I woke up, half-expecting to be in my dorm room. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I find Jason shaking me. I open my eyes groggily and notice a bunch of people lining up in front of the gates for the flight. I sighed in exasperation.

"Come on Vince, we need to get going." Jason said. I stared at the airplane

I just groan and get grabbing my – oh, nothing. I realized I wasn't even packed and started to panic. I mean, how I am I supposed to survive in America without clothes, money, or anything like that?! Thankfully Jason saw my expression.

"Don't worry; everything you'll need is at camp. Some kids go there straight out of the foster system or even running away from home. You'll be fine." Jason assured.

I nodded my thanks and followed Jason with Clarisse close behind. She looked angry. It wasn't a fury, more like a deep annoyance. She was scowling really hard and occasionally muttering curses. I leaned over (and up) and whispered to Jason. "What's she so upset about?"

"She hates long-distance extractions – it's a lot of work for not much return" I raised an eyebrow at that last part. Jason looked a bit ashamed at his word choice. "Oh, that came out wrong. Don't worry; I'll explain everything on the plane."

"Even why I'm not worth it?"

He hung his head in guilt. I didn't really care; I knew I wasn't that important and never really cared enough to feel bad it. At least, that's what I told myself. I patted his back while smiling and said, "Don't worry about it; I was just messing with ya."

We finally got to the gate and got our tickets checked. We walked through the corridor and found our seats in silence. I got the window seat, Jason got the middle seat, and Clarisse got the aisle seat. We didn't talk until we were at cruising speed and there wouldn't be any interruptions.

"So, what is all this about?"

Jason tensed slightly, and then sighed. "You took Greek right? Then you should know something about the Greek gods, goddesses, monsters, heroes, etc."

"Yeah…"

"Well, they are real."

"Okay… shouldn't they be in Greece? I mean we're already flying all the way across the world; it's not much farther than Greece is." I was half-expecting him to go "Psyche!" Although, If he was serious maybe that'd upset Psyche? This was weird; if he was serious then... nothing. It wouldn't really impact me, right? I mean, I've lived 14 years without much trouble for them so why would they start now? That doesn't explain why I've been absconded from my life by two kids carrying medieval weapons. I calm myself, and clear my thoughts. I've never been one to panic. As Miyamoto Musashi said, "Take the world as it is." That is, never second guess the truth and never panic about it. Just take it as it is.

Jason said. "The gods move with the heart of western civilization. And right now that is in America."

I thought about it. If they moved to America, that means that Mount Olympus would have to be there somewhere along with the entrance to the underworld. "Two questions: How did no one notice their existence at all? In the myths they weren't very discrete."

"There's something called the mist; it makes people see what they want to see. Mortals will believe about anything other than the truth." Clarisse spoke up. Her scowl gave way a little.

"That leads to my second question. Why me? Why isn't anyone else with us?"

"Because one of your parents is a god – it's not uncommon, but demigods almost never meet outside of camp." Jason said.

"Which one is my parent?"

"We don't know. They have to claim you once you turn 13 and are at camp though. Although you are probably a child of Athena, since they all have blonde hair and grey eyes." Clarisse said.

"Who are your godly parents?"

"My father is Jupiter, or Zeus." Jason said – rather proudly if I say so myself.

"My father is Ares." Clarisse said, not much more humbly than Jason.

"Cool." I said calmly. I was trying to play it off as no big deal more for myself than anything else. It was a bit much too handle and I kept thinking of what this all meant.

Clarisse narrowed her eyes as she glared at me, deepening her scowl again. I raised an eyebrow. Jason had a slightly annoyed look. Then he exchanged a glance with Clarisse.

"Ok, what now?"

Jason thought for a little bit, searching for the right words. "You just don't seem very surprised."

"One of the wisest men who lived once said 'Take the world as it is.' I figure that panicking and second guessing everything in life isn't the way to go about taking this information. So I'm going to suck it up and make everything fit the best I can." I said while I shrugged. To be honest it took every ounce of will power not to freak out. But I have trained myself to use panic as a motivator. If you are worried something is going to happen, don't just think about what could happen prepare for what could happen. That's what I believe anyways.

