Ok, I fully deserve y'all being pissed at me. I know I haven't updated in forever. And I feel really bad. But what with the start of school and planning my 15th birthday party and everything else going on in my life, I just haven't had a lot of time to write stuff. And then I had to do the map because y'all had to be able to see what I was talking about. Although I think I made up for it a teensy bit by making this chapter basically twice as long as my other ones. And so here it is, finally, Chapter 4.
A/N part 2: Ok, new point of view! I'm going to try a new person as often as I can *crosses fingers*. We shall see how that goes…Anyway. Writing this POV was fun. Enjoy the new chapter!
Clarisse's POV
Damn Percy Jackson. Damn him to Hades. Just because he's the son of Poseidon doesn't mean he's so cool and great. But using his powers in our sparring match? That crossed my line.
"What the fuck was that, Jackson?" I yelled as he threw a ball of water at my chest, with perfect aim of course.
"Oh don't bullshit me and tell me you haven't been using your powers, Clarisse!" he shouted back. He was right though. I mean, being a daughter of Ares I have natural battle instincts and reflexes. Still. It felt like his powers were more…effective.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. "What the hell are you guys doing?" yelled Annabeth. I guess we had drawn some onlookers. All the more reason for me to beat Percy. It was as if a new rush of adrenaline was coursing through my body. I attacked and slashed at Percy with new energy.
"Holy Zeus, Clarisse!" he yelled as I nearly sliced his chest open. I felt powerful and knew that I was controlling our fight now. I was making him jump all over the place just to avoid my swipes and jabs.
"You're gonna get it, Jackson!" I yelled as I started chasing him around the arena. Damn he can run fast.
"Hey Clarisse!" he said while turning around to face me, "watch your step." Being the son of Poseidon gives him more powers than I realized I guess, because at that moment I could feel the earth quake and tremble beneath me. Soon I was stuck in a huge fissure in the ground with my sword two feet away, leaving me defenseless.
"What in Hades was that Jackson? That's cheating," I declared as he walked over to me.
"Hmmm. I believe it's actually called winning," he said as he pointed his sword at me.
Percy's POV
I stood over Clarisse, breathing heavily and pointing Riptide at her. I could hear our audience clapping and cheering. "Damn you to Hades, Jackson. Fine. You win. Now get me out of this damn hole," she said. I helped her out of the hole I had made in the ground. That power was a pretty recent addition to my list of powers and it was already proving to be really useful.
I could tell I had wounded her pride. Losing, especially in front of our friends, was hard for anyone let alone a child of Ares. "Hey Clarisse," I said, "why don't we have a little rematch at our first lesson tomorrow. You know, show them how it's done?"
"Oh, you're so gonna get your ass whooped. Bring it on Jackson," she said with a wicked grin.
I walked over to Annabeth to see her glaring at me. "Do you know how effing STUPID that was? I mean, you weren't wearing armor and nobody was here watching you in the beginning and something SERIOUS could have happened and THEN WHAT? Nobody would have been here and then-"
I cut her off with a quick kiss. "Shhhh, Wise Girl. Stop worrying. I promise you nothing is going to happen. Nothing is ever going to happen to me. I can take care of myself," I assured her.
"I know that, but it still makes me nervous. I shouldn't be, but I am. I know I have nothing to worry about," she said with a smile. Then we heard the clopping of hooves approaching the arena.
"What is going on here?" Chiron half-shouted as he galloped into the arena.
"Well, looks like Percy and Clarisse here decided to test our equipment," said Caroline with a giggle. That made everyone laugh, including me and Clarisse.
"Well, let's get back to work, shall we?" he said. "We only have an hour and a half before they arrive and we still have some work to do. I assume not all of the cabins were tended to?"
"Well, we got a little distracted by Water Boy and War Girl over here," said Malcolm. "But we'll get right on it," he added quickly after he saw that Chiron was not laughing.
"And I am sure that now since their job is done, Percy and Clarisse would not mind helping you out with your task," Chiron added.
"Of course not, Chiron, we'll get right on that," said Clarisse. And we did. We went through all of the cabins and made sure everything was in order for the campers. Except ever since I had made the gods swear to recognize every one of their children, we had added quite a few cabins. Now all of the minor gods and goddesses are represented at Camp Half-Blood. That happens to make for a lot of cabins. However we finished in about an hour and made it back to the Big House by 10:00. The other group of counselors and year-rounders were already there and waiting for us.
"Well, now that we're all here it is time I gave you all your assignments for the rest of the day. As you know, we need people showing groups of campers to their cabins, people waiting at each activity area, and one counselor representing each cabin to get the campers settled," Chiron said. "Please gather with your cabins and decide who is going to welcome the new and returning campers." Everyone started shifting around in the crowd to find their cabin mates. However, since camp hasn't actually started yet a lot of the cabins have one or no counselors. And then there are the cabins of the Big Three. The cabins of Zeus and Hera stay empty all the time of course, and I'm the only one who ever stays in the Poseidon cabin except for when Tyson visits. That means that even though someone has to stay at each cabin, I don't have to because nobody ever shows up as a child of Poseidon. I don't resent it or anything. I mean, I'll always have Tyson, even if he's the head of the Cyclops army and living with our dad.
