Chapter Three

Disclaimer: I do not own the PJO or HoO series by Rick Riodan.

Kyra's POV

"So, you want to wait around for the others, or start heading home?" Nico asks.

We were walking around Camp with Michael in between us, watching as the kids played volleyball or went for a swim in the lake.

"Let's wait around for a little while longer. C'mon, I want to go see something." I say, taking Mike's hand and leading both of them to the cabins.

"Where are we going?" Nico asks.

"Just hang on." I say, smiling a little.

After about ten minutes of trying to find it, I see the two oak trees. They had gotten a bit bigger since the last time I had taken this path.

I squeeze through them and Nico follows. We carefully walk along the old, over-grown path, making sure Mike didn't trip and fall along the way.

"Are we going where I think we're going?" Nico asks.

"If you're thinking of the cliff overlooking the hills, then yes." I say.

We finally get there, to see that the scene hadn't changed after all these years. A bit overgrown with weeds and such, but besides that, it looked exactly the same.

The Moonlace still covered the hills below, except that they weren't currently blooming since it was the middle of the day. The little stream was still there, looking just a little different.

I sit down on the edge of the cliff, letting my feet dangle over the edge. Nico sits down beside me, setting Mike in his lap and holding on tightly to him.

"Y'know, it's just as beautiful in the daytime as it is as night." I say.

"You're right." he says.

We sit there for a few minutes, enjoying the peace and quiet. Suddenly, I hear a sort of cracking and breaking sound.

"What was that?" I ask, looking around.

"Probably a monster farther back in the woods." he says, brushing it aside.

Then the ground beneath me sort of just crumbles apart and I fall towards the ground.

"Kyra!" Nico shouts, trying to grab at my hand as I fall, while also trying not to drop Mike.

Our fingers just barely brush against each other, but he wasn't able to catch me.

I fall way, way down to the ground, screaming all the while. I land painfully on my back. I squint open my eyes to see Nico trying to find a way to climb down safely with Mike.

I tentatively move around, making sure nothing was broken. Thankfully, from what I could tell, nothing was. Just bruised and banged up.

I sit up just as Nico walks down on a small path he had found. He leaves Mike over by a small patch of Moonlace where we could see him and rushes over to help me stand up.

"Are you alright?" he asks, concern in his dark eyes.

"Yea, fine." I say, brushing the dirt off my clothes.

I look around and see that I had landed at the mouth of a cave. It was dark inside, making it impossible to tell if something was in there.

I take out my phone and use its flashlight feature. I shine the white light inside and see that it didn't go very far back at all, and it was deserted.

"Mike, come here!" Nico calls, waving him over.

He runs over to us, holding a flower in his small hand. He reaches up to me and gives me the flower. I smile and take it from him, then take his hand.

We walk in, looking around. There were aged maps on the walls. They looked like maps of the camp. At the back of the cave, there was a little work table.

I walk over to it and look at the things scattered across it. There was, what looked to be, plans of some sort. Maps of tunnels in different places all over the United States, safe houses, emergency armories, and some other maps of the camp.

"Nico." I say, rifling through all the papers.

"Yea, Ky?" he asks.

"I think-I think this had been Callie's little hide out. Or one of them. Where do the boarders stop over here?" I ask.

"At the end of the hills." he says, coming over to look at the contents on the table.

"Do you think she somehow infiltrated it over there with the help of one of her sorceress friends? Because I don't think hardly anyone ever went over there, no one would of seen her." I say.

"It's possible. She might've found a weak spot in it and was able to break through." he says, looking at a long list of weapons.

"Well, I'm just glad we don't have to worry about this stuff anymore, now that she's no longer a part of our lives." I say.

"C'mon, let's get out of here." he says.

"Hang on." I say, gathering all the papers and maps and putting them into my backpack.

"What do you need those for?" he asks.

"I'm going to burn them. If we leave this stuff here, it might fall into the wrong hands if someone comes across this place." I say.

"Good idea." he says, taking the old, crinkly maps off the walls.

After we've gathered everything, I look around and shiver slightly.

Nico lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. "Hey, all that's behind us. We can move on." he says.

"I know. Those memories just come into my mind every now and then. I remember everything that happened over those four years. I wish I could erase all those awful memories from my mind, but I can't." I say.

