And for redemption sake, here's another chapter, y'all deserve it.
Chapter 7
(2148)
Outside, the Romans and monsters saw that the cave had collapsed and paused in the fight. They waited with bated breath for someone to resurface, a movement of a rock, or even a whisper, just any sign, any sign that anyone was alive.
No one resurfaced.
Leila fell to her knees.
"No..."
Boom. A stone boulder rolled to the ground.
The devastated Romans looked up.
Reyna weakly climbed out of the rocks, still glowing a dark red. The blessing had saved her.
She thrusted her spear into the air victoriously, and the remaining Romans cheered.
Kampê was dead. But Reyna Ramírez-Arellano had lived to see another day.
~.~
At that moment, the Daughter of Bellona's legs gave way, and she fell forward, crashing towards the ground.
Michael Kahale, who had been near the rocks, caught her just in time before she hit the ground like a sack of rocks.
Their praetor had saved them all, but there were far too many casualties, while the number of monsters multiplied every five minutes. Too many had been injured, and even more who were dead. They were fighting a losing battle.
It wasn't a very romanly thing to do, but Michael knew that it had to be done.
"Retreat!" He hollered, and the romans hastily regrouped before sprinting back to camp, carrying the injured. No one wanted to leave the demigods who had sacrificed their lives behind to the monsters, but they had no choice.
But as far as they were concerned, they hadn't lost. They had gotten rid of one major problem for Camp Half Blood. The battle had only just begun.
~.~
"The bones in your arm are completely crushed. There's no way it can heal so you'll have to get a prosthetic arm," Will told Reyna after examining her.
"There's no way in Tartarus I'm getting a metal arm," Reyna exclaimed indignantly.
"Well you won't be able to fight without one."
An hour later, Reyna took off with Arion, heading back to Camp Half-Blood - with a new metal arm made by the Vulcan children.
~.~
From the north of the island, the Ares and Athena children roared and ran towards the enemy.
The enemy charged, Leo and a shimmering but almost solid Minos leading the pack.
All of them fought like demons (they were the children of the gods of war after all).
Though they were fighting their hardest, whenever they killed a monster, several others replaced it (courtesy of Minos), and it was a full five hours before Clarisse realised that they were fighting a losing battle.
At least they had bought some time for whatever plan Annabeth had cooked up for Percy.
"Troops! Go back to camp! Retreat! I'll do my best to take them! Camp needs you all back there!" she yelled.
The warriors were hesitant.
"Go!" Clarisse shouted again, and they sprinted back towards camp.
She turned back to face the wave of monsters. She knew that she couldn't take them all down by herself.
It didn't matter. She was just following Silena's footsteps. After all, she had died protecting camp, and Clarisse would do the same.
After all, she was a child of war, and she couldn't imagine anything more honourable than having her last moments on the battlefield, fighting for her home.
The monsters advanced, Leo and Minos in the lead.
Clarisse leapt and whirled, swinging her electric spear and turning five monsters into dust with every slice. It was a while before Leo and a bunch of monsters finally managed to surround her because of the sheer number of monsters that were there.
While some of them grabbed her limbs and turned her immobile, despite her desperate struggling, Leo quickly nabbed her spear and threw it onto the ground.
He gazed at her, his face hard and pitiless. "This is what you get for fighting for the gods."
He pierced her armour, and Avenger went all the way through.
Clarisse La Rue fell to the ground.
Leo led the enemy towards the heart of camp as they roared in victory and marched onward.
~.~
Aphrodite cabin were preparing for battle in their own special way; perfume spray bottles filled with liquid Celestial bronze (ineffective for smelling nice but great for monster fighting), hairpins that were made out of Celestial bronze (awesome for a little sparkle in your hair, but even better to throw at monsters), and other goodies, as well as the usual weapons of spears and blades.
The children of Demeter were getting ready by scattering seeds around the ground.
"No, those are dandelion seeds, dumbass! We need seeds that grow into trees so the enemies get trapped in them!"
Meanwhile, the Hunters… well… they just waited, since they were always prepared for fighting.
~.~
Just before the battle started, there was a cry.
"TIME TO CRASH THIS PARTY!" Everyone turned to see the Party Ponies galloping towards them, Chiron in the lead. They all had their paintball guns out, and some of them had shirts with sloppily written slogans on them, like "MINOS SUX", "WE GON WIN DIS WAR" and "I LIKE KETCHUP".
But they weren't the only ones who had arrived.
Grover and Coach Hedge were leading a respectable number of satyrs, and there was Tyson leading a pack of Cyclops.
And at the back of the crowd was Reyna Ramirez-Arellano herself - with a new prosthetic arm - riding in on Arion and ready for battle.
The arrival of these surprise guests gave the demigods renewed hope.
"G-MAN! TYSON!" Percy yelled at the top of his lungs.
"Brother!" Tyson grinned at him.
"Perce!" Grover shouted.
Chiron smiled at Percy. "Perseus. Are we late? They were quite a handful."
"HEY C'MON Y'ALL! WHAT'RE WE WAITING FOR? LET'S GET THIS BREAD!" one of the centaurs screamed.
"YEET!" Grover, Tyson and Chiron yelled in unison (it was their battle cry). Reyna stood at the side and just grinned. (She'll never say "yeet"). The newly arrived troops roared as they charged into war.
The battle began.
No one knew what was in the paint guns, but as soon as the 'paint' made contact with the monsters and the undead they dissolved. Probably Celestial Bronze that had somehow been dyed bright neon colours.
The satyrs were surprisingly good fighters as well. In unison, they played a quick tune on their panpipes, and vines erupted from the ground to wrap around the ankles of the opposing army. They turned every enemy within a ten metre radius into a tree.
