Update Part 3 of 4

I think this might be the shortest of the bunch, mainly because the chapter after this is the one that I cut from this one because it was getting too lengthy. Because I ramble too much. And so the next chapter is a lot of my philosophizing. And it's also probably the longest out of all these updates.

Enjoy! :)

First Person: Azrael

It was odd, being in the presence of a god in such a…peaceful manner. Most gods that I met were usually brought before me so that the Wards could test my ability to kill them. Even being free of the Wards, I'd killed Khione as well.

"Apollo won't…really kill Leo, will he?" Hazel asked nervously.

"You know Leo," Frank said comfortingly. "He's an expert at…uh…"

"Accident-ing his way to a good idea?"

Frank sighed. "Aren't we all?"

The four of us followed Artemis, though Kaze seemed distracted, glancing back to watch his sister until they were out of sight. I wished I could support him somehow, but…I couldn't do anything that would be manipulative over my abilities keeping his soul in charge of his body.

"Kaze," I prompted.

"Hm." He probably hadn't even heard me.

"This should suffice," Artemis announced. "First, Kaze and Azrael. There is an important task that I must entrust with you." She held out her hand and passed me a piece of paper. "This is the current location of Emily Hezesto. The two of you are the only ones allowed to seek her out."

"Why?" Kaze asked.

Artemis's gaze hardened. "Unfortunately, there are many factors at play during these final days of this war. The forces protecting her are impenetrable by most standards, and the Seven of your prophesied crew must stay focused on their goal. Your sister, Kaze Grigora, you cannot help her. Not as you are."

Kaze's posture stiffened. "Then how must I change?"

"Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for you."

I looked down at the folded paper in my hand. "We can seek Emily. But can we return with her?"

"I do not know. But they wish to see you, so that will allow you to at least approach the situation. If you will be able to escape, that is still uncertain."

Kaze frowned. "So we are sacrifice. We help the Argo II or we leave."

"When you find her location, you may consider going to see her. But there is no guarantee that either of you will be able to return, much less with your friend in tow."

"Why would we leave with such odds?"

"Because you may have the chance to bend the outcome of this war to your needs. But like I said, it is no guarantee. Nothing is, in times as uncertain as these. Go. Discuss it as you please. If you wish to say farewell to your friends before you leave, that is none of my business, but for now, I must speak with Hazel and Frank."

The 13-year-old-looking goddess shooed us away while she then began talking with Frank and Hazel, their expressions turning grim all around.

"Should we open it?" Kaze asked. Kaze switched between his weak English and his adept Japanese back and forth, and even though the Veil translated both for me, I could tell the difference just through the ticks of his words and his speed and confidence in his speech. He was nice when speaking his native tongue, even if it was being translated into German. Japanese hit so many more consonants.

"If we do, we are not forced to go. We can just look."

Kaze nodded. He was very unhappy with leaving his sister alone with Apollo and Leo, let alone leaving her when he had no guarantee of returning. While Kaze was more in control of his emotions than he would be if he weren't a Reanimation clinging to his soul, I could sense that he was really wounded by Artemis's words.

'Your sister, Kaze Grigora, you cannot help her. Not as you are.'

Those words had stung like she'd shot an arrow through his heart. Kaze had spent a great deal of his life being protected or being alone; he had spent his life unable to do any protecting himself. His mother had suffered, and a part of him was always aware that his very existence was a burden to her. He hadn't been able to help her, he had barely been old enough to realize what her suffering truly meant until it was too late. He had managed to learn how to survive without his mother for a little while, but then Rei had come along and the two of them had lived together. For a lot of it, Rei was teaching and protecting him.

And Kaze hadn't been able to save her either. To him, Rei had been influenced by gods who didn't care about her. It was terrible watching loved ones go along with and trust self-destructive plans because they think it's destiny or they think there's no other way, and it's worse when he had only ever seen the gods sacrifice humans for their own survival. And the humans go along with it because it's fate.

