Author's Note: I'm so glad you guys liked C.C. so much! I knew it was a pretty big risk putting her in there, but I felt like I had to. How long did it take you guys to figure her out? Anyway, this chapter is coming quickly because I love you all so much, once again, thank you so much Phantomwhispers (aka. Full-minata) for being the best beta I could have! Friendly Reminder: Hazel is 13, that means she will think and act like a 13 year old in every situation, not like a 16 year old. Oh and one more thing: I do NOT ship Jeyna, contrary to the belief of most of you. I do, however, believe that Jason is lying though about having never had feelings for Reyna, but this story will be Jasper in the end.
Hazel III
It wasn't long until Hazel really started to regret her decision to leave Nico alone, even if it was only for a little bit. Sure, her brother was able to walk around freely (and without any outbursts) now, but she'd never forget the way his eyes were like broken glass. She'd heard him screaming from his dreams that very night; it made her worry constantly. Nico was staying in Percy's cabin for the time being, at least until (or if) they got Percy and Annabeth back.
That night, Nico's screams had interrupted Hazel's own terrifying dream. She didn't know whether or not if she was thankful for his alerting shrieks.
It was in that dream when she was tied up against a chair in an empty white room.
A booming voice echoed in the room. Hazel wasn't sure whose voice it was, because it didn't sound familiar, but the voice clearly said beware the sound of laughter. Hazel tried to respond- though she was too terrified to respond with anything other than a shriek- but she found that she had a gag placed inside her mouth.
She began wriggling and writhing, but the ropes holding her to the chair wouldn't move at all to allow her an exit, and nor did the chair itself.
After a while (or at least it seemed like that in the dream), Leo came into the room from a door that had appeared just as quickly as it disappeared in front of Hazel's eyes. When the dream Leo saw her, he started laughing. But the laughter wasn't Leo's normal happy laugh, but instead a cruel, mocking one.
Hazel heard Leo's mocking taunts "that she couldn't get out" much longer than she felt she could have heard them . "It's just a chair Hazel," he said. "Not like it's a monster or anything. All demigods can most definitely defeat a stupid chair. Or at least any useful demigod could."
"Leo?" Hazel asked, trying to ignore the criticisms that were stinging her skin with every word. She bit her lip. "What happened to you?"
"My dear, I am not Leo." Leo said, his face falling off of his head and leaving an empty piece of skin there. Hazel looked down at Leo's face that was still laughing at her, but slowly solidifying into a… mask?
Hazel's dream gag fell off as she heard a scream so loud that it forced her to jolt upright in bed. Hazel listened to Nico scream for no longer than it took to slide out of bed and then quickly- thinking the boat was being attacked- run into Percy's room.
Nico lay on the floor, curled up in the fetal position, his eyes closed. He was screaming indiscernible words, but Hazel could tell he was scared out of his mind. His face was already noticeably paler than his usual complexion.
Hazel put her arm on Nico's shoulder to comfort him. "Nico…" she whispered, "Are you okay?" Nico's shattered-glass eyes shot open, his hand shot to his sword, which was lying on the floor next to him. When he saw it was just Hazel, he started crying silently.
She hugged her brother as he cried into her curly hair. "Hazel." He whimpered. "The monsters down there… you can't even begin to imagine. It's insane. There's only one place where the monsters can't find you… and I couldn't get there soon enough."
"It's okay Nico." She replied. "You're out of there now."
"No!" Nico almost yelled. "It's not okay. They're still down there. Sure, they have better chances than me, but don't you think they'll be just as broken as me when they come out? We can't just say that everything's okay, not when you guys don't know how horrible it is."
Nico pulled back from the hug, silent tears streaking his ashen cheeks. "I should tell you something." He whispered. "I borrowed dad's sword. I have it with me right now. It's hidden under the pillow."
Hazel drew back the blue sheets on Percy's bed to reveal the horrible black sword underneath, inside of it lay two keys. She gasped, not daring to touch the keys, because she knew what they would do to her if she touched them. "Why Nico?" She asked her brother, "You have a perfectly good sword."
