Charlie had terrible nightmares that night. He tossed and turned all night, haunted by images of his parents. Their cold, lifeless bodies staring up at him, cold voices demanding answers: "why couldn't you save us?!", "why didn't you try to fight?!", "why are you so useless?"

All night these continued. Eventually, after hours of trying and failing to get a good night's sleep, Charlie gave up. He got out of bed and went to the bathroom. He decided to take a shower. Water always calmed him.

However, someone was already in the bathroom. It was Sophia. "Sophia? What are you doing here?" he asked blearily, still kind of tired.

She whipped her head around. She quickly wiped her eyes. "Nothing. Couldn't sleep."

"Nightmares?" he asked. She nodded. "Me too."

"But you seemed so calm yesterday. Why aren't you breaking down, always holding back tears, the tiniest thing setting you off?!" her voice raised with every question.

"You think I don't care? I'm just better at hiding it! I've been trying to stay strong, to keep going so we can have a chance to do something about it. If they're alive, maybe we can save them. If not, we can avenge them and stop whoever did this." Charlie's voice was raw with emotion.

Sophia looked taken aback. "Y-yeah… alright." I helped her up and took her back to her bed.

"Try to get some sleep, alright?" he asked her. She nodded and closed her eyes. He sighed. Being the older sibling was tiring.

He walked back to the bathroom and finally took a shower. He doubted he would get back to sleep so he got out one of the books he had packed, as well as a small reading light.

He must have nodded off at some point because in the morning he was shaken awake by Sophia. "Come on! It's time for breakfast."

He nodded and got up. He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes but was mostly unsuccessful. He didn't get much good sleep last night.

He followed the Hermes kids to the pavilion and for the first time saw how many people were there. There were about 50 or 60 in all. There was one kid at the Poseidon table. He looked young, maybe 12 or 13. Can't have been there long.

Marcus caught him staring. "That's Deniss Johnson, the only other known demigod child of Poseidon."

There were also a few kids at the aphrodite table. Olivia was there, along with an older looking woman that looked suspiciously like her mom.

"Who's that?" he asked Marcus. He looked at where Charlie was pointing.

"Her? That's piper Mclean. She's Olivia's mom."

Charlie frowned. "Who's the dad?"

Marcus shrugged. "A donor I think. She's got a wife. They don't really talk about it."

Charlie thought that was fair. "What is she doing here?"

Marcus shrugged again. "I don't know. Business, I think." Charlie frowned, not satisfied with that answer. He made a mental note to ask later.

He sat down next to Sophia and across from Marcus. Daniel sat across from Sophia, and the twins sat next to Daniel. The twins were pretty short. 5'4, medium builds, eyes full of mischief.

They made idle chatter until Chiron tapped his glass with his fork. He made an announcement about me and Sophia and then said it was time to sacrifice a portion of the food to the gods.

Food appeared on all the plates in the pavilion. On Charlie's were blue chocolate chip pancakes with butter. His favorite breakfast food. He also got some blue orange juice, for which he got some weird looks.

They didn't do this at home so for the first time they didn't have to pretend to not know what to do. When he did sacrifice his food, he did it to his grandmother, as he was more like her than his grandfather.

'Please grandmother, claim me so me and Sophia's cover remains intact. And protect mom, please. Thanks.' He walked back to the table. When Sophia sat next to him, he leaned over.

"Who did you sacrifice to?" he whispered.

"Our grandfather. I asked her to maintain our cover and to protect dad," she whispered back. He nodded.

"I did the same with grandma. I thought that it would make more sense for me to be an Athena kid." She nodded.

"Whatcha guys whispering about?" Marcus suddenly asked, startling us.

"Family stuff," Charlie told them. Technically true, if a bit of an understatement. He tilted his head in understanding.

After a minute he gasped. Charlie was in the middle of a story when he was interrupted. "What?" he asked. Sophia tapped him on the shoulder. When he looked at her, she pointed up.

Above his head, was an owl. On the inside, he beamed. 'Thank you grandma.' on the outside he put on a look of wonder. Chiron got up and said, "all hail Charlie… I'm sorry I didn't get your last name."

Charlie looked over at Chiron. "Um… Blofis." Chiron looked skeptical, but he said nothing about it. "All hail Charlie Blofis, son of Athena."