Hell, even the whole trip with this war against Gaea fed into Kaze's hatred. The gods (Zeus in particular) were responsible for ignoring the threats of Gaea's rise until it had gotten out of control, and all of these demigods were having to risk so much because of it. His own sister in particular had fallen prey once more to giving herself and Veon and even some of her friends the burden of attempting to host an extremely dangerous and dubious deity. Because it was destiny. Because they had to. There was no choice, or there was a choice, but not to his sister.

I opened the note Artemis had written. It was written in German, but it was just a few words so that fact didn't stand out to me until Kaze said, "What that?"

He couldn't read it? Well that wasn't a problem; I could just tell Kaze what it said.

But for some reason, I hesitated. If I told Kaze, he might take up the opportunity to rush off. But I knew that he wanted to stay here to look after his sister. It wouldn't be a problem if Artemis hadn't revealed that we might get trapped, we might not be able to return in time to be of use to the others. We leave, we likely won't be able to get back. We stay, we could still choose to go later. Well, if we managed to survive that long.

"I will go. You stay."

"What? But Artemis gave this to both of us."

"One can go, one can stay."

"No. I need you to live as me, Azrael." Kaze's scowl always looked halfway between a childish tantrum and a Reanimation's dark emotionless glare. A very bi-polar contrast, I know, but that was the only way to describe it.

"You do not. You are you. You are strong. You have no need for me."

"I do," he insisted. "Even if you are right, what if you are wrong? If you leave and I am not strong enough, I will harm the others. As Gaea gets stronger, her hold over me will be stronger as well. Even if I am strong, I need your help."

Well, he did have a point there, I suppose.

"Azrael, you okay?" He reached out and put his hand on my forehead. His hand wasn't cold, but it wasn't warm either. I had a feeling he had no idea what he was doing, but checking one's forehead was supposed to be a way to test one's health I guess?

"I am fine." I swatted his hand away, though honestly it wasn't an unpleasant thing to have Kaze attempting to worry over me even when he didn't actually know what he was doing.

"You have been sad. Be not sad." He poked me in the temple as though he was trying to poke my happy button.

"Kazeeeee…!" It wasn't exactly easy to swat away a creature that was made of magical dark energies and Gaea's clay body that was near invincible, but I gave it my best effort.

"We both go or we both leave," Kaze concluded. "Or I might go mad. Bonkers. Coo-coo." He started listing off synonyms for going crazy that got increasingly odd through translation. There were some words that didn't easily translate from Japanese to German, but I got the general gist.

I sighed. "If that was a threat…fine." I handed him the note from Artemis and let the Veil translate for him.

I had a feeling that back when Kaze had a real body, his reactions were very big and dramatic, because even with his stoic body from Gaea, he managed a stunned reaction. "Camp Half-Blood?"

"Nearby, I'd assume. In the armies of the Roman camp."

"She is hostage then?"

"Likely. But this is why we may not return. And yet she said we could help change the outcome of the war."

Kaze raised an eyebrow in thought. "Emily was taken by Ward kids, no?"

"The ones that could choose a side and make our job easy or impossible," I agreed, following his thought process.

"So we can help change their minds."

"We have two days."

"Less."

"Little chance. Little plan."

"We should tell Veon-san," Kaze announced. "He search for Emily. He must have plan."

I sighed. "I will take plan."

"Then we go to Veon-san. Then we go to save Emily-chan."

"Chan, san, chan, san," I muttered. The Japanese honorifics didn't translate precisely, and so they just ended up coming out as 'san' and 'chan' with Kaze's full accent rather than something like 'Mister' and 'Missus' or 'child' or some other odd word that the Veil translated as best it could. Same way that names obviously didn't translate, even if someone had a name that meant something else in another language. It was cute.

"Is that 'yes?'" He was smiling. Unlike his other suppressed expressions, he managed a goofy grin.

I couldn't help but feel at least some semblance of relaxation from his attempts at remaining lighthearted. If that didn't prove that Kaze's soul was strong enough to fight his Reanimation's state, then I didn't know what was.

"It is 'yes.'"

Third Person: Rei

There could be a lot of ways to describe how Rei was feeling.

Bored would be the primary adjective at the moment.

