My Take On The Guardian Story

by Me010

A (in my opinion) fresh take on the "guardian of the hunt" story. Give it a read if you feel like it. Hopefully it interests you

25. Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Disclaimer: So, this is awkward. Despite my greatest attempts and efforts, I have not succeeded in coming up with another cute/cool/funny way to inform you that I am not, in fact, Rick Riordan, and I indeed do not own PJO, nor any of the characters. I apologize deeply and profusely, and I shall strive to do better in my life. Until I achieve the ability to never let you down again, I shall merely attempt to make you smile through the chapter you are about to read. But for real, I don't own nothing, pls don't sue me, Disney.

Things between Percy and Artemis had been… strange. Every now and then, they had interactions almost like they were friends. One of them would say something that would lead the other to make some kind of quip, which would ultimately make them both laugh. Those occasions were pretty good. Or at least, they were pretty good for a few seconds. Immediately after they were done laughing, they would look around and see everyone staring at them. Most of the hunters would stare at Artemis in confusion, while a few of them would glare at Percy in utter contempt.

Typically, the same day that they had laughed together, Percy and Artemis would interact again, except that time, she would be snapping at him, rather than anything else. Percy figured it was just an overcorrection. She felt awkward about the hunters questioning them laughing together, so she would overcorrect by being extra cold with him. She was trying to show her hunters that she was still the same person she had always been.

All in all, it was very strange. After a few weeks of this, Percy gave up on trying to understand her. He just rolled with the punches as they came. But all in all, despite being often confused by her demeanor, he was starting to like Artemis. Whenever she was able to relax a little bit, she seemed to be a pretty nice person. She had moments of levity, and being quite funny, but she could also be pretty insightful at times. In one instance, she had given him some pretty good advice. He'd been pretty down about Sara and his relationship crumbling, and she'd identified it instantly.

"I know you're mourning the end of your relationship," she'd told him, "But keep in mind that your friendship doesn't have to end with it. Once you get back to… wherever you came from, there's no reason you can't still keep her in your life. For now, it might just be best to take some time for yourself. It might not be a bad thing to take a step back and figure out where you are, emotionally, without anyone else to base yourself on."

When she had said that, he had just blinked at her. She'd said things of a similar nature to him before, but he still wasn't quite used to it. He couldn't help but smile about it though. It showed that she liked him enough to pay attention to how he was feeling, and could tell what he was thinking without him having to tell her.

So, to sum up, he was starting to like Artemis. She wasn't quite as bad as he might have thought.

After they had searched through the entire monster camp that they had dealt with, by far the most important piece of information recovered, was the log book of all their activities. There weren't too many locations listed in there, but there were a few. It seemed that they had set up camps all over the country. Percy had grinned like a psychopath when he found that out. He had enjoyed clearing the camp with his friends and the hunters, so he expected that the others would be just as good. And he'd been right. They hadn't overtaken all the camps, yet, but it wouldn't be long. Percy figured that they were roughly halfway through the list.

Percy got to spend a lot more time with his friends than he had been expecting. That was always a good thing as far as he was concerned. And they never suffered a single casualty. Not to mention the fact that it was good for him to practice a little bit. He would be getting bored otherwise. The downside to his training from Chaos, was that he felt a lot more restless than he ever had. It was like she had turned his ADHD up to 11.

There was one more little bonus that he hadn't shared with anyone. The constant fighting and searching and hunting, proved to be fantastic distractions from thinking about Sara. It was good for him to have something to keep his mind occupied.

And occupied, it was. Even while hunting down all of the monster camps with Artemis, his friends, and the hunt, he still had his own mission. Just because he was busy didn't mean that he could just leave it alone. What kind of person would he be, to let innocent lives be at risk, just because he had a lot on his plate? He found time for it. Not for the first time since he arrived on Earth, he was extraordinarily grateful that he only slept about an hour per night.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there was very little chatter on the front. He had managed to track all of their communications between cells, and from what he had noticed when he went through the backlog of their chat, they would always tell each other before an attack was imminent. There were extensive back-and-forths about it. Typically, the other cells would know if any given one had an attack due any time in the coming week.

So, by monitoring their communication, he would instantly know if anything was wrong. And things nearly had, a few times. Though, hardly 'nearly'. They certainly would have gone wrong had he not beed there to intercept, but he had been, so no one ever found out that anything had gone wrong. A few times, he'd had to abruptly leave the hunters to go to any given city in the world.

He'd been to Tokyo and thwarted an attack on the Tokyo Skytree. He'd actually quite liked Tokyo, but their cuisine nearly broke him So much fish… He'd also been to Madrid and Chicago.

He was closing in on them. But that had advantages and disadvantages. The advantages were obvious. He was nearly done, and there were fewer terrorists in the world. The disadvantages were that the other cells that were still active, knew that someone was hunting them. Word had gotten out amongst them that someone had wiped out so many of their brothers. It made the remaining cells all the more cautious. He was half-worried that they had figured out that he had broken into their chat. But the less paranoid part of his mind told him that they didn't know. They were still using it enough that he was pretty sure they hadn't picked up on it.

And as if all of that hadn't been enough, he was tasked with yet another job that no one else had. He was also supposed to figure out the command structure that the monsters were adhering to. They had never been so organized before. Not as long as Percy had been alive. They had just kind of roamed the country and eaten demigods. Forming armies, constructing camps of their own, and planning attacks was basically unheard of. No, not basically, it was unheard of. And Percy was tasked with figuring out why. It was a tougher job than he had originally thought. He had a gifted mind, and he was able to make connections few others could, but pure hard detective work wasn't easy. It wasn't quite as simple as it was with the terrorists he had been sent to Earth to stop. They left obvious trails for him to follow, primarily monetary. If he followed the money, it would lead him to the terrorists, and he would kill them. Easy as that. The monster armies had no use for money. He had no way to track them.

The buildings they constructed in their camps were made of wood. Wood, which they got from cutting down trees, while clearing the valleys to construct their camps. No way to trace them there. But he figured they had to be refining it somehow. Building with pure, unrefined wood, was not an easy thing to do. And he could tell by looking at the buildings, that that hadn't been what they'd done. There wasn't even any equipment for wood-refining in the camps, so they had to be doing it elsewhere. First, he started by putting a watch on all of Hephaestus' forges within a 100-mile radius of the camps. There were a lot of them. He figured maybe they were sneaking in and using his facilities like they had at the beginning of the Titan War. It led to nothing. Apparently, Hephaestus had learned from his mistakes and installed security cameras in all of his forges. They showed nothing. So he was looking in the wrong place.

He figured maybe they were using mortal facilities and hacking into their security feeds had been easy. They also showed nothing. Percy sat down with Hephaestus and together they tried to figure out how they were doing it. Hephaestus had been helpful, but no helpful enough. One way or another, everything led to a dead end. It was getting frustrating.

Percy decided to put the wood issue on the backburner. He decided to cast a glance to weaponry. All of the camps they had taken down were quite weapons-rich. They had to be getting a pretty steady supply of resources. They had a forge within every camp the demigods invaded, but they had to be getting the raw materials from somewhere. Celestial Bronze came straight from Olympus. Imperial Gold came from several enchantments placed upon normal gold. Enchantments that regular monsters shouldn't have been able to perform. So they were being sponsored hardcore. Sponsored by someone who was quite wealthy. Percy compiled a list of the richest Gods on Olympus. Hades was first on his list, as the literal God of wealth, but Percy immediately dismissed him. Hades was on their side, through and through. After Hades, Percy's list went on to name all of the other Olympians. He was able to dismiss most of them for one reason or another.

It wasn't Zeus, because he had no reason to sponsor monsters to attack his own kingdom. He stood nothing to gain. He would have to be spectacularly stupid to do that, and Zeus was an idiot, but not to that degree. It wasn't Hera, because she was loyal to Zeus. Hestia was simply too much of a pacifist, and the Olympias were her family, no matter how mad she could get at them. Apollo and Artemis were both on the side of the Olympians. That wasn't in doubt. Artemis and her hunters were helping him and his friends clear the monster camps, and Apollo was helping them a decent bit by helping them find them, and occasionally transporting them. The archery twins were in the clear. Hermes had lost a son to a war against Olympus, so he doubted he would go against them now. Luke had ultimately turned back to their side, and his dying wish had been for the betterment of the demigods. Hermes wasn't about to throw that all away. No matter how hard he tried, Percy couldn't rule out Ares from consideration. He had already proven in the past that he was more than capable of going against Olympus. And he was more than wealthy enough to fund an army of monsters. Not to mention, an army of monsters would lead to a war, which Ares would adore. The better equipped they were, the bloodier the war would be. He didn't even necessarily have to be against Olympus. He might have just been bored, so he decided to brew up a conflict to entertain himself, and then fight for Olympus. Or maybe he had turned. Percy couldn't decide either way.

He knew Athena was on their side. Her dearest daughter had fought for Olympus, and had redesigned the place after the destruction of the Titan War. Olympus had too much of Annabeth in it for Athena to turn against it. She was on their side, and when the time for devising war plans came, she would be critically important. Aphrodite was on their side. He knew that for a fact. He wasn't entirely sure how he knew it, but he did. His instincts told him that she was solid. Poseidon was a no-brainer. Of course he was on Olympus' side. And if he were to turn, Percy was pretty sure his dad would come to him about it, aiming to recruit his most powerful son to his cause. So his dad was safe. Demeter could really go either way. She struck him as the most passive of the Olympians. He didn't have too much experience with her. The last time they had interacted at all, he had pinned her to her throne with a thousand daggers of shadows. He could see how that might upset her, but would she be willing to turn against Olympus for that alone? At the same time, was there anything major to keep her on their side at all? Her kids, sure, but Ares had kids at the camps too. He held her as a maybe. He regarded Dionysus the same way. He had been Camp Half-Blood's director for a long time, but that hadn't necessarily guaranteed his loyalty to Olympus. He made no secret of the fact that he hated it there. And he didn't have any kids at either camp. Dakota and Pollux were living in New Rome, and Dionysus/Bacchus hadn't had any more children since them. At the end of the day, Percy was leaning more towards Dionysus being on their side, but mainly for the simple reason that he doubted the stupid God would be able to hide his treachery for so long.

Percy was fairly confident that Hephaestus was on their side. They had worked together on the wood issue, and he had seen that the God was making quite an effort on it. He would be supremely surprised if he had turned against them. He liked Hephaestus quite a lot. He was certainly one of the smartest Gods on the council, and Percy knew a decent bit about engineering, so the two had had a few decent conversations about it.

Percy's final conclusion was that it was most likely a minor God, or Ares or Demeter. His list included a few minor Gods of course. He liked to be thorough. Iris was probably quite rich. She took a one-drachma commission on each Iris-Call, and Iris-Calls were demigods' primary way of communicating long distance. She probably had a lot of funds stored away.

