#read more because it's a lot and nobody should deal with this unless they want to

[asstrolo]

PISCES PLACEMENTS.

one thing you need to know about Pisces is that they always look aloof and are extremely observant.

✦ Pisces Risings have a very good intuition to situations involved with emotions and other people's feelings, they can read them very well, but should always be careful as they can appear to think they know what a person is feeling when it could be something completely different.

✦ People with a Pisces stellium deal with very difficult mental health problems, like any other water stellium (or any stellium) their emotions are at an all time high and can make it hard to put things into perspective when it's all just one energy. To add that Pisces are mutable energy and that energy is very volatile, balance is not something that comes easily to them, unlike fixed signs like Aquarius, Pisces stelliums get trapped inside a thought or a scenario in their head a lot, it's really hard to make them come back to reality unless they are aware of what they are doing. This does not mean they are unstable or untrustworthy, they are wise and can with frequency have prophetic dreams

✦ One thing about Pisces mercury is that they will lie unprovoked, they often lie for their peace of mind so people would leave them alone, but other times they just lie because they can and I can confirm this as a Pisces mercury I lie a lot about things that don't matter like when I buy something and I tell my family that the person that sold it to me recommended it because it's really good, that's a lie nobody recommended me anything

✦ I do believe Pisces like to be sad more than they liked to admit, as the sign is known for not being present and you can always see them not wanting to be in the real world, sometimes they can use their moods to escape real life issues or responsibilities

✦ Jupiter in Pisces generation are really good at spotting a person's energy, they tend to have luck in everything esoteric but can shield on that a little too much, have an over positive or negative view of life as they have a strong intuition sometimes they will fool themselves into believing something just because of the ~vibes~ thy feel, a little too delusional sometimes ngl

✦ Pisces in anything but specially Pisces sun people are very addictive, is the Neptunian force, when people talk about Pisces have addictions to escape reality that is valid, I do believe they are super intoxicating to be around, is something about them that leaves people wanting more. Watch Pisces people that are famous, Hozier and Rihanna, Maddison Beer or Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, and the most Pisces of them all was Kurt Cobain with a extremely present Pisces stellium and a Water dominance with a Cancer moon and Scorpio mars, he looked almost like a cult leader and that's the magic of Pisces, they can draw people in so easily it's hard to know where you start and they end, but that's the magic of mutable signs

✦ Pisces men why are you like that? I'm not a mind reader don't make me kill you

✦ As Saturn is transitioning Pisces people with this placements can feel like it's just one thing after another, they can never really be calm because Saturn is not about calm at all, it's about responsibility and maturing in the blink of an eye, they will be confronting things they used to sweep under the rug, which is something difficult to do for Pisces placements as they can be too n their own world to see certain things surrounding them

✦ Continuing the Pisces/Saturn transit, this can obviously be felt more on where you have Pisces in planets or house. Venus in Pisces will be dealing with a lot of hard lessons in love, if you have unhealthy patterns that follow you through all your relationships and it can feel very overwhelming when you try to connect with somebody but is impossible because there is something you must learn, or you view of love could be very different when you start your first healthy relationship or stay single for your mental health. It really does depend on the person as Saturn has lessons in all shapes and forms . Pisces in the 9th house could mean responsibilities outside their home or comfort zone, or the impossibility of traveling due to these responsibilities. College or School can take a significant time in your daily life as someone who is starting to take it more seriously, or the sudden decision to leave a career to chase other dreams. Either way, it's a challenging time for the dreamers

✦ Pisces placements and always looking like they don't know where they are

✦ Since Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac they do encapsulate a tiny part of all the signs and that's why they can be so changing, Pisces Sun and Risings are known to be really good actors like Anya Taylor-Joy having a Pisces rising or Oscar Isaac. They can mold into a different personality very well and that's part of their empathetic tendencies too

✦ to me pisces placements embody the forever I hate it here I want to be inside my mind palace ALL THE TIME there's a reason a lot of pisces placements are actors or writers, they continuously try to run away from real life!!

a pisces placements song in my opinion

[copperbadge]

Having ADHD and Being A Little Punk Rock

So....a huge amount of the discourse on Tumblr around neurodiversity generally is just venting. Which is good, it’s good to vent and Tumblr is a good place for it. And I know that often, when venting, the LAST thing you want to hear is someone trying to offer help or solutions. So generally I keep my mouth shut unless someone is speaking to me specifically. 

But a while back I saw someone asking (rhetorically) about what people with ADHD wish their parents had known, and I had a lot of thoughts about that which I started jotting down. Reading the various ADHD tags, I also see a lot of teens and twentysomethings with ADHD who visibly have no coping mechanisms and no way of creating them. I don’t blame the kids, and it’s not some kind of personal failing on their part; they’re young, and nobody has taught them. But I look at them and I think, A little sideways thinking would help you out so much. Then, recently, I got an ask (thank you for the permission not to respond directly) that was full of feelings about not being able to process or communicate well, and feeling a lot of negative emotions because of it. 

So, maybe it’s time to just throw this out there. I want to offer some advice as Fandom Dad with forty-three years of being neurodiverse and exactly seven months of actually being aware I was neurodiverse. Which for once is actually going to be pretty helpful! Because I looked at the world and I assumed my own neurotypicality and I thought, well, okay, but fuck all that.

Allow me to explain.  

I think this can apply to a number of ways in which people are neurodiverse, but I have ADHD so that’s what I’m really speaking to here. With ADHD, there’s medication, and I strongly urge people to explore that option because medication is awesome when it works. But there’s also a lot out there about how to try harder, or trick yourself into doing something in a very neurotypical way, or use systems that may not work for you. I know; I tried some too, and the sense of failure, the sense of being an ongoing failure, is terrible. So I want to offer an alternative which has helped me a great deal, and may help other people with ADHD, particularly younger people. 

People of any age, but especially young people who have ADHD, should be made aware that it’s okay to suck at things, to struggle, and to fail. Even if you think you should be good at something, even if everyone around you thinks so too, it’s okay to just be garbage at it and to acknowledge that fact. But just saying “well I’m dumb and can’t do this” of course isn’t actually helpful, and harms you a great deal, because you are a living person with feelings and if you’re self-aware enough to notice, you’re also too smart to be calling yourself dumb. Acknowledging that you’re bad at something, and even acknowledging that you’d like to succeed at it, is only part one of figuring life out.

Part two is deciding what to do about it, and more importantly, how. 

I was always told I was smart, but I was told “You’re smart so you should be able to do this”, not “You’re smart, so let’s come up with a way around this.” I don’t think many people are encouraged to explore why they are bad at something, to understand their own brains and thought processes which cause them to struggle.

Decades before I knew I had ADHD, I had to figure out that one of life’s most important skills is not being able to creatively solve problems but to recognize when you have to. Anyone can sit around and come up with three or four ways to solve a problem, but it’s not actually often taught that you should also be aware of when this is needed. Often, when faced with a problem that is difficult to solve, we’re taught that our reaction should be the socially approved “I just need to try harder”. Sometimes that’s true, but usually it’s not.  

More often, when we feel that instinct, especially as people with ADHD, we should say instead, “I’m not going to try harder, that’s bullshit. I’m trying already. I’m going to find another way to solve this problem.” Trying harder doesn’t work, after all, when your own brain is fighting you.

So you stop and think, if there were no rules to the world, how could I do this? You don’t have to work smarter; a lot of my solutions could reasonably be described as “work dumber”. The point is to work differently in a way that helps you specifically. 

Stop trying to remember to take your keys when you leave the house and get a lanyard and hang them on the doorknob; if you lose them a lot, hang the lanyard around your neck when you leave the house. 

Stop pretending you’ll remember to scoop the litterbox every night and set an alarm that tells you to do it. Or don’t, that works for me but might not for you! Maybe you have to put the litterbox somewhere you’ll see it right before bed (I ALSO do this for the days I turn off the alarm and then promptly forget it happened). 

There are phone charging cords in every room of my home so that I never run down my phone battery, something that is mildly inconvenient to have happen but deeply anxiety-inducing to think about for me. And now I never worry.

The point is, don’t ask how you can do better at something, ask how you can make something easier for you.

Even rewiring your brain to ask the question is a learned skill, though. You have to consciously stop when you find something is fighting you and consciously think, how can this be easier for my specific brain? If we assume I am not stupid but am in fact fighting an invisible monster, how do I make the monster visible? 

Life became roughly 60% easier for me when I started thinking this way. Of all the tips for time management and list making and organizing and de-organizing you can try and implement, none of that is necessary if you know how to ask yourself, “How do I do this differently?” and come up with alternatives that suit your brain. 

Especially with neurodivergence, there’s no “one size fits all” when it comes to handling it, neurologically or emotionally. So I think that it’s important to be a little bit punk rock. Not necessarily in the way of defying authority but in the way of defying convention -- the ability to say “fuck you” to the Way Things Are Done and do one’s own thing is very liberating and healthy. You lose a lot of the benefits of creative problem solving if you’re also ashamed of the solutions. So I think the best trick I know of to succeed despite unmedicated ADHD is just to say “fuck you, there must be an easier way to do this.” 

I’m garbage at cleaning my home (I can say that because I’m not only calling myself garbage, I’m using “I’m bad at this” as a stepping stone to solving the problem, and then I no longer feel like garbage and can joke about it with a healthy ego). I vacuum regularly and do the dishes and such but like...I don’t scrub the floors or dust or wash out the bathtub. That’s part of why I do November Cleaning -- so that at least once a year those things, that I never want to do but always think I should do, get done, but only have to be done once and at a specific designated time. So now if the bathroom floor is a bit grimy in the corners I just think, “Ah -- that’s for November” and add it to my November Cleaning list. 

For my friend who struggles with communication, which is something I also used to really struggle with (and still do in some ways), one of my “make stuff easier” techniques for this was simply to...tell people.

“Hey, I tend to talk really fast when I get excited, so please tell me if I need to slow down.” 

“Sorry, I have some hearing issues, I may ask you to repeat something -- it’s fine just to do it slower, I don’t need louder.” 

“I’m upset and struggling, I need a minute.” (or even just “Hey where’s the bathroom?” so you can sit quietly for a moment and gather your thoughts. If you’re too upset to talk, it also helps to type them out, which I often do.) 

If someone tells me something I want to remember, I’ll get out my phone and say “Sorry, I’m still listening, but I want to write that down so I won’t forget it.” I do all my writing-things-down in Google Tasks, then once I’m somewhere quiet and private I review the notes and move stuff that isn’t actually “to do” to another list. Sometimes I’ll tell someone “I’m so sorry, you just said something and I totally missed it, but it’s important to me -- can you repeat it?” 

Most people find that kind of honesty, where you’re open about why you’re maybe talking at cross-purposes, really charming. It indicates that you think they are important, and you’re putting in effort to hear what they’re saying and respond to it thoughtfully.  

I hope this is helpful in finding ways around some basic problems, rather than through them -- that being able to stop and think “This could be easier -- how?” is something that people can internalize and make use of. Going around a mountain rather than through it might look like it’ll take more time and energy, but it beats trying to punch through granite the whole way there. 

[wandering-tides]

TNE Fandom where are you?

Sujin shippers where are you?

I have Fics to Rec

I don't really go out of my way to rec fics (and I dunno why I have never done this before on tumblr), but BY GOD, have these two fics taken a special place in my heart.

I ADORE everything about them.

They are both Suho x Hajin ships

But the ship aside, I am so incredibly grateful for the authors to have brought them to life and allowed us to read these absolute GEMS of a fic in this little, little fandom of The Novel's Extra.

Really, y'guys have no idea how giddy and excited I get at every update.

Now, the fic in question?

1. Flowers of Agápē by DescendedGaia (Not sure if the author has a tumblr or any other social media... but lemme know if you want me to tag you :) )

Kim Hajin is a failure. There's no two ways to look at that objective truth. It's a truth that resonates through how others look at and ridicule him. It's a truth that echoes infinitely inside his head, compounding and doubling down on his inadequacies. It's a truth, despite the unconditional love of two parents that soothe but cannot dispel those haunting doubts. Kim Suho is simply perfection. The desperate vessel and ideal of Hajin's "ifs" and wishes. Because Kim Suho, the protagonist of Hajin's novel, is everything Hajin wants to be for his parents and more. But, that same story falls apart at the seams the same way Hajin has lost faith in himself. Yet, as the common narrative dictates, everything begins anew with an innocuous email requesting to remake Hajin's novel, his desperation and desire incarnate.

*** Alternatively, the extremes of Korean culture break Kim Hajin into someone who feels much more acutely, and everything shifts to the left.

This is such a MASTERPIECE. Hajin's characterisation in here is just *chefs kiss*. For me, thats one of the biggest plus points in this fic. Hajin is so much more emotionally sensitive in here and feels far more acutely than in the orignal, as should have been.

This fic has been adressing almost all the points that made me frown at or dislike in the orignal novel and manhwa (and from what I can notice, almost every one too).

This fic is kinda a rewrite of the orignal novel, (tho the author follows the manhwa flow of the story) with added Suho interactions, and such good characterization of Hajin, I fell in love at first read LMAO.

So far, there aren't any major spoilers (unless you read the author end note, where they give their own tid-bits of the chap, which sometimes contain spoilers too, or go to the comment section which may sometimes give you spoilers to the novel lol) If you are caught up with the manhwa, or atleast the season 1 of manhwa, then so far there won't be any spoilers for you!

And I think i'll stop talking about it here cuz if I keep going, I think i'll end up giving in-fic spoilers Lmao

(Oh, btw, this updates every other thursday! So far, it's been consistent in its updates ^^)

So onto the next fic!

2. Mountain To No one by @thek1ngtalks (as k1ng0fn0b0dy on ao3)

There's a number on his smartwatch that leads to nowhere. Suho's gotten in the habit of texting it throughout his day. Today, it texted back.

_ Or, in a world missing Kim Hajin, everyone is worse off. Fixing this starts with (a lot of) text messages between a protagonist and his missing piece.

And Man.... where do I begin? I have SO MUCH to say about this fic but I think i'll end up spoiling the whole fic if I start lmao. It's just so good dammit. Just gonna say that this fic takes after the end of the novel, after the conclusion. Only couple few remembers Hajin in the orignl right? Well, in this fic, nobody does. But Suho is probably (???) Going to be the first to remember... I dunno tbh, the fic is only 2 chaps in (and yes, I really adore it already)

I love what the author did with Suhos character and how he is dealing with the aftermath of... everything. Same goes for Hajin, and I love where they seems to be taking this fic. How they characterizes these two main characters and everything.

Listen, I have a LOT to say but i'll just end up giving spoilers so really go read it for yourself. This is another MASTERPIECE of a fic and I am so grateful for its presence in this little TNE fandom TT

Really, thankyou for such amazing fics authors!!

And that's all from me!! Lol I was so excited while writing this XD (could you tell? Lol)

(I edited this post twice because of all the typos I ended up making in excitement LMAO)

[baejax-the-great]

Archive-locking the fics that YOU WROTE and are thus 100% yours to decide what to do with 'hurting people' is so silly tbh. Skill issue on their part. Wish those people could be normal about the amazing fics that writers like you put out & be understanding or at the very least respectful of the choices that writers make about how and where they make their fics available. Especially in light of recent ai training theft and nonsense & all that.

I hope this doesn't sour the fic writing & sharing experience for you too much. I love your writing & think you're very talented & skilled!

There seem to be dual attitudes I'm coming up against recently (and obviously these are not held by everyone, I don't even know that they are held by a majority, but they are certainly held by a plurality).

The first is that authors should be grateful that readers deign to read what they put out there. I think this stems from the "content creation" mentality and the idea that everyone who posts things wants as massive as an audience as possible (for monetization purposes which... isn't a thing in fanfic). I think this mindset also leads to readers demanding that people write specific tropes/pairings/whatever, or threatening basically to take their business elsewhere. "Nobody will read unless you do [X]." 1. Not true and 2. Okay, you weren't my audience.

(I also think authors circulating those posts about how badly they want comments/kudos feeds this mentality of readers doing authors a favor by even clicking on the fic. "Wow, if people are so desperate for attention, then mine must be worth an awful lot!")

Fanfic ain't a business, and I write for myself. Readers choosing to read my work isn't a privilege or an honor they are bestowing upon me (nor are comments for that matter), just as me posting my writing where they can see it isn't a privilege or an honor for them. We are both engaging in hobbies and a love of some media, and sometimes we will overlap and connect and sometimes we won't. Readers aren't reading out of altruism for attention-starved authors, and authors aren't writing out of altruism for content-hungry readers.

And there are those who will read these paragraphs above and think to themselves "wow, what an ungrateful author," and that's exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, it's delightful and rewarding to receive comments on fics and chat with people about Blorbo and the Situations. But it should be delightful from both sides of the exchange, or why the hell are we doing this? If I'm meant to be grateful for every commenter who jumps into my inbox, then every commenter in my inbox better be grateful for me, and I can tell you right now there is a population who is not. There is a population who sees me as a service provider for their entertainment, and whatever form I take in their brain, it is not shaped like a full person.

This attitude also leads to people thinking that things like lorefm are no big deal. Don't I want to get my work in front of more eyeballs (or ears)? Don't I want to broaden my audience? And once I put my work out there for readers to see, should I be shocked (or express any negative emotions at all) when someone plagiarizes/scrapes it for AI/demands updates rudely/reads it on a monetized youtube channel/binds it and sells it for profit?

