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"What are you doing?" Percy snapped, pulling (Name) to her feet.

"Drowning," she replied. "Until you ruined it."

Percy shot her a scolding look. "You know what I mean."

"I fell."

(Name) was sopping wet. Her hair was flattened to her skull, eyelashes pearling with specks of water. Her Camp Half-Blood tee-shirt pinched in all the wrong places, showing the outline of her bra. Percy flustered at the realisation, staring daggers into the centre of her head.

"For someone who's as sharp as you, I'd thought you'd be less clumsy."

"For the son of Poseidon, I thought you'd be taller."

He sighed. "You never have anything nice to say, do you?"

"If I see something nice, I'll let you know."

Percy ignored that comment in favour for rifling through his draws. He tore out random shirts and pants, but nothing seemed to fit the bill .

"You're going to catch a cold if you stay in those clothes, and I don't have anything that fits you." He muttered.

She huffed. "I wasn't planning on falling into the water."

"And I wasn't planning on babysitting some bratty rich girl, but here we are."

"Bratty rich girl?" She repeated.

"Yeah, you act like all the girls at my school."

(Name) scowled. "This entire scenario wouldn't be happening if you'd just left me alone when I asked."

"We were just trying to help."

"I don't want your help."

Percy groaned into his hands. "You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Nope," she replied flippantly. "Who else would I annoy relentlessly?"

"Annabeth, Grover, Chiron," he offered. "Just to name a few."

"Annabeth's fun to annoy, I'll admit. But you take the cake."

Percy staggered on her words. "W-what makes me so special?"

"That right there," she pointed at Percy. "The dumb part."

"You just gestured to all of me."

"Uh-huh."

Percy threw his hands in up in defeat. "You're insufferable!"

(Name) grinned. "I have a knack for that kind of thing."

"Please shut up."

"Make me."

Percy slammed his cupboard draw shut. The loud clap that followed drew (Name) to silence.

Talk about being dramatic...

"Here," Percy chucked her another orange tee-shirt. "Try this on, you can't come to dinner looking like a sea cucumber."

"Wow," she huffed. "Your charms know no bounds."

Percy scowled. "Just get changed."

(Name) gave him a curt thank-you and rushed into the other room to get changed. She found her old jeans folded neatly on one of the beds. She quickly got undressed, unzipping her jeans and kicking them onto the bed. A she was peeling her shirt off, she caught sight of herself in the mirror sitting beside the doorframe.

It was long enough to glimpse at her torso, and she didn't like what she saw. Pale, dewy skin. Bright, zigzagged veins running up and down her arms like tattoos. Angry bags that pulled at her eyelids. Skin free of scars and scabs and scratches. It was very different from Annabeth, whose arms were littered with fading scars. She was a fighter. A warrior. A hero.

(Name) squeezed herself into some jeans. Behind the vexing, confident and downright overbearing performance she flaunted, she couldn't help but feel inadequate. She was just a tiny speck in the universe, a random statistic caught up in some otherworldly mess. A haughty teenage girl who's time had run-out.

She couldn't deny her resentment. She'd spent the bigger part of her life in and out of hospital, bleeding from her ears as her throat swelled and bruised. She'd never had the chance to be normal, or let go of her anger. Life was so cruel and unfair and she wasn't ready to come to terms with it yet.

And now this stupid Camp full of endless possibilities had given her something she'd been trying to avoid.

Hope.

Those voices in her head were running on a loop.

What did it mean? Why was this all happening now?

(Name) had spent so much time researching. So much time digging into her history, unravelling any clue no matter how trivial it seemed. She'd been so dead set on finding a solution, but nothing came from it.

