The Grey Owls was a virtual reality blog run by Annabeth Chase, who had updated almost religiously every Tuesday and Thursday since it’s first posting straight up until the day of the Age of Heroes Tournament. It was a public forum, for the most part, where anyone and everyone could convein to talk about anything and everything to do with virtual realities.

She had tutorials on on fighting, on leveling up, on certain easy quests. She checked her inbox regularly for questions she could answer involving procuring certain items, fighting certain player trolls, and invites to raiding parties that she never joined. She kept a day-by-day blog of her game time, which often breached the realm of unhealthy amounts of time in game without breaks, as well as breakdowns of the fighting style of some more powerful players.

If you had a question the one person to go to was -Chasing-.

However, her blog was not the only place to get information.

In fact, you could go almost anywhere to get information on what happened that summer. The world was aflame with the news. For a good long year it the was only thing anyone could talk about: How safe were virtual realities anyway?

At about one in the afternoon, all the TV stations had been cut off from the daily programing and siphoned right back into the horror show that everyone had already been thinking about anyway. All the world had watched what had happened that day.

The video feeds were all over the place: easy to find and with great quality. It started with a disturbed blond man, holding a sword over a black haired teenager. It started with an explanation on why he had decided to kill everyone.

The full blown investigation into Olympus Gaming System started the next day.

The fight itself was nothing short of amazing when looked at from the outside. A team of very powerful individuals, a guild made of the best of the best, who had joined the game at one point to fight each other but now fought side-by-side. The Pegasus Symbol was the most sought after joke of all:

Leo Valdez explained in an interview months after the incident (They always called it an incident-- as if it was a misunderstanding and not a murder spree). “I chose the name, although it’s Chase’s guild. She told me she couldn’t type and run. I thought Demigods was a good name, because we were what the Gods of Olympus made us, right? Nine sexy motherfuckers with abilities beyond average who probably won’t get a real happily ever after.”

No one beyond the original nine were accepted into the guild.

But who could blame them? Time Magazine did a whole article on the Stoll Brothers: with several intrusive photos of Connor Stoll’s grave and Travis Stoll crying over it and his girlfriend Katie punching a reporter in the face.

Most of the players refused to put on their headsets again. Hazel Levesque even sold hers for 1.5 million dollars which she used to fund the failing art program at the high school she went to. Her charity fund reached all corners of the globe, reviving the liberal arts in her passion for them.

Reyna dropped a comment about needing to stay in a world were she could make a difference. She opened her own business, with help from her sister that traded gaming systems, games, and fixed up anything that linked to the internet, with her two employees: Leo Valdez, who had also been working non stop on a side project for Olympus since the tournament, and Frank Zhang, who was studying to become a history major on the side.

There were several scandalous photos of Piper McLean’s new boy toy: a fair skinned, blue eyed heartthrob by the name of Jason Grace. They spent a few weeks each on the cover of most glossy magazines. Thalia Grace had collected them and pinned them up on her walls with a smirk. No one was sure what she was doing.

(Some liked to gossip that she put a large donation towards the studies into the mental health of teenagers. But the money was from a Zoe Nightshade so there is still some debates.)

Nico Di Angelo disappeared from public eye after the first week out of the game. His passport was activated and he left the country on a journey to find… something. No one save Hazel and Thalia had heard from him since.

A year after the AOH tournament, Olympus Gaming System shut down it’s servers. The backlash from the game and what it could do to (pushed mainly by the Nakamura and Castellan families) overwhelmed the creators and the lawyers and every sensible mother that ever existed. Between the Stock prices plummeting and the immense amount of compensation owed to the AOH players, the “Gods” went bankrupt within months.

For those that dug deeper, they would find a short clip of Grover Underwood who, while drawing strength from a pretty girl on his arm, explained to reporters what had happened that afternoon at his house: How he and Rachel had been watching Tyson Jackson while Sally Jackson was talking to the police, how several large men had broke down the door and locked Rachel in a separate room before knocking him unconscious. He smirked when he spoke of how Rachel had broken out of the room and taken on three men twice her height and thrice her weight with nothing but a hair brush, memories of old self defense classes, and a shit ton of luck.

If you went far enough, you could even find a the deleted account that was Kronos: where a blond haired avatar with welcoming blue eyes apologized for discontinuing his blog and promised to have a link to the new one up in a few short days.

The Grey Owls blog was certainly not the only place to find information on what had happened in the AOH tournament. Most of the world had watched what had happened on live TV. They had seen Percy Jackson tell Thalia Grace to kill him to save herself, they had watched both of the players dissolve into data particles and they had stared at the TV long after it had auto switched off the interruption and gone back to its daily programing.

Annabeth Chase had never missed an update before. But that Tuesday, she didn’t update. Nor that Thursday. Or any of them after that.

Her inbox flooded with questions on what had happened, on if Percy had lived, on if she was alright, on if she was willing to do an interview on TV, on and on and on.

She didn’t read any of them.

It was a year and a half before she updated again. Her fans were thrilled at the notification: they thought she had psychoanalysed Kronos, or written a autobiography on what had happened in the game. They thought she was going to give them new information.

“I joined Olympus because it was an escape.” She wrote instead. “Because I could be anything and anyone when I put on the head gear. In here, I was a well known player: I kept a blog. My ability to take apart a defense was useful. I could help less experienced Players. I had more achievements than almost any other player.

“But in the real world, I had run away from home because my step mother had told me I was useless, Iived on the streets, stole what I couldn’t buy, and looked out for only myself. I used a headset from the Library until I had earned enough money through the game to buy my own headset. In both worlds, everything I had gotten I had earned. I thought I would never need anyone else.

“Then I met a boy with raven black hair and eyes as green as seaweed. He had all the braincells of actual seaweed. I had never seen someone fight so much. He still smiled even when things were hopeless. Still thought clearly when the pressure was sure to kill him. He looked at everyone as if they were something special, something worth protecting, something worth giving his life for.

“He didn’t believe he had any friends beyond two people. He loved his family more than he loved himself. He didn’t know this, but he drew people to himself: Me, Leo Valdez, Frank Zhang, Travis Stoll...You can ask anyone who was in that game and they will tell you the same thing.

“His name was Percy Jackson. He was a stranger. But I would have given anything to have met him in any other time of my life: When I had first run away and needed his hope, when I had first put on a headset and needed his enthusiasm, when I decided to join AOH and needed a partner. Even now after it all has happened, I wish I had met him in a coffee shop somewhere, smiling as he recognized me from the news with his eyes still glowing a warm green from a life that hadn’t been a living Hell.

“I know how selfish that sounds. I have spent a year and a half trying to make it sound less selfish. But it’s only fair that I tell the truth here and now. He shared all his secrets and they killed him. If I can’t give up one of my own, what does that make me?

“I will be taking some more time off. I had forgotten what the difference between a real sky and a virtual one was. It’s time I relearn that. Maybe one day you’ll find me in the virtual world again: There have always been more places than just Olympus. But for now I think I’ll go...home.”

A few days after her last post, a picture was posted in the comments section by an account called Finding Pan: the blonde hair gamer curled up on a couch with a small brown haired, four year old in her lap, both asleep with old x box controllers in their hands.