After Time

Leo

I just about jumped out of my skin as Percy came up behind me. "Holy shit!" I shouted, punching him in the arm. Annoyingly, he only stared at the spot. "Bad enough you can't talk, your footsteps are silent too!"

The son of Poseidon looked at me in amusement, before gesturing to the blueprint for the Argo II. When Piper, Jason and I returned from our quest, we had very quickly decided who would be joining us on our trip to Greece. Me, Jason, Piper, Annabeth, Andromeda, and two other Romans were presumably the seven heroes mentioned in the prophecy, Chiron said. Additionally, Percy, Calypso—former Titaness and Percy's girlfriend. Distractingly pretty, but I don't think she likes me very much—Will Solace, Pollux,  Gleeson Hedge, and a few others were joining us mostly for maintenance.

That first briefing had been scary. Percy and Annabeth had this terrifying aura of determination and fury as Jason described the Roman camp to them. Most of the counsellors—the ones who had fought in the Titan war, I learned—kept looking between each other, as if they were all having their silent conversation.

Until then, I had known Annabeth was a badass, but Percy had seemed far more harmless. It never made sense to me how Jake and Nyssa all but worshiped the ground he walked on, treating him like some kind of war hero. Not to mention the first day when his look had convinced a couple of Ares kids not to give me the 'Initiation'. He was too calm and joyful for me to understand that. He seemed like he couldn't hurt a fly.

Conversely, the boy had been downright murderous when Jason told him what Hera had done to his sister. Clarisse—a big, scary Ares girl—had needed to physically hold him back from shooting off to rescue her. The next day, he disappeared for about 4 hours and returned inconsolable, even by Calypso. On the following day, he had gone right back to his normal, jovial, harmless self; a look I thought was much more befitting the Champion of Hestia.

I looked at the spot on the blueprints he was pointing at. Behind us was the work-in-progress Argo II, only a month into construction. The main hull was nearly completed now, and would probably be finished in a few days. Percy was seemingly trying to point out something about the living quarters of the ship.

He made a few signs, which I didn't understand. He looked around the desk. After a few seconds, he tried to make different signs. They weren't sign language, as it was much more bombastic than his typical dialect, but I slowly figured out what he meant. "The engine room? No... the stables? Okay, what about them? What? Get rid of it? Why?" He paused, before continuing. "The flying... horses... oh, right, pegasi... the pegasi won't use it?"

He shook his head. He made a few more signs. I got the gist. The Pegasi like to wander.

"Oh, gods, yeah," Annabet walked over from the entrance to Bunker 9. "They barely stay in the Camp stables as it is." Percy, looking incredibly relieved to see her, made a few signs. "Of course they do," she sighed in response. "Percy says they always use Chiron as an opposing argument."

I cracked a smile, "well, technically..."

Percy slapped his forehead. 'Please don't encourage them.'

"Duly noted," I put my hands up. "But while I've got you both here, do you have any requests before we start building the interior?"

Annabeth looked over the blueprint. Percy pointed out something and made a few signs. "Oh yes, don't waste space on private bedrooms, there's too many people anyway," she said. I jotted it down in a notebook. "Make two sleeping bays instead." Percy interrupted, holding up three fingers. Annabeth turned very red all of a sudden. "Right, three bays, not two. Boys, girls, and special cases."

"Right, of course," I nodded, jotting it down. "Gender is a spectrum, same-sex couples defeat the purpose of gender-based segregation in this context, other personal trauma-related issues, and so on. Lots of reasons for gender-neutral sleeping quarters" Annabeth turned very red at my second point. Afterwards, she looked at me curiously.