Reyna's POV

Jason's apology was awkward as hell. He didn't exactly know what to do or more specifically what to say.

"So uh..." He scratched the back of his head. "I guess I have to apologize for being a total jerk or as Thalia said an-"

"Asshole." I wasn't exactly being nice but hey? Who would be?

"Yeah exactly. Anyways, I'm sorry. I was out of line and I didn't mean half of what I said. I wasn't angry at you just upset and kind of scared." Jason tried for a smile.  "And it seems like you two kind of have a thing going."

"What?" I asked confused. Jason frowned now also looking confused.

"I mean er so you guys aren't....you know what never mind my bad." Jason said adjusting his glasses before extending his hand. "We're cool again right?"

"Yeah," I nodded, shaking his hand and I couldn't help but chuckle lightly at the big smile he now wore. In the end neither of us could really stay pissed at one another because we still saw one another as childhood friends.

"Now I got to go. It's past my bedtime." Jason said.

"You have a bed time? Who gave you that? Annabeth?" I asked.

"Nico actually," Jason laughed. "I just do it to amuse him. He likes to be in control of small things and I think he's just so used to taking care of Hazel that he gets stuck in Parent mode and bosses me around too."

"Makes sense." I nodded. "Speaking of which I should probably get going."

"Right, yeah, don't let me hold you up." Jason said awkwardly shifting aside. Laughing quietly I headed back to the Artemis cabin and found a spot to squeeze into. It didn't take long for me to fall asleep but it felt like my rest was awfully too short.

"Rise and shine losers!" Thalia called, earning a few laughs. Confused I sat up and snickered. She had a squirt bottle in her hand and had sprayed Hylla who glared angrily.

"I'm going to kill you." She said wiping the water off of her face. And just like that the day started with Thalia running for her life as my sister went on the war path.

"Why do I feel like this is normal?" I asked. Zuri smiled brightly.

"Because it is. One time Thalia threw mud at someone who was sleeping in. So for payback we all teamed up together and got up super early and dumped a bucket of ice water on her. It was hysterical. She wasn't even mad it was so funny," Zuri laughed.

I dressed quickly and headed outside squinting from the sun that attacked my eyes. Kids were already heading for breakfast except there was a business like air to it. Today was going to be the day everything was decided. No more interruptions period. 

"Annabeth protect me." Thalia said ducking behind a confused Annabeth.

"What did you do?" She asked crossing her arms.

"Nothing, nothing at all," Thalia lied.

"That's not what Hylla says." Percy snickered and snatched up the squirt bottle spraying the girls and running off. Annabeth silently fumed.

"I didn't even do anything." She said flatly but couldn't help but smile as Percy squirted other people, managing to squirt Piper in the eye. He was now apologizing to her an excessive amount.

"Alright enough, go eat." Chiron ordered, trotting by and taking the water weapon away shaking his head.

With that breakfast passed relatively fine except for Thalia, Percy, and Nico using their silverware to catapult food at one another before Jason confiscated the weaponry and Piper stole it, giving them back to the hooligans.

"I swear everyone here is insane." I sighed shaking my head.

"Tell me about it." Frank laughed sitting next to me. "There isn't a moment's rest but it's kind of nice."

"Where's Hazel?" I asked glancing about.

"Oh she shadow travelled back to Camp Jupiter. Thought it'd be a good idea to Iris Message her the plans so she could organize an offensive front with us Romans." Frank said eating an apple.

"Not a bad idea Zhang." He really was brilliant even if he didn't think so.

"It's nothing really, besides she's worried since Dakota was put in charge." Frank and I both shivered at the idea of our friend who was always hung over on sugar leading the camp.

"Incoming!" Percy yelled smacking Nico on the back of the head with an orange slice.

"Not my little boy! Do it against Jackson and I'll drop kick you so hard up the ass you won't be able to-" Frank covered my mouth before I could finish gesturing to the younger kids.

