Trivia, and the select Olympians all being dressed like modern American troops. I mean, it made sense for Tyson and his deputies to be wearing it (the "Torrent Troopers'" whole thing seemed to be modern warfare) but I felt absolutely weird in this MultiCam combat shirt, pants, plate carrier, and other tactical paraphernalia. And thanks to a plethora of information I discovered on the Internet between gun training sessions, I knew that all of the gods were wearing the OCP pattern, with "name tapes" designating them as members of the United States Army (Pluto, Vulcan, Trivia, and Mother) or Air Force (Jupiter, Apollo, and Mercury). This, of course, did not include Neptune, who was wearing the US Navy's AOR1 pattern, otherwise known as "NWU Type II..." because the military is apparently just as confusing and bureaucratic as Olympus.