I just want to start this with a massive thank you to -concrete-rose- who was the unlucky soul who had to put up with my inane ramblings and suggestions as I plotted the next few chapters before being the first one to read them. I think she is yet to forgive me.
Bellerophon grabbed him and dragged him back outside, worried that he had accidentally woken the Cabin's occupant. Or, if Percy had seen clearly, he should say occupants.
"Blue!" Bellerophon hissed.
"Did you not see that?" Percy asked, gesturing viciously towards the door.
"What?" Nico asked.
"That!" Percy repeated, stunned.
"Blue, stop repeating yourself and just tell us what you saw." Silena instructed gently.
"Has anyone been in his Cabin recently?" Percy directed at Nico. He knew Leo wouldn't be able to answer with his common absences from Camp. "Cabin Inspections are still a thing, right?"
"Annabeth, Jason, Clarisse and Nathan do them." Nico huffed. "I refuse to let him in my damn Cabin; Chiron himself had to ask if I would unlock the door and allow Nathan to do the inspection because the other three were busy one time, which I reluctantly agreed to. Weirdly, Nathan said he never wanted to step foot in my Cabin after a random skeleton appeared to chase him around Camp afterwards."
"His Cabin does actually get checked, right?" Percy asked.
"As far as I know, yeah." Nico nodded.
"Then how the ever-loving fuck does he manage to hide another whole ass human being in there?" Percy gestured widely to the Cabin. "One that should be as dead as the teddy bears he used to maul."
Nico wrinkled his nose. "Ew, Octavian." Then it seemed to sink in. "Wait, Octavian is in there?"
"As in my legacy kid from Camp Jupiter who was actually an evil little shit?" Apollo asked, slipping around them and opening the door. Seconds later he was closing it and coming back, face pale. "Yeah, you do mean my legacy kid from Camp Jupiter who was actually an evil little shit."
"He should be dead." Nico looked thoroughly disturbed. "Like, deader than dead, he literally died in a flaming ball of demigod."
"Want to say a variation of dead one more time, Spooky?" Luke asked teasingly before frowning. "Is this guy the one that disembowelled your panda?"
"Yes." Percy pouted, the panda pillow pet still a sore subject.
"He's the one that launched himself from an onager?" Leo recalled. "He was the fireball that screamed like a little girl?"
"How is he walking the earth again?" Bellerophon frowned. "Nobody escaped when you were pulling us out of the Underworld, right?"
"It was all on Hades to round everyone up and let you out and he closed the Doors immediately after you all passed through." Percy shook his head.
"We've got less than an hour until sunrise." Apollo was the one who intervened. "I'm as freaked out about this as all of you, if not more. That's one of my line in there and he's not the one I ever wanted to see rise from the grave. But if you want to steal Burns' sword and disguise it as something else, we need to do it now."
"He's right." Percy sighed.
"We need to split up, half of us need to get the stuff we nicked from the Cabins off the meadow and into our Cabin and the other half need to steal that sword and cause some chaos for Burns," Beckendorf suggested.
"Charlie's right." Silena agreed. "You lot should deal with the Cabin and we'll deal with what's out here." She gestured to the original group and then to the other half that had joined them. "Do some damage."
They were silent as they entered the Cabin, Percy concerned that his outburst and Apollo's trip in and out of the Cabin had woken at least one of the two people sharing Nathan's bed.
Apparently though, his worry was for naught.
"Ew." Nico wrinkled his nose when he realised that Octavian and Nathan were wrapped around each other.
Percy elbowed him in the gut. "Shush."
"Can I burn all of his clothes again?" Leo whispered.
"Yes," Nico responded before Percy could.
