I'm, uh, back… and late. Again. *Sigh.*

I swear, I'm not just lazing about! Well, not all the time! :P
I've just been working on another story, and this chapter wasn't the easiest to write. :/

Disclaimer: All rights to Rick Riordan and stuff! If you can't tell the difference between his writing and mine, raise your hand! *Cricket noises*

I wonder, Green thought absently, as he lay flat on his back with his head aching yet again, How many times have I been knocked out this week? Not to mention how many boats had met their unfortunate ends, evil monsters that had tried to kill them ‒ well, that last was to be expected. Still, he should really find a mortal doctor when this was all over and find out just how many concussions a human being could take before they turned into a vegetable.

Well, there was no time like the present for discovering what evil man-eating monster has you in its clutches, so Green opened his eyes. What kind of hell fiend would be looming over him today?

There was a girl staring at him. A girl that blended perfectly with the background, leaving only vague outlines of her body and eyes. Invisible girls, just what he needed.

"You're awake," she said, matter-of-factly.

"Uh…" he said, trying not to sound like a drunken goon and probably not succeeding.

"You can talk?!" she asked, as if he was her favorite cat or something.

"Yeah, for…" he paused a moment. How long had it been? He had no idea how many days. Two concussions, two faints, and a sleep, right? Wait, no, two concussions, three faints, and a sleep. Did drowning count as a faint or a concussion? "…six losses of consciousness."

She was giving him a strange look, but she had some pretty good reason. Not that she should talk, or rather look, as she had jumped off a cliff earlier. Was that the same person? Did he make that up?

"You shouldn't be able to talk. That's the whole point, you can't talk until we train you."

Well, this was just getting more and more cryptic. How he loved confusing conversations first thing in the morning.

"Uh, excuse me, what?!" he demanded, hoping she might actually make some sense if she said it again.

"That's just the way it is. We don't talk at first, we physically can't! If you don't talk, you don't make allies. They distract you," she explained. Well, she was talking, but the word "explain" was pretty generous.

"Right, let's start slowly… no, let's get to the million dollar question actually. Why am I not supposed to have allies? Who are you?! What do you mean by training?" Technically, that was three questions, but who was counting?

"You're biased. Your domain is all that should matter. Oh, and I'm Abby, I'm supposed to teach you about your powers."

POWERS?! It was about darn time! Percy got his epic water skills and sword fighting, Annabeth had her battle strategy and dagger, Tyson was basically the hulk, even Grover could magic some lousy vines into existence! All he got was as much balance as a drunken toddler on a pogo stick, spaghetti arms, the strength of a diseased weasel…

"Powers?" he asked, trying not to sound greedy. One crazy skill, was that too much to ask?! Some flight, invisibility, maybe one weapon he could use competently (that wasn't basically a stick)?

"Oh, those won't come until later. I think I've gotten you confused… let's start with your name." Drat. Well, they'd better be some awesome abilities.

"I'm Green," he said, rather anticlimactically. Green wasn't a very impressive name to begin with, and he'd just kind of said it. Dramatic flair was another thing he simply couldn't quite grasp.

"Green. That isn't very clever. Well, my full name is Abigail. Get it? Abigale?"

"Er, no actually."

"Right, you have no idea what's going on!" That, sadly, was quite an understatement. Absolutely nothing even remotely resembling any clue at all came a bit closer to the mark.

"I'm a blank slate," he said flatly.

"Well, to start with… um, I've never really done this before. We're, uh, elementals, sort of." Okay... that rung a bell, that one bell in the cathedral that was cracked or something, so it made a really discordant, annoying noise that did nothing at all except confuse everyone.

"What?"

"Okay, I'll just tell you the myth!" she said, smiling brightly and making him shiver slightly. He was hanging around demigods too much; with Annabeth and Clarisse, bright smiles were usually a bad sign. "So, way back when Gaea came from Chaos, he was a bit overprotective. 'Course, he was an all-powerful deity, so instead of just worrying like a normal person, he created the first elemental, the protector of earth to guard his daughter."