"Well, Leo Valdez?" Apollo folded his arms. His eyes glowed with golden light. "Let us bargain, then. What can you offer that would convince me to help you rather than kill you?"

"A bargain." Leo's fingers twitched. "Yeah. Absolutely."

His hands went to work before his mind knew what he was doing. He started pulling things out of the pockets of his magic tool belt - copper wire, some bolts, a brass funnel. For months he'd been stashing away bits and pieces of machinery, because he never knew what he might need. Kaze may have had the storage space for bigger objects, but Leo was no slouch. And the longer he used the belt, the more intuitive it became. He'd reach in and the right items would simply appear.

"So the thing is," Leo said as his hands twisted wire, "Zeus is already P.O.'ed at you, right? If you help us defeat Gaea, you could make it up to him."

Apollo wrinkled his nose. "I suppose that's possible. But it would be easier to smite you."

"What kind of ballad would that make?" Leo's hands worked furiously, attaching levers, fastening the metal funnel to an old gear shaft. "You're the god of music, right? Would you listen to a song called 'Apollo Smites a Runty Little Demigod'? I wouldn't. But 'Apollo Defeats the Earth Mother and Saves the Freaking Universe'…that sounds like a Billboard chart-topper!"

Apollo gazed into the air, as if envisioning his name on a marquee. "What do you want exactly? And what do I get out of it?"

"First thing I need: advice." Leo strung some wires across the mouth of the funeral. "I want to know if a plan of mine will work."

Leo explained what he had in mind. He'd been chewing on the idea for days, ever since Jason came back from the bottom of the sea and Leo started talking with Nike.

'A primordial god has been defeated once before,' Kympoleia had told Jason. 'You know of whom I speak.'

Leo's conversations with Nike had helped him fine-tune the plan, but he still wanted a second opinion from another god. Because once Leo committed himself, there would be no going back.

Rei and her own Primordial hadn't been that helpful. Just because he had the ability to speak with a Primordial more ancient than even Gaea and Tartarus, it didn't mean that they planned to be of any help. He supposed that once you got that ancient, he should just be glad that the Primordial within her didn't want to join Gaea and destroy the world even faster.

"You could die," Khaos had said helpfully when Leo had consulted her (them?).

"I know."

"You could die painfully."

"I know."

"You could die painfully and-"

"Look lady - or dude, or whatever I should call you, your Primordial-Ship - are you gonna give me any helpful advice?"

"If it were that easy, where would I get any of my fun, sweetheart? No, no, the most helpful thing I can give you is this: it's very easy to die, Leo Valdez. It all depends on what you do with your death. Have you ever considered why beings as big as me and as little as the weenie babies you call 'gods' want humans to continue to exist? Your worth amounts to little power, great arrogance, amazing levels of destructive cruelty, and on top of all that, no matter how many times you make things right, in a few more generations everything either becomes boring or absurdly depressing! I mean look at all the depressing things that come of you humans. So why do you think you're important enough that the gods want you around?"

"Uh…because we…can also do good things?"

"Could be put more elegantly, but yes. Think of that whenever you have doubts. Your value, Leo Valdez, has already been established. If nothing else, you will put on a show. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, just remember that creatures like you humans will always come into existence eventually. If you lose and this world is destroyed, in another few thousand years I might make some new humans! Or heck, maybe I'll keep some of the other religions alive to screw with them too! I mean we can't just have the Greeks and Romans fail and the other religions pop out of existence for something they weren't even responsible for! I put a lot of work into those religions! I should trigger Ragnarok and watch as the gods do glorious battle until all of them are dead instead of a few survivors; I should destroy the world of the Fifth Sun in that giant earthquake I planned ages ago; I should make that giant snake eat Ra already! Oh, it would be so much fun! Yes, don't worry, if you fail, Leo Valdez, I'll make sure you humans all die out so that I'll have an excuse to make some new humans! Maybe I'll give you more limbs, or more eyes, or-"

And so that was how Leo discovered he should never speak to Khaos about anything. Like ever.

