Hey guys! Thanks for all the many reviews last chapter! :) Let's get going with those vague responses! Whoo! First thing, the poll will be closing the day the next chapter is posted! So check the ending note for more details. But I think I might hold off on writing the sequel, just to get some distance from this story. But I will eventually write a sequel, since everyone really wanted that. So get any last minute votes in! When this is finished, I will be taking a short break of a few weeks (two, maybe) just to relax before starting the next story. It all depends on when this ends! Another thing, no reviews annoy me. Ever. Not one person leaves a review that annoys me, especially people that review so regularly. I look forward to every single review, so don't worry about annoying me, because that could never happen. Back to the story-related ones, now! In a way, holding up the sky is a fate worse than death... Unless you're a traitor of Olympus that would most likely be sentenced to Fields of Punishment. And since Cassidy won't spend forever and eternity holding up the sky, I think she got off pretty easily. And don't you worry about someone letting go (except now I'm worrying about the morals of you people... Kidding!). There'll be a whole oath and all for that. And someone (no spoilers!) will give her immortality, so she doesn't just die as soon as she takes the sky. That's just mean on my part. As for Percy... We just have to hope they make it back soon! And about Demeter's friend, yes it was Hades. Or I tried to hint that, at least. I was going to have it be Hestia, but then I decided to make them friends in this story. They both have children they're trying to protect. They could use some friends, I think. And finally, at least in this story, I don't think Zeus is going to die. Sorry! ;) Ok, I own nothing but please enjoy this chapter! :)

Third Person POV

"Fine. All in favor of placing Cassidy Jones, daughter of Demeter, under the sky as punishment for her betrayal?"

For once, every Olympian (bar Zeus) was able agree on a decision. Eleven hands raised themselves high into the air.

Demeter turned and beamed at her daughter before returning to her throne. Zeus stood himself up with a heavy sigh, looking around at the brash fools that wished to save the life of the daughter of Demeter. He just wanted to see her thrown into the Fields of Punishment! Was that too much to ask for?

"I suppose we must place this traitorous girl under the sky, then," he said in a bored tone, glaring at the Olympians that had the greatest roles in saving her from a worse fate. Compared to the Fields of Punishment, holding the sky for a little while wasn't that bad. All he wanted was to see the girl suffer for what she did to his son! Again, was that too much for ask for?

Zeus didn't think so.

He waited for a moment before continuing, hoping at least six of them would come to their senses and change their minds. When he only saw a sea of nodding heads urging him to continue and leave behind his dreams of her suffering, he sighed again. "Fine," he all but whined. "Have it your way. Who wishes to bless this girl with immortality to prevent her from dying a horrible death once she takes up the sky?" He paused. "Or you know, that sounds good too. No one has to bless her if you don't want to. How about we just don't bless her at all? A win-win situation if I do say so! If no one has any objections, I'll end the council right here and-"

"Zeus," Demeter warned, a sharp edge to her voice. Her brother stopped and looked at her.

Damn it, he thought to himself, seeing the nicely-defined eyebrow lifted towards her hairline. Again, he sighed.

"Fine," he groused. "Who wishes to bless the girl?"

Everyone waited for a tense moment, no one moving to raise their hand. Demeter could not bless her daughter, unfortunately, because that would show favoritism amongst her children. The ones still safe at Camp Half Blood would be none too pleased with her if she did that, and they already hated her as it was. No, she couldn't bless the girl.

Artemis carefully avoided the gaze of her lieutenant, who kept trying to plead with her mistress without using words. Zoe wanted Cassidy to be blessed by her patron, even if she still felt a bit of resentment towards the girl. After all, Cassidy let her romantic emotions about a male consume her, something that any wise huntress would never allow. But even though Cassidy indirectly got her brother killed (briefly), she didn't want her cast into the Fields of Punishment. She didn't deserve that.

Artemis didn't want to bless Cassidy. It felt wrong to give immortality to the girl that caused her newest huntress to abandon her sisters. She couldn't take Amanda back into the hunt, either. Not since she gave up her immortality to resurrect the son of Atlas. He didn't have the same partial immortality of her hunters, though, so she didn't feel as much loathing towards him as she thought she would. Since he was dead when granted the immortality, it only gave him life, not extended life.

She suddenly realized that no one told him that particular fact. And yet he rushed under the sky to save two maidens regardless. How... Odd.

Amanda glared at both of her grandparents from the back of the room with her friends (and Atlas). Poseidon frowned at the ground, occasionally glancing at his stupid brother, but never once looked in her direction. Did he not know about her being his grandchild? Did he not care? Or could he not feel the heat of her glare as it burned into the side of his head?

Zeus, on the other hand, looked directly at her several times. At least, she thought he was looking at her. (It could've been Zoe or Cassidy whose direction he glared in.) Either way, she glared fiercely back. He would regret being such a dick to her, her family, and her friends. His son, her father, obviously inherited many of the same personality flaws.

