Author's Note: Remember that time when I said this account was only for Avoiding Clichés Like the Plague? Hahahahahahaha I failed miserably at that. It's been more than a year since I've posted, and I seem to have spent a good deal of that time writing fanfiction. After creating a trillion short stories, I wrote this 43 000 epic, twisted, why-would-you-make-this piece of crap. I warned you that my stories are weird, and I think this is one of the odder ideas I've come up with.

Also, before anyone gets out their Nancy Drew brains, I'd like to say that this isn't really a whodunit mystery so much as a what-the-hell-is-going-on mystery.

In a couple of weeks the summer starts, and I'm going to be away for two months. I'll only have access to a computer every couple of weeks. But this whole story is already written and I'm not wasting it, so I promise it will all be up before House of Hades comes out.

Chapter 1

The two massive sheets of rock that made up the Doors of Death were making an awful grinding noise that hurt Annabeth's ears. She could see the gap between them getting smaller, and on the other side of them, maybe three hundred feet away, she could make out the silhouettes of several people. If they were going to leave, it would have to be now. Annabeth looked back at the raging fight. Didn't these demons realize there were only three opponents, and one of them was standing off to the side? The beasts were mainly fighting each other. Percy (one arm gripping his bandaged chest) and Luke were, of course, right in the middle of the fight, destroying everything they could, not that it made a difference down here.

Luke.

He had found them after the fall, carrying Annabeth's backpack, laptop, and knife. He'd always been useful like that. Since they'd needed a guide to the Underworld anyway, Luke had gone along with them. Annabeth had a tiny bit of hope that the two boys would have gotten along a bit better than before, but predictably, they didn't. First, Luke had to do his older-brother-assess-new-boyfriend thing, which Percy didn't appreciate. He probably would have let it go, but Luke was just openly unfriendly to Percy. Annabeth knew why, of course, although she'd hoped Luke would have gotten over it. Percy, on the other hand, still couldn't figure out where all the bitterness had come from. Annabeth figured he was only putting up with Luke for her sake. She had still made Luke promise to come with them out of the Underworld.

Annabeth called to them over the snarls of the beasts, and immediately regretted it. Percy noticed her frantic waving and the doors closing, and elbowed Luke to let him know. This caused both of them to lose concentration and get buried under the howling creatures. The beasts now turned their attention to Annabeth. She threw her arm out and slashed at as many as she could with her knife, but she was backed up against the wall of stone and had no escape. Their claws snatched at her hair and raked at her clothes, scratching her face. She held her arms up to protect her head, and felt their teeth and claw dig into her forearms.

Something grabbed her arm, and this time it was a human hand. Percy pulled her off the wall, and together they set off running through the ever-narrowing doorway. Annabeth turned back and saw Luke standing among the demons, sword lowered. They weren't attacking him. Of course. He belonged with them now. He was dead. Luke waved at her and she stopped running.

"What are you doing?" Percy shouted over the noise of the shuddering rocks, but Annabeth ignored him. Luke had never planned to return with them. He'd just told her that so that she would leave. Another broken promise. Yeah, right, not if she could help it. She'd already lost him once, and it was not going to happen again.

Annabeth turned away from the light and started running back into Tartarus. She grabbed Luke's wrist and tried to drag him into the doors. He pulled back, but she didn't let go.

"Come on!" she screamed, "I'm not leaving you down here." Luke shook his head.

"No, I'm not coming. I should stay here," he said. Not the answer Annabeth had been looking for. She continued to pull on his arm, despite his resistance.

"I'm not leaving without you," she yelled. Luke looked at her. Then he looked at Percy, the doors, the creatures around him, then back to her. It was obvious that she was being serious.

"Fine, but we have to go now," he said. Annabeth didn't wait a second for him to change his mind. She started running back through the doors, this time holding onto Luke's arm. Percy ran ahead of her, looking back every now and then to make sure she was okay. Luke was running behind her, but she didn't think she'd ever seen such a reluctant expression. Was he going to dissolve into dust like a monster when they reached the outside world? No, others had made it out this way, and they had been in one piece.

The walls were much closer together now. Annabeth had to turned her shoulders sideways so that they wouldn't scrape the walls. Less than a hundred feet now. Annabeth could feel the warmth of the sunlight on her face already, and for a moment she wondered where exactly the Doors of Death were in the mortal world. As she glanced backwards, Annabeth realized that they had just run out of a huge, majestic marble and limestone temple. The walls of rocks seemed to be bending around it. They didn't bend around Annabeth, though, and the cavern they were now in was still getting narrower.

The hopelessness of the Underworld seemed to seep out of her as Annabeth charged out of the doors, and a joy filled her that she had not felt in what seemed like years. As she collapsed on the sandy ground in the sun, she had never felt more alive. Percy was okay, Luke was back, they had made it out of the Underworld –

Her happiness was cut short when she heard Luke shout. She sat up and looked around wildly. They were on a beach with the blue ocean behind her and white cliffs all around. It was beautiful, despite the piles of monster dust that littered the ground. Beside the crack that ran all the way up the enormous bleached cliff, a small clump of people were standing in a circle, facing inwards, weapons drawn. Leo, Piper, Hazel, Frank, Jason, and Nico. Annabeth had only once before seen such a look of loathing on Nico's face, and it was when his sister had died. At the time it had been towards Percy. Now the glare was directed towards Luke, who sat on the ground, looking dazed but worried, surrounded by weapon points. He held his hands up as if surrendering.

Annabeth scrambled to her feet and ran over. Percy was sitting in the water already, completely submerged, healing his chest wound, and oblivious to what was going on.

