And once again we switch the POV back to Amber, and we get to Camp Half-Blood!
Disclaimer: Do I really have to do this again? *sigh* Fine. I do not own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. They are the sole property of Rick Riordan and Hyperion Publishing. *turns to lawyers* Happy now?
Chapter 4: We have a fangirl fit
After a man with a funny beard teleported me and Hope out of his shiny palace, I was feeling kinda queasy. In fact, when we appeared at a campfire in front of a bunch of kids, I threw up on some poor guy's s'more before I could stop myself. A shame, it looked really good, too. Now apparently, girls popping out of nowhere is not typical for this place, since everybody there was staring at us like we were, I don't know, Siamese twins or something. I apologized to the kid whose snack I barfed on, and went back to stand next to Hope.
A boy stepped out of the crowd. He was a couple years older than we were, with black hair and sea-green eyes. A part of my brain was jumping up and down, screaming at me to recognize him, but I ignored it. He and Hope were talking, but I wasn't listening. Instead I was looking at the people around us. A few of them stuck in mind. A blond girl. A pudgy man. A guy in a wheelchair. The part of my brain from before was shrieking now, running around in circles going, you know who they are, dumbass! But how could I know who they were? The only people I knew of that matched those descriptions were . . . whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. That's crazy, even for me. It couldn't possibly be them . . . could it?
My train of thought was interrupted by Hope when she pulled out of the campfire area after the boy from before, along with the blond girl, the pudgy man, and the guy in the wheelchair. They led us to a big two-story house near some strawberry fields. Hold the phone . . . first a mountaintop, then thrones and teleporting, and now a campfire with people my brain is screaming at me to recognize, along with a big house and strawberry fields? I grabbed Hope to get her to stop moving.
"Hope," I whispered "I don't think we're in reality anymore."
"I know," she whispered back "This is familiar to me too. I think I know where we are. Do you know too?" I nodded. "Yeah. I thought you would. Part of me is still hoping that this is all a dream, and that any moment we'll wake up on the bus like nothing ever happened. But another part of me knows that we aren't."
"Hey, you guys coming?" yelled a voice from the porch. The boy was there, waving at us impatiently. Wait, I didn't have to refer to him as "the boy" anymore. I knew who he was. Hope and I nodded, composed our faces, and followed Percy Jackson into the Big House of Camp Half-Blood.
"Do you know where you are?" Mr. D (a.k.a the pudgy man) asked us. I snorted.
"Of course we do." I replied. Hope shot me a panicked look before I continued, "We're in a house." Percy did a face palm when he thought I wasn't looking, and Chiron (a.k.a the guy in the wheelchair) took over.
"Ladies, what Mr. D meant was, do you know what this place is? Do you know what state you are in?" Hope jumped in before I could answer.
'No, we don't, could you please tell us?" she addressed all of them.
"You're in Camp Half-Blood," Annabeth (a.k.a. the blond girl) replied "Long Island, New York."
"Oh," Hope said, leaning back in her chair. "Well, that's a bit of a shock, considering we're from Maryland."
"Are you really still getting shocked, Hope? Weird stuff has been happening all day. Going to New York has been the least shocking of our escapades." There were a lot of raised eyebrows at this, so we told the whole story, from the bus to the campfire. Percy smiled when we mentioned the Ophiotaurus and nearly cracked up laughing when I told him about the crumbling statue. Annabeth made sympathetic noises when Hope mentioned Hera (Oh. My. Gods. Hope yelled at the Queen of Heaven! Talk about your social error) and grinned outright when Hope repeated what she had said. And everybody looked freaked when I mentioned the hole I blew in Mount Olympus (How was I supposed to know I grabbed the master bolt? Wait, don't answer that). We only left out one tiny detail: that we were actually from another universe in which this universe was a series of fiction novels meant for the entertainment of young adults. Not a very tiny detail, I know, but it's not like we could tell them that there's a whole 'nother world that thinks they're just products of Rick Riordan's imagination.
There was this whole orientation film after that, which I ignored. Hope was actually paying attention, which flabbergasted me. It was all, "monsters, blah blah blah, gods, blah blah blah, camp borders, blah blah, quests blah blah blah blah." What really stunk was that I already knew all that stuff, from reading the series. So it was just a whole bunch of blahs. Then I just heard,
"You'll have your tour in the morning" and Percy hauled us out to this really old, camp style cabin. I could only assume it was the Hermes cabin. We had two bedrolls on the floor, but when I stepped on mine, I felt something under the cloth. Reaching in I pulled out a lighter . . . and my iPod. Fully charged and with all my songs, thank the gods. Percy left us to get settled, and as soon as he was out of hearing range, Hope started shrieking in excitement. Then I was shrieking in excitement. Then we were jumping up and down, hugging each other and squealing. You know, all that fan girl stuff. So yeah, we basically had a fan girl fit while nobody was around. Then the Hermes kids, our new cabin mates, got back and the head counselor called lights out. I crawled into my new bedroll and fell asleep.
So that's the end of chapter 4. Now about the lighter and iPod . . . The lighter is going to cause a little trouble in the next chap *wink wink* and the iPod, well Amber (the real Amber) really wanted to have her iPod in here, so I obliged. Not sure what it's gonna do yet, though . . . Anyway, review!