GG, Kronos, But I Have Foresight

I think someone upstairs wasn’t too happy with my little info-spilling stunt earlier, because fate seemed to be against me as I was helping to clean up my cabin.

It started off simple enough. I wasn’t perfect at making my bed wrinkle-free yet, simply because I hadn’t bothered to make it even once back home, but it looked decent enough, anyway. The yellow bedsheets were on pretty neatly, the orange blanket laid over the sheets with only a few noticeably large wrinkles, and my pillow was only a tad crooked at the head of my bed. None of this bothered me very much, thanks to the fact that OCD was not one of the things I suffered from. Except when it came to writing. Bad grammar and improper usage of dialogue techniques, and other stuff like that, always got on my nerves.

That made it a little hard to find fanfiction with interesting premises that I could actually read without tearing my eyes out of my head… But I digress.

My evening started going bad when I stepped on the piece of Five gum I’d carelessly dropped on the floor earlier that day.

“Aw, really?” I sighed, staring at the bottom of my grey sneaker (white shoes were a huge no-no) with a disappointed frown. Even if it was my own gum, it was still chewed up and dry, and had my teeth marks dented into it. Grody. I shuddered and gingerly reached down to pick it off. When it came off, strands of the green gum still stuck to the sole. I groaned and ran my non-yucky hand through my long, chocolate hair. Greeeeeat.

Well, at least Percy was here. He’d be able to wash off the gum with water soon enough. Until then, I’d just have to live with it. Unless Annabeth knew of a way to get it off?

No, wait, hadn’t there been a One Piece episode where the Barto Pirates called Bartolomeo’s grandmother to ask what to do about the gum that covered their deck? I think there was. What had she suggested…? Something about using the cold hail—

WHACK.

“Ouch!” I yelped, my train of thought immediately derailing as I whirled around to glare at a sheepish Michael Yew, who appeared to have hit me over the head with the end of the broom he was carrying. “Watch it!”

Michael winced, his blond locks bouncing as he rubbed his head. “Sorry,” he said with a wince. “That was an accident.”

I shrugged and made my way over to the trash can that sat next to the cabin door. “Ah, don’t sweat it,” I told him. I waved my hand to show that I wasn’t angry. “It’s no biggie.” Besides, the momentary pain had already subsided.

Now at the trash can, I carefully judged the distance, then the weight of the ripped-off gum in my hand. I hesitated a moment, then threw the gum. Or tried to, anyway. It stuck to my fingers. A grossed little ew escaped my lips, and I made to throw it again, but it didn’t make any signs of coming off. At last, I cut my losses and simply scraped off the gum into the trash can. Thankfully, this time it all came off.

At the same time as I turned around and started walking back to my bed, Lee Fletcher was mopping the floor. I wasn’t paying attention, already lost in a fantasy world of intense battle music and imaginary fight scenes. I hummed something that sounded rather like RWBY’s Red Like Roses Part II, earning me some rather curious looks from my other cabin mates as they went about cleaning their own areas. Unfortunately, due to my self-induced distraction, I walked right into the wet floor and the world suddenly flipped.

My long hair fell over my face, and I choked when some of it went into my mouth. The back of my head struck the wooden floorboards hard.

“Ow,” I said again, a little louder this time, and immediately lifted myself up to a sitting position. Ruby Rose and Ichigo Kurosaki stopped fighting Roronoa Zoro in my head.
Man, that had been weird. Normally, I had a rather good sense of balance even on slippery floors. My time as a McDonalds’ employee had taught me that. Grease commonly got on the floors when the grease traps got too full and we tried to empty them, and of course that required a full mop-up of the area. So why had my foot fallen in just the wrong way there?

Hmmm.

All of Apollo’s actual children rushed over to me, looking down over me with concerned frowns.

“You alright, Eve?” one of them—crap, I forgot his name (I’d always been bad with names)—said, offering me a hand.

I knocked it away and got to my feet by myself. “It’s okay, I’m fine.” My head ached annoyingly now, though. I scratched the point of impact tenderly, and my friends looked at me like they didn’t quite believe me. I rolled my eyes and continued back to my bed, making extra careful to watch where I stepped this time. “Seriously, you guys, I’m fine. It just aches a little.”

Will glanced at Michael, then shrugged. “If you’re sure,” he said, and I sighed. Gods, he was such a mother hen sometimes.

“I’m sure.”

“Alright, people, back to work,” he said, and the tall kid clapped his hands. My cabin mates stopped staring at me and went back to whatever it was they’d been doing. I peered under my bed, looking for any chip wrappers or stray papers filled with writing notes that might have happened to have found their way underneath. (Hey, just because I was in a fantasy world didn’t mean I would stop having ideas for fantasy books.)

Nothing.