Looking at Poseidon, staring at the ground and his brother without saying anything, she could see how her mom was related to him, too.

The Olympians all stared at each other from across the room. Hephaestus egged Ares on with his eyes, challenging him silently to grant the girl immortality and impress Aphrodite. Ares wordlessly retorted that if it was so impressive, Hephaestus should do it first. As her maimed face was still hidden in her manicured hands, Aphrodite saw none of this. Hera saw both of her sons mentally arguing and told one of them to just bless the girl and be done with it, before some fool like Dionysus got all the glory.

Dionysus was too dazedly drunk on his throne to notice what was going on, much less care.

Apollo stared at his younger sister, Artemis, knowing she should be yelling at him for calling her the younger sibling, even if he said it internally. Since she didn't even glance in his direction, much less react, he knew something was wrong. He kept staring (but hopefully not in a creepy way, he prayed), hoping she would look at him and let him know what was wrong.

Athena and Hermes made faces at each other, trying to convince the other one to bless the daughter of Demeter. Hermes argued that Athena should want more wise representatives.

Athena argued that the girl was technically a criminal, and wasn't that right of Hermes' alley?

Not a sound was made in the vast throne room until one party finally gave in to the amounting pressure. "Fine, I'll do it!"

Mount Orthys

He blinked desperately, wanting to at least see what was going to kill him, but the world was a blur of pain and sweat. All he saw was an expanse of white, with a little bit of black at the top, reminding him of a backwards-Oreo.

At least he'd be killed by an Oreo.

Perseus didn't really care too much that an Oreo would kill him. He cared more that his death would literally kill everyone else. And probably figuratively, too, before they all died in the explosion.

He squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the pain of the sky as he attempted to focus his jumbled mind on the pulling of his leg.

A moment passed. Through the ringing in his ears, he thought he heard someone calling his name again. Again, right? Right, that's right. But how long ago was that? And who was calling him then? Who was calling him now?

He didn't know the answers to any of the questions.

Suddenly, the pressure around his leg from the giant Oreo disappeared. Percy's eyes flew open (well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. He pried them open painfully with a great struggle, but that's practically the same thing.) and he looked around frantically for the thing that was going to kill him just moments ago.

Where did the Oreo go?!

He didn't see it.

He closed his eyes again, fighting against the pain of his body slowly being crushed like a tin can in a buff man's grip. He was convinced that he imagined the Oreo. After all, a walking Oreo? Seems impossible. He honestly was losing his sanity.

Darn. And he had really liked his sanity, too.

Suddenly, something grabbed his shoulders. From between clenched teeth he cried out in shock. Or at least he thought he did. He didn't hear it past the constant buzzing in his eardrums, like a swarm of mosquitos crying for his blood. Maybe that's what this pain was! A lot of mosquitos eating at him simultaneously. That seems pretty logical. He wanted to pat himself on the back, but that was impossible with the weight he was carrying.

The thing that grabbed his shoulders didn't let go, even as he tried to feebly squirm away. It didn't budge. Finally, he gave up fighting the strange hands that held his shoulders in place. They didn't feel all that large, he thought, or rough. They felt like doll hands. Or maybe kitten paws. Kittens could climb mountains, right? Or maybe the Oreo left its kitten behind.

Did the Oreo have a kitten?

His mind was so scrambled that the thoughts that should've been at the forefront of his brain were mercilessly pushed to the back. The concerns he should've had about being killed by whatever monster this was were tossed aside. There needed to be room for the increasingly more insane ideas.

He was just about to contemplate the likelihood of the kitten having human-sized hands (equip with five fingers and hairless palms) when the hands pushed him out from underneath the sky.

Perseus rolled with the shove, weak as he was, and tumbled out from the oppressive, unrelenting force of the crushing sky. He stumbled forwards a little ways before his knees completely gave out and pitched his body down the hill. He landed in a splotch of grass and didn't move for a very long time, trying to regain the strength to do so much as open his eyes.

It took a long time before he could even move his fingers. Everything was tired and everything hurt. Could he die from stress and exhaustion? Either combined or alone, it didn't matter. He was pretty sure he was dying, if the soreness and pain shooting through his muscles was any indication.

Obviously, it wasn't. After an eternity of laying there, occasionally groaning in misery just to hear a noise other than the ringing in his ears (which still hadn't faded completely), he mustered up enough strength to feebly sit up.

Immediately after that accomplishment, he toppled back over.

It took him two more tries to sit up before he stopping falling back over. Even then, his chest heaved up and down and cold sweat dripped down his forehead. The flow of salty liquid was a lot slower than before, but it still drenched his entire being.

Once he caught his breath, Perseus had to blink several times to refocus his eyes. His sight was still blurred (which was probably a bad sign) and he vaguely wondered when the earth started spinning so quickly on its axis. Or was that just him, too?

He blinked again, slowly regaining vision. After a particularly vicious eye-squeezing motion, his eyesight cleared.

