Because Nothing Lasts Forever

VII

The head councillors sat around the ping pong table. Everyone was doing their own thing (eating, sleeping, seeing how many pencils they could stick in someone's nose, etc. . .)

Chiron calmly waited for the last people to arrive.

The door opened and everyone fell silent.

Laughter came from the doorway.

Four people walked in, all laughing at something that one of the girls walking in (who had red hair and emerald green eyes) had said.

"Apparently, Lily was this character that died while saving her child from some evil guy named Voldemort."

The other three broke into more laughter.

Percy managed words between laughs.

". . . Died?. . . You're huntress. . . don't have children. . . Mouldy Warts?. . ."

"Are you all talking about the Harry Potter books?" A girl at the ping pong table asked incredulously.

"Yeah. . ." Percy said, calming down, before the four looked at each other and burst into more laughter. "I haven't read them yet, but Rose was just filling me in about how this Lily person died."

"But that part is sad!" The girl from the ping pong table protested.

"One, she looks just like Rose here," Percy said. "That's why it's funny. Second, sad books are the best books!"

Everyone looked at him weird.

"What? Nothing can be as sad as my life, which pretty much makes them so funny because they cry about breaking their ribs."

(A/N My reasoning for being happy during sad parts is that I'm going to be an author too. I'm 99.9% sure that makes me immune to sadness from books.)

Everyone looked at him even more weird.

Percy just rolled his eyes.

"Here's Tartarus's plans." Percy put a paper on the table.

"I thoughts you were getting a weapon?" The Ares councillor said questioningly.

"Their plan is their weapon," Percy said. "So why don't we use their plan? They think we destroyed it in the explosion—"

"I thought you weren't supposed to destroy the place." Said the Athena head councillor.

"Whoops," Percy said. Then he muttered under his breath, "Next, you're going to be telling me I wasn't allowed to blow up the St. Louis Arch."

"You blew up the St. Louis arch?!" Lizzy asked loudly.

"It was an accident," Percy said. "A lady and her dog attacked me."

"Uh huh," Lizzy said, but she was smiling, which showed she was joking.

"It was Echidna and the Chimera," Percy muttered.

"Oh," the three girls said. "Just the mother of all monsters and her deadly Chihuahua."

"Pretty much," Percy replied. "I thought it was just a fat lady with were evil dog or something. They blew a whole in the side of it, so I jumped out."

"You dropped from the top of the St Louis Arch?"

Percy shrugged, but he had a haunted look in his eyes that scared everyone.

"I've fallen from higher," he said. "Way, way, way higher." He closed his eyes. "Legend has it you fall for nine days," Percy said. "I don't know if that's true or not. I had lost track. It could've been minutes, hours, days, months. . ."

Everyone was frightened by the fear plain in Perseus Jackson's voice. But no one was more scared than the three huntresses near him. They had spent so much time with this fearless hero and had never seen or heard a sliver of fear from him.

Percy then opened his eyes after a few moments of silence and took a shaky breath. He mentally cursed at himself for losing control in front of the campers and huntresses.

"Anyway," Percy said. His voice had the tiniest shake in it. "It won't do anyone any good to be afraid of the person we're fighting against."

Everyone's eyes widened. Alice fainted, and the other two huntresses looked close to it. The other girls at the ping pong table were either on the verge of fainting or were fainting. Among the ones who didn't was, surprisingly, the Aphrodite cabin's head councillor.

"A huntress fainted," the Aphrodite kid mumbled. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"And if you ever mention it again," Percy mumbled back, glaring at her, "then I will make sure you never see it again."

The sounds of people panicking covered up the conversation to everyone but Rose, Lizzy, Percy, and the Aphrodite kid.

"Who is she, your girlfriend?" The Aphrodite kid snarled.

Everyone heard that and looked at the Aphrodite councillor like the crazy person she was. She just provoked the Perseus Jackson.

"She's the Lieutenant of the huntresses of Artemis," Percy snarled back. Everyone was surprised by his tone.

"So? She could've broken her oath," the Aphrodite kid said "reasonably".

Percy growled. "First off," he said, "it would be very weird if I were in love with my ex's daughter. Second off, I'm already in a relationship. You should never, and I mean never, accuse a demigod with the dam fatal flaw of loyalty of cheating on someone!

"Now can you do us all a favor and get out of here before I accidentally snap you neck?"

She ran out of the Big House as fast as she could.

Everyone had woken up and was staring at Percy, the three huntresses the most.

Percy put a pleasant smile on his face, but it was strained. "Let's continue this dam meeting."

*Edited*