Comrades In Arms (Chapter 34)

Quote: "One will never excel at anything if an attempt is not given. If devotion is not committed, success is certain to never arise."

~2 Weeks Later~

"AHHH!" A feminine shriek pierced my ears like a speaker as I raised an eye.

"Huh, so you two like to hang out here?" I said slyly. I had just caught Jason and Piper sharing a kiss by the beach. It was late afternoon, and it had been very coincidental that I ran into them here.

The sun was dim, as it drifted over the orange skies above the blue waves, creating a beautiful sunset. It was honestly a really romantic setting, so I applauded Jason and Piper for their choice of location.

"PERCY!" Jason cried, as if he had just missed out on something truly wonderful. I seemed to have interrupted their little date, by complete accident of course.

"Sorry, I didn't mean it. I didn't expect you guys to be out here of all places. By the way Jason, I didn't know you could do opera." I said sheepishly, and Piper crossed her arms as Jason threw his hands in the air. 

"Come on man! The Bro code!" He nudged my shoulder.

"I'll make it up to you later, anyways, have you guys seen Nico? I haven't seen him around camp that much." I inquired, as that was my reason for looking around Camp Half-Blood in the first place. Jason put his hands over his head and sighed as he cooled down, and tried to remember the last time he saw Nico.

"Nico? He's always helping his father in the Underworld I think. Probably helping with processing the dead, I hear it's really busy down there." Jason said thoughtfully.

"Hm, I guess that makes sense. I'll have to visit them soon. Also, it seems that what you're saying is that it's quite lively in the underworld, huh?" I joked, but received a identical reaction of blank looks from both Piper and Jason at the same time.

"Percy, that was a bad joke, and you should be ashamed of yourself." Piper shook her head slowly in comedic fashion, as she disapproved of my fantabulous humor.

"We're just going to pretend we didn't hear anything." Jason said with his hand on his forehead, disappointed.

"Wow, tough crowd. Shall I let you two go back to munching on each other's faces?" I teased, and saw them both tense up and give me a playful glare. 

"Don't tell anyone we were here. It's a really nice place to spend time together." Piper said, staring toward the horizon over the slow tides.

"Yeah...it is. It's the same place Annabeth and I used to hang out. Son of Poseidon, it's in my domain and all that junk." I shrugged. Jason and Piper both frowned at the mention of our former comrade, and I accidently dampened the mood between them.

"Well, ah...how about we all go hang out somewhere?" Piper suggested, as if an idea popped into her head. I looked at her strangely, because the idea seemed a bit strange to me. It's been ages since we've really talked to each other and had fun as a group, and Leo, Nico, Reyna, Hazel, and Frank weren't here at the moment.

"Really?" Jason and I said at the same time, and the two of us looked at each other with weird faces before looking back to Piper.

"Why not? It's been forever since we all did something together. Every time we ever tried to do something, we've been interrupted by just about anything. Right now seems like a decent time to relax, especially after someone ruined a certain romantic moment for us." Piper said, as if daring me to refuse her offer. 

"Just the three of us?" I asked, uncertain.

"It'll take too long to round everyone up. Who knows where everyone is, I don't want to have to search all of camp, the state, Olympus, the Underworld, or some mythical destination that only a handful amount of people know..." Piper said, and I could understand where she was coming from.

"Sure. I don't see why not." I nodded, and Piper smiled in return. For some reason, I had a feeling if I had said no, I woken up tomorrow in the Poseidon's cabin covered in glitter and makeup. Just a sneaking suspicion...

"Don't I get in a say in this?" Jason interjected, but Piper gave him a look that said "my word is law, you silly peasant" and he backed off in a heartbeat. It was quite clear who was the boss of this relationship, and it wasn't the son of Jupiter.

And they say Chivalry is dead.

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Eventually, an hour later we had ended up in the mortal world. Piper had "forcefully insisted" that we go eat at a restaurant, and Jason and I were unsure, until we noticed that monsters avoided us altogether. We were relieved to know that we wouldn't cause a commotion in public is we stepped out of Camp. It felt weird outside the barrier, because we had been conditioned and so used to not being outside and not on guard constantly, that it made us feel weird inside now that we could move freely.

