Have you ever wondered what actually went on over on the Greek side of the Son of Sobek? This is my take on how they dealt with it. I'm also seriously dying right now waiting for City of Heavenly Fire and Blood of Olympus. Like, why do they have to take so long? They must take lessons from each on how to torture their readers -_-

It all started when a crocodile ate Guido's second cousin.

I was in my cabin, asleep, for the record, when a loud thumping sounded outside on my wooden porch. I guessed it was Blackjack heralding some sort of marine emergency again, so I rolled out of bed and stumbled to open the door.

What I didn't expect, however, was a pure white pegasus squealing with excitement, his flying hooves coming a little too close to taking my head with them.

"Woah!"

Yo, boss!

"Guido, I was asleep." I sighed. "What's the problem?"

Only then did I look round him and notice the chaos our camp was in. Pegasi were running wild, yelling excitedly and shrieking in my head, which made me wince. I saw Leo dive into the Hephaestus cabin with his pants on fire, closely followed by a swearing Jake Mason. Hazel, being obsessed with horses, was trying to calm down the poor creatures, but pegasi can be off their rocker when they get down to it.

I dodged past a sweaty horse flank and ran into the middle of the clearing. "Guys! Slow down a minute!" Nothing happened. The pegasi were still screeching about crocodiles. I had to tell them to lay off the Party Ponies' root beer.

Annabeth ducked and dodged to my side. "What now, Seaweed Brain? What're they saying?"

"I honestly have no idea."

Piper appeared on my other side, her face bleeding and her knife drawn. "What are they saying?" she yelled over the thunder of hooves and high-pitched whinnies.

"Something…about a crocodile."

"What?!" Annabeth must have thought I'd really lost it this time. I could see it in her face.

Piper nodded grimly. "Well, I saw one in the dagger." She was always careful to never call it my dagger or my knife. I often wondered why. Without another word, she turned to the panicked herd and yelled "HEY!"

Her charmspeak was enough that everyone in camp froze for a moment. Leo peeked back through the door of his cabin. Blackjack and Porkpie stopped chewing the grass roof off the Demeter cabin. Guido quit yelling about his second cousin or something like that. The chestnut coloured Bracken (why did female pegasi have such normal names?) finished her rant about oversized swamp animals. Hazel blew a sigh of relief and Jason landed on the roof of Zeus' cabin.

"Guys," I said again. "What's up?"

I was instantly assaulted by a barrage of complaints, thrown at me from every winged horse in the camp. I winced, holding my ears. "One at a time!"

Guido stepped up, prancing and snorting. Y'see boss, we were having fun tonight, just horsing around, when this huge croc jumps out and snaffled Larry. WHAM! Like he was a donut or somethin'. Right out the river like a jack-in-the-box.

It's true. Blackjack supplied. Swear we've not had any root beer, boss.

Yeah! Bracken shrieked. It was huge. One minute there was nothing and then the next Larry was gone.

"Who's Larry?" This earned me a withering look from Annabeth, who had no clue what Guido had just said. "Uh…I mean, what was the monster like?"

He was my second cousin, boss.

"Stop calling me boss! And…the monster was your second cousin?"

Annabeth huffed. Impatient girl. True, it was like three in the morning and the whole camp was only able to hear me talking. Somewhere Leo would be laughing his little head off.

No, man! Larry was my cuz! The monster was a gigantinormous crocodile.

"Right." Sighing, I relayed the conversation to the rest of the camp. Annabeth's brow furrowed deeper as I went on.

"A crocodile? A giant one."

"Yep." I turned to the pegasi. "Guys, go to the stables"

Aw, c'mon!

We didn't do anything wrong!

Meh, the stables.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, the stables. One, it's probably not safe outside camp with a monster roaming around. Two, you may not have noticed, but you kind of trashed my camp. Three, Chiron will probably want to talk to you about both of the above."

Muttering obscene things (they have a worse mouth than Arion sometimes), all of them trudged off to the stables, their wings hanging limply by their sides.

Jason appeared next to me, taking Piper's hand, with Leo, Frank and Hazel not far behind. Ever since we'd returned from Greece, we'd always looked to each other more than anyone else. We were a close-knit group; nothing could break us apart. I was only vaguely aware of the rest of the camp watching us furtively.

Frank shrugged. "It doesn't sound like any monster I've ever heard of. Maybe it's not even Greek?"

We all turned to Annabeth, who frowned. "I don't know. There's nothing I can think of that involves a crocodile. They all live in Africa, around Egypt or Kenya. Places like that."

Now they all turned to me. I wasn't the oldest (that would be Annabeth, as she keeps reminding me) but everyone seemed to think I had to make big decisions. I nodded. "We'll give it a couple of days. If it's a monster, it shouldn't be able to get past the borders. We'll have to keep the pegasi inside camp until they calm down, in case they stampede Manhattan. Issue a warning to everyone. Careful up in the woods and around water and avoid going outside camp unless it's absolutely necessary."

Everyone murmured in agreement before turning to the rest of the camp. Jason naturally took charge, telling all the bleary-eyed demigods what we'd just decided.

Annabeth took my hand. "We'd better tell Chiron."

The lights up at the Big House were still out. "How on earth did he miss all of that?"

She chuckled, her grey eyes lighting up. "Quick. Go before Katie starts mouthing off about your pegasus eating her roof."

"He's not my pegasus, braniac."

"Whatever, Seaweed Brain."

So what'd you think? Obviously there's going to be another chapter where Percy actually meets Carter and I'll try to make it as parallel as possible to the actual story, although it will be with Percy's narrative.

Thanks for reading!

Ciara