I'm extremely sorry for the long wait, I sort of lost motivation for a while... I'm sorry.

Chapter 8

"HELP? What do you mean by help?" Percy squeaked, as Aphrodite pushed him on a chair and looked at him closely.

She proceeded to squeeze his cheeks and squeal loudly. "You are sooo cute!"

Percy shrunk back into his seat and tried not to blush.

Athena finally intervened, since Apollo was too busy laughing his ass off. "Aphrodite, stop scaring him."

"Too bad we're going to have to make you less cute; less... noticeable."

"A-Apollo..." he mumbled. Who knew the goddess of love could be so scary? What was she even talking about? Why did he need to be less noticeable?

"Look," Apollo finally managed to say through his snickering. "Aphrodite's going to make you blend in more so less people will connect you with Poseidon; after all, you're basically a carbon copy of him. And 'Thena's going to train you in the art of strategy, and battle."

"Which you need a lot of help in," the goddess of wisdom helpfully added.

"So, they know everything about me?"

Athena said, "The basics, yes."

"We both promise not to tell anybody though, since you helped our children," Aphrodite informed him, before she turned his chair around so he stared at a mirror. "Besides, it's not your fault Zeussy's all paranoid and Poseidon fell in love—Oh, they were so cute—Poseidon and Sally, not Zeus, of course!"

Percy raised his eyebrow while Athena sighed in the background.

He looked at himself in the mirror; his dishevelled and lanky hair that was so long it basically reached his eyes, his usual tanned face and green eyes. "Look closely, because you're not going to look the same when I'm done with you."

She picked up a pair of scissors and ran a hand through his hair, making Percy shiver.

The goddess of love then began to chop off tuffs of his dark black hair and his jaw dropped. Black strands of hair fell to the floor and Percy obediently sat.

"While Aphrodite deals with your rat's hair, I'm going to talk to you about the mission," Athena reluctantly took a seat beside him. "I saw your interaction with that Tom man, and it was barely sufficient. If a person does not comply, you have to make them, even if you have to resort to blackmail or threats. But even better than that, you have to make them respect you; treat you seriously."

Percy knew that; he knew he had to make people think he wasn't just a measly, useless 11 year old. Not if he was going to be a savior one day. But the question was: how?

"I guess the best way to do this is to let him know you aren't joking and that you are capable of great things—which you are." Athena talked on, not even noticing that she was unwittingly complimenting him. "Hermes and I will teach you more about this later."

"Another thing—as soon as I entered the elevator, I knew you had panicked. You wouldn't even look at me, and if you had, you might've saw my grey eyes and known it was me. Gods and goddesses rarely ever change their eye colour—it is a clear giveaway to who they are."

Percy slumped lower into his seat, which caused Aphrodite to smack his head. "Sit up."

"And if it wasn't a god or goddess?" he asked.

"Then you would have been right in pushing the lockdown button, but the best thing to do would have been to prevent the situation from occurring in the first place—to make sure that nobody could have possibly gotten in the elevator with you."

Percy 'hmphed'. "Didn't know it was possible."

"That's why you close the elevator door before inserting the card into the slot."

"Ohhhhhhh kaaaaaay..."

"You are definitely your father's son," Athena smirked. "And that's also why I'll be teaching you strategy skills from now on."

"Okay," Aphrodite cheerfully clapped. "Enough of your silly talking Athena, time to dye your hair Percy-boy!"

"Silly?" Athena hissed. "You're the silly, foolish—"

"What colour hair do you want?" the goddess of love asked. "Brown? No..."

"Um..."

Athena smirked. "What about blond?"

"It wouldn't go well with Percy's complexion."

"Maybe a..." the kid was hopelessly interrupted again.

"I've got the perfect colour!" the goddess of love sung, before she rubbed her hands with some goo that she mixed up and lathered it on Percy's head.

"W-What are you doing? Apollo, what's she doing?" The son of Poseidon tentatively asked. It felt so strange and gooey, like somebody decided to just crack a bunch of raw eggs on his head.

"I have no clue," Apollo drawled as he flipped through more car magazines. "But she knows what she's doing, so just go with it, mhhmm-kay?"

"Uh huh," Apollo didn't even look like he was paying attention. Percy doubted all of them, but had no choice in the matter but to accept crazy Aphrodite's choice.

Two hours and a lot of questions and arguing later, Aphrodite was finally done messing up his hair.

"One more thing." She placed manicured fingers on both sides of his temple and took a deep breath.

"What—" a searing pain suddenly tore through Percy's brain and he gasped. The pain was so awful he could barely breathe, but just as soon as it came, it faded away, leaving the boy gasping heavily for a breath. "What was that?"

"Aphrodite..." Apollo was standing up, his magazine on the ground. Percy guessed he wasn't expecting that either. What was with this goddess? She was a wild card.

The goddess of love ignored him and moved Percy's head so that he was looking directly at the mirror, something which she forbade him to do to keep the surprise. "So?" she smiled in glee. "How do you like it?"

He couldn't help but gasp in surprise. Aphrodite was right when she said he would definitely look different in the end. His hair was close-cropped now, no longer shaggy as it had been. The most important thing though, was the fact that his hair was no longer its black colour, and his eyes weren't green either. Instead, his eyes were a dull brown colour that didn't stand out, and his hair was a dark red shade that almost looked brown. All in all, he didn't look like anyone's child, much less Poseidon's.

Even though that was the whole point, he still sort of felt sad, because his looks were a huge connection to his father and without that, he somehow felt less like the son of the sea god.

"It's very... different," Percy finally said.

"Yep, nobody'll ever connect you to Poseidon, and don't worry; I can always get rid of it whenever you say so." Aphrodite assured him.

"Are you ready?" Athena asked as she finally stood up. Her grey eyes stared at him from behind her glasses.

Percy looked towards Apollo, before nodding.

"I've gotta go tend to some things, but you have fun with 'Thena and don't forget to give her a lot of trouble," the sun god laughed. He patted Percy on the head before leaving.

Great. The damn sun god was leaving him with his dad's rival.

After politely thanking Aphrodite, Athena led him to an empty secluded room beneath her palace. It was extraordinarily amazing how many empty, inconspicuous rooms you could fit in Olympus without anybody being suspicious about it, what with Zeus all paranoid and all.

In the gymnasium was a lot of training equipment and obstacles, such as a river and a forest. The room seemed extensively vast; it was like an underground labyrinth with no end, and no beginning. Athena turned around and smiled, with a glint in her eyes that promised a lot of pain and sweat. "Ready to start, sea spawn?" she asked.

Percy swallowed, but nodded with a determined look. "Yes, Lady Athena."

May 10, 2014

Please, please review if you liked it!