(A/N (original): This chapter wasn't intended originally, as another chapter had already been designated as the fifth chapter in Michael's POV. However, due to how long the previous chapter got and what I had in mind with the newcomers, this chapter was created to serve as the new fifth chapter in Michael's POV. As a consequence of this, the old chapter designated as this is now "Michael VI" with every chapter after that now designated as the number after what they were originally designated as to reflect this. With that said, there are also now 5 chapters left before we get back to Luke, Percy, and the others. With that out of the way, enjoy this chapter!

Update A/N (dated 7/9/2024): After looking over the chapter list, I've decided to take away one chapter from Michael and re-designate it as an interlude chapter, meaning that four of the next five parts will be split evenly between Lavinia and Michael.)

Chapter Title: Who Even Builds A Safe-House In The Middle Of Remote Mountains?!

Okay, let's be real here.

Words cannot honestly describe the level of mixed emotions I'm feeling after what had just happened with Chrysaor and his crew. They really cannot — but I guess you all want to know, so even as I sit in one seat in the back with Lavinia in my lap as Cháris drives us to only gods know where, I'll try to tell you to the best of my ability what I am feeling.

I would say that first off, I was.. pretty pissed off - firmly at Chrysaor. Like, holding fellow demigods - ones that could be siblings of me and the others in the Apollo Cabin - hostage for Gaea? What the absolute fuck?

It felt way too similar to the shit that Luke's Titan Army recruitment thing was pulling, if I had to be honest. Keeping our numbers down while strengthening the enemy's numbers - in Luke's case, though to be fair, he was being manipulated by Kronos at the time.

But still, to not only be holding demigods hostage - but also abusing them, that just made me even more ticked off. I'm absolutely glad as well that Colton showed that piece of trash what he deserved - if only in the usual honorable kind of fashion that he brings. Still, the implications of all of this were painfully obvious - at least in my eyes. If some or all of the four people that we had helped escape from Chrysaor and his crew were demigods, then who knows how many more demigods were out there right now held captive by those thugs. The thought made me sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

But back to the original topic. Secondly, what I was feeling also involved confusion and amazement. Colton and Percy were known rivals, it was a fact that even Poseidon himself - I'm not though if Neptune does too - knew. So why then, of all things, would Neptune make Colton an honorary son of his after defeating Chrysaor, thus making Colton an honorary sibling of his established rival? It made absolutely zero sense. I was there in the throne room on Olympus for crying out loud when Zeus and Poseidon tried to make Percy a god, even though in all honesty, Colton had deserved it more after all that he had done.

I saw that look on Poseidon's face as he looked at Colton prior to Zeus making the offer, as if Colton being the one who had ended Kronos and done the legwork in winning the fight for us with assistance from his followers as he was the Monster King - had been a fucking insult as to what Poseidon had wanted to happen.

So why? Why would Neptune make Colton an honorary son of his now? It just didn't make any sense at all.

There was just no way to explain it.

The last thing I was feeling though, to be honest, I had to say it would be dread. Dread as to how everyone else back at Camp Jupiter - at Camp Half Blood, plus the Gods themselves - were going to react to the newfound information about Chrysaor that I had stated previously - about him holding demigods hostage and all. You could tell that Colton was worried about it too, because he looked stressed - more so than normal. Like, I can't emphasis how abnormal it was for this man to have a stressed face at all. It was very rare indeed.

So for him to be stressed like this now.. it was an obvious sign of just how much the revelation and its implications were weighing heavily on his damn head right now. He definitely needed some time to think about what his next move would be given this new information, that much was right now obvious to me.

I glanced over at the newcomers.

Three adults and a teenager.

Despite the obvious abuse signs that these four souls all had, you could still see the physical characteristics that set them all apart from each other, aside from age that is.

The teenager was the youngest of them all, as could be obvious, but with brown hair that seemed to flicker with flames at the ends of the strands - or maybe I was just seeing things, I don't really know - and green eyes, he stood out from the rest of them all the same.

One of the adults had black hair just like mine with a short beard on his face, a good amount of muscle, blue eyes, and what seemed like the scar shaped like the sign of a medic on one cheek and the sign of a scientist on the other. The thing is, these two scars didn't seem to inflicted by torture like the others. They seemed to have been there from the start, almost like birth marks. It was weird.

The second guy was even more muscular than the first guy, and like the teen, seemed to have flames shooting off the ends of his hair - or what little hair he had for that matter. Apart from some facial hair, this guy was basically bald. He had brown eyes, and like the first guy, a scar that seemed to have existed there from the start, in this case the scar shaped like a wrench on his forehead.

