To 8Ball3- Agree to disagree? :P We need more Tyson!

To someone- (Chapter 10) He is! ^_^ (Chapter 11) I never plot. Don't know what you lot are implying... O:)

Apollo made a mental note to never ever enter a place where a Cyclops gets his tattoos. The odour was… something to behold, in the sense it was a boiling vat of ink and leather purses. So potent and overwhelming the stench, Apollo could taste it at the back of his throat. The skin of a Cyclops was so much tougher than human skin that it required superheated needles to inject the ink. The smell brought back memories- millennia ago, he had struck dead four of his father's favourite Cyclopes because they had constructed the lightning bolt that had killed his son, Asclepius. Obviously, he couldn't kill the real murderer, so he had to make do. His punishment for this was his first banishment to earth as a mortal.

He had not had the best of luck or history with Cyclopes, but Apollo had no problem with Tyson. The Poseidon/Neptune/whatever twins claimed him as their little brother. And Tyson had been rewarded the title of general after the last war with Kronos, alongside a very nice stick. Tyson was tolerable, by all Cyclopes standards, and he took up as much space as a large human. He had never forged a lightning bolt that had killed anyone. His gentle brown eye and broad smile made him look almost as cuddly as Frank. And, best of all, he had devoted himself to helping Ella reconstruct the Sibylline Books.

Tyson turned to lead them into the bookshop. Apollo had to suppress a yelp. It looked like someone had dumped the complete works of Charles Dickens on his back. From his neck to halfway down his spine, line after line of tiny, bruised purple text had been inked into his skin, only broken up by scar tissue.

"Don't." Frank breathed. Apollo noticed he was on the verge of tears. So much tattooing could not have been pleasant, but the sight of the sprawling, old scar made him worry what abuse the poor Cyclops had suffered. Tyson was no more than a child, despite his size, and to see such pain inflicted upon him… Apollo just wanted to give him a hug. Frank stared at him, a silent warning not to make a big deal out of it.

He hurriedly wiped his eyes and composed himself. Tyson spun, still grinning, and spread his arms. "See? Books!" There was a till/information desk in the centre of the room. Shelves radiated in all directions, crammed with novels of every size and shape. Two ladders led to a railed balcony, also wall-to-wall with books. Huge windows provided views of the city aqueduct and the hills beyond. Sunlight trickled in like warm honey, making the shop comfortable and drowsy.

Had it not been for the stench of boiling oil and leather, it would have been the perfect place to plop down and leaf through a book. There was no visible tattoo parlour, but against the back wall was a set of thick velvet curtains, hung under a sign that read 'Special Collections'.

"Very nice." Apollo nodded.

"Books!" Tyson repeated, clapping. "Because it's a bookshop!"

"Of course." Apollo nodded again. "Is this, um, your store?" The single, brown eye darkened, the smile fading.

"No. Sort of. The owner died. In the battle. It was sad."

"Ah. I… I'm sorry, Tyson. Um, at any rate, it's good to see you again. You probably don't recognise me in this form, but-"

"You are Apollo!" The smile returned, accompanied by a laugh. "You look funny now!" He wagged a finger at him, tut-tut-tutting. "You upset big sister. She says if you hurt any more of her friends, she will…" He trailed off. "Um… she said lots of rude words. I am not allowed to repeat them." He thought for a moment, and then spread his hands as if measuring something, something quite big. "Lots of hurt." He settled with.

"Yes," Apollo winced. "Any chance you could… perhaps tell her not to do that?"

"No. Big sister scary. Sssccccaarrrryyy."

"Tyson?" Frank interrupted. "Is Ella around? I wanted Apollo to hear what you guys discovered."

"Ella is in the back room. She was giving me a tattoo! Do not tell Lou. She's scary!" He leaned towards Apollo. The former god recoiled a fraction, certain he was going to be told more of Louisa's scariness. Instead, Tyson lowered his voice with a love-stricken smile. "Ella is pretty." He said. "But sssh." He put a finger to his lips. "She doesn't like me saying that all the time. She gets embarrassed. Then I get embarrassed."

"I won't tell." Apollo promised, breathing a silent sigh of relief. "Lead on, General Tyson."

"General." Tyson laughed some more. "Yes. That's me. I bashed some heads in the war!" He galloped away like he was riding a hobbyhorse, straight through the velvet curtains. Part of Apollo was tempted to turn, leave and take Frank for another coffee, maybe draw up his adoption papers. He did not want to know what lay beyond those curtains.

Before he could move, however, a curious mrow came from somewhere by his feet.

The cat had found him. The large orange tabby, which had surely eaten all the other bookshop cats, pushed its head against his leg.

"It's touching me." Apollo wheezed, not daring to breathe. Frank laughed.

"That's Aristophanes. He's harmless. Besides, you know how Romans feel about cats."

"Yes, yes, don't remind me." Apollo grimaced. He had never been a fan of cats. They were self-centred and smug and thought they owned the world. Truth be told, he did not like the competition. For Romans, felines such as the one currently trying to climb his leg, were a symbol of freedom and independence. They were allowed to roam wherever their twisted little hearts desired, even inside temples.