Leo half hoped Apollo would laugh and tell him to forget it. Instead, the god nodded thoughtfully. "I will give you this advice for free. You might be able to defeat Gaea in the way you describe, similar to the way Ouranos was defeated eons ago. However, any mortal close by would be utterly…" Apollo's voice faltered. "What is that you have made?"

Leo looked down at the contraption in his hands. Layers of copper wires, like multiple sets of guitar strings, crisscrossed inside the funnel. Rows of striking pins were controlled by levers on the outside of the cone, which was fixed to a square metal base with a bunch of crank handles.

"Oh, this…?" Leo's mind raced furiously. The thing looked like a music box fused with an old-fashioned phonograph, but what was it?

A bargaining chip.

Artemis had told him to make a deal with Apollo.

Leo remembered a story the kids in Cabin Eleven used to brag about: how their father Hermes had avoided punishment for stealing Apollo's sacred cows. When Hermes got caught, he made a musical instrument - the first lyre - and traded it to Apollo, who immediately forgave him.

A few days ago, Piper mentioned seeing the cave on Pylos where Hermes hid those cows. That must've triggered Leo's subconscious. Without even meaning to, he'd built a musical instrument, which kinda surprised him, since he knew nothing about music.

"Um, well," Leo said, "this is quite simply the most amazing instrument ever!"

"How does it work?" asked the god.

'Good question,' Leo thought.

He turned the crank handles, hoping the thing wouldn't explode in his face. A few clear tones rang out - metallic yet warm. Leo manipulated the levers and gears. He recognized the song that sprang forth - the same wistful melody Calypso sang for him on Ogygia about homesickness and longing. But through the strings of the brass cone, the tune sounded even sadder, like a machine with a broken heart - the way Festus might sound if he could sing.

Leo forgot Apollo and Rei were even there. He played the song all the way through. When he was done, his eyes stung. He could almost smell the fresh-baked bread from Calypso's kitchen. He could taste the only kiss she'd ever given him.

Apollo stared in awe at the instrument. "I must have it. What is it called? What do you want for it?"

Leo had a sudden instinct to hide the instrument and keep it for himself. But he swallowed his melancholy. He had a task to complete. Calypso…Calypso needed him to succeed.

"This is the Valdezinator, of course!" He puffed out his chest. "It works by, um, translating your feelings into music as you manipulate the gears. It's really meant for me, a child of Hephaestus, to use, though. I don't know if you could-"

"I am the god of music!" Apollo cried. "I can certainly master the Valdezinator. I must! It is my duty!"

"So let's wheel and deal, Music Man," Leo said. "I give you this; you give me the physician's cure."

"Oh…" Apollo bit his godly lip. "Well, I don't actually have the physician's cure."

"I thought you were the god of medicine."

"Yes, but I'm the god of many things! Poetry, music, the Delphic Oracle-" He broke into a sob and covered his mouth with his fist. "Sorry. I'm fine. As I was saying, I have many spheres of influence. Then, of course, I have the whole 'sun god' gig, which I inherited from Helios. The point is, I'm rather like a general practitioner. For the physician's cure, you would need to see a specialist - the only one who has ever successfully cured death: my son Asclepius, the god of healers."

Leo's heart sank into his pockets. The last thing they needed was another quest to find another god who would probably demand his own commemorative T-shirt or Valdezinator.

"That's a shame, Apollo. I was hoping we could make a deal." Leo turned the levers on his Valdezinator, coaxing out an even sadder tune.

"Stop!" Apollo wailed. "It's too beautiful! I'll give you directions to Asclepius. He's really very close!"

"How do we know he'll help us? We've only got two days until Gaea wakes."

"He'll help!" Apollo promised. "My son is very helpful. Just plead with him in my name. You'll find him at his old temple in Epidaurus."

"What's the catch?"

"Ah…well, nothing. Except, of course, he's guarded."

"Guarded by what?"

"I don't know!" Apollo spread his hands helplessly. "I only know Zeus is keeping Asclepius under guard so he doesn't go running around the world resurrecting people. The first time Asclepius raised the dead…well, he caused quite an uproar. It's a long story. But I'm sure you can convince him to help."