"Well, if none of that had happened, we probably wouldn't be where we are today." he says, looking down, fondly, at Mike.

"That's true." I say, running my fingers through his mop of curly black hair.

I take Nico's hand and we start walking out of the cave, Michael running around in front of us, pretending he was an airplane or something.

We start making our way back up to the top of the cliff, being careful where we stepped on the steep, narrow path.

Sometimes I hated that part of my life, all the pain Callie had put me through. But, as Nico had said, if none of that had happened, we wouldn't be where we are today, or have what we have.

A/N:

Blast from the past. I like writing those, makes me feel all nostalgic. If that had been one Callie's hide-outs, why do you think she never went through the woods and tried ambushing Kyra?

I swear, I have the most bizarre and disturbing dreams ever. Last night's was extremely strange, even for me and my fucked up mind. Let's just say it involved the birthing of killer robot dogs and Frank Iero and Gerard Way and leave it at that.

Can I just say that button-ups (especially plaid ones) and sweaters are the best fucking things ever invented. Like, fuck man, they're awesome. Throw a cami under that button-up, pair it with some ripped skinny jeans and some combat boots or hi-top Converse and you got yourself a totally fucking cute outfit.

And don't even get me started on jackets. I've already gotten two new ones and I found another that I want and just-THEY'RE SO ADORABLE, I WANT ALL THE ADORABLE JACKETS ON THE PLANET!

Man, I wanted to flip off this guy today. I was with my friend and her mom after class because her mom needed to run some errands and I didn't really want to go home yet. So, one of the things she needed to do was go to the laundromat. Well, she got her clothes started and she was talking to the owner and I was standing there with my friend and the owner just looked at me and said I needed to get some pants that weren't ripped. Okay, I'm used to people picking on me for my fashion choices, so I just smiled at him and said that I liked wearing jeans like this.

So he goes onto this whole thing of how I'm a beautiful young girl and how if I wore un-ripped jeans I'd have boys lining up for me. Ugh. Lemme just tell you that I HATE it when people do that to me. Like, they tell me "Oh man, you're gorgeous, I betcha your daddy has to ward off the boys with a shotgun." And it's FUCKING EMBARRASSING. Like really, they just need to stop.

But this guy wasn't the one I wanted to flip off. There was another guy who came over and sat down at the table with the owner and jumped into the conversation as well. Somehow my friend's mom got the conversation turned to how I'm an artist and this other guy starts asking me all these questions like,"Well, what do you do?" so I told him I was a potter and he asked me if the things I made could actually be used or if they were just for decoration. THEN, after all that and answering more questions like that, her mom said I was a successful writer too. By this point, I really just wanted to smack a piece of duct tape across her mouth.

So the guy who had been asking me all the questions about my pottery turned and looked at me and said, "Well, what kind of stuff do you write?" and I'm gonna be honest, he was about mid-fifties, early sixties, and I was pretty sure he wouldn't know what fanfiction was, so I just told him I wrote fictional stories. Then he asked me if I had published anything or sent anything in and I told him I hadn't then he launches into this whole lecture about how if I want to be a successful potter or writer, I need to put myself out there.

I wanted to scream, "I'M ONLY 15 YOU FUCKING ASSBUTT! AND FOR YOUR FUCKING INFORMATION, I'VE SOLD QUITE A FEW OF MY PIECES OF MY POTTERY AND I'VE HAD A GUY CONTACT ME ABOUT A FUCKING SHORT HORROR STORY I WROTE!" and then flip him off and storm out. Being me though, I didn't do that, but god I wanted to.

And the tone he was using was sorta like he was criticizing me because I hadn't published anything. Like fuck, just fuck. I really just don't get people, man.

I'm so excited. I'm planning on getting a new iPod nano because my iPod touch is suckish. It goes really slow and I have to press the shuffle button several times before it will actually decide to go to shuffle. It also takes forever for me to skip a song, and it glitches all the time. I'm gonna get a yellow one, 16gb. AHH! I CAN'T WAIT!

M/A:

*screams at the top of my lungs on top of a building*

"'BOARDERLINES AND ALIENS

GLOWING IN THE DARK'"

Today's song is Boaderlines And Aliens by Grouplove from their newest album Spreading Rumors.

Fucking brilliant album and you should totally check it out!

XOXO,

Mrs-diAngelo25