We made small talk after that and watched a couple movies. It was a good time. I couldn't entirely stop thinking about how I left my dad though. My ADHD let me get pretty distracted, but it doesn't make me forget. I hope he's alright; living alone for the first time in so long must be tough. I slowly began to nod off.

It turns out they weren't kidding. After an awkward trek through the New York International Airport with no luggage, we made our way to camp. Standing on the hill next to the pine tree, the view was fantastic. There were white marble buildings and a collection of just fewer than 2 dozen cabins. Each cabin was constructed completely differently; each designed with a different theme. One of them was short, painted deep-sea blue, and had all sorts of sea life or fishing stuff decorating the outside. One looked like a giant marble mausoleum with big bronze doors that had holographic lightning bolts on them. One had flowers all over the place. On the window sill, where the gutters would be, etcetera. They were probably arranged by your godly parent.

Jason gave me a tour, first letting me meet Mr. Brunner (who I had forgotten was in this mess) and showing me the orientation video. I immediately determined I didn't like the director, Mr. D. We moved on, and we got to the cabins last. We peeked in each cabin, and my suspicions were confirmed. Each cabin was assorted by godly parent. After visiting the major cabins on the "male side", we visited the minor female goddess' cabins and finally made our way to the major ones.

The first major goddess' cabin was Aphrodite's. Inside, the walls were bright pink and the air was probably 75% perfume. It was awful. Everyone in the cabin was gorgeous which made sense considering who their mother is. It was clear not everyone was here because almost every bunk space was taken. There were posters of all the "hottest stars" next to almost every bed. Most of them waved and said hello, so I waved back. I swear every girl in there had more makeup on than they had skin.

We passed a silver building for the maiden goddess, Artemis. Apparently the cabin is just honorary, but when the hunters come they use it – whoever they are. We moved on and went in the Athena cabin. Jason was pretty sure that this would be where I went. Why? Well everyone in there had the same eyes – dark, stormy grey. Also, they had blueprints all over the place with bookshelves hiding the walls. They were all working furiously, and only a couple of them looked up at us. I wouldn't mind living here at all. They had some of the same interests I did, and I noticed all the bunks were pushed in the back of the cabin as if sleep could wait. I couldn't agree more; I always viewed sleep as unproductive but grudgingly necessary.

The Demeter cabin wasn't that interesting and the amount of posters for tree huggers that was overwhelming. After that Jason took me to the tool shed. It seems that a common theme for the tour is, "you're not alone." I wasn't convinced. However, I did notice that Jason was apparently well respected. It seemed like everyone knew who he was and pretty much everyone liked him. He said he'd been here for just over 2 years; I realized that with how old he was he probably came from somewhere else If I could barely make it as a son of a goddess without getting attacked, then there's no way he came here only 2 years ago [A1] as a son of Zeus.

When we got to the tool shed, I cocked an eyebrow and gave Jason a quizzical look. He motioned for me to be patient, and then opened the doors. I was not prepared for what was inside. It looked like a Greek army had taken over one of James Bond's secret weapon stashes. The walls were covered by panels that were slid on an angle and each weapon was neatly laid in a foam depression to that nothing would fall off. Each weapon was made of bronze and even though this place was actually well lit I could tell a faint glow was emanating from it.

"Feel free to check out any weapon you want." Jason said, eyeing me with curiosity. There was almost everything; there were xiphoi (swords with a leaf-shaped blade), bows, and even some firearms. Everything was either made of bronze or had bronze ammunition. I tried them all but none just clicked. The xiphos was definitely the most comfortable, but I couldn't use a shield since I wasn't strong enough. I wasn't very comfortable with a spear and a bow felt pretty awkward.

"We have quite the selection, don't worry." Jason said soothingly, trying to reassure me. I wasn't convinced; however, since I had the feeling like what I wanted wasn't here. Maybe I was just being difficult. Ugh, I wish there was some way to tell whether or not that weapon was for you – like that shoe sole fitter in the TV ads. After, trying out every weapon, I decided that I would go with the xiphos.

