Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter One

Reach For The Stars

For a second, Percy felt himself relax.

Annabeth at his side as they sat on their festive picnic blanket, the taste of Frank’s latest culinary creation resting in his mouth, listening to Hazel’s story… he really, truly, felt at peace. He’d just scraped through his winter finals at New Rome University. He and Annabeth had stayed up practically every night testing each other with flashcards. The two praetors of New Rome had greeted them afterwards with a congratulatory picnic and they’d walked up Temple Hill to bask in the remaining sunlight they’d get that year. They hadn’t been attacked by monsters in nearly two months. Peace.

Then he saw Nico.

Now, even though Nico had maybe perhaps tried to lead him to his death in the past once or twice, perchance, that wouldn’t normally be such cause for alarm. However, the taller, older, deathlier version of him walking behind him made them all sit up. Frank inhaled sharply.

“Is that-?”

Percy sighed and nodded. His next bite of ginger beef tasted slightly sour this time around.

“Uh, hey, guys…” Nico said as he reached them. His expression was firmly apologetic.

“Hey Nico,” Annabeth said.

A beat of silence.

Hades sighed.

“Your assistance is necessary,” the god of the dead droned. Percy swore he could see beads of sparkling grey sweat on his forehead. “There’s been a… situation.”

“Isn’t there always?” Percy said, getting a strong feeling that their picnic was about to be rapidly derailed. “I’m sure someone at camp can help.”

“This is a fairly local problem.”

“Then one of the legionnaires?”

Hazel sighed.

“No,” she said, “Percy, we’re praetors. It’s our responsibility if it’s this side of the Mississippi.”

Annabeth nodded.

“Yeah, Percy,” she said, “You’re a former praetor, you should know that.”

They all grinned, remembering Percy’s brief twenty-four hour stint as praetor. Percy ran a hand through his hair.

“Must have missed that part of induction,” he said.

“So,” Hazel took charge, Hades’ Greek form blurring into Pluto as she spoke, “What’s gone wrong?”

“Nothing world-ending,” Nico interjected somewhat-reassuringly before his father could speak, though Hades glared down at the back of his head.

“Nothing has gone wrong,” Hades stressed, blatantly lying.

Frank sipped his apple juice with a loud slurp. Percy bit his lips together to stop grinning so much. Nico seemed to take pity on his father and sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he started to explain.

“There’s been a breakout in the Underworld,” he said. “The Fields of Punishment, specifically.”

They all raised their eyebrows.

“How?” asked Annabeth, narrowing her eyes. “It was a lot harder to break out of that place than it was to break in.”

Hades’ dark eyes pulsed with a brief rage.

“I will remind you,” he said in a controlled tone, “That I allowed you in most of those times.”

“Didn’t let us out though,” Percy added.

As the shadows around them blackened, they all stopped smiling so widely. A chill flowed through the air. Annabeth sighed.

“Okay, so what happened?” she asked.

Hades visibly cooled off, though Percy still felt a little cold in his chest.

“It was Daedalus,” he said firmly. “He’s been renovating the lines of the dead for maximum efficiency. Really, he’s been quite useful to put to work for all eternity. And there are no unions in the Underworld. He says he enjoys it but I think he knows that it’s this or the boiling wax. Either way. I digress. To maximise his own efficiency, I granted him the use of this gateway device he created. Since the Underworld is on the larger side, he uses it for getting around.”

“Cool,” Annabeth said, her grey eyes sparkling with a glee that told Percy that their corkboard at home would be quickly deluged with more plans.

“Mm,” Hades continued. “Well, like he does with everything he loves in his life, he dropped it. Next thing I’m told, several of my maximum security prisoners have managed to teleport themselves to the surface.”

Percy whistled.

“Yikes,” he said. “That sounds sucky. Have fun with that over Christmas.”

Hades just looked at him, deadpan in every way. Percy sighed. It was worth a try.

“I am issuing you all this quest. Three praetors, either present or former, one architect of Olympus and two of my very own children- you should have no problems. Some of you may even be familiar with several prisoners, which is why I’m assigning this to you specifically.”

“Familiar?” Annabeth screwed her nose up. “Oh gods, it’s not Tantalus, is it?”

Nico winced. For a second, Hades mirrored his expression.

“Tantalus is among the escaped, yes,” admitted the god. “Since you know him, I imagine you will know where to start looking for him. They should all still be within Los Angeles, near the Underworld entrance.”

Percy frowned.

“LA is like a six hour drive,” he pointed out. “And it’s nearly dinner time. We can’t all fit on Arion and I’m not driving past midnight.”

“What are you, Cinderella?” commented Nico.

“Worse,” Percy replied, “A student.”

Hades waved his hand through the air.

“No matter,” he said. “I will get you there. This must be done quickly and covertly before anyone finds out or Demeter will never let me hear the end of it. There are five escaped prisoners. To get them back to the Underworld, deal with them as you would a monster and send me their souls. Nico, you should be drawn to them. Good luck.”

He raised his fingers, about to click. They all started protesting, food going everywhere as they scrambled to sit up straight, shaking their heads and-

Click!

“Oof!”

The air was knocked out of Percy’s lungs as he landed on the sidewalk, headbutting Frank with his leg propped up on Annabeth’s stomach as they fell in a pile. He groaned and blinked bleary eyes up at the building now suddenly in front of them. DOA Recording Studios. Despite the fact it was winter, a few palm trees leaned into his vision and he heard someone ruining the Mariah Carey Christmas song somewhere. Great. Hades had definitely sent them to LA.

A fate worse than death.

Under Hazel’s foot, he caught a glimpse of people with flyers in their hands heading their way. He pulled himself quickly to his feet, yanking the others up and bustling them away down an alleyway. Not the best place to go in LA.

“Nico,” Frank groaned, “I am going to file a complaint against your father.”

“To who?” Nico wrinkled his nose.

“Uh…” Frank frowned. Then he straightened his shoulders. “To you,” he said forcefully.

Nico threw his hands up in the air in exasperation and bodily turned his back on him.

“Okay,” the son of Hades said, “Where are we?”

Annabeth peeked her head around the corner of their alley.

“I think we’re in east LA,” she said, “A couple things here look familiar. I’m doing a module on street architecture,” she added, unable to fully hide how smug she was. Percy smiled fondly at her.

“My GeoGuessr genius,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Okay,” Hazel said, clapping her hands, “Nico, what are we meant to be feeling about this tantalise guy?”

“Nothing tantalising about him,” Annabeth grumbled.

Nico shrugged.

“I’m sure I’d be able to feel him if we got close,” he said, “But I don’t even know where to start.”

Percy and Annabeth looked at each other. The other turned to them.

“You know this guy?” Frank asked.

They nodded.

“Chiron got framed for a crime when we were thirteen,” Annabeth explained, “So they sent Tantalus to replace him for a little while.”

Nico frowned. His hair was getting longer and it flopped in his eyes. Percy resisted the urge to find a pair of scissors and a bowl.

“They sent a criminal to replace the alleged criminal?” Nico asked.

“We never said it was a good idea,” Percy pointed out.

“So if you know this guy, where do you think the first place he’d go would be?” Frank interrupted.

A crease appeared cutely between Annabeth’s eyebrows as she seemed to sink deep in thought. Percy wondered if monsters knew how lucky they were to see that before they died.

“His eternal punishment was to be stood in a pool with food out of reach,” Annabeth stated. “Knowing him, he’d probably go right to the nearest food place.”

“Waffle House?” Percy offered. “iHop? Denny’s?”

“He’s starving,” Nico said with a raised eyebrow, “Not desperate.”

“Bigger question,” Hazel interjected. “How are we going to get there?”

Annabeth looked at Percy. He shook his head.

“I can’t steal another car,” he said, “I think I’m still being looked for in this state for that police cruiser I crashed.”

“You did what now?” asked Hazel.

“You’re going to college in a state where you’re a wanted man?” Frank looked aghast.

“Wanted,” Percy said gently, “Not found. It’s fine.”

Nico sighed. It was a loud, drawn out sigh that captured their attention. They stared at the short teenager as he rubbed the back of his neck, looking like he was waiting for someone to announce his execution.

“I… have a method of transportation,” he confessed, not looking them in the eye.

They waited a beat of silence.

“I don’t think you can piggyback us all, Nico,” Percy replied.

“Shut up, Jackson.” Nico crossed his arms. His chest slowly went up then down as he took a breath. “I have a chauffeur.”

Oh. Percy blinked. He hadn’t expected that. Well. It wasn’t like he could drive. Made sense-

“He’s a zombie,” Nico added. “Called Jules-Albert.”

Ah. Percy blinked again. Somehow, that made more and less sense at the same time.

Nico knelt and placed his hands on the ground, careful to avoid the broken glass and needles hidden behind the fake plants of the place they were next to. His eyes fluttered closed and they all watched in fascination as his head drooped slightly, like his life force wasn’t quite on the surface anymore.

“Jules-Albert,” Percy heard him say shortly, “Need a lift. Thanks.”

The ground split in a five-feet wide chasm. Percy wasn’t sure what he expected to happen and watched with an open mouth as a zombie in a ragged nineteenth-century motoring outfit clawed his way to the surface.

“You… weren’t kidding,” said Frank, his eyes flickering yellow the way they did sometimes when the guy was resisting the urge to turn into a bird and fly away.

That might have been Percy’s fault. He’d convinced Frank and Grover to watch 28 Days Later with him one night in his dorm. It had now been over twenty eight days since they’d watched it and Juniper said that Grover still climbed all the way to the top of her tree when sleeping over with her, his hooves audibly trembling like castanets.

Frank shot him a dirty look as they watched the zombie fully emerge. Percy put his teeth together in an awkward apology smile.

“An actual zombie,” he said. “He’s not going to, like, eat our brains, is he?”

“He’s not on a diet,” Nico replied with a dismissive wave of his hand before he addressed the zombie chauffer. “Jules-Albert, we’re trying to find some escaped convicts. Can you lap around this area? Please?”

The zombie gurgled and nodded, limping out of their alley and onto the street. The people of LA walked right past him with just an upturn of their noses and deft sidesteps, clutching their Christmas shopping bags closer to themselves. Percy wondered how the Mist was disguising him, though as he saw them repeat the same behaviour to a homeless man down the street, he found he didn’t have to think too hard. Typical.

They all watched as Jules-Albert walked up to a large black car. The zombie stared at it for a few seconds before punching the driver’s side window out.

“Oh no,” Percy heard Annabeth murmur.

He sighed and nodded as they watched the zombie unlock the car from the inside and start hotwiring it. The locks on the back doors went down after a few seconds. Luckily, passersby still were staring resolutely ahead or at their shoes. Pros and cons.

“Come on,” Nico sighed, walking towards the car. “Shotgun.”

“Wait, that’s not fair,” said Frank, “You’re- well…“

“If you want more space, shapeshift into a moth or something,” Nico cut him off without looking back.

Percy and Annabeth looked at each other. Her blonde curls were framing her face really nicely. Something in his stomach did a little flutter. He’d thought that after a few wars and years together, it would stop, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“I probably could’ve just stolen a car in the first place,” Percy said to her as they headed for the car.

“Yeah, but this way they can’t get you for it in a court of law,” Annabeth countered, sliding into the back. “Just keep your head down. Sit behind the driver’s seat so your face is mostly blocked.”

Percy grinned and kissed her on the lips. “Aiding and abetting?”

“Advising,” she replied innocently with a sparkle in her eye. She leaned forward to stick her head between the two front seats until she was level with the scented Christmas tree dangling from the rear view mirror, clearing her throat with a wary glance at the zombie. Though Percy knew that, unlike Frank, Annabeth would be more than happy to fight in a zombie apocalypse. She’d been planning for it since she was little. “Jules-Albert,” she said, “Can you take us to the nearest street of big restaurants?”

He grunted. Once they were all in, Jules-Albert started the car. True to Nico’s word, the dead guy knew his way around a car, indicating right before swinging them out into traffic and beginning their cruise around the block. The radio played Wham at a low volume in the background. They drove past rows of buildings and crowds upon crowds of people, though none of them seemed to look like the ‘fresh out of prison’ type.

Well. Not the Underworld prison, at least.

It felt like they should have Nico’s window rolled down like a sniffer dog. Instead, the boy just sat there frowning, his dark eyes fixed on the dash.

“Warm?” Annabeth asked him. “Cold?”

“Lukewarm,” Nico said, his head tilted. “I think we’re going the right way.”

After a minute or two, Jules-Albert turned right, leading them onto a wide road lined with Christmas decorations and stocked to the brim with restaurants, cafes and takeout places. Hazel groaned.

“Anyone else just seeing a haystack?” she said.

“He’s here, though,” said Nico, turning his head from side to side. “Definitely here. But…”

“There,” Annabeth said, her tone holding no question in her voice.

