Annabeth figured out how to drive an airplane despite having no training or any such thing...

Aaron is supposed to be a pragmatic Hero like the OG Perseus or Theseus...

Aaron

From the deepest sleep he could ever remember having, Aaron was shaken away by Annabeth. Through sleep ridden eyes, he somehow managed to look at her with some concertation. She looked worried, her cap in hand.

Grover, doing the same for Percy, whispered to them. "The truck's stopped," he said. "We think they're coming to check on the animals."

"Hide!" Annabeth hissed. She just put on her magic cap and disappeared. Grover and Percy hid behind the feed bags, looking like convincingly perfect turnips. Aaron, being considerably bigger then the others, had to slip behind a box and turn to the side, trying to work through the exhaustion so visibly burning through his mind and body. Like walking through a river, dull and hot, he could barely focus but somehow managed to do so.

The trailer doors creaked open. Sunlight and heat poured in, waves upon waves of disgusting dry heat that sapped his strength even further.

"Man!" one of the truckers said, waving his hand in front of his ugly nose. "I wish I hauled appliances." He climbed inside and poured some water from a jug into the animals' dishes.

"You hot, big boy?" he asked the lion, then splashed the rest of the bucket right in the lion's face, somehow not seeing just utterly pissed the hidden kids were. Aaron personally wanted to whip him with his bow until it shattered, but barely managed to avoid the motion. Mostly thanks to his exhaustion.

The lion roared in indignation, a pitiful sound from the emaciated beast.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the man said.

The trucker threw the antelope a squashed-looking Happy Meal bag. He smirked at the zebra. "How ya doin', Stripes? Least we'll be getting rid of you this stop. You like magic shows? You're gonna love this one. They're gonna saw you in half!"

The zebra, wild-eyed with fear, looked straight at Percy, getting the boy to almost gasp for some reason.

There was a loud knock, knock, knock on the side of the trailer.

The trucker inside yelled, "What do you want, Eddie?"

A voice outside-it must've been Eddie's-shouted back, "Maurice? What'd ya say?"

"What are you banging for?"

Knock, knock, knock.

Outside, Eddie yelled, "What banging?"

The less then intelligent Maurice rolled his eyes and went back outside, cursing at Eddie for being an idiot.

A second later, Annabeth appeared in anger and worry, clearly she had done the banging. She said, "This transport business can't be legal."

"No kidding," Grover said. He paused, as if listening. "The lion says these guys are animal smugglers! We've got to free them!" Grover said. He and Annabeth both looked at Percy and Aaron both,

"I know we have to save them but we need a way East... can either of you hotwire a car and drive it?" Aaron sighed. " I hate acting so cold, what's happening is wrong but we have to consider the grander picture, which in this case is the bolt."

Annabeth stepped forward. "I can, I think..."

"Best that we try soon, now let's get them out." Percy stood proud, nodding to them. Outside, Eddie and Maurice were still yelling at each other, and so Percy grabbed Riptide and slashed the lock off the zebra's cage.

The zebra burst out and bowed to Percy.

Grover held up his hands and said something to the zebra in goat talk, like a blessing. Aaron could feel it's power, so different then his magic, it was warm and far more potent then his natural strength. It invoked feelings of power, calm and unending peace.

Just as Maurice was poking his head back inside to check out the noise, the zebra leaped over him and into the street. There was yelling and screaming and cars honking. As one the Questers rushed to the doors of the trailer in time to see the zebra galloping down a wide boulevard lined with hotels and casinos and neon signs. It was honestly entertaining to watch, the damn thing startling tourists and making a scene.

Maurice and Eddie ran after it, with a few policemen running after them, shouting, "Hey! You need a permit for that!"

"Now would be a good time to leave," Annabeth said.

"The other animals first," Grover said.

Percy used his black to cut the locks. Grover raised his hands and spoke the same goat-blessing he'd used for the zebra.

As one the beasts flew out of their cages and into the bustling streets of Las Vegas, hopefully towards a future where they get to live and be happy. Some tourists screamed. Most just backed off and took pictures, probably thinking it was some kind of stunt by one of the casinos.