There was an awkward silence as Green tried to grasp what she was saying.

"Anyways," she continued, ignoring the funny look of utter confusion that he was probably making. "Gaea was lonely, yadda yadda, Ouranos!" That was much more… oversimplified than he was used to, but he liked how to the point it was. "The second elemental was created, protector of air. That's me, uh, kinda. I protect the wind and sky."

"You aged well," he said, trying very hard not to start spluttering and making incoherent noises. Wait, was he that old?!

"No, wait… uh, well, that was the original air elemental. She, wait… he, yeah, he the first time‒"

"What?!" he asked, his voice rising another octave. That was often a symptom of complete mental overload, something he'd been experiencing far too much lately.

"Yeah, when he died, he was reincarnated, and so on and so forth. I'm the…" she paused, thinking. "...I have no idea. Something in the millions. There've been a lot of incarnations before I came along. Right, so after that, there was all kinds of procreation‒" she ignored the odd noises Green started making again. "‒and eventually more elementals were made, one for each, uh, element. Fire, water, earth, air, and you. And, er, there's another one, but we don't talk about her."

"Okaaay…" Green said, trying to process everything she'd just said. "I'm the… what elemental?"

"Plants, duh!" she said. Green thought she rose an eyebrow, but it was hard to tell what with her being see-through and all. "I just met you today, and even I knew that!"

"The other one, you said you didn't talk about…" he trailed off, looking at her expectantly.

"We don't talk about her," she said, looking at him oddly, like it was somehow rude for him to ask. When he didn't respond, she said, "She's the incarnation of, well, darkness. She's evil." Ah, that explained it. Not really, but he was too busy with all the other questions crowding around in his head to stick to one topic.

"So, do we all have themed names? Abigale, Green…"

"Huri's name is the first half of Hurricane," she said, "and the fire guy goes by Chris, as in Crispy."

"Nice to know I'm part of a long line of god-awful punners," he said with a sigh.

"That's nothing. The air guy before me called himself Gus, as in Gust." Green had to force himself not to cringe.

"So," he said, once he'd recovered somewhat, "If you had a past reincarnation… incarnation? Carnation? Anyway, what was mine like?"

Abby froze, staring at him.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked, after a long and awkward pause.

"I'm just curious," he said, wondering why he felt so defensive all of a sudden.

"Oh…" She was silent for at least a minute after that, looking down at her feet. "Well… she was kind. She'd never hurt a soul, unless you messed with her friends. It was a bit of a berserk button of hers."

That sounded a lot like Percy, actually.

"What was her name?" he asked, filled with a sudden urge to know about this woman that had come before him. It was like finding a diary that belonged to a mother long dead and forgotten. Before, he'd never noticed how much he needed to remember her, but now…

"Jasmine." He laughed a little at that.

"Like the plant? Sorry, but that's way better than all those puns and oh my gods are you crying?!"

"No," she protested, turning her head away from him. He hadn't noticed because she was so translucent, but her eyes looked sort of sparkly.

Green hesitated between patting her on the back and putting a hand on her shoulder. What was he supposed to do?! Would she be mad that he was touching her? Could he even touch her? She was see-through, what if his hand went right through her?

"I'm sorry! I didn't… don't cry!"

"It's okay…" she said, wiping her eyes angrily.

"Well, she's in Elysium now, right?" he said, trying to smile reassuringly.

"No," she said, flatly.

YOU COMPLETE IDIOT! Green thought at himself. Gingerly, he rested a hand on her shoulder. She was reassuringly solid, warm and alive-feeling.

"Uh, well, uh…" He really sucked at this. She drew in a shuddering breath, let it out.

"I-I'm okay now," she said, after a minute. "It's just… we don't get an afterlife. We just… stop."

"I'm really sorry, I didn't know," he said softly, cursing himself for being so incredibly insensitive. "She sounds great."

Abby smiled weakly, "You're a lot like her, you know."

