A/N: This chapter runs roughly parallel to chapter 9-13 of CoL (time is difficult in Tartarus!) It's rated PG because monster fighting time! (Wouldn't be an adventure without a couple of monsters, right?)

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INTERLUDE II: THE WAYSTATION

HAZEL

Hazel had to hand it to the Roman limousines—they were speedy. Not as quick as Arion, whom she'd regretfully left behind (the fastest horse in the world could have covered the two thousand miles to Indiana in hours, but it wouldn't have done them any good if their chariot had crumbled to pieces beneath them halfway there), but fast enough that the prairie was a blur as they sped along the I80. The elegantly decorated interior was also way more spacious and comfortable than a rickety chariot.

'I could get used to this,' Frank admitted, running his hand along the cushioned leather seats. They were a deep, royal purple, trimmed with gold, and bore the SPQR emblem on every headrest. 'I didn't realise we could get stuff like this.'

'Me neither.' Hazel drummed her fingers on the narrow bar table in front of them. It was even fully stocked—with Pepsi and Kool-Aid, of course. 'I just hope we don't end up trashing it.'

Piper looked up. She'd cracked open a can of Pepsi, but it stood untouched on the table next to her dagger, Katoptris, which she was studying intently.

'Well, Leo can fix it for us if it comes to that,' she said. 'He does run a garage.'

'He knows we're coming, right?' Frank asked.

'Yeah. Jason sent an Iris-message to get the address. We haven't had a chance to visit since Leo and Calypso opened their garage.' Piper shook her dagger and knocked it against the table a few times. 'Oh, come on!'

'What's wrong?' Hazel asked.

'I'm trying to look for Annabeth. I've gotten better at coaxing Katoptris to show me the right stuff, but the visions keep going fuzzy. It's like the wifi in Jason's dorm room—the stupid signal never stops flickering.' Piper held up the dagger. All Hazel could discern were a few shadowy blobs reflected in the blade.

'It's probably Tartarus,' she reasoned. 'It can't be easy to project anything down there.'

Piper banged Katoptris against the table again. The image winked out, the blade's surface going completely blank. Piper sighed. 'I did manage to get one vision earlier. They reached the shrine of Hermes. I hope Travis and Connor remembered to keep the food burning. I hate that that's all we can do for them.'

'It isn't,' Hazel said. 'We're getting them out, remember?' She looked at the translucent partition separating them from the driver seats, where Jason was currently directing Reyna as she drove. 'We've got to be nearing Indianapolis by now.'

'Almost there,' Jason promised, glancing back.

It was shortly after midnight when they pulled up by the kerbside next to a building with green window frames and doors. Reyna put the limo in park and Jason hopped out, looking from a slip of paper in his hand to the inverted-U sign that said UNION STATION in gold letters.

'This can't be right,' Piper said, stepping out of the limo. 'It's a railway station.'

'That's the address Leo gave me—260 South Meridian Street.'

Hazel and Frank came out to join the others. Their limo was the only vehicle on the street, which dipped under a metal railway bridge right in front of them. Across from them was the entrance to a multi-storey parking garage. Nothing around here even hinted at being a potential residence of Leo Valdez. There was an eerie silence to the dark streets. The only noise was a low hiss that might be water running through the sewer pipes that supplied the street-side fire hydrant.

'It seems pretty deserted for a railway station,' Hazel said.

'I'm gonna kill—look out!' Piper screamed.

From the entrance to the parking garage came a burst of fire. Hazel yelped and dove aside, knocking her knee hard against the hydrant.

The hissing wasn't from running water. It was coming from a stubby, lime-green snake with a jagged white ring of scales encircling its head. The fire, too, had spouted from the jaws of the ferret-sized reptile, which was now eyeing them with an evil glint in its mustard-coloured eyes.

'Basilisks,' said Frank. 'I hate these things.'

To Hazel's horror, more snakes were joining the first, slithering out from the parking garage. The concrete sizzled under their poisonous bellies, leaving a scorched trail in their wake.

'Stay back!' Piper said, brandishing Katoptris. Hazel almost stepped away from Piper herself; such was the force of Piper's Charmspeak. The basilisks swayed for a second as though hypnotised, giving Jason and Frank time to grab their weapons from the limo. Jason retrieved his gladius and extended it into a javelin, chucking it at the first basilisk just as it broke from Piper's spell and snapped at her heels.

