νεκρός || Annabeth Chase x Fem!OC

Vol. 2-5: Thalia torches New England

PERCY

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The Hunters piled into the van. They all crammed into the back so they'd be as far away as possible from Apollo and the rest of us highly infectious males. Bianca sat with them, leaving her little brother to hang in the front with us, which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn't seem to mind. Even Tempest sat with them, her arms crossed and legs spread out as she slouched. She had that look on her face again. By "look", I mean she looked like she wanted to skin me alive and sell my carcass for a single cigarette.

To be honest, I've always felt... weird about her. Not like an attraction thing, but Tempest is really weird. Yeah, I know that sounds like I'm a dick, but it's true. I've known plenty of weird kids, and I'm considered a weird kid at my school, but Tempest is like a Weird Kid on steroids, and adderall, and six energy drinks, and LSD, and she's wanted in six states for arson.

For starters, she was an asshole right out of the gate. I mean, we literally met the same day Chiron was fired, and Annabeth was literally breaking down, and Tempest thought it was a great idea to call Annabeth stupid (I know because Annabeth told me after dinner about how much she hated Tempest for it).

Then the whole guinea-pig thing happened, and that's just awful all around. I mean, being turned into a guinea pig is bad enough. Afterwards, I still felt so small and scared. But, Tempest being Tempest, forced me to stay a guinea pig for her own enjoyment. I very strongly disliked her after that.

But then, she apologized to me. And... well, it felt very real if I'm being honest. I remember when I said if she knew what it felt like to be humiliated so bad, and she'd said yes. I asked her what she meant by that, and she told me a story about her childhood (I won't repeat it out of respect). After that, I kind of understood why she is the way that she is.

I also admired her for helping us so much on the quest. After all, it was her that fished me out of the sea, and her that saved Annabeth from dying (Annabeth told me about that, too). And, she gave me a shield when I fought Luke on the Princess Andromeda. At camp, she was somewhat nice to me, too. She was still rude in comparison to normal people, but in comparison to Tempest, she is absolutely amazing to me.

Then we have the whole hating-all-men thing. I mean, it's so obvious that she has a lot more trouble with boys than with girls. Tempest will fight anyone at pretty much any given time, but with men, it's on sight. And, don't tell her I said this, Tempest has definitely gotten worse about it in the last two or three months.

Today, though, she seemed to hate everybody.

"This is so cool!" Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver's seat. "Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it's them and sometimes it's you and Artemis?"

"Downsizing," Apollo said. "The Romans started it. They couldn't afford all thosetemple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car."

"But how does it work?" Nico asked. "I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of gas!"

Apollo chuckled and ruffled Nico's hair. "That rumor probably got started because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends on whether you're talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think about the sun? Ah, now that's more interesting. They've got a lot riding on the sun... er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines, makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams about the sun, kid. It's as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The chariot is a manifestation of the sun's power, the way mortals perceive it. Make sense?"