5. I Play Pinochle With A Horse

The storm that had been doing its best to claim its spot as the worst storm in the history of the world was finally beginning to fade from my shinobi senses as I laid in one of the large branches of the huge tree on top of the hill that marked Camp Half-Blood's boundaries. I was near the top brooding. Yes, that's right, I'd temporarily gone emo like Sasuke, but I had a very good reason for it. Apparently Mr. Brunner wanted to wait until tomorrow to answer my questions, he insisted that I needed to get some sleep. What I needed was answers about why I was being targeted and how my mom suddenly ended up in the underworld. The only thing that he would tell me was that it involved the circumstances of my birth and that I would be told more in the morning.

I knew that if I stayed in the house that I'd probably try and beat the answers out of my Latin teacher, so I left Grover under the blond haired girl's seemingly experienced hands and took off back to the pine tree where I made myself as comfortable as possible while I listened to the last of the storm leave the area.

I stayed up in that tree branch all night staring out across the land as I went over what little facts I had and tried to figure things out for myself. I gave it up for a lost cause when the sun rose and declared to the world that it was now officially Saturday on the Eastern Coast. For all of that pondering, the only thing that I knew for sure was that I had a bunch of Greek monsters after me, which I already knew, and that I was some kind of half blood in this world. I had a very good idea what the nonhuman half was but my mind kept telling me not to put all of my eggs in that particular basket unless I wanted to be thrown for a massive curve ball further down the road.

About ten minutes after the sunrise, I began hearing activity down in the valley. I looked down and saw that people were beginning to leave the cabins that I had seen last night. I watched them mill about for a little while before I turned back to looking at the rest of Long Island.

I stayed up in the tree for another hour before I heard a voice at the bottom of the tree say "You decided to stay in a tree for the night instead of a bed? If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were Pan's kid."

I looked down and saw the girl from last night looking up at me from where she stood ten feet from where the lowest branches' reach ended. I had heard her approach but hadn't felt like acknowledging her presence until she spoke. Now that I wasn't dealing with after battle tension and talking with a stubborn Latin teacher, I studied her allowing me to take in more details than just her hair color. She was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and looked a whole lot more athletic looking than you would expect a twelve year old girl from this world to look. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what you would think a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds, pretty, but they were intimidating as well, as if she was analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.

I mentally snorted at that thought before shrugging and said "I didn't want to sleep actually. Besides, some of my best thinking is done at nighttime."

The girl hmmed at me and said "Come on, Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."

I stood up on the tree branch I had been lying on and said "So I'm finally getting some answers? About time."

The girl's eyes narrowed at me but they widened when I suddenly leapt out of the tree from where I was about twenty five feet up the tree to past her about fifteen feet down the hill. I landed in a roll and came out running at a speed that was pretty slow for me. Looking over my shoulder, I noticed the girl still standing there staring at me and I said "You coming or not?"

The girl blinked before she rushed to catch up with me. She didn't say anything else on the way back to the large house instead concentrating on maintaining the pace I set which left me secretly pleased since I was going at about the same speed as a third year academy student using chakra in their legs.

Once we reached the porch to the house, the girl took the lead and our pace dropped to a slightly fast walk. The girl was breathing a little heavy but other wise showed no signs that she had just run a quarter mile faster than she probably usually did. Whoever she was, she definitely knew how to move when she needed to and how to keep oxygen in her lungs.

The porch wrapped all the way around the farm house and we followed it to the back of the house. When we reached the back I allowed my gaze to shift to the rest of the valley and began properly memorizing what the place looked like. We were definitely on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, the landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek Architecture- an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena, except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs were starting to play volleyball. Canoes were leaving the shore of a small lake and cutting through the water. Kids in bright orange T-shirts that said something I couldn't quite make out but suspected said the camp's name were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some were setting up to shoot at targets in an archery range while others were riding horses toward a wooded trail, and unless I was seriously misjudging what my eyes were telling me, some of those horses were actually Pegasi.

All of this was taken in in an instant, my mind already filing everything away even as I continued following the girl to the end of the porch, where two men sat across from each other at a card table while Grover was leaning against the porch looking more nervous than a kitten in a room full of Rottweilers. He looked at me and he seemed to flinch as if I reminded him of some terrible fact.

