A/N: Welcome to Part Four of TAC! I know that you were wondering what Persephone's gift to Alex was, considering I never said what it was in Demigod Cannonball Run. Well, this story starts hours after the end of the last one; I would have explained it earlier, but it fits more in this chapter. And for legal purposes: I don't own PJATO: Battle of the Labyrinth. Why do we even need to say that? If we owned it, we wouldn't be writing on FanFiction, now, would we?

Operation: Obliterate!

The Alexander Chronicles

Part Four

Chapter One: Unlucky

I was about to resume looking for Nico, when to my surprise, Hades showed up, inside my cabin. "Uncle! What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to keep my promise, Alex. The Lord of the Dead always keeps his promises. You wanted to know about my wife's gift to you, yes?"

"Yeah, but how did you know about it?"

"Because the gift she gave you is actually a gift that my children have. It's called Shadow Travel, and it will allow you to travel nearly anywhere on Earth."

"What? How?"

"It will make you very tired at first, but the more you use it, the less tiring it will be. It works best at night, but it will work anytime. All shadows are part of the same substance, there is only one darkness. All creatures of the Underworld, and you, can use that darkness as a doorway. All you need to do is think about where you want to go, and you're there." I decided to try it, then and there. I decided to try to go to Percy's room in the Poseidon cabin for two reasons. First, it was close by, and I didn't want to end up somewhere that I didn't know where I was; second, I wanted a nice, comfortable bed to sleep in, in case I was to tired afterwards. I stepped into the shadows, picturing Percy's room, and . . . WOW! That had to be the most amazing thing I'd ever experienced, and the most tiring. It was a good thing that I chose it, because I instantly collapsed on his bed and fell asleep. "Well done, nephew. You have mastered your ability, I shall return home now, and watch for my son."

"Doesn't anyone know where he is?"

"No one. I even checked with Percy and the Doc. He isn't with either of them. In fact, Percy hasn't hear from him for nearly a week, and the Doc hasn't seen him since Thalia's tree was poisoned."

"What about that friend he mentioned, the one that's keeping an eye on Mount Tam? Does anyone know who he is?"

"No. I'm starting to wonder if he's even for real. Why would a demigod be willing to live near San Francisco?"

"You were, my dear. I'm starting to get worried. No one's seen him for nearly a week. I can't say that I'm sorry he's gone, but still."

"Chiron! How could you!"

"Annabeth, he's disobeyed my orders numerous times, he's shot Mr. D, he threatened to shoot me. He's even managed to make some immortal enemies. I wouldn't be surprised if he has left the camp for good and joined Kronos."

"Chiron, he wouldn't. He may not trust the gods, but he said better someone you know you can't trust than someone you don't know. He turned Atlas to stone, for Olympus' sake! Knowing him, he's probably doing something to help a friend. That's his fatal flaw, you know."

"Really? I always thought that it would be arrogance. He's always talking down about mortals, and he doesn't consider any monster to be a threat to him."

"Maybe it's both. Do I have your permission to check his cabin for him?"

"Go ahead, Annabeth. Tell me if you find him."

"I don't understand it, Chiron. What would he be doing sleeping in Poseidon's cabin? He's been there for nearly two weeks!"

"I don't know, Annabeth. If he were a son of Hades, I'd have a guess, but I don't know. I want you to keep on feeding him until he wakes up. I want you to watch him instead of train."

"Sure, Chiron."

When I finally woke up, it was to Annabeth feeding me some ambrosia. "Hey, how often have you been feeding me that? You do remember that it could be dangerous, right?"

"Hey, welcome back. What happened to you?"

"I tried using a gift I'd just found out. Damn, Hades wasn't kidding about it being tiring."

"WHAT! What do you mean Hades told you?"

"Apparently my gift from Persephone is something that Hades' kids can do, something called Shadow Travel. By the way, how long have I been out of it?"

"Nearly a month. We were starting to worry that you'd never wake up."

"The 'we' being who?"

"Myself, Percy, Grover, Silena, Beckendorf, Jake, and that Nyx kid Javier. And of course, Chiron."

"I'm surprised to hear Chiron on that list. Last I heard, he hates me and thinks that I'd join Kronos."

"No, no, that's not true! Chiron would never-"

"It's okay, Annabeth. You don't need to protect him. Thanks for defending me, by the way. I was really touched."

"Wait, are you telling me you heard us talking? When you were asleep? How's that possible?"

"You mean you don't remember? I've been able to do that since before I got here. You thought it meant I was a son of Morpheus, remember?"

"Oh, right. Please tell me that you're not going to try that again, are you?"

"Well, I had been planning on trying it again, but if you insist, I'll wait a few weeks before making another attempt."

