A/N: Yeah, not much to say about this one. Basically, different people's first impressions of Annabeth. Enjoy, and review please?
Whoever She Was
Sherman
Sherman froze, looking at the hill in shock. Just a few seconds ago, there had been dozens of monsters there. Now, there was a pine tree shooting up before everyone's eyes. The son of Ares began running again, but not as urgently as before; there was no reason to rush if the fight was over.
Upon joining the growing crowd of people at the base of the hill, he found two blonde kids and a satyr staring up at the tree too, all saying the same thing as if they were in a trance. "Thalia. No, oh my gods, no. Thalia."
The little girl was crying. Sherman walked over to her and crouched down. Normally, he wasn't this warm and fuzzy, but he wanted to know what had happened, and the guy and the satyr looked like they were about to have a coronary or pass out—whichever came first.
"Hey, kid. You okay?"
The girl glared up at him like she couldn't believe he was enough of an imbecile to ask that question. He recoiled a bit—those grey eyes were startlingly fierce. A daughter of Athena, then.
He tried another approach. "Can you tell me what happened? So I can tell Chiron. Maybe we can help."
The little girl gave him the death glare again. He felt like he was being passed under a microscope like some unknown kind of bacteria.
"Idiot," she muttered, her childish voice sounding peculiar in combination with her venomous tone. "There's no way you can help, and you know that."
She stalked away to stand near the blonde guy, and Sherman stared after the little daughter of Athena in awe.
Whoever she was, he thought, she was pretty smart.
Percy
Percy looked at the girl in front of him cautiously. She could have seemed nice at first, with the curly blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and the casual, non-intimidating jean shorts and orange shirt.
But the rest of her pretty much screamed HOSTILE! DO NOT MESS WITH THIS GIRL.
Her arms were crossed tightly, her body tense and muscular. She looked like one of those young athlete prodigies, the ones who played on national teams almost as soon as they could walk. Percy was pretty sure that if she wanted to, she could break his neck in five seconds.
He could see the handle of a knife sticking out of a sheath at her belt. But that couldn't be right, could it? They couldn't let kids go around with weapons. Right?
"This young lady nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now," Mr. Brunner said.
"Sure, Chiron," Annabeth replied, never taking her calculating grey eyes off Percy.
Her gaze was unsettling, like she was analyzing every aspect of him and thinking of ways to use his flaws against him in a fight. He stood up straighter, trying to shake off the feeling that she could take him down easily. Because she wouldn't actually kill him. That was crazy.
"You drool when you sleep."
Annabeth practically skipped off towards the cabins, leaving Percy with his mouth hanging open in shock.
Whoever she was, he thought, she was pretty scary.
Lee
Lee grimaced as he struggled through his first swordfighting lesson. The Apollo cabin had paired up with the Athena kids for today, which made remembering everyone's names twice as difficult. It was bad enough being a new camper and not even knowing his own siblings' names, let alone more than a dozen other people.
Austin, one of the only half-brothers who Lee actually knew, came over to sit next to him on the bench as they took a water break.
"How's day one, kid?" he asked.
Lee snorted. "Great. I just loved getting my butt kicked by crazy demigods holding swords. Who wouldn't?"
His older brother nodded in understanding.
"I know what you mean. No one in our cabin ever really likes fighting with swords, but Chiron makes us learn just in case. We only have to do it twice a week, though. The rest of the slots are for archery, since our dad's Apollo and all."
"But why can't we just focus on archery? Is it really that necessary?" Lee hated sounding whiny, but he was sick of people trying to stab him.
Suddenly, something cold and thin and sharp was pressed against his neck. He froze mid-gulp, his eyes bugging out. Austin laughed.
"Hey, Annabeth," he said. "Nice job giving poor little Lee a heart attack."
The blade disappeared from Lee's neck. He gasped, coughing up the water that was stuck halfway down his throat. Someone chuckled behind him.
"Thanks," came a girl's mischievous voice. "I try."
Lee turned around and stared at her incredulously. She looked so innocent—blonde, curly hair and sparkling grey eyes. And yet, she'd just nearly decapitated him. He made a mental note to avoid daughters of Athena in the future.
"You just—you just tried to kill me!" he croaked.
"It's good training," she said, as if this was completely normal. "Never let your guard down, even in practice." She walked away casually to talk to one of her sisters.
Lee gaped. "Who—?"
"Annabeth Chase," Austin answered, still laughing. "Daughter of Athena, master strategist, child genius. You get the picture."
"Oh, I get the picture all right," he muttered, rubbing his neck resentfully.
Whoever she was, Lee thought, she was pretty good with that knife.
Nyssa
Nyssa stared at the Camp as she ate. It was amazing, really. When you wake up, you're just a normal girl with discipline problems. And then, after a monster attack and a particularly harrowing taxi ride, you find out you're the daughter of the Greek god Hephaestus. Go figure.
"Did you hear about Annabeth?" Beckendorf, the cabin leader, was saying. He and the other Hephaestus kids were sitting at dinner during winter break. It wasn't cold, which Nyssa had thought was weird, but apparently the gods could keep bad weather outside the Camp's borders as well as monsters.
"Who's Annabeth?" she blurted out without thinking. Everyone at the table turned to look at her, and she blushed.
"Daughter of Athena," one of her siblings (John? No, Jake) said.