She pointed out the window as Jules-Albert pulled up on the left. Percy followed her line of sight out the car and onto the street and found himself staring up at a sign proudly blazing in full daytime neon: ‘All you can eat! Food from all around the world! LA’s only conveyer belt buffet that’s never been closed due to rats!’

Percy nodded instantly. “You got it. Let’s go.”

They piled out of the car, luckily all of them armed from either before or having been magically equipped with their weapons by Hades mid-transport. Percy took out Riptide and held it in pen form in his hand. He saw Annabeth’s drakon bone sword bulging suspiciously out of the back of her t-shirt and smirked. She was still working on adapting from her covert knife to her very large and scary-looking sword.

Nico’s holster for his sword swung at his waist, partially covered by his jacket, and he saw a glint of gold peeking out of Hazel’s sleeve. Frank had left his bow and arrow in the car, shrugging when Percy gave him a questioning look as they walked into the restaurant.

“I’m not wasting my arrows on just some guy,” he said, making Percy snort.

“You wouldn’t need to,” he replied. “This guy’s biggest feat was cooking. Not exactly a fighter.”

Inside, the restaurant was very modern and colourful. The floor was a shiny, squeaky silver and a long metal conveyer belt ran through the length of the room, laden with a mix of plates of sushi, turkey or pasta. Red pillars supported a ceiling covered in mirrors. Green Christmas trees drenched in sparkly gold baubles lurked in every corner, surrounded by circular tables full of munching customers.

With nothing more than a glance between them, they moved as a unit through the room, scanning for Tantalus.

It wasn’t hard; after less than a minute, they ground to a halt, staring at the closest table to the conveyer belt.

Percy’s lip curled. Tantalus sat there without noticing them, stomping his feet under his table as the food passing him by jumped out of his hands. He looked somehow worse than when Percy was thirteen, still dressed in the same ragged orange jumpsuit, looking pale with shadows beneath his eyes. With his pale skin and grey hair, he looked more like a ghost than a man.

“There he is,” sighed Nico. “Those gross jumpsuits really make this easier.”

Percy’s nose wrinkled in disgust as he watched as Tantalus snatched at some sushi with his overgrown, dirty fingernails. The sashimi did a little wiggle and jumped right over his hands, landing neatly back onto the conveyer belt. Tantalus howled in rage. The next table along from him inched their seats back and let the untouched sashimi pass them by.

“His Fields of Punishment curse still seems to be in effect,” he heard Annabeth ponder aloud next to him.

“Do we just grab him or what?” asked Frank. “This place is still full of people.”

People who were starting to give them suspicious looks. Percy could see a waitress hurrying over to them from the back bar. No time. He scanned the room quickly, trying to find the- there!

In two short strides, he reached the fire alarm on the wall and pulled it.

Immediately, the siren blared out like a wailing cat, red lights flashing above as everyone started to panic. Sprinklers above them burst into showers, drenching the food and immediately giving Percy a burst of energy that he really needed by that point in the year. It soothed the aching in his back from being hunched over a desk.

Gods, he was getting old.

Tantalus looked up, his mouth falling desperately open to try and catch any of the water in his mouth. The droplets, however, seemed to dodge his face, falling to the floor instead. Tantalus roared in anger and his eyes finally landed on their group.

Faintly in the background, Percy heard that Christmas song by one of the remaining Beatles start playing.

“You!” Tantalus shouted, pointing his finger at them.

Annabeth took out her drakon bone sword as the last few customers ran out the door. Her blonde hair was plastered to her head.

“You’ve eaten all you can, Tantalus,” she called. “Time to go home.”

“No!” Tantalus’ eyes went wide and Percy knew he would run for the door before he even moved.

He uncapped Riptide threateningly and darted in front of the door, crossing his arms and shaking his head. The other four split into two, going around both sides of the conveyer belt. Tantalus glanced between them with a rageful scowl.

“I won’t go back,” he growled. “This curse has to fade at some point.”

“It’s not going to fade,” said Nico. “You still haven’t learned your lesson.”

Tantalus’ head turned from side to side as they advanced.

“Oh, I’ve learned lots of lessons,” he said. “Like never trusting the gods. Or their brats! Oh, if only Chiron had taken the fall and taken my place!”

Percy winced; bad choice of words. Annabeth’s eyes narrowed as she took point in their offence.

“You were the worst Activities Director we’ve had in over a century,” she told him. “You were stupid and knew nothing about anything. But I’m glad you escaped.”

The others glanced at each other. Percy waited for the follow up as Tantalus’ eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Really?” he asked. “Well, I must say-“

“I’m glad,” Annabeth continued, cutting him off, “Because now I get to send you back to the Underworld myself. This is for Chiron.”

She raised her sword as Tantalus jumped onto the conveyor belt, his bare feet disgusting and grubby. Percy made a mental note to never come back there. Immediately, the prisoner’s arms wobbled like windmills as he rotated around the restaurant. Then he crouched, swinging his arm towards the plates around his feet. They jumped out of his way but the force of the swing sent them flying towards his friends.

Tantalus cackled as they ducked, sending more plates flying. It almost looked like he had telekinesis. Percy wanted to rush over and help but a look from Annabeth had him staying and standing sentry by the door. Since the giant war, he’d been trying to take a step back and let people fight their own battles. Besides, Annabeth was right; she had this.

As Tantalus sent more sadly delicious plates flying, shards of crockery and carbonara exploding on the tables his friends had taken refuge behind, he saw Annabeth ninja-roll out from behind one, her free hand coming up to grab the lever for the conveyor belt. She yanked it down. The belt froze for a second before starting to move the other way.

Tantalus wobbled at the change in direction, his hands flying up to protect his face as he toppled off. He landed in a pile of food, groaning, blood spilling from his hands as crockery pieces embedded themselves in his skin.

Annabeth wasted no time; she hopped the conveyor belt and pinned one of his injured hands to the ground with her foot. For a second, Percy almost felt jealous of the guy. Then she pressed the tip of her sword into Tantalus’ chin, staring him down with a victorious grin.

Yeah, now Percy definitely felt jealous of the guy.

“You lose again,” she told the prisoner. She reached to the side and picked up a chicken wing, holding it like a taunt above his head. He opened his mouth, staring pleadingly at her. “Hungry?” she asked.

“Yes,” he whined.

She dropped it and it landed on his forehead, leaving a greasy smear along his skin and down his hair as it rolled off and onto the floor. He screamed through his teeth in frustration.

“Get used to it,” she said and sank her sword through his head.

The image of him blurred like a 144p YouTube video before turning into a vaguely orange fog and drifting down through the floor. Percy walked forward, not quite capping Riptide yet and put his hand on Annabeth’s arm to let her know he was behind her. She glanced at him quickly but relaxed, just a part of their system post-war.

“Nice one,” he told her before turning to Nico. “Is he gone?”

He nodded.

“I can’t feel him anymore,” replied the son of Hades. “I think that’s one down.”

“Four to go,” said Hazel.

They all looked around the destroyed restaurant awkwardly. The sprinklers had started melting the paper chains into big clumps on the food-covered floor.

“So… we should leave,” Percy said, jerking his thumb towards the door, and the others hastily nodded.

They headed out, hopping over downed Christmas trees as the song finally ended, cramming themselves back into the car. Once inside, they turned to Nico, who was frowning out the window.

“South,” he said. “I’m feeling something down there. Something… warm?”

They looked at each other but everyone just shrugged.

“Okay,” said Percy, as Jules-Albert started the car, “Let’s go see what’s behind door number two.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Two

Like A Record, Baby

“You’re kidding,” said Hazel as they pulled up on the curb. “One of them is here?”

Nico shrugged with a patience Percy had only ever seen him grant his sister and boyfriend.

“Not sure,” he said, “But something is in this area and this is the only place I think one of them would go.”

They all stared up at the building through the car windows. It was midday but the neon lights in the city never seemed to sleep, boldly proclaiming Hustler’s Casino as their next destination for prisoner-hunting. It had a wide entranceway with a curved roof above it like a cowboy hat, surrounded by short palm trees and cars zipping by on the road. A crowd of laughing women staggered through the front doors with one woman festooned in white sashes proclaiming her to be the bride to be.

Percy turned to Nico.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

Nico frowned. “Why are you asking me?”

“You literally lived in a casino, dude. For like seventy years. If anyone knows how to go about this, it’s you.”

Nico scowled at him.

“First of all, it didn’t feel like seventy years,” he said. “Second of all, knowing one casino doesn’t magically give me full knowledge of every other casino in existence. Third of all, shut up and get out of my chauffer’s car.”

They all slid out, covering their eyes from the bright sun above. Now that was the biggest change he’d found since moving to the other side of the country; in New York, his mom would probably be under the electric blanket he’d bought for her right now. In California, he was wishing he’d brought his shorts. Some Christmas weather.

“Just circle the block until we come out,” he heard Nico mutter to Jules-Albert. “Don’t run out of fuel.”

An ear-splitting scream erupted from inside the casino.

They all glanced at each other before sprinting inside, their weapons at the ready-

“Oh my god!” yelled the woman in the main hall of the casino, the walls lined with brightly-coloured machines, her finger resolutely pointing to the main stage at the far end. “I really thought that hit him!”

Percy followed her indicating finger towards the stage, finding only some entertainers on the stage. One was throwing knives, the other strapped to a spinning wheel. His brow furrowed; there really were some things in casinos that just had no business being there. His line of thinking extended to the surrounding décor, a huge glass chandelier dangling above them and a rotating car up next to the crowded bar.

Like the Lotus Casino, time lost all meaning here too, he thought while looking at the bar, as apparently it was five o’clock somewhere.

“Ugh,” Hazel said behind him. “Let’s start looking. We could split up? Half can take upstairs.”

“No need,” said Nico with a frown. “They’re in this room. Just… somewhere.”

Percy looked around the large room but nowhere did an orange jumpsuit pop out to him. They shifted into a corner of the room as a crowd passed them by, huddled up like a sports team.

“They’ve probably changed their clothes,” said Frank, coming to the same conclusion. “Great. Now it could be anyone. Does anyone look suspicious?”

They all looked at him. Nico raised his eyebrows.

“It’s midday in a casino in LA,” he said. “If there is a single schoolteacher or nurse here, I’ll go up on that knife wheel myself.”

Hazel snorted. “Nico, do you think you’d recognise anyone from- y’know, down there?”

Nico pulled a face.

“I don’t know,” he said, “Maybe only the really high profile ones. But it’s not really a place I’ve hung around in much. I’d maybe know them if I saw them face to face.”

“Maybe we should be looking for someone still cursed,” offered Annabeth. “Tantalus still had his. He couldn’t touch his food.”

They circled as a group around the tables as people flipped cards and exchanged sneaky glances. The floor went from a clear white linoleum to a dark red carpet, no doubt holding grubby secrets. The Christmas decorations they did have were far and few; Percy guessed that the people in there didn’t want to be reminded of where they should be during a family holiday.

Up on the stage, one of the performers, dressed in a flared gold suit that Percy had to do a double take with to make sure it wasn’t Apollo in disguise, came up to the edge of the stage and bowed. He announced something Percy missed as a nearby blackjack table exploded in noise. Then he began throwing knives at the slowly spinning wheel, his tied up partner grinning back as knives buried themselves in the wood near his head.

“Gods, you wouldn’t catch me doing that,” said Hazel disapprovingly.

“The knives or the gold suit?” Frank asked her, causing her to elbow him with a smile that crinkled the skin around her eyes.

The music playing quietly in the background did nothing to hide the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ of the crowd at the show. Next to him, he caught both Annabeth and Nico starting to frown.

Never a good sign when they teamed up.

“What?” he asked them, his stomach sinking.

“Those knives,” Annabeth said, nodding her head towards the knife-thrower. “They look like imperial gold to me.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” replied Nico. “And I can feel a stronger presence towards the stage.”

Percy glanced around. In the wide main room they were in, he could see multiple members of staff wearing their red velvet jackets, dealing cards at the tables they were stood at. But more than that, he could see the shifty customers who didn’t seem to be winning or losing, in dark colours with shades on. Undercovers? On top of that, openly buff security guards with little wires to their ears stood like pillars at every door.

“We might need another distraction to get close,” Percy said, “And I don’t think we can pull another fire alarm without maybe losing our guy.”

“Leave that to me,” said Hazel, her golden eyes closing as she concentrated.

Percy grinned with Annabeth as the air rippled on the other side of the room. Since Hazel had got good with the Mist, it was a treat to watch her use it. It felt like sitting back and watching a master at work.

Sure enough, on the other side of the room, the Mist started to pull together, unnoticed by the mortals around it until it solidified into the form of a man. A man in a black ski-mask and gloves with a small safe in his hands as he ran across the room, green bills flying out behind him like butterflies.

“Nice,” said Nico, whistling.

The security around them immediately bolted. Burly men with shades and walkie talkies sprinted across the room, alongside several patrons Percy had given the eye to earlier. Narcs. They jumped on top of the man, several of them audibly cracking their mostly bald heads together, falling into a large dogpile that they then writhed around in, grabbing each other and searching for their incorporeal thief.

