Imagine the best day ever. You're staying at a cabin in Montauk, spending days taking early morning walks on the beach with your girlfriend. She builds a better sandcastle than you, but when you compete to see who can find the tiniest seashell, you'll win every time. When you're both exhausted—or when you're both suffering from a bad sunburn—you'll go back to the humble cabin. While your girlfriend hums a John Lennon song in the shower, you'll make pasta with Alfredo sauce for dinner, and she'll tell you the food is to die for. After that, you'll open up the Ben and Jerry's ice cream pints—Phish Food for her, and Chewy Gooey Cookie for you—over a screening of Jaws even though you've forced her to watch it about a million times by now. She'll fall asleep on the couch before it's over, and you'll have to carry her to bed, but you don't mind because you love her that much.

Now take that beautiful scene and imagine the exact opposite. Suddenly, it's not so hard for Percy as he finds himself sharing a New Rome private honeymoon jet with his crazy ex-girlfriend on a potentially life-or-death quest.

Crazy isn't a word that Percy just throws around. People talk about their crazy ex-girlfriends all the time. Some crazy ex-girlfriends stalk you on Instagram. Others send you relentless text messages until you block them, only to send your nudes to your mother, not that he would know from experience. He was on several wrong sides of TikTok for a while after Leo got those new monster-proof phones distributed.

In Percy's case, his ex-girlfriend all but dropped off the face of the earth for ten years, only to then reappear having quit all aspirations of becoming an architect in favor of a job as a bartender at Hooters, and then showed up blacked out inside a Dutch windmill. That's a crazy ex-girlfriend.

So yeah. This is not the vacation he'd like to be on right now. Instead of cozy familiar Montauk, he's flying over gigantic Europe. Instead of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, he's watching Annabeth eat his package of peanuts because she asked if he was going to eat them and did not wait for a reply.

And instead of his comfort movie Jaws, he's listening to the sounds of Annabeth playing with her shiny new monster-proof iPhone from Leo.

"Percy, how do I send this video to Will?" she asks.

"Tap the arrow at the bottom of the screen," he says, only to be tuned out by—oh gods—she's found the ringtones.

"You mean this thing can fucking quack every time someone texts me?"

It's not worth answering. She's not listening. She's had her phone for less than twenty-four hours and she's glued to it like an iPad kid.

Percy doesn't want to sound ungrateful for the strides he's made patching up his relationship with his ex-girlfriend in the past couple of days. He's thankful that they don't spill drinks on each other anymore, and they can almost stand to be in a room together, but he's learned something else about Annabeth that's changed in the past ten years.

She's annoying. Like, so annoying that Percy's thinking about drinking, but he can't do that. He doesn't drink. That's against everything he stands for, and besides, Annabeth's the one with the small drinking problem. He's the one who'll drag her to bed and hold her hair back while she vomits at the end of the night, apparently.

Annabeth, who has been not so quietly enjoying the luxuries her cell phone and the New Rome private jet have to offer, rotates about ninety degrees in her chair so her legs are hanging off the top. So it's true what they say about bisexuals and not being able to sit in chairs properly.

"You know that thing people do where they try to have sex in as many countries as possible?" Annabeth asks. The devilish glint in her stormy grey eyes is a warning sign that he isn't going to like whatever she's going to say next.

Percy raises an eyebrow. He should be used to the freaky shit she's into by this point, but he entertains the thought anyway. "I guess so."

"I want to do that," she says, "but with tattoos."

"Excuse me?" Percy can't say he's a tattoo kind of guy. He won't get down on anyone for it, and ink certainly isn't a dealbreaker in a relationship—he was flattered when Annabeth got a trident tattooed to her thigh after the Giant War—but he doesn't get it. Maybe it's because of how his momma raised him, or maybe because of his indecisiveness, but he's never felt the urge to stick a needle through his body and leave something permanent on there. Besides, it's permanent as in for the rest of your life.

Maybe that's why Annabeth likes tattoos enough to subject herself to that kind of torture every time they enter a new country.

Percy rolls his eyes. "We have a mission, or have you forgotten already?"

"My only mission is to find the finest mimosa in the land, starting with the ones on this plane!"

He chokes on some water and stammers, trying to find the right words to scold an almost thirty-year-old woman with.

"I kid. I kid!" she shouts, throwing her arms back in surrender, "but you could stand to lighten up, you know. We're in Europe on an all-expense paid vacation."

"We're above Europe on an all-expense paid quest that was supposed to be our friends' honeymoon."

Annabeth nibbles on one of the piercings just below her lip called spider bites. Since the encounter with a fake Cerberus at Frank and Hazel's wedding the other day, she's swapped her black studs out with silver hoops, and while this isn't the look Percy exactly envisioned for his first girlfriend, he likes the hoops more than the studs.

"You say tah-may-toe, I say tah-mah-toe."

