Evelyn woke up and immediately groaned. Wanna know why?

It was end-of-summer/camp-dance day! Yayyy!

Not.

She rolled out of bed, got ready and walked outside, stretching. Not only was it the dance, they decided to have a capture the flag game before the dance, sort of like the homecoming football game. All the Aphrodite girls were complaining because they had to run before they got ready and their hair would get messed up. Evelyn didn't know who they were kidding.

The Aphrodite girls didn't run.

Evelyn wasn't really sure where she was going, but then Sierra ran up to her.

"Hey." she said with a hint of something Evelyn couldn't place. But something about her tone seemed off, and that made Evelyn nervous, because she really didn't want Sierra to turn her into a squirrel or something.

"Oh hey." Evelyn said with a smile.

"Got a date for the dance?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Oh. So you're not going with anyone?"

"No, well, most of my friends have dates so I'll probably just hang out with whoever doesn't have one, you know? Are you going with anyb-"

"Does Nico have a date?" Sierra said, cutting her off.

Evelyn resisted the urge to throttle her and tell her Nico wasn't interested. Instead, she calmly replied:

"I don't think so, but I think he said he didn't really want a date, so..." she said, trying to save Nico from having to deal with Sierra all night.

"Oh… so you'll probably hang out with him then?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"So he's sort of like your date?"

"Well, no.. we'd just hang out as friends. I mean we might dance once or twice but it's not like-"

"Oh. I see… I'll catch you later." Sierra, said running off and disappearing as quickly as she'd come. Evelyn watched her go with a strange feeling of anxiousness in her stomach, and reminded herself not to eat anything Sierra gave her.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Sicomba, Louise and Elizabeth stood in the back of the group, tightening their armor and half-listening to the plans for capture the flag.

"Yeah, I hear they got a DJ from Olympus!" Elizabeth said excitedly, pulling out her bow and arrow.

"Really? Well, that makes sense, they can't really hire a mortal one can they?" Louise said.

"Yeah, but if Dionysus is planning it it should be amazing." Sicomba commented.

"You three, talking in the back! Offense!" They heard someone shout. They hefted their weapons. "POSITIONS!" The person yelled. They moved into the woods and when they heard the canon, ran.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Evelyn stood alone, leaning on Zeus' fist, lazily swinging her sword around. Some idiot had put her on guard duty, while all her friends were off fighting. She sighed again and threw her sword in the air, watched it spin and caught it again. Then she heard movement in the trees. She straightened up and lifted her sword.

Sierra walked out of the trees and stopped in front of her.

"Oh.. it's you." Evelyn said, lowering her sword slightly.

Sierra said nothing.

"Um…" Evelyn, said, seeing Sierra was unarmed and didn't seem to be making any move for the flag.

"Don't worry." Sierra finally said in a distant sort of voice, "you'll only be out until tomorrow. Then I can win him over at the dance. It's for the best. You won't even remember this."

Suddenly a chill ran up Evelyn's back. What was Sierra talking about? She lifted her sword again, but Sierra didn't charge her, she just looked above Evelyn's head. Then Evelyn heard a loud crack, and looked up just in time to see a tree branch fall from above. Before she could react, the world was black.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Sicomba was confused when the horn blew. No one had one the game yet; no one had captured a flag. He looked around, hoping he could find out what was happening, but all he saw was Louise, who shrugged. Suddenly, he heard the clatter of hooves and saw Chiron ride through the trees with Percy right at his heels (uh… hooves?) before disappearing in the direction of Zeus' fist. Sicomba looked back at Louise, who nodded and they raced after Chiron and Percy.

What they found was not a pretty sight.

Evelyn was on the ground, unconscious, blood gushing out from a wound on her head. There was a tree branch next to her, and Sicomba assumed it must have fallen and caught her unawares.

A tree branch.

A tree branch had taken down Evelyn? The daughter of Poseidon? The girl who never lost a fight. The girl who had once single-handedly fought a giant, a Cyclops and an angry taco-delivery guy demanding his money (long story) had been taken down by a tree branch? It didn't seem right. Sicomba and Louise watched as a few campers who had been gathered around Evelyn (they were presumably the people who found her) stepped back as Percy lifted Evelyn onto Chiron's back and they rode toward the infirmary.

