I've decided to embed review replies into my chapters, so that no good and loyal reviewer need worry that their kindness will go unrewarded. Not too many plot secrets, of course-isn't that why you all came back?

Heythere—Thank you, thanks a lot for being reviewer number one! (Go on, gloat. I do it too.) The plot will be made clear in this chapter, so I hope you stick around. The quote from my summary is from here. I'm planning on giving it a 'true' summary soon, hopefully.

ToL-Lover—Thank you for the support! Here is more, and I hope you enjoy. :D

Alexis—Wow, that has to be a record. I've gotten you hooked already? I must refrain from being smug, so instead... YAY! (parties) (settles down) Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Two.

Thank you all for your support of this newest child of mine. I know you will be itching to find out what happened to Percy, but be patient and all will be revealed. (I sound like a fortune-teller.)

Now, a warning: this chapter gets a little tricky tense-wise. There are times (in italics, mostly) when Percy is reliving the past, and not thinking in the present as is normal. I was sure to put in heads-up for these while writing, but I don't want you to be confused. If you are, feel free to PM or review and I'll differentiate.

Oh, yeah. I don't own Starbucks Coffee. All I like is their hot chocolate.

Chapter Two: Kindly Ones Nearly Eat My Diploma

It was so good to be home, to close my door on the world. On Rachel Elizabeth Dare, on Mr. D, on the world of gods and Titans and quests and re-forming monsters, and on the first words my father had 'spoken' to me since I was seventeen or eighteen, and we'd parted on Olympus.

I await your return to camp.

It will be a cold day in Hades, father, I vowed silently. That was much more Annabeth's world than it was mine, now. I had left anything that screamed Perseus Jackson, Son of Poseidon either in cabin three or in Annabeth's New York apartment.

I didn't visit either of those places.

And yet... after everything, after my life had basically fallen into the cracks of Greek tragedy and humiliation, after I had retreated to the mortal world, never to return—Poseidon still wanted something of me.

Your father sends his well-wishes.

A lump formed in my throat. Was Dionysus just toying with me? That had to be it. It was the only explanation for what had just happened: Rachel, who had 'escaped' Clarion Academy to return to Goode with me, whom I hadn't seen or heard from since graduation, walking into my job and greeting me like she'd never ignored my existence. Greeting me like Annabeth would.

Gods, I missed my girlfriend. One more thing to add to my life-tragedy, that I did not see her often enough at all.

And Dionysus, snarling at me, talking to me like I'd never run away from camp, from duty, from being a half-blood. Why did they both not understand that I had failed, that I'd barely not died, and that I didn't want to humiliate myself anymore?

I had hated—HATED—letting the gods down. Not that I would have admitted that to the majority of them. But Poseidon, on the other hand...

Gods, I disappointed my father.

Shaking, I sank down on my bed—how I'd crossed the room and locked the door, I had no idea. That lump in my throat was starting to hurt. And was my vision blurring?

My mom, Sally Jackson, had told me when I was much younger that it was okay for boys to cry, whatever anyone (read: Smelly Gabe) said to the contrary. But it had been such a long time since then...

And anyway, if I started bawling at work or whatever, my fellow male apron-wearers at Starbucks would never let me live it down... never...

Never...

When was the last time I had cried?

It wasn't really necessary to ask. I was nineteen, and I remembered it perfectly. It came back in my dreams, jagged and always so sharp.

I had been seventeen, on the waning side of my junior year. Still going to Camp Half-Blood (though not as frequently), my second home, my haven. So close to having five beads on my necklace, come summer. Praying I'd done well on the SAT, that my "study sessions" (okay, some of them) with Annabeth had paid off. Alternating between pleasing the gods (finding their children, with Grover, and bringing them to camp; Hermes had especially thanked me for following through on my word) and annoying them (just ask Dionysus).

And then my mom got sick—really sick. All while she had taken care of me, alone, she'd seldom ever gotten sick. But that year… it was like every sickness she'd sidestepped in my favor had converged on her all at once.

I thought that Sally Jackson was going to die. My schoolwork plummeted back into its pre-demigod abysmal ways, and I hardly cared; I was too busy driving or hiking to the doctor every day. Every day, for the same head shake from the doctor, for my spirits to poison further.

"I don't understand how she's still alive, Mr. Jackson. But I'm glad of it—her resilience may save her yet. Hopefully."

