a/n: Happy seventeenth birthday to me! :D This is a filler chapter, but I promise the next one will be good.

Shout out to Erin for helping me brainstorm and edit this chapter!

Btw, the line from the last chapter was from Pirates of the Caribbean. No cookie for anyone!

Most people hate change.

They like the dull, ordinary routine of their ordinary lives. Although it offers nothing great, it's predictable and safe.

I am not one of those people. I like change, and I like having things shaken up once in a while. It makes me feel like I'm actually living,

I could've gone on without dramatic change, though. First it was falling into the Underworld, then it was finding out I was half god, then it was living in an insane camp for a week, then it was discovering my birth mother, and now it was changing cabins. And, as an added bonus, my two best friends are going out now. Peachy.

My appearance could be considered good change, though. It was my third day wearing makeup, and I was already used to the different materials and longer bathroom time. After I got ready in the morning, I no longer stressed about how I looked. Nico had been dead wrong when he told me I didn't care what anybody thought- I cared more than anybody.

And with the new satisfaction in my appearance came more time to stress about daily life.

I was finally adjusting to the new cabin (although having scheduled shower and bedtimes sucked).

Ever since Nico and Jess started their spontaneous relationship, I'd been growing closer to my other new friends. I was even making more. I pretty much knew everyone at camp now, but most of the kids started coming in July, which meant I only had a few more days to get ready.

I finished my morning routine and changed into an orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD tank top (they're actually comfortable! Who knew?) with Soffe shorts.

I made my way to the Persephone cabin. Sarah had agreed to help me contact Persephone (I'd told her about the whole Underworld situation, and she was sympathetic).

On the way, I noticed a large group of people gathered near Half-Blood Hill.

"What's going on?" I asked the nearest person, who just happened to be my sword-fighting instructor.

"Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase just got here." Toby explained, with his weird, knowing smile I'd been seeing the past few days.

I turned uncomfortably away. "Oh."

I watched with everyone else as a boy with jet-black hair and a blonde-haired girl walked down the hill.

I vaguely remembered Nico saying something about Percy Jackson being a big hero of Olympus. I guess the blonde girl was Annabeth, then.

"Hey." A voice said behind me.

"Hey," I greeted Nico beside me. "Where's Jess?"

"She had to write a letter. Where've you been lately?"

Avoiding you. "Oh, you know. Around."

"Are you avoiding me?" Seriously. Stop doing that. It's creepy. "Well, yeah. I thought you and Jess would want alone time and I didn't want to be a third wheel."

"Well, I appreciate the gesture, but we don't need alone time every second of the day."

I nodded. "Okay."

"I like the purple." He said, pointing to my hair. Jess had taught me how to make the extensions work with every hairstyle, and I was now rocking the wavy beach hair- without the beach, or a tan, or a bathing suit.

My hair was wavy, okay?

"Does he always have this big of a fan club?" I asked Nico as they two teens were swarmed by a group of admirers.

Nico shrugged carelessly. "It'll die down in a couple of hours. Want to do something today?"

I adjusted to his topic change. "Like what?"

"I dunno. Go swimming, play a game, find some friends…learn to walk on water, build a rocket and conquer an alien space colony, paint my toenails pink…"

"That sounds nice." I said absently, watching Annabeth greet a small blonde girl with enthusiasm. Percy stared at her with an adoring look on his face. I could tell just from their body language that these two really cared about each other. I wondered if they were an annoying couple to be around.

"Alice. ALICE!"

"What?" I snapped at Nico, who was clapping his hands in front of my eyes.

"You were spacing. Where do you want to go?"

"Oh, um…well, I was on my way to see Sarah about her mother."

He raised an eyebrow. "You told her about the Underworld?"

"She's the only one I've told. It'll only take a few minutes."

He shrugged and fell into step beside me. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. His appearance hadn't changed much since him and Jess had started dating: his hair still hung in his eyes a lot, his wardrobe still consisted mostly of black shirts and sneakers, and he still had the same way of walking. He sort of dragged his feet in the dirt, a habit I'd noticed a while ago. He could definitely be considered bad-boy cute. Not hot or anything, but cute.

"You're spacing again."

"Sorry." I apologized.

We reached the Persephone cabin, where Sarah sat waiting for me by the daisy patch. Her eyes slid to Nico questioningly.

"Look who I found trying to peek inside the girls' showers!" I said cheerfully.

Nico snorted. "I can blend into the shadows. There's no way you could catch me doing something sneaky."