Reyna gave a sharp whistle. A pair of greyhounds—her gold and silver automatons—descended out of nowhere, metallic fangs bared. The silver dog snapped a basilisk in half and spat out its ashes with a whimper. Steam rose from its jaws, the points of which had been corroded away.

'Argentum!' Reyna ran to the silver dog.

'Their skin's poisonous!' Frank said, as he fended off an attack with a spear. 'Imperial gold can hurt them, but anything else it touches—'

Piper swore as a basilisk lunged for her. She beat it back with her handbag, wisely not risking Katoptris. The bag disintegrated the moment it touched the snakeskin. Hazel leapt to her friend's aid with her spatha.

The snakes kept pouring out of the parking garage in overwhelming numbers. It was like being caught in a swarm of wasps. Reyna had sent her dogs away and was now slicing at the basilisks with her Imperial gold sword. Frank speared as many as he could, while Jason managed to fry a bunch with a well-timed bolt of lightning. Piper ducked into the limo and exchanged Katoptris for a gold javelin. Hazel herself jabbed and stabbed with her spatha.

One of the basilisks slithered forward. It dodged Hazel's swing and spat fire at her, setting her shoe alight. Hazel shrieked and kicked off her shoe, tripping and landing hard on her bum in the process. The basilisk reared its ugly, crowned head, ready to strike.

'Hazel!' Frank yelled. He started to run towards her.

Before Frank could reach her, something whizzed over Hazel's head. It slammed into the basilisk, knocking it back. The snake swayed dizzily and keeled over next to the weapon that had hit it—which turned out to be a solid gold wrench.

'Hit the ground!' yelled a familiar voice.

Hazel covered her head with her hands. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the others flatten themselves on the sidewalk. A wall of fire sped over their heads and hit the attacking basilisks. To Hazel's surprise, the basilisks darted backwards, away from the flames.

Who'd have thought fire-breathing snakes could be driven back by fire?

'Fight fire with fire,' said Leo, stepping forward to reclaim his wrench. 'Hi guys. Just a sec—' He put the wrench to the valve of the fire hydrant and twisted it open. The hydrant went off in a spray of water that smelt sharply of wormwood. The moment the water hit the pavement, the basilisks scattered in a panic. Within seconds, the streets were empty again.

Leo wrenched the hydrant shut and wiped his hands on his cargo pants.

'Sorry about that,' he said. 'We've been dealing with an infestation since Cal started growing moonlace. They've become quite the pests.' He reached out a hand to help Hazel to her feet. 'Anyway, welcome to the Waystation.'

'The what?' She winced as she put weight on her bare, burnt foot. Frank hurried over and slipped an arm around her waist for support.

Leo grinned and pointed to the brick building behind him. Where there had been solid wall before, there was now a metal chute sticking out like the end of a slide on a child's playground.

'Good exit, but we'll need an easier entrance, Waystation,' he said to the building. As if it understood this, the chute contorted with a grinding noise and became a flight of stairs leading into an interior tunnel.

Hazel should have been used to weird stuff by now. After all, she'd taken Leo's amazing ship halfway across the world and had herself used the Mist to twist the appearance of Pasiphäe's Labyrinth. But this building really took the cake when it came to magical construction.

'Did you build this place?' she asked, awestruck, as Leo led them up the stairs into a long passage lit by candles in bronze sconces along the walls. The opening onto South Meridian Street closed up automatically behind them, probably returning the building's exterior to its original brick wall façade. There was a hum in the bricks that vibrated with magic. It wasn't the Mist, but something else, something almost alive.

'Nah,' said Leo. 'Just found it.'

The walls rumbled. Leo patted them fondly. 'Sorry, I mean, it found us.' He said it the way he might speak to his automated dragon, Festus. The walls seemed to purr in response. A door swung open out of nowhere, nearly hitting Frank in the nose. He stumbled back. Hazel, who was clutching his arm for support, nearly lost her balance.

'What the—'

'Thanks, Waystation,' Leo said. He nodded at Hazel's injured foot. 'Come on, let's get that sorted before we talk.'

'Wow,' said Piper. The room was obvious an infirmary, given the immaculate row of beds, all neatly made with their sheets pulled into tight hospital corners. However, it was even better equipped than the university hospital in New Rome. An array of medical machinery Hazel couldn't name (X-ray's were already complicated enough for her) lined the far wall. Opposite the beds were glass cabinets stocked to the brim with supplies: jars and bottles and assorted tools that Hazel assumed had surgical purposes. In the back corner of the room, a glass panel separated the medical bay from a solarium, inside which a bevy of colourful snakes basked under a heat lamp.

