GG, Kronos, But I Have Foresight

It was while we were playing a game of basketball that the news reached me.

Well, all the other kids in the Apollo cabin were playing basketball. I was mostly just sprinting around the court and trying to keep between a couple people who had the ball (and failing). The demigods were faster than me and a lot of them were taller. The cons of being in a twelve-year-old female body; whereas I'd been 5'9" back in my home world, now I was just barely reaching over five feet. Another thing that was helping me fall behind the others was the fact that the Apollo kids' mastery over projectiles transferred to basketballs as well, whereas I did not have these perks. This meant that while they were landing nearly every hoop they shot, any balls I managed to get my hands on and throw wound up skipping along the rim and falling away from the basket, or bouncing off the rim, or falling short, or (don't even ask me how I managed this one) accidentally braining Lee Fletcher in the head despite him having been fifteen feet behind me at the time.

"Ow," he said, rubbing his head gingerly as he spun the ball on the pointer finger of his free hand like a Harlem Globetrotter. He flicked it up, juggled it between his feet, kicked it, rolled it down his back, spun, and caught it again. "Where were you even aiming at that time, Eve?"

I harrumphed and folded my sweaty arms, glaring and pointedly ignoring his question (mostly because I didn't know the answer myself). "Now you're just showing off."

"Guilty as charged." He spun the ball on his finger again, and I stared, my eye twitching.
I'd always wanted to be able to do that.

"Oh, screw off," I said, shaking my head. "You Apollo guys are all way too full of yourselves. Except Will and Michael."

"See?" Michael grinned and jabbed Lee in the side with his elbow, causing the cabin counselor to drop his basketball. "I told you I'm her favorite."

A flat expression overtook my face. "Actually, I take that back. Only Will's not full of himself."

"I'm not really as cool as you always try and make me sound…" the annoyingly gorgeous blond said awkwardly, standing a few feet away from the hoop, skirting around it back and forth in wait for a rebound.

"My point exactly."

As some of my cabin mates chuckled in response, I grinned and maybe blushed a tiny bit at Will's kicked-puppy face. A man had absolutely no right being that cute. The worst part was that I couldn't even blame it on my girl's body being hormonal; this was one hundred percent me reacting this way. It was just... I was in full support of the LGBT+ community, gods bless them, but it felt weird wondering if I was now a member of them. Then again, I suppose I'd been a member of said community ever since coming to this world.

Did being forcibly genderswapped by a mythological, all-powerful being count as being trans?

...I wasn't sure of the answer to that question. I made a mental note to ask my sister whenever I'd manage to make my way back home. She was taking a Women's Studies course and a Gender and Sexuality course in college. She'd know better than I would ever hope to.

My sister was pretty cool like that. We used to have great conversations about politics, what makes a person a person, and stuff. Watching the Apollo kids bicker about who was my favorite among them like normal brothers, my mood saddened. Not for the first time over the course of the previous month or so, I missed my family—my real family—terribly.

I was shaken out of my homesickness by the sight of two distant people picking their way down Half-Blood Hill into camp. I'd only just picked them out from my peripheral vision, and it was only because of my ADD drawing my attention to movement that I'd noticed them in the first place.

My eyes widened.

"What day is it?" I asked, turning to Will, who blinked and tapped his chin.

"May 31st," he said after a moment. He tilted his head. He looked like a kitten trying to understand some new sound. "Why? ...Is something important happening today?"

I caught myself staring at his (nope, not cute!) expression and quickly turned away, my face hot. A mental image of a short, angry old lady slapping me with a rolled-up newspaper came to mind. My gods, pull yourself together! "Mm, not really," I said mysteriously, giggling a little at the disbelieving Ehh? Will gave me. "Just the beginning."

"The beginning?" Lee, who'd been busy bouncing his basketball off of Austin Lake's blond head, looked at me with a confused furrowing of his eyebrows. "The beginning of what?"
I hummed. "Of everything."

"Eeeeeeve, you're doing that thing where you're not making sense again."

I cackled at my cabin mates' faces, all scrunched up, trying to think of what I meant. Did I enjoy picking on them and dangling my future knowledge right in front of their faces, then snatching it away at the last minute, way too much? Probably. Did I care? Not in the slightest. "Things will make sense when they're supposed to make sense," I said, wearing a vulpine-eating grin. "Things won't make sense when they're supposed to not make sense."

Michael Yew raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Ehhh? You just like teasing us."

"Well, can't argue with that."

All the Apollo kids, save for Will and Lee, suddenly gained a furious twitch of the eye. "This girl…" they ground out, several of them facepalming.

