Notes: Another entry in the Greco-Roman coalition chapter! Except this one isn't really all that big on the crossover-camp drama. Written for Endgame in the Percy Jackson Fanfiction Challenges Forum. Prompts were Katie Gardener (who's the protagonist) and Pink (various pink objects in the narrative. Also Venus and associates).

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not for profit.

3

Dutifully stayed in Camp every summer from when she was ten till her eighteenth birthday, check. Attempted to get a grip on that stupid swordfighting thing everyone was so enthusiastic about, check. Tried not to strangle her siblings while they overdid the magical fertilizer thing and made Chiron give her one of his "I am so disappointed in you" speeches? Check. Tried to be fair and firm and kind and not at all like the daughter of a woman who killed half the Grecian population via starvation because of Empty Nest syndrome? Check.

Commanded the front lines in the Battle of Olympus (which had been- wow, five years ago) and watched her siblings die? Check, and the nightmares still kept coming.

Katie Gardener had been there, done that and ran the gauntlet. And ever since she'd retired and passed on the Cabin head post to Miranda, she'd been working on building herself a life that had nothing to do with Olympus and all the insanity that happened there.

Now, at twenty-three, she was happily settled into a programming job that had nothing whatsoever to do with plants, the planet or cereal. She was living in a charming building in a pretty suburb that she had inherited from her paternal great-aunt;blessedly far away from New was dating a nice, normal guy who wouldn't know a minotaur from a buffalo even if it was in the process of eating him, had annual meetings with her mother (because there were literal legends about Demeter and her out-of-control maternal instincts) in controlled environments far (far) away from any of her usual haunts, and the her only obvious concession she made to being half-deity was a thriving vegetable garden on her terrace, the proceeds of which she sold to a contact in the supermarket.

Katie, who had always been methodical, had fully mapped out the rest of her life. She'd give Daniel six to ten months to propose and three to six months for the engagement. She was making some great progress on planning out the wedding venues and entertainment, and was confident her enthusiasm would be met with complete approval from her future in-laws.

Following what was undoubtedly going to be a spectacular wedding, she was going to spend two years in blissful matrimony, after which she was going to have two kids and a house with a white picket fence. Everything planned out, and no monsters at all in sight nossir. Camp happened to her younger self in another lifetime, and was utterly irrelevant for her now.

One week into Daniels' proposal window, she got an Iris Message which promptly shattered that delusion.

The Iris Message found her while she was in the restroom touching up on her lipstick. It was from a woman she had never seen before- about her age or older, with dark hair pinned up in a firm bun that was at complete odds with her youth. She managed to introduce herself as Mercedes Cinna before Katie ran a hand through the message in a panic, dissolving it into mist.

One minute later, when she was safely tucked away in a bathroom stall, the woman contacted her again. She looked annoyed.

"I'm at work," Katie hissed at her, "What is wrong with you, trying to get me at work? And who the hell are you anyway?"

"Mercedes Cinna."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

Katie saw a vein twitch at Cinna's temple. "I'm one of the coordinators for the Greco-Roman alliance."

Oh.

She peered at the woman. While the whole "we have a sister camp and it is made up of Romans!" thing and the subsequent apocalypse had happened after she'd left CHB (thank mom for that), she'd still gotten wind of it from various sources who refused to let her go as easily as she'd tried to let them go.

(Travis Stoll, for example, was currently dating a very nice con-artist girl in Chicago now; but he still called her up occasionally to whine at her. Personally, Katie's sympathies were more inclined towards the girl, but Travis needed support and so support she gave because that was part of this whole platonic BFFs thing.)

Romans, huh? They didn't look any different-

"Are you done staring at me?"

"Yes." Katie replied, "Why are you calling me? I was retired since before you guys came into the picture, and I doubt it's because you want my oranges."

Cinna ignored all mention of oranges (which was sad, her town-famous oranges were something she loved to talk about), and said, "There is a demigod in your area who has been fleeing from a Hydra. I will give you her current location- your particular skills may be very helpful in this case. The creature has already grown five heads- it must be neutralized."

Katie stared at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. Because really, there was no other way to react to that.

"Did you hear-"

"I heard you," Katie said, her laughter stopping as abruptly as it had begun, "And the answer is no. What part of retired do you not understand?"

"If the monster kills them, it will come after you next-"

"Oh?" Katie said, "Thank you for warning me, then. I'll make sure to not be here."

