Frank Zhang and the Avengers

one. frank zhang is far from home.

The first thing Frank Zhang felt when he woke up was the cold, hard ground underneath him. The second was warm rays of light hitting his face, which made him do a double-take so he could ask a very important question.

Why the heck was he lying on the cold, hard ground? How did he even get here in the first place?

He slowly raised himself to a sitting position with the help of another hand. Wait, what?

"Kid, are you alright?"

Frank stared at the hand holding his— big, meaty, round, and sweaty as heck. His eyes flickered to the man it belonged to. His blue uniform was a dead giveaway (although the blaring red and blue lights in the background kind of clued him in as well).

He was in the middle of a strawberry field.
Sitting next to a cop.
Pardon his french, but, shit.

He sat back down trying not to make any noise but his head still hurt. He couldn't tell if this was from being hit on the head or if he had a concussion or something.

"Hey kid, do you know where you are?"

He groaned. Gods, he hoped the Mist would fix something up real quick, because this wasn't a good position to be finding himself in.

"Kid, don't worry. We're gonna figure out what's going on, alright? Just sit tight for me here."

The cop got up and walked to his car, probably to grab something. Frank didn't know. Nor did he care.

He stared at the spot in the field where a sign usually would be standing, "Delphi Strawberry Service," scrawled proudly against its wooden posts. It was empty. A large, decrepit house stood in shambles about a hundred feet away from it, remains of a dusty volleyball court sitting next to it sorrowfully. A warm breeze blew through the overgrown grass. It tickled his arms.

The only evidence of there ever having been human presence were two sets of footprints leading into the tall grass, roughly the size of his own, on a somewhat trodden path to the big house.

This was what remained of Camp Halfblood. But it was all wrong.

This wasn't camp anymore; there should have been kids running around with sticks and balls or doing chores or eating lunch or laughing loudly or throwing their stuff around in the dirt like they normally did. What happened? Where'd everyone go?

Frank had never had a "demigod dream," much to his relief and the astonishment of the other seven. But this probably got pretty close to that. It couldn't be real, and even if he was, why was he here, in New York, instead of in New Rome, Camp Jupiter, in California? And the barren camp begged another question. Would Camp Jupiter still be around if her sister camp had fallen?

There had been a constant pain in his back, Frank realized. Pulling the object underneath him, he revealed the culprit— a backpack, with a long spear resting in the side pocket like it wasn't some kind of weapon that was definitely out of place. Frank pulled up the spear, weighing it in his hands, eyes traveling over every scratch and dent or chip in it.

There was no doubt about it. This was the same spear his dad gave him at the beginning of the last war. The one that would summon his (dead— or undead?) skeleton-spartus friend, Gray. The one that vanished into thin air the third time he used it. The one that wasn't supposed to be here, in his hands right now.

Maybe he skipped ahead a few chapters too many? How else was he supposed to explain the thing in his hands that literally vanished out of existence five years ago?

He used the spear to get back up and gave it a few twirls. It nearly hit the police officer, returning from his car. He ducked just in time, chuckling nervously.