Aaaand, the action starts now! I hope this chapter is well received. In this chapter, finally things are starting to get heated. Not a lot will be revealed, but please keep in mind that this fic is an AU…sorta, so there are differences from canon. Big differences. Also, I've written half of this chapter about two years ago, so it might seem a bit off. Oh well.

So… on with the story!

Disclaimer: I'm afraid I don't earn anything other than personal enjoyment out of writing this, I'm NOT Rick Riordan, so PJO and HoO don't belong to me.

Dear Diary,

Ok, this may sound weird, very weird, but who cares? You certainly can't. So…

OHMYGODJESUSNONOTJESUSGODBUTGODSWITHANSICANTBELIEVEITIMHALFGREEKGODAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHTHISISAWESOMEANDHORRIFYINGTHERESTHEFLYINGHORSESANDSWORDSANDSPEARSANDMOOOOOONSTERSAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Yep, that about sums it up.

As you can gather from all the inner screaming I did just now, I'm kind of freaking out and having a breakdown -internally, of course. I'm now sitting in a van with Shrynae, Handrew, and three other kids. They're siblings, I guess, they all look alike, and have the same last names. Stoll, I think. One's Cath, and there's Lav, which is short for Lavender. She looks just like Cath. Then there's J. He looks like a younger male version of Cath and Lav, only with sandy blonde hair instead of brown.

You know, I probably should start from the events of this morning. Writing may help me understand my situation more, and what a situation it is.

Alright, today's the school's annual Sports Day, so I woke up early in the morning to get ready. Our school is divided into five different sports houses – Red, Blue, Yellow, Green and Purple. The Purple house has long since been leading in the Annual Sports Events, followed by either Blue or Red. The Yellow and Green house though, is always competing for the second to last place. Sad, isn't it? I'm in the Green house.

The Annual Sports Events is a series of different competitions throughout the entire first and second semester. There's a Sports Telematch, where the houses send their best players to participate in a series of competitions to win points, and the Student's Marathon, where each student who reach their destination in the time given each earn their house one point.

I wasn't chosen for any of the matches, and didn't reach the finish line quick enough. Oh well.

Back to the Sports Day, the students all wore their House coloured T-shirts and school shorts to school. When I stood on the top of the slope where the main entrance is, I could see thousands of students, a mix of five different colours mingling together, creating some kind of carnival atmosphere. It was quite cool.

At 7.00 in the morning, we all gathered at the large field. The quarter masters (students who take care of sports equipment, and generally anything sports related. They're a school club) had erected six open-aired tent – five for the each house and one for the teachers, the headmaster, the special guests, and a few parents.

It's really unfair – we students sit on a small sheet barely enough for half a house of students to sit on, so most students sat on the dirt ground. Not that bad, right? It had just rained last night. Very heavily. The adults' tent does not only have enough plastic chairs for more than everyone there, it also has four standing fans, constantly turned on. We have our own hand-made paper fans. Textbooks were used if one's too lazy to fold a paper fan. The thin ones, mind you, not those with over 300 pages.

There are many competitions, including various races, the high jump, long jump, shot put, javelin throwing, and some other competitions for entertainment values, like the one where the House with the best costumes win, or the one which the most decorated House win. I know, it's all pretty boring…

Each House is given a place to set up their decorations. This year, my House, Green, has chosen the theme Shrek. We have a live sized Donkey, a Puss in Boots, a gigantic Shrek's head to mount on the 'doorway' and a live size Fiona (is that her name?) that's four and a half metres tall, all in full colour, and a few other things which I didn't pay any attention to. How the seniors managed all that in two months is beyond me.

So at the start of the Annual Sports Day, the Chief Guest, some super-duper-important-guy-from-the-Ministry-of-Education-whose-name-I-have-not-a-clue, who is invited to preside over this function, give a very, very winding speech. I swear, his voice was so dull and flat, I fell right asleep at the second sentence. Finally, he unfurled the flag which has the school insignia, signaling the start of the Sports Day. It began with the marches.

