A/N: Sorry if this chapter seems a bit slow, but I wanted to get it out there to show Alex's strengths and weaknesses (the ones that can easily be seen, anyway). I also tried to add a little bit of random stuff to Alex like him not being a morning person and loving bacon. Along with that I added another two semi-major characters, and referenced two more. I also took a shot at
Alex wasn't very good at getting up in the mornings. When he slept, he slept very deeply and subconsciously got into such a comfortable position that waking up was a momentous task to him. That is why on Thursday morning, the day after the giant combat training session, he took a full 10 minutes to get out of bed after he was woken up. His half-sibling Tammy woke him up 10 minutes early for that exact reason.
"Muhrnin." Alex mumbled when he was woken up, being too sleepy to form proper words.
"Morning." Tammy replied, deftly hopping down from Alex's bunk.
Although he stalwartly refused to admit it, Tammy was Alex's favourite half sibling. She was energetic, kind and amusing, whereas most children of Athena were fairly serious and calculating.
A short while later Tammy started to wake up the other demigod children of Athena and Alex took it as his signal to get out of bed. He clambered down the ladder from his bunk and headed into the changing rooms. The young demigod collected his clothes from the bottom of his personal cupboard and got dressed.
As soon as everyone was dressed, they all headed for the dining pavilion. The meal that morning was bacon sandwiches and egg. Alex didn't like eggs, so he took an extra bacon sandwich instead of a second egg, and scraped his first egg into the sacrificial fire. He mentally congratulated himself before he realized how simple of a solution the one he just took had been.
Alex loved bacon sandwiches, mostly. However, he hated the fatty white meat on the outside of each slice. He peeled as much of that as he could off before putting the bacon back inside the bread and starting to eat.
Breakfast was uneventful, and so was the morning session of ancient greek. Canoeing after that was a complete disaster, but then again, with children of Athena it always was, due to the rivalry between Athena and Poseidon. The day remained uninteresting through the session in the archery range, too. That is, until the guns were brought out.
"Time to train with rifles." Martin, an older half brother of Alex, said.
"Yay! I love rifles, they're so much more fun than bows, because bows are slow whereas rifles are more bangbangbangbangbang!" Tammy laughed, and Alex realized just how much of a rifle fan his half sibling was.
The rifle cabinet was unlocked, and everyone selected their firearm. Alex went for an old but cheap M16A1 assault rifle, and loaded it with a clip of average, mortal bullets. Celestial Bronze bullets were too expensive for training use. Tammy chose the fastest firing weapon in the armoury, a brand new and incredibly well maintained M8 rifle that straddled the line between assault rifle and light machine gun. Alex grabbed some ear protectors as soon as he saw Tammy click her weapon into fully automatic, then crouched down on one knee at the end of the range.
He started with single shots, getting used to the feel of the weapon and the recoil, then flipped the rifle into fully automatic. He fired short bursts at the target, picturing it being first a dracanae, then a minotaur, then a telkhine. After three spent clips, he decided to look over at Tammy's target. It had been ripped through in spots too numerous to count, and was barely standing up. To be honest, it was in far better condition than Alex had expected. After Alex fired another three magazines' worth of bullets, however, Tammy had needed to bring in a new target.
Half an hour later, the competition began. Whoever got the most bullseyes in 30 seconds would win. Tammy tried to achieve that by spraying and hoping to hit the bullseye. Alex went for short bursts aimed at the dead center of the target, firing enough to get plenty of bullseyes but slowly enough to be accurate. In the end Reggie, the oldest demigod in the cabin, won. He had been firing single shots incredibly quickly, somehow not losing any of his pinpoint accuracy.
After the shooting session it was lunchtime. Alex wasn't very hungry, and didn't really enjoy the toasted cheese and sun dried tomato sandwiches, so he was glad when the conch horn for the end of lunch blew. His cabin's schedule for the day was very packed, so it was straight back to activities for the young demigod.
Five hours of climbing rock walls, training with the sword and trying (and failing miserably) to make a shield followed. Alex almost got incinerated by a burst of lava and was inches from having his foot crushed by the time the rock climbing was over, which put him in a bad mood for his sword training. He didn't learn any new moves, and barely got any more skilled at using the ones he knew. The shield he tried to make ended up looking like it had been hit by a series of meteors, then bent even more out of shape by an angry god. Smithing was not Alex's best skill, in fact, it was far closer to being his worst.
"That is the worst shield I have ever seen." Tammy had laughed.
"Does it really count as a shield?" Alex had replied.
"Probably not." Tammy had said with a grin.
Dinner was far earlier than it had been the previous day. It was a six thirty; On Wednesday, it had been at nine thirty. Combat training had pushed dinner back very far. Alex scoffed down his lasagna after making the mandatory sacrifice, then dug into a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. He leaned back and let out a satisfied 'aah' once he was done eating.
