Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: And chapter 2, here we go!

For readers newer to my PJO fics, yes, there is Ancient Greek in this chapter, and there will be in future chapters. I will always gloss Ancient Greek unless it becomes a repetitive phrase, which one of these will, so you don't need to worry about putting it through Google Translate. It's not like that would work very well anyways, haha.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

Ἐνδέσματα – Amulets

Μὰ θεούς – By the gods/I swear to gods

~Say A Little Prayer~

~Chapter 2: We Recruit My Friends~

It was, surprisingly, not that hard to convince my friends to join me and Luke.

I waited a few days to go to them, because I wanted us to get the major kinks in our plan worked out first. Mainly, figuring out how we were going togetto Mount Tamalpais, and what we were going to be up against when we got there.

"If I already had Backbiter, getting there wouldn't be a problem," Luke told me with a scowl.

"What's Backbiter?" I asked.

"It's...the sword Kronos had me make, with the intention it would eventually be re-forged into a scythe for him," he revealed. "It's made of two metals: tempered steel and celestial bronze. So, it can harm mortals and immortals alike."

I was a bit in awe, I'm not ashamed to admit. I didn't necessarily like the idea of a blade being able to harm regular mortals, I was still naïve enough to think that they shouldn't be allowed to have many affairs in the godly world because of how dangerous it was then, but it was cool. "I didn't know you could make something like that."

"That's because the Olympians don't want people to know," Luke said. "It's more dangerous than a regular celestial bronze blade, plus...if a mortal blacksmith makes it, they'll die in the process."

My heartbeat nearly came to a stop. Oh.

"Who...who are you having make it, then?" I asked carefully.

He shook his head. "Nobody from camp, trust me. I wouldn't allow anybody here to put themself up to that. And the person whoisdoing it...well, he knew what he was signing up for. Anyways, because of its properties, the sword is more magical than most. It'll be able to create portals with just a slash of it through the air. So, if I had it, I'd be able to get us there fast enough to not risk the Olympians finding out what we're doing." He exhaled loudly. "But it's not ready yet."

I dwelled on that. "Is there any other magical way we could get there?"

"I've heard about the Labyrinth still being around – the maze that Daedalus built to contain the Minotaur," Luke admitted. "But I don't know where the nearest entrance is, or how to find one."

"That's okay," I assured him, reaching out to squeeze his hand. Although, inside, I was angry. I was sure that Kronos knew how to find an entrance to the Labyrinth, even though he'd already been rotting away in Tartarus for millennia when it had been built, because he was a god. Well, a Titan, technically. He was immortal, and this couldn't be his first time trying to overthrow the Olympians. He had to have found out about the Labyrinth before now and how it worked, but of course, he wasn't going to tell Luke about it yet. Not until he was sure he had him wrapped around his little finger.

Some "benevolent god" he was, for sure.

"We can just get there by train," I said. "Sure, it's not the fastest route, but it might actually be the safest. Less magic and whatever, less chance of alerting the Olympians to what we're doing."

He blinked. "You know, I didn't think about it like that."

I grinned, then kissed him on the nose. "That's what I'm here for."

"But I'd still like to go and get the sword after it's been forged, if we can pull this off," he said. "I have a feeling...regardless of who wields it in the end, it'll be important to the war."

I nodded. I could understand that.

As for the other issue, Luke understandably got a lot more serious about it. He explained to me, haltingly, what had happened on his quest. How his dad had given him the quest, apparently out of a desire to see Luke "make him proud." How, unlike me and what the tradition typically dictated, he'd decided to only take Alan Bolloré on the quest with him, who had been his boyfriend at the time. How Alan had died, in his arms.

"Oh, Luke, I'm so sorry," I whispered when he was done. "You shouldn't have had to go through that."

"And you shouldn't have had to go through your quest," he returned with a self-depreciating smile. "None of us should be forced to go on quests just to clean up our godly parents' messes, or earn the least of their shouldn't have to be their pawns, theirslaves."

"No, we shouldn't."

He grabbed my hands in his. "So, you see," he said, in order to sum up the crucial information of his tale, "we're going to have to worry about Ladon. His bite is venomous. And even if we can defeat him, we'll have to worry about the Hesperides, too. Their powers have been mostly locked down by the Olympians, but...they're not afraid to fight through other means."

I stared at his scar, swallowing.

"We'll get through them," I said. "We have to."

Luke chuckled. "At least you have enough optimism for the both of us."

