Chapter Title: New Title, New Home (Temporarily)

If you had to ask me how I really felt about becoming praetor, I had to say it honestly felt.. well.. rather complicated honestly. On the one hand, I felt like my plans for Camp Jupiter had taken a massive step forward — even if I hadn't planned on becoming Praetor, which let me be honest here, I actually had not. I honestly thought it would have gone to Percy for retrieving the legion's lost eagle. But I guess I had actually thought wrong.

Massively wrong.

Because you know, now here I was in this position. Talk about awkward — given that I would have to deal with the guy who formerly held the position tomorrow, and part of me wasn't looking forward to it.

The fact that Kayla would have to see me in this.. that was a whole level of awkward I really did not want to have to think about — for the reason of the fact that I had been appointed to this position by a beautiful girl, who had actually tried for my heart. I could sense the jealousy from here — like look, Kayla is a real pure sweetheart, but that only makes her jealous, possessive moments all the more scary, believe me.

Yeah — hopefully Reyna and Jason would get together, because if not.. well, I might as well give praetor back to Jason to get them together. I'm serious. I would do it.

I mean — I pretty much got Travis and Katie together thanks to me and Kayla fighting Porphyrion, Enceladus, and Periboia last year, so wouldn't hurt to try that.

There was still the problem of Octavian honestly, but I bet that with my forces and Kayla, that could easily be taken care of to be honest. I hadn't, however, foreseen how simply just leaving Octavian alive would be a bad idea down the road — which would bite me in the ass due to me having not have foreseen this. As events transpired, it would have been much more a correct choice for all of us if I had snapped Octavian's neck with my bare hands when I had the chance — or chances — prior to what happened next, consequences be damned. It would saved us a whole lot of suffering — and me a whole lot of work. It was because of him that I eventually spent two weeks in hell — two weeks that left me with more questions than answers as to what the hell my life had become.

But at this current moment in time, I had no clue of what awaited me down the road.

Either way, right now, I had a good whole lot on my mind. I needed time to think, but first thing to do now was check out where I was supposed to live as Praetor. See what I was working with honestly — not that it would matter in the short term, since I was likely going other places starting tomorrow.

Reyna had given me the location of where the second Praetor's house was, which was on the Via Principalis, which if I had to be honest with you on how I would best describe this section of town, it would go something like this would be definitely be Kayla's part of town — that was for sure. This place was rich person central for New Rome, for it had a certain aura of wealth and high standing about it. It was the type of place that would attract Kayla and her parents — whenever Kayla wasn't by my side — like moths to a flame.

Opening the door to the place, I sighed in resignation. Not because of anything else, it was simply because that even though the place was nice, it also happened to be full of Jason Grace's stuff. I admit, I definitely was uneasy about taking his title of Praetor, even if I didn't show it on the outside.

I didn't know if I wanted to really take the guy's house too — to be honest. It didn't seem right. Things would be awkward enough when Jason came back, I knew that full well. Still though, it was for one night — hopefully. What was the risk in doing so?

It's not like things could go one way or another because of it. Hopefully.

So I went in. Besides, I was a little bit curious as to what exactly Jason had. And to be fair, what I found definitely told me a lot about the man as he had grown up — away from Thalia, that is. Real, real interesting indeed.

Anyways, on to the interesting kind of stuff that I was mentioning earlier. There wasn't a lot of stuff that fell into this category, but believe me, the things that did spoke more than anything all of the other stuff in his place could ever have.

The first item — actually the only item that I'll mention here since it said more than pretty much anything else I found that even fell into this category that fit here was a picture of Jason with Thalia hanging up near his bed in a picture frame with the words 'Someday I'll find you again sis' written in the bottom left corner of the picture in black ink. It was a rather heartwarming thing to be honest because it reminded me of Kayla and how tomorrow, I would find my way back to her or at least be at the end of that.

It also reminded me of Lily, of her and her sister at Camp Half Blood — and of what Bellona had said when I pressed her on the matter.

I thought back to what had occurred at Temple Hill before I had come here.

I had decided to visit Bellona's temple again now that I had finished the assignment she had given me and see what reward, if any, I would get. I wasn't really expecting any awards, but you never know.

Just like last time, there she was, right by the altar. She simply turned and gave off a hint of a smile. "I would like to tell you congratulations Colton Reynolds.. though you could have been quicker to prevent my daughter from injuring herself.. you have succeeded in your task.." she said after I had knelt down before her.

I winced at the latter part, as yeah, I definitely could have been a bit quicker in transforming into the Monster King and preventing Reyna from injuring herself. Either way, no use beating myself up over that now. "I understand.." I simply said back to the goddess. "..and believe me, I am relieved that I have been able to complete the task you assigned me, my lady."

"Indeed — and now to reward such a rather.." she said, pausing for a few moments as if to find the right words to say next. "..unusual warrior."

I had a feeling that was referring to me being the Monster King, which at this point, I had the impression that the prior holders of the title I now hold had done some pretty bad things to Rome in the past, and by extension Greece too — which if you think about it, it would make Zeus' insistence to smite my ass upon learning that Typhon had crowned me the Monster King two years ago thus leading to the deal between me and my father all the more understandable. One could wonder if it was actually his Roman aspect exerting influence in his Greek counterpart in wanting to smite me, or not. I had no clue, and certainly I didn't have time to think about it now.