"Alright, now that that's settled, I need one counselor from each activity to report to their location," he said. That meant either Clarisse or I was going to have to go down to the arena again.
I saw Clarisse walking over to me. "I would rather not herd kids around all day so I'll head down to the arena," she grumbled. I could tell she was still pissed at me for what happened earlier by the tone of her voice and the hard expression on her face.
"That's fine," I said, "I like giving the tours anyway." I don't even think she heard me as she stalked off towards the arena. She left me standing with the rest of us who would give the tours and show the campers to their cabins. It looked like Annabeth, Caroline, Connor Stoll, Melissa, a daughter of Nemesis, Nate, a son of Nike, Evan, a son of Hephaestus, Amelia, a daughter of Iris, and I were left to show the new campers to their cabins. We started walking towards Half-Blood Hill where Argus would drop the campers off. Basically all we had to do was drop each kid off at their designated cabin. If we don't know who their godly parent is, we house them in a bigger cabin with all the other undetermined kids until we know. Then they move to their own cabins. This way the Hermes cabin doesn't get way too crowded. Usually a kid is claimed a few days into camp, so the Undetermined Cabin remains empty for the rest of the summer.
"Hey, y'all, here they come!" yelled Caroline. She's a real people person and so she gets excited before the campers arrive. And sure enough, we could see the Argus pulling into the camp at the top of Half-Blood Hill. As soon as the kids got out you could tell which ones were new and which ones had been here before. Basically, the returning campers ran straight down the hill past us to their cabins. The new arrivals, however, hung back and looked afraid of us. Chiron started trotting towards them to meet them and their gasps of shock and amazement were audible to everyone.
"Welcome, demigods!" he said. "This," gesturing to the camp, "is Camp Half-Blood. Here you will learn to harness your skills as a demigod and learn to fight in battle. Behind me are eight counselors here to show you to your cabins, where you will be staying for the summer. I trust most of you know who you're godly parent is but if not we can still accommodate you until we know. I want you all to separate into 4 groups so you can begin your tour." He turned to us as the kids were jostling into their groups. "I want you all to pair up so that there aren't eight groups running around camp," he directed.
"Well, we all know who Annabeth's going to pick!" said Amelia with a huge grin.
"Oh whatever," said Annabeth as she walked over to me.
Annabeth's POV
We all turned and looked at the new campers. The youngest ones were probably 7 or 8 years old, and the oldest probably around 13 or 14. Chiron assigned each pair of us to a group of campers and Annabeth and I walked over to our group.
"Hi, I'm Annabeth Chase, Daughter of Athena, and this is Percy Jackson, Son of Poseidon," I said, addressing the campers. "As Chiron said, we're going to show you to your cabins. You also get to spend this afternoon getting to know your cabin mates."
"Don't forget to ask your head counselor any questions you might have during the day," added Percy. "Okay, let's start on the left side of the cabins!" We made our way to the left side of the cabins. That way we stop at the Hermes cabin first and our group gets considerably smaller. We dropped off about 15 kids at the Hermes cabin. Then we went around and dropped off 2 kids at the Eros cabin and 1 at the Epiphron cabin. Those kids never get along. I don't know who decided to put the cabin full of prude kids next to the cabin belonging to the god of sex. We continued on our way around the cabins and dropped kids off one by one. We usually don't have many kids in the Aergia cabin because she gets a little lazy and doesn't want to put up with having children, but we dropped one boy off there. When we got to the other end of the cabins, we realized we still had one kid left in our group.
"What's your name?" I asked him.
"Jake," he said, "Jake Clements."
"How old are you?" asked Percy. It was hard to tell exactly how old he was, and I was wondering the same thing.
"I'm ten years old," he replied. "I don't know who my godly parent is though. No one came to claim me. My daddy wouldn't tell me who my mommy was, but I really want to know."
"Well, we can put you in the Undecided Cabin until we figure it out. There isn't anyone else in there right now, but it's right behind the Morpheus and Alastor cabins so you won't be far from other campers," I said.
"Okay," he said brightly. "I just hope we can find out soon. I don't like being alone." I looked at Percy when he said that, and he had a look on his face that said "We have to help this kid." I completely agreed with him.
"Don't worry," I said, "we'll try as hard as we can to find out who your mommy is." He got a huge smile on his face when I said that. We walked him over to the cabin and he went inside. Once he was inside and the door was closed, Percy turned to me.
"Who the hell could his mom be?" he asked me.
"I honestly have no clue," I replied. This could get interesting.
