Aaaand, I'm back after a ridiculously long time! Yay! Sorry for the long wait but hopefully this will be worth it. :0)

Chapter One: Laptops, New Friends, and Little Siblings

Achilles:Tartarus

I was sure that we were dead when we started free falling. Laurel was clinging as tightly to me as I was to her, as we fell through pitch black darkness. After what seemed like forever, there was light, and we could see the bottom of the huge cavern, hundreds of feet below. Laurel whimpered as we rushed towards the bottom. I'm pretty sure that I screamed. Then I noticed the many river winding along the cavern floor. Water. Thank the gods.

I closed my eyes and concentrated and felt the almost painful tug in my gut that always got worse the farther water was from me. Laurel gave a little scream as icy cold water enveloped us and we crashed, unharmed into the water below. I'd just started to relax when the voices came.

Hopeless, you'll never get out, better to stay here with us. What hope do you have? It went on. "We're still alive, aren't we?" I said allowed. "And I'm not gonna let some stupid river tell me what to do." Still holding onto Laurel, I willed the water to spit us out, and it did, not with out resisting, though. We crashed down onto the beach and both of us cried out in pain. "Ow!" complained Laurel. "that hurt."

I looked down. "Great," I grumbled, "the beach is made out of obsidian. Just fantastic."

"C'mon, Achilles," Laurel said standing, then pulling me up. "We need to move. I have some ambrosia. Just take a little though. We might need it."

I took the ambrosia and bit off a tiny piece. It tasted like Dad's blue waffles. The cuts on my hands started to heal. Somehow I still had my sword, so I picked grasped it, and with my other hand, I grabbed Laurel's. She smiled at me, and together we walked along down the river bank.

"Where do you think we are?" Laurel asked.

"The voice called itself Tartarus. That's probably where we are."

"Like from the stories?"

"Like from the stories."

Her grip on my hand tightened.

"But if it's like from the stories," her voice trembled, and when I looked over at her she looked terrified. "What chance do we have of surviving? We're just kids, half the age when you're parents fell in." She was staring to scare me. I was supposed to be the pessimist, and here was Laurel, eternal optimist scared out of her wits.

"Well," I said, "We know what to watch out for, for one."

"What do you mean?"

"We know not to go into any forests, so we can avoid the arai, there's a shrine to Hermes down here somewhere, we just have to find the Plethegon, and then we'll be able to find it and have food."

"But what about the monsters?"

"Well," I hesitated. "Y, you have your spear and reed pipes, and I have my sword, so we'll just have to be careful, and if any do find us we'll fight together."

"Ok."

We'd been walking for a while when the first monster came. We jumped back into the water and ignored the voices until it was gone and then we got out and kept walking. We did this for the next few monsters, until we saw something washed up, trapped against one of the rocks.

"What is that?" I muttered.

"I dunno," Laurel replied, "Let's go see." She ran off, and I had no choice but to follow her.

When I finally caught up with her (Laurel's a lot faster than me) she was attempting to retrieve the objects from the river. There were two. One, a large, silver laptop with an ancient Greek delta on the top. Under it was a bronze dagger. We got both of them out and lay them on the river bank. The laptop was somehow working, but it definitely could use some repairs. The dagger was just fine. Both seemed familiar, something Laurel realized before I did.

"Hey, Achilles?" she asked.

"Ya?"

"Don't these look familiar, like you've seen them before?"

Now that I thought about it, yes they did, I told her so.

"But if they're down here, where could we have seen them before?" she asked.

"I dunno, maybe in an old picture or something like- Oh!"

"What is it? Do you know where we've seen them?"

I leaned forward to take a closer look. "Ya," I said, "doesn't the dagger look exactly like the one that my mom always had with her in pictures before she and Dad were down here?"

Laurel peered closer, "You know what, I think you're right," she said.

"And the laptop, I think that it's the one in that picture where Mom's glaring at Dad because he's taking a picture of her while she was trying to design something."

"Ya, it is. Wow, good luck finding them, am I right?"

"Ya," I murmured, thinking hard.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I think that I know where we need to go."

"You do?"