Now, if you're wondering about why we were planning on doing this so quickly, the answer to that is simple, the same as it was before: we didn't want the gods to catch onto us. What was days for us, in comparison to their existences, was only seconds to them. Maybe minutes.

Anyways, the day that I decided it was time to tell my friends, I packed my things into the bag Luke had given me. There wasn't that much. I thought, with a wry twist of a smile, how, in a way, Camp Half-Blood was basically a monster-protected foster care for the Olympians, and even the minor gods.

Oh, sure, they claimed their children when they came here, presuming their children didn't die in the process. But once the kids were here...the gods didn't do anything with them. They didn't spend time with them. They didn't make sure that they were alright, that they had everything that they needed beyond what the camp provided them.

That was not how parents should act. My mom – she hadn't been perfect, far from it. She'd gotten with a guy who'd abused the both of us so I could stay with her a little while longer. But she'd known more about parenting than the Olympianseverwould.

Once we overthrew them, I was going to ensure that demigods, regardless of if they came to camp or not, would never suffer like this again.

Never.

Ironically, when I went out in search of my friends, it was them who found me, not the other way around. I hadn't found them in their cabins, or at the sword-training arena, or the amphitheater, or anywhere else, and so I was walking back towards the bonfire pit and the woods when I felt somebody grab me by the shoulder.

"Ack!" I exclaimed.

"Relax, it's just us," Katie said.

She and Silena were standing in front of me. Silena, naturally, looked far more worried than Katie did, because she always wore her heart on her sleeve. Yet, I could tell the daughter of Demeter was concerned, too.

I nearly breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, I was just wanting to talk to you guys."

"Percy, what's going on with you?" Silena demanded. "You've been acting very weird the past couple of days! I know – I know your mom died, and I can't even begin to imagine how much that hurts – "

"I can," Katie deadpanned.

Silena acted like she hadn't spoken. "But whatever you're doing to grieve for her right now, it's not healthy!"

"She was killed, you mean," I said. "By Hades."

Silena flinched. "Well, yes, but – "

"Luke and I got together," I blurted out then.

Well, "blurted out" implies that it wasn't intentional. It was. I'd decided that this would be the easiest way to break the news of what were doing to them.

"You – you are?" Silena asked faintly.

"Yes."

"Percy, I know what I said before, but I don't know if it's such a good idea for you to be getting into a relationship right – "

"It's fine," I cut over her. "Luke and I talked. It's not like we both don't want this, so why shouldn't we get together?"

"Well – "

"We also talked about something else," I continued. I scratched the back of my neck nervously. "And, uh, that's what I wanted to talk with you guys about."

Katie squinted her eyes at me. "What is it?"

"Hades killed my mom," I repeated. "Yeah, sure, he said that he 'didn't mean it.'" I made the air quotations and everything. It was the only way that I could quell my urge to punch something, like one of the trees next to us. I didn't want to deal with the splinters because of that, or the angry dryad who would then chase after me. "Then he said that Ananke herself told him that it was her fate to die."

Silena frowned. "He was probably telling the truth, Percy."

"'Probably.' But aren't you guys tired of that? Aren't you guys tired of always having to believe them, regardless of if they're actually telling the truth? I mean, I've only known that I was a demigod for, like, a month, and I'm already sick of it!"

"Percy," Katie warned.

"If your mom told you that your dad died, not because of the Ancient Laws, which are also a crock of shit, but because Ananke told her that he had to die, would you be alright with that?" I felt bad for using the death of her dad like that, but it was something that had to be done.

It was like I'd struck her in the face. "Percy..." she said again, much softer this time.

"Your dad, Katie."

"That's not fair, Percy," Silena protested.

"Maybe it's not, but the Olympians aren't fair," I argued. I ran a hand through my hair. "Look, I don't want to argue with you guys. You're my friends. But this, what we go through, isn't normal. Isn't it fucked that, just because of who our parents are, we have to constantly fight for our lives, even when we wear the ἐνδέσματα to hide our scents? Sure, 'That's just the way things are, Percy.' Except, my point is, it doesn't have to be!

"We can change things. This quest just proved that to me," I said. "If we were able to stop a war just by returning back a couple of symbols of power, think about what else we could do. Maybe not as just demigods...but I have a plan for that."

Silena covered her mouth with her hand. Then, she removed it to say, "You can't be saying these kinds of things, Percy! You don't know what the gods will do to you!"

