To 8Ball3- I had to put it, sorry-not-sorry :3

'Death to my enemies' was an excellent battle cry. A true classic, delivered with conviction. Some of the drama was lost, however, when Nero pushed the button and the shades on the windows began to lower. He really did need a labelling system, Apollo realised as the emperor cursed- perhaps one Meg had taught him- and dived into his sofa cushions, looking for the correct correct remote.

If the thing stopping them from dying was a lost remote, Apollo wouldn't have stressed anywhere near as much as he had.

Meg had disarmed Aemillia, as she had promised, and was now swinging her borrowed sword while more and more of her foster siblings encircled her, anxious to have a part in taking her down.

Nico waded through Germani. They outnumbered him more than ten to one, but they quickly developed a healthy respect for his Stygian iron blade. Even barbarians can master a steep learning curve if it is sharp and painful enough. Nico couldn't last forever against so many though, especially since their spears had a longer reach and he could only see through his right eye. Vercorix barked at his men, ordering them to surround di Angelo. Unfortunately, the grizzled lieutenant seemed much better at mustering his forces than he was at delivering remote controls.

As for Apollo… using a bow after being stabbed in the side? He was not yet dead, which confirmed the blade had missed all his important arteries and organs, but raising his arm made him want to scream in pain.

He had lost blood. He was sweating and shivering. Nevertheless, his friends needed him. He had to do what he could.

"Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew." He muttered, trying to clear his head.

First, he kicked Lucius in the face and knocked him out, because the sneaky little so-and-so deserved it. Then he fired an arrow at one of the other Imperial demigods, who was trying to stab Meg in the back. He was reluctant to kill, remembering Cassius's terrified face in the elevator, but he hit his target in the ankle, causing him to scream and do the chicken walk around the throne room. That was satisfying.

His real problem was Nero. With Meg and Nico overwhelmed, the emperor had plenty of time to fish through his sofa cushions for remotes. The fact that his blast doors were destroyed did not seem to dampen his enthusiasm for flooding the tower with poisonous gas. Perhaps, being a minor god, he would be immune. Perhaps he gargled with Sassanid gas every morning.

He fired at the emperor's centre mass- a shot that should have split his sternum. Instead, the arrow shattered on his toga. The garment had some sort of protective magic apparently.

With a great deal of pain, Apollo loaded another arrow. This time, he targeted Nero's head. He was reloading much too slowly. Every shot was an ordeal for his tortured body, but his aim was true. The arrow hit him right between the eyes. And shattered uselessly. Nero scowled at him from across the room.

"Stop that!" He demanded. Then he went back to searching for his remote.

Apollo's spirits fell even further. Clearly, Nero was still invulnerable. Luguselwa had failed to destroy his fasces. That meant they faced an emperor with three times the power of Caligula or Commodus, and they hadn't exactly been pushovers. If Nero stopped obsessing about his poison gas gadget and actually attacked them, they would be dead.

New strategy. As Nero picked up the next control, Apollo shot it out of his hand. Nero snarled and grabbed another. Apollo couldn't fire fast enough.

Nero pointed the remote at him and mashed the buttons like they might erase him from existence. Instead, three giant TV screens lowered from the ceiling and flickered to life. The first showed local news: a live feed from a helicopter circling this very tower. Apparently, they were on fire. The second screen showed a PGA tournament. The third was split between Fox News and MSNBC, which side-by-side should have been enough to cause an antimatter explosion.

Nero growled in frustration and tossed the remote away. "Apollo, stop fighting me! You will die anyway! Don't you understand that? It's me or the reptile!" That rattled Apollo and made his next shot go wide. It hit the groin of the long-suffering Vercorix, who went cross-eyed in pain as the arrow corroded his body to ash.

"Dude." Apollo said, stunned. "I am so sorry."

At the far end of the room, behind Nero's dais, more barbarians appeared, marching to the emperor's defence with their spears ready.

Meg was still surrounded by her foster siblings. She had managed to get a shield, but she was hopelessly outnumbered. Apollo understood her desire to abandon the dual scimitars Nero had given her, but he was starting to question the timing of that decision. Also, she seemed determined not to kill her attackers, but her foster siblings had no such reservations. The other demigods closed in around her, confident smirks indicating that they sensed imminent victory.

