AN: I gotta say guys, I am sorry. It has been a little bit since I last updated, I know. It's just that the last time I updated was during the week that SATs just happened to come up, and then AP tests came up, and then SATs came up again and prom came up again. This has been by far the busiest part of my year- not that I'm complaining.

In fact, I actually have SATs this week as well (I want to take them 3 times to superscore) but it's Memorial Day as I'm starting this and I really, really don't want to go another week without updating. That's just not how I roll. So, if you think this chapter is lower in quality, I'm sorry, but I'm doing my best with what I have.

On a brighter note, you can expect weekly updates (maybe even twice or three times a week) once this last week is over because then I'll be done with SATs and school will be winding down and it'll be summertime! *woot woot*

Anyways, without any further ado, onto the chapter. Enjoy.

Percy gasped as the man-bull thingy lifted him up into the air with a hand. "You're so much more fun this way." It snorted. "So weak. So pitiful."

He reared back and threw Percy as hard as he could. Percy groaned as he smashed through the bathroom wall and ended up sprawled in the Native American exhibit.

"What the hell?" Percy moaned, pushing himself up to standing position. He looked around and noticed he was in the back of a wagon. A small Native American girl was looking at him disapprovingly, as if to say, wow, you're bad.

The man-bull slowly stepped through the hole in the wall, shielding his eyes from the sudden light. The whole room was covered in stained glass windows at the top.

Percy slowly hopped out of the back of the wagon. "What the hell is going on?"

"You're going to die," It reiterated simply. "For what you did to my mother."

Yeah, and who's that? The Ben and Jerry's cow? Percy thought. "Look buddy, I didn't do anything to anyone."

"My father was the Minotaur." It continued. "He and a water Nymph had settled down, after the whole maze fiasco. Gained a bit of humanity."

Percy looked at it, confused.

The bull obviously took this as a sign to continue. "And then you had to come and mess things up. Perseus, the oh so great patron of all women had to come and make sure my mother wasn't bewitched or anything, just because she was with my father. And maybe she was. She just needed a little nudge, is all. She loved my father, though."

"Well, what happened next?" Percy asked, although he regretted it almost immediately when he saw the bull's countenance darken.

"She 'realized' that she'd been bewitched and came to you with open arms, begging for you to take her away from her captors."

"So, wait. I supposedly helped a bewitched women come to her senses and then rescued her, and I'm the bad guy?"

"That was my mother, you fool!"

"That you just admitted was bewitched! She wouldn't have been your mother if it weren't for whatever your psycho dad did."

"The Minotaur." Bullsy replied. "That's my father."

"Slow down," Percy said. "The Minotaur was real?"

"Is." The bull corrected. "He is real, and he's on his way here. I just couldn't help but get started."

"With what?"

"With tearing you apart limb by limb." It began stalking forward.

Percy tensed. Remembering the advice from before, he looked at his watch. It seemed to be pulsing and emitting a golden light. Percy gazed at the inscription, before the letters faded away, making way for two symbols to appear anew.

A sword.

A bow.

Percy tentatively pressed the sword. A loud ringing sound burst forth from the watch, and a golden dome of light sprang forward, enveloping Percy's entire left arm.

The bull stopped. "What is this?"

The light died down, and in Percy's hand was a gleaming bronze sword. It's hilt was worn, but fit Percy's hand perfectly- like it was made for him. Along the flat of the blade ran a series of Greek words.

At Least, they looked Greek.

"So you got a sword, big deal." The bull snorted. "It won't help you!"

Percy ran towards the bull, and slid under his meaty hand. He snapped back up, and the sword slashed across the bull's leg.

"This thing feels weightless," Percy muttered to himself.

The bull staggered back. "Why, you!"

"Doesn't feel so good, does it?" Percy taunted. "Once I'm done with you, even McDonald's won't want you!"

The bull stopped and gave Percy an exasperated look. "Okay, come on. It's bad enough that you hit me, do you need to say bad taunts too?"

Percy didn't reply, choosing rather to twirl his sword experimentally.

The bull ran towards Percy and slapped his sword hard. It went flying out of his hands, and then the decked him in the face with its shoulder. Percy felt a sickening crunch as he was lifted off of the ground and thrown backwards into a replica of Sputnik. Nearby, a wax statue of Yuri Gagarin was impaled in the face with Percy's sword.

As the bull began to stalk closer, Percy's sword pulsed with light and rang. The bull took a couple steps back, holding its head with its hands.

That's it! Percy thought.

The bull charged towards him again, but not one to be beat by the same trick multiple times in a row, Percy's mind was working overtime. He took everything into account; the speed of the bull, its size, its height- anything that could possibly hit him.

His body moving seemingly by itself, Percy suddenly turned and ran to the left. The bull looked on, suspiciously. "Hey, you know I'm down here , right?"

Percy jumped, landing on a red button on an exhibit. With a loud wail, two spy planes launched towards the bull. Percy hopped onto one.

