Just a word of warning for this chapter: there is one swear word. So if you don't want that, just skip the all capitalized bit.

Jan. 5

Dear Diary,

I left Camp Jupiter a week ago, and I have been searching for the Hunters since. My comm had been broken back in Indiana when Lityerses had punched me. For an undead guy, be packed a mean punch. And I'd regularly gotten socked by Clarisse during martial arts training at Camp Half-Blood.

I was riding on Milky Way, over some state, Wyoming, I think? When I saw it, the Tessumian Fox, tearing at a carcass. I hoped it was a deer or something, and not an unfortunate demigod. Since the Tessumian Fox couldn't be trapped, we'd had a lot of trouble getting to it, seeing that we would have to make the kill while chasing the fox.

Hey, Milky, I said. Just hover around here for a while, will you?

Milky Way nickered. No problem, boss. I felt a little bad for bringing Milky Way all the way out here. We'd been traveling together for the past week, often with only a few hours of sleep. We were both worn out. But she'd insisted, so here we were.

An hour or so later, I caught a glimpse of silver whipping through the trees. I urged Milky Way into a dive and landed in front of a very surprised Thalia Grace.

"Er, hi," I said.

Thalia blinked. She stared. Then, finally, she seemed to find her voice. "ABIGAIL GAO! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING? CHALLENGING THAT SON OF A BITCH TO A DUEL AND GETTING YOURSELF CAPTURED AND LEAVING US THINKING YOU WERE DEAD OR SOMETHING AND, And, and…" she trailed off and settled for punching me in the arm. Her two partners kept their distance. As I wrote before, no one wants to face down and angry Thalia, what with the black leather jacket and silver jewelry, along with the black eyeliner. She could easily be the best demigod I'd ever met at giving dirty looks, challenged only by Nico di Angelo, the Ghost King himself.

"Gah, you… you ηλίθιε!"

"Gee, thanks for calling me an idiot," I said sarcastically, once Thalia seemed to calm down a bit. Thalia smacked me again, but without any heat.

"Thals," a brunette tapped her shoulder. "What do you want to do now?"

"Abby can come with us for now," Thalia replied. "You don't have your comm anymore?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Here," she rummaged in her pack and tossed the small white device to me. I nodded my thanks.

Thalia tapped her comm and reported our coordinates to the other Hunters. The brunette scribbled a note. "Yo, Thals, should I add that Abby's here?"

Thalia gave me an evil grin. "Of course, Sidney. Can't wait to see the others' reactions when they see her."

"Go east," the other girl spoke. "We should check the mailbox on the way. It's only a minute or two from here."

Thalia nodded, her silver circlet glittering in her dark hair. "Why not?" she started jogging off. We followed.

"Hey," I said. "Does anyone know about this thing called a Waystation?" The question had been bugging me since Lityerses had mentioned it.

"The Waystation is in Indiana," Thalia said. "Emmie and Jo help us keep an eye on the list of unusual monster activity in that area." that opened up a lot more questions. But I had the feeling that if I asked all of them, we'd never finish. So instead, I nodded and kept my mouth shut (if you're wondering, it wasn't easy).

"It's quite a fascinating structure," Sidney supplied. "I've only been there twice, but it's almost like a living structure. And not in the Daedalus-labyrinth-I-want-to-kill-everyone kind of living. More friendly," she added.

"Oh," Sidney said suddenly. "Introductions. I'm Sidney. Daughter of Trivia. Hunter for… I don't really remember. Two hundred years?"

"Two hundred fifty-six," the other girl corrected. "Skye, by the way. I'm a legacy of Mars, but I'm also a daughter of Mnemosyne. I joined, one? Two thousand years ago? I remember it was something like one thousand five hundred thirty-seven years. Yeah, that's right. My name was originally Priscilla Atalanta" she said something that lasted almost thirty seconds. "So when English became more developed, and people kind of forgot how to speak ancient Greek, I changed it to Skye."

I blinked. "So you're both Greek and Roman."

"That's right."

"And a half-titan."

"Yep."

"So you're a Greco-Roman demi-titan, about one thousand, five hundred years old."

"Exactly."

I blinked again. I guess it wasn't the weirdest thing I'd heard of. But definitely up in the top twenty.

