Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! Welcome back! Hopefully, this chapter marks the beginning of regular updates again. Sorry about the delay – coming off of the reasons for my hiatus took more out of me than I thought it would.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis


~The Finding Home Saga~

~Finding Home~

~Chapter 52: My Winter Break Gets Ruined~


I had big plans for winter break.

Well, maybe "plans" isn't the most accurate term. I knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to do that "more" Luke and I had previously talked about. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to accomplish that without my mother noticing – I'd thought about enlisting Alabaster for his help, because there was no way I was having my first time in her apartment but I'd need some sort of distraction for at least a night if that was the case – and some trepidation filled me whenever I thought about it, turning my stomach into a pile of snakes, even though I knew that Luke wasn't like that. He wouldn't hurt me or do anything that I didn't want him to. He would take care of me. Which was exactly why I thought I was finally ready for that "more" and willing to do what it took to make it happen.

But unfortunately for me, about a week before the beginning of winter break, my mom knocked at my door only a couple of hours after I had fallen asleep, startling me awake. "Percy?" she asked softly, before she opened my door.

Light seared my eyes, causing me to close my eyelids shut and twist around in my bed miserably. "Mmph," I moaned.

My mom walked into my room. Her hand squeezed and shook my shoulder gently. "Percy, you need to get up."

"Don' want to," I replied. As she chuckled, I opened my eyes anyways and looked up at her. With her face half-lit by the lights from the hallway, I could see that she looked as tired as I felt. Stressed, too. That second part probably didn't bode well for me. "Wha' is it?"

"It's camp," she said quietly. "Chiron's on the landline. He wants to – "

Suddenly, I was wide awake. Sitting up in my bed, I scrambled to my feet and headed out my door without another word.


Thankfully, it wasn't about camp specifically. Camp Half-Blood was just as safe and sound as it had been when I'd left it after summer break.

Still, I was needed. That Friday, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school. We picked up Silena, Katie, and...Thalia on the way.

It was nice to see Thalia again. More than the past summer, though, after she'd been resurrected and taken to avoiding everyone besides Annabeth, I didn't know what to say to her. It made the eight-hour drive from New York to Bar Harbor, Maine more than a little awkward. The only conversation that we had besides Silena and I making some small-talk with her and Katie (more so Katie) about what they'd been up to in the past couple of months was my mom telling them pretty much every embarrassing baby story there was to tell about me. She gets that way when she's nervous. At least the sleet and snow that pounded the highway made for some nice background noise in the moments of silence.

When we finally got to our destination – before I could literally die from the humiliation, or so it felt like – Thalia wiped the fog off the car window and peered outside. "Oh, yeah. This'll be fun."

Westover Hall looked like an evil knight's castle. It was all black stone, with towers and slit windows and a big set of wooden double doors. It stood on a snowy cliff overlooking this big frosty forest on the side and the grey churning ocean on the other.

"Are you sure you don't want me to wait?" my mom asked.

"No, thanks, Mom," I said. "I don't know how long it'll take. We'll be okay."

"But how will you get back? I'm worried, Percy."

I hoped I wasn't blushing. It was bad enough that I had to depend on my mom to drive me to my battles when I was already sixteen. Getting my license just wasn't in the cards for me right now with my mom's busy schedule. I wasn't upset with her for it or anything, but now that she'd given my friends quite the vivid picture of what raising me was like...

"It's okay, Ms. Jackson," Katie piped up. Her brown hair was pulled into a braid underneath her ski cap, her green eyes bright. "We'll keep him out of trouble."

My mom seemed to relax a little. I knew she thought Katie was the most levelheaded out of the friends I'd made, and she was my stepsister. She probably thought that Katie would keep me from getting killed. Which was also probably a valid assumption to make; that didn't mean I had to like it.

"Alright, dears," my mom said. "Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes, Ms. Jackson," Thalia said. "Thanks for the ride."

"Yes, thank you," Silena agreed. Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. I knew that was because of me.

"Extra sweaters? You have my cellphone number?"

"Mom – "

"Your ambrosia and nectar, Percy? And a golden drachma in case you need to contact camp?"

"Mom, seriously! We'll be fine. Come on, guys."

