Annabeth Chase and the Last Olympian

Chapter 2 - I get an unwanted shower

The countdown to August was torturous. We were still weeks away but knowing what was going to happen in the middle of the month was driving me crazy. So I combated it by keeping myself so busy that I couldn't spare even a moment to think about it. 

Most of my time admittedly was spent creating battle plans, drawing up rosters for the defence of the camp and checking to make sure all entrances to the camp were heavily guarded. I even went to check on Zeus' Fist a couple of time, just to make sure that it was safe. I knew that the Labyrinth was destroyed, turned to rubble when the spirit of Daedalus finally died after centuries of drawn out life, but it still didn't ease my worry. If there was one thing I'd learned from my many years of being a demigod, was that if something could go wrong, then it usually would. 

We could barely keep up with the amount of monster activity running rampant in the Long Sound neighbourhood. Teams of demigods were being sent out nearly every day to either deal with a monster sighting or to bring in a discovered demigod. A lot of those missions ended with injuries and not many ended in success. I'd gone on several of those missions myself, and every time I wished that Percy was beside me. Leaving the camp on a perilous mission just wasn't the same without him. It wasn't just because he was the best fighter the camp had produced in years, but it was also because he was the best fighting partner I'd ever had. We got each other. 

But if I wasn't missing his reassuring presence beside me in a fight, I was blocking out any thoughts of him from my mind. The events of last year had left a certain strain on our relationship. It wasn't just because of his obvious interest in Rachel, but also the kiss that we'd shared before he blew up Mount St Helen and got trapped on Calypso's Island for two weeks. We'd never spoken about that moment, neither of us daring to bring it up, but I thought of it constantly. I had no idea if he did. 

I actually called Sally Jackson when I first got back to camp, just to check on him. I was one of the few demigods who owned a phone and I used it sparingly, mainly for emergencies. Sally had given me her number years ago, which was wise considering the amount of trouble that Percy got himself into on a daily basis. She liked to call me to check on him, especially as he was too forgetful to call her himself. Sally and I had a good relationship, bonded through the way that we both worried about the son of Poseidon. 

The call with her didn't last long though, as we'd barely gotten through the greetings before I heard Rachel's voice in the background. She and Percy were joking about something and the sound of his laughter mixed with hers cut through me deeper than I'd like to admit. I made up the excuse that a camp emergency had popped up suddenly and hung up quickly, Sally barely getting through a goodbye before I ended the call. 

That call more than anything had shaken me. I should have known that Percy would hang out with Rachel when he was home. He didn't have many friends outside of camp that I knew of, and even if he did, it's not like he could speak of his ancient Greek life to them. It was only natural that he would turn to Rachel, someone who he'd shared a life/death quest with. And yet my reasoning did nothing to settle the angry roiling of my stomach and the ache of my heart. 

To forget it all, I threw myself into my work even more. One of my focuses became Daedalus' laptop, gifted to me before he died. It had thousands of ideas and projects on it that the inventor had created, many of them never having been built. I hadn't had much time to work on the laptop while I was home thanks to all the schoolwork I'd had, but I found time now. I reasoned that one of these projects could help us change the course of the war. The fact that I was fascinated by all the projects had nothing to do with it. 

Someone else who was equally entranced by the laptop was Charlie Beckendorf. He was the best builder the camp had ever seen and spent more of his time in the workshop tinkering with things than he spent out of it. It was a wonder that he ever spent anything time with his girlfriend, Silena Beauregard, daughter of Aphrodite.