Nico was losing steam against the Germani. His sword seemed to become ten pounds heavier every time he swung it.

Apollo reached for his quivers and realised he had only one arrow left to shoot, not including his Shakespearean life coach from Dodona.

Nero pulled out yet another remote. Before Apollo could take aim, Nero pressed a button. A mirrored ball lowered from the middle of the ceiling. Lights flashed. The Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive' began to play, which everyone knows is one of the Top Ten Omens of Impending Doom in the Prophecy for Morons handbook.

Apollo almost said a silent prayer of thanks for useless remotes controlling useless things, but Nero threw away the disco ball remote and picked up another. With a cold sense of dread, Apollo saw it was the last one.

"Nico!" He yelled. He had no chance of bringing Nero down. Instead, he fired at the Germanus who stood directly between the son of Hades and the throne, blasting the barbarian to nothingness.

Bless his fancy cowboy hat, Nico understood. He charged, breaking out of the ring of Germani and leaping straight for the emperor with all his remaining strength. His downward slash should have cleaved Nero from head to devil tail, but, with his free hand, the emperor grabbed the blade and stopped it cold. The Stygian iron hissed and smoked in his grip. Golden blood trickled from between his fingers. He yanked the blade away from Nico and tossed it across the room. Nico lunged at Nero's throat, ready to choke him or make him into a Halloween skeleton. The emperor backhanded him with such force, he sent Nico flying twenty feet, slamming into the nearest pillar.

"You fools cannot kill me!" He roared. "I am immortal!" He clicked his remote. Nothing obvious happened, but the emperor screeched with delight. "That's it! That's the one! All your friends are dead now!"

Meg screamed in outrage. She tried to break out of her circle of attackers as Nico had done, but one of the demigods tripped her. She crashed face-first into the carpet. Her borrowed sword clattered from her grip.

Apollo wanted to run to her aid, but he knew he was too far away. Even if he shot the Arrow of Dodona, he couldn't take down an entire group of demigods.

They had failed. In the tower below, their friends would now be choking to death- the entire camp wiped out with a single click of Nero's remote.

The Germani hauled Nico to his feet and dragged him before the throne. The Imperial demigods pointed their weapons at Meg, now prone and helpless. "Excellent!" Nero beamed. "But first things first! Guards, kill Apollo!"

The Germani reinforcements barrelled towards him. Apollo fumbled for his ukulele, desperately reviewing his repertoire for a song that would produce a stunning reversal of tortures. 'I Believe in Miracles?' 'Make It Right?'

Behind him, a familiar voice bellowed,

"STOP!"

The tone was so commanding, even Nero's guards and family members turned towards the broken blast doors.

On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light. At his left was Lu, alive and well, her stumps now outfitted with daggers instead of silverware. At Will's right was Rachel, holding a large axe in a golden bundle of rods: the fasces of Nero.

Will glowered at the emperor. "No-one hits my boyfriend," he thundered, "and no-one kills my dad!"

Nero's guards made ready to attack, but the emperor cried,

"EVERYBODY FREEZE!" His voice was so shrill that several of the Germani looked back to be sure he was the one who had spoken.

The demigods of the Imperial family did not look pleased. They had been about to give Meg the Julius-Caesar-in-the-Senate treatment, but at Nero's command, they stayed their weapons.

Rachel scanned the room: the pollen-covered furniture and barbarians, the overgrown dryad trees, the pile of bull bones, the cracked windows and columns, the shades still going up and down on their own, the TVs blaring, the Bee Gees playing and the disco ball swirling.

"What have you guys been doing in here?" She marvelled.

Will strode confidently across the room, snapping at the Germani to get out of his way. He marched straight to Nico and helped him to his feet. Then he dragged him back to the entrance. No-one tried to stop them.

The emperor inched back on the dais. He put one hand behind him, as if to reassure himself that his sofa was still there in case he needed to faint dramatically. He ignored Will and Nico. His eyes were fixed on Rachel and the fasces.

