DISCLAIMER: Rick Riordan still owns PJatO and HoO. You can tell, because he's the one that bailed on Texas right before HoH revealed Nico's, ah, fetishes… Coincidence? Kolkolkol, I kid. That's not why he moved. But he still owns both series.

REVIEW RESPONSES:

Sydy – Nyx: Oh, good lord… There's a very interesting story to that…

Nic: NO! The sonic screwdriver is MINE!

Nyx: While I know what Dr. Who is, I do not watch it. So when Nic told me she had obtained a 'sonic screwdriver' and a mechanical whirring could be heard over the phone line, you can just imagine the horrors that went through my head….

oOo

"Ugh! Holy Styx! I'm gonna let him freaking have it!"

"That may not be a good idea," Brook sighed.

"Uh-uh! No! I kept my mouth shut enough! You guys said, 'Be quiet, Hunter, until we're done talking. Keep your opinions to yourself, Hunter. No, no, it's not like we're in the kind of situation like Kronos again, Hunter. Just pretend they're not smart enough to follow your epicness, Hunter.' Yeah, well, you're done talking! Next time we see him, I get my say!"

"Do it after one more conversation, please," I begged, sitting next to her on the cold carpet. She gave me an incredulous, threatening look. "You saw how he acted at the end. We've got a shot!"

"I don't think so," Brook said softly. All banter halted as we waited for her to explain, but she didn't. She just sat with her back to the door, Moon finally back in her normal form beside her, quiver cradled in her lap. Her fingers brushed the seven arrow ends and their feathers. Her other hand was rubbing her side absently, where she'd fallen early that morning.

Hunter snorted. "Chicken."

"Am not!"

"Mistress afraid. Mistress wise," Moon chimed in, sticking her muzzle into the quiver. It shook as she spoke. "Mistress is not chicken. Mistress is not food."

"Mistress might be soon," Brook sighed, scratching her shoulders.

"Psh. I can give you my opinion on that, too," Hunter huffed, but it wasn't strong enough to make us believe it.

There was a moment of awkward silence. I wished that Nico were there, but he had retreated to his own room across the hall, and I knew very well that alone time had its perks. Especially for him.

"Are we forgiven?" I eventually asked Brook.

"No." She wrapped her fingers around the chosen arrow. Moon gripped the end in her teeth and together they pulled it out and began to examine the shaft with hungry eyes. "I'm not a little kid anymore. I know what death is. You can stop hiding it from me. And if you expect I'd be grateful that you let me live at the extent of your lives, you're wrong. I would know, after my father, that I'm not that noble kind of person."

Moon whined and licked her chin. Brook just sighed and murmured something in her language before patting her shoulder and gently shoving her aside.

Me, I'd never felt guilty for the way I looked at her, and I didn't now.

Yet I knew better than to say it.

Hunter looked straight at her. "You're going to hate us if we don't subjugate to that."

"Maybe."

"Well, then you can hate us. We try, honey, but… we love you as you are and how we are in turn. Just because we think you're young doesn't mean we think any less of you. Psh, you shoulda seen me at your age. Four feet tall but tough enough to achieve complete impunity among my wimpy peers. Now, if you were a melodramatic teenager, we might have issues…"

Brook looked down and didn't comment. Hunter looked rather frustrated at that.

But she didn't miss a beat, either. "Anyway. Any other opinions on Hades?"

"Dandelion is right," Moon said. "Fear-scent covers him."

Getting tired of conversation, I returned to my iPod and thoughts. "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance was playing. That resulted in me wondering if my age was part of the reason my father hated me.

I didn't really care what his personal opinion was. It'd been a long while since that mattered to me at all. I mean, sure, his words might sting a bit, but we were two different people – we've no obligation to like one another.

But we had an obligation to get along, and he wasn't cooperating. Not even with lives on the line.

For some strange reason, I wasn't mad at him. The frustration was aimed at myself.

I was missing something.

Thirty minutes later I had nothing to show but another example that thinking too hard was bad for me and guilt that I'd taken so long to assess my own problems. There were bigger ones across the hall. Nico had now spent over two hours alone. Most of the time, he'd appreciate the space. Waiting patiently for him to come to you wasn't always as rude as that seemed.

