Disclaimer: If I owned Percy Jackson, then Percy most likely wouldn't have been a son of Poseidon, but instead a child of Nyx or some other primordial or awesome god/goddess (not to say Poseidon isn't awesome). Seeing how this has not happened, then the series must still belong to Rick Riordan.

~Chapter 7: Meeting Some Family~

The tour was quite nice, in reality. But, Percy really wasn't expecting anything less. Of course, it sure didn't really feel that way when they passed the volleyball pit. The campers, who wore the same orange t-shirts that Luke and Grover did—she figured out that they said Camp Half-Blood, even though her dyslexia was as terrible as always—and they were older and taller than her. Their satyr friends were bigger than Grover, with nothing covering their shaggy hindquarters.

However, the real thing that made her nervous, and maybe even a little bit shy, was when several of the campers nudged each other before pointing at her or the Minotaur horn that she was carrying. She could even hear them whispering, "That's her." Which, in all honesty, made Percy want to flip them all off before continuing on her slightly-pessimistic way. Of course, with Chiron around, she restrained herself from doing anything.

Looking back at the farmhouse, she realized that it was much bigger than she first thought. Four stories tall and sky blue with white trim. Rather impressive, really. But, she was looking at the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught her eye, a shadow in the attic's window. Something had moved the curtain, she knew it. The feeling of being watched increased.

Turning back to Chiron, she asked, "What's up there?"

He looked to where she was pointing, and his smile faded. "Just the attic."

"Somebody lives there?"

"No," he replied, and it was clear he didn't want to talk about it anymore. "Not a single living thing."

Befuddled, Percy took one last glance at the attic. She knew Chiron was being truthful, and yet she also knew that something up there had moved the curtain, as she was pretty sure that curtains didn't move by themselves in the world of the gods, either. Still, she continued to follow the centaur, thoughts of the attic quickly being pushed aside.

They walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe. Percy looked at a girl, whom was muttering something about could-be twins and pranks as she picked the strawberries, her brown hair swaying slightly in the breeze. Chiron told her about how the camp grew crops for not just themselves, but also restaurants in New York and on Mount Olympus. "It pays our expenses," he explained. "And the strawberries take almost no effort."

Next came the forest. It took up at least a quarter of the valley, with trees so tall and thick she had a good guess they had been there since Native American times, before Columbus-Sailed-the-Ocean-Blue and all that kind of crap. "The woods are stocked," Chiron said, "If you care to try your luck, but go in armed."

Percy raised an eyebrow at this. Stocked with monsters, that once again made the most logical sense. But then another thought disturbed her—logical sense was not really an explanation anymore, was it? She'd tried saying that her whole life all had an explanation to it, for instance, that she had insomnia and that was the reason why she always stayed up so late. But science had now been proven wrong, very wrong. There was no logical sense anymore; well, that made sense!

The centaur continued to show her places, rambling on about them. There was an archery range, the canoeing lake, and the stables—which Chiron didn't seem to like very much. There was also the javelin range, the amphitheater, and the arena where sword and spear fights were held. Well, they were demigods after all.

"Oh yes, and there's the mess hall."

Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion, and once age Percy had to admire the architecture. Like all of the other buildings, it was built out of shining white marble Grecian columns on a hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen tables, and there were no roofs or walls, she noted. That probably meant that there was some kind of magic-thingy-or-other keeping a weather control over the camp. An ingenious idea.

Finally, were the cabins; just like the tables, there were twelve of them, nestled in the woods by the lake. However, they were also the weirdest collection of cabins that she had ever seen. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five on either side. The only thing that they all had in common was the fact that they all had a brass door number above the door, with odds on the left side and evens on the right.

Number nine had smokestacks, and she easily identified it as Hephaestus'. Number four had tomato vines growing on the walls and a roof made out of real grass—Demeter. Seven seemed to be made out of solid gold, which gleamed so much in the sunlight that it even hurt her to look at it through her sunglasses—Apollo, she noted as she winced and looked away. They all seemed to be facing a common area about the size of a soccer field, where there were basketball hoops, fountains, flower beds, Greek statues.