"Think about it," I told her, "The laptop and the dagger must have been washed down stream, which means that Mom and Dad fell upstream from here. Somewhere near where they fell is a cliff, which leads down to the river of Fire, which can heal."

"You think that we should follow their tracks." She guessed.

"Ya," I said. "If we can find the Hermes shrine, then we can get real food, and some level of protection. And if we can find some way to write a flammable message-"

"We can get a message to Camp, and our parents!" Laurel exclaimed. "Let's go!"

It took what I think might have been a couple of days to finally find the place where my parents had fallen in. By the time we got to the river, we were so exhausted that we were leaning against each other to keep from falling. We drank from the river (which was completely gross by the way) and kept going. I'm not sure how long we'd been walking when the saber-tooth tiger found us. With him came a huge silver dude named Bob, who somehow know who we were. Thankfully he was friendly. He was looking for his friend Damaesan and Damaesan's massive Drakon friend who we found at the Hermes shrine.

We ended up staying at the shrine, in a hodgepodge little house made from the hide leftovers of the various monsters that came our way. We ate from the offerings that were burned in Camp. We never did figure out how to send a message; even when we had the material to write on, we never had anything to write with.

I'm not sure how much time actually passed, but I do know that eventually Laurel and I outgrew both our clothes and our weapons. Laurel still used a strip from her shirt to tie back her hair, I used a strip from my jeans. I took to using the dagger (which we also used to cut our hair, Laurel kept it at her waist, I at my shoulders), Laurel rigged a spear with half of my short sword (which had been broken by a cyclops at some point). I think that we might've been around fifteen when we first kissed. From then on she and I were doing the closest thing to dating that is possible in Tartarus. When you're in the Greek equivalent to hell, it's rather hard to come up with romantic places to take your girlfriend out on a date to.

We passed the time by adding onto our house, keeping the monsters away, training, telling stories, and I obsessively worked on the laptop that we'd found. Most of what Laurel and I know about the outside world came from that thing, but that wasn't what I was looking for. I was bound and determined to somehow use the thing to contact my parents. I still remembered them, and my little siblings. I wondered how they were doing, and if Silena and Luke remembered their older brother. I hoped so, but I doubted it. Their faces were fuzzy for me, and they'd been three years younger than me when I'd disappeared.

The day I finally had my breakthrough, I think that Laurel and I might've been close to our twenties. We'd been down there so long that our house could easily fit two teenagers, a Titan, a Giant, and a Drakon. At that point I'd figured out the the laptop (which I'd found out some time ago had belonged to Daedalus) could track those with noticeable godly descent. It did this by tracking the different 'essences' of a certain deity, but it had to be familiar with them. Also, it apparently could only track one 'essence' at a time, not a mish mash of both. I finally discovered that if I could introduce my 'essence', a mixture of Poseidon and Athena, then the laptop could home in on the place that had the highest concentration of that mixture. When I finally figured out how to scan myself, I let out a jubilant whoop.

"What happened, did you find something?" Laurel asked excitedly, running over to where I was sitting criss-cross applesauce on the ground.

"I think so," I told her, "Let's find out." I hit the button that would have it scan for that place of highest concentration. There was an affermative beep, as said place was found.

"Right," I muttered as I told it to scan for a computer or other electronic device being used. If one was being used, the laptop would send a video chat to them. Then it was just a matter of the person answering. "C'mon, c'mon, someone turn on your blasted device." Finally someone did. "Aha!" I exclaimed. "Now they just have to answer."

"Answer what?" Laurel asked.

"The laptop's sending a video chat to whoever just got on their phone or computer, or whatever. If they answer..."

"We have outside contact!" Laurel finished jubilantly.

"Exactly." I confirmed.

She sad down beside me and kissed me. "So now we wait?" she asked.

"So now we wait."

Silena: New Athens, Camp Halfblood

"I'll be right back!" I yelled to my brothers, boyfriend, and best friend. We, that is Luke, Ethan(brothers), Ran (boyfriend, and Em (Emerald, and my best friend), were planning on going to got to a movie. The problem was that we didn't know when any of the showtimes were, so I was going to see what they were on my laptop. I ran into the room I shared with Luke (my twin), and skidded to a halt in front of my desk. I flipped open my computer and brought up the website for theater. I'd just found the movie I was looking for, when a request for video chat popped up on the screen.