"Don't I?" I snorted. "I'm leaving camp tonight. Me and Luke both are. I want you guys to come with us. You're the only true and best friends that I've ever had. But...I know that I'm asking a lot. I'm asking you to leave behind camp, your other friends, your family." I nodded to Silena here. Katie's father was gone, and she was the only one in her cabin, but the same couldn't be said for the daughter of Aphrodite. She did have her dad, and several half-siblings at camp, who I knew meant the world to her. Then there was Alabaster for her to consider, as she'd told me that he was her crush. "I won't hold it against you if you don't come. But, if you want to...meet us at Thalia's tree at midnight."

I turned on my heel.

"Wait," Katie said.

I stopped.

Her eyes were hard, and I knew she was mad at me for bringing up her dad's death.

But.

"You're my best friend, too," she spoke. She took a step forwards. "And maybe you're right. But...even if you're not, I don't want you and Luke to do whatever it is you're planning by yourselves."

"Katie!" Silena gasped.

"I'm coming with you," Katie told me.

I smiled.

We both looked at Silena.

"No," she said. "No. I'm not leaving my half-siblings behind. And what about Ally? I remember what you said, Percy. If he really does like me like that – "

"I know. But if you do this, you could make it so that they and no other half-blood will ever have to suffer again," I said.

Her bottom lip wobbled. Unlike Katie and her dad, I didn't need to bring up the death of her older half-brother. I could tell that she was already thinking about him.

"Just think about it, okay?" I requested.

With that, I walked away, and Katie came along with me.

It was ten minutes past midnight when Luke grabbed my shoulder. "Come on, Percy," he said gently. "We need to get out of here before the harpies find us."

"Just a few more minutes," I replied absentmindedly, still looking down at the side of the hill that led into the valley.

Would I have been absolutely crushed, if Silena had decided not to come with us? At that point...no. like I said, I would've understood, because she had a lot more incentive to have stayed at camp than any of us had. Of course, I would've been sad, but I thought that I would've been able to get over it.

But as you already know from the beginning of the chapter, she did, in fact, decide to come with us. And that's why I said it was "not that hard," because really, in the grand scheme of things, less than a day's worth of deliberations was not that long at all.

When I saw her running towards the hill, a bag slung over her shoulders, I nearly shouted out in happiness. I didn't, because that would have been a bad idea. Luke had been right; we absolutely didnotwant the harpies catching on to the fact we were out after curfew.

"Silena!" I breathed once she'd scrambled up to the top of the hill. "Μὰ θεούς, Silena!"

"I'm here!" she exclaimed. She gave me a smile, although it didn't quite reach her eyes. "I'm sorry it took so long. I kept on having to think about it, and then when I decided that I – I wanted to come, I wanted to write a letter to my dad and another one to my half-siblings, and I wanted to make sure that they were all asleep before I left..."

"I get it," I said. I pulled her into a hug. "I'm just so happy that you're coming with us."

She looked from me to Luke after we'd separated, and blew a piece of hair out of her face. "So, where are we going?"

"We'll get into that," Luke promised. "But I want us to get the hell away from here first."

Silena scrunched up her nose at his obvious contempt for the camp, something I guess he'd never revealed to anyone else before, but she didn't say anything about it.

Luke gave one last look to Thalia's tree, mournful, and indeed he even went over and said a few words. Not many; I had the feeling that he was just telling her goodbye, nothing more. He'd made his peace with her death a long time ago.

Then, we were off.

We walked about a mile down the road from camp. When we got there, a taxi cab was waiting for us. The driver looked pretty pissed when we walked up to him; his window was rolled down as he smoked a cigar, which made me tense. Nobody noticed. "Are you the kids I was supposed to be waitin' for?"

"Yes," Luke said.

"You're fuckin' late."

"Sorry about that," he said.

The driver grumbled, but he popped the trunk so we could put our bags inside. Silena, Katie, and I squeezed into the back, while Luke took the front; he was too tall to comfortably sit in our row of seats. "Where are we going?"

"Oak Island Yard."

"Fuck!" the driver swore. "You want me to take you to New Jersey?"

Luke handed him a wad of cash. Like, a huge one. I knew that he must've stolen it from the camp store, along with my bag and undoubtedly a whole host of other things. "Will this be enough for your kindness?"

The driver looked at the money with beady eyes. He took it, and counted it up. I watched his eyes grow as he realized that they were all fifty-dollar bills. "'Fine," he said. His tune was considerably happier. "It'll be just fine. Provided this money isn't stolen, that is. I don't wanna get in no trouble."

Luke gave him the best poker face I'd ever seen. "You don't need to worry about that."

