Chapter 4: Percy Returns
The salt-sting of the Aegean was the first thing Percy registered as he shouldered open the heavy oak door of his cabin. The second was Annabeth, curled like a wounded animal on his bunk, her back to him. The sea-green bikini was a grotesque parody of his father’s colors, two scant triangles of fabric tied to a body that radiated misery.
“Annabeth?”
She didn’t turn. Her shoulders were tight, knotted under skin that looked too pale in the fractured sunlight. He dropped his duffel, the sound muffled by the damp rugs. “Hey. I got back as soon as I could. Mom said you called like, twelve times.” He approached slowly, like she was a skittish seahorse. “What’s going on? And why are you… what are you wearing?”
Her voice was flat, stripped of its usual music. “Aphrodite’s latest draft.”
She told him. Not the sanitized version, not the strategic summary. She gave him the raw, ugly data. The daily requirement. The rapidly declining cognitive function without it. The humiliating procurement process she’d undergone just hours before he returned. She didn’t look at him once. Her gaze was fixed on a knot in the wooden wall, as if she could solve it through sheer force of will.
Percy listened. The sea outside seemed to still. The only sound was the creak of the cabin and her low, steady voice detailing her own degradation. When she finished, a long silence stretched, taut and terrible.
“Okay,” he said finally. The word was quiet, but absolute.
Her head turned slightly. “Okay? Percy, did you not hear what I just—”
“I heard.” He sat on the edge of the bunk, the mattress dipping. He didn’t touch her. Not yet. “The semen thing. That’s… we’ll deal with that. We’ll figure it out. Me. It’ll be me. That’s non-negotiable.” He said it with the same finality he’d use to claim a battle position. “But the clothes. She wasn’t specific? Just… revealing?”
“Her exact words were ‘you will wear the garments of desire, not the armor of intellect.’ I woke up like this.” Annabeth finally looked at him. Her gray eyes were storms. “I tried to put a shirt on this morning. Just a t-shirt. I got dizzy. My thoughts… slipped.”
A spark lit in Percy’s eyes—the one that appeared before a risky maneuver. “So there’s a limit. A threshold. We can test it.”
“Test it?”
“Yeah. Like, scientific method. We need data.” He stood up and went to his footlocker, rummaging. He pulled out a soft, faded gray hoodie of his own. “Start with this. Put it on over the top.”
Annabeth eyed it like it was a live grenade. “Percy, if it backfires, if I get stupider—”
“Then you take it off. We reverse it. That’s what you said, right? The clothes thing isn’t permanent like the other.” He held it out. “Come on. Let’s see what we’re working with.”
The practicality of it was a lifeline. She took the hoodie. The fleece lining was soft, familiar, smelling of him and the sea. She slipped her arms in, the fabric swallowing the tiny bikini top, and pulled it over her head. It settled around her, covering her torso, her arms down to her wrists. She zipped it halfway up.
For a second, nothing. She breathed. “Okay. I feel okay. Maybe she was being metaphorical—”
Then it hit. A gentle, fuzzy pressure behind her eyes. Like cotton wool being stuffed into her ears, but inside her brain. She blinked. “Um. Percy?”
Her voice was different. Higher. Lighter. A melodic, vacant tilt at the end of his name.
“Annabeth?” He was watching her closely, his green eyes sharp.
“Wow, like, this is so comfy!” she heard herself say, the words bubbling out without filter. She giggled, touching the sleeve. “So soft. You’re so nice to let me wear your stuff.”
Percy’s face went ashen. “Okay. That’s… okay. That’s the threshold. Take it off. Now.”
“But it’s cuuute,” she pouted, even as a distant, screaming part of her mind recoiled in horror at her own tone. She forced her hands to the zipper, fumbling with the pull. She shrugged the hoodie off, letting it pool on the bunk.
The effect was instantaneous. The cotton-wool feeling vanished, replaced by the sharp, cold clarity of returning consciousness. She gasped, her real voice back. “Gods. Did I just… did I say ‘cuuute’?”
