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Percy set down the last moving box in their new NYC apartment with a relieved huff.
“Glad we’re finally done, Seaweed Brain?” Came a teasing voice from next to him as Annabeth set down her own box.
Percy smiled, shaking his head ruefully. “Yeah I am. Gods, I’m never going to give my mom grief about moving ever again.”
“When did you ever give Sally grief about moving?” Annabeth laughed. “You love your mom.”
“Yeah, but I really didn’t want to move in with Smelly Gabe.”
Annabeth paused. “Actually, you were probably justified there.”
“Yeah, but my mom was justified in making me do it anyway.” Percy shrugged. “Gabe’s smell kept the monsters away, and I would have had to leave much earlier if it wasn’t for that.”
Annabeth hummed in agreement as the two set to unpacking.
~~~~~
“And up goes the last one!” Annabeth stepped back, satisfied as she looked at the picture hanging on the wall. It was of her, Percy, Nico, Thalia, and Grover, laughing happily at the sparring grounds at Camp.
At least, Grover and her were laughing. Thalia and Percy were smirking as they teamed up to give Nico a noogie while the boy tried to push her away.
“I miss them.” Strong arms enveloped her in a hug, and Annabeth leaned back into Percy.
“You’ll see them in a few days when you go back to Camp to work on the city again.” The rumble of his voice in his chest reassured her. “What did you decide to name it again?”
“New Delphi,” Annabeth absentmindedly answered, still looking at the photo wistfully. “It was one of the most powerful and influential cities in Greece that wasn’t the domain of any specific god.”
“Not even Apollo?” Percy’s confused frown was audible, and Annabeth chuckled.
“Percy, Delphi may have been the site of the original Oracle, but the Oracle was out of the city bounds. Only her cave was sacred to Apollo.”
Percy made a soft noise of understanding before falling silent as they both looked at the picture.
Eventually Percy stirred, releasing Annabeth as he stretched, popping his back before clapping his hands together. “Well! I think after finishing unpacking all of that a celebratory dinner may be in order.”
“As long as you’re the one cooking!” Annabeth grinned, following Percy into the kitchen as he snorted.
“Don’t worry, you’re still banned after you set our last kitchen on fire.” He pointed a finger at her, half-jokingly. “I thought that was Leo’s job, not yours?”
“Fire’s pretty. I have no excuse other than that.”
~~~~~
Percy leaned back as far as he could in his chair, groaning as he cracked his neck. After so long staring at a computer screen as he typed out the story of his third year at Camp, the lines and words were starting to blur in front of his face.
Scratching at his stubble, the 30-year old walked to the kitchen, planning on grabbing a drink and a snack to try to decompress. He didn’t regret choosing to publish his life story to help other demigods out there, but whoever said writing was easy had lied.
It was easier now that Leo had come up with monster-proof technology and custom Greek keyboards, but actually sitting down and writing was still a pain.
He absentmindedly sent an icicle spike at the hellhound in the corner, impaling it as it tried to lunge at him as he opened the fridge to look at what was available.
Eventually deciding on a ginger ale, Percy grabbed it and an apple before closing the fridge and leaning on the counter as he munched down on his snacks.
As he drained the last of the ginger ale, Percy frowned as he sensed a harpy coming in at high speeds. “Weird…there have been a lot more monster attacks lately.”
After killing the harpy, he debated with himself if he should call Annabeth about it for a few minutes, before deciding against it. She was busy building a city after all, and she’d be back in a week.
~~~~~
Percy gagged at the smell of the dumpster, turning to grab his trash bag and throw it in as fast as he could, nearly missing the glint of light hitting metal in his haste to slam the lid shut.
Leaning against the wall several feet away, Percy paused as he remembered that flash in the dumpster.
Had that been Celestial Bronze?
Curiosity getting the better of him, Percy went back to the dumpster and opened it.
And then promptly regretted that decision as soon as the smell hit him again and he saw what was in the dumpster.
“Oh you have got to be kidding me, how the fu-”
~~~~~
Percy stared at the sword sitting innocuously on his dining table. Even though it didn’t have eyes, Percy had the striking feeling that it was staring back at him, assessing him just as he assessed it.
Steel gleamed on one side of the xiphos, while Celestial Bronze ran down the other. Even without touching it, Percy knew it was just as wickedly sharp as it had been when it last fought against him.
“Backbiter.” Percy sighed, leaning back in his chair. “What to do with you.”
Intellectually, Percy knew he should probably throw it back in the dumpster and do his best to forget it existed, maybe even going so far as to get a different apartment. The sword was the reincarnation of Kronos’s scythe, and was almost certainly both cursed to high hell and the cause of the increased monster attacks he’d had to deal with lately.
But on the flip side of the coin, who knew who would find it if he just left it? It was a dangerous weapon, and Percy could count the people he would trust with it on one hand and still have fingers left over.