We didn't talk about our plans or anything on the way there, not with a mortal in the car. Actually, Katie and Silena both fell asleep rather quickly; I remained awake, gazing out through the window at the dark scenery rushing past. My thoughts were on Montauk, and my mom's cabin, and the feel of the waves of the ocean lapping at my feet and the sand moving between my toes, and how the last time we'd been there was the last time I'd truly been with her.

I knew if my mom knew what I was doing right now, she would be sad. I could see her disappointed eyes in my mind, the way that the lines in her face, which she should've been too young to have, if not for how much she'd been through, would become harsher as I explained everything to her. She'd always insisted that my dad was a good person; he'd left us, but he was good. He hadn't wanted to leave. He loved us.

My hands curled into fists.

If Poseidon had loved her, if he'd truly thought that my mom was "a queen among women," he would've saved her.

And I knew that, when I saw my mother again one day, not if, while she would be disappointed, she would forgive me. She always did.

After over three hours of driving, we arrived at Oak Island Yard, the freight rail yard located north of the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal and the Newark International Airport. We got out of the taxi, and the driver sped off, asking no questions about what we were doing or where we were going. I guess Luke's money had bought his silence, too.

"We need to find a train going west," Luke said. "The farther, the better."

We went to the main building, which housed the office, to take the easier route to getting what we wanted first. Luke and Silena took charge here, him with getting them inside, and Silena with talking to the guy on-duty. Katie and I waited outside, because I was still a little uncomfortable with Silena's charmspeak powers.

Twenty minutes later, they came back outside. "We're in luck," Luke informed us. "One of the trains here right now is leaving at eight o'clock this morning. Its final destination is Reno."

"I-80 goes straight from Reno to San Francisco," Katie remarked.

He grinned. "Exactly."

"We're going to San Francisco?" she asked.

"Close."

Silena knew why, she'd put the pieces together, at least in terms of us going to Mount Tamalpais. But neither she nor Luke and I explained why we were going there to Katie, or in my and my boyfriend's case,whatwe were going to do there until we'd found our train. It was in the process of having carts added onto it. Since it was likely that the ones first being attached were going all the way to Reno, we chose one of those to hop into. The cart was partially full of boxes, but the ones that were there looked stable enough to not fall over, and there was enough room for us to sit together comfortably.

My friends listened in stunned silence as Luke and I went through everything in-depth to them. "I don't know what to say," Katie said, shaking her head. "Percy, are you insane?"

"I mean, you've known me for almost a year now. You know that's up for debate," I replied with faux-cheerfulness. Her response was making me nervous. "Listen, if you don't want to do this anymore, I'm sure Luke has enough money to give you so you can get back to camp."

He nodded uneasily, and I knew why: it wasn't like that would exactly be a good idea, for her or for us.

"I just ask that you don't tell anyone for a few – "

"No, I said I was going to do this with you, and I am," Katie said. She let out a loose breath. "Just...wow. I guess I should be glad that you were able to talk Luke out of siding with Kronos, 'cause he definitely would've been worse for us demigods than the Olympians, not better. Like, he used to do human sacrifices!"

I nudged Luke with my arm, as if to say, "See?"

He rolled his eyes.

Silena's expression was dazed. "So, we're going to become gods ourselves."

"If this works," Luke said. "It could very well not. We could just end up getting killed."

"No, it'll work," she responded. "I mean, I am willing to risk losing my life for this, that's why I came along, but you didn't see Percy on our quest, Luke. If he puts his mind to something, he's going to get it, one way or the other. Just...what do you think we will become the gods of? Like, what do you think our domains will be?"

"Wait, just how do the gods get their domains, anyways?" I asked.

Luke shifted around. "Sometimes, they get their domains because they're given them by the other gods. Like, Apollo and Artemis. It's said they became the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the Moon because Helios and Selene gave them their domains before they faded. Or my dad, when Zeus declared him the Messenger of the Gods when he reached maturity. Other times, they choose them themselves, like the Big Three sort of did when they drew sticks. But as for the rest...Ananke declares it."

My lips thinned. I didn't exactly feel comfortable with Ananke declaring anything for me, if Hades had been telling the truth and she had told him that he couldn't resurrect my mother.

"You guys should get some more sleep," Luke announced then. "I'll take first watch."

Katie and Silena didn't put up a fight, regardless of how they had to be more well-rested than he was, and I didn't, either. I got comfortable as best as I could, and closed my eyes.

In no time at all, I was out like a light.

Word Count:3,831

Next Chapter Title: The Hesperides & Ladon Get What They Deserve