Percy remained silent, too caught up in what Nathan had done to his Cabin. What was still visible of the walls still shone like abalone, but the majority was covered in huge sheets of paper filled with enough plans to rival Luke's, with several whiteboards and posters taking up the rest. There were pictures of campers, both deceased and alive. And most notable of them was the poster of Percy himself, a large glossy picture of him stood on the deck by the lake. And as if that wasn't as uncomfortable enough, the Percy in the poster was shirtless, water still dripping from his body. There was a bright smile on his face, laughter in his eyes. The Percy stood in the Cabin was almost certain he knew when the picture was taken – only days after Nathan had arrived – but he was confused, he thought he would have noticed someone with a camera but absolutely could not recall.
The six bunks were gone, replaced with a solo Queen-sized bed that was occupied by Nathan and Octavian. Above the bed were more pictures, pictures of Nathan and Octavian together, pictures of them with other campers that Percy had seen sat with Nathan at dinner times. Also present and mounted on the wall was the horn of the minotaur that Percy had slain outside of camp borders the night he stumbled across them for the first time, and the javelin that Tyson had created for him to use during the short-lived run of the chariot races. Still present was the fountain filled with drachmas that his father had gifted him, along with multiple mobiles filled with sea creatures hanging from the roof, courtesy of Tyson. Percy reached out and moved one of the soft blue silk curtains and sure enough, the plants and corals that Tyson had also added to the Cabin were still there.
"Blue?" Nico said gently.
"What has he done to my Cabin?" Percy whispered.
"What's with the poster?" Apollo whistled softly. "I'm not complaining about the view it provides but damn, it's a little bit of a creepy choice from a guy supposed to be masquerading as your brother."
Nico elbowed Apollo in the stomach. "One, shut up, and two, was it necessary to say you like the poster?"
"Hypocrite, you need to shut up." Apollo hissed.
"Stop squabbling." Percy glared at them, hoping that they would stop bickering for five minutes. An unlikely scenario, but he could still hope.
"Mmmm, Tavy," Nathan mumbled, shifting slightly and tightening his grip on Octavian.
"Ew." All seven of them shuddered.
"Can we just-?" Percy gestured to the interior of the Cabin.
Leo grinned and darted straight for the chest of drawers that held Nathan's clothes. Patroclus went to help him while Nico pulled his phone out of his pocket.
"We don't have time to read all of this." Nico started taking pictures of the walls. "And the minute he realises that someone was in here and saw it, he'll destroy it and we won't have a chance to check it again."
Percy nodded in understanding, taking himself off to find Nathan's sword. He groaned when he recognised the hilt of it sticking out from under the bed, as if Nathan had just dropped it on the floor and kicked it beneath the bed to either hide it or just to move it out of the way.
Reluctantly he moved closer, crouching and dragging it out as quietly as possible, wincing as it scraped on the floor slightly. He stilled, rising slightly to ensure that Nathan and Octavian were still asleep before swiftly removing the blade and standing. He pulled the blade slightly out of the sheath to check it was the correct weapon and breathed a sigh of relief. The odd colour of the metal gleamed in the soft light that illuminated the Cabin and confirmed that it was the jagged blade that Nathan had utilised in the arena.
The pile of clothes that Leo was accumulating was growing larger and larger, especially when he started to add spare bed sheets and towels to it. Patroclus was sliding things off hangers and throwing items to join the rest and Percy was swiftly becoming concerned about Nathan's shopping habits. Though, he considered when a toga was flung from Patroclus' hand, it clearly wasn't just Nathan contributing to the mass of fabrics.
Then it dawned on him. Octavian's presence clearly wasn't a new one, if the clothes and the pictures were anything to go by. The Roman had been roaming the earth again for a while, and Percy needed to know exactly how long it had been since Octavian had wandered out of the Fields of Asphodel and back into the strawberry fields of Camp Half Blood.
"We need to hurry." Apollo hissed. He tapped his wrist where a fancy watch sat and Percy squinted at it for a moment before he realised that it showed the time the sun would rise in each time zone.
"Nico, get the duvet," Leo smirked.
"You could not pay me to grab that thing." Nico glared at him. "What if they're naked?"
