𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐖 ༄ ᴘercy ᴊᴀᴄᴋꜱᴏɴ

i anger even the herbivores

I wake up with a gasp, feeling like freezing cold water has just been poured over me.

Then I realise, it had. Someone took it upon themself to pour ice-water directly onto me in the hopes of waking me up. It worked, but now, I was cold and shivering, whilst unbelievablably annoyed and still a little out of it.

Kai is immediately by my side, his hand gripping mine. "Crap, it worked. Hey, Nai. You good?"

"Kai?" I cough out, pushing the wet strands of my hair off my face. "What the fuck? Did you pour water on me?!"

Hands suddenly appear on my other side, as someone wraps a towel around me. I only catch sight of her braids and half of a worried and disappointed expression, before Annabeth turns away again. "I told them not to do it." She grumbled, settling back into a chair. I'm about to thank her for the towel, when someone else interrupts.

"That was me, actually." A voice pipes in. I turn, and standing next to Annabeth is Percy. He looks taller than last year, and has grown into himself a little more, the baby fat in his cheeks has lessened and his jawline more pronounced. He shoots me an easy grin, and I stare wide-eyed, my anger forgotten as soon as I see him.

"Percy!" I gasp. "You're back?!"

He rolls his eyes with a smile, before he starts to walk towards me. I try and shift, expecting a hug after almost six months of no contact, but that's not what he does.

He stops inches from the bed, and holds out his fist in a very polite, and very weird fistbump. I stare, confused, before awkwardly giving him the fistbump back.

The tips of his ears have gone red, and Annabeth - despite her previously concerned expression - is holding back a laugh.

I smile tightly, confused by what's happening. "Well, welcome back then. Did you get here last night?"

"This morning. Literally moments before you came running past with some monster chasing you." He grins but it's no longer carefree. Now it's a little tense.

"Oh. Yeah." I say, nodding my head. "That."

Kai frowns. "What the hell happened this morning? Where were you?"

I cleared my throat. "Out for a early morning walk. Lost track of time. Ran into the creature." I tell him, safely skipping over the fact that 'the walk' had been last night and I had 'lost track of time' when I fell asleep in a tree.

Annabeth frowns. "What? But Katie said-"

"Annabeth! I just wanna say, thanks for the towel. It's keeping me pretty toasty." I interrupt, shooting her a grin. A grin that screamed stop talking, please!

Annabeth seemed to get the message. "Yeah. you're welcome...." She drawled, her eyes narrowed as she stared me down.

Then she shook her head, as if clearing her thoughts. "But we really need to talk about what happened this morning. You were chased down by a monster, who attacked you and then.. talked. Not to mention, it had some weird sort of protection over it. All our weapons and attacks just bounced off like it was in a bubble. The only person who could get close to it, was you. None of this is normal. We need to find out what's going on." She spoke, her authoritative voice echoing through the room.

"It was so weird. Campers kept trying to get to the monster, and help you, but they physically were just bounced off." Kai said, shifting in his seat as he turned to me curiously. "And what did the monster say to you? None of us could get close enough to hear." 

I'm about to try and answer, when Percy speaks first.

"But why was it after you in the first place?" he asks, fiddling with his pen as he spins it round his fingers. "When it got to you, it didn't actually attack you, and when it was running through camp, it was only chasing you. It ignored everyone else. Normal monsters wouldn't just do that for no reason."