And now an answer had fallen into her lap, and she had no idea what it meant.

~~~

Dinner was quite interesting, to say the least. (Name) followed Percy up a giant hill to the mess hall, watching with warped fascination as dryads peeled away from the trees and satyrs skipped out of the meadows. Even the ocean naiads she'd seen playing near the shallows had shown up for dinner.

The dining pavilion was framed in Greek columns that overlooked the sea. There were no walls or roof, so (Name) wondered what they did when it rained. Set up tents?

Torches blazed from the columns and a central fire burned inside a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. She spotted Annabeth at a table with her brothers and sisters. They all had the same intelligent grey eyes. When Annabeth saw them both, she ignored (Name) completely and waved at Percy.

(Name) thought she would've gotten up to say hello, but she stayed put. Percy steered her over to a clean table. Grover was the only one sitting there, munching on some green enchiladas.

The big scary girl who (Name) later found out was Clarisse sat with all her Ares brothers and sisters at a big table. She hadn't realised it before, but all the tables were separated by their godly parentage. There were a couple Apollo tables, a dozen or so Hermes ones. (Y/N) didn't see any Hades tables, and the Zeus table was completely barren.

Guess that explained why Percy's table was so vacant. He was the only son of Poseidon at Camp Half-Blood. (Name) figured it probably got lonely eating by yourself all the time, watching everyone else have a blast.

Percy showed her how the enchanted crockery worked. Whispering to the plates and goblets made any food of her desire materialise like a projected image. (Name) found out pretty quickly that Percy had some weird obsession with the colour blue. He had a blue cherry coke, a blue pizza and a some blue chocolate chip cookies for dinner.

Chiron slammed his hoof against the marble floor and raised his glass. Everyone repeated after him and toasted to the sky. The heavens, (Name) supposed. To the almighty Olympian Jerks. After that, the kids went berserk, loading their plates metres high with every kind of food under the sun.

The tenderest steak (Name) had ever seen appeared on her plate, along with some baked potatoes and grilled asparagus. She gaped at it, utterly mystified.

"Asparagus huh?" Percy muttered, snapping a cookie in half.

"I...I didn't choose, it just showed up!"

"Mmm," he shoved the cookie into his mouth. "That happens if you take too long to decide."

"So now what?"

"It chooses a meal of nutritional value for your body."

"Red-meat, char-grilled vegetables and lots of salt..." she scowled. "Pretty sure that's confidential information."

"It's a plate, (Name). It doesn't care."

She blushed and begrudgingly started to pick at her food. Every now and then campers went up to scrape their food into the fiery bathtub.

"What are they doing?" She whispered.

"Sacrifice to the gods."

"They're giving their parents...spaghetti?"

"Among other stuff yeah, but the food isn't the point."

"What is the point?"

"That we're..." Percy sighed. "I don't know, respecting them."

(Name) sniffed. "That's so dumb!"

"C'mon we've gotta do it."

"Ugh, do we have to?"

Percy grabbed her arm and started dragging her. "Do you want to get blasted by lightning?"

Her heels dug into the dirt. "They wouldn't do that to their own kids!"

Percy rolled his eyes. "They sure would."

"That's horrible!"

"...you get used to it," he scraped a bit of his food into the flames. "Whoever your godly parent is will be the same."

"I'm not a demigod Percy," she reminded.

"Doesn't matter, the half-blood lifestyle is crazy," he shot her a strange look. "Monsters don't care how inexperienced you are. My first day at Camp I almost got killed by a minotaur."

"As in the bull, man thing?"

Percy shoved her gently. "Just scrape your food already."

She did as he said and flicked some asparagus off her plate and into the flames. A rush of warmth hit her face as the fire crackled. The smell was brilliant, like a combination of her favourite things. Mash potatoes, toffee apples, pulled pork sandwiches, banana smoothies, crunchy apples. She almost fainted she was so hungry.

Percy nodded absentmindedly. "It's always like that the first time."

"What's it like for you now?"

"It's almost smelt like my moms cooking, which makes me feel like they're laughing at me." Percy scowled. "Reminding me that my life isn't my own."

"O-oh..." (Name) stammered. She hadn't expected such a blunt response. "How so?"

Percy brushed his fingers against his cheek. "Children of the Big Three aren't supposed to exist. Hades, Poseidon and Zeus swore an oath off kids because of the potential danger they caused to the Olympians. I am a product of that broken oath, and my fate is tied to some inevitable prophecy detailing the end of the world."

