Percy's P.O.V.

I sat down in Helios' man cave that housed several cool artifacts and devices from old and new Nintendo systems and arcade game machines, to ancient swords and shields that belonged to great warriors. We were lounging on the giant sofa, and Rhode had her feet kicked up on her husbands' lap while I sat a little further from them.

"So, to start, it took a bit of snooping in the underworld to truly know who your parents were. Word travels faster than Hermes down there, so if one person knows it, at least three others do as well."

I merely nodded as he paused. He continued after making eye contact with me, holding a serious face.

"Perseus, your mother is Hestia, and she was raped by Hercules. As you know, she is a sworn virgin. When she broke her oath, even when she was not at fault, punishments were due. You were supposed to be born a god, but Lady Styx tore that away, and replaced your immortality with mortality. However, it seems that you are more than a demigod. I would call you a quasigod."

"Your mother wasn't allowed to keep you due to the ancient laws. She found a foster home in the mortal world close to where she could keep an eye on you. However, around 10 years ago, when you were three years old, it seems she lost contact. I couldn't find out why."

I sat back and processed the information. So, I was the son of two gods, but not a god. Not to mention, Hercules was my sperm donor, and my mother was the eldest of the gods. That's pretty badass. I don't really care that they weren't my parental figures. I've come to know that most gods don't care for their children. No reason I should be any different.

But now my training made sense. I had amazing potential. Hercules was the god of strength, endurance and demigods, and Hestia was the goddess of fire, the hearth, and home. Ironically. Everything I had done now was to appeal to those aspects and draw them out of me.

"Now that you have a semblance of your history, I think that might help you understand your powers more. Start meditating. As for your first assignment, you're going to collect the Nemean lion's pelt and bring it back here. You can find it at the Smithsonian Museum. Good luck and don't die."

With that, all the gods flashed out and I was left by myself. I put on my weights, gathered some supplies in backpack that was meant for hiking, but would be my new adventure bag. After grabbing my board, I walked outside. I set the hoverboard down and stepped on it.

"Go board!" I shouted, ready to take off. I didn't move. I fixed my feet again.

"Fly." I demanded out of the board.

"Up, up and away board!" Still nothing. Hmm. I stepped off and stepped on the board the opposite way. "Shazam!" Again, no movement. I tried different postures.

"Go." "Go." "Go board go!" Wait. Activated by my powers huh? I breathed in deep and tried pushing fire out of my feet. I lurched forward, the board moving forward a few feet. Okay, I got this.

I poured a small, constant stream of fire out of my feet and I rose into the air. Then I leaned forward. The board started moving with me. It was just like snowboarding, but without the snow. Or ground. I smiled. "Tally ho!" and I took off, the boarding speeding up quickly.

I tried to gauge how fast I could go, but it was pretty hard to do so considering if I went too fast, I couldn't open my eyes. As soon as I even thought about it, a pair of goggles appeared on my face. (Matt from Death Note's goggles) Sick. I sped up then I realized I had no idea how fast I was going either way.

A certain van full of demigods and hunters sped through traffic, at the ends of a woman who was not really a woman, and really quite insane. One of the passengers stared into the sky, spotting a black speck soaring through the clouds, a little too big to be a bird. But she didn't spot the object again.

On a certain black Pegasus, a young demigod looked up as something shot above them, and a small heat wave hit them. They couldn't tell what it was as it was there and gone before they could register what it was.

An hour later…

Theo's P.O.V.

I looked over at the white van. Everybody was getting out. Grover pointed toward one of the big buildings lining the Mall. Thalia nodded, and the four of them trudged off into the cold wind.

I started to follow. But then I froze.

A block away, the door of a black sedan opened. A man with gray hair and a military buzz cut got out. He was wearing dark shades and a black overcoat. Now, maybe in Washington, you'd expected guys like that to be everywhere. But it dawned on me that I'd seen this same car a couple of times on the highway, going south. It had been following the van.

The guy took out his mobile phone and said something into it. Then he looked around, like he was making sure the coast was clear, and started walking down the Mall in the direction of my friends.

The worst of it was: when he turned toward me, I recognized his face. It was Dr. Thorn, the manticore from Westover Hall.

Invisibility cap on, I followed Thorn from a distance. My heart was pounding. If he had survived that fall from the cliff, then Annabeth must have too. My dreams had been right. She was alive and being held prisoner.

Thorn kept well back from my friends, careful not to be seen.

