Scattered Dimensions

Chapter 1: I Think Someone Broke Time

I was definitely excited. The semester was finally over, and I got to go back home. For the first time, though, my mom let me go directly to the camp. Normally, I would have gone home first, stayed in for some blue cookies and cake, and continued chatting with Paul and my mother. And then the topic of Annabeth would come up, and everything would become awkward and strange.I understand that teenage pregnancy is not cool and protection is important, so I make sure to not upset Annabeth and what not. Sometimes I feel like Annabeth is my mom's daughter and I'm just the boyfriend. I wouldn't mind any of this, though. My mom is cool, and I love my mom's blue food. Also, Paul's cool too; he helps with my ADHD and dyslexia and has helped me with a letter of recommendation for my admission to the university.

Anyways, I understand why my mom isn't too keen on having me at home. Things have been too hectic at home. With my baby sister to look after and her new book going around for publication, it can get quite difficult and stressful to do too many things at once. Fortunately for mom, Paul is present and assists with a variety of household tasks, including my step sister.Another major reason for not having me home would be my delicious scent that pours out of me like dry ice in water. Percy Jackson brings all the ugly, annoying monsters to the yard. And with me being older now, I'm practically a walking talking buffet waiting to get feasted on by monsters. Honestly, it's a surprise to me as to how my university still remains in a single piece.

Annabeth is already at camp, or at least I'm assuming that she is. I spoke to her on the phone about a week ago, and she told me that her semester was ending a day earlier than mine. She had decided that she would meet up with her father during the day and then go to the camp. I would have called her again, but phones are dangerous for us demigods, and if she was at Camp Half-Blood, then it would be impossible to contact anyone in camp via phones (an elaborate protection system was put into place to avoid any contact via phones after the prank war between the Hermes and Hephaestus cabins).

The cab dropped me off at the nearest possible location a mortal could see from the camp. From there on, it was just a small walk in. As I made my way in, I looked around to see Thalia's pine tree. For some reason, there was a lot of foliage around. A lot of the space around was covered with thick green bushes and trees. Was it because of the battle with Gaia? I don't know, but I feel like I'm closing in on the tree.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, I hear a soft rumble, similar to that of a salivating monster. I pulled out my pen and made sure I equipped it as my sword, Riptide. Also, I had this watch given to me by Tyson after the events that transpired recently, and this watch was super cool! On command or by simply sensing any sort of danger near me around a fifty-foot radius, it automatically turned into this celestial bronze shield that weighed almost nothing, and even better, upon command, it would morph into an extremely lightweight yet durable body armour. Luckily for me, the shield did not activate. Even then, I decided it was better to remain on guard.

Finally, I spotted Thalia's tree with the fleece still hanging on one of the branches. I walked towards the trunk of the tree and placed my palm on the bark when suddenly, tremors and rumbles erupted through the ground. It felt like an earthquake, but eerily, it also felt slightly off. The ground didn't feel like it was shaking like a normal earthquake, it felt like everything around was swinging like a pendulum at its end. The nauseating visuals caused by this visceral trembling all around me were threatening to bring my insides out. Is Gaia back? What is happening now?

And then, suddenly, everything stopped, literally everything. Birds were frozen in place, leaves in the wind stuck in their place, there was no rumbling anywhere and everything seemed to come to a standstill, including me. I seemed frozen in place. I didn't feel like I was breathing, but also, somehow, I didn't feel the need to as well. My eyes could perceive what was going on, and it felt like I was in a sci-fi movie where one of the main characters pauses or stops time at a particular moment. The only down side is that I am definitely not the main character in this situation. There's some other force at play here, something much larger.

As I remained stuck in this hell space, I swear on the River Styx that I could see everything deteriorating into grayscale right in front of my eyes. Everything I could see was in black and white, with various shades of gray. It seemed like someone was turning the world as it was into their own person. It was like a 1970's movie, except it was not nearly as good as a movie and everything looked so eerily similar and yet completely different. Something was definitely happening, and I couldn't understand what it was.

All of a sudden, everything returns to normal. Everything is back to color. I can feel myself breathing, birds chirping, and the wind calmly blowing around me. Whatever was happening came to an end. And whatever it was to come, I didn't want to face it alone and underprepared. With the whole Titan war and the Giants war, I realised I didn't ever want to fight anything without prior knowledge, especially without the strategic mind of Annabeth.

I needed to get into camp as soon as possible so that I could talk to Chiron and Mr. D about whatever had happened and hopefully make sense of what was going on here.Oh gods, I don't want to be involved in this matter. And I especially want to stay out of this if it's something related to the ones living above the Empire State Building on the 600th floor.