She looked a little hurt, and I was sorry about that, but I was ready to be out of that car. If my mom told one more story about how cute I looked in the bathtub at three years old, I was going to burrow in the snow and freeze myself to death.

Silena, Katie, and Thalia followed me outside. The wind blew straight through my coat like ice daggers.

Once my mother's car was out of sight, Thalia said, "Your mom is so cool, Percy."

"She's pretty okay," I admitted. I was more irritated with her than I should've been, all the stories aside. I was more irritated with this situation than I should've been in general.

I didn't want to be here. I wanted to be back home, finishing up my plans for how I was going to spend my winter break with Luke.

But, to quote a certain doctor on a medical show, "As the philosopher Jagger once said, 'You can't always get what you want.'"

"We'd better get inside," Silena reminded us. "Bianca will be waiting."

Thalia looked at the castle and shivered. "You're right. I wonder what she found here that made her send a distress call."

I stared up at the doors of Westover Hall. "Nothing good," I guessed.


The oak doors groaned open, and the three of us stepped into the entry hall in a swirl of snow.

All I could say was, "Whoa."

The place was huge. The walls were lined with battle flags and weapon displays: antique rifles, battle axes, and a bunch of other stuff. I mean, I knew Westover was a military school and all, but the decorations seemed overkill. Literally.

My hand went to the pocket where I kept Riptide. I could already sense something was wrong with this place. Something dangerous. Thalia was rubbing her silver bracelet, her favorite magic item. I knew we were thinking the same thing. A fight was coming.

Katie started to say, "I wonder where – "

The doors slammed shut behind us.

"Okay," I mumbled. "That's definitely not creepy."

I could hear music echoing from the other end of the hall. It sounded like dance music.

We stashed our overnight bags behind a pillar and started down the hall. We hadn't gone very far when I heard footsteps on the stone floor, and a man and a woman marched out of the shadows to intercept us.

They both had short grey hair and black military-style uniforms with red trim. The woman had a wispy mustache, and the guy was clean-shaven, which seemed kind of backwards to me. They both walked stiffly, like they had broomsticks shoved up their asses.

"Well?" the woman demanded. "What are you doing here?"

"Um..." I said.

The man took that for the opportunity it was. "Ha!" he snapped, which made me jump. "Visitors are not allowed at the dance! You shall be ejected!"

He had an accent – I wanted to say it was French, because he pronounced his J like in Jaques, but he didn't sound exactly like Silena's father, Jean. Considering he'd grown up in Brittany, though, maybe that just mean this guy came from a different part of France. Or maybe I was just talking out of my ass.

In any event, this guy was tall, with a hawkish face. His nostrils flared when he spoke, which made it really hard not to stare up his nose, and his eyes were two different colors – one brown and one blue, like an alley cat's.

Thankfully, Silena came to our rescue. She stepped forwards, her face all kind and sweet. Katie and Thalia both covered their ears, which the man and the woman gave them confused looks at. Not for the first time, I was grateful that I was immune to charmspeak.

"Oh, but we're not visitors, sir," Silena spoke, laying it on thick, batting her eyelashes. "You remember: I'm Silena, and these are my friends, Thalia, Katie, and Percy. We're in the tenth grade."

The male teacher narrowed his two-colored eyes. I was almost caught off-guard by it; I'd never seen someone besides me, Callie, and Drew able to resist Silena's charmspeak before, and that was only because Drew had charmspeak and we'd been able to deduce over the past couple of months that Callie and I did have siren-esque abilities after all. Yeah...that's not a story I feel like repeating even if I wasn't the one singing, though I will say that's why I sang Waterloo under my breath rather than out loud, because something-something about being in love meant Luke was able to resist my song, or so Alabaster had discovered. That was what the ability was called. Sirensong.

But then, getting back to this present, the male teacher blinked. He turned to his colleague. "Ms. Gottschalk, do you know these students?"

Despite the danger we were in just by responding to Bianca's distress call, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. A teacher named Got Chalk? He had to be kidding.

The woman blinked as well, like someone had just woken her up from a trance. "I...yes. I believe I do, sir." She frowned at us. "Silena. Thalia. Katie. Percy. What are you doing away from the gymnasium?"