Finally, Grover stopped in front of a big building that said NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM. The Smithsonian! I'd been here a million years ago with my mom, but everything had looked so much bigger then.

Thalia checked the door. It was open, but there weren't many people going in. Too cold, and school was out of session. They slipped inside.

Dr. Thorn hesitated. I wasn't sure why, but he didn't go into the museum. He turned and headed across the Mall. I made a split-second decision and followed him. What did I have to lose? I was gathering valuable intel.

Thorn crossed the street and climbed the steps of the Museum of Natural History. There was a big sign on the door. At first I thought it said CLOSED FOR PIRATE EVENT. Then I realized PIRATE must be PRIVATE.

I followed Dr. Thorn inside, through a huge chamber full of mastodons and dinosaur skeletons. There were voices up ahead, coming from behind a set of closed doors. Two guards stood outside. They opened the doors for Thorn, and I had to sprint to get inside before they closed them again. Annabeth's hat must've silenced footsteps as well, the way I was barreling towards them.

Inside, what I saw was so terrible I almost gasped out loud, which probably would've gotten me killed.

I was in a huge round room with a balcony ringing the second level. At least two dozen mortal guards stood on the balcony, plus twenty monsters—reptilian women with double-snake trunks instead of legs and a few hellhounds. I'd seen them before. Annabeth had called them Scythian dracaenae.

But that wasn't the worse of it. Standing between the snake women—I could swear he was looking straight down at me—was my old enemy Luke. He looked terrible. His skin was pale and his blond hair looked almost gray, as if he'd aged ten years in just a few months. The angry light in his eyes was still there, and so was the scar down the side of his face, where a dragon had once scratched him. But the scar was now ugly red, as though it had recently been reopened.

Next to him, sitting down so that the shadows covered him, was another man. All I could see were his knuckles on the gilded arms of his chair, like a throne.

"Well?" asked the man in the chair. His voice was just like the one I'd heard in my dream—not as creepy as Kronos's, but deeper and stronger, like the earth itself was talking. It filled the whole room even though he wasn't yelling.

Dr. Thorn took off his shades. His two-colored eyes, brown and blue, glittered with excitement. He made a stiff bow, then spoke in his weird French accent: "They are here, General."

"I know that, you fool," boomed the man. "But where?"

"In the rocket museum."

"The Air and Space Museum," Luke corrected irritably.

Dr. Thorn glared at Luke. "As you say, sir"

I got the feeling Thorn would just as soon impale Luke with one of his spikes as call him sir. Which I understood completely. I would do it myself.

"How many?" Luke asked.

Thorn pretended not to hear.

"How many?" the General demanded.

"Four, General," Thorn said. "The satyr, Grover Underwood. And the girl with the spiky black hair and the—how do you say—punk clothes and the horrible shield."

"Thalia," Luke said.

"And two other girls—Hunters. One wears a silver circlet."

"That one I know," the General growled.

Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably.

"Let me take them," Luke said to the General. "We have more than enough—"

"Patience," the General said. "They'll have their hands full already. I've sent a little playmate to keep them occupied."

"But—"

"We cannot risk you, my boy."

"Yes, boy," Dr. Thorn said with a cruel smile. "You are much too fragile to risk. Let me finish them off."

"No." The General rose from his chair, and I got my first look at him.

He was tall and muscular, with light brown skin and slicked-back dark hair. He wore an expensive brown silk suit like the guys on Wall Street wear, but you'd never mistake this dude for a broker. He had a brutal face, huge shoulders, and hands that could snap a flagpole in half. His eyes were like stone. I felt as if I were looking at a living statue. It was amazing he could even move.

"You have already failed me, Thorn," he said.

"But, General—"

"No excuses!"

Thorn flinched. I'd thought Thorn was scary when I first saw him in his black uniform at the military academy. But now, standing before the General, Thorn looked like a silly wannabe soldier. The General was the real deal. He didn't need a uniform. He was a born commander. General of what though? Mills?

"I should throw you into the pits of Tartarus for your incompetence," the General said. "I send you to capture a child of the three elder gods, and you bring me a scrawny daughter of Athena."

"But you promised me revenge.'" Thorn protested. "A command of my own! The hunters and Percy Beauvoir interfered with my mission!"

"I am Lord Kronos's senior commander," the General said. "And I will choose lieutenants who get me results! It was only thanks to Luke that we salvaged our plan at all. Now get out of my sight, Thorn, until I find some other menial task for you."

