No, there was not a time warp! Yes, this is an update! I know, it's really quick (for me), but it's to thank you guys for getting my review into the hundreds!

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I don't own Starbucks.

Recap: (You shouldn't need one, but whatevs) Percy, Annabeth, and Grover have been on their quest, and have just defeated Medusa and freed her victims. Now they're driving south to Maryland.

"So where do we go now?" I asked

"South," she decided. "South to Maryland."

***

Well, we've been driving south for about five hours now. We've passed so many freakin' toll booths I'd be happy if I never saw one again. I mean, how much money do people spend on those stupid things every year? If America is the land of the free, then why in Hades' pants do we have to pay money to drive into another state?!

"Percy, turn!" screamed Grover.

"What? Oh, crap!" I said. I swerved, narrowly avoiding the truck in front of us and waking Annabeth from behind us. (We stopped a while back in Newark so Grover could come up front and Annabeth could get some sleep.) She fell into the little area between the front seats and the back, and came up cursing.

"Percy Jackson, take that exit right now," she said. Completely calm, with icy black eyes and a murderous look on her face, her nose all scrunched up. I shivered sarcastically, but took the exit.

"Stop in front of that Starbucks," Annabeth ordered. I did, just to see what she would tell me to do next. "Now open the door and step out of that seat."

"Why?" I asked.

"So I can sit, turn the keys in the ignition, and drive without killing us all."

"No. I don't wanna," I puffed out my cheeks like a little kid and pouted. Grover exploded in laughter. Annabeth got even angrier.

"Percy Freakin' Jackson, get your freakin' butt out of that seat right this freakin' second!"

"I said I don't WANNA!" I screamed. I was about to crack up but I held it.

"Percy if you do not get out of your seat right now, I'll kill you!"

"And I'll help her. Believe me, it won't be a painless death, either," came another voice, and I pretty much jumped out of my skin. I twisted around in the seat really quickly, believe me.

A grinning guy stared back at me, holding Annabeth's NYY cap. "I've been sitting here for a half hour, and believe me Percy, it looks like you guys are going to Hades fast."

"Nico? What are you doing here?" I asked.

"I got bored. I wanted to do something exciting. I decided to sneak away and join your quest. Of course, that wasn't too hard. I just shadow traveled here," he smiled even wider.

I nodded. He'd explained shadow traveling to me one of the times he'd visited me. "Wow, Nico! Man, it's great to have you here!" I said. I meant it, too. Nico was a great kid; you had to get past his emo/goth look. He knew a lot about the legends and all, and he was an amazing fighter.

"Yeah, yeah. So, are you trying to pass the prophecy on to me? 'Cause that's what it looks like from your 'amazing' driving 'skills'! I can drive better," Nico teased.

Nico had really lightened up. He wasn't all…doom and gloom and depressed anymore. Something had really changed him, and I thought it was Danielle. Danielle was a daughter of Apollo, about seven years old, who he'd found on the streets in Nevada. He took her to Camp Half-Blood, and he got attached along the way.

I was glad that he had the chance to be close to somebody; the only family he'd ever really had was Bianca. When she died, it was a huge blow to him. He still missed Bianca, and nobody could ever take her place. But Danielle was like another sister; a younger one. She really brought out his paternal side. I was happy that she made it to Camp, too.

"Oh, give me a break. I don't drive that badly. And you have practice! How many times did you drive getting Elle to camp?"

Elle was what he called Danielle. Either that or 'Miss Princess'.

"Hmm…that's a tough one. I remember that one car…" he smiled dreamily. "Poor guy, I hope he didn't like that convertible too much…"

Grover and Annabeth were watching us talk.

"Nico, how's Elle?" Annabeth asked. Elle had taken a liking to Annabeth immediately. (Then again, I doubt any little kid could not like Annabeth.) She hung around Annabeth all the time, but Annabeth never got annoyed, the way I would have. Heck, when the incoming campers hang around me, I get way annoyed. Annabeth just took it in stride. Now Elle was a mini architect. And none of the other Apollo campers were happy. At all.

"She's fine. She keeps talking about how she has 'limited resources' and how the rest of the Apollo campers are 'completely mindless'. Other than that, it's going great," he glared at Annabeth. "Did you have to tell her that classical music is supposed to be 'exciting, yet peaceful'? Now she keeps bothering everybody in the cabin!"

