I'm SO sorry I haven't updated in forever! Well, not really forever, but longer than usual. Thanks to everyone who fav/followed/reviewed - you make my day! So anyway, I've taken the advice of more than a few of you and decided to do a minor goddess. Her name is…

NEMESIS

The goddess of revenge, known for her brutal fury, godly powers and vicious strength, was driving around Chicago in a motorcycle.

She wasn't sure why she'd picked Chicago, but she liked it. Chicago was full of heartbreak and anger. It was a good city. The angst was almost tangible, even though it seemed to mortals like a nice place. After all, she could feel what they couldn't.

"…got what Nemesis promised him."

Nemesis looked up—and up and up, her vision zooming all the way into Olympus itself; the pantheon to be precise. To her surprise, all the Olympians were sitting on their respective thrones, deep in discussion. Since her name had been mentioned, and angrily, no less, she could guess what they were talking about.

"Hephaestus, you're not even the ones who've lost a child! What do you have to complain about?" Athena snapped, her braid falling over one shoulder as she leaned forward and scowled at the blacksmith god.

"Nemesis." His tone was grave. "She promised my son that one more thing would happen too hard for him to bear…and she delivered. Leo is a wreck, and I do not mean he is a machine wreck. No, he is a person wreck, and I cannot fix people."

Nemesis nodded thoughtfully to herself. Yes, she had tipped the scales just right. Leo had had a hard life, and this was the final straw. Now she was going to balance the scales and give Leo a better time. Also known as Calypso.

"Some things cannot be fixed." Athena's tone was just as serious.

Poseidon sucked in a breath. "Percy," he half-whispered, and his outwardly calm expression visibly broke into pieces. Nemesis could feel the burning desire for revenge in his heart, but he had no way to channel it—and so it burned with no outlet. Which was dangerous, especially with gods.

"Enough of this," Athena said sharply. "Where is Nemesis? She will answer to our queries." For a moment she seemed to blaze with her own conviction; looking at her was like watching a city burn. (I have shamelessly swiped this sentence from somewhere. Points if you know from where. KitKatWei, I'm looking at you.)

Nemesis had had enough of this. Closing her eyes, she pictured Mount Olympus.

In a flash—quite literally—she was standing in the throne room of the gods.

They were all staring at her—some, like Athena and Poseidon, almost hatefully—and some, like Zeus, neutrally. "What do you want?" Nemesis snapped. She didn't have all day.

Athena looked horrified. "What do you want? What about us? You will tell us why you did what you did, Nemesis, or—"

"Or what? What do you want to know? Why I killed the Jackson boy and the Chase girl?" Athena's eyes hardened, but Nemesis carried on. "I did it because of, quite obviously, balance! I am the goddess of the scales of the world. I could not allow Valdez to have such joy. Neither could I have let the others. There is such a thing as too much joy in this world, and I was long ago appointed to shatter it accordingly."

Nemesis was not quite as uncaring as she seemed. Even standing there, talking to the gods in as scathing a tone as she could muster, she felt slightly…well, slighted. She was supposed to shatter joy, yes, but she also had to keep her balance, and she felt that she had failed with Jackson and Chase. Too much pain, and their lives had been so hard. At least they had died in each other's arms.

"Yes, but you're supposed to balance things out!" Athena cried, echoing Nemesis' thoughts. "And my daughter's life had practically nothing in it that really mattered—"

"PERCY," Poseidon snarled.

"Hey, hey, hey," Hermes cautioned, but he was too late. The council soon dissolved into all-out war, with Poseidon and Athena yelling at each other, the other gods screaming over them, trying to be heard, and a few, namely Ares and Dionysus, making noise just because they could.

Nemesis stood watching calmly, although inside she was trying to keep it together. Jackson and Chase would always remind her of the one way she had failed. What if she hadn't been meant to orchestrate their death? What if she'd been supposed to keep them alive with their friends? What if, what if, what if. There was a world of possibilities, a thousand ways it could have gone—but only one way it had. There was nothing anyone could do about it. The past was in the past, after all.

It took a great deal of self-control for Nemesis to stop herself from leaving the throne room and returning to Chicago, because she knew inside her that she had to see things through; balance it out. But she grew more and more uneasy by the second, and she saw again the demigods' faces behind her eyes as she stood silently in the pantheon.

Chase and Jackson would always be her biggest what-if.

Nemesis closed her eyes and, to her surprise, mourned.