The last guy seemed to be the most mysterious of all, having less muscle than the second guy but close to that of the first guy. Like the other two, he had a scar that seemed to existed there from the start, in this case a peculiar kind of knife as the shape of a scar located on his left arm. He had brown hair and brown eyes, and out of them all, seemed the most stoic of them for some reason. Again, I had no clue why.

Either way, it was definitely an interesting cast of characters that we had freed from being held prisoner by Chrysaor and his crew, that was for sure. Whether any of them would provide any useful utility or ability to us on this quest or thereafter, that was another matter entirely - one that I would be willing to bet that Colton was already weighing on in his head in addition to everything else now.

Either way, the car-ride up into the Tehachapi Mountains proceeded without incident, even though we passed by groups of monsters - small groups mind you, nothing too major - frequenting various spots near the highway from time to time. Eventually, we came up to this area called Rowen, and Lavinia's eyes drifted leftwards. I, bored since no one in the car was saying anything at this point, followed her eyes and just watched as a train rolled the other way on the railroad track now next to the highway.

Further on up, we passed by this feature in the landscape on our right - where the tracks seemed to loop over themselves - and believe me when I say, I don't think I was imagining things when I say that there seemed to be some sort of golden light emitting from the hill in the center of it, rising up into the sky. I looked at Colton's seat, and his eyes were looking towards it too. From his expression, you could tell he was definitely thinking of what this meant.

He then turned to Cháris. "Where exactly are you taking us..?" he asked the guy in flaming armor driving the car.

"Young master.." Cháris began. "..there is a safe house that also doubles as a safe spot for demigods located near the town of Tehachapi just up ahead in the hills around it, established by Duncan Alexander, an ex-Confederate soldier who became the Monster King in 1874 and moved to the area in 1877. It has since been upgraded by loyal servants, monster and clear-sighted, over the decades and century since then from what I have been told, and should serve as a clear base of operations for the search for Argonaut."

"Right.. right.. well, I think I'm going to need at least everything the records from the temple or anything else you and my other followers can remember about Argonaut once we get there.." Colton responded. "..because I had a feeling that we might not have to look all that far for it."

With what he was saying, it just seemed that there was no way it could be true. There is no way that a sword with the power to doom factions and nations that opposed Rome could have just been perhaps buried on a hill next to a railroad in the middle of nowhere. Could it?

- — - — - — -

The safe house, in question, was located at the end of El Rancho Drive, a road basically about close to or on top of the rocky, mountain ridge that extended northwest to Bear Mountain, about a couple of miles west of Tehachapi, with the railroad visible down the northeastern slopes near the highway to the north and slightly northeast of our new location.

True to Cháris' word, it definitely had been upgraded and maintained in the years since 1877, though Cháris hadn't said if that was when Duncan had first established this place. I didn't really care much about it though to be honest at this point. The house itself looked to be a 2 story building currently made out of modern building materials, with basement included - a small dip in the ground that led to a window under where the ground floor was tipped me off to that - that was in rather dull and also environmentally similar colors to the surrounding terrain, most likely as a form of camouflage. It was a rather decent size to be sure, definitely slightly larger than a medium-sized two story house, and given the fact that there was a smaller building about half a football field north of the house - next to the short stretch of dirt road that led up to it - that looked to be occupied by a few Telekhines supported by a couple of Centaurs and three Hellhounds that were a part of the Monster King faction since they did not attack us at all, it was evident that the faction supporting Colton was rather invested on making sure their King was protected at all times should he ever be in the position of being hunted down.

I will admit, that did in a rather odd way that I had never expected allow me to breathe a bit easier. Even so, I wasn't completely complacent to be honest. Once inside the house, which looked as modern as my childhood home had been, I went upstairs to one of the bedrooms - the one that overlooked the front entrance. Colton had taken the three adults somewhere else in the house when we had all entered, while Cháris went another way and that left Lavinia with the teen - and when I had left them, she seemed to be bringing him out of his traumatized shell.

Plopping myself down onto the bed, after having placed my stuff on a table nearby, I took a moment to relax - which to be fair, I hadn't had the opportunity to do so in a while since I had woken up from that long ass sleep I, along with Colton, Luke, and Percy, was put into. It felt nice really, to be able to at least forget about the war that I was a part of right now - two wars actually, I mean - and actually be able to relax like a normal mortal could. Plus, at least I could probably have a real meal other than gas station food for dinner most likely.

But seriously, the fact that some dude who was one of the prior Monster Kings would make this house out in the middle of fucking nowhere a damn safe house — like what was he even thinking? This was probably one of the oddest locations for a safe house, given that it was so conspicuous atop the ridge. Then again, in the mythological world, safe places existed in the places considered remote — either literally or figuratively speaking — by mortals, so in all likelihood, the remoteness of the location probably meant that monsters and other fiends would consider this just a house out in the middle of nowhere from a distance.

