Reyna's eyes were steely as the Argo II settled gently on the ground near the Pomerian Line.
The ladder spilled over the side, and the Seven and Nico climbed off, looking battered and weary. Percy and Annabeth looked the worst, gaunt and haggard and looking like they'd been through hell, Tartarus, and back again.
"You'd better have a damn good explanation for what happened the last time you touched down here," Reyna said stonily.
"Ok," Percy said raspily. "Look, Reyna, I'm not even going to bother to try to talk my way out of this, because I'm no Octavian."
"Hey!" Octavian yelled.
"Shut up!" was yelled by Reyna and Jason.
"I'll tell you the truth. I know I swore on my life that nothing would go wrong. I'm sorry that I was wrong. I usually am. But as one last request I'd like you to hear me out," Percy pleaded, ignoring the interruption like it had never happened.
Reyna looked at him with disbelief. "I thought you said you wouldn't talk your way out of it."
"I'm not. But I still want you to hear me out. I won't be telling you opinions, I'll be telling you what really happened."
Reyna wanted to hear him out. So, so bad. The last time she had seen him peacefully, he was so lighthearted. The last time she had seen him not-so-peacefully, he had been fighting and holding her soldiers hostage in the water. Now he looked broken, frail...almost like an old veteran of the Veitnam War. She had liked him, even though he had destroyed her home once, and caused her to fight. Then he appeared in her life again, amnesiac and lost and confused, and her heart, against her will, had warmed to him. She had offered power to him, something any Roman would want, but he had rejected, which brought her to the realization that he wasn't Roman. He wasn't Roman, and was the hardiest person she had ever known. And then his friends had destroyed her home, again. He wasn't Roman, but defeated the First Cohort, the pride of Camp Jupiter. But he wasn't Percy anymore. The sea-green eyes she had come to love were broken, shattered like a dropped vase.
"Please," Percy pleaded raspily.
Reyna looked at Jason, who had a new scar on his cheek, and his eyes sad. He was supporting Annabeth, who looked just as bad as Percy, her gray eyes just as shattered as Percy's. Piper stood on Annabeth's other side, sporting a quite obvious broken arm and a gash to the head, but her eyes as fierce as Annabeth's eyes used to be. Leo was sitting in front of Annabeth, looking exhausted but alert all the same. She looked at Nico, who was using his sword as a cane, and looked as hollowed and shattered as Percy and Annabeth. Her gaze drifted to Hazel and Frank, who both sported many minor gashes like someone had made glass explode towards them. As unsteady the eight of them were, they were strong.
Reyna looked at Jason again, and he gave her a single, deep nod. She looked at the councilers, who were scattered amongst the crowd, and most of them nodded.
"Go," she said.
Percy took a deep, rasping breath, and began. "Octavian had been somewhat right when he said that he saw Leo. Physically, it was Leo, but on the inside, it was an eidilon, a possesion spirit. It's impossible for anyone to escape out of its grip. I know, because I was possessed by one, as well as Jason."
Reyna was reeling, but didn't let it show.
"To be put bluntly, we battled to the death in a cornfield in Kansas." That elicted some snickers from some of the Romans. Percy gave them an extremely tired smile. "Obviously, no one won, thanks to Piper, who got my Pegasus to knock me out after I knocked Jason from his horse and knocked him out."
Reyna had to suppress a smile. The great hero, knocked out by his own horse...
"After we got out of the States, we flew across the ocean and made it to the Mare Nostrum. I know we were supposed to be killed on sight just for that one thing, and I thank you for not killing us yet. We encountered the jerk known as Hercules, or Heracles, depending on who you are, at the entrance."
Some gasping and murmuring flew throughout the crowd as Percy denounced one of the greatest heroes who ever lived. Reyna just shook her head slightly. Always one to make the gods mad.
"A couple billion monsters later, we arrived in Rome, which is where the Mark of Athena comes in," Percy said. Annabeth pushed herself off Jason, who stood by. Reyna gasped as she fully saw Annabeth's face, which was covered in scratches, burn marks, and bruises. One eyebrow was half gone, and her left eye was swollen shut. She had her ankle wrapped in a Bubble Wrap cast, suggesting she broke or sprained it. She hobbled over to Percy, who hugged her.
"Get a medic to attend to those two while they talk," she hissed to the nearest person, who just so happened to be Bobby.
"But if they're already sentenced to death..."
"They're heroes of Olympus and now the entire world, what on earth do you think I am?!" she whisper-yelled. "I just want to make sure they're telling the truth! Doesn't mean they have to be in pain all the way through!"
Bobby gave her an impish grin. "My respect for you just went from a measly two to a twenty. Thought you really were going to execute them."
"Medic," she reminded him.
"Yes, Reyna."
Percy continued. "I saw her to the beginning of her quest, but beyond that, I don't know."
Annabeth picked up. "I was to find the Mark, like all my predecessors, and who all died. They didn't make it beyond the first test, which was a bunch of ghost believers from another panthenon. I had to pretend I was the magna mater of their cult, so I could get by. When they tested my power, I hit the capstone and the entire building collasped. I brust out the door, and fell twenty feet, which is how I got this," Annabeth geustered to her Bubble Wrap cast. "I broke my ankle from landing on my feet. A box left over from Hermes Express was near, so I used some of the Bubble Wrap inside and a couple pieces of the wooden stairwell that had collasped centries ago."
Annabeth's breathing was worse than Percy's. Every time she talked, Reyna had to resist the urge to yell for help. Gwen was sending Reyna anxious glances, and Reyna caught her and jerked her head towards the two. Gwen burst out, her eyes saying thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou.
