AN:I'm finally back. I won't try to explain/make excuses for why I was gone, I'll just say that I'm so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so very very sorry for the wait. I hope you haven't given up on me.

Chapter 4: Rue the Day

Nico

After obtaining the photos and an argument between Shifa and I about death, we went to a nearby cafe to look at the photos and get some food. I checked my Underworld Sundial. It was five in the evening up above.

"Alright guys, I've examined the photos," Josiah said. "Would you like my professional analysis?"

"Sure," I said. "You are a son of Athena."

"And a private eye," Josiah added.

Shifa rolled her eyes. "Just get on with it." She was already in a bad mood from our argument.

"Geez," Josiah said, "touchy." He put the first photo on the table. "So, this is right before kidnapping. We see Iapetus here, tending the flowers. According to you, Nico, he started doing that weekly after becoming Bob, correct?" I nodded. "Right. So he's watering the flowers. Now look here and see what's different. What's out of place." Shifa and I leaned over the photo. Crowds filled the square. Nothing odd immediately caught my eye.

"Well?" Shifa asked.

Josiah rolled his eyes. "Here, here, and here." He pointed out three seemingly inconspicuous individuals in the square. I noticed what he had pointed out and gasped. Josiah nodded approvingly. "Do you see it Shifa?"

"See what? You just pointed to three people."

"Their eyes," I said. "Look at their eyes and compare them to everyone else in the photo."

Shifa glanced down again. "I see a pair of blue eyes, green eyes, and yellow eyes. So?"

"Two things," Josiah said. The first is that everyone in the underworld has black eyes. You haven't noticed it?"

"But-" Shifa looked confused. "But wait, Graham had brown eyes."

"Ah," I said, "But you see sometimes a person can retain eye color for up to a week after they die. It doesn't usually happen, but it's not unheard of."

"I see," Shifa said. "Just another way that the underworld is undercutting all that the individual stands for."

"Really? You're going to pin this on me? You know-"

"The other thing," Josiah butted in with, "is the fact that we only know of one person with yellow eyes. She went to our school, Shifa."

"Helen?" Shifa asked. "Why's she interested in Iapetus?"

"The question is, why is Krios interested in Iapetus," I said.

"Right," Josiah said. He laid down the next photo. "This one is during the kidnapping. What do you see?" We looked at the photo. It was blank white. "Nothing right? So from this we can deduce that Helen used a flash to mask what she did. At first I thought that that was all the photo had to tell. But look more closely. You'll see that you can actually see vague shapes in the white." I looked again. Sure enough, he was right. Three shapes holding what appeared to be swords were around the fourth, presumably Iapetus. The shapes were only a slightly darker shade of white. I wouldn't have seen them if Josiah hadn't told me to look for them specifically. "So three people with swords accosted Iapetus and stole him away. But three against a titan? Not likely, unless they were all Percy Jackson. Which leads me to believe that a spell to dull Iapetus's mind was placed prior to the assault. For the goddess Hecate, that wouldn't be too much trouble. Iapetus's mind was already slightly dull from the bath he took in the Lethe. But for a mortal, even a mortal as strong in magic as Helen, it would be nigh on impossible. Unless, of course she had the means to make a power medallion."

"Power medallion?" Shifa and I asked.

"One of the alleged items that Hecate designed. It is a seemingly simple piece of metal, but it contains an unlimited supply of power within it. Drawing upon it, even a normal human would have enough power to cast that spell, if they knew the way to do it. However, The only place the designs are supposed to exist are in one of Hecate's private spellbooks. That leads us to the conclusion that Shifa must have broken into her mom's house and stolen the spellbook. But she would have had to do it within the last twenty-four hours, otherwise Hecate would've known about it. Also, Helen would have needed to make the medallion in Hecate's private magical forgery. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to make one quickly enough to get down here and kidnap Iapetus."

"This is quite complicated," I said. "Couldn't Helen have just stolen a medallion?"