"Will the animals be okay?" Percy asked Grover. "I mean, the desert and all-"

"Don't worry," he said. "I placed a satyr's sanctuary on them."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they'll reach the wild safely," he said. "They'll find water, food, shade, whatever they need until they find a safe place to live."

Aaron fell peeved, looking at Grover with some disconcertion. "Why can't you place a blessing like that on us, that would have come in handy a while ago"

"It only works on wild animals."

"So it would only affect Percy," Annabeth reasoned.

"Hey!" Percy protested while Aaron just laughed.

"Kidding," she said. "Come on. Let's get out of this filthy truck."

They stumbled out into the desert afternoon. It was a hundred and ten degrees, easy, dry and uncomfortable but still better then the stuffy truck. A feeling of freedom, not being confined in the metal cage, set Aaron off with a smile as they took advantage of the screaming confused tourists. They passed the Monte Carlo and the MGM. We passed pyramids, a pirate ship, and the Statue of Liberty.

At some point it was clear that they must have taken a wrong turn, because they found ourselves at a dead end, standing in front of the Lotus Hotel and Casino. The entrance was a huge neon flower, the petals lighting up and blinking. No one was going in or out, but the glittering chrome doors were open, spilling out air-conditioning that smelled like flowers-lotus blossom, or so Aaron assumed.

The place oozed magic that surpassed even Hades' great power, leaving him breathless and reminding him of his dream. "Guys, this place reeks of potent magic."

They stared at him but nodded, walking away and towards the parking lot even as the doorman smiled, calling out. "Hey, kids. You look tired. You want to come in and sit down?"

Grover turned and nodded. " That sounds wonderful." But the others grabbed his arm and pulled him away.

Aaron called back out. "Our parents are waiting for us, but thank you sir." They quickly rushed away, finding their way towards the massive parking lot where they found the oddest assortment of cars. Some looked old, like utterly ancient, from the fifties or sixties or even earlier. Others were recent, but most were in poor shape.

"Is there a car show going on?" Aaron looked about, getting some looks from his friends. "These cars, their so old and worn down..."

"Too worn down for a car show, something is wrong with this place." Annabeth's eyes were determined. " Come on, I can at least drive this one over here." She led them to a simple sedan, something no one would question, with large tinted windows. It was actually a smart tactic, since no one would question a child driving It if they couldn't see said child. Oddly the car was unlocked, so they didn't have to jimmy it. "Keep watch, it's been a while since I've had to do this."

And so they did as she asked, keeping an eye out but no one came or even seemed to notice them. Not the six cop cars that went by, probably trying to catch the wild animals they had released, or even the fourteen groups of tourists that walked past their parking lot. It was like they were being veiled...

"The Mist... I didn't realize it before, but it is strong here." He looked about, seeing and focusing hard as he could, where he realized that there was potent concentrations of the mystical substance everywhere. It almost funneled around them, almost as thick as when Hecate had appeared in camp. "This place, it's coated in Mist, I think we're safe."

The car starting ended that part of their conversation, drawing all of them into the car where they felt the glorious coolness of the air conditioning soothing their worries, pain and heat sapping exhaustion.

"How'd you know how to do that?" Percy pipped up, asking the question they were all wondering.

She blushed. "My dad is big into airplanes and machines, and I lived on the streets for a while with Thalia and Luke. We slept in cars a few times, so I learned how to do this. Been a while though, I was worried I'd forgotten how to do it."

"""

Percy

Thanks to Annabeth's moderately decent driving, the speedometer never dipped lower then fifty miles an hour. On the road, they had plenty of time to talk. I told Annabeth and Grover about my latest dream, about how I recognized the sound of the voice as Luke's like we had discussed before and how he called the creature in the Pit the Crooked one. That left everyone shivering, especially Annabeth.

"That's... that's... I didn't want to believe it." She looked into the rearview mirror right at me. "That's the name for The Father of the Big Three...don't say his name."

