K, I'm back again! :P

Shoutout to 1eragon33 for reviewing, and happy (really, really late) birthday! :3 Sorry, I was on vacation in Norway. (:D)

Anyways, let's just pretend I'm not totally seeking reviews. :P Seriously though, this is mostly for fun, but I love feedback and refuse to apologize for that!

DISCLAIMER: If I made Minecraft and PJO, I could just publish this! Then the poor suckers would have to pay for my writing! WAHAHA!

Clang! Jason's gleaming gold sword bounced off Riptide in a shower of sparks, as Percy advanced another step. Sweating and panting, the son of Jupiter raised his blade to deflect yet another furious swipe. Percy's sneakers pounding on the hard, dry ground of the training arena, he slashed again and again, channeling all his rage and pain into the sword, feeling himself calming down. Training was good, simple, it made sense.

His girlfriend disappearing into thin air right in front of him? Not so much.

Percy could almost feel his blood heating up as he thought about it. He'd been so happy, ready for anything… and bam! Nothing he could do, no way to stop whatever it was, just standing there like a useless lump.

Thud! Jason sidestepped a particularly violent attack, letting him bury his sword in the dirt. He flew forward, but Percy yanked his blade out of the ground and stepped back.

The son of Jupiter feinted towards his head, then twirled his weapon around and slashed at Percy's sword arm.

He jerked backwards, but too slowly.

"Wait!" he panted, dropping Riptide. His hand was oozing blood.

"Sorry!" Jason managed, in between huge gasps of air. "Didn't mean to cut you."

"That's alright," he replied, shaking his arm and flinging a tiny drop of blood into the air.

Somehow, the sharp pain of the cut seemed to sharpen his senses, calm his hyperactive brain. Maybe it gave him something else to focus on.

Still, his mind kept wandering right back to Annabeth. Grunting in frustration, he lunged forward, swinging faster, harder, ignoring the burning in his muscles.

Jason beat Riptide out of the way, then thrust forward at Percy's chest.

She was gone, just like that. No warning, no prophesy… just that weird sting. He connected with Jason's sword and slid it out of the way, twisting his friend's wrist around, went for his chest.

A streak of gold knocked his attack aside and sped towards his cheek. As he moved to block the attack, the edge changed direction and headed towards the other side of his face. Again, Jason sent the metallic blur careening in the opposite direction, neatly dodging Percy's parries.

No bright flash, loud explosion, not even a slow fade. One second, she was there. Then, poof! Not even a poof… no noise at all.

The stinging in his hand doubled, and something in his chest burst. He turned Riptide sideways and slashed as hard as he could at Jason's sword, knocking it back towards the guy's face. He stumbled back and dropped it, mostly to avoid getting beheaded by his own weapon, then tripped and went sprawling in the dirt.

Panting hard, Percy capped Riptide and offered a hand. Jason took it, rubbing the back of his head where he'd collided with the ground.

"You know, it's just sparring. There isn't a rule that says you have to kill me," he said, picking up his sword.

"Sorry," Percy muttered sheepishly.

"Maybe you could take your rage out on the dummies instead," he suggested.

It wasn't such a bad idea. They had far too much of their straw-guts still inside their bodies.

"Hey man," Jason said, sounding worried. "You should get your hand looked at."

The guy's hand was covered in blood where Percy had helped him up.

"Oh," he said, his voice a little higher in pitch than it should've been. "Hey, Jason?"

"Yeah?"

"Get Chiron," Percy said, as he noticed just how familiar the cuts on his hand looked. There was no way Jason had done that, not while he was holding Riptide. An odd L shaped incision, with a dot hovering between each end, like a connect-the-dot square that hadn't been finished.

He knew what was probably going to happen. He'd seen it, stood there helplessly while Annabeth screamed. Just thinking about it made him feel sick inside, small and weak and useless.

All he wanted was to stick whatever had done this with the business end of Riptide… and if the strange cut was going to teleport him somewhere, it made sense that it would send him to the same place. Maybe, he'd be able to find the monster that had started this new… whatever this was. Magic?

