DISCLAIMER: DO NOT OWN.

I was still giggling like a complete crumb (it's still kind of difficult not to fall into my thirties slang) while Percy and Annabeth stared at me, completely shocked at this turn of events. The Nico they had said goodbye to definitely would not be slouching haphazardly in front of them, chortling around the yummy breakfast delights shoved into his cram-hole. Well gosh; it is really quite rude and unbecoming of them to gaze upon my visage with such blatant disapproval clouding their faces. I tell them such. They look even more scandalized. I shrug, and breakfast marches on in (what I believe is) companionable silence. Just when I'm about to devour my last piece of bacon, I realize something. I scream like a bee is making love to my petals (it has happened once, when I was a daffodil, and how the fuck did that bee get into the goddamn underworld?) Percy and Annabeth look up from their plates, startled, and I unceremoniously grab my plate and clumsily run over to the fireplace at the eating area.

There is a curious silence all around me, and I throw my bacon into the fire and wail out;

"OH GODS, DAD I'M SO SORRY! THIS IS THE SECOND FUCKING TIME I FORGOT TO OFFER SOMETHING, PLEASE DON'T SEND YOUR BITCH OF A WIFE TO TURN ME INTO A DAFFODIL, I LOVE YOUUU!" I end my begging with loud, terrified, irrational panting. Hey, if you were as high as I am right now, you'd be hyperventilating too.

Dionysus is staring at me, entirely impassive to my melodrama. Chiron looks flat out incredulous and pissed (he really shouldn't be either; I pull this sort of shit a couple times a year. Seriously dude.) For a moment the silence reins supreme, until a few people shriek and book ass from their tables. Why? Because they were sitting in a shaded area, and the shadows suddenly sprang to life, coming at me like an angry crack addict. I just sigh, and let them encase me snugly, no use fighting fate.

The floor is front of me gives birth to a skeleton adorned in the worn down robes of a foot soldier from the dark ages (one of my father's favorite points in history, where people dropped dead from the bubonic plague). It marches toward me, ominously, and everyone else in the area (barring Percy who has out Riptide, and Annabeth who grabbed her dagger) is holding their breath, afraid for me and themselves, respectively. I look over to Percy and Annabeth, and give them a reassuring look, and they relax their stances a bit. I direct my attention to the foot soldier, which is standing right in front of me now, close enough that I can feel the chill of the Underworld radiating in waves off of him. He raises his bony hand and…flicks my nose, with extreme force. Like, hard enough that a THWAP noise is echoing in the rebounding silence. The shadows release me from their grip and I cry out in pain, my hands immediately shooting up to my smarting nose. I pout, and the soldier crumbles into ashes. I trek back over to my friends, looking at them for pity.

"Um, wow. That was odd; your dad sure has changed, hasn't he?" Percy says hesitantly, awkwardly. I nod, and sit down. Annabeth turns to me with such seriousness that I think I've suddenly had that fork magically tucked behind my ear again.

"That…was utterly hilarious." She says with a straight face, before she bursts out laughing, Percy following suit. And suddenly, the spell of silence has been lifted and everyone is laughing at my father's eccentricity and my misfortune. Even Chiron and- AND FUCKING DIONYSUS THAT MOTHERFUCKER IS SMILING. I feel so betrayed, completely gob-smacked, that I cannot even process it. I'm too stoned to identify all this betrayal, so I laugh too. And then cringe instantly as my nose smarts again. I sullenly glare at all these off the cob bastards, who won't be smiling later when I ask some demons to wait under their beds until nightfall.

I hate my life sometimes.

Terminology:

Crumb: Social Outcast, loser.

Off the cob: Crude People, rude.