I frowned but before I could ask what was wrong, the girl nudged me and pointed to the man that was facing me and said "That's Mr. D, the camp director so be polite." The man facing me was small but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of cherubs. Only it was more like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got the feeling this guy could've given even my ridiculous good luck at gambling a run for its money.

"You already know Grover and Chiron." The girl pointed at the guy whose back was to me. She was pointing at Mr. Brunner.

The Latin teacher turned when the girl had said what was apparently his real name and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.

"Ah good, Percy," He said. "Now we have four for pinochle."

I blinked before I said "No thank you. You could start answering some of my questions though."

Mr. D humphed and said "My, aren't you quite sure of where you stand in this world?"

I looked straight at him and said "I have a pretty good idea, yes"

The man frowned at me. Mr. Brunner frowned at me as well before he offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked back up from the cards he was holding and gave me the briefest of glances with his bloodshot eyes as he heaved a great sigh and said "I suppose I must say it, even to you, welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you now that I've welcomed you."

"Then I ask you not to expect me to be glad to be here. I have someone to track down after all." I said with narrowed eyes even as I subtly shifted away from him since I could tell that he had been hitting the happy juice. If this guy was a stranger to alcohol then I was an Uchiha. The guy gave a halfhearted glare at me before he humphed again and went back to looking at his cards.

"Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner asked to break the tension and allowing me to finally know the girl's name. When she came forward, he said "Could you go check on Percy's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now."

"Sure, Chiron." She said. She glanced at the minotaur horn that hadn't once left my hand during the night and I expected her to say something about it only for her to turn and sprint down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her.

I watched her go for a moment before I turned back to Mr. Brunner, or Chiron as he seemed to go by here and said "So I take it the name you gave us at Yancy isn't your real name."

Mr. Brunner nodded and said "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. After all, how many people are there in today's world who are named Chiron?"

I hmmed before I turned to face Mr. D and said "And it's obvious that 'Mr. D' isn't your full name."

The man stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young man, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."

I snorted and said "'You don't just go around using them for no reason.' What is this, Eragon?"

Mr. D's eyes narrowed and I swore a purple flame sparked in them for a moment as I felt what felt like an extremely close try at killing intent being directed at me. My own eyes narrowed as I brushed the false killing intent away like it was nothing but a stray leaf on my lap and replied with my own killing intent in a two second burst at ten percent power causing the man's eyes to narrow even further before he looked back down at his cards.

Chiron-Brunner cleared his throat and said "I must say, Percy, I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."

My narrowed eyes switched their focus to my Latin teacher as I said "I'm only staying here long enough to get answers sir. And what do you mean by 'house call?'"

Mr. D muttered something about impertinent brats as Chiron squirmed a little from my 'Hokage' eyes and he said "My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to…ah, take a leave of absence."

My eyes narrowed further as I remembered the beginning of the school year when we had another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy before he had been replaced by Mr. Brunner without any explanation. My eyes shifted over to Grover who flinched at seeing my eyes like he expected me to suddenly decapitate him.

I gave a small frown at his reaction before I turned back to Chiron and said "Let me guess. You came to Yancy to make sure I had a solid grounding in Greek history as well as to confirm Grover's assessment for yourself."

Chiron nodded and said "Got it in one. Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first. You seemed to already have a good grounding in Latin for a sixth grader but you seemed more oriented to a different language than either English or Greek. It's really quite confusing, but you made it here alive, which is all that matters really since that is always the first test."

"Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?"

"Yes sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair.

"You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.

I took the cards from the table and held them in front of my eyes for a moment before I decided to showboat a little with my wind manipulation skills. I let go of the cards and a sphere of wind surrounded the two incomplete decks of cards before the wind pushed itself between the gaps of the cards and scattered them over the table in a spinning mass of layered paper before they started spinning around in a vortex of cards before the appropriate number of cards shot towards each person stacking on top of one another to form a deck of twenty cards in front of each player.

Grover and Chiron were staring at me with Grover's mouth slowly dropping while Mr. D was looking at me as if he was trying to figure out whether to give me a hug or burn me to ash and then burn me some more for good measure. Picking up my deck, I said "I actually prefer Shogi and other board games to card games, but yes, I do know a thing or two about this game."