Suddenly, the mark on his hand was filled with sharp agony, making him close it into a fist, hoping in vain that it would stop. He dropped to the ground, no longer capable of standing upright, and curled up around his hand. Some part of him thought that maybe he could cut it off… but that was a really, really bad idea, no matter how much better it would feel.

Jason was sprinting towards the big house, and the last thing Percy really registered was the concerned faces of some Ares campers that had been training on the other end of the arena.

Someone was screaming, and Percy thought vaguely that the cry sounded almost like his voice. But that couldn't be it, because he couldn't breathe anymore. The air just wouldn't come, and as he started to black out he thought he could see stars‒ but that didn't make any sense, because it had just been daytime. Still, there was the night sky, spread out above him, and covered in strange letters, written in fire across the constellations.

Maybe if he could read the words, they could tell him how to make it stop.

Silence. Stillness. The pain was gone. Percy lay sprawled on the ground, eyes closed, just enjoying the quiet, the peace. The lack of searing pain was pretty nice too.

The last thing Percy wanted was to get up. Unfortunately, there was something digging into the small of his back, and some idiot ‒ probably Leo ‒ had set up a giant humidifier or something. The air was more like breathing in the lake than anything else, all steam, and even though he could breathe underwater, there was something buzzing in the back of his mind, panicking. It was like the world around him was half air and half water, and his lungs couldn't figure out which he was supposed to be breathing.

Not only that, it smelled like brimstone, sulfur, and…

Bacon?!

The smell was so incredibly out of place that his eyes snapped open and he sat bolt upright, glancing around and half-expecting to see a plateful of eggs, sausages, and Canadian bacon.

'Course, going by the smell the eggs were rotten and the sausages had been left in the sun for a few decades, but he was hungry.

There wasn't any breakfast.

Two-legged, rotten, sword-wielding pigs were strolling around like they owned the place. Their faces looked like they were melting, the flesh sloughing off their skulls and dripping down onto the floor… and they smelled like bacon.

Percy was suddenly half-way between wanting to throw up at their sight and smell ‒ the sour, not-so-pleasant part that probably came from being all rotten ‒ and fighting to suppress this little corner of his mind that still sort of wanted to eat them.

He was never eating bacon again.

Still, at least they hadn't noticed him yet. Whether or not they were basically walking ham sandwiches, those swords looked pretty sharp. Imperial gold, or at least something very similar.

Then, there was everything else. He was in some kind of cave, made of a strange maroon-colored rock that was probably responsible for the sulfur and brimstone smells. Some of it was on fire, but it didn't seem to be spreading, so Percy decided not to panic yet. The pig things were wandering aimlessly around the mouth of the cave, and he could see where it opened up into a massive cavern, so huge that he couldn't make out any kind of wall on the other side.

In short, it looked way too much like Tartarus, if someone had set up a pigsty down there for whatever reason.

Not knowing what else to do, he stood up and pulled Riptide out of his pocket. This was going to be so much fun.

Mozart. That was Annabeth's first thought as she opened her eyes. Something was playing piano in the distance. Actually, it sounded a bit like Beethoven's third… was she hearing things?

"That's the alarm. Time to get up," said an unfamiliar voice. Annabeth shot to her feet, raising her fists, her heart lodging somewhere in her throat. She'd just napped on a wall, right above a horde of monsters! What if those giant spiders could climb? Stupid, stupid, stupid, she chanted to herself. Looking around wildly, she still couldn't see whatever had been talking. Where had it come from?!

Then, she noticed that there was a leather jacket on the floor. She must've shaken it off when she got up, but why would a monster…

"I come in peace," the voice said, sounding amused. "I swear!"

Up. It came from above her! Glancing up, she saw a tall, wiry guy sitting casually on the parapet, with bubblegum pink hair… a dark green Mohawk…

Something in her brain, probably the part that processed color, shorted out.

Butter yellow, sky blue, neon orange, mud brown, lavender… it was like a box of Crayola crayons had been strapped to a stick of dynamite and dropped into an active volcano. And his eyes! One was a deep red, like dried blood ‒ she would know ‒ and the other was a beautiful indigo, like the night sky over Camp Half-Blood. They were pointed in opposite directions, hazy and unfocused. He should be basically blind. Not only that, he was grinning at her in a way that was somehow both endearing and unsettling.