"That means, oh, I wondered why it didn't feel like a god's voice."

"You can tell the difference?" Aaron turned from the front passenger seat to fix me with a look.

"Yeah, a god's voice is more normal, like ours but this was booming... like the earth itself was talking to me."

"Huh... I guess that explains a lot... now what?

"Nothing much, we know that we need to cast a sacrifice to get into Hades and we know that Luke stole Zeus's and Hades' symbol of power from Olympus, and the gods were hunting him, I mean, a lot of things could go wrong and it did. He fought out war happy cousin and he took the Bolt or at least hid it since there is no way they'd manage to keep it at Camp. We just have to talk to and prove that to Hades and... ugh, this is still going to be difficult to prove. I mean it's our word against an Olympian, who's going to believe us?"

Aaron seemed to feel her frustration. "Hopefully someone, if nothing else Percy can tell the contents of the Prophecy and we can share the information. If nothing else that has to be enough to get them to look into it."

''''

Eventually, with an empty tank of gas, we found our selves in L.A. With some spare change from Ares's backpack, we took the bus into West Hollywood. I showed the driver the Underworld address slip I'd taken from Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium, but he'd never heard of DOA Recording Studios.

"You remind me of somebody I saw on TV," he told me. "You a child actor or something?"

"Uh ... I'm a stunt double ... for a lot of child actors."

"Oh! That explains it."

We thanked him and got off quickly at the next stop.

We wandered for miles on foot, looking for DOA. Nobody seemed to know where it was. It didn't appear in the phone book.

Twice, we ducked into alleys to avoid cop cars, Aaron having some trouble due to his big size and oddly exhaustion that hadn't left him since he was knocked out at the Waterpark.

It got dark, and hungry-looking characters started coming out on the streets to play. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a New Yorker. I don't scare easy. But L.A. had a totally different feel from New York. Back home, everything seemed close. It didn't matter how big the city was, you could get anywhere without getting lost. The street pattern and the subway made sense. There was a system to how things worked. A kid could be safe as long as he wasn't stupid.

L.A. wasn't like that. It was spread out, chaotic, hard to move around. It reminded me of Ares. It wasn't enough for L.A. to be big; it had to prove it was big by being loud and strange and difficult to navigate, too. I didn't know how we were ever going to find the entrance to the Underworld in the next few days. We walked past gangbangers, bums, and street hawkers, who looked at us like they were trying to figure if we were worth the trouble of mugging.

As we hurried passed the entrance of an alley, a voice from the darkness said, "Hey, you."

Like an idiot, I stopped.

Before I knew it, we were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled us. Six of them in all-white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. Like the kids at Yancy Academy: rich brats playing at being bad boys.

Instinctively, I uncapped Riptide.

When the sword appeared out of nowhere, the kids backed off, but their leader was either really stupid or really brave, because he kept coming at me with a switchblade.

I made the mistake of swinging.

The kid yelped. But he must've been one hundred percent mortal, because the blade passed harmlessly right through his chest. He looked down. "What the ..."

I figured I had about three seconds before his shock turned to anger. "Run!" I screamed at Annabeth and Grover and Aaron.

We pushed two kids out of the way and raced down the street, not knowing where we were going. We turned a sharp corner.

"There!" Annabeth shouted.

Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The sign above the door said something like CRSTUY'S WATRE BDE ALPACE.

"Crusty's Water Bed Palace?" Grover translated.

It didn't sound like a place I'd ever go except in an emergency, but this definitely qualified.

We burst through the doors, ran behind a water bed, and ducked. A split second later, the gang kids ran past outside.

"I think we lost them," Grover panted.

A voice behind us boomed, "Lost who?"

Chapter end, tell me what you think in the reviews.

No explosion in Denver or St. Louis no pictures of the other kids. No time in the Lotus Casino, not ending up on TV since it required the explosion and days of delay... I wanted to write the Lotus Hotel scenes but I just can't see Aaron not freaking out from the Magic of it.

Love, your Ninja Overlord,

Mika.