"You heard the prophecy." He replied. "You guys need the twin keys of death to lock the doors of death. I only wish…" Nico blinked back tears. "We have both of the keys on this side, so we'll just have to figure out how to get one to the other side."
Hazel knew what Nico was thinking, but she didn't dare voice their thoughts out loud. They both sat there, staring at the sword until the Mediterranean sun started creeping through the room. That was how Nico stayed as Hazel went back to her room, and she was sure that he'd stay like that for the rest of the day until someone moved him.
That morning, on her way to breakfast, Hazel rushed to the stables take a look at the Athena Parthenos. The pale face of the goddess seemed to glare down at her as if to say, "You are not worthy Roman." Hazel pulled her brown jacket closer to her skin as a small breeze from the bay doors turned cold under the goddess's icy gaze.
Hazel almost wanted to ask the statue what she'd done wrong, but she knew subconsciously that Athena had been against the Romans since the Trojan War back in Ancient Greek times; there was nothing she could do about her ancestry.
As she walked up to breakfast, she ran into Leo, who was carrying some supplies to the engine room, powdered doughnut on his face. "Hey Hazel." He said, but his mouth was full so it sounded more like "Mfh Azml."
"Hello." Hazel replied, her thoughts still on the Athena Parthenos.
Leo swallowed and then asked "Do you want to help me install the Archimedes spheres later today? It could be fun… and I'm great for a laugh.." Leo smiled his salesman smile, but Hazel wasn't buying it.
"No thanks, ask Piper." She replied. "I'd rather not since the last time you worked on something, you caught fire." Her hand subconsciously went to the pocket of her jacket where Frank's candy-bar sized piece of firewood was located today.
Leo got the message. "Okay…" he said, but then he smiled again "do you want to hang out later then?"
"Not really. I'm a little confused about how you were with Circe. Maybe times have changed, but I'm pretty sure fifteen year old guys don't hit on million year old witches. Are you always like that with girls? Sammy…" His name faltered in her mouth. "Sammy wasn't like that." Hazel said, a burst of anger rippling through her as she ran up to breakfast.
When she got up there, she found Frank and Jason looking at a map of the Messinian straight that they'd have to pass through to get to Greece. From what she heard, it was the fastest way to Greece without going near Africa. Apparently, Jason had a bad feeling about Africa.
"But we'll have to go near Sicily," Jason was warning, "and then we enter the Ionian Sea, which is the second most dangerous part of the Mediterranean. This was part of the original Sea of Monsters, where Odysseus and Jason and everyone traveled, so we'll have to be super careful…."
Jason trailed off in thought as Hazel sat down next to Frank, accidentally knocking his glass of milk all over the table. Hazel rushed to get a napkin and they both cleaned it up, avoiding each other's eyes. Hazel tried to hide her embarrassment at making such a scene. Jason didn't even look up from the map.
After a couple of uncomfortably awkward minutes, Piper entered the room. Hazel wasn't sure what she really thought about Piper, she had been totally supportive and a great friend earlier on the quest, not to mention she was a great fighter, but Hazel had seen Reyna and Jason grow closer before he disappeared, and she didn't see how Piper was any better than Reyna. (A/N: Hazel is the one who ships Jeyna, not me.)
Both of them were extremely beautiful, and very smart. Piper was funnier though, and smiled more often, which made her whole face glow so you couldn't help but look at her. As Hazel got lost in those thoughts, Piper came up and touched her shoulder playfully. "What'cha thinking about?" Piper asked, smiling.
"Nothing." Hazel replied automatically, she'd never been good with having girls as friends. In New Orleans, she'd only had Sammy, and then at Camp Jupiter it was Frank. Sure, Gwen had been nice, and Reyna had been, well, kind of like a disapproving sports coach who gave you a lot of tough love. Piper's new friendship was somewhat hard to adjust to, especially with her conflicted thoughts on Piper.
Suddenly, a loud crunching sound came from the left side of the dining room.
"Leo!" Piper called, making Hazel wince because of her conversation with him earlier. "What just happened?"