First, the school Music Band. I was surprised to see Jean a member of it. She didn't tell me she was going to perform! I waved to her enthusiastically, apologizing when my hand hit the girl squeezing on the mat behind me. Next, the five Houses. Purple came in first-I have no idea what their supposed to be dressed up as. Then came Blue, which theme is Stich. The girls and guys are all dressed up as Lilo. Wow. Red's next, the marchers dressed up as the Tin Soldier, I think, followed by Yellow, who all looked like Lego people. Last but not least, Green, all dressed up as little green things that I'm pretty sure isn't found anywhere in Shrek.

It was all fine and dandy, and that's when I saw it.

Several girls marching in the Green formation don't look like their marching at all. They look like they're… slithering. On two snake trunks. I stared. And stared. And stared. I jumped –well not jumped, I'm seating lotus style on the ground after all - leaned back with a yelp, blinking furiously and rubbing my eyes, then looked again. The snake-girls/women are nothing more than normal seniors, marching in a straight formation. There. No more weird things. I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but my lungs won't cooperate. I couldn't breathe out. So I sucked in a very deep breath, held it till I thought my lungs were bursting, then slowly let it go.

Better, but not by much.

I kept my eyes steadily glued to those girls, but nothing was amiss, and I soon lost sight of them when the parade turned in a circle. I might be my imagination, but those girls looked like their staring at me for a moment there.

I moved back to my place, apologizing to the girl behind me again.

I was very nervous, and I felt like I couldn't keep still even more than usual. I kept trying to look for the snake-legged girls again, but to no avail. The parade ended with the loud BANG of the drum, and slowly disbanded. The snake girls were nowhere to be seen. I guess I must've looked pretty frazzled, since Rinae came looking for me not long after the first event, the 100 metres race ended.

Her House is Blue, the most likely candidate for this year's second place. Her Blue House coloured T-shirt stood out like a sore thumb amongst the sea of green. It's not technically breaking the rules for a student to go to the tent of another House, but even the boldest rule breakers wait awhile longer before so blatantly ignoring protocol. Rinae's a good friend like that, I guess.

She had seemed quite on edge, and I had wondered if she had seen the snake ladies, too. I dismissed the thought as simply ridiculous. Little did I know…

'Hey, mind if I sit next to you?' Rinae had asked, gesturing to the space beside me my bag had taken as its own. 'Sure.' I didn't mind that we had to squeeze quite a bit-I felt too relieved for that. Rinae always has that calming air to her that spreads over to the people around her. She's the most reliable friend if there ever was one.

We had sat there, talking about the races as it came and went. I had felt back to normal by then, the snake girls all but forgotten. Hey, if you have mood flashes like mine, you would have extremely short-termed memory too! … I think.

After the races, the javelin throwers from each House all lined up on the field, preparing for the javelin throwing event. The announcer called a number, and the player would step forward from the line to get their turn to throw the javelin.

I was discussing the pro and cons if humans can't see light to Shrynae –a Science class project- when I saw the snake ladies again.

They were lined up with the javelin throwing contestants, each with a javelin in their hand. They don't look any different from the others from afar, but their green legs, well, trunks or tails or whatever it is stood out a mile away. They were standing side by side, and as they swung their supposedly wooden javelins with blunted metal pointy ends in their hands, the sunlight glinting off the javelin made it look the furthest thing from 'woody'. I bet the metal tip is decidedly NOT blunt at all. The worst thing?

They are wearing the same Green house T-shirt I'm wearing. They looked –how do you describe a snake lady wearing a bright green T-shirt with two green tails? Scary? Horrifying? Terrible? Awful?

Whichever they are, I'm looking right at them, and they're looking right at me.

One of them raised the javelin in her hand. It wasn't her turn yet, so suppose she's just practicing swinging the thing and no one took any notice. Practicing the movements before the actual throw is a good thing, unless your practicing involves actually throwing the javelin, at very high speed, really-spikey-metal-end pointing straight towards the audience seats. At me.

Now, have you ever watched a movie, where when someone ran across the highway, see a car coming straight at them, immediately freeze there standing in the middle of the road, waiting for the car to hit them? I always thought that they're stupid, you know –you see certain death heading straight at you; you run away. Only superheroes face it head on-and I'm certainly far from being a superhero.

