II
Phineas

I'll start where I imagine Isabella left off. We arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I was making friends with Percy, and Ferb was claimed, right? Oh, you haven't heard that last bit? Alright then, I'll start there.

The three of us were just getting ready to go to sleep along with the Hermes cabin's other inhabitants when I noticed some little colourful flowers popping out of the leg of the bunk (which Ferb and I were sharing). When I asked Connor Stoll, the guy in the next bunk over, whether this was normal, he didn't respond. Instead, he stared at Ferb for a second, then pulled a megaphone out from under his bunk (to this day, I have no idea why he had a megaphone).

"HAIL FERB WHATEVER-HIS-LAST-NAME-IS, SON OF PERSEPHONE!" Connor pretty much blasted my ears out with his yelling, and I heard someone (probably from the Ares cabin— I had learned pretty quickly that if there's someone angry they're probably an Ares kid) yelling back at Connor to shut up. I got up and looked at Ferb, and saw that he had a wreath of muticoloured spring flowers in his hair, and a glowing green and pink flower hovered in the air above his head.

"Wow Ferb, congrats!" I climbed up and gave my stepbrother a high-five.

"Yeah, you're now the sole current resident of Cabin 13b." Connor announced. I had absolutely no idea how he was still talking despite having shouted so loud earlier, but I still registered what those words meant for my stepbrother (and possible cousin, I guess?): in exchange for knowing who his mother is, he would be living in a cabin alone. I was about to protest, but Ferb held up a hand and gave me a look telling me not to. So instead, I asked a really intelligent question.

"Why 13b? All the other cabins have their own numbers, right? So why not Persephone's cabin?" I inquired. Hey, it seemed sensible at the time!

"Well, when we were adding additional cabins for Hades and the non-Olympian gods, Persephone directly put in a request that we attach her cabin to her husband's, as she 'very rarely ever has children'. Of course nobody would risk the wrath of the Queen of the Underworld, so we did as she asked." A boy in the far corner of the room supplied. I thought the voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't immediately place it. Then it hit me: somewhat ironically, my first thought was that I never had been able to immediately recognize his voice even when he WAS around. The voice belonged to Albert du Bois, older brother of my friend Irving. He didn't seem to recognize me at once either, so I decided to talk to him in the morning.

I sadly waved goodby to my stepbrother as he walked to the door, suitcase in hand. He waved back, taking confident-looking strides, though I could tell he was a little nervous. I momentarily wondered if his mom would contact him during the night, or if that was what he thought would happen. Suddenly, though, Ferb stopped in his tracks.

"Vanessa? Is that you?" He asked, turning to someone hidden in the shadows on the girls' side.

"Oh, hey Ferb. Fancy meeting you here." Vanessa replied. My first thought was that Ferb always knows everyone, and then I remembered that I knew her too from our trip around the world. They said a few things that I couldn't hear, and then Ferb walked out the door, waving to her and me. To be honest, I felt a bit left out, but then it occurred to me that Ferb must've felt like that from time to time when Candace or I talked to our respective non-family best friends.

To say I had insomnia that night would be a lie. To say what I did have was just as bad, however, would be completely true.

I was standing in a mountain cave, and my first thought was that it was made of glass. Below me— FAR below, inside the mountain at ground level, stood a pale girl maybe sixteen years old. She was wearing an elegant white dress, and she looked pretty in a super famous celebrity sort of way: absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, but equally unapproachable.

Across from her, a figure rose out of the ground. I mean, actually out of the ground. Made of dirt and everything. The girl knelt, like a knight before a ruler in one of those books on medieval times.

I couldn't hear all of their conversation, but I got a surprising amount considering that I was about a gazillion feet above them. And believe me when I say that I honestly don't wish I heard more. Some things are best not repeated... The little snippets I heard were a few examples of this. Of course, my opinion may have something to do with the fact that the pale girl's voice sent icicles down my spine. To top it all off, when they were seemingly finished talking, she shot me a piercing glare and made as though to throw a frisbee at me; the next thing I knew, I was falling.

When I woke up, I wasn't in the Hermes cabin anymore. Well, not unless it had been somehow vaporized— which admittedly, considering the fact that I had just found out about my dad (and Isabella's, as well as Ferb's mom) being a god, I didn't entirely write off as a possibility.

I felt around in the dark, immediately noting how wet the grass was. While the dull green of the herbaceous plants (of the family Poeceae, if anyone's interested) hardly showed in the faint moonlight, the neon green shock of my brother's hair did.

"Ferb?" I asked, wanting to make sure I wasn't still in a dream. After all, my previous dream had seemed real enough. To my mixed relief and increased anxiety, Ferb nodded. After getting up and looking around, and finding that we were just outside Cabin Three, I heard a yawn and the sound of a third person getting up.

