Fanfiction: Percy Jackson and the Sphairochionomaché (Percy Jackson)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Percy Jackson and the Sphairochionomaché
Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Character(s): Percy and Annabeth
Pairing(s): Percy/Annabeth
Word Count: ~1000
Rating: G
Warnings: Set after The Last Olympian; no earth-shattering spoilers.
A/N: Written in response to the prompt "winter" provided by cornerofmadness for the Just One Word meme. It was going to be a drabble, but you try shutting Percy up once he gets going. Concrit welcomed with snow angels. Crossposted from nebroadwe to halfbloodhill and percylicious.

---

      "Ha!" I shouted as another of my Slushballs of Doom hit Annabeth square in the face.

      Hey, don't look at me like that -- she'd started it, sneaking up behind me and shoving that icicle down my shirt. If I'd known that becoming the snowball-fighting champion of Camp Half-Blood was the equivalent of having Tyson engrave KICK ME in giant letters on the backplate of my armor, I would've stayed on the sidelines drinking hot chocolate with Chiron and Mr. D. (Okay, maybe not.) But now I had a reputation to maintain. Believe me, that reputation, the tripwire at my door, and the bucket of water beside the bed were the only things allowing me to get a decent night's sleep since I buried the Ares cabin with an avalanche. Not my idea of a relaxing winter break.

      Annabeth ducked, scooped up a handful of powder, and heaved it at me. I didn't even have to dodge -- her face was half-covered with the remains of my slushball and she could barely see to aim. "Yoo-hoo!" I yodeled at her. "I'm over hee-ere."

      "You'll regret that, Seaweed Brain!" she shouted, but as I reached down and goosed the snow at my feet with just enough of my power to make it projectile-ready, she turned tail and ran for the pine grove.

      I jogged after her. She could drag the fight out, dodging around in there, but I'd knocked off her Yankees cap of invisibility with my first slushball, so she couldn't hide for long. She might have allies waiting to ambush me, but I thought of all the snow clinging to those big green branches and chuckled. I could take on three cabins' worth of campers with that much ammunition. "Just surrender, Wise Girl," I said. "Drop the snowflakes and nobody gets hurt."

      "Never!" she answered, ducking behind one of the thicker trunks. Another scrabbled-together lump sailed defiantly through the air toward me. It would have looked a lot more defiant if it hadn't been coming apart the minute it left her fingertips. "Molōn labe!"

      Tossing a slushball up and down in my hand, I grinned and moseyed into the grove. I'd fought Annabeth to a draw often enough that an absolute victory was something to savor. Don't get me wrong -- having a girlfriend who's brave and clever and does amazing things on a regular basis is awfully cool. It's easy to believe you're a hero when someone like that wants to hang out with you. On the other hand, the pressure to do something amazing yourself, just to keep up, can get pretty intense. You might find yourself rescuing capsized fishermen during a nor'easter or wrestling the giant clams in Long Island Sound-- or perfecting a Slushball of Doom and making yourself a walking target for a valley full of demigods. I know it's not the smartest way to cope, but even Einstein would have dropped a few IQ points dating Annabeth.

      I stopped about six feet from her tree, close enough to nail her with a quick cast if she tried to jump me. She was hunkered down on the windward side, neck hunched into her shoulders. With her blonde hair plastered with slush, her cheeks flushed, and her lips pale, she looked pathetic. "Had enough?" I asked. Heroes are magnanimous to the defeated -- Chiron drills that into us from day one.

      Unfortunately, Annabeth didn't consider herself defeated. "C-come on and f-find out," she snarled through chattering teeth. She raised her left fist, which was clenched around what couldn't have been more than a tablespoon of snow, and shook it at me.

      I took another step forward, still juggling my slushball, because honestly, I'd seen more convincing displays of bravado from Grover. "You know," I said, doing a pretty good job of keeping the smugness out of my voice, "there's no shame in losing a fair fight to a true champion."

      Annabeth's gray eyes blazed so brightly I was surprised steam didn't rise off her scalp. "Oh, really?" she asked, and the hand that wasn't menacing me with a chance of flurries plunged into the lumpy drift blanketing the tree's roots to yank something up -- a rope.

      Did I mention that it was Annabeth who'd shown me how to set a tripwire?

      The branches she'd drawn away from where I was standing whipped back and knocked me flat on my butt with the force of a million hairbrushes, coating me from head to toe with frigid powder for good measure. I felt like one of those little plastic figures in a snowglobe must when some overexcited five-year-old whacks it into a wall. I lost my grip on the slushball, of course -- I think I ended up lying on it -- and before I could get enough of my wind back to contemplate creating another, Annabeth was sitting on my chest, making breathing impossible for all kinds of reasons. "Who's the champion?" she asked sweetly.

      I wheezed.

      She shifted her weight off my lungs. "I didn't quite catch that," she said, turning her head to bring an ear in line with my mouth and sprinkling my numb cheeks with meltwater from her hair.

      When I still didn't answer -- have you ever have the breath slugged out of you by a twenty-year-old pine? It takes more than a minute to be in a condition to do anything except wheeze -- she raised her left hand over my face and opened it. A tablespoon of snow fell from her fingers onto my nose. "Who's the snowball-fighting champion of Camp Half-Blood?" she asked again.

      "You are," I admitted at last.

