hi again! this is probably our last update before september, so...

About forty minutes and a trip to the car later, and I was pretty much kitted up and ready to go exploring, clad not in my old SHIELD armour, but as a hiker, although my attire was (deliberately) khaki in colour, and I was armed (subtly) with celestial bronze, imperial gold and mortal steel, so not to take any chances.

Annabeth queried my noticeable lack of body armour, but I did my best to explain that there are just some occasions in which you can't skulk in the undergrowth, and sometimes blending in with the general public is an even better disguise than a few leaves and some face paint.

I parked up in one of the classic tourist car parks, and just prayed that there wouldn't be anyone patrolling the area and looking for shitty spies such as myself.

There weren't, which suggested that I was a long way from where I needed to be.

So, I guessed that I'd better get hiking, shouldering my slim rucksack and locking the car, before heading off at what SHIELD used to call 'relentless pace': pretty fast, but sustainable for hours on end (kind of like old-fashioned mammoth hunting). Despite what I'd told Chiron just a week ago, I'd been working really hard on improving my fitness again after the battle, and it appeared to be paying off as I scaled the first of the inclines with relative ease, pausing at the top for a water break and to zip up my rather disgusting green fleece against the brisk January gale breeze. I also decided that here was as good a place as any to pull my binoculars out of my pocket to start looking at the 'birds'.

So far, there wasn't a single wooden hut to pique my interest, so I moved on.

Quickly my afternoon became quite monotonous, but it was a monotony that I found comfort in, marking anything of remote interest onto my map of the area, and getting a little closer where I could. Some could be struck off pretty quickly: too small, too exposed, public toilet blocks, that sort of thing, but there were several which couldn't be easily accessed without obviously snooping around, and I didn't want to give any occupants cause for alarm, or the mission would end up being a bust.

By the time I had finished my reconnaissance, I had marked out seventeen buildings for us to investigate once Jason arrived in the city; fingers crossed, we'd actually find the fucker who was terrorising the one demigod safe haven for families (that we knew of). They were spread over a relatively large area, but it was still better than it had been before I started looking in the first place, and I had my suspicions about a few more than others.

I shoved my map back in my rucksack, and started the long hike back to the car.

o0O0o

When I arrived back in New Rome, I thankfully wasn't interrogated by the guards, who instead nodded their heads at me with a strange look in their eyes (Was that respect? Because nobody had ever looked at me like that before.) I waved hello to Julia, Terminus' little helper, as I walked through the boundary from the camp to the city, and finally bought a coffee from Grumio's Cafe (I'd literally only been in New Rome for two days, but I already loved the coffee, and I wanted to take all of it back to New York with me.)

A familiar blonde figure walked in and sat down in the seat across from me at the little table.

"Find anything of note?" she asked. "Reyna's waiting pretty eagerly to hear any news."

I nodded. "I've found seventeen possible sites, but my gut feeling is that it is at one of three. All are pretty isolated, so you're unlikely to freak the occupant out by going in on any of the others. I say we start with those ones and work out from there."

"Great." She nodded down at my coffee cup. "Are you almost done? Because I'm sure that Reyna would love to hear all about your findings."

"Why do I feel like you're trying to rush me?"

"A small car arrived at the Little Tiber about an hour ago. Reyna went to greet the visitor in person and hasn't come back yet."

"You think that he's arrived early, then?"

"Yes, and I think that Reyna is going to want to get straight out on the road before the rest of the city knows that he's here, because if they find out, they'll want to have feasts and parties and all of that will just slow down the operation. So, are you ready to go?"

I sighed. "Give me ten minutes to get back to the room and change my shirt, and then I'll be ready. Are you?"

She kicked the small duffle under the table. "Well, I'm not the one that's going to see a friend he fled from after having a week-long identity crisis, but yeah; I've been ready to go at a moment's notice all day, and so has Reyna. I think she was expecting a distress call from you that we'd have to answer."

