"Walker!" A teacher yelled. "Watson! What are you two doing?"

Carrie looked back and still saw the two cheerleaders chasing the freshman. She gestured to the teacher. "There's trouble! Those two students are in trouble!"

The teacher looked behind Carrie, confused. "What students?"

Carrie turned around again; the freshman had turned a corner and the cheerleaders were still standing in the far hallway, seemingly readjusting themselves. Carrie turned back around. "Can't you see…?"

The teacher pinched the bridge of her nose. "There's no one there, Watson. Please go take your seats." She shook her head. "This is unusual behavior for you."

Carrie panicked and looked to Dennis for answers, who swiftly cooled under pressure. "We saw two freshmen leave and we just wanted to make sure everything was okay."

She stared at Dennis in disbelief. Why isn't he backing me up?

The teacher seemed to take that as an acceptable answer, and Dennis and Carrie to their seats at the welcoming committee section. Carrie was still restless, thinking back on what she'd just saw. She leaned over and whispered to Dennis.

"Shouldn't we tell them what just happened?"

He shook his head. "They wouldn't believe us."

Carrie looked dumbfounded. "Well if they saw what we saw –"

"They can't. You tried to show her, and she didn't see anything. "

A teacher shushed them and Carrie lowered her voice. "We can't just leave those kids to fend for themselves."

Dennis threw her a look. "We're the same age, Carrie. What can we do?"

Call a teacher! Carrie thought, wanting to say it again. Dennis sensed she was going to say more and put a hand on her arm to stop her. "I'll explain everything to you later, I promise."

Against her better judgment she listened to him and sat still for the rest of the freshman orientation. After it was over he took her hand and led her outside.

"What's going on, Dennis?" Carrie had been stewing over it in her head; nothing was adding up. Not judge what had happened today, but the way Dennis has been acting since she met him. Something was up, and she wanted to know what. "What happened in there?"

"I've been waiting." He ran his hands through his hair and smiled a smile that reminded Carrie of a mad person. "I've been waiting for so long for him to show up. And he finally did."

What? For who? "For who to show up?"

"Percy Jackson."

Carrie remembered his name from the list of freshmen who were coming in. "The 9th grader? Why is he special?"

"He's not just a 9th grader. He's a demigod."

Carrie paused. "A demigod," She said skeptically. They'd learned about Greek mythology in school, so she knew what a demigod was.

He nodded. "I know it sounds crazy but…he is. He's a demigod, and I know because I have been tracking him for months."

The more Dennis spoke, the crazier he sounded to her. Tracking him for months? "You've been stalking a 14 year old?" She said in disgust.

"We're 14 too!" He shook his head, frustrated. "Forget it, that's beside the point. Just listen to what I have to tell you, it'll make sense in the end."

He took a deep breath. "You saw what happened in there, right?"

"Yeah… Tammi and Kelli turned into…" Turned into what? I don't even know what those were. "Something,"

"Not just any thing. They turned into Empusas; Blood sucking creatures of the night."

"Vampires?" She said with disbelief. "They had goat legs."

"The legend was based off of them. Carrie," He moved closer to her and held her shoulders. "Can you explain what you saw in there? Why the teacher couldn't see what we saw?"

Carrie tried, but couldn't. There was no doubt in her mind what she'd seen…but maybe there was another explanation. Maybe it was a costume they'd put on?

"You can't, right?"

Carrie was starting to get a headache. "That doesn't…that doesn't mean anything! That doesn't prove Percy Jackson is a demigod."

"I've been keeping tabs on Percy and anywhere he goes, everywhere he goes – monsters follow him. He's constantly chased by creatures like the ones you just saw in school. Creatures like that only chase demigods."

Carrie started to rub her temples; she felt her headache grow. "Dennis…I don't understand what you're trying to tell me right now. It doesn't make sense."

Dennis seemed to be getting frustrated with her. "Do you know why the teacher couldn't see what we could see?"

She shook her head.

"Because we have the sight, and she doesn't. There's normally a mist that covers monsters, makes normal humans either not be able to see them at all or turn the monsters into something more mundane for their minds to understand. But some people, some people like us," He took her hand. "We can see through the mist."

"The mist," She said again skeptically. None of this made sense. Yes, it was weird that the teacher couldn't see the two monsters, but this explanation for it was even weirder.

Dennis pulled back and started fishing around in his book bag. He brought out a USB and crammed notebook and handed it to her. "This notebook documents all of my research, and this USB has video graphic evidence of monsters attacking the town. And each time, Percy is there."

Carrie took them tentatively, warily staring at Dennis.

"When you're home alone, watch it."

And when she got home, despite the fact that her mind was telling her this was ridiculous and crazy and that she shouldn't even entertain Dennis's insane ramblings, she watched it.

"His notebook was so detailed, but it was the flash drive that made me believe. Seeing actual video footage combined with his notebook…everything started making sense." Carrie looked at Connor's shocked expression. "What?"

Connor was startled by what he'd just heard. "Are you saying Dennis has a notebook and flash drive filled with secret writings and video footage of demigods in New York?"

Carrie shook her head. "Not anymore, they were destroyed a while back. There was a fire in one of our –"

"Okay story's over!" Scarlet clammed her hand over Carrie's mouth and grinned at Connor. "I think you've gotten all you need from her."