In the end, the list gave Percy a major headache. It was all a question of probability. Which God or Goddess was the most likely to turn against their own kind? If there even was one. For all he knew, the monsters were getting their supplies some other way.

Which led him to where he was currently. He was sitting inside a diner that was thankfully open 24 hours a day. The hunters were fast asleep, a few hundred miles away. But he wasn't worried. Artemis had acknowledged that he had a lot of work to do, and he generously offered to let him take the night off while she kept watch over the camp. He had been kind of reluctant, and she had given him a phone that he could use to contact her. She could hear his prayers in her head, but that was hardly a two-way method of communication, so she gave him the phone so that she could alert him if anything was wrong. It would take him 2 seconds to get there if it did.

So, he decided to go to a nice diner in New York. He knew it, and it was cozy. He needed a quiet space to think and wifi. Coffee also helped immensely. The waitress seemed fascinated by him. The giant stranger who had been working for 5 hours straight, in the middle of the night, consuming nearly an entire gallon of coffee. The diner, to its own dismay, had a bottomless cup policy on coffee, and Percy was well on his way to bankrupting the place. He was going to make sure to leave an astounding tip for the poor waitress, and a good amount for the diner itself. No reason to put them out of business just because he had some work to do.

He was trying to narrow down his list when a bunch of guys walked in. Well, not a bunch. There were around 4 of them. They were laughing together amicably. They walked over to the counter and ordered a bunch of coffees to go. The waitress didn't look happy to see them. He could tell from her body language that she was highly uncomfortable. He knew why. He had seen it the moment they had walked in. The outlines of baseball bats under their coats. Invisible to most people, but his heightened sense of vision practically highlighted it. They were either going to rob the place, or, more likely, they were running a protection racket for some gang or other. Percy let out a quiet sigh of frustration.

While they waited at the counter for their coffees, Percy quietly pushed his entire table forwards so that it blocked the door. He rearranged his seat, so that he was sitting with his back to the door, staring straight ahead at them. He stopped his work for a few minutes and just watched them calmly. He felt like a predator, staring at them, without them knowing. And him knowing with absolute certainty that they would all be going to the hospital for a very long time once he was done with them.

A minute later, the waitress presented them with 4 coffees in takeaway cups. The obvious leader of the little gang, looked over at her like he had forgotten she had existed.

"Oh, thanks, honey. You got anything else for us?"

The poor woman lowered her eyes and emptied the register for them. She bundled all of the cash together and offered it to them. The leader glanced at it, and raised an eyebrow. With a growing air of reluctance, the waitress added the contents of her tip jar to the bundle. That pissed Percy off even more. The leader still looked unimpressed.

"Is that all?" he asked coldly.

The waitress shifted on her feet, "That's it. Business has been a bit slow." she said quietly. Quietly enough that Percy wouldn't have heard them had he been a normal person, with normal hearing.

The guy pursed his lips, and then sighed through his nose like he was trying desperately to suppress his rage. Then he looked her up and down.

"Well, you're gonna have the rest of it by tomorrow. Otherwise… me and my boys here are just gonna have to collect our payment in some other way."

The waitress couldn't repress the shudder. It made the guy grin like a savage. Percy clenched his teeth but made sure to keep his face calm. In his experience, serene calmness intimidated the weak far more than pure rage.

The guys turned to walk away, and saw Percy sitting at his table calmly, blocking their path. They all looked surprised. Including the waitress, who hadn't noticed him move. Percy sat there watching them, waiting for one of them to speak first. It was typically better that way. And he already knew what he was going to say.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, asshole?" the leader asked.

"That's funny," Percy replied, emphasizing his New York accent to make it thicker than normal. "I was just gonna ask you, clowns, the same exact question."

They all exchanged glances. They were confused. So was the waitress.

"I'm not sure why that's any of your business," the leader replied confidently. And Percy could tell that it wasn't forced. These guys were that arrogant. Of course, Percy might also have been, if he were in their situation. 4 against 1 in a diner in the middle of the night. They didn't even see his enormous bulk yet. He was sitting down calmly, leaning back in his chair, sipping his coffee.

Percy raised an eyebrow in response to the leader's question, "Do you not know whose turf this is?" he asked them.

They scrunched their eyebrows together, deep in thought. It looked like the effort hurt them. Percy repressed a smirk. When they looked like they were about to reply, he cut them off.

"Obviously not," he said quietly, as if disappointed, "What do they teach you kids these days? Let me make things a little bit simpler for you. I'll make it so simple, that you can't possibly confuse it."

He stood from his seat slowly. They traced him as he rose and their eyes slowly widened. Once he was standing at his full height, he slowly walked around his table and leaned down against it, so that now there was nothing between them but empty air. Even half-sitting, he was as tall as any of them. He continued talking as if he hadn't stopped.

"You see, we aren't going to let the likes of you take anything from us. And this whole area's ours. You wanna start a turf war? Cause, we really don't mind that. I don't even care who you work for. We can take you."

That hit the spot. Nothing worse than a gangster's wounded pride.

"Oh yeah? We work for Don Perez, motherfucker! Who the fuck do you work for?"

Percy laughed. He had no clue who Don Perez was, but he had to make it seem like he was so far beneath him, that it was cute.

"Awww," he cooed at them, "Little Donny Perez? That's who you work for? Wow, this'll be easier than I thought. I thought you people actually worked for one of the big boy bosses, but I guess I gave you too much credit. My bad, my bad. You want a tip for next time? Do some research before you go looking for places to rip off. You'll wanna avoid little incidents like this when you get out of the hospital."

They didn't like that. Not one bit. They all puffed themselves up a bit and took out their baseball bats. Percy stared at them mockingly. He could have taken out his gun and shot them all before they could blink, but he decided to show some restraint. Not for their sakes, but mostly for the waitress just behind them. Watching someone get killed wasn't an easy thing, and there was no reason to torture her like that.

As before, he waited for them to make the first move. He just leaned back further on his table and waited, looking as casual as he possibly could. Not 3 seconds later, Lackey #1 made a mad dash at him. Stupid decision, really. Taking a bat into a fight was hardly a wise move. In order to charge up any force whatsoever, you would have to swing it back first. If an opponent knew what they were doing, as Percy did, then they could simply catch it as it was on its way back, before it started its forward sweep. It would eliminate all force from the blow and render it inert. Then, a simple headbutt would end all debate. Of course, seeing as Percy had 3 of Chaos' blessings, he could have simply tanked the blow and then beat the shit out of them all, but he wanted to do it like he was just a regular human who knew what he was doing.

Just as he expected, the bat went rearing back in preparation for a thunderous blow. Percy dashed forward and caught it in his right hand, just as it was about to go charging forward into the side of his head. He decided against headbutting the guy. Instead, he threw the lightest punch he could, into his throat. Lackey #1 bent at the waist, gasping for air. Percy ended him with a mild knee to his face. He collapsed to the ground, totally unconscious. But alive. Percy decided to make him hurt a little, and stomped hard on the guy's knee, breaking it. He was never going to walk right again.

Now, in the span of a single second, Percy had changed the dynamic to 3 against 1, and he had a weapon. But he didn't want the bat. He could have used it better than them by reversing it and using it as a poker, but he didn't feel like it. He just tossed it aside

The other three guys were stunned. He saw them all decide the same thing. No more one-on-one. They formed up and approached him together. Apparently, it was their belief that this would change the equation in some way. It really didn't. When Percy had gotten the first blessing from Chaos, it slowed his perception of reality. It was the same for all members of her army, so when sparring against any of them, it seemed like a normal fight. But in a fight against regular people, it was like they were moving through jello. He had all the time in the world to dodge and counterattack. Demigods were, on average, faster and stronger than mortals, so they would do better, but still not well enough. And these guys were completely ordinary mortals.

In a remarkable display of teamwork, they all attacked him at the same time. But from different angles. The leader guy was coming at him head-on. Lackey #2 was approaching him from the left. Lackey #3 was coming at him from the right. Percy wanted some one-on-one time with the leader guy once they were done, so he decided to save him for last. As they all attacked, Percy dodged forwards and to his left, instead of backward. Lackey #2 went stumbling from the force of the blow he tried to land, and Percy just lined up and launched a powerful elbow into the side of his head. Lackey #2 was out for the count. Percy took another second to crush the guy's right wrist under his boot.

After that, he decided to put the fight to an end. He was getting bored of it, and he wanted to get back to work. He flung himself across the room at Lackey #3 and dropped him with a decent headbutt. He made sure to pull himself back a little bit. He would kill the guy otherwise. Even as it was, he was going to need to spend a few months wearing a metal mask at the hospital. He would probably end up looking pretty shitty for the rest of his life. Not that he would have won any beauty contests before.

That left Percy and the leader guy alone. He walked towards him slowly. The leader guy looked scared. He was right to be. Like the first lackey, he tried to swing his bat at Percy, who just tore it out of his grasp and broke his nose with the butt end of it. The leader guy went stumbling back, howling and cursing. Percy kept advancing toward him like a machine. After a few paces, the leader guy tried for another offensive. He tried for a wild right hook. Percy just knocked the clumsy fist off course, planted his palm on the guy's face, snaked his foot around the back of his legs, and pushed lightly. He went tumbling to the ground in a heap. Percy crouched next to him, and whispered quietly.

"Next time you see little Donny Perez, you tell him this is our turf, ok? This whole area, ok? If I see you, or any of his guys here again, I'm not gonna be so gentle, you hear me?"

He didn't wait for an answer and hammered the guy's head into the tiles hard enough to knock him out. Then he stood up and crushed the guy's right wrist and left knee. Easy as that.

Percy looked up and saw the waitress staring at him, jaw dropped. He wanted to make her feel a little bit more at ease. He gave her an awkward smile like he was suddenly a bit shy. He leaned down again and picked up the stack of cash that the leader guy had tucked into his coat. He gave that to the waitress and asked her to put it all in the register. Then he went through all the guys' pockets, found their wallets, and emptied them. Nearly 800 dollars between them. He emptied his own wallet too and added another grand to the total. He stuffed it all in the tip jar and flashed her another smile. She still looked pretty shell-shocked. She was staring at the 4 unconscious bodies. Percy figured it would make her a bit more comfortable if she couldn't see them. After moving his table back to where it had originally been he dragged them out of the diner 2 at a time. Once they were out of her view, he picked them all up together, 2 on each arm, and hauled them to a back alley. He dropped them in a dumpster and walked back to the diner.

When he got in, he sat back down at his table. He was peripherally aware of the fact that the waitress didn't stop staring at him for the rest of the night, but he tried not to focus on that too much. He just thought about a man named Don Perez. He was probably going to have to kill him. He figured there was a 50-50 chance that ol' Donny boy would send in some guys to ask the waitress a few questions about who had done that to his boys. When she told him that she didn't know, Donny's boys weren't going to react to that very well. But he might not do any of that. If Perez was small-time, then he might not try to push it. If he was big-time, then he would take it as a challenge and hunt the offender to the ends of the Earth, starting with the poor waitress. Percy wasn't about to let that happen.