Green grinned, "I ought to be! She's kinda like my mom, right?" Abby blinked, and for a horrified second he thought she might cry again.

"Yeah," she said simply. Time to change the subject, he thought.

"When you say powers… what exactly does that mean?"

"Well," she stopped, collecting herself. "Jasmine could grow plants, make them move… stuff like that."

"Cool!" he said eagerly, hoping that his enthusiasm might cheer her up.

"Of course, it takes years before we can use them, like, on purpose."

…

Crap. The universe was just messing with him at this point. Oh look, it turns out you're an entirely different species with epic powers! 'Course, those epic powers are basically the same as your average Satyr and aren't even reliable. HA!

"Great," he muttered, hanging his head. "Just splendid." That got a laugh out of Abby at least. "Oh yeah, is it true that if I go too far away from plants for long enough, I die? A pine tree told me." She blinked. Twice.

"Yeah, it is. We're all like that. For me, it's going underground."

"But… there's air underground. That doesn't make any sense!" Green could practically hear the universe laughing at him. Sense? What is this sense you speak of?!

"Well, I'm more a wind elemental than air. No wind underground, or inside buildings."

Green stopped to process that sentence. "You can't go inside? Ever?"

"Not unless you leave the windows open," she replied, smirking. The look on his face must've been pretty funny.

"Okay. Hey, uh, am I supposed to develop super strength, by any chance?" Green really, really wanted some cool powers.

"No, no, definitely not. Actually, you're probably less strong than the average person, at least at first." He wanted to be offended, so badly… but the truth was the truth.

"Any particular reason? Is there some kind of cool tradeoff?"

"Nope. It's because you're basically a newborn baby," Abby replied, the corners of her mouth twitching.

"No! I've been alive for… uh…" He didn't really know. "At least a year."

"And one-year-olds have such excellent fencing skills!"

"But… but I'm older than I remember! I had this weird dream, and I don't remember it, but it, like, erased my memory!" Yes, he was babbling… but it was so unfair that he was completely useless in every single aspect of combat. Except the insane plans part.

"Oh… I think that was your creation."

"The weird dream?!" He wasn't even two. He wasn't even two!

"Yeah. That was Chaos. We're not born, we're made, so we can sometimes remember, uh, coming into being."

Wait…

Wait!

The oak tree! "Those like to you in spirit have never been born." Oh, ha ha! Stupid mysterious oaks with their cryptic bull‒

"Look, we can talk later, but we should really head to the beach. Luke's on his way with his ship, and‒"

"WHAT?!" Green shrieked at the top of his lungs. Perhaps a more subtle approach would've had more success, but there was a limit to how many game-changing shocks he could take in one conversation.

"Oh. You made friends on the other side right? That's what I was trying to say, about your domain being the important thing."

"He poisoned my friend! My friend the tree!" Green protested.

"One tree. Trees, air currents, puddles of water, bits of soil… millions of them are killed every day, cut down or poisoned, and Kronos would get rid of all that." Green froze. His insides froze. He'd never thought about that, actually. So… air and water were sentient. Earth and fire were sentient. Even DARKNESS was apparently living and thinking, just like him. Great, just great.

No way, part of him said. Luke is EVIL. He tried to kill your friends more times than you have fingers!

That was true… but Luke could probably wipe out every demigod on the face of the earth, and it still wouldn't add up to a single square mile of jungle.

This feels wrong!

He thought hard, looking for what it was that made this feel so incredibly immoral. It wasn't that hard to locate actually.

"I can't just help with mass murder! That's wrong on so many levels, I don't even know where to start!"

"I'm all ears, if you have a better idea," Abby said, looking at him angrily. Well, he suspected that was how she was looking at him, but on her translucent face it was hard to tell.

He couldn't just tell people. No one would take some kid's word for it that all the plants in the world were sentient! Even the tree nymphs at camp didn't seem bothered by all the deceased plant matter they served at dinner every day.

Wait a second! The food at camp wasn't grown there or imported, was it? It was just there, by magic! If they could magically create the food, maybe he could eat it! (He really missed meat.)