"Well, I'm sorry, but the Apollo campers aren't very good musicians!"

"Well, neither is Grover!"

"Hey!" Grover looked offended.

"Hey is for horses, Grover," Annabeth said.

This got all of them started in a war of words. They were better than cable. Or Hephaestus-TV—before it went all reality programming, of course.

I cleared my throat. "If you guys are done, can we start now? Annabeth, Grover, fill Nico in on what happened."

Grover sniffed. "Nico? Oh is that that one guy who smells like dead people?"

Nico looked like he was going to kill Grover. Before he could say something, Annabeth interrupted. "Hey, stop! I'll fill you in, Nico. Grover, you have a time-out."

"I'm thirty one! I haven't had time outs since I was, like, ten!" he protested.

"Well, you will be in a time out as long as you act like one. Let's get some coffee and food and stuff. We can talk in the café," I said. "Annabeth, can you bring your laptop?" She nodded.

"Okay, then, let's go."

***

10 minutes later, we were sitting around a table inside Starbucks. I was sipping my coffee, Annabeth was pulling her hair into a messy knot, Nico was eating a Toffee Almond Bar (A/N I love those! Go try one!), and Grover was eating his wax paper.

Annabeth filled Nico in on what happened. "We fought Medusa last night. Today, we burned the head, and freed all her victims. We were driving to Annapolis, but then I decided that we should go west instead. And that's about it," she finished.

"Oooh! Oooh! No, it isn't! This morning, I walked into the living room when Percy and Annabeth were having a 'moment'!" Grover said.

"We were not! Annabeth just forgot what happened last night, and asked me! Grover," I said, "I hate you."

"Sure, Percy…we believe you," Nico smirked.

"Nico," Annabeth said.

"Yeah?"

"Shut. Up. Right. Now. Or. Else."

"Yes'm," Is it just me, or did Nico actually look scared?

"Percy, what did you need the computer for?" Annabeth asked.

I didn't answer, just turned it so it was facing me. I opened the Internet (thanks, Hermes!) and went to Google Maps. "We need a map."

"I came prepared," Nico started waving a book of maps around. "This is a road map of the entire United States, section by section."

"Let me see that," Annabeth snatched the thing right out of poor Nico's hand. She started studying it.

"Yeah, that's great, but we need directions," I said.

"Percy, to get directions, we need to have an address. Which we don't have," pointed out Grover. I frowned. That was a problem; we couldn't just type in 'Annapolis, MD to West Coast,' after all.

"We need to IM Dr. Heale. Immediately," Annabeth said. Nico was going to say something, but he never got the chance. Because right then, the roof exploded.

***

We looked up into a hideous, scarred, very big face. I heard someone scream. Looking around, I saw that it was Annabeth. That right there set me quaking. Annabeth doesn't scream unless there's a spider nearby. Ever. And if she was screaming, then…well, it was either the end of the world, or pretty darn close.

"Annabeth! What is it?" hissed Nico.

"It-it's Pallas," she whispered.

"Oh, Styx! Pallas? What in Hades do we do now?" Grover asked.

That's where they lost me. "Pallas? Isn't that the first name of Athena, or something?"

"Seaweed Brain, Pallas was a gigantes—a giant—who Athena killed in the First Titan War. She then took his name. It's his skin that makes Aegis- the original one, Zeus's version, not Thalia's, I mean."

"She killed him…so I'm guessing…it's not easy for heroes to kill him?" I asked backing up slowly.

"Yep."

"We have to—Grover, duck!" screamed Nico.

Pallas launched a flamethrower at Grover, which, in turn, launched us into action. Grover ducked like Nico said, and the fire missed his skin by inches. I rolled to the other side of the room. Nico and Annabeth ran to front, close to Pallas. Still, there was no way to get rid of him. He was at least seventy feet tall. And even if we stacked one on top of the other, we would only be twenty feet at the most.

"How in Hades do we get rid of him?" I yelled. Just then, Pallas threw a sword blindly into the room, and it headed straight for the laptop. I knew how important it was to Annabeth; it was given to her by her half-brother Daedalus, and it was filled with ideas of his that he was never able to do. There was nothing else like it in the whole world.

