( CHAPTER ONE )
Charlie Aggressively Ignores All Warning Signs

ORGANIZING FILES WAS SURPRISINGLY going to be the best part of Charlie's day.

The dusty hotel room was cheap that was for sure, the floor's creaked, the beds felt like cement and she'd befriended the mouse family in the wall in the time she'd been here. The desk chair she set on cracked every time she moved, and with Charlie's ADHD? Let's just say she was thankful for her headphones resting on her ears or she'd gone mad a long time ago, she was pretty sure the room next to her already had. She didn't blame them. The desk she was working on was shoved in the corner of the small two person hotel room, a small barely working lamp sat on it and if it wasn't for the light coming of Charlie's exposed arm she wouldn't have been able to read anything.

In some way Charlie was glad the glowing thing seemed to have at least one purpose, although it could be easily replaced by a flashlight or a change of batteries in the old lamp, it was something. Glowing was, unsurprisingly, useless in combat. Anything useless in combat and easily replaced by the mundane task of buying a flashlight weren't that high on Charlie's list of favorite perks of being a god's daughter. Perhaps because that list had nothing on it, but who was she to be her negative self.

Speaking of negative. These documents were worsening her already grumpy mood. Most of them were about attacks from monsters here and there, other's about the gods being their usual egocentric self an almost revealing the entirety of the mystical world ( Apollo, she's talking about Apollo ). Some about people who saw trough the mist helped out of psychiatric hospitals and explained on how no you're not crazy, everything is just very, very terrible. Charlie hated writing out how missions went and she didn't know her mother did it every time.

Her pen scribbled something before she put down her pen and calmly put of her headphones off, casually throwing them on the bed behind her. Then, she promptly slammed her head on the desk.

The jiggling of keys and the noise of the door creaking open made Charlie let out a long defeated groan as if she had to make sure everyone around her knew how frustrated she was. The sound of bags being plopped down onto a bed and the creaky door closing made Charlie let out another long insufferable groan. Someone crouching down and the squeaky noises of mice coming out of their hiding place to nibble on what she was pretty sure smelled like cheese got Charlie to open her mouth and let out a deep long sigh-

"Organizing documents too boring for you?"

Another groan.

"I brought pizza."

Silence. Apart from of course the mouse, whom Charlie had named Timothy Tom the Third, also known as Triple T, running across the floor back into his hiding place.

"Did you also bring Dr. Pepper," Charlie spoke out voice muffled.

"Yep."

"Does the pizza have pepperoni on it?"

"It sure does."

"What about making a mess?"

"Charlie, sweetie, have you seen this place. We could preform a satanic ritual and they wouldn't notice a difference in mess."

Charlie's head shot up from the desk a cheery look on her face at the promise of eating pepperoni pizza, drinking some Dr. Pepper and not having to clean up after herself. "In that case, god bless shady hotels!"

With the speed of light Charlie launched herself onto her mother's bed crabbing out the pizza and a can of Dr Pepper before happily plopping down back onto her own concrete single bed. As Charlie shook the Dr Pepper violently her mother glanced towards the desk with the documents surprisingly neatly piled on it. Charlie's mother, Lauren Vos, hated paperwork more than Charlie did, but somehow, in some magical way, as if she had actual motivation to finish tasks (ridiculous, charlie knows), her mother always got done with them on time.

Reaching into the plastic back Lauren glanced towards her daughter. "How far did you get before you decided to begin your groaning party."

Charlie halted her shaking for a second. "Almost done, I got a headache from trying to read trough the Helhound file looking for the date."

Lauren made a face." Knew I forgot something." She reached into the drawer next to her bed picking up a box shaking it for a second looking at Charlie. "Want something for the pain."

She shook her head. "Nah, I'm good thanks mom." Charlie's shoulder slightly shagged as she glanced back to the files. "I don't get why we got to write down all the missions."

"It's part of the job, you know that."

"I know, I know. It's just, I get we gotta protect mortals and all. We're like the Winchesters of the Guardians and all that stuff, but-" Charlie grimaced. "It's so much work. I'm lazy. Can we just like, not do it."

Her mom chuckled lightly. "It's too learn-" Charlie let out another defeated groan before her mom continued, "If something goes wrong now we can make sure it doesn't again, besides in our line of business anything can be connected it's handy to have records no matter how miscellaneous they might seem." She threw a disapproving look as Charlie went back to shaking the Dr Pepper can. "I said you could make a mess, not create a soda explosion."

