Sorry for the wait,Myra and I are having writers-block. Thanks for sticking with the wait.

Special thanks to Guest who reminded me of this.

I don't own pjo or hoo


In The Underworld

Jason's eyes were wet with tears as the the memory of Julia's death finished. Beside him, he could see Piper trying to stop the waterfall of tears flowing down her face, too. On his other side, he saw a tear fall down Nico's face, he would have been surprised but honestly, Jason couldn't blame the guy. He was in shock, Leo had been though Tersesa and then this too? Jason only knew a little bit of Leo's past, but he knew he had gone though too much.

"I don't understand, though. Why would Leo be in a gang? Why would you be in a gang?" Piper inquired, rubbing away some tears from her eyes. Her voice shook a little bit but remained strong. "That doesn't sound like Leo, and from what you told us, it doesn't sound like you either."

Julia shrugged, walking over to place her sword in the weapons rack on the side of the arena. "Gangs aren't always what people think they are. There are a lot of stereotypes surrounding gangs and the people in them, a lot of them true but a lot of them false. I ran away from home when I was eleven; it was a stupid decision. I had a good life at home, but… my mom started dating this guy, a nice guy, and I overreacted. I didn't want my life to change, so I left out of anger.

"And that's when I met Cruella," Julia continued, turning back to face them. A small smile appeared on her face. "She was nice to me at first. She took me to this place, a warehouse where all of these kids and teens and young adults stayed. It didn't look like a gang. It just looked like a band of runaways, and that was what Cruella told me they were. She lied.

"A few months after, Cruella showed her true colors. The gang was built on the foundations of loyalty and trust and strength, which seems like a good thing, but… they took it too far.

"If you went against the gang, your family paid the price for it."

Jason couldn't stop the gasp that escaped his mouth at her words.

"They… killed people?" Piper stammered. "I mean, I know what they were going to do to you, but… they killed the families of so called traitors?"

Julia nodded, somberly. "I feared for my mother's life if I ever left the gang, and when Leo showed up about a year after I met Cruella, he feared for the lives of some of his friends. These people- Rose Potter and her children James, Madison, and Morgan- had taken him in after he ran away from a foster home. They treated him like family and not like a charity case, and the thing Leo loved most was that… he had the freedom to choose whether to leave or stay. If he chose to just pack up his bags and leave one day, they would be sad but they wouldn't stop him like foster parents or social services would have done. He had the freedom to choose, and Leo wanted that more than anything. That was why he got so close to them.

"Until Blake came into his life. Leo never told me the full story, but he did tell me that Blake met him and… took a liking to him. Blake basically stalked Leo for a month before he made his move and threatened the Potters if Leo didn't join the gang. Leo couldn't let anything bad happen to the Potters, so he gave up his freedom in exchange for their safety, and the worst part is… the Potters think Leo just left them. As far as I know, they have no idea what happened. They thought Leo chose to leave them," Julia rambled, and at this, she couldn't stop the tears from escaping her eyes. She choked back a sob, and Jason wasn't surprised to find that he was doing the same.

Julia scrubbed away her tears and swallowed, continuing the story. "Blake held that above Leo's head for a year, and after I died, Leo couldn't take it anymore. He left the gang that night. I'm not sure if Blake ever went after the Potters, and I'm not sure if Leo knows either."

Nico nodded, and Jason could see the tears pooling in Nico's eyes, but Nico, being Nico, refused to let them fall. "Thank you, Julia. This… This has been very helpful. Do you know where the dagger could be?"

Julia nodded. "It should still be at the gang's headquarters. Sparrow Street, Salida, Colorado (1). There's a bunch of abandoned warehouses lining the street that the gang uses. The dagger has Leo's initials engraved into the bottom of the hilt."

Jason brushed his blonde hair from his eyes, more just to move his hands than having to get his hair out of his face. "Thanks, Julia, and what you did… for those kids… that was really brave."

Julia pursed her lips. "I was tired of being a sheep," she replied, simply, but Jason, Piper, and Nico, knowing far too well what it was like to be pawns in a chess game they never wanted to play, understood, perfectly.


Camp Half Blood, Cabin 9

Annabeth was in shock. She knew that Leo had been through some tough stuff, but not like this.

She thought of how hard it must have been for Leo to kill his friend to spare her a painful death, and the image of a blonde boy with a scar stretching down the side of his face plunging her knife into his Achilles Heel. She knew exactly how hard something like that was, how something like that robbed you of a piece of your soul that, no matter what you do, you can never get back.