Leo looked terrified for a moment. "Leave the duvet." He muttered hastily, scooping up as much of the pile as he could carry.
"Leo, don't burn it." Percy followed him outside. "We need to keep it, it proves that Octavian is living with him and has been for some time."
"Fine." Leo pouted but started to run across the meadow to the Chaos Cabin with it. Bellerophon followed him, picking up the stray socks that fell but left the hot pink thong that was lying in the centre.
Percy slipped back inside, collecting Nathan's sword from where he had temporarily left it on the desk. Then he placed it back down and checked each of the desk drawers, grinning when he realised that only one of them was locked and Nathan had stupidly left the key in plain sight. He unlocked it and fished out the thick leather journal, taking a moment to check through it to make sure it wasn't just love letters from Octavian. When he was positive it wasn't, he tied it closed again, not wanting any of the loose pages to fall out, and locked the drawer, placing the key back in the exact spot he had lifted it from.
"Done?" He raised an eyebrow at Apollo who was gleefully pouring green glitter on every surface, the last person in there despite being the one who had been worried about timing.
"One moment." Apollo held up a hand, going over to the bag of supplies that he'd been carrying around all night.
From that, he withdrew a bag of rubber goldfish that he poured into the fountain.
Well, Percy thought they were rubber. Then they started swimming.
"Mist." Apollo winked at him. "I wouldn't subject real goldfish to the care of Nathan."
Percy breathed a sigh of relief. "Now are you done?"
Apollo looked around and nodded, apparently satisfied.
"Good." Percy grasped the journal and the sword in one hand and dragged Apollo out of the Cabin with the other.
"Everyone is going to know it was us." Silena looked anxious from where she was sat on the stairs, everyone piled into the living room and sitting in various spots. Outside the sun was rising in the sky and they were just waiting until they heard the first shouts of confusion.
"Not if we pretend it's happened to us too." Luke suggested, a gleam of mischief in his eyes. "Say that all of our cloaks have been nicked or something."
"Or, we say that we lock our door but it still looked scuffed as if someone had tried to kick it." Beckendorf suggested. "I can chip off some of the paint really quickly?"
"Just say we lock the door." Percy shook his head. "None of the other Cabins had locked doors, the closest thing we encountered in the way of security was the mines in the Ares Cabin. And if we do admit it was us, we say it was a practical demonstration in how easily they were lulled into a false sense of security by trusting us and we had to demonstrate how easily an attack could occur."
"Training exercise, I like it." Luke nodded.
"The only person who would be truly freaked out would be Nathan." Nico pointed out. "Because he'd know that we saw Octavian."
"I was wondering when someone would bring up the elephant in the room." Apollo beat Percy to saying it.
"After we've suffered through the consequences of my inability to say no to Luke, can you take me to see your dad?" Percy asked Nico.
"Of course." Nico nodded.
"Oi!" Luke suddenly realised what Percy had said. "You know it was an excellent plan. We got the sword, right?"
"We did." Percy nodded. He'd immediately taken the journal upstairs and hidden it on his shelves, not wanting Nathan to break in and recover it easily. The sword, however, was resting on his knee.
He looked at Leo and Beckendorf, the resident sons of Hephaestus and realised that Leo had been running around with these people all night and was sat with them now while they were all unmasked and the Firestarter looked like he didn't have the faintest clue who anyone was. Well, he obviously knew Nico and Apollo and he'd met Luke the night he'd shown up in camp. Introducing him to Bellerophon and Patroclus had just been natural because Percy had originally enlisted their help for the night and the seven of them had spent the evening in Percy's room waiting. He'd missed Bianca's unveiling on their first day in camp and Nico had introduced them in the week Leo had been back, but he was still looking at Silena, Beckendorf, Zoë, Michael, Lee, and Castor as if they were aliens. Though, Percy noted, his gaze was mostly fixed on Beckendorf.
"I've not introduced half of you to Leo." He spoke his thoughts aloud, gesturing to said person.