But other times, he'd sit there waiting for something but never gain enough self-importance to ask you for it.

I turned down my iPod and stood, taking in the room carefully. No windows. Blank grey walls. Dark carpet. No furniture. We were high up in Erebos, far from the prison cells, but somehow I knew any escape or break-in would be impossible. "I'm gonna go talk to Nico. Try not to burn the place down."

Hunter winked. "I'll try my best. And tell Daffodil he's lucky I hate the name 'Romeo." Moon growled angrily at her.

I shook my head and knocked on the door. A skeletal guard answered. I showed him what I wanted and he let me pass, walked with me across the hall and five more guards, to my brother's door. I knocked lightly.

"Go away," came his mollified snarl.

"It's me," I offered.

"Go away."

"Alright. I leave in three, two…"

The door unlocked. I slipped in quietly and was sure to secure it behind me. His room was much like the one we were in; the only difference was the bed shoved against the far wall. On it was Nico's bag and Nico himself, his back to the wall where he could see the whole room but eyes awfully glazed. His fingers were on Mνήμη.

I sighed and sat next to him, waiting for him to finish. It took a long while. Eventually his gaze returned to reality and his sword was set down on the bed before him.

"Any comfort?" I asked.

"It's calming, at least," he said.

We sat there, offering comfort, but there was a barrier stopping us. I couldn't read his thoughts quite as easily.

"We're close," I said. "I wouldn't say it if I thought it. But we have him. We're so close. I'm not going to lie down when we're so near the finish line."

Nico shook his head. "No. We just made it worse. Now he feels cornered and alone. You know what animals do when they're cornered? What demons and half-bloods and gods do?" He chuckled as if it were amusing. "There's nothing left to beg for, Sis. The next thing we need to focus on is getting out of here alive."

"You'd give up on him?" I asked even as I recalled him leaving Hunter and Brook when they demanded it. "Just like that?"

He spread his hands helplessly. "Who am I to defy a god? Just one more person who doesn't want to deal with me. Whatever I did wrong…. Whatever turned him against me…. Is done now. No going back."

I didn't speak, though I could hear the words cutting him deep. Because I knew they healed as well.

And that Nico would come back to his father eventually. For better or for worse. For success or the sake of running in circles just for something to do.

Then my dream struck me again, and I had the awful premonition that he wouldn't get the chance.

I closed my eyes and fell onto the bed, rolling to my right. Gangrene was starting to spread again.

No. No, I don't want to rot. I want to live.

The desire was so close, so real. Like week-old hunger so tantalizingly close to a steakhouse on Friday night.

But the doors were locked right, and the windows barred, the foundation laced with magic-resistant stones. The people inside laughed and commerce with cruel indifference.

"I can trust you'll be able to hold your own, should we get you a bit of a head start. I've seen Percy pull some pretty cool stunts on the skeleton guards. My job will to be make sure the odds don't sway too far against us, keep the field even. That means I'll have to meet up with you later," Nico was rambling.

"That's too risky. Pluto might take his anger out on you."

"Well, I wouldn't be trying to get caught. And I'll just have to delay him long enough to escape myself."

I thought of the fortified fortress that was Erebos and shook my head. "No. We aren't splitting up."

"I'd rather do that than see you four killed because I brought you here," he said harshly. "Yeah, I know who touched the torches, but it was my quest from the beginning, and I dragged you along. Somewhere I have to put my foot down, alright? And it's at…"

His voice cracked and he cut himself off abruptly.

Something to lose, he'd yelled at Pluto.

Slowly, he fell backwards onto the bed as well, facing away from me so that our curled backs just lightly touched. I could feel him shaking.

"I won't lose you," he said. "I'll fight it every step of the way. I promise."

It wasn't fair that I existed. I knew it. Yet what right did I have to ask something of him? That was already plenty right there, that oath.

We laid there for a long time, feeling the fear and gangrene roiling in one another. Unanswered questions clapping like thunder in our ears. Feeling the mellow, tender brush of memories so tentatively, like an addict dabbing at his fix. Tasting the hollow despair of being abandoned again and the waves of agony from a fall that was only half-remembered and the low, humming ache of grief and hearing the clink of Mithridates's vials in his fastidious hands and captivated by the strings of a violin from another world at another time and the gentle orchestra of deep dangerous waters.

