A/N: Hey readers! Shorter chapter today – lot's to come in the future and I have minimal writing time this week due to the holidays, so this is brief, though (I hope) satisfying.

This chapter is really where I begin to divorce the story from the initial writings of Rick Riordan – Reyna's part in the story becomes to change from Jason's part, and they start to gain their own personalities and such. I hope it is all you wished for, and thank you so much for your interest.

Bonus points for the person who catches the Buffy reference!

Read, review, and I hope you enjoy!

Reyna hardly listened to Drew as she rambled on and on about how stupid it was that she had to babysit the new campers and why, oh why, couldn't there have been a hot guy there to make it more fun for her?

Reyna was just glad she didn't have to deal with Drew hitting on her.

"So then when Annabeth – that's the chick who's totally MIA right now, the one who disappeared – got Percy, like, that was a huge blow to all of us actually attractive girls here. Like, come on. Her?" Drew scoffed derisively, so cold that Reyna actually could have felt a freeze come off of her. "Not that she hasn't got that tall, tan and blonde thing going on, but she doesn't even try with the hair. It's like 'oh, ponytail, let's just chuck you up and see what happens next.' It's hideous, really."

"Course," replied Reyna, rolling her eyes. "Because, you know, the only thing one should think about when trying to stay alive is their appearance. That's totally sensible."

"Right?!" said Drew, completely missing the sarcasm. "Thank the gods somebody else here gets it."

"I cannot even deal with this right now," grumbled Reyna.

She continued to glare at Drew's back until she saw the giant house in front of her. She froze in her tracks. "Nope," she said, feeling like she was vibrating with how much she was supposed to run out of there. "I need to go. This – this is not right."

Drew turned to her. "I mean, not like I really need you to stay," said Drew, "but you're probably a demigod. So you kind of are supposed to come over here."

Reyna shook her head and fought the urge to step away. This was enemy territory. This was not where she belonged. "This is so, so wrong," she muttered.

Drew, however, ignored Reyna's protests and grabbed her arm, pulling her toward the house. "What is it, that girl?" Drew whined. "Oh, gods, you'll see her later, you don't need to be so clingy. Just come on."

Frowning and making her best attempt to pull away, Reyna found herself being dragged into the house by Drew's surprising amount of strength.

"Stop that!" exclaimed Reyna. She half stumbled down the steps."And don't do that ever again."

"Don't do what?" Drew asked, folding her arms. "Gods, you're acting like such a pretentious little holier-than-thou. Who ARE you?"

"I'm not being pretentious or holy or whatever you said," replied Reyna, brushing off her clothing. "I just would prefer not to be tugged on like a rope!"

Drew stared at the space above Reyna's head. "With an attitude like that, I wouldn't be surprised if you were a daughter of Zeus. Because you act like such a special snowflake."

Reyna opened her mouth to respond that, no, she didn't even know what her favorite color was, let alone her parentage and what the hell was a special snowflake, but she was interrupted by the clopping of – hooves.

"Ugh, finally," groaned Drew. "I'm off the case." She glanced up again at the same spot above Reyna's head.

"Are you expecting me to get claimed in front of you or something?" asked Reyna. "Because the only thing I feel like claiming right now is the right to beat you with a stick until you become pleasant."

Drew's jaw dropped. "W-well at least I'm not some –"

"Drew," began Chiron, "please stop antagonizing our new camper and tell me what's going on."

"Chiron, this is Reyna. She's a demigod. She fell into camp on a flaming chariot. Can I go now?"

Chiron, however, was acting as if he had never heard Drew. "You," he said, his eyes locked on Reyna, "why do I know you?"

"I'm sorry?"

He scanned her briefly and then stumbled backward. "You should be dead."

Reyna blinked. That sure as hell was not the greeting she had expected.

"In the house," said Chiron sternly. "Drew, back to your cabin."

"Thank gods," she said, booking it out of there like she had to pee like a Pegasus.

