A/N: Okay. I've got some stuff to say here that I really don't want to say, but I need to say it anyway.

LISTEN UP, YOU SELECT LITTLE CRETINS WHO HAVE BEEN HARRASSING ME THROUGH PMs AND REVIEWS.

I am going into my junior year of college and currently taking summer courses that have me in class from 7am to 6pm with NO BREAKS except for the bathroom when our professors are feeling merciful.

This is a story I post because I like to, not because I have to. One click and it gets deleted, and let me tell you I am literally four seconds away from deleting this story altogether. I am sick to God of people sending me rude PMs, giving me rude reviews, and frankly, I do not appreciate the select little nitwits who have actually THREATENED MY LIFE OVER A STUPID STORY ON THE INTERNET.

You have got to be kidding me.

In conclusion, I don't give a monkey's left butt cheek if you guys want me to post right this second or else. I post when I want to and when I have time to, and not a doggone second before. You get me?

You had better.

*** EDIT: I am being serious. STOP threatening me over a story, it's not worth it. News flash, the police have ways of tracking your IP address, you know. It's called CYBERCRIME. Harassment and threats are something they take seriously.
(To clear up confusion, this is aimed specifically towards four people who will remain unnamed that messaged me threatening to harm me or end my life over this story. One of said people went far enough to track me to my state and city and then threaten to kill me. It was more than a little scary and very far beyond okay.)

Respect is a two-way street. Respect me and this story and the fact that I have a life, and that family, friends, and school come way before this story, and in return, I will respect you. Patience is a virtue, so please try to practice it else you ruin it for everyone else. I understand that you guys just want to know what happens next but there is a line and more than one person has crossed it.

To those awesome, lovely, perfect people who have done nothing but be encouraging and patient with me, I am so, so, so sorry that you've had to wait this long. I dedicate this chapter to those lovely, warm people who keep a smile on a face and make me finish up these chapters so that I can read your witty, wonderful reviews. Please ignore everything above because it absolutely, positively, 500% DOES NOT apply to you. I love you all dearly and I thank you for your constant encouragement that inspires me to do better with each passing chapter. Without you, this story wouldn't be possible, so THANK YOU BUNCHES. I ADORE YOU ALL TO PIECES! I hope that you guys love it as much as I loved writing it!

Disclaimer: Not mine – they all belong to Rick Riordan!

/

Chapter Twelve
Rhode: Part III

Percy's scream caught in his throat. Above him was a horrible creature with a cruel hag-like face, leathery wings, sharp talons, and pointed yellow teeth. It dove at him with a terrible sound coming from its throat.

Going on instinct, he dove to the hot earth and covered his head and neck with his skinny arms. His movements were slow, sluggish, uncoordinated. His body felt heavy, weak. It was too hot, too dry, and he could barely think straight through the strange fatigue and his building fear.

A scream of pain tore from his throat when talons cut deeply into the flesh of his right shoulder blade and back. Dizziness descended on him viciously, making his vision swim and his head pound.

Warm wetness spread down his back. He dizzily rolled over and staggered to his feet, his right arm hanging limply at his side. A trickle of moisture ran down the side of his head, and he touched at it absently with his good hand. His fingers came away stained with blood, a sight that only made his dizziness increase as he swayed on his feet. Strangely the whole side of his face felt wet too.

"Well, well, what have we here?" the creature sneered, landing with a dull thump and looking down at him. It sniffed the air deeply and cackled madly. "A Demigod child, lost in the Underworld? How did you get past Charon and Cerberus, you little cretin? What shall I do with you? Shall I tear you to shreds, eat you, or both?"

Percy's ears were ringing. He stared blankly at the creature, no longer really seeing her as his vision doubled and blurred. The pounding in his head increased as he started to shake. The thing's mouth was moving, but he could neither hear the words nor make them out. In a detached sort of fashion he realized the thing was talking to him.

Strange.

All he could think was Uncle Hades, Uncle Hades, Uncle Hades.

He coughed wetly as his dizziness increased, his vision whiting at the edges. Staggering more, he fell to one knee and hunched over to touch the earth in an effort to steady himself. If anything it only made him dizzier.

The ringing in his ears had lessened and in its place was a cacophony of noise.

The skeleton guards were clacking their teeth together in some sort of chattering speech. The creature was yelling at him in a screechy voice as screams echoed from the Fields of Punishment where figures were being openly tortured. Cerberus' deep bark joined in and was so loud and deep it was shaking dust from the ceiling high above them.

Percy tried to stand but couldn't. All he could focus on was thinking his uncle's name over and over. Unbeknownst to him he started to say it aloud in a hitching voice, a constant stream of, "Uncle Hades, Uncle Hades, Uncle Hades."