I stood up then, stretching a little to try and relieve some of the stiffness in my muscles. "Well, sorry to disappoint. And, I didn't flee directly from Jason; we were mostly on different task forces." Not sure why I felt the need to clarify that in particular, but whatever. "Shall we?"

She jumped to her feet, grabbing the bag from under the table. "Race you to the river!" she called over her shoulder as she exploded off the mark, swiping the door wide open as she plunged into the street.

Guess I wasn't going to change, then. I paused briefly to give the bemused barista a 'what can you do with these immature kids these days?' look, before following Annabeth out of the door, feeling a smile tug at the corners of my lips as I took turn after turn through the winding streets, boots thundering on the cobbles and the blood singing in my veins.

Not that I was competitive or anything, but I was going to win this. Already my mind was firing at a mile a minute, furiously calculating routes at street level, roof level, intermediate level.

I changed my mind at the last second, skidding on the stones and almost (but not quite) falling on my face, before jumping as high as I could reach onto the outside of a fire escape and scaling the bars, eventually reaching the top level and jumping off the railing, hooking my fingers around the lip of the roof and dragging myself up.

Roof level was almost always the most direct route, and it hadn't rained in the last couple of days. The golden roof of Jupiter's temple glimmered in my periphery, arching regally over all of the other buildings nearby. I tried not to think about why I had last been on a New Rome roof, instead fixing my gaze on the distant gleam of the wan sunlight on the waters of the Little Tiber.

New Rome's streets were narrow, so, while my parkour was sadly a rusty skill, at my best, this terrain would have been an effortless playground at roof level.

Hopefully it would be a bit like riding a bike. I didn't desperately want to get back to street level the short way.

The first jump was dead easy, and now I was gaining some momentum, I was starting to enjoy myself, leaping from roof to roof like a bad action hero and revelling in the soaring adrenaline that comes with the subtle thrill of danger sourced from something other than running for your life.

The buildings began to thin out slightly as I approached the banks of the river, but they were also lower, so I reckoned I could make the longer jump onto that last roof…

I realised in midair that my feet probably weren't going to make it, but my hands definitely would, so I leaned all the way forwards and rolled into the impact with the flat, gravelled roof, probably scratching the hell out of my leading shoulder (the adrenaline rush just flattened out the pain, and I wasn't stopping to look). I stopped right on the edge, then jumped neatly downwards, catching the first floor window frame before dropping all of the way to prevent any unforeseen broken legs, and sprinting the last few metres to the banks.

A familiar blonde figure came careening around the corner just in time to see me give her a cocky wave and fall backwards into the waters of the Little Tiber.

Yeah, I definitely did a number on my shoulder and hands, considering the way that the water rushed to heal them the second I was fully submerged. No matter, though. That was the most fun I'd had in forever.

I let myself drift in the eddying currents for a few more seconds, loving the unpolluted clarity of the water all around me (much better than my dip in the Hudson, which I'm fairly sure could mutate children with all the crap in it), before popping back up to face Annabeth, who was by now standing about a metre back from the edge, face flushed but grinning her head off.

"Asshole."

I laughed, and sent a wave her way, completely drenching her from head to toe and flattening her blonde curls to her scalp. It made her look like a disgruntled poodle, and once I'd got that image in my head, I couldn't get it out.

After a few more seconds of helplessly killing myself with laughter, I swam over and proffered a hand. "M'lady."

She narrowed her eyes at me, then took the offered hand.

I pulled her in. Maybe she shrieked a little, but she'd never admit it to anybody (even if they were witnesses). Once she'd got over the reality of being completely submerged (by which I mean that she'd stopped thrashing around and spitting curses), she let me guide us both across the river and out on the opposite bank. I decided to be kind, so Annabeth was completely dry as she stepped out, with a slight look of shock on her face.

I figured we'd better not look like we'd been splashing around in their sacred river like a couple of idiotic Greek children in front of both of New Rome's praetors.

We hiked the last two hundred or so metres together and at a reasonable speed, because first (or second) impressions count, you know.