"You know Thalia," Sidney interrupted my brain-sorting. "Daughter of Zeus, the almost-child of the prophecy, et cetera."

I nodded. "Yep. Definitely. Heard she electrocuted my half-brother once. Is that true? 'Cause Percy keeps on trying to pretend it never happened."

Thalia smirked. "That's not a camp myth. It's very real. Very, very real."

I nodded. "Good to know," I said with pretend thoughtfulness.

"Guys, this way," Skye pointed. "Thalia, we should get the whole group together. Fan out ahead of the fox. Hopefully, we can kill it soon."

Thalia nodded. "Why not?" she pulled out a map. "We're here," she tapped a spot in Wyoming. "Fox is heading that way," she traced her finger down the map. She double-tapped the spot. A set of coordinates shimmered above the map. Sidney reported them to the rest of the Hunters.

"We're going to ride," Thalia informed us. "Too hard to get past the fox on foot."

"I thought you don't like heights," I said.

"Who told you about that?" Thalia wheeled around.

"Oh, come on. You know Percy talks in his sleep," I lied. He'd actually told me during a truth or dare game. But since I prefer my brother alive (even though it'd be funny to see Thalia yelling at my brother, who was almost a foot taller than her five foot two inches), I just fibbed, something I'd become quite good at over the years.

Sidney snickered. "Boys."

A bit later, Skye poked Thalia's shoulder. "Mailbox."

Thalia rolled her eyes. "I know. I'm not that bad at remembering stuff."

"That could be debated," Sidney countered.

"Like that time you managed to forget where you put your pen," Skye said.

"Or that time you lost your backpack," Sidney added.

"Fine," Thalia said finally. "Let's stop here," she offered, changing the subject. "Call the rest of the gang over. We should be about a day ahead of the fox. And the mailbox is right there."

Skye shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

In no time at all, the other groups of Hunters started to arrive. Some in pairs, or by themselves. Some came in groups of three.

"There aren't a lot of people," I commented to Thalia.

"No," she agreed. "We Hunters often go off on our own hunts, but we always, always stay with their tent-mates. But recently, since the Titan War, our numbers have dropped dramatically. We lost too many against Orion, and we lost several of our sisters while hunting our last major hunt…"

"The Lydian Drakon," Skye said.

"Yeah. We usually have at least twenty to thirty Hunters. Before the Titan War we had forty," Sidney added.

"But now," Thalia continued, "as you can see, our sisterhood has been reduced to no more than a dozen."

"Abigail Gao! What do you think you were doing?" a familiar voice yelled at me.

"Hey, Rachel! Whassup?" I grinned. Rachel emerged from the underbrush, twigs in her hair, and dried grass and leaves stuck to her clothes.

She tackled me with a bear hug. "Are you kidding? We thought you were dead, or worse!"

Julianna punched me in the arm and grinned. "We thought Thalia was going to explode!"

In no time, we had set up camp. Usually, there would be a fire at the center of the crescent, but we didn't want to drive the Tessumian Fox.

Rachel studied my face. "You look like you haven't slept properly for days. Do you not take moonwater?"

I blinked. It was true. I hadn't slept properly since Indiana. "What moonwater?" I asked.

"This," Rachel said, pulling out a canteen. I waited. I had the same canteen in my own pack. "Is moonwater." she poured some out into her hand. It looked like normal water, with something silvery, like mercury, mixed into it. "Just a sip gives a person the feeling of a good night's sleep and a good meal. It also makes you more alert."

"But you can't take it too often, or there could be some serious side effects," Julianna added. "It could make you extremely woozy, or just pass out. Also, it would make you feel as if you hadn't eaten in a week, along with an acute sense of thirst. So, like any other magical food or drink, don't overindulge."

"Good to know," I mumbled. "Now, if you two don't mind, I'm going to bed, before either of you comes up with another clever idea to keep me awake, or better, get me a cup of proper Chinese green tea."

I grinned, crawled into the tent, and promptly passed out on my sleeping bag.

Well, peeps, that's a wrap! Honestly, I don't even know how I'm writing in the state I'm in, but it's here! Blue cookies for everyone! As usual, constructive criticism is welcome, so please favorite & follow. And please, please, please. If you find any grammar mistakes, tell me! I'm a grammar freak.

Good hunting!

~ Hunter of Artemis 01