'Not bad, eh?' Leo tapped on a cabinet. There was a clinking noise inside it, like a few glasses being shuffled around, then the cabinet door swung open and a clear bottle slid into Leo's waiting hand. Leo passed it to Hazel. 'There you go—nectar.'

'Holy Aphrodite, Leo, you've been keeping this a secret this whole time?' said Piper.

Leo held up his hands in a gesture like, what could I do? 'I would've told you, but it wasn't really my secret, you know? This place is really—'

He was interrupted by the appearance of a button-nosed kid with pipe cleaners wound in her frizzy brown hair. 'Leo, Mom-Emmie says—' The girl stopped short when she saw Hazel and the others.

'Hey, Georgie,' Leo said. 'Shouldn't you be in bed, kiddo? Never mind, go tell your moms we have visitors, okay?'

Georgie nodded and disappeared down the hall.

'Um, Leo, exactly how many people live here?' Jason said. He sounded about as flabbergasted as Hazel felt. Whatever she'd expected Leo's new place to be, a labyrinthine railway station with state-of-the-art medical facilities and a whole bunch of housemates was not what she'd had in mind.

'Oh, there's usually about twenty of us around at any one time. They come and go—the Waystation's a refuge for outcasts. But Emmie and Jo run the place.' He rummaged in a drawer; unlike the cabinet, this wasn't automatically spitting out the desired item.

'And they took Leo and me in.'

Leo looked up; so did the rest of them. Framed in the doorway was a girl Hazel had never met, but whom she felt she knew intimately all the same. After all, it was Hazel who'd sketched Calypso based on Leo's description upon his return from Ogygia. She was quite gratified now to see how accurate her portrait had been, from the thick, caramel tresses to the slanted, slightly impish eyes, button nose, and wry lips that seemed to hide a perpetual smile. The only thing different was her attire. Leo had described her wearing a fitting white chiton. Now, Calypso's statuesque figure was obscured by the loose checked shirt and baggy jeans she'd donned. Over her clothes was a tool apron, its pockets bursting with pruners, shears, and scissors. In her hands, she carried a pair of rubber-coated gloves. She looked like she'd just come in from the garden, although Hazel couldn't imagine why she'd be gardening at this time of the night.

Calypso entered the room, followed by a pair of grey-haired women, the smaller of whom was dressed in similar fashion to her. The much larger one—thick through the waist and with biceps to rival Frank's—was clad in pyjama pants and an enormous t-shirt with the words WENCH WITH A WINCH printed across it. She had the little girl, Georgie, by the hand.

'Guys,' said Leo, 'meet my gorgeous mamacita—ow!' Calypso punched him in the shoulder. 'Calypso,' he corrected, 'and the caretakers of Artemis's Waystation—'

'Hemithea,' said the lady in gardener's garb. 'But you can call me Emmie.'

'Josephine,' said the burly companion. 'But Jo's fine.'

'And you've already met their daughter Georgie,' Leo finished, as Georgie came to stand beside him. He tugged affectionately on one of her pipe-cleaner dreadlocks like he would a little sister's, although they were practically the same height (and Georgie was more sturdily built).

'Pleased to meet you,' Frank muttered, shuffling forward to shake hands as Leo introduced each of them in turn. Hazel copied him, feeling a bit dazed. It was a lot to absorb—just how many secrets had Leo been hiding?

'So you were saying this place is like a safe house for demigods?' said Jason.

'Demigods, Hunters, monsters,' Jo said, with a casual wave of her hand.

'Monsters?' Frank glanced warily at the solarium, as though one of the snakes might suddenly bust out and attack.

Jo shrugged. 'Sure. Not those snakes, but we've had dracaenae and karpoi visitors before—the Waystation helps anyone in need, as long as they're not dangerous to us. Not all monsters are evil, you know.'

'Wait, you said this was Artemis's Waystation?' Reyna interrupted.

'That's right. Emmie and I used to be Hunters.'

Reyna stared. 'But you're—' Her mouth clamped shut abruptly and her cheeks went pink.

'Ancient?' Leo supplied cheerfully.

Jo swatted Leo fondly around the head. 'We left,' she explained to Reyna. 'The immortality package doesn't exactly come with a pension.'

