"What are you working on?"
Juliette almost throws her pencil across the room like a javelin. It's freshly sharpened and she hasn't written a word in the "grief journal" Annabeth gave her all night, so using it as a weapon probably would be pretty effective. She keeps hold of it, though, and settles for slapping a dramatic hand over her chest to calm her startled heart back down.
"You need to start sleeping with a bell in your pocket," She gasps. Soldier Boy has the decency to appear at least a little apologetic.
One actual look at the translucent boy, though, and Julie's pencil is rolling across the floorboards, forgotten.
Bruises are blotched up the left side of his face. His lip is split down the center, the cut barely an inch over from the familiar vertical scar on the right. His blonde hair is buzzed short, but mud and rainwater is dripping from his scalp. He's not in his pajamas. Instead, he's standing in the middle of her bedroom at the Big House wearing a pair of jeans, a purple t-shirt, and a sheepish grimace of pain.
In a flash, Julie is off her vanity stool and in his personal space, fretting. "What happened to you?!"
Soldier Boy rakes a hand over his head. "Just...An attack. It's nothing to worry about."
"An att-What were you facing?! A Titan?!" She shrieks in alarm, itching to reach for his injuries and the medical supplies in her dresser. There's nothing she can do to help the intangible, painful looking black eye that's forming on his left side, though, and that makes her want to hurt someone. "What the Hades could do this to you?!"
"Not a Titan." He seems to find that guess amusing. He steps around her to get comfortable on the floor by her bed, pulling one knee to his chest with a wince. "There was a horde of t_kh_es blocking the path to _up_a's Lair. I needed to get rid of them before they moved on her or the city."
Ears buzzing with divine communication-line-interference, Julie sits down on her knees in front of him. "Some of that didn't come through," She sighs.
Soldier Boy nods and closes his eyes tiredly. "Fought some sea demons. They were stopping the new kids from making it to safety."
Sea demons. Telekhines. Gotcha.
"You went alone?" asks Juliette irritably, already knowing the answer. "To fight an entire den of them?"
Soldier Boy nods.
Julie's first urge is to scold him, because she's pretty sure no one else in his other life is going to be so appalled by his lack of self preservation. But he looks exhausted. His head is leaned back against the side of her mattress, his blue eyes shut tightly to block out the dim light of her desk lamp. He must have a terrible concussion from the look of those bruises. Julie gets to her feet to shut off the light before returning to her anxious hovering. The sudden darkness pulls a sigh of relief from him, and his eyes slide back open.
Julie meets them. A stewing silence makes the room feel stuffy. She doesn't know quite what to say. Especially without sounding hypocritical. It's only been about a week since the Battle of the Labyrinth. She's not really one to lecture him on not doing dangerous stuff by himself.
Still, though...Julie threw herself down that underground passageway for a reason. She had to find Percy, and that effort was more important than anything she may have lost if she hadn't made it out of there alive. Juliette's decision to go after the quest group had been selfish and impulsive, but she'd do it again without hesitation, because she fights only for the people that she loves. And above all the others, Percy is her highest loyalty.
Although...This nameless boy, with his tired blue eyes and sheepish smile, is...strangely enough...a close second.
"Why do you do things like that?" She finally asks, because she's bursting to know.
Soldier Boy furrows his brow at her, and she folds her hands in her lap. This isn't the first time she's wanted to ask him that question. Last summer, when he appeared to her drenched in seawater and picking bits of tentacle off of his clothes, she'd wanted to ask him what was so important to a West Coast demigod that he went 1v1 with a seamonster to defend it.
He has people that he talks to - other demigod kids who he refers to as "colleagues" like he's a forty year old stock broker. Besides Reyna, though, there's really no one regular in his life that Juliette sees him hang out with. She's wondered about this for a while now.
This is the first time she's spoken the question aloud. So, it takes Solder Boy a moment of pondering to come up with his answer. He fills the passing seconds by studying Julie just as intently as she is him.
Then he grins with one corner of his mouth and shrugs.
The look of tired frustration she must give him makes him burst out a bright string of laughter. The sound is enough for her to let go of her question, rolling her eyes fondly and shaking her head. She kidnaps some pillows off her bed and lays out beside him on the floor for the night where she can keep a better eye on him. Soldier Boy seems to find that funny too. He teases her for coddling him until Hypnos finally comes knocking on her bedroom door and her eyelids start to droop.
Julie still doesn't know if Jason is aware she heard him say this. She's barely sure she didn't dream it, anyway. But as she drifted off that night, she heard the boy beside her mutter under his breath the answer to her question.
"Better me than them," He'd told her bedroom ceiling. "I was made to handle it."
Out of all the things that Jason thought he could handle, he didn't account for this. He didn't account for not being here when his people - his friends - needed him the most.
Jason can hear Juliette calling his name in one ear. He can hear the crashing of blades on shields in the other. But his eyes are focused forward. Forward and down on the body in the street, which is being stepped over and stepped on by the pandai fighting for the enemy. They're focused on the red KoolAid stains around that body's mouth, almost unnoticeable beneath the stream of black tar coating the teeth marks in the gash bitten out of his cheek.
