Me: Not going to post this chapter today. I just won't. My readers need to learn to be patient with updates. Not everyone is going to be as updating-awesome as I am, and they need to learn that in the real world, life isn't fair. So I am not going to—
Mom: Come on and do errands with me for the entire day! It'll be fun!
Me: *glances at computer* NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO, MOM! *sits down and starts typing to look busy*
And that's how this chapter was created.
Disclaimer: I'm not going to do it. I won't. I seriously—*gets hit by lightning by Almighty Overlord/Greek God of Cliffhangers, a.k.a. Rick Riordan*
Leo
The pair marched back to the forges. Leo explained that they would have total and complete concentration there, seeing that everyone was still at the campfire, as well as all of the supplies they might need later on.
"Where do we start?" asked Piper, sitting down and rubbing her hands together eagerly. "Maybe we could use a giant bullhorn, or—"
"Patience, Piper," said Leo. "You can't build any machine without a blueprint first. We need to get the facts." He marched up to a cabinet and pulled out three sheets of regular paper and a pencil. Always a pencil, he thought. Never pen. Pen ink doesn't erase, though pencil lead does. He went back to the worktable where Piper was sitting at and wrote Prophecy on the top of a page.
"We'll start with the prophecy," he explained. He turned toward his partner. "Do you remember it all?"
"Something about the past not being told correctly," she started, trying to remember. "And damaged time."
Leo scribbled that down.
"I remember the next part," he said, jotting down a few more lines underneath. "The Lost Heroes not being found yet, and so basically nothing has happened."
"Then it goes into a talk about the Romans, who are missing someone we should have changed," continued Piper.
While writing this, Leo voiced—
"And so the Goddess of Marriage—which is Hera, of course—was reluctant, so that never took place, which somehow resulted in the camps fighting each other instead of the real enemy."
"Then it goes into some talk about saving the fate of the future…" started Piper.
"And this is where we come in—the forge and the dove," finished Leo. "We've gotta change the persuasive rate somehow."
"And then it finishes with saying that even goddesses can make mistakes," finished Piper.
"Deadly ones as well," commented Leo. He stopped scribbling of what was an almost-perfect prophecy.
"Close enough," decided Piper, reading it through.
"Now we've gotta infer it," said Leo. He pulled out a second sheet of paper and wrote Interpretation on the top.
"When the past is not correct, and we're living in damaged time…" wondered Piper out loud.
"The Lost Heroes have not been discovered, so their adventures were never rhymed," finished Leo.
"That first part," said Piper, snapping her fingers in thought. "That's just sort of an opening. Summarizing what really happened in a couplet. Something happened in the past, so the time we live in isn't the correct one. Something happened…"
"My guess, something happened and the outcome was the opposite of what the person really wanted, so they did something in time to change it," said Leo. He stopped. "Man, this is really starting to sound like a bad sci-fi film."
"Complain later," said Piper. "The Lost Heroes… What could that mean?"
"Well, if you look at the following line, it says that these 'heroes' journeys have never been rhymed. That's just proof that I was correct. Their journeys not rhymed means that there was an original prophecy—perhaps a whole bunch of them—but something happened in the past to these lost people, so the prophecy was never fulfilled, thus never existing, seeing that prophecies are always right."
"Wow, Leo, you're good at this," said Piper. "But it's my turn now. The Romans missing their role model, the person we Greeks should have exchange—those two swapped people must be the Lost Heroes!"
"Man, we are on a roll!" Leo exclaimed, holding his palm out to Piper. "High-five!"
Piper slapped his hand.
"Alright, next lines," said Leo, returning to the task at hand.
"What happens now is just repeating itself; Hera was reluctant, so that didn't happen." Piper stopped to gasp. "That must have been what was changed! Hera-freaking-Hera didn't do some sort of switch, and thus the result was that the camps turned against each other!" she exclaimed eagerly. She took the paper and pencil from Leo and scribbled that down in a corner.
"One possible way to save the world, blah blah blah," said Leo. "Forge and dove to change persuasive rate."
"But how on earth will we do that?" asked Piper. "Assuming that the 'persuasive rate' here is somehow convincing the Romans to stop their attack and the Greeks from their counterattack."
"Worry about that later," her partner replied. "Last verse, come on, we can do this."
"High stakes, goddess makes mistakes," said Piper, setting the page and pencil aside. "Also unnecessary info. But there is one thing I don't understand."
"And what would that be?" asked Leo.
"How they would have gone back," said Piper. "It's not like the god/goddess of time would happily follow this bad guy's orders." She paused. "Would they?"
"Maybe they were forced," said Leo. "But it is best to research up on that anyway." He stood up heroically and pointed his finger upward. "To the Athena cabin!"
[insert heroic music here]
After a short walk, the two of them were sitting on the floor of the cabin, surrounded by books—most of them being god/goddess encyclopedias.
"There's something I should know about all of this," said Piper, setting a book aside and leaning forward to grab another one. "It's as if though it's an itch I can feel but can't scratch because I don't know where it is yet."
"God of time, god of time, god of time…" murmured Leo, tracing his finger down the table of contents of a textbook, searching for the title. "Not here," he announced with a short sigh. He grabbed the book Piper had just abandoned.
"Not in there," she warned. Leo redirected his hand and chose a different book.
"So you've got a theeling," Leo clarified in a matter-of-fact tone, opening it.
"A— what?"
"You know, a thought and a feeling at the same time," said Leo. "A theeling that we won't want to know about this god of time?"
"Sort of," replied Piper, flipping to a random page in a random book. "Maybe we should just start at the beginning and go through everything. It'll be longer, but we'll cover more grounds." She began to read out loud. "Once upon a time there was a Titan who had a bunch of kids and he swallowed them all, just 'cause."
"Is it actually written like that?" asked Leo, interested, looking over her shoulder at the book. Piper shoved him away.
"Jeez, I'm paraphrasing," she told him. "Anyway, one of these kids wasn't eaten, Zeus—"
"God of the gods," said Leo tiredly. "Yeah, Piper, I've gotta tell you something. News flash! Used gossip, hel-llloo!?"
Piper ignored him. "Zeus survived. Then he fed his daddy some horrible concoction to make him throw up his siblings, and after a long war, the gods drove the Titans back into Tartarus. Some Titans include Iapetus, Hyperion, Epimethous, and the one who started it all, Kronos, the lord of…" Her face paled considerably.
"Lord of what? Idiots?" Leo asked.
Piper frowned at him. "Try time," she said.
That was a horrible cliffhanger, I know, but I'm tired and I don't want to write anymore. So go away.
I'm kidding! It's just that I'm evil and I don't have Rick's cliffhanger skills. But whatever.
Now some reviews!
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dont wana log on: What, stalker much? Canada; that's all I'm telling you.
CrazyChick: I don't think Festus is going to appear, because I replaced him with Chime. Ha. Maybe, though, but I don't think so.
hernie locker: Don't worry. No one's going to die in the war. (Well, no one important anyway... MUAHAHAHAHA!)
EpicMusic: That's the POINT the Greeks didn't do ANYTHING but OCTAVIAN has this CONSPIRACY thingy going on in his HEAD and he believes that the GREEKS are EVIL and now he has the entire CAMP under his train of THOUGHTS. (I just made random words caps. :D)
Forever South: Thank you for your long review!
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Now review, or else you are a heartless jerk.