With slight disappointment Charlie stopped shaking the can. She glanced up at the clock on the wall, she was slightly surprised that it wasn't broken in all honesty she expected-

"Wait."

Charlie's eyes fixated on the clock, a bit past seven in the morning, nothing unusual for Charlie. She always got up with the sun. She glanced down it the dr pepper in one hand and a slice of pepperoni pizza in the other. She glanced up at her mother who was gathering up the documents from the desk. For a second Charlie hesitated, wondering if asking was a better plan than just ignoring her realization. With any other person Charlie would've just dashed out of the room, but she knew her that wouldn't change a thing with her mom.

Against, as she would later realize, better judgment she opened her mouth and asked, "What kind of vile, terrible thing are you about to put me trough."

Her mom didn't eve flinch as she spoke,"You're going to school for today."

Charlie made a mad dash for the door only to realize it was locked.

For a second she considered just breaking the thing down. But before she could raise her hand and obliterate the door that was standing in her way to freedom her mother slyly said, "If you destroy the door you're paying for it."

Goddamn her cheap self.

Charlie's head whipped around to her mother's a look of utter betrayal. "What have I done to deserve this mother?"

Her mother rolled her eyes as Charlie sniffed dramatically. "It's for one day."

"One day of suffering," Charlie muttered under her breath letting go of the door handle after she tried one last time to ruck the door open.

"I've got some business just out of town, old friend of mine-" Charlie opened her mouth. "No you can't come."

"Why not?" Charlie wined sitting down on the concrete mattress.

"It's not a Greek problem," her mother explained. "And you're not ready to deal with anything other yet." A grin broke onto her mother's face. "Besides," she said a bit too cheerily, "I got a call from Gleeson Hedge-"

"Glee? Like that show?"

"Like the satyr," Lauren corrected putting the documents away. "Grover called you Saturday didn't he? You two caught up, but I'm pretty sure he mentioned the guy."

Charlie scratched her head thinking back to the short lived call, before a lamp lighted up inside her head. "The old guy? He told me something about a job the old goat was doing at some Wilderness school." Charlie narrowed her eyes. "I don't like where this is going anymore."

"I talked to Grover a bit after you went to bed. Apparently there's two demigods in the school, they were going to be brought to camp tonight so I suggested you helped Gleeson bring them to camp." Lauren laughed at her daughter's tired groan. "They're the same age as you, Grover and I thought you'd be better at explaining things to them."

Charlie tried to argue that she would be terrible at it, and probably try swinging a bat at them if they started to act annoying. Unfortunately her mother didn't buy it and after shoving a backpack in her arms and shoving her into the car she knew she was doomed.

On the way to what her mother said was in fact Wilderness school she briefly filled Charlie in on everything about the demigods she knew. As it turned out The Wilderness School was a school for problem children so Charlie would be perfectly in her element. It did not brighten her mood though. One of the demigods was named Piper, apparently she stole a car once, Charlie already liked her. The other one a boy named Leo who was send to the school after he kept running away from foster families seemed to be prone to putting things on fire, Charlie also already liked him.

Even though the two demigods didn't seem to be that bad Charlie still wasn't to keen on going to school. Mostly because she felt something was about to go very, very wrong. She of course chose to aggressively ignore that feeling, because everything was going fine. Besides her biggest problem right now should be finding Percy not going to school and pretending everything was sunshine and rainbows.

Percy Jackson, Charlie's best friend since childhood, was missing and she had an odd feeling the real reason her mother send her to do this was so she could think about something else. It wasn't a secret Charlie was worried, when the blonde was worried she tended to do everything to keep herself busy. In the best week she'd finished all the homework she'd 'forgot to do' from the past two weeks, she'd reorganized all the documents on demigods in camp, she'd cleaned the entire Apollo cabin and Hermes cabin (do you have any idea how filthy that place is), she'd willingly tagged along with her mother to do paperwork. Paperwork.

In the end though paperwork was a lot better than the mess she was about to be dragged into.

After being set of at the school Charlie considered just running for it then and there, but as she couldn't see anything for a good mile she decided against it and walked inside the school. Her search for the so called Gleeson hedge was shorter than expected she'd asked a teacher passing by who just vaguely pointed towards what looked like gym doors. At first she didn't get it, not soon after she heard a loud yell and the sound of a baseball bat hitting the ground. (Don't ask how she knows that.)

Dashing forwards she slammed open the doors of the gym door just in time to see the baseball missing a student by a slight inch.

