Hey there :) for those of you who are reading 'Childhood martyrs' ? it is currently on break. I may or may not finish it, not that I gave up on it easily, and may still try to save it, but there were just too many problems with it at the moment. so while I try to fix it, enjoy my new little projects :)

this one is mainly just a writing exercise, a collection of thuke moments, whether friendship or not, but I will try to stay away from the mopey stuff, i feel as though we have enough of THAT kind of thuke ;) you will probably also see some percabeth at some points.

ENJOY!

oh and i disclaim owning the characters blahblahblah...


Dawn broke, the sunlight filtering in through the canopy of leaves overhead, a few stray beams landing on a slowly awakening teenage girl who was sleeping, curled up like kitten on the hard dirt. The girl made a small protest, pulling her woolen hat down over her eyes briefly and growling before unfurling and stretched, arching her back and feeling the bones pop back into place. Snapping to her feet and brushing herself off with the air of someone who really doesn't care whether or not they're dirty, she retrieved a back pack from a tree nearby, and slung it onto her shoulders familiarly.

Then she started to run.

Long easy strides, with wide alert blue eyes that searched every tree for threats, and thick soled combat boots thudding evenly with every bound. A crack of a branch under foot, coming from her left side, she skidded to a halt, hands twitching to her belt where two twin knives hung like old friends. She blew a renegade strand of black hair out of her narrowed eyes. A low whistle was blown, and she heard a light chuckle. Someone had been following her, possibly for a while now. She scowled and her eyes danced to every tree branch, searching for the whistler.

"Now see, I had entertained the idea of you being a half-blood, thinking it's a fifty-fifty chance," the voice came from a tree by her left, she whipped around, a knife going from her belt to her hand to the bark beside the boys head in the blink of an eye, where it stuck, quivering for a moment.

The boy hadn't even flinched, he was leaning against the tree with a shoulder on the bark, hands in his pockets, head turned to look at the knife curiously, as if a peculiar looking bug had landed on the tree, instead of the three inch serrated blade of bronze steel, his crystal blue gaze fell on her again, and she shivered oddly, "I was thinking you could be a criminal on the run maybe, or one of those nature lovers who trek around sleeping on dirt for a spiritual bond to dear mother earth."

He plucked the knife from the wood and leapt down from the tree, walking towards her with a nonchalance and handed her the knife handle first, "but that reaction? Gotta be demigod. And the weaponry kinda gave you away."

Needless to say, she had a spear at his throat before he finished his last word. He grinned, and batted it away casually as if it were just her way of saying hello. Of course, her response to which was tothrow down her pack, and smirk, hefting her spear mercilessly. He shrugged and pulled out a switch-blade, which transformed into three foot long gleaming bronze sword. He swung at her, and she effortlessly deflected him, before she spun and caught him in the ribs with the butt of her spear. He went down with a grunt, kicking her feet out from under her and flipping up onto his own. She blocked a down ward blow with the blade of the spear, sparks flying down from the impact. The fight continued, and she grinned as she saw him wink at her, parrying away before re-engaging. She felt the shift, the turn from hostility to something…. else, and she couldn't help but be impressed with how he was holding his own. After too many clashes to count, he stepped back and put a hand up, breathing hard and chuckling.

"Okay, demigod, warrior princess, whatever," he breathed, still laughing, "I have decided that you must be my partner in crime. I'll be Bonnie and you be Clyde, whatya say kiddo?"

She laughed, surprised at how weird it felt after so long without laughing at all, "Well, if you've already decided…"

"This is true," he stood up and gave her a cheshire cat grin, and she took him in properly for the first time. He had a lean build, almost feline, his arms and hands were scarred, and part of his blue t-shirt was slashed open. He had sandy blonde hair that curled at the nape of his neck and hung slightly over his crystal blue eyes. He had an impish face that was at once boyish as it was burdened, with a mouth that curled up in the corners. He was a study in contrasts, the golden hair and the baby-blue eyes, the boyish grin, were all slightly set off by something deeper lurking behind those blue eyes. She decided she liked the way he looked, and the way he was looking at her, "so we're a team then yeah?"