Josiah shook his head. "Why would Hecate need one? She's already the most powerful magician in the world. She doesn't need a medallion to enhance her powers. She wouldn't have one on hand. Helen would have had to have broken into her mothers house, taken the book, snuck into the forgery, which is probably within the house, make a medallion, and then immediately come here to kidnap Iapetus. That's the only way that this works."

"You deduced all of this from a couple of barely visible silhouettes in a photograph?" Shifa asked. "Maybe you are smarter than your brother."

Josiah snorted. "Don't ever accuse me of that. I'm the cool one, remember? Ben would've figured that out in the half the time."

I wasn't so sure, but said, "Okay, so what else did you learn?"

"Well we only have one other photo that we can glean any information from," he said. He laid the final photo on the table. It looked almost exactly like the first one, except without Iapetus and without the living people. "As you can see, this photo is very similar to the first one, which leads me to believe that the whole sequence of three photos happened so quickly that no one had time to react. After this one we just see the reactions of people, which aren't really very important to our investigations."

"Alright," I said slowly. "So what should we do next?"

"Well," Josiah said slowly, "I'd like to visit the scene of the incident. Can you take us there?"

I nodded.

-t-S-S-

It took us about an hour to get to the square. It was void of people, probably due to the kidnapping. "What exactly are we looking for?" Shifa asked.

"Anything that might tell us where Helen took Iapetus," Josiah said.

So we looked. And looked. And looked some more. Nothing. There wasn't a trace of anything. Finally we all sat down, too tired to continue our pointless search. "Well that was useless," Shifa said.

I couldn't agree more. Josiah stood up, apparently with some sudden inspiration. "Nico! Helen couldn't teleport here could she?"

I shook my head. "You can shadow travel in here, but standard teleportation isn't possible. The closest she could have teleported would have been the LA Entrance. And Charon wouldn't let her in."

"Are you absolutely certain?" Josiah asked.

"Well... father is always saying that Charon constantly gripes for higher pay..."

"I knew it," Shifa spat. "The lord of the dead is too stingy to properly pay his employees."

"Hey! Don't insult my father! He can't raise Charon's pay because he's almost broke from the overpopulation problems!"

Shifa opened her mouth to respond, but Josiah stepped in again, "So Charon might be bribed into letting her in."

"Not if he knew that she was a servant of Krios, I'm sure of it," I said hotly.

"Then we must assume that Charon didn't know what she was up to," Josiah said. "So she paid Charon, got in, and..."

"She couldn't have made it past the walls of Erebus without raising a huge alert, in which case the gates of Elysium would be locked to even me," I said.

"Ah, but is anyone working near or at the walls untrustworthy?"

I furrowed my brow. "Well we did have some troubles with King Minos a while back. He's one of the judges of the souls that enter. He might be persuaded to let someone in if it profitted him in some way."

"Then we have someone to go see it looks like," Josiah said. "Where would we find King Minos?"

"In the judges' pavilion," I said. "Come on. I'll warn you, it's a bit of a walk, but I don't feel like shadow traveling right now. I drained a lot of energy getting us here."

-t-S-S-

It was nine by the time we made it to the walls, and we were tired. "Look, I don't feel up to a confrontation tonight," I said. "Let's wait till tomorrow, and then go see Minos." Josiah and Shifa agreed. "I'll take first watch," I added. The trip was so short notice that none of us had bags or blankets or anything, so Josiah and Shifa curled up in the yellow-gray grass of the fields of Asphodel.

I turned away from them and stared out into the mass of the dead. After about half an hour, Shifa spoke. "I can't sleep. I can't see the stars."

I turned. She lay on her back, staring upwards at the ceiling. "You can't see the stars when you're sleeping inside," I noted.

"But at least I know they're there," Shifa said. "Here I'm not sure."

I nodded. After a while I asked something that had been bugging me. "Why do you hate me, Shifa?"

"I don't hate you," she said, furrowing her brow. "I just – I don't know. I just can't except that people die prematurely. Of old age, I understand, but from war, famine, disease. I can't... I can't accept that."

"You know, I don't particularly like that either," I said. "Believe it or not, I'm not a huge proponent of death. But I am a son of Hades. I of all people should learn to accept death for what it is." I paused. "You know, Shifa, I had a sister once."

