3

walk away from her, staring blankly at where he had been standing for several moments afterwards. She shook herself out of her stupor and hurried after Percy, determined not to let him slip away again. "Wait, Perseus! You're going the wrong way!"

Percy stopped in his tracks, allowing for Annabeth to catch up to him before spinning around and fixing her with a wide grin. "Oh, Wise Girl," he said teasingly. "It seems as though you forgot that I'm older and much stronger than you. How could I possibly be going in the right direction?"

A smile tugged at her lips as she stared back at him. "Well… I guess you are right. Although, there are more things in this world than just numbers and letters. There's also magic, and even monsters. And if I were you, I would definitely avoid using such ridiculous methods when dealing with monsters."

As always, he laughed at her words. "Yeah, okay. But how am I supposed to avoid fighting monster after monster if they're everywhere? It just makes sense!"

"How many monsters do you need to kill to find that logic correct?" she questioned.

"Well, um, actually… I haven't killed a whole ton in the past three weeks. Not counting monsters. I know that most people don't count that many monster kills as a whole, but my mom is usually pretty strict with us. So if she finds out that I've killed monsters, then she would definitely kill me. Besides, there's something really fun about slaying monsters!" he explained enthusiastically. "And I'm always ready to slay a dragon. That's pretty cool." He looked down at Annabeth for approval, smiling as her expression changed from curiosity to excitement.

"That's...actually really awesome," she responded honestly.

His smile grew wider. "Great! So are you gonna join me today?" He gestured to the field where the rest of his friends were gathered. "We'll get started with the basics first and then later we can go into more advanced training techniques. Does that sound good to you?"

She hesitated for a moment. "I mean, yeah, I'd love to help you train. But what happens after that?"

He smiled reassuringly at her before grabbing hold of her hand and dragging her along with him toward the fields.

"Don't worry, Wise Girl. Just relax for now. Everything will work itself out eventually."

Chapter 3

When he woke up that morning, it took everything that he had in order to drag himself out of bed. His eyelids wouldn't open no matter how much he wanted to. When he tried to move, he found himself completely paralyzed from head to toe. He could neither move nor breathe as a strange feeling came over his body. After taking a long, deep breath and focusing on his breathing, his eyes finally managed to crack open.

What greeted him was the sight of his ceiling. He wondered briefly if he was dreaming when he spotted a familiar figure standing beside his bed, watching him intently with concern. However, when he finally managed to turn his head to the side to examine the person who had awoken him, he realized that she was indeed real, and she was also watching him intently with a frown on her face.

After a second or so, he finally managed to croak out a word. "Nico? Is that really you?"

Despite looking quite confused by his question, she nevertheless responded, albeit slowly. "Yes. Why wouldn't it be me, Jackson? Are you alright?"

Jackson shook his head lightly as a smile formed on his face once more. "I'm fine. I just woke up, that's all. You scared the crap outta me."

At that moment, his mind registered the fact that Nico was dressed in some kind of uniform, which was similar to how he was used to seeing the son of Hades dressed. However, something appeared to have been placed rather precariously upon his head – it didn't seem to be falling apart, but there was a strange piece of fabric resting atop of his head, which didn't appear to be doing much of anything as far as keeping the fabric in place. Despite that, it seemed that Nico seemed perfectly aware of its existence despite not having any idea as to why it was in place, as she reached up and ran her fingers through the item gently in attempt to remove it. Upon realizing how odd it might look if it fell apart due to her efforts, Jackson quickly snatched the cloth off of his head before it made it to the floor before reaching over towards the side table next to his bed to retrieve the scissors and scissors that he kept on hand in case he needed to cut anything while cutting the thread holding his sheets to the ceiling in one swift motion. As soon as the scissors were in his hands, he immediately reached upwards to begin snipping the excess fabric off of the sheets, careful not to damage the blankets as he continued working on cutting off small pieces of material until the sheets finally came loose from their position and fell onto the bed below them.

He hadn'