"Hey. Hey. Wake up." Gohan blinked his eyes in confusion as he slowly realized that someone was poking him. He turned to see no other than Bianca, poking him with one end of her bow.

"Hey." She said. "It's morning. The train's stopped. Come on. We're not waiting around for you."

Gohan tried to shake off his drowsiness. Thalia, Zoe, and Bianca had already rolled up the metal curtains. Outside were snowy mountains dotted with pine trees, the sun rising red between two peaks.

They'd arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny.

Quite frankly, the weather wasn't that bad for Gohan. Thanks to the years of training he had had during the preparation for the androids, Gohan was much more used to cold weather. But it was still a bit unpleseant, even with his lion-skin coat. To say the walk up to the town was a bit awkward was an understatement. Gohan and Thalia refused to so much as even look at each other, still both pissed at the other after the previous evening's words. Percy really didn't comment, as he looked like he was deep in thought and not really in tune with reality.

As they walked, Gohan backed up and told Grover and Percy about his conversation with Apollo the night before—how he'd told him to seek out Nereus in San Francisco.

Grover looked uneasy. "That's good, I guess. But we've got to get there first."

They stopped in the middle of town. You could pretty much see everything from there: a school, a bunch of tourist stores and cafes, some ski cabins, and a grocery store.

"Well… this is quaint." Gohan tried to be optimistic.

"Great," Thalia said, looking around. "No bus station. No taxis. No car rental. No way out."

"There's a coffee shop!" said Grover.

"Yes," Zoe said. "Coffee is good."

"Coffee?" Gohan grinned.

"Not you! The last thing you need is caffine." Percy groaned. Gohan frowned.

"You're no fun."

Thalia sighed. "Fine. How about you two go get us some food. Percy, Bianca, Gohan and I will check in the grocery store. Maybe they can give us directions."

We agreed to meet back in front of the grocery store in fifteen minutes. Bianca looked a little uncomfortable coming with us, but she did.

Inside the store, they found out a few valuable things about Cloudcroft: there wasn't enough snow for skiing, the grocery store sold rubber rats for a dollar each, and there was no easy way in or out of town unless you had your own car.

"You could call for a taxi from Alamogordo," the clerk said doubtfully. "That's down at the bottom of the mountains, but it would take at least an hour to get here. Cost several hundred dollars."

The clerk looked so lonely, Percy bought a rubber rat. Then they headed back outside and stood on the porch. Gohan had some fun with the rat, squeezing it several times.

"What's the point of this?" Gohan sighed before squeezing the rat again.

"Wonderful," Thalia grumped.

"I could fly us down. It wouldn't take very long." Gohan suggested, though he looked at Percy when he said that, not Thalia.

"No way. Now, I'm going to walk down the street, see if anybody in the other shops has a suggestion."

"But the clerk said—"

"I know," she told them. "I'm checking anyway." She stalked away, walking down the road.

They let her go. After all, both Gohan and Percy knew how it felt to be restless. All half-bloods had attention deficit problems because of their inborn battlefield reflexes. They couldn't stand just waiting around. Same went for Gohan's Saiyan instincts. Also, it was pretty obvious that Thalia was still upset over her "conversation" with Gohan last night about Luke.

Bianca, Gohan and Percy stood together awkwardly.

"Nice rat," she said at last.

"My rat." Gohan answered before squeezing the rat again, turning his back to Bianca.

Percy set it on the porch railing. Maybe it would attract more business for the store. "So... how do you like being a Hunter so far?" Percy asked, trying to break the awkwardness.

She pursed her lips. "You're not still mad at me for joining, are you?" Gohan made a hmph noise, causing Percy to elbow him.
"Nah. Long as, you know... you're happy."

"I'm not sure 'happy' is the right word, with Lady Artemis gone. But being a Hunter is definitely cool. I feel calmer somehow. Everything seems to have slowed down around me. I guess that's the immortality."

Gohan hmphed again. Bianca whirled on him, her eyes blazing.

Percy stared at her, seeing the difference. She did seem more confident than before, more at peace. She didn't hide her face under a green cap anymore. She kept her hair tied back, and she looked Gohan right in the eyes when she spoke. With a shiver, Percy realized that five hundred or a thousand years from now, Bianca di Angelo would look exactly the same as she did today. She might be having a conversation like this with some other half-blood long after he and Gohan were long dead, but Bianca would still look twelve years old.

"Just what is your problem with me?"

"Nothing. I just have a problem with selfish people who only think about themselves." Percy facepalmed himself.

"Ayiiii…"

"Selfish?! You know nothing about me! Yet here you stand and judge me like you're my father or something!"

"And how does Nico feel about all this? If his sister, the only family he's ever known, just up and one day leaves him all alone with little more than a "see ya"? I'd be pretty confused too if I was him." Bianca's face softened, almost like she might cry.

