Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or any of the characters. If I did I sure wouldn't be on this site.

I was sitting on my couch being bored as hades when the doorbell rang. You see, since I might not live until my 16th birthday, I decided to have a party before I went to camp. I kind of felt like I deserved it, since I spent the last few weeks training. I got up and answered the door to see Annabeth standing outside.

"Hi," I said.

"Hey Seaweed Brain," she replied. "Can I come in?"

"Sure." I moved aside to let her in. "Where's everybody else?"

"They got into some trouble. I came early so you wouldn't think that we left you."

"Oh," I said. We started talking to try and pass the time. Things like, "how was your summer?" or "how many monsters tried to kill you?" You know. The usual. Finally it occured to me to ask what had happened to everyone else.

"They ran into some monsters, like the minotaur and some dracanae(sp?).

"Do you think that they'll be okay?"

"Yeah, sure, they should be fine."

We went on talking like that for a while until the doorbell rang.

"I'll go get that," she offered.

- - - - - - - - - - -

We were all sitting around being totally bored as hades (whoa, deja vu!), wondering what to do next.

"We could watch a movie," Nico suggested.

"Yeah, but our computer's broken down so we can't check what's on." I replied. I thought for a minute. "Hey Annabeth, do you still have Daedalus's laptop?"

"Yeah," she reached into her bag and brought it out.

"Whoa, big bag." Thalia commented.

"Here." I took the laptop and started searching for an internet connection.

"Percy, are you sure that's okay?" Annabeth asked me.

"Yeah, I'll just steal our neighbor's internet connection for a little bit."

Incoming Iris message. Please deposit one drachama for five minutes.

"Here, I need to answer that. Nico, can you take this?" I handed the laptop to Nico. Annabeth winced.

"Don't worry Annabeth," Nico said grinning. "I won't blow this one up."

I walked out of the room, fished a drachama out of my pocket, and threw it into the rainbow. Chiron appeared.

"Hey," I said.

"Hi. Percy. Our spies report that Kronos' army is getting stronger, so you need to come back to camp by tomorrow."

"Okay," I replied. "Is that it?"

"I guess so. See you tomorrow."

"Bye." I waved through the Iris message, and returned to see Nico playing on the laptop while Annabeth still had a frown on her face. I sat down beside Nico. He was playing Solitare. "Red six on black seven," I said, gesturing to the screen.

"Oh. Thanks."

"Sure." I sat down back on the couch. "So what movie have we decided to see?"

"Well, we decided on one, but it doesn't start until six," Thalia replied.

I checked my watch. "It's 4:30 right now, and we probably need to get there around 5:35 to make sure we have everything. So it looks like we have another hour to kill."

Nico and Annabeth groaned simultaneously. Thalia just sighed and put her head in her hands.

"C'mon guys," Grover said. "We'll find something to do." He turned to me. "Isn't there an arcade down the street?"

"Sure," I replied. "If you want to go."

"I don't know," Annabeth said.

"I hear they have a sim city game," I lied.

"I'm in," she said and jumped off the couch.

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After sucking at pac-man for a half hour, I walked over to see what Annabeth was doing. As it turns out, they did have a sim city game. Right back there in the corner with all the games nobody everplayed anymore.

"Hi," I said.

"Hey," she replied, not looking up.

I leaned over to look at the building that she was making. "No," I said.

"What?" This time she did look up.

"The structural supports are all wrong. See, if you just take an objective look at it combined with simple physics..." I went on to talking for quite a while.

"Percy," she said slowly, "How do you know all that?"

I laughed. "I spent five hours memorizing facts from a book to flip you out." I stopped laughing and thought for a while. "It wasn't worth it."

She rolled her eyes. "Seaweed Brain," she muttered.

Eventually 5:30 came about. We were sitting in the movie theater, waiting for it to start. Thalia was eating popcorn, me and Annabeth both had some candy, and Grover slowly chewed tin cans. Nico, of course, ate nothing. Sitting there, I thought back to my 15th birthday party, and how that had gone over.

Flashback

I took Nico down the stairs and introduced him to my mom and Paul. After about a half hour of him eating, he turned to me.

"We should probably continue thisconversation elsewhere," he suggested, his eyes flickering towards Paul.

"Sure," I said. We walked up to my room. "So you said you had a way to get rid of Kronos and save Luke?"

"Yeah," he said. "About that. I'm not exactly sure."

"Try me," I responded.

"Well, have you ever looked really close at Kronos' weapon?"

"Kind of," I said. "Half Celestial Bronze, half steel."

"Yeah," he smiled. "But don't you think that it's wierd that he uses a combination of Celestial Bronze and Steel, when if he used Stygian Iron, it would be so much easier?"

"Now that you mention it," I said slowly.

"You see, Stygian Iron absorbs the energy from whatever it touches. Afterwards, it goes to where it really belongs."