"Uncle Hades?" the thing repeated, pausing in its threats for a moment to frown down at the dark-haired child. "How dare you address the Lord of the Dead in such a way, you sniveling whelp of a half-blood fre— "

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF TARTARUS IS GOING ON HERE," a terrible, furious voice thundered, easily outstripping Cerberus in volume and sending more dust and dirt cascading down from the ceiling miles above them.

That voice caused instinctual fear to curl in Percy's gut. It was a voice that he knew he should be afraid of, but it was also a voice he recognized. He managed to get to his feet, swaying dangerously as he choked out, "Uncle Hades!"

He couldn't see. Something thick filled his eyes, obscured his vision. Hands out in front of him, he blindly moved towards the voice, blinking furiously in an effort to see something other than blurry vague shapes swirling in red.

Quicker than a blink hands caught him under the arms, holding him upright. Percy panicked slightly, flailing desperately as he tried to wipe the stuff out of his eyes, but he was getting even more sluggish by the second. He coughed, and then he went limp and knew nothing.

/

Hades had just left his palace only to find that some kind of ruckus had begun in his kingdom. Growling low in his throat, he abruptly changed directions and stalked across his domain, wincing as Cerberus joined in the bedlam and caused dust and dirt to rain down on his head. Gritting his teeth, he moved through the ranks of skeleton soldiers who bowed out of his way and shrank down to normal size while he was at it to minimize the potential future damage.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF TARTARUS IS GOING ON HERE," he thundered furiously as he made it through the last rank of soldiers and finally saw what all the fuss was about.

What he found was the last thing he could have expected: Alecto standing over a small, kneeling, dark-haired child, and not just any dark-haired child. A dark-haired child so familiar he actually froze in place, utter shock permeating his being. Before he could say a word, Percy cried, "Uncle Hades!" and ran at him.

On reflex, he reached down to steady the child, and could do nothing as his nephew appeared to lose his battle with consciousness.

To say Hades was annoyed would be the understatement of the century. To say he was surprised to see Kelp Brain's Demigod son here —in the Underworld of all places— would be the understatement of the millennium.

His nephew was covered in blood. Frowning, he lifted the boy up to eye level and carefully assessed his injuries: a deep gash on his right shoulder blade, three smaller slashes where Alecto's claws had gripped his ribs, and a decent cut on his forehead that had given the child a mask of red. Percy's skin was far paler than it should have been, so pale it was almost sickly, and he trembled in his grasp.

Internally, Hades wished he could just toss the kid into the pit of Tartarus. That way, he wouldn't have to face a severely ticked off Barnacle Beard or face possible war (again). Though in hindsight, he doubted Barnacle Beard would appreciate him throwing his kid into Tartarus any more than he would appreciate the fact that Alecto had apparently maimed him. He resigned himself to the fact that Poseidon would no doubt cause another hurricane and kill a bunch more people until he got his temper back under control after this mess was over.

"Let me finish him off, Lord."

Hades pulled the boy against him before he could think about how the action would be perceived and shot his famous glare at his servant. Alecto positively cowered under the force of his rage, shrinking downwards and away from him in shock.

"Alecto," he snarled, ignoring the flames increasing their potency in reaction to his anger, "what have you done?"

"The demigod was not supposed to be here. I thought you would want it disposed of — "

"YOU THOUGHT WRONG," he thundered, stomping his foot down for emphasis hard enough to make the earth tremble beneath them. "You have no idea what you have just done, Alecto. By the Gods if he tries to stab you with his trident, I will NOT be stopping him!"

Alecto swallowed, hard, and stared up at her furious master. "T—Trident, my Lord?" she stammered. It only took a moment for her to connect the dots. A trident, a dark-haired child who reeked of the sea, and who just so happened to be a demigod. Not just any demigod child, either, but Poseidon's demigod child, she realized.

And Hades was very, very angry. She gulped; Persephone was with her mother, so there would be absolutely zero chance of soothing his temper any time in the near future.

"Get water," he ordered harshly. "Tell no one what you have seen today, and do not mention this boy to anyone. Ever. Do you understand me?"

Bobbing her head, Alecto rushed off to do his bidding.

"Get lost," he barked at the soldiers, who scurried away. "Cerberus, will you CEASE YOUR RACKET," he shouted in the direction of the gates. The dog gave one last mournful whine before he fell silent. Muttering under his breath about pandemonium and annoying family relations he wished he could feed to his apparently useless so-called 'guard dog', he scooped Percy up in his arms and moodily carried him back to the palace. He settled him in what would have been Nico's room, had the boy been allowed to live normally instead of being cooped up in the Lotus Hotel for the past few decades.

Shuffling mournfully, Alecto came with the water he had demanded. Hades wordlessly snatched it from her and unceremoniously dumped it on his nephew, watching as the wounds immediately started to heal and the blood was washed away. He wiped away what was left with the cloths.