Piper chose an Italian restaurant in the middle of Manhattan, and Jason and I were at this point just doing whatever Piper told us to do. We had nothing better to really do, so we played along, like we had used to a long time ago.

It was late evening, and we decided to just have a night out in the mortal world for a change, eat mortal food instead of ambrosia and nectar, and wear casual clothes rather than armor or robes.

Piper was wearing a purple and red skirt with a white shirt along with a denim jacket that suit her well. I guess it was her whole "daughter of Aphrodite" ordeal that made her practically desirable whatever she was wearing. That's probably why she received so many stares and glances as we walked down the streets a few minutes ago, and I had laughed at how Jason was giving glares to random strangers who stared at his girlfriend. He practically looked like Donkey Kong defending a barrel of bananas.

Eventually, we sat ourselves by a window, and the restaurant was fairly packed on this night. It was peaceful to see the mortals all interacting normally, because frankly, it's something I haven't been able to see in a while.

"I told you we should have just taken the shortcut." Jason grumbled, his jaw was probably tired from giving death stares to bystanders.

"Relax, it's not like any of them have a chance. Jealous much?" Piper rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was playing with Jason like a fiddle. She secretly enjoyed how protective Jason was of her, and I could see that in the way she looked at him. It was pretty obvious Jason valued Piper above almost anything else, even himself.

Jason piped down (ha, ha, I said piped, now move along.) with the look of defeat on his face. I did not envy his position as Piper's boyfriend. The two were practically made for each other, with Jason being the by the book boy scout, always following orders and had a pure, untainted heart. Piper used to be shy and more reserved, but once the war was over and we all got closer, it was found out that she had one crazy side to her that she showed a little bit to people like me and Hazel for example, but Jason is the guy having a front-row seat alongside her.

A match made in Olympus, I'd say.

We ordered a few meals, some fancy pasta stuff that I couldn't even try to pronounce, but Piper and Jason were apparently some spaghetti contours, because they just went along fine. I just ordered a chicken parmesan, and Piper sighed deeply, like she was extremely underwhelmed by my choice. I used Hestia's blessing to whip up a blueberry flavored coke. Sometimes eating food rather than ambrosia was refreshing despite actually tasting somewhat less flavorful, but it just felt more natural and more intuitive than magic.

Then, we began being who we really are. 

"-so then Hazel kissed Frank in the middle of camp! It was so sweet, and Frank passed out cold as a rock." Piper gossiped, giggling like a schoolgirl at the memory. Jason grinned as he also remembered what Piper was talking about. However, this was news to me, as I hadn't heard much about them since.

"Sounds just like something he would do. That's pretty much what I did when I got my first kiss." I chuckled, recalling my first kiss when I had been so shocked that I got caught by Kronos's minions at Hephaestus's forge. That was when everyone had been looking for the labyrinth under Camp Half-Blood.

"Not only that, but one time, Nico accidentally dropped a his myth-o-magic cards in the middle of camp, and the younger campers all got addicted and started stealing his collection. He was so mad at first, he even started a witch hunt in order to find all his cards again! Can you believe that?" Piper said hysterically, and I started to laugh uncontrollably as well.

"Ha ha, you're kidding me right? Even I wouldn't touch his cards when I first met him." I said.

"Actually, we had a run-in with some strange folks over the years..." Jason stated, remembering something in the past. The whole time, I saw him beaming with interest and excitement, like he really wanted to tell me what I had missed. I was lucky to have friends like Piper and Jason, who always found it in their hearts to include me, even though I'd been out of touch for a while.

"After you were gone, we had this encounter with this boy named Carter Kane and his sister Sadie. The boy said he'd met with you one time, and said they were on a mission to defeat some ancient Egyptian god or something. Leo and I were on a quest when we met, so we didn't believe them and thought they were some sort of trick, until they mentioned you and Annabeth. Though, sadly, we couldn't help them at the moment, as we were on our own quest. Haven't seen them since, but that made us think that there may be other gods out there." Jason explained, and he was dead serious the whole time.

I thought back a long, long time ago and sort of remembered running into some Carter Kane...but I couldn't place it.

"Name rings a bell. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised about other pantheons, as we already have Greek and Roman ones. I'd be willing to bet there's a few others out there as well." I shrugged, and took a sip of soda.

