Unrequited

So normally, I wouldn't do an A/N at the beginning of a chapter, but this is really important. A certain character will be quite a bit OOC, however, it will only be for the first two or three chapters he is featured in, then he will begin to become more like his usual self. I have reasons to justify this inaccurate portrayal of the character, so please don't get mad. The reasons will come to light eventually.

Annabeth shuffled awkwardly in her new clothes; the shirt fit her weirdly, like it'd belonged to a slightly shorter person with a much larger bust. However, the material was soft, smelled like roses, and was in a nice shade of orange. Something had been written on it at one point, but it had since been faded away with age. The denim shorts fit well enough though.
"Don't worry, these clothes are just temporary. We couldn't have you walking around in Percy's pajamas, and these have just been lying around in Silena's locker, so..." Thalia trailed off.
"Well, I'm going to have to thank this Silena girl. Nice of her to lend me her clothing."
"Yeah, well, I'll tell her that," Thalia said, scratching the back of her neck with a slightly contrite look. While Annabeth felt compelled to ask, she would save that question for later.
"So, where are we going exactly?" Annabeth asked, choosing a less sensitive issue to address.
"We're headed to Hall Eleven," Thalia said plainly, as though not thinking.
"What's-"
Thalia cut her off with an exasperated sigh. This girl with clearly very atrabilious; almost as much as Clarisse.
"Hall Eleven is where all the lower members sleep. It's where Percy is currently staying. That's the main reason you needed the new clothes today; he wanted to meet you," Thalia said.
"Hasn't he already met me? He did give you guys permission to keep me prisoner, so he would have seen me at some point," Annabeth responded. She sounded like a snob, but she didn't care. So far, she'd been treated like a child by everyone and it infuriated her.
"He wants to meet you while you're conscience," Thalia said.
Annabeth gave her a smile and rolled her eyes. Thalia's brash comments had started to grow on her.
"I've got to admit, though, you are way more pleasant when you're asleep."

Hall Eleven was not what Annabeth had expected to say the least. She had pictured another long boring hallway with a priceless vase or stolen art piece, but Eleven was different. The hall may have been painted warm brown at one point, but it had since faded and started to peel. Each door was a vibrant color and the wood floors looked like they'd been walked a thousand times and were in desperate need of sweeping.
What surprised her most were the people. Kids from ages seven and up were running around from room to room carrying everything that began with a letter A through Z. A high school student with a towel around her chased after a boy throwing rubber duckies at him; A group of middle school boys were playing basketball on a small hoop attached to a red door; A fourth grader was throwing a dagger at a target; two boys seemed to be putting a weird white powder on a shirt before sneaking into a room with a hot pink door; A third grader was reading a high school level physics book while leaning against a doorframe, seemingly unaware of everything going on around her. The whole thing was chaos at its finest.
That is until someone saw her.
It was like a chain reaction. First it was one person, than it was three, then it was fifteen, and then it was everyone in the hall. She could her snippets of the quidnunc, that's her; I hear she's the reason Mr. Jackson has been in the hall; they say she's the daughter of an Olympian. The whole body of mass seemed to only think of one thing, and it was Annabeth.
Thalia saved her from further humiliation, "Cut it out, all of you! Shouldn't you guys be at the pavilion training or in the library studying? Get back to work."
The kids grumbled and continued to do whatever they'd previously been doing.
"Sorry 'bout that. The unclaimed kids are a little... uh... talkative," Thalia said.
"What do you mean by unclaimed?" Annabeth asked in response. While the literal meaning of the word was pretty obvious to Annabeth, the way Thalia said it hinted that it meant something else in her mind.
"Sorry; I keep forgetting that you're not up to speed with our lingo," Thalia said with a little laugh, maneuvering her way through the hallway. It didn't seem to be a hard task, though, the kids were giving them a pretty wide berth.
"Everyone is assigned to one of twelve task forces each with a different specialty. We call them cabins, though. Some kids who just don't fit into a niche, or fit into a full cabin, or are too young end up without a cabin. We call them unclaimed. Hermes, the guy who runs Cabin Eleven, volunteered to keep all of the unclaimed kids in his task force's hall and let them train with all the kids from Cabin Eleven," Thalia explained. It was a lot to take in, but Annabeth got the gist of it.
"Yeah. They get a little resentful though when someone like you gets claimed for a task force so early," Thalia said.
"What?"
"Gods girl, you ask a lot of questions," Thalia said, "I think I should probably just let Percy handle all the explanations, though. He's better at this type of thing."
By this point, they'd made it to a section of the hall where the doors hadn't been painted. There weren't many, just five or six blank white slabs of wood with a chalkboard on it. Only one appeared to be occupied. It was the last painted door, adorned in a nice deep cerulean color that reminded Annabeth of the sky on a rainy day.
"This is where I leave you. Good luck," Thalia said, opening the door and shoving Annabeth in.