"Phineas? Ferb? Whatcha doin' up so late? And... What are we doing out here?" Isabella asked.

"I'm not really sure... I just woke up, and—" I didn't finish replying before Isabella shushed me.

"Did you hear that? Something's happening in there." Isabella pointed to the nearby cabin. I heard a thump.

"Maybe Percy just can't sleep?" I suggested, but before I even finished saying it I got a sense of foreboding that told me it wasn't true. Ferb and Isabella evidently didn't believe it either, as they both ran over to the cabin door. I followed them.

Just as we reached the door, two glowing peacock feathers appeared, crossing in front of the door like a barrier. Ferb tried to open the door, but the handle wouldn't budge.

"It's locked." He said. All three of us had paid enough attention on the tour to know that wasn't normal. Heck, it wasn't possible, given that none of the cabins had locks (except for the magical one the Hecate year-rounders put on around April Fool's, but it wasn't April and we didn't know that yet).

It only took one shared silent glance for us all to agree on looking in through the windows. There was almost no light to see by, but what little I could see alarmed me, to say the least. A creepy old lady in a cloak (goatskin, maybe? I couldn't quite tell) walked over to the bed where Percy was sleeping and touched his forehead (or the tip of his foot- again, I couldn't quite tell), and then it happened. What I can remember clearly is that Percy floated up towards the ceiling, still asleep, and then he just vanished. The old lady followed him, giving the three of us what I think was meant to be a "we-just-shared-a-secret" wink before disappearing as well.

A few seconds later, the peacock feather-shaped barricade turned into mist, but I'm ashamed to say we all just stood there trying to register what had just happened. Then again, combining all the startling revelations of the last under-24-hours, I guess we must've collapsed under the shock for a few minutes. I guess anyone would need those few minutes— after all, the whole day had been pretty rigorous and I for one had felt too dizzy both before and after the eight-hour flight to fully process the information until then. A dragon attacked us, our friend told us he's a satyr, mom and Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro rushed us to the airport, and my real dad is a god. I hadn't thought about how weird that last one is. I'd always thought my genetic dad was dead, or possibly an intrepid archaeologist/reporter/detective/spy who went missing in action. I'd had bazillions of different way-out-there theories about who he might be, but a god was definitely not in my top ten most likely. Yet here I was, in a magical summer camp that allowed only children of the Ancient Greek gods as campers. I had made fast friends with a son of Poseidon, and Ferb had found out his mother's identity as a flower goddess, and one of our new friends had just disappeared in front of our eyes.

In a nutshell, this was either the most exhilarating or the worst day ever.

"Do you guys think we can find our way to Chiron in the dark?" I heard Isabella ask.

"I'm not sure. We can try." I replied, trying to keep positive. Even though I knew the light was too dim to see it, I gave her what was meant as a reassuring smile. For some reason, my vision was blurry, with odd flecks of light mingling with the darkness, and that didn't do anything to help my optimism.

After taking a few steps, I tripped. 'I sure wish I could see a little better,' I thought. Then, something strange happened. The blur in my vision turned into a few clear orbs of light, and I could see much better. Scanning around, I gave a grin as I saw the sky blue of the Big House where Chiron stayed.

"Come on, this way!" I motioned happily towards the Big House. Ferb and Isabella didn't seem to be able to see for some reason, so I grabbed their hands and walked them to our destination. We all knocked on the door simultaneously. Chiron opened it, out of his wheelchair and in upright centaur form (which we had learned about earlier).

"What are you doing up? It's long past curfew." He said, surprised.

"Mr. Chiron, we all woke up outside Cabin Three and there was this glowing peacock feather blocking the door and then this old lady teleported Percy away and- and what should we do?" Isabella asked, finally panicking. I really couldn't blame her, all things considered.

"Come inside and tell me everything." Chiron replied gently. And so we did, taking turns (mostly Isabella and me, since Ferb doesn't talk much when it's not just the two of us). At the end, Chiron nodded grimly.

"I see." Chiron appeared to be deep in thought.

"All things considered, it's best not to keep this to ourselves any longer than necessary. However, as I can say with a good degree of certainty that only few of the campers who have been here longer than a few weeks would not begin to panic, it IS necessary to wait the hour or so until sunrise. It would be no good to anyone to stumble around in the dark and in a frenzy." Chiron seemed (very understandably) worried, but it hardly showed on his face and his voice was perfectly calm. Presumably that came with having as many centuries (or would that be millennia?) of experience as him.

That hour seemed like much more, and when Chiron gave us the OK to tell people, all three of us ran out the door like the building was on fire. We had discussed this while waiting: Isabella would tell Annabeth, I would tell Connor (so he in turn could use his megaphone to tell everybody else), and Ferb would wander around trying to calm down whoever panicked most.

Needless to say, the camp was chaos within ten minutes.