A/N Oh my gods. You guys probably hate me, i haven't been on here in forever. I am the worst procrastinator like, ever. But...I still finished! So here you are.

Disclaimer: Last time i looked in the mirror, i was a girl in middle school, so, i am not Rick Riordan, therefore, I do not own PJO

"My Dinner Goes up in Smoke," Piper began.

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately.

"And you were surprised?" Malcolm asked, looking amused.

Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

Annabeth and Clarisse shivered together.

She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man),

"His name is Pan!" Hermes exclaimed.

and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava,

"The lava makes a pretty good hot tub," Mused Leo. Sharing a look, Travis and Connor gave identical smirks

"Well Percy," Travis began

"Leo, how about a deal?" Connor added

"We can make camp more even more awesome. We just need…"

"…Both of you."Connor ended

Leo agreed immediately. Percy, however, hesitated, before looking at Annabeth, then back at the Stolls. "I guess" Connor pulled out a notepad before whispering furiously with Travis. The other demigods only heard snatches of the conversation like, "Convince Chiron…" and "Get on Mr. D's good side…"

"I'm jealous…" Frank whispered to Hazel. "Why can't we have a hot tub?"

She smiled and whispered back "Because we have Roman baths and an OCD statue. We've got the better deal"

and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.

"I almost die on that every time" Piper sighed, looking up.

"Don't stop now!" Apollo told her. "Get on with the story!"

"Alright! Jeez…"

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.

"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."

"Whatever."

"It wasn't my fault."

"Yes it was" Athena glared.

She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.

Hermes and Apollo snickered. "One with the plumbing" Hermes recited.

"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.

"Who?"

"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."

"Rachel is not a what. The Oracle is not a what." Apollo said fuming.

"The Oracle is a what. Rachel is who. " Athena argued.

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once. I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.

"You are, more or less" Poseidon reasoned.

I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.

"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"Ooooh… Somebody's jealous" Sang Drew.

Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."

"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"

"I can name a few." Thalia muttered glancing at Nico. Then she looked at Leo. Then the Stolls. Then Percy. "More then a few, actually."

Annabeth nodded her head. "I think half the kids are mentally disturbed."

"I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."

"Half-human and half-what?"

"I think you know."

I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.

"God," I said. "Half-god."

Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."

"That's ... crazy."

"No, Poseidon isn't crazy. That's Hades. "Demeter corrected

"And Apollo" Artemis piped up.

"You forgot the Drunken Idiot" Athena said, glancing at Dionysus.

"Hey!" Protested Hades, Apollo, and Dionysus.

"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"

"But those are just-" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth.

"But if all the kids here are half-gods,"

"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."

"Then who's your dad?"

The female gods huffed.

"Sexist much?" Gwen questioned.

Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.

"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."

"He's human."

"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"

"Oh Gods, two Annabeths. Scary. Terrifying actually." Nico shivered. Percy nodded his head.

"Who's your mom, then?"

"Cabin six."

"Meaning?"

Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."

"Whoop! Go Theeny!" Apollo cheered.

"Theeny?"

Okay, I thought. Why not?

"And my dad?"

"Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."

"Except my mother. She knew."

"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."

"My dad would have. He loved her."

"Maybe not." Aphrodite reasoned. "Gods don't always do. If he did love her, he might have kept it a secret to protect her." She glanced quickly at Piper and felt a pang of regret.

Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens."

"You mean sometimes it doesn't?"

The gods looked everywhere but at the teenagers on the ground.

Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us."

I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.

"So I'm stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?"

"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force.

"Excuse me?" asked the children of said goddesses.

"I don't think that applies to Piper" Jason reasoned.

"Or Katie." Travis agreed. "You've never seen her actually angry."

The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."

"Who are some famous demigods?" Leo asked.

"George Washington. Abe Lincoln. Elvis Presley. Taylor Swift. Avril Lavigne. Adam Levine. Elton John. Bruno Mars-"Annabeth listed easily.

"So monsters can't get in here?"

Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."

"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?"

"Practice fights. Practical jokes."

"Practical jokes?"

"You guys take camp way to seriously." Frank muttered.

"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."

"So ... you're a year-rounder?"

Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.

Athena raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."

"Why did you come so young?"

She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."

"Touchy…" Connor whispered to his brother, who snickered. Unfortunately for them, Annabeth heard, and whacked them both with her dagger.

"Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So ... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"

"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless ..."

"Unless?"

"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time..."

Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.

"What happened?" Hermes asked curiously.

"Uh…" Will started. Luckily, Nyssa covered up for him.

"One of the campers traveled to the garden of the Hesperides and tried to pick an apple. Ladon didn't like that so he lunged, and then- I mean now- he has a big scar down the left side of his face."

"How do you know so much about the quest?" Thalia questioned.

"I was undetermined at the time. You should've heard some of the things Lu- I mean he said about that dragon."

"Back in the sick room," I said, "when you were feeding me that stuff-"

"Ambrosia."

"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."

Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you do know something?"

Thalia shook her head in mock disappointment. "Shame, Annabeth, you should know by now that he knows nothing."

"Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"

She clenched her fists.

"I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal."

"You've been to Olympus?"

"It was rather nice before the war, wasn't it?" Katie asked, glancing around the throne room.

"Lucky them." Octavian muttered with a sour look on his face. The Stolls, who had taken note of his unpleasant expressions and mutterings, noticed this as well.

"Some of us year-rounders Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."

"But... how did you get there?"

