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Alexandria

"Come on, Alex. You couldn't beat us even if you tried, so just admit defeat and let's move on with our day," Ryan said jeeringly, still nursing the spot where Alex had just punched him.

Alex laughed. "How about no? You can't win without cheating, so how about the real losers admit defeat? Because, let's face it, Ryan. You're not that good," she taunted back.

Overhead, the sky started to darken and rumble. That's exactly when Alex knew she had done it. Well, that and the fact that Ryan had ducked under the net and joined her on the other side, his arms wide open in invitation.

"Bring it, Alexandria! Let's fight!"

Tip for the future: When in a fight with two sons of Zeus and one son of Apollo while nowhere near any water source, run.

And that is exactly what Alex did, knowing that at least Ryan would come after her. Which was Alex's main aim, as long as she could reach the river before Ryan caught up to her.

"Move, move, move!" Alex screamed at a group of demigods in the way. She pushed through them, still in a dead run for the forest. She could hear somebody's footsteps trailing behind, but she didn't dare look back.

It had become something of a game for the two of them to carry out with such antics, chasing and fighting each other. Alex knew that she didn't actually mean the fights and that she didn't really want to hurt Ryan, but that didn't mean that she was going to back down when the opportune moment arrived.

After all, somebody had to show Ryan that he wasn't the leader, and no one else was volunteering. So, they were frienemies. And it worked out just perfect.

Most of the time, anyway.

But there were those other times, when Alex just wanted to hang out with him. No fights. No showing each other up. Just hanging out like normal friends. Normal was a scarce word in Alex's life, unfortunately for her though.

Focus, Alex, she chided herself as she stumbled into the forest boundaries. She was just happy she had chosen decent running shoes today.

The morning forest was really pretty in Alex's opinion. Back where she grew up, in Nice, France, there weren't really that many forests, so Alex really appreciated the one at Camp Half-Blood. Birds loudly chirped at one another in song, and the light wind softly swayed the leaves and branches. In open spaces between the trees, sunlight streamed in like millions of little spotlights.

Alex's fascination with the forest was short lived, however.

"Hurry up, Jack. She's got to be around here somewhere," a muffled voice that was easily recognizable as Ryan's said, not too far away from the sounds of it.

Alex quickly realized that she needed to get near the river pronto or else she would have to fight against the odds. She could sense its presence already, but she would have to keep an eye out for the two sons of Zeus, as they could easily fly up and scout her out. They weren't the only ones either, she'd watched Erik at the archery contests the Apollo cabin held. Getting hit with an arrow was definitely not on Alex's bucket list.

The treacherous leaves and sticks crumbled and cracked beneath her feet, and for once, she wished that she could fly. It just wasn't fair that flying wasn't included in the nice package of powers she had inherited from Poseidon.

And then, she heard it. The melodious sound of running water, trickling over the rocks and occasionally spilling and splashing onto the sand in small waves.

The river.

Alex excitedly jogged towards her home plate, examining the trees nearby to make sure that they weren't currently occupied by any tree nymphs. She didn't have much time though, so hoping the fates were in her favor, she climbed the one nearest to the river and waited.

She let her mind wonder a bit, thinking about just how ridiculous this was. Alex could be attacked at any moment by a monster stashed in the woods, and no one would even know because she had ventured alone.

She blamed Ryan. Ryan, and all his stupid arrogance that Alex just had to set straight. Not to mention all his 'flirtationships' with all the Aphrodite girls that he was constantly bragging about. How he could always get the best girls and couldn't resist his charm.

Jealous? Absolutely not. Alex could do that too, if she wanted. If she really wanted to, she could have his own brother, Jack, as a boyfriend right now. It was no secret that he had a crush on her.

But that didn't matter now, because she sensed their presences. Well, more like she heard Erik's as he walked and felt the atmospheric unbalance as Ryan and Jack took advantage of their demigod powers.

"Alex! Come out and play!" Ryan taunted, peeking around to see if he could spot her.

Alex rolled her eyes. As if. Besides, if they had one inkling of a brain, even if they were all put together, they would have the intelligence to go above the forest and look around in the trees. From their angle on the ground, there was no chance in Hades that she could be identified.

The trio started to make this weird clucking noise and Ryan clapped his hands. "Come out Fishy Fishy! Come out, come out wherever you are," he said, but in a whiny voice like he was speaking to a baby, or even a dog.

Alex didn't appreciate it one bit. She was a human, a seventeen year old human! And she would not be spoken to like anything lesser.

So that's when, naturally, the river exploded into geysers, spraying the three boys and throwing them in all different directions. Alex took advantage of their distraction and jumped out of the tree, which was a good twelve feet in the air, and plunged straight into the river.

