Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson. Sue me not, Ricky.
When Marion woke on that hot summer Sunday, she was not at all prepared to be staring deeply into a pair of overlarge brown eyes.
"Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!"
Marion twisted in alarm, rolled a little too far to the right, and plummeted five feet to the ground from her snug bunk bed in the Hermes cabin. Lily Amy Jones, her thirteen year old half-sister, had been about an inch from her face.
The elder sister groaned on the floor, gently massaging her left shoulder. Lily, the damn girl, was laughing her head off, having settled comfortably into Marion's bunk.
"Lily… Didn't I tell you not to wake me up like that?" droned Marion, still half-asleep. "Because I seriously remember having that exact conversation."
"Ha! Well you did, but I was just looking! I didn't expect you to wake up," Lily choked out through laughter. "I just wanted to see if you had a lot a lot of freckles, or just a little a lot," At this, Marion raised her eyebrows. "I'm drawing you."
Lily was the only other girl in the Hermes cabin this summer besides Jessica and Nadia. At eighteen, Marion was the oldest of her sisters and second eldest in the whole cabin, after Ryan. And of her sisters, Marion liked Lily best.
Lily was one of those Jack-of-all-Trades kind of people: intelligent, straightforward, and unafraid of a challenge. She had wavy brown hair and big brown eyes, and looked uncannily like her father. She was notorious at camp for being extremely stubborn, which could be either endearing or infuriating. She was constantly trying out new skills as well: apparently the latest of these was drawing.
"Can I see it?" Marion asked wryly, getting up from the floor.
"No!" Lily squealed. "It isn't finished yet!" She went on sketching, purposefully ignoring Marion, who was rolling her eyes. "You should be glad I'm drawing you instead of a cat. Maybe I'll draw you with whiskers instead of freckles."
"Damn girl, what is it with you and cats?"
Lily didn't respond, and Marion decided to get dressed for the day. She strolled over to the dresser next to her bunk, which held the girls' clothes. Inside, she found her favorite pair of denim shorts, but her camp t-shirts were all missing.
Marion visually searched the room for hers, which was difficult because all the camp t-shirts look alike. Man, the room was trashed. Cabin 11 was a wreck, more so than usual. Clothes, trash, and even weapons were everywhere.
The usual bunks were always crowded by hammocks hung in between them, to make room for all the extra campers. People had to duck under them to walk through the room, giving the cabin a crowded, jungly appearance. The Hermes kids were also the only ones to have small safes built into the underside of the bunks (when you live in a den of thieves, it's kind of necessary). And everyone liked to put things on the walls, so the walls were plastered with totally random things: anything from posters to weapons, all hanging on the wall by hooks and tape. Every piece of furniture and every shelf was mismatched, yet seemed to belong. A huge map of the world covered most of one wall, just above the Stoll brothers' bunks, and the campers liked to put pushpins in the places they'd been. Strange items, some salvaged, some stolen, hung from the ceiling like bizarre wind chimes. Kids in the Hermes cabin usually lived like wild, merry vagrants. Marion loved every minute of it, but it made finding missing clothes rather difficult.
When Marion located a shirt she hoped was hers and laced up her sneakers, she grabbed her bag and began to head out the door. She turned, and called out, "Lily, I'm leaving. Can I see the picture now?"
Lily shook her head no, obstinate as ever, and Marion decided to pay Lily back for how she had woken her up that morning.
Marion strolled casually over to her bed, where Lily was still perched. She pivoted slowly toward her younger sister, who wasn't paying any attention. Quick as you please, Marion snatched the paper and bolted toward the door.
Lily's shriek of indignation echoed off the walls. She bounded off the bed after her sister, trying as hard as she could not to trip over all the things on the floor. But Marion wasn't the fastest kid at camp for nothing: she was expertly maneuvering through the room, and made it to the door in record time.
Unfortunately for her, the door swung open and her brothers Connor and Travis burst in. The door hit Marion square-on, and she went crashing to the floor for the second time that morning.
Marion groaned while Lily shrieked with laughter again. The younger girl pounced on the elder one, pinned her to the floor under her weight, and daintily plucked her art from Marion's grip.
"Oh, sorry," Travis said carelessly. Connor said nothing, and randomly began picking up clothes and books. The brothers were clearly agitated. Lily stared at Connor, but Marion ignored his odd behavior and muttered something about knocking first.
"Marion, Lily, get up!" Connor suddenly snapped. "I need your help!"
"What are you talking about, you weirdo?" Marion said.
"It's cabin inspection today!"
Lily gasped, and leapt to her feet. "Crap, that's today!" She began scrambling around, grabbing clothes off the floor and cramming them into the dresser by the bunk beds. Travis took Marion's hand and pulled her from the floor, which was a good thing because the door flew open again to admit Jessica (arms full of windex), Nadia (broom and dustpan at the ready), and Ryan (looking empty-handed and extremely useless).
Marion threw back the rumpled covers on her bed, frantically trying to pull the twisted sheets into lying smoothly. How could she have forgotten the cabin inspection? The other cabins had been getting ready for the last two days. Chiron had been reminding the camp every night at dinner this whole week! How had she forgotten?! More of her cabin-mates shot through the door, and the group cleanup became hectic.
Marion shook the bedcovers, about to pull them up over her sheets, when a pair of scissors flew out and landed on her pillow. She stared at them: really, scissors? In her blankets? How long had they been there?!
Connor was hauling a trash can around the center of the room, collecting trash from everyone's bunks. He took one look at Marion's bemused expression, still staring down at the scissors, and burst out laughing.
"Hey!" Marion shouted indignantly over the din of the cabin. "Whose scissors are these? I slept with these scissors!"
"Has anyone seen my green jacket?"
"Hey Ryan, I found your socks. And I know they're yours because they smell like bat barf."
"Marion did what with a pair of scissors?!"
"Here, this is yours, Jessica. I stole it from you two weeks ago. I wanted to see how long it took you to figure it out."
"Aw come on guys, really? Pizza crusts?"
"Someone take the trip wire out of the bathroom door! And by the way, I call not cleaning the toilets."
There was a moment of dead silence as that job was contemplated by all. Marion's eyes flickered to the door and back as she plotted her escape.
"Nose goes!" Travis suddenly shouted, his own index finger planted firmly on his nose. Marion threw her bag to her bed and smacked her whole palm against her face. The whole cabin followed suit, except for Nadia, who was too busy washing windows to notice the action behind her. However, when she did turn around and saw a roomful of happy campers staring at her, her yell of rage could have been heard on Olympus.
"You guys don't get to decide just because -"
"The nose never lies, Nadia!"
"Oh, the nose never lies, huh? Well what about the fists?"
"Yeah..." Marion said to nobody as the argument became heated. "I'm going to work. My bed's made, so... Yep." No one noticed her, so she slung her bag over her shoulder and strolled casually out the door, hoping someone would straighten her shelf.
And thus begins the adventures of an OC. I wasn't originally going to post this, but I figured, heck. Why not. Love it, hate it, have an OC that you want me to add to the cast? Let me know. This is a comedy, moments of drama later on, but mostly lighthearted fun. I'd be delighted to hear your comments :)