Percy + Magnus and the Olympians

The lightning thief (claiming)

7 OUR DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever we went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Magnus, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

He showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts- and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.
Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.
"I've got training to do," Magnus said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."

"Magnus, I'm sorry about the toilets."
"Whatever."
"It wasn't my fault."
He looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.
"You need to talk to the Oracle," Magnus said.

"Who?"
"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."

I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.
I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shim-mering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.
I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.
"Don't encourage them," Magnus warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."

"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now." Aaliyah decided.
Magnus frowned. "Don't you get it, Aaliyah? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."
"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?" Asked Aaliyah.

"I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."
"Half-human and half-what?"
"I think you know."
I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.
"God," I said. "Half-god."
Magnus nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians or maybe your a child of Loki? Or my half bro."
"That's ... crazy."
"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"
"But those are just-" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. "But if all the kids here are half-gods-"

"Demigods," Magnus said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."
"Then who's your mom?"
His hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.
"My mon is dead" she said. "I haven't seen her since I was very small. I was five when she died."
"He's human."

"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"
"Who's your dad, then?"
"Norse cabin 1 and a legacy of 6."
"Meaning?" Aaliyah asked.

Magnus straightened. "Frey, Norse God of peace, fertility, wealth, rain, summer, and sunshine. Descendant of Athena, Goddess of wisdom, civilization, mathematics, strategy, defensive warfare, crafts, the arts, and skill, she blessed me cause I barely got powers and with monsters after me."

Okay, I thought. Why not?
"And my dad?" Asked Aaliyah.
"Undetermined," Magnus said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."
"Except my mother. She knew."
"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their iden-tities."
"My dad would have. He loved her."
Magnus gave me a cautious look. He didn't want to burst my bubble. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.
"You mean sometimes it doesn't?" Asked Aaliyah.