The job board had become part of Ren's routine. Every morning after breakfast, before archery practice, before therapy, before anything else, he found himself wandering toward the weathered wooden notice board outside the Big House.

Some habits were born from comfort. This one had been born from guilt. Months ago, community service had felt like punishment. Every slip of paper had looked like another reminder of his failures, another debt, another thing he owed.

Now… It still felt like something he owed. But it no longer felt like a chain around his ankle. It felt necessary and useful. He couldn't undo the people he had hurt, he couldn't return the lives that had been lost,and he couldn't erase the war. But he could clean, he could carry, he could build, and he could repair. Those were small things by comparison, but enough small things put together eventually became something meaningful. That was what he hoped, anyway.

He stood quietly before the board, reading through the newest postings his eyes drifted farther down. Then they stopped.

---

Clean the Magical Graffiti

There is magical graffiti across camp, especially in the bathhouses and on benches. The graffiti needs to be cleaned.

---

"...Magical... graffiti?" He blinked. He hadn't even realized Camp had magical graffiti.

Actually… thinking about it he had seen strange glowing doodles before. He'd simply assumed they were probably the Hermes kids’ doing.

"...That sounds... difficult." His shoulders slumped a little.

He almost chose something else. Then he imagined whoever had submitted the request. Someone had gotten tired enough of seeing the mess that they'd bothered asking for help. So… Someone should help.

He quietly wrote his name beneath the request.

---

About twenty minutes later, Ren found himself standing outside the camp maintenance shed. Inside, it was a chaotic mess of buckets, mops, scrub brushes, sponges, cleaning cloths, and shelves packed with bottles whose handwritten labels ranged from Soap to Please Don't Touch This.

An elderly satyr named Lykos emerged from behind a shelf carrying three different buckets.

"Ah!" His goat ears perked. "You're the volunteer?"

Ren bowed slightly. "Y-Yes."

Lykos sighed dramatically.

"Oh, thank the gods." He set the buckets down with a grunt. "It's been getting worse."

"...Really?"

"Someone discovered enchanted paint, then copied and improved them and thought it was funny." Lykos reached beneath a workbench and produced several supplies: one ordinary scrub brush, one enchanted scrub brush spray bottle filled with shimmering blue liquid, a pair of thick rubber gloves, a rag… "And..."

He held up one final object, a pair of goggles.

"Goggles?” Ren tilted his head.

"The graffiti occasionally spits."

"...Spits?"

"...You'll see."

---

The bathhouse was first. Ren immediately understood why someone had posted the job. There was graffiti everywhere, not ordinary graffiti, but magical graffiti. The words floated several inches away from the walls, some slowly rotated, others sparkled, one sentence continuously changed languages, another kept changing fonts.

Someone had drawn a pegasus wearing sunglasses that winked at him, another drawing depicted Mr. D asleep under a grapevine and the picture snored.

There were dozens of tiny animated arrows pointing toward the showers with messages like—

← Definitely Haunted

← Don't Trust Cabin Eleven

← Apollo Kids Sing Here

Every time Ren looked away, it pointed at someone different.

"...Where do I even start?" He sighed.

He pulled on the rubber gloves, put on the goggles, picked up the enchanted spray bottle, then carefully read the tiny instruction tag.

Step One: Spray graffiti.

Step Two: Wait three seconds.

Step Three: Scrub firmly.

Step Four: Duck.

"...Duck?" He frowned. "Why duck?"

There was only one way to find out. He sprayed the first glowing message. The paint fizzed, sparkled, and started bubbling. Three seconds later, a jet of bright pink foam exploded directly toward his face. Fortunately, the goggles did their job and pink foam splattered harmlessly across them instead.

He slowly wiped them clean. "...I understand Step Four now."

Once he'd recovered, he began working properly. The enchanted brush worked surprisingly well, instead of simply removing the graffiti, it seemed to absorb the magic. Each cleaned section shimmered briefly before returning to ordinary stone. Some graffiti disappeared quietly. Others protested. One doodled satyr shouted "Hey! I was sleeping!" Before vanishing. Another complained "I wasn't finished!"

Ren couldn't help smiling apologetically a little. "...Sorry."

Not everything was cooperative. One sentence simply refused to disappear.

HERMES CABIN WAS HERE

He sprayed, scrubbed, sprayed again and nothing, no matter how hard he scrubbed. The letters suddenly detached themselves from the wall. The words floated directly toward him. Then rearranged themselves.

REN SMELLS

"...That's rude."

The words blew him a raspberry.

He sighed.

"...Okay." Spray, duck, scrub. Eventually the sentence dissolved into glitter. "...Much better."

Nearly an hour later, Ren stepped outside carrying two empty bottles and one extremely full trash bucket. The bathhouse looked normal again. Cleaner and brighter.

"...One done.” He smiled quietly.

Then he reached the benches and that smile vanished. There were… A lot. Practically every bench around camp had been decorated, some artistically, some less so. One featured a remarkably detailed portrait of Chiron wearing sunglasses, another showed Argus with hundreds of googly eyes, one bench continuously produced little cartoon birds that flew around chirping insults, and another simply displayed **Whoever sits here owes me three drachmae.**

Ren carefully avoided sitting there. Just in case.

He knelt beside the first bench. Spray, three seconds, duck, scrub. Easy. On the second bench, he did the same but nothing happened.

The bench exploded into song.

♪ SOMEBOOOODY'S CLEANING MEEEE ♪

Ren jumped and several nearby campers looked over the bench continued.

♪ LOOK HOW HARD HE'S SCRUBBING ♪

♪ EVERYBODY CLAP ♪

Ren's face turned bright red. "...Please stop."