However, in the center of the commons area was a huge stone-lined fire pit. A girl around nine years old was tending to the flames in the warm afternoon, poking the coals with a stick. For some reason that Percy couldn't explain, she found herself walking towards the fire pit and the girl. When she reached it, she sat down, a little ways away from the girl, and then the girl looked up.

Even if she was only nine, she radiated a comforting touch, almost like she was a mother. Her eyes were brilliant golden flames, but then they settled down and became an amber color. Her hair was in between a mousy brown and auburn, and it had subtle highlights of gold in it, almost like a fire. She wore a simple brown chiton, and her feet were left bare. When she smiled, her smile reminded Percy of Salus and their small apartment in Manhattan. That, and once again blue chocolate chip cookies.

"Hello, Percy," she said, her voice melodic as she continued to tend to the fire. "It's been so long since somebody visited me, some company is nice for a change."

Percy blinked. "Lady Hestia," she replied, "It is an honor to meet you."

The goddess seemed to keep in a laugh. "Please, don't call me 'Lady'. After all, would you want me to call you Pertessa?" Seeing Percy's expression, she then laughed, which was just as beautiful as her voice. "Just call me Hestia then, my dear; no formalities needed. Now then, I have been told something by a—I suppose you could call him an old friend of mine, to tell you.

"He says that your father is safe, though he had a good guess you already knew this. He also said to tell you that 'When the time is right, you'll know' and 'See you soon'."

Percy raised an eyebrow. An old friend of the goddess of the Hearth's? Although it wasn't that surprising, she didn't know why the old friend would be interested in her. After all, she was just a mortal. "Can you tell me who he is, mi—err, Hestia?"

She shook her head, but happiness—and maybe a hint of amusement—was still twinkling in her eyes. "I'm afraid not; he told me to especially not tell you who he is. Supposedly, it would ruin his fun and the things he had planned. He tends to get himself into the oddest and most troubling predicaments—I have learned not to question what he does over the millennia."

Seeing Chiron slowly walking towards them, Percy stood up and said, "Thank you for the message; it was a pleasure to meet you, Lady Hestia."

With even more amusement in her eyes, the goddess replied, "It was a pleasure to meet you as well, Pertessa Jackson. Now, I think Chiron wants to continue on with the tour." And so Percy walked away, but she heard Hestia mutter in a language that she somehow understood perfectly, "Keep her safe."

Walking back to Chiron, she realized the centaur was looking at her with an odd expression. She realized he hadn't been expecting her to notice the goddess, much less talk to her. Percy frowned at this, her previous smile vanishing. Hestia was the goddess of the Hearth and family, after all. And to here she wasn't visited often; that just contradicted her domains. Besides, wasn't family important to the gods? Especially one of the ones who had probably given up the most?

Turning to look at the cabins number one and two, something automatically seemed off about them; they weren't very welcoming compared to the other ten. They both looked like mausoleums, big white boxes with columns in the front, to put it in a gist. Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve, with polished bronze doors that seemed to have lightning bolts on them. Cabin two seemed more graceful, with slimmer columns decorated with flowers and pomegranates. The walls were carved with images of peacocks, just as graceful as the cabin itself and just as beautiful. But Cabin two also seemed kind of—lonely? Like somebody should've been living in that cabin, but wasn't.

"Zeus and Hera?" she guessed.

"Correct," Chiron said.

"Zeus' cabin looks empty," she noted. Well, so did Hera's, but she was the goddess of marriage and as such shouldn't have any children—besides, she didn't seem like Percy's mother at all. Too royal, too sophisticated—but then again, none of the Olympian goddesses seemed to be her mother, as she didn't think any of them had similar traits as she did

"Several of the cabins are, that's true. No one ever stays in one or two."