Thinking about food, however, made me a bit hungry after a while, so I got up and ventured downstairs to the kitchen, only to bump straight into Lavinia. "Colton wants us in the living room now.." she muttered, and then turned the other way, heading back to what I probably assume was the living room.

I groaned.

Can't a guy eat without being dragged into strategy meetings or some shit? I thought to myself before I reluctantly followed in her wake. Hopefully, this would be worth it - at least worth dragging me away from a good meal and delaying my dinner for gods know how further.

- — - — - — -

So, it turned out in the brief space of about an hour - since I had lost track of time while resting on the bed in the second floor bedroom, a lot had happened indeed since both Colton, Cháris, and Lavinia had all made progress with what they were all doing. Lavinia told me that the teenager's name was Joey, and he was a child of Hephaestus, meaning that he was a Greek demigod. By a pure coincidence, the adult with the scar of the wrench on his forehead whose name was Dale Richards from what Colton said, also happened to be a son of Hephaestus, though it was of his Roman aspect - Vulcan.

The trend of Roman demigods also being involved in the shit that Chrysaor and his crew were pulling for Gaea continued with the guy that had the medic and scientist scars, aka Professor Ludwig Konrad von Hecker. Although an adult demigod, he had told Colton that he knew that his godly parent was Apollo, his Roman aspect in particular - meaning that this guy was an adult sibling to me, Kayla, that bitch Octavian, and all other kids of Apollo, which was kinda cool in my opinion. Although he had been born in Germany, evidently he had managed to figure out his heritage from others in the know in Europe and had begun the process of traveling to America recently as an adult to offer his services to the Olympian cause, only to have the misfortune of coming across Chrysaor off the east coast of Spain.

Neither Dale nor Joey had admitted when it was that they themselves had come across Chrysaor and his crew, but to be fair, it was probably better that they didn't say to be honest. I'll admit, there are parts of the last war that I don't talk about simply because I don't want to remember them - most of all, the image of Kayla crying into Colton's chest after they had killed Theo that appeared in my head after I was told after the fact. So yeah, I get why they weren't really talking much on that front.

The last guy was from France, a sort-of retired professional spy named Leclerc, and it seemed he was a more of a clear-sighted mortal with a unique skill-set than a demigod from what I was told by Colton. He had ran into Chrysaor while cruising by himself in the Mediterranean only three months prior to now, and seemed to be aware of a lot more, given that Colton mentioned that Leclerc had told him for sure that they were other demigods being held by Chrysaor and his crew back in the Mediterranean, though Leclerc was not sure exactly of the precise location. Either way, I could most likely bet that before this war with Gaea and Porphyrion was over, you could rest assured that Colton would be cracking down hard on Chrysaor and his crew with his authority as the Monster King, and to be honest, I would not be shedding any tears at all as he did so.

What Cháris had found though, confirmed Colton's suspicions about the location of Argonaut.

"From what I gather.." Cháris said as we all either sat in chairs or on the couches in the living room, except for Cháris, as the man in flaming armor simply kept standing, with arms crossed behind his back as he kept talking. "Even if buried underground, Argonaut is said to emit light up through the ground and into the sky if demigods are close enough to it."

"So basically speaking — the Tehachapi Loop is where Argonaut has been located all this time.." Colton said back, putting two and two together easily as usual.

Cháris just nodded. "Correct, young master.." he said. "It definitely appears to be so."

I just sighed. On the one hand, I was at least relieved. At least we finally know where this thing is. But on the other hand, given that we knew that Gaea's forces were also looking for the weapon, I felt anxious for probably understandable reasons. Then, of course, there was the looming attack of Camp Jupiter in a couple of days' time hanging over our heads.

So yeah, I was still feeling several things just like in the car earlier. But still, out of all the places Argonaut could have been hidden, it just happened to be next to a railroad out in the middle of nowhere more or less — well, the loop wasn't exactly the middle of nowhere, but close enough.

Either way, you could tell in Colton's eyes just what he thought of this revelation — that this was a major break, and to be fair, I didn't blame him. The Tehachapi Mountains were a wide area, meaning that Argonaut could have been hidden anywhere. And yet, we had now pinpointed its location within hours of entering the region. It was remarkable, really.

For a brief moment, I wondered how Percy and Luke must be doing at this time. Hopefully — they were doing just as good as us, right?

I didn't dwell on it for long though. With Colton and Cháris both now having a conversation with the adults and Joey warming up to Lavinia, I took the opportunity to slip out and get my dinner now.

Say what you will about a son of Apollo, but a medic doesn't heal and an archer doesn't shoot on an empty stomach, that's for sure.