Chapter Title: Times Are Very Strange

(A/N: This chapter wasn't originally planned. I simply felt as of now in late May (when I started working on this particular chapter) that it needed to be placed here. As such, it's time for a chapter from the perspective of a god, but this time it is a Roman God. And honestly, I figure who better to use for this one than Reyna and Hylla's mother, Bellona. Hope you enjoy!)

If you had come to me a few years ago and told me that one day the wielder of the Monster King would show up at the edge of the camp for the children of the Gods as an amnesiac, I would have called you delusional and then probably have had you executed. I don't think any part of me back then would have even accepted such an event happening at all.

But yet, lo and behold, here we are. Predictably, my feelings about all of this are very mixed, partly due to past events, partly due to the circumstances of the present times. That is not to say, that I am complacent about all of this. To be very clear, I have been against Juno's.. err.. shall we say.. rather dangerous dealings as of late.

I must say, what is that woman even thinking? Wiping the memories of the son of Jupiter as well as three other demigods and transplanting them to go to the Greek Camp? Doing the same to four Greek demigods, among them the current wielder of the Monster King — god how I wish that power would have stayed with Typhon for centuries more — at that.. has the woman gone mad?

Sure, there's the matter of the approaching great prophecy, but to resort to these.. these sorts of measures.. it is un-Roman in general. After everything past wielders of the Monster King have done towards the children of Rome, what was Juno thinking by bringing the first wielder of this power in 60 years to Camp Jupiter? What was Typhon thinking in entrusting this power.. to a GREEK of all people?!

It is.. just madness, in my opinion. Complete and utter madness.

Now, look. I think it made it pretty clear by now that I really wish if we Romans did not have to rely on the Monster King to help us win in this war, never mind the Greeks. Sure, maybe I am holding on to grudges from the past in thinking this way, but as many of the children of the Greek counterparts would say, as have been spoken by Juno and some of the others at countless meetings, we Gods are not perfect.

This is true.

Even so, it should be noted that I go along with the insane ideas of Juno as of this moment.. with very great and probably understandable reluctance about all of this. Then again, the actions of Octavian do not lessen my concerns about what might happen to my children — Reyna, Hylla, and the others — or if history should repeat itself with his actions turning the Monster King once more against Rome.

This, to be frank, was probably the main concern on my mind when I came face to face with the current Monster King.. Colton Reynolds.. in my own temple, no less.

I must admit, the sudden rise to prominence in meetings Colton's name has been on.. was something I really had not expected for multiple reasons. For one, I had heard so much of this.. Percy Jackson and his exploits.. to the point where even much of the credit for the Olympian successes on the Greek side of things was attributed to him.

Colton had barely — if ever — been mentioned at all, even with that Battle Of The Labyrinth. Little did any of us Roman Gods — with the exception of a few — even considered this as covering for something until in the aftermath of the fall of the Titans' home once more, it struck us all in the face.

The amount of revisions to what Percy had supposedly did — which were then attributed to Colton — soon followed. It had been so sudden, that I must confess that even a month after the revelations came out, I still felt shocked over them.

I was briefly reminded of that once again when I came face to face with him.

I must confess, he was nothing like I had expected a wielder of the Monster King to be at all. Everything about him seemed very different — in just about everything he did. His efficient and effective tactics that steamrolled over what were supposed to be the best of our children — I was both appalled and intrigued at the same time by this demonstration of his skills.

In the past, wielders of the Monster King had skill sure, but they tended to use the powers of the Monster King as their go-to instead of using their skill or their brains, something which has cost us Roman Gods many a demigod child over the centuries.

Colton was different.

He didn't seem to instantly go for the power of the Monster King during all of that. Mind you, he was amnesiac up until Mars threw him the King's sword, but even so had he remembered before then, I had a feeling that he still wouldn't have tried to use that power unless he felt like that he had no other choice but to use it.

I, for one, respected that despite my earlier hesitations. I may be the goddess of war — and sometimes have destruction, conquest, and bloodlust referred to as being among my domains — but I am not like Ares, no. Neither was Colton in my eyes for that matter. He was so much more like Mars than Ares in my own opinion that it was hard to believe he was even a Greek to begin with.

That being said, once he came contact with the sword though, it still felt that way to me, even though it was rather apparent in my eyes that he now remembered who he was — until he proceeded to demonstrate that if anything, he seemed to be a cross between a Roman child of Mars and a Greek child of Ares at the exact same time.

I don't know how such a thing was even possible, for the only instance of kids born to different aspects that I am even aware of is Jason and his Greek sister, Diana's lieutenant Thalia. But Colton existed — a literal walking contradiction and anomaly to everything I knew about the offspring of gods, as in demigods in general — and I had no clue how to cope with it.

Still, like I said before, I had my doubts about his loyalty, given past events related to the Monster King. So, I decided to test him.

Look, I know Reyna sent Percy up to find Hylla — since he's the one that basically got them out of the Sea Of Monsters, which seemed almost hard to believe — a Greek freeing Roman children, I mean — but despite my reluctance to all of this, if there was honestly one person that I would entrust with making sure my children would survive beyond a specific event that worried me a lot — such was the case with me currently as despite the War Goddess that people describe as loud, active, and barking orders or war cries, plus organized and always in control of the situation, in truth — privately I was fretting over the coming battle for the home of the Roman demigods since I had little control over this situation — I felt that regardless of how I felt about the Monster King, there would be no better person to choose than Colton.

He thinks in a way that very few — even in Camp Jupiter — do, if I had to be honest. He thinks in a way that outdoes even my pride and joy, Reyna, as much as I don't want to admit it.

He literally just stared at a well done fort that on any normal day, would have upheld the disappointment standard that was the Fifth Cohort and just then proceeded to come up with a plan that produced a massive upset of the status quo in camp. He wasn't fazed at all by it, from what I had seen — I had been observing closely from Olympus, at least the Roman version of it that is. To top it all off, he did this while still having amnesia courtesy of Juno.

While his unorthodox way of thinking did lead to him choosing some.. shall we say.. un-Roman like tactics, such as what he chose to begin the quest to retrieve Argonaut, thanks to the idiocies of Octavian, it made him a quite logical choice to assign such responsibility, regardless of the power lurking inside of him.

Which leads me to something else about him. The way he acted inside my temple when I encountered him — it was subtle, but something about him seemed a little bit off — has me convinced that he is already making moves to ensure that future events aren't as dark as they seem to be. I don't know what exactly about him tipped me off to this inference, but the point remains.

Colton Reynolds was up to something.. and for now, I could do little bit wait to see exactly what he had been doing at this time.