But there I was, eyes glued to the javelin heading straight for my head, frozen still as a statue.

The javelin flew closer and closer. I didn't dare to blink my eyes, afraid that once I do, I'll never open them again.

One second, it was two feet away from me, about to spear me through the head. The other, an ear-deafening clang resounded through my ears, followed by the piercing sound of metal against metal. I blinked, and the javelin was lying on the ground beside me. There was no blood.

'Rinae…?'

She was standing in front of me, a short sabre in her hand. The sabre was bronze, even the hilt, but there was a hint of golden along the edges of the blade. Rinae's normally kind eyes were staring straight at the half-snake-half-girls, blazing with cold determination.

What the…?!

The seniors with snake legs hissed at Rinae, and even from a distance I could see that they definitely wasn't human. The large protruding fangs were a bit of a giveaway. The only problem was that other than me –and probably Rinae -, no one is reacting! The other athletes lining up with their wooden javelins behind them all have their eyes focused on the field, completely ignoring the two decidedly snakey seniors two steps in front of them.

'Rinae, what –'

Just then, a faint roaring cold be heard, growing louder and louder, racing down to the school field from the school gates. Not a second later two large garbage trucks crashed into the field, scattering students and teachers alike. Now people were panicking, and panicking generally involves a lot of screaming and running around, and flapping of arms and legs.

Like some sort of universal signal, everyone, and I mean everyone was soon following the examples of others, and within seconds the whole school population was imitating headless chickens amass. Even the ones in the school buildings overlooking the field.

It was like some sort of cartoonish scene cut right out from a comedy, the two garbage trucks are driving around, roaring and engines growling, and heads are bound to be knocked together sooner or later. Rinae's tight hold on the collar of my shirt was the only thing stopping me from joining in.

'Come on, snap out of it!' Rinae shook my shoulders, hard. My head lolled about, taking in the chaos around me with a detached sort of filter. Oh, I've heard of this. I think I was in shock.

Finally sound seemed to register in my brain, as well as sight. The garbage trucks aren't running on growling and roaring engines, the trucks are growling, and the I found that compared to garbage, these trucks-no, wait, WHAT in the-

'We have to move, now!' Rinae shouted in my ear, half-dragging, half-carrying me towards the edge of the school field.

-what ARE those?! They smell worse than three week old garbage! How are they going to smell anything other than themselves even if they go sniffing around like that? It's like, like the mouldy, salty hint of something dead, like the time a lizard died in the air-conditioner, only a hundred times worse.

'Snap out of it!' With a mighty shove from Rinae, I was suddenly looking straight at her, not past her anymore. Rinae was frowning, a rare and dangerous sight. I've never see her really frown before. Then I started taking in what she was shouting at me over the chaos.

'Look, reinforcements are coming, and our ride should be here soon, go, run to the gates!' Two House tents collapsed behind us, the metal poles supporting it snapping like a twig as one of the monster-that-is-not-a-truck knocked it down.

I was on my feet real fast after that, and I realized that the snake seniors were closing in on us since all the chaos begun, but was blocked by the mass of bodies running around on the school field, supposedly avoiding the rumbling out-of-control garbage trucks. But didn't the snakey seniors have real, life, dangerous javelins?

The people in their way…just as the thought occurred to me, one of the snake seniors swiped out a hand at a girl in Purple House shirt running past her! N-wait, was that Handrew? Did he just did a flying jump and knocked the girl out of harm's way?

Another harsh tug at the collar of my shirt. Jeez, I'm running, Rinae, I'm running! 'But what about Handrew?' I yelled, voice one or two octaves higher than normal.

Rinae pulled me up the stairs leading away from the field. 'Don't worry about him, he's a great fighter! Run!'

Helter-skelter, I followed Rinae's hurried footsteps through a few corridors and the cafeteria. Rinae's whole body was tense; her eyes alight with a kind of heightened awareness. The hand clamping down on my arm was tighter than an iron band. Whenever we turn a corner, she slowed down, and from her expression I knew she was listening intently for any sounds of movement from around the corner before she pulled me along, all the while her sabre held steady in her other hand.

