[Okay, yeah, the blanket cave is helping. I'm never letting go of this pillow. That was a fun couple of hours, huh? I kept the water down, so let's get this over with and… c'mon, Rory, it's not your fault! This "therapy" shit wasn't your idea… but you see why we didn't give details about that sooner, right?]

[So I was at… oh, gods, this part.]

"You'll tell me, or I'll find out how you taste."

Yeah, so I was speechless.

Alec sure wasn't, though. "Y'know what, just shoot him. I'll take the quick death. Then you run."

And then I remembered, oh, right, I have back-up if I fire my gun. So I did, and I got the cyclops in the shoulder. I'd been aiming for the head, but I hadn't hit Alec so it was good enough.

Better than I'd hoped for, actually, because the bullet penetrated and the cyclops let go of the hacksaw; he'd kinda cut Alec's neck with it a little but he'd live. I hoped.

As I was lining up my next shot, Diego burst through the front door and charged the cyclops. Alec dropped to the floor and started crawling to "safety", and it was a good thing he did 'cause my shot went low again (definitely not 'cause my hands wouldn't stop shaking) and hit the monster in the chest.

Diego stabbed him right where the bullet had just hit and wrenched the knife downwards. He was pissed and he made sure the cyclops knew. "I heard all of that, bastard! Let's see how you taste without your fucking tongue!"

So he went for the face, and I dunno if the cyclops was just used to the pain or if he didn't have anything left to lose, but he got one hand around the knife and the other around Diego's wrist. "Hmph; shoulda kept running, boy." I heard a pop.

I didn't have a clear shot; yeah, Alec was in the way the first two times, but that left me a lot more space. Plus, they kept moving around. I was pretty sure Diego was still fine if he could cuss the cyclops out (at least, I think that's what he was doing) but after a while it managed to fling him into Alec, who was not close to them.

And that was a really dumb thing to do, because it pissed me off and gave me a clear line of fire. I've noticed that monsters don't really bleed. This one was already leaking a lot of dust but it poured out fast when I emptied the rest of my magazine into him.

Which meant when I got hit square in the chest by the pissed-off cyclops I only ended up blacking out for a few minutes when I hit the ground instead of dying. I really don't remember much of anything until we got back to the park and I got some nectar in my system. The guys said they almost got in a fight, which sounds about right. I moved and they called a truce, I guess.

[Why? Oh gods, it's so dumb… basically, they thought I died and Alec was being… himself. No, they didn't think to check a fucking pulse, I asked. Alec said he was "too distraught" and Diego didn't know how.]

But anyways, Dairy Queen. The first thing I remember was Rory explaining how nectar and ambrosia worked to Diego and I definitely lucked out missing most of that. We had a lot of stuff to explain. [Hey, I… kinda… helped, I was the example that time!]

"So this stuff heals you… but it also might set you on fire?" Diego asked, staring at a square of ambrosia like he thought it was gonna burst into flames right there.

"Only if you have too much," Rory assured him. "But in small doses, it works well. I can set your wrist for you if you'd rather but the ambrosia won't hurt…"

"And I know that would. All right, I'll give it a try. Can't be worse than getting a cast, right?"

"Oh, dude, it's so much better than that. And faster. And not a million bajillion dollars," Alec said.

And that's when I asked them what happened because I just looked over and saw blood on Alec's shirt and a cut on his neck that I could tell was getting smaller. I guess the guys somehow got me to walk back with them and we were gonna go to Diego and Alicia's house to wait for their mom.

Speaking of Alicia, she wasn't scared at all and I wasn't sure if that was like, impressive or disturbing. I mean, she'd seen this kind of thing before, but that didn't exactly make it better. Her only questions were about what ambrosia tasted like and why didn't we have to clean up if we killed a monster.

"Why would you have to clean up after that?" Alec wondered.

"They've come to the house before," Diego explained. "I don't answer the door anymore. Anyways… what does this stuff taste like?"

"It's different for everyone," I said. "Like, I know it looks like a lemon bar but to me it tastes like spring rolls, so like, don't expect it to make sense."