Before we could answer, Thalia and Katie having drawn their hands away from their ears, I heard more footsteps, and Bianca ran up, breathless. "You made it!" she exclaimed. "You're – "

She stopped short when she saw the teachers. "Oh, Ms. Gottschalk. Dr. Thorn! I, uh – "

"What is it, Ms. di Angelo?" said the man – Dr. Thorn. His tone made it clear that, while he didn't outright hate Bianca, he definitely didn't like her, either. "What do you mean, 'they made it?' These students lived here."

Bianca was obviously more flustered than I'd ever seen her before, even during this past summer when we'd been staying on one of the Heliades. "Yes, Dr. Thorn. I just meant, I'm so glad they made...the punch for the dance! The punch is great! And they made it!"

Dr. Thorn glared at us. I decided that one of his eyes had to be fake, but which one? The brown one? The blue one? He looked like he wanted to pitch us off the castle's highest tower, but then Ms. Gottschalk said dreamily, "Yes, the punch is excellent. Now run along, all of you. You are not to leave the gymnasium again!"

We didn't wait to be told twice. We left with a lot of, "Yes, ma'am's," and "Yes, sir's," and a couple of salutes, just because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Bianca led us down the hall in the direction of the music. Even with it being four months or so since I'd last seen her, she looked different. She'd gotten a little taller and seemed a lot more confident. She was wearing the green floppy hat she'd worn when we'd rescued her and Nico from the Lotus Hotel, though, along with a black dress with elbow-length sleeves. It wasn't in the kind of style that would make you think she was goth or punk like Thalia, but if you were in the know, it certainly denoted her status as a daughter of Hades.

None of us spoke again until we got to a door that had GYM written on the glass. Even with my dyslexia, I could read that much.

"So, what's the emergency?" I asked.

Bianca took a deep breath. "I found Two."

"'Two?'"

"Two like us," she translated. She specifically looked between me and Thalia. "Like, 'us', us."

We both knew what she meant by that. I swallowed.

Usually, the way that demigods found out about camp was from other demigods that came across them or through word of mouth. Very rarely, a god or goddess would send them on a quest to find a specific demigod like Demeter had with Katie for me. In this respect, this distress call wasn't so unusual now we knew what was going on.

What was unusual was – yeah, you probably already know what I'm going to say here.

"Are you sure?" Thalia asked, her voice tight.

Bianca nodded.

"Do you know which – ?" I started, even though I knew we weren't meant to verbally guess things like that. Claiming was the right of the godly parent.

To this, the daughter of Hades shook her head.

I supposed it was a good thing that she'd found whoever this kid was. These were desperate times. Camp Half-Blood was in need of recruits, because we kept on losing campers. We needed all the fighters we could find – especially if they were a child of the Big Three, because we couldn't risk kids like us falling into the hands of Kronos – which was why I knew Bianca was here now, because a bunch of year-round campers had volunteered to go searching for demigods this school year. The problem was, there just weren't that many half-bloods out there.

"They're a brother and a sister, they're both around fourteen, maybe fifteen," Bianca explained. "I don't know their parentage, but they're strong. We're running out of time, though. I need help."

"Monsters?"

"One," she confirmed. "He suspects. I don't think he's positive yet, but this is the last day of term. I'm sure he won't leave campus without finding out. It may be our last chance! Every time I try to get close to them, he's always there, blocking me. I don't know what to do!"

Bianca looked at me desperately. I knew she put a lot of trust in me now, after everything that we'd been through together. But she looked at Thalia, too, because the daughter of Zeus had more experience than any of us with fending off monsters in the real world.

"Right," Thalia said, taking over for the moment. "These half-bloods are at the dance?"

Bianca nodded again.

"Then let's dance," Thalia replied. "Who's the monster?"

"Oh," Bianca said, before she looked around nervously. "You just met him. The vice principal, Dr. Thorn."


Weird thing about military schools: the kids go absolutely nuts when there's a special event and they get to be out of uniform. I guess it's because everything's so strict the rest of the time, they feel like they have to overcompensate or something.