The inside was less than impressive. The whole thing was a huge mess with an unmade bed, dirty clothes everywhere, and an assortment of dollar store decorations.
In the corner was a desk.
At the desk was a man.
Percy Jackson had to be sixteen or seventeen, eighteen at the most. While Annabeth couldn't be sure what she was expecting, it wasn't this. She knew what Percy looked like from his photo album, but she had figured most of those pictures were outdated and that he had somehow become a middle aged, daunting man while all his friends remained their late teen-early twenties selves. She certainly hadn't expected him to be a regular, if rather muscular, teen, messy room and calculus homework (Which he was failing miserably at from the looks of the paper in front of him) included.
When a guy like Percy stared at you, it was hard not to blush. To say the least, he was hot, in a surfer boy way. His green eyes were large and childish in every way. His easy smile must have made teachers immediately know he was trouble. His messy black hair made him look like he'd either just got out of bed (which really wouldn't surprise Annabeth) or he'd just been surfing. From the salty smell in the room, it was most likely the second of the two options.
"So you're the infamous Percy Jackson?"
"I prefer the term notorious," he responded.
Annabeth just stared at him silently, clearly not amused.
"Please, have a seat," he said patting his bed with an impish grin that probably made the average girl swoon. Or run for her life.
When a normal boy asks you to sit on his bed, you don't do it unless you want to end up doing some nasty things. Just from his state and previous information, Annabeth could come to the conclusion that she would be perfectly safe; she could perform a judo flip in her sleep anyway.
"So, what do you want?"
"What I want to do is talk," Percy responded dumbly. Normally, Annabeth would imagine a sentence like that to sound arrogant and overly charming, but when Percy Jackson said it, he made it clear he didn't have the slightest idea of what subliminal messaging was.
"Well, be my guest. No one is stopping you from rattling away," Annabeth responded. She hated this guy already. At least if he were a sleaze, she could have an excuse to slap him, but she couldn't find a justifiable reason in that specific moment.
"Actually, I was hoping to answer your questions."
This surprised Annabeth into further anger. Why did he have to be so hospitable?
"I don't have any questions to ask you. First, your workers kidnap me, second you force me to endure the presence of the most irritating girl in the world, third-" Annabeth said, only just beginning her rant, when Percy cut her off.
"Quick question: Are you talking about Clarisse or Thalia, because I think Thalia wins that ticket. Clarisse is just mean. Also, I didn't have my workers kidnap you; that was all Nico."
"But you said it was okay," Annabeth countered.
"Fine, that one might be true, but I did it because I was told to; I don't run this place, I just steal stuff and give an inspirational speech or two. All I want to do is help you understand the situation," he told her with complete sincerity. It was almost adorable.
"Fine. First question: Where am I?"
"I don't know the exact address, but we call this place Camp Half-Blood. It's on Long Island," he said.
"Okay, next question: Why did you lock me in your room and not in one of the empty ones over here?"
"'Cause I wanted to be a gentleman and give you the best room, duh," Percy responded facetiously.
Annabeth glared at him.
"Fine. My room is the safest, most secure room in this place. Plus, Hall Three is empty, so none of the other kids would bother people while they checked on you," Percy explained.
"Whoa, wait," Annabeth said, a little shocked, "Thalia explained the whole, kids from each task force stay in that hall and whatever thing, but why would there be so many unclaimed kids if you're the only person in your task force?"
Percy pondered this for a moment, as though trying to figure out how to word it. Finally, as though satisfied by his explanation, he began.
"So, my dad, Poseidon, and his siblings, Hades, Zeus, and Hestia, had a pretty shitty dad. His name was Kronos. He owned this big company of sorts. It was basically a bunch of con artists, bounty hunters, and assassins who got paid a ton of money to do jobs for super rich people, but their front was as a technology thing with computers and stuff. Kronos had been doing some awful things with the money he was getting, though, so my dad, his siblings and a bunch of their friends, we call them the Olympians now, got together and made a plan to take him down. It worked and they took over and built an even bigger empire off of it. Everyone here is connected to the Olympians in one way or another. The most elite of the Cabins belong to Zeus, Zeus' wife Hera, Poseidon, and Hades. Combined, there are only three of us, Thalia, Nico, and me. Cabin two is empty because Hera likes to assign kids from other task forces on missions for her rather than have her own task force. The missions they're in charge of are too dangerous for most, so Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon just put their own children in the task forces and let them choose their companions when they have missions. Therefore, I have the hall all to myself."
"I get it, I guess, but then why me? I'm just a random girl," Annabeth said, still a little confused. The whole concept was insane and the story was a bit far-fetched. How could such an organization hide from the public?
Percy's phone let out a little blip. He unlocked it and texted whoever it was back. After a few moments, it beeped again and he became absorbed in the conversation. Finally, Annabeth waved her hand in front of his face, breaking him out of the trance.
"Oh! Right, sorry, I'm a little ADHD," He said with a nervous laugh. Then he asked, "What were we talking about?"
"I said I was just a random girl. Why did they decide to keep me here? Besides the obvious calling the police thing?" Annabeth repeated, a little annoyed.
"Thanks," he said, then Percy recomposed himself into his former state, "Random girl my ass!" Percy said, "Didn't your mom ever tell you what she did for a living?"
"My mom was an architect," Annabeth responded. She could tell what he was hinting, but refused to believe it.
"True," Percy said, "But she's also the one who came up with the plan to take Kronos down."

Just to clarify, I'll be using Task Force and Cabin interchangeably.
Also, I know this chapter is super messy and stuff, but if you guys want full explanations and stuff, I'll do a chapter dedicated to lingo, back-story, and stuff like that to make things easier to keep straight.
Sorry for not being able to post on Wednesday, but I had a lot of homework this week. :/
What was Percy texting while talking with Annabeth? Check out my profile under Unrequited to find out!

Thanks for Reading

-Vans