DISCLAIMER: We do not own PJatO. Rick Riordan does. As well as HoO.

oOo

Ethan did his best to ignore the clamor of the crowd, picking through his eggs with the fork in his right hand, left arm pressed tightly against him in an effort to protect it and even shield it if necessary. His shoulder burned, but he didn't dare say that.

He sighed and sat the fork down, for despite his hunger, the inability to sit still was stronger. His eye wandered around the room. He turned his whole head to see what was to the left of him. Then Kronos's sharp golden eye caught his, and he looked away quickly and began to pick at his eggs again.

"So? You gonna tell us what that quest was about?" Hunter asked, stabbing her sausage contently.

He had a dim memory of her asking that last night. "No."

She scowled. Hunter, it seemed, did not like being told that. "Give us a hint, then?"

"Okay. I failed." On purpose. "I wasn't fast enough to get it done before my time limit ran out."

"You ran over your twenty-four hour limit," Brook reminded him.

Ethan grimaced. He hated that damn garden. "Not that limit."

"I bet the quest was very brave," Brianna murmured. Ethan sighed. If you saw the bright side of things, great. Good for you. Go get high on your illusions, and time will kill you fast enough. If you didn't, however, it got very annoying to hear everyone else say it five times over.

"What limit?" Hunter asked, right on topic, golden eyes boring into him.

Ethan tried not to flinch under their pressure, hot as iron. "A different limit. Shut up and eat."

He couldn't tell them. They were already too close.

Though yet again, something in the back of his mind kept insisting. You owe them.

He scowled angrily and stabbed at his eggs. He most certainly did not. He'd saved their sorry butts back when they'd ran off to China. And he'd trained them how to fight – if it weren't for him, Bree and Brook would be dead. He owed them nothing. He hadn't even consciously agreed to let them help him upon returning last night – he'd been semiconscious and only capable of simple thoughts. Like, Oh, it's them. They haven't hurt me before; I can trust them.

Ach. One false thought that led to another. He couldn't trust them, not really, and he knew it. Trust got you stabbed in the back. Or in the eye.

Though still, the voice persisted. Okay, even if the sense of trust was false, you still owe them. They might've saved your life last night.

As far as Ethan was concerned, that made them even. Nothing more. He refused to admit a debt. Except to Kronos, maybe. He shuddered – you listened to Kronos. No matter what. You just did.

Ethan didn't want his life saved. He didn't want a debt owed. They should've asked him first.

That hadn't been an option. They risked their own safety, out so late at night when the monsters hunt, and your anger at them to help you. They used their own supplies of bandages and nectar. That's not easy to get a hold of around here.

"Shut up," Ethan muttered to the small voice. No one commented.

There hadn't been reason behind their actions, anyway. Lack of reason was insanity. And he didn't owe an insane person – or a sane person over an insane action – anything. End of story.

He couldn't quite wrap his mind around what happened. Why would they do it, anyway? Deplete their own supplies? Wasn't that as bad as owing a debt yourself? They each had two sisters to look out for – why bother with him, an outsider, a stranger? It wasn't smart. People died for helping strangers, or from seeking their aid.

He'd have to give them a lesson on stupidity today, he decided.

oOo

"What do you know about ravens?"

Ethan started at the question. Off all the strange things Bree asked, though not the most outlandish, this had been the most random. "What?"

"Ravens. Black birds. More elegant than crows."

He thought about that for a minute. "…Aren't crows and ravens the same thing?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"Well, I don't know that, but I know they're both carrion feeders. Off the dead."

"Anything about myths?" she insisted, parrying his strike without a blink, eyes trained on his and totally focused on the conversation. He frowned. She was evading him almost subconsciously now. Not a good sign for him. He blamed it on his burning shoulder.

"No, although I'm sure if you ask around you'll find one," he said flatly, moving his sword faster and putting weight behind it at the last second, a cunning strategy he'd learned in the Labyrinth. "Why?"

She glanced down – there! He stepped past her guard. But in the blink of an eye, she was four feet back, sword drawn and pointed despite the distant look in her eyes. "A… It's stupid."