"Doesn't that bother you though? The thought of other demigods, or other cataclysms that could happen?" Jason exclaimed, and he had a point.

"Nah. As long as they don't intertwine with our world, we don't have to worry. Besides, for all we know, the Shinto pantheon could be full of flying ninjas, a Taoist sect made up of god-fighters, or a Norse clan with a bunch of Vikings and dudes with fabulous beards." I said, and when said aloud, it did sound pretty reasonable. After all, Greek and Roman gods were never worshipped nowadays, so it would make sense that we have a weaker pantheon that used to be very strong.

"Hmm...that does sound cool. How about a Christian-" Jason started but I immediately cut him off.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa hold your horses, we gotta keep this viewer-friendly. Can't have religious wars be caused by us anytime soon. We'll get banned." I warned sternly, and Jason stared at me oddly.

"Banned? From where...?" He said, puzzled.

"Never mind that, anyways, who knows? The world is full of mysteries that are yet to be answered. I don't think cataclysms are much of a worry either. Remember that Mayan calendar crisis back in 2012? Maybe that's when the Mayan gods faded, and didn't leave any demigods behind." I pondered. I was speaking out of guesses, but relatively theoretical possibilities.

"Oh yeah...that actually kinda creepy. Like, maybe they had some sort of destructive god who killed all the demigods like Kronos would, and destroyed the Mayan pantheon entirely from physical existence...that could happen to us one day." Jason said matter-a-factly, and Piper stared at him like she was taken aback by how conclusive he was.

"It's only creepy if you think of it like that. Maybe they just got too old and lived long, happy lives, but kept their children ignorant to the mythical side of the world in an attempt to conceal them, like a demigod's parents would for us." I suggested.

"That doesn't exactly sound very happy, but sounds better than world domination." Piper said unappealingly. 

"Welp, that's just my two cents. Hopefully our brothers got their roles covered, because we already got our hands full with Pontus." I groaned.

"Now that I think about it, aren't there like over 8,000 Hindu gods? Greek and Roman combined doesn't have anywhere near that amount, I can only imagine how crazy it must be for them..." Jason shuddered, and the thought was pretty intimidating. With that many holy beings, things would probably be chaotic everyday.

"True, but look what we can do with our Greek lineage alone. Greek gods have been irrelevant for almost two thousand years, and look at what they can still do now. If we're being consistent, probably millions of people still practice Hindu religiously today. I can only imagine how powerful their demigods must be..." I said.

"That's a whole lot of brain-overloading information." Piper said groggily, keeping up with the conversation.

"If only Annabeth was different. She'd be ecstatic. That's enough about other pantheons anyways, the last thing we need is another world to save other than ours." I sighed.

"Right." Piper and Jason both said in unison.

The three of us talked for a while longer, laughing about this and that, just hanging out as a couple of buddies like the good ol' days. We ate, we talked, we laughed, and we had a good time, because we knew that the days coming were going to be stormy, so we may as well have some fun before the rain pours.

By the time it got late, Piper and Jason had to go back to camp before curfew. Ever since they lost their godhood and became powerful demigods once again, Chiron stilled bossed them around like sheep. I, on the other hand, wasn't restricted by the rules, so I got to stay in the mortal world for a little longer.

That night was wonderful, and I felt elated to know that I still had hope.

Hope in my friends, hope that I could still live a functioning life even though it's been a rocky way here. Through the fire and the flames, I made it here. Alive, well, and surrounded by people who admired and cared for me. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for better friends and a better family to have. Had I given up and faded in Tartarus, I'd have never made it back here and regained the life I had lost.

Let Pontus throw everything he had at me.

I'm waiting on it.

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Author's Note: Alright! Another Chapter! 

So I'm in a bit of a sticky spot when it comes to this book. While making this chapter, I've realized how out of touch I was with PJO, so these chapters may be a bit different from the previous ones in terms of format, style, and structure. 

There may be a delay between this and the next chapter, because I need to see if this story is actually worth finishing. I'm still bordering between either moving onto another project, or finishing this one. 

Feel free to leave feedback of any kind. Even though this is a pretty long book, I'm still a huge amateur when it comes to writing. What did you think of this chapter? Was it good or bad?