a/n one: welcome to chapter two of carry on! i hope you guys enjoy!

bouquets: none today, alas.


Annabeth saw the boy first, climbing up the hill.

"Should we do something about the mortal climbing the hill, Chiron?" She turned to the centaur, who was looking over some papers.

He looked up. "No, Annabeth. Nothing seems to be going on - he'll be gone soon anyways." And he returned to the paperwork.

But, Annabeth was right. (when was she not?) During dinner, there was a low bellow from the hill, and rushing there, Annabeth saw the gods damn Minotaur, and that stupid mortal facing off with the bull-man, rain whipping up around them.

She turned to Kayla, her half-sister. "Kayla. Go alert Chiron. Counselors!" Annabeth yelled, "escort your cabin mates back into the cabin. Sentry, on guard." She turned back to the trembling girl. "Kayla, you have to go now. Please."

Kayla let out a small whimper of terror, and ran off to the Big House.

Her heartbeat erratic in her chest, Annabeth took off towards the Athena table, and began ushering her half siblings to the gray cabin, Malcolm beside her all the while. "Keep watch here, Mal. I'm going to Thalia's Pine, in order to try and see what in Hades is going on."

"Stay safe, Annabeth," Malcolm murmured into his younger half-sister's hair, as she sent him a tired half-grin, bags painfully obvious underneath her gray eyes. "Can't lose you too."

And Malcolm was right. The camp had lost Bianca Di Angelo, daughter of Hades, two years before, on the quest to free Artemis. Thalia had become Artemis' new lieutenant, and Nico Di Angelo had disappeared to the Underworld. Three pillars the camp had been leaning on, gone in the span of a mere week. It was a harsh blow to the demigods, and Annabeth knew that only she and Chiron remained as tu pillars of hope for the campers. If she died, well, Annabeth didn't want to think about that. Smiling tiredly back at Malcolm, Annabeth ran out the door, and into the rainy night.

So much for those campfire s'mores she wanted.


Percy woke up in an infirmary.

Well, something that looked like it. There were wooden pallets with off-white mattresses on them, and a cabinet with glass doors, stuffed with Ace wraps and pill bottles. On the chair next to his pallet, slept a girl, with golden-blonde hair, like the last flash of color he had seen after collapsing on the ground.

Percy paused. Wait, collapsing?

Looking down at his feet, Percy swore quietly, looking at the scrapes and cuts that littered his legs, and the tears on his beat-up Chuck Taylors. There was a stray fleck of dried blood on his left hand, and a forming scar on his right palm, from where he had gripped the Minotaur's horn, ripping it from the bull's head.

Where was the horn? Percy swiveled around in the mattress, his hands skittering about his sides, until the tinkling sound of crashing glass brought his attention to the night table, and the box atop it, a glass shattered on the floor, bits of ice and what looked to be apple juice pooling into the cracks of the wooden floors.

The girl's eyes shot open. In a flash, she seemingly drew a dagger out of thin air, brandishing it. Percy swore colorfully, tumbling off the bed, and onto his feet, instincts taking over.

"What the fuck? Watch where you point that thing!" He yelped, backing away from the blonde.

"Oh, it's just you. You're awake, huh?" She sheathed the dagger in a scabbard hooked on her belt.

"It looks like it. But who're you?" Percy eyed the girl warily, slowly reaching down for a glass shard on the floor. If anything, he could use it as a weapon if she ended up being hostile.

"You can put the glass shard down. I'm Annabeth."

He gripped the shard tighter, blood dripping onto the floor from where the jagged glass cut into his scarred palm.

Annabeth sighed. "What's your name?"

"Percy," the teen ground out, dropping the glass with a hiss of shock and pain as a tingling sensation erupted in his palm. The skin knitted over the laceration, the blood ceasing to flow. "What the fuck?"

Annabeth meandered her way over to Percy, gingerly gathering the glass bits. "Looks like the nectar in the glass got in your cut. It's healing it right now."

"Nectar?"

"The drink of the gods." She looked him up and down. Torn Chuck Taylors. A worn black hoodie, with beige cargo shorts. A runaway. "Obviously, you must be a demigod, or else you would have burst into flames and died."

Percy paused. "Wait, what? And if I wasn't a demigod? Would you be really willing to take that chance? What's a demigod?" He fired off, staring at Annabeth incredously.

Annabeth sighed. "Well, you wouldn't have been able to get through the Camp boundaries if you weren't a demigod. And demigods are the children of gods and mortals."

"So you're saying I'm half god."

"What about my earlier statement wasn't clear, dumbass?"

"About half of it, oh-wise-one."

The daughter of Athena sighed. "OK, what do you know about Greek Mythology?"

The green-eyed boy shrugged. "A little bit, I guess. Twelve main gods, the head honcho is Zeus, and Kronos ate his own kids."

The resounding sound of Annabeth's palm meeting her forehead was loud, and possibly extremely painful. "Alright, and what did the gods do most of all?"

"...Interact with humans?"

She wanted to scream - it was like pulling teeth. "Yeah. Demigods are the result of a meeting of gods and mortals. I'm a child of Athena."

Percy furrowed his brow. "Isn't Athena a virgin goddess? How can she have kids if she's supposed to be an eternal virgin?"

"Children of Athena are children of thought. We're born from a meeting of minds."

The demigod was confused. "So...do you still have a belly button, then?"

Like pulling goddamn teeth, she swore. Like pulling teeth.


a/n two: well, it's short, and i'm sorry. exposition is like pulling teeth, sadly. thank you to all who reviewed/favorited/followed! you guys make my day!

leave a review, and tell me what you thought~

aishiteru,

ren