There were black and red balloons all over the gym floor, and guys were kicking them in each other's faces, or trying to strangle each other with the crepe-paper streamers taped to the walls. Girls moved around in football huddles, the way they always do, wearing lots of makeup and spaghetti-strap tops and brightly colored pants and shoes that looked like torture devices – a sharp cry from Bianca's outfit, but that made sense, considering what time period she originally came from. Every once in a while, the girls would surround some poor guy like a pack of piranhas, shrieking and giggling, and when they finally moved on, the guy would have ribbons in his hair and a bunch of lipstick graffiti all over his face. Some of the older guys looked more like me – uncomfortable, hanging out at the edges of the gym and trying to hide, like any minute they might have to fight for their lives. Of course, in my case, that was true...

"There they are." Bianca nodded towards a couple of kids arguing in the bleachers. "Lauritz and Ausma Koskinen."

...Those are strange names, I couldn't help but think. I know, I know, I don't exactly have a place to talk from with a name like Perseus Styrmir Jackson, but still. Lauritz? Ausma?

The boy had messy – a trait which both Nico and I had, so that didn't rule either of our fathers out – dark brown hair, while the girl had loosely-curled dirty blonde with a red hat similar to Bianca's in style. They were talking heatedly, their heads put close together. They seemed oblivious to the rest of the world outside of one another.

Silena said, "Do they...have you told them?"

Bianca shook her head. "You know how it is. That could put them in more danger. Once they realize who they are, their scent becomes stronger."

"So let's grab them and get out of here," I said.

I started forward, but Thalia put her hand on my shoulder. The vice principal, Dr. Thorn, had slipped out of the doorway near the bleachers and was standing near the Koskinen siblings. He nodded coldly in our direction. His blue eye seemed to glow.

Judging by his cold expression, I guessed Thorn hadn't been fooled by Silena's charmspeak after all, which made sense now that I knew he was a monster. He suspected who we were. He was just waiting to see why we were here.

"Don't look at the siblings," Thalia ordered. "We have to wait for a change to get them. We need to pretend we're not interested in him. Throw him off the scent."

"How?"

"We're three powerful half-bloods. Our presence should confuse him. Mingle. Act natural. Do some dancing. But keep an eye on those kids."

"Dancing?" Silena questioned. In spite of us being on a quest, she looked a little too happy about it.

Thalia nodded. She cocked her ear to the music and made a face. "Ugh. Who chose the Bobby Darin?"

Bianca looked hurt. "I did."

"Μὰ θεούς, Bianca. That is so lame. You couldn't have picked like, Green Day or something?"

"Green what?"

"Come on, Bianca," I suggested, grabbing her lightly by the arm. "Let's dance."

The daughter of Hades went along with me willingly. We went over to an open section of flooring not to far away from the bleachers, so one of us could keep an eye on the Koskinen twins, but far enough that we could talk comfortably if we wanted to – which, I kind of did. I knew this wasn't the time or place for it, but I wanted to talk with her about what she had said about this life not being mine and Luke's first life together.

"Is it okay if I – ?" I asked her, waving my hands in the gesture that I wanted to do.

"Yeah," she said. "Go ahead."

I put my hands on her hips, and she put her arms around my neck – the standard slow-dancing pose. We swayed a little to the beat, because although I knew more types of dances than that, I had the distinctive impression she wasn't in the mood for that tonight. Not that I blamed her.

This was kind of...awkward. I wasn't cut out for dancing with girls like this.

"So, how have you been, Bianca?" I inquired, trying to keep the mood light. It was probably better off for me to start things slow than to get right into what I really wanted to ask. "How have you liked this school...Dr. Thorn aside?"

"Oh, it's nice. I like it here," she commented lightly. "I mean, it's pretty...rough," I laughed as she said this; that was one way of putting it for a military school, "but I like the routine. It's not too much different from camp." A blush rose to her cheeks. "I do miss Annabeth, though."

...Whoa. Interesting.

"And how's Annabeth doing?" I hoped that Annabeth felt the same way about her that she did, if that was what was going on here. Everybody needed something good in their lives in the face of the upcoming war right now. Plus, this next reasoning of mine wasn't all too altruistic: if Annabeth had a crush on Bianca, maybe that meant her crush on Luke would fade away. She still liked him, even after everything had been said and done.

Then again, I knew how that went.

"Frustrated," Bianca revealed. "We've been writing letters. She decided to go to this one boarding school near her father's place in Virginia. But now he wants to move to the other side of the country, and that's not really going to work."

