gambler: percy jackson²

001

In which; the new kid shows up,
and things take a turn for the worse.

Minho knew that things were... stirring.

There had been whispers amongst the lares, monsters swirling back to life mere minutes after death and radio silence from Olympus. It was enough to have him jittery, with fingers tapping nervously as he spent his days scouring for any sign of their missing Praetor. Something was building.

Yet despite all those warning signs and waving red flags, he'd had the foolish idea to think that perhaps there would be a normal day.

What a fool he was.

Some demigod, Percy Jackson, who Minho was having great difficulty deciphering, had barged through the Camp entrances, with an old woman on his back and two gorgons in tow. He'd seized control of the river and formed the testy waves of the Little Tiber into giant morphic hands of water and squeezed the monsters so tight they'd burst.

Minho and Reyna had rushed over from the principal and while he was ready to defend him home, Thyrsus held firm and steady against the throat of whoever dared lead danger to camp, Reyna had been startled into silence.

She recovered quickly, he'd given her that much credit, but something was wrong, as she ordered him to back down with a level of authority in her voice that she so rarely used towards him. But the strangled noise and look of horror when she laid eyes on the new kid wouldn't be something easily forgotten.

Why it had caused her such a reaction, Minho couldn't be sure. There didn't seem to be anything extremely noteworthy about their visitor; he was somewhat pale with dark hair that was all kinds of askew, but somehow, he was completely dry- as opposed to Frank and Hazel, who'd been on guard duty and taken a dip in the river.

The kid looked older than most recruits, sixteen or seventeen. Not to mention lean, already muscular enough to pass off as a camper- normally it took a few months for kids to build up some strength (even after the training they receive at the wolf house), but this guy already had that covered. He wasn't the typically bulky warrior they looked for in recruits, but considering he'd just massacred two gorgons, Minho figured he could hold his own.

And while that all was remarkable and far from the ordinary for their standard at camp, the last thing Minho expected it did not seem to be kind of precursor that would justify the queen of heaven showing up.

There, bathed in golden light, draped in a goatskin cloak and standing seven-feet-tall where the grubby old woman had been mere seconds before, was Juno.

She proclaimed the kid a son of Neptune, something about death being unleashed too? Minho was more concerned with not making eye contact with a potentially spiteful goddess.

Once Juno took her leave, it hadn't taken long for a commotion to blow up around the crowd gathered on the Little Tiber's bank, but Reyna- having regained her thoughts, shooed the campers all off and asked Minho to visit Octavian, have him consult the Augur about incoming threats- 'specifically ocean orientated threats'.

Minho had given her 'the look' which she knew meant- you better explain. Reyna lent right into him whispering in his ear as her eye stayed focused on the people in front of her. "Pirates."

It was the smallest of whispers, one that told Minho everything he needed to know as he gave Percy Jackson one more look over, before heading off to the shrines along Temple Hill, already knowing where to find Octavian.

And that was where he'd been for nearly an hour, listening to the human equivalent of a children's toy with a broken voice box that spoke at frequencies just a tad too annoying for even toddlers to tolerate. Octavian was a scheming, sleazy, slime-ball. Meaning it came to no surprise he'd been fighting Minho's word on why an arguary was to be read- especially if it was regarding the ocean.