I have one major thank you: trustingHim17, who is my wonderful beta who volunteered after I botched the last chapter. Hope this one was better!

The next morning, Alexis could hardly eat her breakfast, she was too busy being inundated with campers' "good job" and "thank you" and gushing over her performance. I never got the chance to tell her about my visit with our father.

Alexis had yanked the world out from my feet and she didn't even do anything. Now I knew what the rest of the Camp had felt like when I was still in my trouble-attracting days.

It was disconcerting, to tell you the truth, and funny, and maddening, all at the same time.

But what really made me mad was Poseidon. I don't know what Alexis did to anger him so badly, but with the hostility on both sides, I didn't know what to think. I knew that Alexis had the same view of Poseidon that Annabeth viewed towards her father for the majority of her pre-teen years: deadbeat. Uncaring. But with the little information that I was given, I suspected that it ran deeper than simple neglect.

That afternoon, we were finally alone in our cabin. She was fiddling with some metal thing that I had no idea what it was supposed to do, but occasionally weird squeaks would emanate from it.

"I talked with our father yesterday," I said, finally breaking the awkward silence.

"Oh?" Her voice was decidedly cool and skeptical. I had to remind myself that she was twelve, not the broody fifteen-year-old that she sounded like.

"I never would've thought that Dad could hate someone of his own blood so much."

She scowled. "I'm sure he accused me of all sorts of bizarre things."

"Why? I don't understand," I said, stumbling over my words. "All I'm getting from both sides is a great amount of hostility and only a little bit of information. You haven't accused him of anything outright, and he hasn't accused you of anything either, by the way. What on earth happened?"

Her head was bent over the metal thing that she was working on, and it emitted a particularly loud SCREECH. Alexis's hands stilled, her head bending even lower, her hair dropping into her face like a curtain, shielding her from the rest of the world. She sighed. "Our father…he's not perfect, Percy. He's prone to rages and pitiful temper tantrums just like the rest of the world. When I was six, a year before my mother died from her alcohol, we lived in Louisiana."

She stopped her story, and fiddled with the metal thing. When it gave another loud, protesting SCREECH, she huffed in exasperation and threw it at the wall. It bounced off and started wailing like a freaking banshee. She got up, stomped over there, and crushed it under her boot heel. The noise stopped, and I lowered my hands from my ears hesitantly.

I almost thought that she wasn't going to continue with her story, but she flopped down on her bed and refused to look at me, instead staring at the bottom of the bunk above her. "You were scarily right, actually, that first breakfast we had. I did have a sister, a twin, named Kirsten. Do you remember Hurricane Donovan?"

I was probably staring like an idiot, but I nodded, remembering the horrific news on the storm. Donovan started out in east Africa in June six years ago and moved his way across the Atlantic, building strength with frightening speed. He'd been a very organized storm, and instead of hitting Florida and dissipating instantly like most of the hurricanes did, it passed over the peninsula as a category three wreaking havoc and never breaking up or slowing down. It hit the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and then rammed into Louisiana and Mississippi with devastating force at a category four, moving inland, and only getting to the status of a tropical storm after getting to Tennessee. Donovan, as a major storm system, continued north and then east, going back out into the Atlantic after passing through Virginia and Maryland, causing another four deaths from knocking over power lines and trees and crushing houses on top of unsuspecting people.

"We were in Baton Rouge when Donovan hit," Alexis said. "Within hours the water was rushing in at an unbelievable speed. My mother, my twin, and I were making for a rescue boat when a huge oak tree comes barreling down the street from the wind and the current that was rushing around our legs. My mother and I leaped one way, Kirsten leaped another. She got caught up in the tree's branches and I never saw her again."

I closed my eyes. "She was a daughter of Poseidon," I pointed out weakly. "She couldn't have drowned."

Alexis shook her head. "I can only breathe underwater if I'm thinking about it. If she was knocked out and then submerged, she would have drowned. I told you Percy, I'm not very powerful. I'm not like you."

"Missing doesn't always mean dead in demigod cases," I said.

"Name one person other than yourself," she challenged.

"Jason Grace," I shot back. "Leo Valdez. Annabeth Jackson. Nico di Angelo. Chris Rodriguez. Ethan Nakamura. Sally Jackson. Thalia Grace. Tristan McClean. There, I've named nine people."

I thought I had trapped her, considering that some of those were mortals or people who didn't have seriously visible powers. But I guess not, because she said, "And how many of those people did you legitimately think that they were dead and not have dreams about them still living or proof that they still live?" she demanded.

"Four," I admitted. "I thought that Ethan, Mom, and Thalia were dead until I got them back or I met them on the battlefield again. The latter accidentally, actually. And Leo…well, we can't find him in the Underworld. That's all the proof that we have that he's not dead."

Alexis shook her head. "Until I have proof otherwise, she's dead. I can't let myself hope."

I moved to sit by her, taking out the clip that was keeping some of her hair pulled back. That was a physical similarity between the two of us, I suddenly realized: our curly, messy hair that refused to be tamed.

"If we have hope that Leo's alive after all these years, you should have hope that Kirsten's alive as well," I said softly.

"You have proof," she murmured as twin tears spilling over and running down the side of her face. "I don't. I can't do it, Percy. I can't do it and I wouldn't do it even if I could. Let me go on believing that she's dead; it's easier."

That evening, I was walking through the middle of camp when I was suddenly blinded by plaid fleece. I smiled, but my rib cage was slowly being crushed under my half-brother's enthusiasm. "Hi, big guy," I wheezed. "Ribs! I like them unbroken!"

He let go and stepped back, his big brown eye sparkling with excitement. "Brother! Ella and Rachel staying for a while!"

My smile grew. "Where are they? And big guy?"

"Yeah?"

"We have a new sibling!"

I was entirely unrepentant of setting Tyson's child-like exuberance onto Alexis, who seriously needed a pick-me-up. Once you got used to Tyson, he was the best thing for cheering someone up. I pointed to the Poseidon cabin and he grabbed me by the arm (I think he was meaning to grab my hand, but he missed and grabbed my forearm instead) and all but dragged me there. I like to think that I'm pretty darn fast when I want to be, but when you have a ten-foot-tall brother going at top speed, you tend to lag behind.

Tyson ducked into the cabin, leaving me to rub my (probably bruised) arm and grin as Tyson scooped her up and whirled our startled sister around, yelling "Sister!" in excitement. I got a glimpse of her startled and a slightly alarmed face just before she was smothered into plaid fleece, and I burst out laughing.

When Tyson finally set her back down onto the ground, she was dizzy and fell on her butt with a thump. After she managed to get the world to stop spinning, she looked up…and up…and up at Tyson. Tyson really wasn't the prettiest picture by human standards, with peanut butter coated crooked teeth and the single eye right smack in the middle of his forehead (not to mention the ten-feet-tall part which gives any self-respecting human a crick in their neck).

Alexis looked to me first (I was still laughing), and then back at Tyson. "Hi," she said, but it came out more like a question. "I'm Alexis Sanders."

"Tyson!" Tyson said excitedly, and pumped the hesitantly offered hand enthusiastically, practically shaking her whole body.

Her rattled face just made me crack up more. I'm sure my face was beet red from laughing.

He was still shaking her body (I refused to say that he was shaking her hand) when he said, "Now we can swim and eat peanut butter sandwiches and see Annabeth and make monsters go BOOM!"

When Tyson finally stopped shaking her, she gingerly rubbed her arm, but she had a smile on her face. "So you like explosions too, huh?"

I ran out of the cabin, thinking, oh gods, not another pyromaniac in the family.