"I don't get it," I replied.

"If I stabbed you with Stygian Iron right now, you would go to the Underworld. If I stabbed a god, he would go to Mount Olympus. If I stabbed a titan, he would go back to where the gods sent him. So if I stabbed Atlas, he would go back to holding up the sky. If I stabbed Kronos..."

"He would go back to Tartarus?"

Nico grinned. "Excatly."

"But how does that save Luke?" I asked.

"Well, that's the part that I'm not sure about. I think that since Stygian Iron absorbs energy, it would go after Kronos, seeing as he's a titan, and send him back to Tartarus while ignoring Luke, since he's just a normal half-blood."

"Okay, but how would we even get close to Kronos? I mean, he's the Lord of Time. Couldn't he just slow me down and kill me?"

"Ah," Nico said. "I've been thinking about that too. You see, Kronos slowed you down, but not Rachel when she hit him with her hairbrush. So that means if he doesn't know somebody's there, he wouldn't be able to slow them down."

"So you're saying if we used Annabeth's invisibility cap?" I guessed.

"Or Hades' helm of darkness. I bet I can get him to lend it to me," Nico grinned. "Anyway, this plan would be really dangerous. You still want to do it?"

"Count me in," I said.

End of flashback

Finally the movie started. Unfortunately for me though, that's when all hadeswas about to breakloose. In the dim light of the movie theater I saw a ton of monster scattered about. Well, what can you expect, three children of the big three in the same place. I saw the manticore, some dracanae, and a hellhound. (How did they even get that in there?) I leaned over toward Annabeth.

"Let me borrow your knife."

"Why?"

I gestured around the movie theater. She gasped, and then cursed under her breath.

"Why do you need my knife though?"

"I have a plan," I lied.

"Fine." She handed me her bronze knife.

"Thanks." I took it and slowly walked down the aisle. The manicore was probably the biggest threat. I walked over and tapped it on the shoulder. It jumped, then turned around to face me.

"Ah. Pers-" It didn't get much farther than that before I stabbed it in the head. Sadly, that was the end of the discreet part of our battle. All of the monsters turned and attacked us.

"Annabeth, catch!" I threw the knife back to Annabeth, drew Riptide, and started battle with a dracanae. It lunged at me. I jumped and swung at it in midair. It dodged and pounced on me. I felt a searing pain go through my left shoulder. Luckily, the attack gave me the opening that I needed. I struckat it with Riptide, and soonI was surrounded in a bunch of dust. I looked around to see howeveryone else was doing.Nico's dracanae was gone, and Thalia and Grover werefightingthe other one. Annabeth was fighting the hellhound without much luck. I saw it pounce on her.She tried to jump out of the way, but it was too close. I threw Riptide.It peirced right through the hellhound, and itturned to dust. I ran up to Annabeth, who was panting and sitting on the ground.

"Thanks,"she said.

"So was screaming all part of some master plan you had or..." I asked playfully.

In answer, she got up and punched me in the arm. Hard.

"Ow! Geez," I mumbled. I took some Nectar out of my pocket and drank some, instantly feeling to cut in my shoulder go away. "Grover! Thalia! You okay?"

Thalia stabbed the dracanae in the chest. She turned around and gave me a thumbs up.

"What now?" Nico asked.

"Well for starters," Thalia snapped her fingers. "You didn't see that. There were no monsters here, and we never came." The mortals sat back down and started watching their movie. Thalia turned back to us. "I think we should go back to camp now."

"Yeah. C'mon, let's go find a cab," I said. 20 minutes later, we found ourselves standing at Camp Half-Blood. A guy walked over to us, probably 15 or 16.

"Hey Annabeth," he called.

Annabeth ran down the hill and kissed him. "Hey," she said.

I turned to Grover. "Am I missing something?"

"Oh yeah!" Grover said. "I forgot to tell you. Annabeth has a boyfriend now."

"Ah. Anyway, I'd better go find Chrion." I walked to the archery range, where Chrion was trying to get arrows out of his tail.

"Hello Percy," he said, smiling. "I'm a little busy right now, can you come talk to me before capture the flag tonight?"

"Sure," I said. I went into Posiden cabin, to find Tyson.

"Brother!" he shouted, and gave me a hug that almost broke my ribs.

"Hey big guy," I said. We went down to thesword arenaand played with Mrs. O'Leary. Before we knew it, it was time for dinner. We walked down to the dining pavilion and got our food. I walked over to the fire. "Posiden," I said, and threw most of my food in there. I walked back and sat down at Posiden table. While Tyson was filling me in on what was going on under the sea, Annabeth came to our table and sat across from me.

"Look, Percy I-"

I put my fork down. "I'm done, I'd better go talk to Chrion." I got up and left the table, my dinner only half-eaten.