We then headed to the mess hall for dinner. The mess hall was a typical Greek building of white marble and pillars going all around the outside except that there was no other structure inside the pillars. Inside there were wooden tables with one for each cabin. There were maybe 30 kids here, since most people didn't stay year round. I sat with Jason while we ate (The dishes magically created food) and didn't talk a whole lot, but we didn't ignore each other. We had a good time; especially once dinner was almost over I was experimenting with the dishes. They were polylingual, could fulfill the wildest request, but could only summon food (almost scared Jason out of his wits when I requested a hell hound from my dishes). After dinner, Mr. Brunner, no Chiron, got up from the head table. He announced that due to someone misusing a fire arrow in last night's capture the flag game and almost burning down the forest (I guess you could use weapons, although that sounds ironically dangerous for a supposed safe haven), the dryads wouldn't allow capture the flag for three weeks. Most of the kids glared at someone at the Apollo table who hung his head in shame.

We were about to walk away when all of a sudden someone shouted "look!" and pointed behind me. I turned around and saw nothing. When I faced forward again everyone was staring at me.

"What?" I asked. I then noticed most of the kids were looking above me, so I looked up and saw a hologram of an owl floating there. However, it only lasted a couple seconds before it disappeared leaving some confused faces.

"I told you so." Jason said with a smirk replacing his mildly surprised expression. Unsure of whether to smile or to yell at my parent for waiting so long, I decided to smile because it made me happier out of the 2. My mother was Athena, cool. It was definitely the cabin I wanted to be in the most. I had a foreboding feeling though, like some inner disagreement with her before even meeting her. Maybe that's me overanalyzing how anti-climactic my claiming was.

I said goodbye to Jason and headed back to my cabin with my new half-siblings. A tall kid came over and introduced himself to me as Malcolm, the head counselor. I asked him about the schedule and the other details as we walked to the cabin. When we got to the cabin, he assigned me a bunk (I got the bottom one, below some guy who didn't speak to me) and we talked a little bit more. I found I had a fair amount in common with them, which was nice for a change.

I woke up, and found no one else was awake. I thought this was the early riser cabin. Huh. I found a calculus textbook and set it down on the table before I went through my morning routine. I soon started working out of it. Maybe half an hour later others started waking up and working on things or getting ready. In no time, everyone else was awake and bustling around. Everyone was working and time passed as I lost myself in my work just like everyone else. I liked it here for many reasons: when you wanted to work, no one thought you were anti-social; when you wanted to talk and have a good time, no one thought you were slacking off; and finally when you need some time to blow off steam, no one sees you as weak. I felt like I fit in for once – I found people who understood a lot of what I did.

Eventually, Malcolm told us to round it up and we started cleaning before inspections. By the time we had everything organized and cleaned up; the inspector came to check out our cabin. He was short for his age, which was about the same as Jason's. He was Hispanic and had a mischievous glint in his eyes. He wore jeans, the camp shirt, and had some sort of tool belt around his waist.

"What would you guys do for a good rating?" Leo asked with a devilish grin.

Malcolm rolled his eyes. "Leo, how about not lock you out of the forge for a year?"

"What a kill joy…" Leo said with a small frown as he wrote something down on his clipboard. I guess he was a son of Hephaestus and I also guess that the threat wasn't empty based on the way Leo reacted. It's weird here. Everything seems so relaxingly serious. Everyone is so relaxes, yet everything is extremely dire. Interesting.

We went to a rather uneventful breakfast where we made small talk. Okay, I guess they really are my half-siblings because most of the breakfast they talked about architecture much to my annoyance. I mean, sure the math of architecture is interesting, but not that interesting. After an hour of boredom, we went to arts and crafts for our first activity. I never liked my artistic talent (or lack thereof), but people always told me that's because I'm a perfectionist. I made a bust of Athena where half her face is smirking but then flows into the other half wearing a scowl. It wasn't any better than anyone else's, but I was happy with how it turned out.

Next we had lessons in fighting with demigods. I was sort of excited, since I love sword fighting. We started off with some preliminary dueling. I was paired up with a kid who looked 15. He was a couple inches taller than me, and was just as athletic as everyone else. He was wielding just a xiphos, as was I.

We stood about 3 yards apart. I unsheathed my sword and squared my hips. I ever so slightly brought my heels off the ground in preparation.

"Go!"