"It probably is, but since I put up with your usual idiocy, I see no reason for you not to tell me."

"Well… I had a dream. Two, actually."

Ethan froze, hardly noticing her fling his sword aside. She saw he wasn't fighting back and stopped, too, frowning. "…What?" she asked.

"Demigod dreams aren't something to play around with. What did you see?"

"Um… It kind of just walked around. I saw bones, but I don't think that's where the raven was."

"Both times?"

"No. The second time, it was talking to a horse about a silver flower. I know, stupid, right?"

"Not stupid, dangerous!" he snapped. How many times did he have to repeat himself? "Did you hear anything it said?!"

"No! ….It attacked me once, I think…."

"It attacked you?! It saw you?!"

"Yes. I wasn't exactly stealthy. Bones tend to crunch when you step on them."

"Don't you get it?! It could be another demigod!"

She frowned. "One that turns into a raven?"

"No! Ach, let me think…" He sat down on a bench, mulling over his tactics for explaining things. He had methods now, he'd been working with them for so long. She sat down next to him as he finally found the words. "Look, I told you that I tried to look for my mom in my sleep? The first day we met?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, demigod minds wander when we rest. I tried to direct mine, and I failed. It's usually a random, subconscious thing. But it looks into places you're not at, sometimes even the past, if you need to see it. Rarely, even the future. Since you saw this raven twice, and not in specific scenes but just doing random things, I think you're subconsciously spying on someone."

She blinked, looking kind of shocked. "Who? Why would I want to?"

"Well, the raven is the key to that. Find out who's related to a raven somehow. Once you figure out who the raven is, then you'll probably know why you're stalking them. Simple. The horse, too, maybe."

She didn't look very satisfied. "…Well, who do you think?"

"I don't know. Somebody that eats dead things?"

"So, all carnivores and omnivores. Maybe a demon. Great."

Ethan shrugged. "Someone relevant, now. Don't get too wild."

"Nobody's really that relevant that I can't meet in real life," she muttered.

"Percy Jackson? Would that not seem relevant?"

She was staring at Brook, distracted, watching the younger girl split her own arrows in half with each other against the target. "…I guess, technically."

Then, rather unexpectedly, Brook's target blew up. The blast of heat wasn't too welcome. People nearby yelped and jumped out of the way, hairs singed and one with his pants on fire.

"Yes!" Brook yelled, pumping her fist in the air. "Explosives spell!"

Bree paled. "NOBODY tell Hunter!"

oOo

That night, I called dibbs on the bathroom and was the first in there to change into my pajamas. As I pulled on the tank top I wore to bed, my elbow knocked against something hard and knocked it onto the floor. I cringed and waited for a shatter or the pinch of glass shards in my feet, but there was none.

I bent down and picked up what it was. My bottle of foundation. The one I hadn't used since the incident with Herald. Huh. Wonder why it was on the counter.

Despite my longing to see it again, the raven did not walk in my dreams that night.

Days went by. Weeks. Nobody I asked knew anything about ravens. Or evil empousi. Ethan was hiding something about his quest, and that resulted in a lot of cold silences between us. But we still trained without much of a hitch. His shoulder healed fine, though I knew that it seemed to take forever to him, because between the bad arm and missing eye, his left side felt rather undefended.

One day, I was searching through the rooms again. The ones in that corridor. I found fresh blood stains in one, still wet but sticky and on their way to drying. It made my skin crawl. The thick scent gathered in my throat like a ball of wet wool. But that was it; no body, no torn clothing, no sweet scent of death. I had trouble believing an empousi would spill blood needlessly, yet at the same time refuse to kill their subject.

I voiced it to Hunter in a moment of false confidence. She glowered at me, and we didn't speak for the rest of the day.

There was also another day, perhaps a few after I found the blood, when Kronos dismissed Hunter from training. It was a Saturday, so I was with them, but never before had he insisted on working with me alone.

"Go train with Nakamura and Brook for today," he told her. "Learn what they're working on. Some variation is good for you. I must talk to Bree alone."

