Heroes United

Camp Titan

Kevin Springer

Chapter 1

Damien

"Arise my son," said the swirling black mass. "Avenge my death. Bring down the son of Poseidon."

Sixteen year-old Damien Connors woke from his fitful sleep drenched in sweat in his small San Francisco apartment. It was the same dream again, and it was getting worse. For the past couple of days, Damien had been having dreams about the darkness, monsters fighting teenage warriors, and an image of his twin brother, who had been missing for several days.

Damien slapped the snooze button on his alarm clock and walked to the bathroom to get ready for another day at the Bay's School for Troubled Teens. He looked in the mirror and brushed his long black hair from his golden eyes and saw how pale he was. The dream always did that to him, it made him wake up shaking, sweating, and missing his brother.

His mother had been no help in trying to explain what was going on. By the time he woke up, Damien's mother was already at her job at the University as a theoretical physicist, and despite her success and prowess in the field, Dr. Connors had forced her children to live in a second-hand apartment in one of the worst parts of San Francisco.

Damien walked out the door to the apartment wearing worn out denim jeans and a black v-neck toting a small Adidas backpack. He disliked walking to school, but with his motorcycle in the repair shop, he was reduced to roughing it on the pavement. He checked his watch for the time and saw that he had little more than fifteen minutes if he wanted to show up on time. Normally that would cause him to worry, but ever since his brother Zane went missing, he has given little care to anything else. It really didn't matter if he went to school anyway; he suffered from ADHD and dyslexia, so studying was pretty much out of the question. The only classes he seemed to excel at were ancient history and gym, and that would mean nothing to a college.

Suddenly, a chill crept over Damien, as if all the warmth in his body fled all at once. He tried to run from it, but his body wouldn't move. Damien looked around for help, but as he looked around, everyone on the streets seemed to be, moving in slow motion.

"You are slow to awaken to your power my son," said the voice from his dreams. "Your brother came to realize his potential much quicker than you."

"Who are you?!" Damien cried out to the voice. "Where is Zane?!"

"All in good time my son, you will find your true destiny, but perhaps you need a little push." And with that, the voice was gone and the world proceeded into normal speed once more.

Damien fell to his knees, sweating, with his mind filled with visions of monsters, soldiers wearing bronze armor, and dogs made from the shadows themselves. "What the hell was that?" But Damien knew that he was unlikely to get an answer. Everyone else on the street seemed not to have noticed the strange episode. The only thing he could do now was head to school.

As Damien walked through the doors of the school, he felt that something was wrong. Everyone seemed to be moving slower than normal, as if they were trapped in a giant vat of amber. "Man, what is with today?"

"Why it's the day of your awakening my lord."

Damien turned to see a pair of hooded men with green monkey tails swishing behind them. Beneath their hoods, Damien thought he saw yellow cat eyes and green furry faces. He rubbed his eyes, thinking that it was a trick of the light, but when he took another look, the yellow eyes were still staring back at him.

"Who are you and why are your faces green?" was the only thing that Damien could think of.

The monkey men started to laugh at Damien's ignorance. "Ha ha ha! So it's true! This kid doesn't even know who we are."

The monkey on the left managed to calm himself down before the other and straightened himself to look Damien in the eye. "Look, I'm Akmon, and this," said the monkey-man as he pointed to his look alike, "is Passalos. We are the cercopes. Children of the titan Theia and famous tricksters of Heracles."

"I'm sorry," said Damien as he scratched the side of his head, "did you just say titan?"

"You can ask all the questions you want when we get you to camp, but for now." The cercopes brothers charged forward with claws raised, crying out monkey sounds that wouldn't be misplaced in a Tarzan movie.

"You've got to be kidding me." Damien dodged Akmon's, (or was it Pissalos?), claw and Pissalos', (or was it Akmon?), kick and retreated down the hallway.

The other students turned and looked in chock. "Oh my gosh, there's a fight!" "Those two kids are attacking Connors!" "Someone call a teacher!"

'Kids? What are they talking about?' Damien waved the thought away and focused on the two monkeys trying to kill him.

"Hold still darn it!" One of the twins aimed a kick at Damien's chest, and despite that he blocked it with his backpack, it was powerful enough to send him flying into one of the classrooms.

"Argh!" The kick was like getting hit with a steel bar. Damien struggled to get back on his feet, but he knew that no matter what he did he wouldn't last another minute against the cercopes; they were too fast.

"He he he you're done for kid." The twin monsters walked through the door smiling, revealing horrible yellow fangs. The two cercopes leaped towards Damien claws extended with a wild look in their yellow eyes.

"STOP!" He didn't know how or why he did it, but Damien instinctively raised his hand towards the attacking monsters and he felt a surge of power flow from his fingers. He braced himself, expecting to be torn to shreds, but the pain never came. He opened his eyes a crack and looked dumbfounded at a pair of frozen monkey-men. Not frozen as in, hey everybody, let's all have a cercopsicle, but frozen like, hey, I can't move, frozen.

Damien got to his feet and slowly walked towards the floating cercopes and waved his hand in front of their faces. "This is just too weird."

"Indeed young hero."

Damien felt his heart stop and jumped backwards five feet, thinking that one of the cercopes had began to move again.

"Calm yourself Damien, I'm over here." Sitting in his wheelchair in the corner of the room was Damien's ancient history teacher, Mr. Brunner.