Eventually, we cleared the brow of the hill. The car park was still pretty quiet (I mean, I'd parked in it less than an hour before and nobody noticed), but I hadn't really approached from this angle before. There was a little path just the left of the gravelled area, that led into the 'wilderness' somewhat.

If I was looking to privately catch up with somebody, I guess I'd go down there.

So we did, and, sure enough, it wasn't five minutes before we could hear a pair of voices. I knew both of those voices. It'd been four years (fuck) since the last time I'd seen one of them, albeit he was very drunk at the time, but still, Jason Grace's weird accent, which was a mix between every fucking accent on the West Coast, was not one I could forget.

I paused for a moment before continuing. Annabeth turned, raising one eyebrow in challenge, as if she thought I'd lost my nerve. I wasn't really sure how to explain to her that even just hearing him felt like a punch in the gut. It was one thing to see your best friend on the battlefield, but it was quite another to come across a co-worker once you'd completely changed your life.

I didn't even know if Reyna had told him.

I exhaled, and gave Annabeth a small smile that I didn't feel, but I kept going.

We rounded a corner to find that the path opened up into a little glade, and in that glade there stood two very familiar faces: one dark-haired, defiant in her independence and ferocious in her strength, and the other pale-haired, straight-backed, every inch the loyal soldier. Their conversation ceased almost at once, as they both turned to look at the newcomers (now I come to think of it, the pair of us mirrored the pair of them: light to dark).

Jason didn't betray his surprise in his stature, but a brief flash of confusion shot across his blue eyes.

I gave him my very best crooked smile, feeling myself slip into my old spy persona like I'd never even left. "Surprised, Grace?" I smirked at him, watching him gather himself together.

He recovered very admirably (but we spy-types always did, didn't we?). "We all thought you were dead. One third of Coulson's favourite trio. That surprised us all. This? Well, you were always a bit of a slippery bastard, weren't you?"

"Why of course; I need to keep some tricks up my sleeve. Anyway, when you said that SHIELD recruited from your summer camp, this is not what I imagined." I grinned at him.

"Well, I couldn't exactly tell anyone below Level 8 about being a demigod, could I? I'd look completely off my rocker, especially on the first day."

"Oh, so Fury knew all about it then?" I tried to keep my tone light, but it was becoming very quickly apparent to me that fleeing had been completely useless, because SHIELD already knew about demigods. How could they not? They knew about the fucking Norse Alien Gods, didn't they?

"Recruiting out of Camp Jupiter was Fury's idea. He told me that kids who've been in the care of Lupa always make the best, most loyal agents. And besides, having a few unearthly tricks up your sleeve can make the difference between being someone who tried but failed, and someone who was successful and survived." He smiled softly. "Anyway, it is good to see you again. A Greek, huh?"

"Yeah, a Son of Poseidon, to be precise."

If Jason had been shocked before when I showed up, he was down right flabbergasted now. "You know what, I'm impressed that you managed to keep a lid on that until you did. Generally powers manifest earlier in stronger demigods. You should have known by the time you turned sixteen."

"Well, apparently childhood trauma can repress more things than just emotions. What can you say? Maybe old Gabe wasn't such a force for evil after all."

Annabeth was starting to look a bit uncomfortable at the direction that the conversation was taking, but I didn't love it either. In the old days, I'd always faced the tough questions head-on and batted them away with flippant remarks. Jason was looking for the old me, so he was going to get him.

Jason stuck out his hand for a handshake. "Well, I guess we should reintroduce ourselves then. I feel like you're a whole new person now."

"That's a way of putting it."

"Jason Grace, Son of Jupiter. Praetor of the Twelfth Legion and Consul to the Demigods." His handshake gave me a slight static shock. I wondered if it was intentional. Asshole.

Oh, so the Romans get titles, huh?

I tried to cover my own surprise with another stab at poor humour. "Well then, you can thank and apologise to your dad on my behalf for the rooftop stunt on his temple. He'll know what I mean."