Seeing as he had his laptop right there with him, he decided to look into Perez there and then. A quick peak at Interpol's files and a slightly longer peak at the FBI's, told him that he was going to have to do something. And he was going to have to do it that very night. Perez was pretty big time. He had formed a very lucrative business for himself, kidnapping children and then selling them into a life of slavery for a cartel somewhere in South America. The FBI could unofficially tie him to the kidnappings of over 30 kids in the past 2 years, and well over a dozen murders in the same timeframe. Percy could only wonder what Perez had done that they didn't even know about. Protection rackets for one, but what else? But despite the fact that the FBI knew that he had done it, or at least orchestrated it, the trouble was what it typically was in cases like that. Witnesses either wound up dead, or recanted their statements after a sizeable deposit was made into their accounts, or their families were taken hostage. While the FBI knew for a fact that Perez was their guy, they could never prove it. The precious justice system that they believed in with all their hearts, was making sure that Perez never saw the inside of a prison cell. And Percy decided he wouldn't see the inside of a cell. He would see the inside of a coffin. That was for damn sure.

Luckily, it wasn't going to take him very long. He knew that for sure. And it wasn't going to be too tough, either. First thing was first. He was going to have to take out a few other of Perez's enforcers. If the only guys who got taken down were at the diner, then it would stand out. Instead, he was going to make it seem like someone was declaring war. So, he packed up his things and shadow traveled back to the hunters' camp. He dropped off his stuff and left again.

It took the rest of the night, but he managed to track down another 13 of Perez's enforcer squads and he gave them all debilitating injuries. He gave them all roughly the same message he had given the originals and made sure they would tell their bosses when they woke up in the hospitals. Sadly unaware of the incoming rush, New York's emergency rooms were about to get a pretty big influx of patients.

Once they were all taken care of, he went after Perez himself. He was probably still fast asleep in his penthouse. Percy had found the address in the FBI's files. Sneaking in was pretty easy, despite the two unmarked FBI stakeout cars parked outside. He just scaled the side of the building until he got to the first floor, and then broke through a window. He took the elevator up to the second-highest floor. Once the doors opened he pressed the button to close them again. He unsealed the latch at the top of the elevator and jumped up on top of it. After that, he just had to climb the elevator cables for a few feet and swung himself to the small ledge where the doors were. His enhanced senses told him there was a guy on the other side of the doors. He stopped for a second to think. Then he made his plan. One guy was easy enough to deal with.

He braced himself and got ready. He was going to have to move quickly enough that the guy wouldn't be able to make a sound, and quietly enough that he wouldn't alert the rest of the floor all on his own. The doors were on his left side, so he wrapped his left hand around the side that was closest to him and wedged his right foot against the other side of the doors. He grabbed one of his throwing knives with his right hand. The knives that he had been given by Chaos were all made of her special metal that he had never seen on Earth. And he suspected that she had blessed them all to remain sharp as ever, no matter what. He decided to test that out. He stabbed the knife into the wall and carved out a decently sized chunk of brick.

He counted to 3 in his head, and pulled the door open with his left, while pushing the other side open with his leg. As soon as there was a big enough gap between the two sides, he threw the brick right between the guy's eyes. He was knocked out instantly. Percy pushed the doors the rest of the way open and walked inside. He took a look at the guy and made sure he was still breathing. He was. No need to kill him, Percy figured. He probably didn't know much about what his boss was doing. He was just a guard. Percy arranged the guy into what the paramedics called the 'Recovery Position', just on the off chance that he started choking to death. If he woke up, he would have a concussion, which could make him throw up. He would be too groggy to move, so he would stay in position, and that would help to make sure he didn't choke on his own vomit. Not a very attractive corpse.

Then he walked through the rest of the penthouse. He took care of whatever guards he found, as quietly as he could. Given his training, it wasn't even remotely difficult. He cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Within 2 minutes, he was in Perez's bedroom. He opened the door softly and found him sleeping like a baby. Don Perez was a slight man. He couldn't have been more than 5'4. He couldn't have weighed more than 130. But Percy could tell that it was all muscle. No fat on the guy. He had a shaved head and thick black eyebrows. He had a nose that had obviously been broken a few times in its lifetime.

Percy had to make it look like a rival mob had done it, so he took a minute to figure out how he wanted to do it. After a few seconds of thought, he walked over to him and tapped him on the forehead. Perez woke up and Percy knocked him out again with a moderate punch to the temple. He didn't want him out for too long. Dragging him by the collar, he got Perez all the way up to the roof. He set him up against the edge and waited for him to wake up. It was better for everyone involved if Perez sold the story for himself.

When Percy could tell that he was about to wake up, he grabbed him by the ankle and stood up on the ledge. He used his augmented strength to hold Perez off the side of the building upside down. Now it was just a matter of waiting. Waiting for the FBI agents on the street below to notice and run upstairs. It took about a minute, but then he saw them get out of their cars and sprint into the building. Just then, Perez woke up and noticed his predicament. He started screeching loudly enough for all of Manhattan to hear him. Percy listened for a moment before the sound started to bother him, so he lightly punched him in the stomach to knock the wind out of him. But Perez was relentless. Now that screeching was no longer a viable option for him, he started trying to plead for mercy. Percy listened to that too for another second, before he cut him off.

"Listen to me, you child-trafficking sack of shit. Don't try to beg me. Don't try to get out of this. There is no getting out of this. This is what you deserve, and it's what you're gonna get. So shut up and take it. We only have another minute to wait."

Despite Percy's warning, the big tough mobster kept begging and pleading and attempted to bribe him a few times. Percy ignored him. The four FBI agents arrived right on schedule. They burst through the door to the roof, guns drawn.

"FBI! Freeze! Put him down!"

Then, it was time for Percy to submit his nomination for an Academy Award. He punched Perez hard in the gut and roared.

"And if your people ever try to come into our turf, we'll do the same to them!" he screamed at the weeping, whimpering heap that had once been a person.

Then he dropped him. Perez screamed the whole way down and was suddenly silenced.

"Put your hands in the air!" Percy heard behind him.

He turned around like he had just noticed them, and pursed his lips like he was scolding himself. He raised his hands above his head and pretended to cooperate.

"Get down off the ledge!"

He did.

While the other three covered him with their guns, one of them approached him cautiously, grabbed his hands, and forced him down on his stomach. He cuffed him and then hauled him up. Percy felt a gun press into the middle of his back as they all led him to the stairs. He obviously wasn't about to let himself get arrested though. That was no part of his plan. But he didn't want to hurt any of the agents either. They'd done nothing wrong. So he decided to go along with them until the right moment presented itself. He just had to make sure that they wouldn't see him use any of his supernatural abilities. That wouldn't be good.

He decided to wait for them to make a mistake. And it didn't take them too long. When they loaded him into the elevator, they had the guy who cuffed him stand in front of the doors, Percy in the middle, and then an agent on each of his sides. He fought to repress the smirk. A split second before the doors closed, he knocked the guy aside and dashed forwards. Not as fast as he could, since he could move at humanly impossible speeds, but quickly enough. The agents hadn't been quick enough to react and catch him. He figured he had about 3 seconds until the doors opened again and they started chasing him. He used that time to run back up the stairs to Perez's penthouse, get to the bedroom, snap the cuffs off of his hands, and pick up the laptop that had been left on the nightstand.

He knew what the agents will have done. They would never figure he had gone up. They figured he would have made a mad dash down the stairs to try and get out of the building. Two of them would get off the elevator and take the stairs down, and the other two would take the elevator down to the ground floor and wait for him. When the two that took the stairs got to the bottom, they would figure out that he had actually gone up from the start, and go look for him in the penthouse while one or two of them covered the lobby to make sure he didn't get out. When they found that the penthouse was empty, they would start searching floor by floor again, until they got to the first floor where he had broken the window to get in. They would figure that he had left that way too. So instead of going through the motions and wasting time, he just shadow traveled away.

He got to the hunters' camp, picked up his own laptop, and got to work. He managed to use his laptop to break into Perez's and went through his emails. Within 10 minutes he had identified all of the highest ranking members of his organization and sent them all a mass email to gather for a meeting in 10 minutes at one of the warehouses Percy had seen listed as a property belonging to Perez, in the FBI files. Time was of the essence since Perez had died very publically, and he only had a very brief window before people found out.

With the top leaders dead, and most of the enforcers in the hospital, the entire gang would be effectively crushed. The only people left on the streets would be the mid-level guys, who were useless without their bosses telling them what to do, and their underlings to do it for them. And who knows? They might even wind up in prison too, once he anonymously sent Perez's laptop to the FBI. Percy had only had it for a few minutes, so he wasn't sure exactly how much was on it, or how incriminating it was.

Thalia woke up and left her tent to find her cousin sitting on a log, balancing two laptops on his thighs. She looked at him quizzically.

"You got yourself another laptop? Why?"

Percy looked up from the screens and blinked at her.

"Ummm… Not quite?" he tried.

"What do you mean?"

"Well… It's kind of a long story," he tried again.

Thalia just raised an eyebrow. He sighed.

"Well, I didn't exactly get it. And it's not exactly mine."

"So… you stole it?"

He quirked his head to the side a little.

"Technically, yes. But honestly, that was the least of my crimes tonight, so I don't think it's even worth mentioning."

Thalia stared at him for a second, and then screwed her eyes shut and opened them again.

"Do I even want to know?"

"Uh… You may not," he told her uncertainly.

Thalia nodded to herself and walked away, muttering under her breath. He decided not to listen in on her, but he was willing to bet that she was calling him a few choice names. All part of her particular brand of love, he knew.

Percy went back to the laptops and found the reply emails streaming in. All of the top dogs. All obeying their master. He closed both laptops, though not before deleting any password protection from Perez's, and got up. Artemis walked over to him.

"Hey, Percy. I hear you're acting somewhat strange."

"Stranger than usual? That's interesting," he joked.

She smirked lightly and then dropped her gaze to the two laptops. Her face screwed up much like Thalia's.

"You got yourself another laptop?"

Percy sighed, "You know, it's a long story. I've gotta dip out for around 20 minutes, are you guys ok over here?"

Artemis blinked in surprise but nodded. He thanked her quickly and left the camp. He shadow traveled over to an alley near the warehouse where he had called the meeting, walked the rest of the way and snuck in through a top window. Within 5 minutes of him arriving, everyone was there. Evidently, when the 'big' (Percy smirked at the pun) boss called a meeting in 10 minutes, the underlings made damn sure to be there on time. That suited him just fine.