"Thank you!" Then she did the one thing I never expected, she gave me a big hug.

"Um, this is nice, Annabeth. But don't you think that Percy would get a little jealous if he found us like this? He may not completely realize it, but he does love you."

"Right." She let go off me, and said, "You need to get back to training. Chiron would be really upset if you tried that again, without getting some regular practice in."

I focused on my usual training, for about a week. Then I tried Shadow Traveling again, this time going from Half-Blood Hill to my bed, where Annabeth was waiting. This time, I was only out for two weeks. At that rate, I could use it to look for Nico after five more tries! I kept up my training using that pattern, but I noticed that my recovery rate was slowing down. It wasn't until April that I could use Shadow Travel without having to sleep. While I was working on my usual training in March, I had Charlie and Jake build me a celestial steel cane so I could walk around without my limp interfering. Fortunately, the limp seemed to disappear when I got into a fight. Clarisse tried to take advantage of my disability, and ended up taking a dirt nap for her trouble. Also during that time, I had Jake write in a new name for my sword. Considering we had Roman demigods out there, I thought it would help keep the peace if I showed up with a steel sword with a Latin name. So, I changed the name from Thuella (Tempest) to it's Latin equivalent, Ventus.

My first Shadow Travel out of camp put me in the middle of a camp full of monsters. They took one look at me, and charged. They didn't last long. Two of them (Cyclops) surrendered, and I said, "Go, tell Luke what happened here, and that Alexander Summers is coming for him." They started running, but then I thought How many Cyclops does it take to deliver a message? Then I answered my own question, "One." And I shot one of the Cyclops in the lead. That should make sure that Luke gets my message.

For two more months, I searched for Nico, with no luck. In fact, I kept running into monster camps, and every time I followed my original pattern. However, once I ran into a camp of demigods, and I managed to get them to talk to me. "Tell me this, why are you fighting for Kronos against your parents?"

"I was at Camp Half-Blood for nearly five years, and I never got claimed," one said. A son of Aeolus, god of winds.

Another said "I was left with a dad who went crazy after mom left." A son of Aphrodite, no wonder his dad went crazy, based on what I'd heard about how others saw her.

A third said, "I'm a daughter of Hecate, and my mom was never acknowledged as an equal among the others."

"You mean we're actually fighting our parents? Why didn't you guys say something? I was told we were fighting against a secret group that was extremely dangerous to America."

"Yeah, you're working for Kronos, against your parents. You are a daughter of Ares, god of war. If any of you want to leave Kronos, come with me, and I'll take you to a safe place for demigods. If not, I want you to tell Luke that I'm coming for him, and I'm going to stop him. Now, who's coming with me?" About a dozen kids came with me. "Alright, I want you to hold on to each other, and to me. This is going to be a scary ride." I then took them through the shadows to Camp Half-Blood. Luckily, Annabeth was waiting for me. "Annabeth, take these kids to Chiron. I just rescued them from Kronos. And I'm going to bed now. Two Shadow Travels in a day is tiring, especially when you've got passengers."

When I woke up, I walked out just in time to see Javier getting ready to leave the camp. I noticed that he was wearing his new arm-brace, something he claimed was inspired from the Golden Fleece from a game called God of War. If he was wearing that, then he was expecting trouble. "Hey, Javier! Where are you going?" Over the past few months, we had became pretty close friends, but we often got into big arguments, the biggest of which was over my plan to get Luke to focus on me, and not Nico. He thought it was stupid to draw attention to myself, just to protect Nico, but then, he didn't know who Nico's dad was.

"I'm going on a quest. Mr. D wants me to help him out with a job. He's doing his best to make sure that the minor gods stand with Olympus, so he told me to find Thanatos."

"Thanatos? You mean the Grim Reaper? Why him? Oh, wait, he's your half-brother, isn't he?"

"Yeah, that's probably why. Hey, you give up on your plan yet?"

"No. I have to protect Nico from Luke, no matter what."

"Why? What's so important about him? You act like he's a son of the Big Three or something."

"You have no idea, Javier. He could be the key to our victory over Kronos, or our defeat. Until I find him and convince him to come back to camp, I will keep fighting Luke's army, and he will come to fear the name Alexander Summers."

"You know, that arrogance is going to get you killed one of these days."

"Not until I've finished my job, I'm not. In any case, good luck Javier. I hope you're successful."

"Thanks, Alex. And good luck to you too, even if I think that you're nuts."