Paul Blofis had been a wreck. He'd alternated between staying longer at school, drowning himself in Goode work, remaining constantly at my mother's side, stroking her hair or keeping her window curtains open, and the worst—trying to console me, to keep me on track, to truly play "Father". He offered me his shoulder and I pushed it away—and literally ran away. I was more of a wreck than he was, then.

It was Sophia who found me sleeping on Starbucks's back stair, on the way to Annabeth's apartment. Maybe it was the look on my face, something like Hey, I think my mom's dying and it sucks—but instead of calling the police, she offered me a job. In the process, she became like my second mother—definitely closer than Queen Amphitrite had come.

I had cried so, so much during that time. Normally I might have pulled a Luke and cursed the gods for what they'd done to my mom, but it seemed to be out of their control—and even they were sympathetic to what was happening.

That's right, I said sympathetic.

Paul and I hadn't discussed how I'd basically "moved out" yet, because of our combined grief. Just when the doctors started muttering about "possible signs of cancer" and I began to panic even further, the gods saw fit to pay visits.

My father Poseidon was first to come. I had been sleeping in a chair near my mother's bed when the air started to smell of the sea—I jerked up, and found myself staring into his deep green eyes and tanned face. "How is she?", he had wanted to know, and I told him that I was afraid, that I didn't know how she was or would be, and about how I was afraid she was going to—

"How are you, then?" Poseidon had asked me. I stared at him. Then he pulled me to him, for the second time in my life, and hugged me. I sobbed then too, because I'd last seen him at my most recent birthday, and the irony of the contrast in his reasons for coming (irony again) made me hurt even more.

We had stayed by my mom all night, neither one of us falling asleep—well, he was a god, too, so that helped. Paul had tiptoed in at about three in the morning, and, upon seeing Poseidon, his eyes had widened considerably. My father just nudged the empty chair next to him—and the vigil went on.

Days later, I knew Zeus had come when the hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I smelled ozone. The God of the Sky had looked to me, and... I racked my memory. What had happened, exactly?

I rushed to bow to him, but he waved me off as I was coming back up. I guess he saw something in my eyes, because he put his hand on my shoulder and nodded. His cloud-gray eyes surveyed me, then moved to my mom. She shivered violently in her sleep, and I moved reflexively toward her.

"Halt, nephew," Zeus said to me. He moved over and put a hand on my mom's forehead; she sighed, and some color returned to her face.

I had never been the type to grovel at Zeus's feet, but what he had done for my mom was enough to have my legs trembling, sending me to the floor as I thanked him earnestly.

"I have not alleviated her sickness," Zeus murmured solemnly, pulling me up.

"I know—but—oh, thank you, Lord Zeus, thank you..."

He blinked, and moved to studying her again. Finally he said:

"I do not know what ails her. It is debilitating—yet she still fights it. ...I see, I think, what my brother Poseidon saw in her all those years ago—and still sees."

It was only after he'd left when I realized that Zeus was acknowledging our family ties. He'd called me "nephew".

My Big Three magnetism continued: Hades swept into the hospital wing a few days later, on a cloak of darkness so thick it constricted the room. He was tailed by Nico, who gave me a sad smile. The unspoken tone of it made my blood freeze, I remember, and I turned to the Lord of the Dead.

"You haven't—you're not here to—"

"No, godling." I had almost forgotten now what Hades's voice sounded like—deep, and oily enough to smooth frizzy hair for years. "As you have been told, she is dying, not dead."

"Dying?" How my voice had broken, then!

Nico had stepped forward, and hesitated. He knew my mom too, after all. In a way, she was a second mother to him—the only living one he knew.

"Go ahead," Hades instructed. His eyes followed his son's movements and glittered neutrally.

Nico had gone forward, touched one finger to my mother's arm. He immediately flinched back.

"What?"

"Her life force. It's... being repressed by something. It's almost out."

"Repressed? By the sickness?"

"No," Hades had said. "Not by the sickness. Not by a sickness."

"Then by what?"

Hades had shrugged grimly. "I don't know 'what', specifically. But it is familiar... it reminds me of Underworld magic. That much I know." He frowned. "I came because I wished to look into this strangeness further." He had glanced at his son. "And Nico insisted."

Nico had fixed me with his dark, thirteen year-old stare. "I wanted to be here, Percy. I wanted to help."

"Thank you. Both."

I wasn't sure what had happened after that, because Hades snapped his fingers, and I saw sudden darkness.