"Get nectar and ambrosia," he snapped, not even looking to watch Alecto scurry from the room. When she returned he snappishly ordered her to be quiet and stand there in case he needed her while he tried to figure out how to contact his brother, who would no doubt he having an epic conniption fit when he discovered his son was missing. He judged it would happen any time now.

Percy's color improved after the nectar, but he remained still. At least he was breathing, Hades mused. One less thing Barnacle Beard would want to kill him for. He remained lost in thought for quite some time, pondering how on earth he was supposed to contact his brother without access to a rainbow, and was so distracted he didn't notice when his nephew woke up.

With a yelp, Percy sat bolt upright and didn't seem to notice him in the shadow beside his bed. He only saw Alecto just inside the doorway, and with eyes as wide as saucers he scrambled away from her, falling gracelessly off the edge of the bed.

Rolling his eyes, Hades deftly caught and steadied him before he could hit the ground and further injure himself. Percy flinched out of his hold with a loud gasp, spinning and bumping into the edge of the bed, before he blinked a few times and stared up at him dumbly for a long moment before exhaling in relief and launching himself at the Lord of the Underworld.

Hades blinked when Percy impacted his chest hard enough to cause a soft grunt. Those tiny arms locked around his chest in a vice grip far stronger than any normal seven-year-old boy's. He held his arms up and away awkwardly as his nephew buried his face in his chest and trembled, but didn't say a word or cry. After a long moment, he hesitantly lowered his arms to wrap them loosely around the frightened child.

"You are safe, Percy," he said, not sure what in the name of Tartarus he was supposed to do. He didn't comfort people; he was the God of the Dead, for the love of Olympus! It wasn't in his job description to do all this emotional nonsense.

"'m scared," he mumbled, voice barely legible through the fabric of his robes.

He ventured to guess the boy would probably be more scared when he saw the detail of suffering souls on his robes and fervently hoped he'd keep his eyes closed for the time being. Gods forbid he scare the child further after his servant had nearly killed the boy, it would just be another reason for Fish Breath to impale him with his trident.

"You are safe," he repeated gruffly, motioning for Alecto to leave them immediately. "Alecto will not harm you again."

"Who's Alecto?" Percy asked, and Hades was relieved to notice the child had ceased his trembling and loosened his vice grip.

Slightly.

"Alecto is my servant," he explained, deciding to talk to him like any other fully grown being. He never could understand why humans talked to their offspring as if they were incompetent fools. "She will not be harming you again, you have my word."

Percy loosened his arms a little more and looked up at him with tear-filled sea-green eyes. "What is she?" he wondered curiously.

"Alecto is one of the Furies, Percy."

"Oh."

Hades had nothing to say to that, so he remained silent.

"How come she attacked me?" Percy asked, wiggling a little and shifting around until he was sitting sideways on his lap. Not for the first time, Hades was extremely taken aback at how fearless this child was. It was shocking that Percy would choose him of all people for comfort or physical contact. Everyone and everything else more or less avoided him like the plague.

"She thought you were trespassing, which brings me to my next point," he said briskly, standing and setting the boy's feet on the ground to mask his discomfort, "How in the name of Olympus did you get here?"

"You dropped a pearl-looking thing," Percy explained, ducking his head. "Last sowstice," he added, since Hades was staring at him blankly.

"Solstice," Hades corrected automatically.

"Solstice," he dutifully repeated. "I picked it up. My sister Rhode came to Atlantis, and she said some mean things, and I did not know who to ask cuz Papa was looking into something and Mama went somewhere and Triton was busy doing Hades-knows-what. So I thought of you."

Hades blinked yet again, surprised at the expression, at how freely the boy said his name. He raised an eyebrow and Percy blushed, avoiding his gaze. Curse it all, he had dropped a pearl, an experimental traveling system he had been toying with at the time.

"And what did you want to ask me, Percy?" he wondered, resigning himself to his fate.

Percy shifted uncomfortably, absently plucking at his shirt as he bit his lip and tried to figure out how to word it. Hades bit back the impulse to intimidate it out of him and instead stood there without moving, hands on his hips, one eyebrow raised expectantly.

"What's a bastard?" he said finally, in a very small voice that wavered in such a way Hades knew it threatened tears.

Oh, boy. This conversation. It was his turn to bite his lip as he pondered the best way to respond. "It, um, means that you were born out of wedlock," he said carefully, wincing internally as the words left his mouth.

Tears forgotten, Percy stared up at him, his entire face scrunching. Frustrated, he said, "What's wedlock?"

"I think this is a conversation better left for your parents," Hades decided, not willing to wade into these dangerous waters. One wrong word, one wrong implication, and Poseidon would have yet another reason to impale him with a trident, and his brother's patience and temper were not something he was keen on testing.

Shoulders slumping in defeat, Percy sighed and mumbled, "Okay." He sniffed and rubbed the end of his nose before blurting, "'m hungry."