Mid-flight, he jumped, grappling onto one of the museum banners. At this point, he was a good fifty feet above the bull, who had begun to jeer at him from below.

"Come down, coward! Athena would be disgusted!"

Athena? That sounds familiar.

"Please work, please work.." Percy prayed. "Whichever god or goddess is in charge of stupid, suicidal plans please make this work."

He looked upwards and threw the sword. It wedged itself in between the banners of the museum, right at the top, by the windows. It rang loudly (it was more of a screech, actually) and every single window in the room exploded.

Percy grunted, and tried to turn away, but was caught by many of the shards of glass. His grip on the banner loosened, and he slid down the wall.

On the other hand, the bull began to roar in pain. It clawed at its face, tearing large strips of flesh off. "Boy! I'll kill you for this!"

Percy cried out in pain as he landed. He felt a searing hot pain in his left ankle as he stood up, leaning against the wall. "Oh, fuck."

The bull charged at him. With strength he didn't know he had, Percy jumped and kicked off the wall, getting out of the way just in time to see the bull collide with it, shaking the whole building.

As it dislodged from the wall, one of its horns remained firmly inside.

That's my ticket!

Percy's ankle began swelling. He took in deep, ragged breaths. As the bull began to stalk towards him, he sprinted forwards. He quickly dropped to the floor and slid, sliding past the bull and reaching the wall. He ripped the horn out of the wall with a tug.

"Your story ends here." The bull growled, charging at Percy.

Percy gasped out in pain, his ankle giving out. He fell backwards onto the wall, and began hyperventilating.

Come on, Percy, you're better than this. He thought.

The bull charged, and Percy simply held the horn out in front of him, the point facing it. The bull rammed into Percy with enough force to send him crashing into the wall, ribs cracking.

Despite the haze of pain he was in, Percy managed to extract himself from the bull and crawl away.

The bull dropped to his knees. "You…you…"

"Yeah, I did." Percy said, grimacing in pain.

Seemingly phasing in and out of existence, it finally faded in an explosion of golden dust. The horn Percy used to kill it lay atop the dust.

Percy's sword dematerialized from the wall by the windows and reappeared as a watch on his wrist.

"Oh man," Percy gasped, propping himself up against the wall, when the hole he was thrown out of (from the bathroom) exploded.

Percy's heart dropped.

Surrounded by the dust of the wall, a true monster stood.

He was seven feet tall, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine-bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other obscure muscles, all stuffed like baseballs under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear, bright white Fruit of the Looms-which would've looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and horns-enormous black and white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.

"Any chance you're the delivery guy?" Percy asked hopefully.

Snort. The Minotaur replied, saliva going flying out of his nose.

"Guess not."

The minotaur shot forward at Percy, multiple times faster than his son. Percy braced himself. This would be where he died.

"Screw the ancient laws!" He heard, and the minotaur was sent flying back as it's chest was impacted by a dull gray lance of what looked like light.

"Are you okay?" A girl asked as she appeared in front of Percy.

She had tanned skin, and glowing silver eyes. Dressed head to toe in a similarly colored armor, her right gauntlet was smoking.

"How did you…" Percy began, when a thought suddenly struck him. "Hey, wait! Is your name Zoe?"

Zoe's eyes widened. "Why yes, it is. Do you know me?"

"Sort of. I have dreams about you." Percy said, instantly turning red at what he'd just said. "Not like, sexual dreams, but like, memories. I don't know whose they are."

Zoe smiled warmly at him. "Well, I'm sure we'll figure it out. Do you mind if I take a look at your ankle?"

Percy nodded. "I don't know what happened to it, but I fell from pretty high up."

"You fell?" Zoe asked incredulously as she knelt and examined his ankle. "Percy, you'd need to have fallen from really high up for your ankle to have been hurt this bad."

"I did." Percy said sheepishly. "I was at the top of the dome, by the stained glass. I had this dumb idea that kind of worked."

"Kind of?" She questioned, removing a bag of what looked like cubes from her waist.

"I got the bull thing to be startled, but I couldn't attack because my sword got stuck up there and my ankle hurt. I killed it with this horn." Percy said, waving around the horn.

"Open up." Zoe instructed, popping a square in his mouth.

Percy chewed experimentally, before flinching for a second. "What is that?"

"Ambrosia." Zoe said, offering Percy her shoulder for balance. "It's godly stuff that heals demigods like you right up."

"Can I have some more?"

"No. At least, not for now." Zoe said. "The stuff heals, but too much of it can cause you to literally burn up. You don't have enough god in you to eat it as much as you want."

"Are you a goddess?" Percy asked curiously.

"It's complicated." Zoe laughed. "I'm immortal, and the daughter to a former Olympian. I guess I'm some sort of a goddess, for lack of a better term."

As they began to walk out, the Minotaur stirred again.

It angrily snorted, and Percy tensed up, but Zoe shook her head. "Hecate's got it."

Black mist settled around the Minotaur, encasing it from head to toe and making it impossible for it to move.