Joking aside, the fact that Percy and Grover were here in the early evening of today, the thirty-first, concerned me. Bored one day some years ago, I'd pulled up some calendars of 2005 and used the date of the summer solstice—June 21st of that year—to pinpoint roughly the exact days of the events of the first book. If I'd been correct, then Percy and Grover's arrival at Camp Half-Blood and the kidnapping of Sally Jackson was supposed to take place today. It was supposed to be in the nighttime, though, after Percy had gone to sleep and started dreaming about Zeus and Poseidon's fight. But this was probably around six o'clock, maybe a little past that, and Beckendorf and I had already fought the Minotaur; did that mean that Sally hadn't been kidnapped by Hades? I hoped that was the case. Percy didn't need to have his quest complicated by a revenge subplot.

There is a reason why prophecies always happen, Mr. D's words echoed in my head.

I squeezed my eyes shut and desperately forced them in the back of my head. Shut up, shut up, shut up!

"I'm going to go say hi to a couple of friends," I said with a wave to the other kids in my cabin as I jogged off the basketball field. "Is that alright?"

Lee blinked. "A couple friends? Yeah, sure. It's our free-time, so I don't really care. Just be back before cabin clean-up in an hour and a half." He was a pretty kind, laid-back guy. All of Apollo's kids were that type of person, really, with varying levels of narcissism. Well, they were laid-back unless you insulted music within earshot of them. The last time that had happened, the Ares cabin had been cursed to only talk in one note all the time, completely unable to raise or lower their voices. The campfire sing-along that week had been hilarious.

"I'll be there then!" I promised, and ran off to go meet up with my Yancy friends for the first time in a little over a month.

I was stronger than I'd been last month, that was for sure. The training here was rigorous, dangerous, and had nearly killed me countless times, but thanks to it I was a different man… um, woman than I'd been in April. Or all my life, really. I'd never been this limber, never felt this fast. My lethargic, sedentary self almost hated admitting this, but it felt… good. By the time I'd sprinted over to Percy and Grover, I was only panting a little bit instead of bent over my knees, gasping for air.

"Oi!" I called wildly. Their now much bigger and closer figures were clearly Percy and Grover indeed, as I'd suspected, and even better, it looked like they hadn't fought any battles at all. Percy wasn't beat up in the slightest, and most importantly, Grover was on both fake human feet and not moaning unconsciously for food. A ridiculously happy grin spread across my face. I'd done it! I'd made them not have to fight anything and had therefore saved Sally!

Percy glanced up from chatting with Grover, paused, said something I couldn't hear from this distance, and waved cheerfully. "YO!" he shouted down the hillside.

"In your face, Mr. D!" I cheered, punching the air triumphantly.

The demigod and satyr picked up their paces, running all the rest of the way down Half-Blood Hill to greet me. Grinning joyfully, I turned to walk between them and clapped my right hand on Percy's back and my left hand on Grover's. "The band's back together!" I said.

Grover snorted in amusement. "You're in a good mood," he observed.

"Oh, please, I'm an optimist," I informed him with a snort of my own. "That's literally in the job description."

The son of Poseidon tilted his head and frowned. "There's a job description for optimists?"
"Well… no. But that'd be there if there was one!"

"No kidding." Percy chuckled and folded his arms behind his head. "Well, anyway, when she dropped us off on the crest of that hill, my mom said that I'd have to register at the Big House." He pointed to the huge, multi-story house not too far away at our left. "I assume that's the place there?"

"Correctamundo!" I confirmed with a thumbs-up.

Percy looked out over the camp again, humming thoughtfully. "So what is this camp, anyway? Chiron said it was for people who liked mythology, but some of those cabins look… well, er, kind of over-the-top."

I followed his gaze to the Ares cabin, all blood-red and screaming danger. This impression was further insinuated by the stuffed boar's head above the cabin door, the barbed wire rolling all over the rooftop, and a few arrows lodged into the outside walls.

"Crash course for the newbie," I said, making Percy roll his eyes and Grover shake his head at me rapidly, a bead of sweat rolling down his cheek. I raised an eyebrow at him, like, what? "We're inside camp borders and all, there's no way a monster'll attack us now." I thought about that and fixed my statement. "Er, except for the hellhound that will appear during next Friday's capture-the-flag game."

Grover sweatdropped. "Huh?"

Percy gaped. "Um, sorry, what? Monster? Hellhound?" He blinked and pointed at my hand. "Oh, also, what the HECK happened at the museum?"