Mr. D grunted before he made a bid. As he did, I said "You know, this still doesn't explain why I had two monsters try to kill me. I mean, why now? Why not come after me when I was younger?"

Chiron frowned and said "It's because your smell didn't catch their notice until now. Whatever your mother did to hide you, she did it well."

"Not well enough." I whispered as I remembered her seemingly exploding in a shower of lights.

Mr. D grunted and said "It really is her own fault you know."

My head snapped up as I said "What?" Grover shivered at the tone I used and even Chiron frowned as he looked at me.

Mr. D looked up from his cards and said "You were just thinking about what happened last night I imagine. Or more specifically what happened to your mother according to you. But them trying to keep you close to them is usually how they get killed. Although I suppose its only natural for them to want to keep their young nearby, in the end it is really a stupid instinct."

My eyes narrowed as I said "Tell me Mr. D, have you ever had children before?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but yes." Mr. D said as if him suddenly saying that mom either dieing or being transported straight to the underworld while still alive was completely her fault didn't bother him in the slightest.

"And yet you still call parents who want to bond with their children fools. Makes me sorry for your kids."

All of the blood in Grover's face instantly drained leaving him a pasty white color. Mr. D studied me coolly before he humphed and went back to his game.

Chiron frowned at the exchange before he said "Yes, well. As I was saying, whatever your mother did was certainly effective. But hiding people like you only works for a limited amount of time. This is due to what the other half of your parentage is."

I rose an eyebrow and said "And that other half is?" I seemed like I was as cool as a cucumber on the inside, but the truth is that I was nervous to finally have confirmation of my theories.

"I would think that would be obvious Percy." Mr. Brunner said as if he was lecturing me on a Greek myth that I had gotten a part of wrong. "Gods-the forces you call the Greek gods-are very much alive. And like mortals, they occasionally get a need that they have to fulfill."

Well, there went most of my harebrained theories about my father in this world and left only the really weird ones that you sometimes wish weren't true.

Grover brought me out of my thoughts as he timidly said "Mr. D, if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?"

"Eh? Oh, all right."

Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully. Meanwhile I looked at Chiron and said "You're going to have to forgive me, but I don't buy it. Why would someone like Zeus come down here just to do the horizontal tango with a mortal woman?"

Distant thunder suddenly rumbled overhead, but it was cloudless right now.

"Young man, I would really be less casual about throwing those kinds of names around if I were you. And as for your question, mortals may be below gods on the ladder but that doesn't mean they don't interact with them."

I scoffed and said "Yeah, they interact with them alright. Turning people into spiders just because they got challenged to a weaving contest or turning a woman into a monster that petrifies people just because she got consensually raped in her own goddess' temple. Personally I don't see what the person in charge of this realm sees in the gods since it seems to me like they do nothing but screw up people's lives. They're barely better than the titans they replaced. So excuse me if I don't give two ryo about whether or not I use their names or not. Because to me, they're nothing but a bunch of kids who throw a tantrum when they don't get what they want."

Thunder rumbled across the cloudless sky again, much closer this time as a single bolt of lightning flashed overhead. Grover was practically a bed sheet right now while Chiron was staring at me with wide eyes. But I was more interested in Mr. D's reaction. His eyes literally burst into purple flames before I felt the crushing weight of that imitated Killing Intent. And then I began seeing visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts.

I waited for thirty seconds in order to see what he was showing me. Then I blasted the guy with every single ounce of Killing Intent that I could call my own causing him to actually jerk in his chair and for both Grover and Chiron to suddenly feel like their hearts had hands around them squeezing them as they were indirectly affected by my Killing Intent. My chakra surged as my hair began turning blondish grey and spiky, my eyes went from sea green to two blocks of ice made out of sapphires, and three lines drew themselves across each cheek as I changed my form to look like my ninety eight year old self from my previous realm.