The other idea I've been coming up against is almost the opposite of this--that because some readers form attachments to fic, deleting that fic (or even archive-locking it!) is actively harming those readers. Sure, they can't be bothered to hit the download button or get an AO3 account, but that's no reason not to think of these strangers first before doing what I want with my creative output.

Yall, life is ephemeral. There are things we will see and enjoy and never find again for one reason or another, and it's not harm being done to us, it's just the nature of existence. Having an emotional reaction to something does not give you any sort of ownership over that thing. Artists are allowed to change their minds about whether they want that art in the wild, particularly given that it's free. Maybe it's because I utilize the library a lot, but reading a book and then losing access to that book is not a crime against you, it's just a normal thing that happens. If you read something and it means that much to you, there are ways to avoid losing it (download it).

Seeing this particular attitude extend out to "not making your fic available for as many people to read as possible is harming them" is beyond bizarre. If I woke up tomorrow and deleted everything I have ever written, there would still be thousands upon thousands upon thousands of beautiful, emotional, meaningful fics out there for people to read. They would lack for nothing. Would some people be upset? Probably. Would I be hurting them? No, not really.

Sometimes people have negative emotions because of our actions, but that doesn't mean we did anything to them. This is one of those times.

Lastly, this AI and everything else bullshit really has taken a toll on my enthusiasm for posting my work. It's one thing for companies to try to pillage every thought, every word, every stroke of a pen or paintbrush to enrich themselves while actively making the planet an unbearable and inhospitable place to live, it's another when fellow fans are telling you that "Whelp that's just life, what did you expect, give us your content anyway or you're a bad person and if you complain, then I'll be taking my business elsewhere, you sensitive, entitled creative, lol."

[halothenthehorns]

Chapter 12: TWO SNAKES SAVE MY LIFE

Annabeth was fiddling with the ends of the pages, letting them run through her fingers as she nervously stared at the title. Great, just what she wanted, more of her screw-ups on display, now from Luke's father himself. Gods knew what else about her past mistakes had been shown in Percy's life she hadn't gotten to yet. This was going to go so well!

"So," Alex broke the awkward tension in the room. "We're not even close to being half done with this one, and Percy's already invincible. I say we start placing bets now on how many more times he should have died."

"At least three more, minimum," Jason grinned.

"We have three, do I hear four, where's four?" Alex grinned in delight, still pointing at Jason and doing a fair impression of an auctioneer.

Annabeth sighed, very loudly, and started reading. Knowing Percy hadn't died was only, like, her fifth worst thing about dealing with this considering it made a living ball of anxiety in her snap taught every time it had almost happened.

It didn't help her problem Alex immediately started snickering again at the chapter title. "George and Martha make an epic return apparently."

"I bet Percy doesn't even offer George a rat, again. You're so ungrateful," Thalia mock wagged her finger around.

"I'll make sure I have plenty for you Thals," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Unless it's two other random snakes who just happen to be in the right place at the right time. I think a rat snake would come in handy," Magnus said with the hope the traitor would be revealed already before any more damage was done.

"We haven't even started yet and I'm already one-third of the way on my bet," Jason nodded at Percy, clearly impressed.

"And you're probably lowballing it for the gag," Percy rolled his eyes.

I love New York.

"Wow Percy, I never would have guessed," Thalia gasped, planting her hand against her forehead and falling back in her seat.

"It's not like it crosses your mind every other thought we hear or something," Jason smirked.

"You can both kiss my big apple," Percy rolled his eyes.

You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

"I swear your brain is made of Mist," Alex snorted. "That would happen anywhere, they don't see her!"

"I don't mind him like this," Magnus chuckled, "I feel like it'll be really easy to tell if he's ever body swapped someday if he doesn't mention New York and forgets how the Mist works."

"Is that something you're concerned with happening a lot Magnus?" Annabeth asked with interest.

"More than you guys give credit for," he said seriously. He wouldn't put anything past these gods.

Of course, the Mist helped.

Percy stuck his tongue out at these guys, but none of their smiles faded much. He still seemed like a goofball for being surprised by it years later.

People probably couldn't see Mrs. O'Leary, or maybe they thought she was a large, loud, very friendly truck.

"The only garbage truck I'd ever want on my block," Will grinned.

I took the risk of using my mom's cell phone to call Annabeth for the second time.

"You used a cell phone while exiting the Underworld?" Annabeth looked ready to cry at him. It really somehow felt worse hearing he put no thought into tempting the world with his insanity.

The others were more confused why she was surprised at this point anybody else would be his call.

"And you didn't pick up," Percy told her with a tragic expression. "What were you doing that was so important? Prepping another war council or something?"

"It was on the charger," she scowled rather than admit she hadn't checked it for nearly an hour because she'd been running all over camp trying to figure out where he'd vanished to when she'd come knocking on his door for exactly this reason and he hadn't been there!

The amount of minutes she'd spent at camp wondering where he was had probably worn out the string on her life by decades.

I'd called her once from the tunnel but only reached her voice mail. I'd gotten surprisingly good reception, seeing as I was at the mythological center of the world and all, but I didn't want to see what my mom's roaming charges were going to be.

"With any luck and hoping you'd call, she probably has unlimited data?" Magnus said with only some idea what he was talking about, homeless shelters occasionally handing out phones. He usually just traded his away for food, but he might keep the next one if Annabeth asked if he had a number.

"Either way, she won't care when she finds out why you were calling from the center of the Earth," Will agreed.

This time, Annabeth picked up.

She'd only just heard his first message when he did call the second time, and there had been a horrible split second where her mind swiveled to it being Sally and having to explain she didn't know where Percy was before she snapped open the phone fast enough to break it in relief. She patted her empty pocket miserably now.

The only thing getting her through the past week was her daily phone call with Percy's mom, neither of them having an update, but the same hopeless hope in both their voices promising the other he was still alive somewhere out there. Now Annabeth couldn't pick up her phone still resting on the charger again to promise her it was true.

"Hey," I said. "You get my message?"

"Percy, where have you been? Your message said almost nothing! We've been worried sick!"

Annabeth read that with a little to much oomph in her voice. Like she wasn't just reading that, or saying it from memory. A large part of her still felt that, and Percy leaned forward automatically. He wanted to put his hand on hers like she had for him, hold her close.

She was radiating unapproachable. He'd pissed her off one to many times in his recent memories and now with Luke's dad on the horizon she clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

He sighed and slouched in his beanbag all the same, shifting his weight to be as close to her as he could without being 'in her space.'

It seemed to do the trick. Her voice relaxed a notch as she kept going.

"I'll fill you in later," I said, though how I was going to do that I had no idea.

"Hopefully you start with the part where you ran into Nico and then go in chronological order?" Magnus frowned in confusion.

"I get the feeling if Percy tried to give Percy back his own memories it wouldn't be half as coherent as these are," Alex snickered.

Percy couldn't even deny it.

"Where are you?"

"We're on our way like you asked, almost to the Queens—Midtown Tunnel. But, Percy, what are you planning? We've left the camp virtually undefended, and there's no way the gods—"

Jason's head hurt. The kind of splitting, aching feeling that made him wonder if he'd crash landed without a helmet recently.

His vision kept wanting to double up, overlay proper war efforts, a whole group of people dividing duties. A girl with dark hair and a purple cloak at his side- his vision was blurring with tears and pain he quickly swiped away. They'd seen. He knew for a fact his ragged breath hadn't gone unnoticed.

Thalia was studying him with heartbreak in her eyes. It had never occurred to her to ask what the Roman kids had been up to all this time. Their camp was right under the base of Mount Tam. Did their Greek Titans attack them? Or would they have been safe in some cosmic ignorance?

Judging by the fact that he was here, that Oceanus could even pull him in here, Thalia suspected otherwise. She was sort of hoping, and just as afraid to hear of what he'd been up to during this time.

Both of them stared longingly at the other pile of books, a deep feeling of want to know how the parallel battle had gone.

Patience. Jason grit his teeth and pushed his problems aside, a feeling he managed with clear cut precision that should have worried him some other time. Percy was nearly caught up, no way would he interrupt with his little problem.

"Trust me," I said. "I'll see you there."

I hung up.

Annabeth could practically still hear Malcoml asking her if he'd told what the plan was and she'd had no good answer for him. He was so frustrating she'd nearly thrown her phone out the window.

My hands were trembling. I wasn't sure if it was a leftover reaction from my dip in the Styx, or anticipation of what I was about to do. If this didn't work, being invulnerable wasn't going to save me from getting blasted to bits.

"Percy, what do you do?" Jason tried to ask while pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Sounds like an average Wednesday for him to be honest, don't know what's got your panties in a twist," Alex snorted.

It was late afternoon when the taxi dropped me at the Empire State Building. Mrs. O'Leary bounded up and down Fifth Avenue, licking cabs and sniffing hot dog carts. Nobody seemed to notice her, although people did swerve away and look confused when she came close.

I whistled for her to heel as three white vans pulled up to the curb. They said Delphi Strawberry Service, which was the cover name for Camp Half-Blood. I'd never seen all three vans in the same place at once, though I knew they shuttled our fresh produce into the city.

The first van was driven by Argus, our many-eyed security chief.

"I'm curious if you've just stopped bothering to try and count his eyes or you finally believed your brain when they said they move and regrow," Thalia grinned.

"Little of both," Percy admitted, squinting suspiciously at nothing in here as his mind was still convinced a new eye had either grown between his nose and lips, or it had moved from his cheek.

The other two were driven by harpies, who are basically demonic human/chicken hybrids with bad attitudes. We used the harpies mostly for cleaning the camp, but they did pretty well in midtown traffic too.

"I will not be able to unsee every New York driver as a human/chicken hybrid now," Magnus sighed. "How did you even get those guys there?"

"Just like every other monster, they showed up, but we manage a symbiotic relationship," Annabeth shrugged. "We get lucky all they want is the trash scraps. Chiron said the Criocentaur that he paid before kept stealing all the kid's clothes and it just wasn't working out."

Magnus felt like his brain was rebooting with an outdated modem as he debated whether to ask what the heck that was before Annabeth took the option away and kept reading.

The doors slid open. A bunch of campers climbed out, some of them looking a little green from the long drive.

Will chuckled, he'd almost felt nostalgic being back on a bus. Katie had gotten a sing-a-long going, it had sent him back to some of the best times being in that old van with his mom as he passed out cold water and advised some of those more woozy it helped to focus on a singular spot inside.

I was glad so many had come: Pollux, Silena Beauregard, the Stoll brothers, Michael Yew, Jake Mason, Katie Gardner, and Annabeth, along with most of their siblings. Chiron came out of the van last. His horse half was compacted into his magic wheelchair, so he used the handicap lift. The Ares cabin wasn't here, but I tried not to get too angry about that. Clarisse was a stubborn idiot. End of story.

Hopefully not the very end, Jason tried not to shiver as Annabeth's words sat haunted in him. For all Percy knew, this was going to be the main battle and Kronos would still send forces to destroy the camp while they were all there, and they'd come back to see their home salvageable, with the Ares cabin obliterated.

I did a head count: forty campers in all.

That number didn't sit any better in Jason's mind. He'd always known in theory there was something fundamentally different about this place he'd never understand, never be able to comparatively wrap his brain around. Forty? Only forty warriors in total? That wasn't even a portion of- his brain slammed a metal gate shut on wherever that thought was leading, leaving him unsettled more with every word that progressed.

Not many to fight a war, but it was still the largest group of half-bloods I'd ever seen gathered in one place outside camp. Everyone looked nervous, and I understood why. We were probably sending out so much demigod aura that every monster in the northeastern United States knew we were here.

"Yeah, but, they were already on their way for this big showdown," Alex said unperturbed. Magnus genuinely wondered what it would take to make him perturbed.

As I looked at their faces—all these campers I'd known for so many summers—a nagging voice whispered in my mind: One of them is a spy.

Percy bit back a groan of pain. His brain was a tilt-o-whirl of all their faces flashing through his mind making him more sick than any New York driver could manage. The worst part was, he didn't even want to know the answer.

But I couldn't dwell on that. They were my friends. I needed them.

Then I remembered Kronos's evil smile. You can't count on friends. They will always let you down.

Annabeth came up to me.

Percy chuckled deep in his chest, that she always managed the best timing, that she seemed like an exception to every bad thing in his life. His eyes flickered to Will, who still had his arm casually around Nico. Less like he was holding him in place these days and much more like they were just chilling. His guilty thoughts then flickered to Annabeth and his traitorous arm and how that probably wouldn't feel like just a casual thing.

She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder—ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.

"I have faith she can do both at the same time," Alex nodded with confidence.

"Only after I'm interrupted the third time," she said with a wicked grin of a little to much seriousness.

She frowned. "What is it?"

"What's what?" I asked.

"You're looking at me funny."

"Hate to break it to you cuz," Magnus grinned, "but that's how he's always looked at you from day one." One of the first expressions he'd come to recognize on a stranger's face was Percy just kind of staring into space when Annabeth entered his mind.

Annabeth blushed and cleared her throat hard before continuing.

I realized I was thinking about my strange vision of Annabeth pulling me out of the Styx River. "It's, uh, nothing." I turned to the rest of the group.

Annabeth resisted the urge to smack him with the book. He called her being his lifeline nothing?! Gods, if he had told her that she would have melted to a puddle and needed to borrow crutches for the rest of this fight!

Okay, so maybe it was a good thing he hadn't told her, but she still wanted to smack him anyways.

"Thanks for coming, everybody. Chiron, after you."

My old mentor shook his head.

There was a dull sense of sadness in Percy as he realized none of them were going to laugh at his use of the word old there like they had in the past. The truth was, Chiron was his only mentor, and his age was as legendary as some of the heroes he'd taught. It made the impact of this moment feel greater when his friends really couldn't crack a remark at him.

"I came to wish you luck, my boy. But I make it a point never to visit Olympus unless I am summoned."

"Is there a story there, or?" Magnus asked with the kind of familiar dread of not being sure if he wanted an answer.

"No, he's just very respectful like that," Thalia sounded as baffled as Magnus so often did though at clearly not understanding this concept one bit.

"But you're our leader."

He smiled. "I am your trainer, your teacher. That is not the same as being your leader. I will go gather what allies I can. It may not be too late to convince my brother centaurs to help. Meanwhile, you called the campers here, Percy. You are the leader."

I wanted to protest, but everybody was looking at me expectantly, even Annabeth.

"Are these guys nuts?" Percy asked far to late after already being inducted.

"No," Annabeth said simply with a smile.

Percy looked from her to the book and back several times dubiously. Chiron, Annabeth, Beckendorf, heck Thalia had more a claim to a leaderly role than he'd ever thought of.

Again he waited for someone to laugh, Alex or Thalia being a top contender for never failing to make sure he had humble pie shoved in his face when he needed it.

Neither of them made a peep.

All he'd been in here, heck, all he'd been his entire life was a destructive, impulsive, decent fighter. He'd never asked for people to put their lives in his hands.

He took a breath and told himself this was his Iliad. He hadn't asked for this by having Posideon for his dad, but it was as much a part of his path as bestowing the prophecy upon himself as well as this curse.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, like I told Annabeth on the phone, something bad is going to happen by tonight. Some kind of trap. We've got to get an audience with Zeus and convince him to defend the city. Remember, we can't take no for an answer."

Magnus tried hard not to wince at the idea Zeus was just going to blink and blast them all to bits for Percy's latest impertinence now rubbing off on the rest of the kids at Camp. The lightning god didn't seem like the kind who would take being told what to do lightly.

I asked Argus to watch Mrs. O'Leary, which neither of them looked happy about.

"I can't imagine why, we already know from Peleus he hands out the good treats," Percy said with regret.

"She just didn't want to leave you Percy, she's been enjoying your bonding," Alex said like the expert on dogs she clearly proclaimed herself to be.

Chiron shook my hand. "You'll do well, Percy. Just remember your strengths and beware your weaknesses."

It sounded eerily close to what Achilles had told me. Then I remembered Chiron had taught Achilles.

"Did I read a myth once right, that Hercules accidentally killed Chiron?"* Jason asked as he rubbed the side of his head. What a horrible time for that odd memory to resurface, but he had a feeling it tied into all this somehow.

"Almost, but Zeus told him how to heal the wound," Annabeth nodded with a sad smile. "It's how the idea of Camp actually came about, he needed a safe place to rest from his injury and Heracles helped find the place that felt sacred and safe enough."

"Cool," Percy and Jason chorused in surprise.

That didn't exactly reassure me, but I nodded and tried to give him a confident smile.

"Let's go," I told the campers.

A security guard was sitting behind the desk in the lobby, reading a big black book with a flower on the cover.

Magnus and Alex once again exchanged grins over a random book appearing that went way beyond and over anyone else's head. Magnus flashed up a sign and then finger-spelled something. Alex nodded slowly in understanding as he got the interpretation.

"You know sign language?" Annabeth said in understanding without taking in a word.

"Um, slightly," he blushed and dropped his hands like he'd been caught, though he looked a little proud too his cousin had sounded impressed. "Hearth's deaf, he's been teaching me."

"I've been wanting to learn another language recently that isn't hard-wired in," Annabeth grinned, still watching his hands fidgeting in his lap like a new book. Percy grinned at the way she said it like a challenge, a new feat for an ADHD kid to learn. It sounded perfect in fact, since they were all so fidgety.

"I wouldn't mind showing you the basics, that I know," Magnus happily nodded, that they might actually have something in common, might actually have a reason to hang out away from this place where they weren't forced into each other's company. Gods, it had been so long since he'd been around family, the idea almost frightened him. Hearth and Blitz had been the closest he'd had for so long, and now he wasn't even sure if they were okay. It was a dizzying kind of relief and guilt and pain all at once.