Connor swallowed. Everything he'd just heard…Wow, I didn't know Dennis at all. Andrew was right. Even thinking that killed him, but hearing about the person Dennis was when he was younger…it hurt him more. Dennis had completely lied to everyone in camp about how he'd grown up. He pretended not to know Percy…he lied about his school…lied about where he grew up…

Connor knew that he had to have fabricated some aspects of his life in order for him to keep up the façade that he was a demigod, but Connor had assumed he'd kept the mundane stories about school and other things the same. What would be the reason to lie about those?

Scarlet let go of Carrie's mouth/ "Are you okay, shrinkydink?" She moved forward. "You don't look so good."

Connor ran his hand over his face. "I'm fine." He turned back to Carrie.

"So after that, you started to help Dennis do what…find Percy?"

Carrie looked at Scarlet, who shook her head. She asked Connor, "Why are you so curious as to how we met Dennis? Shouldn't your story be the same?"

Are you saying yours was? He thought. He smiled at her, shaking his head slightly. "I'm just trying to get to know you guys better. If we're going to be working together, shouldn't I know my teammates?"

Scarlet crossed her arms, still not convinced. "Do you know Nick?"

Unfortunately, "Yeah, he's the…con artist." Thief, Connor wanted to say, but held his tongue. "He introduced himself to us by stealing Eirene's ring."

Scarlet started to smile, so Connor quickly countered it. "He was good, but we got the ring back," He paused. "How did you meet him?"

Scarlet sat back in her seat, her legs crossed and her mouth shut. She wasn't going to budge.

Just then Carrie started to panic. She started shoving Scarlet to look at the watch on her wrist. "W-where is this boat going?"

Scarlet looked at Carrie's watch, which Connor noticed was too big to be a watch, and started to panic too. "Where the hell are you taking us? Is this a trap?"

Connor stood up and went over to them. "What the hell are you two talking about–?" He saw then that Carrie's watch was actually a very large GPS tracker, and on the tracker there was a giant red shape emerging from the left of the screen. "What does that mean?"

"This is a monster tracker; it alerts us when a monster is near." She looked out at the ocean in fear. "Usually it shows a small red figure. I've never seen anything this big before. We're sailing right into the monster's way."

"You guys planned this, didn't you?" Scarlet grabbed his shirt and shook him. "This entire thing was a set up!"

Shit. He shoved her off and turned to Carrie."How accurate is that tracker?"

"It's never been wrong before, it's how we always know where to go to catch monsters."

Connor looked towards the stairs to Andrew. "Stop the ship!" He yelled while running towards the flying bridge. He was running so fast he basically flew over the stairs and started Eirene, who was stroking Elon's hair. Andrew stopped stirring momentarily and turned around.

"Stop the ship! Or turn it around, something, damnit!"

"What's gotten into you?" Andrew asked. "Has talking to them made you mad?"

"We're sailing straight towards a giant sea monster." He breathed, looking more panicked by the second.

"How do you know?" Eirene asked. She didn't doubt him, but what made him suddenly think so?

"The girl downstairs, Carrie, she has this sort of monster-tracking device. It's never been wrong before, and it says you're sailing directly towards a giant creature."

Elon stood up suddenly, shaking in his hoofs. "I knew it! The sea means death!"

"Okay, everyone calm down for a sec." Andrew turned to Elon. "Are you sure Matthew is still headed east?"

Elon nodded furiously. "We're all going to die!" He wailed.

"Does Carrie know what kind of monster it is?" Andrew asked Connor.

"I don't know, I didn't ask."

"Bring her up, maybe she does." Andrew could think of a wide array of possible monsters they were headed towards, and he could think of a multitude of ways to defeat them, but it was tricky because they weren't in possession of anything they needed to kill those possible monsters. If he knew exactly which type, maybe he could think of something on the ship that could help.

Connor went downstairs and a few moments later came back up with Carrie, who looked just about as shaken as Elon.

Andrew didn't hesitate and started questioning her about the supposed monster they were approaching. Carrie kept tapping her tracker. "I don't know what kind of creature it is, but I'm getting consistent vibrations and heat shocks, which means its Power Caliber is higher than any of the other monsters Scarlet and I have encountered."

She tapped it again, moving closer to Andrew to show him. "And it's not just that creature; other red targets are appearing around it. Smaller, but it's a lot of them." The GPS tracker was riddled with a few tiny red dots across the screen, and then off to the far left there was a massive red dot blocking that entire region.

Scarlet stomped up the stairs next, looking furious. "If you guys purposely set this trap up for us, I swear –"

Andrew scoffed. "Right, we set a trap for you guys that involve us getting killed too, real smart."

She pointed a finger at him. "You're all demigods! You all have powers! There's no way Carrie and I can make it against you guys."

As the crew stood there arguing, and Elon stood there shaking, Eirene tried to calm them all down. She took Andrew's arm to distract him from arguing. "We've come across a lot of powerful creatures in a short time and defeated them all. We'll be fine, don't worry." She looked at Connor. "We aren't going to die."

Everyone calmed for a moment, and just then, in the sudden silence they heard a voice.

It sounded like a whisper at first. But then they heard it again.

And this time, a song.

Author's Note/: Reviews are greatly appreciated and help motivate me for the next chapter :)