While that mess occurred, their group snuck through the gasping crowds towards the stage. Though the wheel was still spinning, the knife thrower had stopped, watching the chaos with a smile on his face, twirling a golden knife in his hands.

Frank reached the stage first, rolling on and grabbing the guy bodily around the waist. Percy heard his gasp of breath get cut off as Frank tossed him behind the red show curtain that divided the audience from where the minimum wage workers span pulleys and ropes.

The guy landed on the floor of the backstage and they closed the curtain behind them. Luckily, no one else was there.

“Hey!” the knife thrower spluttered. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Nico rolled his eyes. “Time to go home.”

The knife thrower blinked brown eyes up at them.

“Is it eight already?” he asked. “Damn… I only clocked in two hours ago.”

Percy glanced at Annabeth. One of her eyebrows twitched.

“You know what we mean,” said Frank. “Hades is looking for you.”

Annabeth reached down and picked up one of the golden knives on the floor as the knife thrower blinked.

“Hades?” he asked, before pointing at them strictly. “He send you? You tell that guy he owes me ten bucks. And I’m not driving him home ever again.”

At that, they all faltered.

“Come again?” asked Percy.

The knife thrower looked at all of them in befuddlement.

“Hades?” he said, his curly blonde hair sticking up from the manhandling. He looked to be in his early to mid-twenties. Percy started to get a bad feeling. “The magician?”

Still lying on the floor like a flipped bug, he jerked his thumb up at a poster on the wall.

They all looked up. True to the knife thrower’s word, the poster loudly proclaimed the casino to be the home of Hades the Horrible, the most talented magician in the South Bay Region. It was accompanied with a picture of a squirrelly-looking man with a dark goatee and an evil look, holding up a deck of cards with question marks instead of the card suits. The collar of his black suit was popped.

“Not too far off,” remarked Percy.

“Guys,” Annabeth said in a warning tone. They all turned to her as she held up the knife, pointing at some tiny writing along the blade. “This is gold-coloured stainless steel. Made in Taiwan.”

Percy screwed up his face. Several of his friends did the same.

“You seemed pretty happy to see all that chaos back there,” Hazel pointed out.

“Uh, yeah,” said the knife thrower. “It was like I got a break. Usually, my manager has me throwing knives for hours. And he doesn’t even give me any plasters, I have to buy my own.”

He heard Annabeth sigh deeply.

“So… you’re not an escaped prisoner?” asked Frank.

The knife thrower’s face contorted into confusion.

“What?” he asked. “My name is Jerome. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

They all glanced at each other and then looked around the backstage warily. Hazel stepped forward and held out her arm to help the guy up off the floor.

“Sorry,” she said, wincing as she helped him up, “We thought you were someone else.”

“Who?” Jerome asked, bewildered. “I just- I’m just doing this until I can pay for law school. Trust me, I’m not committing any crimes. Well…” he trailed off with a sheepish grin at Percy, who pulled a bemused face, “Nothing they can trace to me.”

“Okay, Jerome,” sighed Nico. “How about you go wash up for your next show?”

“But I thought it was eight in the evening?” Jerome asked with visible hope on his face.

“It’s midday,” said Annabeth in an apologetic tone.

The guy slumped miserably, shuffling off towards a dark corner full of pots of glitter, costumes and dark hair-dye tubs. They turned to each other.

“Okay,” said Annabeth, clapping her hands together, “So, we got the wrong person. Happens. Nico, can you still feel them near?”

Nico frowned, looking down at the floor.

“Yeah,” he said, “I can. I don’t know why it wasn’t that guy. It feels like they’re right next to me.”

They all glanced around the backstage. There was nothing but cobwebs and Jerome muttering unhappily to himself as he sprinkled gold glitter around his eyes.

“I can feel it too now that we’re closer, like a vague presence. Maybe they’re upstairs?” Hazel offered, but Nico was still shaking his head.

“No,” he said, “They’re literally a few feet away from me.”

Percy whipped open the stage curtain. There were a few people returning to the stage which still housed Jerome’s assistant, turning on his wheel. He scanned them but they just looked like general scumbags. He closed the curtain again.

“Okay,” he said, “Maybe we should have a rethink. Nico, is there any possibility…?” he trailed off as fire blazed in his peripheral vision.

They all turned as Jerome caught their attention, lighting up a stick with a blowtorch. The orange glow filled the dull backstage.

“Uh, Jerome?” Percy asked, his eyebrows raised. “What you got there?”

“Oh,” said Jerome, “This is just part of the act, don’t worry. There’s this fuel-soaked rope around the wheel. Just makes for a bit of show. My target guy is weirdly calm about it, but he’s new, so I just guess he hasn’t had enough burns yet.”

He took a deep breath then swooped open the curtains to paltry applause, leaving them alone backstage. They heard a whoosh as Jerome set fire to the knife wheel.

“Oh, Di immortales,” he heard Annabeth say at the same time as Nico groaned loudly. “We’re so stupid.”

“At this point,” Nico said to her, his hands moving angrily, “I don’t know how we’re walking and talking at the same time. Is this just one too many brain injuries?”

“Must be,” said Annabeth as she pinched her nose, “Or maybe some kind of funky Tartarus air just rotted away what few brain cells we had left.”

“No, I’m serious, I might as well just go-“

“Uh, guys?” Frank interrupted them. “Care to share with the class?”

“Yeah,” Percy said, “Because maybe a couple of us actually are stupid and have no idea what you’ve realised.”

“Ixion,” Annabeth and Nico said at the same time, both in the identically flat, defeated tones. “That’s who we’re after,” Annabeth added.

Percy exchanged a glance with Frank and Hazel. The name rang a bell, especially with something about a flaming wheel, but if there was no Disney animation about it, he was a little lost on the details. He could see Frank and Hazel were too.

Annabeth started to explain without prompting: “Okay, so Ixion wanted to marry this girl, right? And he promised her dad a big present, like a dowry. But he didn’t. So her dad stole some of his horses and Ixion just straight up killed him for it, pushing him onto a bed of hot coals.”

“Gods,” Percy said, wrinkling his nose. “What was wrong with them back then? Why was their first go-to always just murder?”

“Efficient though,” added Nico, Hazel nodding next to him.

While Percy gave them a concerned look out the corner of his eye, Annabeth continued.

“So the guy got shunned for a while and no one would absolve him of his sin,” she said. “But Zeus took pity on him.”

“One father-killer to another,” Hazel stated.

“Jeez,” said Frank, his eyes widening at her words. “Hazel.”

“What?” she said, her cheeks going slightly redder. “It’s true.”

“It is,” added Annabeth. “So Zeus invites Ixion to Olympus, decides to give him a big meet and greet with all the gods. But this guy is a scumbag. Throughout the meal, he’s giving the eyes to Hera. Big no-no in guest rules back then.”

“Also now,” interjected Frank wisely.

“Either way,” Annabeth continued, “Zeus catches on to this and creates a cloud shaped like Hera as a trap. Ixion goes over and puts the moves on her, which also is kind of how we got a new breed of centaurs.”

“Makes sense,” said Percy.

“His eternal punishment for his acts was to be strapped to a- you guessed it, burning wheel,” she said with a roll of her eyes, gesturing to the curtain behind her. “And now he’s escaped. Somehow. Maybe he rolled.”

“Kind of impressive,” whistled Frank. “Makes catching him easier.”

“Yeah,” nodded Percy. “Dude’s tied up. This couldn’t be more simple.” He frowned. “This is too easy, something’s going to happen.”

“It might not,” Annabeth said hopefully, but her slanted smile didn’t reach her eyes. After a couple of seconds, she gave up and her shoulders slumped. “You’re right. Let’s just go find out. But…” Percy watched her eyes flick from the curtain to the far wall next to them. “We can’t just go out there and start stabbing. Security will be on us in seconds.”

“I can shoot him?” Frank offered, holding up his bow.

Annabeth blinked then nodded. “Yes. That should work.” She pulled the edge of the curtain back, revealing the stage, where Jerome was making some speech to the bored-looking crowd as Ixion span on his flaming wheel. “Should being the operative word,” he heard her mutter.

Frank crouched at the edge of the stage, just the tip of his loaded arrow pointing out of the curtain. He took a singular breath in as he lined up his shot with the rotating man before letting it fly with deadly precision.

They all watched as the arrow flew across the stage, perfectly lined up with Ixion’s head and-

The fire blazed, heatwaves blaring out of the wheel in a light so bright it hurt Percy’s eyes as he peeked through the gap. People in the crowd gasped. The arrow diverted mid-air, burying itself in the wood instead.

“Oh, there it is,” said Annabeth.

“I’m sorry,” Percy said incredulously, “Is he friends with the wheel now? He can control it?”

Nico scowled.

“It could work,” Nico said. “Over time, people and their curses can become synonymous with each other. Tantalus learned how to weaponise his in that restaurant. My father has had to increase the size of Sisyphus’ boulder a few times over the years because he keeps getting stronger. It could be that the wheel has become a part of Ixion. Or that the curse is fading now that he’s on the surface and this is how it’s manifesting.”

“Why is he even here?” asked Percy.

“Hiding. Blends in, I guess,” Nico replied. “I mean, we didn’t even notice him. But that could just be because we’re stupid.”

“Either way,” Frank said with a scowl, putting his bow away, “Long-range is out. Now what?”

“Now, we go to plan A,” Annabeth said.

“Plan A just failed,” Hazel pointed out.

“That wasn’t plan A. That was plan B. Plan A hadn’t been put into motion yet.” Annabeth strode over to the back wall where all the stage props and costumes were and held up a pot. A pot of glitter. “This is Plan A.”

“Oh, great,” Percy sighed. “I love glitter.”

Several minutes later, they were ready. Their faces covered in gold glitter, all of them wearing a gold jacket over their clothes, they looked the part of the glamourous assistants. Though the miserable facial expressions ruined it slightly. Or, Percy thought, looking at a glaring Nico, perfected it.

“I want this guy dead as quickly as humanly possible,” the son of Hades ground out between gritted teeth, gold sparkling on his pale cheeks. “Let’s go.”

They took a few seconds to prepare their short-range weapons, Frank taking out a gladius instead. Percy gripped Riptide tightly. Hazel made the air around them shift for a few seconds.

“Okay,” she said, “Any mortals should now see our weapons through the Mist as either batons or torches. We’re good.”

“Let’s move,” said Percy, holding open the curtain and ducking through.

They sidestepped awkwardly under the spotlight along the back of the stage, trying to pretend to just be background people. Thankfully, since they were just stood there in costume, no one in the audience seemed to give them a second glance. The pros of being stage hands.

Up close, they could see Ixion in all his spinning glory. The guy looked a mess. Under his gold clothes, his orange jumpsuit was peeking out, only now noticeable from a few feet away. His once long, lustrous hair now looked thin and grey, missing in burned spots. Shiny red skin covered his wrists and neck. The wheel span fast enough that Percy was dizzy just looking at him.

“Okay,” he murmured to Frank next to him, “I grab the wheel and stop it, you get Ixion?”

“It’s on fire!” Frank hissed with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m- have I never told you this? Huh. I’m kind of fireproof,” Percy whispered. “Like I’ve been in lava before.”

“You- what?”

Percy waved a hand.

“We don’t have time for this right now,” he hissed. “I won’t be able to hold it for too long though. Ready?”

Frank nodded.

They moved like ninjas.

Percy grabbed the wheel, the fire whooshing out under his very warm hands and he strained to make it stop.

It didn’t. The unstoppable wheel flipped Percy around like a party trick. As he landed, bewildered, back on his feet, he heard scattered applause. Jerome turned round with a confused look. Unfortunately, Ixion’s pale eyes now focused on them.

“Demigods,” they heard him croak like he had a smoker’s cough. “Godlings,” he hissed, the wheel starting to spin faster.

Percy gave up. “Frank!” he called, “Get him!”

Frank lunged but the wheel suddenly shook, breaking off the spokes keeping it on the floor. It fell with an almighty crash off the stand and started to roll off the stage, Ixion still spinning around with it. The dull people in the crowd suddenly came to life, screaming and pointing as the giant spinning wheel careened towards them, leaving a trail of fire wherever it landed.

The people scattered, running for the doors. Percy watched with wide eyes as Ixion started cackling, cutting off any escape from the stage for the others by setting fire to a large ring around them. Then the wheel turned, bolting straight for them.

“I can’t believe he can drive this thing!” Percy howled as they dived to the side, the wheel bouncing onto the stage and smashing through into the backstage.

It did something of a three point turn before hurtling for them again.

“Take something from me, gods?” Ixion shrieked. “I’ll take something from you!”

Frank stood up amongst the chaos.

“I’m going nuclear,” he announced to the rest of them.

Percy stopped breathing out his mouth hard and let a grin fall across his face instead.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yep,” Frank replied, stretching his neck from side to side. “Haven’t done it in a while. Room’s big enough. Target is on fire. Haven’t had the chance to stretch my wings since the war.”

