This takes place sometime before the Lightning Thief.
Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians, or most of the following characters. All rights go to Rick Riordan.
Pranks taken from the following websites:
alanwhite/the-27-pranks-you-need-to-really-own-april-fools-day
/default-category/april-fools-pranks/
The Test
"So You Think You're a Child of _?" had to be the most popular game among the unclaimed demigods in Cabin 11.
Basically, the "judges" – which consisted of Luke, Travis and Connor Stoll, Alabaster Torrington, Doug Heil, and Anthea Tonks, – created a "test" for the participant that was related to the godly parent the participant believed was his or hers.
For example, if the participant thought he was a son of Aphrodite, then the test might be to hook up a daughter of Ares with a son of Athena. If somebody wanted to be a daughter of Ares, then she might be asked to win a fight with one of the tougher demigods.
This was always fun for the participant; if it wasn't then he/she had his/her parent wrong. However, fun wasn't the only reason the game survived. According to Kane,79% of participants who beat the test were claimed afterwards.
"So, Chris, you think you're a son of Hermes?" Doug announced, sitting crossed-leg on top of Ice's bed. Chris nodded. "Well, we think it's time for your test."
"What's the challenge?" Chris questioned.
"Well, tomorrow is April Fool's Day," Luke answered, "So, we were thinking about making you do a full day's worth of pranking."
"On who?"
"Clarisse La Rue, toughest girl in camp," Doug supplied, grinning mischievously. Chris thought for a moment, running through his list of pranks.
"How much help will I have?"
"We will provide you with whatever materials you ask, and will distract anybody except Clarisse." Luke answered. Chris nodded. Perfect.
"Should I make a list?"
"Depends on how much you need," Travis piped up from where he was running through supplies for another prank.
Kane had classified the pranksters in the Hermes cabin into two groups: the ones who will pull something in the whim of the moment, like the Stolls and Donnie, and those who think out a big mastermind scheme, which was where Luke and Doug were placed. Chris had always been part of the latter group.
For the test, Chris had requested a bunch of random supplies – pink and purple post-its, soy sauce, Sprite, empty Diet Coke bottles, baking soda, donuts, balloons, and several other items. He also needed every other child of Ares preoccupied.
Travis and Connor had volunteered for the roll of gathering supplies, though Luke hoped they would remember Chris's long list. The bigger problem was distracting four of the toughest warriors at camp.
Luke, Doug, Travis, Donnie, and Connor were the only claimed children of Hermes at the moment, but that did not mean they were the only pranksters. Lou Ellen and Alabaster had both jumped at the idea of putting some of their coolest – and scariest – spells to use. Kane, of course, despised children of Ares and was more than happy to help. Ice could do some serious damage, being a daughter of Khione, and could land several campers in the infirmary with injuries from slipping. Adila, Anthea, and Clovis also offered a hand.
Luke, as head counselor, had been placed head of twelve pranksters. However, he only really needed Ice's help, since she alone could injure every camper in second. Lou and Donnie would not let her take the spotlight, though. So Luke had done the obvious thing: split everybody up into four groups of three.
Lou, Anthea, and Clovis had been placed with Luke, which was okay with him. Kella Lakely was their victim, and by the looks of it she was going to be subject to some serious daughter-of-Hecate damage. Anthea, being a daughter of Persephone, was helping Lou hide her magical traps in the woods. Clovis was planning on using his son-of-Hypnos powers to slow down Lakely's reflexes, while Luke led her to the traps.
The plan was so smooth that Lakely won't even realize what happened.
Chris's plan relied on five things:
Clarisse's siblings being distracted
Chris's ability not to get caught
His ability to set fake paths
His timing skills
And his ability to do some serious multi-tasking.
He already knew that he'd be spending April 2nd in the infirmary, but he knew Clarisse's face when she saw her cabin was going to be worth it.
First things first: Sprite and soy sauce in a Diet Coke bottle.
"Hey, Clarisse!" Chris called, holding the bottle in his hand.
"What, Rodriguez?" She replied, turning around from where she was lining her cabin up.
"I know you don't like diet, but here's the Coke you asked for." Clarisse took the bottle uncertainly, but she still opened it and drank it. Chris had already started on his escape route by the time Clarisse was spitting out the soy sauce.
"Hey, Aoife!" Travis called. "I bet you can't catch me!" It took about five seconds for Aoife to become a stream of red hair chasing after Travis. Kane watched the son of Hermes run towards their makeshift ice rink, Aoife in tow.
Kane mentally counted down how far Travis had to run, chanting in his head don't slip on the ice. Don't slip on the ice. He could see Alabaster moving away from the ice, which was now invisible.
Travis stepped on the ice, but somehow managed to keep going without even the smallest slip. However, Aoife barely had one foot on the ice when she slipped backwards into a pit of mud. Kane's modified tripwire activated, and Aoife was trapped for the moment.
Chris had given himself five minutes to de-spike the Ares cabin before moving on to step three.
He left the door to the big house slightly open, which was both necessary for the prank and helpful in luring Clarisse into the room. Then he filled a cup with water and dribbled a little pink paint into it. He placed it delicately on top of the door, and ran.
He had blown up the balloons and filled them with glitter the previous night, and now they were hidden with a nymph. He had already pocketed the pink and purple post-its, which would be used in the final stage of his grand scheme.
First, though, he needed the balloons.
He slung the first bag filled with the balloons over his shoulder and darted. Clarisse wasn't going to be distracted for long.
To Mark, Adila was twice as annoying as any child of Athena.
So when he saw her hanging out with Donnie, his first reflex had been to march up and pick a fight. He had never seen any threat in the children of minor gods, so it wasn't with caution that he confronted her.