"He followed you out, Annabeth," Hazel said, not taking her eyes off Luke. Annabeth shook her head.

"I know. This is Luke, he's a friend of mine who we met up with down there," she explained. Nico snorted when she said the word friend.

"Yeah. Right. Friend," he said. Leo was also looking a little nervous.

"But wasn't the guy who started the second Titan war called Luke?" he asked, "And didn't he die? And didn't he have a scar like that? And didn't he have blond hair? And wasn't he your friend?" Annabeth really needed to talk to everyone at camp again about explaining the war to the new campers.

"I can't believe I'm going to have to explain this again: Luke's not the bad guy," she said.

"No, of course not. he just reduced half of Olympus to rubble," Nico added. Annabeth threw her hands up in exasperation.

"Just give him a chance, okay?" Luke raised one of his hands above his head as Annabeth spoke.

"Anyone want to hear my side of the story?" he said.

"Not really. Nobody's supposed to get out of the Underworld." Piper had her horn of plenty pointing at him. It didn't exactly seem menacing. Luke noticed this and turned towards her, as she was the only one who wasn't pointing something sharp at him. She brandished the horn at him, but all she got in return was a very confused look.

"Look," Piper said, "he tried to bring back the Titans and destroy Olympus! Isn't that enough of a reason that we shouldn't trust him?"

"But-" Jason was interrupted by Leo.

"Dude, he tried to kill your sister. You know, the one who just saved your butt in the battle," he said. Luke made another attempt to defend himself. He started to protest.

"I wasn't going to kill-" Annabeth cut him off.

"Wait, the hunters are here?" she asked. Frank nodded. He had been silent the whole time, probably sizing up Luke and how much of a threat he was.

"They arrived halfway through the fight," he said. "Said Artemis had sent them."

Annabeth frowned.

"But the gods aren't talking to anyone right now."

"Apparently Artemis doesn't play by Zeus's rules," Jason said.

"Fair enough. Are you guys going to let him go now?"

None of them moved. Nico gave her a look of disbelief.

"Annabeth," he said slowly, "let me say this very clearly: He. Tried. To. Kill. You. And you're okay with that?" Luke looked down at the ground, ashamed, and Annabeth shifted her weight uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"I didn't want to," Luke mumbled. The others looked at him suspiciously. Jason seemed to be concentrating very hard.

"My sister had pictures of you," Jason said.

"I take it you're Jason then," Luke said, looking up at him. Jason nodded. "Yeah, Annabeth told me about you."

"I… I guess if Thalia trusted him that much… I mean, she doesn't trust a lot of people," Jason said slowly.

"Everyone trusted him," Nico pointed out. He was really not making this easy.

"Thalia's – was my best friend. You really think –"

"Who you tried to kill."
"I wasn't going to kill her!"

By this time Percy had noticed the commotion and come over to join the party.

"What's going on?" he asked, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"Okay, convince everyone that they can trust Luke," Annabeth said as she gestured to the young man sitting in the sand. Luke gave a half-hearted thumbs up. Percy looked at him for a long time, his face twisted up, seemingly in a moral dispute. Annabeth held her breath. Finally Percy took a deep breath and looked around the circle.

"Well… I guess he was pretty good when we were in the Underworld. Like, he didn't try to kill us or anything," he said slowly.

"So basically you can stop pointing your weapons at him now," Annabeth said. Apparently the confirmation from both Annabeth and Percy, and Jason's opinion were enough to convince them. They still looked uneasy about the whole thing, and Nico looked downright angry, lowering his sword only reluctantly.

"But he tried to destroy camp, and the whole Western Civilization," Leo said. He'd clearly been reading up on his Camp Half-Blood history, not that it was particularly hard to find out about the war. Anyone who'd fought there – Drew, Travis, Connor, Katie, Clarisse, Jake, Will – they all loved to tell their stories of battle and scare the new campers. Annabeth was about to come to Luke's defense again, but Jason got there first.

"Look, how about we trust him for now, but we keep an eye on him," Jason suggested, "And if he tries to do anything, we kick him out." The others nodded and muttered some form of an agreement, but Nico still didn't look happy. He probably partly blamed Luke for Bianca's death.

"Okay, now that's settled, where are the hunters?" Annabeth asked. Luke nodded.

"Yeah, I need to see Thalia and apologize for… well, a lot, I guess."

"Around that cliff." Jason pointed to his right, where the cliffs curved around a corner and out of sight. Voices echoed off the stone. It certainly sounded like people were there.

"Right. Let's go, then," Annabeth said. She sounded much more confidant than she felt. As the group (which had grown to nine now) set off for the hunters' camp, Annabeth glanced wearily back at the cliffs that held the Doors of Death. Did they really loom over her so threateningly, or was it just her imagination? Were those cracks half way up really arranged in the shape of a face, or were they innocent fractures? And those ledges that jutted out near the top? Those certainly held skeletons.

Annabeth noticed that she wasn't the only one who was still nervous about the cliffs. Percy and Luke kept looking back, too, and neither had put their weapons away yet. Percy gripped Riptide so tightly she could see the veins in his arms. It occurred to her that perhaps walking into the hunters' camp with two boys holding weapons and looking extremely tense might not have been the best approach, but she brushed away her concern. The hunters didn't mind Percy all that much and Luke… well, Luke was going to get punched whether he was holding a sword or not. Thalia would see to that.

As they arrived at the hunters' camp, the girls didn't too happy to see them, despite the fact that they'd all just fought in a battle together. Then again, the hunters never looked too happy to see anyone. Especially not boys who they'd fought against the previous summer.