The Helm of Darkness - A Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief Fanfiction

13 - I Promise to Give Nancy Bobofit Hell

We were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of course everybody treated us as if we'd won some reality-TV contest. According to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honour, then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence.

Annabeth's shroud was so beautiful – grey silk with embroidered owls – I told her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut up.

Being the son of Poseidon, Percy didn't have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin had volunteered to make his shroud. They'd taken an old bedsheet and painted smiley faces with X'ed-out eyes around the border, and the word LOSER painted really big in the middle. It was fun to burn.

The Hermes Cabin had made my shroud, Black silk with skull and crossbones embroidered on it. Even though it was beautiful, Travis, Connor and Luke really knew my style, I loved burning things.

As Apollo's cabin led the sing-along and passed out s'mores, I was surrounded by Hephaestus cabin – who had heard what I said about their father and were now adopting me as an honorary sister, Annabeth's friends from Athena, and Grover's satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand-new searcher's license he'd received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called Grover's performance on the quest "Brave to the point of indigestion. Horns-and-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past."

The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose poisonous looks told me they'd never forgive me for disgracing their dad.

That was okay with me.

But something weird happened.

As I sat roasting marshmallows, someone sat next to me.

Aaron Myers, from the Ares cabin.

"Look, Maliha, I'm not mad at you for disgracing my dad, and all. He can be a real jerk sometimes." He said, blue eyes twinkling in the firelight.

"Sometimes?" I questioned.

He laughed, "All the time," he began to fidget a bit as we sat in an awkward silence. "So," he said after a while, "I've been planning to tell you this for a while but then you went on your quest. But, uh, you wanna be my girlfriend?"

I was taken aback.

"Oh, uh," he seemed genuine, "Sure."

We talked for the rest of the night and when I went to bed in the Hermes Cabin, Travis grabbed my arm, "I don't like him," he warned.

"You're just pissed about him being from Ares," I replied.

...

On the Fourth of July, the whole camp gathered at the beach for a firework display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus's kids, they weren't going to settle for a few lame red-white-and-blue explosions. They'd anchored a barge offshore and loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles. I even got to help them with it, this seemed to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship with Cabin nine. The blasts would be sequenced so tightly they'd look like frames of animation across the sky. The finale was supposed to be a couple of hundred-foot-tall Spartan warriors who would crackle to life above the ocean, fight a battle, then explode into a million colours.

As Annabeth, Percy and I were spreading a picnic blanket, Grover showed up to tell us good-bye. He was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt and sneakers, but in the last few weeks he'd started to look older, almost high-school age. His goatee had gotten thicker. He'd put on weight. His horns had grown at least an inch, so he now had to wear his Rasta cap all the time to pass as human.