After a quick headcount to make sure no one was running late, Percy dropped down to meet them from the lower levels. He drew his gun and started firing. The standard guns that were used as a sidearm in Chaos' army had a standard clip of 22 rounds. There were 12 underlings and a few of them had brought an underling of their own. Within 5 seconds, they were all gone and Percy hadn't needed to even reload. Easy as that. He shadow traveled back to the hunters' camp and joined them for breakfast. One of the most prolific gangs in the city, and they were basically done. War had effectively been declared on them, and the vast majority of their thugs were in the hospital, and would be in prison for a decent time once Percy dropped off Perez' laptop to the FBI. The top dog himself, was dead. As were all the other high ranking members. There was virtually no one left. The gang was done. Whoever wasn't dead, would be in prison very soon after they were released from the hospital. And it had taken him a few hours. He was going to have to make sure there wasn't a gang war on the streets from the resulting power vacuum, but as long as he could dissuade that, everything would be ok for the most part. He also made a mental note to look into the South American cartel that had paid Perez so much money for the child-slaves. Any people willing to do such a thing, didn't deserve to live. And Percy was more than willing to see to it that they didn't.

Artemis asked him what had been going on when he had been there earlier, and he basically told her all about his evening. Once he was done, she blinked at him and laughed a little. He grinned lightly and asked what their plan for the day was. She seemed happy to tell him.

"Well, we heard a few rumors about a camp full of monsters," she told him with a glint in her eyes.

He quirked an eyebrow, "Artemis, are you forgetting that we have a literal list of those? That's hardly a big discovery anymore."

She rolled her eyes in a way that told him she was only half serious about it, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"Yes, I damn well remember, but this is something we haven't heard about before. If the rumors are accurate, this is a camp that we don't have any record of. And, if what I've heard is trust-worthy, then I can understand why we have no record of it."

"What do you mean?" he asked her.

She smirked at him and leaned in conspiratoriously. Like she was about to tell him some big secret, almost.

"Well, it seems that this isn't any regular camp. This is like their elite division. Not just regular, average monsters. This is where they keep the biggest, meanest, baddest monsters that we would end up darling with later. All in one place, just waiting for us."

He could see why she was so eager. One of the things he liked about her was the fact that she was adventurous. Rather than running away from danger, she ran right towards it. She was excited by the prospect of a real challenge. A real fight. That was one of the reasons that their fight a few weeks ago had gotten her blood pumping.

He leaned in towards her too, "When you say 'Elite', you mean…"

Her eyes picked up a special kind of glint. He liked her eyes. They were expressive.

"The Manticore, the Minotaur, the original Hydra, Echidna, the Chimera, the Nemean Lion, the newly-reformed Medussa and her sisters, Lamia, the Erymanthian Bore, Kampe, and several different Drakons. All the big ones who do the most damage. And, of course, a few of their best regular monsters to fill in the ranks. Dracaena, empusa, hellhounds, telekhines, and the like. Probably less than 5 thousand of them total, but they're the absolute best. I've even heard whispers of a Titan or two who stay there."

Percy leaned back a bit and whistled appreciatively.

"Wow. That's quite a roster."

He started to grin at the thought. It was going to be fun.

"Where?" he asked.

"From what I've heard, it's in the middle of a desert in Arizona."

"Arizona? I think I would have sensed such a massive presence when we were there dealing with the first camp. So would you, right?"

She shook her head, "From what I can tell, it's new. They only just built it. That's why they chose Arizona. They must have figured that we would rule it out as a place to go looking for them. They figure they're hiding in the very last place we'd think to look."

Percy considered it. It seemed reasonable to him. There was a certain logical flow to it. And he was getting excited at the thought of so many monsters, just waiting to be killed. And these were the tough ones. It was going to be an interesting fight. Eventually, he nodded at her.

"Ok. I'll call for reinforcements from my friends at Camp."

Artemis waved him off, "No, no need. At least until we either confirm or deny. No need to bother them until we have something concrete."

He shrugged, "Fair enough. When do we leave?"

She grinned again, "As soon as we're done eating."

With that, they both tucked into their breakfasts and ate as fast as they could. They were both quite eager to get things going.

He took a moment to consider Artemis. She seemed different than she had been when he had first joined them. Maybe that was just how she was, but she'd been a bit stiffer around him. Or he was starting to have some effect on her. Either way, he was pretty happy about it. Either she had been stiffer than usual around him and she was starting to relax a bit, or she considered him enough of a friend that she felt happier that he was there with them. Either way.

As soon as they were all done with their food, they packed up the camp in record time. Artemis called Apollo and asked him to drop them all off in Arizona. Moving so many people across such a distance would be too much exertion for either Percy or Artemis, and neither of them wanted to expend so much energy before the fight even started. Apollo agreed warmly (pun intended) and they were loaded onto his sun chariot within the hour. The journey didn't take too long, despite it being over 2 thousand miles. Apollo's chariot was pretty speedy. And Artemis was championing them along, every step of the way. She wanted to get there as fast as she could. She was practically salivating at the thought of the fight! He wasn't at all embarrassed to admit that he was too. A while later, they touched down. Percy, Artemis, and the hunters disembarked, and Apollo wished his 'Little sis' the very best of luck. She must have been pretty eager to get to the fight, because she barely even scolded him.

The ensuing journey was not very fun. No, scratch that, it was misery personified. They all ran through their supplies within the first hour. The conditions were pretty harsh. It was the back end of the summer, but it was still ridiculously hot. Not to mention the fact that sand was pretty horrible to walk on. Percy did what he could to make the journey a bit more tolerable for everyone involved. He used his powers to draw water from the moisture in the air. It wasn't a skill he had perfected, so he wasn't able to do it with too much ease, nor in great quantities, but he was more than happy to make the effort to help out the hunters. Every 5 minutes or so, he would drop a bunch of water over them all, just to keep them from overheating. That, combined with the fact that he was using his powers over the shadows to give them whatever shade he could manage, made things ever so slightly better. Though, Phoebe and her posse refused his help for the first 40 minutes, but they eventually yielded when they were about to pass out from heat stroke. Artemis was doing her best to help them along as well. As the goddess of the wilderness, she was trying to make a small breeze cool them down. It wasn't going too well though. That wasn't really her specialty. But any help was greatly appreciated. Even Percy was getting tired from the long trek.

It took nearly 5 hours of stumbling around in the desert, but eventually, they found it. And it was like nothing they had ever seen before. It didn't even look like a camp. It was more like a castle. For starters, the walls weren't made of wood, like the others. These were made of stone. The back of Percy's mind screamed about what a logistical nightmare that must have been, and how he was going to have to look into that later on. He and the hunters watched it for a moment before they could even react properly.

They found a little hill that would provide them with some cover from the sun and, more importantly, from the seeking eyes of the patrolling monsters. The hunters hardly blended into their environment, what with all the silver. They practically sparkled.

Once they were away from prying eyes, there was a debate. A debate about whether or not they should rest before attacking. The hunters were all for it, but both Percy and Artemis were against it. The hunters were saying that they could use the rest to make sure they were at 100% before they got into a fight with some of history's deadliest monsters. Percy and Artemis were adamant that it wasn't a good idea, because the monsters could pick up on their scent at any moment, and they would lose the element of surprise.

They were both valid points of view, but eventually they compromised. They would rest, but only for around half an hour. They agreed that they couldn't really afford to wait any longer. And even Artemis was tired enough to concede that a quick rest could only be of use. Percy decided he would keep watch, and make sure the monsters didn't ambush them. So, while everyone else was sitting back and relaxing, he was out in the heat and the sun, on his hands and knees so as not to be seen, keeping guard. And as any soldier could tell you, guard duty was impossibly boring when there was nothing going on.

He spent his time thinking about the little problem he had identified earlier. How the hell had the monsters built the damn camp they were in? With the camps built from wood, Percy could understand how it was feasible. But the stone castle they had constructed? That was just insane! And he wanted to know how they had pulled it off. Because obviously they had. It was just a question of how. How had they managed to obtain all of the raw resources necessary, and then refined them all, and then put them all together. There was a drawbridge, for the love of Chaos!

The half-hour rest period came and went, and Percy hadn't really made any progress on his question. Though, he was hardly in ideal thinking conditions. Artemis and her hunters came out from their shade and they all got started.

"I'll call my friends and let them know what's going on," Percy said casually.

"No, no need yet," Artemis told him.

He raised an eyebrow, "Artemis, do I need to remind you what we're up against here? I think it would be for the best that we call them."

"Keep in mind, what I heard about that place was only rumours. There could be nothing worrying in there at all. It could just be a few dozen of them, for all we know!"

"Are you serious? Look at that place! That's a serious encampment right there. And it's well defended, too. They have guards that are posted all along the wall. There must be a hundred of them right there, and that's before we even make it into the camp itself. Either that's their normal level of security, or they know we're coming. Either way, we could use the backup."

"Or," Artemis countered, "They're guarding something important. Like their war chest, or maybe some kind of weapon, rather than a big army. I'm just saying, why don't we scope out the place first. If the rumours were accurate, and there's a huge army of deadly monsters there, then we can call your friends and wait for them to arrive before we attack."

Percy watched her for a moment before relenting. She had a point. His friends were busy people. They were senators and praetors and instructors. No need to disrupt their busy schedules without a reason. He would hate to drag them down to Arizona for nothing. And if something went wrong, he would call them up immediately and they would be there within 10 minutes.

So, the group started heading towards the castle. Based on first impressions, Percy was willing to concede that maybe Artemis had had a point. His senses didn't pick up on much activity in there. There were certainly some fairly powerful presences within the stone walls, but nothing they couldn't handle. And it seemed that what Artemis had heard about the 5,000-ish regular monsters, hadn't been true. He could sense a bunch of the more powerful monsters, and maybe 750 regulars. They might not even need to call in Percy's friends at all. There was a decent chance that they could handle it on their own.

It took a while, but eventually they made it to a wall of the castle without being detected. It had taken a lot of work on Percy's part, but he had managed to carefully envelop the entire group in shadows. After that, it was just a matter of moving slowly enough that the monsters keeping guard didn't notice the movement. Percy's efforts were helped greatly by the fact that it was mostly dark by that point. Searching for the camp had taken most of the day, and the half-hour wait had basically made the difference between day and night.

Once they'd made it to the wall, Percy used the shadows to make several grappling hooks for the hunters to use to climb up. There were around two dozen hunters, plus Artemis, plus himself, so roughly 26 people. He made 6 ropes for them to climb. It was about all he could risk. Anymore, and the monsters could notice. He figured 6 would be enough to get them all up quickly enough. But there were sentries directly above them, and there was a fair amount of them. They would need to be taken care of quickly. With that in mind, it was important to consider the order in which they climbed up. The first 6 up on the wall, would need to take ou the sentries in the fastest, quietest way possible.