"We guessed who he was." Castor rolled his eyes before directing his next words at Leo. "Process of elimination, he'd introduced us to Nico so we figured you were the other 'brother' he never shut up about when given the chance to talk about."
"You look like Pollux." Leo blurted out.
"My twin." Castor nodded. "I'm Castor. I died in the Battle of the Labyrinth."
"Do you lot ever get sick of having to tell people when you died?" Leo shuddered.
"It is a little macabre, though it's probably how you'd have heard our names." Silena nodded. "I'm Silena Beauregard, I died in the Battle of Manhattan. I pretended to be Clarisse to convince her Cabin to join the fray."
"Clarisse's talked about you!" Leo perked up. "She's always said you were the greatest friend she ever had. Pipes, Aphrodite's current Counsellor, wished she could meet you. She's always hated Drew."
"I've been meaning to speak to Clarisse." Silena nodded. "And I've heard about Piper from Percy."
"And I've heard about you from Percy." Beckendorf grinned at Leo. "How's my dragon friend?"
"You're Beckendorf?" Leo's eyes widened. "Holy Styx, Festus is going to freak when he sees you."
"I-"
There was yelling outside that disrupted Beckendorf.
Percy grimaced and they all moved to put their masks on, switching their cloaks for dressing gowns so it looked as if they too had just rolled out of bed. "That's our cue."
"What is wrong with you all?" Chiron asked, wading through the sea of campers, dressing gown wrapped around his torso, blanket draped over his back and rollers still in his tail.
"You lot interrupted my beauty sleep." Dionysus cut a terrifying figure beside him, purple facemask and leopard print robe that was only loosely tied, revealing a large swathe of his chest. "I spend all my time here, looking after you brats, and this is the thanks you give?"
"What's wrong with us?" Clarisse seethed. "What do you think is wrong with us? Some punk has stolen all of our weapons and swapped them for stupid foam things and taken Stabby. Not to mention the damn glitter." She gestured to herself as an example, a shower of red glitter falling to the floor as she moved. "Someone thought it was funny to rearrange the mines and fill them with this. And I swear to my father, if this crap isn't the biodegradable type, I'll mount the culprit's head where Fred should be, since they've swapped him for a kid's unicorn."
Of course the glitter was all biodegradable, who did she take them for? Percy knew how damaging the nondegradable stuff was for the environment and the ocean.
"Oh, you think you've got it bad?" Drew shrieked. "Look at my feet!" She gestured to the horrific white orthopaedic shoes that Percy recalled Piper telling him about. "I can't get them off, I swear they're like totally glued on or something."
"At least you don't have wings glued to them," Travis complained, wiggling one of his own feet as an example of all of the shoes the Hermes Cabin were currently wearing. Connor stood beside him, barefooted and scowling, as another example of those of them who had simply refused to wear them.
"Where in the name of Hermes' thieving hands is my laptop?" Annabeth came storming out of Athena's Cabin, a trail of siblings behind her.
"Oi!" Connor snapped. "You don't hear us saying 'which of Athena's big-brained brats thought it would be a good idea to steal our actual winged shoes and our entire stock of Greek Fire' and blame you lot for it."
"Come on, are you trying to say this wasn't you?" Katie scoffed. "You've reused the same damn prank!" She gestured angrily to the chocolate bunnies on the roof of the Demeter Cabin.
"We'd own up if it was us!" Chris was standing shoulder to shoulder with his siblings, all indignant that the blame was being placed on them. None of them seemed to notice that his shoes were caked in red glitter, no wings in sight.
"It's actually lowkey insulting that you think we'd do it again." Travis huffed.
"I mean, we would because your reaction was funny, but this genuinely wasn't us," Connor added.
"Children." Chiron intervened. "Do not be throwing accusations of blame when you do not know the culprit."