"Yeah," Harley chimed in. "You met Percy, right? She's his best friend." She hadn't met Percy, whoever that was, but she nodded anyway.
"They've been on a few quests together. Anyway," Beckendorf said in between enormous bites of pizza, "word has it that she got kidnapped by the Titans earlier today. Someone heard Percy and Thalia yelling at each other about it."
"They got Annabeth?" Jake asked, his mouth hanging open in shock. "How? She's like, the best knife fighter in decades."
"I heard they were going to get some new demigods, and a monster got her," Harley said, her voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper as she leaned in.
"Must've been one Hades of a monster," Beckendorf muttered darkly.
Nyssa had to admit—she was a little scared. They'd only told her the bare minimum about the war with the Titans, but she could tell from the campers' faces that it wasn't going well. And now, with this Annabeth's disappearance, they looked even more worried.
Whoever she was, Nyssa thought, she was pretty important.
Lacey
Lacey stumbled across the border with Norman to see a bunch of people in armor running towards her. They must be demigods, she thought. Like me.
She still found it weird that her mom was a goddess from, like, a million years ago. But, like Norman (who was a satyr—half guy, half goat) had explained in the car, the Greek gods from the stories were all real, and they were alive in America.
And, just like in the stories, the gods (and goddesses) still came down and hooked up with humans—mortals, Norman called them. Their kids were called demigods, or half-bloods, and Lacey was one of those kids.
Their conversation had stopped once the hellhound caught up to the cab, of course.
The driver just thought that it was a very aggressive black pickup truck (Norman said something about mist covering mythological things), so he was pretty confused when they got out, threw some money at him, and then started sprinting up the hill. Lacey twisted her ankle on a root, but kept running. The giant, terrifying monster behind her was slightly more important than a little bit of discomfort.
The armored kids met them next to the big pine tree, and some of them ran forward and stabbed the enormous black dog. It howled, and then turned into gray dust. Lacey stared in shock at the spot where the hellhound had once been.
"It just—how—?" she asked as a blonde girl checked her over for injuries.
"Monsters disintegrate when you kill them," she explained. "Their essence gets sent to Tartarus, in the Underworld, until they reform."
"Reform?" Her eyes widened. "But—they can come back?"
The girl looked at her sympathetically. "Yeah. It usually takes a few years for the more powerful ones. That hellhound won't be coming around again for at least a decade, though. You'll get used to it eventually."
"Oh."
"Your ankle's swollen," the blonde girl noted. Lacey jumped; she had almost forgotten about that. "Here, drink this. It'll help." She grabbed a canteen that was attached to her belt loop, right next to a sheathed knife.
"What is it?" Lacey eyed the liquid warily. It didn't look like water…
"Nectar. The drink of the gods. Demigods can be healed by it, as long as we don't consume too much. When that happens, you burn up."
"Oh." Lacey's voice shot up a few octaves. "Sounds fun."
"Don't worry," the girl grinned. Lacey thought absently that her grey eyes would look great with blue eyeshadow. "It doesn't happen often."
The nectar tasted unbearably sweet—like honey. It slid down her throat soothingly, and she felt her twisted ankle heal.
"You're taking this surprisingly well." The girl looked thoughtful as she took the canteen back. Lacey just shrugged. "C'mon. I'll take you down to meet Chiron. He's the activities director." She started to lead Lacey toward a big blue farmhouse in the picturesque valley. Lacey stared at the blonde girl fiddling with the handle of her knife absentmindedly.
Whoever she was, Lacey thought, she was pretty nice—a lot nicer than that hellhound.
Leo
Leo stared at the girl pointing a knife at Jason's throat. Yeah, of course he was worried for his best friend—seriously, someone was about to cut his head off. But still, that girl was smoking hot.
He heard her say something to Jason, but he couldn't focus on what she was saying. She was breathtaking. Blonde hair, tan skin, long legs… Leo had to remind himself not to let his jaw drop.
The girl turned towards him, and he immediately tried to straighten himself up, silently cursing those weird things for giving him a huge lump on his head. Hopefully she was the type who took pity on injured guys…
"What about Gleeson?" she asked fiercely. "Where is your protector, Gleeson Hedge?"
Leo cleared his throat and stepped forward a little bit, eager to impress her. Hey, it couldn't hurt to seem like he knew what was going on, right?
"He got taken by some…" Shoot. What could he call them without seeming like a complete idiot? The girl looked at him skeptically. "Tornado things," he finished lamely.
"Venti," Jason said. "Storm spirits." The girl glared, and then corrected him in another language. Jason told her about Hedge, and Dylan, and all the other weird things that had occurred so far.
The entire time, Leo could only stare at the blonde girl. Her intense grey eyes never wavered from Jason, even though Leo tried to catch her eye numerous times. Playing hard to get, he guessed. It was funny—a lot of girls tried that with him.
When Jason finished the story, the girl kept glaring. "No, no, no! She told me he would be here. She told me if I came here, I'd find the answer."
"Annabeth," grunted the bald guy who'd come over while Jason was talking. He pointed at Jason's feet, and then he and Annabeth talked about the state of his shoes, for some reason.
Suddenly, Annabeth yelled up at the sky, like she thought someone was up there listening. "What do you want from me? What have you done with him?" She stormed off to the flying chariot, her blonde, curly hair twisting in the wind. Leo stared at her retreating figure.
Whoever she was, he thought, she was pretty.