Sam hit the ground once again, only half prepared for it this time. He groaned and made to sit up, only to be slammed into the ground again by an unknown force to the chest.

"DIE!" Someone screamed.

"No! They're helping!" He heard Nico cry out from somewhere to his left.

"Di Angelo!" A furious voice hissed out, surprising Sam as it came from directly above him. "You do not simply declare you're going out and then disappear in the middle of a quest and bring back strangers!" It half shrieked.

"Yeah, mortals at that." The first voice, gruff and suddenly uncaring, noted randomly.

"Mortals?!" The second voice howled, and Sam blinked back into focus. He and Dean were on their backs—yet again—a puerto rican-looking teenage girl only a couple years older than Nico standing above them and holding some lethal looking knives. She held an aggressive stance, so it must've been her who'd knocked them down once more.

"Well hell, don't make a big deal on our account." Dean muttered, seeming defeated by all the strangeness happening and just lying there in his dark sarcasm.

"Sam, Dean, this is Reyna and Coach Hedge. They're the passengers I was talking about." Nico said, coming into view over Reyna's shoulder. Sam was slightly alarmed to see how drastically he seemed to have paled, and how short his breathe seemed to be coming. But still, he remained standing and firmly intent on the situation. "Reyna, let them up, they're friends and they're going to help." He said calmly.

The girl looked perfectly capable of murder in her subdued anger, but stood straight and allowed them to get to their feet again.

"Nice to meet you," Sam said warily, glancing around the empty, humid meadow they were now in. He didn't offer his hand half in fear she'd stab him rather than accept his offering of peace. She certainly looked like she wanted to do just that… or maybe she just wanted to stab Nico, it was hard to tell with the glares she was shooting at all of them.

"di Angelo…" She growled. "EXPLAIN."

Nico—for his credit—only brushed himself off briskly from his travel, not even flinching at the glare that would've had greater men quaking in their boots. For a girl not much older than sixteen or seventeen, Reyna was definitely one scary force to be reckoned with judging by the immense presence her short stature portrayed. "These two are brothers of a neighboring Pantheon who know a thing or two about fighting monsters. The Laeri have Mist blindness which gives mortals the advantage over demigods and I trust them to help." He declared.

Her eyes narrowed savagely. "I could take those filth." She hissed, looking frustrated.

"Don't care." Nico shot back bluntly. "I'm not going near them which means if you want to continue to hitch a ride back to America and not get left in France you need to come with me and these two will take care of them." He said simply, shrugging unhelpfully.

Reyna growled under her breathe. "And WHY in Mars' name will you not go near them? They're just stupid snakes!"

Nico tisked. "What? Giant tropical colored snakes aren't enough for you?" He shrugged, brushing past her and marching up a small hill. Sam followed him with his eyes cautiously and felt his jaw drop as he looked up directly behind him.

Damn that was a big statue.

"It's beautiful." He said instinctively.

"You're such a history nerd." Dean scoffed. "But yeah, that's one big ass statue."

"It's more trouble than it's worth." Nico hissed, sitting heavily at its base, and Sam was struck once again with just how tired he looked. It also registered belatedly that Nico had told them why he was avoiding the Laeri, but not Reyna, who he was supposedly on a mission to save the world with. It struck him as strange, but he remained silent about it. By the way Reyna seemed to be vibrating in place with fury and Nico was putting up a show of being decidedly apathetic, he felt that he was a tad out of place in the confrontation.

"Do I want to know what a 'neighboring pantheon' means?" Reyna demanded from behind them, sounding less angry and more exasperated.

"Probably not. More Apocalypses to worry about than we already have." Nico shrugged, leaning against the statue and running a hand over his face tiredly. "But… they're good. I know you don't think much of mortals, but still, they're capable." He said distractedly.

"Thanks for the compliment." Dean deadpanned. Reyna stalked past him, not even glancing as he made that comment.

"Don't take it personally, she's a daughter of a war goddess so she doesn't think much of anybody's fighting skills. Not even mine, and she's seen me fight!" Nico huffed and Reyna paced by the statue restlessly.

"You fight dirty." Reyna snapped, not looking at him but at the meadow around them.

"Do I look like I can win a fight against someone like Jason or Frank playing fair?" Nico said incredulously, gesturing to himself and his unhealthily thin frame. "You try spending your life with animated skeletons and then not seeing tendons as a target." He grumbled.