An unreadable expression came over Reyna's face.

'Anyway, that's why I couldn't tell you guys about this place. Artemis keeps it pretty hushed up.' Leo finally came up from his drawer with a tiny jar, which he held out to Hazel.

Emmie intercepted it and said sharply, 'What's this?'

'Burn ointment.' Leo jerked his chin towards Hazel's injured foot. 'She got blasted by the basilisks.'

'They're back again?' Calypso looked alarmed. 'I have to cover the moonlace!' She dashed out of the infirmary, presumably to check on her plants. Georgie ran off after her.

'Leo Valdez, this is sun cream!' Emmie said in exasperation. She deposited the jar back into the drawer and slammed it shut. 'Honestly. How many times have I told you not to muck around in here when you don't know a splint from a sling?'

'It's a burn—those are my department.'

'Fire's your department, hun,' said Jo. 'And how would you know how to deal with burns when you can't get one?'

Leo gave her a sheepish grin while Emmie extracted the correct ointment.

'Why don't you take Leo and his friends to the kitchen, Jo? Hazel and I will be along once I've seen to her foot.'

'Actually,' Jason said, 'we kinda need Leo's help now.' He quickly explained their quest.

'Holy Hephaestus,' said Leo. 'Why didn't you lead with that?'

'We were distracted,' said Piper. 'Anyway, can you help or not?'

'Can I help? Can I ever! You came to the right man, Beauty Queen. Let's take this party to my workshop. I've got just the thing.'

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After she'd seen the calibre of the Waystation's infirmary, Hazel wasn't surprised by how high-tech Leo's workshop was. Emmie showed her there after she'd expertly mended Hazel's burned foot. The others were already crowded around a screen on one of the walls of the decagon-shaped room.

Hazel took a moment to take in the impressive workshop. Each of the twelve walls was fitted with a different workspace. Half the room was set up like a forge, stocked with hand tools and machinery and even a fireplace built into one of the walls. This must be where Leo tinkered with his engines and stuff. Leo's bronze automaton dragon lay snoozing next to a giant contraption that seemed to be all twisted pipes and rods.

The other half of the room, where the others were currently gathered, was more high-tech. The workstations here had electronic gadgets and boxes with knobs and buttons, some of which whirled freely on their axes. The large flat-screen the others were watching had an LCD-display of a world map. Attached by a thin cord to the bottom of it was a spinning bronze compass with a glittering crystal at its centre.

'My astrolabe,' Leo explained. 'It got me to Ogygia after Gaia…well, you know. Anyway, I just hacked into the Godly Positioning System—little trick I learned from Apollo.' He put a finger to his lips and winked. 'Don't tell the gods.'

A dozen multi-coloured dots appeared on the screen, which had now zoomed in on America. Each dot was labelled in miniscule letters that played havoc on Hazel's dyslexic eyes.

Leo squinted at the dots. 'I gotta figure out how to make those bigger.'

'There!' said Frank, who was the only one of them who'd escaped the demigod dyslexia curse. He pointed to a blinking purple dot somewhere in Ohio.

'Why's Thanatos's dot purple?' Leo asked. 'I would've thought it'd be black or something.'

Piper rolled her eyes. 'Who cares? It looks like he's in Cleveland. That's not too far from here!'

'We should go right away,' Reyna said. 'Before he moves off and we end up chasing him all over the States.'

'We'll need the map to pin him down. Is there any way we can take it with us?' Jason asked.

'Jo?' Leo turned to the burly ex-Hunter, who sat watching from her perch on a nearby work table.

Jo concentrated for a second, then waved her hand. The GPS map vanished, replaced by a palm-sized gadget that looked vaguely like one of those smartphone things that were all the rage these days.

'The Mist magic won't hold if I'm not with you, though,' Jo warned.

'I told you we needed to find a way to make that portable,' Leo complained. 'Mist-batteries—is that too much to ask?'

'Will you come with us, then?' Reyna asked.

Jo shook her head. 'I don't need to. I think your friend Hazel may be able to keep it going. She can manipulate the Mist, too, can't she?'

Hazel looked at her, surprised. It was true, but how could Jo possibly have known?

Jo smiled. 'I'm a daughter of Hecate,' she explained. 'I can sense when someone's been dabbling in my mother's tricks.'

'Oh. Um—'

'It's all right. Do you think you can manage the magic?'