Well, if that rat that was scurrying towards me counted as nothing. I yelped and dived onto my bed, my heart pounding from the unexpected furry rodent. It scuttled away, getting lost somewhere under Lee Fletcher’s bed. Good. He could deal with the evil little bastard. Mice were adorable, but rats could go to hell—or, rather, Hades—for all I cared. They were evil little sons of bitches, to be topped only by skunks and spiders.

I sat on my bed, panting a little bit. That had jump-scared me more than I would’ve liked to admit.

“Man, this evening is weird,” I muttered to myself, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. Were rats even able to get into this cabin in the first place? That seemed kind of like the thing that shouldn’t be possible for the sleeping quarters of the kids of ancient gods—especially for the kids of ancient medicine gods. When one adds in the factor of rats being known to have carried several rather potent diseases in the past, the ability of them to infiltrate the Apollo Cabin was highly questionable.

Whatever. That now familiar clenching in my waist was back again. I needed to go to the bathroom, and the bathroom was a time for thinking deeply about what could happen if Rick and Morty were to fight Bill Cipher with the Gravity Falls cast, not to worry about my chances of finding a likely evil rodent under my bed.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I announced, and stood up and went to leave the cabin.
Michael, fluffing his pillow, nodded, his back turned to me. “Be quick. Dinner starts soon.”
“I know.”

Outside, the first of the evening stars poked their way out of the darkening blue canvas above me. A cool breeze carried briny air from the sea, pleasant to breathe in. The climbing wall flashed and glowed with lava out in the distance as some poor campers tried to scale it. Away at the lake, the Aphrodite cabin worked together to heave a couple canoes back to the canoe storage racks. The Demeter cabin swooped through the sky on Pegasi with the desire to get in a few more rounds of flying before dinner.

And then there was plain ol’ me, human extraordinaire, singing Ed Sheeran softly as I went to a bathroom I would’ve had no rights being in just barely over a month before. And also somehow managing to step into every single mud puddle that lay between the cabins and the bathrooms.

“Seriously?” I groaned after the fifth time I happened to step in a puddle of wet earth. “How is there even mud here anyway? This is Camp Half-Blood. There isn’t supposed to be any rain to create mud in the first place. Like seriously, what the fuck is going on with tonight?”

Mumbling about bad luck, I entered the women’s bathroom and found an empty stall.
For a camp that was made for the gods’ children, the bathrooms were every bit the rundown piece of junk that Percy had described in the books. The doors were partly rusted, with the common unnecessary swears inscribed by pen and knife on many of the stalls. Except this time, the swears came in 100% more Ancient Greek, meaning I couldn’t even amuse myself by reading them. At least the girls’ toilet seats were a thousand times cleaner than the boys’ seats in my school’s and every public bathroom I’d been in were. Seriously, guys, if you’re gonna have bad aim when you’re shaking hands with the president, at least lift up the seat of the goddamned toilet!

Grrrgh.

But again, I digress.

I walked across the mucky floor, speckled with dirt from people’s shoes and some dried leaves from the forest here and there. I chose a stall and entered it, shutting the door behind me and latching it. I then turned around and shoved my shorts and… dear gods… panties down. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d seen my own parts by now more than enough times to be entirely desensitized to them. Heck, they felt as natural as my old body had. But the fact that I had to wear panties and a bra now? I didn’t think I’d ever get used to that.

As I was sitting down and preparing to do my business, people entered the bathroom. I didn’t pay them much attention, mostly focused on Saitama’s theme song, which was playing in my head. It always took a little bit to get going, since although it felt natural having the parts there now, I still wasn’t entirely used to the differences in how they functioned compared to my old parts.

Man, what an awkward subject…

Anyway, it wasn’t until the water started making sounds below me without my doing anything to it that I pulled myself from my thoughts. Frowning, I looked down, but of course I could only see a little of the toilet seat between my mostly clenched legs. I got up and turned around to get a better look at what was going on. I blinked and frowned deeper.

Was toilet water supposed to swirl around in a mini whirlpool like that, before it’s flushed?
Out of the corner of my ear, I happened to hear a mean, smug voice say, “Taste that water, punk.”

Even with my aforementioned bad memory of names, I didn’t even need to see the face of the voice’s owner to immediately know it was Clarisse. No one else was as eager about being mean as Clarisse, and she also called literally everybody punk, except Mr. D. Not even Clarisse was stupid enough to call the wine god punk, although sometimes I wished she was. Her sword training sessions belonged in the Fields of Punishment.

Now, why did Clarisse calling someone punk in the girls’ bathroom feel familiar to me?
I had one moment to think, Oh, shit, this is that scene in the books, and another to hastily pull up my panties. I tried to get my shorts, too, but I wasn’t that lucky. The toilet water arched up out of the bowl before I’d gotten them past my thighs. I drew in a quick breath of air and tried to plug my nose, but the entire contents of the plumbing knocked into me like one of those six-foot tall waves I’d played in during a vacation to New York City with my grandparents as a kid. And just like back then with my light little kid body, the water tendril pushed me back with surprising force.