I hate it when someone puts me on the spotlight. I stood there, staring stupidly at him, wishing I could come up with some witty comeback to put me on top of the situation. With most others, I could've – but this was Kronos. Everyone, even Ethan, was timid as fish around him.

He just stood there and stared back at me, eyes raking up and down from my head to my toes. I felt kind of exposed, but I didn't tell him to stop. Eventually he said, "If I asked you to kill me, right now, fast and above all silent, what would you do?"

"My lord? Wouldn't you stop me with your time powers?"

"Don't answer a question with a question! Assume I had none. Assume I am just going to stand here and do nothing until a blade touches my skin. What are you going to do?"

I thought for a moment. He and Ethan hadn't just been training me magic and fighting skills these past few months – they'd been training my mind and thought process for these situations. "…Your throat," I finally decided. "It'd cut off your air, so you couldn't scream. There are nerves and blood vessels there. It might take a couple seconds, but it'd be silent and fast enough. Can I ask why, my lord?"

He ignored me and asked, "How many places can you name that'll put a man down for good?"

I squirmed. I didn't like this topic of killing. I had felt Death in such an unnatural way before – at the Battle of the Labyrinth, stumbling upon the Hecate kid's body. It crawled up my throat and seemed to explode my cells, unleashing strange energy not too far from the shadows. It made my head buzz. Not entirely unpleasant, but… Big. Effective. It boomed in my chest like a kick drum. Did I have the right to cause such an effect, to destroy life? Especially when it tasted so addictive, like all the drugs we'd learned about in health class? Like it was temptation from the devil?

"Child, answer me."

"Head. Usually guarded and hard to hit but silent and painless. Throat. Lungs, so long it's deep enough. Stomach. Heart. Deep across the upper forearm. Couple places in the thighs that'd cause someone to bleed out." Yay for all those shark attack shows. "Spine. Any wound big enough has the potential to do it."

He nodded slowly. "Be careful with belly wounds. They depend on what's been punctured. It can be unreliable. Now, how would you do it with your powers?"

"Um… A random Stygian iron spike from the ground. I can make them sharp if I concentrate. Blood boil. Shadows wouldn't kill, but it'd be a nice cold shock to my advantage… I could shadow travel past and nip you with my sword, I guess. Stygian iron works as a shadow."

"Though not as well," he said sternly. "And the Stygian iron from the ground is too loud, noisy, and predictable. Blood boiling is loud and messy. As far as the shadows, I imagine enough in rapid succession would do the trick, but it'd wear you out and that's not a good idea. Very well. We'll work on your powers today."

I nodded and brandished my sword, the Stygian iron humming response to my touch. I had found that it was quite useful in lending energy or channeling magic.

"Now," he said, "as we do this, remember the places you said you'd jab at with a sword to kill someone. That's of use to you even when using magic. Alright, now-"

"My lord? I thought we were working with magic?"

"We are, you dimwit. Why ask?"

"…Are we working on magic, or assassinations?"

He gave me a cold smile. "We're working on how to apply your magic to killing people or other beings, child. It is a war, and you'll be fighting in it. What else did you expect?"

I had nothing to say to that.

oOo

A few days later, it was just me, Brook, and Hunter in our dorm. I was struggling to lift my massive shield composed of Stygian iron, courtesy of the new glyph.

"That thing will be useless in a fight," Brook warned. "It should change materials."

A cold chill went up my spine. Something dim as a shadow flashed on the wall and Hunter's face behind her. I hissed and shook my head vigorously. "Say that again?"

"It should change materials."

This time, I memorized the shape, and quickly doodled it with a pencil as to not forget later. Then I borrowed Hunter's scythe again, and began to carve.

Thirty minutes later, my sword could also change its matter.

"That is wicked," Hunter said, watching.

I grimaced. "It'll be helpful, but the wood mode is very weak. It'll smash easily. The sword is meant to be Stygian iron. I don't think the other forms will work too well."

Hunter shrugged. "Only use them when you absolutely need to, then. Ooh, look – that one flashes blue, not purple!"