Hazel squinted.

“Was that a pun?” she asked.

Frank didn’t answer. As they stepped back, the round-faced boy they all knew and loved blurred before their very eyes. He was already tall but then he got very tall. With grey scales. And a tail. And wings. And Di immortales, Percy was going to fight his dad for not passing on the cool powers to him.

Frank the dragon unfolded his huge, leathery bat wings, roaring at an ear-splitting volume in the large hall. He still had gold sparkles on the scales on his face. Like a cat with a ball of wool, he pounced on Ixion’s wheel, knocking it flat to the floor.

People screamed louder as they fled. Percy wondered what they saw.

They slid off the stage to get a closer look, Hazel’s face smugly smeared with pride as her boyfriend bared his slathering jaws to the escapee. The fire on Ixion’s wheel went out like a candle being blown, the whites of his eyes visible in fear as he stared up at rows upon rows of teeth.

“If anyone ever questions the security of New Rome these days,” he heard Hazel say next to them, her chest puffed out, “Just show them this. We’re good. We’re very good.”

Frank’s jaws descended upon the wheel, crushing it into splinters of wood and a burst of orange fog, fading into the floor. The dragon reared its head back, surveying the destruction with glowing bronze eyes. Then it glanced back at them.

Percy stuck his thumb up in the air affirmatively.

The dragon nodded before giving a little wriggle, stepping over the wood almost daintily. Its form began to deflate like a balloon and, within a few seconds, Frank stood there as he was before, his brow furrowed as he poked his teeth.

“Guys,” he called with a slight pout he would later no doubt deny, “I think I have a splinter in my gum. It really hurts. Um- Hazel, can you-? Please?”

“Coming,” she called fondly, heading over to him.

The remaining three of them turned to each other as the little fires around them crackled.

“Okay,” said Annabeth. “That’s two.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Three

Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls

Nico had a perpetual scowl on his face. He had since they had first started circling the same area.

“Maybe we should go back to the Hollywood sign,” Percy suggested, “Feels like there could be something ominous there. Well, more ominous than some giant letters.”

“At least you can read them clearly at this size,” Frank offered, a glint in his eye.

Percy glared at the only demigod there who had managed to dodge the bullet of dyslexia. But, then again, he mentally relented, he couldn’t imagine lactose intolerance was a walk in the park either. Not that he had ever seen Frank refuse ice cream. His friend usually just put on a grim game face and dug in, with all the vibe of a man tying his own noose up on the gallows.

He would not want to be Hazel sharing a house with Frank later that night.

As Percy pulled a face at Frank, Hazel leaned forwards, sticking her head between Jules-Albert and Nico. A little crease had appeared between her eyebrows.

“I think we should head back east,” she said. “There was just… a feeling.”

Nico nodded and Jules-Albert immediately wrenched the car into the next lane, several cars beeping behind them.

“I know what you mean,” Nico said. “Honestly, I think there might be two in this area and I’m picking up both. Let’s deal with the one in the east first and double back after.”

“This is how you know they’re old,” Percy whispered to Annabeth. “East? Who knows that?”

Annabeth grinned as Hazel swatted at his shoulder.

“Look at the sun, genius,” she said.

“Hazel’s trying to blind me,” Percy announced to the car in his best telltale voice.

Frank snorted as Hazel protested, her finger coming up as she spoke to wag in a way that only made them laugh more. In fact, they were all still giggling when Hazel suddenly stopped.

“Nico,” she said, her voice alert.

Their giggles cut off abruptly and everyone, whether actively or subconsciously, reached for their weapons.

“What is it?” Annabeth asked in a low voice.

“Yeah,” Nico nodded before Hazel could answer, “I feel it too. It’s… I’m- take a left here,” he instructed firmly to Jules-Albert, pointing down a side road.

Jules-Albert acquiesced sharply, sending Hazel tumbling back into the backseat onto Frank, who went pink in his cheeks as he helped her sit up.

“Any vibes about who this clown is?” Percy asked Nico, who frowned.

“Something… wet,” he replied.

Percy and Annabeth glanced at each other. Annabeth’s nostrils were doing her little flare-y thing when she was trying not to laugh.

“Wet,” she echoed, turning the situation around on Percy who now had to squint his eyes together to not snort.

Nico held his hands up in defeat.

“That’s all I got,” he said. “Oh, if only we had some kind of water-powered person on board who could find out more.”

Percy rolled his eyes, scooting towards his window and peering out.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, trying to feel for any water around him.

They were quite high up, or felt like it at least, with the rise and fall of the landscape around them. And LA was weird; on one side of the road they were driving on, big apartment blocks had absolutely saturated lawns, green as Kermit himself. On the other side, dead, yellowed grass stretched out in thin strips, bottles and broken glass filling in any patches. Even the poofy trees lining the road alternated between evergreen and ever-brown. As they passed a rug cleaning store where Percy could feel all kinds of soapy, grubby water, he started to feel something else.

“Something up here,” he said. “On the left. Big thing of water.”

“Does that line up with your spider-sense?” Annabeth asked Nico.

Nico nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think we’re here. Time for prisoner number three.”

And there they were.

As Jules-Albert pulled up on the side of the road, the orange-jumpsuited figure was right out in the open, thankfully not about to send them on a wild goose chase. However, they were stood right in the middle of a fountain.

“William Mullholland Memorial,” Frank read aloud from a sign posted in front of the huge fountain. “Looks nice.”

It did. Percy knew a thing or two about fountains and this one was on the fancier side. It looked to be around a hundred or so feet wide, a big, turquoise-tiled circle. It had a couple levels for water to trickle down and a few chutes for it to pour out of too, shooting several streams into the air in a graceful water dance. As they got out of the car and walked along the path towards the fountain, he noticed it was ringed by a bunch of white roses, the odd petal being the only thing to indicate that the crystal clear water was even there at all.

Well. That and the weirdo stood in the biggest ring.

Up close, it wasn’t anyone Percy had ever seen before. For one, it was a girl; the majority of the inmates in the Fields of Punishment, especially the infamous ones, were usually men. Judging by the similar blank looks on everyone else’s faces, no one else had any clue either. Great. Going in blind.

She didn’t look threatening on the outside. She looked young, maybe about the same age as them. Possibly younger. Like every prisoner, she was dressed in orange. She had long, dark braids piled up on the top of her head, held in place by a single golden pin glinting in the afternoon sun. Her skin was a warm brown and her eyes were outlined in black in the same way that Thalia did her makeup. She was quite pretty and didn’t wear the ‘oh gods, the suffering’ look that the others had worn.

It was then that Percy noticed what she was doing. In her hands, she held a metal sieve. It was bent and looked like junk metal, but she was dipping it in and out of the fountain, each time watching the water trickle out before refilling it.

He looked to Annabeth. Sure enough, his girlfriend was watching the motion of the sieve with a frown.

“This… rings a bell,” she said. “But I’m not sure.”

They reached the edge of the fountain, hands on their weapons. Percy gripped Riptide as they climbed up onto the stone. Luckily, with the exception of one person stretched out on a towel on the yellowing grass further away, there was no one else about.

She looked up as they approached, taking both sides around her like a pack of velociraptors. Percy sighed. Gods, he needed to stop watching Jurassic Park films so late at night.

“Hello,” she said, stopping them in their tracks. “I was wondering how long it would be before someone came to get me.” Her voice was soft, tinted with an old accent that Percy couldn’t place. She sounded a bit like how Zoë had sounded; from another time. Her brown eyes regarded them without malice. “You are demigods, no? Heroes?”

“Yeah,” said Annabeth. “And you’re…” He watched her screw her face up in annoyance as she tried to remember, like an angry mouse. “You’re…”

“Take a lap,” Percy advised her, earning himself a scowl.

The girl smiled gently.

“My name is Gorgophone,” she said, without any of the shame Percy himself would have had for having such a name.

Funnily, this only made Annabeth scowl harder. But instead of her having a sudden realisation, it was Nico who came to life around them. He lowered his Stygian Iron sword a fraction of an inch.

“Oh,” he said, “You’re one of the Danaïdes.”

“That was it!” Annabeth exclaimed, snapping her finger so loudly that Percy wondered if it hurt. She lowered her hand, looking slightly embarrassed, and gestured silently for Nico to carry on. Percy grinned and bumped her with his shoulder. She bumped him back.

“Your eternal punishment,” Nico said, nodding his head towards the dripping sieve in her hands. “It was to carry water from a pool to fill a bathtub with holes in it.”

Gorgophone nodded.

“When it was full, my sisters and I could leave,” she said. “But it was never to be full. We understood that quite early on.”

Hazel spoke up, her head tilted in curiosity.

“What did you do?” she asked.

Gorgophone sat on one of the inner walls of the fountain, still absent-mindedly filling her sieve. Percy took that as an opportunity to sit down himself, letting his feet float in the water with a nice soothing effect rolling up his body, soothing his aching back from being in the car for so long. The others exchanged looks then sat down too. Their weapons all remained out.

She wasn’t actively trying to kill them but that was kind of the bare minimum. They’d remain on guard.

“My father, Danaus, was a prince of Egypt, later the king of Libya,” she began. “He had a brother called Aegyptus, who became king of Arabia. They were quite bitter rivals. My father was a worrier; he had fifty daughters, after all.”

“Damn!” Percy exclaimed.

She looked at him.

“I’m sorry,” he amended hastily.

Nico shook his head with closed eyes. Annabeth hid her mouth behind her hand as Gorgophone continued.

“However, my uncle was lustful for power. He wanted the throne of Libya too. And he had fifty sons.”

Gods… Percy held back another exclamation. Any hand-me-downs would have been straight up dust before reaching the youngest. And fifty cousins? They would’ve just been swapping rags.

“Aegyptus, of course, proposed marriage between us all,” she said.

“Of course,” he heard Frank mutter.

He held back a disparaging comment about cousins marrying cousins, glancing at Annabeth. People in glass houses and all…

“My father tried to protect us,” Gorgophone continued. “Aegyptus’ sons had gained a reputation for being cruel and brutish. He built one of the first ships in existence and sailed us far away, relinquishing his throne in Libya and taking the crown in Argos when we arrived. The goddess Athena helped him. But we couldn’t flee forever from Aegyptus’ greed. And Argos was in no state to go to war when they eventually turned up demanding marriage again, trying to take everything my father had worked for.”

“So you all married,” Nico picked the story up quietly. “And on your wedding night…”

Gorgophone looked down at her hands. A troubled expression flicked across her face as she no longer looked them in the eyes.

“You must understand,” she told them, “It was how it was done back then. If your father gave you an order, you had to fulfil it. We were young and we were women. Both those things made it imperative for us to follow instructions or face consequences.”

“Things are different now,” Hazel said in a reassuring voice. “What did your father ask of you?”

Gorgophone tucked her legs up under her chin. It made her look younger, her lips twisted to the side as she seemed to work her way up to an answer.

“Our father gave each of us a knife,” she said eventually. “Upon the moment our marriages were to be consummated, when our new husbands’ guards were lowered, we were told to strike and end Aegyptus’ line where they lay.”

Percy blinked. Wow. That was one way for Danaus to go about things. Girl dad, he guessed.

“And you did,” Annabeth jumped in, clearly excited to be back in the flow of the lore. “All of you but one.”

Gorgophone looked up at that and gave a half-smile, half-grimace.

“Yes,” she said. “I killed my husband, Proteus. I stabbed him in the chest when he was distracted, staring at one of my maids. I… I had never seen anything die before. I almost didn’t expect it to happen. It was… messier than expected.”

“Happens,” Percy told her with a shrug.

“Wait, one of your sisters didn’t do it?” questioned Frank, leaning forwards. He looked weirdly captivated by the story. It was kind of like a soap opera, Percy conceded. Or more of a telenovela.

Gorgophone nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “My older sister. The oldest of all of us. Hypermnestra. She- well, she was our older sister. She had been looking after us her whole life; she knew how to talk to people, be assertive. And, luckily for her, her husband Lynceus was a kinder man than most. He respected her wishes to not consummate her marriage and, as a result, she let him live. Only, that then meant we were revealed. Lynceus killed our father in revenge and the two of them then ruled. She was happy. I believe she was sent to Elysium when she died. And we were all sent to the Fields of Punishment.”

They sat in silence for a few beats. Percy frowned.

He tried to see it from all angles but failed miserably. Maybe there was just something in him that refused to see sorting out bad husbands as something wrong. He was his mother’s son, after all.

Hell, if his mom hadn’t killed his stepdad, he would’ve.

Percy blinked and shook his head slightly to clear his mind. Now wasn’t the time to think about that. It was never time to think about that.

“We’re here to take you back,” he heard Nico say in a voice as hesitant as he felt. “To the Fields of Punishment. You said you were waiting for us?”

Gorgophone met their eyes, this time her smile a little more sincere.

