Mama's Boy

Chef L/N

[Percy's POV]

The next few days were torture, just like Tantalus wanted. The first order of business was moving Tyson into the Poseidon Cabin. He giggled to himself every fifteen seconds, saying, "Percy is my brother?" Like he'd won the lottery or something.

"Tyson, buddy. It's really not that simple." I tried to explain.

Unfortunately, there was no explaining it to him. He was in heaven. Me, on the other hand? Not so much. As much as I liked Tyson, I couldn't help but feel embarrassed. Ashamed even.

My dad, the almighty and powerful Poseidon, had gotten all mooney-eyed for some nature spirit, and Tyson was the result. I mean, I'd read myths about Cylops. I even remembered that most of them were Poseidon's children. But I'd never really processed that this made them my...family until I had Tyson living in the next bunk.

Then, there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, I wasn't Percy Jackson, the cool guy who'd retrieved Zeus' Master Bolt last summer. Now, I was Percy Jackson, the poor schmuck stuck with an ugly monster for a brother.

"He's not my real brother!" I tried to explain whenever Tyson wasn't around, "He's more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like a half-brother twice removed or something!"

Nobody bought it.

I was angry at my dad. I felt like being his son was some big joke now.

Y/N and Annabeth tried to make me feel better. They suggested that we team up for the chariot race to take our minds off our problems. Don't get me wrong, we all hated Tantalus, and we were worried sick about camp, but we weren't sure what we could do about it.

Y/N had mentioned that his mom was there when he went to his cabin last night, and she was all woozy like she'd fallen or something. She was fine, apparently; she just felt like she couldn't remember the last five minutes.

Until we figured out some brilliant plan to save Thalia's tree (I was going to leave that to Y/N and Annabeth), we figured we might as well go along with the races. Apparently, teams of three weren't allowed, but Annabeth was sure she could find a loophole. So, the three of us prepared to race together.

Leah seemed pretty bummed out about it, though. I think she wanted to race with Y/N, but Annabeth and I had beaten her to the punch.

We figured that since Annabeth's mom, Athena, had invented the chariot and my dad created horses, combined with Y/N's archery skills and proficiency with most other weapons in general, we'd make a great team.

One morning, while we were sitting by the canoe lake sketching chariot designs when, some jokers from Aphrodite Cabin walked by and asked me if I needed to borrow some eyeliner for my eye... "Oh, sorry, eyes." they all snickered.

Y/N stood up and ran after them, seemingly ready to give him a piece of his mind.

Annabeth grumbled, "Just ignore them, Percy. It isn't your fault you have a monster for a brother."

In the distance, I could hear Y/N giving those Aphrodite kids the biggest dressing down of their lives. Most of them weren't paying much attention to what he was saying and just stood there looking at him all googly-eyed.

"He's not my brother!" I snapped, "And he's not a monster, either!"

"Hey, don't get mad at me! And technically, by definition, he is a monster." Annabeth retorted.