"Oh well that's a relief, because if you found out the whole truth things would go easy and we can't have that!" Jason groaned.

"The truth about what exactly though?" Alex smirked. "Who stole the bolt? Annabeth's imaginary friend? The president?"

"It probably means more half-truths and figuring it out for ourselves, so I'm not looking forward to it any more than you guys," Percy sighed, clenching and unclenching his hand with unease. It was unblemished like the rest of him, but he would swear there used to be a scar on his palm...

Will felt for the guy, truly, Percy had been drafted into this, accused of and lied to this entire time and now he had to face an impossible choice no one would envy. It was moments like these he truly understood Luke's cause, the gods that had done this to Percy couldn't have mercy for their kids, but they were all here. Getting Percy's memory restored because of Poseidon. Some good had to come of this, whatever the original plan had been on how they'd gotten here.

Nico grimaced, sounded like his personal torture.

It only then occurred to Nico, hearing it out loud like that, spending all of his time in this place might be why he'd grown to loathe being touched and in large crowds. He knew he was looking for someone he had no hope of finding and yet persistently kept at it with no other hope of a connection gone. The ghosts crowded him though, their whispers his ears could detect better than anyone's, impeding his progress all the more.

He'd never admitted it before, but Will put it so simply the parallel was impossible not to draw.

Nobody would bother him in Tartarus, he concluded.

"Are we sure this isn't a form of punishment?" Alex demanded.

"Doing nothing will leave you with nothing," Thalia uneasily reminded. "It was their choice not to face the judges for something better, their average lives that lead them to, well an average eternal-ment."

Alex bared her teeth, not at Thalia, just the world in general. She'd never go down without a fight, not in the mortal world or any other realm. Hearth already got the sense she was going to be an einherjar no matter what became of her in the world above.

Nico watched Will say that, really seem to mean that, and it surprised him all the more Percy seemed to understand that too. What did it say that most of the campers thought he was creepy, yet a very important person around there didn't?

Thalia was looking a bit forlorn herself, that this was the best she could hope for Luke instead of receiving some punishment from Hades for his actions. She didn't even know if she should want this for him instead.

For a moment Thalia's eyes glazed over again, just a bit, just a hint of still wanting to go back and try again before she mentally smacked herself.

"Don't we all," Will said graciously.

Thalia thought she was at least lucky in that regard. While it wasn't part of the guarantee of being a Huntress, you were most assuredly going to get Elysium for doing the goddess's work unless you'd done something outstandingly stupid to earn her wrath.

"Sounds sort of boring," Alex dismissed, this felt no better than eternal nothingness. "Getting a perfect afterlife, everything you could ever want just handed to you. Where's the, drive, where's the goal?! People need motivation to do something or they'll go nuts."

Magnus was watching her avidly, he was pretty sure he could spend eternity watching her do whatever she wanted and never grow bored of it.

"Who said the Isles of the Blest doesn't do that," Nico had an odd sort of smile on his face as he challenged back. "Nobodies ever been there and back to report of course, it's impossible to sneak in, you have to be escorted by Hades himself. Yet I find it hard to believe the ultimate goal of the dead could ever be called bad." He was thinking though, that if other gods existed, it was possible other forms of death did too. Maybe even his dad didn't know for sure what happened out there, but Hades spoke of the place with confidence while watching him...like he pictured him going there one day.*

"Most people aren't good or bad, they just don't try," Alex said with an eerily calm look as she twined her garrote around her fingers. "Too wrapped up in their own worlds to make that effort. I suppose, in that way," she trailed off this did seem just.

"Doesn't mean we stop hoping they will," Will insisted, it never hurt to hope for the better, even when disappointment was all you got, the trying had to make it worth it on some level, even Hades's.

"Darn, I was hoping it was gargoyles," Magnus said.

"They're a good resemblance," Percy agreed.

"I'm sure you still have time to make it to Maine and back," Jason snorted.

"What the-"

Percy made a wild grab for the book before Thalia snatched the back of his shirt and yanked him back into his seat, but the other four all took the hint and knew not to ask what was going on as Percy narrowed his eyes with confusion, for now. Something was about to happen though, the air in here was starting to feel a little thin...

No, he didn't, Grover hadn't done this, but something evil was doing this to him. Percy had Riptide in hand and looked prepared to stab Thalia, Will, and whoever else he needed to find out what was being done to his friend.

Jason felt like his imagination was in active overdrive as he tried to keep up with the chaos being described, fingers twitching like he had the maddening desire to try it now and see if he could.

