Hi! I was going to post on Tuesday, but I had skating practice, and on Wednesday, I was absorbed in the House of Hades!

SPOILERS START HERE

I was going to put Nico in this chapter, and he would have had a daughter named Bianca, and a wife that died. (Because I couldn't think of a name.) And when I was reading the part in HoH when he and Jason had to talk to Cupid, I was literally crying. Poor, poor Nico di Angelo. (If anyone who didn't read the book is actually reading this part, I'd just like to tell you, he did NOT die.) And I didn't make Leo get married or anything because of all that Caleo stuff. (So cute! I hated Calypso with Percy. When I read BotL for the first time, I threw the book against the wall.

SPOILERS END HERE

Anyways, I'm doing this from my phone, so please feel free to review telling me how horrible my grammar was.

{CHRISSY'S POV}

The blue hairbrush slid through my dark hair, causing me to wince. It wasn't my fault my hair got so knotty.

People were going to arrive soon. Mom and Dad were doing all that last minute cleaning, while Mirabel was pacing by the front door, waiting for the doorbell to ring.

I was wearing my normal clothes; a button-down shirt and bright green jeans. I adored colored denim. I had pink, black, purple, orange, white... Name a color and I own it.

I brushed my hair some more, for good measure, and blew my side bangs out of my face. I walked out of the bathroom, just as the doorbell finally rang.

Mirabel answered it right away, and I sprinted the rest of the way there. It was my cousins, James and Alexis, and their parents Piper and Jason. Lames was twelve and Alexis was six. Their parents were my parents' cousins, so they were my second cousins.

Then we began the first round of greetings. We didn't get to see them really often, because they lived half the time in New York, and half the time in California. I didn't really understand why, because it's not like their parents are divorced or anything like that. In my head, I just decided it was Piper's and Jason's jobs.

I didn't call them Aunt Piper and Uncle Jason. They weren't my aunt and uncle.

Alexis, James, Mirabel and I went up to our room.

"Your room is pink!" Alexis exclaimed. "Mine is too!" Alexis had just finished kindergarten a few weeks before, just as Mirabel and I had just finished seventh grade.

James rolled his eyes. "No one cares, Alexis." Siblings can be so loving. Trust me, I know. (Hint, hint: Mirabel.)

We sat in the Fun corner of our room. Okay, I guess the time has come to explain that.

When we were ten, Mirabel and I went through a phase where we were neat-freaks. (Of course, Mirabel is still a little OCD.) We had to have our room completely organized. So Mom gave us a roll of bright blue duct tape and we "organized." We made sections all across the carpet, and labeled them off.

We had the Bed corner, where our bed was. It was a bunk bed and I slept on the bottom. Then we had the Clothing corner, where there was our closet and a full length mirror. And we had the Fun corner, where we kept some beanbags, books, board games and other stuff. Then we had the Homework corner, where we had a desk.

Our room was divided into quarters. It wasn't that big, but we had had to get Dad and Mom to rearrange the furniture to fit in the corners. We replaced the duct tape every so often, to a different color.

James and Alexis were used to our room. "What do you want to do?" I asked, just as the doorbell rang again.

All four of us ran back downstairs, and Mom had already let more of our cousins inside. It was Hazel and her husband Frank. They had one son, Felix, who was three, but they had another baby on the way. Hazel was five months pregnant, and I was pretty sure they were having a girl.

Felix was a really hyper boy. He came right up to us and gave us a big hug. "Hi, Cwissy! Hi, Meerabel!" He still had a lisp. I laughed. We never got to see him much, because he lived in California.

The door opened again, and this time it was my Aunt Rachel (who wasn't really my aunt) and my parents' other cousin, Leo. Aunt Rachel wasn't married and she didn't have kids.

Aunt Rachel was awesome. Since she never got married or had kids, I think she seriously tried to spoil Mirabel and me, but my parents wouldn't let her.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "You guys are so grown up now! You're teenagers!"