For the next two weeks, I had no luck finding anymore monster or demigod camps, so I decided to research the Gigantomachy, or War of the Giants. Unfortunately, the Big House's library was only stocked with books in Greek. While that might not have been a problem for any other demigod, it was a big problem for me. I seemed to learn Greek as quickly as a snail would. The average kid who had just finished his first summer knew more Greek than I did. But Latin, I picked that up quicker than I got used to the fact that I was a demigod. So, I learned almost nothing about it; I asked Chiron about it, but either he wasn't willing to talk to me, or he didn't want to talk about it. So I was ready when Annabeth brought Percy back to Camp. I knew that soon, Percy would be getting a quest, it was simply Fate with him. "Hey, Percy! How's it been?"

"Not bad, except for the fact that I blew up my mom's boyfriend's school. You know what's going on with Clarisse and Annabeth?"

"Clarisse and Annabeth? No, I'm surprised that they can stand being together. What, are you saying that something's going on with them?"

"I don't know. All I know is that Annabeth said something about the two of them working on something. Then she said something about Chiron wanting to see me before some hearing or other. Do you know anything about that?"

"Actually yeah. Apparently the Council of Cloven Elders is meeting to decide if they should revoke Grover's searcher's license. They don't believe that Pan actually spoke to him."

By now, we had reached the arena, where to our surprise, we found a giant hellhound! We looked at each other, pulled our swords, and charged. But we were stopped by another celestial bronze sword, wielded by . . . a fifty-year-old son of Athena? But something was odd about him, he kind of smelled like the Hephaestus cabin, oil and electric wiring . . . an automaton?

"Whoa, there! Truce!"

"That's a hellhound!"

"She's harmless. That's Mrs. O'Leary." What in the world? A son of Athena with a hellhound for a pet? I could believe it of a child of Hades, being a fellow creature of the Underworld, but this guy acted like she was nothing but an overgrown puppy. "Mrs. O'Leary is my pet. I couldn't let you two stick swords in her rump now, could I? That might scare her."

"Who are you?"

"Promise not to kill me if I put my sword away?"

"Sure."

"Quintus." Quintus? Why would someone have that name, Latin for 'fifth?' "May I see your sword?" We figured he had to be talking to me, so I handed him Ventus. "Interesting. It's a celestial metal, but it's not bronze. What is it?"

"Celestial steel. Comes in real handy when you have mortals that mix in with our world, son of Athena."

"Wait, what?"

"How did you know I was a son of Athena?"

"It's a gift. My sense of smell is sensitive enough to tell who a demigod's Olympian parent is."

"Ah, that's got to be useful."

"So, how did you get a hellhound for a pet?" I couldn't blame Percy for asking that, I was wondering the same thing.

"A long story, involving close calls with death and quite a few giant chew toys. I'm the new sword instructor, by the way. Helping out Chiron while Mr. D is away."

"Oh. Wait, Mr. D is away?"

"Yes, well . . . busy times. Even Dionysus must help out. He's gone to visit some old friends. Make sure they're on the right side. I probably shouldn't say more than that." I knew what he meant, the wine dude was checking on the minor gods, and Javier was working with him. Unfortunately, that meant that things must be in desperate straits if Dad was relying on him. Then we noticed the horse-sized boxes that were stacked nearby. When we asked what they were, Quintus said that it was, "A little surprise. Training activity for tomorrow night. You'll love it. You young ones need more challenges. They didn't have camps like this when I was a boy." Hmm, that was odd. He mentioned camps, plural, which probably meant he knew about the Roman camp. And he said that there weren't camps like CHB when he was young? I'd learned that it had been around for at least 200 years, so how was that possible?

"Wait a minute, you're a half-blood? How is that possible?"

"Some of us do survive into adulthood, you know. Not all of us are the subject of terrible prophecies."

Just then, Chiron showed up and asked Percy to follow him. On the way, Chiron asked Percy about an attack on Percy by some empousai at his school. "Jeez, Percy. You really can't stay out of trouble even one year, can you."

"Hey, it's not my fault! They find me! It's not like I consciously go looking for them!"

"Maybe, but can't you avoid destroying the school in the process? This is twice that you've damaged a school because of a monster in as many years. What happened to just killing the monster, like with Dodds?"

"They don't make it as easy as she did. That empousai got too close to the mortals, then she exploded into fire."

"Mm, the more powerful ones can do that. She didn't die, she just escaped. It's not good that the she-demons are stirring. It's amazing you survived. Their powers of deception . . . almost any male hero would've fallen under their spell and been devoured."

"I would've been. Except for Rachel."

"Rachel? You mean the mortal that saved you at Hoover Dam?"

"Ironic to be saved by a mortal once, let alone twice. Yet we owe her a debt. What the empousai said about an attack on camp-we must speak of this further. But for now, come, we should get to the woods. Grover will want you there."

"Where?"

I sighed. "His formal hearing, remember? The Council is deciding whether or not to revoke his license."