Leo ran into the room, his face covered in black soot. "I don't know?" He replied, exasperated. "I asked Festus, and he said that the rocks we just ran into kind of came close to us super fast, like godly fast, and they grew bigger and sharper until they hit us... and... well..." Leo seemed to be struggling for the right words to describe the situation.
Hazel ran onboard along with everyone else. Coach Hedge was already up there, dishing insults right back at the rocks. Sticking out of the ocean, about two miles from the coast of Sicily, was an island of jet black rocks that were insulting everything they saw, which was literally only the Argo II and it's crew.
"You're a useless satyr." A taunting voice, came out of a crack in one of the rocks.
"Is that a unicorn horn on your face?" Another rock asked.
"Okay, that's it," Coach Hedge yelled, threatening to throw his baseball bat into any rock he could find, unfortunately, there was an island full of them.
"Why is this happening?" Frank asked.
"Look," Nico said, and he pointed to a maroon figure that was passed out a couple meters from the shore and who's mouth was saying all the insults.
"Must be a god if he has that type of magic." Jason observed. He raised his hand slightly above his sword, ready for battle.
"We'd better go talk to him." Piper agreed. "I'll go with Hazel and Leo to see what's going on, you guys get some wax from the supply room and shove it in your ears, we'll be back soon."
"Umm," Leo started to protest, glancing at Hazel nervously, but Piper pulled on his ear and dragged him to the gangplank so they could get aboard the island.
The walk to the passed out man was about as awkward as it could possibly be because of Leo and Hazel's fight earlier that morning, but Piper kept it lively by yelling at the rocks to "shut up" (a phrase that had to be explained to Hazel) using charmspeak. When they finally got to the guy, Piper stopped dead in her tracks.
"Now normally I'm not one to criticize fashion," she said, "that's my mom's job, but that is a really hideous outfit."
The man was wearing a maroon pinstriped three-piece suit, the kind that Hazel knew her father wore. Across the stomach, was a weird flap of fabric with buttons, which made her assume it opened. The man wore a highlighter yellow cravat and a black top hat on bright red hair. Now, it wasn't like "ginger" or "redhead" red hair, it was seriously stop-sign, fire-engine, chili-pepper red that clashed hideously with the maroon and the yellow. His black and white old-fashioned cane was topped with a jester's crown and was swirling in the air as if conducting the insults that were all around them.
Leo bent down and shook the guy's shoulders, and he sat upright, smiling at them in a way that seemed totally insincere. "Welcome to my island demigods." The man said. "I am Momus, god of laughter... among other things."
Hazel could've sworn she heard him mumble under his breath, "Criticism, mockery, ridicule, blah, blah, blah."
"Hello... Momus." Piper greeted smiling her usual reserved-for-monsters award-winning beauty-pageant smile that made Leo start fidgeting uncomfortably. "We were just wondering why you crashed our ship, surely a god like you wouldn't be interested in little old us."
Piper's act was perfect, flawless, for a moment, Momus actually looked confused, but then he started laughing. "Another blameless and flawless child Aphrodite," Momus yelled at the sky, "I'm still wondering how you do it."
"What do you mean: blameless?" Leo asked the god.
"I suppose ignorant, imperfect spawn of Hephaestus like you wouldn't understand." Momus sighed, as if he was scraping mud from the bottom of his obsidian black boots.
Hazel was mad at Leo, but not enough to let him get insulted like that. "Now what do you mean by that?" She asked Momus, big mistake.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Momus said "I don't talk to dirt."
Hazel glared at the god, ready to make the entire island of obsidian explode in his face out of anger for such rudeness, but Piper shot her a look that said, "I'll handle this."
"Momus!" Piper's smile appeared again, her hands opening wide in a gesture of peace. "Tell us more about... my mother."
"Oh yes," Momus smiled, "Venus, that flawless angel... where do I begin? Well, I suppose it was the day I was brought in to criticize, I mean critique some of Hephaestus' work….
Okay, that's it, tell me what you think. Momus, one of the only gods who people actually still worship (it's kind of creepy.) Anyway, look up Momus if you just can't wait for the story, because I won't be all explicit about it. Once again: Hazel is 13, so don't criticize me for her thoughts toward the guys not being that exciting.