Eventually, Grandma Sally and Grandpa Paul came, even though we saw them the day before. But too bad.

There were plenty of hellos, and finally everyone got settled down, and we had... Well, it wasn't lunch and it wasn't dinner. It was in between.

The adults ate in the dining room, while we ate in the kitchen. It was me, Mirabel, Felix, James, and Alexis.

"What do you want to do after we're done eating?" Mirabel asked.

"I don't know," we all replied. There wasn't much we could do, but we could always get our parents to bring us to the park.

"What-" Alexis started, and got cut off by the sound of the front door being knocked down.

We all stood up and looked through the kitchen window thingy. It was this huge, black dog. It couldn't fit through the door, it was so big. Only it's head was inside the apartment.

Mirabel looked half confused and half afraid, and I guess that was me, too. Felix couldn't actually see, because he was too short and no one wanted to lift him up. James and Alexis were staring at the dog.

"Cool!" James exclaimed. "I've never seen one of those before!"

The parents all came out of the dining room.

Mom looked at us and let out a heavy sigh. "I guess the time has come to tell you." Behind her, the dog disintegrated in smelly yellow dust. Did my dad have a sword? I noticed they all had weapons of some sort.

What just happened?

We sat on the living room floor, and the parents sat on the couch and chairs. My parents were standing though.

"Chrissy, Mirabel, you're thirteen now and we think it's finally time to explain things to you," Dad started. "Your cousins already know this, and we're really sorry we didn't tell you before. And don't be surprised or anything."

Mom looked at us. "Well... You know, I'm just going to get straight to point. The Greek gods are real."

Mirabel and I exchanged glances. "Really?" Mirabel asked.

Everyone in the room nodded their heads. "The big dog you just saw was a monster, a hellhound," Mom explained. "Monsters are attracted to demigods."

"What's that?" I asked, even those I perfectly well knew the answer. My parents had many, many books on the Greek myths.

And then I realized it before Dad even said it. "All of us," he paused and gestured to all the parents, "are demigods."

"So we're descended from two demigods?" asked Mirabel. She spent hours in my parents' office and had read every book in there multiple times.

Mom nodded. "I'm a daughter of Athena and your father is a son of Poseidon."

"My dad is Hephaestus!" exclaimed Leo, and his fingers on his right hand burst into flames. I backed away a little. I didn't want the whole building starting on fire.

The conversation about this went on the whole rest of the party. I learned a lot, I guess. There are monsters, Mount Olympus is above the Empire State Building, there is this thing called the Mist, and lot more. The whole Greek and Roman thing gave me a headache, though.

My parents and their friends told all of us the story of their quests, which apparently was very dangerous, but they saved the world twice. A lot of demigods didn't get to do that.

But they told me the story of both the Second Titan War and the Second Giant War. It was horrible. So many people died. Both my parents suffered from terrible injuries, and faced death many times.

After everyone left, my parents, Mirabel, and I were cleaning up in the kitchen. "I can't believe it," Mirabel said out loud, after an awkward moment of silence.

Mom looked at us, wistfully. "I didn't want to tell you. The life of a demigod is dangerous." She and Dad looked at each other sadly, and I knew they both had suffered. I could tell they left out the scarier parts.

They said they had been to Tartarus and back, and from those books in the office, I knew that was the worst they had ever gone through. They only explained it in vague detail.

When they told the story of the first war, against the Titan Kronos, it was mostly Mom, Dad, and Aunt Rachel talking. None of the others came in until the second war against the evil Mother Earth, Gaea.

Multiple times throughout both, someone looked like they were about to cry.

At the time, I didn't really understand who dangerous it was going to be, even if I wasn't a real demigod.

My parents decided to send us to their camp, Camp Half-Blood, the next week. I was glad because James and Alexis would be there. Felix wouldn't be, because both his parents were descended from Roman gods, so he lived at the Roman camp.

I was only just realizing my life was changing majorly.

Haha, can anyone find the reference I put in? It's from one of the PJO books!

~Sofia