"What do you think you're doing, Tonks?" He asked threateningly. Adila turned around, flipping her solid black her around.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Hey, calm down," Donnie commanded, placing his hand on top of Mark's shoulder and another on Adila's arm. Mark glared back at him, but when his head turned his target ran away. Donnie's hand brushed Mark's hip as the son of Ares chased after Adila.
Mark was out of breath fairly quickly, and had to stop mid-woods. He knew he should return to his cabin; Clarisse would be mad if he missed any activities. Before he turned around, though, he noticed a white piece of paper taped to a near-by tree. The corner of something green stuck out, and in a panic Mark checked his pockets.
Nothing.
That brat Donnie must have stolen his wallet, which meant that he was broke. He needed money, and by the look of things that paper was an envelope containing at least one dollar.
Mark trudged over to the envelope and opened it in a hurry. Instead of finding green, a white strip of paper fell out into Mark's hand. Scribbled in pencil were the words "HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY! LOVE, DONNIE." Mark flipped over the paper. "P.S. IF YOU WANT YOUR WALLET, GO ASK THE NYMPH FOR THE BLUEBERRY BUSH NEXT TO THE RIVER." Which blueberry bush?
Luke and Chris had discovered one hill in the forest that had been rigged by a former demigod to be impossible to climb back up. If Chris's plan worked correctly, then Clarisse would run down the hill and be forced to keep going, despite any obstacles Chris put in the way.
When it came to Clarisse, the best traps to use involved pink and sparkles; she hated anything moderately girly. So, naturally, Chris needed something glittery and it wasn't hard to make sparkly glue. It would have been funnier if Kane was helping; being the genius he was, Kane could have made Clarisse trip and stomach flop on the glittery water. Still, it was hard to look as tough with glittery jeans and combat boots.
One second Kella was strolling through the woods, and the next she couldn't move her legs.
She was fairly observant, but it still took her about a minute to find what had frozen her. Hidden behind the bushes, only noticeable because it glowed, was one of Lou's classic traps.
The idea of being caught so easily just made Kella more anxious be unfroze.
Chris had already began on the exterior of the Ares cabin, and three other demigods had already come up to him to tell him he was dead.
Yeah, he knew that.
The top third of the Ares cabin had been completed, and now Chris only needed two more distractions. He had been up the previous night preparing the final stage, but first he needed a hole in the ground.
He dug into the ground until the hole was up to his waist, and stuck gigantic ice cubes – courtesy of Ice – into the ground. Next was the black tarp, followed by the ice cold water.
Even Clarisse didn't like ice cold water.
Finally, the trap needed to be covered. It wasn't hard to find leaves and twigs to cover the hole, but Chris took his time before darting off to finish his job with the Ares cabin.
Clarisse was about as mad as she could be.
When she realized what day it was, she knew she should be on guard. However, she never thought that anybody was stupid enough to target her.
The spit take in front of everybody had been embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as having pink paint in her hair or missing a whole day's worth of instructing because of an idiot.
The cold had about as much appeal to her as the color pink did, and that was saying something. Being from Arizona, she was used to heat. Just the temperature of New York bothered her, but falling into ice cold water really spiked up her temper.
At least the water washed the sparkles of her shoes.
When she saw the white piece of paper with what looked to be Chris's apology, she huffed and stormed away thinking about the thousand things she could do for revenge. She followed the arrows, expecting to see him at every turn. Eventually, she came across something much more appealing: donuts.
There were two boxes of donuts stacked on top of each other; six chocolate-frosted donuts were on top, and three powdered and three plain donuts were on the bottom. She devoured the top six first before moving on to the bottom box.
One bite of the powdered donuts was all it took for Clarisse to realize that the sweets were rigged. The three powdered donuts were covered in baking soda, and she guessed that the other three had Mayo filling.
Rodriguez was dead.
"I'm looking for a wallet," Mark told the nymph – she said her name was blue – next to the river. Blue nodded.
"I was told to tell you that it is down next to the ocean as far away from the cabins as you can get without leaving camp." Blue supplied.
"Are you sure?" Mark questioned, crossing his arms.
"No," She admitted, smirking.
"Clarisse is coming!" Malcolm, who had volunteered as look-out, warned. Chris looked up from where he was double-checking everything to see the branches in the forest move in a way that hinted Clarisse's arrival. "Hide!"
Chris darted over to his cabin, where the rest of Cabin 11 stood around, admiring his work. The rest of the campers were scattering away from the cabin; all except for Drew, who was filming it since she was the only one with a video camera.
Clarisse stormed out of the woods to laughter. Her hair was pink, her pants were wet, and baking soda covered her lips. Her fists were clenched, and she looked downright murderous. Her eyes swept the campers, lingered on her cabin and kept moving until they stopped on Chris. Uh-oh.
She stomped up to him, grabbing his shirt. Campers parted around her; even Chris's caring cabin mates stepped away from the daughter of Ares.
"Did you do this?" She asked, gesturing towards the cabin, which was currently decorated with post-its.
Chris had covered the entire cabin in purple with pink hearts. The windows, roof, walls, and giant boar's head over the wall were all purple. It had been difficult, with all the barbed wire, but Chris had managed to make the entire cabin look flat-out girly.
"Y-yes," Chris stammered, feeling everybody's eyes on him.
"It even has balloons on the inside!" One of Apollo's children called. Clarisse shoved him down and stormed all the way back to her cabin. She yanked open the door, and balloons fell out. For a minute she looked at Chris intently, her eyes mad.
"Impressive," was all she said before she turned around and left Chris as slack-jawed as the rest of the demigods.