Special People

Their suspicions turned out to be right. The birds were slashing at any bit of exposed flesh, driving everyone into a panic. When observed closely, they realized that they weren't normal pigeons. Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their beaks were made of bronze, and judging from the yelps of the campers, they must've been razor sharp. Those were Stymphalian birds as Annabeth yelled in the middle of the chaos.

The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the track altogether and flew skyward in a huge dark wave.

"Now!" shouted Annabeth. "Archers!"

With clear targets, Apollo's archers had flawless aim. Most of them could knock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on the horizon.

The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn't pretty. Most of the chariots had been completely destroyed. Almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from multiple bird pecks. The kids from Aphrodite's cabin were screaming because their hairdos had been ruined and their clothes pooped on.

While Tantalus announced Clarisse as the winner, he also blamed Annabeth and Percy for what happened. The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson, and Percy hadn't disturbed them with their bad chariot driving.

Y/N was too tired to save her friends from the punishment they received - kitchen patrol-scrubbing pots and platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Annabeth and Percy had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

She knew her special bow and arrow weren't working the way it was supposed to. So she took some time and practiced using the normal ones and clearly her training paid off. When her friends were busy with their punishment, Y/N was busy treating the wounds with the rest of the Apollo kids. It was good for training, but took a lot of energy out of her. Experience wise, she was still a few steps behind than the rest of them.

"Honestly why did you stand still like that?" Y/N said applying some medicine of Harris's scratched hand.

His nose scrunched as the area stung and he chuckled, "Wow, nice way to say thank you to save your ass. TWO TIMES."

She huffed and dabbed a bit harder at the comment as he yelled. She smiled and said, "You could've ran you know? Tch, look at what your stupidity did."

"Okay you gotta stop scolding me like my parents do," He laughed.

She stopped for a moment and looked at him, "Turns out we DO act the same way as our parents when shit happens."

"So are we gonna talk about it or...."

"We are not."

"Well atleast you accept that you've been feeling down."

Y/N cleaned up the medical supplies and chuckled, "You are not gonna let this go, will you?"

"Glad we are on the same page," he laughed, "By the way, I saved your ass two times and still had to wait in the queue for treatment? Like there's no respect for friendship down here huh!"

She laughed and said, "We serve every patient equally. Oh, you gotta go now, the others are-"

"Take a break Y/N," one of her half brother said, "You've been working non-stop. We can handle the last few of them."

"Okay thank you," she said, getting up and stretching her arms. She walked outside towards the canoe lake along with Harris. As she sat down, she said, "Look, I know I'm stuck in a weird situation but they are my friends. You can't expect me to not support them."

"I'm not telling you to not support them. I'm just telling you to....maintain your distance. I don't wanna put suspicions in your mind but," he cleared his throat, contemplating whether to say the words and then said, "do they think of you as their close friend? Annabeth does, I guess but Percy? Is that guy even worth it to get your head messed up?"

Y/N tightened her fist as a sense of shame took over, "I don't know if he does for sure but I'm doing this for Annabeth. Besides, we don't know each other for long, so I'm sure these feelings will go away."

"Yeah, that's kind of what you said the last time you left."

"I'm trying okay?! I don't even know why I feel this way around him. It's like....he has a weird effect on me that I'm just not able to brush off."

Harris noticed her mood going down, as she tried to hide her face with her hair falling on her face. He brushed them behind her ears gently and turned her face towards himself. Y/N looked at him teary eyed as he broke down a smile and said, "I didn't have the chance to listen you perform in your latest school fest. What did you sing?"

Y/N chuckled and fixed her posture, looking around the area, "Okay, since you begged for it-"

"Oh please, you're just looking out for other campers! How the heck are you okay to perform in front of thousands of mortals and during campfire, but not around all of us?"

"Shut up!" she shoved him playfully, "You know I sing solo for special people!"

He smirked and raised his eyebrow, "So I'm special?"

Y/N stared at him for a while, before looking back at the lake with a tiny blush on her face and started singing her song, realising he was not going to look away anytime soon.