I woke with a start.

Something made me rub my head, hard. What had upset me while I was asleep and dreaming?

Mom.

I almost destroyed something with Riptide (when did I draw that?) before I remembered: she was fine. Fine. Sally Jackson had gotten better, miraculously better, the September of my senior year. Annabeth had been there, as she often was, and on her last visit to the hospital her mother had accompanied her. And that was rare enough.

Athena.

My heart had dropped. I remembered expecting her to start trying to convince me my mom would be better off dead. It would be just like her.

"Lady Athena." I'd bowed all the same.

"Perseus Jackson." Athena had inclined her head in my flashback/daydream, and I had started in surprise—it was a sign of respect I never expected to receive from her. "I would see your mother."

I'd stepped aside, and she had moved to put her hand on my mom's forehead—a common gesture of late. Annabeth had come to my side and held my hand, but her eyes (and mine) were on her mother.

What happened next was probably why this memory in particular was coming back to me, after nearly two years buried.

Athena had removed her hand after a long, long time. She approached me back then, and her gray eyes had bored into my face.

She'd spoken quietly. "Your mother was treading the line of death, Percy. But you will be pleased to know that she will recover."

"She's going to... live?" My voice had broken; my nerves had been long since shot, and this was the last straw, in a way—even if it was a good straw.

"Yes. She was in danger, but whatever had hold on her has released her. Your mother lives, and will recover soon."

"So you agree with Hades—that whatever-got my mother was an 'it', not a sickness."

Athena had pursed her lips. In retrospect, maybe that was a bad comparison.

"...I do. This all reeks of something more sinister."

Kronos. It was what I had thought at the time, but I did not say the name. After the war, I never wanted to say it again; and that still stood now, especially after certain unspeakable recent events.

"Perseus." She recaptured my attention. Her next words were burned—or maybe frozen—into my memory; they chilled me to the bone. "When I touched your mother, I received an insight—something that has never before happened to me. You will share your mother's fate, albeit in a different way. You will walk the line of death. Be cautious."

I had now heard those words twice, from two gods (not counting the possible Apollo-through-Rachel), neither of which knew exactly how the warning had come. Both, though, knew it was a warning to me—and, from Dionysus's reawakening of the words, I knew that if it was a prophecy of some sort, it hadn't been fulfilled when I'd received the scratch on my back.

Like my mother before me, I would also 'walk the line of death'. But as a demigod, there was no guarantee that I would live to laugh at those words.

THUMP.

I shot out of my daze. Starbucks, home early, apartment empty except for me. So who was making all that noise?

THUMP.

THUMP.

CRASH!

My third coherent string of thought was: Oh, no. Monsters.

It was like someone had turned on a switch. I jumped up, grabbed Riptide-in-pen-form and took several deep breaths. A while had passed, a long while, since the last time I'd faced any kind of monster. A long, non-life-threatening time, in which time my adrenaline had never been racing as fast as it was right now.

Please, I sighed. Please let it be like riding a bike. Riding a bike and killing age-old monsters-let them be the same. ...Practically the same.

And if the gods weren't listening, I wouldn't be surprised.

Crrrrraaaaaaaackle.

Was that...paper?

That was it. They were not wrecking my apartment. I charged into the living room, letting loose a strangled, lame battle cry and...

and...

...stopped in my tracks. These weren't monsters.

The three Furies were flapping around, trashing my house.

Suddenly I was twelve years old again—with a quest I hated, a father I didn't want, and immortal relatives I didn't even know yet. All I had in my hand was a pen that became a gleaming gold sword.

My flashback abruptly ended when the middle one (whom I immediately recognized as Mrs. Dodds, my former 'math teacher') examined some familiar-looking paper in her claws and, inspection done, promptly opened her mouth to eat it.

I recognized it, of course.

My diploma.

My Goode diploma, the one I'd received with Chiron watching, with all my parents watching, with Dionysus watching, with Annabeth watching. So many good memories packed into that one sheet of paper, the only one that proved I had any worth.

Somehow I found the strength to shout: "STOP!"

The Kindly Ones looked around slowly towards me, and I began to wonder just how soon I'd be seeing the Underworld. But at least my diploma was safe.

I, on the other hand, was definitely not safe.

It was Mrs. Dodds who approached me. I took a step back, and promptly felt the wall behind me. No escape.