First, he sought out the Oreo. He gazed around himself dazedly, looking for anything with a white bottom and a black top. He only saw grass.

Huh.

Through his muddled mind, he realized that the world didn't blow up when he was pushed out from under the sky, meaning something had to have taken it from him. He looked up at the peak of the mountain, trying to resist the urge to just collapse to the ground and sleep.

He noticed now, since he was attempting to look at something a great distance away, that his eyes were still a little fuzzy. However, he could make out enough to see something with a white bottom and a black top crouched under the crushing weight of the sky. Even though he was convinced the Oreo tried to kill him, he didn't want the Oreo to die taking his burden. Using all his strength, the semi-delirious son of Atlas began to crawl up the hill.

It took him longer than he would like to admit, but finally he was close enough to see exactly what the evil, murderous Oreo was. (But first he had to get himself back up into a somewhat-seated position, which also took longer than he would ever like to admit.)

The white part of the Oreo took shape into a long, flowing, Greek-styled dress. Percy fought off a small smile, remembering that his sisters wore dresses like that. He noticed the tanned legs that shot out from under the skirt of the dress, the muscles tensed as the being held up the weight of the sky. The Oreo (he decided to keep referring to her as that until he could identify her) didn't wear shoes, either.

The black part of the Oreo came into focus a moment later. It was harder to focus on that, since it was constantly moving. That's when he realized that it was a mess of long, tangling black hair.

Kind of like his sister's hair...

A frozen ball of dread began to settle in his stomach, weighing him down like an anchor. He wanted to drift away into the madness that was slowly taking up residence in his mind, but the realization stopped his ignorant bliss.

The Oreo wore the same white chiton as his sisters. Her legs were the same tanned shade as his arms (despite the endless swaths of black he cloaked himself in). Her hair was the same obsidian color as his. It was the same lengthy, wavy mop that belonged to all six of his sisters.

Fucking shit. His sister was trapped under the sky.

It didn't matter that at the moment, he didn't even know which sister was under the sky. The only thing that mattered was that none of them had any business standing between him and the crushing weight of the sky.

Gracelessly, Perseus scrambled to his feet. It took him several attempts to right himself before he could stand without the weakness in his body sending him back into the grass. But each time he got up, even for just a second, he made it a few feet further up the mountain.

Finally, he regained almost total control of his body, like Westley from The Princess Bride after he died a horrible death at the hands of his true love's fiancé. (He still couldn't believe that Hestia roped him into taking her to the theater to see that back in the late 1980s. He shouldn't have made that bet.)

Whichever sister was underneath the sky, Perseus had to get really close to see her face. She was hunched over, her long, flowing hair blocking her entire face from view. The curse of long hair, he thought bitterly. Maybe I should go my hair out long like that so I don't have to constantly wear the cloak of my hood up. That long hair gets everywhere, anyways.

He hurried to get closer and relieve his sister of this horrible burden that she didn't have to undertake. That she shouldn't have undertaken. Not that she physically couldn't, far from it; he didn't want her (or any of them) to ever go through suffering like that in their lives. That's why he left in the first place! But now here one of them was, willingly crushing herself to help him.

Him, of all people!

He ended up having to do a limping-crawling maneuver to reach the peak of the mountain in the most efficient manner. But when he did, he flopped himself down on the ground right in front of his sister's bare feet. Grasping for breath and hating himself for doing so (it was such a trivial matter to get up the mountain, as it was barely a few yards from where he had fallen; he shouldn't be out of breath), he struggled to look up into her face.

Slowly, his dark obsidian eyes were able to lift themselves higher. They climbed up her legs and past the hem of her dress, carefully avoiding anything indecent lest Artemis suddenly appear and murder him before he could defend himself. (That would be just his luck, too.) They scurried up her body to the neck of her dress, where they lingered for a moment, unable to raise themselves higher. It should only take him a small amount of effort, yet he found himself already tiring.

But he needed to know. He needed to save his sister before she did something terrible because of his reckless foolishness.

Carefully, with an embarrassingly great amount of strength, he forced his eyes to continue up his sister's face. They passed pursed lips pale with pressure, flushed cheeks white with stress, before reaching tight, closed eyes. Even with her eyes closed, he knew who this was.

"Aegle," he breathed in shock, staring at his second-youngest sister. She must have heard him through the pain of being slowly crushed, because she wrenched her onyx eyes open and stared directly into his identical ones. In a soft, strained voice, she whispered, "Go."

Hey guys! Ok, so, next update will be next Thursday. Yes, one full week. Sorry, but there's Easter and tomorrow is Good Friday and it's a big weekend for my family, being Catholic. So, next Thursday is the update. On next Thursday, I am also going to close the poll. I don't think I'll immediately write the sequel, since I feel like there needs to be a little breathing room, so I'll pick either the second or third option. Sound good? Ok, thanks! And happy Easter, if you celebrate it! Thanks. :)