I had noticed that, but didn't comment. The color didn't really matter to me, a dull, grayish blue that at its height should've been the color of cobalt glass. All that I felt was a swell of pride in my blade. I turned it back into a sword, tossing it back and forth, deciding there was a reason I'd drawn it this way from the bowl of water months ago. Then I changed it back to an eraser and slipped it into my pocket, swearing that if that blade saved my life – and it already had – then I'd give my life to protect it, too.

oOo

Maybe a total of four months since we'd arrived, in the middle of October, we finally managed to communicate with Ethan. Efficiently.

On our way back to dorm 333, he caught our eye. He was standing in a dark corner of the corridor, eye glinting like molten jasmine, hissing through his teeth at Herald. Ethan looked positively peeved. For a moment, I was worried that he'd draw his sword on the smaller boy. But he held his ground firmly and settled for gripping his sword hilt tightly.

"Look," I heard Herald whisper as he rubbed his tan arm where there was a small pink scar. "All I want is whatever you have. Protection."

"Protection?" Ethan spat through his teeth. "From what?"

"From the man, dog. From the big one. From the pack leader. From Kronos. What did you do to earn his favor like that?"

Ethan scowled. "One, I didn't earn his favor. Trust me. Second, it's not something that can be repeated. Bug off – this isn't your business."

"Come on, bro. Everyone knows he sent you on that quest two months back. He trusts you with the devil's daughter." My fist tightened. Pluto was not the Greek version of the devil, thank you very much. "He asks you for reports and has you run around like his little personal Hermes. Man, you're the teacher's pet. And the teacher don't abuse his dog."

"For the record, that quest nearly got me killed. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd intended me to die out there. I am not his pet. And if you say one more word about those girls, I'll-"

"Those girls ain't gonna protect you," Herald whispered. "They're his pets, too. They ain't gonna step out of line to save you if something goes wrong. Think about that, bro." And he stepped back, melding into the flow of the crowd as if he'd been there all along, disappearing in a heartbeat.

Ethan grumbled something and stormed across the hall. He froze when he saw us staring. "Did… Did you…"

"See and hear all that mess? Yeah," Hunter spat, glaring at the crowd. "I hate that guy."

"Yeah, well, it's my business, and not yours. You don't even know the full story, so you shouldn't bother-"

"It became our business when they attacked us," Brook muttered so sternly he paused to look and listen to her. "They hurt someone else, it's our business, especially if it's our mentor. If you get into trouble, we interfere, because swapping teachers now isn't in our best interest. Sorry for the inconvenience."

He scowled. "I told you already; you three stick together and don't listen or worry about anyone else. Stay with people you absolutely trust. That's the only way to survive. Anyone else is a potential threat to you."

"Even yourself?" Hunter challenged, raising an eyebrow.

"Even myself," he replied evenly, green eyes boring into her. "Quit poking your nose into places it doesn't belong!"

"What if we just want revenge on Herald?" I suggested. "Kind of convenient if we take it now, huh?"

He glowered. "Are you deaf?!"

"When I want to be," I retorted. From my jacket, I drew the bottle of prank poison. It was crystal clear, like water. "I got a full dose of this stuff left, and for my own interests – if that pleases you more than for yours – I'm going to slip it into something of his tomorrow. And you're not going to stop me."

A literal growling noise rose from his throat. "Why are you doing this?" he spat.

"Because it matters to me, and nothing you're going to say is going to change that!" I shot back venomously. "Now bug off! This is my business, remember?"

His eye was like a sharpened blade of jade. "Fine. Be that way." Then he spun on his heel and marched away.

oOo

Looking back, I don't blame him for being ungrateful. If you stop to think, he was just… in the dark. He didn't know what it meant to help someone out before. He'd been on his own too long to understand why one might lend a hand to another. The last time he had tired, years ago, he'd lost his eye. And he'd been in utter isolation since. He had lost sight of the benefits of helping someone else. All he knew now – all he'd been shown – was the downsides. The cons. The risks that went wrong. So he only saw it as foolish. That was all he'd ever known.

So I'm glad we stepped out. I'm glad that, even if it took a few tries (his shoulder, the potion) that we managed to revive some of the light in his eye.