When we finally reached the open parking lot just before the main gates, my breathing was ragged from all the running and the tension, not to mention more than a little woozy from all the impossible things happening today.

With Rinae's urging, we made a mad dash across the crammed parking lot. Heat waves rolled off the reflective surfaces of the car roofs, and droplets of sweat rolled down the side of my face as we weaved and darted through the cars.

The gates were thrown wide open, likely from when the not-garbage-trucks barged into the school grounds. The guardhouse was empty, the small electrical fan inside still spinning. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the school guards running around in the crowd still panicking over at the field. The screaming was still on-going, and I think someone got ahold of the megaphones.

'Rinae, RUUUUU-woah!' a shout came up behind us, and I turned my head to find Handrew sprinting full pelt towards us, dodging a swipe of a javelin at his head. The snakey seniors slithering up several feet behind him, one of them must have retrieved her javelin, as they kept waving the javelins like long sticks in front of them trying to smack Handrew upside the head, eyes blazing and hissing, 'Ssssstay sssstil, sssstupid ssssatyr!'

My feet slowed down, trying to get to Handrew and- do what? I can't do anything, but Rinae can. 'Rinae! Handrew-we have to help!'

'No! Keep-hey!-going! I'm catching up lat-woah STOP WAVING THOSE THINGS AT MY HEAD!' Handrew yelled at the snakey seniors behind him, grabbing one of the javelins aimed to split his head in half dangerously close to the sharp end of the stick, and pulled hard as he fell forward into a half crouch, narrowly dodging another swipe of the other snakey senior's javelin.

Momentum pulled the javelin out of the snakey senior's hand, and Handrew turned around swiftly, both hands gripping the snatched javelin. An indignant hiss at being run through by her own weapon was the last thing the snakey senior did before bursting into golden dust.

'You will pay for that, ssssatyr!' was the last thing the other one said before Handrew smacked her in the jaw with the blunt end of the javelin in his hands and with a small, graceful twirl, swiped the sharp end across her throat.

Rinae was still pulling me along, but my legs were going on auto pilot as my brain short-wired. The image of the quiet, gentle, funny Handrew I know and the fierce, graceful, monster-slayer Handrew clashing in my head.

Talk about split personalities, huh.

'Come on, let's go,' Handrew caught up with us, and my legs followed my two friends as we passed through the school gates unhindered. Guess I was right after all when I wondered if there was something different, or suspicious about their behavior. I took several seconds in my head to reorganize and reassess what I knew about Rinae and Handrew, and integrated what I just learned into what I thought was them. There will be questions, I promised to myself, and they will be answered, one way or another.

'There, our ride!' Rinae pointed ahead her sabre, and I followed the pointy end of the blade to land my eyes on a black Mercedes. A very familiar black Mercedes.

No. No way. There is NO way-Nonononono

'Sorry for the delay, but they caught up faster than we thought they would,' Rinae explained to the driver as we piled into the car. Handrew practically collapsed and fell right into sleep on my left, and Rinae on my right side-wait, where did her sabre go?

The man in the driver seat turned around to look at us for a second. 'No problem,' he replied evenly, actions betraying his calm deposition as he floored the accelerator and the car tires screeched on the asphalt as we did a 45-degree turn into the main road.

I was in too much shock to properly form a sentence. There are already way too many surprises today, and it's not even noon yet. I didn't think my heart could stand anymore, and one just had to pop up to crown them all.

My dad looked at me through the rearview mirror. 'So, how was school today?'

And - CUT!

This entry really is too long for me to write it in one chapter, so I had to split it up. Hopefully, it's not going to take too long to reach the start of this chapter. Another thing, because of the two-year long lull I had between first starting this story and now, I have, frankly put, completely forgotten what the original plot was. Yay me.

One last VERY IMPORTANT thing: I haven't touched any PJO or HoO books and fics in over a year, so the facts and stuff could very well be wrong. Feel free to tell me when I've gotten some fact about the PJO world wrong, or a character is too OOC, although the story would most likely focus on my OCs.

So, what'dya think? RnR~