Alene and Ethan were having a full out screaming argument in the middle of the lounge. The rest of the demigods were scattered around on the perimeter of the room either talking quietly, listening intently, or snacking on various junk food items spread out on tables.

Damon sat slouched on a chair near one of the windows, gazing boredly at Seth and Paxton who were taking turns throwing darts at the board. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was a mess, but he seemed relatively calm compared to many of the other demigods. Kyla sat on the armchair next to him, inspecting her nails while occasionally looking up to see if anyone else walked in through the door.

"SCREW YOU!" Alene hurled a knife at Ethan who deftly dodged it, where it lodged straight into one of the panels on the walls.

"Yes, because that's definitely going to solve our problems. Hurling knives at walls has always worked out so well in the past!"

"I don't care Ethan. If you don't fix this, we're all going to die and it will be your fault."

"Why are you acting like I have any choice in this matter?!"

"You could do something other than follow Kronos around worshipping his every single movement and nodding at everything he says!"

As Alene and Ethan continued to scream at each other, I cast a quick glance towards Rickie who was sitting next to me on the floor. Since we had already been in here for awhile watching demigods threaten and throw things at each other, a pile of empty Pringles cans had begun to accumulate next to him. At that moment he was fishing around again in his backpack, his eyebows furrowed in concentration.

"Hey, Rickie."

"Yeah?"

"Where did you get your backpack from?"

Suddenly a huge grin lit up his face as he looked up. "Do you really want to know?"

"No, I don't want to know. That's why I asked." I rolled my eyes, trying to keep myself from getting annoyed and saying something harsh.

Rickie smiled, seeming to be completely oblivious to my sarcasm. "I stole it from a homeless guy when I was seven while I was on my way home."

There was a pause, as I sat there staring blankly at him and his backpack. Usually by now I would respond with some sort of cutting remark seeing as there were a lot of things weird about what he just said, but lately I had just gotten to the point where I was so exhausted that I couldn't even be surprised.

"You see, there was this homeless guy sitting on a bench, and he had this bright pink backpack right next to him. So when he looked the other way I just grabbed it and ran. It wasn't hard at all."

I let out a huge long sigh. Staring up at the ceiling, I tried to imagine that I was back at the beach, not hearing about how Rickie apparently spent his childhood stealing things from hoboes.

"It's a really cool backpack, actually. It's like time-lord magic, bigger on the inside, you know what I mean?"

"No."

"Like, I don't put things in it. Objects just show up in it from nowhere, and then they eventually disappear. Also it's awesome because the backpack doesn't like rip, burn, or ever get wet. I don't think you could hurt it if you tried."

"So you steal a backpack from a homeless guy, it's magical and just fills up with random things, it's virtually indestructible, and throughout all of this you never even think, 'Hmm, this is a little weird.' "

Rickie shrugged, not bothered by any of the logical things I had just said. "It had my name on it. Once I had gotten far enough away I inspected the outside of it, and I found my name written in Greek on the bottom of it." Without missing a beat he flipped the bookbag over to where his name was indeed written in greek with perfect handwriting.

As I opened my mouth to respond, a dart whizzed dangerously close to my head and I had to hit the ground to avoid being hit.

"Hey, sorry Lander," Damon drawled. Seth and Paxton snickered together, though I couldn't tell whether it was at me or Damon's poor dart-throwing skills which hadn't even come close to hitting the target.

Alene who had otherwise been ignoring everything else that had been going on in the room whirled around, her eyes glowing with anger. "Could you shut-up Damon, and at least pretend that you care about anything that is actually going on around you?"

At first it looked like he was going to ignore her challenges like he usually did, but then he seemed to think better of it. "Neither of you are saying anything important, so no, I don't see any need for me to be quiet."

"If you even knew a single thing about what we were talking about, then I'm sure that your imbecilic brain would be able to realize that it's important. So will you shut up now?"

Damon's eyes flashed. "How about you stop acting like a bitch? We all get the jist. Percy is coming, Kronos wants to let him blow up the cruise ship and escape, and you're just throwing a fit because apparently the whole war should be about your own stupid problems against Camp Half-Blood and the gods. Kyla and I were there with you, so why can't you just fucking move on?"

There was a tense silence. The entire room sat frozen, not daring to even draw a breath. Even Rickie who was usually unaffected by any serious mood was sitting frozen in shock. As a general rule, you didn't piss off Alene. You tried to stay on her bad side as little as possible, and you never brought up anything about her past.

The seconds dragged by, until Kyla slowly stood up. "Alene, Ethan might have some points. If we did let Percy destroy the Andromeda it would give the gods a false sense of security. It would be even easier then to-"

"Will you ever grow up Kyla, and stop acting so naive and moronic?" Alene's words resonated harshly and clearly across the room. Then she was gone, slamming the door of the lounge behind her. The wall shook from the force of it, and all of the half-bloods flinched.

We were mostly used to Alene storming out of meetings and yelling at us, but it was always the most difficult when it was Damon and Kyla who were the ones she was upset at. At other times they could be depended upon to reason with her and keep everyone's sanity under check, but when they couldn't it felt like the ground had been ripped out from underneath us.

Callie who was sitting near Seth and Paxton was the first one to get up and head towards Kyla. Touching her lightly on the shoulder she murmured a few things, and then left. Seth and Paxton followed after her along with Ethan, and slowly the meeting began to dissolve.
Sighing, Kyla pressed her fingers against her right temple as if she had a headache. I watched her close her eyes as if she was trying to refocus, and for the first time I began to realize how much the war was affecting everyone.

"Damon, go talk to her."

Without even giving an affirmative response he stood up to leave, but not before stopping to give her a quick hug.

"Love you." Then he walked out, leaving just me, Kyla, and Rickie.

Taking a quick glance at Rickie to see how he was reacting now, it didn't surprise me to see him reaching his hand in his backpack looking for something. After a few seconds he pulled out what looked like a photograph, and handed it to Kyla. She looked at it only briefly before folding it and putting it in her pocket.

"You guys should head up to the cafeteria. I'll be up later." Her voice was quiet and level, which was a lot different than her usually bubbly and self-confident tone.

Nodding quietly, Rickie turned towards the door and left.

The teen lounge was a mess. Trash, empty wrappers, overturned furniture, and a few random weapons were laying out everywhere. Bright light continued to stream in through the windows, which only served to further illuminate how awful everything looked. There were cracks in the walls and the carpet was stained, but as I walked out the last image that stuck in my mind was Kyla standing alone in the center of the room with her back to me, looking out into the endless ocean.