“Yes,” she said. “I am ready to go back. I did not fully understand what was going on when we left. Sisyphus was shouting and it was all very dark.”

“Oh, great,” Percy grumbled, “Is Sisyphus out of the box too?”

“I believe he was one of them,” Gorgophone shrugged. “Hard to tell, he didn’t have his rock at the time. I was the only one of my sisters to see them all fighting over this glowing device. I wandered over- but I shouldn’t have. I know that now.”

Nico tilted his head, his dark eyebrows knotted.

“You want to go back?” he said. “Why?”

Gorgophone gave him a soft smile, her eyes holding a deep emotion in their depths that Percy couldn’t identify.

“You know our punishment,” she said. “We fill a bathtub that cannot possibly be filled. We are trapped in a moment all forty-nine of us cannot escape, the same as our husbands. And yet…” She glanced around, as if checking if anyone was listening, before saying in a hushed voice: “We are together down there. No fathers and their orders. No husbands and their hands. No uncles and their threats. We talk to each other as we fill the bathtub, we braid each other’s hair with our free hands. We swim in the pool of water. There are far worse fates to have, demigods.”

Damn. They all looked at each other, probably all thinking the same things. Had Hades purposefully given them a less harsh punishment? Would it be kinder to send her back? Did they even deserve to be down there anymore?

They had committed murder but… it was Greek mythology. Who hadn’t?

“So, you absolutely want to go back?” Frank ventured with uncertainty.

She nodded. “Absolutely.”

They all looked at each other. Well. If it was that simple…

Nico put his sword away.

“I’ll help you,” he said, “I can send you back without having to stab you first.” His expression flickered. “I think.”

He stared down at the water and wrinkled his nose, his shoes hovering above the surface. He turned to look at Percy. Percy sighed and decided to pull a Moses, making a shoo-ing motion with his hand and splitting the water down the middle to give Nico a path to where Gorgophone sat. The turquoise tiles on the floor were a lot cleaner than the ones on the walls.

Nico shuffled off as the rest of them put their weapons away too. Gorgophone met him in the middle.

Now that she was closer, Percy could see little drawings on her jumpsuit. They looked to be done in some kind of black dust, little flowers and intricate patterns. When she turned to face Nico, he saw a load of them on her back. Around the top, he saw ‘Gorgy’, written in Ancient Greek like the back of a sports t-shirt. He found himself smiling at the sight of it.

Nico held out both of his hands palms up to Gorgophone.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “I think I can send your soul back painlessly.”

“Thank you,” she replied. “If not, may I request beheading? I find it should be both painless and quick.”

Most of them snorted.

“Uh- you got it,” Nico replied, his eyes darting to worriedly side-eye the rest of them as they watched.

Percy gave him a thumbs up then reached for Annabeth’s hand to hold. She squeezed his hand tightly, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand.

They watched as Gorgophone took Nico’s hands. Her cheeks went a little pinker but Nico just smiled awkwardly at her.

“Okay,” he said. “Um- close your eyes.”

She nodded, acquiescing, and Nico did the same. Around them, the shadows got slightly darker and they flickered. The air got colder. Percy was surprised to see his breath fog up in the air. Nico tilted his head from side to side, his neck popping audibly.

“Gorgophone,” he said without opening his eyes. “Daughter of Danaus. I relinquish your soul from this plane. Go in peace.”

As he spoke, her body became dark and smoky. Under her feet, the ground started to open like a mouth. Her smile was her last visible feature before she fully blurred.

“You go with the blessing of the son of Hades,” Nico said. “Tell that to anyone who asks,” he added quickly.

“Thank you,” they heard her faintly whisper before she sank into the earth. The ground closed up behind her.

At once, the air went warmer and everything got brighter. Percy grinned victoriously.

“All right!” he said, “That’s three. And we know that Sisyphus is out here somewhere. Then it’s just whatever random loser is left and we get to go home! I need a nap.”

Nico dragged his way out of the pool and slumped on the wall, leaning on Hazel. He looked a little paler than usual and the recovering bags under his eyes were back in smudges of their former glory. He didn’t look as wiped as he usually did but his overtired irritation was radiating off him.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he grumbled, “Was that taxing for you to hold up a little pond? I’m so sorry.”

Percy let the water go with a shrug. The crystal-clear waves splashed up onto their knees as they rushed to fill in the gaps.

“Okay, you,” said Hazel, putting the back of her hand on Nico’s forehead in a concerned manner. “Let’s get you some sugar. We drove past a billion fancy malls on the way here and at least one of them has to have something that isn’t sugar-free, gluten-free, lactose-free-“

“But Frank needs that,” Percy pointed out.

“Y’know what, Jackson?” Frank trailed off threateningly, though his smile gave him all the menace of a fluffy panda.

“Do you need like, a power nap?” Annabeth asked Nico.

“No,” the boy replied, shaking his head. “I’m not wiped or anything, it just takes a little bit to move a soul through planes, you know? It’s easier when they don’t fight it.”

That got him a few looks and Percy certainly raised an eyebrow but they left it there.

A far away honk of a car horn grabbed their attention. They looked up to see Jules-Albert cranking down the car window, his zombie face peering their way. Nico held up a thumb in the air, which seemed to reassure his undead chauffer, and pulled himself to his feet, letting go of the fountain. Percy shuffled off as they all followed him back to the car.

“I could go for food,” Annabeth said, rubbing her stomach. “Wish I’d had more picnic food. Wasn’t exactly time to pack for the road.”

“It’s probably being eaten by ants now,” Frank said miserably. “He could’ve given us some godly Tupperware to put it in. I spent good money on that steak. And the sesame oil. I even bought those sesame seeds specifically.”

Percy’s stomach growled.

“Frank,” he said. “I’m begging you, please stop. You’re making my stomach cannibalise itself.”

They clambered into the car, Nico taking shotgun with his feet up on the dash. Jules-Albert growled a gurgling sound under his breath but Nico just rolled his eyes.

“Rest break,” he told the zombie. “Go to the nearest mall. One that has a McDonalds, just in case we can’t find somewhere else.”

“KFC is better,” Annabeth argued.

“McDonalds,” Nico reinstated.

Jules-Albert grunted and started the car. Percy put on his seat belt. They pulled away from the fountain to rejoin the traffic on the road. Percy noticed that the sunbather hadn’t opened their eyes in the entire time they’d been there, probably snoozing under the sun, despite the chill in the winter air. Anything for a tan. Gods, LA.

They drove onto a big, main road and Jules-Albert was happily weaving in and out of traffic at the maximum speed limit when Nico sat up. He turned around to face them with a downturn of his lips, his dark eyes flicking from side to side.

“You know I said there was another one?” he said, continuing after they all nodded like good little students. “It was in this direction. But… it’s getting closer. Hazel, you feel it?”

Hazel closed her eyes, her long eyelashes fluttering as she seemed to search the area around them. She pulled a face when she opened them up again.

“Yeah,” she said. “Vaguely. It’s stronger than the other ones. What would make one of the prisoners more noticeable?”

“I’m not sure,” Nico frowned. “Sisyphus is a pretty old prisoner and definitely one of the better known ones. It’s possible he could have more of a presence on our radars. But… I don’t know. I think there’s something going on wherever this prisoner is. We might have to postpone lunch.”

“Unacceptable,” Percy said. “I’m starving. And you need food. If this guy is so stinky that you two can feel him from here, we’ll have no problem finding him again. After lunch.”

Annabeth nodded. Her leg was warm where it was pressed up against Percy’s leg, sat right next to him. Like, right next to him. He swallowed and wondered whether she could feel his pulse beating through his skin.

“I agree,” she said, backing him up. “You need energy. We need food. Remember, we’re doing things on our own timetable these days. We’ve saved the world enough times to know when it’s at stake and it definitely isn’t now. We can take a lunch break.”

Nico looked at their earnest faces and nodded, rubbing his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. You’re right. Nearest mall, please, Jules-Albert.”

Jules-Albert grunted and took the first exit off their road, taking them round a corner and under a bridge. A gleaming mall shaped like a U stood out at the end of the tree-lined road.

Yet when they got closer, Percy leaned forwards, as did the others. He squinted, his eyebrows knotting together. There was something… going on over there. Jules-Albert let them out and they headed over. Outside one of the shops, a large crowd had assembled, full of mall cops and people filming themselves, narrating what was going on in a way that made Percy’s New York heart recoil.

“-totally psycho!” this one guy covered in fake-tan was saying, holding a smoothie that had about fifteen separate toppings on top. “It was absolutely crazy, guys, you would not believe it! If I wore an orange jumpsuit in winter of all seasons, I’d probably be losing it too. I’ll be posting about this all day so stay tuned, Kevinators!”

Percy rolled his eyes and turned to the others. They all seemed to heave a group sigh.

“Looks like lunch will have to wait,” he said mournfully.

Chapter Text

Chapter Four

Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again

Percy approached the wild influencer with slow steps, keeping his hands up so it wouldn’t seem him as a threat.

“Sorry,” he said, “Uh- Kevin?”

The influencer span around, shoving his phone in his face. He shrieked. The frosted tips of his hair wobbled as he moved.

“Oh, one of my adoring fans!” he exclaimed. “Sorry, no press, no press. Do you want an autograph? Or are you here about my limited edition merch? Because I’ll be getting new Kevinator hoodies in lime green teal back on my website in just two weeks when the shipment comes in from overseas. My workers are just so lazy over there! So you may need patience. I hope that’s okay, little fan!”

Percy’s mouth, which had long since dropped open, tried to form some sort of smile but failed.

“Uh-“ he said, even his ADHD struggling to keep up with the blathering.

Luckily, Hazel stepped in.

“What happened here?” she said, hitting him with a subject change seamlessly.

Kevin’s eyes widened.

“Oh,” he said, “It was, like, so tragic. But also funny. Tra-funny. Or maybe fu-gic. Note to self, copyright one of those. Anyway, yeah- so there we were, right, looking at getting some new threads, and who rocks up but this yucky homeless man- uh-“

He gave them the look of a naughty child caught smuggling sweets up to his room.

“I mean… home-deprived man,” he corrected himself. “Which I, like, totally support, y’know? Go him.”

“Totally,” Hazel nodded. “Go on.”

Flawless execution. Percy stepped back to give space to a master at work.

“Yeah, this- intriguingly dressed- man turns up and he’s just going insane,” Kevin continued, obviously already over his mishap in words. “First of all, he’s head to toe in orange, which between you and me- not his colouring,” he added, wrinkling his nose like he’d seen a dead body. “And he’s all old and grey and wrinkled and- get this,” Kevin said, pausing dramatically for effect with a smug smirk. “He starts stripping naked.”

Oh. Percy blinked.

“Oh,” said Hazel. “Right. Why?”

Kevin shrugged.

“That’s the thing, right? There are literally changing rooms there. But he’s just constantly trying on clothes. And he’s getting them all dirty and smelly and- ugh- I can’t even-“ Kevin retched, putting a hand up over his mouth, his other hand wagging a finger. “I will literally never step foot in this store again. And that,” he said, immediately transitioning back into his influencer voice, holding his phone up to film his face again, “That is exactly why I will only be wearing my own merch for the next week. Like and subscribe, Kevinators, and I will send one lucky person my limited edition Kevin boxer shorts- get a bit of Kevin in your pants!”

He strode off without another glance in their direction, still filming himself and narrating. They all stared at his bedazzled, retreating back.

“Do you think his name was Kevin?” Annabeth said in a deadpan voice.

Percy snorted, looking round to catch her eye as she grinned at him.

“Okay,” said Hazel. “I mean, it sounds like one of ours. It feels like one of ours. But trying on clothes? Sisyphus’ punishment was pushing a big rock up a hill and never being able to reach the top before it rolled down again. I can’t see him fitting that between those electric doors,” she said, gesturing to the clothing shop.

“Automatic doors,” Nico corrected her gently, “And you’re right. It might not be Sisyphus. This could be number five and then Sisyphus is next. Only one way to find out.”

Annabeth looked from side to side, her grey eyes narrowing as she examined the building.

“We should find the employee’s entrance,” she said. “I bet it’s around the back. If the prisoner picked this shop, I’m guessing they’re either changing their clothes to go incognito or there’s something about being here than links to their curse. Regardless, they’re not getting through this crowd without being noticed. Mall cops are like babysitters for leaves. They’re likely waiting for actual cops to arrive, so we’ve got a bit of time. Let’s go.”

She took the lead, directing their little group down a gap between two shops.

“I love it when you think out loud,” Percy told her, earning himself a grin from her.

They came out on the employee side of things: big, overflowing bins, slumped and smoking employees from other shops that didn’t give them a second look, and door after door marked ‘fire exit’.

“This is us,” she said, holding open the door. “Ladies first.” She winked at him.

“Such a big, strong man,” Percy pretended to swoon, walking in. “My hero.”

“You know it.”

