Just for the record- I am not the type that habitually jumps off cliffs. In fact, it’s something I usually avoid. It never, ever, ends well. But this was a special case.
Annabeth and I were supposed to be scouting out two more half bloods and pulling him from his perfectly normal middle school life in eastern Virginia and introducing him to the world of gods, monsters, and Camp Half-Blood. Of course, I’d yet to meet a half-blood that had had a perfectly normal school career, and most of them had all ready been introduced to monsters, whether they were aware of the fact or not.
We’d done this dozens and dozens of times since the gods had promised to remember and notify camp about all of their children- the camp’s population had quadrupled at the very least. Satyrs were working full shifts, and older campers were sent out as well on unusual case conditions.
Well, this one definitely qualified. Camp Half-Blood had received a hastily scrawled note saying two half-bloods were enrolled in Seaside Middle School in Werechest, Virginia and needed to be moved immediately, if not sooner. No name, no Olympian parent identification- nothing.
Chiron, concerned by the nature of the note, sent Annabeth and I out that evening on the first southern-bound bus from New York City. Upon arriving and realizing we didn’t even know which kids we were to pull out, let alone what kind of danger they might be in, we decided to keep constant surveillance on as many students as possible and did the unthinkable- we enrolled in middle school. Again.
Annabeth was better at faking her age than I, so I got to be an eighth grader, she a seventh. It was remarkably easy; a few foraged signatures, a tale of missing a grade or two for a deathly illness, and a twist of the mist, and bang! We had schedules.
Now, two weeks later, we were chasing a remarkably agile janitor through the halls during a passing period, on a hunch that he was up to no good. And, though we were gaining on him, we still had one major disadvantage- we still hadn’t managed to identify our half-bloods.
“I told you, Percy,” Annabeth scolded as we skidded around the corner, “I told you, keep with that janitor!”
“Me?” I exclaimed. “I was betting on the history teacher. That man is a dictator!”
“Pah. You’re just mad at him for giving you a detention for arguing about the outcome of the Battle of Thermopoly,” Annabeth said. “That janitor just… reeks monster.”
“Ok Grover,” I answered saucily. “Hey- there!” I pointed as I caught the janitor ducking into a classroom. Putting on an extra burst of speed and dodging a few locker body-slams we skidded into the classroom before the door had a chance to shut.
The Spanish teacher glanced at me curiously.
“Need to talk to the janitor about a flaming heater,” I explained, surveying the classroom as I spoke. The teacher stood at the front of the room in front of his whiteboards. Windows lined the right hand wall, which the janitor was inching his way towards. Only a few students were in the room yet, getting ready for their upcoming class. One of which, I noticed, was a flaming red, kinky haired girl Annabeth and I suspected was one of the half-bloods.
“Well,” the teacher said, his eyebrows raising, “I’m sure that- Mr. Hilblood?” The janitor had chosen that moment to leap over a row of desks and grabbed the redhead around her waist like she weighed less than a sack of potatoes. Annabeth and I charged, but we had several more rows of desks, not to mention screaming students, to get around.
The janitor shoved a few desks out of his way, scooped up a thin boy wearing rainbow-tinted sunglasses under his other arm, and leaped through a window. The girl let out an ear-piercing shriek, accompanied by the shattering glass. Annabeth and I followed, jumping through the newly-formed exit.
And we met with a startling sight- the janitor, holding his two captives, standing inches from the edge of a cliff. And beyond that- well, there was a reason the school was called Seaside. I pulled out Riptide, and Annabeth flung at the monstrous janitor with an ancient Greek war cry. She got luckier- whereas my sword missed decapitating the janitor by a hairline, she caught ahold of the girl’s legs, yanking her free from the janitor’s grasp- just as he threw himself off the edge with the boy, cackling crazily. So, I did the only thing reasonable.
I jumped off the cliff.
When you extend the chapter, draw parallels to several gods so that we can being to speculate the children's parentage. That's something that gets PJO fan everytime, pointing at people in the street and saying, "Hephaestus, Hermes, Zeus..."
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