Challenge accepted. "Anyway, what've you got?"

Sarah handed me a small plastic ring. I looked at it warily. "What is it with you demigods and rings? Does everyone in this camp have some strong desire to get married tomorrow or something?"

Nico slapped his forehead. "You figured us out. Well, I guess the jig is up! Alice," he got down on one knee. "Will you marry me?"

I flapped my hands in front of my face and jumped up and down. "Of course!"

Sarah stared at us, wide-eyed.

Oops. I forgot most people aren't used to the way we act. "Anyway, how does this work?"

"It's kind of like a telephone." Sarah explained. "Just press the flower on the top down and it works like a speaker."

"That is seriously cool." I remarked, turning it over in my hands. It looked like something you could get out of a vending machine.

"I'll being it back tomorrow." I promised her.

She nodded. "I need to go meet Jack. See you later."

"Her boyfriend." I explained to Nico when she was out of earshot.

"Ah. So you're basically the only single person in camp then?"

"Actually, being single is fun! I can do this-" I poked him in the chest. "And no one will look at me funny."

"Ow."

"Baby." I poked him again.

"Quit it!" he shoved my hand away.

I began mercilessly poking him. He refused to retaliate, so I poked him harder. He fell to the ground and curled up into a ball. I sat on him, continuing my relentless pokes and enjoying myself immensely.

"Um…hey, Nico."

I looked up. Percy Jackson was standing just a few feet away, looking amused.

Nico stood up to greet his friend. "Why is it that we're always doing something weird when someone comes to talk to us?"

I shrugged.

Percy held out his hand. "Hi, you must be Alice. I'm Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon."

I found the last part kind of unnecessary, but maybe it was some sort of demigod code for "Hey, I'm important!"

"Nice to meet you. Were you the friend Nico stayed with after he found me?"

Percy nodded. "Uh-huh. It was fun. In fact, one night we got drunk off of too much sugar and had a karaoke party at 2 AM. Nico actually took one of my mom's lipstick tubes

and-"

Nico cleared his throat loudly. Percy grinned and rubbed the back of his neck. "But that's another story. Anyway, what-"

"All campers please report to the dining pavilion." Chiron's voice sounded over the loudspeaker.

The three of us stared at each other.

"Can they do that?" I asked.

"I guess." Nico said uncertainly.

"Chiron told me he was trying a new exercise today…I wonder what we're doing." Percy thought aloud.

We walked to the familiar structure and joined the gigantic surge of campers. I wondered if there had ever been a time when they all wore their shirts the same way. Some girls knotted it in the back, some cut the sleeves off, one even dyed hers a bright pink…was an orange tee really that bad?

An incredibly muscular kid had cut the sleeves off his shirt. I watched with mild amusement as he pretended to be the statue from Night at the Museum. "Boom, boom. Firepower!" A group of girls giggled around him.

"Thank you all for coming so quickly. I aplogize for the short notice." Chiron started, while Mr. D. stood behind him wearing his usual 'sour grapes' expression.

"Yeah, thanks for the warning!" Someone shouted from the back. A blonde-haired boy had a towel wrapped around his waste. Bubbles decorated his hair.

Chiron pretended he hadn't heard him. "Mr. D and I have created a new training exercise that we think will help you learn special skills. Among these skills are stealth, trust, and suspicion. And before anyone makes a snide remark, trust and suspicion go hand in hand."

I looked around. A sea of bored and/or confused faces stared at the centaur.

"There are forty-three of you at camp right now. Ten of you are killers. The other thirty-three are innocent civilians. Your mission is simple: find the killers and bring them to justice. You have three days."

Dead silence.

"The killers know who they are. For the rest of you, here are the rules: if you are killed, a red triangle will be marked on your door in the morning. You are then disqualified from the game and forbidden to discuss the details with your partner. You cannot kill someone if you are not an official killer. If you wish to accuse someone of being a killer, you must have liable proof. If you do, the killer will be out of the game and you will be rewarded. If you don't, you will be disqualified. Any questions?"

"There are no real killers…right?" someone asked on the other side of the pavilion.

Chiron looked amused. "No, my dear. It is merely a training exercise."

"Can you or Mr. D be the killers?" another person asked.

Mr. D held up a hand. "I could be, if you wanted me to." There was a dark glint in his eye that made me think he wasn't joking.