Hazel considered the now-tiny GPS. The magic seemed to involve a warping of its actual dimensions instead of a straightforward visual illusion, like Jo had removed the extra space between the flat-screen's atoms to compact it into the smallest possible space. It was complicated, but Hazel had done plenty of complicated magic before. 'I think so.'

'You're all set, then.'

'Excellent!' Leo rubbed his hands together, but stopped abruptly when they started to spark. 'We'd better get going, then. What?' he said at Reyna's surprised look. 'Of course I'm coming. Can't very well leave Aqua-boy and the others in Tartarus. Besides, you'll need me to troubleshoot that thing.'

'Not so fast.' Calypso, who must have finished protecting her plants, had returned. Leo turned, crestfallen.

'Cal…'

She held up a large hamper filled with fruit and sandwiches. 'You're going to need this.'

Leo's face brightened. 'You're amazing.'

'Love you, too,' said Calypso, giving him a quick kiss. 'Just remember—'

'I know, if I die, you'll kill me.'

Calypso smiled. 'And you'd better be back in time for the moonlace harvest.'

Leo put a finger in his mouth and whistled. Festus the dragon gave a little snort, got up, and ambled over from the forge side of the workshop. Leo pressed a sequence of buttons along his neck and Festus compacted himself into a dragon-headed suitcase.

'Never leave home without him,' Leo said. 'Trust me, he always comes in handy.' He kissed Calypso again. 'Be back soon, babe. I promise.'

Hazel took the GPS, memorising the magic that Jo had put into it. 'Come on, then,' she said. 'We've got a god of Death to find.'

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A/N: Back to the main adventure soon! Look out for chapter 10 tomorrow!

And thank you Nuada Silverhand, CupcakeQueen816, and strawberrygirl2000 for being as encouraging as ever!

To the guest reviewer on chapter 2 (if you're still reading)–yeah, there's lots of stuff out there that shouldn't be (at least not without filters or warnings). But I will do toned down versions of the higher-rated stuff specially for younger readers!

Strawberrygirl2000–Sorry to make you cry! And now you need to go and write a Will-and-Nico meet the parents snippet, right? :P As for what's coming … *heh heh heh*

CupcakeQueen816—there will be a lot of differences in the Tartarus journey, because I'm taking a very different approach. Also I had them arrive in a different spot since they fell from the Underworld rather than Epirus this time, so I figured, let's not land in the same place.

I am indeed doing NaNoWriMo this year, and you'll be glad to know I'll be working on more of DoW! (The BotL book companion, to be exact, because I have my draft for TC already, it just needs to get edited because it is a pile of crap at the moment.) And that is my first tip: NaNo is all about getting words on the page, so don't worry about whether it's good or not at this point. That's what the editing process is for! Believe me, I know how hard it is to switch off your inner editor. There've been times I just stare at the page for almost an hour, fidgeting and trying to craft the perfect sentence. After doing NaNo, I realised that sometimes once you already have something written, the words that actually fit can write themselves in a lot easier during the editing phase.

Next tip is very Annabeth: always, always have a plan! Of course, I guess this depends on what kind of writer you are. I definitely need a plan. To the point where I work out what I want to include in each chapter. This helped me so much last NaNo, and now I craft out a plot plan whenever I want to write a chapter fic. Of course, things still change when it actually gets written, but having a skeleton to work my draft around makes it so much easier and takes the pressure off for the actual writing process. For example, for the upcoming story, I have a page of notes for each chapter telling me the points I want to hit, and anything going on in the background that may not actually be revealed in the fic. Like, 'open chapter with Annabeth flying the Sopwith Camel, she flies into a storm and has a vision (during this time Luke is in the Styx but she doesn't know it).' (And I guess I've just given you a teaser of my plot, heh.)

Third tip: if you get stuck, don't spend too much time there. If I really can't find the word I want or the connection I need, I'll put a note there, something like [insert description of palace here] or [work the conversation around to Annabeth's family problems] and jump ahead to the next scene that I was trying to get to.

Final tip: Make sure you have something on you that you can write in at all times. You never know when you might get stuck somewhere and have nothing to do and this can be valuable writing time. Last year I got locked out of my house and I ended up going to a café to write. This year, I'm going to be running psychology experiments just about all month, and I plan to write little snippets between participants. Every tiny bit of writing time helps when you're trying to make 1,667 words a day!

I'm so glad you're doing NaNo, too, and very excited for you! Are you doing fanfic or an original story?