Inside the shop, the lights were off. For a second, Percy wondered if security had cut the power. But it seemed more likely they were just going for a grunge vibe, judging by some of the clothing they sold. Rows of fabric covered the walls, all sporting heavy price tags that just weren’t worth it. In the corner of the shop, clothes briefly flew through the air, piles surrounding something that was moving. Frantically.

Hazel drew level with him and gestured with her spatha for him to take the right. He nodded and the pair of them crept closer like a pincer movement to pin whoever it was down, the others following them behind.

The further into the shop they got, the louder the mutters from whoever it was seemed to get.

“-low rise, mid rise, high waisted, low rise, mid rise, high waisted-“

The voice was low, a man’s, and sounded virtually on the verge of sobbing. Percy screwed his face up. Who the hell was this?

With a single nod between them, Percy and Hazel stepped out into the aisle of clothing, cutting off the two exits.

Between them sat a half-clothed man, rocking back and forth as he yanked clothes off the rails, snapping the coat hangers they were on and flinging the clothes into piles almost as big as him. A discarded Fields of Punishment jumpsuit sat at the bottom of one of the piles, orange and grubby.

The man himself looked like some kind of once-buried voodoo doll unwillingly brought to life. He had a pot belly and ratty hair that stuck up around his head like a torch. Percy wrinkled his nose at the loincloth around his waist. It looked more like a diaper. And a dirty one at that. He had scrawny arms and legs that looked like entirely muscle, no fat, like he was auditioning to play a dehydrated superhero without any of the bulk behind it.

The weirdest part were the clothes he had on. Or half-on, Percy supposed. He appeared to have paired his loincloth with a black t-shirt with a heart cut out the chest. In his hands, he held pairs of jeans, sobbing over them.

He looked up at them with watery, red eyes.

“Which?” he demanded of Hazel in a scratchy voice. “Low, mid, high? I can’t tell! I can’t tell!”

Hazel looked as confused as Percy felt. He looked over at Nico, who blinked.

“Oh,” he said, “That is Sisyphus.”

Percy raised an eyebrow, looking back at the grubby old man.

“Where’s your rock?” he asked him.

Sisyphus shrieked and put his hands over his ears, shaking his head.

“No rock!” he cried. “It’s over! It’s done!” Something sparked in his eyes and he scrambled to his dirt-covered feet. “I need accessories!”

They watched as he span on the spot to face the other side of the aisle, seizing sunglasses and headbands.

“Just one, for effect!” he said, before immediately biting back a rebuttal. “No, more! Maximalism! Minimalism! Take one off before you leave the house! Always wear three!”

What in the Gollum was this? Percy gestured helplessly at him, lowering Riptide. The guy was definitely erratic but he seemed more interested in his outfit than he was attacking them.

“His curse,” said Hazel suddenly. “His curse is still in effect. It’s adapted to modern times.”

Percy watched understanding dawn in Annabeth’s eyes.

“Of course,” she said. “Hazel, you’re right! Pushing the rock was his eternal task, never truly done. Now-“

“-it’s fashion,” Hazel nodded. “Always changing. This is how I felt when I came back. It’s very confusing these days. He can never reach the top of the mountain; he can never be truly caught up with fashion.”

“Do I wear ruffles?” Sisyphus demanded, his eyes pleading. “Bows? Flares? Cravats? White is always in! Black is timeless! Red is the new black!”

“What about jeans and a t-shirt?” suggested Frank.

Sisyphus froze, contemplating, before he shook his head with a snarl.

“No,” he dismissed. “That’s too casual for the casualness of business-casual which is the new casual!”

“Oh my Gods,” Percy groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Let’s just kill him already and get out of this city.”

He lifted Riptide as Hazel lifted her spatha. Sisyphus stiffened, glancing between them as they advanced one step at a time.

“You can’t stop me,” he growled. “I will be free as soon as I find the perfect outfit.”

“Yeah?” asked Hazel, “What does that look like?”

Sisyphus swallowed, his eyes darting around the shop.

“A- a little black dress!” he declared. “Round neck, just above the knees!”

“Too short,” Hazel deflected.

“Uh-“ Sisyphus frowned, his hands coming up to grasp and tug his hair. “Maxi length!”

“Too long.”

“Midi!” Sisyphus cried out.

“Both too long and too short,” Hazel said, every word like a bullet to Sisyphus, who whimpered with his hands over his ears.

“A jumpsuit!” he howled.

Her voice dripping in venom and ice, Hazel crumbled him in a singular question.

“And what do you do when you need the bathroom?” she shot back.

Sisyphus shrieked, grabbing handfuls of clothes and flinging them at her. Percy took a pair of jeans to the face as he launched forwards. They were surprisingly hard to deflect off their weapons, the clothes curling round their blades as they swatted them out the air.

“Get him!” shouted Nico as Sisyphus fled, crawling like a freak under the clothing rails.

Percy dived after him, grabbing him around the ankle and holding back a heave like a champ at the same time, Sisyphus’ grubby foot far too close to his head.

“Got him!” Percy called, elbowing his way through and getting closer to the squirming man.

Only Sisyphus turned as he brought Riptide down, shoving him with both hands hard in the chest.

Oh no-

Like he’d been hit by a car, Percy flew backwards, literally seeing his feet go over his head before he landed on a thankfully squishy display of hoodies. He blinked, dazed.

“Look out!” he called, “He’s got some kind of super strength!”

“You don’t push a boulder that size for all those years without acquiring a little muscle, sonny,” cackled Sisyphus. “Now, what colour goes best with brown?”

Percy pulled himself to his feet, rubbing his chest where it throbbed, but not before he saw Annabeth similarly go flying.

“Oof!” she gasped, taking out a mannequin as she landed. “That’s… that’s a hell of a throw.”

“Harder to catch than he looks,” Percy nodded grimly as he caught up with her. “And he already looks… just terrible.”

“What does that say about us?” she snorted as she got up, spinning her drakon bone sword in her hand.

“That we’re retired?” he tried.

“Attempting to.”

“Attempting,” he agreed, resignedly nodding.

Frank and Hazel were chasing him down a long aisle when they found them on the other side of the store. Nico was stood on top of a tall display of clothing decorating a Christmas tree, shouting out the best ways for them to go through the maze of railings.

“Frank, left!” the boy shouted. “Hazel, keep going and you’ll pin him in there! Oh- no, he’s crawling under again! That’s cheating, you know?”

Annabeth kissed him on the cheek with a roll of her eyes before they split up again, her heading to Hazel’s side to back her up and him taking Frank’s side. Frank nodded at him when he caught up with him.

“Y’know,” Frank huffed with a roll of his eyes, “I don’t even know what this guy did. Like, I’ve heard of him and I know about his rock-“

“The rock!” Sisyphus shrieked in horror from somewhere in a pile of clothes. “The rock!”

“Yeah, that one,” Frank nodded. “But what did he even do?”

Percy grinned. It wasn’t often he both actually knew the lore and got to explain it without someone- cough, Annabeth, cough- launching into the explanation before he could. He couldn’t explain the quadratic formula to anyone but he could do Sisyphus.

“So this guy was just the worst, right?” he said, as he and Frank herded Sisyphus towards Hazel and Annabeth. “He killed his houseguests all the time and I think he might have even got freaky with his niece- he was a straight up Game of Thrones kind of bad guy. It got to a point that Zeus was like, ‘I’ve had enough of this guy’ and he sent Thanatos to kill him. But- and doesn’t this just ring a bell- Sisyphus traps him.”

“What is it with that guy and chains?” Frank rolled his eyes.

“Maybe he’s into it,” Percy shrugged, distantly hoping an eavesdropping Thanatos wouldn’t drop him dead where he stood. “Either way, I think Ares intervened and killed him, but not before Sisyphus told his wife to do the wrong funeral rites. Which means, he gets to the Underworld and can’t cross, so he whines to Persephone about his wife- probably the origin of ‘I hate my wife’ boomer humour- and Persephone sends  him back to go yell at her. But, obviously, this means he’s alive again. So Hermes goes and drags him by his ear back downstairs where Hades gives him his rock.”

“The rock! No!” they heard Sisyphus scream again as he battled mannequins, both Hazel and Annabeth looking confused on the side. Then Hazel’s eyes narrowed.

Around them, the air shimmered.

Sisyphus looked up in terror as a boulder the size of a car loomed into view, rolling down the aisles of clothes. It was a fantastic illusion; it rumbled like an oncoming train, snapping coat hangers into tiny little pieces underneath. He gasped, scrambling to his feet from where he’d been crawling to avoid the girls, and fled from the rock.

“No!” he shouted. “I won’t! I won’t!”

Another rock flickered into view in the direction he was running, hurtling towards him. He ground to a halt. His wide eyes flicked frantically between them.

“It never ends!” he moaned, gripping his hair. “It’s never over!”

“It is for us,” Hazel said, stepping through the illusion of the rock and neatly impaling Sisyphus on her golden spatha. “Thank the gods.”

The rocks vanished. Sisyphus looked down at the weapon stuck in his chest then back up at Hazel. He looked almost outraged before turning to badly-dressed fog and sinking through the floor.

“Nice one,” Annabeth told her, sitting down on a display while blowing a breath out her mouth. “Gods, he really made us run. I can’t remember the last monster that made us run.”

“Maybe that hellhound pack in Nevada?” Percy offered, dropping himself down next to her.

“Don’t remind me of that. This is really something we should put into the orientation film,” Annabeth remarked. “Don’t be scared of the monsters or gods- it’s the cardio you have to watch out for.”

“I’m surprised Sisyphus had it in him to run that much,” Nico stated, joining their aisle.

“Yeah,” Percy snorted. “Especially in the face of an Indiana Jones situation like that.”

Hazel grinned.

“I watched that film recently,” she said. “Frank and I are going through all the ‘iconic’ films. That came up. Just in time, too.”

“Turns out I haven’t nearly seen as many classic films as I thought,” Frank admitted. “So we’re on pretty much the same level of pop culture knowledge. One of the fauns keeps demanding we watch The Godfather.”

“Ugh.” They all rolled their eyes at that one.

In the quiet of the store, the odd clothing item occasionally dropping to the floor, someone’s stomach growled. It took Percy a hot second and the sudden turning of four faces to realise it was his own.

“Okay,” said Annabeth. “Now, it’s lunch time. We’re done here, right?”

She looked between Nico and Hazel. Hazel started to nod before stopping, her mouth pulling to one side as she visibly thought. Nico also frowned. Percy held back a sigh.

“Kind of,” said Nico. “The whole ‘prisoner of Hades’ vibe felt really strong here. I thought it was because of Sisyphus. It’s definitely got better since you got him,” he said, nodding to Hazel, “But… I don’t know. It’s still lingering somewhere near.”

They all glanced around the store. Nothing jumped out at them. And the mall cops were getting louder outside like they were right next to the doors.

“Let’s go,” said Annabeth. “We can figure out if we’re missing anything after lunch.”

They snuck out the back, slipping past the employees on break who still didn’t give them a moment’s notice. Once they were back on the main street of the mall, they relaxed a bit.

Their feet tired and their stomachs growling, they gravitated to the food places lining the walls of the mall. Though Annabeth said she was fine, like always, Percy could see her eyelid twitch whenever she stepped on the ankle she’d broken in Rome. It had healed fine thanks to her bubble wrap ingenuity (and a metric ton of hellish fire water) but they’d learned the hard way post-war that their minds didn’t always remember when something had healed. Either way, when her limp became more pronounced, he knew it was time to get them all sat.

Denny’s was nobody’s first pick. They were there because it was close, not because it was good.

Still, Percy couldn’t complain once his Slam Burger arrived. It wouldn’t be earning any Michelin stars anytime soon but the hashbrowns were soft, the bacon was crispy and the sauce was tangy. And it was food. And it was edible.

He sank his teeth in it and grunted appreciatively through a mouthful. There was no worry of anyone judging him; they were tucking into their own food as well. Only Hazel seemed to have any concept of table manners, though she confessed that the nuns at her old school St Agnes were very firm with a ruler about allowing elbows on the table. She’d told them that then deliberately put her elbows on the table, sticking her chin in the air.

She was great like that.

The air filled with murmurs of conversation between bites. Percy zoned out of it, letting his eyes trail across the restaurant. The other customers were mostly families with sticky kids tucking in to sticky waffles, though he could see a few exceptions: two teenagers nervously laughing with at each other over some pancakes. A first date, Percy thought with a sideways smile at Annabeth. An old man alone with a newspaper sat in the corner. He looked both content and slightly on guard. Percy guessed that in LA, any old person eating alone could be swamped by someone on a phone ‘keeping a poor lonely grandpa company’ at any second.

The door leading to the bathrooms banged open. A man backed out with a grimacing look on his face.

“Jeez,” he said, catching their eyes as he walked away. “Some real pieces of work in this world. Stay out the bathroom, kids.”

“Thanks?” Frank replied before turning to the rest of them with a raised eyebrow.

“It’s Denny’s,” Percy pointed out.

“Demigods don’t tend to do coincidences,” said Hazel with a shrug.