"This isn't sounding like much of a deal," Leo said. "What about the last ingredient - the curse of Delos. What is it?"

Apollo eyed the Valdezinator greedily. Leo worried the god might just take it, and how could Leo stop him? Blasting the sun god with fire probably wouldn't do much good. Rei was sitting in one of the seats in the second row, her feet up on the chair back in front of her. She didn't look like she was gonna be any help.

No offense to Rei herself, but that Primordial within her…well, Leo couldn't say he was fond of it.

"I can give the last ingredient to you," Apollo said. "Then you'll have everything you need to Asclepius to brew the potion."

Leo played another verse. "I dunno. Trading this beautiful Valdezinator for some Delos curse-"

"It's not actually a curse! Look…" Apollo sprinted to the nearest patch of wildflowers and pocked a yellow one from a crack between the stones. "This is the curse of Delos."

Leo stared at it. "A cursed daisy?"

Apollo sighed in exasperation. "That's just a nickname. When my mother, Leto, was ready to give birth to Artemis and me, Hera was angry, because Zeus had cheated on her again. So she went around to every single landmass on earth. She made the nature spirits in each place promise to turn my mother away so she couldn't give birth anywhere."

"Sounds like something Hera would do."

"I know, right? Anyway, Hera exacted promises from every land that was rooted on the earth - but not from Delos, because back then Delos was a floating island. The nature spirits of Delos welcomed my mother. She gave birth to my sister and me, and the island was so happy to be our new sacred home it covered itself in these little yellow flowers. The flowers are a blessing, because we're awesome. But they also symbolize a curse, because once we were born, Delos got rooted in place and wasn't able to drift around the sea anymore. That's why yellow daisies are called the curse of Delos."

"So I could have just picked a daisy myself and walked away."

"No, no! Not for the potion you have in mind. The flower would have to be picked by either my sister or me. So what do you say, demigod? Directions to Asclepius and your last magical ingredient in exchange for that new musical instrument - do we have a deal?"

Leo hated to give away a perfectly good Valdezinator for a wildflower, but he saw no other choice. "You drive a hard bargain, Music Man."

They made the trade.

"Excellent!" Apollo turned the levers of the Valdezinator, which made a sound like a car engine on a cold morning. "Hmm…perhaps it'll take some practice, but I'll get it! Now let us find your friends. The sooner you leave the better!"

"Meanwhile, we have things to discuss, my little Apollo!" Rei exclaimed. She felt her Primordial getting excited, which helped brighten her mood. And also made her a little more afraid of what happened when her Primordial started getting happy.

By the time Leo was headed back to the Delos docks to meet up with Hazel, Frank, Kaze, and Azrael, he turned to tell Apollo good-bye, but the two gods had vanished.

First Person: Audrey

"Excuse me?"

Percy was characteristically calm about being told that he was gonna get killed. I mean, I suppose he was probably so used to it by now that death threats were about as effective as an angry comment on YouTube. Honestly, a YouTube comments section could probably be more deadly than any death threats Percy's heard before. Monsters ain't got nothin' on the haters.

"We must do battle," Quake said simply.

"Yeah, yeah, I got that part. But who are you and why must we do glorious battle or whatnot?"

The boy's face shifted only just slightly, but I could see the irritation flickering to the surface on his otherwise stoic expression. "I already told you. I am Quake, LK-2, and I have been ordered to kill you. So I will. And you must fight me in an attempt to preserve your life. That is how battle works."

"Look, I don't know what your deal is, but if I'm going to die, can I at least get some answers first?"

"He's one of the Ward kids," I said. "Remember that report we got?"

"Yeah, tough kids raised to be weapons in Facilities, right? Uh…which one were you again? Sorry, there were so many that I kinda lost track pretty quickly."

Quake exhaled through his nose with a clear wave of exasperation. "I am LK-2, R Neptune, S.C.F.E. - 0025 - ENSDN QK, generation 629, wave Eta, par-"

"Okay! Okay! You're Quake, I get it!" Percy huffed.

