A/N: Random Fact: Nereids, nymphs, and naiads are the same thing. Your welcome.

-Will-

How did one usually kick start their morning? Maybe they hit the snooze button ten times. Since I was a demigod, the snooze button usually blew up ten times. (And yes, I did that once when I was in first grade. A cousin got me this alarm clock for Christmas and I destroyed it a day later. At the time, I didn't know that it was because mortal technology didn't get along with demigods and monsters, but I nearly set the entire neighborhood on fire.)

The late summer morning started fine. After showering and changing, I grabbed my med kit and went out of Cabin Seven. The rest of my siblings were still sleeping. I smiled and headed out to the canoe lake. I wasn't worried about them. Well, yes I was, but I knew that if a camper let in a monster into the cabin, with or without luck it would get pierced by Kayla's arrows, deafened by Austin's saxophone, while Jerry, Gracie, and Yan would keep everyone safe if they remembered Healing 101 last week.

Hopefully, Nico had gotten my message the night before. I'd slid it under the door of Hades Cabin, but he was probably still out. I had to talk to him to shadow travel less often or it might mess up his sleep schedule.

The lake was not too far away from the cabins. I checked my watch and saw that it was about 5:45. I gazed across the rippling mirror of water. The local naiads were playing this game with a golden rope they must've found down there or something. It looked a bit like jump rope, except underwater. I wasn't sure but hey, these were water spirits. Anything was possible with them.

Anything was possible...

I looked more closely at what they were doing. It seemed like there were one...no, two people that were under the surface of the lake. The nereids were actually strangling the poor demigods with their own whip. I never knew nereids to be so aggressive, but I hadn't seen these kids around camp either. They must've been newcomers.

Wait...ah. You may be asking how I knew they were demigods. The truth was, I didn't. Most mortals weren't allowed into Camp. As I said, with the Athena Parthenos and the camp's magical borders protecting it from monsters, they couldn't come in unless a Hermes kid was pulling a fast one. Or it might be the woods acting up again. I wasn't sure.

So, not a huge chance that they were either monsters or mortals unless it was a stranded pizza delivery guy (long story).

One of the kids had green hair the color of pine needles. He wore a pink hoodie, lime skinny jeans, and rose-colored sneakers. His pal looked like a teenaged version of Kurt Cobain.

I raced to the edge of the lake and jumped in. I wanted to get out as soon as I could, but I couldn't let the water spirits drown two kids in a canoe lake.

Speaking of which, I really should've got a canoe. For some reason, I was afraid of water. Not really, mind you.

I swam up to the nymphs. "Hey," I put my hands up. "good morning. May I ask why you are strangling two random people?"

The nearest spirit flashed a smile. "Hey, you're the counselor of Cabin Seven, right?" Some of her friends giggled and waved. "We were protecting these guys from camp. They kind of had that monster-ish vibe, right gals?" Her gang nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah right," one of the demigods muttered. "haha."

"Hey Alex," the other chided. His friend's expression softened for a moment before he noticed me. They both looked wary, and the one called Alex was playing with their garrote.

I decided to try politeness. "Hi. I'm Will Solace. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood, where not everyone wants to strangle you at the bottom of a lake."

Teen Cobain introduced himself. "I'm Magnus Chase, and this is Alex."

Magnus looked thoughtful. "Hey, didn't Annabeth say the place was called Camp Jupiter?" Alex shrugged and continued making a cat's cradle. "By the looks of it, perhaps. Didn't you get her message that she was coming to New York?"

"Wait. You know Annabeth?" I frowned.

"I'm her cousin."

"Ah." I guess they were sort of similar looking. Same dirty blond hair. Same dark grey eyes. Same haunted, serious expression.

Magnus and Alex began making gestures with their hands, but I didn't know sign language. I wish I did. I recalled sometime during spring when Nico told me that once he learned sign language, but he only remembered 'C', 'O', and 'Z'. I asked him why he didn't learn 'N' and 'I' yet and he punched me.

Good times, those were.

Apparently, the two knew it better than my Italian boyfriend did, because they weren't hesitating at all.

"Okay," Magnus sat down on a nearby rock. "I guess we can trust you."

-Magnus-

Hello. It's Magnus. That's all you want to know.

When Annabeth called in a few days ago, she told me that her Greek and Roman demigods had stopped the evil emperors from taking over North America.

She sounded shaky over Alex's cell (which I borrowed without asking, and paid the price afterward).

"What's wrong?" I asked her. "Nothing...just some bad news."

I decided to come over to San Francisco to see what was up. Maybe I could sort things out with her. Annabeth was the only family that I had left, apart from Uncle Frederick, her father. I went through one of the doors that I hoped went out to San Francisco. After she texted me some directions that I copied down after Alex garroted me, I went and found the almighty Camp Jupiter.

Long story short, I met up with the praetors, Hazel Levesque and Frank Zhang, who kept turning his purple cloak into a sweater wrap for no apparent reason. They told us that Annabeth had gone back to Camp Half-Blood due to a meeting with their buddy centaur Kai-rune. So we had to find our way back to Valhalla and try the elevator to New York.

The elevator broke down on floor 157 and Alex accidentally turned into a fruit bat and smacked into the emergency button. It made us crash into a lake, nearly drowned by girls with an obsession over a guy, and said guy distracted the ladies from being murdered by Alex.

See? This is why I regret dying.

Fast-forward to the present: I told Will everything. I remember what Annabeth said about him last spring before I met the Dreaded Percy Jackson. Will Solace had healed some friend's mind and drove him away from Suicide Street.

I wonder how he managed that. Even Annabeth sounded impressed too, in her own storm-cloud, Athena-strategy-girl way.

I explained my crazy life in the nine worlds jumping from quest to quest to save some god's stupid noun. From me dying and going to Valhalla up to a few weeks ago, when we delayed Ragnarok for some time. By our standards, 'some time' meant 'until next Thursday.' Of course, I left out the part where Alex and I kissed...but I'll leave you to figure that out for yourself.

Will nodded along. When I finished, he didn't seem very surprised.

"Mhmm. Maybe Nico would know more," he smacked himself. "Hades, if he knew all along, I'm afraid I'd have to give him another talk on keeping secrets."

Alex looked up. "And I have to tell Magnus the exact opposite."

"Hopefully without me dying," I added quickly. Alex didn't answer, which worried me. "Hey, where's Will?"

I turned around and saw that he had left. "And that," Alex sighed. "is why we also will have to talk about leaving without a word."

I was just glad the guy wasn't there to be tortured by Alex Fierro.