"Why didn't Leo tell us?" Hazel murmured, her quiet voice resembling a scream in the silence that had fallen over the room following the story Jason, Piper, and Nico had told.

"Would you be able to talk about something like that?" Percy asked, not in an angry or accusatory voice, but in a flat tone, a genuine question.

Hazel remembered all the ones that had fallen victim to her curse, remembered the way her own mother tried to use he'd to raise Gaea, and she understood all too well how difficult it could be to confide in people, to open the closet and show people the skeletons and demons that lurked there.

Annabeth unfolded the map once again, and if anyone noticed her hands shaking, nobody pointed it out as she flattened the map on the bed.

"This is what we know so far," she began, talking mainly to Jason, Piper, and Nico but also just wanting to lay down all of the information and sort out her cluttered, overwhelmed mind. "To save the flame you must go where the healer god roams: according to Zeus, Apollo is in Alaska, and the Hunters are going to head there after they have the item they're looking for. Follow the path that fire once walked alone: we think that means this map. All of these symbols represent something in Leo's life, a place he's been, an event that occurred, somebody he knew. This is a map of Leo's life, of his past. It's the path that he once walked alone," Annabeth explained, tracing her finger over all of the different symbols drawn on the map, never ceasing to wonder what all of them meant.

"The Hunters lead the way to the lion's den," the daughter of Athena continued. "We found this picture while you were gone," she told the son of Hades, child of Jupiter, and daughter of Aphrodite as she reached into the Box and withdrew the photograph of Leo with the stuffed lion. "We Iris Messaged the Hunters and told them that this is what we think they're looking for, but we haven't heard back from them yet. Provided they found it, that's one item down," she announced, placing the photo with utmost care on Leo's bed beside the map.

"While a lock of hair helps dove and lightning to make the trio whole again," she pushed on. "That was obviously you guys going to find Julia, and thanks to her, we now what the item is and where it's located. A dagger with Leo's initials in a warehouse on Sparrow Street in Salida, Colorado," Annabeth clarified, and she pointed her finger to that place on the map, where two things had been drawn: a red bandana and the letters D and C overlapping each other, almost like some kind of insignia. "We haven't figured out the next line. We were hoping you guys could help us out. Skull and sun must find a picture in the ashes."

Jason straightened, immediately, and he turned to Piper. "Do you think it could mean…"

Piper nodded. "It's definitely a significant event," she stated.

"Do you guys know where it is?" Nyssa wondered.

Piper and Jason turned back to their friends, and Piper responded. "Yes."

The daughter of love placed her index finger on the map, directly over a picture a house with a heart drawn inside of it. The symbol was located in Texas.

"Houston, Texas," Piper answered. "It's where Leo was born and… where his mom died when he was eight. She died in a warehouse fire."

Nyssa perked up in interest. "He told me it was a warehouse collapse."

Jason nodded. "That's what he told us, too, until he told us the truth back in January when you guys were working on the Argo II. It's a… hard topic for him to talk about. Gaea showed up, locked his mom in the warehouse, and tricked Leo into using his powers."

Percy blinked as realization dawned on him. "Leo started the fire." He wasn't blaming Leo for anything, simply stating a fact, but horror could be heard in his voice. Not horror at Leo's actions but horror at the fact that Gaea was sick enough to trick an eight year old into causing the death of his mother. Sometimes Percy could fool himself into thinking even immortal beings had some kind of a moral standards, but then something like this happened, and that illusion was shattered like a window after a rock had been thrown through it.

Piper nodded. "It wasn't his fault," she said, even though she knew Percy wasn't blaming Leo. She just felt like it had to be said. "He's blamed himself for it, though, especially after his cruel aunt told him he killed his mother right before throwing him to social services," she muttered, her voice bitter. "No matter how many times we tell him it wasn't his faults, I don't think he'll ever be able to stop blaming himself for what happened."

Jason pursed his lips, tapping his foot in agitation. He didn't want to think about all of the pain and horror Leo had been through anymore because he knew that if he heard one more tragic tale, he would be tracking down ever single person that hurt Leo and frying them with as much lightning as he could summon. He tried to restrain himself, though. These monsters weren't worth it; Leo was, and he needed to focus on saving his best friend…

Then maybe he could start planning revenge.