Like hell she was going to risk her life fighting a five-headed hydra. If her usual methods failed, she was totally going to cash in her vacation dates and vacate. And if that didn't work, she was going to quit her job and find a new one in some other out-of-the-way town with no other demigods to lure in monsters. Leaving Daniel would be a pity, but single was much better than dead.

Demigods were very good at survival shit like this.

Cinna looked slightly stunned by her attitude, presumably used to in-their-prime heroes who would jump at any suggestion to save the world from murderous monsters.

"But a Hydra-"

"Not my problem," Katie said firmly, "Get an Ares- what was the Roman version again? Mars?- kid to risk their life. Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back to my desk and-"

"She is a child of Venus- she doesn't stand a chance on her own!"

Katie's hand, almost at the point of dissolving the message, stopped in mid-motion.

An Aphrodite kid.

As different as they were, the Aphrodite and Demeter cabins shared a few things. Not particularly heroic things- they were generally considered the weakest of cabins, the most useless. The least suited for bashing in monster heads, constantly the last to be picked for any capture the flag game. Utterly incompetent in a fight, to sum it up.

Not that it had stopped them from fighting the legions of Kronos in the battle of Olympus.

Maybe it should have. She'd seen too many people die, from both cabins. Perhaps the numbers were not quite as steep as those of Ares (who tended to be reckless) or Apollo (who had the largest numbers, and therefore proportional causalities), but they were all the more significant for being willing sacrifices by heroes who knew they hadn't stood a ghost of a chance.

Cinna must have seen the hesitance on her face, because she drove the knife in deeper- "She's been on the run for thirty-six hours- driving on no sleep, and there are no other demigods are there in the area. And she is, quite obviously, unequipped to deal with a monster that size. If what I have heard your skills is correct, you may be her only hope."

In other words, the life of a girl who had never asked to be born into this madness was now in her hands.

"Fine." Katie bit out, "Fine. But for the record- this is the last time I get caught up in this nonsense."

She found the African-American demigod in a dark corner of the local bus station, surprisingly well-hidden given that the car she was driving was painted in a garish shade of (what else?) pink.

She did not in any way look like she had been on the run for thirty-six hours, but Katie figured that was an Aphrodite thing. Katie hoped she was beyond driving age- if she'd been driving that monstrosity across state lines without a license, something was going to give and she really didn't have to bail the girl out of whatever it was going to be.

The girl had taken one look at Katie in all her middle-class corporate employee glory, tossed her head, and demanded how on earth she was supposed to help her.

"I developed a strain of moonlace when I was still in camp," Katie told her, "It's not quite monster-proof, but it has a tendency to mask the scent of demigods."

Katie hadn't even realized how tense the girls' shoulders were until they had untensed. In typical Aphrodite fashion, she'd managed to convert stress into posture.

"It's not foolproof," Katie added (because many a demigod had met their end by being overly confident) "It would do squat for say- a kid of the war gods. The weaker the power of the demigod, the better it conceals them. It also seems to work slightly better for plant-based demigods, like Dionysus or Demeter. Potency increases with exposure- I seem to be effectively mortal in most monsters sights, for example. Children of Aphrodite may hopefully be weak enough that it may have some effect."

At that the girl tensed up again; nobody liked to be reminded that they were helpless. Not even people from the Aphrodite Cabin. In many cases, especially people from the Aphrodite Cabin.

"There should be some advantage to being powerless," She shrugged. "I'm Kayla Brown, granddaughter of Venus. Pleased to meet you, I suppose."

"Katie Gardener, daughter of Demeter," Katie replied, "You can crash in the spare bedroom."

"Oh thank Cupid."

After establishing Kayla in the spare bedroom, Katie tried to forget she was there and to get on with life like everything was normal. This worked well on the first day, which the girl spent sleeping. In typical Aphrodite me-me-the-world-can-revolve-around-me fashion, Kayla started getting on her nerves as soon as she got over the sleep deprivation.

Then the girl stalked around the house like a spooked cheetah and pointedly ignored all the food in Katie's kitchen (Godsdamit, she was eating healthy so what if there was more cereal in the house than was strictly necessary?) before flopping elegantly all over the place wearing immaculately put-together pink outfits (wherever did she get those clothes form anyway?) while gazing gloomily at the ceiling with a "my days are numbered" expression.

Occasionally, she hovered around Katie's monster-proof garden and kept poking at the plants till they started trembling with annoyance, driving her to soothe them with promises of extra fertilizer and rose-scented water (she wasn't sure if this made her rosebushes cannibalistic). The girl also complained loudly about the amount of dust in the spare bedroom, and Katie was reduced to counting to a twenty before she could answer without ripping her head off. Which was a rage-control method she hadn't had to use since Travis' ill-conceived courtship.