"Together," he said with a ferocious conviction. Like he might tear down the whole palace. "We fight like hell and whatever happens, we're in it side by side."

"Together and for one another," I agreed as I felt the hard resolve rising above the tide and my craving to live return. Live with all of them. "I promise."

oOo

"Hunter would know how to convince you," Shay said with her hands splayed helplessly before her, palms up as if she had something to offer. "But you chased her off."

"No, she ran off as soon as you started poisoning the water!" another anonymous counselor spat.

"I have no control over that," Shay argued, biting her tongue to keep from going into what her friend would have called 'hood-rat mode'. She'd always found that term a tad offensive but Hunter obviously hadn't meant it so. Hunter used a lot of terms that normally were scathing.

"She had about as much a say in it as we did when they killed our parents," Luna said flatly. That, and due to an awful reason Shay didn't wish to learn the details of, struck home.

Miranda from the Demeter cabin rose her soft voice. "Your intent doesn't matter. We're talking about how dangerous it is to have you around. If the Titan kids have been isolated for so long that they all've been manipulated or used like that, then there's still too little trust we can place in you. Lots of weeds look and smell lovely, but they're still weeds."

"Oh, sure," Will said to himself. Then, only a little louder, "You don't stop an infection by letting it fester."

"They'd be great in our armies!" Clarisse boasted.

Annabeth sighed and let her head hit the ping-pong table. "Why, why is it Seaweed Brain that makes people confident and intelligent, and not the one who actually does any work…"

Leo looked like he wished to say something, but didn't. Instead he fidgeted with his child's drawing of a grand old boat. Jason was watching with careful eyes. But whatever had led him as he in turn led his Legion, it was not there now.

The quiet kid, Seth, was in the back of the room. He sniffed the air and scowled. "Who has water?"

Silence fell like rocks.

"I can smell the poison. Who grabbed water?"

Eyes of smothering cinders turned to Shay. She shook her pounding head. "I'm not…"

The next thing she was aware of was Luna shaking her, calling her name. Chiron was waving the other counselors back to give her room. Down here on the wooden floor, she could feel the poison's awful scent curling around her nose.

She tried to pry Luna off and get to her hands and knees, but a sharp pain shot through her stomach. A rotten taste tumbled across her tongue as she crumpled.

Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she heard a ringing sound…

Will knelt beside her, green eyes curious but cold with indifference. He didn't so much as flinch when, for a horrible moment, her world seemed to spasm into horrendous colors and the deafening ringing blare.

On Half-Blood Hill, Pelius screamed so loud that the war counsel heard it.

oOo

"Twenty-One Guns," Nico suggested.

"No!" I gasped. "That one's better bowed."

"Then get out the bow!"

I chuckled and, cradling my beloved instrument, set the violin down in its case so I could loosen the freshly rosined strings. They had a wonderful smell.

My nose crinkled. "Ich. I don't recall rosin smelling like that."

Nico, also expecting the warm wooden smell, scowled. "That smells like hellebore."

No sooner had he said it did I feel something inside me twist. I mean twist, like my stomach was trying to wring itself out. I was so shocked I nearly dropped my bow.

That little accident alone told my brother something was wrong. "Sis?"

"Stomach ache," I muttered, yet on some dark and obstinate superstition, set the instrument's components in the case and zipped it tight. The air had decided to hit the waterslides and drop about twenty degrees.

Nico obtained a concentrated look and took my hands from the violin. His eyes met mine. "…Hey. You alright?"

"Fine," I said as clamps tightened on my skull. For a moment I considered giving him a different answer. But it wasn't too awful. Rather I just stood and made my way for the bed. "Oh, crap. My bag fell open. You weren't peeking at your Christmas present, were you?"

"You… you got me something?" he sounded astonished. Then he waved it off. "No. No, I didn't even think you'd bother."

I smiled and closed it. "Of course I would. You want to face Granny when her Christmas doesn't go as planned?"