I decided to play passive as my opponent slashed. I parried and attempted to follow it up with an overhead strike but he easily blocked it. I barely blocked the next strike, or the next 3. I couldn't keep up. Every time I would parry he would already be striking again. I kept trying to think how I could gain the upper hand, but I was too focused on not getting my head chopped off. I knew if I tried to roll out of the way he'd get – his reflexes were pretty fast.

Finally he made a mistake when he slashed one way and slashed the other consecutively. That's not that bad either, right? Well, he telegraphed it, a lot. However, I wasn't fast enough to take full advantage of it. So I quickly stepped into the strike parrying it and in the split our swords were touching I followed it up with a moderately soft jumping knee to his chest (more like a hopping knee, but whatever). It was just hard enough to send him staggering back and I swiped at his feet with the flat of my blade. He fell backwards and pointed my blade at his throat.

I shook his hand as we congratulated each other on the good duel. Of course, I did awful. I have a talent for being awful at everything I do. I'm mentally shrugging right now, if you can't tell. A minute later we had our breathing back to normal and we were at it again. It started off the same way as last time. I was frantically trying to use leverage to parry his strikes that were almost too fast for me to stop. I took a swing in a slight lull but I timed it wrong. His blade hit the handle of mine and it went skidding off to my right. He sheathed his blade and we repeated this routine for 15 minutes. I only won one more time.

The rest of the hour was spent learning a disarming technique. It was fun, actually. Thank goodness I am not proud of my swordsmanship, or I would've had the biggest hit to my ego ever. Ok, I'll admit that I was middle of the pack. But for someone who trains (even if it was twice a week[A4] ) I should be better. When I told myself it was because they train too, I couldn't help but feeling like I was making excuses. Eh, only one way to fix this – work at it. I would get to that later.

The next activity was archery. I was bad at it. Not being hard on myself either, I was just plain bad. I have room for improvement, right? Yeah, it's not a half-full or half-empty thing – it was just plain empty. The day flew by, and I began to get to know my half siblings better. I wasn't really good at most of the activities, but I could barely get by, thinking my way through everything. The last activity on my schedule was a free period. I couldn't decide what to do, but then a realization hit me.

I would make a katana. I would forge my sword with my own two hands and train like my life depended on it – which it probably did. I went into my cabin and scanned the shelves of books. I knew that you had to fold steel to make a katana – not literally, but the process was just as tedious. I found a book on sword-making techniques and checked the table of contents to verify. I began reading the book. I am very easily entertained, but there are few things I actually enjoy. Starting a project without guidance and putting a lot of time and effort into it is definitely one of them.

Katanas are not easy to make. First off, even though celestial bronze is fine it isn't the quality of steel I needed. Katanas were famous for their ability to go through many battles without damaging the blade very much if at all. Three different alloys were used in the creation of a katana; dubbed the hard, medium and soft metal. I decided to construct my blade the same way as the most famous black smith did; no need in settling for less than the best.

It wasn't long before we had what I imagined was a typical dinner and had to head to bed. I waited 30 minutes after lights out using a reading light to read the book. I got some strange looks since I was reading this book for a good portion of the day, but I didn't really care. I was on a mission from myself.

Eventually I knew everyone was sound asleep. I quietly got out of my bunk, grabbed my book and left the cabin. I grabbed my sword in case the harpies found me, and walked to the forge. I wound up using the glow of my sword to not trip, and prayed that the harpies wouldn't see my blade. Thankfully they didn't find me.

I closed the doors to the forge, and then settled on creating the ores first. I couldn't do it perfectly because it would take too long and too many resources, but I knew what I had to do. I walked to forge and sat in front of a furnace. I grabbed some celestial bronze, and melted it in a vat while I searched for charcoal and something with carbon in it. Carefully measuring everything, I melted it down then added a small, but just right amount of carbon. I cooled it and then ground the celestial bronze into dust. I put the dust in a vat and mixed pieces of charcoal with the sand before heating it up. The hardness of the steel is determined by how much carbon I use.

After a couple hours of making the "celestial steel" as I called it, I had 3 slabs (one hard, one medium, and one soft) that were maybe 3 feet long, 6 inches tall, and 8 inches deep. I then headed back to my cabin and slept for a couple hours. When I woke up I was really excited knowing today I would be making my blade. While it may seem strange that a katana felt so much more comfortable in my hand than the xiphos; they were actually very different weapons. The katana had one edge, while the xiphos had two edges; the biggest difference was that the Kanata was about 2 and half feet long, and the xiphos was about 1 and ¾ feet long; and finally the katana weighed one and a half times what the xiphos did.