Percy and Artemis were no-brainers. They would be 2 of the first up on the wall. So was Thalia. So that was 3. As much as Percy loathed to admit it, Phoebe was one of the hunt's best fighters, so she was number 4. Atlanta became number 5, based on the same principal. He didn't like her much either, but she was pretty good with her bow. The last hunter to get on the wall first, was a younger one named Helen. Of course, this was a group of immortals, so when he called her 'younger' he meant she was only around 120 years old. Compared to the rest of them, that was young. Physically, she was around 19 years old. Brown hair, green eyes. Daughter of Demeter. She was tall, relative to the other hunters. Tiny compared to him. She had that lithe athleticism that all of the hunters had, born of a life constantly on the move, constantly fighting. She was the best of the hunters who were participating in his hand-to-hand classes. She was doing pretty well, and was quite receptive to learning from him, despite his gender. He liked her a decent bit, though they rarely interacted much outside the classes. He wanted her up there first because there was no doubt in his mind that she was better with her knives that Phoebe or Atlanta, who were there mainly for their archery technique. So, they had a decent mix. Percy, Thalia, and Helen who were better with hand-to-hand, since Percy's gun would be too loud and he was pretty bad at archery. Phoebe and Atlanta who were better at long range with their bows. And Artemis who could go either way, depending on the situation once they got up there.

They started climbing, and Percy was instantly tempted to make Phoebe's shadow rope evaporate and let her fall, but he restrained himself with great effort. He really, really didn't like that woman.

They got to the top, and Percy was the first one over the wall. He instantly slashed the throat of the dracaena he was closest to, sent a knife flying into the chest of the furthest one that had seen him, and started silently hacking and slashing through the rest. Immediately after, Artemis and Thalia joined him on the wall, and started doing the same thing. Phoebe, Atlanta, and Helen joined soon after them, and Helen joined the fight, while Phoebe and Atlanta started picking off the farther ones. In the end, it took maybe 5 seconds and around 15 monsters were dead. And no one had heard a sound.

They all hunkered down and waited for the rest of the hunt to join them. A few moments later, they decided on a plan. Percy and Artemis would lead the younger, less experienced hunters across one side of the wall, and Thalia would lead the veteran hunters across the other side, and they would meet in the middle. They would take care of every sentry they came across. That way, when the fight started, they wouldn't have to deal with archers from above. It would all be contained to the main battlefield.

As Percy and Artemis led their group around the castle, it became obvious to him just how huge the place was. And he really couldn't see why it was being used to house so few troops. Maybe Artemis had been right, and it was there to store their war chest. Or some weapon. Or maybe a bunch of recources. That would certainly explain why the heavy-duty monsters were there. His senses were annoyingly quiet on that one. He couldn't hear or smell anything of note in the camp. Maybe they had found some way to disguise whatever it was, from him.

Each group's half-circle took about 4 minutes before they met in the middle. Percy and Artemis' group had taken down close to 60 monsters, and it made sense for Thalia's group to have taken down just as many. All in all, roughly 120 sentries along the wall of the castle. That was simply nuts. Whatever was being held in there, it was sure as Tartarus getting a lot of protection.

Once all of the guards were taken care of, they started to assess the situation within the walls. It was pretty much as Artemis had said, though it was just… less. Most of the heavy-hitters that Artemis had named, were there. But after they had taken down all of the guards, there were only really a few hundred of the regular monsters left. Percy couldn't sense any Titans in the area. So, it was still going to be an interesting fight, just not quite as good as they had been hoping for. He turned to Artemis.

"Shall we call my friends?"

"Do you really think we need to?" she was genuinely asking. Not a mocking tone. Just a sincere question.

"I don't really know. I think we can take everything here on our own. If you would prefer that I go get them, then I don't mind that."

She thought for a few moments before shaking her head.

"No, it's ok. Let them have a night to themselves. They've been helping us a lot lately, with all the other camps we've found."

Percy nodded, and they started to think of a battle plan. After a few moments of quiet conversation, they decided that Percy, Artemis, and Thalia would be on the ground, while the rest of the hunters spread out along the wall and provided them with cover from higher up. It took another few minutes to decide on all of the best angles for the hunters to shoot from, and then they were ready to go.

Percy, Artemis, and Thalia jumped down and got busy. And it was glorious. It was a fantastic battle. With the hunters launching volley after volley at anything in sight, and the trio getting bust against the most famous monsters of history, it felt like a pretty momentous occasion. It felt like the stuff of stories. And it was awesome. He realized that he hadn't actually fought side by side with Thalia in a very long time. And he had never fought with Artemis. He'd fought against her more than he had foughtwith her.

Percy took the Nemean Lion first. He wasn't about to let that impenetrable pelt stick around for too long. It needed to be gone. It opened it's huge maw to roar at him. He pulled out his handgun and unloaded half the magazine into the it's soft side. It screeched and yelped, and he just kept squeezing the trigger. It wasn't long until it evaporated into golden dust and left behind an interesting-looking fur coat. He made a mental note to pick it up later. It could be useful. His armor was better than it, but he could give it to someone else that could make use of it.

In the time it took him to get rid of the Nemean Lion, Artemis had almost killed one of the Drakons and Thalia was fighting the Manticore. He knew why she had chosen it, and agreed with her thinking. Or maybe it wasn't actual thinking. Maybe it had been subconscious. But it had been the Manticore that had nearly killed Annabeth all those years ago, the first time he had met Artemis and her hunt. He joined her against it. With two of the most powerful demigods of the age working together, the Manticore fell pretty quickly. Percy was pretty glad to have it's paralytic spikes taken out of the equation. Those could be pretty nasty.

He looked back and saw that Artemis had finished off the drakon, and was already moving towards the Erymanthian Boar. He quietly approved of her decision and selected Lamia as his next target. But he was interrupted. The Minotaur sent him flying across the open area. He wasn't entirely sure how, but he had failed to notice it. He chalked it up to tunnel-vision. He needed to remember to be more conscious of everything around him. The blow from the charging bull-man had taken him off his feet, and had indeed sent him flying, but his armor had taken most of the blow for him. And whatever damage was actually done to him, would heal within a few minutes. He was basically just left with a general annoyance. He was pissed to have been knocked off track.

He decided to get revenge. He flung himself at the huge beast and buried his sword in it's chest, while he brought his knife up higher and stabbed the horned beast in the forehead. The oversized calf broke down into dust, and Percy fell a few feet onto the ground. When he landed, he went for his original target. Lamia. That bitch needed to go. And apparently she felt the same way about him, because she was making a bee line straight for him. He met her half way and feigned a leap, but actually dropped to his knees and slid into her from bellow. Because of his position, he used riptide to cut off her legs at the knees. Then he sprang up and decapitated her. Another one down.

Then he spotted Medussa. Or rather, sensed her. He wasn't sure how he hadn't taken her out yet. She was pretty damn dangerous, and he was the best candidate to take her down, since he could 'see' perfectly well with his eyes closed. That was what he loved about his senses. He squeezed his eyes shut and went straight for her. On his way, he noticed that Thalia was having some trouble with Echidna. He sent a wave of shadows crashing into the mother of monsters from across the battlefield. He wasn't about to let that psycho touch his cousin. And it seemed his brief distraction was both good and bad. Good for Thalia, bad for him. Good for Thalia because she was able to stab Echidna in the throat with her spear, killing her instantly. He crossed Echidna off his mental list of the hard hitters. Bad for him, because the Chimera launched itself at him. He noticed it a second too late, and he felt it's poison flow through his veins. He cursed, and shook it off of him. Chaos' first and second blessings made him virtually immune to most poisons, but it still hurt like a motherfucker. It burned him from the inside like fire. Medusa could wait. He went after the Chimera with a vengeance. He cut off all of it's limbs and it's tail. Then he used the shadows to slowly crush it's skull. It dissolved into dust. And he moved on.

He finally got to Medusa. She wasn't even really fighting. She was just standing there, glaring at everyone. It was pretty funny. Of course, he knew why. She was glaring at people, trying to get them to glance at her and turn to stone. Artemis, Thalia, and all of the hunters knew better of course, so she wasn't really having much of an effect. He leaped at her from up high, and cut off her head with one vicious swing. Then he did the same to her sisters. Then he destroyed Medusa's head, since he knew from experience that it could still turn people to stone, without being attached to the rest of the body.

He took a second to asses the situation. They had mostly won. There had been a total of three Drakons, and one of them was gone, while Artemis and Thalia were double-teaming the last one. They had it on the ropes. One of them must have finished off Kampe too. She was gone. Which only left one heavy hitter. The original Hydra. And it was quite the beast. They had all left it alone purposefully. That was going to take some doing. The main problem with it was the fact that the heads needed to be cauterized after they were severed. And none of them had the means to do so. Percy's armory from Chaos' realm hadn't included a flame thrower. Those were against the Geneva Conventions. He wasn't about to use one, so he hadn't brought it. Of course, torture was also against the Geneva Conventions, but he tried not to think about that.

The hunters had taken care of all of the remaining regular monsters. It was just them and the Hydra left. He wondered if Artemis' beams of Godly energy were actually made of energy. If they were, then they would certainly burn. Maybe one such blast to the stumps would be enough to cauterize them. But it was only a maybe. Artemis and Thalia joined him in front of the Hydra, and they started a conversation while dodging it's blasts of fire. Having Leo around would have been a massive help by that point.

"What are we gonna do about those heads?" Thalia yelled as she combat rolled.

"Percy, I'm open to suggestions right about now?" Artemis roared as she flung herself across the field in a desperate dodge.

"Artemis, those beams of energy that you fire! Are they actually energy?" he yelled back.

"What?" she shouted incredulously.

"Just tell me!"

"Is this really the time for a lesson in the divine?" she deadpanned.

He resisted the face-palm, "If they're made of energy, they'll burn. We can decapitate it without any issue!" he explained quickly.

Artemis thought for a moment, "Honestly, I've never really thought about it!" she told him sheepishly.

"Are you fucking kidding me? All these years, you've never been even a little curious?"

"I don't know!" she shouted defensively, "It's always just been a thing I could do. Do you question how you can breathe?"

"Yes, I do! And then I found out! There's a whole science based around that sort of thing! It's called biology!"

"Yeah, well, bite me, smartass!" she called back maturely.

Not one to be challenged on maturity, he stuck his tongue out at her, and almost got it burned off by the Hydra.

He decided it was worth a try. He grabbed at the shadows and formed them into a spear, which he flung into it's middle head. It let out an earth-shattering screech, and he dissipated the spear, and re-fashioned the shadows into a giant cleaver, which he brought down over it's neck, decapitating the beast.

"Try it!" he shouted at Artemis, who sent a blast of energy into the stump.

For a brief, wonderful moment, he thought it worked. The wound blistered and smoked, but then it healed right up. Now there was yet another head for them to deal with. They all cursed and started dodging again. Percy went right back to the drawing board. What could they use to cauterize the wounds? He used his senses to search the area for anything flammable. Maybe they could have Thalia use lightning to set something on fire, and they could use that. But there was nothing anywhere near them.

And only then did it dawn on him why they had made that camp out of stone, rather than wood like all of the others. Stone wasn't flammable. And he also understood why they had chosen the location. It wasn't just to throw off suspicion as the first place they had attacked. They were in the middle of the damn desert. And there were no trees anywhere nearby. Maybe there had been a few, here and there before, but the monsters had torn them all down when they had moved in. They had made an excellent decision in building the camp there.