[ TIME SKIP ]

That night at the campfire, Apollo's cabin led the sing-along. They tried to get everybody's spirits up, but it wasn't easy after that afternoon's bird attack. The campers sat around a semicircle of stone steps, singing halfheartedly and watching the bonfire blaze while the Apollo guys strummed their guitars and picked their lyres.

They did all the standard camp numbers: "Down by the Aegean," "I Am My Own Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa," "This Land is Minos's Land." The bonfire was enchanted, so the louder you sang, the higher it rose, changing color and heat with the mood of the crowd. On a good night, it twenty feet high, bright purple, and so hot the whole front row's marshmallows burst into the flames. Tonight, the fire was only five feet high, barely warm, and the flames were the color of lint.

Dionysus left early. After suffering through a few songs, he muttered something about how even pinochle with Chiron had been more exciting than this. Then he gave Tantalus a distasteful look and headed back toward the Big House.

Y/N noticed Annabeth and Percy talking. I mean, it wasn't weird that they patched things up, it was just their expressions were far too serious to talk about sweet nothings. She decided to let them be, and concentrated on the bonfire. If they were talking, that meant Percy had already filled in about his dreams of Grover and they were planning something.

"Do they think of you as their close friend?" Harris's statement came to her mind.

When the last song was over, Tantalus said, "Well, that was lovely!" He came forward with a toasted marshmallow on a stick and tried to pluck it off, real casual-like. But before he could touch it, the marshmallow flew off the stick. Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames.

Tantalus turned back toward them, smiling coldly. "Now then! Some announcements about tomorrow's schedule."

"Sir," Percy said.

Tantalus's eye twitched. "Our kitchen boy has something to say?" Some of the Ares campers snickered, but he wasn't going to let anybody embarrass him into silence. He stood and looked at Annabeth. Thank the gods, she stood up with me.

Percy said, "We have an idea to save the camp."

Her suspicion turned out to be right. It turned her mood sour. Ofcourse, they were planning something and she wasn't a part of it. Her eyes went towards Harris who was already looking at her muttering, "dick."

Y/N chuckled and focused on her two friends.

"Indeed," Tantalus said blandly. "Well, if it has anything to do with chariots-"

"The Golden Fleece," Percy said. "We know where it is."

The flames burned orange. Before Tantalus could stop him, he blurted out his dream about Grover and Polyphemus's island. Annabeth stepped in and reminded everybody what the Fleece could do. It sounded more convincing coming from her.

"The Fleece can save the camp," she concluded. "I'm certain of it."

"Nonsense," said Tantalus. "We don't need saving."

Everybody stared at him until Tantalus started looking uncomfortable. "Besides," he added quickly, "the Sea of Monsters? That's hardly an exact location. You wouldn't even know where to look."

"Yes, I would," Percy said.

Annabeth leaned toward him and whispered, "You would?"

He nodded, because Annabeth had jogged something in his memory when she reminded him about their taxi drive with the Gray Sisters. At the time, the information they'd given him made no sense. But now ...

"30, 31, 75, 12," he said.

"Ooo-kay," Tantalus said. "Thank you for sharing those meaningless numbers."

"They're sailing coordinates," Percy said. "Latitude and longitude. I, uh, learned about it in social studies."

Even Annabeth looked impressed. "30 degrees, 31 minutes north, 75 degrees, 12 minutes west. He's right! The Gray Sisters gave us those coordinates. That'd be somewhere in the Atlantic, off the coast of Florida. The Sea of Monsters. We need a quest!"

"Wait just a minute," Tantalus said.

But the campers took up the chant. "We need a quest! We need a quest!"

The flames rose higher.

"It isn't necessary!" Tantalus insisted.

"WE NEED A QUEST! WE NEED A QUEST!"

"Fine!" Tantalus shouted, his eyes blazing with anger. "You brats want me to assign a quest?"

"YES!"

"Very well," he agreed. "I shall authorize a champion to undertake this perilous journey, to retrieve the Golden Fleece and bring it back to camp. Or die trying."

Y/N rolled her eyes and looked away towards the fire. She wasn't needed in the team anyway, right?