"Really?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Bianca. She was the greatest. She always looked after me no matter what happened. Then, we met with our destiny, our world. We met with the fact that we were demigods. She – she joined the hunters of Artemis. I didn't understand. Why? Why did SHE LEAVE ME ALL ALONE!" I roared the last part, catching the attention of some of the spirits going by. After all this time, it still hurt that she had chosen the Hunters. I took a calming breath. I hadn't opened up like this to anyone, not even Percy, who had probably figured this all out himself. Yet, I felt like Shifa needed to hear this, to understand.

"And then, she went on a quest to save Artemis. Percy went after them because Annabeth's fate was on the line as well. I made him promise to make sure my sister came back okay. I was still hurt. I still am. But I loved her more than anyone. She was my big sister, I had to know she was alright. Well, she died, sacrificed herself to save the rest of the group on the quest. When they returned, Percy pulled me aside, apologizing endlessly for what had happened. I got angry. Really, I was angry at her, and angry at myself too. But I took it out on Percy. There was nothing he could have done to stop her death, but I blamed him all the same.

"I ran away, and became obsessed with finding a way to bring her back to life, and to get revenge on Percy. I made a deal with Minos, but he twisted it, twisted me even further. He was using me to give him a new life and revenge in one fell swoop. In the end though, Percy managed to help me, I managed to come to terms with my sister's mortality, and we stopped Minos from rising again.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, don't accuse me of wanting everyone dead. I lost someone I loved." And then, out of nowhere, I started crying.

Shifa stood and came to me. "I'm so sorry Nico. I didn't know. I suppose that I'm the way I am because my mother died of cancer. She was a doctor, but she couldn't prevent her own death. After finding out the Greek gods were real, I guess I just blamed your father, and by extension, you."

I took a deep steadying breath.

Josiah sighed. "Well that's usually the type of thing that happens later in a quest." We stared at him. "I was awake the whole time. Look I'm glad that you two are friends now, but usually the whole 'two people who don't get along finally being able to see eye to eye thing' doesn't happen right at the beginning."

"So?" I said.

"So now there's no room for growth in your relationship! Now your relationship is going to be static for the rest of the quest!"

"You're acting like we're in some kind of tv drama," Shifa said.

"Well honestly the way you two argued had me nearly convinced we were," he said.

I cracked a smile. "Let's all just calm down," I said, a chuckle escaping me. "Josiah, I'm sorry that Shifa and I resolved our differences too soon."

He smirked a bit. "Good, you should be. Now, I'm going back to sleep."

"Good night Josiah," I said.

"I think I might finally be able to sleep now too," Shifa said. "Thanks Nico. And I'm sorry. For everything."

"Thank you for listening and understanding," I said.

She nodded and laid back down. I turned away again and stared off towards the wall. Well, I thought, that will make this quest about a million times better.

-t-S-S-

Josiah woke me up (he had had the first watch) to the sounds of, "Get up Nico. Let's go question Minos then get back to Elysium, I'm starving."

"Good morning to you too," I said with a yawn.

Shifa snorted, "If you can call this endless dark morning." On the outside it appeared a direct insult, but the tone was more of a playful jibe.

"True enough," I conceded.

"Come on," Josiah said. "I'm gonna die of hunger here if we don't get a move on. Although I suppose the Underworld would be a convenient place to die, but regardless, come on."

-t-S-S-

We arrived at the pavilion only a few minutes later. The three judges were interviewing a person right now. The three were Martin Luther King Jr., who coincidentally had been a son of Athena, Otto Frank, whose daughter, Anne, is very well known, and, of course, King Minos. Recently, my father had had to triple the number of pavilions, so this was only one team of judges.

The person they were judging was a guy named Theodore Johnson. I'd been there when the man had died. He had been at his daughter's funeral. Heart Attack. Poor guy.

"Well, Mr. Johnson," Otto was saying in a thick German accent, "we understand that..."

"It looks like we have visitors," Minos interrupted. "If it isn't the glorious Ghost King," he spat the last part. His voice thick with irony, he said, "To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure."