Sicomba turned to Louise.

"Can you believe it?" Sicomba said.

Louise shook her head.

"I know," said Mary from behind them, who must've walked up when they weren't paying attention, "she was going to do my hair for the ball, too."

Sicomba rolled his eyes and headed toward the infirmary.

OoOoOoOoOoO

"Why isn't anything working?!" Percy said in exasperation, collapsing into a chair beside Evelyn's bed. "The water should have healed her and it didn't, and even if that didn't work, Chiron's healing skills should have! Why isn't she getting any better?"

Everyone else shrugged. Sicomba, Louise, Elizabeth, Nico and a few others had come to see if they could help, but nothing was working. They had managed to stop the bleeding, but Evelyn was still unconscious and the swelling wasn't going down.

"We'll just have to wait it out." Elizabeth said, "but gods, I hope she's okay."

OoOoOoOoO

Evelyn was not okay. She felt like someone had taken off some of her skin, whacked her skull with a hammer, stuck a baseball in her head and sewn the skin back on. That and she was stuck in some limbo place between sleeping and waking up. Maybe she was getting dementia, but she was sitting in a room with two doors. Evelyn knew this was in her mind, but it seemed pretty real. One door was labeled 'awake' and one 'asleep'. She'd tried the 'awake' door 50 times but it was locked. If only she had a key… Evelyn had hoped it would be like Alice in Wonderland, so the minute she wanted a key, one would appear, but no such luck.

Evelyn kicked the wall (again).

"GAHHHAGGHHH." She said before sitting down because her toe hurt.

"Evelyn…" she heard a voice say. Now, when you're stuck in a state of your own mind, a voice speaking to you doesn't seem like a very good thing.

"Oh god I am going crazy." She said, looking around.

"Not any crazier than you were before." The voice said. Then she recognized it.

"Dad! I'm not going crazy!"

The voice of her father chuckled.

"No child. Wake up."

"I can't, the door's-" she started, but when she looked at the door, she saw it was indeed ajar.

"Aw sweet! Gotta love godly powers. Thanks Dad!" she said, walking to the door.

"And try to remember."

"Wait, remember what?!" she said, but she was already gone. The world flashed white, then black, then she opened her eyes and a whole new wave of pain crashed over her head.

"Evelyn?" said a hopeful voice.

"Nico?" she said back, blinking a few times.

"Thank the gods." She heard him say. She finally got her bearings and looked around. Nico was the only one there.

"Excuse me, where are the rest of my totally-worried-I'm-going-to-die people?"

Nico chuckled a bit.

"They all left about ten minutes ago to get ready for the dance.

"Well shame on them. I at least expected a balloon, or a teddy bear." She said, reaching up to feel the softball sized lump on her head.

"Gods. What happened?"

"You got hit with a falling tree branch."

"Oh really?!" Evelyn said, "How lame is that?"

"Very."

"Oh shut up."

"Hey, I'm just agreeing with you. Anyway, none of the healing was working on you, we just couldn't get you to wake up."

"No that makes sense because I was supposed to be unconscious until tomorrow…" she said, the words spouting out of her mouth, even though she had no idea where they came from.

"What?"

"I don't know."

"Well… your head looks a lot better." Nico said, changing the subject, but obviously still thinking about what she'd said.

Evelyn felt her head again and even after only a couple minutes the lump felt smaller.

"Thanks dad." She whispered, so only she could hear. Then she said:

"Well. I suppose I'm well enough to go to the dance then."

Nico raised an eyebrow.

"Seriously? You have a perfectly valid excuse not to go and you still want to?"

"Why not? I didn't buy that stupid dress for nothing." She said.

Nico shrugged.

"Well, maybe your head's messed up but okay."

Evelyn grinned and hopped out of her bed, her head exploding with pain. She ignored it, though and skipped toward her cabin.

"See you at the dance!" she said.

"See you at the dance." Nico replied, hooking his thumbs in his black jeans and watching her skip away.

Author's Note: Okay, so dance and beginning of summer next chapter, then a small story line over the summer and then guess what? LEO! I mean… HEROES OF OLYMPUS! Just in time for House of Hades. See you guys next chapter!