Percy's breaths were coming in short, sharp pants as he wished he could do anything to stop this, the feeling was creeping around him more every moment of where his friend was being dragged to and he couldn't breathe-

"Percy," Thalia gave his shoulder a vigorous shake, "you're sucking all the water out of our air!" She was starting to get a nosebleed!

"Sorry," he gasped, literally, and so did the others as they exhaled in relief and some of them rubbed their throats. It was like he'd been trying to pull Grover to him any way he could, bend him back to his side no matter how ridiculous the thought. If he concentrated though, really hard, he just knew somewhere Grover was alive and okay, though he still had no clue what gave him such an assurance.

Thalia kept her nails dug into his shoulder all the same at the horror of what had almost happened.

Nico was taking calm, calculated breaths like he was preparing to take that lunge right now. Whatever Kronos had started by awakening had not stopped by his death. There had been zero hope of finding Percy in the Underworld, but he'd looked all the same until he heard the whispers from the dead, mother earth herself was stirring, and he would go down to the deepest parts on display right there to find out what.

"Nico, pay attention!" Will was nudging him persistently, speaking just a tad louder than was necessary. "I'm sorry if you're afraid of heights, but that's not helping!" The guy was turning gray and they would all swear the earth was starting to roll just a bit beneath their feet.

Having two such powerful demigods in such a state of distress was about to literally tear the roof down around them if they didn't hurry up and get away from this chasm!

It took every ounce of self control Percy had not to throw himself forward again, hand extended towards no one here to stop this from happening. He could do this, he could stop this, if he just stabbed his sword into the ground and reached far enough, he wouldn't lose him.

Percy laughed. He slumped back in his seat in relief and looked punch drunk like all this water was making him high. Thalia sighed in relief and smacked his shoulder calling him a turnip brain, before Will shushed them both so the rest of them could hear for themselves and get away from this creepy cavern Nico was still far to uneasy hearing about as far as he was concerned.

"I have never been more afraid of shoes in my life," Jason looked a little faint.

"Did those Aphrodite kids curse them or something?" Alex demanded.

All at once it seemed to hit the five of them who had given Grover those shoes. Percy began looking at Thalia, Nico, and Will so intensely, they could practically feel the water boiling around them.

"The bolt Percy," Thalia forcefully reminded him, "focus on getting out of that place, not going farther in."

He struggled to swallow for a moment as his headache screamed in protest like he was going to split in half. He should let this go before he blacked out from pain, but he couldn't, he was right and they were going to admit it-

"Let it go Percy," Jason coolly stepped in. "We've got enough to deal with when we get to the surface to hash this out." A mole in their midst was certainly a priority of his, and he wasn't even sure he had any loyalties to this camp yet.

He was right though, Percy would have to admit as he backed down. His mom was the priority here, finding that bolt and getting back to Annabeth. The second he let go of the idea, he was already drawing up a blank on what he'd been demanding before anyways. He just knew he wanted out of that cavern.

Thalia had her lips pursed up so tight she looked like she was chewing on a lemon, and Nico and Will were fidgeting in the exact same way. Great, now he knew he was missing something! That stupid backpack had nothing to do with those shoes, right?

"That was freaking cool if it wasn't so awful for him," Alex muttered.

Nico looked least surprised of all, Will felt a cold chill as he watched. There was something so wrong with the calm way he knew of this place, his head tipped slightly to the side as if he were listening for it now. Nico had never been Kronos's spy though, had helped Percy and them fight in the Titan's war, so what his familiarity with this place was greatly disturbed him if it was somehow even worse than that.

"Just drop the dang thing already!" Magnus blurted, he had no more need of it.

He watched all four Greek kids grimace at the suggestion and realized Jason had been right to question it.

They were lucky, or grateful Ares had enchanted him to not do any such thing, Will very much wanted to protest! If Krono had gotten that, he could have resurrected even sooner! Though, it might have saved Luke's life, maybe he would have made the right choice sooner...

Percy kept shifting his weight around like he was trying to readjust the straps, that stupid purple thing was lingering in his mind like it was full of Oreos again and he was being denied a treat, and no way was he crazy for thinking so with the way Thalia would no longer quite meet his eyes.

All eight of them shivered at once. It had never left their mind just how close the thin layer of ocean floor could be separating them from this very fate if this was all somehow a trap.

"He managed to hit Medusa with a branch with them, it's almost worth the trade," Alex disagreed.

"Now I know what kind of footwear you prefer, the life and death kind," Magnus didn't seem all that surprised.

"You guys didn't question this at all?" Magnus whispered in a tiny voice.