She wanted to ask why for Zeus, for wasn't he the one who sired the most demigods? Heracles, Helen, Perseus, for example? So why wouldn't he have any kids now? And why would others, except for Artemis, be empty? But she kept silent, knowing that Chiron wanted to continue on.

However, Percy came to a stop in front of the cabin on the left, just after the first cabin. Cabin three. It had a homier feel to it, but just like Hera's Cabin, it seemed lonely. She knew instantly that it was another empty cabin. Still, it was made out of beautiful rough grey stone decorated with coral and seashells, like they had been brought up directly from the ocean floor. Poseidon's. Against her better judgment, she opened the door, and Chiron said, "Oh, I wouldn't do that!"

The scent of the sea, salty and yet slightly sweet, was almost like a slap to the face. There were six bunk beds, with beautiful silk sheets turned down, but there was no sign that anyone had ever lived there. It was definitely lonely, and a little sad too. Chiron grabbed her shoulder and said, "Come along, Percy."

Of course, it seemed a little silly to her but unsurprising at how most of the other cabins were crowded with campers. Number five was a bright red and a real nasty paint job that was so bad she wanted to grab a frying pan and chase whoever did it around the camp, screaming and shouting at the top of her lungs to do it over again. But, in reality, she only winced. The roof was lined with barbed wire and a wild boar's head stood over the doorway, eyes seemingly following her.

Good God—Gods? Yeah, I'll go with that. Good Gods, who would ever want to live in that?

Inside she could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, the kind that she loved to be in a fight with and come out as the winner. There was arm wrestling and arguing with each other as rock music—you couldn't even call it rock music, actually, more like the sound of a million dying untamed animals—blared. The loudest of them all, a girl only a year or two older than her, looked at Percy and gave her a sneer at first, before she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She had stringy brown hair and wore a XXL Camp Half-Blood t-shirt under her camouflage jacket.

But Percy continued to walk, thinking. All of the kids here, including her—yet once again, though, she had that feeling that she wasn't one—were demigods. Children of the Greek gods themselves, all being trained by the immortal centaur and trainer of heroes, Chiron. But there was also reality to face: not a lot of heroes in the Greek "Mythology" books she had read had had happy endings, in fact, most of them didn't. Did that mean that Chiron had to go through tragic deaths of his students over and over and over again? That was just plain depressing, but she supposed if he liked his job, it was worth it.

Then a new thought sprung to her mind. What about Grover? She'd been focusing so much on the gods and demigods and all of the things that go along with that that she hadn't really paid much thought to her satyr friend—which made her feel guilty. Percy wasn't really that angry at him anymore, probably because she had inherited at least some of Salus' anger. Still, she would have to talk to him later.

"Oh, look," Chiron said, breaking her train of thought. "Annabeth is waiting for us."

Looking at the blonde haired girl, Percy mentally grimaced. She was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, cabin eleven. She looked up from her book suddenly, and her grey eyes analyzed the noirette once more, which caused Percy to mentally grimace again. Didn't Blondie get that it was very, very rude to stare at people like that? Gods, did she really need to tell the other girl that?

Percy trued to see what book she was reading, and for a split second she thought that her dyslexia was acting up more so than usual—which quite frankly, would've been impossible. Her dyslexia was more horrible than most kids. However, she soon realized that the title was actually in Ancient Greek. She decided that it was about architecture, seeing how it had pictures of columns and stuff on its cover. Architecture and those eyes analyzing her. . . . Was it possible that Athena, who was a maiden, had kids? It had to be.

"Annabeth," Chiron continued on, seemingly oblivious to the look that the blonde haired girl was giving Percy. "I have masters' archery class at noon. Will you take Percy from here?"

Annabeth looked at Chiron with a passive expression on her face and said, "Yes, sir." But when she looked back at Percy, she had the feeling that Annie-Bell was still trying to tell if she was a friend or a foe; somebody to kill or not. She didn't like that look, she decided.

"Cabin eleven," Chiron told her, gesturing towards the doorway. "Make yourself at home."