(Name) wasn't sure what to say to that. He'd been so flippant too, like it hardly mattered to him anymore.Guilt clawed at the edges of her mind. She was so used to treating people with a down-the-nose kind of disrespect. It was hard to swallow the fact Percy was feeling a lot of the same emotions she was.

"Let's get back to our table," Percy muttered. "My foods getting cold."

She scuttled back to the table and ate her food in silence. Lesson learnt: do not underestimate Percy Jackson.

Dinner continued without a hitch, which was an absolute first for (Name). Everyone stuck to their respected tables and ate merrily with their siblings. The only table that wasn't coordinated by parent was the main one, where Chiron sat. There was a guy next to him who caught (Name)'s eye. He was short and fat like a garden gnome, with really dark hair. He was wearing a tiger-striped Hawaiian shirts and purple running shoes.

He looked ridiculous, and (Name) had to choke down a laugh.

Percy nudged her with his elbow, a small smile playing at his lips. "Don't stare, it freaks him out."

"Him?"

"Dionysus," Grover replied, nervously nibbling at the end of his fork. "He's the director."

"That's friendly-talk for 'camps resident jerk-face'." Percy corrected.

(Name) raised an eyebrow. "The God of Wine is in charge here?"

"Sure is," Percy took a swig of his blue cherry coke. "Although he doesn't do a lot of 'directing'. He just plays card games and makes our lives miserable."

"Why's he even here then?"

Grover's cheeks flushed red. "We're not really supposed to talk about it."

"It's his punishment from Zeus for pinning over some off-limits nymph." Percy explained.

"That's disgusting!"

"Which part? That he was chasing after girls as a married man? Or the fact that Zeus thinks he owns women just cause he likes them?"

"Both are really bad," she muttered. "And nymphs are like...minor-gods, aren't they?"

"Some are. It's basically just a higher class of being to regular nymphs. Naiads vs nereids. Dryads vs the Meliae," Grover hummed. "It's kinda weird, to be honest."

"Kinda? Isn't that like...incest?"

Percy choked on his drink.

"Gods see things very differently to humans," Grover said. "'Sibling' is just a title, it doesn't hold much merit. The only reason incest was banned in the first place was because it screwed with the human genome and created...unfortunate individuals."

(Name) snorted at Grover's polite retelling.

"Gods don't have DNA," Percy lamented. "Just golden ichor and a semi-functioning moral compass."

A clap of thunder shook their table.

"We should probably shut up now," Grover squeaked out.

Dionysus begrudgingly stood up at the centre table, calling everyone into silence.

"I suppose I'd better say hello to you brats," he took a sip of his diet coke. "Blah blah blah...capture the flag on Friday for the newbie. What's the name? Fire? (Name) Fire."

Someone coughed.

"Fiora?" He turned and locked eyes with her. His irises looked like pits of sulphuric acid and (Name) had to fight off a shiver under his calculating stare.

Percy's nudged her reassuringly. "He does that to everyone."

"It's creepy."

"Yep."

"Hurrah!" He exclaimed unenthusiastically. "Fun, fun, fun! Now go along to your stupid campfire kids."

(Name) thought she had a vague idea of what campfires were supposed to be like. But she'd failed to take into account that this was a demigod campfire, not your standard, run-of-the-mill bonfire with some marshmallows.

Apollo's kids led a sing-a-long. (Name) didn't know any of the words, but their singing was kinda infectious. Some songs were slow and melodic and others called for a giant chorus of screaming and chanting. Industrial sized marshmallows were passed around. Some campers opted for smores whereas others preferred burnt sugar on a stick. Insides jokes were tossed around as the flames grew higher and higher. People danced and shook and wiggled their hearts out.

Percy and (Name) were at each other's throats for most of the singing, arguing about menial stuff as the fire raged high. Grover tried to pry them away from each other, but his attempts at playing mediator were fruitless. (Name) was too vexing for her own good, and Percy never backed down.

The evening went by in the blink of an eye. The coals in the fire pit crackled and popped, smouldering in the starry sky. The smell of burnt wood and overcooked biscuits cut through the air like a knife.

Finally, when the last horn blew again, everyone started filling back to their cabins. (Name) didn't realise how tired she was until her head hit the pillow.

Kidnappings and prophecies, voices arguing in her head, plates that could read her mind, eating and laughing with gods and centaurs. It was all too much.

As soon as she shut her eyes, she fell asleep.

☾