The worst part, though, was the pink. Katie realized that her problems with the color were at least partially rooted in misogynistic prattling and all, but god did the girl not own anything that was say- red? Or green, maybe? What wouldn't she give for a nice, soothing shade of green?

Kayla's presence in her life was disruptive, for all that she'd only been around for two days. Daniel had listened to her really long tirade about kids from her old summer camp showing up and disrupting her whole life on the second night, and asked the perfectly reasonable question of why she didn't ask her houseguest to move out; politely, of course.

Katie froze, stumbled through a couple of really obvious attempts a deflections, and dodged the subject.

Because at the end of the day, she knew why Kayla was being well- Kayla. She was terrified that Katie's plant smokescreen wasn't going to work (she wasn't the only one), and was spending her days in a frozen state of terror mixed with anticipation. She was dealing with it by being loud and obnoxious and by living up her life as much as she possibly could in what little time she might have left.

When you thought you were going to die tomorrow, you tried to live today. Everyone fell into it at some point, and Kayla was still young enough (and probably inexperienced enough) that she hadn't accepted it as being inevitable. And at least Katie had been at Camp when she'd had her panic attacks, where safety was (well, more or less) assured.

Not that it made Kayla any less annoying. But it did make her understandable.

One more day, Katie told herself. That'll make it probable for the monster to be out of range. Then we can see about getting her back to Camp.

Daniel got a call from his father and had to leave early, so Katie found herself driving back home by herself. She spent most of the ride grumbling about overbearing paternal types and Daniel being too compliant for his own good. Once she turned the corner and saw her house, however, her muttering ground to a halt.

Oh gods she had forgotten how large the damned things could get.

The hydra had- six heads now, and it was waving all of it at her house in a menacing fashion.

Great. Perfect. That was just the perfect end to her aborted dinner date- and gods it was even bigger up close-

Wait. Up close?

Katie skidded to a halt. Apparently, camp-nurtured instincts of wanting to run towards the giant man-eating monster was ingrained more deeply into her than she'd thought. What the hell was she doing? She should be hiding out somewhere very quiet till the morning and-

And-

Oh Zeus, the girl.

Kayla was trapped in the house- her house, probably cowering (albeit in a dignified manner) in a corner and waiting to be eaten. And as much as she wanted to run away and hide, she… couldn't. She had been a hero, darn it! Heroes could retire, maybe; but they couldn't become the kind of monsters who left a terrified girl to a grisly fate.

Arrrrgh.

Katie stumbled back to her car and rummaged in the trunk till she found her spare celestial bronze machete. Again, just because she was a retired hero didn't mean she was stupid.

Right.

Distract the hydra, and run? It looked big, but slow. She could probably outrun it long enough to give Kayla a chance to escape. After which she could what- hide somewhere? Somehow? Without her scent to track, it wasn't going to be able to find her easily.

She hoped so, anyway. Her exposure/less attractive to monsters theory had never been tested quite so rigorously. Volunteer satyrs were not the same as ravenous Hydras.

Oh gods she couldn't believe she was actually doing this. If she survived it, she was going to find Mercedes Cinna and run her through with a rosebush.

Katie gripped her machete tighter, gave an embarrassingly high-pitched scream, and charged at the Hydra before she could lose her nerve.

Katie had never really taken to swordfighting. Swords simply were not natural in the hands of Demeter's children. They tended to trip, whine and moan and make the Apollo kids in the infirmary grumpy with all the accumulated injuries.

Machetes, however, were definitely Demeter territory.

"KAYLA, RUN!" Katie screeched, waving her arms wildly at the Hydra, trying to get it to notice her oh gods was she a crazy suicidal nutcase?

The Hydra turned to her, three heads hissing, and Katie decide that she definitely qualified.

"KID, GET IN THE CAR AND DRIVE DAMMIT!" Katie screamed at the house, "I'LL TRY TO HOLD IT OFF FOR A WHILE!"

One of the heads lunged at her, and then it was all about the battle.

She was never one of those fighters who went strategic (aka Athena style) or berserk (aka Ares style). Katie had, much to the disgust of most of her instructors (except, ironically, the traitorous Luke Castellan) adopted a duck and weave and stab approach to fighting. Close quarters were pretty scary, but the closed you got, the less range the monsters had. And the larger the monster, the more helpless they became.

Katie thought it was beautifully ironic, and stepped towards the monster and away from the range of it's heads, easily moving with it when it tried to get her into range.