"Nico protection squad bitches," Nico grinned, giving me a thumbs up.

"Sure but there isn't a Percy protection squad." Thalia smirked as did Nico and the two let loose a barrage on poor Percy who was caught in the middle.

"That's not fair it's not like you have one!" Percy whined covering his head with his plate.

"I have a bunch of kick ass girls with bows and knives." Thalia reminded. Piper started to join in and shot a blueberry into Percy's eye.

"Pay back!" She cheered high fiving Leo who sat next to her.

"I hope you all know you're picking up your own mess." Chiron said which ended the battle of food. All the involved parties collected what they'd used as ammunition and breakfast ended without another incident.

The morning had started off with relatively high spirits but it was time to get to the grim stuff. The meeting.

Annabeth and I spent a good two hours after breakfast talking through every possible scenario the two of us could think of before deciding to divide tasks amongst the cabins and counselors.

So here they all stood crammed into the big house waiting for orders with expectant eyes. Annabeth and I stood at the front of the room each holding a list.

"So you all know the threat, dangerous army that outnumbers us practically six to one plus some gods for the side dish." Annabeth said looking up. "We're gonna need to be better prepared than ever before and it's going to take a lot of work. We don't have a lot of information regarding the current whereabouts of the enemy."

"Which brings me to the first group." I said. "Nico and Will you two are assigned to find the best and stealthiest group of campers you can get and set up scout outposts. Find and track the current movement of the enemy and report back to us."

Will smiled. "Lou, Cecil, Hedge. How do you guys feel about coming with us?"

They all nodded in agreement and Hedge seemed excited having only recently come back to the fighting after taking time off  to be with his son.

"My baseball bat is polished and ready." He said cracking his knuckles and earning a smile from the others.

"Good." Annabeth nodded. "Next we're going to need team in charge of communications making everything run smoothly between us and the Roman camp until we can all be in one location together."

"I got it," Butch said raising his hand and selecting a few campers and siblings to help him. Those who'd been tasked filed out of the room slowly leaving space for others to squeeze inside.

"We're going to need a good large team for building a complex battlement system. If you're interested see Malcolm who has the design." Leo immediately went over followed by Nyssa his sister. Malcolm grabbed some others as well and they left.

Annabeth took the next order of business. "Weapons. We need as many as we can make."

The Hephaestus cabin volunteered along with the Hermes kids and some Athena kids who were going to cook up some nasty traps.

"Percy you're with me and Jason, we'll be running a training program that Frank came up with for us," Annabeth informed. "The rest of you get to be the workers."

"Worker?" Piper asked confused.

"In other words we get to do the heavy lifting and things no one else wants to do." I smiled thinly. This wasn't going to be fun at all.

"Nice, dirty work." Thalia laughed. "Kill me now."

"I'll come with you." Piper joked along.

"No one is dying!" Annabeth said rolling her eyes playfully. "Drama Queens."

"Tell me about it." I laughed.

"Lets go Piper, they obviously don't want us around." Thalia feigned offense.

"Meanies," Piper pouted before he two of them ran off shoving each other and laughing.

"Hard to think they'll be sisters soon enough." Annabeth mused.

"How? Oh!" I realized what she meant. "Hah yeah I guess. God Jason's gonna have his hands full."

"You have no idea. Piper is the type of person who is completely logical on her own but if you pair her up with someone they will most likely end up burning or exploding something," Annabeth said, tossing her list aside. "Anyways time to get to work."

"Charming." I smiled thinly and went outside. Already chaos of an organized kind was taking place. The materials needed to line the borders with defensive walls and towers were already being laid out. It would be a three ring system. One wall behind another with a twenty foot gap in between. It felt like we were designing a castle.

Nico and Will were with their group hashing out the last of their plan before shadow traveling out of sight. A tent was being set up for communications and the forges were alive with noise.

Annabeth rolled up her shirt sleeves and pulled a pair of working gloves out of her back pocket. "Time to rock and roll."