“Yeah.” Percy’s jaw was tight. “So hoodies are out. Let’s get more precise.” He grabbed a notebook and a pencil from his nightstand. “We need percentages. That bikini covers what, like, nothing? We’ll call it baseline.” He started sketching a rough outline of a figure. “We add something, see where the dumbness kicks in. Then we push it, see where it becomes permanent.”
The clinical approach was a shield for both of them. For the next hour, they conducted the most degrading experiment of her life.
A silk scarf around her shoulders, tucked into the bikini top. She could feel the curse pushing back, a mild fog, but she could still discuss siege tactics. Percy estimated 18% coverage. They noted it.
She added a second, thinner scarf tied as a mini-skirt over the bikini bottoms. The fog thickened. Her sentences shortened. She began to lose track of subclauses. “The Romans, like, they had big walls. Right?” she said, blinking.
“That’s it,” Percy muttered, marking the notebook. “Twenty percent. That’s the soft limit. Beyond this, you start to slip.” He looked at her, his pen poised. “Do we go further? We need to know the hard limit.”
Annabeth, her mind currently clear with the scarves removed, hugged herself. “We have to know.”
They chose sweatpants. His, obviously, because she had nothing else. She pulled them on, the thick gray cotton covering her from waist to ankle. With the bikini top still on, Percy calculated roughly 30% skin coverage.
The change was violent.
One second she was standing, waiting for the cognitive dip. The next, her entire posture slumped. Her eyes, usually so sharp and assessing, went wide and empty. A bright, vapid smile stretched her lips. “Ohmygosh, these are sooo baggy!” she chirped, looking down and giggling. “Are these for, like, working out? I should work out. But it’s so hard.”
Percy stared. This wasn’t just ditzy. This was a caricature. This was every cruel joke about blondes, every stereotype Athena’s daughters had spent lifetimes disproving, made flesh. Her intelligence wasn’t just dimmed; it was erased.
“Annabeth.” His voice was choked. “Take them off.”
She just giggled, twisting to look at her backside in a non-existent mirror. “Do these make my butt look big? It’s okay if they do, boys like that, right?”
“Take them off NOW.” He didn’t mean to yell.
The command in his voice cut through the curse’s programming. She pouted again, but hooked her thumbs in the waistband and pushed the sweatpants down, stepping out of them. The reversal was, again, immediate. The vacant smile vanished. Her eyes snapped back into focus, the storm returning, now tinged with raw terror.
She didn’t speak. She just stood there, shaking, in the sea-green bikini.
Percy looked down at his notebook. The data was clear, cruel, and incontrovertible. Baseline: 12% coverage (the bikini). Soft limit of impaired cognition: 20%. Hard limit of full bimbo transformation: 30%. The curse had built-in tolerances. It allowed for accessories, for the illusion of choice. But it demanded her exposure. It demanded her humiliation.
He threw the notebook across the room. It slapped against the wall and fell to the floor.
“We’ll find a loophole,” he said, but the fury in his voice was aimed at the heavens. “We’ll find a fabric, a god, something.”
Annabeth finally moved. She walked to him, her bare feet silent on the planks. She didn’t try to cover herself. What was the point? She put a hand on his chest, over his racing heart. “You’re my loophole,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “For the other part. You’re sure?”
He covered her hand with his own, his grip firm. “I’ve got you. Every day. I’m not letting you go through that again.” He meant the satyr. The shadowy corner. The dripping shame.
The relief that flooded her was different from the chemical relief of the curse being fed. This was warmer. This was a harbor in the storm. But as she leaned her forehead against his shoulder, the reality settled in her gut, cold and heavy.
Her boyfriend was now her sole daily sustenance. Her dignity was now measured in square inches of exposed skin. She was saved, and she was utterly, completely trapped. The cabin walls, damp with sea spray, felt less like shelter and more like the beautifully carved interior of a cage.