A/N- Chapter 7! Oh yeah!

Disclaimer: This all belongs to Rick Riordan. Well, except for my OCs. And the parts in the plot my sister made up.

Thank you, Zi! Without you, this fic would have crashed through the floor…

REMINDER: MOST BUILDINGS IN THIS STORY ARE FICTIONAL.

Together Nico and I started walking back towards camp, talking. When we walked into the clearing where it was, we got a bit of a surprise. Caleb, Sadie, and Seth were all absent, but Avery and Kole were there. And you'll never guess what they were doing…kissing.

I was shocked I froze. Nico looked, like, really uncomfortable. When Kole and Avery finally realized we were there, watching, they both got sheepish looks on their faces. This was going to be good…

"We can explain!" Avery exclaimed quickly. Kole nodded quickly. Too quickly. A grin started to appear on my face. Avery continued. "You, uh, see, Kole was being an, um, idiot and he, uh, tripped over the log. It was, uh, a complete accident." I looked at the log she was pointing at. It was way too far away.

"You expect me to believe that?" I asked skeptically.

"Uh, yeah…it's the truth."

"Avery," I said, "I can see you crossing your fingers."

She immediately uncrossed them. Nico smirked. "What fingers?" she asked nervously. "I'm not crossing any fingers! Where would you get that idea?" I rolled my eyes.

Kole, seeming to get that we didn't believe a word of it, sighed. "Okay, fine, you caught us. We were kissing."

"Um, duh."

Nico and I grinned at their awkwardness. Caleb came through the trees at the other side of the clearing carrying firewood. He looked at us strangely, then shook his head, like it didn't matter to him. He muttered, "Idiots." Why, isn't he kind?

"Hey," I asked Caleb, "where are Seth and Sadie? Were they with you?" I had been wondering where the others were until I had come into the camp. Then I was too wrapped up in the hilarity of the situation with Kole and Avery. You know…now that I think about it, they are kind of cute together…

Caleb shrugged. "Sadie was looking for edible plants. But then she and Seth got in an argument. I'm sure they'll be here soon." He didn't sound like he cared. But, then again, Caleb doesn't really care much about anything. I actually thought that fighting could be a very bad thing, considering we were on a quest. And on a quest like this, we needed to stick together. Well, that sounded corny, but we at least needed to be able to work together.

Now that I listened, I could actually hear Sadie and Seth loudly quarreling. I wondered what they were fighting about. I could guess, though. I bet Seth wasted something or littered. I smirked. Sadie would be watching him like a hawk.

They came into view, still angry with each other. "Okay, whoa, calm down," Nico said. I could understand why. Sadie was a bit red in the face and had been yelling at Seth. Of course, he wasn't going to take her insults. That meant he ended up fighting back. I can't believe they thought they were the mature ones.

Sadie turned her anger towards Nico. "DON'T YOU DARE TELL ME TO CALM DOWN, NICO DI ANGELO! I AM COMPLETELY CALM! MEN! YOU GOOD-FOR-NOTHING, LAZY, PLANT-KILLERS! YOU'RE A DESTROYER OF NATURE!"

My eyes grew wide. That seemed a bit extreme, honestly. I mean, it wasn't Nico's fault Seth did something wrong.

"Um, Sadie," I said slowly, "you really need to cool down. You're face is red." Oh, shoot, I probably shouldn't have said that last part. Oh well, I already did.

Sadie turned to face me. "Kylie?" She seemed confused. "I didn't realize you were here…Oh, uh, sorry…" She took some deep breaths. Everyone looked at me like they were wondering how on Earth I had managed to calm Sadie down. Well, folks, it wasn't easy.

About twenty minutes later, everything was back to normal. Or, at least, as normal as it could be for a few demigods. Sadie was still a kind of mad at Seth, and none of us were talking for fear of being yelled at. I blame Seth for getting her wound up in the first place. Then I tried breaking the silence.

"So…I was thinking…You know how the gorgons, like, died? How were they attacking us?"

Seth answered. "Kylie…Some monsters, gods, and ancient powers can fade, but they don't die. The gorgons did fade, but sometimes the more powerful monsters can come back. Like Kronos did, a couple years ago. They wouldn't on their own, though, something would have been calling them to rise up, or something like that. I don't want to know what it was."

"Maybe you do," said Nico slowly. "What if…what if that's what could destroy Olympus? This ancient power that raised up the gorgons could be something really important." Great, we were back to brainstorming.

"But I thought we were looking for griffins," Caleb said. That was a good point. I mean, Apollo, my father, had told us to look for them.

"Yeah, we still should. But maybe this whole thing is bigger than some magical object…"

"It could be," Avery supposed. "I mean, we've all been a bit single-minded about this quest only being to find some artifact. If it was actually a power, that makes things so different."