Thorn's face turned purple with rage. I thought he was going to start frothing at the mouth or shooting spines, but he just bowed awkwardly and stood to the side of the room.

"Now, my boy." The General turned to Luke. "The first thing we must do is isolate the half-blood Thalia. The monster we seek will then come to her."

"The Hunters will be difficult to dispose of," Luke said. "Zoe Nightshade—"

"Do not speak her name!"

Luke swallowed. "S—sorry, General. I just—"

The General silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Let me show you, my boy, how we will bring the Hunters down."

He pointed to a guard on the ground level. "Do you have the teeth?"

The guy stumbled forward with a ceramic pot. "Yes, General!"

"Plant them," he said.

In the center of the room was a big circle of dirt, where I guess a dinosaur exhibit was supposed to go. I watched nervously as the guard took sharp white teeth out of the pot and pushed them into the soil.

What no one in the room was ready for was a person to fall in through the skylight and crash into the dirt where the teeth were just planted. Everyone kind of just stood there in shock, me included as the body groaned. The body dragged their way to their feet, and it looked like a guy, but he had a badass mask and goggles on so I couldn't see his face. He looked around, noticing everyone was staring at him.

"Well shit."

The monsters pounced on him, and I took this as a perfect opportunity to get the fuck out of there.

Percy's P.O.V.

I had been leaning over the exhibit trying to catch a peak at what was going on inside. I had spotted that monster going in here and figured it would be my biggest lead for the Nemean lion. What I didn't account for was the old glass breaking and me falling right into the middle of their meeting. Of fucking course.

I groaned as I lifted myself to my feet. My back hurt like a motherfucker, thank the gods I landed on the fucking dirt pile in the middle of the room. I looked around, and noticed the monsters and humans were looking at me.

"Well shit."

They pounced at me, and I summoned a whip of fire and swirled it around me, killing two human guards and three hellhounds that couldn't dodge. Not letting them rest, I summoned several fireballs and threw them at the dracanae with bows, so they couldn't outrange me. I summoned my brass knuckles and got to work. I bobbed, weaved, jabbed, punched and rolled my way through the crowd of monsters. I noticed I was only dazing them and decided to add a bit more power to my punches.

The next human guard approached me with his baton in an overhead swing, and I uppercut him. Well, I tried to. His head came clean off his shoulders. The spray of blood peppered my goggles, and I took a second to wipe them off. Disgusting.

The pause was all the manticore needed. I was hit with two spikes, one on my shoulder and thigh. I did the only logical thing. I screamed. My hands erupted into flames, and I lunged at the manticore I had previously beaten up. He scrambled back, scared of me. Hell yeah, you better be.

Before I could lunge at him again, a sword appeared in my peripheral vision and I threw myself to the side, rolling and getting back to my feet. A blond young adult stood where I was, sword imbedded into the ground. He pulled it out, flicking it to get the dirt off.

"Now, intruder, who are you?" He asked.

"No one important. Was just hanging around." I tried to say nonchalantly.

I started backing up, realizing just how many opponents I had, and this guy looked dangerous with that sword. Before I could back up all the way, a mountain of a man landed on the ground in front of me, cracking the marble floor under his leather shoes. I peered up at him, his bulging muscles through his Italian suit. He was built like a bodybuilder, only 10 feet tall and a whole lot more muscle.

He cracked his neck and then his knuckles, which were attached to hands that could snap a flagpole in half. His grey eyes peered down at me. His very aura made me want to get on my knees and beg for forgiveness. He just stood there menacingly, staring at me. I stared back, not as menacingly. He seemed to be waiting for me to fight him. Did he really think I would make the first move?

I turned around and fucking ran. I squeezed through the door as the guards were closing them, getting caught on the handle but tearing my shirt to get away.

I ran across the mall, trying to find the best way to hide. As I was running, I was constantly checking over my shoulder to see if they were chasing me. I turned my head a little too far and ran into a group of people, knocking down two of them and myself. I was tired of being on the ground.

I looked at the group and found I knew 3 of them.

"Bianca?" I asked.

She frowned at me. "Do I know you?"

Oh yeah. I was wearing a mask and goggles, and my voice was a little warped coming through mask. I was about to take off my goggles and show her my unique eyes, but then everyone froze, I heard a growl so loud I thought one of the rocket engines was starting up.