"It's still dirty." She said sternly.

"And it still works." Nico mocked under his breath.

"Just hit 'em hard on the head with something heavy. That always works for me!" Coach Hedge chimed in, looking rather cheered as he swung a baseball bat around. Dean took a neat step away to avoid being struck in the shoulder, eyeing the crazy man incredulously. Sam noted there were hooves beneath the track suit pants he wore, but just shook his head and ignored it.

"This is irresponsible." Reyna continued as if Coach hadn't spoken.

Nico leaned back onto the statue and closed his eyes wearily. "How is giving us out best chance irresponsible? No, you know what, I don't care. What's done is done."

"That's not how it works." Reyna said through clenched teeth, her eyes flashing. "I protect you and you get us there—that was the deal. You don't get to go rouge on this with this much at stake!"

"I can do what I want, in case you've forgotten." Nico muttered to himself, and Sam felt the tension in the air spike. He and Dean exchanged a look and slowly took a step back, though Hedge looked highly entertained by all this.

"You pretentious brat!" Reyna burst out.

Nico didn't even open his eyes. "What of it?" He snorted.

Brat prince indeed, Sam thought, remembering Crowley's words. Glad he's on our side.

"Argh!" Reyna screeched, obviously at her wits end. "I've never met anyone as arrogant and insufferable as you! It's a wonder the Greeks won't have you if you act like an incomprehensible jack ass!"

"And you're a stuck-up Roman with a stick so far up her ass, I can see it when you talk—or was there a point to this besides pointing out the obvious?" Nico yawned uncaringly. Finally, he opened eyes and gave Reyna a dismissively bored look. "You don't scare me, Praetor." He said coolly.

She seethed visibly. "I'm supposed to protect you, but you're making it hard. I've half a mind to let the Laeri rip you apart." She growled.

He snorted, pointing at the two mortal brothers watching carefully. "Yeah, that would be why I called them."

Reyna stood up straight as if she'd been electrocuted, glancing at the brothers with wild eyes. She looked at them, then back at the son of Hades, then back at them twice more.

"… you trust them more than me." She realized, a blank tone in her voice.

Sam swallowed, not liking the way her chocolate eyes bored into him as if trying to tell by sight why the son of Hades would think this. As if he had any idea why Nico would think that.

Nico, on his part, just shrugged, leaning back on the statue and watching her with carefully blank eyes.

"But they'd mortals! And adults at that," Reyna harrumphed darkly, shooting Sam and Dean a look that told them all what she thought of both of those classes of people.

"They're also not Roman." Nico said smoothly.

She stared at him incredulously. "… you don't have anything against Romans. We took you in and gave you a place of respect when the Greeks would not. Plus, your sister is Roman. It is not the Romans you have an issue with." She declared slowly.

Nico blinked, his ink black eyes empty.

"Then perhaps you should figure out who I have the problem with." He said so coldly, Sam could almost feel the ice in the air.

Reyna sneered. "It is not my fault Octavian is set to destroy us all, di Angelo!" She shouted sharply.

"It's your fault he's still alive at all," Nico suddenly snarled, on his feet in a split second, although the effect was dampened some when he stumbled a bit and had to put his hand back on the base of the statue to keep himself upright, his complexion going from pale to almost grey in an instant.

The Roman girl turned an interesting shade of red. "I cannot simply murder those who annoy me. Octavian has other uses despite his faults, and killing off those who wrong me simply isn't done." She stated through clenched teeth.

Nico straightened himself up, seeming to quickly compose his moment of outward anger to simply stare coldly at her.

"Then maybe it's the Roman way things are done that piss me off." He rolled his eyes, but no one missed the note of sincerity in his words.

"I'm not a murderer." Reyna hissed.

Nico just sat down on the statue again, his eyes dropping to his sword that he gently laid across his lap. "You say that like it's some horrible thing, but you haven't seen it. People are so much happier when they're dead." He said simply, leaning back and closing his eyes once more.

"Here, here." Dean muttered, and Sam sharply elbowed him in the side to get him to shut up. They might've watched the argument with baited breath, but it totally wasn't their place to step into the middle of this.

Reyna agreed with Sam as she turned her murderous glare towards the eldest Winchester, but Nico took Dean's side as evident by the snort of amusement under his breath.

And if they got along as well as Sam and Dean did without the fact they were family to tie them together, Sam realized it was going to be a long night.