Confidence & Pride// [Percy Jackson OC]// Book 5

{Chapter Two}

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"Now the night is coming to an end/ The sun will rise and we will try again
Stay alive, stay alive for me"
- Truce (Twenty One Pilots)
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THE BEGINNING OF THE END

THE YEAR HAD BEEN FAR TOO LONG.
   
Arya was right about the end of last summer, it had been the calm before the storm. As soon as summer ended things started to pick up. Satyrs, nymphs, and dryads would all come back one after the other with reports of monster and enemy bases that had been found all over the country. From there the council, consisting of the head councilors, the head satyrs, Chiron, and Mr.D (if he was around), would determine who would be best to send out to take care of it. Some of the operations needed bigger crews, some needed more discrete ones. There wasn't a day that went by that didn't consist of campers being sent out, or coming back tired beyond belief. Everyone was doing their part to help. Arya was out just about every other week, usually they sent her out on the smaller missions, her team usually consisted of Will Solace, Pollux, and Annabeth. They're skill sets balance each other out well and as the months past, their team work skills became more precise.
   
She was lucky that most of her raids went off without a problem. They were a stealth team that was known to get in and out quickly. She wore a badge of pride that none of her raids ever amounted to severe injuries or deaths.
   
Others weren't so lucky.
   
If Arya wasn't out in the world, training, in meetings, or being forced to take a break, she was healing those who had been caught on the bad end of fights. Deep cuts that had been infected, poison, chucks of limbs missing from bites, broken bones. She's even had to call the death of a couple of campers herself, something she imagined would never get easier.
   
The months flew by and fall turned to winter, which turned to spring, everyone was going non stop in and out. For most campers they would get back, take a week to rest and revive, then get sent back out. It was draining, and spirits were getting low, morale was hard to come by.
   
Then Chiron came out of the blue and declared there was going to be a graduation ceremony. Arya was skeptical, saying they had never had one before, why start now? Chiron brushed it off insisting that it was to honor the biggest graduation class camp half-blood had had in years. It wasn't until the actual day came around that Arya learned his real motives.
   
The old Centaur was correct in his thinking and it lifted everyone back up, made them feel like even for a second they could take on the world. It was amazing what a little hope could do for people. It reminded her of the flickers of hope that filled her when Percy first got to camp.
   
Graduation and the following weeks, are what Arya saw as the eye of the storm. There were still raids, but not nearly as numerous, less kids were getting hurt, and there hadn't been a death in over a month. Things seemed to be calming down, everyone had leaned slightly away from the teetering edge that they had been on since September.
   
Then one day Arya had been on the beach to watch a footrace between two Hermes kids when Poseidon stepped out of the water, looking much different than she had been used to seeing. He looked like an old god, with a wrinkled face and long white hair, shirtless, with only board shorts on. He had been draining his power fighting the actual old sea gods.
   
With a solemn look, he regretfully told her he had a mission for her. Poseidon had gotten word that Kronos' invasion force would be coming by way of the Princess Andromeda in a month's time, as soon as it was in range he wanted her and a small team to blow it up.
   
"I didn't want to have to ask this of you, yet, we can not wait any longer. It's a job that needs to be done from the inside, my power can do nothing to it from the outside. This is going to be the most dangerous task you've done yet."
  
Arya understood, and took the job with pride anyways.
   
She considered this the turning point.