"Yeah, and that's how nectar works too," Alec added, "so I almost spit it out the first time I tried it 'cause shepherd's pie should not be a liquid."

It was a good thing we kinda ran out of nectar already 'cause Diego probably would've had that same kind of reaction to it. "Thanks for the heads up; it's good, but I was not expecting that to taste like a chicken tamal."

"Can I try?" Alicia asked.

Great question, 'cause for all we knew she could be, like, mortal mortal. "You didn't get hurt," Diego reminded her. He flinched suddenly. "Whoa, this stuff works fast, it's back in already."

"So today we learned to always trust food from strangers," Alec joked.

"No, we didn't, this was a special case, never ever do that," Rory quickly replied.

[Look, more proof: you are a childless dad.]

"Well, after… pretty much everything that just happened, I wouldn't exactly call you guys strangers," Diego said. "Come on, let's get to the house before something else shows up."

I wouldn't've called us strangers either, but it was definitely too early to say "friends." There's gotta be some kind of in-between word… eh, whatever, if he could go along with my barely-a-plan and trust Rory to watch his sister while we did it, I could trust himto not be leading us into a trap.

"Something else?" Alec repeated. "Just how often do you see monsters?"

"At least every other week," Diego replied. "And that's a lot less than it was during the school year… do monsters somehow know when you have a lot of essays due? I thought junior high was bad, but they just didn't stop this year!

"Hey, Alicita, if we're walking you need to hold my hand, okay? I don't want you to get lost."

"We all hafta," she stated. "What if they get lost?"

She kinda had a point, so we actually did – at least, for a few minutes until Alicia got tired of walking and Diego picked her up again. We walked in a single-file line down the sidewalk and there were more people out and some of them gave us looks but honestly that was fine by me. I needed to do something dumb. Like, normal kid dumb, not the kind of stuff I'd think of.

[Look, most of my ideas are for like, getting people to pay me to smuggle shit or pull off revenge pranks, I – ugh, I know it's kinda dangerous, but – Rory, so help me, I'll tell Brook you bleat in your sleep!]

Anyways, we (okay, mostly Rory) ended up explaining Demigod 101 to Diego pretty much the rest of the way to the house and damn, no wonder he got attacked by monsters all the time when he used the internet to do homework stuff! "Okay, seriously, how are you still alive?" Alec wondered. I was wondering the same thing, but I wasn't gonna say it.

"I don't know, how can monsters find you through the freaking internet? I've fought a lot of things without hands, so they can't just be using computers… can they?"

I sure didn't have an answer for that one – cell phones make sense, they send up a signal to the towers and I guess monsters can sense that somehow. I would've thought like, it was the whole "names have power" thing, but Diego got through a whole term paper on the Kindly Ones without them showing up so I dunno.

[I learned about that one later – long story short: ghost teacher, killed and replaced by a monster, replaced the monster, huge grudge against demigods and she's still out there.]

"Hm, monsters just kinda know where you are when you're online," Alec replied. "I'd try to explain how, but you wouldn't understand."

"Neither would you," Rory pointed out. "It's just a feeling you get, like you're being drawn someplace. It varies based on how powerful the demigod is, and what they're looking up, but usually you need to already be in the same general area."

[And that right there is how you sound like a monster in disguise. You should've led with, "I'm a satyr and we don't eat people."]

Yeah, so Diego reacted to that about as well as you'd expect. "Before anyone does something they'll regret later," I warned, "Rory's a satyr and he works for Camp Half-Blood; finding demigods is part of his job. If he was that kind of monster, uh, I don't think we'd all still be here after earlier."

"Not helping, Brenna," Alec noted. Except it totally did help 'cause Diego put my knife back in his pocket and apologized so take that, Alec.

So then Rory got to explain protectors, what satyrs actually do, and all that fun stuff; like how monsters go after them, too. That took us pretty much the rest of the way to the house, and this isn't really important 'cause Arlington's basically D.C. but we'd actually ended up in Virginia 'cause we got off at the wrong stop. Or the right stop; I dunno, it's weird when your dad's the god of travel.

