Okay, writing this one by the seat of my pants so bear with me. I would've written last night but…whatever that's not important. Bottom line, this chapter may be a bit rusty.

I blame early wake-up syndrome

By the time we came out of the forest, Alex was her old self again. It felt good to have the real Alex back, not some evil version of her intent on killing me or a sad version who wanted me to kill her. I shuddered at the thought of that.

When we got back, we found out a war council was being held in the amphitheater to figure out our next move. Rebuilding camp was going to have to take a backseat for now.

"Well, I think it's safe to say were in no condition to take on an army," Will. The others agreed with nods, half-hearted jokes, or grunts.

There were so few campers left, everyone was at the war council. Even Rae was there, although Alex wasn't too happy about that. But like it or not Rae was staying here at least for a while and I was already teaching her how to use a sword so Alex couldn't call her useless in a fight.

She didn't keep a tight enough grip and her sword would always fly out of her hand and straight at me, but she was learning.

"So what's the plan then?" Henry asked. "Dig a cave and hide? No, we start making hit and run attacks on Urunos's army. Oh wait, what if we—"

"Henry?" Will interrupted.

"Yeah?"

"Shut up," Roxanne told him with a glare.

"Well I never!" Henry shot back, folding his arms and looking away. Alex slapped herself in the forehead, muttering something about a seaweed brained moron.

"Well you should," Roxanne advised.

"Both of you, be quiet," I said, getting annoyed. "Getting Henry to stop coming up with bad ideas isn't getting us anywhere."

"Hey!"

"Look I'm sorry," I apologized, "but they're terrible."

"Well thanks for letting me down gently guys," Henry huffed.

"Oh get over yourself," Alex said.

"Jerks…"

"Well Jacob, got any ideas in that big brain of yours?" Tony asked.

"Actually…" I said, almost ashamed. "No. I've got nothing. A whole camp full of demigods, and we could barely handle fifteen of them. An army? Not to be a downer, but if we want to stand any kind of chance it's going to take more than what we have here."

"We could go out and recruit some of the nature spirits," Han suggested. "And I'm sure there are people in Satyr Securities who could help."

"Maybe," I said.

"You get the mortals to help," Rae suggested.

We all turned to her in either stunned silence, confusion, disbelief, or a combination thereof. Then, all at once, we started laughing like she was joking. Henry gave her a slap on the back, and kept laughing, Alex actually started to cry she was laughing so hard. But, Rae didn't laugh, she just sat there giving us all a confused look.

"Wait, you're serious?" Will asked, recovering from his laughing fit.

"Yes I'm serious," Rae huffed. "Think about it. They may not be as used to fighting monsters and gods as you guys, but there's a lot of them. Mortal military is the quickest and biggest solution to the numbers problem."

"Even if I believed that," Alex said, "which I don't, how could we possibly convince the mortals to help us, when they hate us?"

"Not all mortals hate you," Rae protested. "I don't hate you, and I bet if we talked to the right people we could convince them to help."

"And who exactly would the 'right people' be?" Roxanne asked.

"Oh I don't know…" Rae said slyly. "A good place to start might be…the President?"

"Start at the top huh?" Tony. "Worth a shot. If we can convince him, he'll convince everyone else for us. And I gotta admit, an army of mortals with machine guns sounds like quite the rescue party."

"Quantity over quality?" I asked. "I know we're desperate but…really?"

"Unless you have a better idea," Rae offered.

Everyone turned to me, but I had nothing. I kept going over the battles against the Urunos slaves in my head. There were no weaknesses to exploit, no methods of attack to assure victory, no tactics that could be effective with the numbers we had now.

But mortal military…there were tons of them. The strategist in me couldn't help but smile at the thought of coming up with battle plans to exploit the strengths of a full sized army. Ambushes, traps, flanking maneuvers…With the numbers of the mortals there were infinite possibilities.

With fourteen battle weary half-bloods…digging a hole and hiding was actually sounding like the most effective plan we could pull off with our numbers.

"I guess we're going to see the President,"

All of us?" Will asked. "We've got one working van, and I will not be crammed in there with thirteen other people. I say we treat this like a quest, send three people, and the other eleven stay here and keep rebuilding."

"Well, who's going?" Han asked.

"Rae's idea, she goes," I suggested.

"What?" she and Alex asked at the same time.

"I can't…what?" Rae asked.

"C'mon, it was your idea," Jacob said. "And besides, your living proof mortals and half-bloods can get along. We'll need you there if we're going to be convincing."

"Okay I'll go…" she coincided. "But not without you."

"Okay, I'm great with people anyway," I said.

"Yeah…sure you are…" Henry chuckled nervously.

"Oh shut up," I shot back.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Alex said. "If you two are going, then I've gotta come."

"Okay, but why?" I asked.

"I'm not gonna let you two lovebirds run off on a road trip without any…severely biased supervision," Alex explained. I opened my mouth to protest, but Alex added, "Besides, neither of you can drive and I can."

"Argus could—"

"Barely walk around without running over Henry," Alex interrupted.

"The horror," Henry put in.

Alex stepped in between Rae and I and draped her arms over our shoulders. "Don't worry you two, it'll be fun! Just, you know…no PDA unless you want sparks to really start flying."

A brief jolt of electricity went through me and Rae, and Alex patted us on the back. "Okay, you two get ready, and I'll see you on the van."

She walked off, clearly pleased with herself. Henry and Han started laughing, Will smacked himself in the forehead, and Roxanne was shaking her head in disbelief.

"What?" I demanded angrily.

"Threesome!" Han bleated, and started cracking up again. I clicked Miz to life, aimed, and drenched Han in a blast of water. "Argh! Help! I'm drowning standing up!"

Rae giggled, and I shrank my sword back into a pen. That was when I suddenly felt a sharp pain shoot up my butt.

"Hurry up will you?" Alex called form the van far off.

Rae was rubbed her own hindquarters to try and relieve some some the pain.

"I think she's warming up to you," I said, rubbing the spot where I'd been zapped. "She only zaps the people she likes."