For a moment she froze in a state of remorse at the sight of Jack possibly clutching a broken arm, just because he wasn't his fault technically. Ryan taunted her, and Alex stupidly rose to the bait.

But then she was reminded that at any time now, their initial shock would be long gone, and Alex would have no mercy. So, it was time to go.

Alex sprinted out of the woods, trying to make her way out again without tripping over a stupid tree trunk or something. It was hard, because about a million things had decided to run through her head all the sudden. Like how she would be so dead if they caught up. Or that the water nymphs would not be happy at all with her now that she had pretty much just turned their peaceful river into Yellowstone Park.

She was so caught up in her thoughts, in fact, that she nearly ran into a boney girl just outside the woods.

"Hey! Watch where the Hades you're going!" the girl yelled with a glare on her face.

Alex recognized this girl as Jordan McAdams, a child of Ares. And though Ally had told her that Jordan was actually a pretty cool person to hang out with, Alex had heard of the welcoming ceremonies conducted by the Ares cabin when a new demigod arrived. Alex had been at camp for two years and still not received the welcoming, so she was always on the lookout. And yes, this meant locking her cabin door at night.

"Sorry, gotta go!" Alex quickly apologized, aware of the possible situation she could get wrapped into. She didn't want her welcoming ceremony to be assisted by three other vengeful demigods if she didn't get gong.

Alex felt the girl's angry eyes on her back, but at the moment she didn't have time to care. She could see Ally and Rory's figures by the strawberry fields, and Alex figured that maybe she could blend in with the crowd and be unnoticed if she went with her friends.

Ally must've heard Alex approaching, because she turned around with a slightly annoyed look and her arms crossed. "Alexandria Hayden, what are we going to do with you?"

Rory was apparently not feeling sympathetic towards Alex either, because she threw in a sassy, "Yeah, Alex. What are we going to do with you?" echoing Ally. So much for fellow dance partners.

"What? It was Ryan's fault," Alex casually responded, kicking at the dusty dirt covering the fields. She noticed the unusual amount of Demeter and Dionysus kids out working in the hot morning daylight, and also the zero amount of greenery out on the fields.

Ally shifted her feet and opened her mouth to respond, but before Alex and Rory had the chance to warn her (Actually, Alex probably could've warned her in time but she wanted a distraction from the lecture), a muscular Demeter boy, who Alex knew as Carson Williams, carrying a large bag of fertilizer and a bucket of water stumbled right into Ally, knocking her to the ground.

The bag of fertilizer fell to the ground in the most ungraceful way, spilling its contents all over the ground. Alex managed to save the bucket of water by forcing it to stay within the bucket's boundaries, but it cost her all the remaining energy she had left from creating the river geysers, causing her to collapse with Rory barely catching her in time.

But that wasn't even the best part. Collapsing was totally worth it for the scene right in front of her on the ground. Carson, dirty and smudged with mud from the fields had landed right on top of Ally. They were both blushing madly as they struggled to untangle themselves and put as much distance as possible from each other.

Alex, despite her exhaustion, pulled herself up from Rory's hold and attempted to take the water bucket over to the son of Demeter. Rory took it away from her though and handed it over instead.

"Here you go, Carson. Sorry about that, we shouldn't have been in the way," Rory apologized in a steady voice, though Alex could detect a hint of amusement in it.

Carson held out his hand to help Ally up, but she refused and got up by herself and dusted herself off. Carson fiddled with the handle on the bucket, his boyish face still slightly tinged pink. "It's no big deal. Don't worry about it. I don't think anything we do is going help anyway," he said in crushed voice.

"I wonder what's going on?" Ally said, apparently recovered from her personal space violation.

Carson pressed his lips together, like he knew something but wasn't supposed to tell. He must've decided to share, because he leaned forward and dropped his voice. "My sister Isabella says it has something to do with our mom, like she's angry or something. But there's a reason for her anger. The seasons can't change without-"

"ALEXANDRIA!"

Alex flinched, not really wanting to look back to the voice's source. She already knew who it was. Ally and Rory, however, did look behind them.

"What did you do now?" Ally asked with her grey eyes narrowed.

"No time to explain!" Alex said, grabbing her two friends arms and taking off in a dead run. So much for the plan of blending in. "Thank you, Carson!" she called to him as they took of running, but Alex didn't hear a response.

She didn't really know where exactly to go, but they ended up in front of the Big House. Alex's eyes darted around the porch, and she quickly spotted Mr. D., drunk and asleep, on a chair just by the door. Chiron wasn't present, so she assumed that he was helping with lessons or something.