Jason turned his eyes apologetically onto Annabeth. "Sorry, what's your name?" Always the gentleman, old Jason. So tactful.

"Annabeth Chase, Daughter of Athena. Architect of Olympus."

Jason's eyebrows raised in visible surprise. "Minerva has Greek children? I believed that she was a Virgin Goddess in both pantheons."

Annabeth grinned. "She is. I was born of her head, as she was of Zeus. My siblings and I are gifts that she bestows upon mortals that impress her. I'm not sure how much of a gift a child actually is, but she clearly thinks so."

Reyna spoke for the first time, clearly processing everything that had just happened, "Pardon, did you say Architect of Olympus?"

"Yes." Annabeth's cheeks blushed red. "It was my reward for my role during the Battle of Manhattan last year. After all, most of the buildings were destroyed by Kronos in his attack."

"That is certainly a great honour. You must have been instrumental in the defeat, then. I apologise for having not realised. And as for Percy, I believe you mentioned an offer made to him after the battle?"

Annabeth glanced my way and smiled. "Immortality, yes."

Jason's pale eyebrows almost vanished into his equally-pale hairline. "And this was merely an offer?"

"Yes, I turned it down. I don't think I want to live forever, especially not with them." I gestured towards the sky.

"Is it common practice amongst the Greeks to insult the omniscient gods that rule above us, or is it just something that you do?"

Good question. I grimaced. "Trust me, if you get pulled out to do their dirty work enough times and save their entire civilisation to only be told that you can't be fully healed because they want you to 'learn your lesson', I think you're allowed to have a free pass on your opinions, don't you agree?"

"Apollo denied your healing after the battle?"

I laughed slightly, unpleasantly. "Oh, Apollo was actually trying to help. He might be a prima donna, but he's not in the habit of leaving you to die. No, you can chat to your Dad about that one, although he'll probably say that I should be grateful that he allowed my life to be saved in the first place."

This is the trouble with meeting old friends of yours: you start talking and then open a whole can of worms that did not want to be opened. Good job, Jackson.

Jason's eyebrows creased again. "You're telling me that you should be dead right now?"

"Oh, please, I should have been dead after that fiasco back with the mafia. First ever mission, too. 'It'll be a cakewalk', they said. Goddamn desk duty is bad enough, let alone teaching the juniors how to bloody swim in all that spare time you get on injury leave. What did you get on your first ever field trip?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "Bodyguard duty. Most boring two weeks of my life. And don't you go trying to change the subject on me. You got not-quite-killed less than a year ago. I thought you left that life behind you."

"Oh, me too. But life has its ways, you know. 'Child of conflict', I believe is how Hestia described me."

"Now I want to know what happened."

"Sure, but does Reyna know how you got that scar on your lip?"

Jason rolled his eyes. "You're changing the subject again."

"Answer the question, then I'll tell."

"No, I don't," Reyna cut across, curiosity lacing her tone. "But now I want to know as well."

Jason shuffled in a slightly embarrassed fashion, the tips of his ears colouring.

I laughed again, this time with some actual mirth. "I'll go first, shall I? I decided that it would be smart to square up against Kronos by myself. Everyone thought that I'd bathed in the River Styx, which would have made my skin tough as steel. Except, I hadn't, so it didn't. But Kronos' host had, and he was also better at sword fighting than me."

Jason nodded. "Good start, now get to the point. You've always been good at dancing around the subject and never actually answering the question."

A laugh bubbled out of me. "Yes, I'd make a good politician. Anyway, Kronos' sword was cursed to drain your life source even if it literally just grazed you, and he shish-kebabed me, so…"

Jason gave a low whistle. "That's impressive, I'll give you that. Weren't you wearing any decent armour?"

"Oh yeah. Went straight through a Celestial Bronze chestplate and my tac vest. Hephaestus cabin had their work cut out to patch it."

Annabeth flinched almost imperceptibly, as if recalling the terrible screech of rending metal that had filled the throne room that day. I hadn't been conscious in the aftermath, but from what I'd heard, it hadn't been pretty.