Percy decided that cabin eleven was the friendliest out of all the cabins besides Poseidon's. It looked like a regular old cabin, but with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint was peeling. Over the doorway was a caduceus; two snakes wrapped around a pole, that medical symbol. Inside, it was more packed with boys and girls varying in age than any other cabin, and also way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over the floor, almost like a Red Cross evacuation center or something. But even with all of that, it still had a homey feel to it, causing her to grin almost maniacally and most likely like a troublemaker. Well, Hermes was the god of thieves, so she figured that her grin wouldn't seem so out of place.

Chiron didn't go in, as the door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all bowed respectfully. "Well then," Chiron said, "Good luck, Percy. I'll see you at dinner."

When he left, the campers stood up once again. They were all staring at her, eyes of varying colors—some that were supposed to be impossible in humans—were looking at her as she stood in the doorway with the same troublemaking grin on her face. She really wanted to make some type of her usual sarcastic or crazy comments, but for some reason she couldn't find her voice.

"Well?" Annabeth said, her voice hardened. "Go on."

Percy blamed the blonde girl for what happened next. She tripped, even though she was not clumsy, and made a total fool of herself. Snickers ran through the small crowd of kids, and she felt her cheeks heat up. Of course, realizing this, she let out a small sigh and rubbed her sleeve over them, but she knew it wouldn't help.

"Percy Jackson," Annabeth announced, "Meet cabin eleven."

"Regular or undetermined?" one of the campers asked.

"Undetermined," Annabeth replied before turning around and running away again. To that, Percy didn't know if she should be happy or amused at.

Everybody groaned, but then a familiar voice broke through the protesting, "Now, now, campers. That's what we're here for. Welcome, Percy."

Luke grinned at her, his eyes promising mischief, and the grin that had been washed away from the groans came back, as well as a little bit of cheek heating. "I didn't get the chance to say thank you before," she replied, "So, thanks."

"Oh," a slightly familiar voice said, bringing out the exclamation.

"Luke, got yourself a girlfriend?" another, almost exactly like the other one, accused, and some snorts and more snickers came.

"Well, you didn't choose wrong," the first voice replied, kind of like an echo to the second.

Luke rolled his eyes and said in an exasperated tone, "Travis, Connor."

Suddenly, two boys who looked like twins stepped forward, both of them smiling sickeningly innocent smiles. They were both tall and both had curly brown hair and blue eyes, but Percy realized that they had the same elfish features that Luke and quite a few of the other campers had. They both wore orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirts, jean shorts, and sneakers.

"What?" one of them exclaimed.

"We were just teasing!" the other said, once again like an echo.

A girl near the front with neon purplish-blue hair let out a snort before saying, "Cut her some slack, you two. You should remember when you first came here."

"Yes, Mother," they both said, mock saluting her.

"Stolls!" the girl growled in response, before jumping on them and the three crashed to the floor. More snickers and laughter ran throughout the group at this.

Luke rolled his eyes once again and let out a sigh, before raising an eyebrow and looking at another kid who had stepped forward, not much older than Percy, maybe a year or two. He looked to be Japanese American, and had glossy black hair that was sort of spiky and he had a wiry build. Still, the one thing that didn't match up, in her opinion, was his grey eye. Yes, eye. He had an eye patch over the other one. But his grey eye wasn't like Annabeth's; steelier, and unlike Annie's held a promise of revenge. He wore strictly black as well, unlike the other campers there. She felt like she should know him, like he was a long lost brother or something like that.

Immediately, all the campers hushed and even the Stolls and the purple haired girl paused in their fighting to look at the boy with wide eyes. The boy, noticing the looks he was receiving, huffed in response, before turning back to her and saying, "Nice to meet you, Percy. Name's Ethan Nakamura."

She gave him her biggest smile, still feeling like he was a lost relative. "Nice to meet you as well, Ethan."