"Nico didn't understand my decision," Bianca murmured. She looked at Percy like she wanted assurance it was okay. To show some support.

"He'll be all right," Percy said. "Camp Half-Blood takes in a lot of young kids. They did that for Annabeth." Gohan's face soured.

"I need food." He stomped away, storming out the back door.

Bianca rolled her eyes.

"Seriously… I hope we find her. Annabeth, I mean. She's lucky to have friends like you. Him… not so much." Percy sighed, shaking his head.

"Look, don't hold that against him. I know he's a bit…"

"Stubborn? Assholeish? Judgemental?"

"I wouldn't use those words." Percy rubbed his forehead. "I know he seems a bit cold, but he's just a little frustrated."

"A little?"

"It's just…" Percy groaned internally.

"Gohan has been through some really bad stuff in the past. And I mean bad. Things worse than anything we've come across so far. And he's been doing that since he was four years old."

"Four?"

"Yeah… and his dad had a bad habit of…" Percy paused, trying to choose the right word.

"Leaving." Bianca finished.

"Yeah. Not for bad reasons though, he sounds like a pretty cool guy from the way Gohan described him. A lot like him actually. But still… he was gone a lot when Gohan was little. Then, his dad... died, and then Gohan got sucked from his world into ours right after."

"Oh. Wow, that's… rough."

"Yeah… look at it from his perspective. Imagine being stuck on Mars. Everything's completely different from what you knew. Everyone you knew doesn't exist here. He doesn't say it, but it really gets to him."

"Geez… but that's still not an excuse to act the way he does."

"I know. I just wanted to point out why he's acting like that. He's not normally like that, though. He's, honeslty, one of the bravest guys I know." Bianca raised her eyebrows.

"That's sure a lot of praising. Almost like you idolize him." Percy's face flushed.

"No, I'm not!" Bianca grinned, playfully elbowing him.

"Still, you two seem close. Are you guys…" she pressed.

"Are we what?"

"You know…" Percy frowned for a second before his eyes widened, realizing what she was insinuating.

"NO!" Percy blurted, then quieted down as several passerby stared.

"I like girls." He hissed through clenched teeth. Bianca giggled.

"Just checking. You should see your face." She softened at the expression on Percy's face.

"Look, I was just messing with you. Seriously, stop blaming yourself. You risked your life to save my brother and me. I mean, that was seriously brave. If you ask me, you're just as brave as Gohan." Percy blinked in surprise.

"Thanks."

"Seriously. If I hadn't met you, I wouldn't have felt okay about leaving Nico at the camp. I figured if there were people like you there, Nico would be fine. You're a good guy." Percy smiled.

The compliment took me by surprise. "Even though I knocked you down in capture the flag?"

She laughed. "Okay. Except for that, you're a good guy."

A couple hundred yards away, Grover and Zoe came out of the coffee shop loaded down with pastry bags and drinks. Percy kind of didn't want them to come back yet. It was weird, but he realized he liked talking to Bianca. She wasn't so bad. A lot easier to hang out with than Zoe Nightshade, anyway.

"So what's the story with you and Nico?" I asked her. "Where did you go to school before Westover?"

She frowned. "I think it was a boarding school in D.C. It seems like so long ago."

"You never lived with your parents? I mean, your mortal parent?"

"We were told our parents were dead. There was a bank trust for us. A lot of money, I think. A lawyer would come by once in a while to check on us. Then Nico and I had to leave that school."

"Why?"

She knit her eyebrows. "We had to go somewhere. I remember it was important. We traveled a long way. And we stayed in this hotel for a few weeks. And then... I don't know. One day a different lawyer came to get us out. He said it was time for us to leave. He drove us back east, through D.C. Then up into Maine. And we started going to Westover."

It was a strange story. Then again, Bianca and Nico were half-bloods. Nothing would be normal for them.

"So you've been raising Nico pretty much all your life?" I asked. "Just the two of you?"

She nodded. "That's why I wanted to join the Hunters so bad. I mean, I know it's selfish, but I wanted my own life and friends. I love Nico—don't get me wrong—I just needed to find out what it would be like not to be a big sister twenty-four hours a day. I guess Gohan did make a good point, though. Maybe I shouldn't have been so rash."

Percy shrugged.

"True, maybe you should have though it over a bit more. But what's done is done." Bianca shrugged.

"I guess you make a good point."

"Zoe seems to trust you," Percy said." What were you guys talking about, anyway— something dangerous about the quest?"

"When?"

"Yesterday morning on the pavilion," Percy said, before he could stop myself. "Something about the General."

Her face darkened. "How did you... The invisibility hat. Were you eavesdropping?"

"No! I mean, not really. I just—" Before Percy could answer, the world exploded.