Reyna, feeling as if she was following Chiron to the gallows, trudged along behind the centaur and nearly jumped when Chiron said, "we have lemonade."

When they made it into the room, Reyna stared at a stuffed leopard on the wall until she realized she wasn't just staring at it.

They were making eye contact.

"Your stuffed cat is staring at me," said Reyna, not looking away from it.

"Perhaps because you are staring at him," chuckled Chiron. "Now, Seymour, Reyna is a friend. Stop bothering her, please." He picked up a Snausage from the table and tossed it into Seymour's mouth.

Reyna's jaw dropped, but she managed to compose herself quickly. "What even – what is this?" asked Reyna, not sure whether she should laugh or back out of the place. She walked a little closer to the leopard, examining it. "How does it talk? It's not anything but a head – I don't even want to know where the food goes." Reyna frowned. "What is this place?"

"This," said Chiron, "is the Camp Half Blood Big House. But I do believe we have more pressing issues to discuss, don't we?"

Reyna sighed. "Yes, we do." Reyna launched into her story, starting with waking up on the bus next to Piper and finishing with getting dragged away from the rest of her group by Drew. She left out her feelings for Piper and Piper's feelings for her. She didn't feel like it was particularly necessary information.

"You must have some questions for me as well," said Chiron.

"Most important of which being why were you so convinced I should be dead."

Chiron sighed. "The marks on your arm. That purple shirt you're wearing. These aren't the typical things one would see here at Camp Half Blood." Chiron frowned and studied Reyna. "You really don't remember anything, do you?"

Reyna shook her head and ran her fingers over the marks on her arm. "Random, tiny bits of information pop into my head every once in a while," she replied. "And – thoughts. I have thoughts about people or places that ingrain themselves into me and make me feel…" Wrong, is what she wanted to say, but she didn't want to make Chiron think she was ungrateful.

"So you've got essentially no idea where you are or who I am," surmised Chiron.

Reyna shrugged. "You're Chiron. Trainer of Heracles and other children of the gods."

"So do you believe that the gods exist?" asked Chiron.

Reyna nodded. "Of course – it's illogical to assume otherwise. No one worships them anymore, but they still exist." Something came to the front of Reyna's mind, a memory, though, something that she had not had in her head before this moment. "They move across the world in correlation with the power sources, right?"

Chiron nodded once. "Well put," Chiron said, "And have you yet been claimed?"

"I don't know," replied Reyna frowning. "Perhaps. That's one memory that hasn't returned."

Seymour snarled, and Reyna, before she realized what she was doing, snarled back. She blushed, and then froze in her place.

She had been speaking another language.

"Quis erat – what just happened?" asked Reyna.

"You just spoke Latin," said Chiron. "Most demigods recognize it, though not as well as Ancient Greek, as it is in their blood. However, without practice, none can speak it fluently."

As every moment passed, Reyna's worry and feeling of displacement grew. Chiron wasn't threatening; it was more the atmosphere of the place.

"You have a history in this world," said Chiron. "And beyond that, you have a future." He turned, meeting her eyes. "A harsh future. I can tell."

"Well that's a cheerful welcome," said Reyna with an eye roll.

"I'm not a cheerful person, unfortunately," apologized Chiron. "Briefly, I was optimistic. After Percy's victory, we expected peace for at least a brief time."

"And then Annabeth went missing," said Reyna.

Chrion nodded. "This is not the same as if a typical camper went missing." He closed his eyes. "She was the backbone of this camp, this spine for years and years." His eyes opened and bore into Reyna's. "We have no choice but to save her, to return her. She's the only thing that keeps us all from falling to madness."

"And Percy," said Reyna, beginning to understand. "She keeps Percy grounded."