"What in Hades?" I mumbled.

For about a minute I toyed with the idea of not answering, but Luke and I had gotten the full dose of Dad's impulsiveness, so I pushed the accept button. Instantly the screen was taken up by a young man, maybe nineteen, with ragged black-and-blonde-streaked hair pulled back into a pony tail, and grey eyes. Nest to him was a young woman, on closer examination, a saytr, with long, raggedly cut reddish-brown curly hair and bright green eyes. They were dressed in what appeared to be several kinds of animal skin patched together. The minute he saw me the young man's already pale face turned paler, and his grey eyes widened. The girl beside him gasped.

"Silena?"he asked incredulously.

"How do you know my-", I stopped talking, because looking at those grey eyes triggered a mostly forgotten memory. Walking through the Woods, with Luke and Ran, and Em, and-. A serious little boy, older than I was, with black-and-blonde-streaked hair, and grey eyes. Walking beside him, an optimistic young saytr with long reddish-brown hair and green eyes. They'd always been joined at the hip. Even as an eight year-old he'd been overprotective, and five year-old me had come to the conclusion that as long as her big brother was there nothing could possible happen to her. However, that didn't stop the Black voice from taking both of them. My wonderful big brother, Achilles, had vanished into thin air, along with his best friend. But, here he was, on the screen of my laptop.

"A-achilles?" My voice quivered and cracked. "Li? Big Brother." When I put my hand up to my face, I realized that I was crying. His eyes were wet too.

"Silena." He reached out a hand towards the screen as if he were trying to tough my face, but quickly retracted it as he realized he couldn't. "You've gotten so big. So beautiful. How old are-How long have I-"

He couldn't finish the questions. I answered them anyway. "I'm sixteen. You've been gone eleven years, Li."

"Gods," he choked out. He might've said more, but Laurel gave him a tentative nudge. "Achilles?" she said.

"Oh, right." He wiped at his eyes. "Um- are Mom and Dad around?"

"N-no, they're at Grandma Sally's." I was going to ask him where he could have possibly been for eleven years, but before I could say anything else, a voice came from downstairs.

"Hey, Lena!" It was Luke, he was the only one who ever called me Lena without getting punched. "What's taking so long?"

I swallowed. "Ah," I called back, "I think that maybe you guys should come up here!"

"Who-" Achilles never got to finish his question, because right then the others came bursting in.

"What's wrong?" Ran demanded.

"Who are you talking to?" Luke asked. "Lena, have you been crying?"

I wiped at my cheeks furiously, and locked eyes with my twin. "Achilles, I've been talking to Achilles, Lu." I'm also the only one who gets to call Luke, 'Lu'.

Luke stared at me.

"What do you mean, you're talking to Achilles?" Ethan demanded. "Achilles died thousands of years ago."

"Shut up Ethan," I snapped, then turned back to Luke. "Achilles, Lu, Li. Don't you remember?"

For a second, I thought that he didn't. Then recognition dawned on his face, and he took a step back as if he'd been hit. "That's not funny, Lena. Not funny at all."

Em and Ran gasped as they remembered. "Silena," Em said tentatively, "Achilles vanished eleven years ago, it's just not possible that-"

Which was when I got annoyed and stepped away from the screen, and gave them a clear view of Achilles, who was gaping at all of us like he still couldn't believe what he was seeing. For a second there was complete and utter silence.

Then Em gasped, "oh my gods." Ran's jaw dropped, and Luke let out a choked, "Li?"

Smiling sadly, Achilles nodded. Ethan, again, interrupted. "Who, the Hades is he, and how in Tartarus," Laurel and Achilles flinched, "do you all know him?"

Luke cleared his throat. "You have met him Ethan. You were just too young to remember it."

"What are you talking about?!" Ethan was getting frustrated. He hates, and I mean hates not knowing what's going on. He gets that from Mom.