"What are we, chopped liver?" Josiah whispered to Shifa.

"Actually," I said, "we came to speak to you, your highness." I dipped into a deep mocking bow.

"Could it possibly wait?" asked Dr. King. "He is needed to make the decision."

"I'm afraid it's urgent," I insisted. "I'm on business from my father."

Minos eyes narrowed. He was calculating his options. He could take a chance and refuse, but he wasn't sure if I was bluffing or not. I put on a confident face, which wasn't hard since I had told the truth. For the most part. Finally Minos decided that I wasn't lying and said, "I will step outside with his majesty and his friends for two minutes."

He followed us outside the pavilion. As soon as we were out of earshot of the other two judges he spun on me and spat, "What do you want you little cretin!"

I maintained a calm attitude and spoke, "You will answer all my questions and you will answer them truthfully." It had been said in a seemingly normal way. But he and I both knew the difference. I had used my power in my speech. I had made it so he had to obey me. Ever read Harry Potter? You know how the house elves have to do as they're told? When I intoned my voice with that power, I was basically doing the same thing as a master might do to their house elf. He couldn't disobey.

His face twisted with rage. "Fine. What do you want to ask?"

"Did you let three living humans in here recently? One of them had yellow eyes. Did you let them in?"

"Yes," he growled.

"And what did they promise you to let them in?"

His face twisted even further. "They promised me they would do what you failed to do for me. They promised me a new life."

I raised an eyebrow. "I thought there was only the way you tried to have me do."

"Ignorant son of Hades. There are multiple ways. One would be to fling open the Doors of Death," the back of my neck prickled unexpectedly at that, "another would be a spell in the book the yellow-eyed one had."

"I see," I said. "And how did they escape the Underworld? They surely weren't foolish enough to leave via the wall again."

"They took a secret route. One unknown to most, and most fear to go near there."

"Why? Where is it, what routed are you talking about?"

Minos chuckled. "Why, the hole in the sky of course."

"That's not anywhere in the stories," Shifa said.

"It wouldn't be," I said grimly. I unfortunately knew what it was. "Get back to your job, Minos. You will be hearing from my father after the solstice."

That seemed to strike some fear in him, but he hid it quickly and said, "Very well."

After he was back in the pavilion, Josiah said, "Looks like you've got to explain some things, but first we need to eat. Could you please shadow travel us to Elysium? Please, please, please?"

I laughed. "Yeah okay."

-t-S-S-

After we'd eaten and I'd explained our grim situation, Josiah whistled in amazement. "There's no way the three of us can do that alone."

I nodded. "We'll need help."

"But from whom?" Shifa asked. "We're not exactly in a great position to get help. We're kinda stuck here in the Underworld for the time being."

"I'm sure we could find someone willing, right Nico?" Josiah said.

I wasn't so sure. We wouldn't want anyone from the Fields of Punishment, they couldn't be trusted. We wouldn't want anyone from the Fields of Asphodel because they were about as useful as stumps. And who in Elysium would want to temporarily give up paradise to help us? And this excluding the fact that we would need an extremely skilled fighter.

"Sounds like you need help with a dangerous quest," a familiar voice said behind me. I turned around and my jaw dropped. I'd been too busy to pay attention to who was dying (and regardless I usually tuned it out, people died all the time). If I had I might not have been so surprised that this person had died in battle last night. But I hadn't, so I was surprised to be staring at none other than Clarisse La Rue.

-t-S-S-

Jason panted under the weight of the sky. He was going to die. He was sure of it. But somehow he kept on living, doomed to hold the sky until someone took it from him. Atlas sauntered over.

"You're in luck Jason," he said. "My father will be here any minute. Now be warned, he's lost his memories so he might be a little doped, but when he comes to, I'm sure that he'll be very pleased to meet you."

Jason spat at Atlas, the spit red from the blood in his mouth. He didn't even address the part about Atlas's father, he merely said, "You will rue the day you captured me Atlas. Make no mistake about that."

Atlas laughed. Jason growled.

AN: Again, I'm very sorry.