I slammed into the stall door with a surprised yelp, which somehow blew open. I had no idea how, since I’d definitely latched it closed. Whichever way, I was washed out of my stall and I tumbled across dirty tiles, sputtering and cursing. Water had managed to get up my nose, and despite it being 100% water, it still reeked just because of the type of water it was.

“Eve?” came the smooth alto of Annabeth Chase’s worried and surprised voice. I looked to my right once friction stopped my tumbling, and I could actually tell where ‘right’ was. She stood there by the door to the bathroom, her Disney princess blonde locks of hair waterlogged and heavy. Near her, several of the Ares kids were groaning and dazed on the floor of the bathroom, Clarisse among their number. “You were here?”

“Yeah.” I coughed the terrible taste of toilet water out of my mouth, and little drops of the nasty stuff splashed into the rest of the water that now coated the evenly placed tiles. “Bad day to go to the bathroom, huh?”

“Of all the times you picked to go to the bathroom, you had to pick the period when Clarisse tried bullying Percy but got everything turned back around on her,” Annabeth deadpanned. She splashed through the centimeters of water and offered me a dripping hand. “You have the worst luck in this entire camp.”

I accepted it and she lifted me up. I pulled my now sopping shorts back up all the way.

Quick footsteps rang out, and we both looked left to see none other than Percy, who looked equal parts excited, flummoxed, and worried, coming out of the stall Clarisse and her gang had forced him into. “Eve?” he said, and as he walked forward, the water just around his feet parted so that he wouldn’t get them wet. I was instantly jealous. I’d always wanted water powers. “Geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were here too.”

I sighed. Twelve-year-old Percy was freaking adorable, and even if I hadn’t been mad, that wrinkled brow would’ve taken all my anger right out of me. “It’s okay, Perce. You couldn’t have known there was anyone else here. It’s not your fault.”

“How did you do that, anyway?” Annabeth wondered as Clarisse, half-conscious, groaned weakly.

Hah. Serves her right.

“I remembered Eve mentioned that my father was Poseidon,” Percy said, nodding in my direction, and I blushed as Annabeth stared at me.

“That can’t be true!” she denied, shaking her head rapidly. “I mean… yeah, you have those little… premonitions or whatever they are, but that can’t be true. The Big Three took an oath.”
Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that I’d dropped that bombshell. “Well, um… they’re gods and are kind of really, really bad at keeping oaths? Like, really bad? Did I mention how really bad they are at that?”

Thunder rumbled overhead. I winced.

Annabeth’s face paled. “What.”

Percy raised an eyebrow at that whole ‘premonitions’ and ‘oath’ thing, but carried forward with his explanation. “Er… anyway, at first, I didn’t believe her, but after Grover revealing that he’s a freaking satyr, Mr. Brunner revealing that he’s actually freaking Chiron, and the orientation video, I was a little more open to what she was saying. Plus, it… kind of made a lot of sense to me, deep down. The beach or the pool had always been the only places where it felt like everything didn’t matter so much.”

The Daughter of Wisdom gaped. “What. No, no, no, that can’t be true… Can’t be…!”

“So, anyway, I just kind of imagined Clarisse getting splashed with water instead of me, because I really did not want to get dunked in that stuff, and then the plumbing just kind of… responded.” He winced at Annabeth and me. “Er, sorry again, you two.”

“None taken,” I said, and grabbed some of my hair, then twisted. Water oozed out of it like it was a wet towel. Beside me, the resident blonde was just staring at Percy like he was some incorrect information in a textbook. I blinked up at her. “Oh, by the way, notice how Percy’s standing in the only dry section of the entire floor?”

Annabeth’s silver orbs rolled down to the floor around Percy. Her jaw dropped even further in disbelief. A dry sound came from the back of her throat, and then she just stared blankly. Percy and I exchanged looks, and I leaned forward and waved my hand in front of her face.

Nada.

“Percy,” I said, somewhat amused at Annabeth’s real-life reaction, “I think we broke Annabeth.”

The poor kid’s brow wrinkled even more with concern. “Yeah, no kidding,” he said.
“Well, you take her to my buds at the Apollo Cabin; they’ll be able to snap her out of it if she doesn’t do it on her own. As for me, I’ll go back to what I’d been doing before the toilet exploded on my face.”

Percy got a horrified look on his face that sent me breaking down into snickers, and nodded quickly. “Uh, yeah, er, you do that. I… I’m leaving now. Bye.” He grabbed the pretty much comatose Annabeth and, with surprising strength, rushed out of the bathroom with her. I snorted as Clarisse and her cronies slowly started sitting up, and went back into my stall. Water had for some reason already filled back into the bowl. I turned, shut the latch very firmly, and started to lean back to sit on it.

And I promptly lost my balance again and ended up falling into the toilet bowl.

“…ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.”

It was just the start of a long, long string of really bad luck.

Notes