"Then," Kole said from where he was sitting next to Avery, "we have to figure that out. And after that we have to fight them. You guys need to think this through more. I mean, if this power was strong enough to bring the gorgons back, then we seriously have something to worry about. And what 'Doors of Death' would they be guarding? Why in the name of the gods would they be guarding the doors to the Underworld?"

"Who knows?" Sadie replied. "First we need to worry about finding these griffins…and avoiding those ghosts."

"That's easy," Nico scoffed. "If we find building where griffins are guarding the entrance, we're gold."

"Well, we need to find that building," I decided. "But…how are we going to?"

Avery grinned. "Easy. We find a library with a computer. We'll head to the nearest town tomorrow."

"Well," Caleb said, "let's go to sleep."

"Good idea."

We were all out with a few minutes.

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The next morning we packed up our things and erased all evidence that we were there. Don't want any monsters tracking us, now, do we? Luckily, I had a map and we were able to find the state park where we were on it. The nearest town was about five miles from us. Deciding that was really lucky, we just walked. There was no point in wasting the twenty bucks we still had. But it was still a bit of a drag to have to walk.

We made it to the town in a little less than forty-five minutes. Hey, we were walking slowly. It was a small town. It's library was a one-story place. It only had one computer. Boy were we lucky. But it was dial-up, so that sucked. And it was, like, impossible to find where the griffons were guarding a place. And Kole's dad worked with the Pentagon, with advanced programs and stuff like that. Kole said he was an expert on computers, but even he couldn't find anything.

Finally Avery told him to click on something. It was an article about the statues of griffons in front of a library in Ohio being destroyed and how they would be rebuilt.

"That's where we're going," said Nico. "Now we need to get there. What city is it in?"

"Um…Columbus? I think that's what it says…" Sadie looked a little pale as she said that. I don't think she was real excited about going to Ohio. I wonder why…

"Well, we could stow away on a plane," said Seth, a bit jokingly. Wow, Seth was joking.

Nico shook his head violently. "Not if you want to survive. Zeus doesn't let me in the air. Ever. I would be blasted out of it. Never in my life have I ever been on a plane. Not in my entire life, and that's lasted a long time." We gave him weird looks. He shrugged them off.

"Well, maybe we could get on a train," I said. "I mean, we wouldn't be able to pay for all of us, maybe not even one of us, but we could get straight into the city, right?"

"I guess."

After that was decided, we looked up the nearest train station. It was actually really close, which was really lucky, again. We hitched a ride with some truckers. Actually, they didn't know we were on their truck, Avery had hot-wired it, and taken it when they were in a store, but, same thing. We left it in a tow zone and hopped out of it next to the train station. Then, Avery (how does she know all of this?) would have snuck us in, but Nico had a better idea.

"I'll manipulate the Mist. I should've thought of that sooner." Seth grinned.

"I can put a spell on him to make them think that we should be on here the entire ride."

"Do it," Caleb encouraged them.

"Alright," Nico whispered. I saw that he whispered because the train person was coming. When he was there, Nico did something really weird. When we were going to be busted, he snapped and said something like, "We're passengers on this train. Let us through."

The strangest thing was, though, that he let us through. Kole and Caleb high-fived. It was kind of funny, actually, to see them do that. Then we boarded the train. It would take us to almost the edge of Pennsylvania. It was only about three and a half hours 'til we got there. We wasted most of the time talking and Avery, Sadie, and I played 'Would You Rather?'

"Let's see..." I said, "Avery, would you rather go to jail or never to another prank or commit another crime again?"

"That's easy," she scoffed. "I would rather go to jail, duh." She smiled at me.

The game continued like that, and it didn't seem like a long time until we were in Pennsylvania. From there, we boarded the second train, and Nico and Seth had to do their thing again. This train ride only lasted about two and a half hours. It wasn't long until we were in Ohio, but I think we had gotten the directions wrong, 'cause we were in, like, the middle of nowhere. From what I had seen, Columbus was a pretty big city.

"Well…" Seth said, "this sucks."

"Yeah, I know," I replied. "How are we going to get to Columbus from…here? I don't think it's a good idea to get back on the train now."

"I have an idea about how we could get there," Sadie said, swallowing. She seemed nervous, just like she did when we were at the library in New Jersey. That was weird.

"Well," Caleb said impatiently, "what is it?"

Sadie looked sick. "My dad lives in Ohio. I could contact him using an Iris Message. I'm sure he'll take us to Columbus. Problem solved." I wondered if she had problems with her father. I mean, if they were anything like the ones I had, then we were screwed. But Sadie seemed pretty positive that he would come for us, which was good. I guess things between them were a bit tense. I hoped they would work things out.

Kole got a golden drachma from Avery and handed to Sadie. Seth used magic to make some mist. I think Sadie said a quick prayer before she threw the coin down, saying, "Oh goddess, accept my offering."

A/N- Okay, well, that's my mini cliff-hanger. Sorry I couldn't update last night. I'll try to update quicker in the future.

Oh, um, I'm not sure if I got those words right at the end. Sorry…

Well, please review!