Sorry this took so long to get up everyone... I have been being lazy, just like Sarah in the story. At the end of the chapter is the name of Chapter 5. It should give you a pretty good idea of what's going to happen.

Chapter Four

THE PRETTY YELLOW FISHIE

Just before dawn, I was not-so-subtly awakened.

Sitting bolt upright, I blinked rapidly. Three blobs stood over me.

"Blobs," I muttered unintelligently.

Turns out, they were not blobs, but angry Ares kids. "Um… hi," I said. They just glared down at me.

"You're going to pay tonight," said the oldest kid, Jerry. "Tonight, at Capture the Flag."

"Okay." I stared at them.

"Aren't you going to retort or something?" Pure confusion shone in their eyes. "Aren't you going to attempt to pelt a book at us?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

"Oh… well, okay then. This is quite awkward." They stood there for a moment, then quietly shuffled out of the tent. Just for kicks, I picked up the nearest object; a book titled 101 Ways to Kill a Monster, and chucked it out the door. The yelp from the Ares kid made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. I figured I had a little bit of sleep left, so I curled back into bed and buried myself in the pillow.

Morning came too soon. Elise had to shake me awake. "Sarah… Sarah, wake up!"

I leapt out of bed wildly, screaming, "Attack! Sound the alarms!" That was all I got done with until I did a spectacular face plant on the floor. Trust me; I could've monologued for much longer if stupid ol' gravity hadn't ruined the effect.

Elise's eyes were wide. "You were snoring louder than Travis!"

"Whoot! I have the snoring record now!" I jumped up. Everyone else was awake.

I hesitated; should I tell them that the Ares cabin had come in and basically threatened us? Naw, no thanks. I don't want to ruin their eagerness for the continued Capture the Flag game tonight.

"Well, let's go to breakfast," Travis said as he pulled on a shoe.

"You guys go ahead; I need to get dressed." They hurried out the door at the thought of food as I pulled on my pair of jeans. Only then did I realize that my right pant leg only came down to my shin. I had forgotten about the night before. For all of you fashion freaks out there, let's just say this is the new trend.

I groaned, but there was nothing to be done. All of my other pants were dirty. After slipping on the bright orange T-shirt that said: Camp Half-Blood, I hurried out of the cabin towards the Pavilion.

I joined the kids from the Hermes cabin and the kids, er, kid from the Poseidon cabin.

I fell into pace with Matthew. He said, "Did you hear we're getting some new campers?"

I perked up. "Really? When are they getting here?"

"Should be today," he replied as we neared the Pavilion. "Two of them. One's already been claimed."

"Which cabin?"

"Athena."

Great. Yet another kid here who's smarter than me. "What about the other one?" Who knows, I could be getting a new half-sibling.

Our group entered the pavilion. It seemed as if we were the last to arrive.

"Undetermined." The pavilion begun to hush. "I'll catch you later. We've got canoeing this afternoon, remember."

Truthfully, I had completely forgotten. But I just nodded and slid into the Apollo table. Elise and Travis were having a heated discussion; something about 'Can you light fire to the sun?'. I worry about them sometimes, you know.

"What's up?" I turned away from Elise and Travis.

"Nothing much." Chelsea looked like a starving bear as she dug into her breakfast. It consisted of scrambled eggs and sausage. Yum, yum.

Nathan glanced up from his plate. A piece of egg was perched on his nose. My half-siblings can get down and dirty when food is mentioned. "Well, the Ares kids are shooting daggers at us."

I sputtered on my orange juice, nearly spraying it into Emmy's face. "D-daggers?!"

Chelsea glanced at me. Slowly, she said, "Theoretical daggers, Sarah. He means that they are looking angrily at us."

Pheww! That was a relief. "Don't forget, we've gotta go canoeing this afternoon."

Everyone looked at me funny. "What?" I glanced at them, a frazzled look upon my face.

"No, we don't," Emmy said. "Do we?"

"Well, Matthew said we had canoeing-"

You know how I almost spewed orange juice in Emmy's face? Well, I guess she wasn't too grateful, because in the middle of a large gulp, the orange juice just LEAPT FROM HER MOUTH! Onto my face! And other extremities, of course.

"What the HECK Emmy!" I growled loudly.

Emmy just sipped her cup nonchalantly, the little demon. My eye twitched and Chelsea and Travis grabbed their napkins and pelted them at me as if their lives depended on it.

Slowly, I tightened my fist around the napkins and proceeded to wipe up the orange juice that soaked me head to toe.

And the Ares cabin saw the whoooooole thing.

After taking quite some time to persuade my cabinmates that we, indeed, had canoeing this afternoon, they unwillingly followed me to the lake.

The bright summer sun shone proudly in the clear sky, making the water shimmer. "Shiny," Travis chirped, his eyes sparkling as much as the water.

