It was a dark and stormy night… Which wasn't all that uncommon for this time of the year in New England all things considered. For a moment as the wind howled, Xander missed the soft California evenings. He frowned again as something caught his attention.
It was a whisper in the storm, a sigh on the wind, a sound beyond hearing that called to him. With a lurch, Xander was up and moving.
Clad in a pair of flannel pajama bottoms Xander hit the door running, Sword and Shield in hand as he sprinted out into the cold New England rain. His many years of experience running away in the Sunnydale nights served him well as he was halfway through the rows of cabins before he finished strapping the shield in place and realized that he wasn't actually alone.
"ALARM! ALARM! MONSTERS AT THE BARRIER!"
By the time he reached the end of the cabins the Children of Hermes were already scrambling out into the rain soaked night. Armed with a verity of swords, spears and bows, they were the fastest to respond to his call despite being lightly armed.
He could tell from the sounds coming from the other cabins that the children of Ares and Athena would be slightly slower out of the gate, but would be armed for bear when they got into the fight.
Even further back, he could hear the call go out from the other cabins as the kids passed on the alarm.
Pumping his legs as he dashed through the sand pit of the sparring ring, Xander cursed the thirty pounds of wood and celestial bronze that weighed him down.
Despite his impressive lead he could tell that the children of Hermes were closing fast and behind him, Xander heard the horn sound from the camp's long house as Chiron entered the race for the barrier. Even with the lead he'd had, Xander knew that he would only be seconds ahead of all the other demigods now awake and moving.
Still, those would be seconds he would have to buy, as he began to pump his way up the long hill towards the tree line. He brushed past a Satyr whose wide frantic eyes indicated that things had gone extremely pear shaped for the young man's charges.
Reaching the top of the hill, Xander took note of movement to his right as a teen passed the barrier further down before the roar of the fight washed over him.
Below, just outside the barrier, a dark haired demigod stood alone against a pack of hell hounds and all three of the furies. Said teen was desperately trying to hold them all off and retreat up the hill at the same time.
With a final step over the summit, Xander screamed out a battle cry as he launched himself at the assembled hell born foes. "LEGGO MY EGGO," he screeched as the full weight of his partially divine form behind the bronze aspis slammed into the fury that had been trying a flanking attack with the force of a freight train He knocked the winged menace to the ground and crushed her beneath him.
Turning with a swipe at a nearby hellhound, Xander shifted so his shield overlapped his battle buddy's, taking the press off the exhausted demigod.
Taking a step back as the wave of demonic flesh hit his shield Xander stabbed under the curve with his blade and grinned as one of the hell beast's disintegrated into dust before it could shove them back again.
He could hear the other campers as they reached the summit, already a flurry of arrows stabbed into the tide of beasts, taking some of the pressure off them as the children of Hermes entered the fray. Unfortunately they were unable to deal damage to the most pressing threats as Xander and his companion were blocking the view. The others were also too lightly armored to render assistance without being ripped apart by the hellhounds.
Another step back, another crash of flesh as the hounds snapped their jaws, trying desperately to get around their shields. The beasts couldn't flank them without the arrows from the other campers cutting them down, still the monsters pressed on, hungry for the flesh of the demigods.
Out of the corner of his eye, Xander could tell his comrade in arms was faltering, shield no longer held as firmly and the sword swings seemed to be more of a last gasp effort to keep the fiends back than a desire to slay them.
Blinking the rain out of his eyes, Xander saw one of the enraged Furies making a suicidal bombing run at them to break up their shields. With a whisper towards his absent father, Xander pulled the exhausted girl behind him and prepared for the worst.
The worst, however, was circumvented by the arrival of a dozen campers in full armor. The Ares and Athena contingent hit the wave of monsters like an armored battering ram, many of the teens leaping over him in their rush to join the fray.
As the battle pushed back down the hill, Xander felt the adrenaline fade even as the members of House Hermes rushed to drag him and the warrior woman he had helped back behind the barrier and fully into camp half blood.
Glancing over, Xander took note of the girl's leather jacket and punk rocker motif and the medusa face emblazoned on her shield as she leaned back in the cold wet grass and let the other campers look her over carefully for critical injuries.
It didn't take the Sunnydale native long to figure out who she was the daughter of and why his dad had gone to such lengths to kill her off.
Making a mental note to speak with his dad about the proper way to make friends and influence people, Xander let himself drift off to sleep in the cold mud atop the hill.
"So what happened?" Dawn asked as she watched him carefully for any hint of him downplaying his part in the battle.
Sighing as he realized that she was prepared to drag the truth out of him kicking and screaming, Xander decided to forgo the song and dance and just tell the truth.
"For that, you need a little bit of back story. Apparently after world war two there was a big, nasty prophecy and the big guys got together and swore to never have kids again."
At Dawn's snort, Xander just raised an eyebrow at her as she shrugged. "If even a quarter of the stories are true, I'd lay money on them breaking the deal within a couple decades," she explained before hugging Xander around his middle with a smile. "Besides, I have some pretty solid evidence that at least one of them broke that agreement."
"Well, you're not wrong, Dad fell in love with a mortal and had two kids with her, Zeus found out and tried to kill them."
At Dawns gasp Xander nodded again "Yeah, their mom stepped in the way and died to protect them."
"I'm going to guess that Hades wasn't happy about that," Dawn said and Xander had to nod at that particularly massive understatement.
"That is one way to put it, especially after he found out that Zeus had also broken the agreement and had a daughter of his own." Xander explained and politely ignored the sing-song "Dysfunctional," Dawn whispered even as he tried to ignore the whole 'Cousin/Step-mom that he calls Aunt' issue.
He was not from West-Virginia, there were no banjos and he did not have a cousin/mother.
"Anyway, when Dad found out that Zeus had done that he went ape shit, unlocked the cages of all the monsters he could and set them off on Thalia and her friends. The end result of that was me playing the big damn hero at the last second to save her."
Hugging him again for being the hero that she knew he was, Dawn considered the story before asking, "So the only person that didn't break the agreement was Poseidon? And why didn't Zeus try and kill you over the whole 'prophecy' thing?"
Coughing slightly as he blushed, Xander shrugged. "Actually, his son Percy is at Camp now All of them broke the rules at about the same time. as for me, Zeus can't see on the Hellmouth."
"And the prophecy?"
"The Prophecy was explained after my first ever meeting with the Oracle of Delphi."
Stepping into the creepy ass attic, Xander tried desperately to calm his inner Hellmouth senses that were screaming at him like a loud audience member at a horror show. "DON'T GO IN THE ATTIC!" he could hear them screech before he took another step in.
Actually now that he thought about it something else was screeching, and it wasn't mental either.
Looking deep into the gloom, Xander felt his life flash before his eyes as a desiccated corpselike figure lunged out of the darkness, a familiar piece of wood held in its upraised hand before it flashed down towards his chest.
"WHAT!" Dawn screeched as she fumbled with his shirt and finally managed to check the skin underneath for any signs of a past staking even as she ran through a half dozen plans on how she would destroy this so called "Oracle". Memories of his time after his return from his road trip reminded her of a jagged scar on his chest that he had never explained.
Laughing at her reaction, Xander enjoyed the attention before he poked Dawn in the ribs to get her to focus back on him before he smiled, "It was a pudding pop stick. The crazy undead had grabbed a pudding pop stick and tried to stab me with it."
At her gob smacked look, Xander just laughed again. "Apparently me interrupting the Prophecy with Buffy sent the whole thing out of whack, I'm now the personal bane of seers and prophets the world over."