"Mrs. Dodds was literally a demon and I killed her by catching a magic sword with my palm," I said flatly. I returned my dark-haired friend's skeptic stare with a deadpan of my own. "I couldn't even make this up if I tried."

Oh, wait, I was very likely a self-insert.

I guess I could make this up if I tried.

Moving on.

"Eve!" Grover yelped, waving his hands around desperately. "Don't overwhelm him!"

"Overwhelm him, you say? On it!" At this statement, the poor satyr wilted, buried his face in his hands, and groaned while I turned back to a very confused Percy. "So, everything you know is wrong. Mythology isn't mythology, science is just primitive mumbo jumbo, and magic is a thing. The weather going wild is the Greek gods fighting over Zeus's missing thunderbolt which airheaded Zeus thinks you stole despite the fact that you still have no idea Poseidon is your father, and you're about to go on a narrowly completed quest to Hell in order to prove your innocence before you get smote by a trigger-happy nymphomaniac, despite the fact that Hades isn't evil and Zeus is just a jerk."

The sky rumbled and rain poured down around me. Literally only me.

"YOU CAN'T DENY THE TRUTH!" I shouted at the cloudless sky. I blinked at that. How was it raining when there weren't any clouds overhead? You know what, whatever, I'm going to dumb it down to all-mighty sky god logic.

But wait, I thought Poseidon was the master of water? Shouldn't he have control over rainstorms? I didn't insult Poseidon.

This raised some questions. Could Jason make storms? Could Jason and Percy combined make Level-5 hurricanes? You know what, I bet they're somehow going to be responsible for Harvey, Irma, and Jose in the future, because as we all know, CLIMATE CHANGE DOESN'T EXIST! *cough* sarcasm *cough*

Hey, wait, when did Katrina take place? This year, right? Was it a result of the argument over Zeus's Master Bolt? Wait, never mind, it happened—happens—in August and as we've already discussed, the summer solstice is on the twenty-first of June. I made a mental note to send an anonymous warning to NASA or whatever to evacuate people around the Gulf Coast, after the completion of Percy's quest.

"Eve!" Grover waved in front of my face, making me jerk back in surprise. "You're staring off into space."

I rubbed the back of my now-wet head awkwardly. "Ah… hahaha… sorry."

Percy stared, his jaw dropped as he looked up to the sky, down to the rain drumming down on me like Eeyore, back up to the sky, and down to me. "How is it raining on literally only you? And wait, did you say my dad's Poseidon? As in, the ancient Greek god of the sea? The Greek god of the sea who's not supposed to exist?"

Grover stared at me in sudden horror. "You're not serious."

"Yes I am," I replied casually, wiping my soaked forehead with an annoyed huff. "And as for you, Percy, what was the first thing I said?"

He furrowed his brow. "Everything I know is wrong?"

"No, after that."

"Uh… mythology isn't mythology?"

"Ding ding ding! We have a winner! And do you think you would like being told you weren't supposed to exist by someone who is basically on the level of an ant compared to you?"

Percy gaped at me. "You're insane," he decided.

"Obviously," I agreed, "but I'm also right. Grover, tell him."

The satyr stiffened as Percy looked disbelievingly at him. "U-U-Um, well… Eve is r-right about the gods being real, but…" He paled. "You can't be Poseidon's son."

"Prove it," Percy demanded. "Prove the gods are real."

Grover sighed and glared at me. "Well… alright. I wanted to save this for after orientation, but I suppose some people leave me no choice." With an annoyed bleat, he stiffly pulled his fake feet out of his sneakers, kicked them off, and rolled his pants up.

Percy's eyes nearly popped out of his head.

"W-WHOA!" he gasped, pointing at Grover's legs. "Dude, you need to shave."

"Rude!" I reprimanded him, bopping the boy upside the head while Grover glared at him. "He's a satyr, obviously. Just look at the hooves."

"So… beneath the waist, my best friend is half-goat?"

I blinked. "Good for you, I thought you were gonna mix it up with a different animal."

"Hey, I'll have you know I actually learned things in the final month at school!" Percy huffed, rubbing his sore head.

...Did I unintentionally make Percy smarter?

Huh.

"Still…" Grover gave me a nervous frown. "How can Poseidon possibly be Percy's dad. The pact—"

"Has already been broken by Zeus twice," I deadpanned, "with both his Greek and his… oh wait, you guys don't know about that yet, do you? Heheheh… I can blackmail a god…"

The rain poured down on my head considerably harder, and I think I felt the ground crackle with electricity. All the color drained from my face and I waved my hands before me pleadingly. "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT, IT WAS A JOKE! A JOKE! I'M A FUNNY GUY, ER, GIRL, I MAKE JOKES! PLEASE DON'T SMITE ME!"