"We were focused on the deadline," Percy said with such dread in his stomach, he was beginning to wonder if he'd swallowed that backpack.

"Did we expect anything else at this point?" Alex said, but a very large part of her did want to see such twisted artwork in person.

"He actually has a bit of premonition power about death," Nico answered, "a sort of, gut feeling, like a ticking noise that steadily grows louder the nearer it draws, that all sound slightly different when something is about to strike and increase his workload," he finished sourly. Boy did he always hear about the paperwork of that.

"All gods have that to some degree," Will added with less cheer than usual. "It's not that they can see the future, except the Fates of course, that's their shtick, but they get this, feeling. A sense like they should grab a raincoat even though there's not a cloud in the sky and it works out for them later in the day when a bucket falls on them."

"This feeling that stretches over millennia, mind you," Thalia nodded.

Alex grimaced with distaste, she had plenty of experience with Loki's uncanny assurances about the future, but the others felt a bit small for the reminder of how the gods could easily view them as pawns in such a widespread cosmos.

Nico sighed with distaste, it was a particularly popular story for cabin four to hiss at him during meals. You'd think the guy who got regularly turned into a plant by their mother and his own stepmom would get some kind of pass from them!

"And house is putting it mildly," Percy told them.

"Not an adventure I envy," Jason shuddered.

"That sounds like the coolest haunted house in the universe though," Alex said with just a touch of longing.

"Only if you acknowledge there's no exit," Magnus swiftly reminded.

"And here I thought the Bible Thumpers would be lining the block to get in there," Will snorted.

"At that point it's just redundant," Thalia rolled her eyes, "you've already snuck into his kingdom, might as well barge into his home." She was mostly being sarcastic, but it didn't feel like there was a right answer to that either.

Nico straightened up in surprise, but he wasn't really going to get his hopes up Percy had anything decent to say about his dad, nobody had before.

Will sounded as if he meant every one of those powerful words.

Apollo had come to visit him in his dreams sporadically and he'd only seen his dad in person twice as a happy go lucky teenager. The last time he'd been to camp he hadn't even popped in to say hi, though admittedly his sister had been missing at the time, they'd all quietly wondered to each other that summer why he'd never instigated a quest out of any of them, nor had he gone out of his way to ever show them around Olympus when they got the chance to visit there. He came across more as a 'cool' parent who just blessed them with amazing gifts when he remembered they existed.

He glanced curiously at Nico, and now actually felt a little jealous of how common place this environment was to him. How much time did Hades spend with him?

"I think the wine dude is still my favorite," Alex said with a scrunched up face. "I'll take trailer-park cherub over any auras these other two give off."

"Please don't ever say that to him, I am begging you," Will said with even more fear than seconds ago, which appropriately made the reading sound even worse now.

Nico managed to laugh of all things, taking that in stride as he imagined Will eating this book before Dionysus could get his hands on it instead.

"Which I'm only semi-confident you can do at this rate," Jason frowned, considering how rude he'd been to Mars. Pluto at least was coming across exactly how he would have expected.

'It's amazing how thin that line is,' Hearth uneasily agreed. He'd never wanted to hear depictions of Hela, let alone her male Greek counterpart.

And then the tension was broken by nearly hysterical laughter by them all. Thalia tried choking something together about child molesters and rapists but the answer wasn't very clear, while Alex said loud and proud, "you make me wish I had ADHD for these thoughts!"

"At least now you acknowledge I have them," Percy grinned indulgently, glad it was all fun and games for them when his voice had been squeaking like a mouse in front of someone who could wave his hand and turn him into one any second.

Nico bore a very striking resemblance of that unimpressed look now, Percy absently noticed, as he grumbled inaudibly he'd been going about making him laugh all wrong. Man that guy was weird.

"Grover the unsung hero of this quest," Magnus snorted.

"At this rate what haven't you done," Alex threw her hands up in exasperation this pantheon seemed no better than her own. "Shoot JFK? Started World War 2!"

"Can't say I'm looking forward to finding out," Percy groaned.

'That is a lot of dead bodies,' Hearth's mind boggled at the madness.

'And those were just the ones he summoned,' Magnus reminded, his mind on all the dead who had ever passed his domain, Genghis Khan's ruling alone must have been a mass import.

"You get a gold star for that restraint alone," Thalia promised.

"Oh, here we go," Nico couldn't stop the little sigh of defeat, but he did it quietly just for Will. He knew this speech so well he could have said it with him.

Will had to really concentrate all of a sudden on the book, and not the fact he shouldn't be able to feel the warmth of his breath down here.