"Ha!" the purple haired girl cried, looking back at Travis and Connor. "You two owe me twenty drachmas each! I told you somebody would cause Ethan to be friendly for once! Pay up, mother—"

"Lou," Luke said, looking at the girl with a raised eyebrow. Snickers were restored once again.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, language," Lou huffed. "But they never pay up!"

"That's because were broke!" one of them exclaimed.

"Because we always lose to you!" the other said quickly.

Lou grinned. "That's because you're never supposed to bet against a daughter of Hecate, even if you are sons of Hermes!" The fighting ensued once more.

Percy, however, frowned and turned back to Luke. "Daughter of Hecate?" she asked.

He shrugged, but she could tell it wasn't exactly an easy topic to mention. "For now, you're here. Until you get claimed by your godly parent, if they are an Olympian, you stay here. If not, well. . . ." he trailed off, gesturing to Lou, and then to Ethan. "Lou's a daughter of Hecate, and Ethan's a son of Nemesis."

"Some mother she is," Ethan muttered. Percy had a feeling it had to do with his missing eye, but she didn't dare ask.

"Cabin eleven takes all newcomers and visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers." Luke finished.

"Oh," Percy replied, not sure what to say. Claimed kids without a cabin? That wasn't right. That was basically telling the kids that they weren't special because their godly parent wasn't an Olympian. All demigod kids should feel welcome, and judging by some of the faces of the campers, they definitely didn't feel welcome at camp.

"Hey," Lou said, standing up and wiping her hands on her orange t-shirt. The Stoll brothers were glaring at her, but she saw one of them have a slight smile on his face. Was that brother crushing on her, perhaps? "Where's Percy going to sleep, Castellan? You sure as heck," she said the word carefully, grinning as Luke gave her a stare that said not to curse, "Didn't mention it."

"Lou," Luke replied, giving her an unamused look.

"Yes?"

"Would you please shut up?"

"What? It was a good question!" she complained.

"Alright, who gave you sugar?" Ethan asked her, before looking at the Stoll brothers. "Connor, Travis, I swear—"

"It wasn't us this time!" they both promised.

"Anyways," Luke cut in, "I don't think you want to stand here and listen to them fight—believe me, Lou and Ethan can get into it. So, walk with me?"

His eyes had that mischievousness glint in them once again—but Percy had a feeling that it was something that hardly ever went away. She took one glance at the bickering Lou and Ethan—Lou was singing while pouncing on him that he had a crush on a daughter of Hephaestus, and the campers were laughing and egging them on—before she followed Luke out of the cabin.

A/N: And that's a wrap! A slightly shorter chapter than usual, but oh well. WE MET PEOPLE! Particularly Ethan and Lou, and of course Travis and Connor. And Percy, Ethan is a lost relative—he's your nephew! Frankly, I'm not sure whether to laugh my head off again about that fact or not.

As for Hestia, once again we have a mystery figure that ya'll have to guess about. I'm evil that way, I know. You'll know who he is as soon as you read/see him, believe me. Also, Hestia herself. She's such an awesome goddess, but she never gets enough credit, even though she gave up a lot in order to be where she is today. She gave up having children and her throne, for goodness sake!

Well, that's really all I have.

Cassandra-Caroline: Tuesdays are my update days! But yeah, I updated! Thanks for the review!

Dogbiscuit1967: Yes, if only she knew. But she'll find out soon enough! Thanks for the review!

Demigod of Nyx: Gotta say, I love your username. And it's a good thing you're confused! Her identity is going to remain a secret for a while, so I'm not going to confirm nor dismiss your guesses. Thanks for the review!

DragonkynNatKiasu: Complainers-in-Crime; a weird title, but okay. I have troubles with writing Luke off and on, to be honest. I keep on imagining him like this, but then my mind is like 'NO! HE IS A BAD GUY!' Percy is going to figure out that her mother is Nyx soon enough, but that's all I am going to say. Thank ya for the review!

See ya'll next time (as long as my computer doesn't give me a heart attack)!