"Yes Travis," I replied. "Very shiny."

Matthew was waiting for us. He had already propped up several canoes. In fact, there were too many for just our cabin and him. My question was answered when he asked, "Did you catch the Demeter cabin on the way over here?"

I shook my head. Well, at least Zoe's coming too.

I poked the canoe. I learned that wasn't the most brilliant thing to do because I was warmly greeted by the hottest thing I've ever touched. I yelped in surprise and topped over onto the sand.

"Yeah, I probably should've told you. The canoes are really hot. That's the disadvantage to these new steel canoes."

I winced as I examined my scalded finger. "You probably should have mentioned that BEFORE I touched that tin can."

Matthew shrugged. "You shouldn't have been touching it anyways."

I gave him the evil eye. "Don't start with me, boy." He inched away.

I turned to say something to Chelsea, but then I saw the Demeter kids racing down the hill. Their counselor, Jeff, skidded to a halt in front of us.

"Sorry we're late," he panted. "It took a little longer to tend to the garden than usual."

They are such treehuggers.

I nodded a greeting to Zoe as she jogged up with the rest of the Demeter cabin.

"So, let's get these tin cans a floatin'!" I said.

Matthew had to correct me of course. "Actually, we need to go over safety procedures and types of strokes first."

I narrowed my eyes; under my breath I said, "Screw safety procedures."

Emmy giggled quietly.

I'll admit, I basically tuned out everything Matthew said. Chelsea had to give me a hard poke when he was done. I wiped the drool off my chin and scrambled to grab a paddle. I glanced around, "Where are the stinkin' life jackets?"

Matthew said, "Chiron's getting more. He condemned our last set."

"Oh, that makes me feel so safe," I said, imagining what 'condemned life jackets' would look like.

Matthew paused and looked back at me. "Don't worry, I'll be here."

I stopped next to him and looked at him for a moment. Then wacked him with my paddle. Huh? What do you mean I ruined a perfectly good romantic moment?

Anywaaays, we all piled into our canoes. "Two to a canoe, people!" Matthew said. But no one paid much attention to him, because Chelsea, Emmy, and Zoe piled into a canoe, and Travis and Nathan took one.

I stood there, baffled. "Way to think of others, people! And by others, I mean me!!!"

"That's okay," Matthew said. "You can go with me."

At first, I wasn't too keen on that idea. But then you get thinking: Hey, this kids a son of Poseidon. So he can just steer the boat with his water power thingie.

Of course, my reasoning is wrong. He made me paddle. Which makes no sense AT ALL, I might add.

We'd only been paddling in circles (my own technique) when, saw a silver shimmer under the water. I leaned over to get a better look, and the next thing I know, the canoe's tipping over and I'm in the water.

I floundered about until I got my bearings. "Nice job," Matthew said dryly before he did some Poseidon-y thing and got the boat back up right. I scrambled back in.

"Well, it's your fault, for making me paddle," I said grumpily, my clothes plastered to my body.

Most of us know that wet jeans are not the most comfortable thing in the world. Those lucky few who've never experienced it, well… you're lucky. Like I said, NOT a comfortable feeling.

At least, when you're already soaked, tipping over again isn't much of a problem. And trust me, we did plenty of that. So let's see. Sarah's list of things that she is not good at? So far I got: riding Pegasi, and keeping a canoe upright. Yup, that sounds right. May as well add romance on there too.

We tipped again. This time it was not my fault! Well, not completely my fault.

The canoe shook, and the canoe rocked violently back and forth before it completely tipped to the left. The difference this time, the stupid metal canoe came and bonked me on the head.

Once I was in the water, I moved my arms to tread water, but they wouldn't listen to my brain. Come on arms, wake up!

I tried kicking with my feet, but it seemed that my whole body was taking a little break. I could imagine one of those 'Be back in 15 minutes' kinda sign hanging from my neck. Only one problem: I would be slightly dead in 15 minutes.

I slowly floated down, as if I was some kind of rock. My lungs began to beg for air, but I kept my mouth sealed shut. Head pounding, I tried to look around, but my vision began to falter. It was beginning to look like the static on one of those old TVs.

All I could make out in the murky water was a large mustard-yellow blob with orange eyes.

Yellow fishie. Pretty yellow fishie, was all my brain was capable of doing. The throbbing in my head increased; my lungs couldn't take it anymore. My mouth jerked open and breathed. But there was only water. I coughed the water out, but there was now zero oxygen in my lungs.

This was my time of dying, yet all I could think of was the yellow fish.

It came closer. It kinda looked like a snake, with a long, coil-y body and fangs coming down over its bottom lip. Pretty, yellow fishie.