"Perseus Jackson," she hissed. As she did, I vaguely remembered that her name was Alecto. His? Its? Really, I didn't know anymore.

The only halfway-intelligent thing I could say was "Look, I've already told them I'm no longer a hero—"

"And did you remember, Perseus Jackson, what I told you I would do if you did not live well and become a true hero? What would happen if I ever had you in my clutches again?"

I swallowed hard. I did remember. Her eyes had been enough to give me an idea back then. And right now, all I could think was Uh-oh.

Alecto cackled, and I flinched. One of her (his? its? Oh, whatever...) hands/talons shot out and gripped my arm, the one now loosely holding Riptide.

So much for self-defense.

But her coal-colored eyes looked into mine, and suddenly everything else melted away. My whole half-broken world changed when she told me why she and her siblings had, in essence, been looking for me for months.

"We have come concerning the fate of Luke Castellan."

My throat closed up. I managed to say, "You might as well begin my eternal whipping, because he's dead. You know that. I'll take my punishment, since I had a hand in his death..."

"He killed himself," the Fury reminded me.

My teeth clenched. "I'm quite aware. I was there, remember?"

She studied me curiously, clicking her teeth. Her sisters grumbled behind her, but she held up a hand to silence them. When she spoke again, her voice was scratchy and full of disbelief. "You have been living all this time as a... mortal?"

"Yes." No sword practice with Riptide, no visits to Camp Half-Blood, no quests, no interactions with monsters or other immortal beings. Nothing.

"There has been trouble of sorts in the Underworld. Sporadic problems over the past year. Some misprints in applications are the least... the dead are sent to the wrong places... Tartarus in particular has been seething with mischief, Jackson, and that mischief has... well, we have lost many souls. And it is getting worse."

"Lost?" I thought of my twice almost-dead mother, of Bianca di Angelo, of Zoë Nightshade. Lost souls. "How can you lose souls? How can a place that—that houses Titans be used to capture a person's soul, especially if it's the world of the dead?"

"That is what we are trying to discover."

"What does... Luke... have to do with any of this? He was going to try for Elysium... the Isles of the Blest."

The cold feeling in my gut intensified even before Alecto shook her dark head.

"Luke is one of the targeted ones. If he is lucky, now, he will see Elysium. If he is not... we have discovered that when these souls are eliminated, no traces remain. It is as though they never existed."

I'd like to say that I said something Luke deserved—maybe I felt some relief that he couldn't return to try and kill me and destroy the gods again, or a vindictive satisfaction that Luke was defeated even in death.

But the problem was...

Three years was a very, very long time to think about my former enmity with Luke, along with the revelation of his past, his history with three of my closest friends... and his history, if short, with me. It wasn't right that something downstairs was trying to wipe out his soul—even if it was Luke.

My second train of thought wandered to my girlfriend: it was to her that Luke had revealed his plan for the afterlife. And now that it looked like someone was messing with that plan...

Annabeth is going to kill me.

The third train rushed by in my head and slammed, ADHD-like, into the second with a resounding gong.

Unless I somehow fix this.

I finally spoke, quietly. "You came here, to me. You're telling me about Luke being in danger, even though he's dead. What in the world do you want me to do about this?"

The other two Furies flapped over to one another and began hissing in Ancient Greek, too fast for me to understand. I closed my eyes sharply. So, I was being asked to help.

A year and a half, two years maximum, and they were asking me to slip a completely different life-skin back on—just put on the shield, draw the sword, and become a hero again.

The crazy thing was... my blood screamed for just that. It was, at that very moment, exactly what I wanted for so many reasons. The pounding in my head said, This is exactly what I need. I want to try this all again. Let me redeem myself in Annabeth's eyes, and in my own.

I want to be a hero one more time.

I wrenched my sword arm out of Alecto's grasp. Her ugly eyebrows rose in surprise, but my mind was made up and I hardly noticed.

"I will go to the Underworld," I said. "I will travel, again, across the United States and try to find out why these souls are being exterminated—and who's doing it. And... I will rescue Luke Castellan from the same fate, even if it kills me in the process."

The other Furies stopped speaking. Grinning savagely, they sank down onto the couch—my couch—and focused their dark, beady eyes entirely on me.

Alecto/Mrs. Dodds gave a smirk that bordered on a smile. Her claw went clamp right down on my sword arm again, like we were sealing a contract.

But all she said was, "Thank you, Perseus Jackson. I would have expected nothing less."