Magnus opened his mouth with that curiosity of his again, but Nico gave him a small shake of the head silently hoping he wouldn't persist. He didn't, to Nico's relief, who for once would have felt guilty for not answering, and yet that kind of knowledge was really pushing the limits of what he should and shouldn't know of this place.

"I take my gold star back!" Thalia whacked him hard enough to make him see stars.

Percy couldn't even be mad as he rubbed the spot, he already wished he hadn't let that one slip too.

"I will help," Alex promised.

"Maybe later," Percy sighed, though he hadn't ruled it out yet.

"That was fascinating," Jason looked like he regretted not having a pen and paper to jot all that down. "Did none of the other gods take that into consideration? It's like Zeus wanting more car factories to exist."

"We certainly didn't think of it that way," Will agreed regretfully, "and Hades has no, ah, ambassador to speak for him, nor is he welcomed on Mount Olympus to ask, so, yeah, sounds like a recipe for disaster in hindsight." He'd thought Nico would take up the role, but he'd have to be a camper longer than two weeks to manage it!

"Great, can he explain it to me?" Percy sighed.

"How have we not all died yet from these three?" Alex looked plenty disturbed these idiots apparently thought their two brothers were out to deceive them at the drop of a hat.

Nobody answered her, which wasn't exactly encouraging.

Hearth was starting to get a headache trying to keep in line all these different fabrics the gods were weaving over this one lie in the first place. How was it even possible to hide away a demigod child if monsters could so casually smell him, wouldn't the gods have known when he was born? The same deity who had foreknowledge of plagues and natural disasters couldn't pick up on the fact Percy had no idea about any of this? Immortal clearly didn't mean all-knowing like Odin.

"Percy has literally not said a word about any of that," Jason said dubiously, "he's been weirdly polite to this god during his rude rant."

"You try telling him that," Percy waved at Jason with such agreement he blasted a current of water that splashed his face. He spat out the ocean from his mouth and asked himself how long he'd have to put up with these Greek kids nonsense.

Magnus was going back in his head and ticking up all of the interruptions, and only the first on the bus had most definitely been Hades. After that it was Medusa and Procrustes by accident, Zeus had sent Echidna, and Ares had helped them the rest of the way there. It did seem that if this guy had wanted to impede their progress, he might have been trying harder. Hell, they'd walked right through his front door!

"Was that a threat or a compliment for your brass?" Alex asked.

"I could not tell you, gods do I hope we don't find out," Percy groaned.

Percy's defiance in the face of the gods didn't surprise anyone this time. This quest had been nothing but infuriating from the start, everyone pointing the finger at everyone else and even this twelve year old made the gods seem like a bunch of children arguing over a toy.

"I don't understand," Percy looked very much like he didn't understand his own words coming out of his mouth. "Did the pit put that in there! It wasn't there until, but-"

"I know Percy," Thalia sighed, "this is a really multilayered crap sandwich. It took Annabeth ages to explain it all to me, and with not nearly so much detail as this."

Will was glancing anxiously from Percy, to Nico, to the surface to get this over with already and kept reading loudly before he could ask anymore leading questions he wasn't ready for.

Nico felt his heart shrivel up, did his dad think that of him too? Hades only tolerated him most days, had a rare conversation on a good day, and ignored his presence the rest of the time while roving in the Underworld. He didn't consider himself a very prideful person, but he'd never been officially claimed either, so he didn't feel he had anything to be proud of.

"There's that sort of truth," Alex narrowed her mismatched eyes with distaste, and the look seemed all the more striking for it.

"There's no way Ares was the one who orchestrated all this," yet Magnus would believe it at this point. Would the war god ever have a reason for not wanting to start one out of boredom? He'd admitted himself he'd put this idea in Poseidon's head, but, "he can't take their godly items."

"He's had help," Jason agreed, those shoes still bothering his mind greatly, but what motive would a child of Mercury have for helping him? Luke could be being framed for that bad gift just like Percy had been. None of this explained that grotesque pit's involvement either.

Thalia made a hissing noise and was slashing across her throat to shut them all up before Hearth could get his hands moving. It was heartening to see them piecing this together, but bad for her friend who had his eyes closed and fingers drilling into his forehead to alleviate the pain.

Percy reached his hand out again; he was twelve years old standing on the rain soaked hill of Camp-Half Blood where Thalia and his mother had made a sacrifice that had paid off, he was at the edge of that pit willing to throw himself over the edge to pull Grover back. He would burn Hades's palace to the ground jewel by jewel to get her back.

...and yet...