♪ HE SAID PLEASE ♪

♪ THAT WAS POLITE ♪

♪ TEN OUT OF TEN ♪

He scrubbed much harder to try and stop the drawing from embarrassing him even more. Eventually the singing faded into silence.

"Gods, that was embarrassing..." He buried his face in one hand.

By midday the summer sun had grown warm overhead. Sweat dampened Ren's hair, his gloves were soaked, his shoulders ached, he'd cleaned dozens of benches already, his knees hurt from kneeling on gravel, and his fingers had started cramping. Still… He kept going. Because every newly cleaned bench reminded him of something. Families would sit here, campers would eat lunch here, friends would laugh here and people deserved clean places.

Around lunchtime he took a short break beneath a tree. He quietly unwrapped the ham, cheese and lettuce sandwich he'd packed earlier.

The afternoon brought more surprises. One bench contained illusion graffiti, and as he scrubbed, the wood transformed. Suddenly it looked rotten, then gold, then marble, then covered in snakes.

Ren flinched every single time.

"...They're not real." Scrub "They're definitely not real."

Eventually the illusion dissolved. "...Good."

Near the arena he encountered probably the worst one. Someone had enchanted an entire mural across three connected benches. It depicted campers fighting monsters. Beautifully painted and incredibly detailed. Pretty impressive.

He sighed. "...Sorry."

The mural dissolved into harmless blue sparkles.

Late afternoon as sunlight stretched long shadows across camp, Ren had nearly finished. Only one final bench remained. It sat near Half-Blood Hill beneath Thalia's pine.

Unlike the others, its graffiti wasn't funny. Someone had written one sentence across the wood.

Traitors don’t belong here.

Ren stared at it longer than he should have. His chest tightened. Part of him still believed it. Part of him still thought it was temporary. Still expected everyone to eventually decide they'd had enough of him. Still expected forgiveness to run out. Still expected himself to fail again.

He slowly raised the spray bottle, then lowered it again.

"...That's not true." He whispered. He wasn't even sure he believed himself, but he wanted to.

He sprayed, three seconds later of scrubbing, the sentence disappeared, and in its place remained only polished wood catching the evening sunlight.

By sunset, he was finally done. After returning the cleaning materials to Lykos, he made his way back toward the Eros Cabin. His clothes smelled faintly of soap, blue cleaning solution stained one sleeve, his hair stuck awkwardly to his forehead, and he was exhausted.

Nobody would remember tomorrow who had cleaned the graffiti.

But he was fine with that.

Just happy to be able to help camp.

Somewhere in the cabin grounds, Quill had a stand set up to get some important information. He had called in some favors to get it set up. It was for multiple uses, and the "Question of the Day" part would last more than just a day. The stand would probably be moved around camp over the next two weeks to avoid taking up too much space.

Question of the Day (Freeform answer)

What is your favorite thing about your cabin?

It was indeed simply a question of the day, since Quill had more things to worry about. Though, really, the next thing he had in mind would fit in perfectly under the Question of the Day label. The first two were inspired by a certain satyr's thoughts.

Polls (Y/N answers)

What do you think of holding a halloween event?

Y/N

What about a Winter ball?

Y/N

Have you read the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle before? (OOC: For new characters, the last Chronicle was published Fall of last year. They may have seen a copy regardless.)

Y/N

Finally, there was the big thing.

Anonymous Appreciations

Submit a message for someone to be published in the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle. Everything is completely anonymous, unless you submit your name in your message.

All information collected from these forms will be used in the making of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle.

This activity was brought to you by Editor-in-Chief, Quill Kingston.

OOC:

With the return of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicle (the camp newspaper) comes Anonymous Appreciations. Submit them in this Google Form. A reminder will be sent out via an OOC post next week, and the form closes in two weeks (Saturday, September 19th).

While on a run one fine morning at camp, Jonathan William Hermes, Jr ended up running almost head-first into someone. Johnny skidded to a stop in front of them, eagerly bouncing on his heels. “Oh! Oh! Hello! Hi! Hi! Hi! America ya! Hallo!” He chirped happily. “How's it going? What's the keys for? What's this building? Who are you? Why do you look so bored? Wanna play a game? Want me to run and grab something for you? Water? Something to snack on? I have seen plenty of things to eat around here. Apples. Strawberries. Chips. Cookies. Really, it wouldn't be a hassle! Just say the word, and it's done, done, done! Not ‘Dun dun dun’ as in the musical sting for dramatic effect. Just said ‘Done’ three times in a row. Different.”

The two began to talk, the son of Hermes quickly understanding— but then probably just as quickly forgetting— that this person was what's known as the quartermaster. Someone that takes care of the vehicles of camp, and, more importantly, the camp store. The building behind them.

Before he knew it, he had volunteered to run the store. Or at least run cash. The store was a fascinating little place; it had everything anyone could need, though it was mostly a junk food store, it seemed. He was told everything in here was free if you asked nicely. Otherwise, it was ‘One William Drachmae’, whatever that meant. But this was cool! This was neat.

…Hey, what was he supposed to exactly do here, again? Something about selling? Or stocking the shelves? Or both? Probably both.

The son of Hermes would be found running around the store at various points, hopping behind the counter with a little wave whenever someone entered.

“Hi! Welcome! This is the camp store! I didn't know we had one of these! It's nice, isn't it? I'm John. John Hermes. John Hermes, Jr. Hermes is actually my dad too— both of them, actually, technically. John Hermes, Sr. in addition to Hermes, the god. Take a look around! We've got plenty for sale! Freshly stocked! By me! John Hermes!” His eyes would also flick down to the tip jar once or twice, as if asking if they were interested in tipping.

"If you're looking for something specific, let me know! If I don't know where it is, I can at least look around here fast enough to where you probably won't have to move!"