He glanced up when we all filed in with our weapons and armor clanking. "School group? We're about to close up."

"Oh the deja vu," Magnus chuckled. "I hope another fury doesn't pop in. We've had enough of them."

"You know guys, I think Chiron might have been onto something when he told me those Greek myths would be important in my life," Percy nodded solemnly as he got a chuckle out of everyone, his heart leaping with pride even Annabeth managed a small but genuine laugh as she flashed him a smile before she kept going.

"No," I said. "Six-hundredth floor."

He checked us out. His eyes were pale blue and his head was completely bald. I couldn't tell if he was human or not, but he seemed to notice our weapons, so I guess he wasn't fooled by the Mist.

"I am so fascinated by the implications here!" Jason's blue eyes glinted with their own light when his voice got that high-pitched with excitement. "Do they only hire mortals who can see through the mist? Is he like Paul and just accepts something is going on but doesn't understand what? Is he the god of security?"

Annabeth grinned at his curiosity. "I've asked on the field trips we went on, it's usually the same mortal. Chiron told us that, but Luke told me this legend about how he once darted across traffic to save a kitten and Mr. D granted him with the best pension and clear sight to keep doing his great work of keeping solicitors out."

Percy felt a wavering sense of jealousy as his eyes darted between Jason spluttering how cool that was and what other gifts she knew gods had bestowed, and Annabeth just casually mentioning Luke's name like someone else wasn't wearing his face.

Why had she attacked-kissed him if he was apparently the least interesting person in her life?

Will had gotten roped in now debating with Annabeth if that one super soft blanket everyone kept stealing was a godly gift or an enchanted item from the attic, and Thalia decided to cut in before the last dumb-struck blonde could get over his usual 'I have no clue what's going on' face to join in and this became a whole thing since Alex and Nico were being zero help and just enjoying the show.

"I thought we were all tired and wanting to go to bed?" She groaned. "This is not the kind of three AM conversation I'd stay awake for." They really hadn't even been at this that long, but Nico and Percy were dragging bad and it was only late afternoon at best.

"Only because we don't have any sugar sticks handy," Percy smirked at her. "I can go get some."

Annabeth shook herself and got back on track. "Every time you eat sugar before you go to bed you roll over in your sleep more than a rotisserie chicken."

She kept reading loudly over any lingering looks of why she'd know that.

"There is no six-hundredth floor, kid."

"Is this not the same guy who you showed off that lightning bolt to?" Magnus asked in surprise. "I thought you'd be a pretty memorable guy from that."

"It's been a few years, I've had a growth spurt despite what some people say," he shot Annabeth an aggrieved look who merely grinned. "I guess it's possible some other kids have come and gone through with purple backpacks full of godly items."

Not ones Magnus particularly wanted to meet as he tried not to crawl under his seat at the idea of being forced into this kind of job as a reward. Yeah, it sounded like he'd get to read ninety percent of the time on the clock, but the downside was, well, kids like Percy showing up out of the blue.

He said it like it was a required line he didn't believe.

"I want him to say there's no tooth fairy and easter bunny too," Alex chuckled. "I just want to hear someone say that like they hope it is true."

"I can't even help you with that Alex," Thalia grinned, "I hope they aren't real too, because I just know they'd be monsters I'd have to deal with."

Alex gave a long, exaggerated, forlorn sigh.

"Move along."

I leaned across the desk. "Forty demigods attract an awful lot of monsters. You really want us hanging out in your lobby?"

He thought about that. Then he hit a buzzer and the security gate swung open. "Make it quick."

"Has any visit to Olympus been quick?" Magnus asked. Every time he heard of the place there were councils and parties, neither of which felt like a ten-minute visit.

"The trip back down when Zeus tosses you," Percy said. Hopefully not from personal experience.

"You don't want us going through the metal detectors," I added.

"Um, no," he agreed. "Elevator on the right. I guess you know the way."

Percy chuckled as he ran his fingers over his beaded necklace. This might have only been his second time this way, but yeah, he'd say he had a pretty good idea.

I tossed him a golden drachma and we marched on through.

We decided it would take two trips to get everybody up in the elevator. I went with the first group.

Different elevator music was playing since my last visit—that old disco song "Stayin' Alive." A terrifying image flashed through my mind of Apollo in bell-bottom pants and a slinky silk shirt.

Will groaned and covered his eyes in pain at the idea while Alex of course had to escalate it, "afro, of course, and shag carpet walls, oh, oh, and a disco ball flashing a rainbow of colors!"

"Never, ever, let this one have a video camera. Our life will be over," Jason said in fascination, which Will full-heartedly agreed with.

I was glad when the elevator doors finally dinged open. In front of us, a path of floating stones led through the clouds up to Mount Olympus, hovering six thousand feet over Manhattan.

I'd seen Olympus several times, but it still took my breath away. The mansions glittered gold and white against the sides of the mountain. Gardens bloomed on a hundred terraces. Scented smoke rose from braziers that lined the winding streets. And right at the top of the snow-capped crest rose the main palace of the gods.

Percy thought Annabeth sounded fondly disinterested, like she was reading of an old lego set she'd knocked down herself for her sixth better attempt.

Because she was. She still remembered the first time seeing this place and being just as in awe...and yet mapping in her head how she would have done it different, done it better. Her mother either would have been proud of her thoughts or scorned them and she'd whispered to Luke in fear of this, and he'd smiled and assured her Athena had no reason to punish her when this wasn't the goddess's personal layout.

Now, it was hers. Annabeth had nearly finished her remodeling of Olympus. This was just an old doodle she'd find in an old scrapbook.

It looked as majestic as ever, but something seemed wrong. Then I realized the mountain was silent—no music, no voices, no laughter.

Annabeth studied me. "You look . . . different," she decided.

Nico looked at her strangely. "What are you talking about? He didn't actually look any different when he wasn't slaughtering my dad's army."

Annabeth shrugged, she couldn't have described it to him or anyone. Like someone had weaved an image of Percy together and inlaid it over him from the day before. He had looked identical, he still had that mole on the inside of his right arm, he'd still studied everything around him with those green eyes that always left her guessing what was going to come out of that mouth.

...He'd just been, different. The way he carried himself, making him seem taller. His confidence of accepting the responsibility Chiron had bestowed upon him.

"Where exactly did you go?"

"Down to the Underworld for a bath," Alex oh so helpfully reminded.

"Now where were you when I needed that answer," Annabeth sighed.

Alex laughed he'd probably been sleeping in a dumpster a few states over, which would only be funny to him.

The elevator doors opened again, and the second group of half-bloods joined us.

"Tell you later," I said. "Come on."

Annabeth still took the time to look around at Percy with a really punctual stank eye for leaving her in the dark on this the others had no choice but to laugh at when Percy just gave her an innocent smile back.

We made our way across the sky bridge into the streets of Olympus. The shops were closed. The parks were empty. A couple of Muses sat on a bench strumming flaming lyres, but their hearts didn't seem to be in it. A lone Cyclops swept the street with an uprooted oak tree. A minor godling spotted us from a balcony and ducked inside, closing his shutters.

"So, like," Magnus scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. "When you showed up last time and they were on the brink of war, did these guys all just think that was casual Friday, or, am I missing something?"

"Zeus and Posideon throw those kinds of tantrums to often for them to care," Thalia reminded in exhaustion. "Now their either helping the war efforts or in hiding." Long, long after the fact of when they should have been.

We passed under a big marble archway with statues of Zeus and Hera on either side. Annabeth made a face at the queen of the gods.

"Hate her," she muttered.

A feeling that had only grown worse over time, the manipulative peacock she was. If Annabeth could tie her up over the pit of Tartarus and chuck golden apples at her once a day she would.

Percy was here, she reminded herself with some kind of mental calm, but it was like dropping a pebble into a creek. It barely rippled across the surface before it was rushed away into a storm of problems of who would try to take Percy away next and what all this was a plan for.

"Has she been cursing you or something?" I asked. Last year Annabeth had gotten on Hera's bad side, but Annabeth hadn't really talked about it since.

Percy glanced in concern at her now. The idea bothered him a lot of what all she'd been through out in California, what she'd never told him, or Chiron, or Thalia, or anybody because she was trying to deal with it on her own when he'd known from that first blown up bus they worked better together as a team.

"Just little stuff so far," she said. "Her sacred animal is the cow, right?"

"Right."

"So she sends cows after me."

I tried not to smile. "Cows? In San Francisco?"

"Cows are no joke Percy," Alex told him in a weirdly serious kind of voice. "More people die from cow attacks than practically any predator you can name."

"Well yeah, more people are around them," Jason said fairly. "If we hearded sharks by the thousands and actively tried to breed them with people around at all hours their numbers would be much higher."

"More people are killed by coconuts than sharks, not the best animal to pick," Thalia chuckled.

"How did we get here? How do we go back?" Annabeth sighed, before she kept reading loudly over them.

"Oh, yeah. Usually I don't see them, but the cows leave me little presents all over the place—in our backyard, on the sidewalk, in the school hallways. I have to be careful where I step."

"That sounds more like she was trying to convert you to go country than any real 'you'll regret this' vibe." Magnus wasn't ungrateful an all-powerful goddess hadn't placed some deadly curse on his cousin like Ares had to Percy, but it seemed mild in comparison from what little he'd gleaned of the big Hercules, Hera debacle.

"Well I have had practice with a gun or two if it works out like that," she chuckled at standing in her dad's camel and mock spewing a hail of bullets down on the next row of monsters before rushing off to remind him she wasn't in the car for him to be pulling out.

"Look!" Pollux cried, pointing toward the horizon. "What is that?"

We all froze. Blue lights were streaking across the evening sky toward Olympus like tiny comets.

"Are we throwing a concert right now?" Alex sounded mildly amused and partly concerned. "Did the god of theatrics stick around for morals and make his own audience?"

"When is it ever something so friendly and innocent?" Percy sighed.

They seemed to be coming from all over the city, heading straight toward the mountain. As they got close, they fizzled out. We watched them for several minutes and they didn't seem to do any damage, but still it was strange.

"That was the most ADHD sentence I've yet heard," Will snorted. "We all just stood around and watched the fireflies get zapped in the middle of our very important mission."

"No worse than getting sidetracked to the arch, or a siren song, or- ouch-" Percy yelped more in surprise than pain as Annabeth pinched him when she realized he was only listing her sidetracks.

"Like infrared scopes," Michael Yew muttered. "We're being targeted."

"That was already obvious," Jason tried to say like this was of no real concern. Kronos had never made it a secret this was his plan.

Still, his skin twitched in anticipation at the idea of giving someone who stared down an arrow shaft a scope for better aim and a more high-powered weapon to boot to return fire. This guy was going to make some monster's life hell.

"Let's get to the palace," I said.

No one was guarding the hall of the gods.

Nico had been a little preoccupied back when Percy's first adventure had been recounted, but some part of him back then had been equally fascinated and disturbed at how easily his father's helm had been stolen as well as Zeus's bolt. The gods of myth were so lax, Percy's dream of them more like toddlers arguing over a toy felt more grounded every day.

Which wasn't a worldview he was happy to be shifting into. He worried the next time he didn't kneel before his father because he was to busy trying not to laugh about wondering what Percy would call Persephone's throne. Probably something to do with it being made out of Skittles.

The gold-and-silver doors stood wide open. Our footsteps echoed as we walked into the throne room.

Of course, "room" doesn't really cover it. The place was the size of Madison Square Garden. High above, the blue ceiling glittered with constellations. Twelve giant empty thrones stood in a U around a hearth. In one corner, a house-size globe of water hovered in the air, and inside swam my old friend the Ophiotaurus, half-cow, half-serpent.

"Bessie's back!" Alex cooed in delight. "I hope he's been getting to stretch his legs more than that little bubble!"

"I'm sure he's beach-balled around Olympus plenty," Percy agreed, slightly guilty that he was relieved his old friend wasn't wandering around the ocean getting caught in more nets and bullied by orcas. He might be under supervision up there, but at least he was safe.

...then he grimaced at his own thought. Gods, he sounded like an overprotective parent. Just because he could destroy the world didn't mean he'd ever let his dad ground him out of the ocean. When this was all over, he might have to find a way to liberate Bessie instead and throw him in the lake at Camp. Apparently it was easy enough to bust in and out of this place even when the gods were around.

"Moooo!" he said happily, turning in a circle.

Despite all the serious stuff going on, I had to smile. Two years ago we'd spent a lot of time trying to save the Ophiotaurus from the Titans, and I'd gotten kind of fond of him. He seemed to like me too, even though I'd originally thought he was a girl and named him Bessie.

"That's one of the reasons I decided I did like you Perce," Alex fondly reminded.

"Yeah yeah, my ability to entertain you has been the highlight of my amnesia trip down memory lane," Percy shook his head.

"Hey, man," I said. "They treating you okay?"

"Mooo," Bessie answered.

"I bet they give him lots of sweet grass and remind him of vegetarianism every day," Magnus nodded before they all started snickering, leaving Annabeth to sigh and give a green glare to the quest she'd missed out on the most.

We walked toward the thrones, and a woman's voice said, "Hello again, Percy Jackson. You and your friends are welcome."

Hestia stood by the hearth, poking the flames with a stick. She wore the same kind of simple brown dress as she had before, but she was a grown woman now.

There was no point in questioning why a goddess would make herself appear older in her own home than the girl she'd been when first meeting Percy, but it was still a change that interested Jason a lot. Did she always do this on The Capitoline Hill to make herself appear older, more mature, in line with her siblings?

I bowed. "Lady Hestia."

My friends followed my example.

Annabeth read that strangly to Percy's ears, because she didn't say it like it was any big thing. No laugh in her voice, no hint of agitation it wasn't her in charge, the person who obviously should be. He still found it harder to wrap his head around the idea he had his camps, Annabeth's blind trust, when about this time five years ago he'd been the whispered traitor to at least half of them.

Hestia regarded me with her red glowing eyes. "I see you went through with your plan. You bear the curse of Achilles."

The other campers started muttering among themselves: What did she say? What about Achilles?

"Bear the curse of I kill these monsters," Nico helpfully interpreted with a conspiratorial wink at Percy. "She obviously wasn't giving away you just gave yourself a massive upgrade and a huge weak spot somewhere on you in a room with a possible traitor."

"Thanks man," Percy nodded, "I'm sure that's exactly what they heard."

"You must be careful," Hestia warned me. "You gained much on your journey. But you are still blind to the most important truth. Perhaps a glimpse is in order."

Annabeth nudged me. "Um . . . what is she talking about?"

"You see Annabeth, Achilles was this hero that- okay, ow," Percy broke off in a laugh as she elbowed him.

I stared into Hestia's eyes, and an image rushed into my mind: I saw a dark alley between red brick warehouses. A sign above one of the doors read RICHMOND IRONWORKS.

Annabeth immediately knew what Hestia was about to show him. She really should have seen this coming, with the path the goddess was on to show Luke's trail. It didn't make her happy about it, as was evidenced by her hands tensing tight enough around the book like she was imagining strangling it for a few seconds rather than choking out what came next.

"Annabeth?"

She looked over at Percy watching her in concern. It instantly reminded her it didn't matter if a bunch of strangers heard this. The most important person to her already had.

Two half-bloods crouched in the shadows—a boy about fourteen and a girl about twelve. I realized with a start that the boy was Luke. The girl was Thalia, daughter of Zeus. I was seeing a scene from back in the days when they were on the run, before Grover found them.

Luke carried a bronze knife. Thalia had her spear and shield of terror, Aegis. Luke and Thalia both looked hungry and lean, with wild animal eyes, like they were used to being attacked.

Thalia laughed a noise that didn't sound pleasant in any way. Some days she still woke up in her tent with this memory the last thing her mind lingered on before she jumped into her day. Sometimes it was fondness and made her smile as she went around. Some days it made her so irritable Phoebe would threaten to tie her to a tree.

"Are you sure?" Thalia asked.

Luke nodded. "Something down here. I sense it."

A rumble echoed from the alley, like someone had banged on a sheet of metal. The half-bloods crept forward.

Old crates were stacked on a loading dock. Thalia and Luke approached with their weapons ready. A curtain of corrugated tin quivered as if something were behind it.

Thalia glanced at Luke. He counted silently: One, two, three! He ripped away the tin, and a little girl flew at him with a hammer.

"Whoa!" Luke said.

The girl had tangled blond hair and was wearing flannel pajamas. She couldn't have been more than seven, but she would've brained Luke if he hadn't been so fast.

"Annabeth," Percy said again. She looked around. He was still scrutinizing her intensely. She thought he was going to say something sweet, or profound, or even awful about Luke. "How many monsters did you manage to debrain with that? I wish I knew all these years I could have been calling you Thor."

She laughed, enchanted as always at Percy keeping her so grounded. "It was a strategy worthy of a god, if I do say so myself," she mock blew on her nails and brushed them against her grungy shirt. "See, I lured them in with that noise and caught them off guard thinking they were going to be dealing with something much bigger. I managed to nail two different monsters."

Percy laughed, and the thrill that she seemed to mean half as much to him as he did her still rocked her socks in moments like this. Where Thalia chuckled along on her other side and everything just felt right.

He grabbed her wrist, and the hammer skittered across the cement.

That had been her father's favorite hammer, the one he rarely misplaced because his years of using it had the grip just right. She'd taken it the night before and tried to bash all of those spiders away but only managed to put a hole in the wall her stepmother would have never let her hear the end of.

