Annabeth was waiting for me outside of the forges, unpatiently tapping her feet.
"Why were you inside there so long? Your not even a child of Hephestus!"
Weird that she would go there, but then she continued on.
"Your not even disabled in some way! Ever other Hephestus camper has a disability like their father, but you! You don't appear to have one! Though you might have inherited his ugliness instead. The gods knew you look like that. What's with all those scars running up your arms?"
And with that she had pointed at my arms, which were covered in scars resembling the tattoos I would have had if I wasn't currently in Human form. How has that girl not been smited or murdered yet? Seriously I had thought that, once I would meet her some of my dislike for Annabeth would go away but instead she's making me hate her more and more with every word.
Then I proceeded to ignore her instead of talking with her. I walked to the last cabin that I hadn't been introduced to yet, which happend to be the Ares cabin.
"Ethan! WHAT THE FUCK! Why did you throw Chris across the arena!" came a loud voice from within the cabin followed by hasty steps running towards the entrance door and ending with a very giddy and nervous Ethan Black running away from the cabin and past me.
" Oh hi Perc. Welcome to camp. GOT TO GO NOW, YOU WILL UNDERSTAND!" he said and screamed the last part as three more kids ran after him.
"And who the fuck is that! OWL FACE, did you bring us a newbie!?" and there was that voice from before.
"Clarisse! Don't fucking call me that!"
"Go to the crows!"
"No you!"
"No! You go to the crows!"
"I hope there is a fucking spider in your cabin tonight!"
This exchange was followed by a sharp intake of breath by those watching. Personally I think Annabeth would deserve to be visited by a few spiders.
Annabeth stared at me expectantly, like she wanted me to defend her. But really, why should I. From the moment I had entered camp she had been anything but friendly.
Seeing as I wasn't going to defend her, she huffed at me, turned around and left.
"So newbie, who are you. Talk before I do to you what I'm about to do to Ethan when I get my hands on him."
Hearing her say something like that made something ugly rear its head inside of me. I had to focus for a moment to calm it down before I'd do something I would regret.
Unfortunately I didn't notice how my eyes began glowing silver while I did that. A remnant of my nightmare as the Pale One.
"Oh, are you giving me attitude? Do you even know whose child I am?"
Now throughly calmed again, I refocused on Clarisse and began speaking.
"I know. Ares, am I right?"
"Well at least you know the important bits." she countered.
"It's hard not to when I'm good friends with Ethan. We talked before he had to go to camp."
"So you know Ethan. Did you know who you were before you came here?"
"Of course I did. It's not hard to realize if there are several sightings of monsters around you. All trying to get a piece of this."
Clarisse was silent for a minute, sizing me up and seemingly being satisfied with what she saw.
"I think we're gonna be great friends." and in that moment a grin had settled on her face.
Only to be mirrored by my own grin.
2 Days later:
Do you know how funny it is to keep a whole camp of demigods on their toes? To keep them guessing?
No?
Well, I'll tell you it's absulutly hilarious. With my bloodlines still active and considering the domains that are connected to them, combined with the class skills of mine it's incredibly easy to pretend to be not only a child of Hephestus (Skill: Forge, Domain: Metal and the Elven-Bloodline from LOTRs) but also a child of Apollo (Class-Skills: Potion and Poison creation and my experience with bows.) and then even a child of Hecate (magics originating or related to the bloodlines, the grimoires).
For the last two days I've been in cahoots with the Hephestus cabin to pretend I was their half sibling. Charles even got the permission of his father for me.
The camp, Dionysius and Chiron have been very confused due to it as they no doubt thought I was my father's child. Jokes on you, I still am!
During those days my lesson schedule has been changed. The Athena-cabin was no longer teaching me ancient Greek. The lessons on sword fighting and Unarmed fighting had reduced significantly as well. Meanwhile my time at the forges had been drastically increased.
I showed of some of my experiences with smithing during those lessons and needless to say, Hephestus wasn't sure if he hadn't just forgotten about me possibly being his son.
He had visited me in my dreams once, throughly put off by the gore and screams surrounding us.
I had to swear to him that I knew who my divine parent was and that it wasn't him, because if I hadn't, well, Dad would have lost his first demigod child in this century to the Hephestus cabin.
Then another two days were spent confusing them more as I continued to exell at canoeing and horseback/Pegasus riding.
So, to summarize, I had a few fun days before the capture the flag game was scheduled. And I managed to avoid becoming the LORD OF THE BATHROOMS. Annabeth Chase had also backed off by now as, in her own words: "You are not the one I was waiting for. I can't believe how stupid I had to have been to think that you would be the one. Really anyone could have been better than you."
Needless to say, Charles and the others weren't amused by this and barred her from receiving any services from the forges in the future.
This seemed to be a sentiment mirrored by their own father as the flames in their smelters were much stronger but remained usable and calm shortly after this.
My father, even if he hadn't claimed me yet, seemed to agree with Hephestus on this and, since then, Annabeth had had several canoeing accidents that, even to the very children of Athena, appeared to have been just that, accidents.
Only the Charles, the rest of the forges and I knew what had actually happened as I had told them of the changes in the water, which I had felt, before any of them had been caught up in these accidents.