For I soon was glowing and something was in my hand. I looked at my left hand, and it now had a torch in it — and then I looked up and above my head before it settled onto it was a Spartan helmet. These remained on me for a few moments before they disappeared, and I felt a little bit more powerful than before. I had seen it before, what she had done. Claimed.

I was now an honorary child of Bellona. Since I was made aware by the others that I had also been claimed by Orcus, that made it three Roman gods and goddesses that had claimed me as an honorary child of theirs since I had arrived at Camp Jupiter.

I'll admit, for a reward, I was not expecting that. "Rise, my honorary child.." she said, and I did. She had more of a smile on her face now than she did before. She did some sort of wave with one of her hands next and then I sort of started glowing again - well, it seemed that one part of me was glowing. So I looked down to the left, where the glowing was coming from. The cartridge box I used with the Whitworth was now shimmering with magic, as if it had been enchanted. "I have enchanted that and the box you use for your machine gun with magic.." she said calmly. "..meaning that both shall from now on contain infinite number of rounds, meaning that you will never run out of ammo."

I had zero words to say for a moment there, I was just stunned. Like no, really I was. I just couldn't think of anything else to say. Finally, after a few moments of awkward silence on my part, I spoke. "Thank you, my lady.. I truly am honored."

But then, a nagging concern came to my head. Lily and her sister - why were they swapped in the first place?

Bellona must have noticed that I was deep in thought then, given what she said next. "Do you have something on your mind..?" she asked. I simply nodded.

"So with Lily and her sister, if Lily was supposed to go to Camp Half Blood and her sister was supposed to go to Camp Jupiter, why were they switched..?" I asked her.

"The sisters serve the same purpose as do you, your friends and Jason and the others.." Bellona calmly replied. "..they are supposed to light the way to the future. Although I do not really approve of this course of action.."

She paused, and you could still that despite the calmness, she still had some reluctance inside of her. "..I will admit, your actions have shown me that perhaps there is some hope in burying the hatchet between the Romans and the Greeks. If this can lead to the triumph of our cause over Gaea and the Giants once more, as well as the rogue ones, then I wholeheartedly will give it a chance." She still seemed a bit reluctant to do so, but I didn't try to say anything about it.

"Juno was the one who proposed the switch, and although Ceres didn't really want to agree to it at first, she eventually did anyways.." Bellona continued. "When Jupiter closed off Olympus, I guess Juno decided that it wasn't enough, so she took Jason and the others and switched them with you and your friends."

As much as I could understand that clearly, it still made me a bit angry inside because seriously - I didn't fucking ask to be ripped away from my beloved girlfriend and also have to deal with amnesia all within half a year. Like seriously, did I even fucking ask at all?

Whatever. No time to harp on that now.

So I just played like I was still calm and collected. "I see.." I simply said in reply. "..that explains quite a lot. Seems like Juno displayed quite a bit of foresight."

"Yes.. she did.." Bellona replied, albeit once more reluctantly. "Well.. then, I have matters back on Olympus to attend to. Hopefully, I should be able to speak with you again tomorrow."

"I understand, my lady.. good night to you then.." I replied, and she said simply, "..you too Colton Reynolds.. you too..", I just turned and left the temple, heading to Jason's place.

I snapped my mind out of the reflective trance and gazed back at Jason's stuff. There were plenty of things on my mind right now, but the most pressing thing right now was tomorrow — for very good reason. Kayla had mentioned that she and the others would be coming to Camp Jupiter tomorrow in this airship or whatever the fuck they made, the 'Argo II' or whatever. I know it's a reference to the ship the original Jason was on in the quest for the Golden Fleece, but it was probably the lamest name I had ever heard. Pretty sure that I had told Kayla as much in the telepathic conversation we had after I had met with Bellona at her temple before coming here.

Anyways, the main obstacle to all of this was the one you perfectly expected to be the one likely to screw things up — Octavian. We pretty sure didn't see eye to eye with each other after he nearly skewered me and Gwen back after the War Game, but now that the cat was out of the bag and he knew that I was both the Monster King and that me and the others were Greek, he likely was going to try to look for a way that allowed him to prove that we Greeks were actually working for the enemy and revive the old conflict between Greek and Roman Demigods, Gaea's threat to the world be damned. That, of course, meant that Kayla would be in danger from his ambitions, and I could not allow him to succeed.

That made the fact that I was now praetor especially beneficial, in my opinion. It put me in a position of power higher than Octavian, and allowed me to be able to keep him at bay if necessary. No.. scratch out necessary, it was practically guaranteed I needed to keep him at bay. If I didn't, Kayla would die. Everyone on board the Argo II would die. And then me, Percy, Luke, and Michael would die. And you probably know what would happen after that.

So yeah — I had to stop Octavian, no matter what it took. As it had been back during the final part of the Battle of Manhattan, failure was not an option. And if I failed, things would go to shit.. very, very fast.

And so I went to bed in Jason's bed that night, already knowing what exactly I had to do - in a general sense - tomorrow.