She hadn't bothered to go looking for it when he put her down moments later.

The little girl fought and kicked. "No more monsters! Go away!"

Percy chuckled and called her a spitfire, but Magnus couldn't manage anything but a painful wince. Gods, his cousin had really been through the kind of crap that made people never bother to think they could turn their life back around. All before he'd even been attacked by wolves two years ago.

"It's okay!" Luke struggled to hold her. "Thalia, put your shield up. You're scaring her."

Thalia tapped Aegis, and it shrank into a silver bracelet. "Hey, it's all right," she said. "We're not going to hurt you. I'm Thalia. This is Luke."

"Monsters!"

"No," Luke promised. "But we know all about monsters. We fight them too."

Slowly, the girl stopped kicking. She studied Luke and Thalia with large intelligent gray eyes.

"Was he still dangling you by your good hammer arm while promising that, cause uh, I have opinions," Jason frowned.

"Like a legitime rename of this chapter could be called hammer time," Alex snickered.

"No, he'd put me down when Thalia put her shield away," Annabeth assured.

Percy still wasn't a fan of the way she was slightly blushing as she thought back on this moment, like a part of her brain was wondering if he'd thought she looked silly while fighting for her life, but it wasn't his memory to really be commenting on to bring it up.

"You're like me?" she said suspiciously.

"Yeah," Luke said. "We're . . . well, it's hard to explain, but we're monster fighters. Where's your family?"

"My family hates me," the girl said. "They don't want me. I ran away."

Annabeth paused and licked her lips and still hated the part of herself that didn't know how to move on from that feeling at a time like this. There were far more important things going on. She knew her dad regretted neglecting her for so long, letting it get this bad, but somehow even now years later while they were trying to put together their relationship, this memory was the first time she rememebred that, oh yeah, she should tell her dad Percy's alive too. The last in the long list of people to share the best news with. And whether that would make him stop what he was doing long enough to hear her anyway.

Looking up in surprise at a noise, she saw Magnus trying to rub his nose and pretend like he'd sneezed.

Gods, her cousin was in here. A part of her family she hadn't thought about in so long he felt more like a memory than Frostine was.

She kept waiting for something that clearly wasn't coming as she smiled awkwardly at him and he did the same back. She glanced at Percy, pretty convinced if Magnus had been in here cussing her out for doing this to his life Percy wouldn't be so casual around the guy.

She just didn't know what else to expect from someone of her family being in here.

"Is it, better now?" Magnus finally broke the awkward silence as he asked. "You, um, you've been staying with him a bit, right?"

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "It's, better." Not great. She sat at the table for family dinners and was included in conversation...just, ones she had little to partake in. She was okay in school, but her brothers were doing great with their consistent methods, so that was sticky. Her dad and step-mom asked her how her day was, but there was a thinly veiled fear as they awaited her answer to know if any monster sightings had been spotted.

She knew what she was wanting, what she kept expecting to happen. The ease she had with Sally and Paul to finally lull her into feeling comfortable there. It hadn't happened yet, but she'd keep trying as long as her dad did.

Thalia and Luke locked eyes. I knew they both related to what she was saying.

"Oh really Percy?" Thalia's voice was acidic with the kind of internal frustration that she was surprised had never made her spontaneously combust. "Is that what you picked up on?" Gods, where was this boy's perception skill when Annabeth was involved?!

Annabeth gave her a sad, understanding little smile, and that just made it worse. She was smiling about this memory because it was the best day of her life, and just like that moment all those years ago, Thalia shoved everything she was feeling aside to make sure she didn't scare Annabeth off. She'd made sure that girl ate before she bothered to take a bite, she'd made sure Annabeth always had Luke to turn to no matter what she needed to get off her chest. She regretted none of it, not even when she'd given up her life for the sibling she'd finally managed to do right by.

It only angered her because looking back on all this, she couldn't even convince herself she'd done the wrong thing by not snatching the kid away and leaving Luke there. It never, ever would have happened. Percy had been right, in one of his more annoying features. There hadn't been anything different she could have done, not to save Annabeth or Luke from what happened.

"What's your name, kiddo?" Thalia asked.

"Annabeth."

Will faux gasped. "I thought we'd been transported into one of my memories!"

"You wish you could swing around a hammer in flannel pj's," Nico snorted.

"Got to keep those hopes and dreams alive somehow," Will chuckled.

Luke smiled. "Nice name. I tell you what, Annabeth—you're pretty fierce. We could use a fighter like you."

Annabeth's eyes widened. "You could?"

"Oh, yeah." Luke turned his knife and offered her the handle. "How'd you like a real monster-slaying weapon? This is Celestial bronze. Works a lot better than a hammer."

Percy hadn't a lot of room in his head from Hestia beaming this memory right into his brain for his own thoughts to get much in, but he felt a great swirl of them like someone had pulled a plug on a tub of water. Gods, she'd always looked so fierce with that knife, and she'd been given it by Luke. Why did that annoy him so much, and yet not surprise him all at once.

The fond smile on her face made any little minor problems he had with it worth everything. He'd do anything just to see her smile, it was worth any cost, including putting on a brave face and getting through this without throwing out insults on Luke.

"What's the first monster you killed with that thing?" Jason asked, holding his coin tight. He knew he was projecting, a longing he could know something like that, but he wanted to know more about her too.

"An amphisbaena,"** Annabeth smiled with pride. "A dragon with a head at each end," she explained to several confused faces. "Thalia and Luke were keeping one head distracted, and I managed to stab her deep enough right in her other brain."

"At seven?" Magnus repeated as he wondered how much therapy cost.

"Probably one of the youngest, biggest kills at camp," she agreed with pride. She still remembered telling her eldest sister at the time when she'd showed up about this and having leadership nearly shoved into her lap by the relieved girl.

Maybe under most circumstances, offering a seven-year-old kid a knife would not be a good idea, but when you're a half-blood, regular rules kind of go out the window.

"I really want to know who you think that PSA is for?" Nico snickered in surprise.

"I want to know how often Percy recreated that 'this is your egg-brain on drugs,' one," Magnus snorted.

"Enough that my mom banned me from using a frying pan for seven months," Percy sighed.

Annabeth gripped the hilt.

"Knives are only for the bravest and quickest fighters," Luke explained. "They don't have the reach or power of a sword, but they're easy to conceal and they can find weak spots in your enemy's armor. It takes a clever warrior to use a knife. I have a feeling you're pretty clever."

He'd instantly clocked her as a child of Athena, Annabeth remembered feeling pride for the first time in her life. Her dad had always described that golden cradle of her arrival as something that had been a distraction he'd never wanted, but when Luke looked at her and seen her mother's eyes he'd made her feel for the first time what her mom was supposed to be capable of.

Annabeth stared at him with adoration. "I am!"

Thalia grinned. "We'd better get going, Annabeth. We have a safe house on the James River. We'll get you some clothes and food."

"You're . . . you're not going to take me back to my family?" she said. "Promise?"

Thalia could have said what came next with Annabeth. They were supposed to be each other's family. They were supposed to protect each other from ever getting left behind again.

Her anger at Luke failing that promise, repeatedly, didn't seem to be shared though, as Annabeth read what happened next gently, like she was still leaning down and vowing the words to herself all those years ago.

She glanced at Percy and knew her little sister had still gotten her family, if not the one she'd been promised. At least it had worked out for her in the long run. It was enough to stop her feeling like the useless part in this she'd played as a tree.

Luke put his hand on her shoulder. "You're part of our family now. And I promise I won't let anything hurt you. I'm not going to fail you like our families did us. Deal?"

"Deal!" Annabeth said happily.

Magnus was happy for her, that she seemed happy now. That the problems she'd had in life all the way up to this moment didn't seem to leave her with lingering regrets because she read that with the kind of smile of someone looking back at their old stuffed animal. She didn't need that security item anymore, but she'd never replace the ice cream stains all over it.

"Now, come on," Thalia said. "We can't stay put for long!"

The scene shifted. The three demigods were running through the woods. It must've been several days later, maybe even weeks.

The best weeks of Annabeth's young life, the time that had truly carved out who she really was. She couldn't have cared less about not having a roof over her head or the array of squashed, half eaten, or stolen food. They'd listened to her.

Luke and Thalia had believed her every time she said she saw a monster on the street and either prepared for battle or rushed her away, promising they'd find out what it was at the next stop to know better. The freedom of just being able to talk and laugh, even when they did have to quiet her down when they heard something she didn't because they weren't telling her the monsters weren't real. They'd been telling her to look alive and focus on them.

She loved Camp. She loved Chiron and the campers and that place was her home. But she always still craved this adrenaline rush of speeding off to their next destination and what they'd find along the way.

All of them looked beat up, like they'd seen some battles. Annabeth was wearing new clothes—jeans and an oversize army jacket.

"Just a little farther!" Luke promised. Annabeth stumbled, and he took her hand. Thalia brought up the rear, brandishing her shield like she was driving back whatever pursued them. She was limping on her left leg.

Thalia shifted her weight around, grumbling about that old Teumessian fox. Her tail had been on fire, which probably helped a lot in that whole 'can never be caught' part of her myth. The predator learned something about her that day too though, don't ambush her little sister in their den if you didn't want a shield in the face.

They scrambled to a ridge and looked down the other side at a white Colonial house—May Castellan's place.

"All right," Luke said, breathing hard. "I'll just sneak in and grab some food and medicine. Wait here."

"Luke, are you sure?" Thalia asked. "You swore you'd never come back here. If she catches you—"

"We don't have a choice!" he growled. "They burned our nearest safe house.

"They?" Jason asked in concern. Monsters he knew the trio could deal with, but if some minions of Kronos or something had been after them all the way back then, that was even worse.

"We'd been fleeing from this fox and dog at war with each other. The fox can never be caught, she's called the Teumessian fox, and the dog always catches his prey, he's Laelaps. They're in this eternal struggle now thanks to the gods, and we happened to be caught in the middle of it."

"Aren't those also constellations?" Percy asked. He didn't know why, but he tended to remember stories better when they had stars. Maybe because of Zoe.

"Yeah, Zeus supposedly tried to end the paradox by turning them into Canis Major and Canis Minor, but you know how long that kind of thing lasts in our world," Annabeth said with a proud smile at Percy.

And you've got to treat that leg wound."

"This is your house?" Annabeth said with amazement.

"It was my house," Luke muttered. "Believe me, if it wasn't an emergency—"

"Is your mom really horrible?" Annabeth asked. "Can we see her?"

"No!" Luke snapped.

Annabeth shrank away from him as though his anger surprised her.

It was the first time he'd ever snapped at her, Annabeth frowned. In all that time, he'd never raised his voice at her, only shouting at their enemies.

It was no surprise to her Hestia was showing these memories. This is what had saved the world, Luke had chosen to remember these little moments, their family, his promise.

"I . . . I'm sorry," he said. "Just wait here. I promise everything will be okay. Nothing's going to hurt you. I'll be back—"

A brilliant golden flash illuminated the woods. The demigods winced, and a man's voice boomed: "You should not have come home."

The vision shut off.

"Rude," Alex spluttered like someone had just turned off his favorite program.

"Most things in my life tend to be," Percy nodded without surprise.

"This wasn't your life," Thalia looked around at him in consternation.

"I witnessed it, part of my life now, influxing the rudeness," Percy grinned.

"In-influencing?" Magnus tried to correct.

He was ignored as Annabeth rolled her eyes and called Percy a seaweed brain, which meant Oceanus could have popped back in and it would have fallen on deaf ears.

My knees buckled, but Annabeth grabbed me. "Percy! What happened?"

"Did . . . did you see that?" I asked.

"See what?"

I glanced at Hestia, but the goddess's face was expressionless.

"Gods forbid she show a hint of regret for throwing other people's lives on display," Nico scowled.

"Where do I sign up?" Jason sighed. He wouldn't even complain at this rate if his life was beamed into someone else's head, at least they'd explain it to him.

Nico wanted to assure him he'd get his life back, but he worried it felt like an empty promise. Nico had been trying to get his past life back for years and still only had scraps.

I remembered something she'd told me in the woods: If you are to understand your enemy Luke, you must understand his family. But why had she shown me those scenes?

Percy gulped as Thalia and Annabeth had very similar looks of wishing to smack him. "Okay, got it," Percy tried to save himself from a bruise even the curse couldn't prevent. "I was still stuck on Hermes' voice popping up at the end of that when he wasn't in the rest."

"Gods you and your one track mind," Annabeth sounded so exasperated by him like she'd been dealing with him all her life.

"I still say we should try using different treats to motivate him, maybe the right combination of barbeque and candy will open his mind wider," Thalia clearly brought up an old argument with her.

"I'm worried we'd piss off Zeus by making him even more unstoppable," Annabeth shook her head as if this were a legitimate worry.

While Percy sat between them still frowning and trying to figure out why Hermes had shown up when he did.

"How long was I out?" I muttered.

Annabeth knit her eyebrows. "Percy, you weren't out at all. You just looked at Hestia for like one second and collapsed."

I could feel everyone's eyes on me. I couldn't afford to look weak. Whatever those visions meant, I had to stay focused on our mission.

Percy jolted in surprise as everyone around him in the room sighed. "What?" He demanded, trying to shake off his vision. He'd heard Annabeth continue reading and hadn't heard anything significant.

"Never change Percy," Alex reminded fondly.

"Or Zeus might destroy you," Magnus muttered.

Percy looked blearily at them, then at Annabeth for what he'd missed, but didn't protest as she kept going again.

"Um, Lady Hestia," I said, "we've come on urgent business. We need to see—"

"We know what you need," a man's voice said. I shuddered, because it was the same voice I'd heard in the vision.

"Last time he showed up he gave you a bunch of limited edition stuff and sent you on a monster cruise to get his kid to act right, only half of which worked out as planned," Will winced. He knew nobody had even died from this visit and he still felt a pit of worry at Connor's dad showing back up in Percy's life. At Luke's dad making an appearance at the most inopportune time just like the mail he often delivered. Why did he always seem to remember to send those rare birthday cards days after the event for that extra punch in the gut?

Annabeth found that a strange way to sum up their time in the sea of monsters, but not inaccurate either.

A god shimmered into existence next to Hestia. He looked about twenty-five, with curly salt-andpepper hair and elfish features. He wore a military pilot's flight suit, with tiny bird's wings fluttering on his helmet and his black leather boots. In the crook of his arm was a long staff entwined with two living serpents.

"The saviors of this chapter, spoiler alert," Thalia chuckled.

Percy chuckled for her, but Annabeth sunk lower into her beanbag.

"I will leave you now," Hestia said. She bowed to the aviator and disappeared into smoke. I understood why she was so anxious to go. Hermes, the God of Messengers, did not look happy.

"I guess nothing in his contract says he has to be smiling while delivering in all weather, apocalypse included," Magnus said with a nervous smile.

"The real question is, what's he there to deliver?" Alex said with narrowed eyes. Judging by all appearances, it felt like it was going to be a death threat rather than a letter this time.

"Hello, Percy." His brow furrowed as though he was annoyed with me, and I wondered if he somehow knew about the vision I'd just had.

"Wouldn't surprise me!" Percy threw his hands up in exasperation. "Somewhere out there, the gods are laughing their asses off at me having to get my memories back via them! I can't do anything in my life without hop-scotching from ticking off one to pleasing another!"

He was building up miniature storm clouds over his head the longer his anger of this started to brew, gearing up for a fight like it had been Ares to appear in the room instead.

Annabeth had a feeling she knew why as she slowly lowered one arm back down to his side. The other followed reluctantly as he watched her, trouble in his eyes, but a soothing, confident smile on his face like he was just posturing.

Gods she loved him.

I wanted to ask why he'd been in May Castellan's house that night, and what had happened after he caught Luke.

'Caught,' Thalia winced at Percy's choice of words. Like Luke had done something wrong by going back there. Like his thief-like inherited skills weren't up to par by the god witnessing him sneak in and out.

The worst part was, Percy seemed to have experienced that from Luke's eyes, judging by Hestia's 'gift' to him. So Percy was still channeling how Luke might have taken all that in.

I remembered the first time I'd met Luke at Camp Half-Blood. I'd asked him if he'd ever met his father, and he'd looked at me bitterly and said, Once. But I could tell from Hermes's expression that this was not the time to ask.

"Is now ever a good time with you to ask Percy?" Alex sounded bemused. She couldn't believe Percy had once restrained himself by asking Luke all those years ago, here he was still showing he did have some self-restraint by holding back again against another god when they all knew he was more than capable of blurting out the question.

"Saturdays seem to be the go-to, just to ruin my one day off," Percy sighed.

I bowed awkwardly. "Lord Hermes."

"I feel like you only did that because you bowed to Hestia," Thalia accused. Percy wasn't known for his bowing skills.

"Hence the awkwardly part of that," Percy nodded.

Oh, sure, one of the snakes said in my mind. Don't say hi to us. We're just reptiles.

"Obviously only amphibians should be greeted, they get the most dunked on," Alex nodded seriously.

Considering Percy couldn't name an amphibian off the top of his head, he wasn't up for disagreeing.

George, the other snake scolded. Be polite.

"Hello, George," I said. "Hey, Martha."

"I do love the casualness," Jason chuckled, it still boggled his mind being that chill around a god.

"I'm more surprised Percy didn't bow to the snakes too," Nico smirked.

Did you bring us a rat? George asked.

George, stop it, Martha said. He's busy!