No one else said anything, so Chiron clapped his hands together and smiled. He seemed way too into this. "To answer your question, Mr. D and I are not killers. Now, everyone find a partner. Make sure you trust this person, as they will be the only person you can discuss your suspects with. Oh, and one more thing! Anyone who does not catch a killer will suffer the consequences."

Uh-oh. Why were there always consequences?

I looked over at Nico, but he had already walked off to find Jess. Sarah was still with her boyfriend, and I didn't see anyone else nearby. I inwardly groaned. I'd probably get stuck with someone I didn't even know.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. "Hey, want to be partners?"

I turned and saw my sword-fighting instructor. I squinted at him. "Are you really one of the killers just setting me up?"

He grinned. "Is that a no?"

"Sure, why not?" I said, although I couldn't help but notice he didn't answer my question.

A-B-C-D

"So, where should we start?" Toby asked after we'd signed in as partners.

I put my hands behind my head. "This whole thing is so weird. In a battle, we'll know who's on our side and who we're fighting against."

"Not necessarily." Toby said lightly, although there was something serious about his manner. "There are traitors and spies."

I waved a hand dismissively. "No one actually does that."

"During the Titan War, a lot of people did."

"Really? Why?"

He sighed. "It's complicated. A couple did it out of fear, but most did it out of anger. I was almost fourteen that summer, stuffed in the Hermes cabin with everyone else who was undetermined."

"What about the undetermined cabin?" I asked. We'd ended up at the lake. He sat on the sand, so I sat next to him and took my sandals off.

"It didn't exist then. There were only twelve cabins, one for each of the main gods and goddesses. Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus made this deal a while back to not have any kids because they were too powerful, so their cabins were always empty. Artemis isn't very fond of men, and Hera is the goddess of family, so their cabins were also empty."

"But that's only seven cabins. You're telling me everyone who was a child of a minor god got shoved in the Hermes cabin?" I asked incredulously.

"Uh-huh. We didn't have quite as many people then, but it was still tight."

"And what about Nico and Percy?"

"Well, Percy's dad broke the oath, and I'm assuming Nico's did, too. You'll have to ask him about it."

Hmm. Interesting.

"Anyway, you can imagine how some of us felt in there: unwanted an unimportant. We joined the Titan army hoping to get more respect. When we had to actually fight against our old friends, a lot of us realized how stupid we were being, and came back here."

I stared at him. "You?"

He looked pensively out at the water. "Me."

"Well, it's stupid for the gods to just leave their kids like that. What did they expect to happen?"

He grinned. "That's kind of what Percy said, too. That's why camp is the way you see it today."

I thought about what he said. I gave my mom a hard time when she came all the way to camp to help me. Toby's dad hadn't even acknowledged him until he'd had to.

"So, onto a better topic. Which one of our friends do we think is a cold-blooded killer?"

"The most pleasant conversation piece available." I agreed. "Well, this might sound awful, but I think we should wait until someone gets killed. We can start looking for clues then."

"Good idea."

E-F-G-H

Later on, I sat down with Nico and asked how he'd come to be the son of one of the most powerful gods.

He shrugged. "Well, my sister and I got trapped in this casino in Las Vegas. It was like the ultimate arcade. They had a water slide, a hot tub, I even got my own room…" his face clouded over.

"Nico?"

"Sorry," he said, shaking his head. "Long story short, we got out and came here. I was twelve when I went in and twelve when I left, even though I was in there for years."

"Wait, when were you born?"

"Before World War II."

I stared at him. "You're kidding."

He grinned. "Nope. But that means I'm an elder, and you should respect me."

Toby hadn't told me when the big three decided not to have any children, but I could only assume it was after Nico's birth.

"Who told you about the deal?"

"Toby."

He raised an eyebrow. "Toby as in chick-magnet-I'm-cooler-than-ice-the-sun-can't-melt-me-Toby?"

"Uh…sure?"

"Do you like him?"

"By all means, be blunter next time. I think you missed the point."

"That was a terrible pun; please never use it in conversation again."

" I don't like him. I barely know him, anyway."

"But, you might if you spend more time with him?"

I snorted. "I doubt it. He's not really my type."

He threw up his hands. "Sorry. I didn't know you had a 'type.'" He batted his eyelashes and puckered his lips.

"Watch it, grandpa, or I'll leave you in the middle of the crosswalk during rush hour."

"Well, I'm certainly not buying any girl scout cookies from you!"

a/n: I apologize for the filler, but the next chapter is a good one. Not sure when I'll update next, because I have SAT's and my driver's test in the next two or three weeks. Ugh.