Percy Jackson: Night In The Land Beyond The Gods

"How water works."

Piper's POV

"And how exactly is it worse?" Annabeth scowled at him, and I copied the action.

"Because not only do you have your own endless list of enemies, you also have your godly parent's enemies who want to take out their revenge on you, and there's no protection to be found from the ones who betrayed you. Need I explain further?" Percy snapped at her, daring her to say yes.

For once I prayed she didn't intend to test him.

Annabeth rolled her eyes, "Boo hoo."

As the room started to get colder from the ice starting to swirl about Percy's fists, I broke in, "Alright! We get it, you both hate each other very much and there's probably very little chance of you two getting back together, but could you please save the arguments until after the quest – when you can both shout at each other for as long as your hearts require – and let him finish explaining? Thank you!"

Annabeth's face tinged red but Percy seemed indifferent to my annoyance, only sparing me a glance before continuing his story.

"Well, I doubt you're going to understand what I say next but I'll dumb it down as much as I can for you," he sent Annabeth a smirk as she furiously scowled at him, insulted by his statement. I had no doubts that he had purposely phrased it that way to get under her skin because everyone in the room could tell he had. And it was working.

Annabeth held her tongue, however, and I internally praised her.

"Due to my disownment, technically my water powers shouldn't work, and usually they don't or they just backfire on me, as proven a few minutes ago." Percy rolled his eyes, "But because we're in Alaska and the... 'ritual of disownment' thing didn't work out, I still retained some of my powers – just not in the way you might expect.

"So water, as an element, has three states, yeah? So it's basically a matter of emotions that control it, or the users preference over which state they use – but I think that's only if their really powerful or something, like none of what I'm telling you has a definite chance of being true. I mean, it's not like there's some kind of book about it, disownment is pretty uncommon stuff."

"You're going off on a tangent, Perce," Nico shook his head.

"My name is Percy, don't push it, di Angelo."

I could feel waves of brotherly care between them, and felt almost happy but then realised that Nico was enjoying Percy's company a little too much. Someone was going to have to remind him later that Percy wasn't coming back with us after the quest... willingly, at least.

"Still..." Nico raised an eyebrow at him as I pulled myself away from my thoughts.

"Right. So yeah, water is basically controlled by emotion: Water is the more moderate emotions and hero quality stuff, like determination, but you generally also have to be... not disowned to use it, as that power is directly linked to Poseidon; Ice is more bitter stuff, to be honest, and I was pretty bitter when I was first disowned," Percy cracked a slight smile, "But it's also more complicated and I don't really need to go into details; and Water Vapour, is the extreme emotions, like hot rage or extreme happiness – though how a person could be that happy I don't know... but, yeah, that's generally how water works."

A/N:
I am sick. Very sick. Nothing deathly or anything, but enough that I've been off school for a few days meaning, in my sick state, that I have had time to think and update. Not fun for me, exactly, but I'm hoping you guys may benefit from my ill-health, at least.
See you all on the flip side (or next chapter),
- Me