"Am I?" Percy asked blankly, like the appearance of Annabeth's past crossing his mind had wiped out why he was there. Which really wouldn't surprise anyone else.

"Zeus, world saving, Kronos on the way," Will helpfully reminded.

Percy shook himself. "Right yeah."

Too busy for rats? George said. That's just sad.

"Honestly though. Snackage should always be at least in the top five priorities at any given time." Alex grinned.

"Says the person who showed up in here like a talking watermelon, that doesn't surprise me," Percy snorted, not that he disagreed in the slightest.

I decided it was better not to get into it with George.

"You really should take that back Alex," Annabeth chuckled. "Percy clearly does know how to prioritize."

"Above snacking! I can't say I approve," she shook her head with such misery Percy might have chucked a cupcake on the floor.

"Um, Hermes," I said. "We need to talk to Zeus. It's important."

Hermes's eyes were steely cold. "I am his messenger. May I take a message?"

"I feel like his voice message box is always full and he'll get back to you in a thousand years or so," Thalia frowned.

"I got that vibe too," Percy sighed, "as well as the fact that any packages I might send would explode on sight."

Behind me, the other demigods shifted restlessly. This wasn't going as planned. Maybe if I tried to speak with Hermes in private . . .

"So that he can rip your bones out one by one without an audience? Jee Percy, you sure are considerate," Nico frowned. He never liked not knowing why a god was pissed at Percy this time.

"That's me, just the most helpful guy to all parties," Percy sighed.

"You guys," I said. "Why don't you do a sweep of the city? Check the defenses. See who's left in Olympus. Meet Annabeth and me back here in thirty minutes."

"Scavenger hunt on Olympus!" Alex gasped in delight.

"No Alex," Magnus frowned.

"They should at least start by building a moat and drawbridge, setting up spikes with all of Aprhitdie's infinite hairbrushes," Thalia offered.

"Yes, she gets it," Alex cackled. "Use Demeter's cows as quick plows for that, I bet Ares wouldn't even be mad if you used his sacred oak paintings of himself as material."

"We're all going to be cursed when we get out of here," Magnus sighed.

Silena frowned. "But—"

"That's a good idea," Annabeth said. "Connor and Travis, you two lead."

The Stolls seemed to like that—getting handed an important responsibility right in front of their dad.

"Which hopefully deterred them from doing anything to crazy," Nico said without much hope.

"Nothing got shoved down their pants, they stuck to things that would fit in their pockets only," Will said in that unhelpful way of unknown sarcasm.

They usually never led anything except toilet paper raids.

"So this really isn't much of a step up, honestly you guys, you should try giving them something of actual importance," Thalia rolled her eyes.

"Next time I need to save the world I'll ask if they want to go ahead," Percy nodded.

"We're on it!" Travis said. They herded the others out of the throne room, leaving Annabeth and me with Hermes.

"I feel like the title already should have been changed to, Annabeth and Two Snakes Save My Life," Percy frowned.

Annabeth forced a chuckle that sounded like she was choking. Percy had in fact saved her life. His faith it was the opposite warmed her heart as much as she adored him for that.

"My lord," Annabeth said. "Kronos is going to attack New York. You must suspect that. My mother must have foreseen it."

"Your mother's not psychic Annabeth," Magnus said, then frowned and asked hopefully, "right?"

"No more than the other gods," Annabeth sighed. "Foresight of good planning."

"Your mother," Hermes grumbled. He scratched his back with his caduceus, and George and Martha muttered Ow, ow, ow. "Don't get me started on your mother, young lady. She's the reason I'm here at all. Zeus didn't want any of us to leave the front line. But your mother kept pestering him nonstop, 'It's a trap, it's a diversion, blah, blah, blah.' She wanted to come back herself, but Zeus was not going to let his number one strategist leave his side while we're battling Typhon. And so naturally he sent me to talk to you."

"I sense a bit of saltiness like Percy's dad showed up instead," Jason said uneasily.

"I want to know what Ares had to say about Athena being his top strategist," Alex grinned.

Annabeth sighed that they seemed to have missed the big picture where her mother had been right! May Zeus have mercy on them if they could actually hear this or they'd all be obliterated by now.

"But it is a trap!" Annabeth insisted. "Is Zeus blind?"

Thunder rolled through the sky.

"I'd watch the comments, girl," Hermes warned.

"Oh how the turn tables," Percy said with a delighted smile. "I see he's thinking of taking the diplomatic approach with me."

Annabeth gave him a blank look, she felt like that was a dig at her telling Hera to clear off but that didn't feel right.

"Zeus is not blind or deaf. He has not left Olympus completely undefended."

"But there are these blue lights—"

"Yes, yes. I saw them. Some mischief by that insufferable goddess of magic, Hecate, I'd wager, but you may have noticed they aren't doing any damage. Olympus has strong magical wards. Besides, Aeolus, the King of the Winds, has sent his most powerful minions to guard the citadel. No one save the gods can approach Olympus from the air. They would be knocked out of the sky."

"Why can't they just put that around your camp, and, just around Kronos? Keep him stuck in one spot for good this time," Magnus frowned.

"Because that would be to easy," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Because that's the kind of direct interference they actively try to avoid," Thalia scoffed.

"Because it wouldn't hold him indefinitely, no prison ever will," Annabeth frowned at these two being unhelpful to her cousin. Poor Magnus and what all he must have been through down here.

Magnus didn't really like any of their answers though so it was kind of a moot point.

I raised my hand. "Um . . . what about that materializing/teleporting thing you guys do?"

"Excellent question Percy," Alex nodded.

Percy grinned because he so rarely got that reaction. Usually, they just laughed at him.

"That's a form of air travel too, Jackson.

"Ooo, last names, I am in trouble," Percy rolled his eyes with far to much nonchalance for a guy about to die, again.

Very fast, but the wind gods are faster. No, if Kronos wants Olympus, he'll have to march through the entire city with his army and take the elevators! Can you see him doing this?"

"Yes," all eight of them said in varying levels of confidence. He'd gone through so much already, his determination wasn't going to be stopped by a little thing like an elevator. He'd probably do something even more psycho, like take a staircase all the way up there.

Hermes made it sound pretty ridiculous—hordes of monsters going up in the elevator twenty at a time, listening to "Stayin' Alive."

"I mean, it's an apt song for them," Nico said fairly.

"I know at least Bigfoot will stay on beat," Alex nodded along.

Still, I didn't like it.

"Maybe just a few of you could come back," I suggested.

"There's some obvious answers to pick and I'm still not sure what good they'd do," Will shook his head. Posideon might have helped turn the tide on defeating Typhon, but he still believed in the idea that it took the gods and their children's combined power to stop all these threats in their own ways. Any god coming back to offer assistance would have interfered in Their quest, when a minor helping hand along the way was all that they had needed to win.

Hermes shook his head impatiently. "Percy Jackson, you don't understand. Typhon is our greatest enemy."

"I thought that was Kronos."

"Percy Jackson, over here telling the gods who their greatest enemy is," Jason sighed while rubbing his temple.

"He wouldn't be Percy if he wasn't impertinent at least once a year," Will nodded.

The god's eyes glowed. "No, Percy. In the old days, Olympus was almost overthrown by Typhon. He is husband of Echidna—"

"Met her at the Arch," I muttered. "Not nice."

"Percy Jackson, still over here casually interrupting the gods," Nico sighed.

"He wouldn't be Percy if he didn't blah, blah, blah," Thalia chuckled as she waved at Will, who still nodded in agreement.

"Are you guys done now?" Percy sighed.

"I wouldn't count on it," Annabeth gave him a stranger than usual look for asking such a dumb question.

"—and the father of all monsters. We can never forget how close he came to destroying us all; how he humiliated us! We were more powerful back in the old days. Now we can expect no help from Poseidon because he's fighting his own war. Hades sits in his realm and does nothing, and Demeter and Persephone follow his lead. It will take all our remaining power to oppose the storm giant. We can't divide our forces, nor wait until he gets to New York. We have to battle him now. And we're making progress."

"What I just heard was a painful amount of ego," Alex rubbed her ear as if it were bruised all the way down the tube.

"Godly sized, some might say," Percy nodded.

"Progress?" I said. "He nearly destroyed St. Louis."

"Yes," Hermes admitted. "But he destroyed only half of Kentucky. He's slowing down. Losing power."

"Only half you say?" Magnus asked mock brazenly.

"It needed some Kentucky fried reducing I'm sure," Alex snorted.

"You two are not funny," Jason sighed.

"I want to know how you cook chicken without power, isn't that food poisoning?" Percy said much to Jason's further dismay.

I didn't want to argue, but it sounded like Hermes was trying to convince himself.

"Glad it wasn't just us," Magnus nodded in thanks.

In the corner, the Ophiotaurus mooed sadly.

"We too should hold a moment of silence for all the sudden chicken prices that will be going up," Alex had to get one last crack in despite multiple grumbles of protest.

"Please, Hermes," Annabeth said. "You said my mother wanted to come. Did she give you any messages for us?"

"Messages," he muttered. "'It'll be a great job,' they told me. 'Not much work. Lots of worshippers.' Hmph. Nobody cares what I have to say. It's always about other people's messages."

"That was deep," Percy said in surprise, wondering if he should have thanked the mailman once in a while.

"Percy getting to witness some philosophy in person, what a historic day this shall be," Thalia snorted.

Rodents, George mused. I'm in it for the rodents.

Shhh, Martha scolded. We care what Hermes has to say. Don't we, George?

Oh, absolutely. Can we go back to the battle now? I want to do laser mode again. That's fun.

"Wouldn't that, hurt their eyes?" Magnus asked in vague concern for the godly snakes.

"George is clearly speaking Hermes' real thoughts there," Annabeth said with a nervous chuckle she tried to hide, she enjoyed hearing them laugh one last time before the fit hit the shan, as her stepmom would say about her next bumble.

"Eating rodents and all?" Percy asked with doubt.

It easily worked, and what was once a casual smile at the snake's comment easily spiraled up into laughter and Alex asking for more crazy options of what the snakes could shoot out of their eyes. She kept smiling for what she wished was a lifetime but was only a few moments more until it culminated in Nico and Jason trying to have a serious discussion if Zeus would allow different colors of lighting before Thalia threatened to shoot rats into the mouth of the next person who wouldn't can it.

"Quiet, both of you," Hermes grumbled.

The god looked at Annabeth, who was doing her big-pleading-gray-eyes thing.

"Oh he's doomed, nobody can resist that," Percy said with the kind of confidence of saying blue was the best color. The sort of biased statement that he couldn't prove but damn anyone who bothered arguing the point.

"Bah," Hermes said. "Your mother said to warn you that you are on your own. You must hold Manhattan without the help of the gods. As if I didn't know that. Why they pay her to be the wisdom goddess, I'm not sure."

"They pay her?" Magnus asked, clearly wondering how many infinity signs could fit on a check.

"Pay her in compliments," Percy rolled his eyes while Annabeth frowned at the two.

"Anything else?" Annabeth asked.

"She said you should try plan twenty-three. She said you would know what that meant."

Annabeth's face paled. Obviously she knew what it meant, and she didn't like it.

"You don't like direct advice?" Jason looked at her like she was nuts. "From your mom!" Clearly some lingering humbleness of getting any god's advice was kicking itself awake in him, Percy rolled his eyes.

"Not this plan, you'll see," Annabeth made a face. Those statues had helped, but she still saw some of them wreaking havoc in the city months later and it was nearly a weekly chore to send kids out to keep trying to deactivate them all.

This answer wasn't up to scratch for any of them who had heard it far to much and made the exact same face back at her.

"Go on."

"Last thing." Hermes looked at me. "She said to tell Percy: 'Remember the rivers.' And, um, something about staying away from her daughter."

"She's still on that?" Thalia asked mildly, clearly unimpressed.

Percy was blushing to hard to form an answer and Annabeth was smiling smugly how well that worked out to bother.

I'm not sure whose face was redder: Annabeth's or mine.

"I vote Percy's," Will said with a laugh as he watched them now.

"Doesn't count," Percy had a distinct wine in his voice. "She's not, now, and back then, I-" he felt like someone was yanking on his tongue as he kept swallowing a blush that wasn't shared, the traitor!

Annabeth just smiled indulgently at him and kept reading.

"Thank you, Hermes," Annabeth said. "And I . . . I wanted to say . . . I'm sorry about Luke."

As Annabeth had guessed, all previous enjoyment drained out of the room like Annabeth had perfectly installed and then pulled the plug.

The god's expression hardened like he'd turned to marble. "You should've left that subject alone."

"I don't think she's capable of that," Thalia muttered low enough only Percy heard, and he nodded and swallowed a snide comment of his own as his hands twitched. He wanted Annabeth's hand safely in his right now more. He could sense danger coming.

Annabeth stepped back nervously. "Sorry?"

"SORRY doesn't cut it!"

George and Martha curled around the caduceus, which shimmered and changed into something that looked suspiciously like a high-voltage cattle prod.

For some reason that one hadn't made the mention of their previous guesses of preferred weapons, though Alex had come close with the joshing comment of Godzilla sized bug zapper.

"You should've saved him when you had the chance," Hermes growled at Annabeth. "You're the only one who could have."

Percy might have switched into laser beam mode, as much as he hard focused on Annabeth. The water itself grew tense around them, as if holding all the oxygen hostage.

Annabeth didn't seem to notice. She did a terrible job of breezily reading over that as her lip trembled and one of her hands dropped from the book to wring nervously through a few curls of her hair as she kept going.

I tried to step between them. "What are you talking about? Annabeth didn't—"

"Don't defend her, Jackson!"

There were no jokes this time, though Jason bit his tongue down to stop himself from telling Percy that was three times Hermes had used his last name, which felt like a bad omen before this whole new death threat business got started.

Hermes turned the cattle prod toward me. "She knows exactly what I'm talking about."

"Maybe you should blame yourself!" I should've kept my mouth shut,

"I think that's the first time Percy's ever acknowledged that," Will was all about those helpful comments. "Progress."

"Maybe one day when he's got arthritis he'll learn to act on that thought first," Nico rolled his eyes.

"He once admitted to himself he should sow his mouth shut, something I'm still all to happy to help with," Alex reminded.

"I'd be actively considering it under other circumstances," Percy said with a leveled look at the book, no interpretation needed saying he'd rip out any stitches to keep that god's anger off Annabeth.

but all I could think about was turning his attention away from Annabeth. This whole time, he hadn't been angry with me. He'd been angry with her.

"That, is a very new experience for you Percy," Thalia sounded grudgingly impressed and slightly murderous of no one in here. "I don't even blame you not picking up on that."

"Thanks," Percy said with a wayward frown at her, his body wanting to throw him into overdrive and dive in front of Annabeth this second despite the fact she was ignoring the pair and trying to read over them as if this was as normal as his usual occurrences with other gods.

"Maybe if you hadn't abandoned Luke and his mom!"

Hermes raised his cattle prod. He began to grow until he was ten feet tall. I thought, Well, that's it.

"Those are the least most inspiring last words ever," Jason frowned at him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, now that I have some warning I'll write out a novel- oh wait!" Percy dragged his eyes away from Annabeth as he spoke to Jason with a massive eye-roll the ocean should be envious of.

But as he prepared to strike, George and Martha leaned in close and whispered something in his ear.

"Something?" Will yelped in protest. "We don't even get to hear the awe inspiring words that saved one of the greatest heroes of our time with the all mighty wise words of the snakes!"

"Who are you trying to impress?" Percy stared oddly at him.

"I genuinely want to know," he looked actually a little pouty. "Those could have been passed on to generations of impertinent demigods to stop them repeating your steps."

"I've found making your own path is better anyways, I've done better than Hercules repeatedly," Percy shrugged.

Hermes clenched his teeth. He lowered the cattle prod, and it turned back to a staff.

"Percy Jackson," he said, "because you have taken on the curse of Achilles, I must spare you. You are in the hands of the Fates now. But you will never speak to me like that again.

"That's all they said?" Will still looked like someone was dangling a candy bar above his head on a fishhook.

Percy shrugged again. "Don't know what to tell you man, guess if you want the next set of kids to live like me you'll have to push them in the Styx."

Will sighed and bit back a groan because he wasn't really sure how much Percy meant that.

You have no idea how much I have sacrificed, how much—"

His voice broke, and he shrank back to human size. "My son, my greatest pride . . . my poor May . . ."

He sounded so devastated I didn't know what to say. One minute he was ready to vaporize us. Now he looked like he needed a hug.

"The dichotomy of these gods really is, something," Magnus couldn't help but unintentionally mimic Will's exact tone on that word.

"I think it's Percy," Annabeth corrected, her voice only mildly trembling. She was pretty sure she'd never thanked him before for saving her life, but it was par for the course for the pair of them and she'd been in her own world, her own hurt during that. "I certainly didn't want to give him a hug."

She couldn't help her eyes flickering back to the text, wanting to know if Percy had wanted to hug her or yell at her for her part in Luke's life too, even if she did feel guilt for her cousin clearly wanting to chat about this more. Any other day of her life she would have been ecstatic to talk with him about this side of her life, but she needed this more. Percy needed this more.

"Look, Lord Hermes," I said.

"I always love it when you try to up the respect after they decide not to kill you," Alex's tone was a faint hint of sarcasm though showing he didn't really mean that.

"Hopefully they just remember the last thing I did rather than the whole eviscerating part," Percy shrugged.

"I'm sorry, but I need to know. What happened to May? She said something about Luke's fate, and her eyes—"

Hermes glared at me, and my voice faltered. The look on his face wasn't really anger, though. It was pain. Deep, incredible pain.