Oh, yeah. She going to love this school so much. (Spoiler: she wasn't, that was sarcasm.)

Unfortunately in her mad dash for the door she'd slammed open the doors hard announcing her presence and halting the second swing of the bat.

All eyes turned to her and luckily most people didn't look at her like she had two heads. Charlie figured she fit in pretty well with the other students. She had the trouble look easily down, worn out shoes, jeans with holes (that hadn't been there to begin with), and her camp half-blood shirt held five different stains on it. Her hoodie over her messy hair and worn out leather jacket were surprisingly, kinda, a little, they were less filthy than her shirt. With her headphones dangling around her neck to noise out any adults Charlie looked like the prime example of a problem child.

The coach opened his mouth to yell again before his eyes landed on her shirt, then his eyes shifted to her leather, jacket, hair, and lastly the pizza stain on her pants, then somehow his scowl worsened and he glared at her as if she'd committed high treason. The coach was about Charlie's height, perhaps even a bit taller, he wore a bright orange polo shirt that made Charlie squint her eyes, a pair of nylon pants, and Nikes.

For a second it looked like he was going throw his baseball bat at her, but then her turned around and yelled, "Five rounds! Go!" and turned and walked towards her. Charlie had an odd feeling that might be Gleeson Hedge. There was some complaining by an elf looking boy with pointed ears and hair almost messier than Charlie's, but Hedge waved his baseball bat around shouting something along the lines of "Don't make me use this Valdez!" and the boy, although begrudgingly, started running.

When he finally stood in front of her he glared menacingly before saying, "You."

Anybody else would probably be intimidated, but Charlie who had faced cyclops, hellhounds, titans, and who'd had Annabeth Chase yell at her, just sighed tiredly and said, "Me."

He looked her up and down before raising an eyebrow. "You're Charlie Vos?"

Charlie sighed again moving to lean on her other leg. "I know, I'm short, my hair's a mess, and no, I'm not planning on buying a new jacket." Charlie tapped on of her feet. "Grover- uh, Underwood send me, said tonight you were bringing two demigods to camp. Figured I could help with that."

If possible Hedge looked more annoyed by this situation than Charlie. "So they send you to school to go undercover as a student?"

"You make it sound like this is 22 Jump Street." Charlie shoved her hands in her pocket. "But yeah, pretty much. I figure you've got the, you know-" She gestured to his bat. "Violent department under control, but you've also gotta deal with the whole my parents aren't gods, you're crazy, I'm going crazy. You know the whole 'ordeal'" Charlie glanced behind him to see the students almost done with their laps. "Anyway since I'm a demigod Grover figured they might listen better."

"Listen to what?"

Charlie figured he was asking about the speech she was going to give them, but after a second she just, "I was honestly just thinking of punching them, and using vague threats." The blonde shrugged lightly. "Usually does the trick."

Hedge nodded his head thinking for a bit. "Why not just let me knock them out with my bat."

For a second Charlie considered it, and for the first time since entering the school she grinned a twinkle of excitement in her eyes. "Yeah, no that works for me. I'll help you carry them to camp when you knock them out. Can I knock one out too?"

Part of her was happy the students were running far enough away to not hear they're conversation.

Hedge grinned, seemingly pleased by the green light Charlie gave him, he looked almost proud as he said, "Finally! A demigod after my own heart. The rumors were true huh, as violent as they come." He put his bat on the ground using it as a leaning pole. "Now a days it's a rare sight to find some true warriors, ya know, all of them jump at the sight of a shadow!"

Charlie a little more relaxed to see Hedge seemed to be more of a survival of the fittest than peace maker satyr chuckled a bit. "You know, you'd love Clarissa."

A grin broke out onto his face. "Clarisse La Rue? How is she these days, brought that girl to camp myself, haven't been able to see her in awhile because I'm stuck here." For a second a grimace flashed on his face before he went on, "Violent girl that one, an absolute delight!"

"Yeah, delight," Charlie answered thinking back to the time Clarissa almost ran her trough with a spear. "Anyway about the demigods-"

When the bell rang Charlie and Hedge conversation had ended, they'd quickly discussed the demigods, Hedge had pointed them out to her, muttered something about how he could've easily handled it, but a violent spirit was always appreciated, and he'd gone back to yelling at the teenagers. Charlie'd sat on the bleachers next to a student with a broken arm for the rest of the period. The student, Kyle, was pretty good company. He asked her why she was send to the school so suddenly. She made up something about breaking a teacher's arm, he seemed to believe her.