Mrow, Aristophanes said, headbutting him again. His sleepy eyes were a pale lime green and seemed to claim Apollo as his own. "I have to go." Apollo told the cat. "Stop doing that." Mrow. "No, shush." Mmmrrroowww. "Frank, help."

"I think he likes you."

"You're enjoying this."

"Why don't you like cats?"

"They peed on my altars. A lot."

"It could be worse."

"How?"

"Could be the other one."

"Ooh, I'm reconsidering your adoption."

"My what now?" Frank puzzled. Apollo managed to hop over the cat, sighing and straightening his shirt. The movement had done his stomach wound no good. He turned to face the curtains while Frank leaned down to scratch Aristophanes behind the ears.

"Come, Frank Zhang. Let's go find a harpy."

The special collections room had been set up as a tattoo parlour. The smell was even worse in here. The rolling bookshelves had been pushed aside, heaped with leather-bound volumes, wooden scroll cases and clay cuneiform tablets. Commandeering the middle of the room was a black leather reclining chair with foldable arms that gleamed under an LED magnifying lamp. Beside it stood a workstation with four humming electric steel-needle guns connected to ink hoses. Apollo had never obtained a tattoo in such a manner- as a god, he could just propose any image upon his skin that he wanted. This set-up seemed much like something Hephaestus would try- a lunatic experiment in godly dentistry, maybe.

In the back corner, a ladder led to a second-level balcony, similar to the one in the first room. Two sleeping areas had been created up there. One was a harpy's nest of straw, cloth and shredded paper. The other a cardboard fort made from old appliance boxes.

Movement behind the chair caught his eye. Ella was pacing, muttering to herself as if having an internal argument. Aristophanes had followed them inside. He abandoned Apollo's legs and began to follow in the steps of the harpy. He tried to headbutt her leathery bird legs every so often. She ignored him completely. An occasional rust-coloured feather fluttered from her wings and the cat gleefully pounced on it.

"Fire…" She mumbled. "Fire with… something something… something bridge… Twice something something… hmm." Apollo could see her agitation, though he could summarise that this was her natural state. He knew Percy, Hazel and Frank had discovered her in Portland, muddling by on food scraps and nesting in discarded novels. At some point in time for reasons unbeknownst to them all, Ella had chanced upon copies of the Sibylline Books, three volumes that had been thought lost forever in a fire towards the end of the Roman Empire. Her memory was photographic, but also disjointed. The trio that had found her had also brought her to the safety of the camp, in the hope she could recreate the lost books with Tyson's help. "No, no, no." She passed a hand through her luxuriant cascade of red hair, ruffling it so vigorously, Apollo marvelled at how she hadn't given herself scalp lacerations. "Not enough words. 'Words, words, words'. Hamlet, act two, scene two."

"Ella, look!" Tyson smiled. "Friends!" Ella frowned, her gaze sliding from Frank to Apollo, as though they were minor annoyances- pictures hung askew on a wall or the loo roll placed around the wrong way.

"No." She decided, clacking her fingernails together. "Tyson needs more tattoos."

"OK!" Tyson grinned, bounding over to the reclining chair.

"Wait." Apollo interjected. It was bad enough smelling the ink. He did not want to watch them being made. "Ella, before you start, could you please explain what's going on?"

"'What's Going On'," Ella said, "Marvin Gaye, nineteen-seventy-one."

"Yes, I know. I helped write that song."

"No. Written by Renaldo Benson, Al Cleveland and Marvin Gaye. Inspired by an incident of police brutality." Frank smirked at Apollo.

"Can't argue with the harpy."

"No." Ella agreed. "You can't." She scuttled over, studying his face, sniffing his bandages and poking his chest. "Apollo." She said. "You're all wrong though. Wrong body. 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers', directed by Don Siegel, nineteen-fifty-six." Apollo did not like that comparison, but he just been told not to argue with the harpy.

Behind her, Tyson was adjusting the chair into a flat bed. He lay on his stomach, the recently inked purple lines rippling across his scarred, muscular back.

"Ready!" He announced. The obvious finally dawned on Apollo.

"The words that memory wrought are set to fire." He remembered. "You're rewriting the Sibylline Books on Tyson with hot needles. That's what the prophecy meant."

"Yep." Ella poked him in the stomach, assessing for a writing surface. "Hmmm. Nope. Too flabby."

"Thanks." He grumbled. Frank shifted beside him, suddenly self-conscious of his own writing surfaces.

"Ella says it's the only way she can record the words in the right order." He explained. "On living skin."

"OK, but… how far have you got?"

"The first lumbar." Ella said. Facedown on his torture bed, Tyson paddled his feet in excitement.

"Ready! Oh, boy! Tattoos tickle!"

"Ella." Apollo tried again. "What I mean is, have you found anything useful for us concerning, oh I don't know… the threats coming in the next four days? Frank said you had a lead."

"Yep, found the tomb." She poked him again. "Death, death, death. Lots of death."