But yeah, it was like, an actual house. I, uh, don't have a lot of experience with those. Mom and I always lived in apartments. Y'know, so it'd be easier to move when I got myself expelled from whatever school was dumb enough to take me.

It looked like their house was mostly one level but there was at least one room above the main floor. They had a yard with grass, which I guess is just a thing people have and how can people afford to water that? Like, it can't rain that much out East, right? I guess I wouldn't know, Camp has magic weather and stuff and Demeter doesn't usually let it rain too bad unless someone pisses her off.

Y'know what else is cool about yards? You can like, put stuff in them and it stays there and you don't have to walk to the community plot or the park or the beach or anything because you can just have that stuff. Diego and Alicia had a garden and a playground in theirs and there was still space left.

[…oh, right, uh… what was I talking about before that?] So Diego unlocked the front door and let us into the living room. There were a lot of toys on the floor… and the couch… and there was a chair tipped over on its side that looked like it was being used as a blanket fort. It was really easy to tell that a little kid lived there, that's all I'm saying.

"It's, uh… a little messy," Diego said as he set his sister down so he could actually make it through the doorway. "We clean it up before Mamá comes home."

"If you think this is messy, you should see the Hermes cabin," I responded.

"I mean, he will if he comes to Camp," Alec pointed out. "It's pretty bad; you don't see the floor really until summer ends or it's time for cabin checks."

"Oh, the cabins are named after Greek gods? Nice. But, uh, before we talk more, Brenna needs to put her gun in the gun safe."

A good call, really. I have to do that in my cabin too and I know I should get a lockbox or something for travelling but that whole clusterfuck was the first time I actually spent nights outside Camp since I got there so I never really got around to it.

Once we got back from that, we tried to talk about cabin stuff but we got distracted by how Camp Half-Blood could be safer than other places and after a few minutes of that I couldn't keep track of what was going on anymore so I played stuffed animals with Alicia in the fort instead.

[We were defending it from the evil empire of darkness, it was super important, okay? Besides, you guys didn't even notice for like half an hour, so clearly I wasn't needed there. Diego was asking, like, science-y questions and we know how good I am with those.]

Around the time Maria, Stitch, and Eeyore defeated the Dark Emperor Mal, Diego lifted up the blankets. "Time to clean up, guys," he announced. "I'm gonna start dinner in a few minutes."

"I don't wanna," Alicia whined.

"I can help," I offered.

"Actually, can I borrow you for a few minutes first?" he asked. "We need you to settle a debate."

Oh boy, my favorite thing. "Sure, I guess."

"Great. Okay, Alicita, five more minutes, but we're cleaning when we get back."

She wasn't too thrilled with that but we were already standing so she went back to playing. "Rory told me you're a vegetarian, so do you eat eggs?"

"Yeah." I was getting my hopes up that it was just a food debate. I should've known better.

"Cool. The only vegetarian thing I could think of that we don't need milk for is fried rice so I hope everyone likes that."

"It'll be fine, at this point we'd go for anything."

"'At this point…' How long has it been since you guys ate? Why did no one say anything? We've gotta have something in the pantry, come on!"

I was gonna tell him it we could just wait, but he'd already started running so I just followed him. The kitchen was just two rooms over, it wasn't like it was far away. "Look who decided to show up," Alec greeted us when we got there. "Did you tell her about the plan?"

"For dinner? Yeah. Your idea? Nuh-uh, you gotta explain that."

"I still disapprove, for the record," Rory chimed in.

Alec rolled his eyes. "I know, you guys totally ganged up on me."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's up?" I asked. I really regretted leaving the living room right about then.

"What I was thinking was, this bull is just straight-up heading for Camp, right? So we find a spot nearby to set up an ambush."

"That sounds like a great idea," I said.

Alec smirked. "Right? The thing is, we don't know if the bull's gonna sleep. So I think one of us should stay overnight at the ambush site, just in case it passes by and we miss it."