Then he had a thought. Maybe they didn't need Thalia to light anything on fire for them to use as a weapon. Maybe her lightning could do the job on it's own. He decided to risk it. He dodged as close to Thalia as he could get.

"Thalia! I'm gonna cut off another head. When I do, you blast that thing with as much lightning as you can produce! It might be enough to cauterize it!"

He saw her nod, and he repeated the process with the shadows. The giant spear to weaken it, and then the huge cleaver like a guillotine. As soon as he did, Thalia shocked the thing with a blast so big, it might have been from the master bolt itself.

And it worked. The stump closed off and there were no regenerating heads. The huge monster screeched again. Percy and Artemis grinned at each other. They had their method of attack. But Thalia already looked tired. Percy cursed under his breathe and ran over to her. He picked her up in his arms and ran her over to one of the buildings, where they would have some cover.

"Thals? You ok?"

She nodded, out of breathe.

"That was one hell of a blast. But it worked! How many more of those do you think you've got in you?" he asked.

Thalia hesitated. She craned her neck and looked out of one of the windows. He saw her counting the heads. 8 of them. She hesitated again.

"I can take them all out," she said confidently. Or at least, she was trying to sound confident. She didn't really. But he had faith in her.

"Ok. I'm gonna go out there. You wanna stay in here? No reason for you to dodge all that crap with us. You can blast it from here, can't you?"

She nodded.

"Yeah, that'll work," she told him. She was starting to sound better.

"Ok. Give me a shout whenever you think you're ready for another one. I'll cut off one of it's heads and you can blast it."

She nodded again. He squeezed her shoulder, and went back out with Artemis. She had stamina for days, seeing as she was a Goddess and all, but he still would feel better if he were out there with her.

She looked at him as he approached her, clearly worried about Thalia.

"How is she?"

"She's good. And she says she's got enough juice left in her to take out the rest of the heads. We've just gotta give her a bit of a rest in between blasts. I told her to give me a shout whenever she's ready for another one."

Artemis nodded, "I'll take off the next head."

He raised an eyebrow, "How exactly are you planning on doing that?" he asked curiously.

She didn't reply verbally. She just offered him an excited grin and kept dodging the fire and acid blasts. Another minute went by, and they heard Thalia yell out, "I'm ready!", so Percy stepped aside and let Artemis do her thing. She grinned over at him one more time, and then darted around the monster and came at it from behind. She climbed on top of it and ran along it's back until she reached one of the necks. She spent a few moments charging up another beam of divine energy and unleashed it into the monster's neck. It worked just fine. There was another deafening screech, and the head fell to the ground while the neck twitched wildly. Immediately, Artemis put as much distance as she could between herself and that stump. Another massive lightning bolt rained down on it, and just like before, it was enough to stop it from growing back.

Percy dashed back to the house and checked on Thalia. She gave him a thumbs up, but she looked pretty pale. Almost sickly. He was really starting to doubt if she could handle another 7. He was starting to doubt if she could handle another 2. But he didn't say anything. He just ran back out into the courtyard and started thinking about alternate ways to take care of the rest of the heads. He was getting worried about Thalia. The size of the blasts were ridiculous, but he doubted that her regular ones would have the necessary power to cauterize the wounds. It was an all-or-nothing situation.

Suddenly Artemis dashed into the house with Thalia and stayed there for a few moments. Then she came back and kept distracting the Hydra, along with Percy. He knew what she had done. She had done the same exact thing for him when he had shadow travelled all of the hunters up to the cliff. She had given Thalia a few pieces of Ambrosia and a canteen of Nectar.

It wasn't long before Thalia yelled out again. She was ready for another one. Artemis turned to him and fixed him with a look that said 'this one's mine too' and he had no objection to it.. From there on in, they would decide who got what. He had thought she would repeat the process like before. But that wasn't how she did it. Instead, she ran over to it until she was directly beneath the head she chose to sever, and blasted it from there. The head exploded away and left a messy stump. Artemis went dashing away back next to him and they both heard the now-familiar sound of the hydra screeching in agony. Then there was another enormous blast of lightning and the wound was cauterized.

'6 to go' he thought.

Again, he ran in to check on Thalia. By the time he got there, she was already munching on more ambrosia. She was sweating pretty badly and she looked even more pale than before. He was starting to get worried. No way could she handle another 6 of those. It was going to kill her, before she killed the Hydra. Percy decided to take things into his own hands. Because even with Ambrosia and Nectar, Thalia wasn't going to last very long. She was already on the way out. From the looks of her, she was going to pass out before very long.

Percy looked out of the window to check on Artemis. She was doing ok. She was in no imminent danger from the Hydra. So, he shadow traveled away. He needed to be quick. He came out of the shadows in an alley in New York, right next to a big shopping center. He ran inside, looking incredibly ragged. He didn't care. The first thing he picked up, was a lighter. Then he ran around for a little while until he found hairspray. He paid for the items as quickly as he could, and went back to the alley. He shadow traveled back to the monster camp, into the building with Thalia, where he had left from. He'd been right. She was totally unconscious. He was glad he had gone.

He ran back out into the battlefied and Artemis was still doing her thing. She caught sight of him and grinned.

"You took your time!"

"Yeah, I went shopping!"

She looked totally confused. He held up the items he had bought. The lighter. The hairspray. She looked at them, totally blank. She had no idea what he was going to do with them. He smirked.

"Percy, I don't think now is the time for accessorizing!" she told him, gesturing at the hairspray.

"No?"

"No!"

"Ah, well. Watch this!"

And with that, he ran at the hydra. Instead of a guillotine of shadows, he used Riptide to sever another one of the heads. He dodged away from it and saw Artemis' bewildered expression. Thalia hadn't called out that she was ready, so she couldn't imagine why he was making their lives all the more difficult.

As soon as he was far enough away, he opened the hairspray and flicked on the lighter. And he blasted the Hydra with his home-made flamethrower. The look on Artemis' face was spectacular. Her jaw practically hit the ground and her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Her eyebrows hit her hairline. He just grinned at her smugly. That was enough to snap her out of it. Her eyes narrowed and she crossed her arms over her chest. She was pouting. It was weirdly cute. Like, it was, but it wasn't. It was quasi-cute.

The hairspray-lighter combo was enough to cauterize the Hydra head. He weighed the can of hairspray in his hand. He figured there was enough in there for him to take out the rest of the heads without having to go shopping again.

Unfortunately, he was a bit distracted by Artemis and her cute/not-cute pouting. The Hydra caught him on the arm with it's acid spray. Luckily, he had his armor on, which helped a lot. But it totally scorched the shit out of his right hand, and the lower part of his neck. He let out an involuntary scream. Before he knew what was going on, Artemis was next to him, pouring Nectar down his throat and splashing some on his hand and neck. He felt it helping immediately, providing some relief to the horrible burning feeling. He caught a look at Artemis. She looked panicked. Her eyes had widened again and they were scanning him all over, checking for damage.

Then they were forced apart. He noticed the Hydra getting ready for a fire blast, and he shoved her away from him and dodged backwards. The fire missed both of them, and they regrouped as best as they could. Percy spent a second concentrating on his powers. He managed to draw some more moisture out of the thick desert air and used it to speed up his healing. Chaos' second blessing was already helping him out, but it was pretty damn painful. He turned the water ice cold, because the acid was burning pretty horribly. He was 99% sure that he heard Phoebe chuckling to herself, but it might have been his imagination. He could certainly imagine her finding that funny. Or at least amusing.

Artemis dashed over to him again.

"You should get in there with Thalia! Recover for a little bit! Give me the fire thing."

He shook his head and took a deep breath.

"No, no I'm fine. I can handle it. You take care of the next head. I'll cauterize it."

She furrowed her eyebrows at him.

"I wasn't asking, Perseus! Get in there and heal!"

"I wasn't asking either, Artemis! I keep telling you, you're not my boss. Now, are we gonna do this, or what?"

Her jaw clenched and her lips pursed but she got on with it. There were still 5 heads left. He forced himself to keep going. Part of his training with Chaos had been on how to resist torture. The same methods could basically be applied to this situation. Parts of his skin had been horribly burned, but they would heal. It was nothing permanent, just horrible pain. And he could deal with pain. He forced his mind to ignore it. That was rarely a good idea, seeing as how pain was actually pretty good for a person, but he had to focus. He was no good to anyone if he was distracted. So, he decapitated another of the Hydra's heads and used his homemade flamethrower to cauterize the wound again.

'4 left, motherfucker' he thought vengefully.

He sent a long spear of shadows into the Hydra's chest. It wasn't a fatal shot by any means, and it got them no closer to killing the damn thing, but it made it screech in pain yet again, and that was helping to satisfy the part of his brain that demanded retribution. For his suffering.

Artemis shot him a concerned look, but he could tell it had nothing to do with what he had just done. He doubted she had any problem with him inflicting pain upon the ancient beast. She was probably just concerned for his well-being, just as she had been immediately after he had taken the hit.

Together, they managed to take care of the rest of the heads. It was a fairly drawn-out process, but since they had an easier way of cauterizing the heads, it was a lot quicker than waiting for Thalia to 'recharge' each time. As they took out the last one, he quickly checked on her with his enhanced senses. He wanted to make sure she was ok. He heard her heart beating. Strong and steady. He heard her breathing. Soft and even. She was perfectly fine, just asleep. And she would probably stay that way for a little while.

Once all of the heads were destroyed and the Hydra was dead, he looked Artemis over. She was sweating lightly. It had been a while since she'd had a fight quite like that. And she was thriving off of it. That much was clear. Despite her obvious fatigue, she was radiating positivity in a way he had never seen her do before. It was only a second later that he noticed she was doing the same thing to him, as he was doing to her. Her eyes were raking up and down his body. He knew exactly what she was seeing. His massive frame was clung to by sweat, which he used his water powers to get rid of. He was covered in dust and dirt, which had been mud until he had removed the excess moisture from himself. He had a few cuts and scapes along the parts of his body that weren't protected by his armor. He probably looked like he had just been through a battle, which he obviously had. He noticed that she was mainly focusing on the burn marks on his right hand and across his neck. She was making sure they weren't getting worse. He knew that they weren't. Chaos' second blessing was doing it's job. They would be fine in a day or so. Maybe longer. He had no idea how potent Hydra acid was.

Once she had confirmed to herself that he wasn't about to drop dead, she gave him a grin that suited her face perfectly. He liked it when she smiled at him like that. He noticed she was doing it with slightly increasing frequency. He liked that little fact, and wondered if she was aware of it or not.

"Well, wasn't that fun?" she asked brightly.

He laughed

"You've gotten pretty bloodthirsty, huh?" he teased.

She gave him that same pout/not-pout, but he could tell that it was more playful that time.