Annabeth started coughing, a horrible, gutteral noise that sounded like a mixture of a monster eating sand and growling and someone with pnuenomia. The others surged around Annabeth, forming a protective and battered barrier around the two. Gwen screeched to a halt, and looked at Reyna questioningly. Reyna shrugged.
"Let her in, guys," Percy said. Jason and Piper stepped aside just enough for Gwen to pass through, then sealed the barrier again.
Gwen tended to Annabeth while Percy continued with his side of the story.
"The Piper, Jason, and I had gone down into some cellar that was really home to some nymphs that had been dried up for centuries. In fact, they were the ones who tended to Zeus when he was a baby. Piper, having the cornucopia, told us to pour everything we had into it and dilute and poisoned water that the nymphs used to try and drown us."
"That'll work real well on a son of Neptune," Gwen snorted under her breath.
"Well, it wasn't exactly water, so it did affect me, Gwen."
"Oh..."
"It was more like a oily sort of thing. Anyway, we managed to free the nymphs from their prison, and we got out of the place as fast as we could."
"While they were dealing with that, Frank, Leo, and I were dealing with a lock in the base of a Catholic saint's tomb. Was it a saint?" Hazel asked Frank and Leo. They shrugged. "I don't know. It was some kind of relic, with a lock and door in the base of it. Leo cracked the code, and I went in."
"There were these tourists near, and suddenly they started to attack us, since they were possessed by the eildions. Before, when Piper exorcised Jason, Leo, and Percy, she made them swear on the River Styx to not possess anyone on the ship and leave them alone as long as they were on the ship. Leo and I were forced to go after Hazel. I was thanking the gods that the tourists they inhabited were fat," Frank said.
Some snickers flew around the crowd. Some of the people in the ring were smiling.
"We went down the cramped tunnel, and suddenly it was a room. There were these sphereical things, some robots that didn't work, and pretty much heavan for a Vulcan child." Hazel said.
Leo picked up: "I was freaking out because we had found the place where the Romans in ancient times had taken Archimedes' notes and spheres."
"But apparently, according to our resident Hephaestus kid, we Romans weren't complicated enough," Frank muttered.
"They did do an admirable job of copying the Greek's robots and taking apart the spheres," Leo conceeded.
"And you said that the robots wouldn't work," Frank said.
"They didn't. They only moved because the eildions decided to possess crudely done automatons that didn't even work."
"So? They tasered me and Hazel and almost killed us!"
"And I was happily saving you guy's butts, trust me. You didn't see the finale when the sphere was picking the other one apart and the eildions were fused to the metal and therefore harmless unless someone decides to fix them, which is pretty impossible to do since I melted them."
"Guys! Gods," Percy called them to order.
"No Percy, we are not guys or gods, we are a mixture of the two," Leo corrected.
"Leo," Annabeth said softly, her voice not quite as raspy. Gwen was still working on her, which atested to how badly they were hurt.
"Shutting up, ma'am." Leo swallowed and shut up.
"I have two things to not call me: Annie and ma'am," Annabeth said, smiling a little at Leo's antics.
"Shutting up, sir," Leo announced and kept a straight face as the others started cracking up. Percy cracked a smile at the resident court jester.
"Leo, if I were in the right condition, you'd be pulverised by now, but I'll have to ask Piper to do the honors right now," Annabeth said, her eyes crinkled. Piper took the liberty of smacking Leo on the back of the head.
"Seriously? I just got them to laugh and you smack me on the head instead of saying 'atta boy', 'cuz heavan knows that you've been trying, too!"
"We're kind of in the middle of a war meeting, Leo. With hostile Romans. Would you like to die today?"
"Way to put a damper on things," Leo muttered to himself.
"While they were busy fusing possessers to metal, we were going after Nico. Unfortunately, he had two giants guarding him," Percy continued his part of the story.
"One with an obsession of ballet, and the other with a fashion sense to make Venus keel over and die," Jason put in. Reyna suppressed a laugh.
"Actually they both had a horrible fashion sense," Piper said. Everyone looked at her. "What? Blame the Aphrodite genes for kicking in."
"So, long story short, you fought the two giants and rescued Nico successfully, and you probably looked epic while doing it. End of storytime for you right now, Percy," Gwen cut in. "I'm done with Annabeth, so now she can talk without us feeling like rocks are being scraped over our ears."
Annabeth frowned a little at Gwen, but continued her part of the story. "After the cave, I was having a hard time walking, obviously, and I thought that I was just about as good as my predecessors: dead. I still don't know how I made it through that. I don't remember much of it, because there were so many and I was..." Annabeth swallowed.
"Annabeth, don't let that flaw get to you now," Percy warned.
"I was absolutely terrified. Even afterwards, when we fell, I could've dealt with that, except for the..." Annabeth's jaw clenched, and Percy waved Gwen away. Percy wrapped his arms around her, and Annabeth pounded against his chest. Then she collapsed, sobbing, and the retelling of her story was just too much. Everything that she had kept under lock and key burst out of her in a torrent of tears and screaming.
Reyna was shocked. A strong warrior with a fire in her eyes, crumbled to pieces in front of her.
Then she noticed that Percy was crying as well, burying his head in Annabeth's hair, his sobs heaving his back, and all that anyone could see was a mixture of two great warriors who fell from their former glory.
To say Reyna was floored that something could break both Annabeth and Percy, would be a serious understatement.