Chiron folded his hands in his lap and looked down at them. "It is difficult to understand," began Chiron, "as they are both so young and you know only one of them at a superficial level, but yes. And he keeps her stable. They have both seen things, experienced horrors that no person, let alone child, should have to witness. Annabeth became friends with and, if I'm allowed to enter my own conjecture, fell in love with a boy she was convinced was sentenced to death. His survival gave her hope, and her existence as his co-leader gave him a shoulder to lean on when the worst became even more horrible, and kept him from losing his head every time."

"You love them," said Reyna simply.

Chiron laughed. "I care for Percy a bit more than a typical camper, but I have a father's love for Annabeth, of course," he replied. "I essentially raised her. She became my second in command, showed wisdom beyond even my years when she was only seven. She became counselor of the Athena cabin at twelve. She was that good."

Something in this story of Annabeth's immediate command of a whole camp, her steady control and hidden agony, resonated with Reyna. Even though she'd never met her, she wanted to find her. She began to think she would find a kindred spirit in this Annabeth Chase.

"And I'm supposed to be dead," said Reyna. "Annabeth's gone, I'm supposed to be dead, and Percy's about to lose his mind and go comatose. Can we clarify the dead part so at least one thing can be easy to understand?"

Chiron frowned. "There is nothing in the world that should have allowed me to break this secret, yet you are here in violation of the oath made on the River Styx. I know not who could have the power to break the oath and not fear the consequences. This couldn't be –"

The room slowed and stopped. Seymour turned to Reyna, his mouth dropping to release mist.

"Freaking venti," growled Reyna. She pulled the hair pin out of her pocket and snapped it, revealing her short sword.

The mist began swirling, as if trying to take some sort of recognizable shape. Its voice sounded, thundering and intimidating, but Reyna stood her ground. "Your guardian gets one of your famous attacks? Lower your sword, my warrior, and listen to me now," said the mist as it formed into a woman with a goatskin cloak

"Who are you?" demanded Reyna, staring down the woman in front of her. "What do you want? And what do you mean by guardian?"

"We have little time, Reyna. My prison grows stronger with each passing day and though I am able to appear to you here, it took a full month for this progress. There is little I can do to further assist you,"

"Prison, huh?" said Reyna, folding her arms. "Give me a reason I should trust you enough to release you from this prison. Most people are put there for a reason."

"You will release me because you are, at the heart, a hero, and you will do what must be done to save what must be saved."

"Why?" asked Reyna. "What makes you so sure that I'm going to trot off like a good little girl and do your bidding?"

The woman laughed. "If you want your memories back, if you want to feel safe ever again, you will do this. You will save me so their king will not rise from the earth, so I will not be destroyed. You will save me to retrieve your memories."

"You're the jerk who stole my memories?!" exclaimed Reyna. "Well, then, I –"

"You have until the sunset on the solstice, Reyna, my warrior. Do not fail."

The smoke disappeared and the misty substance twisted back into the mouth of the leopard. Reyna blinked and heard Chiron say, "- possible without some serious consequences to the perpetrator."

"I'm going to chance a guess and say it was the lady who was just in that misty stuff," replied Reyna, nodding over toward Seymour.

Chiron looked between Seymour and Reyna's sword hand. "Where did you get -? And when did?" He turned to Seymour, looking angry. "Why do you look like you just were caught doing something awful?"

"Probably because he was spitting out a goddess to harass me," mentioned Reyna.

"Oh," said Chiron, a pained expression on his face, "that explains it."

"Explains what?"

Chiron opened his mouth to respond, but was cut short when the door flew open, and Percy, carrying Piper in his arms, burst in.

Reyna dashed over to them and helped rest Piper on the couch, where she took the other girl's hand without thinking it through. "What just happened?" she demanded. "What happened to her?"

"Hera's cabin," said Percy, not taking his eyes off of the redheaded girl who had come in behind them. "Rachel had a- a bad vision." He turned to her. "What the hell just happened, Rachel?"

The redhead, who must have been named Rachel, brushed a tear off of her cheek. "I think I might have killed her."