"Not 'bloodthirsty' per se!" she said, drawing out the last syllable.

"No no," he said, "It's pronounced, 'Percy'. Say it with me now…" he trailed off.

She rolled her eyes at him, but she couldn't quite keep the smile off her face. She'd found it funny.

"Crazy how that one monster took up like 90% of the battle, huh?"

"Yeah, that one kind of screwed us up. Having Leo around would have been pretty helpful, huh?"

"Yeah, sure, I guess," she mumbled.

He smirked victoriously, pleased that he had gotten her to admit that Leo of all people, would have been a welcome addition.

And then it happened. He had sensed it a second too late. A split second, even. If he had just been slightly faster, then he would have been able to dodge it, at least slightly. But no, he had been too distracted by Artemis. For the second time that battle, he noted angrily. That woman - Goddess, whatever - was going to be the death of him one day. And that day might not even be too far from then. It might been the day.

One second, he had been standing there, laughing along with Artemis. And then the next quarter-second had played out in slow-motion. First, Artemis' eyes had widened considerably. Gone were the half-smile and playful, amused expression. They had been replaced with the look of sheer terror, while her gaze fixed on something behind him.

He hadn't sensed it. Hadn't sensed them. And neither had Artemis. And neither had her hunters, all of whom had been on their way down to the courtyard from their positions on the walls.

An instant after he had registered the look on her face, his senses had reached out to try and identify what was causing it. They would be faster than him turning around and looking. More detailed too. And that was when he had realized what was wrong. He realized why Artemis looked so scared. And he felt that same terror clutch at his heart.

He had been trying to turn around when the colossal fist he had sensed, slammed into his kidney at full force, and sent him flying across the courtyard, into the wall. He hit it with such force, that the pure stone cracked against his body. Parts of it even crumbled and fell away.

His mind only registered one word as he was flying through the air.

"Giant." he had thought.

But when he landed painfully, and managed to turn around properly and take a look, he realized that he had been wrong. Not just a Giant. Giants. All of them. And they were ready for combat. There was no doubt about that. They were all standing side-by-side, dressed for battle. They were all wearing full armor, all of it gold. They were each carrying their weapons. None of them was standing at their full height, instead choosing to be closer to Percy and Artemis' size. A casual observer would have laughed at the sight of them.

"A bunch of muscled-up cosplayers" they would have thought.

But everyone that was there knew better. These were the most dangerous beings on the planet. And there were around a dozen of them.

It was clear that they had all spent their time wisely, just as Percy and his friends had. Just like Zeus and the Olympians hadn't. That was the problem with being in total, unchallenged power. It bred complacency. And that was precisely what Zeus and his council had become. Complacent. They saw no need to train and better themselves. That was one of the main reasons why Percy was so confident that he could take any of them. He was willing to bet every cent and every drachma he had ever earned that the last time Zeus had even held a weapon had been during the Giant war. He had ruled unopposed for too long, and he had gotten so fucking lazy.

But a mere glance at the Giants assembled before him, told Percy the exact opposite story. They hadn't been in power. They hadn't grown complacent. They'd had to struggle and fight for everything they had, and it showed. Tartarus was a pretty horrible place, as Percy could personally verify.

Even though they were all immortal and could alter their appearance at will, their eyes told him the story. They looked hungry. They looked ready. They were willing to do what was necessary. And he could tell that he was fucked. His best hope was to get the hell away as fast as he could. It was hardly honorable or heroic, but fuck honor and fuck heroics. They were no good to you if you were dead.

But it was more complicated than that. For one, Thalia was sleeping soundly in the main structure of the camp. He made sure that he wasn't masking his presence at all. If his own aura was as potent as it could be, then hopefully it would shield Thalia from their senses. She was alone in there and completely defenseless. She would be captured and likely tortured for information, and then killed. He wasn't about to let that happen to his cousin. As the most vulnerable person in the area, she was his top priority. After Thalia, he wasn't sure who was the most defenseless. It was either the hunt as a whole, or Artemis herself. She was trying to hide it, especially in the face of so many powerful enemies, but she was pretty tired after the drawn out fight with the Hydra, and all of the powerful monsters that preceded it. She wasn't at her best, and even at her best, she would have been overwhelmed instantly. Had she been at full power, facing off against any one of them with a demigod at her side, he would probably have given the outcome even odds. 50-50. She could win, or she could lose. He wouldn't be particularly surprised either way. But in her current state? Against that many opponents? Forget it. And her hunt wasn't in much better shape. They had spent a lot of time firing arrows, and drawing back on the drawstring took a lot more strength than it seemed. So they were all tired from what had already been a pretty long battle. They were nowhere near ready for another confrontation, much less one with a bunch of Giants. Even if they were at full strength, he doubted they could have done much against opponents of such power. The huntresses were at their most effective when they were facing regular monsters. They could take a lot of them, and they were very efficient about it, but against any given opponent with the power of the Giants? Nope. They wouldn't make a dent. And they were facing the same handicaps as Artemis herself. They were tired, and there were simply too many of them.

So he was left with a question. Who would he evacuate first? Because that was the only option. Evacuation. They had to get as far away as they possibly could. Another planet might not have been overkill. But he wasn't sure who to take first. He wasn't in great shape himself. The battle had taken a decent bit out of him. He was somewhat injured. Mostly from the single punch that the Giant had landed on him. It had been a colossal thing. The hardest blow he had ever taken. He was sure that several of his ribs were completely shattered, even through the amazing armor that he was wearing. He shuddered to think what would have happened to his body without it. The shattered ribs would hinder him in battle. A lot. They would heal well-enough on their own with Chaos' second blessing fueling the process, but it would take a very long time. Time he didn't have. And he was fairly drained, in terms of his powers. He'd used them a lot throughout the whole thing. The Titans and Giants had picked their moment well.

Then he realized that they hadn't picked their moment well. They had taken any picking out of the equation. They had manufactured the moment. All of those ancient and powerful monsters had been sacrificed. They'd been sacrificed in order to lure Olympus' best fighters into a trap. So now, not only were they perfectly positioned for the Giants, but they were all weak and tired. Credit where credit was due, it was clever. Percy was suddenly incredibly thankful that they hadn't brought his friends along. No doubt they were supposed to be with them. All of them together might have been able to do some decent damage to about half of them. It wouldn't have been worth it. Best for his friends to get to live to fight another day.

Percy assessed the situation as best as he could. 'Bleak' was the first word to come to mind. 'Shit' was the second. He decided to get the hunters out. It was what Artemis would want him to do. And he could come back for her. But he might not even have to. She could still teleport out by herself. The hunters couldn't. He forced himself to use his powers a little bit more. The hunters had gathered together and were watching the terrifying attack force timidly. He had never thought he would use that word to describe them, but there he was. He drew moisture out of the air, and used it to make an arrow out of water. He placed it right in front of the hunters, and pointed it towards the house with Thalia. They got the message and snuck their way over there. Luckily, all of the Giants' attention was focused on himself and Artemis. They were standing a few feet in front of the house with Thalia, and the hunters had been behind them. They wouldn't notice them sneak inside.

Once all of the hunters were in, he fought to bring his powers forth again. He drew more water from the hot desert air, and bent it into words inside the house, where he hoped the hunters could see them. He spelled out,

"Grab Lt."

His senses confirmed that someone picked up Thalia bridal-style and brought her to the center of their group. Then he reshaped the water.

"Prep. for exit."

They all joined together so they were at least touching. That would be enough. He felt overwhelming gratitude to them for knowing what he meant. As tired as he was, even just using his powers in such a simple way was draining him.

His plan was to run in, and shadow travel them all away. Once they were safe, he would shadow travel back and see if Artemis had also teleported away. If she had, he would just go back to the hunters and they could Iris-Message her and join up. If she hadn't, then he would buy her as much time as she needed to get out.

There was only one problem with that plan. There were roughly a dozen Giants standing between him and the house with the hunters.

He took a deep breath, and formed an idea. It wasn't a very good idea, but they didn't really have any other options at that moment. He simply walked over to Artemis, who was standing about halfway between where he had landed and the Giants. He stood next to her and whispered to her as quietly as he could,

"Stand with me until they make a move for us. When I make a run for it, flash away. I'll get everyone out. You just get as far away as you can."

He could feel that she wanted to resist, but she just nodded her head a fraction. He took another deep breath. His ribs were killing him. Just walking over to her had been pure torture. He had no idea how he was going to manage the next part.

The demigod and the Goddess stood together for a while, just waiting. He was waiting for them to move first. He needed to. As it was, they were far too close to the house. He needed them to get further away from it.

He found himself wishing that Sara had never left. If she'd been with them, he would have had absolutely no worries. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that she could have taken them all. All she would need is to have Artemis fire an arrow into each of them when she was done. And a demigod too, since Sara was technically a mortal. With him helping, even in his weakened state, they would have made quick work of the opposition, and turned their own ambush against them. Not to mention the massive help that her mere presence would provide. He missed her sunny disposition. He just missed her.

A few moments after the standoff started, the Giants moved together. But it wasn't some big charge. They were just walking along. Almost strolling. Moving with the complete confidence that anyone would have in their situation. They were going to win, and they knew it. And they were making sure Percy and Artemis knew it too. The slow, measured stride was a show of confidence. Confidence that they had earned. Percy put a hand on Artemis' wrist to tell her to wait. He held it there for as long as he dared. When he figured the Giants were at the right distance.

Then he dashed forwards. His peripheral vision caught the enormous explosion of light that Artemis made as she flashed away somewhere. That helped him quite a bit. The magnitude of the light was enough to make even the Giants squint and cover their eyes. It gave Percy a few precious seconds to move without them seeing him and reacting to him. He used his time as best as he could. He moved as fast as he could possibly go. His ribs were screaming at him. He felt like each step hurt as much as a punch, about as hard as anything Ares could deliver at full power. But he pushed himself on. He had to get the hunters out. So he did his best to shove the agony away from his mind, just as he had done with the - considerably lesser - pain from the acid burns.

He jumped over the Giants' heads and kept running for the house. Landing after the jump had almost made him black out, but he just stumbled on. He got to the door, shoved it open, and found all of the hunters inside. They were all linked together, holding hands. Including Thalia, who was still unconscious, held by Helen. But there was a problem. The Giants were on his tail. They were right behind him. They were too close. He made a desperate leap for the closest hunter to the door. It happened to be Phoebe. And she was reaching out to him. The overwhelming danger of the situation had overruled any hatred she had for him. Their lives were more important.

With a mental cry of relief, he felt his fingers make contact with Phoebe's palm. They were ready to go.

With a mental cry of anguish, he felt the Giant's fingers grab his ankle. If he shadow traveled, the Giant - Alcyoneus, he suspected - was coming with them.

And that was not what they wanted. He had absolutely no idea where Alcyoneus had reformed, and therefore they couldn't kill him no matter what. And there was no way they could make him tell them. So even if they were capable of fighting him and winning, he would have the last laugh.

