Everyone stared in awe as a tall centaur emerged from over the hilltop, followed by a small group of teenagers in orange shirts.
"Holy moly, that man's a horse!" Butters exclaimed, pointing at Chiron.
"Goddamnit, Butters." Cartman sighed in exasperation.
"Centaur, in fact." Chiron corrected. "Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. I suppose Grover told you about the gods already, but you'll be needing a tour. I brought these four campers to show you around." He motioned to the group of teenagers. "I'm afraid I'll have to leave you here as I have business to attend to. Grover, may I have a word?"
Chiron and Grover trotted away down the hill in urgent discussion.
A heavily tanned blond teen stepped forward. "Hi! I'm Will Solace, hottest son of the sun god and head counsellor of the Apollo cabin." He smiled brightly at the kids, his blindingly white teeth reflecting the sun into their faces. "These are Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, Leo Valdez, son of Hephaestus, and Nico di Angelo, son of Hades. We would give you each individual tours normally but there are so many of you and everyone else is busy preparing for capture the flag tomorrow, so we're just going to split you into three groups."
"Capture the flag?" Cartman scoffed. "That's so gay, am I right you guys?"
"Cartman, don't even start!" Kyle yelled.
Will and Annabeth exchanged uneasy glances.
"Right, we should get you into the camp." Annabeth said. "Some of you might get claimed by your godly parent pretty quickly once we're over the boundary, so be prepared for that."
"Claimed?" Craig asked.
"A holographic symbol will appear briefly over your head representing which god or goddess is your parent." Annabeth elaborated.
"I want to be claimed!" Stan said eagerly. "Let's go already."
Peleus let them all pass with a pleasant puff of smoke, and curled up around the pine tree again to snooze. As they crossed the hilltop into the camp the kids introduced themselves, and Leo gave them another rundown on the gods, gesturing dramatically along with his own renditions of various myths, which Annabeth corrected whenever he paused to take a breath. Nico was observing silently next to Will.
"So then there's Aphrodite," Leo went on, "she totally screwed over Hephaestus, her husband, so she could get it on with Ares. He's the god of war so no way was Hephaestus messing with him directly, which means Aphrodite basically has free reign to do whatever she wants. But Hephaestus, being a genius inventor, designed all these traps to capture Aphrodite with Ares and ridicule them in front of the other gods."
Kyle zoned out listening to him talk. He already knew a bit about Greek mythology of course, but he was having trouble grasping what any of this meant. Was he even still Jewish? Only Jimmy, Stan, and Wendy still seemed to be paying attention to anything Leo was saying.
"These gods really don't seem to have strong moral compasses." Wendy remarked.
"I find this all incredibly fascinating." Jimmy said. "This guy knows how to tell a st-st-st-story."
"So far I think Hera is the most upstanding Olympian. Zeus doesn't deserve her." Wendy said.
Annabeth snorted.
"I might be biased, but I'd have to say my dad is the best." Leo went on. "Hera I'm not too fond of. There was this one time–"
"That's the Big House." Annabeth interrupted whatever Leo was about to say, pointing to a baby blue building in front of them. "It's where we hold our camp meetings among other things. We'll split up into smaller groups down there."
Just before they reached the Big House a bright orange light appeared over the children's heads. Many of them gasped and spread out trying to see who was claimed.
"Hephaestus!" Leo shouted. A grin spread across his face.
"Is it me?" Stan bumped into Jimmy while trying to get a good look at the symbol, knocking them both to the ground.
"Jimmy Valmer, son of Hephaestus!" Annabeth announced.
The campers bowed briefly, some of the South Park kids following their example awkwardly.
"V-v-v-very cool!" Jimmy said, getting to his feet.
"Yo, brother!" Leo held his hand out to Jimmy for a high-five. "You're in my group, we're going straight to cabin nine so I can show you around and introduce you to our siblings!"