I was really distracted all day. After almost getting my head chopped off several times, almost hitting several other people (and Chiron) with arrows, and launching a new marble bust I was working on across the arts and crafts room, Malcolm told me to take it easy for the rest of the day. So I headed over to my cabin to relax. Ok, that's a lie. I might've used some pillows and cut some of my hair to put on the bed so that it'd look like I was sleeping. It was barely a handful of hair by the way; I couldn't make it too obvious. I grabbed my book and nearly sprinted my way to the forge.

When I got there, it was nearly full of people. The sound was comparable to a bomb exploding, over and over again. I grabbed my slabs and brought myself over to a furnace in the back corner of the forge, grabbing some ear plugs along the way. I focused myself on my work to ease my excitement. Every day for the next week[A5] or so followed that pattern. The first 2 days after that I would be excused after the first 2 activities or so. Malcolm then decided I must be sick. Every day I'd wear a hat I bought from the camp store so no one would recognize me.

At first, I grabbed some of my soft steel and, after some calculations, shaved off the metal on the outside of the box. I then smelted it together into a solid rectangular box using a mold, roughly the size of the katana (but small enough it could fit inside the katana). I then took my hard and medium steel and melted the shavings the same way as before. I took the medium steel and then fashioned 2 rectangular boxes much thinner but a little taller than the last one. I smelted them so that the tall edge of the boxes was against the taller edge of the medium steel box. As I melted it together, it looked like a poorly written "U". I then made a mold in the shape of the full katana and inserted my "U-tube" in the mold. I melted the hard steel and poured it in the mold. After it all settled and started to cool, I sped up the cooling process by submerging it in water.

I was sweating hard by now, and had to rapidly heat it until it wasn't magnetic and then cool it all the while keeping the blade wrapped in a mixture of clay, ash, and water. After I was all done, I was exhausted but proud. Someone cleared their throat right next to my ear and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned around to face Malcolm and took my earplugs out. He had a mildly amused and slightly annoyed look on his face; almost as if he couldn't decide which one he was feeling.

I grinned sheepishly as I realized I forgot that metalworking was on our schedule. "Hey."

"Would you like to explain to me what you're doing here?"

"I made this." I smiled more confidently this time and showed him my blade. It wasn't polished yet so there were still bits of clay muddling the metal and the surface was still very rough. However, I was very pleased. While I actually took much shorter than most sword smiths, the celestial bronze had a major part in that. In actuality I took a fair amount longer than anyone more than an apprentice would. But the end product was very fine if I say so myself. I haven't tested it, but I could tell. It felt strong and very sharp (it was only going to get sharper).

"What on earth is this?" He asked as I realized it was a bit different. The blade gave less of an orange glow and more of a blue glow. It looked like someone was continuously shining a really, really dim LED off of it from all directions.

"It's actually made of 3 different alloys with celestial bronze as its base. The varying amounts of carbon, charcoal, and heating/cooling patterns, give the blade a stronger martensite structure to the different molecules. This…" I started going in-depth into the construction of the blade. Malcolm was looking at me weirdly. "What?"

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" Malcolm asked in shock.

I simply showed him the book and shrugged. "I had to extrapolate some of the processes for a couple of things, but in the end it was mostly the book. I'll show you the blade after I'm done with the handle, these are amazing."

"You've used them before?"

"Yeah, a couple years ago I learned a little bit of Japanese sword fighting using this style of sword, called a katana."

"Ok, then. You're done right?"

"Umm…" I said as I went over the rest of my checklist, and then nodded.

"See you at dinner."

When dinner time came, I was relieved. I sat with my cabin mates and talked about stuff. I got asked a lot about what was wrong. I simply just said that I had a lot on my mind. They never really pressed the matter. To be honest, as with most things, I didn't really care either way. In general, I discovered apathy spares you a lot of pain.