Notably, all of them were demigods he had known since he was a kid- Annabeth, Nico, and Clarisse.
He loved Thalia and Grover with all his heart, but he didn’t know if he could trust them with this sort of power. Grover did a good job of hiding it, but he held a burning grudge against humans who desecrated the environment, which just so happened to be most of them.
For her part, Percy remembered how tempted Thalia had been by the power Bessie the Ophiotaurus had held. Backbiter in its current incarnation was arguably more powerful, and he didn’t want to see the aftermath of her losing control with that sort of power.
Percy groaned as he scrubbed his face with his hands. “I’m going to have to take care of you myself, won’t I?”
~~~~~
Panting, Percy finished off the last empousa, ignoring her pleadings and weak attempts to charmspeak him. With Piper as a friend, one very quickly learned how to resist charmspeak and other forms of mind control.
Percy trudged back into his apartment, collapsing on the couch in exhaustion. Since he had resolved to guard Backbiter, it seemed like the monster attacks had quadrupled.
He shot a baleful glare at the sword sitting innocently on his table, sure that it was somehow responsible for this. He wouldn’t be surprised if monsters could sense it.
“You just had to call for all of them, didn’t you?”
Nothing changed, but he had a feeling it was laughing at him as a veritable army of cyclopses broke down his door and charged into the apartment.
Groaning, Percy stood up and started fighting. He was slowing, and hits that he would have been able to avoid with ease not even three days ago were slipping past his guard.
Case in point, the fist swinging directly for his face.
Percy barely had time to try to bring Riptide up in a futile attempt to parry the hit before the Cyclops exploded into gold dust as a drakon-bone sword emerged from its chest.
Annabeth stood behind it, a stormy expression on her face as she noticed the gold dust everywhere she could see.
Before the remaining cyclopses had time to react, she was in their midst, slaughtering them with ease. Percy had been too tired to wipe them out like he normally would have, but Annabeth was fresh from Camp and had none of that weighing her down.
Once the dust settled, Annabeth turned to Percy with a single eyebrow raised. “Care to explain why our apartment looks like a mess and why you couldn’t take care of them yourself?”
Percy gestured tiredly at the table as he collapsed back onto the couch. “Found that in the dumpster. It’s been calling what feels like every monster in New York.”
He could tell the moment she recognized what the sword was, her body immediately going taut.
“Perseus Jackson.” Annabeth’s tone was clipped and holding barely-restrained anger and disbelief. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yup.”
“Why is it in our apartment?”
Percy shrugged. “I found it and didn’t want anyone using it, so I took it back here. Didn’t know how to destroy it, or I would have done that already. Fire doesn’t melt it, and it broke the sledgehammer.”
“ Di immortales ,” Annabeth swore under her breath. “Percy, you can’t just destroy it with mortal means. You need to weaken it with Styx water before it can be smashed. And only Greek fire has a chance of melting Celestial Bronze when it’s been enchanted like that.”
Percy tilted his head. “Huh. Well, I think I might know where we can get both of those.”
~~~~~
When he asked them for their help, Nico and Clarisse’s instant assurances had been a welcome relief. The monster attacks just kept coming, and Percy knew they needed to destroy the scythe sooner rather than later.
Standing guard outside his apartment complex, Percy watched as Nico popped out of the shadows with a veritable cauldron of water from the River Styx, just as Clarisse pulled up to his apartment with a Greek firebomb and a reinforced Celestial Bronze sledgehammer.
“Hey Prissy, I call dibs on smashing it!” The daughter of Ares was just as rough as he remembered, and Percy chuckled as he pulled her and a slightly resisting Nico into a hug.
“As long as I get a swing, I don’t care who else joins in. Thank you both for getting here so quickly.”
Nico extricated himself from the hug quickly as he looked around. “So where is it?”
Percy jerked a thumb behind him, pointing at his apartment. “Annabeth’s guarding it in the living room while I keep watch out here.”
“Great.” Clarisse grinned savagely as she stomped up the stairs. “Let's get rid of this as soon as possible.”
“You certainly won’t find me complaining.” Percy snorted as he followed her back up, helping Nico lift the cauldron.
In the end, the last remnant of the war Percy had ended when he was a teenager died a rather anticlimactic death. Nico dipped it in the Styx water to make it more brittle before Clarissse and Percy laid into it with the sledgehammer. Annabeth took the remaining shards into their extremely fire-proofed kitchen (which may or may not have been because of her…exploits while cooking) and melted it all down with the Greek fire Clarisse had brought.
Staring at the bubbling metal as it melted, Percy couldn’t help but make a comment.
“I’m glad we were able to keep this situation from… boiling over .”
Immediately, everyone else in the room groaned as they registered the pun.
“What?” A shit-eating smile grew on Percy’s face. “Wouldn’t you guys prefer if I’m like this instead of getting all… melty and squishy on you?”
“Percy, I will throw you into that fire if you don’t stop, I swear to the gods.”