I changed the subject as quickly as physically possible. "Now, do you want to tell Reyna about the scar on your lip? Or should I? You do say I'm good at embellishing."

Jason rolled his eyes. "I'll do it." He locked eyes with Reyna. "I got this scar when I was three years old, possibly by attempting to eat a stapler. There! Is that the confession you wanted, Jackson?"

Reyna laughed openly, displaying more emotion in those three seconds than I think she had in most of the time we had been at Camp Jupiter. "Somehow I thought it would be worse."

I grinned. "Oh, if I'd told you, it would have been. There are details that you can only get out of this one when he's had way too much to drink."

"How are there more details in a story about a stapler?"

I tapped my nose. "That's for me to know and you to find out. He gets wasted the fastest on Russian vodka, if you're interested."

Reyna smirked at me. "I might just take that advice."

Jason coughed, desperate to pull the subject away from his adventures as a toddler. "Anyway, can we bring this back to the matter at hand? What's this drone?"

"It appeared a couple of nights ago during war games. It immediately began to shoot at almost any target and began to destroy the city. There has been little other activity relating to the drone, but Percy went out today to scout for possible locations that the drone could have been launched from." Clearly, Reyna had no problem switching from leisure mode to business mode.

Jason nodded, having also entered full SHIELD agent mode. "I see, and what did you find?"

"There are seventeen possible locations, but the three most isolated are also the three most likely to have been the drone's launch point, so we should definitely start with those. They can all be easily reached within a day's hike, so there is no reason why we can't start to scout out the location properly tomorrow. Hell, we could even just go in all guns blazing if you guys are feeling brave. I don't work for SHIELD anymore, so screw protocol. If that was a test run, we don't want to be on the receiving end of a full frontal attack, so time is of the essence here."

Reyna hummed in agreement. "You're right, but I think that we should take at least a couple of days to actually work out what's going on here; for all we know, they could have accidentally hit New Rome, assuming that it was an empty plain, rather than a city."

"Is your barrier really that strong?" Annabeth had her 'shut up; I'm thinking' face on. "I suppose it would be with the God of Boundaries being ever-present, but still. I agree with Percy on this one: we should get out there as soon as possible."

Reyna smiled wolfishly. "Now, that's not quite what I said. How ready are you two to go right now? We can book a pitch or two at a nearby campsite and scout under darkness. I just think that we need to get a feel for what we're up against before we dive in headfirst."

Annabeth lifted her (magically dry) duffle. "I'm ready. Percy?"

I could survive with nothing but the clothes on my back for weeks, and she knew it. Besides, the car was only a few hundred metres away, and in it was just about anything you could ever want in terms of demigod weaponry and tools, so we were good. "Oh, yes. Shall we?"

"If we take both cars? It might be easier, plus we already have a tent in ours." Reyna nodded at Annabeth's suggestion, throwing a disdainful look at both of the cars in the car park. I could understand why; I'm not sure either of them could actually fit four fully grown adults. What it was with demigods and toy-sized cars, I'd never know.

"If you drive, we'll follow," Jason called as we (with a degree of weariness) opened the doors to get in. I gave him a thumbs up as I slid into the driver's seat, waiting a few seconds for Jason and Reyna to get ready before pulling out of the car park and driving back along the roads until I reached the same tourist spot that I'd used to start my reconnaissance.

"Wow, I almost feel like I've been here before," I commented as the wheels crunched on the gravel.

Annabeth glared. "So where's the campsite?"

"Demanding, isn't she? Over there." I pointed vaguely at the slightly-crooked caravan that I assumed served as a reception for the campsite. It didn't look like they had many people who stayed, so there would hopefully be a couple of pitches that we could rent overnight; there were only two other cars in the car park after all.

I got out of the car and began to haul our tent out of the boot as Jason and Reyna pulled up beside us.

