This is a story I've adopted from Alex and Dillon Productions, with their consent. Basically, Percy goes camping and meets the Hunters. Hilarity ensues. Here goes nothing!
Prologue: Pine Trees and Squirrel Poo
Percy's POV
The day was starting off pretty badly. Thunderclouds raged overhead, dark and ominous.
Ominous. What a foreboding word.
I groaned. Rachel was reading reference books lately, trying to understand some of the words she didn't know in her prophecies. She became a walking dictionary, spitting out words. As if we didn't know what 'death and destruction' meant.
Camp Half-Blood had been calm for the last few days, besides the occasional capture the flag game. I had fallen into a dull routine. Breakfast, training, lunch, training, dinner, training, and then everything repeated like a bad playlist on loop. Even sparring with Annabeth lost the adrenaline rush I normally felt- although kissing sometimes helped. I waited in my cabin, slashing Riptide at imaginary enemies and wondering what I was waiting for. Suddenly, a loud boom echoed. I jumped at the loud noise, dropping Riptide. The Celestial bronze glow faded away as it reverted back into its pen form, rolling across the floor and hitting the wall. The room turned pitch black. Great. I could see just fine in my cabin day or night; I had spent some time practicing inter-cabin traveling after an incident with the fountain. Nowadays, wet pants were rare for me. Being a son of Poseidon had its perks. The darkness made it hard for me to see outside, however, and was otherwise just plain annoying.
A flash of lightning lit up the room. I froze up, my ADHD taking a back seat as fear and battle instincts took over my body. Something was sitting outside the window, and its golden eyes had been staring right at me. I grabbed Riptide and stepped outside, unleashing the blade and waving it around in front of me. The air smelled of pine trees and squirrel poo. I gripped my sword tighter as I fought the urge to gag. Had a monster broken into camp? I checked the perimeter of the cabin and found fresh tracks. I recognized the print, having seen it dozens of times before. A wolf had been outside my window. The tracks disappeared almost instantly, giving me no sense of the direction the wolf took. My body loosened and I soon realized how tired I was. Chasing imaginary foes can really wear a person out.
I decided to check the camp border before I went to bed. If a monster had made it into the camp, it meant that they removed the boundaries first. The glowing Golden Fleece still sat in its spot in the tree, and our dragon protecting it lay curled up around it, sleeping like a rock. I checked the ground along the edge and discovered another set of tracks identical to the ones outside my cabin. The wolf had passed through the boundaries. The paw prints led out into the wild and dark night.
The golden gaze of the wolf came back to my memory. I had to know what it was and how it got into the camp. Ignoring the poo smell, I ran back to my cabin and grabbed my bag, stuffing it with a spare t-shirt and jeans, a lighter, a flashlight, and a few drachmas. I only just remembered to scribble a note explaining the wolf and my intentions before bolting out the door and into the night.
Of course, it rained. Typical. I think Zeus was laughing at me as I trucked through the mud and down the hill. The tracks smeared, but I managed to see where they were headed; the forest. I drew out Riptide in its pen form, prepared to unleash it on anything that moved, wolf or squirrel. My heart was racing, and I realized the sensation was oddly unfamiliar. I hadn't been so stirred up since Kronos and the Battle of Manhattan. And… I liked it. Weird. I ignored the thrill and kept moving, searching the darkness for the golden eyes that haunted me.
This is just a sorta prologue... Man, I suck at making non-foreboding prologues. Oh well. I hope you enjoyed it, I promise that the next few chapters will be longer. I'll try and update weekly, but till then, here's lots of fluff!
