(A/N) Hey! Okay, so this takes place after the Giant War. I'll have Chapter 2 up in a few minutes. Review, please! It's my birthday, so review as a present. Kay, bye.

-JuleRose

Disclaimer: I do not own PJO or HOO; Rick Riordan does. Also, Rick Riordan is awesome.

Chapter I

Halley Sneaks Out

In New York, right now, there are Greek gods sitting in a throne room on the six-hundredth floor of the Empire State Building. There's also a camp where kids learn to fight monsters and use powers they inherited from their parents, the gods. In LA, dead spirits are being brought down into Hell to be judged. You humans think you know everything about the world you live in. You don't. I'll bet that you think I'm crazy; that I'm just trying to entertain you by writing a story. Go ahead and think that. You're better off not knowing anything. For most of you, it wouldn't matter anyways. If you knew something, you might look at the world differently, but your lives wouldn't be in danger.

Some of you, though; for some of you, this matters. If you read this, and you realize that similar things have been happening to you, brace yourself. Try to find your school's satyr and tell them about your suspicions. Get to Camp Half-Blood as soon as you can, and don't look back.

By the way, I'm Abalone Seas, but, if you know what's good for you, you'll call me Abby. I'm the daughter of Poseidon, the sea god, and I'm the head counselor for the whole Poseidon cabin. The life of a demigod is never normal, of course, but things really started getting weird last May. Before I tell you about it, though, let me back up a little bit; tell you about what life is normally like around here.

Ever since Winter Break, Camp Half-Blood had been getting A LOT more campers. I mean, a few years ago, when this guy named Percy Jackson made a pact with the gods that they had to take care of their demigod children; you know, claim them, send them to Camp Half-Blood, make sure that they don't get eaten by monsters, etc., .

At home, right now, you're probably thinking "Wow, this girl is crazy! What kind of person gets eaten by monsters? Monsters don't even exist!"

Yeah, if you're mortal, then I guess, for you, monsters don't exist. Your parents probably told you this. Well, the first thing you learn at Camp Half-Blood is that your parents are filthy liars. Any demigod, or person with any demigod in them, is bound to encounter a monster at least once in their life, and probably a lot more. This is mainly because we are very powerful, us demigods. So powerful, in fact, that we generate auras, auras so strong that we smell a whole lot like dinner to monsters. Because of this, we often get chased by and eaten by monsters very often.

I should also probably explain what a demigod actually is before I go too far into the story. At Camp Half-Blood, everyone is a demigod (half Greek god, half human). Well, not everyone; some campers are satyrs, nature spirits, or some other "mythological" creatures. Even the monsters we fight are supposedly "mythological."

Enough explaining; it's time for me to continue.

Anyway, a lot of demigods have been coming to camp lately. I mean, we had a spike in campers a few years ago because of the whole Percy Jackson thing (I'll talk more about him later), but now it's different. We've been getting at least 10 new campers every week for like, six months. The satyrs (half goat, half man, all pure demigod-locating power) have been working really hard, and the camp is practically full. We don't really know what to do, so we've just been calling the gods down here, especially the ones with a lot of demigod children-Apollo, Ares, Hermes, Aphrodite- to magically expand their cabins so more people could be housed. Half the cabins have two stories now. Even the Big Three Cabins, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, were going to need two stories soon.

But again, back to the point. At the Poseidon cabin, we were expecting two new cabin mates soon. There was this thing called the Big Three Pact a little while ago, when the Big Three gods weren't supposed to have any kids, but that ended when Percy Jackson defeated the Titans, and so now the gods are out having kids again. Still for the better part of about eighty years, no Big Three kids were born. That's why we're some of the smallest of the cabins, and why it's so exciting to get new cabin mates. We have to wait for the kids to get old enough.

We were expecting them anytime this week. The whole cabin had already sort of met them through Iris messaging last week. They lived in Florida, a boy and a girl. They'd been living on the streets, roughing it out for the last few months before this satyr named Joshua found them. He told them about camp, and they even got claimed, right there on the street by my dad. He didn't even wait for them to get to camp. They weren't twins though, not even siblings; they'd just found each other at Miami Beach and decided to team up. They seemed nice enough. The girl was eleven and the boy was twelve; Maria and Phillip. One Poseidon child was enough to attract a lot of monsters, but two? It was a wonder they'd made it in Miami. Phillip got along really well with everyone, but Maria was more shy and subdued. They were both really powerful though. I was cleaning my cabin so it would look nice for Maria and Phillip.

After scrubbing and disinfecting every surface in my cabin, I decided that it was about time to go to the dining hall for dinner. I stepped onto the porch and blew a conch shell. This was the Poseidon cabin's signal to meet in the cabin. I had four other people in my cabin; Jason and Peter Oceanotoga, McKenna Salmon, and Halley Lakeman. Jason and Peter were first to arrive. I, as the leader of the Poseidon cabin, instructed them to line up. Jason got Peter in a headlock and walked him over to where I was standing. Jason released Peter and they both flipped their Justin Bieber haircuts at the same time. McKenna walked up next. She was rather petite for her age, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in ability. She fought remarkably well with her knife and I've even seen her beat Zoe a few times. I liked McKenna; she always knew what to do and was very polite.

"Hey, Abby!" she said, in the cheerful tone that she always used when talking to others.

"Hey, Kenna!" I said back. She danced gracefully into line.

We waited for Halley for about five minutes before I started to get worried. At first, I thought that she hadn't heard the conch shell, so I blew it again; louder this time. After another five minutes, I started to panic. I gave quick, precise instructions.