Now both Percy and Quake seemed exasperated, and I couldn't help but notice the similarities between them. "Hey, did you just say Neptune?" I realized.

Quake nodded. "I am R Neptune - Roman Neptune. LK, Lab Kid. Or Lab Creation, but because Creation is spelled with a 'C' in this culture, it makes less sense."

"The letter C is always bad news," Percy muttered. "You've got the S, you've got the K, so why does the letter C exist? If it didn't exist, I wouldn't get Cs on my report card…"

"But then you'd be getting Ds," I pointed out.

"Uh, no, I'd be getting Bs."

I shrugged. "Sounds bad either way you put it. Though getting Ds sounds a lot worse out of context…"

"Then again, without C we wouldn't have the sea."

"Sea isn't spelled with a C though."

"It isn't?" Percy had one of those blue-screen moments where he knew the information but somehow it didn't make sense even though he knew that it did and should make sense.

Quake glanced between us and then stomped his foot, causing the whole island he'd risen to shake. "Cease your worthless banter! I have explained who I am, now we must fight! I hold your ship with your companions hostage! If you wish them freed, you must greet me in battle!"

Something told me that Quake wasn't used to doing the talking when it came to hyping up a fight. He just stated 'We must fight' and seemed to expect that to be enough incentive for us. Then he remembered that oh yeah he had hostages so maybe that would get us angry enough to start a conflict.

Now I wasn't any expert on people (I dabbled in writing characters in my free time, but real people are more difficult than literary people), but to me, Quake appeared to have no sense of how to interact with others using his words.

Which made sense, I supposed. After everything that I'd learned about Azrael in the short time I'd known him, the Wards taught one to be complacent and to follow orders. Though Quake seemed to be an excellent fighter and soldier, for some reason he appeared to be here alone. And being alone meant that he had to somehow goad us into a fight; all he had been told was that he needed to fight us, and after that, he was sent here without any further instructions. Quake didn't have someone to give him orders right now, he didn't have someone to do the talking while he did the battling.

It was like he needed an Annabeth.

Percy, though Annabeth was usually the brains of the operation, knew very well how to talk his way through a situation, regardless of if he was totally BS-ing the entire conversation the whole way through.

And Quake, for all his flashy power - just going by his entrance and what I'd seen him do in Ithaca - didn't know what to do if his opponents weren't reacting the way he'd expected them to. Aka, accepting the challenge to fight just because he said they needed to. He wasn't used to dealing with people who were non-complacent, at least not without help by his side. He wasn't used to people…not fighting him when he was told to fight them.

"Right, right, friends are held hostage." Percy did his best to keep his tone light and even, though I knew he was genuinely worried about the others as well as the state of the ship. "I wanted info, yes, but I didn't want your whole lab I.D.; I just want to know why you wanna kill me! Tell me that, and we can fight, all right?"

Quake's nose twitched in irritation, but he sighed. "I am here to kill you because Boss told me to."

"There's gotta be more than that. Look, I get people trying to kill me all the time. And monsters. Mostly monsters. And sometimes gods. And other creatures in between. The point is, I've got a lot on my plate. At the moment, everyone who wants to kill me is being ordered to kill or capture me by ol' Dirt Face Gaea. What about you?"

Quake shook his head. "We do not work for the gods nor the Primordials above them. The ultimate goal of the Wards is to protect humanity."

"Then you should be working with us to fight Gaea and the giants! They're trying to end the world, ya know. That would be bad for the whole protecting humanity thing."

Quake's dark eyes locked onto Percy's sea green ones. It was one of those 'Do you take me for a fool?' looks. I couldn't tell precisely what it meant when you got that look so much that it was easy to recognize. Probably that you'd been a demigod for far too long at that point. "We are well aware of her plans. But we also resent your demigod camps and your gods."

"Coming from the kids who have their powers only because of the gods," I pointed out.