Setting up a large sturdy wall was difficult. But it was more so because of the lack of hands and brains of the kids who'd been assigned to help. A lot of them didn't exactly know what to do so a good chunk of time was wasted explaining to them how everything worked. But after a while work started to be more efficient and we had a good section of the skeleton for the wall and towers set up.

Piper was in charge of placing all the bolts and screws in the designated areas while her siblings Lacy and Mitchel followed behind and drilled or screwed them into place. Annabeth alternated between yelling out directions and climbing the scaffolding to get to the higher areas she didn't trust anyone else to do for fear of someone falling off. Thalia was army crawling beneath the low base of boards that had been laid out. She was the only one of us who was thin and lanky enough let alone willing to do the job.

She had to manage working in a small little space between the boards and the ground putting things in place. But there was a perk to it. She would occasionally reach out and grab people's ankles scaring them and crawl away laughing hysterically. It was a stupid way to lighten the mood but it worked.

By nightfall and after eight hours of work it was coming along nicely. The walls were thick and sturdy, metal and wood providing a thick defense. Archer's windows were placed systematically down the length of the walls. Some raw scaffolding poked out in certain places exposing the inner skeleton of the immovable force. Hopefully it would hold when the time came.

Everyone headed towards the pavilion for a well deserved meal and the same process would begin tomorrow. Roiling clouds had begun to from in the sky during mid day at some point. They dangled dangerously over camp.

Thalia had been caught many times glancing worriedly at the sky and she seemed even more anxious now as lightning struck in the distance.

"What's wrong?" I asked picking up the tools that the others had left behind. Thalia with her hair wild and tangled, covered in dirt from head to toe looked as though she'd taken a mud bath.

"Nothing just my Dad is all." She said glancing away from the sky. "Artemis said they were arguing whether or not to help but he won't budge. She's already disobeyed him twice for my sake. A third time and punishment is going to be inevitable."

"You don't think he'll make her mortal like Apollo do you?" I asked understanding her worry.

"I hope not," Thalia worried, suddenly seeming tired. "I need a break. From leading. It's not something I can handle right now."

I shrugged. "I understand. Remember our deal? If we make it out of this you take me on the hunt or I take you to Rome."

Thalia smiled brightly, her teeth white against her dirt covered face. "I forgot about that. Sounds nice. I'll actually get to explore instead of popping up unconscious on your doorstep."

"Blood pact remember?" I said holding up my hand that still had the thin small scar. Thalia nodded.

"Of course I remember that." She said a little surprised as a rain drop fell followed by another and so on. It began to sprinkle before opening up into a torrent of water. "Come on let's go before we're soaked."

But it was no use. By the time we reached the steps of her cabin the two of us were drenched to the core and laughing as we watched others slip and slide trying to find a place of cover.

"Well shit." Thalia said shaking her head flicking water from her hair everywhere.

"Agreed. Oh it's gonna suck going to the Artemis cabin." By now it was bad and I wouldn't be able to get there without treading through two inches of water.

"Just stay here, my Dad's gonna flood the camp and kill us before the monsters even do." Thalia grumbled. Lightning shot the ground nearby and her eyes got big. "Never mind, I'm sorry!"

With that we retreated back inside where we were sheltered from the rain. Thalia waited for Jason to come by but she assumed he'd stayed in the Aphrodite cabin with Piper.

"Well I'm changing out of these so they can dry." Thalia said standing.

"Right... uh where?" I asked eager to do the same.

"You take that corner I'll take this one." Thalia suggested grabbing some clothes and handing them to me. "They may be a little punk but deal with it."

"Wow thanks." She rolled her eyes at my sarcasm but smiled lightly. Turning my back I went over to my assigned corner and quickly changed into a black shirt for a band I'd never heard of and some exercise shorts.

"You decent?" Thalia asked.

"Yep." With that we both turned around and laughed. Thalia sat down on her bed which was tucked away in the corner and grabbed a notebook.