Percy grits his teeth and clings to the leather seat. He says it's a coping mechanism, but it might be a desperate action to keep himself from strangling Annabeth.

"I just don't see why we can't take advantage of a shitty situation. I mean, I know it wasn't exactly easy to do that in literal hell-"

"Tartarus, Annabeth. We went to Tartarus."

"-But we're... Where are we?" she asks. "I'm sure we're somewhere real touristy. Like, I should have stolen Will's Polaroid camera because we're going to want pictures. Oh, wait! I can just take them on my fancy schmancy new phone." She points the phone at Percy and he winces when the flash practically blinds him.

"The odds of us getting out of this plane and stepping into a tourist spot are pretty low, but you do you, Annabeth," he says, turning his attention back to the Wikipedia page on Pothos, the god they're up against.

Pothos's plan for... Well, Percy doesn't know the point of the plan yet, but the plan is... also... hazy. He can't blame Annabeth because even though she's the only one who made contact with the minor god of unfulfilled desires, she was under the influence of some kind of drug. Hence, the aforementioned windmill incident.

What Percy and Annabeth do know is that Pothos is working with a one-night stand of Annabeth's from a few months ago. Once again, because she was under the influence of the no-no adult happy juice, she can't remember his name and has opted to just call him Marty McFly in reference to the costume he was wearing when he and Annabeth were—gag—intimate. They don't even know if he's mortal or not.

Someone seriously needs to start a demigod Wikipedia site. Percy can't trust one puny paragraph, especially if it was written by a clueless mortal. Hell, this page doesn't even know who the guy's parents are! Is it Eros or Zephyros and Iris? Percy thought it was Aphrodite!

Annabeth nestles deeper into Percy's blue AHS hoodie. Come to think of it, the last time he saw that hoodie was when she came to one of his swim meets senior year of high school, and he lent her the sweatshirt because he liked the idea of everyone at school seeing that yes, Jackson has a girlfriend, and yes, she's pretty. That's his old hoodie, dangit!

"Is it suddenly chilly in here or is it just that cold shoulder you're giving me?" she asks.

At first, Percy assumes it's just her saying things to annoy him again, but the son of Poseidon really can't be too cautious when traveling by air, even if he was assured the New Roman plane wouldn't have that kind of effect on him.

"We're probably fine," he says. "Maybe the air conditioning just-"

And then she's in his lap, which certainly isn't the strangest proximity they've found themselves in during the past couple of days.

Annabeth clears her throat. "Attention, passengers, we seem to be experiencing a bit of turbulence- Oh, shit!" She scrambles for something to grab onto—that something being the collar of Percy's shirt—and the two of them fall to the aisle when the plane lurches like a Hot Wheels car.

"We should... we should check that out," he says, trying to ignore her labored breathing and how her piercings jut outwards when she bites her bottom lip.

He uses the leather seats to hoist himself onto his feet, and with wobbly legs, he makes his way up to the cockpit. It's probably nothing. He'll just ask the pilot what's going on, and all his worries will disappear.

Nobody answers the door when he knocks, so he just turns the doorknob and walks right in, because it really is strange how Annabeth is being tossed like a salad back there. Percy knows that she is being thrown about only because she keeps swearing:

"Fuck!"

"Fuck me in the ass!"

Percy clears his throat. "Excuse me, Pilot-Captain-Person-Sir..."

There is no Pilot-Captain-Person-Sir.

"Okay, I'm actually going to be fucked in the ass if I keep getting thrown onto this lever!"

Wait.

Lever?

"Okay, so I figured out our turbulence problem!" Annabeth shouts over a sudden gust of wind.

Percy wants to ask something snarky like, What'd you do, open the gods-damned door?

But she did open the gods-damned door. She tightens her hair bun and shouts, "Hope you weren't craving Dunkin' 'cause we've got Venti!"

Well, what can you do when storm spirits are attacking the plane you only boarded out of a sense of duty?

Actually, Percy has many options, but he doesn't have time to consider those because, at that very moment, Annabeth cracks her knuckles and jumps out of the plane.

She may be tipsier than she initially let on. Excuse Percy for thinking ten years of experience would have built up her tolerance.

So now this poses a new question: What can you do when storm spirits are attacking the plane your ex-girlfriend just jumped out of?

Not much, but at least Percy is sober enough to grab the suitcase he's sharing with Annabeth, a parachute, and his backpack. He feels a little silly with the parachute on his back and the backpack over his chest, and he's certainly got his hands full with the suitcase, but Annabeth will probably appreciate having clothes to change into before bed tonight.

And that's assuming they'll even have beds to sleep in tonight. Percy still sincerely doubts they're about to land anywhere near civilization.

Percy hears Annabeth yell a string of expletives that are mostly lost in the wind. He takes that as a sign that maybe it's best if he doesn't try to decipher that.