Sophia got claimed by Poseidon a bit later. Charlie didn't see it, he was with the Athena cabin at the time, but he heard it was while she was by the lake.

As it turned out, Charlie didn't need to seek out Piper to ask her what she was doing at camp. She sought him out instead. His cabin-mates were showing him around when it happened.

"Hey, you!" she shouted. He turned around and saw her jogging towards him.

"Yes?" he asked, confused. What had he done to warrant this?

"I want to talk to you about a few things. Privately." she added looking at my "siblings". They got the message and walked ahead. She turned on him. "Alright, you have some explaining to do. First off: what's with the blue food?"

Charlie kept a cool face but on the inside, he was panicking. Of course, she would recognize the blue food. She lived with Percy on the Argo II during the second giant war and was one of his good friends for years afterward.

"Come on, spit it out," she told me. Charlie felt compelled to answer.

"My parents. They loved blue food. It was my dad's favorite color." He told her, before wondering why he had just said all that. 'Charmspeak.' he realized.

"And who are your parents?" she asked, voice still laced with charm speak.

His mother had drilled him on how to resist charm speak, but actually doing it was more difficult than he thought. He managed "Jacob and Melinda Blofis. And Athena, apparently."

Her eyes widened a bit. "Alright… I'm gonna go." she turned to go but charlie stopped her.

"Wait!" she stopped. "Why are you here? At camp."

She hesitated. "I… I'm trying to get Chiron to make a quest to find a couple of my friends. They went missing about 17 years ago. I really miss them. So do some of my other friends."

"Who are these friends?" he asked

She waited a moment before answering. "Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase."

"Two of the members of the seven? The two-time heroes of Olympus?" he asked, trying to further convince her of his ignorance.

She nodded. "Annabeth was my best friend. She just left. She didn't even say goodbye. We've sent out a couple of quests for them before. They always come back empty-handed." she was quiet for a moment. "Anyway… I have work to do." she walked off towards the big house.

Charlie watched her go. Had his parents really done that? They just… left? Without saying goodbye? His thoughts were still troubling him when he rejoined the group.

"What was that about?" one of them asked.

"Nothing important. She thought I seemed familiar," he told them. They shrugged and moved on. But he couldn't. He was still turning what Piper had told him over and over in his mind.

A few days later, word came in that the hunters were coming to stay at camp for a while. Apparently, Artemis had some important business to take care of on Olympus. The hunters arrived a day after the news came in.

Charlie was with everyone else, waiting for the hunters to arrive. They came up over the hill and walked down to us. I noticed some petted Peleus the dragon on their way down, including their lieutenant.

They walked up to us and greeted those they were on good terms with. It was really only the girls, however, their lieutenant seemed interested in charlie and Sophia. She walked up to them.

"Hey, are you guys new here?" she asked them. They nodded. Charlie extended his hand. "I'm charlie. This is my sister Sophia, it's nice to meet you." She seemed oddly familiar to Charlie, but he couldn't place how.

She looked at him for a second with a weird look on her face before shaking his hand. "Thalia, lieutenant of Artemis, daughter of Zeus. and same." she looked at him again, closer this time.

"Where'd you get that scar?" she asked. Charlie was confused at first. Then he remembered the small scar on his chin.

"My mom said that my aunt gave it to me…accidentally..." he trailed off as he realized who this was. This was the aunt who gave him that scar. Her eyes flashed with recollection. He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

She saw it and nodded, also almost imperceptibly. She stepped away. "Well, it was nice meeting you, but I have to go help my girls get settled in." Charlie nodded and stepped back to let them pass. After they had all passed, he pulled Sophia to the side.

"I need to take your shift with Mrs. O'Leary tonight." He whispered. Since they got to camp, they had been taking turns with Mrs. O'Leary. They made sure she was fed, and they played with her to make sure she wasn't completely bored out there in the woods.

"Why?" she whispered back.

"Thalia recognized me. I need to talk to her. I'm better at talking to people than you." she contemplated this for a second before shrugging and telling him to have fun.

"Thank you," he said.

"Yeah, I know, I'm the best," she replied.

"That's not what I said."

"It was the subtext. Anyway, I'm gonna go hang out with liv. See you later." and she walked off.

'Alright. Now I just have to deal with my aunt. This should be easy.' he thought. He looked over at the hunter's cabin and saw that they had already beaten up some dude who had tried to flirt with one of them. 'Or not'.