"Wow," Percy whispered under his thudding heartbeat. He couldn't help his mind instantly going to his dad, if that's the look that had been hiding under the surface when he'd said he was sorry Percy had been born. If, gods forbid, something had happened to his mom and he'd taken up Luke's mantel.

Hermes depicted himself nothing like the lord of the sea, but Percy still saw his power and sadness in the godly weight of those shoulders that all the gods must carry, whether they showed it or not. Hades had in his brief time speaking of Bianca, even Zeus whether he'd admit it or not had looked upon Thalia in their short time together with some mixed-up emotions.

The rule of the gods keeping their distance from their kids felt stupider the longer he watched.

"I will leave you now," he said tightly. "I have a war to fight."

He began to shine. I turned away and made sure Annabeth did the same, because she was still frozen in shock.

Annabeth's voice was still softened. Humbled and chagrined and tired and a million other things Percy couldn't imagine. He wished he could wrap his arms around her now and shield her face into his chest, feel her wide eyes and shaking breath warmer than that supernova of a god vanishing. Her unsteady heartbeat had been a more rocksteady hope even when he had no clue what to do about things with Luke, or even why it all mattered as the guy should be long dead in his own husk.

Good luck, Percy, Martha the snake whispered.

Hermes glowed with the light of a supernova. Then he was gone.

There was no last mentions of Geroge and rats and why Hermes would spare Percy except for some curse that shouldn't have stopped a god tossing him into outer space as a pile of dust. Percy felt an ugly feeling bubbling up in him, never far from his mind when the room got quiet and his memories of his life grew louder than the laughter of his friends. He didn't act on it. He knew he never could. He would not even look at the fork that had made Luke into Kronos's puppet.

He still wished he knew another way out of this anger, and just plain exhaustion of dealing with the godly side of his family.

Annabeth sat at the foot of her mother's throne and cried. I wanted to comfort her, but I wasn't sure how.

"A hug would be nice," she grumbled, more for herself than meaning to say it out loud.

Percy gave her a look all the same, he'd heard of course, as close as they were sitting.

His green eyes watched her, a sadness of confusion and uncertainty she'd never expected to see there that hurt as much as remembering all of her screw ups with Luke all over again.

Why did this keep happening to her? Why was everyone in her life destined to leave her or forget about her, or somehow both!

He shifted his weight around, his arms moved up with a hesitancy like he wanted to hug her now, but she sighed and kept reading. She didn't want him to do it because she'd told him to. His arms dropped back to his side as he slumped in his seat, but she'd swear she heard a sad sigh under his breath like he might regret not acting faster. Gods what she wouldn't give to be in his arms having to relive this.

What she wouldn't give up though was her patience. She'd wait for him to get there without hesitation, again. As long as it took.

"Annabeth," I said, "it's not your fault. I've never seen Hermes act that way. I guess . . . I don't know . . . he probably feels guilty about Luke. He's looking for somebody to blame. I don't know why he lashed out at you. You didn't do anything to deserve that."

"I could give you a pile of evidence this girl murdered someone and you wouldn't believe me," Nico grinned.

"That's called entrapment Nico and it's illegal," Percy said with all the confidence of one who had watched, like, two cop-drama shows. One was even based out of New York.

Annabeth wiped her eyes. She stared at the hearth like it was her own funeral pyre.

"I have a strict promise from my siblings about what my shroud should be and everything," Annabeth managed a dower joke, which Percy smiled at of course, but it was too sad to make her heart flutter like usual. He was just humoring her.

I shifted uneasily. "Um, you didn't, right?"

She didn't answer. Her Celestial bronze knife was strapped to her arm—the same knife I'd seen in Hestia's vision. All these years, I hadn't realized it was a gift from Luke. I'd asked her many times why she preferred to fight with a knife instead of a sword, and she'd never answered me. Now I knew.

"Now you knew why she didn't answer, not the oh so important distinction why she prefers a knife," Jason said with a concerned analyst smile on Annabeth like he hoped he could sweet-talk her into an answer. Percy was a little terrified he could too, so he cleared his throat and she reluctantly stayed on track.

"Percy," she said. "What did you mean about Luke's mother? Did you meet her?"

I nodded reluctantly. "Nico and I visited her. She was a little . . . different." I described May Castellan, and the weird moment when her eyes had started to glow and she talked about her son's fate.

Annabeth frowned. "That doesn't make sense.

"Which part?" Magnus gave her a confused brow. "What happened after Hermes showed up?"

Annabeth didn't answer. She gave him the sad-big-gray-eyes and he caved and instantly nodded back to the book to get her out of this subject he'd brought up.

But why were you visiting—" Her eyes widened. "Hermes said you bear the curse of Achilles. Hestia said the same thing. Did you . . . did you bathe in the River Styx?"

"Don't change the subject."

"Percy! Did you or not?"

"Who's changing the subject now," Alex sighed, completely on Magnus's side even if she couldn't begrudge Annabeth finally getting the option to share this in her own time.

"Me," Annabeth nodded without looking up.

"Um . . . maybe a little."

"Just a couple of toes, maybe his whole leg, hard to say." Nico nodded.

"I'd kill to see that actually, just him having to wield Riptide like an arc of pure destruction while having to be on his hands the whole time," Jason laughed.

"I'd just set a chimpanzee on my opponents at that point," Percy rolled his eyes at the pair.

I told her the story about Hades and Nico, and how I'd defeated an army of the dead. I left out the vision of her pulling me out of the river. I still didn't quite understand that part, and just thinking about it made me embarrassed.

Annabeth did blush faintly at that again, much to Percy's delight, and yet still looked around at him like she wanted to strangle him for not giving that detail. It really was like old times for him where he couldn't figure out anything she'd do next when it came to him, which was kind of refreshing.

She shook her head in disbelief. "Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?"

"I had no choice," I said. "It's the only way I can stand up to Luke."

"You mean . . . di immortales, of course! That's why Luke didn't die. He went to the Styx and . . . Oh no, Luke. What were you thinking?"

"So now you're worried about Luke again," I grumbled.

She stared at me like I'd just dropped from space. "What?"

"What expression is that exactly?" Thalia asked with mild interest. "I'd like to see your aliens are real face."

She gave a half-hearted scowl to her sister for mocking her right now, feeling very alone in her protective feelings of Luke she'd hope Thalia would give some consideration to instead of Percy mouthing a thanks at her sister.

"Forget it," I muttered. I wondered what Hermes had meant about Annabeth not saving Luke when she'd had the chance. Clearly, she wasn't telling me something. But at the moment I wasn't in the mood to ask. The last thing I wanted to hear about was more of her history with Luke.

"And we are finally at full levels of Percy ignoring the one bit of good advice a goddess has given him lately," Nico said quietly to Will.

"Yeah, but, I wouldn't push her either," Will sighed, and not because Annabeth scared the piss out of him too. She seemed fragile right now, on the ropes with everyone, even her own past. They were taking this at Percy's pace, but her's shouldn't be discounted either.

"The point is he didn't die in the Styx," I said. "Neither did I. Now I have to face him. We have to defend Olympus."

Annabeth was still studying my face, like she was trying to see differences since my swim in the Styx.

"Those old diplomas and dolls don't appear under his skin from time to time do they?" Magnus asked, mostly joking.

"I have my own hopes and dreams to flush away," Percy said for her.

"Mastery of toiletry and all, I have faith he'll get it done," Annabeth grinned, a sight for sore eyes after this monstrosity of a chapter, so Percy couldn't even get mad at her for now adding in to bringing up that horrendous joke repeatedly.

"I guess you're right. My mom mentioned—"

"Plan twenty-three."

She rummaged in her pack and pulled out Daedalus's laptop. The blue Delta symbol glowed on the top when she booted it up. She opened a few files and started to read.

"Here it is," she said. "Gods, we have a lot of work to do."

"And the usual amount of time to do it," Jason sighed. Just once he'd like to hear of Percy and Annabeth having all the time in the world on their hands to get a plan set up. It would make them unbeatable. Even when they did everything on the fly they were wild and unstoppable about it. He'd just like to hear more of their plans in detail before they inevitably went off the rails and went to 'Crazy Plan Time.'

"One of Daedalus's inventions?"

"A lot of inventions . . . dangerous ones. If my mother wants me to use this plan, she must think things are very bad." She looked at me. "What about her message to you: 'Remember the rivers'? What does that mean?"

I shook my head. As usual, I had no clue what the gods were telling me. Which rivers was I supposed to remember? The Styx? The Mississippi?

"Hopefully you're not on the wrong side of that Naide still," Alex offered. "I bet she'd still try and kick your ass if this mess gets anywhere near Texas."

Percy crossed his fingers and nodded in agreement.

Just then the Stoll brothers ran in to the throne room.

"You need to see this," Connor said. "Now."

"I really wonder what they would have done if their dad had still been in there. Invited him along or apologized for interrupting," Thalia said with interest.

"You're all insane for never knocking," Jason frowned. Every party mentioned had a tendency to barge in on gods that would decimate someone without blinking. It was a miracle Mr. D never had to any of them.

The blue lights in the sky had stopped, so at first I didn't understand what the problem was.

"One less visible problem always equals two bigger ones on the horizon," Alex nodded.

"Why can't Godzilla and mothera ever be on our side," Percy huffed.

The other campers had gathered in a small park at the edge of the mountain. They were clustered at the guardrail, looking down at Manhattan. The railing was lined with those tourist binoculars, where you could deposit one golden drachma and see the city. Campers were using every single one.

Magnus squinted in confusion at that. Who were those for? The gods could apparently just be anywhere they wanted, and all the minor gods and other deities running around up there probably didn't have much care to be spying a thousand feet below unless they'd dropped a squirrel from that height just to see where it landed.

I looked down at the city. I could see almost everything from here—the East River and the Hudson River carving the shape of Manhattan,

Percy's skin itched on the back of his neck. He scratched impatiently, feeling as usual his brain was trying to cook him alive for nothing. What the heck did he care about that being mentioned?

the grid of streets, the lights of skyscrapers, the dark stretch of Central Park in the north. Everything looked normal, but something was wrong. I felt it in my bones before I realized what it was.

"I don't . . . hear anything," Annabeth said.

That was the problem.

Even from this height, I should've heard the noise of the city—millions of people bustling around, thousands of cars and machines—the hum of a huge metropolis. You don't think about it when you live in New York, but it's always there. Even in the dead of night, New York is never silent.

But it was now.

"Wow," Alex said with a faint smile only she could manage. One who was suddenly struck with the idea of an actual apocalypse happening, and being curious rather than horrified at the implications of what else was going to come of it.

I felt like my best friend had suddenly dropped dead.

"No, Annabeth was still standing right next to you," Will assured in a honeyed voice.

"You're lucky I don't drop kick you off there when we get back," Percy rolled his eyes.

"Oh, you meant New York," Will gave an exaggerated nod of relief. "Yeah, okay, makes more sense."

"What did they do?" My voice sounded tight and angry. "What did they do to my city?"

I pushed Michael Yew away from the binoculars and took a look.

Will's smile wavered and Percy didn't notice, looking right back at the book with somehow even more murderous intent than he'd even just felt for a god threatening Annabeth. Gods did that hurt more than he'd expected it too. Was that going to be Percy's reaction when the bridge collapsed? Just pushing everyone who had been there aside from his mind and move on to the next fight?

In the streets below, traffic had stopped. Pedestrians were lying on the sidewalks, or curled up in doorways. There was no sign of violence, no wrecks, nothing like that. It was as if all the people in New York had simply decided to stop whatever they were doing and pass out.

"Is there, a city of sleep?" Magnus asked his usual dopey question, Alex couldn't help but grin.

"Not unless Rudyard Kipling's taken over," she reminded, causing Magnus to turn to her with renewed excitement for a book dissection they could both get into guilt-free when Percy's life was done being gutted in front of their eyes.

"Are they dead?" Silena asked in astonishment.

Ice coated my stomach. A line from the prophecy rang in my ears: And see the world in endless sleep.

I remembered Grover's story about meeting the god Morpheus in Central Park. You're lucky I'm saving my energy for the main event.

"Well then," Jason said in a tiny voice. "I guess this is a mildly better interpretation?"

"Now let's work on that reaping of blades just being a nasty paper cut and we'll be gold," Percy tried his hardest not to say with a shiver like ice wasn't creeping up his spine.

"Not dead," I said. "Morpheus has put the entire island of Manhattan to sleep. The invasion has started."

Annabeth somehow managed to say that in the same tone Percy once had, Will noted in admiration. The horror, of not downplaying this sucked with a capital f, and the power behind her voice, of determination that this was the tipping point in the scale. No more games, no more squabbling. This was going to end one way or the other, and it was not going to happen quietly.

"Should we, get to bed?" Thalia asked before she tried to take the book. Nico was still rubbing his eyes a little to often and Percy was still stretching and rubbing his neck, always in need of a nap.

"It's still to early," Percy protested. Gods they weren't even half done with this one and had dealt with more interruptions than any other with it being so late in the day. He'd lived long enough with that prophecy hanging over his head and wanted this over with!

"Yeah-" Nico meant to agree with Percy, but a yawn cut him off.

"We can finish tomorrow," Percy reluctantly corrected. He couldn't be frustrated with anyone but himself here, he knew he couldn't have made it through the rest of this without a nap, but it didn't make his agitation any less. He wanted to be through with this already.

Nobody argued the point with him, and he got up and shuffled out.

Annabeth only hesitated a moment before following.

When they got to the room Percy had been sleeping in, he turned to her without surprise and grinned. She smiled in relief and followed him in, side by side, so they could curl up on the floor again.

This time, she slept through the night.

PJOPJOPJOPJO

*A myth I'm surprised never got brought up in this series, it blew my mind when I found it. The following is my headcanon/interpretation though, when in the story Chiron actually died and became the Cenatur's constellation because it was un-healable Chimera venom on Hercuels' arrow he accidentally shot Chiron with.

** If you know why I referenced an amphisbaena specifically you get a cookie. If you need time to look it up and come back, you get a cookie as well for doing your due diligence.

[thelunarsystemwrites]

Looooong ass vent

TW for: Self hate. Lots of swearing. Use of not nice words. Eating disorders, purging, self harm, suicide, rants, venting, tons of triggers, dissociation, lying, all caps, me whining, me being a bitch, mistreatment, body shaming, hateful stuff, mental illness, all that- like seriously this has more TWs than I can think of. .

I'm a jealous person. I'm sorry, it's true. I'm jealous when other people have art that gets 40, 50, more notes. I get jealous when my friends have better friends than I ever could be. I get jealous of song writers because damnit please I want to make music. I get jealous of others art,voices, bodies. I get so jealous I get mad at nothing over nothing. I get jealous at others art styles, at other success, i get jealous at my own FRIENDS wow I'm awful

I'm selfish. I'm greedy because I can't just- be fucking happy with what i do have. I can't be patient to get better at drawing, better at recording my voice, more freedom. I am never satisfied, I'm a fucking whore for any sort of love and attention and likes and reblogs. You hear me? I'm, a, whore.

And I'm fucking awful because I can't take criticism for shit, I get so fucking unhappy at it and I lie and I say I'm happy to receive it. I lie all the time like this, I'm a dishonest whore, that's worse than a normal whore! I get so bent out of shape!

And I want to make it big in the Tumblr community BUT FUCK IT BECAUSE I NEVER FOCUS ON ONE THING

M so impatient

And when I talk to my friends I-

I forget all that. I calm down, I feel... wanted.

But I'm burdening them. I'm burdening them I'm burdening them I'm I'm fucking selfish and horrible because they give and give and give and I take like a needy selfish greedy whore.

AND I DON'T SHUT UP, I'm sorry I'm sorry I never shut up

...I'm... awful. And... I shouldn't keep posting shit like this, because nobody should have to read my rambling and shit and I'm overreacting and I want to die and

Im useless irl BTW. I've been nothing but a stupid moody bitch the past two weeks, I stay up all night doing nothing and wake up at 5 pm like a useless piece of human shit that should burn in the garbage

I keep forgetting who I am, who is talking too

Im sooooooooo uselessssssssssss

Its fucking because I think my family would be happier if I didn't exist. Because that'd be one less stupid moody bitch that can't do anything and hides in their room all day that they have to deal with

Im lazy I get apathetic I have no motivation to do anything and I don't cry at sad movies like a broken robot and everything about me is wrong

And my father wanted a daughter so fucking badly, but I'm not a girl I'm nothing and he'd be so mad if I ever told him

And BTW I'm literally awful like I've run out of things I'm a jealous whore

M a whore because all tye time I think of stupid sexual stuff and then I feel disgusted I'm disgusting I barely take showers

I'm pathetic btw I never finish anything I start I have so many half assed AUs and drafts and fanfics and art and chores and needs and shit

and I sit in my room all day and play on my phone like a fucking loser. Im also really stupid btw, I don't know half the shit I'm supposed too and I can't spell shit or know history AND I HAVE THE ABILITY TO LEARN BUT IM SUCH A STUPID FUCKING BITCH I NEVER DO ANYTHING

I'm also a hypocrite because I get so snappy and shit with my siblings when they do nothing wrong except be annoying or something but when I feel justified I shouldn't because I'm still a shitty person

I barely reach out to my friends unless they text first, I'm a horrible friend that never listens I'm sorry I'm sorry I never meant to abandon anyone

And I can't take blame or accountability I'm sorry I am shit why do I keep trying to hide behind myself??

