X

Quinn

The only thing that everyone talked about for the rest of the day seemed to be the one thing Quinn didn't want to hear about.

She didn't want to hear about how whinny the Greeks were. In Quinn's opinion, Percy talking to Octavian was a lot better than what she'd have liked to tell Octavian. If she could talk to people without totally screwing up the English language, that is.

And he'd made several good points- Annabeth could have gotten hurt really badly if she wouldn't have realised the knife was damaged, and Octavian was being unfair and discriminating against her. Just like Joan was to Piper.

Piper had lost her footing on an obstacle course- the kind of thing the army trained its people with. She'd been climbing up the side of two planks of wood with foot holes, leaning on each other like a tent. She'd slipped on one of the foot holes and fallen to the ground- which made no sense to Quinn. What Piper didn't have in strength, she made up with in agility. She'd managed to hold on with the smallest foot holes on the aerial paths, so this?

"If this is too hard on you McLean, you can just go whine back home East!" Joan barked. Quinn had never liked Joan- she always held her head so high up it looked tilted back, which was yet another proof that her ego was ridiculously enlarged. She might have been beautiful if her nose didn't scrunch up like you smelled bad. No, Joan would always be ugly on the inside…

"I didn't fall, that foot hole was slippery!" Piper argued back. "Touch it," she challenged. "There's something on it, I swear on the river Styx!"

Joan rolled her eyes.

"I've got enough of your lies, daughter of Venus."

"Aphrodite." Piper snapped.

"And of your attitude. So suck it up, and sit this one out."

Piper obviously didn't want to sit this one out, but what could she do? Quinn tried to give her a smile as she sat down on the sidelines, arms crossed making it very clear that she was not impressed. Quinn bit back a smile- she knew Piper wasn't full of attitude by nature. She was only doing it to bug the snot out of Joan. Quinn wished she was that defiant.

Quinn's turn came to run the obstacle course. She dove into the tunnel, army crawled under a rooftop of criss-crossed ropes, climbed the rope to tiny foot pedestals, leaped from one to the next do fast there was not time for hesitation, and paced herself on the thin ramp that led to the ground. She then hiked up one side of the climbing planks, and as she scampered down the next paused for a second.

"HUNTER! Don't slow down!" Joan yelled. But Quinn had to. The tip of her fingers touched one of the foot holes really quickly and she climbed back down at full speed, yet again.

She slid under the climbing planks, into a type of cage with ropes as floor. She slid down the slide out from the top of that thing and somersaulted all the way to the finish line.

"5 push-ups for slowing down!" Joan ordered. "What was that?"

Quinn only did them with one hand because the one who'd touched the foot hole couldn't touch the ground- she didn't want to lose the slimy substance they'd picked up. She had to figure out what had been put on the foot hole to slow down the soldiers.

More specifically; to slow down the Greeks.

Jason

"Look, I'm not saying that anything Octavian does is right, but you really can't get him mad." Jason tried to reason with Percy.

"Yeah, I know, but he ticks me off." Percy said.

"He ticks all of us off! Point is; don't mess with the guy." Reyna said.

"Reyna; what if he was making fun of where you're from, of where your friends are from, your dad, your family, your freaking heritage and traditions?" Percy asked.

"I'd punch him in the jaw," Reyna said. "But that's because I'm Roman, and he's not going to attack that. You… We're trying to damage control here. Feel free to help us out."

It looked so much easier for Reyna to have no tact as a public speaker. She just said things as they played out in her head, she didn't try to not offend anybody or any of that. You wanted her opinion, gods of Olympus, you asked for it.

"Rey, he's the only reason Leo, Piper and Annabeth are still alive here. It's not like he screwed everything up."

"He's only come close." Reyna argued back.

Percy sighed.

"I'm sorry, again. I just miss home and hearing trash-talk and insults about it isn't really helpful."

"I get that," Jason said. "A bit. But Octavian's trying to get a reaction out of you, man. Do you want to give him what he wants?"

"Don't you guys think you've lectured me enough?"

"Yes, but she doesn't think so." Jason said, pointing to Reyna.

"I don't care how the Fontus you apologise," Reyna said, "Octavian will remember that. It's just something else he'll add on his list of 'why I hate the Graecus'."

"I don't regret it. Rome might be about shutting your mouth and listening to your superiors or whoever has power, but that's not what I was taught, or at least not what I remember being taught. I was taught right, wrong, and going for the right." Percy said.

"Percy, you swore on your life that this would go okay." Reyna said. "If you die… Then we're full-blast screwed because I don't think anybody from that ship or from Camp Half-Blood is going to tolerate that. It's going to play out like such; somebody mad will do something stupid, that will give Octavian his excuse to tell Romans how weak praetor I was for not listening to the foreshadowing of this. Everyone will raise Octavian on a shield, he's praetor along with me, and as we all know considering you make fun of me for it, his public blabbermouth skills are far superior than mine. He'll rally at least his cohort although the fourth will probably go up as well with no problem, then Piper, Leo and Annabeth will be killed. He'll march to Camp Half-Blood and attack there instead of here, they're not going to be ready for a fight because they won't have a clue about what's happening here, they won't be getting ready when they see the legion approach because they won't know its doomsday, and there's nothing anybody will be able to do about it because Rome works that way." She said in her most cynical worst-case-scenario yet.

"I know Reyna! I know doomsday is basically around the corner! But would it have been better to have let him keep doing what he's doing?"

"Reyna- he's got a point. Octavian probably just lost a lot of respect because Percy was right." Jason tried to add in helpfully.

"I'm trying to keep a sleeping serpent sleeping here, that's the best way to handle him until our priorities get sorted." Reyna said.

"We know, Reyna, but…"

"You have no idea what he's been like for the last few months. How much rallying he's done- he'd got the second and fourth cohort wrapped around his finger if he decides to flip on us." Reyna said, suddenly angry.

"And I'm sorry about that," Jason said feeling the familiar pang of guilt. Reyna'd never voiced that out before, but he'd known. He could read her as much as she read him. "But this is going to turn out okay."

"If it works for you, then go. I guess I'll just have to rip more straw dummies apart. And find more blond wigs to put on them. And I'm going to start hitting targets right now if we don't go, and Grace, you're blond, so I suggest we get moving."