The students all, but ran for the changing rooms which was impressive for the fact five second ago they all looked like they were ready to die.

Kyle stood up from his place on the bleachers, in their ten minutes of getting to know each other she'd found out the boy was send here because he was prone to stealing things, so before he could really go anywhere Charlie blocked his path holding out her hand. "Wallet." Begrudgingly the guy pulled out Charlie's wallet from his pocket handing it to her before disappearing with his group of friends into the hallway.

"Hey! Vos!"

Charlie's head turned to see Hedge approaching her with two students, she quickly recognized them to be the demigods he'd pointed out. Charlie perked up a sly grin on her face the atmosphere of the school was putting her at ease. "Oh, last name basis huh? Was I that annoying?"

One of the students, the boy Leo if Charlie remembered right laughed lightly. Hedge threw both of them a warning glare and swung his baseball bat lightly as if he was readying to swing it at one of their heads. Even though he could only reach Charlie's and said, "These two volunteered to show you around school." Then he walked away leaving her with the two demigods who's lives she was going to ruin in about 5 hours.

The girl, Piper, was pretty, like really pretty. She seemed to try and cover it up though. Her chocolate colored hair was cut choppy and uneven, and although not as messy as Charlie's, she was pretty close, thin strands seemed to have been braided in them and, unfortunately, it made her look even prettier in Charlie's opinion. She wore simple, tomboy-ish clothing, faded jeans, snowboarding jacket, and some hiking boots. Although she wore no make-up and seemed to have a pimple on her nose, she still looked stunning. Especially her eyes, which seemed to be changing colors.

Charlie could've introduced her in a lot of ways, she looked like she was part of a gang, and her natural expression made her look like she was about to commit a mass felony. But with Charlie's luck she took one look at Piper, gasped, and said in the tone of a freshmen who'd just seen his first boob, "Wow."

Thankfully Piper seemed to appreciate it as she let out a small laugh at Charlie's reaction, both her and the boy Leo seemed to visually calm down a bit. Piper stuck out her hand with a smile. "I'm Piper McLean." She jerked her head to the boy behind her. "The elf looking one is Leo Valdez."

"Charlie." She took the girl's hand with a grin. "Charlie Vos."

Looking back on it? She should've made up a name.

Leo and Piper had shown Charlie around the school after gym class, and Charlie had to admit she really liked the two, it almost made her sorry about the fact she was going to make their lives even worse. Leo, to Charlie's absolute delight, seemed to love her jokes unlike Piper who, for some weird reason, didn't find them funny. Leo was, of course, taller than Charlie, but not by much. In Charlie's book five inches isn't much. His face seemed to be covered in oil at all times, and his elf ears were kind of cute. During lunch the two of them had Piper vote on who's hair was messier, Charlie of course won, but she gave Leo props for trying.

The day was actually going quite well, sure being in school was terrible, but with the company of Leo and Piper it wasn't as bad as Charlie would've thought. Leo's jokes almost even made her forget about Percy for a second, which given her situation, she yet again gave him props for trying. Piper was as cynical and hilarious as Charlie had expected, the brown haired girl had made fun of her height in such an original and creative way Charlie wasn't even mad about. Lunch of course was terrible and Charlie almost puked when the food met her tongue.

"Picky eater?" Piper asked pointing her fork at the carrots Charlie'd spat out.

Charlie blushed lightly. "Uh, kind of?"

The two gave her a curious look and the blonde scratched the back of her head. For a second she considered not telling them and just brushing it of as being a picky eater like Piper suggested. It's not like she was ashamed of it, but she didn't want to explain it all to them. Okay, maybe she was kind of scared of their reaction. Oh, right you don't know what she's talking about either do you? I mean you might've seen the hints dropped, but it's unlikely.

"It's just," Charlie started trying to find the right words, the two looked at her curiously. She gave them a shy smile. "I'm autistic, I don't do good with food textures that are-" Charlie frowned for a second trying to find the right word. "Wrong."

She looked at the two expecting the usual confused expressions and comments of 'you don't look autistic' and 'i never would've thought you were-

"I told you they were noise cancelling headphones," Leo said triumphantly to Piper.

Charlie almost choked on her own spit.

Piper slammed her fork down. "You don't know that for sure!"