"It's probably a picture of Leo's mother. I don't know the exact address of the warehouse… or where it used to he, but I know the address of his aunt," Jason informed them.

Piper frowned. "Why? Leo never told us that."

Jason blinked and rubbed the back of his neck, nervously. "After he told me about what his aunt did, I may have… tracked her down? I was going to pay her a little visit, but then the whole thing with Teresa happened, and I never got the chance."

Everyone stared at him.

Percy nodded, patting him on the back. "Don't worry, man. I would've done the same thing."

The others nodded in agreement, and Jason gave a small, mostly fake smile as he pulled out his phone (complete with a monster repelling chip, courtesy of Leo). He copy and pasted the address from where he had saved it to his notes app into a text and sent it, hearing the tell tale ding as it arrived in Will and Nico's phones.

"I just texted you guys the address," he clarified.

Annabeth nodded. "Great. The next line is…Sea must swim into the deep end before the storm passes."

"That's one of the lines that we just can't figure out," Frank informed Jason, Piper, and Nico. "We found a drawing of a swimming pool on the map, and it's our best bet, but while we know it's in St. Louis, we don't know exactly where."

"And that's how I got roped in to breaking into the office of Leo's social worker to find out," Percy chirped, so casually, it would have been downright alarming if anyone but a demigod had said it.

"We're still not sure what the storm is, though," Hazel admitted.

"Doesn't exactly sound promising," Will muttered.

"Wisdom follows an article to a friendship long since broken," Annabeth continued, and she handed the newspaper article to Piper, who held it in her hands to read it while Jason and Nico read it over her shoulder.

Nico swallowed, harshly. "Holly Webster. Fields of Asphodel."

As if the tragic nature of her death, not to mention the painful nature of her life, hearing the meaningless existence she was doomed to after she took her final breath only made it worse. Annabeth tried not to imagine a girl younger than she was that had experienced so much pain, she would rather die than continue to feel that agony and loneliness every day, only to be sentenced to an afterlife of wandering aimlessly, memories little more than whisps of smoke, soul dim and gray, no happiness or peace, even in death.

Like I said, she tried not to imagine it.

"Columbus, Ohio," Annabeth stated. "That's where I need to go, but Columbus is still a pretty big city. I looked Holly Webster up on the Internet, but I couldn't find anything. There's a lot of Holly Websters in the world, and a frightening amount of them have committed suicide, even when I narrowed the search to Columbus, Ohio."

"I think I found something," Nyssa piped up. "I didn't really think of it, but that chemistry book I found? The school is located in Columbus, Ohio," Nyssa told her, holding out the book with the front cover open, and sure enough, on the inside of the hard back cover, a stamp mark could be seen:

Fredrickson Middle School. 45237, Street 79. Columbus, Ohio (2)

Annabeth nodded, closing the book with a small snap and placing it in her backpack. "As good as place to start as any. Thanks, Nyssa. The next line is War and Jewels go to the Golden State to search for a token."

"There are three markings on the map," Will spoke up. "Hazel and Frank will need to visit all three until they find whatever token they're supposed to be looking for. The first one is a Teen Club called Toons and Jams in San Francisco. The second is Chargers High School in Oakland. The final one is the one we're not sure about: a picture of Angel wings in San Diego."

"Use five items from his past and the power of two gods to complete the cure, or else fire's fate will be all too sure seems pretty self explanatory," Annabeth said. "However, the next line is lightning must recover lost memories. We think Chiron might be able to help Jason with that one."

Jason nodded as he stood up from where he had been sitting beside the bed on his knees to get a closer look at the map during the explanation. "I'll go talk to Chiron. You guys should call Thalia and the Hunters to see if they found the lion," Jason suggested before climbing out of Leo's private room and heading for the Big House.

"You guys, start packing up the box. Everything except for the map and stuff we need We don't want to lose any of this stuff," Annabeth pointed out.

Harley laughed without any real humor. "Yeah, Leo might kill us if we do."

They all laughed, but they were all thinking about how important some of the things in the box were to Leo. If they lost any of it, they wouldn't blame Leo for going on a rampage.

"Annabeth and I will head to my cabin to IM the Hunters," Percy added before Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl exited the room and walked towards Cabin Three.


1. Sparrow Street is not a real street, at least to my knowledge. Salida is a real city in Colorado, but I have never been there. I looked up Colorado cities on the Internet and picked one.

2. Yet another completely made up address. Not a real school, at least to my knowledge.