"There are many different ways to get there: A taxi, but that's expensive, the vans, a magical poof of godly magic." Malcolm listed.

"The Long Island Railroad, of course."

"And then there's that."

"You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already.

"You are a New Yorker, right?"

"Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.

"Never argue with Annabeth about architecture." Travis said. "Bad move."

"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I mean Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon."

Aphrodite sighed. One of the great couples she had planned ruined. Maybe she could try for a Romeo and Juliet repeat. Of course, that might be a bit dry.

"But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something."

I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.

"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm not too young. If they would just tell me the problem-"

I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl.

"It was pretty loud. Like earthquake loud." Annabeth admitted.

She told me to go on, she'd catch me later.

I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.

People snickered at this possibility, as it was probably true.

Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles.

They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers.

"Thank you Percy, that means so much" Travis said acting as if he was wiping away a tear.

Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.

The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.

"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."

I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.

"Probably not." Connor said.

I said, "Thanks."

"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough first day?"

"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in them? It doesn't get any easier."

"He seems really bitter." Gwen noticed.

"Luke reminds me of Octavian." Hazel whispered to Frank. "Not just in appearances."

The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.

"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.

He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."

"The wing-footed messenger guy."

"Is that the first thing people think of?" Hermes asked.

"Yes" came the universal reply.

"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.

"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.

"Once."

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.

Annabeth shook her head. "No, that's a different story altogether."

Athena remembered hearing about the quest earlier from the daughter of Hephateus, and how that hero had a scar on his face. Could that hero be Luke?

Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."

"It would have been better if he had meant it." Connor muttered his expression uncharacteristically sour.

He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him even if he was a counselor should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.

I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"

"It means that you'll be the son of one of the most powerful gods, like ever, and that you two will fall in love, save the world, start dating, go missing, get found, sail a flying ship(that is, if we survive the Romans), then save the world again." Pollux answered.

Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."

"Don't we all?" Nico said.

"No, I absolutely love prophecies!" Leo said cheerfully, completely missing the nasty look Octavian sent his way.

"What do you mean?"

His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until...somebody special came to the camp."

"Somebody special?"

"Meaning you, her future boyfriend." Drew confirmed

"Boyfriend?" Athena practically shouted. Aphrodite, however, looked very happy about something. "So are they together?"

Thalia sent Piper a meaningful look, which she thankfully understood meant to keep reading.

"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for.

"I did not!" Annabeth objected.

"Not anymore" Travis corrected.

"But you did." Connor added.

Now, come on, its dinnertime."

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.

Luke yelled, "Eleven fall in!"

The whole cabin, about twenty of us,

"Only twenty?" Piper raised an eyebrow. "Camp's really grown hasn't it?"

The older campers just nodded.

filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.

"It's really pretty after the sun goes down." Piper sighed.

We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow.

Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.

"It's weird when they do that." Nico frowned.

In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.

At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.

Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.

"Go Athena table!" Malcolm cheered.

Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

Clarisse grinned happily, but all the other girls (and Octavian) looked disgusted, not including Annabeth, who was far too used to this behavior.

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"

Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want nonalcoholic, of course."

Katie tilted her head. "What happens if you try for an alcoholic drink?"

"Zeus gets angry, and Dionysus congratulates you before giving you kitchen duty." Travis answered quickly.

Katie felt the corners of her mouth pull up slightly. "Know from experience do you?"

"Obviously."

"How else would he know?" Connor cut it.

I said, "Cherry Coke."

The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.

Then I had an idea. "Blue Cherry Coke."

The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.

I took a cautious sip. Perfect.

Hazel gave an "oh" of realization before turning to Percy. "That's why you had a blue soda at Camp Jupiter, isn't it? It looked…really weird, actually."

Octavian snorted quietly, muttering, "Most things related to the Greeks are strange." Unfortunately for him, the Stoll brothers heard that as well.

I drank a toast to my mother.

"How sweet" Hera cooed before turning to her sons. "Why can't you ever do something sweet like that?"

"It would make me a pussy."

"You threw me off a mountain!"

She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...

"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.

I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion.

I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.

"What are you doing?" Frank asked.

"You guys don't sacrifice food?"

"No"

"Come on," Luke told me.

As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest straw berry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."

"You're kidding." Frank frowned.

"You're kidding."

Nico suddenly developed a very sad look on his face (more so then usual). "Frank," He sighed out sadly, "You're becoming even more like Percy. I am sorry to say it is only a matter of time before your head will also become kelp-filled."

His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.

Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Hermes."

I was next.

I wished I knew what god's name to say.

Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please.

I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.

When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.

"Really?" Reyna asked with a raised eyebrow.

It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.

"Whoa" Gwen breathed. "Awesome."

When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.

Mr. D got up with a huge sigh.

"Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."

A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.

"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."

"Why does Mr. D insist on getting names wrong?" Percy whispered to Annabeth.

"No idea"

Chiron murmured something.

"Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."

Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along.

"It's always so cheesy." Clarisse said, rolling her eyes.

We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.

Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.

My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.

When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.

That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.

I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.

"Ominous. What happened?" Leo asked.

"Who wants to read next?" Piper asked, marking the page. Leo was the only one who volunteered.

Piper sighed, "Fine, Repair Boy. Just don't burn it."

TADA! That is all. And i am currently writing a story with violagirl23 about the Hunger Games in Glimmer and Clove's POV. I think it's pretty good, but that's only my opinion. LATER!

-BBB