He chuckled. "I'd be glad to, if it meant we were out of here. Or perhaps we should unleash her on Father." A gloomy veil slammed over him again.

But all he said was, "…Thanks. For hearing me out. You're the only one I can talk to without…" He meshed his fingers together in a chaotic web, demonstrating. "…Mess."

I opened my mouth to reply, but my throat had an arbitrary spasm, and a choking noise came out. The pain was minimal but the lack of control felt perverted and wrong. My hand flew to my windpipe.

"Sis?!" Nico asked, alarmed. His breath turned to frost in the cold air.

As I set the bag down, the colors of the room seemed to pulse aggressively, like acids in a loaded gun. A cold ringing noise with haunting undertones ripped through my ears.

Nico said something else, but I couldn't hear it for all the noise.

"It's ringing," I rasped. "Gods, it's like our doorbell in Oswego. Awful sound." My mouth moved and my throat had jeremiads ready, but I didn't hear my own voice.

But my body wasn't mine anymore. Somewhere, I thought it ought to hurt. Badly. But it was worse to not feel it at all. A force like massive, iron, invisible hands forced me down onto my knees. The cold wasn't just in the air now, it was in me, like ice in my veins. Hostile ice. Ice with little claws. The ice that hangs from overhead, sharp and beautiful, waiting to strike.

Nico called something and knelt beside me. All I saw was the dusty carpet. The ringing was even louder now. Loud and strong enough it could've cut string.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," a familiar voice rasped, reverberating in my mind.

I gasped and jerked up to stare at my brother, and the transparent clasps snapped angrily. "Gaea's Oracle-"

A Ventus slammed into him. I gasped in shock as wind exploded into the room. The two of them went sailing across the room in a dark, wispy curl. Then a golden shower before Nico crashed so hard into the wall, the thin plaster coating broke to reveal the relentless marble beneath.

Instantly, two more shot for him, and a third seized me from behind. I was surrounded by smoky wings. Through a whirlwind of feathers, I saw Nico lurch to his feet, but there was a glazed look in his eyes. He took one more down as he fell. Shadows curled toward the second as he lifted his head, but vanished when his eyes rolled back and he finally fell limp, blood trickling down his temple.

"No!" I yelled, squirming, but the cold aches had control of me now. Resisting would've been futile even without the demon hug. The screeching of the wind was nothing, nothing to what I heard in my mind…

The Ventus smiled, lightning eyes and dagger teeth filed to points. But it didn't move to kill.

"Întuneric!" I screamed. "Întuneric!"

The little white eraser fell almost by accident from my pocket. Summoning the last images of my sisters in the other room, I wrenched free with a touch of shadows and made a wild lurch for it.

One Ventus fell apart into dust as the shadows touched them. Another snarled and dodged my blade narrowly.

But it didn't strike.

"Coward!" I yelled, and sliced off its head with shadows from behind. It fell apart.

Five more emerged from behind me.

I cussed loudly and struggled to stand under the titanic weight. They just circled me and stared.

Stared out. Away from me. Like some sort of hellish escort.

What…?

My eyes caught sight, through the angry swirl of colors, of what must've been my brother lying beside the wall. Of the door angrily jolting inwards as someone pounded on it from the outside.

I judged a safe distance from them and let my anger burst apart the wall.

Nothing happened.

"In here! Venti!" I yelled, praying my sisters could hear better than I could, and fired again. Nothing.

Moments later, I saw it bubbling through the plaster and hardening in awful, ugly splotches, like a picture slowly burning to ash. The bubbles spread and crawled with rapid and vital life. Dirt and stone, emerging from the marble and iron, solidifying the walls.

Sealing them. Sealing me in.

oOo

Nyx: AHA! Just when you thought it was just gonna be dramatic feels the whole climax!

Sorry it's late. I had a very, very busy day, during which I was forced to participate in things I had no interest in and later I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen, and my patience with people has been utterly spent. If someone came up to me personally to say hi I might just commit murder. I'd have said it was rough if Nic wasn't currently having it even worse.

All's good now, though. Please review and let me know what you think.

Monday's should be on time. Oh, and if y'all ever need inspiration while writing…

Attack on Titan soundtrack. End of discussion.