HephaestusTV.com (Companion to HephaestusTV and a Percy Jackson Fanfiction)

2 Days Before Leaving: Percy's Perspective

*WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SCENES OF NUDITY (viewer discretion is advised)*

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Growing up in the city, Percy was used to the weird happenings of New York. He had plenty of strange experiences long before CHB that had nothing to do with him being a demigod, just weird mortals running around. All of those past encounters, however, seemed tame compared to what he and Annabeth were about to run into on their date at a mall in Times Square.

It started as normal. They browsed a few stores-mostly Annabeth's favorites-before stopping by the food court for lunch.

"No blue pretzels!" Percy exclaimed, holding the plain pretzel up. "This is outrageous! It's pretzel discrimination! I shoud get my mom over here."

"Percy, your mom gave us a bag of blue cookies and you have blue candy, a blue cupcake, and blue slushie. What else do you want?" Annabeth sighed, popping open a can of orange soda.

"It's like the world's out to get me again!"

"What do you mean?" she asked, taking a sip of her drink.

"First I don't get a blue pretzel and now you're drinking orange soda!"

"So?"

Percy scoffed. "Orange is the complete opposite of blue on the color wheel. Why Annabeth, WHY?!?"

"Hang on," Annabeth shushed Percy. "Do you hear something?"

Percy listened closely for a few moments. "Yeah," he said. "it's called New York." He smirked.

"Not that." She looked around the place and over the balcony to the floor below them. "There!"

"What, a monster?"

"No. A flash mob."

Percy saw a group of 50 or so people dancing in sync to Gangnam Style. "Awesome!" he exclaimed. "I wanna join!"

"Percy," Annabeth said.

"What?"

"Never mind. Go ahead."

Percy ran down the escalator and joined the bunch of New Yorkers dancing in the middle of everyone. Annabeth, on the other hand, was among the many who were filming and taking pictures on their phones. He ignored the people gathering around and kept going at it. Annabeth didn't bother to stop him...until he started twerking.

"That's it," she said, dragging him by the elbow away from the general population of the building.

"What?" he asked. "Were you jealous of my moves?"

"Nope," she said. "There were KIDS there, Seaweed Brain!"

"Oops."

"Really? 'Oops' is an understatement."

"Sowwy," Percy said, making a puppy-dog face.

"You're lucky you're cute," Annabeth said, giving him a peck on the lips. "Now let's go to that place over there." She pointed to a newly opened store another floor below them.

"Sounds cool," he said, taking her hand.

Whoever owned the shop was clearly color blind, because the walls and shelves were painful shades of traffic cone orange and highlighter yellow. The display windows had overly accessorized mannequins in front of hot pink self-promo posters. At the entrance was an overly perky lady giving samples of various items. Even before walking in, he was hit with the overwhelming smell of perfume, soap, and lotion.

Annabeth took a few samples from the front and casually went in. Percy tried to deny kindly but the lady just didn't shut up about their 50% perfume whatevers. Just when he was about to walk away, the lady randomly grabbed Percy's arm and squirted some weird-colored lotion in his palm.