All the satyrs, now aided by the Demeter kids, were playing their panpipes and working hard on their miraculous nature magic. Except one.
Coach Hedge screeched and pulled out his baseball bat. It appeared he had gotten an upgrade, as there were bronze spikes sticking out of it. He went around smacking the enemies with his bat like it was a extreme game of whack-a-mole. His arms were a blur. Mellie and baby Chuck would be so proud.
Percy flung a water balloon filled with centaur blood towards Coach Hedge. (He had borrowed it from Travis earlier. How he had that, Percy wasn't sure and he didn't think he wanted to know).
"Hey Coach! Hit them with this!"
Coach turned and swung his baseball bat just in time to strike the balloon with the flat side of his bat. The balloon shot towards the enemy lines like a bullet.
The moment it hit the ground, the balloon exploded, dissolving the 'luckiest' monsters faster than you could say "baseball".
"JACKSON! Give me more of this concoction! This is beautiful!" Coach boomed.
Grover looked terrified. "That's one scary baseball bat."
The Cyclops were probably having the most success of all. With their size, they had a huge advantage; Tyson whacked the army with his "stick" which he had gotten from the gods, while the other Cyclops wielded gold or bronze swords they had made for themselves. They also had their own shields and armour. They could easily take out a quarter of the monsters that had been summoned.
Nico di Angelo rode atop Mrs O' Leary into battle, bursting out from the shadows underneath a tree. He dismounted her and ruffled her fur fondly. "Go on! Plenty of monsters to disembowel for you!"
And then he let Mrs O' Leary go on a rampage.
Well - he tried to, anyway. Mrs O' Leary stayed near him, refusing to run into the thick of the fight. When he waved towards the battle, trying to entice her, she whined.
Giving up, the Ghost King plunged his sword into the ground and hundreds of undead erupted from the fissure he had opened. With a single command, the undead heroes still loyal to camp charged toward the enemy.
Mrs O' Leary growled (one of the few times Nico had seen Mrs O' Leary actually being threatening) and pounced on anyone who came near Nico. Apparently she was staying to protect him, which was… sweet. On the rare occasion that someone - or something - made it past Mrs O' Leary, Nico stabbed them with his sword, which dissolved them into black pools of shadow.
Annabeth was a blur of limbs. Though her only weapon was a knife, which was a disadvantage as compared to those with a sword, she was doing pretty well, whirling around and fending off the nearest monsters. Occasionally, she disappeared with her Yankees cap to confuse enemies, only to reappear behind them and stab them in the back.
"DO A SPLIT! STAB THAT DRACANAE BESIDE YOU! SHOOT THAT HELLHOUND! THOSE SERVING KING MINOS - FALL ASLEEP AND DON'T WAKE UP FOR THE NEXT TEN HOURS!" Piper yelled. The powerful charmspeak in her voice worked, and they obeyed her commands against their will. At her last command, every enemy within thirty feet of her collapsed and started snoring.
And she was doing well with her knife too. She literally glowed with beauty. Piper would smile sweetly and the enemies would stare at her astounding beauty and smile back - until they were decapitated by the swift whirl of Katoptris.
Percy uncapped Riptide and swung it swiftly, jabbing monsters and edging along until he was near the toilets. Muttering a quick apology to the cleaning harpies, he concentrated until the water pipes near the toilet burst.
He willed the water towards some enemies, soaking them with water and blinding them momentarily. With the monsters distracted, it was easy for Percy to run around stabbing them with his sword, a smile on his face.
Jason unsheathed his gladius. He pointed it at the sky. C'mon, Dad, Jason prayed, and sure enough, a huge bolt of lightning struck the spear. He redirected the lightning to the undead and monsters around him, and they became a smoking crater.
Suddenly, there was a terrible scream, and Jason turned around to see Coach Hedge right behind him with an arrow sticking out of his armour and into his torso, on his knees. The arrow was half buried. Coach Hedge had saved him from a fatal strike.
"Coach!" He knelt down beside Coach Hedge and carried the satyr, bridal style, with . Jason ran out of the battlefield, weaving through the crowd and avoiding everybody.
"Coach... you're badly hurt..."
Coach Hedge wheezed. "No shit, cupcake. There's literally an arrow sticking out of my stomach." He coughed weakly. "I saved your butt."
"Yes... you saved me. Thank you, Coach." Jason was close to tears, but he blinked them back.
"Hell yea." Coach Hedge punched the air weakly.
Jason yelled for healers. An Apollo kid sprinted over and quickly performed some healing magic. "He's going to be okay, but only for a few hours. Send him to Camp Jupiter, quickly. He needs more medical attention."
Jason whistled, and a pegasus galloped towards them. Jason laid Coach Hedge onto the winged horse. "He's badly injured. Take him to Camp Jupiter." Although he couldn't speak horse like Percy could, the pegasus seemed to understand (Percy probably told them about the plan) and took off with the satyr.
~.~
From the corner of her eye, Piper saw Leo, setting the Aphrodite cabin on fire while her siblings attempted to defend it but to no avail.
The sons of the eldest gods defeat the traitor.
Piper sliced her way through the throng of monsters. "Jason!" He whipped around, having just electrocuted another herd of monsters.
"Leo's over there. And I was thinking - you might have to be the one who defeats him. Maybe we could try and convince him to stop. We're his best friends. Worse comes to worst," Piper hung her head. "You're going to have to kill him. I know it'll be difficult for you, but… if there's really no way to convince him, it's for the best. It's our duty."
Jason sighed. He really didn't want to hurt Leo. But…
It's our duty.
"Let's go then," he said dejectedly.