Warning: Luke and Percy will interact a lot in this chapter so... There will be Slash!

Hey guys, I'm back with another extra long chapter and 'author's note' that will be at the end of the chapter! I hope you guys enjoy it because it took hours to complete!

This chapter is dedicated to: PercabethNot and Jenyla

I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan. Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers and rebels. As soon as I walked in everyone turned their attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my Minotaur horn. The counselor of the cabin, Luke, came over to me as soon as I sat down. When I observed him a little more I could see that he had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was slightly marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his handsome smile was intact.

"I found a sleeping bag for you to use if you want," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."

I could tell that he wasn't kidding about the stealing part due to that mischievous gleam in his eyes.

I gave him a cheerful smile and took the items out of his hands to put with my other things that he had set up for me when I was gone.

"Thanks Luke!" I wrote in big letters on my notebook.

"No problem," Luke said with a small smirk on his face. He walked over and sat down next to me with his back against the wall and his hands in his lap. "How was your first day?"

"Very Interesting and Mind-Opening... I didn't even know that gods existed until recently."

"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. And once you start believing in them it doesn't get any easier."

He had a very bitter and angry tone in his voice that made me want to know his story a lot more than before. I decided to go the oblivious and safe root and question his dad Hermes first.

"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.

His eyes darken as he glares at the floor and pulls a switchblade out of his back pocket. For a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal.

"Yeah. Hermes. The god of Messengers, Medicine, Travelers, Merchants, Thieves and anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."

I figured Luke didn't mean to basically call me a nobody. I could tell he had a lot on his mind but I still had a couple more questions to ask him before I was done playing detective again.

"You ever meet your dad?" I asked hoping for the full story.

"Once." He frowned even more.

I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar. Luke looked up and managed a smile that I won't admit made my heart speed up a little bit.

"Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're like family, right? We take care of each other."

He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an hot older guy like him, even if he was a counselor, should've steered clear of a teenager like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen some toiletries for me, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day. I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon.

"Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"

Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."

"What do you mean?" I asked, trying to pull the story I wanted out of him.

His face twitched around the scar as his frown deepened.

"Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until... somebody special came to the camp. Also yes, during that quest I got this damned scar."

I blinked once then twice after he finished his rant/explanation.

"Somebody special?"

"Don't worry about it," Luke said obviously not willing to talk about it anymore.

"Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime. You can walk with me."

The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.

Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"

The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. The others lined up in order of seniority, so of course I would have been dead last. I looked around the camp as I walked with Luke. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.

Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods- and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill. In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads. At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I was going to squeeze on to the bench until Luke said that I could take his place. Unfortunately, I managed to trip and fall slightly into his lap, my hand landing on his upper thigh. I quickly fixed my position and told him sorry all while maintaining a red blush on my face. Fortunately, no one noticed the major screw up other than the both of us. I turned away from him to try to lessen the awkward atmosphere.

I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur. Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey blonde hair. Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.

Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"

Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"

Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Usually you're supposed to speak to it. You say whatever drink you want and you get it...nonalcoholic, of course. Since you're special just write down what you want and I'll do it for you."

I smiled at him and took out my notebook to write.

"Cherry Coke."

He spoke my request and the glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid. Then I had an idea.

"Blue Cherry Coke."

He gave me a confused look but laughed and said it anyway.

The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt. I took a cautious sip. Perfect. I drank a toast to my mother. She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...

"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.

I loaded my plate and was about to take a bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.

"Come on," Luke told me. He held his hand out for me to grab and I tried not to blush like a schoolgirl talking to her crush.

As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.

Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."

I didn't even want to entertain the idea of how close his lips were to my cheek at the moment so I ignored it the best I could.

"You're kidding."

His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food. Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes.

"Hermes."

I was next. I wished I knew what god's name to say. Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please. I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames. When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag. It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke. When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention. Mr. D got up with a huge sigh.

"Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."

A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.

"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson." Chiron murmured something. "Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."

Everybody cheered. I walked with Luke as we all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. Luke sat near me when we entered and we slowly grew closer as the night progressed. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home. Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag. My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite. When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly. That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.

I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.

That's all for now! If you have any questions or complaints leave a review!