Started With A Dare - A POTHENA STORY ✔

I Take Forever Finding A Weapon

POSEIDON'S POV

  Athena spoke up. "Uh, we're not...campers, we're just visitors. And we really need to see this guy called Chiron."

  Piper looked surprised. "Chiron, you say? Well, we recently added shipping to our strawberry business at camp and the company we paid isn't doing it properly, so Chiron is having a meeting with them right now. He won't be back until later tonight. You say you're visitors...are you from Camp Jupiter?"

  All those terms she used sounded vaguely familiar. 'Camp Jupiter', 'strawberry business'...I somehow just couldn't create the picture. Something told me, though, that neither one of us didn't belong in Camp Jupiter, wherever that was. Then a name tagged the back of my mind - Neptune. Neptune? Isn't that the last planet of the solar system after Pluto got kicked out? What was that all about?!

  Athena cleared her throat to get me back in focus - I had been lost in thought for a while. I muttered a quiet 'sorry' and followed Leo and Piper into camp. Campers here and there stared at us, some whispering quietly, others focused on their fighting, weapon-forging, strawberry picking, sneaky strawberry eating, whatever. Oh, right. I zoned out and didn't hear the rest of Athena and Piper's conversation so I had no idea where we were going.

  "Hey," I whispered to Athena, "What's going on right now?"

  She frowned at me, then rolled her eyes as if she wanted to say 'I barely met you for a day and I already can't stand you'. "We are heading towards the big house. Piper said the 'cleverest camper' and her boyfriend are discussing matters there, so she would like to introduce us. Please don't ask me stupid questions ever again."

  Whoa, this girl sure was intimidating. Her grey eyes had the power of another level as they swooped left and right, trying to avoid my gaze as she spoke. I gave a small nod and bit my lip, wondering why it made me twitch slightly when she said the word 'boyfriend'.

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  The 'cleverest camper' turned out to be a girl called Annabeth Chase, who had the same grey eyes as Athena and intimidated me just as much. Her boyfriend Percy Jackson, though, he felt like my childhood friend. Even more familiar than the name 'Neptune'. Pieces of blurry memories that found their way into my mind were starting to jumble everything up for me.

  "Visitors, you say?" Annabeth asked as we sat down opposite them, not even bothering to give a short greeting. "Hmm...we usually don't get visitors other than those from campers of Camp Jupiter. Where are you from?"

  Percy stayed quiet as his girlfriend spoke. He kept looking at me with his shimmering sea-green eyes that were exactly the same as mine, which felt awkward but for some reason, this boy gave me a calm feeling I couldn't explain. (No homo here.)

  "That's the thing," Athena explained, trying not to get frustrated, "we don't know. We're sorry to say that, well, we're not even sure that we can trust you guys, but we can definitely trust Chiron. We have something to show him and, well, he might know what to do with us."

  That was when chaos erupted across the table. Everyone started talking at once, trying to explain how we could definitely trust them. As everyone moved, waves of orange blurred my sight. I glanced over to Percy, who had a fed up look that said 'here we go again'.

  "GIRLS! LEO! STOP! PLEASE!" Finally, four sharp words from Percy got everyone to his attention. "Guys, imagine waking up with amnesia, not even knowing how old you are or where you're from. Then you somehow get orders to come to a strange camp and a weird bunch of teenagers start persuading you to trust them. I know it sounds right for them to trust us, but I've experienced it before and I can tell you that no matter how serious your trust issues are, you've got to have doubts at others when this happens. Let's just wait till Chiron arrives and meanwhile..." he scanned from Athena to me, then from me to Athena. "How about we teach you two some basic fighting skills?"

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  The boys got the job to train me while the girls trained Athena separately. Athena had already easily chosen a spear and a shield to match it. She was a natural fighter, blocking Annabeth's dagger attacks and following an extra camper who they got help from, Clarisse La Rue. Clarisse was extremely pleased with Athena's work while I was still fussing over the weapons.

  Percy told me that when you see the right weapon to use, there'd be no hesitation. You just feel your hands drawn to it, like you're ready to battle with it anytime. Leo agreed profusely and that was why they told me to take my time. But I could tell they were getting impatient.

  Among the rows of swords, spears, shields, bows and arrows, even some rare shiny daggers, I just couldn't feel the right sensation Percy mentioned. All the weapons felt oddly like a bunch of popular kids at high school isolating me, the loner. Like how Hawkeye was the outcast in the Avengers. (How did I know all this Marvel stuff?!)

  Finally, Percy grunted, "You've paced around in here long enough, Poseidon! Maybe your right weapon isn't here."

  I looked up. "Other than all these, are there any other weapons?"

  Leo traced his fingers along the hilts of battle axes and hammers as if he was itching to pick them up. "Sure. We don't have a lot of those, though. Only...few of the sea god Poseidon's kids use them and Percy here doesn't."

  Oh. So if what the piece of paper said was accurate, then Percy was my son. This man who looked around his early twenties was my son. I felt my cheeks slowly heating up. I only looked fourteen in my current state.

  Then it popped up in my head. "Leo, did you say that only the water kids use them?"

  "Well, yeah."

  "You were talking about tridents, weren't you? May I please have a look at them?"

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  My eyes instantly lit up at the rows of silver and gold tridents. I picked up a shiny gold one and gave it a few swings - it felt like I was born to hold it. I jabbed it at a dummy nearby and pierced straight in. Percy and Leo stared at me with expressions that were somehow mixed between surprise and horror.

  Percy finally smiled, gripping one of the tridents in the rich display. He made his way towards me. "Alright, let's get you trained, young boy, shall we?"

(A/N: Not gonna lie, I was itching to write this chapter but...procrastination got in the way and...let's just say I wrote it in a hurry on the day this was posted so it might have a number of errors. Please don't kill me...)