After dinner all of the campers had some free time up until eleven, when the harpies came out. Rumour had it the harpies would eat campers breaking curfew, but Alex doubted that. It was far more likely they just chased them back into their cabins, or knocked them out and dragged them there. For some reason, no one had decided to try it out. Alex was sorely tempted to do so for a few moments, but then opted against it. Better safe than sorry, as his dad said.
That chain of thought is the one that lead Alex towards the newly built camp computer suite. The thought of his dad had made him want to talk to him, and phones were dangerous for demigods to use, so email was the only way he could do so. He made his way through the neat rows of computers and sat down at one towards the back of the room. He pressed the on button and waited for Microsoft Windows to start up.
'Thirty nine years worth of development and it still takes forever to start up.' he grumbled mentally.
Alex's dad used Apple Mac, because in his youth he had gotten so frustrated with windows long start up time, random restarts, and vulnerability to viruses. Alex had was unsure as to why Camp Half Blood used Windows, but suspected it was down to either pricing or Dionysus, the camp's godly leader, torturing the unsuspecting demigods.
The computer finally started up and Alex's fingers became a blur as he typed in his username and password. He sat through the long log on screen, then waited as it loaded personalized settings for programs he had never heard of. Windows had barely changed since Alex was born in 2010, if what his dad said was true.
At long last, Alex's home screen burst into life on the screen and he clicked the icon for Wave, the default browser on the Camp Half Blood computers. He clicked into the searchbar and-
"Byarrgh!" someone behind him shouted, grabbing his shoulders.
Unlike the last time he had been startled from behind, Alex managed to avoid a fall.
"Hello Kyle." Alex said calmly.
Kyle had a very immature habit of trying to startle Alex while he was using computers, and he had gotten very used to it, to the point where it only just made him blink, much to Kyle's displeasure.
"What are you doing?" Kyle asked.
"Using the computer." Alex replied sarcastically.
"Alex." Kyle said menacingly.
"Using the internet." Alex teased.
"What are you doing on the internet?" Kyle asked.
"Not much. Just started it up." Alex replied, spinning the chair around to face Kyle.
Kyle was a bit taller than Alex, standing at about five foot ten, whereas Alex was only five foot nine. Kyle's light blonde, almost white hair was nearly the exact opposite of Alex's pitch black hair. Kyle's eyes were of different colour, one green, one blue, which Alex saw as an outward sign of his friend's insanity. The son of Athena's eyes were far less interesting, just the grey that children of Athena were easily identifiable by.
"I overtook you at Quest of Zeus." Kyle said.
"That weird puzzle game?" Alex checked.
"Yes." Kyle confirmed.
Alex opened his favourites menu and clicked the link to Quest of Zeus. He enjoyed the game as much for it's amusingly terrible portrayal of the gods as he did for it's gameplay. The game loaded and a greek hero rendered in the blacks and oranges of ancient greek pottery ran into a room with a giant hole in the floor.
"I beat this bit and the next three puzzles." Kyle said.
Alex just smiled. For a supernaturally intelligent partially immortal fourteen year old like him, four puzzles was nothing. He called lightning from above to turn a column into a bridge, put a drakon to sleep with magic apples, found a mirror and held it up to medusa, turning her to stone - "That is completely wrong." he had said - and found the correct path through a magical minefield. Then he had beaten Kyle by using a red flag to lure the minotaur over a cliff.
"That is so untrue." Kyle said.
"You can't expect mortals to get everything right." Alex replied smugly, "Me, on the other hand, you can rely on to get things right."
Kyle logged on to the computer next to Alex and they competed to beat the game first. Alex won while Kyle was still forty percent from the end of the game. While Kyle was engrossed in the game Alex typed in 'astroboy' to the searchbar. The first image that came up was a stupid manga toddler in a diaper and rocket boots flying through space.
"Hey, Kyle." Alex said, "You're on the internet."
Kyle looked over.
"Shut up Alex." he said angrily.
To outsiders, the whole joke would have made no sense. But to demigods, it made perfect sense. Kyle was the son of Urania, the muse of astronomy and astrology. Astroboy was Alex's taunt name for him, or 'pet name' if he was using it endearingly. But mostly, it was a taunt name.
After playing through a few levels of an interesting but painfully outdated 2012 flash game called 'Jacksmith' Alex noticed the time was 9:53. The computer suite closed at 10 PM. He quickly sent an email to his dad and logged off. He wished Kyle goodbye and headed back to the Athena cabin to get some sleep.
A/N: Yes, the muses can have demigod children. Resurrect Homer and ask him. Or just, you know, read The Illiad. Or google it. But before you do, please leave a review. Thanks in advance, you beautiful person.