With one look at her confused friends and the followers behind, Alex decided to take the chance. She stepped on the first wooden board, then the second, third, and so on. Ally raised her eyebrows in question, but she and Rory followed nonetheless.

Each creak of the boards felt like a canon going off and Alex was sure that Dionysus would wake and assign them all kinds of fun punishments. But, for once, Zeus's reward to him for assisting so nicely in the Giant War had paid off. Mr. D was too drunk to even notice through his sleep.

Soon, Alex was able to open the screen door. She ushered her friends in, barely catching sight of Ryan and company before closing it again.

"Alex, what is all this about?" Ally stopped her before they could continue on through the house.

Alex hesitated, not sure how to tell her two best friends how she created Camp Half-Blood National Park, if even only for a few minutes. So she just went for the usual; break the bad news in the most unsugar-coated way.

"I created a geyser from the lake that knocked away Ryan, Jack, and Erik. Jack most likely has a broken arm, but I ran before I could see anything else," she said in a casual voice, already walking past them and heading up the stairs.

Ally followed her right up the stairs, but Alex noticed Rory paused down by the fist step. "Where are we going?" Rory asked, her hand tightly gripped around the rails.

"The attic. It's the best place I can think of without thinking. Why?" Alex responded, pushing further up the stairs.

Rory sucked in a breath. "Oh, nothing," she sighed, apparently forcing herself up the stairs. "Some friend," she added, though Alex pretended that she didn't hear that last part. She vaguely remembered something about Rory being claustrophobic, but surely the attic couldn't be that bad.

Finally, Alex could see the trap door that lead up to the attic. It was a strictly forbidden place, as the present Oracle no longer used the attic. Alex really didn't understand why it was forbidden, but she knew that no one had been up here for years, since the Titan War.

Bracing herself for the abundant dust, she roughly pushed it open, allowing about ten pounds of the stuff to go crashing down on the three of them.

Ally shook herself like a dog. "First I get knocked over by Carson into the dirt, now this?"

Alex shared a smile with a wide eyed Rory and climbed up into the opening. "Speaking of Carson Williams, you two sure were blushing. Anything you want to tell us, Alice dear?"

Ally didn't respond until both she and Rory were up in the dusty attic. "Me? With that son of Demeter? Please, we've barely even acknowledged each other in our whole lifetime of coming to this camp. I don't even know him!"

"He sure knows you. Must be the Aphrodite genes showing through the Athena ones," Rory said, picking through an odd table of assorted battle trophies. She picked up a particularly gross and deformed bone, grimaced, and put it back down.

Alex snorted and wiped out the dusty window with a cloth that was laying on the wooden floor. She could see the boys just outside the Big House, maybe debating on taking the risk of going in. "I agree with Rory," Alex confirmed.

"You guys are just being ridiculous. Oh, and by the way, Alex. How are things with Ryan?" Ally retorted, checking the latches on the trap door that lead into the attic.

"Things with Ryan? Are you really suggesting that-"

"Suggesting that you two totally have feelings for each other? Absolutely," Ally said in a light voice, a victorious smile on her face.

Alex looked to Rory for support, but Rory was too busy examining a pink lace scarf that even through all these years filled the attic with a pleasant smell. Alex was positive that she was listening, but she was hiding her face. Who was the bad friend now?

Alex laid down the dirty cloth and started to examine the room for a distraction. It wasn't much of use, because Ally was doing the same thing. They poked around in the rafters, occasionally finding more battle objects, but mostly just dead bugs and the rare snake skeleton.

Alex didn't talk, and no one else did either. Her mind was still reeling with slight betrayal at the fact that her friends thought she had feelings for that imbecile son of Zeus! The nerve! Sure, Ryan was pretty attractive with his confident aura and piercing blue eyes. Not to mention the tall and muscular body either. But that didn't mean that she liked him!

Suddenly, Ally gasped and nearly lost her balance from the window sill she was standing on. Both Alex and Rory went to her attention, rushing to her side.

"What's happened?" Rory asked, eying something in Ally's hand.

It was a scroll. Ally shakily unraveled it, and the three of them gathered around it in a tight circle.

"The god of death shall see it through

That two of the creator of voodoo

And one of storms and one of sea,

Plus the daughter and the tender of the olive tree,

Shall face trials and tribulations abound

To find one who won't come back around

All for the price of Harvest's need,

Double the lives has been decreed."

Ally dropped the scroll, and it reeled up into its original shape. She pushed her black hair back from her face. "What was that?"

"That, Miss Alicia Crane," a slurred voice said from the trap door, "was a prophecy!"