Pretty… yellow… fishie…

Fishie… Yel…low…….. Pret…...ty.

My vision went entirely black. I imagined I could feel the fish's scale-y tail wrapping around my body, squeezing until there was nothing left.

Fishie….

A violent spasm ran through my body and I began coughing even more violently. How am I still alive?

"Pretty… y-yellow… fishie," I found myself saying. Air. I was above the water.

"What did she say?" "Fishie?" I could hear the comments buzzing in the air like a swarm of angry bees. They made my head hurt even more.

I wanted them all to just leave me alone to die, but the voices didn't die off, they just got louder. I felt a hand rest on my forehead.

Well, they weren't going to leave a dying warrior in peace, so I forced my eyes open. It looked like I was still underwater, everything was so blurry. But it was light. I could see a big orange blob that I could definitely recognize as the sun.

But in front of the sun were two figures. My sister and Matthew. I groaned and forced my eyelids to open further.

Everyone cheered.

"Oh, you're alive," Chelsea sighed. Her voice shook with relief.

"Where's the fishie, er, um, fish?" I sat up immediately, wincing at the stab of pain my head experienced from the action.

"What fish?" They both looked at me with puzzled faces.

I was beginning to panic. "The yellow fish! Where is it?"

"Please, just rest Sarah," Chelsea fretted. "It's just a fish."

I tried to remember. "No…" It wasn't a fish. It had been… "A monster!" I shouted shrilly, just as the orange eyes appeared below the waves.

"A monster?" Everyone repeated it.

A drizzle of water sounded as the monster reared its ugly head. I don't know what my drowned mind was thinking when it said this was pretty.

We all screamed; I clutched onto the side of the boat just in time. The sea serpent slapped the water with its long, reptilian tail. An immense wave sent to small canoes topping over the waters.

Thankfully, it was sending us closer to shore. Forgetting my near-drowning, I threw Chelsea a paddle and picked up my own. It's nice when leadership skills come out in dark times.

"Paddle!!!" I yelled over the shrieking of the serpent. Only half heard me.

We began to paddle for our lives. The serpent's head melted back into the water. It was swimming underneath us. It hit me; this creature is what had tipped my canoe.

I trembled with relief as the keel brushed the pebbles at the bottom of the lake. I leaped out of the canoe, splashing. We waded and stumbled to the beach. My first instinct was to go back and help the others. Some were pulling up the shore. Others were still bobbing out on the new waves the sea monster was creating by slapping its tail on the water with a shattering force.

"We need to get help," I said, trusting my voice not to crack.

"I'll stay here," Matthew said. His face was hardened in a determined look.

I blinked. "Okay, be careful." He simply nodded. I motioned to Chelsea. "We need to find Chiron, he can do something."

But we decided that finding Chiron would consume too much time, so this is what we did:

We ran through the camp screaming, "GET YOUR WEAPONS AND GO TO THE LAKE. MONSTER! LIVES ARE AT STAKE!!!!" A stream of kids bristling with weaponry streamed out of the buildings. Heheh… I didn't even notice that rhymed. (Seriously, while I was typing that, I didn't realize it rhymed =P) Well, we are children of Apollo after all…

Sydney led the Ares cabin towards the lake, swords raised in the air.

One of them was even screaming, "This. Is. SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"

Weird, but a good effect I guess.

We bumped into Chiron. He was leading around two girls, both around me and Chelsea's age.

Chiron looked startled to see us. "Oh, hello Sarah, Chelsea. I'd like you to meet our two newest campers-"

"No time for that!" Chelsea shrieked.

I, gasping for breath, added, "Monster. In lake. Need help!!! Lives at stake!"

The two girls looked horrified. Chiron, without a word, galloped off, probably going to get Mr. D. Chelsea took off back to the lake. I was about to follow her when I added a parting word with the two newbies. "Oh, and welcome to Camp Half Blood." I shot them a toothy grin and went pelting down towards the lake.

When we arrived, we were both doubled over from all that sprinting. I also realized that I had forgotten to grab my bow, but it seemed it wasn't needed.

The kids that we had summoned were out braving the storm-like waves and were pelting spears and arrows at the monster. The weapons stuck out from it until it looked like a pin cushion, but none had pierced the monster deep enough to kill it.

Without warning, it turned to dust right before my eyes. I learned later that Ethan of the Hermes cabin has es'ploded it with a nice spear-poke to the eye. That, plus all the other damage it had taken, had ultimately destroyed it.

I looked at Chelsea with round eyes. "First hellhounds, and then a great big yellow sea monster. What's going on?"

The idea for the next chapter was inspired by a friend. Heck, it was a whole lot better that my idea, where Matthew goes missing :)

Anywho, here is the chapter name: Camp Gets a Pool

Boy, this should be interesting...