"Jason, Peter, you take a quick dip and see if she's in the water. Kenna, take a quick run through camp, but don't go into the forest. I'm going to go to the Big House," I said without thinking or with lots of thinking if you look at it differently; on one hand, the instructions were easy to give, as I had given them many times before. On the other hand, my mind was a thousand miles away as I thought about where Halley might be. I hoped she was safe. Halley was clever, but she was always causing trouble. Practical jokes, like hiding the Aphrodite cabin's Jimmy Choo flip flops, or spying on couples we had at camp. She got around camp easily, her slim body and long legs allowing her to run long distances, and climb high trees. She was the camp gossip, and sometimes, her new information was so interesting that I asked her about it. It was easy to talk to Halley. You could be thinking about anything in the world, and her mindless chatter would go on and on and on.

I snapped back into reality, and said a quick "Go" to my cabin; Not loud enough to startle them, but enough to get them moving. I started out down to the Big House, but then quickly thought of a place she might be. I ran into the forest, ducking in places where I might be visible to other campers.

Ah, there it was.

About thirty yards into the foliage, there was an intersection between three oak trees. They were quite old, but there was a nice spot up at the top where you could see the sunset.

Halley had come here when she first arrived. I remembered it like it was just yesterday. I had a little flashback as I watched Halley.

There was a gurgling sound in the corner of my cabin at about three at night. I checked around the cabin, as this usually meant something important was happening. I found Halley's bed empty and forced myself onto my feet. I walked outside and felt the cold wind biting my uncovered arms. I saw an almost invisible trail of footsteps leading down to the water, and then more defined, wet ones going up another path. I followed the wet tracks to the edge of the forest and then hesitated to enter the dark brush. I walked further and further into the forest, and there she was, sitting down on the trees. The water she was covered in glistened in the moonlight. I walked over to the tree silently, and climbed up just as quiet.

"Why did you come up here?" she asked softly, her voice thick with tears.

I sighed, knowing exactly what she was feeling.

"It's a lot to take in, isn't it?" I said as gentle as I could. The quiet environment surrounding the trees seemed so fragile, so beautiful. I didn't want to wake anything.

"I don't belong here," she said, her voice breaking at the end up the sentence.

"Yeah, you do. I know it doesn't seem like it, but this is the safest place you can be right now. And your family is safer, there's no monsters coming after them."

She sobbed quietly, and something glistened on her cheek.

"I don't have any family," she said, "They're all dead. And it's all my fault."

"It seems that way, doesn't it? But it's not true. There's nothing you could've done. The best things you can do right now are just trying your best to do what's right and then see them in Elysium when you die." I tried to comfort her.

"You really believe all that stuff; about the gods and all that?" she asked doubtfully.

"Yeah, it gets easier as time goes on," I told her, "Just wait 'til your first trip to Mt. Olympus. Boy, do they know how to party!"

She laughed and then I joined in.

"Thanks, Abby," she told me, and you could tell she meant it.

I smiled at the memory and inspected the tree more closely, and then…Oh!

Halley and Hunter, a boy from the Ares cabin with angular cheekbones and long red hair, were sitting up in the tree, talking. I held my breath and my eyes widened. I reached into my jacket pocket; I didn't think I brought my camera, but this was good black mail for the future if she ever tried something. Surprisingly, my camera actually was in my pocket, though I didn't remember putting it there. As soon as I pulled it out, they leaned in to kiss. I snapped a shot, and winced at the loud noise, though they didn't turn away. I backed out of the forest and then staged it as if I had just entered.

"Halley! Halley!" I called. Within seconds, Halley was standing at my side. I tried not to notice that she was barely breathing and her face was as red as a tomato.

"What were you doing in there? We almost called Mr. D!"

She shivered at the thought of the Camp Director. Dionysus' punishment for chasing an off-limits nymph was that he had to serve as the camp director for a century. He wasn't very enthusiastic about his job, and it was almost more of a punishment to us. Luckily, for his brave acts in the second Titan War, his sentence was cut down to fifty years.

"I dunno," Halley said quietly.

"Sure," I said, not wanting to push. I'd get Kenna to talk to her later.

We ran to the cabin, where Kenna was running away from Peter and Jason, who were trying to get her wet, which, considering she was a child of Poseidon and only got wet at will, was pretty impossible. Still though, imagine two rowdy teenage boys chasing you around. It's terrifying.

"Hey! Boys, stop it!" I scolded. They stood up straight and put their arms by their sides, trying to look innocent.

"Busted," I heard Kenna say smugly. I snuck a quick smirk at her behind the boys' backs.

We walked to the Dining Hall together, silently. I noticed that Halley didn't look up from the ground the whole way.

We sat down at our table; the announcements were just starting. Mr. D grudgingly told everyone about the new campers that would be coming tomorrow. After that, Chiron took over and said that we would be playing Capture the Flag on Friday, and that the winning team would get first shower times; guaranteed hot water.

Finally, we were told to dig in. The meal was same as always; lean steak, fruit salad, and a roll of bread. My cabin got up to give our burnt offering. I tossed part of my roll into the fire and said a silent prayer to my dad.

Please let Phillip and Maria get here soon.

It was a normal dinner. Peter and Jason threw grapes at each other. McKenna flashed funny faces at her friend Sonny in the Apollo cabin. The only abnormal thing was that Halley, instead of being very talkative to us like she normally was, was silently tearing her roll apart into tiny pieces and eating them. I noticed her glancing at Hunter a lot. Even when Jason aimed incorrectly and hit her right in the eye with a grape, she didn't even complain, while usually, it would become all-out war and she would start screeching and kicking at him.

After dinner, we all went to the campfire. The Apollo cabin leads us in some of the usual hits here at Camp Half-Blood such as "I am My Own Great, Great, Great Grandpa," and "How Grandma Got Dressed for War." We all ate our s'mores. I lead everybody back to the cabin and we all went to sleep.