Its past 6 am,people are statving and in here venting like a bitch

I never shut up

I Bother people

i sleep in and I'm moody and I demand attention like a whore whose demanding love idfk

I never know anything, I'm rude as hell

Im sorry

and I'm protective over shit nobody cares about, I'm so damn defensive

Im sorry I'm not doing better I'm sorry I'm not improving myself. I'm so mad at myself I have so much anger at myself I direct it at innocent people I'm sorry

I HAVE NO EXCUSES, IM SO FUCKING SELF AWARE OF THIS BUT I KEEP DOING IT KM SO DAMN FHCKONG DUM IM LUTERALLY COUNTING HOW MANY WORDS OF SELF HSTE

Its justified BTW, i deserve hate

I feel like I'm lying abt being a system and artistic and depressed and anxiety like what I'd I just suddenly decided I had them?? I swear I promise I'm not faking I'm not I don't want to lie I want to be good I never meant to hurt anyone BUT I FEEL LIKE IM A FAKING BITCH

I binge food and throw it up, I hide food like a greedy pig just to purge I take others food because I'm so gluttonous and I LIE about it

and I vent and vent and vent and... and I still hate myself

I'm so fucking manipulative because anytime I talk I CSNT STOP IMSGING HOW THE CONVERSATION WILL GO, I CANT STOP TRYONG TO FUCKING GET MY WAY IRL, AHHGHGBTIDDHDH I ALEATS ACT LIKE I KNOW EVERYTHING WHEN I DONT and I purposefully annoy my siblings so they leave thr kitchen so I can binge like a fat pig, I'm a hypocrite too in every aspect. I'm toxic ok im awful

I s/h and then i forget about it so its not even a problem but I whine like it is and I want to do it so badly rn I wanna go deep

AND I RUINED MYSELF WITH UGLY SCATS they're so ugly like me inside and out

And I wanna cry and

and I'm so awful because like I get so... idk, I am. I've done shifty things, I'm a shit person. I act sweet than a condescending little bitch

and sometimes the smallest things set me off

Im jealous of everyone else

Hell I'm fucking jealous of people I've never met, I want so much so badly I'm so greedy and lustful for it and selfish

In... conclusion? The world, would, be, better, without, me

I'm useless, lazy, stupid, jealous, slutty, angry, sad, pitiful, pathetic, fat looking, no good child, moody, stereotypical, ugly, hateful, chatter box, greedy, selfish. Gluttonous, messy, dirty. I'm all the bad stuff

Dont lie, these are facts. I have so much awful in me, the world wpuld be better off without me

[fuckhouse2theelectricboogaloo]

Christ almighty on a stick. So I'm just gonna share this rq and make a comment regarding it considering all that I've read.

Here's the thing, I've been there before. But saying doesn't do anything. You can TELL someone not to gang up on someone else, but unless you actively put a stop to it you're kinda no better than the rest of them.

Nobody smeared you guys, you smeared yourselves by posting that " callout " on Soy who had made one whole post regarding it, didn't even name-drop publicly, and then left it be.

Spoiler; I was the one who shared the " callout " you made because it was literally just a bunch of you throwing a fucking tantrum over how someone responded ic and took it personally, but interesting .. you didn't bother to share the caps that put all of you in a bad light? Hm. That's not suspicious at all.

I said it to Soy on Crystalline, and I'll say it again. Out of everyone involved, Soy was FAR more mature than I ever would have been in that situation because I would've been a bitch and told you to get over yourselves. Sorry not sorry, maybe you should do research on antagonistic muses or perhaps read their muse page hm?

Again, you all ganged up on a fucking Minor. And good god your poor excuse of a " callout " made me want to punch a wall. Okay, so you guys don't click, or maybe you just don't like antagonistic muses, and that's fine. But here's the thing; instead of making it a big public show for some goddamn reason or another, even after Soy left the server, you could've kept it among friends, agreed to not let Soy back in your space, and go about your day.

Soy very much has every right to vent to their friends just as you do. It becomes a problem when you make it everyone else's problem by making a " Callout ".

You are all literally the equivalent of high school bullies looking for the easiest target to pick on. That is a whole-ass minor, someone who's impressionable and still has a lot to learn about things, and you threw a fit over it. A whole ass group tantrum because boo hoo Pokey/Porky was mean. Get the fuck over yourself.

Maybe consider I dunno, apologizing and owning up and admitting that hey, maybe you were wrong.

To Soy, I'm sorry you had to endure dealing with adults who acted more like children than you did. I wish you the best in this community and hopefully, you find { or have found } people who treat you better than these clowns.

Posting as is

[icy-cold-bitch-latte]

How the Sides would comfort a trans reader who's feeling dysphoric

A/N: this is gender neutral so it can be read by any of my fellow trans peeps who's dysphoria has got them feeling down ✌✌

Warnings: talk of dysphoria, Remus in general lol

Patton

Patton gives you all the hugs, kisses and cuddles ever in order to cheer you up

He's very proud that you decided to tell him how you feel rather than bottling it up because he knows from personal experience that repressing your emotions does nothing but makes things worse

He's not the best at cooking but if you have a favorite go to comfort food that makes you feel better then for you he'll definitely try

He ends up wrapping you up in a ton of blankets and pillows and just lays with you on the couch for awhile

Roman

At first, Roman vows to vanquish the beast that's upsetting you...until he realizes it's not a physical threat you're facing, but a mental one

He tries to take your mind off it by telling you stories of his daring adventures, or by putting on your favorite Disney movie, whichever you prefer

He'll call you an enormous plethora of gender affirming pet names until you're basically begging him to stop, and even then he still refuses until you cave and admit what he always believed, that you're perfect in every way

Logan

Logan uses logistics to combat your insecurities by reassuring you that nobody has the power to tell you what gender you are or aren't, regardless of how you present

He makes to sure look up plenty of coping mechanisms and suggestions for how to deal with dysphoria ahead of time so he has ample knowledge and understanding for how to make you feel better

Not the best at comforting you if you happen to get emotional but he might give you a hug or something if it's clear you need one

Virgil

As a conscious being made up of anxiety, Virgil notices your panic and distress as soon as he sets foot in the same room as you (that's probably what urged him to seek you out in the first place tbh)

When you panic, he panics, but he tries to keep it together so you won't notice and get even more upset

He has several tried and true methods that always work to calm people down, so once that happens and you can explain to him what's up he understands almost immediately

If you want to talk about it, great, if not he's content to just listen to music with you and hang out until you feel better

Janus

You being upset, especially over a topic that's so serious, is not something Janus takes lightly

It may appear as though he doesn't care all that much at first due to his stoic expressions, but that's just because he's trying to think of the right thing to say

He may be the literal physical embodiment of deceit, but if you're upset he'll try his best to be honest with you about how much he cares

Brings out all six of his arms so you can have the most amount of cuddles and physical affection all at once

Remus

Remus's comforting skills leave a lot to be desired, so unless you can deal with him making the most random outrageous sex jokes in an effort to cheer you up it's probably best that you just spend some time alone for a bit

He's incredibly clingy however so it won't be long before he comes begging to you for attention, on literal hands and knees might I add

If you do let him stay with you when you're upset you should make it clear to him you're not in any sort of mood to deal with his shenanigans

He'll actually listen for once and the two of you end up pranking the other sides together until you eventually get bored and decide to watch some horror movies instead

~

Sanders Sides masterlist | 🏷 taglist: @iloveentrapta @feralwenis

[owlphaace]

I want to preface this by saying to my friends that this really isn't aimed at anyone, it's just how things always have been. It also isn't intended to make anyone feel guilty or anything, I just need to get some thoughts out of my head. It's a ramble and I'm crying while I'm typing it so don't expect it to make sense. Not that anyone is going to bother reading it after an opening paragraph this long

I really wish I could connect more with people but I know most people just choose to ignore me, and those who don't eventually find some reason not to talk to me anymore. The most important person in my life straight up told me I'm too much to deal with 6 years ago and cut me out of her life, just because i would worry about her if she disappeared for days at time. Ever since then I haven't known how to actually open up to people.

I cried earlier because one of my remaining friends messaged me to say they've been missing me posting Single Pokemon Runs which is basically the only form of interest anyone has shown in what I like doing in years. I really don't expect anyone to have similar interests as me and i'm used to being ignored so that hit me like a tonne of bricks.

It also hurts a lot that no matter how much effort i put into trying to organise doing stuff people they just don't want to. That's been constant since i was a child. To the point of having mostly stopped even trying. You just have to look at the months I've spent trying to get people to play Blood on the Clocktower with me, a game that would cost people absolutely nothing, and just nobody gives a shit. Or dnd, the amount i spent on that because some friends wanted to play it and then it came to it and suddenly no response apart from one friend who did play a couple of sessions with me before their life became too busy for it (which again is not something i blame them for, it just hurts). Even fucking Among Us, i had friends saying "oh we should all play it together" during lockdown so i immediately bought it and still to this day i've only played it once with my brothers. So yeah i've just given up asking and now only do stuff with people at a rate of about one activity per year

I'm avoiding going to a family friend's wedding today because i used to be close to his daughter (to the point of being one of the only two girlfriends in my life (though i did eventually realise i didn't actaully feel anything but a strong platonic attraction to her but that's just a tangent)) and i can't bring myself to face another person who stopped talking to me entirely because we wouldn't talk unless i initiated the conversation. Every single choice i make just shuts me off from people because i'm just not strong enough to face that pain anymore

There's no point to any of this. I'm just tired and sad.

[nerves-nebula]

I’ve been rotating your TMNeglectedT AU in my brain and read all your posts about it so here’s a dogpile of thoughts and questions (you don’t have to answer/reply to all of them):

I don’t know if you’ve answered a question like this before but- do your versions of the turtles deal with the idea of “my parent was nice to me once so they can’t be that bad-“? Especially Donnie, i feel like Splinter could be polite to him (or just acknowledge him) once and then he’d be like “well now I’m horrible for thinking he’s bad because he’s been decent before-“

do you plan to make this into a story (whether a comic/fic/etc.) with a plot or just a world build in a way-? (Sorry if i don’t make any sense-)

Would you say that Mikey uses Maladaptive daydreaming to cope/has Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder? In which his daydreams can often take over whatever he’s doing to such a degree that it effects him negatively- 

I hate Splinter for being so shaped, like i love his design but i VIOLENTLY hate him

Raph being afraid to cry/not letting himself cry is so me- you mentioned in a reply to an ask that he doesn’t cry for really long periods of time which is 🤝(i definitely think i experienced some form of emotional neglect when younger- and reading about this universe is confirming that to me)

You’ve mentioned Donnie having experiences with grooming, this adds another layer of trauma to him- Would he ever experience flashbacks/triggers to his uncomfortable experiences? For example if someone grabbed his arm a certain way would he experience panic from previous situations. How would him and/or his brothers react to that? (him being triggered and how he reacts because of/during the flashback) at this point i kin your Donnie and I might be projecting

Donnie 🤝 Me (intrusive thoughts)

If i were to make fan art and post it how should I tag it? Or should i tag you in the post?

Thanks for reading this long ask and again you don’t have to answer/reply to everything!

gonna answer these in order

yes, this is actually the hardest for Leo to deal with, since he was treated the "nicest." nobody wants to think their parents suck (unless you've gone full in on it like Mikey haha) so it's a rough road for everyone. it's like, he COULD'VE BEEN SO GOOD.

I plan to do a bunch of one of comics, and I'd like to either make one big fic or a bunch of smaller fics in the same universe. but right now I really only have time for posting on tumblr, since I've already got to deal with college and my ongoing personal comic that updates once a week.

I'm a little bit confused about what specifically maladaptive daydreaming is/looks like. I've watched a few videos on it but am still not sure what its actually like, so i hesitate to say yes, but he definitely spends a lot of his time in his head, sometimes to the detriment of himself/his brothers.

I also hate splinter <3 he's so The Worst

yea i actually cry really easy (or i used to before T) so that's something based off my oldest sister, who straight up could not cry for years hah. trauma's a bitch.

I think all of the turtles experience frequent flashbacks/triggers. they're all pretty heavily traumatized, so it just makes sense. Donnie is probably embarrassed about how his flashbacks/ptsd symptoms make him seem more "twitchy" than his brothers. but they all have ptsd/cptsd. he's just the one who's the worst at hiding his symptoms. that being said, the ways the brothers react really depends on the specific situation. sometimes they'll mock him, sometimes they wont even realize whats happening.

you can tag your post however you want but I'll only see it if you tag me, which I advise you do, cause I like seeing fanart :)

[zitrus-indigo]

Thoughts on video games (some of these also are about phones)

First off, every side (gamers and non gamers) are being too hard on each other :

Non gamers might be nicer than you think.

Some of the person that are worried about people spending too much time on video games might show genuine concern for you to discover other things in your life, do your important stuff and for you to not get health issues.

Most of them don’t know much about video games and new technology can be unusual, scary, with our era of constant information, it can be very easy to fall into a unfounded belief that video games are the one responsible for people being influenced and doing crimes.

Gamers just want to spend their time the way they want without people dictating what they should do with their lives. «Video games make people violent», people that do violent acts after playing video games generally have mental issues because most people are able to separate fiction from reality and don’t do violent acts because they have empathy. I’m pretty sure that if you read about every person that committed a violent after playing video games, you would find that these people already had a problem in the first place. Not all video games are violent and not all have shock value because age restrictions exists. Video games mostly don’t shock you unless you’re haven’t be a teen yet, at most they make you cry because you feel for your favourite characters going through things, but you could say the same thing about reading books. Yes it is more visual than reading a book, but video games developers make an effort to tone down the shocking value, unless you’re in a 18+ rated video game where gore is present. «Video games kill creativity and makes us socialize less», both of these are true to an extent. It depends on your comsuption of video games. Multiplayer video games are an opportunity to extend the game variety you play with your friends and family. Singleplayer video games can be played with a person watching you playing video games and making helpful comments during your game. Every video game allows for fans to create a community where they discuss the game. Video games often end up being a conversation subject for many people with their friends and family. Video games just like any book deal with a lot of topics. Creativity often relies on inspiration, alongside books and the internet, video games are a source of inspiration for the next artist generation. Also, persons in video games communities often end up mastering things like painting or playing musical instruments because of their love for video games.

People’s attention span current criticism is way too harsh. We live in a capitalistic, busy society where most of us don’t have the time, the mood or the energy to read a book and the easy to-go solution is to scroll social media. Could you really blame anyone for that ?

« All children do nowadays is scrolling on their phone », not all of us do that. Yes, a lot of us are into this. All our friends are on social media, nobody wants to miss anything. We procrastinate by scrolling on social media because nobody wants to do something boring, we are human. On the Internet, yes there is a lot of danger (and I’d recommend you’d monitor your child) but there is also what we need as individuals a way to express who we are, to grow, to learn, to socialize and to earn our freedom when all we do everyday is sitting in a chair, listening to uninteresting things for eight hours and doing homework. We don’t go outside because we can communicate with our friends without needing to go all the way to their houses, because it’s dangerous and adults don’t allow us to do so. We scroll our phones to pass time. Finally, why should we be blamed when social media are designed to be addictive ?

I’d like to move on with a different topic.

What I think about video games characteristics.

The complicated things nowadays is that video games are on a very difficult position to hold as they are both a business, an art and games.

This leads to unfortunate things. Gamers are unsatisfied and I don’t always agree with video games critics.

Graphics - sure decent graphics are a must but since video games are an art, devs should be allowed to break modern gaming conventions by making their games in whatever artstyle they want.

Gameplay - a must, we all can agree on that

Framerates - I honestly don’t get what people’s complains are about, sure we need to have a decent amount of frames but a few frames drop isn’t something that really impacts my game

Bugs - honestly a game isn’t supposed to have them, if it have negligible ones at least it is fun to break a game

Linearity - I don’t agree with most gamers on this one, I really like linearity, non linearity games sometimes suffer on this since the dev team didn’t think this through if they blended it with some amount of linearity

Map - I actually prefer medium ones, too small is annoying but nowadays games are too big and it is getting ridiculous at this point

Quests - same as the latter

Story - the story doesn’t have to be complicated for me to like it, I abhor story incoherences (hello Tears of the Kingdom ???), games are both supposed to appeal to players and be pieces of art

Sequels - depends on all these factors in the list + my enjoyment, honestly devs should stop making unnecessary sequels to games that have their narrative arc completed, stand alone games are fine

Genres - too many open worlds today and games that copy others, stan indie game companies, with all the technology we have today, why can’t we be more creative and enjoy ourselves creating unique games

In-game currency - Anything pay to win is a big no for me, free-to-plays are best but it depends if getting the currency is well balanced or not, in some games getting money is way too hard

Time - honestly I agree that time as a mechanic is another way to challenge your player but I hate it when you have to rush just like in Mario levels (though they give you an okay amount of time most of the time)

Levels and grinding - it depends on any player appreciation, most devs use it to extend their game longetivity

Weapons and collecting ressources - weapons is one of the coolest things whatever video game you play, collecting ressources can sometimes be as hard as to earn in-game currency, we all like it when both are given as an reward in a game, I hate it when some things are can only be obtained in one single manner like using online

Multiplayer or singleplayer mode - both are cool in their own way, it’s pretty cool to fight, play and meet other people that like the same game as you, it makes you want to surpass yourself, unfortunately there are a few video games that have a very toxic gamer community, I hate it when mostly singleplayer games put such an emphasis on multiplayer mode (why, sometimes it makes collecting ressources much more difficult + not every online is free, ACNH is an example that comes into mind)

Battles and difficulty - rage, unhealthy comparisons and people beginning to feel they’re just bad at playing video games and that it’s useless to progress isn’t talked enough ahead, I’m honestly annoyed by everyone who thinks every video game should be hard, difficulty modes are a cool idea but too many aren’t well balanced, honestly we should have more video games that don’t require to fight and that have creative ways for you to progress through the game

Trading and gifting - two cool mechanics if you use multiplayer

Avatar - nowadays customisation was very much needed, however I’m not convinced by some video games fashion and customisation

Cutscenes - I’m not a « too much cutscenes » kind of person, I like watching them, it becomes more bothering when the game isn’t very good and the story doesn’t make us care about random background characters they show in cutscenes (looking at you Zelda CDI)

Modifying the environment - not my type of game, unless it’s like in Tears of the Kingdom (sorry, didn’t play that much video games, I played like ten, i’m young) where you create things that help you playing and exploring the game

NPCs - depends if they’re well written and give you interesting quests

Cities - depends on shops and NPCs quality, I don’t like it when open worlds don’t have many

Escorts - while everyone is trashing on this mechanic, I think it should be kept because it allows you to do something else for a while, a video should max have seven of these, I hate these too

Time restricted events - « yeah my video game is an online mobile video game, I don’t want the player to leave it, I need to make money », some are cools but the time restriction is glaring, please let us have a life

Stealth - same as escorts

Buttons - hate : too many, confusing ones

Movements restrictions - depending on the game it’s annoying or perfectly reasonable

Tutorials - some are cools, most are annoying, unless a game has a unique and uncommon gameplay, then why annoying us with that ?