      It's funny -- losing my reputation wasn't as humiliating as I'd thought it would be. Then again, none of my other challengers was as pretty as Annabeth, even dripping wet and shivering, and none of them would have given me a kiss to take the sting out of defeat, either. But true heroes are always magnanimous.

---

Author's Note: "Sphairochionomaché" is classical Greek for "snowball fight," of course. "Molōn labe" is the famously laconic response of the Spartans at Thermopylae to their Persian adversaries. When asked to lay down their arms, the Spartans replied, "Come and take them." They held their ground for three days against overwhelming force, defeated in the end by treachery. This phrase is engraved on the monument which memorializes the battle site today.

[Acknowledgments: The books of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series were written, and their copyright is held, by Rick Riordan.]

Comments

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

One day, I should read Percy Jackson. If I could remember that when I actually arrive at an open library, it might help in those matters.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Tie a string around your finger.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Won't my finger fall off?

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ask COM about the optimum pressure (just enough to remind, not enough to impede blood flow), not me.

My mom always says she'd use this method, except she keeps running out of fingers.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Heee. I'm afraid I'm too rough on string, or wind up needing it for other things.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Like brown paper packages? [FX: oom pah pah, oom pah pah]

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

Noooo...lost dogs, flowers what need tying up so they don't collapse and get run over by overenthusiastic lawn mowers....

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I read that last phrase initially as "and run over overenthusiastic lawn mowers" for some reason, which puts a whole different spin on gardening.

[evil-little-dog.livejournal.com]

I think Stephen King has written that.

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

That was adorable--I enjoyed it so much! The character voices are great, and you made me fall in love with the characters all over again--thanks for sharing!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! Book pastiche usually intimidates the creativity right out of me -- I feel like I have to imitate the author's style perfectly and, except for character voices, that's not easy for me at all. Thank goodness this series is narrated in the first person. :-)

[ariadnes-string.livejournal.com]

Book pastiche usually intimidates the creativity right out of me
*nods vigorously* me too--I've only written PJO once, but getting myself to write in 1st person was actually a struggle. Fun once I got going, though *g*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I do a lot of work in tight-third, so first-person isn't as much of a stretch for me as it might be for others. Describing people moving around, on the other hand, drives me bonkers. I'm terrible at narrating my blocking. Fortunately, this piece had fairly simple stage directions, but I must have gone through four different ways of describing Annabeth pulling the rope before I settled on this one. Ugh.

[aerodactylus.livejournal.com]

Wow, this was excellent. You've really got the characters down, and you can actually write in 1st person, unlike most other fic writers I've read.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

First person's just an extension of dialogue for me, so I don't find it that hard. I do have to go back after the first draft and make sure the vocabulary and diction suit the narrator's voice and don't sound like me being clever, though.

Glad you liked this one! It was fun to write.

[greenconverses.livejournal.com]

This was just great and adorable to boot! Percy and Annabeth competing with each other is one of my favorite parts of their relationship, and this was so true to their characters.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

As I wrote this, I was thinking a little about how Jonathan Stroud talks about Nathaniel and Kitty at the end of Ptolemy's Gate -- how two strong personalities in a relationship can starting pushing each other to become stronger. It was fun to ratchet that dynamic down from saving the world to a snowball fight. :-)

[shai-duck.livejournal.com]

I liked how you put in the part about how Percy has to do things just so he can sort of "match up" to Annabeth :D It's probably pretty true, realistically.

Great job! It was a fun piece ^^

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I had a lot of fun writing it. The characterization grew out of the plotting: I was sitting on the bus, working out the contours of the fight, and that whole paragraph about matching up just popped up, more or less as it stands now. I think I might have changed an adjective or two, but that's it.

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

Ah haha, the reveal there was just PERFECT. I need more fic with these two in my life; this was just a treat today. And, well, there was no doubt in my mind that Annabeth was gonna win; Percy has her on brute strength and maybe reflexes, but she's still a little too clever for her own good. And what's this? A hint of a little bit of issues they made face? I appreciate this.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think my funny stuff's always got a thread of serious in it, and vice versa. And I had written the tripwire in Percy's room right at the beginning and knew that Annabeth was going to have some clever contrivance set up to turn the tables on him, but the line, "Did I mention that it was Annabeth who'd shown me how to set a tripwire?" was an inspiration that hit me only as I wrote it. I love it when a story comes together.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

I loved it. Thank you so very much (I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this). I really enjoyed it. I think you got Percy's voice and his dry (ironically) wit down perfectly. I loved that Annabeth got the best of him. they're very cute together

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I'd actually been making notes at odd times toward another PJO story set during the winter (that I probably won't write -- too many characterization/plotting problems) and that helped me over the initial hump with the narrative voice. And of course Annabeth gets the best of Percy, but only by virtue of canny forward planning. It takes guile and a trap to beat a Slushball of Doom.

Oh, and I keep forgetting to mention and have no idea where it is in your blog anymore, but I liked the story idea about the girl going looking for books. If it's a low-tech scenario, maybe somewhere early in the ms.-to-print transition might throw some interesting wrinkles into the process? (I also recommend for general popular background on the evolution of book storage The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski, which I just discovered recently and contains useful information for describing accurately the details of library settings at various tech levels ...)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

i hear you on making story bits too complicated and thinking hmmm can I/should I write this?

yes that was one of the ideas. It's on the back burner for the 'one day' pile but i'm definitely keeping it in mind. thanks for this. That might be very helpful. (and yes it would be lower tech)