"Oh!" I exclaimed, remembering something. "Oh, I'll be right back, don't do anything without me, I just need to go grab something!" With that I ran out of the room, and opened the broom cupboard. Reaching back, I found the small box that had been hidden there years ago. Then, I ran back in to my room and handed the box to Ethan.

"What's that?" Laurel asked curiously.

"A box of pictures," I told her and Achilles as Ethan looked through it his pace getting paler and paler with each photo. "All of the pictures of Li that were in the house. Dad had to take them down a few weeks after, after the Black Voice took you, because Mom couldn't look at them without crying. I remember him putting the box in the cupboard."

Ethan put the last photo back in the box. "My gods," he breathed, "I have another older brother. Hades."

Laurel giggled, and Achilles gave a half smile. "Ya," he said, "you do."

Then Ran addressed the elephant in the room. "Where have you guys been for all this time?"

Laurel and Achilles shared an uneasy look. "Guys-" Achilles tried but I ran right over him.

"Don't you dare guys us, Achilles Jackson," I snapped, "We have every right to know where in Tartarus-" They both flinched.

"My gods," Ethan breathed. "You've been in Tartarus all this time. How are you still alive?"

That was a good question, and I said so.

Achilles gave another half smile, this one reaching his eyes. "We've had some help," he admitted.

"Who?" Em asked.

"Well," Laurel said, "Aunt Annabeth, sort of." Before I could demand to know how the Hades my mother could have possibly helped them when they were in Tartarus, and she was not, Laurel elaborated. "We found her old dagger, the one she lost down here, and her laptop, the one that Daedalus gave her. That's how we're calling you. Achilles figured it out."

Then Achilles took up the story and told us about their extended stay in hell. It actually didn't sound as bad as the stories that Mom and Dad told us, but then again, I guess that Li and Laurel hadn't had to face the Arai, Misery, or Nyx.

After the story was over, Ethan, Luke, and I had a silent conversation that once we'd come to a general consensus expanded to include Ran and Em. We all nodded, then I began thinking out loud. "We'll need someone who's been to the underworld," I said, "Not our parents, they won't let us come."

The others in the room nodded. "How about Aunt Thalia?" Ethan suggested, "she'd come with us."

"Definitely," Luke agreed. "and we'll need our weapons, plus some extra."

"Don't forget food, lots of it," pitched in Emerald, "and nectar and Ambrosia, we'll definitely need that."

"We'll need to go soon," I added, "All of our parents are insanely good at digging out secrets from us, so it's best if we go before they get back."

"Woah, woah, woah." Said Achilles said, "What do you mean go. Just where do you think that you'll be going?"

We all looked at him like he was crazy. "We're going to get you out of Tartarus of course," Luke and I said.

"You don't think that we'd just leave you down there, do you?" Ethan asked incredulously.

"Absolutely not!" surprisingly, it was Laurel, not Achilles, who said that, though Achilles looked as though he'd been about to, and kept going.

"Have you lost your minds?!" He demanded. "You're not coming down here, no way in Hades. We'll get out without anyone else coming down here. You are staying put."

He did his best 'Big Brother' glare, but I guess after eleven years of not having anyone to do it at it was a little rusty, because none of us were affected in the least. "Just one question." I said out of the blue, because I knew that we were never going to leave if we kept arguing, "Can I call you back after you've disconnected?"

Li looked taken aback. "Ya," he said, "just call the signal back, and it should work."

I smiled brightly at him. "Great, thanks Big Brother!" With that, I slammed my laptop closed, cutting off anything else that might've been said. Turning around to the others, I raised an eyebrow at their dumbfounded expressions.

"Well what are we waiting for?" I asked, "We have a rescue mission to initiate!"

Aaaaaaand, Cut! One longest chapter I've ever written, completed! It took a while, but I'm feeling rather accomplished.

Ok, first on the agenda, a response to my one reviewer. As in singular. C'mon guys, I know that more than one person read it, and I want to know what you think! REVIEW PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

Anyway, mini rant over,

AvaIsAwesome- Congrats for being the first, and so far only reviewer to this story. I'm sure that this is not the speedy update you were looking for, and I do apologize for that, I hope you liked this chapter!

Ok, until next time my friends, CR, out!