They both looked at her. Charlie's eyes darted around in confusion, she glanced at the two before saying, "Uh, yeah they're noise cancelling." She tapped on the left ear of the headphones that was half covering her ear so she could still hear them while the end covered her right ear completely. "Leo's right, it's why I'm not putting it on my left ear."

"Ha, ha!" the boy yelled in triumph.

Piper sighed in defeat before seeing Charlie's expression. She gave the blonde a smile. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Charlie yelped. "It's just you know-" She tapped her hands on the table nervously. "It's just I expected, you know, a different- uh-"

"Reaction," Piper finished with a smile, she rapped her arm around Leo who was seated next to her. "Don't worry about it, both Leo and have ADHD, it has a lot of things in common with autism right?" She threw a soft smile. "My dad had me tested for autism when I was little, turned out I wasn't on the spectrum, but I learned a lot about it because of it."

Leo smiled at her as well. "I had a buddy once who was autistic, made him earplugs that cancel out background noise."

Charlie's head wiped towards Leo as her hands slammed on the table. "You can make those!?"

The day was going great, if not perfect, and for what seemed like a good 15 minutes Charlie forgot about demigods, monsters, and titans, and laughed along with the first people in a long time that made her feel at ease as much as Percy did. Piper gave Charlie some of her break which she happily chewed down, so in the end the food problem was easily solved. her and Leo discussed the earplugs he mentioned, she'd been saving to buy some, but he seemed more than happy to make some for her.

Maybe this whole school thing wasn't as bad as she thought it would've been.

"We're going on a what?"

"School trip, this afternoon, to the Grand Canyon."

Never mind! Everything's still terrible.

"We're going on a- on a?" Charlie looked up at the ceiling glaring "You little-" She turned to look back down at the satyr. "We're going on a what, to where now?!"

After she, Leo and Piper were done with eating Hedge had abruptly dragged her with her to discuss some things. He'd yet again reminded her he needed no help whatsoever keeping monsters at bay, and the only reason he wasn't kicking her out was because he appreciated someone with her personality (violence, that is) and he seemed to have noticed Leo and Piper had easily warmed up to her. Much to, of course, her displeasure as ruining the lives of nice people was a lot less fun than ruining it of people who pissed her of.

Unfortunately as he was about to leave, he told her to tag along towards the bus, and that's where everything just went from great to terribly, terribly wrong.

The bus was crowded, loud, dirty, stupid, and Charlie hated it. She was perhaps a little bit grumpy about the whole school trip ordeal. It might be her experiences with school trips, but easily they went wrong, and when demigods were involved they went very, very wrong. This should be fun for everyone, but Charlie.

In the beginning it didn't seem that bad, Leo and Piper had noticed Charlie's grumpiness and Piper suggested she sat alone for the rit so Leo and Charlie could exchange puns. Bless her heart. Charlie'd put on her headphones half-way trough the ride because of the noise, and started playing a game of charades with Leo and Piper. Piper won. During the ride Leo seemed to be messing with some things he pulled from his pockets when Charlie eventually asked he showed what looked like the start of a small plane.

Son of Hephaestus for sure.

They were almost there when Charlie realized she might've been overreacting. Granted, it was her thing, but she slightly laughed with herself for being so dramatic. Don't get her wrong, something was going to go wrong, for sure, but at least the trip to everything going wrong was turning out to be fun.

She should've kept her mouth shut.

One moment she was talking to Leo about how she could definitely win a fist fight with a gorilla. The next she turned her head to get Piper's opinion in only to see a blond guy she'd never seen before in her life just, just sitting there.

She stared at him long and hard, it looked like he was getting kind of nervous about the stare.

Then, she launched at him.

No, don't worry just messing with you, she didn't attack him. Although she would've wished she had just thrown the guy out of the window of the moving bus, but nothing she can do about that now.

Charlie's eyes met those of the stranger. Electric blue eyes that reminded her of the eyes of Thalia Grace, one of the hunters of Artemis, and Charlie's ex-girlfriend. We'll get to that later. He wore a purple shirt with the bold letters SPQR on them that made Charlie's right eye twitch for some reason. He looked like a brave soldier, a hero, who would gladly give his life to save those in need, or if need it be live out his life humbly after his heroic deeds with his dear wife and five children all of whom he'd tell stories about his travels and accomplishments to.

In short the type of guy who was without fail going to make Charlie's live ten times more difficult.

Promptly she turned around and slammed her head against the seat in front of her and let out a tired groan. "Just one normal day. That's all I ask, but no."

And that, is where this story really starts, or you know when things start going downhill really, really fast.