Minigames - it gets either really boring if a video game rely only on them and they aren’t cool or it becomes cool if they’re not a primary part of your video game and are cool

Video games physics - underrated

Moving on to the next topic :

How you should approach video games as a parent

A few things

You should follow age restrictions

You shouldn’t approach your child playing video games as something negative

Video games are an excellent opportunity for you and your child to bond, to learn them how to think critically and to make them be open with you

What you should do : play video games most of the time along your child, teach them teamwork, ask them what they think and what striked them (it is an opportunity to make sure media don’t influence them in a bad way), answers their questions, let them play video games a bit alone, when they’re back ask them the same questions as before and continue doing the same as before, you should do the same with any media your child consume

Make screen time limits easy to understand to your child, talk to them about why them spending a lot of time on screens make you concerned, teach them responsabilities, make your child go to school clubs, hiking, painting, museums, playing musical instruments, cooking,

Edit : added a few arguments. Forgot to add that video games are a form of art.

[greatwyrmgold]

It's been an awful while since I've read Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, so I've forgotten a lot of the details. The one scene I do remember with clarity is the bit where Kvothe tries to explain where babies come from. To adults from a culture where nobody knows where babies come from.

Details

So, the Adem are basically a matriarchal martial arts society. I remember a lot of little details bugging me, but most are arguably just a matter of Kvothe being a biased narrator. And they don't understand that babies come from having sex.

The explanation given in the text is that all Adem women have so much sex that they assume women just get pregnant when the time is right. They aren't monogamous, and don't think fatherhood is a thing, so they don't have any reason to keep track of the men who had sex with them before they got pregnant.

And worst of all, they know where animal babies come from. Cows get pregnant when they have sex with bulls, and the calves inherit traits from both cow and bull. They just assume that human beings don't and can't work the same way.

WTF?

So, first off, the explanation rang hollow to me when I read the books in high school, and now that I'm not a stupid high schooler, I can articulate why: Some women are ace or lesbians. (Or ace lesbians, of course.) There is no plausible way that every woman across the entire culture has sex often enough that they can't recognize a connection between sex and pregnancy, unless they are all being coerced.

Second, even without that, surely there are premenopausal straight/bi women that don't have sex for some reason. Like trauma, or medical issues, or being too busy raising five kids to make a sixth, or whatever. Hell, there should be some who don't have any particular reason and just don't get around to it. Unless there's something weird in the water, there should be no shortage of people who don't have sex.

Third, the Adem live up in the mountains, but they're not totally isolated from society. Even if every Adem woman shacks up with some dude at least twice a menstrual cycle, they can communicate with celibate and monogamous women, and with people familiar with them.

And finally...this doesn't make the Adem look interestingly foreign. It's not a different way of looking at the world. It doesn't make you think about how "truths" we take for granted are actually culturally subjective. This just make the Adem look stupid. Not even ignorant—they have the information they need to figure out where babies come from. They just don't figure it out.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize that it was actually really close to being what it wanted to be, and that makes the failure more frustrating.

Like, just drop the thing about not understanding babies happen because sex. That's dumb, it should never have seen print. But keep the fact that the Adem don't think fathers are a thing. They understand how the world works, they just don't think "father" is a thing worth naming.

"Yeah, the baby's sperm donor affects their hair color and complexion and stuff, but who cares? Why do you foreigners make such a big deal out of it? Why do sons take their fathers' names, and not their mothers'? Why do you put so much more emphasis on the man that f*ked a woman than on the woman who bore the child?"

That takes the disagreement out of the realm of hard fact and into the realm of social construction. The fact that "fathers" share DNA with "their" kids is hard fact. The idea that this shared DNA means they have some special connection to the kids that other men don't is not.

That would be an interesting cultural detail, not a stupid writing decision that sticks in my brainpan for a decade, like a burr trapped in your coat sleeve.

[mental-health-advice]

hello! I have what might be a sort of strange ask. I have a phobia of anything that can affect your body, basically. Drugs, alcohol, the like. It's at a point where I am uncomfortable even touching over the counter pill bottles to pass on to someone who asked me to get them, and super uncomfortable if I have to have an uncontained pill in my hand. It's like I'm afraid of it seeping into my skin. It's a similar story with alcohol but I'm not around it as much as medicine, so it doesn't affect my daily life as much as having a fear of literal aspirins.

However, it's starting to get a bit worse. Sometimes when I see stuff about drugs or alcohol, I get paranoid that I'm being secretly drugged, or that my friends and family are drinking/doing drugs secretly. Or for a specific example, requesting a procedure to be done without numbing, fearing that they've just done it anyways and placebo-effecting myself. I have lots of fears and anxieties just in my regular life but but they're never as bad as this one.

There's another layer of complications in which I still live with my parents, and along with not taking my (other) mental + physical health concerns seriously, they often try to convince me that if I go to a professional they will medicate me, and even though I know logically that I'd have to consent it's gotten to me over the years. (I also deal with very very frequent migraines, which I should logically take painkillers for, and I don't want to, which is another point of parental contention.)

I'm not even sure what advice I could be looking for here, honestly. I guess I just wanted to share, because nobody in my life seems to understand at all. So thanks for reading, sorry for a text wall, and thank you in advance <3.

Hey there,

This must be so scary for you, having these phobias and especially as it would affect so much of your daily life and living in general!

My first thought would be to obviously gently encourage you to seek some help and support from either a counsellor or a therapist but I can understand how daunting that may be and especially when your parents are trying to tell you that all professionals would do is to medicate you. And yes, whilst medication can at times be helpful for some people, talk therapy is much preferred unless the persons individual circumstances warrant some medication to help them along with talk therapy but again, yes, you have to give consent for this to occur.

I want to also let you know that for some people who get migraines there are some more natural treatments for it now days, and again, I appreciate that you have great phobias but I think that this warrants at least looking into as opposed to medication to help with your migraines if this is something that you can do.

I cannot even imagine what life must be like for you on a daily basis and I cannot say that things will get easier anytime soon, but if you are able to seek some help and support then I would definitely recommend giving it a try.

I really hope that this has helped a bit and please do let us know if we can help to support you in any other way!

I’m thinking of you and hope that you are going well!

Take care,

Lauren

[foxstens]

suddenly i feel a need to talk about piracy

i basically grew up with piracy, everyone does it but nobody talks about it because it’s not considered a big deal, and if you say you pay for netflix most people will look at you like you’re insane because 1. why pay and 2. why pay for /netflix/ 

in my family, while we have more disposable right now than like two years ago, we still definitely wouldn’t be able to afford all of the media we consume, like buying all of the music on itunes or paying for whatever service might have whichever movie or tv show my mom wants to watch, or the video games i’m currently into

like video games are fucking expensive in general but especially when you take into account that $50 is a fuckton of money here. i can go on three shopping trips with that money okay, it’s a lot. and there’s a lot of games out there, with varied prices and varied genres and i have no idea whether i’ll like any of them when i start them. in fact i end up dropping the majority of video games and visual novels and otome games i try. can you imagine buying an average of 30 of each of those a year, and then only liking say 5 of each? doesn’t sound like a good way to spend my money, of which i do not have a lot

i can’t even say i should be pickier with the things i try since i’m already so picky i hardly know what to play at any given time. you could say i should get cheaper hobbies then or something but that’s not how hobbies work

you don’t enjoy things because they’re cheap what the fuck. and even apart from that, i did have cheaper hobbies. i had a good few years when i read a lot of books, which are still expensive but cheaper than video games and the ones i wanted i wouldn’t have been able to find here anyway, i was into anime for a good while - which is just plain unavailable here

and even if i were open to paying for everything i want to play/watch/read, i’d still have to get them digitally - probably not possible unless it’s books; or i’d have to import them which includes crazy shipping prices and waiting times and the risk of something happening to the package and also.... physical storage.... space in the house... i do not have this.... 

honestly i feel bad for indie game developers or independent authors or whoever might get affected negatively by piracy, but usually i don’t think it’s really piracy itself that’s causing the issues. and personally i have never felt guilty about it, and i’ll probably never change my opinion on it - probably a cultural thing

and you know what, even if all the factors i’ve listed weren’t a thing and i had all the disposable income in the world, i’d still pirate unless i had a very good reason not to. since i have this philosophy of ‘why pay when you can just not’ which extends to pretty much everything that i can obtatin easily without paying and without going to jail for not paying. or something like that

[bestpriceforcar]

What should I do to get the best price of my used car?

The increased demand for used automobiles has given sellers the ability to close deals quickly, but it has also significantly decreased the likelihood of getting a fair price for your car because there are now more sellers available to meet the buyer's needs. In these circumstances, one must take a few actions and learn how to negotiate the best price for the car they are selling.

For any used automobile buyer, the most crucial factors are the model year, the model makes, the car's condition, mileage, and attractiveness. As a result, you must make sure that your car achieves the highest possible rating on these factors.

·   Studying Online Platforms: There is no price tag on used autos. This is why determining the value of one's car can be quite challenging. You should look into this situation; it will be to your advantage. To have an anchor price while selling your automobile, you can either approach someone who has already sold their car or attempt a free online used car assessment service.

·   Set Your Mind to a Resale Price: Having a firm understanding of the lowest price you believe your automobile should sell for is a crucial checkpoint in any used car transaction checklist. Keep in mind that if you sell the electric car to a local company, they will want to take a 3-5% commission when they sell your car to someone else. It is recommended that you increase your minimum sale price by 4-5% as a result.

·   Know how much your car is worth: Knowing the value of your car in advance is advised to avoid being taken advantage of by dealers or purchasers when you first enter the market. There are several internet portals that provide this service for free; all you have to do is provide them with some information, such as the make, model, year, and mileage on the Odometer of the car. You can negotiate more effectively and save a lot of time and effort by knowing the general value of your automobile before you start looking around for the best deals. Generally speaking, after you buy a car, its value decreases by 10% yearly. Subtracting the percentage from the current ex-showroom price yields the car's current worth.

·   Post a car listing online: You will lose money for selling your own car because using an offline method will cost you a commission. The reason for this is that any middleman that stands between you and the buyer will demand payment from you. On the other hand, several web-based portals provide this service without any fees or commissions, for free. You can also sell your car to a known individual who will pay you well for it, such as a friend or relative.

·   Odometer reading: Unless it is a commercial vehicle, nobody wants to purchase a car with more than 1 lakh miles on the odometer. It's best to limit your mileage and stay away from pointless trips. If possible, use public transportation or a carpooling service. Don't hold the car for too long, though, if you can't avoid extended automobile trips. An ideal time frame for car ownership should be 5 years.

·       Get your car fixed: Make sure to give your car a thorough inspection before going to sell it. Watch out for defects and other problems. Your car's engine has to be fixed more than its exterior because it is the most crucial component. Ask the mechanic to properly inspect the engine when you take your car to the garage for a detailed service to get rid of minor annoyances. Before selling, fix any denting and painting problems because, as the saying goes, making a good first impression is half the battle won.

·       Ensure that the documentation is flawless: It is essential that you provide all relevant legal paperwork and documentation when selling your car. This implies that when you go out to sell your car, you need to make sure that everything is set up. Certificates like the original Registration Certificate (RC), updated Insurance Policy, Pollution Certificate, and Warranty documents for different accessories like batteries, tyres, etc. should be stored safely. The value of the car will undoubtedly rise with proper documentation.

·       Duplicate key: Your car's spare key is a vital item that needs to be kept in a secure location. It is advisable to put these products in a place that is easy to find because they are rarely utilized. Oh, yeah, and. Your car's new owner will also require it.

·       Toolbox, First Aid Kit, and Air-filled Spare Wheel: Never misplace your toolbox or any of the items in it. Before you sell your car, be considerate and give them back if you lost them. The first aid kit should also be cleaned out of any outdated medications and bandages. Make sure your spare tyre is always in good working order and doesn't appear to have been stolen from a neighbour.

If you have the best used electric cars for sale then you can list them on bestpriceforcar.com. We provide the instant best price for your car with a stress-free inspection. There is minimal paperwork with a same-day payment facility which makes it a hassle-free process. If you have used tesla model s for sale you can contact us.

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8 Risky Relationship Myths

The majority of us grew up watching Disney and Hollywood movies where very attractive ladies frequently fall in love with equally attractive guys and everything just happens by magic. Frequently, finding the ideal companion simply requires a slight change in appearance or manner. Relationships are typically effortless or not meant to be, depending on the situation. the phrase "let's get started" and "let's even begin",let's even begin,even let's begin,even let's begin There are many of these things that begin as a movie or something we read in a book and then, for whatever reason, change into a relationship myth that we take to be a realistic expectation in real life.

Myth 1: Perfect Relationship

A perfect relationship does not exist. Simply put, they don't exist. Relationships are mostly about people, and individuals are basically flawed and not perfect. Nobody is ever going to be flawless. They may be admirable, decent, compassionate, and wonderful people, but they are not infallible. Everybody experiences difficult times; it's natural. The most crucial thing to keep in mind is that communication is essential and that talking to your partner can help you with many problems.

8 Risky Relationship Myths Myth 2: Happy Couples Don’t Fight

Another ridiculous relationship myth. Many people believe that happy couples never fight or argue, and that they always agree on everything. But that is not the case. Everyone argues, in fact, arguing is a normal and necessary part of any relationship, that's how you work through any issues and find a way to solve it, or find a compromise. Arguments have a bad reputation, and people believe that if you argue a lot, you'll break up soon. However, people who argue more are more likely to overcome their problems and stay together for a longer period of time.

Myth 3: A Good Partner Knows What You Want and Need

8 Risky Relationship Myths Let's be clear about one thing: no one knows what you want or need unless you tell them, unless they're a mindreader. But how likely is that? A good partner cannot magically know what you're thinking and what you want or need at any given time. They will learn to predict certain events and read your body language, but that is all. Just work on communication and let your partner know what you want. The lesson here is that a good partner is one who talks to you, asks questions, and listens rather than one who reads your mind.

Myth 4: If You Can’t Find A Partner You Need To Change Your Looks

8 Risky Relationship Myths Experimenting with one's appearance is fun, but it should be done for one's own enjoyment and fun, not to please others. If you prefer to wear sneakers and jeans because they make you feel more at ease, there's no need to start wearing pencil skirts and heels to attract a man. It doesn't work like that. And what's the point of attracting someone who won't be interested in the real you, but in this strange version of yourself you're attempting to be? Simply be yourself.

Myth 5: An Affair Always Means A Break Up

While affairs are painful and damaging, they do not always lead to the end of a relationship. This whole attitude of "I could never be with someone who cheated on me" works for some, but it doesn't have to be the only option. Many people in long-term relationships have to deal with someone having an affair or cheating on them once. It's difficult, but with forgiveness and hard work, people can move on and have long-lasting relationships. It does not have to be the end of the road for everyone.

Myth 6: ‘The One’

This whole concept of 'the one' is completely absurd. There are no soulmates, and the idea that there is only one person who will be perfect for you is completely insane. It causes people to be constantly on the lookout for someone who will be absolutely perfect, but who does not actually exist. They don't know what they're looking for. Don't pass up on wonderful people because they don't fit your bizarre idea of the ideal partner.

Myth 7: You Should Never Go To Bed Angry

We have no idea where that saying originated, but we've all heard it so many times that we started believing it. That mindset can sometimes cause more harm than good. If you're having an argument and it's not going anywhere, thinking you have to resolve everything right away will only escalate the situation and make it out of control. If it's a late night fight - go to bed, you'll be much more rested in the morning and better equipped to deal with this situation.

Myth 8: Marriage Is The End Goal

Too many people believe that marriage is the ultimate goal of any successful relationship, or that it is the natural next step for those who have been together for a long time. That is not the case for everyone. Some people have no intention of marrying, and there's no reason to feel obligated to marry someone just because you've been with them for a few years. On the other hand, it's foolish not to date someone you think you'll enjoy spending time with just because they don't look like your future husband.   Read the full article