She could do this. All she had to do was slice off one of the heads at the base- so easily reachable, and keep doing it till it dropped dead really she had no idea why someone hadn't killed this monster yet. Only the heads were dangerous everything else about it was slow-

…except these were Hydras. Cutting off a head would just make them grow two more.

Oh.

She really should have thought this through a little better.

Okay then. Back to square one. Distract the beast long enough for Kayla to get away, and then run and hide. Only the newer Ares campers had this whole "running away from a monster makes you a coward" thing, and even they grew out of it soon enough.

Distracting the Hydra was fairly easy- she slashed her machete across it's legs, further slowing it down and making it scream, dodged the heads as they tried to bite at her, and dis it confusingly enough that two of the things got tangled. This was a relatively safe place to be in; she'd probably not be in mortal danger so long as she could stay close to the legs and dodge the clumsy heads.

Too bad she was running out of energy, and she still hadn't heard Kayla's pink muscle car driving away.

Katie could feel herself tiring. A graze from the scales, a glint of blood distracting her, a sharp slash of pain across her left forearm.

Yep. Time to run it was.

This was harder to do, since that meant deliberately putting herself in range of the heads for a few moments. Katie finally settled on tangling up four out of six heads (she had to shove the last head through a loop made by the third and boy that was nasty) before running like all the hellhounds of hades were after her and praying the other two heads were still looking in the right direction (which was to say, not at her).

Kayla, she could now see, had finally got that stupid car started- why the hell had it taken her so long- and Katie tensed with relief. Now all she had to do was… run away really hard and really long and she was panting already and she only hoped she was not going to collapse halfway through-

She really sucked at thinking things through, didn't she?

Katie momentarily forgot that this was the whole plan and wished passionately that she was in the car too godsdamnit if she died because of this she was going to haunt the girl until that di Angelo kid came in and dragged her away-

Wait. Why was the car coming towards her-

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DRIVE AWAY!"

Kayla's eyes narrowed over the dashboard, and she made a shard gesture to the side, clearly indicating Katie should move away. Given that the car was barrelling directly at her, Katie didn't really have much choice about it.

Swearing a few Greek phrases she'd new-year resolutioned away a while ago, Katie leapt to the side. Seconds later, Kayla managed to leap on to her, rolling her further away from the house screaming, "DUCK!"

The explosion was much, much more intense than anything you'd expect from a car, pink or no pink.

Seated on the small part of the driveway that was not blackened or charred, Katie sighed.

"Greek fire," Kayla panted beside her, "and gasoline. And um- some kind of explosive stuff. I uh- picked up a few things from the last cache I passed. There weren't any demigods stationed there, but there were supplies so…"

Katie, who was in semi-shock now that the actual battle was over, stared at her in sheer disbelief.

"What?" Kayla said defensively, "I had to do something. I wouldn't have stayed here for this long if I didn't have a plan- it just took me by surprise, that's I sorry about the explosion but I was not going to cut off its' heads with a sword, okay? I don't even like swords."

"Not to mention," Katie said dully, "That cutting heads off a Hydra just makes them grow more."

"…oh."

Katie ignored the horrified realization and looked at her merrily burning garden instead, feeling very sad. But one dead Hydra beat upkeep of her plants. Probably.

"Those were uh- some pretty fancy moves," Kayla offered, a little apologetically, "I think you are to a machete what Percy Jackson is to a swor- oops."

Oops?

"Katie?!"

She supposed she could call Daniel's voice stunned, but that single paltry word wouldn't do justice to the level of emotion in his voice. It was almost stunned enough to make her miss the blare of sirens heading her way. Almost.

Run Mercedes Cinna through with a rosebush, Katie reminded herself as she watched her carefully constructed world crumble around herself. Preferably a pink one.

Notes: Ehh... so. As far as I know, Katie sticks it out and tried to stay in this sleepy little town and there is likely going to be this whole huge upheaval between her an the OC boyfriend and he's maybe part of the Norse Mythology in RRverse I don't know it's all kinda sketchy. And no I was not actively trying to sink Tratie. I just couldn't let it take over the entire narrative, which it really would have if I had paid even the slightest attention to it. The OC was easier to handle.

Katie knows, theoretically, that Venus and Aphrodite are different. It's just that she doesn't really care, and it really manifests in her thoughts. The Venus kids are not quite the same as Aphrodite kids and may not have an all-encompassing need for pink, but Kayla is one of the demigods who do.

That's would be it, I guess.