Hades shoulders slumped slightly as well, though his was in relief. "Well, now that we have that settled, let us go find some ambrosia for you to snack on." A grin slowly spread over his nephew's face as he realized something, and it was a devious expression that immediately put Hades on the alert. He immediately started to rewind through their conversation to see if he'd said something he shouldn't have.

"You called me by my name," said Percy with awe tinting his voice.

Reeling at the sudden shift in conversation, he bit back the urge to sigh. So much or hoping the little brat wouldn't notice, he mused.

"I did not," he sniffed, looking down his nose at the child.

"Did too," Percy countered with a cheeky grin. "You called me Percy three times, Uncle Hades, I heard you. Usually you call me Patrick or Peter or Palmer and pretend you do not remember it, but you called me Percy. You do know my name, Uncle Hades."

Exhaling loudly through his nose, Hades strode from the room and huffed, "I have no idea what you are talking about, Preston."

Percy just giggled some more and hurried to catch up with him, reaching up to hold his hand, squeezing it tightly even though Hades didn't squeeze back. The little boy wasn't deterred. He was too busy leaning into Hades' side as they walked, his wide eyes taking in all the details of his uncle's palace. He gave Hades' hand a little tug and asked, "Uncle Hades, how am I gonna get home?"

"We will figure something out," Hades assured him absently, his mind trying to figure that 'something' out. He supposed he could just shadow-travel him back to Atlantis, but Poseidon would not be expecting him and that always ran the risk of him potentially drowning or, you know, getting him swallowed whole by a blue whale or something equally large and nasty (not that it would kill him, of course, it would just be mildly annoying).

"The colors are all wrong here," Percy observed, skipping a step to keep up with Hades' long stride. He had no idea where they were going, but he followed him anyway. "Everything is really orange."

"That is because you have only ever lived underwater, and so you are used to a world tinged in green and blue," explained Hades with far more patience than he would have thought possible.

"Oh. Is that why I feel so funny?"

That gave Hades pause. He stopped walking so abruptly Percy ran into his leg. The last thing he needed was for the shrimp to pass out on him on top of everything else that Poseidon would want to impale him for. "How do you feel?" he demanded sharply, so sharply that Percy leaned slightly away from him in surprise and stared up at him with wide eyes.

"I feel funny," Percy repeated, frowning as he tried to think of a good way to explain it. "Kinda like 'm half asleep," he said slowly, "or like when I stand up too fast and get all wobbly and mama scolds me."

Hades frowned. "I assume that is because you have lived in water all your life, and there is no water here," he sighed, waving his hand around them for emphasis. "We are underground, but in open air. No water here. Water is your father's domain. Water gives you strength. Without water, you just have a normal body."

"Oh," Percy said again, swinging their hands absently.

Percy still had not let go even though Hades was not grasping his hand in return. Internally, he groaned; if any of the Furies saw this they would not let him live it down for centuries.

Hades sighed and went back to pondering how in the name of Olympus he was going to get out of this mess unscathed, and how in the name of Olympus he was supposed to figure out why his nephew had come to him, because that would require him to act like he cared.

If Hades had been an honest person, he would have admitted to himself that it frightened him how much his brother's child seemed to trust him. It was something no other being had really done before, not with such open innocence and abandon. No one had ever just accepted him at the drop of a hat, at least, not until Perseus Jackson.

"Curse you, Fish Breath," he muttered under his breath, a headache starting as Percy continued to prattle on about what he'd been learning from Carthos, "for having an offspring as annoying as you are."

"What was that, Uncle Hades?"

Hades harrumphed grumpily.

"Nothing, nothing at all. Come on, shrimp, you need to eat some more ambrosia and then I need to figure out how in the name of Olympus I am going to get you back to the ocean without your father impaling me with his trident or sending an army of Cyclopes after me . . .maybe if he's in a good mood he will also refrain from sending a bunch of narwhals to turn me into a pincushion . . ."

Percy laughed aloud at the mental image, the loud belly laugh of a child who had just heard something that was the height of hilarity, and if anyone had been around they would have been astonished to see the so-called scariest god fighting back a grin until he lost the battle and a wide grin spread across his face as a deep chuckle joined the little boy's.

They made quite the pair, striding purposefully through the palace of black and bronze, shimmering in the torchlight, one tall and lithe, the other small and innocent, both with midnight black hair and pale skin. With the boy's tiny hand clasped firmly in Hades' larger one, they made an image of Demigod and God that had never been seen before, and would likely never be seen again.

Percy switched to a skipping gate and swung their hands as the God of the Dead tried to pretend he didn't enjoy the little boy's company.

/

E/N: This is now in 4, possibly 5, parts because I need to get back to actual schoolwork. I had no time to edit this before posting it so please don't hesitate to PM me with a correction so that I can fix it. Thanks guys, have a great weekend!