"Okay, uh…where do I begin…Guys?" Sasha asked the boys, looking for some help.
"Okay, so I'm their brother since we have the same dad. Their mom wasn't legally allowed to keep Sasha and Ryan so she ran off and hid them." Percy began, and Nico cut him off.
"But like recently their dad, His name is…er…..Jason, by the way," He said, and Ryan rolled his eyes.
"Jason? Really?" He said, and Nico glared at him.
"So their dad found them and sent me in to keep an eye on them. Percy's like my best friend but I've also worked as a secret agent before, so it only made sense to send me instead of Percy. Besides, had he sent Percy then Ryan and Sasha would have noticed that they look like him."
"A secret agent? That's a bit far-fetched, isn't it?" Sasha asked, her tone blunt. Nico turned to stare at her.
"Yes, there's no point in denying it. I'm your knight in black."
Ryan choked on his yogurt with laughter.
"Why do I get the feeling you guys are making all this up off the top of your head?" Andrea asked sarcastically.
"Because they are." Sasha said, and all three boys turned to stare at her.
"Fine, if you've got a more believable story…." Nico muttered, taking a bite of yogurt.
"It'll be believable because it'll be the truth." She said, and Percy shot her a warning look. 'Oh come on Percy, like I'd really tell her we're actually demigods. Have a little faith, you know?' She thought, rolling her eyes.
"Okay, so they were telling the truth about my mom and that whole custody thing and all that, but my dad's name is Po…uhhh…..eter. Peter. So it's also true that Nico and Percy are good friends, but Nico's an idiot. He's not an undercover agent."
"I kind of figured that much." Andrea said, laughing, as Nico muttered something under his breath.
"So anyways, my dad just wanted to make sure we were doing okay, and Percy didn't want to go since, you know, he's got a girlfriend and all and he wasn't really sure how long he'd be here, and then there's that obvious fact that we would have found it odd that he looks so much like us, so he went and whined to his best friend as all boys do. And Nico thought it sounded fun so he told our dad he'd go. And so that's sort of why Nico kept acting like a weird stalker dude and all—"
"I was not!" Nico cut in indignantly.
"—and that's why I disappeared for that indefinite amount of time. I was with my dad. As for the cast, well, I broke a bone. So my dad's apparently a doctor or something so he found this the perfect opportunity to test out a new type of treatment. And voila."
Andrea seemed to believe it. "But you could've answered your phone."
Sasha laughed. "To be honest, I turned it off and lost it for the longest time."
Andrea laughed, too. "That's so like you."
"I know."
"You guys really are the most annoying people I've ever met," Sasha began once they were all in Percy's car, making their way back to camp. "Including you Percy. You've managed to make my list." She said, and Percy laughed.
"Oddly enough, that doesn't faze me."
"I'm surprised you actually know what that word means." Ryan told the older boy, and Percy smirked.
"It all comes with dating Annabeth." He said, and Nico laughed. Then he turned to look at Sasha, who was glaring at him, and abruptly stopped laughing. She turned to look at Percy in the driver's seat.
"You know, what I don't understand is why he had to join in on this whole affair." Sasha spat, putting as much venom in the word he as she motioned to Nico as possible. "Why not get someone I actually don't mind being around, like Jonathan? Or Leo?"
Nico rolled his eyes and turned to look out the window. "It's not me you don't like, it's Drew."
Sasha stifled a bitter laugh. "To be honest with you, I'm not crazy about you or your psychotic man-eating beastess."
Ryan burst into laughter at Sasha's description of Drew, but Percy eyed the trio sitting in the back warily.
"So the fact that I saved your miserable little life means nothing, then?" Nico spat, whirling back to face Sasha. Though his black eyes shone with rage and made her nervous, and didn't show it.
"If I'm not mistaken, you wouldn't have even had to save my life if you hadn't showed up in my life in the first place! If I'm correct, nothing went wrong in my life until you showed up. So don't try to make it sound like you were, or are, or whatever, my knight in shining armor, because you're not! So go kiss Drew's ass as much as you want and do me the favor of staying the hell away from me." She hissed. The car was silent for what seemed like forever, and the tension built up to the point where Sasha imagined the car would explode from the pressure. Percy and Ryan were both watching them, waiting to see what would happen next. Nico looked as if he wanted to slap her, but he finally just exhaled and turned to stare out the window. The rest of the ride back to camp was utter silence, save the hum of the car, and Sasha couldn't help but wonder if she'd regret what she'd just said.
Upon arriving to camp Nico had gotten out faster than Sasha would have thought physically possible and slammed the door behind him, not to mention right in Sasha's face, as he stormed up the hill to camp. When Sasha and her brothers arrived at their cabin, even Ryan didn't seem to be in the mood to joke. Sasha hated it. It wasn't like this was the first time she'd liked an ass hole, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. So what was the problem? She slid into her bed and fell asleep, images of her yelling at Nico flashing through her dreams. At some point in the night, the dreams had alternated from her and Nico to something else entirely. It seemed around mid-day, and she was standing, facing what looked to be ancient ruins of some sort. As tourists passed, she caught this American couple mention the words temple and Saturn. She knew that the Romans had taken the original Greek god's names and changed them to the names of planets, so she assumed she was somewhere in Rome, looking at some God's ruins, but she couldn't remember who Saturn was. It made the most sense to say that it was Poseidon and he was trying to contact her, but for some odd reason she knew it wasn't him. She watched as tourists began to disappear like wisps of wind. The sky darkened and the ruins began to glow a dazzling gold. Then the voice spoke.
'Ahhh, Daughter of Poseidon, I've waited a long time to meet you. Especially since that blight of a brother of yours blasted my essence back to Tartarus.'
The voice wasn't…a voice. It was harsh and the noise it made sounded like all the worst noises in the world merged together as one earsplitting voice. She suddenly, with a horrified start, realized who Saturn was. She was in the presence of Kronos.