“It is Denny’s, though,” Nico said, nodding. “I’ve ended up at enough post-shadow travel at three in the morning. Fight in the bathroom wouldn’t be too unusual.”

They watched the bathroom door for a few more minutes before they ended up shrugging and continuing their food.

“Nico, who could the last prisoner be?” Annabeth asked him. “I’m trying to think of any famous ones but I think we’ve got them all. Maybe that guy weaving a rope that a donkey eats?”

Nico wrinkled his nose as he replied. “Ocnus? Not sure. I think that guy might have been released. If I remember correctly, Cerberus ate his file and my father couldn’t remember why he was there so the judges of the dead just sent him on to Asphodel.” He shrugged. “There aren’t too many old big names in there. These days, it’s mostly full of people who were just straight up bad all their lives and were also in a position of power. Minos hates people in general, Shakespeare hates people who did bad things distastefully and Thomas Jefferson hates people who abuse their power. When all three of them hate you, that’s when they start cooking up some poetic punishment. It’s why the line is so long. It would go faster if Shakespeare didn’t start spouting personalised soliloquies every few minutes. Rumour has it, he’s just showing off to romance Jefferson, though.”

Ah, the gossip of the underworld. It was hard to believe Percy had been scared of it when he was twelve.

Muffled shouting came through the wall next to them, bringing their conversation to an abrupt halt. It was a harsh male voice, not entirely clear but definitely sneering.

Percy felt something in his stomach twist. He swallowed.

“Maybe we should intervene,” he said. “Even if it is just a mortal fight.”

Something banged against the wall, rattling the picture frames. Several heads turned at that, not just from their table, and Percy rose out of his seat slightly, his hands on the table as he listened in concentration.

“Nico,” he said, “Hazel. Do you still feel a prisoner-vibe around here?”

They exchanged a look before nodding at him.

“It’s… stronger here,” Nico said. “I think…”

The door to the bathroom opened. A woman with curly brown hair came out, clutching her face with one hand and holding a crying toddler’s hand in her other.

Percy was out of his seat before he even realised what was happening. Something was really unsettled in his stomach. He and several other customers, mostly women, converged around her. One of the women started performing a dance that confused the toddler so much that it started giggling through watery eyes. The rest of them examined the woman. There was a big red mark on her cheekbone that was getting darker by the minute. Her face seemed to flit between frazzled and grateful.

“I’m okay,” she replied to their hushed inquiries, her kind eyes crinkling in a small smile as someone pressed their ice-cold Soda Float to her face. “I am. There’s just this- this horrible man in there. I think he thought my son and I were someone else. Slapped me one. He tried to-“ At this, her brows knotted and her nostrils flared. “-to kick my son. I would’ve hit him back but I just had to get us out of there.”

“It’s okay,” one of the women soothed. “You did what you thought was best. Your son is okay. You’re okay. We’ll sort him out.”

“Come sit down,” said what looked like a husband and wife. “Come sit with us. We’ll hide you if he comes out.”

Their eyes seemed to flick over to Percy, who realised he was the most visibly strong person in their little huddle. Some of them even regarded him warily, not that he could blame them. He hunched slightly so he wasn’t at his full height.

“Is he still in there?” he asked her.

She nodded, her head tilting in concern.

“You don’t have to-“ she said, but Percy cut her off gently.

“I do,” he said.

One of the older women there gave him a firm nod before she ushered the woman away. Percy straightened up to his full height and looked over at his friends with a hard set of his mouth. Without words, they all stood up and followed him as he opened the bathroom door.

It didn’t lead straight into cubicles; it lead into a large, grey, main room that had different doors for different genders and a disabled bathroom. A single lightbulb flickered at the top of the ceiling. Illuminated under its flickering glow, two men remained; one on the sticky, grubby floor, cowering in an orange jumpsuit. The other, meaty fists raised.

He turned around.

Percy’s breath caught.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five

Hit Me Baby One More Time

“Well, look who it is,” the man stood up sneered.

Percy blinked again, thinking that the next time for sure would clear up his vision, reduce this man to just a stranger. But it didn’t. Because he wasn’t.

Finally stood at around the same height, he made eye contact with his former stepfather.

Even blind in a dark room, he would’ve recognised him by stench alone, something he hadn’t smelled since his stint in Tartarus. It crawled up into his nose, making him recoil. Stale beer with blobs of fuzzy white mold growing on the glass. The thick cigar smoke that had made him cough in bed at night when he was a child. Foul breath mingling with intense BO, right up in his face, pinning him to the wall.

Out the corner of his eye, he saw Frank, a hand raised to his nose with a grimace, turn to Nico.

“This guy doesn’t look Greek,” said Frank. “Who is this?”

Gabe raised a thin, barely there eyebrow. The only hair he really had on his head was the hair poking out his nostrils and his patchy, reeking beard and moustache. Any tobacco he chewed would end up getting smeared between the hairs. Unlike whoever was on the floor in orange, he was dressed like normal in a thin t-shirt that clung to his overhanging belly and was smeared with greasy fingerprints. His sweatpants were dark and stained.

“Please…” begged the man on the ground.

Percy finally broke eye contact with Gabe and looked down.

His eyebrows knotted.

The man on the floor… was also Gabe.

He looked awful; he’d lost weight underneath his orange jumpsuit but the skin still hung off him loosely, making him look like a stick figure trapped in a plastic bag. The three remaining hairs his other self had were long gone. His eyes were sunken, his face littered with cuts, his arms decorated with rings of purple circles like fingerprints.

They locked eyes.

“Percy!” gasped this battered form of his stepfather. “Thank God! Son! Help me! Please! Call the police! Help me!”

He could feel his friends’ eyes on the back of his head.

“Percy?” Hazel asked. “You- you know him?”

“Brain Boy here doesn’t know anything,” sneered the Gabe stood up, nodding his head towards the Denny’s sign on the wall. “Crashing your full-time job, are we?”

An old anger, possibly the oldest anger he had, stirred in his stomach. It felt like a balloon expanding in his chest. He gritted his teeth once before manually unclenching his jaw.

Something in him still told him to lie to his friends, the way he had growing up. To say that, no, he didn’t know this man. That he’d had the happiest childhood possible. That nothing bad had ever happened to his mom under his watch.

Suddenly, their whole quest felt like more than just a scavenger hunt for strangers.

“Percy,” Gabe on the floor begged, his voice hoarse. “Please help me!”

Frank took a step forward towards the crying man but Percy held his arm out to block him, his hand smacking into his chest.

“He’s fine there,” Percy said lightly. “This is his curse, after all.”

“What kind of curse is this?” Nico asked with a frown on his face, looking over at the pair.

Percy’s eye twitched as Gabe sneered at him.

“Karma,” he said. “His curse is himself.”

Annabeth’s eyes went wide, staring at the prisoner and his punisher.

“So, him on the floor-?” she said.

“He’s the real prisoner,” Percy nodded before gesturing to the one stood up. “This is just him… as he was.”

Gabe smirked.

“Well, look at that,” he said. “Brain Boy learned how to use that thing in his thick skull. Call the papers.”

It felt surreal. Every time Gabe used that old, hated nickname, Percy felt his height shrink, his muscles lessen, Riptide vanish from his pocket, like he was a child again and dreading getting home from school before his mom got home from work. Memories flashed through his mind. Binning any school letter that talked about bringing fathers in for careers day or special lunches and pretending to be ill that day so he could go to work with his mom and sit in a store cupboard happily eating sweets. Being young, too young, and hiding Gabe’s cigars under the sofa, tucked in just enough that they wouldn’t be seen but would also look like they’d just fallen down there to cover his tracks. Tense family dinners with only his mom talking as Percy glared at Gabe’s arrogant, open-mouth chewing.

All for the sake of hiding his demigod smell. Percy thought he would’ve preferred the monsters.

Gabe drew his foot back and kicked Pathetic-Gabe in his stomach, audibly driving the air out of his ribs and starting the sobbing again. Gabe belched in victory and sniggered, a hand digging in his pockets and pulling out a cigar. Percy's eyes narrowed. He lit it up and blew a mouthful of grey smoke in their faces, making the others cough.

“Where’s Sally, punk?” Gabe asked, a glint in his dark pupils. “I think it’s time I paid my wife a visit after her last little stunt.”

The others turned to look at him with raised eyebrows and wide eyes. Percy breathed in then breathed out manually. The noise from the restaurant outside faded in his ears.

“Percy…” started Nico tentatively. “This is- was- your…?”

“My stepdad,” Percy finished in a flat voice. “The first one.”

At that, a scowl fell onto Gabe’s face.

“First?” he questioned. “What are you whining on about?”

“My mom remarried,” Percy told him, his lip curling. “She sold you and bought a nice apartment. Went back to school. Met a nice man with a good job. They’ve just had a baby together.”

Gabe’s nostrils flared. Pathetic-Gabe whimpered and covered his head.

“How dare she!” he fumed. “That gold-digging, good-for-nothing, waste of-“

Percy punched him across the mouth as hard as he could, sending the man flying into the wall behind so hard that cracks appeared in the stone. Gabe dropped to his hands and knees, his cigar flying out of his hand. Blood dripped from his split lip. He looked up with burning eyes.

“You stupid little punk!” he snarled. “Oh, you’re so going to get it now.”

Percy glanced at Pathetic-Gabe, who was shaking in fear on the floor. Then he looked at his friends who were staring with their mouths open.

“Don’t kill him,” Percy said, his chest heaving and something alive and burning under his knuckles. “Just… give me a minute.”

“Percy-“ Annabeth started, and he hated how much he could read in her eyes.

“I know,” he said. “A minute.”

Without waiting, he seized Gabe by the collar of his ratty t-shirt and kicked open the disabled bathroom door, dragging him behind and throwing him in. Once inside, he pulled the door shut and twisted the small lock. Slowly, his head turned around to face his stepfather.

“Am I supposed to be scared?” sneered Gabe, stood between the toilet and wall-mounted sink.

Percy tilted his head, looking him up and down. Knowing Gabe… yes. He was a jerk but also a coward. He guessed this version of Gabe was on Jerk-Time all the time, the very worst he’d ever been.

Made it all a lot easier.

“I’m going to make you wish you were never born,” Gabe threatened him, raising his thick fists, his foul breath flooding the already small toilet.

Percy raised his own fists. Gabe had weight and size but Percy had been ducking him since he was seven. A smile spread across his face as he rolled his head to crack his neck.

“Oh, the boy wonder thinks he’s-“

Percy lunged, batting away his fists like the two useless hams they were, sinking his knuckles deeply into Gabe’s throat.

Gabe fell to his knees, his hands coming up to grasp at his throat as he wheezed. He looked up at him with a snarl and-

Percy punched him in the side of the head, sending him ricocheting off the sink with a ringing sound that echoed through the small room. A trickle of red immediately flooded down Gabe’s temple. Percy didn’t give him the chance to stand back up, kicking him in the shoulder so he was flat on his back. He scrambled to the floor, punching Gabe in the nose, the mouth, the eyes, again and again. Gabe made gasping noises every time he was hit but he never cowered away, each time trying and failing to hit him back.

It wasn’t enough.

Percy’s mouth twisted into a snarl. Forget finding prisoners and going home. Just for one second, just in this room and just now, he could let some ugly out. Ugly he’d kept bottled up since Tartarus.

Gods, he hadn’t so much as seen a picture of Gabe in years, but it was like everything he’d felt as a hormonal twelve year old sent to anger management had flooded back to him on sight.

He hit him again, cracking his head against the floor tiles.

How many times had he imagined doing this? During and after Gabe? Not before; Percy still bitterly remembered being excited to get a dad, even if it had technically been a stepdad. His mom had married him after only a few months of dating but that hadn’t registered to a four year old him at the time. He only remembered being in a little suit and thinking his mom looked like an angel.

It hadn’t lasted long.

Red splattered across his knuckles, starting to throb. The pain registered distantly in some part of his brain he wasn’t using.

Gabe ‘Don’t Call Me Daddy, Kid’ Ugliano had shown his true colours in less time than it had taken for them to get married. He could still remember the disappointment that had curled around his child-self’s heart after every rejection, every cancelled day out, every roll of the eyes. Disappointment had carved out a place for Gabe in his head, a space that had then filled up over the years with resentment and eventually hate.

Sometimes it was hard to believe he’d ever told the man he’d loved him; he didn’t remember saying it for long.

He hit him harder. The pain was starting to build up in a way that forced a gasp out of his mouth with every hit, but he didn’t care. Deep down, despite fully believing in his decision to leave the choice to his mother, he’d always regretted not giving the guy a piece of his mind before he’d left for camp that afternoon. When would he ever get this opportunity again outside of his daydreams?

Gabe landed a lucky flail of his elbow onto his nose. Percy coughed but fought through the pain. Another punch to Gabe’s teeth shattered the ones in the front and sent them flying to the back of his throat. Percy heard him choke and pulled his fist back, falling backwards to sit on the cold tiles. His chest rose and fell heavily as Gabe spluttered blood onto the backs of his remaining teeth, his limp body rolling onto its side.