Percy's breath shook loose with such sorrow, the powerful wave it sent through the realm probably had surfer's owing him a prayer of thanks. Thalia had promised him this was inevitable, the line that comforted and tormented him in equal measure all condensed into this one moment. He had done the right thing, his mother would be proud of him, even if he never got to see her again. It did not feel like a sacrifice he could ever make, and yet it had stopped the world from falling into doom.**

Magnus couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd come on this quest for her and nothing else, and now with the moment at his grasp, all he had to do was offer the bolt to have her back, or even throw the pearl for her and leave himself behind. He wasn't so sure he could have done the same in this moment what Percy had done.

"Those are the best parting words I have heard in my life," Alex said in admiration. "You could write speeches."

"You are the only person who would give me that power," Percy said with a reluctant, halfhearted grin. The only thing stopping him from curling up in a ball and crying about never seeing her again was the confidence he would find that way. He would see her again.

"Thank you father," Percy said instantly aloud this time. They all heard it, felt it as the cold depths of the ocean parted for a moment for the message to pass unimpeded. The Olympian Gods, in their narrow minded fields, still existed because of their toying, tangling relationship with humanity. Not always good, not always bad, it just existed same as the shark and the seal.

"A shame, some archeologist and geologist would kill to get a look at some of those layers in the earths crust," Alex smirked.

"I'll have Poseidon send them a Christmas card if I'm ever allowed back in LA," Percy chuckled.

"Now I'm just grateful they didn't catch sight of any buried bodies and any amount of things under the surface," Jason frowned at her.

"I think that's karma on some level, you might have saved his life," Thalia said saintly.

"Now who's giving out crappy PSA's," Percy rolled his eyes.

Nico was staring at the floor with a touch of fascination, he'd never equated his gift to Percy's as shaking the very earth! The idea fumbled in his mind though, not quite flying high enough to make his mind race off and hope one day Percy would realize the same. It just stayed there, level, as an interesting comparison rather than being a good or bad one, which left him feeling more flummoxed than if he had just tried to shove his crush back down.

"That is the coolest thing I never wanted to imagine," Will smiled casually, and he had seen the end results of those hordes bursting out in New York.

"It's something alright," Nico casually agree, staring at his fingernails oddly.

"You know it's a big thing when every supernatural thing under the earth isn't your biggest problem!" Jason nodded.

'I will take a moment to pause and be grateful he didn't zap the whole ocean with that thing,' Hearth frowned.

'Magic!' Magnus mocked back with a laugh, which only made his friend smile in delight.

Alex's eyes sparked with particular interest as Jason took the book. Ares was no Loki, but she could not wait to hear this godling give that jerk a piece of his mind!

Jason looked like he was being handed a live bomb and was tempted to let somebody else read the appalling idea this idiot was about to challenge a god!

PJOPJOPJO

*I do imagine all the worlds overlap in a sense, so Isles of the Blest is quite possibly Hotel Valhalla in some aspect. Regardless, I've seen The Good Place one to many times not to nitpick at this anymore, and being atheist means I simply think people just poof, vanish, and that's more comforting to me than eternal anything.

**Considering Percy's fatal flaw is told to be that he would sacrifice the world for his loved ones, I find it hard to believe he allowed it this first time without putting up more of a fight. Don't get me wrong, he made the right choice taking his mother's want into account, it's commendable, but still. It comes true in the third by what he does for Annabeth and all following books he risks the world for her, but it does rub me the wrong way his romantic love seems to outrank his familiar love in the definition here.

I personally think his fatal flaw is more clearly defined as impulsiveness like his half brother Theseus, he doesn't think far enough ahead and choses in the moment what's most important. Like all children of Poseidon, his erraticness would be his undoing; his short term solutions having long reaching problems due to their ever shifting ways. Adaptable, but problematic.

He chose this quest to go save his mother, not to stop the war, that's just what he correctly chose in the end, he over came his fatal flaw, but it's still what almost came to his death before he corrected thanks to his mother and friends willing to do the same for him in that moment.

This of course is in reverse of Jason, who's fatal flaw is most definitely to much deliberation, and I adore they balance each other out! I've yet gotten to it but they are going to be besties by the end!

Will, on the other hand, absolutely deserves the title of sacrificing the world for a passing stranger. He's too sweet for his own good and needs Nico's to balance him out, which we all know is holding a grudge too much.

Alex and Annabeth have the same in my mind, Pride, they're too confident they can do anything better than anyone else.

Magnus and Hearth's could arguably be the same, self-doubt.

I've yet picked a clear winner for Thalia, and it's good enough for me not everyone needs a fatal flaw, but I'm looking forward to exploring this and more as the series goes on.