Below us, a few adults screamed. A little kid's voice screeched with delight: "Kitty!"

Something enormous bounded up the ramp. It was the size of a pick-up truck, with silver claws and golden glittering fur. I'd seen this monster once before. Two years ago, I'd glimpsed it briefly from a train. Now, up close and personal, it looked even bigger.

"The Nemean Lion," Thalia said. "Don't move."

The lion roared so loud it parted my hair. Its fangs gleamed like stainless steel.

"Separate on my mark," Zoe said. "Try to keep it distracted."

"Until when?" Grover asked.

"Until I think of a way to kill it. Go!"

I split from the group, figuring out how I could take this beast down. In the myths, the only weaknesses were that Hercules, curse the rapist bastard, could overpower him, and his mouth, because it contained no fur.

Well, I could either get close enough to fire a fireball into his mouth, wrestle with the animal. I had gotten stronger. I guess I could try both.

The lion growled and clawed the air, but it retreated as if the shield were a blazing fire.

For a second, I thought Thalia had it under control. Then I saw the lion crouching, its leg muscles tensing. I'd seen enough cat fights in the alleys. I knew the lion was going to pounce.

"Hey!" I yelled, turning its attention towards me.

I don't know what I was thinking, but I charged the beast. I ducked under its initial strike and put all of my power into a haymaker right at its face. The blow stumbled the lion, and it backed up a few feet. I tried to press on and go in for more blows, but it saw me coming and swiped its claws at me. I dodged but wasn't fast enough to get away from the claws, which raked my side, tearing up the skin along my ribs. I backed up to the railing.

Arrows whizzed past me and hit the lion. It only served to annoy it, but it got its attention off me long enough for me to duck away.

"Huntress!" I shouted. "Target the mouth!"

The monster lunged. An arrow zipped past it, missing completely, and I dropped from the spaceship onto the top of a floor exhibit, a huge model of the earth. I slid down Russia and dropped off the equator.

The Nemean Lion growled and steadied itself on the spacecraft, but its weight was too much. One of the cords snapped. As the display swung down like a pendulum, the lion leaped off onto the model earth's North Pole.

"Satyr!" I yelled. "Clear the area!"

Groups of kids were running around screaming bloody murder. The satyr tried to corral them away from the monster just as the other cord on the spaceship snapped and the exhibit crashed to the floor.

The kids soon found the danger source and ran away as fast as possible. The cute punk girl with the ugly shield I had seen in Maine dropped off the second-floor railing and landed across from me, on the other side of the globe.

The lion regarded us both, trying to decide which of us to kill first. The black-haired kid with his sword also approached, adding one more meat flavor to the lines lunch.

"No clear shot!" The huntress yelled. "Get it to open its mouth more!"

The lion snarled from the top of the globe.

The black-haired kid started looking around. Options. I figured now was as good a time as ever to try and use the fire powers.

"Thalia," The black-haired kid said, "keep it occupied."

She nodded grimly.

"Hi-yah!" She pointed her spear and a spidery arc of blue electricity shot out, zapping the lion in the tail.
Thalia huh? That was the cute girl's name.

"ROOOOOOOAR!" The lion turned and pounced. Thalia rolled out of its way, holding up Aegis to keep the monster at bay, and sword-kid ran for the gift shop.

"This is no time for souvenirs, boy!" the huntress yelled.

I decided to use my fire. As the lion was turned away from me, I summoned the biggest fireball I could, pouring all my focus and energy into it. The fireball grew in size and heat, and I launched it at the Nemean lion. It impacted, scorching the giant kitty, who yowled like there was no tomorrow. Its whole backside was burnt and smoking. The huntress and Bianca launched a volley of arrows into its mouth. The lion thrashed wildly, turned, and fell backwards, before stilling.

The huntress and Bianca dropped from the balcony.

The huntress eyed me. "That was, an interesting strategy. Who art thou, boy?"

I merely pulled down my mask and grinned.

"A friend, helping out a few damsels in distress."

I walked over to the pelt, lifting it up. The burn marks were gone, it was just a beautiful fur coat. Praying to Helios that I had retrieved his pelt, I walked back over to the group.

"Well, I gotta go. I'll be seeing ya. Bye Bianca!" I pulled my hoverboard out and hopped on, before flying out before they could say another word.

I'd say mission success. I wonder what else was in store for me. Also, I wonder if Heph did make me those swords that Jet had. They were so badass. I could've used them against that blonde guy today.