"Let's play a game." Thalia said grabbing a box of crayons tucked away.

"Crayons?" I laughed.

"Oh hush! Give me something to draw." She said picking the blue crayon.

"Um... draw a dog," I decided, not sure what to pick. Thalia nodded and made sure I couldn't see the paper as she drew. She started to snicker before showing me the drawing. It was fairly good except for the fact that the dogs tail was a monkey's tail.

"That's not bad except for the tail." I laughed. "My turn."

I sat down across from her and took a purple crayon and the notebook. Thalia tucked her long legs up to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. "Oh! I got it. Draw me."

"That's not fair! If I do bad you'll be mad," I frowned.

"No I won't, I promise. I'm just curious." She said smiling.

"Fine fine," I grumbled. "Sit still."

"Aye aye captain." Thalia remained still for a long time which I was surprised about. I glanced up every now and then to see her watching me curiously very much like an inquisitive bird.

"And done." I tossed my crayon at her and she rolled her eyes.

"Just show me." She leaned forward expectantly and I showed her the paper. "No way! You can draw?!"

"Not really." I said.

"Shut the hell up you so can." Thalia said her eyes wide. "That looks exactly like me! What the fuck?"

"Mad that I have talent and you don't?" I teased.

"Watch this I'm gonna draw you better than you drew me." With that she started to color again and I couldn't help but be amused. "Ta da!"

She showed me her paper and the drawing actually wasn't horrible. But it certainly wasn't going to win any prizes.

"It's not...horrible," I shrugged trying to soften the blow.

"Told you mine would be better," Thalia grinned.

"It's not. Mine is." I said nudging her with my foot. Thalia fake pouted and stole my drawing.

"I'm gonna go ask someone." She said standing up.

"No." I groaned not wanting to go back out in the rain.

"Yes." Thalia laughed and made a run for the door laughing.

"You'll get the papers wet before you show anyone." I said following and tackling her before she made it.

"This is assault!" Thalia yelled, shoving me off of her and poking my side with her foot.

"Sure," I laughed, getting up and stealing my paper back.

"Thievery too? Who have you been hanging out with that's been such a bad influence?" Thalia asked taking the paper back.

"You." I said shoving her playfully. Soon we were running around like little kids trying to tackle one another.

"Hey put me down!" I laughed as Thalia picked me up.

"Nope. Not until you apologize for pushing me." She said.

"Fine then I'm sorry..." Thalia set me down and I smirked. "That you're a little weakling."

"That's not an apology." She said crossing her arms and pouting.

"How cute." I teased patting her head. She rolled her eyes and sat down again. Laughing lightly I sat next to her and glanced at the pictures she had taped to the wall. "Is this you?"

"Yep." She nodded. The picture was of her and a small Annabeth. Annabeth was incredibly skinny, her hair still strikingly blonde but she was about seven. Thalia looked to be eleven or twelve. Same short hair and everything. Annabeth appeared to be crying due to a scraped knee, Thalia was holding her and seemed quiet relaxed dealing with a crying kid. "Annabeth had been messing around and hurt her knee pretty bad. Luke panicked and didn't know what to do but it wasn't that bad. I mean, I've had to pull a staple out of Jason's lip. A scraped knee is nothing."

"I'd say," I agreed, glancing out one of the windows only to realize that it'd grown dark. "It's late. I should probably go. We have to rest for tomorrow's work load."

"Eh don't bother, just stay here." Thalia shrugged. "Here I'll even give you the most room."

In reality I didn't mind it at all. I'd grown used to sharing sleeping arrangements with her. But I'd never say anything about it. So I just nodded and stayed on my side of the bed until she fell asleep. Then very subtly I moved closer not liking the big space between us. It felt odd, uncomfortable.

Gently and carefully I wrapped my arms around her hoping she wouldn't wake up. For a moment I thought she had but I was proven wrong. Her eyes were still closed even though she'd nestled back against me. Laughing quietly I closed my eyes and fell asleep.