"I am completely and utterly screwed," he mumbles to himself, stepping out onto the edge of the plane. The wind is strong enough to make his eyes water, and now he can't see because of the tears. Fantastic.

Annabeth is just a blue and blonde spot below. She's fine. She's hitching a ride on a storm spirit while simultaneously beating the everliving crap out of it. Percy's never been one to question her plans before, but this one seems counterintuitive.

How does one skydive? Despite his hatred for the big guy upstairs, Percy says a quick apology prayer to Zeus and hops off the plane the way he might bellyflop into a swimming pool.

Annabeth is now hitting the storm spirit with her backpack. Repeatedly. It dawns upon Percy that she's making a terrible mistake because the creature can just...

He's pretty sure he hears Annabeth yell something along the lines of "Shit!" when the storm spirit vanishes and reappears on top of her.

Is she getting... closer?

This is the moment where Percy remembers that Venti can fly, and it wouldn't make sense for one to just free-fall, so he's in a bad spot right now. That is, Annabeth and the storm spirit are going up, and he is going down.

Percy's no physics expert—he majored in biology, for crying out loud—but something tells him this is not the best situation. In fact, it's more than just not ideal. It's bad.

If Annabeth isn't going to be the one to face this predicament rationally, Percy's going to have to take that into his own hands.

And just as he realizes he's never had to make a plan in the spur of a moment before, Annabeth collides with the backpack on his chest, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

And then the storm spirit gets away. Fantastic. What's even better is that Annabeth and Percy are now free-falling.

She clears her throat. "Forgetting something?"

"Oh. Yeah." Percy pulls the cord on the parachute and then grabs hold of Annabeth because it wouldn't be very nice to let her become a pancake on the pavement below them.

Even if it is her fault they got into this situation in the first place.

***

Percy gasps for air when he finally frees himself from the heavy material of the purple parachute, courtesy of New Rome.

A muffled voice still underneath says, "I should have brought my bucket list so I can check off skydiving!"

Percy never wanted to go skydiving in the first place, and he would prefer to never go again, so he just snatches the section of the parachute covering his crazy ex and exposes her to the elements.

She falls backward, her hair horribly windswept and her eyes wild.

Here's the thing about the new Annabeth Chase: she's unpredictable, and yes, a little irresponsible, but that doesn't make her any less scary than she used to be. It's just a different kind of scary.

When they were teenagers, he never wanted to play on the opposite capture-the-flag team to Annabeth's because she always had a well-thought-out plan, and within that plan, there were sub-plans and backup plans. One time, she passed out flow charts to her team with explicit instructions on what to do in some very specific situations.

Now, Percy has no idea if she has a plan or not. Maybe she does and simply chooses not to tell anyone, or maybe she doesn't. Either way, Percy doesn't want to be on the wrong side of her threats because no matter how much of a disaster zone she is, things seem to go her way in the end. Granted, Percy wouldn't call ending up drugged under a Dutch windmill a win, but something about the way Annabeth couldn't care less about that is unsettling.

He lets out a sigh of relief because as it turns out, he isn't the target of her intense stare. Behind them is a soccer pitch, and in it, a soccer game. None of the spectators notice them, which is weird because the parachute would make for great jumbotron footage.

Shoot. This can only mean that-

Annabeth cackles from her purple parachute nest. "I fucking told you so! Damn, I should have brought Will's camera; Polaroids would look awesome in our kitchen." Her smile wavers for a second. Percy feels like a jerk for not asking if she's alright, but he knows the answer she's not going to admit any time soon. It's not a conversation worth having unless she's willing to initiate it. If Percy brings it up, he'll probably get punched in the gut.

Annabeth quickly regains her composure and holds her camera out for a selfie.

"Alright." Percy drops the parachute bag and gathers his bearings. "We need to figure out who this Marty McFly guy really is before he ruins Back to the Future any more than he already has. That'll probably give us some clues as to what kind of a plan he's got with Pothos, or at least what kind of motive he might have for sending monster clones after us. I know your memory is kind of hazy but is there anything more you can remember? Seriously, anything at all?"

No answer.

"Annabeth?" Percy zips up his backpack and looks up. She's gone. He really is babysitting an adult woman. He doesn't mind taking care of his sick mother at home. His mom typically stays in one place. His mom still remembers her cookie recipe. Annabeth doesn't even bake.

"Annabeth?" he calls, only to be drowned out by the crowd of spectators.

"That's a foul!" shouts a man with a heavy British accent.

Percy would like to say he's more than happy to work with Annabeth now, but clearly, they're lacking what they had as kids, and he's not referring to the romance. They used to be of one mind in battle. Now, Percy feels like he's babysitting an adult with a drinking problem and a fondness for swearing.

He leaves the parachute, grabs the luggage, and gets ready to take some elbows to the gut and say 'excuse me' a whole lot.