The ground stopped crackling, and I breathed a very long sigh of relief. I didn't have a whole lot of life to flash before my eyes, and most of it was pretty boring anyway, so I refused to come near death until I had at least a few interesting adventures to relive.

I could literally feel Percy and Grover staring at me.

"Note to self… do not antagonize kings of gods," I muttered, the color oh-so-slowly returning to my cheeks.

"Do you have a death wish or something?" Grover asked, his face looking like he couldn't quite believe I wasn't more roasted than a Thanksgiving turkey.

"What just happened?" Percy asked nobody in particular.

We both ignored him.

By this time we'd finally reached the Big House, and the overhang on the porch did absolutely nothing to shield me from the apparently omnipresent rainstorm cascading over my head. I much preferred heaving water-heavy clothes, though, to wandering the Fields of Asphodel for my eternity, so I took what I had and I didn't complain about it. Mr. D was sitting on a chair next to a table on said porch, a glass of Kool-Aid in his hand and a deck of cards laying on the table's surface.

"New camper?" Mr. D said lazily, staring at Percy like he didn't quite want to get up from the chair at the moment and the demigod's presence was ruining his evening. "Luckily for me, Chiron came back just a little while ago. Go on and meet him inside, boy. Eve, why is it raining around you?"

"Pissed off Zeus," I replied.

Mr. D sighed. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me," he mumbled. Shaking his head, maybe in half amusement and half what-in-the-fuck-is-this-girl-on, he tapped his cards expectantly as Percy nervously opened the doors of the Big House and stepped through. "Pinochle?"

I exchanged a glance with Grover, who nodded hurriedly. Right. I didn't want to piss off more than one god today.

"Pinochle," I decided, and both of us pulled up a chair which promptly got covered in water due to the storm surrounding me. "Just warning you, though, I suck at card games."

~o~
"Eve," Grover said slowly, staring with a dumb expression at the final hand of the game, "how on Olympus did you manage to beat both of us, despite having absolutely no idea what even the rules of the game were starting out?"

I stared helplessly, flabbergasted myself. "I… I have no idea. And for the record, I still don't know the rules."

Mr. D actually looked mildly interested in something, for once. He stared at me through the still-pouring rain quizzically. "Do you have time for another round?" he asked.

No, way, man, I'm stopping while I'm some-fucking-how ahead. I needed an excuse, though. I glanced at my wristwatch, gazed blankly at it for a moment or two, then remembered I didn't have a wristwatch and looked up at the nearest clock. Aha! Saved!

"No, sorry," I said politely, "but I have to go. I'll be late for cabin clean-ups if I spend more time playing pinochle."

"Go clean up your cabin, then, Ivanka," he said with mild disappointment, scooping up and shuffling any cards Grover hadn't stress-eaten.

"Hey, I am not a Trump!"

The water currently pouring down around me instantly turned into Kool-Aid, before it was replaced by new water.

"I am just really good at rubbing gods the wrong way today," I sighed despairingly before standing up and shoving my chair back in. I saluted Mr. D and Grover, then made off for the stairs off the porch. "Well, I'll see you guys at dinner."

The resident wine god made no attempt at good-byes and instead grunted a very bored and very judgemental grunt. Grover waved back at me, then paused and stood up.

"Eve…" he said, looking away at first and then slowly looking me in the eyes. "Is…" He glanced at Mr. D and flinched. "Is you-know-who really Percy's dad?"

"Did you honestly expect them to keep a promise?" I deadpanned. "And besides, remember the fountain?"

Grover's brow furrowed. "The fountain?"

Oh, right, he'd been talking with Chiron about Mrs. Dodds in the museum when Percy had started to accidentally show off his water powers. He wouldn't have seen the fountain start to swirl unnaturally before I punched Nancy and made the demigod calm down.

"Never mind. But why else do you think Percy likes the beach so much? Why Mrs. Jackson said Percy's dad disappeared the way she said? I mean, do you know about that, or…?"

"She told us in the car," Grover said, his face growing increasingly more worried by the second. "Still, that can't be true…"

"Who are you two talking about?" Mr. D asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Um…" I froze, thought about my options, didn't like any of them, and settled for speeding off to the Apollo cabin. "JUST REMEMBERED THAT I NEVER MADE MY BED!" I shouted. "SAYONARA!"

Mr. D stared after me, a complete deadpan coating his features.

"...How that girl has survived this past month is still beyond me," he muttered, shaking his head once I was out of earshot. Grover could only laugh nervously and silently agree with him.

Notes