Making Waves

Chapter 1

Persephone Jackson flung open her front door, slamming it closed behind her, and stomped across the living room. She lifted her cross-body bag and threw it safely into her couch cushions as she stalked past the kitchen and straight into her bedroom. Promptly after kicking off her shoes, she fell face first onto her bed and groaned loudly, the soft mattress muffling her agitated screams as best it could. Her neighbors were definitely going to file a noise complaint one day.

She propped her head up on her elbows, so she wasn't tasting her bedsheets and fished her phone out of her pocket. Calling Annabeth was second nature to her at this point and she was able to open her contact without even looking at the screen. She pressed the phone to her ear and waited.

Not even two rings later, she heard the voice of her best friend filter through.

"Hey Percy."

She bit her lip. How should she greet her? Hey Annie. No. How's it going? No. Haha funny story....

"I quit."

Percy closed her eyes. She was supposed to ease into that, not blurt it out before even saying hello.

"You want to quit your job?" Of course, Annabeth knew exactly what she was talking about. Her incredulous tone was clear as day and Percy mentally winced.

"No, like I already quit. Quitted? Quate? Whatever it is, I did it today so..." Percy snapped back, not maliciously.

"Oh Percy, I'm sorry," Annabeth sounded remorseful, but Percy could hear the edge of confusion in her voice, "And you can just use 'quit'. 'Quitted' is grammatically correct but not as common."

Percy barked out a short laugh in response to that. Trust Annabeth to always get it right. At least the correction came after the apology.

"Thanks. And it's just... I was so sick of it."

Percy turned over on the bed so her back was pressed against the mattress. Annabeth had yet to say anything, and Percy was grateful. Her best friend knew she just needed a minute to gather her thoughts.

After the Giant War, Percy and Annabeth had gone to New Rome University like they had planned. While Annabeth studied architecture, obviously, Percy debated for a whole semester before finally settling on oceanography. She was good at it, and much of the information came naturally to her due to her parentage. She still had to work hard to memorize the terms of the processes of the ocean, and pass basic biology, chemistry, and physics class. Her dyslexia sometimes made her curse the day she was born, but overall, she was lucky. Once she understood the material, applying it came easily. While her classes sucked, the internship she managed to score after her junior year was an incredible experience. Three months on the ocean where she could describe the movement of plate tectonics under the sea and the exact patterns of waves greatly impressed the right people.

As soon as she graduated, with a degree in oceanography and a concentration in physical processes, she was snatched up by a private research company who hired her to study and analyze exactly what she was trained to do. It was so easy. She moved to Bludhaven, got a pretty good apartment with her salary, and finally settled into the normal mortal life.

It's not like her life was miserable, far from it actually. She worked normal hours, her coworkers and bosses were all decent people, and she was able to visit camp on the weekends to teach sword fighting and see her friends. Even the monster attacks had greatly diminished after the wars, the low-level monsters like hellhounds, empousai, and cyclops choosing to stay in Tartarus instead of reforming since they no longer had a master to serve and knew that the chance of them simply being sent back was much higher than before.