Still, he was getting off-topic. What would help the plants of the world more than the death of all the humans? Hmm, his plan should also save the air, earth, and water.

Magically transport all the humans onto the moon? A very naïve part of his brain suggested. Nope, rubbish.

"Stumped, are we?" she asked, giving him a sympathetic look. "Look, I don't like the guy much either, but… there isn't much else we can do."

"Look," Green said, desperate. "Even if what you're saying is true… that still isn't right! We can figure something out that saves everyone!"

"That only works in movies kid," she said, smiling sadly.

"What about the humans?" he demanded, feeling a familiar tightness in his gut. "They get the short straw, no supernatural protector, so now they're just expendable?!" He spat the last word like a curse, standing up and raising his fists.

"Look, I don't want to fight you‒" she began, stepping backwards.

"Sorry, I don't make friends with Luke's minions!" he shouted, charging her.

She didn't even blink, just hopped sideways. "I'm no one's minion!"

"No!" he retorted, clenching his fists so hard he felt his fingernails break skin, "That's why you aren't kidnapping me and bringing me aboard his ship!"

"I'm not going to force you," she said softly, "If you want to leave, go."

"And when you come back later with your new boss and start disemboweling my friends?!"

"I'm not going to hurt you, I just‒"

"Want to wipe out the entire human race. Okay, why would I have a problem with that?!"

"It isn't that simple!"

"You said I was like her!" he yelled, "Would she have been okay with killing all those people just to get what she wanted?!"

Oh CRAP! He thought, realizing what he'd just said. That was so below the belt, it was down in Hades!

The look on her face was probably going to show up in his nightmares, even if she was too transparent for him to see it all that well. Her mouth was hanging open, as if she'd lost the will to keep it closed, eyes huge and glassy.

"I…" she whimpered, her gaze dropping to the ground.

Some part of him that wasn't in too much of a complete panic to be sarcastic spoke up in acid tones. Nice going, PERCY!

"Wait, forget it, um, I'll just… I didn't mean that!" he babbled desperately, caught between backing away and patting her on the shoulder again.

"No," she whispered. "You're right."

"I'm not! I'm an idiot, and I shouldn't have said that," he protested. Had they just switched sides? Was he trying to get her to commit genocide now?! Stupid complicated argument…

"She wouldn't like it," Abby mumbled, still studying the ground. "But that doesn't mean it's okay to just do nothing."

"We'll figure out another way, okay? Something we can both agree is right."

"Like what?! How could we possibly get it to stop?" she shouted, glaring at him.

"I don't know, but that doesn't mean it's impossible!"

"I still can't help them. I mean, it just…" she trailed off, flopping down into a sitting position.

"So don't help them! We'll make a deal. Both of us search for ways to fix it that don't involve killing billions of people, and you'll only help me do that. After all, doesn't it make sense, if both sides are wrong, to just stay out of it?"

"I guess…" Abby said, reluctantly. "We don't usually take sides in things like this… human conflicts. I just got so caught up in… everything."

"By which you mean Luke?"

"It's not like that!" Abby protested indignantly. "I'm‒ uh, not, um… it's not like that!"

"Sure," Green said drily.

"Hey! Just because I happen to have two X chromosomes, doesn't mean I'm a complete idiot whenever some guy with a scar comes along!"

"No one can blame you, really. He's got lots of charisma."

"It's not like that!" she said again, throwing a leaf at him. A wind that Green highly doubted was innocent picked it up and slapped it across his face.

"Okay, okay!" Green relented, holding his hands up in surrender. Stupid wind powers. That was cheating!

It wasn't like he was jealous or anything. Nope.

"Right, so now we aren't trying to kill each other…" he said cheerily.

Nice Segway, he thought to himself. Very smooth.

"I wasn't trying to‒"

"Sorry," he said quickly, not wanting to start another argument. "But have you seen Clarisse? She came on the boat with me, but I haven't seen her around.

"Oh."