"LEO FUCKING VALDEZ!" Nathan screeched as he tumbled out of the Poseidon Cabin, bedsheet draped around him in a poorly fashioned toga, green glitter all over his bare feet. Huh, Percy thought, Octavian clearly hadn't helped tie it, or Nathan had just done it as swiftly as possible in order to come and shout at Leo. He didn't want to think of the reason why Nathan was wearing a bedsheet in lieu of pyjamas.
"Put some damn clothes on, Burns." Clarisse groaned.
"That's the problem, I don't have any." Nathan snarled. "It was Valdez, I know it. He's done it once and he said he'd do it again."
"Oi, Burns, who are you accusing?" Leo asked from where he had seamlessly blended into the group of his siblings, none of whom looked surprised by his sudden appearance. Half of them looked as if they were still too asleep to register that Leo's presence had not been constant from the moment they'd all emerged from their Cabin.
"You've burnt all my clothes again!" Nathan hurled at him.
"No, I've not," Leo stated truthfully.
"If you're saying that Leo has burnt your crap, we're saying that you're the one who has nicked all of our tools." Jake glared at Nathan. "Because someone has, so we might as well blame you."
"Children!" Chiron pleaded. "Will you all please quiet down? And will one of you please give me a straight answer as to what is going on?"
Instantly the babbling started again, camper talking over camper.
"Silence!" Dionysus boomed, voice amplified. "For the sake of my head, will you cease your squabbling and speak once at a time. Jackson Grey, you go first."
Jason let out a long-suffering sigh, obviously now used to Dionysus' inability to get his name correct. "I heard everything outside before I registered that there was something wrong," he confessed. "But I've got what I'm hoping is a temporary tattoo of Pikachu," he held out his arm to show where the Pikachu tattoo was placed over the lightning bolt of his SPQR tattoo, tail lining up with the bolt the best Leo could manage. "My sword and spear coin has been swapped for a chocolate one, the statue of my father vandalised and somehow my bed was swapped for a Lightning McQueen one. While I was still in it."
"Nathan, how about you?" Chiron asked after nodding along to Jason's words.
"Why don't you just ask them!" Nathan pointed a finger at Percy and his team. "Look at them, they're the only ones stood there looking completely normal."
All eyes went to Percy and his team, muffled laughter rising as everyone registered that they had swapped their usual cloaks for novelty dressing gowns, each of them sporting a different one - the most common theme being animals. Percy stood there, knowing full well that he looked ridiculous with a fin on his head and decided to add to the image, grinning toothily to match the shark teeth that were tickling his forehead. They did not look completely normal.
"We're just as confused as you are." Percy shrugged after allowing them a moment to laugh. "But can I just ask everyone who locks their Cabin door to raise their hands?"
Nobody did.
Well, apart from Thalia but that was a given. They'd had no intention of messing with the Artemis' Hunters anyway because those of them who had experience with Thalia knew that her retribution would be worse than anything they could do.
"Well, there's your answer as to why we're stood here looking perfectly normal." Luke drawled. "We lock our doors at night, windows too."
"Don't be stupid Burns – difficult, I know – but they're new here, why would they do something that would mean we don't trust them?" Clarisse snorted.
"Someone was in my Cabin last night and I want to know who!" Nathan's voice turned shrill, a note of fear hidden in there.
"Why Nutella, hiding something?" Nico asked deliberately.
"No!" Nathan shook his head. "I just want to know who was in my Cabin, is that a crime?"
"Well, son, I think you'll find it's my Cabin." Poseidon clapped a hand on Nathan's shoulder, the latter letting out a squeak of surprise as Poseidon gave everyone a sunny smile. Mutters started to circulate as people turned to find their parents amongst them, those gods without kids stood with Chiron and Dionysus.
"Dad?" Nathan sounded terrified, Poseidon's grip on his shoulder unmoving.
"Sorry to break up this party, but we needed to drop in and have a chat," Poseidon informed the circle before his eyes zeroed in on something on the floor. "Someone might want to collect that."
Nathan's face went the same shade as the thong on the floor.