"And that's where he lost me," Diego explained. "Sure, go sleep outside alone at night in any neighborhood, it'll go great."

He didn't have to tell me twice. I was a runaway preteen in L.A., and y'know what the less we talk about that, the better. "We could all just go," Rory suggested, "like I've been saying for the past fifteen minutes."

"Kinda defeats the purpose, don'tcha think?" Alec countered.

"Splitting up is rarely a good idea," Rory said firmly. "What if there's a monster attack? You're down to one bowstring!"

"…okay, so I didn't think about –"

I interrupted, "If we're going that route, wouldn't we need two people anyways? So someone doesn't have to stay up all night?"

"Okay, fine!" Alec snapped. "Sorry I was just trying to be useful!"

There was some awkward silence. I broke it pretty quick. "All right, fine. Just go find an ambush site after dinner and be back by – what time do most stores close around here?"

"Nine," Diego answered, "but what –"

"Be back here by eight. We'll be able to check in the morning if the bull runs past wherever you find."

"This plan relies pretty heavily on Alec navigating a city he doesn't know," Rory pointed out, "and on him going off by himself, which is a bad idea in general."

Alec snorted. "I'm glad you care, but I can look after myself."

"…sure you can," Diego said. [And I'm sure you were thinking it, Rory. I was thinking, Alec's really good at one thing: surviving. Sure, he'll make some dumbass decisions like… well, that one, but he'll do absolutely anything he needs to to make it through the consequences.]

[And honestly, I don't like that. I know I'll try and pull crap to get out of, like, KP and stuff, but I've got lines I won't cross.]

[I don't think he does.]

"Yeah, that's right, I can," was Alec's brilliant response to Diego. "Aren't you supposed to be –"

"I could just… not feed you," Diego said. Knowing Alec, he'd been about to say something really gross and not okay. So it's a good thing he got interrupted. "Speaking of, I'm gonna start cooking now, we basically just have refried beans in the pantry as far as stuff that isn't just raw ingredients goes."

"We'll get out of your way, then," Rory decided as he led Alec out of the room. I could hear him whispering something; if I had to guess, a lecture. [Ha! Got it!]

I'd said I was gonna go help clean up, but I really didn't wanna get in the middle of that so instead I offered to help Diego with cooking. "Y'know, if you want me to."

"Sure, why not. You can set the table." He was pulling stuff out of the fridge. "At least we actually have vegetables… and I made way too much rice yesterday, so we'll be fine there…"

"Where are plates?"

Diego closed the fridge door, probably harder than he needed to, and gestured to a cabinet that I definitely wouldn't be able to reach. "I'll get them down for you in a sec, sorry, gotta set these down… man, how do you put up with him?"

"Alec? I mean… he's fine most of the time. I don't know what his problem is today, but –"

"Earlier, with the cyclops? You literally saved his life – and probably mine too now that I think about it, thanks for that by the way – and we thought you were dead, and he was acting like he didn't even care!"

That honestly didn't surprise me; Alec didn't know who Diego was at that point, and there was no way he'd show those kinds of emotions around him even if he did. "If he was complaining about it, that's how he deals with stress," I replied. "Also, if you guys had like, checked my pulse, you would've known I was fine."

"Alive," Diego corrected. "You were not fine. If I knew how to do that, I would've."

"I'll have to show you later. That's one of the things I actually remember from first aid. So…"

"Here's plates. Silverware's the top left drawer. I guess in that case, I'll give him a pass. But does he always act like he's the smartest guy in the room?" He'd moved onto cutting vegetables and, well…

"Oh my gods, you're gonna cut your fingers off!" I blurted out. He wasn't even looking at his hands and the knife was way too close. "But, uh… usually, yeah. It's not just you."

Diego continued to not pay any attention to what he was doing. "It'll be fine, I do this all the time. And okay, I can live with that then."