"...No, it's not," I agreed. I couldn't really imagine Annabeth wanting to be so far away from camp like that when she'd lived there for almost half of her life.

We talked a little bit more, mostly about this and that. I couldn't really figure out a good way to insert the topic that I wanted without coming across as an asshole.

And then, I never got to talk about that topic at all. Not this time, at least.

When I looked over to the bleachers, I felt the blood drain from my face. "They're gone."

"What?" Bianca yelped, turning around. The two half-blood kids, Lauritz and Ausma, were no longer there. The door next to the bleachers was wide open. Dr. Thorn was nowhere in sight.

"We have to get Thalia, Silena, and Katie!" Bianca looked around frantically. "Oh, where'd they dance off to? Come on!"

She ran through the crowd. I was about to follow her when a mob of girls got in my way. I maneuvered around them to avoid getting the ribbon-and-lipstick treatment, and by the time I was free, Bianca had disappeared. I turned a full circle, looking for her or Thalia, Silena, and Katie. But instead, I saw something that chilled my blood.

About fifty feet away, laying on the gym floor, was a floppy red hat just like the one Ausma had been wearing. Then I caught a glimpse of Dr. Thorn. He was hurrying out a door at the opposite end, steering the Koskinen kids all but by the scruffs of their necks like kittens.

I still couldn't see Bianca, but I knew she'd be heading the other way, looking for the others.

I almost ran after her, and then I thought, Wait.

I didn't resent Thalia because of her past with Luke, and I understood that coming back to life after years of being a tree had to be incredibly hard. But after the mean comment she'd made towards Bianca about her music tastes, and just her general attitude in general really, I didn't really want to deal with her right now. Besides, the Koskinen kids were in danger. They might be long gone by the time I found my friends. I knew monsters. I could handle this myself.

So I took Riptide out of my pocket and ran after Dr. Thorn.


The door led into a dark hallway. I heard the sounds of scuffling up ahead, then a painful grunt. I uncapped Riptide.

I jogged down the corridor, but when I got to the end, no one was there. I opened a door and found myself back in the main entry hall. I was completely turned around. I didn't see Dr. Thorn anywhere, but there on the opposite side of the room were the Koskinen kids. They stood frozen in horror, staring right at me.

I advanced slowly, lowering the tip of my sword. "It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you."

They didn't answer. Their eyes, dark blue for Lauritz and a strange color of green I couldn't quite place for Ausma, were full of fear. What was wrong with them? Where was Dr. Thorn? Maybe he'd sensed the presence of Riptide and retreated...or maybe he was going after my friends instead.

No, I couldn't think about that right now.

"My name's Percy," I said, trying to keep my voice level. "I'm going to take you out of here, get you somewhere safe."

Ausma's eyes widened. Her fists clenched. Only too late did I realize what her look meant. She wasn't afraid of me. She was trying to warn me.

I whirled around and something went WHIIISH! Pain exploded in my shoulder. A force like a huge hand yanked me backward and slammed me into the wall.

I slashed with my sword but there was nothing to hit.

"Yes, Perseus Jackson," Dr. Thorn said. His accent mangled the J in my last name. "I know who you are."

I tried to free my shoulder. My coat and shirt were pinned to the wall by some kind of spike – a black dagger-like projectile about a foot long. It had grazed the skin of my shoulder as it passed through my clothes, and the cut burned. I'd felt something like this before. Poison.

I forced myself to concentrate. I would not pass out.

A dark silhouette now moved towards us. Dr. Thorn stepped into the dim light. He still looked human, but his face was ghoulish. He had perfect white teeth and his brown/blue eyes reflected the light of my sword.

"Thank you for coming out of the gym," he said. "I hate school dances."

I tried to swing my sword again, but he was just out of reach.

WHIIISH! A second projectile shot from somewhere behind Dr. Thorn. He didn't appear to move. It was as if someone invisible was standing behind him, throwing knives.

Next to me, Ausma yelped while Lauritz grabbed her wrist, clutching it tightly. The second thorn impaled itself in the stone wall, half an inch from her face.

"All three of you will come with me," Dr. Thorn said. "Quietly. Obediently. If you make a single noise, if you call out for help or try to fight, I will show you just how accurately I can throw."


Word Count: 4,440

Next Chapter Title: The Vice Principal Gets A Missile Launcher