"If you think you can keep up with me of course," She grinned, grabbing her pack and throwing it back over her shoulders, "I don't want to disappoint you, but working with me involves sleeping in trees and on dirt, but sure, if you're up to it pretty-boy."

"My masculinity weeps for that comment," and he held out his hand, and introduced himself with a cheesy James bond impression, "the name's Castellan. Luke, Castellan.

She quirked an eyebrow, "Thalia. Just, Thalia."

"Well alrighty then 'just Thalia', hows to kick off this teamwork gig, I buy you a muffin, you buy me a coffee?"

She gave him a crooked smile and set off, already liking how he fell in step beside her.

-O-

This girl was hot. This girl was seriously, seriously, hot. I know because I had been studying her for some time now. Call me a stalker, sure, but I prefer to say that I was assessing her potential. From a distance. While she didn't know it. In my defense I thought she was a monster at first, sneaking around the forest like that, and I just had to see why a pretty girl like her was wandering around without any supervision.

She seemed like one of those girls at first. The ones with the chains and the boots and the leather, the way she walked, the way her hair stuck up, the scary ones. But then you see her face, and its round and pale and freckled, with those big wide blue eyes and the button nose and full lips and you can't help but want to wrap her up in your arms and give her some reassurance. Then of course, she noticed me and cause her big round eyes narrowed and glinted and all of a sudden she's all still, like a predator about to make the pounce, and she was goddamn scary again.

But now, as she was digging into a delicious chocolate ship muffin, provided by yours truly, while I sipped black coffee, I was pretty sure that this was a good thing that we had begun, something that could be something really spectacular if we let it. She looked up at me warily, her eyebrows dipping down in suspicion.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked, wiping the crumbs from her mouth, and fixing me with a narrow eyed glare. She set herself back on the metal chair she was sitting on and crossed her arms on the coffee shop table. I just shrugged and threw her a smile, which grew as her eyes rolled in irritation.

"So, since I have no money, and you have no money, how are we gonna pay for this exactly?" she asked, a knowing grin already spreading across her face.

I shrugged again, "We're not, we're gonna make a run for it right about," I squinted to check the time on the coffee mug shaped clock hanging over the counter, 12:00, "now."

Just as we got up, a rush of hard working men and women all on their lunch breaks bustles into the café, needing all the staff to attend to their caffeine cravings. We slipped out unnoticed, except by one particularly burly busboy.

"Yo! You got pay for that kid! Hey!" he started to run after us.

"Oh shit!" Thalia grabbed my hand and we started to sprint down the street, dodging trashcans leaping over small children. I could hear the guy behind us, grunting away, eating our dust, and I laughed, I couldn't help it. I glanced at her, and almost ran into a streetlight I was so captivated. She was laughing, a full blown grin stretching across her face, all flushed from running and her eyes, dear gods her eyes, were literally sparking with energy. She gripped my hand tighter and yanked me down an alley, a dead end. I leapt into a cardboard box hidden behind the dumpster, beckoning with one hand for her to join me.

"Are you mental?" she whispered frantically, and I almost laughed at her expression, "there's no room!"

"Sure there is!" I patted my lap gleefully, "hop on in!"

She growled, but the distant yelling of the muscle bound café employee must have changed her mind because the next second she was curled up on my lap and pulling the cardboard flaps closed over top of our heads. Her hair brushed up against my nose. She laughed lightly and turned to me with her mouth open to tell me something, but trailed off. I pecked the tip of her nose on a whim, and she scowled at me and wrinkled her nose up, elbowing me in the stomach.

I realized something then, sitting in a cardboard box in the middle of a grungy alley, with a girl capable of beating me to a pulp sitting on my lap, waiting for a coffee maker to come and kill us, that I wanted to keep doing this, I wanted to keep this ass-kicking porcelain-doll of a girl. She was still smiling crookedly, an ear pressed against the cardboard walls of the box, and I involuntarily held her a little tighter. She glanced at me, her wide blue eyes catching mine and it felt like a string had tied it to my chest, tying me to her. She kept my eyes for a few heartbeats, before her crooked grin turned into an understanding smile, and she nodded in acknowledgment.

Yeah. This was the start of something huge.


. next chapter shall include some percabeth mayhaps :) and feel free to tell me an idea you want to see :P LOVE YOU ALL- miss alaneous.