"Sorry, can't really help it. I have the fashion sense of a deranged peacock." A deranged, colorblind peacock, actually, but he seemed harmless enough.

"Uh, hi," Annabeth managed, lamely. There was something really off-putting about how he seemed to be staring at her, when each of his eyes was actually looking everywhere but her.

"I'm happy!" Did this guy have some kind of superpower that made everyone he talked to completely forget how to form thoughts?!

"Good for you," she replied, after a minute of processing the completely random statement.

"No, no!" he laughed, showing off pearly white teeth that only served to highlight just how clash-y and unpleasant the rest of his color scheme was. "That's my name. Happy." Ah. Well, why not?!

"O-okay," she found herself saying, more or less on automatic. The leather jacket was still crumpled up on the floor. Partly to distract herself from the tortured rainbow named Happy, she reached down and picked it up. It was soft, but surprisingly thick and heavy.

"You looked cold," he explained, pointing at the coat.

"Thanks!" Annabeth replied, sincerely.

"It's a leather chestplate. I'm supposed to wear one whenever I'm on my rounds… but let's face it. If this wall goes down, we're all dead, and a scrap of cow skin isn't gonna make much of a difference."

"Well, you should take it. I'm probably going to get some armor, for my mission. Right?" She tossed him the jacket, and he caught it without missing a beat, which he definitely shouldn't be able to do with his eyes like that. There was no way he'd be able to focus, right?

"Sure. Armory's over there," Happy replied, gesturing vaguely towards the far end of the castle.

"Uh, alright," Annabeth said. "Thanks."

Very aware that he was still looking at her, she made her way carefully towards the stone stairs carved into the wall.

Climbing down, she wondered whether his eyes were actually at that angle, or if that was just some kind of illusion. Grease hadn't seemed to be made out of stone, not really. He'd been stabbed with the spoon, and his nose had bent in a very un-stonelike fashion the night before.

Yawning, she slowly made her way through the winding paths that connected the haphazard collection of buildings that formed the inside of this fortress, or whatever it was. Somewhere, there was an armory where she could get some gear, though she doubted very much whether she could actually walk in the heavy iron plate Grease had been sporting earlier, let alone fight. Maybe they'd let her go in with just a sword.

For some reason, Annabeth found herself missing her bone sword. Maybe it could hurt the creatures in this world, since she'd never heard anyone actually say that it was like celestial bronze or imperial gold.

Then again, maybe her dagger would work on them too. It wasn't as if they were mortals. She was pretty sure that mortals never spontaneously exploded like those creeper things.

Finally, after a lot of fruitless wandering around, she ran into a burly guy with actual tiger fur who pointed towards a squat building with a chicken coop built on top of it, for whatever reason.

As armories went, it wasn't particularly impressive. The tool shed at Camp Half-Blood had a better variety. All she could see were swords of various materials, some axes, and bows. Archery wasn't exactly her forte, and the battleaxes looked more like hatchets than anything else, so she grabbed a basic, sharp-looking sword.

"Iron, no enchants, new, good choice," said a deep, gravelly voice from behind her.

"Grease!" she yelped, surprised.

"Yeah," he agreed, pulling a rusty axe from a small wooden box that definitely shouldn't be able to fit anything bigger than some daggers. Intrigued, she stepped closer and peered inside, and found…

"Uh, why are these weapons so tiny?!"

Grease laughed, tossing the axe back into the box. As she watched, it shrank to the size of a toothpick and landed neatly on top of a pair of wooden practice swords.

"That's what they do when you store 'em."

She was pretty sure that nothing she'd ever tried to fit in a backpack had ever done that.

"Are those containers magic or something?" she asked, pulling out a sword and leaning back as it expanded to full size.

"Nope. It's just what they do."

"How much can you fit in there?" Annabeth found herself asking. She really couldn't help it; it was just so… odd.

"Uh," Grease scrunched up his caveman forehead as if deep in thought. Mumbling some numbers under his breath, as if counting, he finally said, "About two-hundred and forty cubic meters."

"That's… really specific," she managed. The Neanderthal forehead was misleading; he could obviously do pretty quick mental math.