"The Wards are a contradictory system, it's true. We are the forsaken, those who have chosen to adapt to our enemies' ways and fight their reign using their own power. But we are built to become superior to them. Though our origins began with them, we have grown far beyond them. Your camps, however, are an unstable and unpredictable force. It was the negligence of the gods that incited the incident with Kronos and Typhon and that began the Second Titan War, and it is the negligence of the gods that allowed Gaea's armies to rise to power and for your camps to tear each other apart so easily. Regardless of what Boss's decision is, we will aid you or aid the giants. But we will do nothing to stop the destruction of your people."

Percy's grip tightened on Riptide. I could feel his anger seeping through the water and starting to boil it around us. The tidal waves of the sea crashed against Quake's platform, though if Quake was concerned by this, he didn't show it.

"Do you hate us? Or do you look down upon us? Just because we don't treat our campers like slaves? Maybe you're all soldiers, maybe you don't have any room for fun or even humanity, but that doesn't make you better than us. Camp Half-Blood may not be perfect, but it's home to dozens of campers who would be dead without such a sanctuary. The gods may have been negligent before, but they're going to change for the better. Camp Jupiter's got some bad apples, but most of them are still good people who stick together to defend the peaceful lives of those in New Rome. There will always be corruption so long as there is humanity, but there will also be those willing to stand and defend against that corruption. So what are you going to be?"

"Me?" Quake frowned. "Why ask me?"

"Because you're human too. You're just a kid, just like us."

"A kid…? What does that have to do with anything?" Quake seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Being a kid doesn't mean anything to you, does it?" I guessed. "Because age doesn't matter to the Wards? Because you're a kid made in a lab, you've been fighting all your life, haven't you? And you've never known what having a choice meant."

"I know what it means to have a choice," Quake protested. "I've seen the other Freebies. I've studied humanity ever since Boss took me in."

"If you think that the lives of all those demigods who are doing their own part in protecting others - if you think their lives are forfeit, then you must be terrible at that studying thing."

"You don't seem like a bad person, Quake," I said. "Do you really want to fight us?"

Quake paused. For a moment, I thought I saw him considering the notion. Then, he spoke. "My opinion has nothing to do with the situation. I don't know what I want because I don't want anything. I just want to do what Boss says. She says that I must kill you to become complete. Because I am still weak." He held up his hands like he was ashamed of them, like he hated them even though it wasn't like he had control over how they looked or worked. "I must become stronger because Boss says that I must."

"You're loyal to her," I noted.

"She is Boss. She is my superior. I exist to serve her."

"No one exists to serve," Percy protested. "You're your own person, regardless of what you were born to do or whatever destiny says you have to be."

Quake clenched his hand into a fist. "I want to serve her. I want to make her happy. I want to stay with her. But…I am weak. I must not be weak anymore." He flicked his hand towards the Argo II. The dome encasing the ship retreated back into the sea, revealing some of the crew on the deck rushing about trying to do something. "You will fight me, Perseus Jackson, or I will destroy your ship and any chance you have of reaching Athens."

He held his hand up towards the ship and then clenched it into a fist. An enormous stone pillar shot out of the ocean at an angle and pierced straight through the ship's hull with an enormous BOOM!

Percy and I couldn't help our panic. A hit like that could sink the entire ship! Nike could escape from the stables, some of the rooms might be destroyed, some of the crew might be thrown overboard!

"I can do that until your ship is nothing but tinder," Quake warned. "Now you will fight me."

"Okay! Okay! Just don't sink the ship! Sink it after I die, all right?" As if Percy really intended to die after a threat like that.

"Nonsense. If you die, I will have no reason to stay here. Your ship will remain intact so long as you fight me, regardless of the outcome of the battle. But that means that you will have to kill me or be killed yourself. If there is no retreat and no surrender! Fight me with everything you have!"

And with that, Quake launched himself forward to attack.

I know this is just the preamble to the actual fight, I love writing fight scenes but it takes inspiration to get through them (Rick doesn't like long fight scenes in his stories for a reason, eh?). Though technically, I had to add the Quake confrontation part to the chapter after I decide to split off the next section into the next chapter and add in the Quake thing just to pad out the length.

I swear I'll get to the actual fight scene next time. Swear. I'll get to it eventually. I swear.