My knife clattered to the ground and I raised my hands in surrender. Two of the kids grabbed my shoulders and lifted me to my feet. Alexandra bent down and picked up my knife. The three of them herded me back to the Big House. They sat me down in front of Chiron, he wasn't sitting in a wheel chair anymore, now he looked like a centaur. "Why did you run?" Chiron asked me calmly. "Because I'm not welcome here." I said, pulling back my sleeve. I revealed my Camp Jupiter tattoo. It was a trident and it had six stripes under it. "You're Roman!" Alexandra and her comrades gasped. "How did I not notice? You had SPQR on your jacket!" She smacked her forehead and sat down on the floor. "I lead an enemy straight into camp. . ." Her voice trailed off. "I'm here on a mission. Now if I could please be on my way -" I tried to get up but one of the others pushed me back into the chair. "What's your mission?" Chiron asked. "It's a need-to-know basis." I said, crossing my arms. "Fine, have it your way." Chiron said, his tail swishing. "You can stay here for a while, then we'll see what we are going to do with you. Annabeth, could you please escort Tony to Cabin Three?" The one who had pushed me down gestured for me to follow her. She smiled, but her stormy grey eyes looked skeptical. I could tell she was wiser than she was letting on. I got up and followed her outside. "These are the cabins. You'll be staying in Cabin Three. That's Poseidon's. My boyfriend is also staying there, so you'll have company." She explained as we passed most of the cabins. "I don't want to stay anywhere. I want to carry out my orders." I said. She shrugged and stopped in front of a blue cabin. It had seashells handing over the doorstep, and a big wooden 3 was attached to the door. There was a surf board leaning up against the side of it, and there was a mat outside the door that said "I'm an Aquaholic". "Percy?" Annabeth called. A tall boy came to the door. He had black hair and green eyes, he was also wearing an orange t-shirt and flip-flops. "Hi, who's this?" He asked. "This is Tony." I held my hand up and forced a smile. "Hey, Tony. I'm Percy, you're from Camp Jupiter, right?" He asked, gesturing to my arm. "Yeah, son of Neptune." I said, stepping inside. "Me too, except I'm the son of Poseidon. Guess we're brothers then?" Percy said, sitting down on one of the bunks. I dropped my stuff on the bunk next to the fountain. I took off my jacket and hung it on the bedpost. I noticed for the first time that Percy also had a Camp Jupiter tattoo. It had the same trident symbol but only one stripe. "You lived at Camp Jupiter?" I asked. Percy looked at his arm. "Yeah, for a little. I was a Praetor you know." "Whoa, how'd you do that with only one year of service? I've been in service for six years and I'm not even a Centurion." "Well, some friends and I rescued the Eagle." Percy had a reminiscent look in his eyes. "Why are your people making me stay here?" I asked. Percy paused, like he was thinking whether or not to reveal information to an outsider, let alone a Roman. "Our Oracle received an omen," Percy said. "Chiron probably thinks we need you for a quest." He let that sink in for a moment and then continued. "You could still complete your mission, but you would have to complete the quest too. Alexandra has already been chosen to go. We thought Jason Grace would go as well, he's also Roman, son of Jupiter, but now that you've shown up you might be chosen instead." A quest, and I just got here. How fun. We sat in silence for a little while, but is it really silence when every ten seconds the fountain would splash water at one of us. Courtesy of yours truly. "Well, I think it's time for dinner, you can sit with me." Percy said. We left the cabin and headed to a marble pavilion. "Is this like your mess hall?" I asked. "Yeah, we sacrifice part of our meal to the gods and then we eat." Percy explained, scraping part of his pulled pork into the fire. I lifted my plate of mac-n-cheese and scraped part of it in. I sat back down next to Percy. We both started to eat. I could feel stares burning into my back. And every once in a while a camper would whisper something like: "He's the Roman!" Or: "Didn't he draw a knife in the Big House?" Or: "That kid tried to outrun the Apollo campers!" I took a sip from the goblet next to my plate. It tasted like Coke. "How does it do that?" I asked. "Magic. Quite frankly, I learned not question it and just accept it." Wise words.
Canva Rick Riordan I'm too lazy to come up with new characters, so I'm borrowing the originals, this is based right after the last book in HoO and right before ToA.