We did it at dinner, when everybody was coming to him and his friends for trade. They practically served as our mall. I had bought some nectar from them once, in exchange for a couple coins I'd found at the base of my storage chest. Drachma, I believed they were called. Old, bumpy golden things that I quite liked.

Anyways, Hunter nudged Ethan and jerked her chin towards Howard. He gave us one last smoldering look before turning his attention – covertly, of course – to the slick trader.

Herald was chewing on his spaghetti (they had awesome sauce, by the way, complete with pepperoni) and frowning. "Interesting," he muttered. "Never tasted like this before…"

"My gods, you three are idiots," Ethan muttered.

Herald made a face and spat out the noodles suddenly, a strange choking sound coming from his throat. Next to him, Mac made a confused face. "You alright, man?"

Herald groaned, hunched over and clutching his stomach. "I'm gonna be sick…." Then he disappeared, falling off his chair and crashing into the floor. Kids leapt up and leaned forward, straining to get a look. Mac yelped in surprise and almost fell out of his own seat, eyes bugging out of his head.

"Did we kill him?" Brook whispered. Hunter shook her head and motioned for her to be quiet.

Then, a small cat leapt up from the floor and onto the table, brown pelt glistening in the light. The amber eyes were wide as it ran in circles, mewling in utter shock. Then its forepaw slipped in Herald's plate of spaghetti and he tripped, sprawling across a platter of shrimp, tail and paws flailing wildly in the air.

"Ha!" Ethan burst, an astonished look on his face. To my disbelief, the corners of his mouth twitched upwards just a little.

Herald screeched and leapt to his paws, fur fluffed up and eyes wide, claws sinking into the table as he stared down straight at us. Hunter giggled and waved her fingers, blinking rapidly, putting on a show. I showed him my finger rather proudly. Brook blushed and hid her face in her hair. Ethan raised an eyebrow and made a mock salute. And, for the first time since… ever, there was a genuine smile on his face.

The cat's tail and ears drooped and he stared at us, dumbfounded, astonished. I gave him my best Hunter smile. And he leapt off the table, hiding under Mac's chair.

Ethan and I were smiling in honest. He knew, at last, that he was beat. That had so been worth using my birthday present.

Though it'd be neat to be a cat for a couple months…

The next day, during training, I slipped on one of the tiers (we were on a slope, and that was the only way to gain a flat surface) and my ankle snapped. I grit my teeth and bit my tongue, drawing blood. The heat radiating from the fracture felt like a fire. It got worse when I realized I had, rather stupidly, left my nectar behind.

"Here," Ethan said, handing me his own canister. With a quick (and painful) twist of his wrist, he set the bone back in place and ordered me to drink.

As I handed it back, I said, "Because you'll get killed if I'm hurt, right?"

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, eyebrow raised in a, albeit smile-lacking but still just the same, smirk. "No. Because it matters to me."

oOo

Nyx: We are chugging along now. Look at that. The book is half over.

Nic: Half? I thought the original was just over two hundred?

Nyx: The original sucked, remember. This is the rewrite.

Nic: You estimated this at four hundred total, though, not five hundred.

Nyx: Oh, psh! We're well underway! Trust me on this.

Nic: Oookaaay….

Nyx: Anyway, I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT. Here it is; ….Please review! I mean review! Something longer. Tell us what you think of the characters and how you see Ethan's gradual change and what you think of the raven and Kronos's teachings of killing people and what he plans for the characters. Give us predictions and complaints and criticism and questions and chapter name explanations and anything else that crosses your mind! I don't care if your review takes 20 pages (hyperbole), I'll read it! And probably love you for taking that much time out of your day. Please, it's not hard! Give us details! We want to know what you, our readers, think! Things are written to be read; tell us how we're doing!

Nic: To all those that answer all of the above questions, you will get a virtual bucket of cookies!

Nyx: Oooh! And virtual stroganoff! With your choice of virtual beverage!

Nic: I think we're almost out of the virtual root beer, though…..

Nyx: Thanks for reading! We look forward to seeing (figurative language?) you next week!

Nic: Oh, I found some more! …Wait, nope, I drank that bottle last night….