Jason grinned at me. "Nice place; I've definitely slept at worse places for work." He pulled a pair of aviators (gods, is he a walking, talking American stereotype?) out of his jacket pocket, so that he could focus on the caravan. "Is that reception?"

"I think so." I slammed the boot of the car shut with the butt of the tent bag.

Annabeth squinted at Jason. "Are they X-ray or some other cool spy gadget?"

Jason laughed. "Oh, SHIELD does not have enough money to give us all X-ray glasses. But we do get polarised sunglasses for free, which helps when you're staring down the barrel of a gun somewhere sunny."

"Imagine getting somewhere sunny," I remarked dryly. "We got sent to goddamn Russia."

Reyna coughed, from where she was standing having started walking towards the caravan, but stopped halfway to wait for us. "You coming? I don't know about you, but I don't want to sleep in the car tonight."

o0O0o

The campsite wasn't bad per say, but I think that we were all slightly disappointed by the fact that the only tap for running water was half a kilometre away from our pitch.

Annabeth, upon discovering this, handed me a very large bottle with a lid and didn't say anything. Unfortunately, she didn't have to. I picked up another bottle from the car and traipsed over, really not thinking through the part where I was trying to carry about forty litres of water (why anybody needs that much, I'll never know, but Annabeth wanted to cook pasta) back by myself without any sort of bag.

It wasn't fun, but I didn't die. (Story of my life, apparently).

By the time I'd got back to the pitch, Reyna had set up a small fire to keep us warm, and Jason and Annabeth were laughing about my antics on quests/missions. I didn't really want to know what they were telling each other (I didn't need to worry about whether or not it was true: reality tends to be embarrassing enough when your name is Perseus Jackson).

I settled down to complete the circle. "What has been going on at SHIELD then, since I unnecessarily fled for my life?"

Jason chuckled. "Uhh, Captain America came back to life." I knew that; why did I know that? "That was weird, but the guy's kinda okay once you get past the fact that he was born in the 1910s, and so he's slightly peculiar because of that. Also he was deep-frozen for a long time; that's gotta do things to your brain, right?"

"Sorry." I blinked at my former colleague. "Are you saying that you've met Captain godsdamned America?"

A smug grin slipped onto Grace's face. "Yeah, Coulson was handling him as well, so if you hadn't been a total dumbass, you would have too."

Fuck.

Wait a second. "So you're saying that Clint Barton has met Captain America?"

Jason shrugged. "Yeah, he must have done."

"You know, I would have paid to see that interaction."

"Do you know what else you would have paid to see? Coulson fangirling over Captain America, and getting him to sign his collectors edition baseball cards."

"Coulson has hobbies and interests?" I raised my eyebrows. "I guess that gets rid of the LMD theory then."

Jason snorted. "Everyone knows that the LMDs weren't a serious invention. I think somebody just made a joke that got popular, and then they looked at Coulson and thought 'wow, we could be on to something here', but that was just Coulson.

"You do realise that they would probably take you back after all of this? I mean I'm pretty sure that Clint's still beating himself up about it, and Coulson's still pretty mad that his, and I quote, 'most promising recruit of the decade' just upped and disappeared without a trace."

I laughed then, the same unpleasant laugh that I laughed when somebody asked me about my past. "I would be shot dead before I got within five hundred feet of the entrance to HQ, and you know it. Now, I know that Coulson's not as much of a stickler for protocol as you might expect, but some things you can't let slide. And he can't let slide the part where I have been disavowed for years."

"When you say years, you know it's only been a year and a half, right?"

I mean physically I knew that it had only been a year and a half, but emotionally my self-imposed exile had lasted for like a fucking decade. "Jason, they wouldn't have taken me back after a month, let alone a year and a half. It's not worth even considering it; I'll only get myself killed. And if you go angling on my behalf, they'll shoot you too for consorting with the enemy, you know."

Reyna shook her head. "You could at least try, though, and if not there's always a place for you at Camp Jupiter, if you find yourself outgrowing your Summer Camp over on the East Coast."

