"…And so Voldemort sent the hobbits to Narnia to find Zeus' Masterbolt to fight the Cullens." THE END. - Best one-sentence fanfic ever.

Sorry for the huge delay in updates everyone… school is cruel. And I had to finish my Ven (kingdom hearts) and Squall (ff8) costumes for the upcoming anime con. (you can see pictures on my deviantart site username Colt-kun.) Also need to finish Zack and Crisis Core Cloud, but blah. I finally read the new reviews and felt completely guilty over not updating, so I focused on that. The comments people leave make me feel bad about not updating more, I apologize.

Some of the information about the Underworld I used in this chapter I had to look up. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry. I shall do my best to blame my inaccuracies on my sources.

Chapter Nine

Okay, Percy Jackson just plain sucked at navigating in the dark. Relaxing against the deceptively small but strong shoulders had seemed like a good idea, until after the seventh footslip on the uneven, rocky terrain of the Underworld. Nico clenched his arms tighter around Percy's neck as they narrowly avoided falling once again and Percy righted himself. All without releasing his near death-grip on Nico's legs.

"Percy, just put me down," Nico almost pleaded for the fifth time. His head was throbbing and an annoying ringing had joined in, but he was pretty certain that walking on his own feet wouldn't cause as many mild heart-attacks as this piggy-back ride from Percy, as nice as it felt to be so close.

"No," Percy replied, out of sheer stubbornness now. "Why, are you scared I'll drop you?"

Not really, Nico thought. He trusted Percy that much, but he wasn't sure he trusted him enough to not cause them both to fall. "No."

"You're shivering," Percy pointed out. The trembling took Nico by surprise when he realized that it actually was coming from him.

"It's cold." He offered as a way of explanation. And it was – Nico was used to his bomber jacket – but not quite that cold. Percy wasn't shivering. Actually, he was radiating heat that Nico was grateful to cling to. It was the warmest he ever felt in the Underworld. But-

Percy stumbled yet again. It rocked the headache in Nico's skull on it's side.

"Just put me down!" he yelped over the pain.

"Aren't we almost there?"

Nico grudgingly accepted his evasion and felt about for a minute. He could sense the gates because of the slight emotional turmoil it caused in the otherwise very still Underworld. "Yeah, if we get to the gates we can get to my dad's place quick to talk to him." They were just ahead of the boys – one more turn out of this tunnel and they would see them off across the fields. Hopefully Percy could navigate a field better than he could a dark tunnel.

And he did. Nico gratefully rested his aching head on Percy's shoulder. He felt completely nauseous now, in addition to the horrid headache. Nico was willing to accept some ambrosia or a Tylenol. Whichever was offered first. Whoever invented aspirin was a god.

"Hermes, I think," Percy said out of the blue.

"What?" Nico asked as he opened his eyes again to look at Percy's hairline.

"Aspirin. I'm pretty sure that's under Hermes' domain, the whole medical thing."

Hey, mouth-brake. Why don't you employ before the thought reaches the tongue? Life would be a lot easier for Nico.

The rest of their trip was made in relative quiet, aside from the bass drum playing in Nico's head. He thought Percy slipped a few more times and opened his eyes to accuse the boy of being a complete klutz, but realized they were still moving normally. Equilibrium was out the window.

So when they reached the gates and Percy finally set Nico down, Nico lurched and almost greeted the ground face-first. Percy caught Nico's his waist and steadied him against his side. "Shit Nico, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Nico lied. "Legs are just asleep." He didn't even have to concentrate to find where council was being held over Luke's judgment, the noise level from the arguing dead and the Fates was enough. Some of the gate guardians had joined in as well, and Nico realized he was never really sure what their job was in the first place.

As the two living demigods approached, everyone stopped their arguing to look at them. Life radiated like a warm sunbeam in the dead of winter in the Underworld, and some of the dead were basking in it. Which kind of creeped Nico out to think about. Luke wasn't around, and Nico realized that the argument was for a judgment to be over-turned.

"Luke's in Tartarus," he hissed to Percy under his breath.

"What?" Percy's eyes widened.

"Tartarus! You know, the big damn hole where really bad people go?"

"He doesn't belong there!" Percy didn't bother keeping his voice low, adding to the attention they were already attracting. But that yell made one figure turn around and Nico was surprised to see his father at a lowly mortal's judging.

"Nico," Hades said, his surprise almost perfectly hidden, but his eyes betrayed him as he scanned Nico head to toe as if to make sure it was really his son he was seeing. "What are you doing back here?" Then he looked at Percy. "And why did you bring… company?" Nico wondered what word he was going to use first.

"Nice to see you too, Uncle," Percy said with barely masked sarcasm. Nico tried to give him a warning glance, but Percy charged on. "Nico brought me to so we could make sure Luke wound up where he deserved." Nico's heart squeezed as he silently admired Percy's courage in the back of his mind. But now was really not the time as the argument started again in full fevor, as dead demigods from the battle gained enough life to put their voices against the guardians and the Fates for both liberation and condemnation and Nico's head hurt-

"Silence!" Hades didn't need to yell for his voice to boom over all of theirs. It rattled right down Nico's spine in the literally dead quiet after it. Which Percy broke.

"Luke's a hero!" Percy yelled. "He doesn't deserve to go to Tartarus!"

"He tried to bring down the gods," Hades started, and Percy cut him off.

"Can you really blame him, tho? With how awful the demigods were being treated?" Sarcasm was probably not the best route to go with this argument, but Nico wasn't sure how to tell Percy that. So he shoved subtlety aside and grabbed Percy's sleeve to pull the angry son of Poseidon behind him. Then he looked to his father.

"Dad, Luke did do wrong," he said in a neutral tone. "But he sacrificed himself to end the whole mess he started and saved everyone." His head hurt horribly, and trying to form a cohesive argument without changing his tone was hard. "Doesn't that at least cancel out the wrong he did, if not more than make up for it?"

Hades' eyes focused only on his son, and Nico felt uncomfortable under his gaze for so long in front of others. Then Hades shut his eyes and slightly nodded in a way Nico could only describe as sagely.

"We shall review the demigod, Luke's, case more carefully. To see if he should be granted reincarnation or continue to the fields, his two options."

Surprise and relief hit Nico at the same time, as he turned to look at Percy to see the huge smile across his face. The smile meant more to Nico than Luke's near-save, which he knew he should feel bad about that priority. But he didn't really care at the moment, his head hurt too much to care as Percy's face narrowed and the smile disappeared. "Nico!"

Then Nico couldn't see Percy anymore.

To Be Continued