Boom.

The black mist sucked in and then imploded, causing it to go flying everywhere with no trace of the minotaur.

"Hecate? Like the goddess of magic?"

"Told you he'd know me." A second girl materialized next to him.

"Hey, you're the girl from earlier!" Percy recognized. "Did you know I'd be attacked?"

"Well, yes." Hecate said. "And I technically wasn't supposed to help at all"- she said this with a pointed look to Zoe- "but I tried my best to give you some hints."

"Where are we going?" Percy asked.

"See, normally, when a demigod comes of age and fights his or her first monster, they to to this camp immediately after." Hecate began to explain, little black figurines acting out what she was saying.

"Yeah, normally." Zoe continued. "You're special, Percy, and I'm sure you know that. That fall you took earlier should've done a lot more than just mangle your ankle. That should've broken your lower half."

"Not to mention, your satyr is shit." The mist swirled and made a frowny face. "We literally posed as two students here and he didn't say a word."

"My what now?" Percy sputtered. "Satyr? The goat thingies?"

"Well, not exactly"- Hecate began.

"Yup." Zoe assured. "Your friend Grover. Didn't you ever notice he seemed a bit too old to be in your grade? And his walk was kind of funny?"

"Well, yeah. I just didn't think much of it. People have walking problems…" Percy muttered the last part to himself.

"You're too trusting, Percy." Hecate reprimanded. "We could've been monsters, waiting to kill you."

"Uh, Zoe destroyed the Minotaur in one hit while it took me dumb luck to beat his son. I highly doubt I would've stood a chance either way."

Zoe patted his cheek. "Good boy."

They exited the museum, and Percy noted with a small bit of pride that the whole left side was demolished, and paramedics seemed to be crowding it.

"Now listen, Perce, when we get there, to need to stay close to us." Zoe warned.

"What? Why?" Percy asked suspiciously.

Hecate shook her head. "The hunt isn't a place for men, normally. But we sort of get a bit more leeway, considering we're Artemis' daughters."

Artemis. Percy's breath suddenly hitched. "Arty is going to be there?"

Zoe gave Hecate a knowing look, before turning to Percy. "I wouldn't call her that unless you two are alone, and even then I'd try not to. That's a very loaded nickname."

"Who gave her it?" Percy asked.

"Percy, I think you know the answer to that." Hecate replied quietly.

It was me.

"Did I die? Who was I before?" Percy began to ask. "These memories I have, they're mine aren't they?"

Zoe glared at Hecate. "You weren't supposed to let that one slip."

"Oh Hades." Percy swore. "If those memories are mine...you're my daughters?"

Hecate smiled at him weakly. "Surprise?"

"My head hurts." Percy mumbled.

"You and me both, dad." Zoe shot back, enjoying the look of discomfort on Percy's face. "Ready?"

"For what?"

"Oh, he's ready." Hecate affirmed mischievously.

All of the sound drained out of the world. Percy saw Zoe wink at him, and he saw her lips move, but he couldn't hear anything. Slowly, the world begin to spin. It spun faster and faster, until eventually everything began to blur together.

And then, just as slowly as it had started, the spinning stopped.

"How was it?" Zoe said, holding back laughter/

Percy didn't realize why until he noticed that he was clutching to Zoe like a child. Actually wait, no. It was more like Scooby and Shaggy in Scooby-Doo when they find the monster.

"Welcome to the hunt, dad." Zoe said, gesturing with her hand.

"Zoe, we're inside a tent." Percy pointed out.

"Buzzkill." Zoe said, adjusting so that Percy was more comfortably placed in her arms.

"Oh man, it's like you're the child here." Hecate laughed.

"I'm only 12, Hecate." Percy argued. "I am the child here."

"Hecate, Zoe." Percy heard a dangerously sweet voice say from the front of the tent. He craned his neck and saw a girl around his age. She had auburn hair gathered back in a ponytail and strange eyes, silvery yellow like the moon. Her face was so beautiful it made Percy catch his breath, but her expression was stern and dangerous.

"Mom." They both said together nervously.

"Did you know I love you?" Zoe said happily. "You're the best mom ever!"

"Yes!" Hecate pressed on. "And you're so beautiful, too! I had almost mistaken you for Aphrodite for a moment!"

They both looked at Perseus with a face that said "Go on, compliment her."

"Uh...you have a nice tent." Percy said wakradly. "I really like the color. It's not like a glaring, bright white, it's sort of softer, like an eggshell white. It rally does my eyes good."

Hecate face-palmed, and Zoe muttered to him, "Smooth dad, smooth."

Artemis glanced at Percy coldly for a moment. "Who is this male you have brought into our camp?"

"Heh, you see…" Hecate said. "This is dad."

Artemis blanched. "Wait..what?"

Percy gave a wave. "Hi."

Artemis turned and ran outside of the tent, leaving the flap, well, flapping wildly.

"We have so much explaining to do." Zoe mumbled.