I hid my katana in my mattress (I used it to cut a slit in the side), and sat in my bed wondering how I'd continue my training. I knew some kendo, which was traditionally practiced alone, but I needed to know more than that if I wanted to be great. After I was sure everyone was asleep I set an alarm on my watch [A6] so I didn't lose too much sleep, and went to the bookshelves. I noticed that a few books had fallen, so I picked them up and put them away. I was just finishing up, when I noticed one under the bed. The spine was untouched, so I doubt it had been read much. I tilted my head to read it and my heart about stopped.

The spine read, The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. This book was still regarded as one of the greatest books on strategy ever. Furthermore, it was written by, in my and many other's opinion, the greatest warrior who ever lived. I couldn't believe it; it was too good to be true. I grabbed the book and read it with one arm under the pillow so my alarm wasn't too loud. I decided I'd practice my swordsmanship later as I was bubbling with excitement.

It was 2 weeks that I've been here now, and it was started to feel like home. My archery skills were better, I learned a lot about monsters and tactics against them, and I made a few friends. I was on my way to the Hephaestus cabin during my free period. It was still April, and I had a couple of months before everyone came to camp. I knocked on the door, and thank goodness Leo opened it.

"Wassup?" Leo said with a big grin. I really liked Leo; he was funny, relaxed, but always got the job done. He was amazing at making things, exactly why I am here.

"Leo, I need your help."

"What's in it for me?" His eyes narrowed, and his smile faltered just a little bit. Everyone always came to Leo for a bunch of petty favors and I knew it annoyed him. It was only because he knew I wouldn't ask for his help for something small that he didn't shut the door right there.

"Have you ever made an automaton form scratch before?" He raised his eyebrows, and I knew I had his attention. "Take a walk with me, it's complicated."

He agreed and we walked through along the beach as I described my idea. You see, I love sword fighting and really want to learn how to use my katana better. However, the technique is actually very different from the Greek style and no one else can teach it to me. Thus I, with Leo's help, planned on making 3 to 5 automatons. Fully functioning, dueling robots that would have increasing difficulty and different sword styles. The difficulty would be controlled from a laptop that predetermined reaction time, force, skill, and strategy, by controlling basically any and every component. We made a deal – I make all the blue prints, and he'd make it.

Another week passed and I was almost done with the blueprints. I woke up early and went to bed late (shush, don't tell Malcolm) to work on them. I was adding in notes on how to vary the different parts for the control aspect of the project when I felt someone looking over my shoulder. I looked up and saw Malcolm. We both raised our eyebrows at the same time and laughed.

"What's that? I didn't take you as one to be interested in architecture." He inquired, still smiling.

"You'd be right about that. A project the Leo is helping me out with. He told me if I drew up the blueprints he'd make them."

He studied the blueprints for a few seconds and gave me an impressed look. "That is actually really good!"

I blushed slightly from the praise. I did everything I could to not stammer. "I used a lot of mechanics books and a couple of biology books to draw the designs using machines to simulate the biological functions of a human. I also modeled the 'brain' of the automaton after ours; using quantum computing I can get around the clumsiness of wires and more effectively simulate the human mind. I can't simulate emotions, but I can get them to strategize using predetermined attack methods."

He gave me a pat on the back and said, "You know, Vince, you actually do anything you set your mind to. I am proud of you."

"Thanks for being so understanding with all of this Malcolm, I really appreciate it." I said genuinely. He looked a bit surprised by this, but he knew what I meant. I spent more time on my projects than the other kids, and didn't think twice about it. He knew me better than anyone here except for, maybe, Leo. So he knew I never said anything sentimental unless it really meant a lot to me.

"You're welcome, see you later." I waved good-bye as I finished up my blueprints. I ran over to the forge where Leo was working on the outer shell of the automaton. I handed him the blueprints with a huge grin on my face. He smiled mischievously and took them. He had a couple of siblings who worked on the project with us. I gave him an appreciative nod and ran off again.

AN: Here's chapter 2! Hoped you liked it. Again, tried to keep the dialogue a tiny bit awkward but not too awkward. I hope I didn't go too in depth with the whole forging thing; I just wanted to show how much he could accomplish when he put his mind to it.

Anyways, please review! I will actually read reviews and maybe respond. I might PM you, or respond in author's notes... I'll just wing it XD