Author's Note: Aaaand they're off! To find their dead enemy who has gotten way more powers than he needs. Ah, I feel for these guys. I really do. Now if Barry would just stop messing with the timeline, we might be able to get a coherent story out of this. Read and review!

Thalia's POV

I walked over to Cisco, Caitlin, and Joe, who were monitoring Barry's progress from behind their enormous screens. These people were so obsessed with their technology, I was surprised nothing had tracked us down yet.

Annabeth glanced at me. "I'm gonna go walk around, make sure I know where all the exits are. Just in case."

I watched her leave, and as soon as I was sure she couldn't hear us, I turned to our...friends (what else can you call them when they're helping you track down an old enemy?).

"Listen up," I demanded, speaking through into the little microphone for Barry's benefit. "Barry, you too. You all seem like curious people. Am I right? You always want to know more." All three of them nodded. I assumed Barry did too. "Well, that's fine. But there's one thing you can't ever ask about. Tartarus."

Joe watched me with mistrust in his eyes. "Why not?"

"You don't want to agitate my friends. Percy especially. He's...powerful. Be thankful he's on your side, and not fighting against you."

Annabeth walked back in at that point. "Okay, so plenty of room to fight monsters, not much in the way of escapes. And, you should probably call Percy and Barry back. If they haven't found Luke by now, they won't until he makes himself known. What were you guys talking about?"

I smiled breezily. "Nothing important."

Barry's POV

After nothing more than a few seconds, Cisco spoke in my ear, "Barry, come back. You can find him again later. We haven't been able to get any readings, and there's no point in running for no reason."

Above me, Percy's doughnut stealing pegasus banked hard to the right, and Percy and I zoomed back to STAR Labs.

Cisco, who was sitting in front of one of his ever-present computers, still looked jittery. He started to type something in, but Percy stopped him.

"Hey, man. You gotta stop using computers around us."

Cisco sighed. "I'm getting really tired of hearing/asking this, but why?"

"Monsters can track us down if we use technology, or if someone around us uses it." Annabeth answered.

"That's another thing I don't understand," Joe commented. "Why do you need to fight "monsters"? Didn't they all die in ancient times? Assuming your story is true, of course."

Thalia replied for Annabeth and Percy. "Monsters don't actually die in the same way mortals die. When we destroy their forms here, they disintegrate, yes. But their essence is sent to Tartarus, where they reform." Her voice held badly disguised venom that I understood pretty well. It clearly said, Drop it, now. Or else.

Cisco, Caitlin, and I seemed to catch on to Thalia's poisonous attitude and started doing other things, but not Joe. He seemed...determined, to put it mildly. "Ah, Tartarus. See, I did some reading on that while you guys were gone, and the myths about it are controversial. Some say it's a bottomless pit, while some say it's an actual place. Every myth agrees that no mortal has ever been there. Which is it? And how do you know if you've never been? It seems to me that there are a lot of holes in your story, and I can't help but wonder if you're not who you say you are."

I shook my head no violently. We did not need to make these people angry, like Thalia said.

Percy glared at Joe, but Annabeth spoke before he could say anything. "Look, Joe. I know you don't know us, but I promise we won't do anything to hurt this team. Can we please just focus on finding Luke?"

"I wish I could," Joe said in a steely voice. "Unfortunately, I question your loyalty."

"You think you know what I've been through?" Percy growled at Joe. "True, you don't know everything about us, but I can promise you we are who we say we are. What right do you have to question us?"

"Look, kid," Joe snarled back. "This team has been betrayed by multiple people we thought we could trust. I don't trust someone until I know that they can remain trustworthy under pressure.

"Some of the things I've seen, you wouldn't believe. And you would crumble like a sand castle if you had to make sacrifices to save a life. You strike me as a coward."

"You dare call me a coward? You're just a police officer. Tell me, O great one," Percy continued sarcastically, "what things do you think I would find terrifying?"

I looked down and saw fissure lines spreading outward from Percy's feet. I tried to run in and knock him down or something, but I couldn't get my feet under me.

"Percy, could you um, calm down? The floor is starting to shake," Thalia told him nervously. He ignored her.

"Any of the murders, all the metahumans we've seen would make you hide like a child," Joe replied angrily. "You have never known true sacrifice!"

The earthquake got more and more violent.

Annabeth looked at Percy pleadingly. "Please, Percy. Don't do this to me again."

When he looked into her eyes, Percy began to calm down. "I'm sorry," he told her. The floor stopped shaking.

I averted my eyes, and tried to look at something else. Which happened to be the rest of my team. They were all hugging the wall, or the floor, or hiding under the table.

"Never assume," Percy said bitterly, "that you have suffered more than my friends and I. None of you have seen war. None of you have watched friends die right in front of you, and been powerless to stop it. My fatal flaw is loyalty. A goddess once told me that to save a friend, I would sacrifice the world. And then I have to watch those people get thrown into the Underworld because I couldn't save them. Do you have any idea what that does to you? None of you have been trapped so far down below the earth...where no one expects you to come back from. You asked how we know so much about Tartarus. Annabeth and I fell in. We should have died, countless times. The odds of us surviving…katára Tártara." he trailed off into a long statement in Ancient Greek. "An Tártara ítan edó, tha íthela na ton skotóso, an aftó ítan dynató."

"What was it like?" Caitlin asked softly.

Percy took a deep breath and answered. "Like being in huge cave with all the enemies you've ever faced, ever defeated. And they're all hunting you. And when you kill them, they just keep coming back. Now, imagine there's only one exit. Then, you find out that the cave isn't a cave at all, but a body. A body for something huge and evil. That's not even close to the fear that place instills in you, the anger…" Percy trailed off sadly. His eyes were stormy, almost fractured, like he was remembering something horrible.

"So, you can just cause earthquakes whenever you want?" Joe asked, trying to break the tension in the air. He sounded pretty nervous.

"Um, sort of. I haven't actually done it since Mt. St. Helens…" Percy replied.

"What do you mean since Mt. St. Helens?" Cisco asked him.

"Well, a couple years ago, I was on this quest in the Labyrinth, which, by the way, is under all of America, and Hephaestus had Annabeth and I take this little detour to Mt. St. Helens. The volcano was one of his favorite forges, but they chained Typhon under there, so he couldn't use it, until recently. But Hephaestus wanted us to find out what was happening there. When we got there, there were these sea demons remaking Kronos's scythe from that stupid sword Luke has. They discovered me, and kind of...threw lava at me. But, since I pretty much literally have the sea in my blood, it was hard for them to burn me. Nevertheless, it freaked me out. I don't really remember much except, like, I wigged out, and then I was thrown in the sky. So, yeah. I may have caused the first explosion of the volcano. And woken Typhon. Who caused the second explosion."

"You guys are weird," Cisco commented dryly.

"Well, like he said earlier," Annabeth said, "you don't know the half of it."