"Well, okay…"

Then we got onto safer topics, like how Diego usually did the cooking when his mom worked and how he was actually less than a year older than me, which neither of us expected. He was supposed to start his sophomore year in the fall (if he didn't end up as a year-rounder) and I got to explain that I should've been doing that, but instead I was basically a third grader in any class without "Greek" in the name.

[Yeah, no, that wasn't fun and I'm not gonna go through all that again. I didn't tell him I still can't really read or write good in English, but I'm pretty sure he figured it out after… well, we'll get to that later.]

Anyways, to get off that topic I said, "It's probably a good thing I'm just setting the table; I can't cook worth crap."

"Did anyone ever teach you?" He sounded curious, not [that word for when you're trying to make someone feel bad about being dumb?] condescending, so I nodded.

"At Camp the harpies teach one cabin a week. Chiron thinks we year-rounders need to know stuff like that, in case we wanna leave someday." I really wanted to say "in case we live long enough to need to" but I figured that'd be a bad idea.

[Hey speaking of that, just thought of something – were there no satyrs in the DC area for the past fifteen years? …how the hell did no one run into Diego before us? …oh. Maybe Glen's still out there. Someone should really check.]

"Harpies… are those the chicken-ladies?"

"Yup. They run the cafeteria."

"Okay, sure, that… makes sense."

"They do some other stuff too, like patrol after curfew."

Then so we wouldn't get back into Demigod 101, I asked him what he did for fun. "Y'know, aside from cooking and playing tea party."

"You call launching a full-scale invasion a tea party? Though, she does like actual tea parties too. But let's see… I play football, read, watch sports, and –" He looked around to make sure no one else had come back. "– I really like Disney movies."

Huh. I wouldn't've expected that last part. "Aren't those the ones with princesses and stuff? And that really not great Hercules movie?"

"Okay, Hercules was a mess, but it was a fun mess with a good soundtrack and you can't tell me the whole 'trying to impress an immortal parent' thing isn't relatable. There are a lot of princess movies but some of those princess movies kick ass. Wait… is Hercules the only Disney movie you've seen?!" He'd started out whispering, but by the end he'd gone back up to a normal volume.

"Yeah?"

He stared at me in disbelief. "You've never seen Mulan."

"Can't say that I have."

"We're gonna fix that. After all the important quest stuff's over," he promised. Yeah, we'd have to live for that to happen. "So I'm guessing you don't really read –"

"Not if I can help it," I interrupted.

"Right. But do you have any hobbies?"

I had to think about it. "If pulling pranks with my half-siblings counts, that's one. We play a lot of cards, party games, stuff like that. I listen to music a lot when people are busy and I draw sometimes, but I'm not very good at it."

"Probably better than me… hey, does this look done to you?"

"I'm the worst person here to ask that to," I reminded him.

"Okay, go get someone else then. Did you ever actually set the table?"

I'd gotten as far as putting the plates down, so I finished that. I didn't wanna admit that I'd never set a table before – Mom and I never bothered with one – but I had a pretty good guess how it worked. Diego just had to move some of the silverware.

There was a loud machine-sounding noise that I learned later was the garage door opener. "Actually, y'know what, the rice is probably fine, I'd better go explain what's going on so Mamá doesn't freak out and call the cops or something!"

I followed him to the door, but I walked like a normal person and didn't jump over furniture. The living room was clean, except they'd left the blanket fort up. Alec, Alicia, and Rory were watching some kids' show on TV, all three of them on the couch. Only Rory really seemed to care what we were up to. "I think your mom's home," he told Alicia.

[Hey, how'd you know that, anyways? …okay, follow-up question: how do you know what a garage door sounds like?]

Anyways, Alicia was pretty excited about that. She immediately ran for the door, which meant I nearly got tackled by a three-year-old, but I let her pass. Rory joined me in the entryway and we awkwardly waited for anyone whose house this was to come back inside.

Only for like, a minute, though. "Guys, this is my mom!" Diego announced proudly.

Author's note: See, there we go, a normal chapter ending! Almost didn't make this update on time but we got there. Hopefully I get the next one done on time as well, it's New Job Scheduling Panic Hours.