"Is that a "She's over there" oh, or an "Oops, left her on the boat" oh?" he asked, alarmed.

"Over there," Abby replied, pointing off the rocky outcropping they were seated on toward a large swath of forest.

"You just left her in the woods?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yeah."

"Uh, okay. Can we, er, go?" It wasn't usually this easy to just pick up and leave.

"I guess," she replied, shrugging. "But… your boat…"

"Smashed into little tiny pieces," Green finished. "I noticed."

"Sorry about that."

He stood up, stretching and yawning. Being knocked unconscious really made him tired, for some reason.

"You could probably use a raft or something," Abby said, after a minute. "I could call in a wind.

"Thanks!" he beamed, glad to finally get something resolved without any violence.

A ship horn sounded.

Green sighed. He knew without looking whose boat it was, but spared a glance to confirm that it was indeed the Princess Andromeda, Luke's floating fortress of evil. It was moving fast, way faster than a cruise ship ought to be, and in seconds the boat was docked about a hundred yards away.

"Oops," Abby winced. "Uh, run?"

"Nah," Green replied, casually. "I've been meaning to stab him with something pointy."

"Ahoy there!" shouted a blonde someone that was almost definitely Luke.

"No, seriously, run! Get out of here!" she whispered, poking him in the side.

"Ouch. How? Do you have a sailboat out there somewhere you forgot to mention?"

"Abby!" Luke grinned, strolling casually up the rocky cliff-face. He had new goons too, a pair of women with snakes for legs. Green didn't bat an eye; it wasn't nearly as scary as someone with vipers for hair. "Nice to see you."

"Not really," she said, stepping between him and Green. "Cool minions you got there, but how do they run?"

What? Green thought, confused.

"Don't tell me," Luke rolled his eyes, "The deal's off?"

"Yeah. I guess I don't like how you RUN you're operations."

"What?" asked Luke and Green, at the same time.

"You're hopeless, you know that?!" she yelled, shoving him away. "RUN! GO!"

"I'm afraid I'm not going to allow that," Luke drawled, one of his snake-cronies casually pointing a crossbow at Green's face. "You are quite a pain, for someone so pathetically inept. And you talk now?

"Yeah. It's been great! Now I can tell you just how much I wish the earth would swallow you up and deposit your corpse in Tartarus," Green said. Yes, such an intelligent insult! cried the part of him that was starting to sound disturbingly like Greg in mock adoration.

"Shut up." That'd be his special skill from now on. Being annoying.

"Look," Abby interrupted. "I've decided that I can't help you kill so many people. I'm also not letting you hurt my… brother?" The last word came out as almost a question. Thou shalt not think too much about the godly family tree was pretty much number one on the list of "Things a demigod shouldn't do if he/she wants to retain his/her sanity," so he wasn't going to think too much about how exactly he was related to Abby.

Probably the two billionth cousin two-hundred times removed, if Jasmine was his mom. Ugh, now he'd thought about it.

"What," Luke asked, his tone patronizing. "Again? This is the third time." Abby flushed, eyes dropping to the sand.

"This is final," she insisted, but her voice was a bit quieter now.

Luke flashed a million-dollar smile, showing way too many teeth. "Come on, don't you want to help save the air?"

"I saw that!" she gasped, pointing at him.

"What?"

"That smile! That is not why I helped you! How stupid do you think I am?!"

"Suuure…" Green said, at the same Luke asked, "Really now?" Okay, that had to stop right then, or he was going to have to see a psychiatrist.

"Shut up!"

"Come on, you know you're going to come around again soon! Why not help me now, save a little time?"

Years later, when Green felt unusually depressed, he would remember what happened next and go about the rest his day bouncing on the balls of his feet. Without warning, Abby leapt forward, aided by a sudden gust, and landed her fist right on Luke's too tanned nose. A crossbow fired, but was swept up by the wind and landed safely in the water.

"Green, run. The bow won't hit you," she said, her voice deadly calm.

He wasn't about to argue. Without a second thought, he plunged headfirst into the forest.