Then I took it one step further, I pushed images of my own into the other three male's heads through use of a Genjutsu. Images of a Nine Tailed fox demon being controlled to attack a village that looked big enough to be considered a city in this world. Then that same demon being sealed into a new born baby by a single man. I showed him Kakashi's hand surrounded in lightning as he pierced Haku's heart with his semi-bare hand. I showed him my fight against Gaara during the Chunin Exams. I showed him the fight between the three Sannin at Tazunka Town. I showed him me hitting Kakuzu with a Rasenshuriken cutting him into millions of pieces on the cellular level. I showed him me going against Isobo the three tailed turtle with only Gamakichi as my support. I showed him me and Shion slamming a massive rasengan down on a hydra killing it. I showed him Jiraiya turning bandits into toads and showing me the necessary hand signs to do so as well. I showed him me fighting Nagato's six paths virtually single handedly after he had completely leveled the Leaf Village. I showed him the Fourth Shinobi War where me and Bee fought the other resurrected Jinchuriki of our generation before we tore through the army of white Zetsu even as they tried to use Wood style jutsu against us in order to suppress our tenants' chakra while at the same time a number of my clones battled the former Kages and helped fight a resurrected Madara. Finally, I showed him me appearing in front of Kami, who's light had to be dimmed down more than ninety nine percent for me to even see her properly without worrying about being blind or even incinerated from her power.

I looked at the god that I now knew to be Dionysus and said "You can show me your slideshows of doom and gloom all you want. I've seen all of that and more where I come from."

Dionysus narrowed his eyes at me but I didn't care at the moment as I allowed the chakra surrounding my body to disperse turning me back into a twelve year old kid from New York State. My Killing Intent dropped back to zero and Grover and Chiron both took large gasps of air now that they could breathe properly again. They stared at me in absolute terror and I had the feeling that neither of them had ever felt or seen anything even remotely close to things like that before.

"Well now, it seems we have a wild card here." Mr. D said snapping Grover and Chiron out of their fear induced daze. "I'm tired, I believe I'll take a nap before lunch. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less than perfect performance on this assignment. Chiron, if you'd please show Mr. Uzumaki here where to go."

I blinked at the sudden change of topic and use of my former last name as Grover's face beaded with sweat as he said "Y-yes sir."

Mr. D looked back at me and said "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners."

I rose my eyebrow but Mr. D just stood up and swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.

I frowned after them before I turned to Chiron whose face was still a little pale as I said "Will Grover be okay? That guy didn't look too friendly."

Chiron nodded although he looked a bit troubled as he glanced at the back door of the farmhouse and said "Old Dionysus isn't really mad at him. He just hates his job. He's been…ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."

I blinked and said "You're telling me there's actually a palace on top of that mountain?"

"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do."

"You make it sound like this place is in America, and practically right next door to this area as well."

"Well certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."

My eyebrow rose as I said "The what of the West?"

"Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western Civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know- or as I hope you know, since you passed my course with flying colors- the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps-Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on-but the same forces, the same gods."

"And then they began moving west again didn't they?" I asked as I began thinking about all of the places with Greek and Roman influence in their architecture.

"Exactly. The gods are constantly moving as the fire does. They moved to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Everyplace they ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And now they reside in the United States. Remember what you said at the museum? How the national symbol of this country is also the symbol of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not-and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either-America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."

I considered Chiron's words as I looked across the valley towards the ocean. Looking back at him after a minute, I said "Where is Mount Olympus? You said it goes with the Heart of the West but I can think of a number of cities where that would be. DC, New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco. Any of those could be called, the 'heart' of western civilization." I frowned before my brain went through more facts before I looked back up and said "It's somewhere on the east coast isn't it? That's the only area that makes sense. Washington DC is the 'heart' of America. If the gods are here like you say, then it makes sense that they'd be somewhere along the same coast as the city."

Chiron nodded and said "Excellent deduction Percy. Mount Olympus is actually in New York city. Right over the Empire State Building to be exact."

I blinked at that since when Chiron said New York city I had at once imagined it being over either the former WTC that had been destroyed four years ago or the Statue of Liberty. I was brought out of my thoughts as Chiron shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair.

"Well, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s'mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."

I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn't planning on staying that long since I needed to get my mother out of the underworld as soon as possible. But that thought went temporarily straight to the back of my head as he rose from his wheelchair. There was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way something like that could have held all of him except for by either that or some weird kind of seal, and I knew the latter was impossible. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

'Well now, that explains his non-human presence.' I thought as I studied the horse body which had just sprung from the wheelchair; a huge white stallion. My Latin teacher was a centaur.

"What a relief," Chiron said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."