"Yes."

The strong, silent type. Why was everyone who lived in this fortress so weird?! First, Tyx the scrawny wizard, who was so petrified of people he stuttered when talking to a six-year-old a head shorter than him. Grease, the stone-age mathematician with skin made out of stone that was still somehow bendy. Candy, who went around killing leaf-monsters with herring, Kitty the surprisingly aggressive kindergartener who could heal life threatening wounds in seconds. And Happy, the… the… Happy.

"Hey!" Tyx's voice chirped from behind her.

"Hi," she replied, grateful for his presence. Somehow, he was actually the most ordinary person she'd met since he'd accidentally kidnapped her.

Grease just grunted.

Then, he came into her line of sight.

She couldn't help it, she burst out laughing. He was wearing what looked like the same size of armor Grease might use… and Grease was at least a foot and a half taller. The enormous shining helmet was threatening to slip down over his chin, with a fully tightened strap hanging down like some kind of demented necklace. A burnished breastplate was actually forcing his arms out like chicken wings, and the leggings were longer than his legs! To move around, he had to swing himself sideways, waddling like an enormous metal marshmallow with legs.

"Smaller size?" he asked, bucking his head back so that they could see his smirk under the helmet. He'd probably done it on purpose, as a morale booster or something, but it was hard not to grin at how ridiculous he looked.

"Maybe you could fit into Kitty's armor," Grease rumbled. It was hard to tell, but she thought he might be trying not to smile.

Tyx made a face, evidenced by the weird shape his barely-visible mouth was making, and started wiggling his arms. For a moment, she thought he was just messing around, but then he finally succeeded in tipping himself over, so that the helmet and legs just slid off him like water. Grease held the huge breastplate while he slipped out of it.

"Alright," Tyx said, clapping his hands together. "I'm gonna go find some armor that fits. Leather, maybe."

He sauntered off, acting almost cocky.

"So," Annabeth said awkwardly, after a minute's pause. "Grease, is your skin really made out of rock?" It was going to bother her unless she figured it out, she just knew it.

"Yes. And no."

There was another painful silence, as she tried very hard not to start banging her head against a wall.

"What?"

"It is stone. But it behaves like skin, can catch fire," he explained.

"Oh."

Yet again, the conversation lulled and Annabeth felt herself fidgeting with the end of her new sword, which was definitely not safe. Grease wasn't exactly talkative.

Finally, Tyx made his way back,

"I didn't see you leave the barracks this morning," he said, a bit too casually.

"Yeah… I crashed on the wall. And then… I… uh…" Somehow, just the idea of describing her conversation with Happy gave her a headache.

"You met Happy?" asked Tyx, sniggering.

"How did you‒"

"There's only one person in this fortress that can make someone look that confused."

"How does he… where'd he get those clothes?!"

Tyx burst out laughing. "The Nether."

Even Grease couldn't resist chuckling a little.

"Alright, I've gotta clear all our gear with Kandy. This is what we're bringing, right?" Tyx began drifting towards the door, clearly anxious to get started on their mission.

"You gonna take armor?" asked Grease. Annabeth jumped; he'd been standing right behind her, and with his extra height it almost sounded like he was speaking from somewhere above her head.

"No, I don't think I could maneuver in that," she said, eying the thick leather now strapped to Tyx's skinny frame. "Too thick. And you said it was hot where we're going."

Grease said nothing, just walked away. He stopped halfway to the door, and nodded ascent.

"Okay, so one set of iron, one of leather, an iron axe and a sword. And a spoon," Tyx rattled off, wincing a little at the mention of his little mistake.

"Yeah."

"Sweet," he continued, "Meet me in an hour at… uh… it's the third building to the left of the barracks. Real small. Iron door."

"Okay," Annabeth said, and, like magic, he disappeared. Somewhat disgruntled, she strolled out the door and decided to wander around until it was time for their mission.

And she thought she was done with fire and brimstone.

Tartarus, here I come. Again.

Sorry about the lateness! Now that I'm back in the states, I'm going back to my normal writing schedule, which is still a tad slow, but I'll update as often as I can.

Bai! ~(^0^)~