A/N: Okay, so sorry about the longish break everybody, but I've been dealing with a spat of writer's block. I know where I want this chapter to end, but I've been having a hard time starting it, so I'm just gonna try to get it to be as good as possible. So, on that note, thank for all of your reviews, and now on to the story.

Disclaimer: I have yet to get past Riordan's ninjas, but don't worry, I'm working on it.

Hazel II

Hazel sat in the circle with the other seven members of the upcoming quest, trying to pay attention to Annabeth's ideas for how they should start preparing to leave. It wasn't going as well as she wanted. Every once and a while her eyes would unconsciously move to Frank and then to Leo, and though she hated herself for it, she found herself comparing the two.

Without meaning to, her eyes would go up Frank's body, noting his muscles, but more than that she would see how much he had changed sinse they got back from their quest. Before the quest Frank had seemed to think he couldn't do anything, but now he gave off an aura of confidence, and though he had seemed awkward in his body before, he seemed to feel completely comfortable in his skin now, maybe because he knew he could change it whenever he felt like it.

But then she would look at Leo, and she couldn't help seeing how small he was compared to Frank. But that had never made a huge impression on her because his fun-loving air was the most striking feature. She also noticed that when he thought no one was looking, that air would fade, and be replaced by an inexplicable sadness. She wanted to understand why he was sad, but every time she thought about talking to him about it she would remind herself that, no matter how much Leo looked and acted like Sammy, he wasn't.

Hazel shock herself out of her stupor once again, and forced herself to hear what Annabeth was saying.

"…We need to prepare the others on how to fight the Giants." Annabeth was saying.

Percy sighed in exasperation, "And I already told you a thousand times, we don't have the time. Plus, when we fought them we didn't have any way to prepare. I trust them, and I know you all do to." He looked at all of them. "Just because we're going on this quest doesn't mean we're the only ones who can face these guys." He smiled then, "Anyway Annabeth, You know as well as I do that Clarisse will want a chance to fight these guys, and she won't look to nicely on us helping her."

Annabeth sighed to, "But we can't just leave them unprepared. Most of them haven't fought anything anywhere near as strong as a Giant."

"Yes, but they all have the ability to. I hadn't been trained more than a week before my first quest, and I only a few days after getting some 'on the job training' I was able to face Ares, and it's not like any of them will have to face the Giants alone," Percy retorted.

"Yeah, but—," Annabeth started to say, but then Jason interrupted her. "Leave it bee Annabeth. Percy's right, we don't have the time or the ability to prepare these guys for fighting a Giant. We're just gonna have to trust that they can fight them on their own."

Annabeth glared at Jason for a second, then nodded.

"What!" Percy exclaimed. "I tell you the same thing for like five minutes and get bupkis, but Jason talks for like five seconds, and bam, you immediately agree with him!"

Annabeth stuck her tongue out at him, "Well maybe if you weren't such a Seaweed Brain, you could've done it yourself."

Percy glared at her, outraged, and opened his mouth to tell her off, but then Piper intervened, 'Okay, well if we've got all that settled, is there anything else we need to do before we leave."

All of them looked at each other, and then they all shrugged.

"Good," Piper said, "then we can started packing, because we should be ready to leave first thing tomorrow mor—," She was cut off by a loud screech before she could continue. They all turned their heads as one in the direction of the sound, and what Hazel saw nearly gave her a heart attack. The ground about a hundred yards from New Rome seemed to be boiling, and as they watched hundreds of forms rose out of the ground.

As she watched Hazel saw two forms, smaller than the others, break from the gang of monsters and lead them toward New Rome.

Hazel and the others sat, thunderstruck, for a minute before Leo jumped up and yelled, "They're going for the Argo II!"

Hazel saw that he was right, they didn't have any siege weapons to attack the city, and once the monsters crossed the border, some being destroyed by Terminus as they moved across, they angled toward where the Argo II was sitting in front of the Forum.

All of them stood up and pelted toward New Rome. "How are we gonna stop that many monsters?" Hazel screamed.

Percy looked back at her, "We'll cross that mountain when we get there."

"But we're literally about to attack them!" Hazel yelled back.

"Don't look at the negative!" Percy yelled back.

By then they had reached the border to New Rome, and Terminus was losing his mind. "Really, this is just ridiculous! It hasn't been more than two days since Polybotes was here, and now all of you are here, too! Oh put down that rock!" The Earthborn he was yelling at looked at him, and threw the stone at him. "Okay I am seriously mad now! I swear when I get my hands on you you're going to regret it!"

Terminus then saw the seven heroes pelting toward the border and screamed, "You had better fix this, Jackson, or I'm going to give you and all your friends so many pink slips!

"Is that even a threat?" Piper whispered to Hazel.

"I have no idea," she whispered back.

"Do you hear me Jackson?" Terminus screamed again. "You'll be stuck with fines for the rest of your lives!"

"He can't even write one of those," Hazel heard Leo whisper to Frank.

"Just don't say that loud enough for Terminus to hear," Frank told Leo.

"Come on Jackson! Hurry up and fi—," Terminus yelled, but then was interrupted by Percy.

"We're on it, man!" Percy yelled back. "Just shut up and let us do this!"

"Well, I never!" Terminus exclaimed, and his face went blank as his spirit moved to one of his other statues.

"Do you really think that was the best way to handle him?" Annabeth asked Percy.

"I don't really care right now, we've kind of got bigger things to worry about." Percy answered.

"They all then reached the Forum to see a frightening sight. The Argo II was completely surrounded by monsters, but none of them were facing it.

A shiver went through the crowd of monsters, and then the front parted revealing two…monkeys?

Hazel rubbed her eyes, completely taken aback by what she was seeing. But when she looked again, the two small creatures in front of her were still monkeys.

"Welcome, heroes," one of the monkeys said in a squeaky voice. "My brother and I would like to welcome you all to our party." He smiled malevolently then and added, "We hope you all enjoy it, because it will definitely be your last."

Alright this chapter ends here, because I feel the need to torture you guys, and if you're confused by the monkeys, don't worry I'll explain who they are next chapter. 'Kay, I feel the need to tell you all this, I probably won't be updating much, if at all next week, because the new Christopher Paolini book comes out Tuesday, and so does MW3, so I'll be otherwise engaged next week. At that, I would like to say that I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I'm sorry if the beginning is a little awkward, I had a hard time starting this chapter.