"No! Not that!" she screamed. Trying to get there in time, she all but flew to it. Still, she was way too far. I was closer; I drew and used Riptide to slide the laptop under the table.

"Annabeth, I got it," I said. She flashed me a grateful smile.

"Thanks Percy," By now she was only a few inches away from me; I probably would have said something like 'um uh ga' but I never had the chance—because right then Pallas grabbed Nico and lifted him forty feet into the air.

***

"Nico!" I yelled. He was stabbing desperately at the monster's hand with his stygian iron sword, but it wasn't enough. This monster was too large.

"We need to destroy the monster," I said.

"I think we can use electricity," came Annabeth's voice.

"No need. But I need to get Nico down," Grover said. Annabeth and I looked at him in confusion. "Believe me, guys! I can take care of this."

I looked at Annabeth and she nodded. I shrugged. "Might as well," I said. And then I started climbing Pallas's leg.

***

Now, I would not advice you to climb a monster's leg. Pallas was dressed relatively normally—jeans and a shirt—but not all monsters were that considerate. And I wasn't that interested in staring at a monster's whitey-tighties.

Pallas started hopping around like a bunny on a chocolate high. Or worse, an ADHD bunny on a chocolate high. I was having a really hard time hanging on to his jeans. Eventually I just stabbed the thick material and pulled myself up hand by hand.

I have no idea how long I kept going like that, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. It really wasn't that much worse than the lava wall at camp. I noticed when the dark denim changed to white cotton, and I knew I reached his shirt. (By the way, where would he get clothes that big? You couldn't just walk into the XL section in a store and find clothes that big.)

Nico was still flailing around, attacking Pallas. Huge beads of ichor dripped onto the floor, pooling with the ones already there. I looked down at Annabeth and Grover fighting Pallas and felt a little dizzy. This son of Poseidon is not meant for heights. They make me sick.

"Nico!" I screamed.

"Percy! His weak point is at the elbow! Attack his left arm and elbow!" He yelled instructions at me. Still I remembered what Grover had said: Get Nico down. I had a feeling that he knew what he was talking about.

I didn't answer Nico, I just joined him in stabbing Pallas. I fought my way around his stomach (yes, I know this sounds weird) to his left arm when it became clear that we were losing. I stabbed blindly near his elbow.

"Aaaaaaaaagh!" he screamed in agony. It was the first sound I'd heard him make, and hopefully it was the last. He dropped Nico. Luckily he landed on a sofa in the corner of the coffee shop. I had to get down from here.

All of a sudden, I remembered that when I was little I'd always wanted to slide down a stair banister. Maybe it would work…?

I decided to take the chance. Crossing my fingers (not literally) I let my clench on the shirt loosen and slid down, down, down, in front of Grover's feet.

Looking around, I had to smile. It was really uncommon for…well a son of Poseidon to survive a height like that. "Okay, G-man, do your thing," I said.

He nodded, and put his mouth to his pipes. He played an eerie melody, like a creek flowing over stones and the hum of animals around a carcass in the forest.

Roots began to grow around Pallas. He roared in anger and thrashed around. But he just fell onto the floor, and Grover's magic took hold. Bark began to grow around his massive body, branches sprouted from over his head. Within a minute, Pallas had been completely encased by a tree.

And now we had a horizontal maple tree in a Starbucks in Maryland.

Panting, all of us looked around. The building was completely trashed, slimed up like the inside of a dragon's mouth. The servers weren't there any longer either; they had probably run out soon after the roof collapsed.

"We have to go now," said Nico.

"Thanks for the information, Captain Obvious," Annabeth said. "Come on, let's go!"

***

We ran out of the café like Hades, believe me. We piled into the car and peeled out of the parking lot. Nobody said anything for a while.

In half an hour, Nico complained, "Percy, how come you get to drive again?"

"Well, because I drive the fastest, I'm the oldest, not counting Grover, and this is my quest!"

And that's how the next hour or two went—bickering.

**********************************************************PLEASE READ! VERY IMPORTANT!*********************************************************

You may have noticed I did some major clean up. Now this is the seventh chapter, not the tenth; I combined a few of the shorter chapters. This means that now every chapter (excluding the first) is at least 1,000 words. The story is still all here, just in a smaller package.

By the way, not counting author's notes and recap or disclaimer, this chap was 2,397 words!

Review, please!

~Clara