Chapter 17 – Thou Shalt Not Underestimate Homework

A/N:
Yeah… um… I'm still alive *attempts to dodge assorted flying missiles*.
It seems that every single extended family member has some sort of anniversary this month and requires a family gathering party thing. Not that you care or anything, but that's my reason for not producing another chapter. Plus exams.

I'm pretty horrible at guessing, but I estimate that there might be around 4 more chapters left? No promises though. (Translation: I have no idea what I'm doing, so bear with).

Disclaimer: It would be pretty pointless to write fanfiction about your own novels when you could just make it canon… From that we can conclude that I am most definitely not Rick Riordan and I don't own any of this.

Great. For whatever reason, Hecate had said that it would be my decision, my choice, my responsibility as to the Misty-fate of seven billion Mortals. Just brilliant.

I'm going to skip a week or so forwards after that whole 'wait my classmate is actually a demigod!' and 'Percy you're going to have a big choice to make' thing.

It was a pretty boring week to be honest – I was… taking a break… (read: hiding out at home) due to an 'unfortunate and unexpected case of measles' (read: to let all the gossip probably circulating school about me die down a bit). Soon enough there would be a new subject of gossip and no one would notice that neither me nor Annabeth had turned up at school the last week (she had gone back to camp to help the rest of her cabin try to cure the whole epigenetics thingy).

I probably would have stayed at home indefinitely (well, at least until Thanksgiving) if Paul hadn't sat me down and coerced me to go back to school. It was the whole 'I don't care if your dad's immortal and you don't think you'll live past 20, but I'm not going to allow you to fail Junior year' argument again. In the end I agreed – reluctantly – to return to school.

Remembering the last time I popped back to school unexpectedly, I had borrowed my mum's phone and decided to text Ben (who'd given me his number ages ago, and I'd managed to accidentally memorise it) to warn him of my impending return. Hopefully this time, he wouldn't alert the entire canteen to my presence.

Anyhow, I was back at school and remembering the pains of homework. Believe me, never underestimate a teacher's capacity to set unbelievable amounts of homework at the most awkward times. It's even worse when you haven't done it for some reason and you can't tell the teacher. Take a minute to imagine my situation:

Teacher: So, Percy, why haven't you done your homework?

Me: Well, Aphrodite lost her hairbrush and thought that a child of Hephaestus must have stolen it, because she and Hephaestus had argued the night before, so then I had to try to calm her down because Ares was too scared, and avert inter-deity war. I mean, I know that you're only just coming to terms with the existence of this whole world and you probably don't believe that I'm a demigod, but it's the truth. Honest.

Yeah…

Anyway, I digress. Truth be told, things were simmering back to normal. The government had issued some fairly misinformed leaflets explaining what to do when confronted with various beings of the mythological world; there were various new talk shows devoted to discussing said beings and the whole idea of it; and both presidential candidates had promised to add Ancient Greek and Classical History modules to the National Curriculum if they were elected, but other than that the world pretty much seemed to carry on as it did before.

It was a Thursday afternoon and I had just managed to escape the Biology classroom (we were dissecting fish today in Ms Marren's latest attempt to traumatise me). I'd been frantically swiping through a persistent Iris message all period before it could materialise, so it was a relief when I was finally alone and it could fizzle into existence without unnecessary drama. I made a mental note to try to find a more subtle means of communication for the future (would Walky-Talkies work?).

An Athena kid was standing by their Smartboard which was crowded with formulae (see, I do know how to conjugate nouns in the 1st declension in Latin, thank you very much). He seemed to be peering into the rainbow nervously.

I didn't recognise him so I waved awkwardly - and hoped he wasn't one of the Athena kids who are biased against me because of Dad.

'Percy!' he cried as soon as he noticed me. 'We've been trying to call you for ages!'

'Um…yeah… I was kind of in lessons. Why?'

'We wanted to let you know that we're pretty close to finding a solution...' he explained, his face lighting up with hope. 'We've got pretty much all the theory, we just need to construct something to distribute the sound waves and get the base code for that guy's subwave network so-'

He continued talking for a while but I wasn't really following. At last, he paused for breath and I took the opportunity to voice my query – 'that's great and all, but why are you telling me? Where's Annabeth?'

He may or may not rolled his eyes at that point. 'Annabeth said it was important that you knew – something about Hecate? And anyway, she was telling Chiron what I just told you and then I think she was going to work on sourcing the base code? You see, we know it's in the Expo company admin computer – I believe you're acquainted with the lead scientist's son, Rufus? – but, well… we all came to Camp Half Blood quite young and it's not exactly safe for us to use computers for intercomputer communication. And seeing as Annabeth's lost her laptop and they've got top security anyway…'

'You mean you can't hack into the admin computer?' I summed up.

'If you want to put it that way… It is harder than you think you know.' He grumbled. 'But you're in the Mortal world at the moment, can you help? Maybe there's someone you know?'

I must have looked taken aback – an Athena kid accepting that they needed help? Moreover, help from a Mortal. They must have been desperate.

'I guess I could ask Paul, but he's not exactly good at computers. Maybe my mom? I'll ask around.' I promised him (still not entirely sure what I was getting myself into. How did this base code or whatever relate to solving the problem anyway?)

He thanked me in an equally verbose manner before swiping through the connection and leaving me standing like a fool in the middle of a deserted hallway as the bell rang.

I had a new mission: find someone who could, and would be prepared to, hack a random computer. Oh, and would be prepared to keep it a secret and not require payment (no matter what Chiron says, the strawberry industry isn't very lucrative). No pressure then.

A/N:
Well congratulations on persevering this far. I know not much happened this time but I'm easing myself (slowly) back into actually bothering to write.
Thanks for reading, and do leave a review to tell me what you thought (the heat has sapped my ability to even ponder writing something attempting weak humour. I would not survive in Texas.)
Thank you to all you amazing reviewers – you're all brilliant!