"You." He wagged a finger at her. "You're the Pythia." Rachel hefted the fasces in her arms like a baby- a very heavy, pointy golden baby.

"Rachel Elizabeth Dare." She said. "And right now, I'm the girl holding your life in her hands."

Nero licked his lips. He frowned, then grimaced, as if exercising his facial muscles for an onstage soliloquy.

"You, ah… you all should be dead." He sounded both polite and vexed, as if chiding them for not calling first before dropping by for dinner.

From behind Lu, a small figure emerged: Screech-Bling, CEO of Troglodyte Inc., festooned with six new hats atop his tricorn. His grin was almost as bright as Will.

"Gas traps are- CLICK- finicky!" He said. "Have to be sure the detonators are working." He opened his hand, letting four nine-volt batteries tumble to the floor. Nero glared at his foster children as if to say, You had one job.

"And how exactly…?" Nero blinked and squinted. The glow of his own fasces seemed to hurt his eyes. "The leontocephaline. You couldn't have defeated him."

"I didn't." Lu stepped forward, allowing Apollo a closer look at her new attachments. Someone, presumably Will, had fixed her up with fresh bandages, more surgical tape and better blades, giving her a low budget Wolverine look. "I traded what the guardian required: my immortality."

"But you don't have…" Nero's throat seemed to close up. A look of dread came over his face, which was like watching someone press on wet sand and expel water from the centre. Apollo had to laugh. It was totally inappropriate, but it felt good.

"Lu has immortality," he said, "because you're immortal. The two of you have been connected for centuries." Nero's eye twitched.

"But that's my eternal life! You can't trade my life for my life!" Lu shrugged.

"It's a little shady, I agree. But the leontocephaline seemed to find it… amusing." Nero stared at her in disbelief.

"You would kill yourself just to kill me?"

"In a heartbeat." She confirmed. "But it won't come to that. I'm just a regular mortal now. Destroying the fasces will do the same to you." She gestured to her former colleagues. "And all of your other guards too. They'll be free of you. Then… we'll see how long you last."

Nero laughed as abruptly as Apollo had.

"You can't! Don't any of you understand? All of the power of the Triumvirate is mine now. My fasces…" His eyes lit with sudden hope. "You haven't destroyed it yet, because you can't. Even if you could, you'd release so much power it would burn you to cinders. And, even if you didn't mind dying, the power… all of the power I've been accumulating for centuries would just sink into Delphi, to him. You don't want that, believe me!"

The terror in his voice was absolutely genuine. Apollo finally realised just how much fear Nero had been living with. Python had always been the real power behind the throne- a bigger puppet master than Nero's mother had ever been. Like most bullies, Nero had been shaped and manipulated by an even stronger abuser. "You- Pythia." He said. "Raquel-"

"Rachel."

"That's what I said! I can influence the reptile. I can convince him to give you your powers back. But kill me and all is lost. He- he doesn't think like a human. He has no mercy, no compassion. He'll destroy the future of our kind!" Rachel shrugged.

"Seems to me that you've chosen your kind, Nero. And it isn't humanity."

Nero cast his eyes desperately around the room. He fixed his gaze on Meg, who was now on her feet, swaying wearily in the circle of her Imperial siblings.

"Meg, dear! Tell them! I said I would let you choose. I trust your sweet nature, your good senses!" Meg regarded him as if he were a distasteful wall painting.

She addressed her foster siblings.

"What you guys have done up until now… it isn't your fault. It's Nero's fault. But now you've got to make a choice. Stand up to him, like I did. Drop your weapons." Nero hissed.

"Ungrateful child. The Beast-"

"The Beast is dead." Meg tapped the side of her head. "I killed it. Surrender, Nero. My friends will let you live in a nice prison somewhere. It's more than you deserve."

"That," Lu said, "is the best deal you're going to get, Emperor. Tell your followers to stand down." Nero looked on the verge of tears. He seemed like he was ready to set aside centuries of tyranny and power struggles and to betray his reptilian overlord. Villainy, after all, was a thankless, exhausting job.

He took a deep breath.

Then he screamed,

"KILL THEM ALL!"