Mostly Normal: Hearts and Spades

Chapter One: Języki

A/N: Welcome back to the Mostly Normal series! This is the second work in the series. hermionegirl13 is in Bold and I am in normal text. This book is dedicated to ZZZ23097, who gave me verbal advice as opposed to commenting like she was supposed to.

Maxine lay on her bed with her head hanging off of the end. She giggled and slipped as her half brother Ethan Nakamura walked in. He stared at her and then shrugged as she began to rub her head. He walked over to his bed, his legs going in long strides. The skinny girl then promptly got off of the floor and headed back onto her bed.

Victoria sashayed in with a small pile of books placed on her left arm. She glanced at her older siblings and smiled, though it was small and not very sincere, it was a smile. She placed the books on the bed when Ethan glanced over at them, he scoffed and rolled his eyes at her, "More Polish books? How many of those do you need?"

She rolled her eyes and frowned, (Eye rolling in the Nemesis cabin was not as popular as they were in the Janus cabin, but they still happened quite frequently.) "Polish is my first language dupek," she said, struggling through her words.

"Dupek?" Maxine asked with a frown. Sometimes she didn't understand a word Victoria said. "What does that mean?"

"You do not want to know," Victoria said as she shoved all of her books underneath her bed. There was a loud banging sound that echoed in from the cabin door.

Ethan sighed. "Who is doing that?" he snapped, irritated. He was not happy at the moment, and wouldn't tell any of his siblings why. Victoria huffed and went over to the door to check and maybe yell some profanities in Polish.

She peeked irritably out of the cabin door. The banging was coming from her fourteen-year-old half-brother Nero, who was trying out some new drums he'd borrowed from the Apollo cabin. Victoria rolled her eyes again. Why was Nero playing with drums he had no clue how to use?

"What on earth are you doing?" Victoria yelled over the annoying drum playing. Maxine stomped out of the door and grabbed the drums. She stomped away with them in her hands, and when she reached the Apollo cabin, most of the campers were already shying away from the daughter of Nemesis.

"Who gave Nero these?" She questioned raising them up into the air.

Nobody answered. Some of the kids even exchanged bewildered looks. One bold child of Apollo called, "We didn't give him anything, Maxine."

Maxine sighed and handed the drums to the Apollo kid, who quickly scurried away. The child of Nemesis shook her head.

Nero was looking sheepish. "It looked so easy when they did it," he explained to his sister, "I thought I could too. But I guess I hit it too hard. I made Victoria angry I'm sure, and probably Ethan as well."

Maxine snorted and gave her younger brother a playful shove. He shoved back with a grin, his shaggy black hair moving with a swish, his dark eyes twinkling playfully. Maxine picked him up and carried him back to the cabin as if nothing had happened.

Victoria sat on her bed, muttering Polish words under her breath. Ethan stood up and stormed out of the cabin. "Where do you think you're going?" Maxine questioned, grabbing the collar of his Camp Half-Blood T-shirt and holding him back.

"I want to go find Alabaster," Ethan replied wriggling around, trying to get out of his sister's grip.

Maxine sighed and released her half sibling so that he could go find his friend. There was a yell from the Hephaestus cabin. Victoria and Nero raced to the door and stared.

The cabin and forge lay in pieces, all over the camp. Victoria gasped and tried to push past Maxine, though the older girl would not let her.

"Ale ona tam jest! Muszę iść!" Maxine then let her arm drop as she let her sister go. She ran for the cabin, looking for her friend.

There was a large pile of rubble where the Hephaestus cabin used to be, littered with bits of twisted metal. Part of it was moving slightly, and a weak moan issued from a crack. Maxine's eyes widened. Someone was in there!

Victoria climbed bravely onto the rubble and started moving beams and other things frantically, her teal-blue eyes wide with fear. Where was she? Victoria couldn't see her!

Suddenly Victoria gasped as she was pulled back by a pair of strong arms. "You shouldn't climb rubble like that! You could get hurt!" Ludwig, her crush, yelled as he pulled her back to the pile.

Ludwig and Gilbert, Ludwig's twin brother, sat her down on the grass next to the pile and began to tend to the cuts that she was not aware of ever getting. When the twins were done, the Polish girl jumped up and clambered over to the rubble again. Amelia, one of the children of Hephaestus, pulled a huge piece of rubble up despite her poor health, and under it lay a very broken Elizaveta.

Victoria ran to her best friend with fear in her eyes. She prayed to all the gods that the Hungarian girl was alright.

Taking her friend's hand, Victoria said one last prayer to her mother and finally mustered the courage to look. Elizaveta smiled weakly. "Victoria," she rasped, "I'll be okay. Can you get one of them Apollos for me?"

Victoria swallowed and nodded, letting go of Elizaveta's hand and walking over to a group of Apollo's kids, deliberately not looking at Ludwig in case she blushed. Victoria hated blushing. It had absolutely no point.

A child of Apollo ran up to some of the other injured children of Hephaestus. Victoria was nearly certain that her name was Kayla, though, at this moment, none of that mattered. All she needed was to find Gilbert, and she knew that he understood enough basic Polish that he could understand her.

"Gilbert! Gdzie jesteś?" she shouted, looking around for the suddenly absent boy. There was no answer at first, so Victoria shouted again. "Potrzebuję cię!"

No one understood her except for one: Gilbert. He came running from talking to a child of Apollo after Victoria's second cry. "What do you need, Victoria?" he asked anxiously.

" Elizaveta cię potrzebuje! Proszę ją uzdrowić," Victoria shouted. Gilbert's pale eyes grew wide and he ran to the wreckage. Ludwig followed after them, shouting at his brother.

"Bruder, was machst du?" he shouted. Gibert waved his twin off and then began looking around for his fallen friend. When he found her, he stopped and placed both of his hands on her back, they began to glow. Soon after he did this, the Hungarian girl sat up and hugged him.

"Köszönöm," she whispered as she fell further into the muscular boy. Gilbert hummed and picked her up, and he carried the girl all the way back to the infirmary tent.

Victoria stared at them with a kind of sad hope. Elizaveta had been Victoria's best friend for the entire time the Polish girl had been at camp. It would be cruel to lose her now.

The Polish camper brushed her blond hair out of her eyes and walked back to the Nemesis cabin. When she saw Nero sitting on his bed, grumpily reading one of her Polish books upside-down, she strangely didn't feel mad at all; instead, she did something she hadn't done for years. She giggled.

Nero looked up from his incomprehensible book. "What? Huh?" he mumbled. Seeing Victoria giggling in front of him, he closed the Polish book embarrassedly. "Erm, sorry," he said, "I wanted to learn some Polish. Wrong book."

Victoria smiled and shook her head. "This is the one that you will be wanting," she said slowly and carefully in English, setting a Polish-to-English dictionary in her year-older half-brother's lap. He picked it up. "Thanks," he said.