There was no point being all "I won't leave you!" or anything. He'd seen the look on her face. It wasn't self-sacrifice, it was "Get out of my way or find yourself blown into next week."

"Come on, deus ex machina…" Green muttered as he crashed through the undergrowth.

Just as he hurtled what he was sure would be his last rotting log before he collapsed from exhaustion, he rammed head-on into a very familiar someone, who spouted some very familiar profanity as the two of them crashed to the ground.

"Green! You useless moron! Where were you anyway?!" Clarisse demanded, helping him up.

"Um…" I just met an invisible wind spirit girl allergic to basements who told me all about how I was created by Chaos to save the plants, not even two years ago, and I'm gonna get unpredictable, unreliable satyr powers later, just like my past reincarnation Jasmine, the only exception to the rule of awful pun names. Oh yeah, and Luke's trying to kill us! "We don't have time. Luke's trying to kill us!"

"Fine. How do we get out of here?"

"Improvise!"

He figured there'd be a ship, or small sailboat, or even a log raft. What they got was a cliff.

"Now what?!" Clarisse demanded, looking seconds away from pushing him off for being stupid.

There was a lurch, and he was tumbling into the abyss.

For a second, he was confused. It wasn't like she'd actually push him off a cliff!

Then… "AHH!" Green screamed at the top of his lungs, as the waves below got way closer than he liked. But somehow, not coming up quite as fast as they should have, not that he was complaining. Suddenly, there was a voice from behind him, somehow not being snatched away by the wind.

"Thank you for flying elemental airlines! We hope you enjoy your stay, and never again stupidly back yourself up to the edge of a cliff when being chased by flirtatious psychopaths!"

Oh. Abby. He twisted his head, confirming his suspicion that Clarisse's collar was indeed clasped in his new friend's other fist. Not only that, but her mouth was forming some more profanity.

Then, they hit the water. Granted, they were going much slower than they should've been, but there was really only so much wind could do to slow their fall without ripping their faces off. As it was, the shock of the water made Green lose most of his air, and he barely made it to the surface before taking a huge lungful of fresh ocean breeze. Coughing, he flailed his arms outward, managing to catch something sturdy and buoyant, which turned out to be a large piece of the Song Runner. Wincing at the memory of the unfortunate ship, he hauled himself up and began scanning the water. Abby and Clarisse were both about ten feet away, swimming towards his little pile of planks.

"Great," Abby beamed, grabbing one side of the pathetic little raft. Reaching out, she grabbed a fair-sized wooden stick ‒ probably a spear or something, judging by the sharp, fire-hardened tip ‒ and wedged it between two of the purple planks. Then, seeing what she was trying to do, Clarisse tore off a strip of her t-shirt and helped tie on a small, shattered remnant of a plank. Green hung his own tattered excuse for a shirt on top.

"This," Abby proclaimed, eyeing their handiwork, "Is probably the least sea-worthy thing I have ever seen. That said, Luke is going to find us, so get lost. Their rowboat's gone, so that'll buy you some time, but‒"

"Wait," Clarisse interjected. "Who‒"

"He'll explain later," she promised. And with that, a strong wind picked up, sending their pet embarrassment skidding along the waves at a fairly respectable pace for something constructed in less than ten minutes.

As it turned out, he and Clarisse had to take turns holding the mast together. Until Green almost fell into the ocean, nodding off while mumbling something about a mysterious destiny that came with really lousy powers.

"Okay, you're obviously not going to make any sense until I let you sleep," Clarisse rolled her eyes, giving him a look like it was somehow his fault that he couldn't just run on a hundred percent adrenaline.

"Oh… Kay…" he muttered, in a slightly singsong tone, before curling up on his side of the raft and trying not to crack his head on the deck.

Sleep…

"Mmph…" he grunted, half in contentment, half because he was kinda worried about more life-eater nightmares, and so out of it that he was actually considering telling Clarisse. It was probably a good thing he couldn't quite summon the energy to talk properly.