Percy was stuck. But he had one small advantage. Really, two of them. The first was his mind. Something he had been born with. He had always been able to think a lot faster than most people. It had served him well during his time at Camp Half-Blood, and then again at Camp Jupiter. Quick thinking was always valued. And Percy took it to a whole other level. In a matter of seconds, he was able to mentally work through more than most people could in an hour. The second advantage came from the first of Chaos' blessings. It had slowed down his perception of time around him. Really, it had made him faster, among other things, but that had the added effect of making things around him appear slower. Those two advantages combined, came together to form something quite interesting. When his adrenaline seriously kicked in, he had all the time in the world to think things through. So, while he only had a split second to figure out what to do about his current predicament, Percy could use that split second to the absolute fullest, and figure out the best course of action.

He went back and forth. He considered shadow traveling anyway, despite the Giant's hold on his foot, and risking the consequences. He considered avoiding shadow traveling, and instead shaking off the Giant's hold, and then trying again. But he dismissed both options. The potential consequences were simply too great to risk going anyway, and there was too much risk to the hunters now that the Giants knew they were there.

In the end, he decided to try something he had never even attempted before. He had thought about it before, and ultimately saw no reason that it wouldn't be possible, but thinking something theoretically and doing it practically, were two extremely different things. They were about as different as two things could get. But he tried anyway. Because he had no other options.

He shadow traveled. But he didn't take himself. He only sent the hunters. He had never shadow traveled anything without himself going with it before. Again, he saw no reason it couldn't be done. But he wasn't sure if it even worked that way. But it did. It took absolutely all of the strength he had left in him, but he had managed it. It nearly killed him. Sending that large of a group, in a way he had never attempted before, had nearly torn him apart from the inside out. Or at least, that was what it had felt like at the time. It was like the very muscles in his stomach had turned into snakes, coiling around and squeezing all of his intestines. But he had done it. He had secured the hunters, without sending the Giant with them. For a brief instant, he wondered where he had sent them. He hadn't actually thought of that. He had just been so focused on getting them the hell out of there. Then he saw that he had sent them to Dubai. He wasn't sure why. That had just sprung to mind as the place for them to go. Certainly, the Giants wouldn't go looking for them there, and it was definitely far away enough.

Which left him alone. Against some of the most powerful beings on the planet. And he was already half-dead. Something told him they were about to take the 'Half' out of the equation.

With his grasp of Percy's foot, Alcyoneus slammed him face-first into the ground. Percy felt his nose break, and most of his teeth loosen in his mouth. His eyes felt like they were going to burst, right there in his skull. The ribs that hadn't already been shattered by the first punch and subsequent landing, broke on impact with the ground. He could actually feel shards of ribs puncturing his lungs. And to top it all off, the ankle that Alcyoneus had been grasping, twisted almost 180 degrees. He was fucked.

If he had the lung capacity, he would have screeched so loudly, that he would have put the Hydra to absolute shame. He wasn't sure if he had even been in so much pain in his life. Not even during all the brutal years of training with Chaos, had he been hurt quite so badly. He was going to die. And he knew it. And they knew it. He tried to summon the same anger that he had summoned against the bucket-hat-man, in the elevator at the library in New York. He tried to find that indomitable will to live. To survive. But it just wasn't there. He was far too broken to even attempt a comeback.

But despite that, there was a flicker of hope still in him. Just a tiny little ray of sunshine. And that hope was Artemis. He figured that Artemis would give it a minute, and then Iris-Message Phoebe or Thalia, or any of the hunters. When she got through, they would tell her that he wasn't with them, and had only sent them there without joining them. Artemis would figure out what he had done, and if she had the energy, she might flash back to the camp, and try to get him out. Somehow. He couldn't even begin to guess how she was going to go about that, but he just hoped against hope that she would. Even as every part of his body was exploding in untold agony, he figure how much time it would take her to come back. If she came back. He figured she would be there in about 2 minutes. But whether he would be alive when she arrived, was a whole other matter. He wasn't sure about that.

Alcyoneus picked him up again, by the same twisted ankle as before, and dragged him out. Percy was barely even aware of his face dragging painfully against the hard ground. It was nothing compared to the pain he was already in. He heard Alcyoneus talking to the others.

"The brat managed to get them out of here. No idea where he sent them."

The rest of them all looked pissed about that. Percy managed to take some small joy from that. He loved annoying people that were trying to kill him. It was a wonderful little feeling. Like revenge-lite.

He was sent stumbling into their ranks, and he decided he wasn't going down without a fight. It wouldn't be a very good fight, and he would do almost nothing to them, but he wasn't about to lie down and simply accept death. He was going to show them that he was made of tougher stuff than that.

But he wasn't really. At least, not physically. Physically, he was broken. His body could barely function. Any normal person would have been dead several times over by that point. But he still had his powers.

He sent a wave of shadows into the closest Giant he could see. It turned out to be Porphyrion. It was enough to make the King of the Giants stumble back a step. But only a step. Then he stepped back in with a look of rage and sent Percy flying. Probably another few bones broken. If there had been any left to break. He somehow managed to force his way back up. There was another Giant flying at him. It was Otis. Percy would have been able to dodge it, but with so many injuries, there was little for him to do but take it.

The Giant's knee crunched into the side of Percy's jaw, dislocating it immediately. Percy let out a groan of pain. Then Ephialtes joined his brother. Percy had a little bit more time to react to him and created water from the moisture in the air, just as he had done before. He condensed it as much as he could to make it as thick as possible. He was planning to use it as a shield. It didn't work. Ephialtes broke through it like it wasn't even there, and then carried on to break Percy's left arm at the elbow, making it bend 90 degrees in the wrong direction. Again, Percy couldn't even scream.

Percy went stumbling away. They let him. They knew that he couldn't possibly pose a threat to them. He was about to try something, when he felt a hard kick in the base of his spine. One of the fuckers had snuck up behind him. He reacted as best as he could. He spun around as he went stumbling away from the blow, and used what he could muster of his shadow powers to send a wall of darkness at his attacker - Porphyrion again. The King of the Giants just swatted through it with his hand, like he was shooing off an annoying fly. It was that easy. The shadows just dissolved into nothing. And that was it. Percy had no energy left. He just collapsed. Porphyrion walked over to him and picked him up by the same twisted ankle that Alcyoneus had used to drag him along.

Next, he was aware of the fact that he was tossed into the middle of their little circle. The next thing he felt was a hard kick to the side of the face. It felt like he was hit by a bus. His left eardrum shattered on impact. He couldn't even scream in pain. His lungs wouldn't take in the necessary air to make a sound. He doubted he would even be able to cry. No doubt his tear ducts were ruptured too.

"Aaawwhhhhh. Look at the little brat. He's crying. Like a little baby!" one of them crowed.

Well, he supposed that answered that question. In his defense, he was in more pain than most people could even imagine, let alone endure.

Then he became aware of it. He realized they were right. He was crying. Or maybe not crying. His eyes were just leaking fluid. There were definite tears, but also a lot of blood. A bunch of blood vessels had burst behind his eyes.

Then, he felt a massive hand envelop his head. He thought that was it. He thought they were just going to crush his skull like an egg and be done with it. But apparently not. Instead, they hoisted him onto his feet, and shoved him around for a while, from Giant to Giant, laughing as they did it. And he was just stumbling around like a headless chicken. A few seconds later, he regained his bearings enough to launch a brutal punch into the next Giant he was pushed into. It was Enceladus, he thought. Or he might have been delusional. That was entirely possible. But he was pretty sure he landed a decent blow on the Giant.

He saw Enceladus go stumbling away clutching his face in both hands. Instantly, the laughs from the rest of the group turned silent. He had just landed a blow against one of their own because they had stopped paying attention. They were serious again. Polybotes grabbed him from behind and crippled the arm that he had used to punch Enceladus. Again, Percy couldn't even scream. He barely even wheezed out a sound of pain. Polybotes didn't simply break it. He absolutely destroyed it. If he was a normal human, that arm would never be functional again. Then again, if he was a normal human, he would have been dead a long time ago.

And apparently destroying his arm wasn't enough revenge for the punch that Enceladus had already recovered from. And it was Enceladus himself who landed the next few. He decided to make damn sure that not a single one of Percy's ribs were left intact. Once he had confirmed that vital piece of information, he did what Polybotes had done to his arm, but to his leg.

And they continued like that for a while. They slowly, methodically broke every bone in his body. They shattered his other eardrum. They cut out his tongue. They tore his hair out of his scalp in big, heavy clumps. And they cut off his eyelids, to make sure he couldn't avoid seeing what they were doing to him, while they did it.

And Artemis' 2 minutes came and went. No sign of her.

He had pretty much lost hope. And then something happened, which had he been able to, would have made him cry. There was an enormous flash of light, which he had no choice but to turn his entire body away to avoid being incinerated. It was the flash of light that came with a God flashing in or away. But it was a lot more intense.

When the light died down, he turned back and found the entire Olympian council, and all of his friends from Camp Jupiter, dressed in full battle gear, weapons drawn. His friends looked murderous. His father looked beyond murderous. He looked ready to kill all of the Giants all on his own. Artemis looked like she was on the verge of depression. She looked so guilty, that he would have genuinely expected her to break into tears. Aphrodite looked almost as angry as his father. But it was a different kind of anger. When most people got angry; truly angry, it manifested within them as heat. Most people described it that way. That they get 'hot with rage'. But Percy wasn't like that. He didn't really experience hot anger. Instead, he lived off of ice-cold fury. And a single glance told him that Aphrodite was the same way. Poseidon's rage was like a Nuclear Reactor about to melt down. Aphrodite's fury seemed more like an unrelenting machine. He barely noticed it and was hardly in the right frame of mind to analyze it further. He made a mental note to think about it a bit later.

The moment they arrived, they all sprung into battle. They launched themselves at the Giants, and they all started going for each other. Poseidon was fighting like a demon. He was almost glowing with pure power. Aphrodite too. She was using a knife, and she was fighting dirty. She was going for crotches and eyes and throats. He liked that. But there was one Olympian who wasn't fighting. Apollo hadn't even engaged with them. He'd run straight to Percy, and checked him over. The more he looked at him, the more pale the sun God became. After a moment or two, Apollo turned him over, so that he was face-down in the dirt. Percy tried to protest, since he couldn't breath that way, but then he realized what was going on. Apollo had rolled him over because he couldn't close his eyes, and they were about to flash away.

To confirm his thoughts, they flashed to Olympus a moment later. Instantly, Percy was rolled over onto his front, and he was in a comfortable bed. The God of healing placed his hands on Percy's temples, and said,

"Sleep" in a powerful voice.

Before he knew what was going on, he was unconscious.

A/N: Well, that's that one folks. Thanks for reading. Let me know what you thought. Just like the others, this chapter has been betaed by Anon516, so thanks to them for all the quality-of-life improvements you've picked up on. Stay safe, everyone.