The Nature of a Demigod

Oh, Brother

From the waist up he looks like a regular middle-aged guy with curly brown hair and a scraggly beard. From the waist down, he's a white stallion. He can pass for human by compacting his lower half into a magic wheelchair.

In fact, he'd passed himself off as my Latin teacher during my sixth-grade year. But most of the time, if the ceilings are high enough, he prefers hanging out in full centaur form.

As soon as we saw him, Tyson froze. "Pony!" he cried in total rapture.

Chiron turned, looking offended. "I beg your pardon?"

Y/N and Annabeth ran up and hugged him.

"Ah, Y/N. I see you've found Annabeth." he rubbed a hand on Y/N's head.

"Yeah, so what. Chiron! What's Clarisse talking about?! You haven't been removed have you?" His voice was weak. "What's happening? You're not... leaving?" Annabeth's voice was shaky.

If you didn't know, Chiron had pretty much raised Annabeth since she was seven, and Y/N about his entire life. So they've got good reasons to be this sad.

Chiron ruffled her hair and gave her a kind smile. "Hello, child. I'm glad Y/N reached you in time. And Percy, my goodness. You've grown over the year!"

I swallowed. "Clarisse said you were... you were..."

"Fired." Chiron's eyes glinted with dark humor. "Ah, well, someone had to take the blame. Lord Zeus was most upset. The tree he'd created from the spirit of his daughter, poisoned! Mr. D had to punish someone."

"Besides his damn self!" Y/N shouted. His nostrils were flaring and he looked far angrier than I had seen him before.

"But this is crazy!" Annabeth cried. "Chiron, you couldn't have had anything to do with poisoning Thalia's tree!"

"Nevertheless," Chiron sighed, "some in Olympus do not trust me now, under the circumstances."

"Oh gods, we already pretty much know who it is! Why are we playing the blame game?!" Y/N spoke, exacerbated.

"What circumstances?" I asked.

Chiron's face darkened. He stuffed a Latin-English dictionary into his saddlebag while the Frank Sinatra music oozed from his boombox. Tyson was still staring at Chiron in amazement. He whimpered like he wanted to pat Chiron's flank but was afraid to come closer. "Pony?"

Chiron sniffed. "My dear young Cyclops! I am a centaur."

"Chiron," I said. "What about the tree? What happened?"

He shook his head sadly. "The poison used on Thalia's pine is something from the Underworld, Percy. Some venom even I have never seen. It must have come from a monster quite deep in the pits of Tartarus."

"Then we know who's responsible. Kro-"

"Do not invoke the titan lord's name, Percy. Especially not here, not now."

"But last summer he tried to cause a civil war in Olympus! This has to be his idea. He'd get Luke to do it, that traitor."

"That's what I've been saying but none of the gods want to hear me out! I have a pretty good reason to suspect Luke. For one, he tried to pin me to that tree!" Y/N cried out.

"Perhaps," Chiron said. "But I fear I am being held responsible because I did not prevent it and I cannot cure it. The tree has only a few weeks of life left unless... "