That was actually pretty touching. "I appreciate that, but if I resurface, then SHIELD will have no choice but to hunt me down, and I can't bring them to Camp Jupiter. I took a risk just going to New York during the battle. I'm not kidding when I say that if they find me, they will kill me. They might even send my own task force after me."

"I don't think that anybody could be that foolish or cruel," Reyna retorted. "If they are worried about you turning their agents, they would not send your friends."

"They might if they thought that those friends were the only people with a hope of taking you down. But by saying that, I might be overestimating my talents."

Jason gave me an incredulous look. "Percy, I don't think it's possible to overestimate you, especially now your powers have come to light. SHIELD would be stupid to try and kill you when you've already worked for them before. They took the chance with both of your friends, after all, and they are the two very best agents of them all."

"The only way that I could get a second chance would be if Coulson waltzed into Fury's office with proof that I was still onside. I can't risk all of the new friends I've made along the way for the sake of my old life."

Jason nodded. "I'm pretty sure that hunting down whoever the heck has made this drone, and defending a SHIELD-allied training camp would help though."

Oh. Oh.

I smiled. "We'll have to see what the situation demands."

"You know, the longer you leave it, the less likely it is that they'll take you back," Jason commented, eyes glowing in an almost unearthly way in the firelight.

"I made my choice, Jason. I never expected to go back from the second I stole that car right back in San Francisco. Hell, I never expected to go back from the second that mission went as far south as it did. I thought that none of us would be going back, except perhaps in plastic bags."

"Now boys," Reyna cut in, "let's not be morbid. There's a couple of hours before we ought to get up and scouting. If anybody wants to grab some shuteye, now's the time."

Alright then. I left the fireside and curled up in my sleeping bag. SHIELD didn't teach me everything, but sleeping whenever you could grab half an opportunity was one lesson that I picked up there.

Three hours later, and there was a light knock on the outside of the tent. I woke up to see Annabeth swaddled in a sleeping bag, hair awry and looking very disgruntled. "I don't know how you do that whole 'sleep' thing like you're turning off a light switch, but I'm jealous."

I smiled, mostly to myself given that it was dark. "Practice, I'm afraid. You ready?"

"No."

"Okay then. I'll wait outside. Five minutes."

She probably swore at me then, but I wasn't listening as I pushed open the tent flap to greet Reyna and Jason, both of whom were fiddling with dim torches.

"What, Grace, no night-vision goggles?" I asked.

"You think I thought of this exact scenario when I left for my annual leave? Don't you have any night-vision goggles?"

Oh, it was so fun to piss him off when he was tired. I decided maybe not to push it, or he might punch me and then Reyna would definitely be cross, so I kept my mouth firmly shut.

There was a rustle in the tent behind me, and the flap was pushed away to reveal Annabeth, face pale in the wan torchlight, hair tied back into a scruffy ponytail and scowling slightly.

I passed her a torch out of our bag. "Turn that down, will you? We only need just enough to see by. Don't want to be carrying a searchlight."

"Are we splitting up?" Reyna asked. "That way we could cover more ground."

"No," I said, at the same time that Jason said "Great idea!"

"If we split up and something goes wrong, we're screwed. Not to offend, but you two," I gestured towards Reyna and Annabeth, "aren't trained agents, and I haven't been on a proper mission for a while, so it's too big a risk. Also, I'm the only one who knows where all of the locations are."

"I thought you said there were seventeen of them," Annabeth pointed out.

"Oh, there are. But I think that we'll only need to scout three, maybe four of them. Some were definitely more likely to harbour evil villains than others, so we'll start with those."

Jason nodded. "Since when did you become Mr Careful? All the stories say that you were the one flinging yourself into danger, and my first-hand evidence doesn't dispute that."

"I'll have you know that it was Clint who jumped off buildings without looking more than any of us, but I'll admit that he was also a bad influence, and my ADHD has never made me patient. Shall we go?"

He grinned, teeth flashing in the torchlight. "After you, map boy."

thanks for reading! see you next time!