Percy stared at him for a while.

Then he got up and turned on the sink tap. He couldn’t wash away his split knuckles or the purple bruises forming there but he could wash away the blood. It had splattered up to his forearms. It was even on his face when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Though some of it was his own, dribbling from his red nose where Gabe had caught him.

He washed until the red water ran clear with the odd tint of orange, his cuts stinging, and stuck some rolled-up tissue paper up his nose. Any time Gabe reached with fumbling hands for his legs, he kicked him away without looking.

Slowly, he started to breathe in a more normal rhythm. He ran a wet hand through his hair and rubbed his face.

“You-“ he thought Gabe said, his lips thick and swollen, split in a couple places like he’d had the world’s worst day without Chapstick. “-unk.” One of his eyes was all big, purple and puffy. It looked like a plum glued to his eye socket. Blood streaked his face, pooling on the floor in separate splashes.

Glancing away, Percy tried to put on his normal game face. He was here with friends. Friends who were probably worried. Friends who, now that adrenaline wasn’t deafening him in his ears, he knew he definitely owed an explanation to. Hands on either side of the sink, he sighed. Since Tartarus, he knew Annabeth didn’t like seeing him angry, that it made some part of her scared. Which was why he hadn’t done it in front of her. So now, he just needed to go back out, kill Gabe, and get them back on track to the fun, light-hearted meal with friends they were having.

He tried a smile in the mirror. He breathed out slowly with his mouth in an ‘o’ shape. Then he pulled the tissue paper out his nose and flushed it down the toilet before grabbing Gabe’s semi-conscious body by his collar and dragging it in a long smear of red across the floor towards the door.

Sorry, Denny’s cleaners.

He unlocked the door and opened it.

Outside, his friends were all still stood there, Pathetic-Gabe cowering on the ground. Percy briefly wondered if he should beat him up too but he figured he couldn’t really do anything more than send him back downstairs to continue his eternal punishment.

“Percy,” Annabeth said, her voice quiet and sad. “You’re bleeding.”

Percy dumped Gabe’s body on the floor and wiped his nose, blood streaking across his finger.

“Your knuckles look pretty bad,” Frank commented, wearing the same kind of look they all were of alarmed concern. “We might have to get you some bandages.”

“Nah,” Percy shrugged with a smile. “They’ll heal.”

A few beats of silence passed between them all. In the disabled bathroom, Percy heard something fall over; probably the toilet roll holder. The noise echoed not just through that room but the toilets as a whole, informing Percy in no such terms that his friends would have heard every single blow he’d dealt behind closed doors.

“We should go finish our food,” he said, wiping again at his nose.

They nodded but no one made a move to leave. Percy sent them a quizzical look and they all glanced at Pathetic-Gabe.

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”

“Wait,” gibbered Pathetic-Gabe, “No, you wouldn’t-“

Percy uncapped Riptide and sank it easily with one hand through his face. Both Gabe and Pathetic-Gabe dissolved into smudges and sank through the floor.

Percy breathed a breath out of his mouth, his nose clogged with blood. That one was simpler. He didn’t really know that version of Gabe so it didn’t stir any memories.

He looked at his friends. Their eyebrows were all the way up.

“So- that was your… how long was he your stepdad?” Nico asked, in his best Ambassador-of-Pluto diplomat voice.

Percy considered rolling his eyes or laughing but just ended up shrugging again.

“About eight years.”

“You said your mom- sold him?” Frank asked, funnily enough wearing the same look of intrigue that he had with Gorgophone.

“Head of Medusa,” he replied, garnering a few ‘oh’s of comprehension.

“And he… went to the Fields of Punishment?” Hazel asked with incredulity.

A fair question. It did take a bit more than the average bad to end up there. Hazel should know; Percy remembered she’d told him about how her own mother had been judged to go there for dooming so many people by selling them the precious gems and metals that Hazel had summoned accidentally. But Hazel had intervened, resulting in both of them going to Asphodel, where Nico had then found her.

He didn’t think there was any scenario out there where he’d want Gabe anywhere else.

Maybe Tartarus. A dip in the river Acheron seemed fitting.

He remembered Hazel had asked him a question. He ended up nodding awkwardly. Annabeth squinted at him before twisting around.

“You guys go grab our food and clean up a bit,” she said to the other three. “We’ll clean up in here.”

His friends, giving him nervous but reassuring nods, quickly left. Annabeth turned to him.

“So… that was Smelly Gabe,” she said, her hands on her hips with her nose wrinkled at where their bodies had been.

Percy snorted. She looked up at him and held her arms out.

He stared then sagged, trudging forwards to bury his head in her neck as she hugged him tightly.

“Yeah,” he said, muffled. “That was Smelly Gabe.”

“He looked like a jerk,” she told him, her thumb rubbing the back of his head. “And you were definitely right, he did smell.”

Percy grinned, even as long strands of her curly blonde hair got caught in his eyelashes. She pulled back after a while, lifting up his hands and examining the knuckles. They both winced as she prodded where his skin had split.

“If you were going to beat him up, you could’ve wrapped your hands beforehand,” she chastised, searching her pockets.

“I didn’t know I was going to,” he admitted. “I haven’t seen the guy since I was twelve. I guess I just- lost it, a bit.”

Annabeth nodded. He wondered if she was thinking about her own step-parent. She pulled out a little square of ambrosia and he popped it into his mouth with an appreciative lean of his head.

“I don’t like the thought of him hurting you when you were little,” she confessed. “I think I pictured him differently. Less… gross.”

“Then I clearly didn’t describe him right,” Percy said, making her laugh. “I was fine. Nothing I couldn’t handle. It was-“ His jaw clenched. “It was my mom. When I wasn’t there.”

“Oh, Percy.” Annabeth’s eyes melted, pulling him in for another hug. When they let go, she was scowling. “That’s why he’s in the Fields of Punishment, then. For what he did to you and her. No way Poseidon would let that slide.”

“He let plenty slide,” Percy mumbled under his breath before sighing. “Yeah. I guess so. Better late than never, I suppose.”

“Not a bad punishment,” Annabeth remarked. “I know the message of, like, Sisyphus’ rock and everything, but I’m not sure it’s as effective when it’s all metaphorical. At least this way, he feels everything he did to others.”

“Yeah,” Percy nodded begrudgingly. “Maybe.”

They both stared at the smears of red on the floor.

“I think the others were a bit surprised,” Annabeth commented.

Percy frowned.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well,” she shrugged, “I guess that you had a hard time growing up. I think everyone who’s ever met or heard of Sally wishes they’d had her as a parent. And you talk about Paul and Estelle all the time, so they probably presumed you’d grown up with that. Not to mention- and I may be biased here,” she added with a smile. “You’re just a bit of a rock. Nothing keeps you down for long.”

Percy smiled. He reached out and took her hand even though it hurt to bend his knuckles.

“Thanks,” he told her, then sighed. “Well, I have no idea what they’re thinking now.”

She waved a hand dismissively through the air.

“They’ve seen you fight monsters before,” she said. “Why would this be different?”

He kissed her before returning to her arms for a few more minutes. It always felt like there wasn’t much that could seriously go wrong when they had a good hug going on.

He glanced down at the red stains on the floor.

“There’s no way we’re able to get that clean, y’know,” he stated.

“Oh, I know,” conceded Annabeth. “Same way I know everyone is probably just sat at the table awkwardly waiting for us.”

Percy snorted.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go get them.”

“Yeah?” asked Annabeth, pulling back to look at him, her grey eyes shining. “You okay?”

“I’m okay,” he confirmed. “Are you okay?”

He felt a sudden spike of worry about what she might be thinking of him, but she waved it away with a squeeze of her hand in his.

“Yeah,” she said. “I get it. Come on.”

They re-entered the restaurant. Sure enough, Nico, Frank and Hazel were all shuffling their feet under their now-empty table, their faces drawn tight. They came to life when Percy and Annabeth approached. Percy’s stomach churned a bit at the thought that they might have been talking about him. About it all.

“You good?” Frank asked as he scrambled out of his chair, his big brown eyes looking him up and down with nothing but concern.

Percy relaxed a bit.

“Yeah, man,” he grinned, clapping Frank on the shoulder. “Just a bit of well-needed childhood therapy. If we’re all still hungry, I could definitely go for dessert. I saw a waffle place opposite that clothes store.”

“I have room for a waffle,” Annabeth shrugged as the others nodded. “Not as if there are any more prisoners to hunt down.”

They left Denny’s without looking back. The waffle place was indeed just a few minutes away to walk and it had a menu as wide as the wall behind the registers, the walls painted in pastels. Fairy lights twinkled in warm white from the ceiling. Someone in the corner of the café was fiddling on a piano and every time they got a note wrong, they smacked their hands on the keys before restarting. It made for interesting listening. They were in a booth, halfway through being elbow-deep in their waffles, faces smeared with fragrant strawberries and sticky caramel, when someone walked into the café. The bell above the door tinkled.

“This could be good or bad,” Annabeth analysed as she glanced in that direction, continuing to dig into her ice cream.

Percy looked up. It was Hades. He was dressed in an all-black suit that, for once, didn’t appear to stand out too much from the local fashion. Jules-Albert was holding the door open for him, following the god into the café a few steps behind him.

Hades frowned more than his usual amount when he saw them.

“Oh,” he said, losing a bit of speed as he approached their table. “You’re uninjured.” His eyes flicked over to his children several times.

Hazel’s eyebrows knotted. It made her look startlingly like her father for a split second.

“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

Hades raised an eyebrow.

“Judging by the state of the last prisoner you found, I had believed perhaps a building to have collapsed on you during the fight.”

Percy rolled his eyes. Hades looked to him.

“He… resisted arrest,” Percy explained.

Gods, he’d been in LA for too long. Now he was acting like the LAPD.

Hades frowned. “Wait,” he said. “Wasn’t that the prisoner Poseidon had put in a special request for?”

Percy shrugged. His friends stayed quiet. Hades eyed him, glancing at his bruised and swollen knuckles warily, before he looked away. One of his eyebrows twitched. Then his face smoothed out completely back into his blank regality.

“Whatever,” Hades shrugged. “You’ve all helped return the prisoners back to the Underworld. In exchange, I shall let you go back to Camp Jupiter.”

“Generous,” Percy murmured.

Hades glared at him.

“That is all,” he said, before looking at Nico and Hazel. “Well done,” he said awkwardly to them.

Then he vanished into the shadows between blinks, leaving Nico’s zombie chauffer behind. Frank shuffled up a bit so Jules-Albert could sit at the table. He scooted his plate across so it was back in front of him, like a territorial mother bear.

“I hope someone saw us leave,” Hazel said suddenly. “Probably wouldn’t be good if they think both their praetors have ditched. Or been kidnapped.”

“Let’s hope they presume kidnapped,” Frank replied in a kind voice. “Dead, if we’re lucky.”

“Yeah, that’s actually kind of fun,” Percy chimed in, already waiting for Annabeth to swat him.

Annabeth swatted his shoulder lightly.

“Hey,” she said. “It was not fun.”

“Yeah it was,” he argued. “You gave me a hug and everything.”

She blew a breath out of her nose in exasperation but he could see her smile.

“Of course that’s what you’d remember,” she said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Nico asked, his face screwed up. “When were you presumed dead? When Gaia took you to Camp Jupiter?”

“No, there was another time,” Annabeth replied casually.

“There’s been a few,” Percy added.

As Annabeth launched into the story, Percy looked around at his friends and smiled. Despite everything they’d found out, they weren’t treating him any differently. Not even after he’d straight up beaten the guy. Maybe Annabeth was right, like usual. Maybe it didn’t change anything between them all. They were just friends on a quest. He sank back in his chair, a bit more relaxed.

“-it was this big, whole thing,” Annabeth was saying, before she frowned. “Wait a second. Hades teleported us here. He doesn’t seem to be about to teleport us home, either.”

They all turned to Nico, who sighed.

“I guess Jules-Albert will be driving us home,” he said in resignation. “One last grand theft auto before bed. We’ll have to-“

“There is already a car outside.”

They all jumped about a foot out of their seats as Jules-Albert spoke. It was scratchy, in a gurgled French accent- which didn’t sound too different than regular French- but very clearly words. He sounded quite a posh, too. Nico gibbered out a few words.

“You can- you can speak?” he demanded.

Jules-Albert grunted.

They all exchanged wide-eyed looks. It was then that Percy started noticing Frank’s hands, halfway to bear claws- the animal, not the pastry, Annabeth’s drakon bone sword on the table, his own hand clutching Riptide in pen form.

He started sniggering.

One by one, the others joined in until they were all giggling loud enough for other tables to shoot them dirty looks. Percy’s cheeks started to ache. His friends tried to settle down but kept catching each other’s eyes and starting again. He grinned.

Yeah, he thought. They were good.