A wound from a ghoul. Many wounds from a ghoul. Jason's friend was nearly torn to pieces. The shining tears beneath his open, empty, purple eyes mean he was still alive to witness it.
He's not alive anymore. Jason hasn't spoken to Dakota in two years. Not with his memories intact. And now he never will. His friend died thinking Jason would never remember him.
He does. He remembers every meal that their team shared together. Every battle won and lost.
"JASON!"
He gasps and looks to the side. Juliette is fighting, half transformed and tearing through the pandai around the southern edge of the battlefield like they're made of wet paper towels. The Roman soldiers around them are holding their wounds, standing back and out of her way, and watching her rip apart their attackers with her claws and fangs in awe. She's looking at him, though, her partly scaled expression pained and sympathetic, and slitted pupils trying to catch his eye. She finally does, but Jason can barely see her through the tears burning his corneas.
"We have to keep moving," She insists, reaching a clawed hand uselessly for him. It's not like he can take it. "The ships, remember? We have to get to the ships."
Right. The ships. That's what Neptune had agreed to. Jason and Juliette take care of the fleet of ships trespassing on his waters, and he'll give over his part of the shuttle that will save Jason's life.
The ships.
He tries his best to force a nod. Her eyes dim, pained on his behalf, but she doesn't have the time to spend checking in on him. An axe swings down onto her shoulder, and Jason almost shouts. It's a blow that should slice her arm clean off at the joint. A few days ago, it would have.
Instead, the blade of the weapon sparks like the pandos wielding it struck it against an anvil, and a whole chunk of metal from its center goes flying into the crowd of fighters around them. Before the creature can even drop its jaw in surprise, Juliette swings one of her clawed hands forward and buries her talons deep in the enemy's gut. The pandos' eyes bug, and he collapses into white and gold ash.
Juliette turns to Jason expectantly once more, sunshine veins beneath her eyes and down her neck glimmering brightly, and this time the nod comes easier.
His friends are dying, and Jason can't stop it. But Juliette can. So, he needs to keep from holding her back.
"The ships," He agrees.
His girlfriend turns solemnly towards the shore. Jason looks to the dome around Camp Jupiter. They're standing outside of it right now, where the vanguard is engaged with the enemy troops' first wave of (what Jason expects to be) many. In just the few minutes since they arrived on the winds, the armada of more than fifty cruise ships lining the San Francisco Bay have already released five rounds of catapulted Greek Fire. The ships are by far their first priority, Neptune's orders or not. Terminus' dome is already crumbling in areas, and even more weak points have begun spiderwebbing with fissures.
A handful more missiles, and the whole thing will collapse. They need to stop all of this before that happens, or the battle is lost.
Juliette is way ahead of him. Before Jason even realizes another wave of explosives has been lobbed their way from the ocean, a burst of wind is blowing through him from her hasty take-off into the sky.
From the ground, Jason watches his partner catch one of the barrels of Greek Fire in between her dagger-point fangs. She swings her head to one side, jerks it to the other, and releases the barrel again, flinging it into its neighbor with enough force to ignite them both midair. Jason hears the soldiers around him gasp, most of them continuing to fight, but watching as well as Juliette goes down the line of every projectile launched, catching and throwing, slamming her body weight into, and swiping with a powerful club of her tail until every barrel has ignited.
An explosion the size of a city block brightens the sky above them all for a moment. Then Juliette's wyvern emerges from the flames, emerald scaled and utterly unharmed, and the Roman soldiers erupt into cheers.
Jason's grief dims. It's not the time yet for him to feel it. He lets pride replace it and grins with his comrades on the battlefield as he watches Juliette soar through the night sky, dipping every so often into the fray and returning coated in dust and ghoul tar, on her way to the coast. She's magnificent, and Jason is tactical enough to know that her arrival has just turned the tide of this battle for New Rome, regardless of what the emperors think they have up their sleeves.
He'd better catch up with her. Jason may be dead, but his powers aren't. He doesn't know how much strength he still has after their dip into the Pacific this afternoon, but he's eager to find out.
Electricity sparks between his fingertips, and Jason begins to run.
He's fought in several formal battles like this one up until now. This one reminds him most of his most recent - the finale of the war against Gaea. Maybe that's because Jason had a home on the line then too.
Fighting exotic warriors with giant white ears in the city he grew up in feels much stranger than defending the strawberry fields of Camp Halfblood. Jason loves the Greeks. Juliette, Piper, and Leo mean more than anything to him in the world. But San Francisco is his home. Watching ghouls and golden-clad enemy soldiers charge through Union Square brings out a primal sort of rage in him that Jason has only ever felt while standing beneath the fluorescent lighting of a cruise ship turned laboratory.
He releases that rage in the form of about a hundred lightning strikes which erupt simultaneously throughout the city.
The sensation is overwhelming. The yell he lets out feels like someone else's voice has hijacked his vocal chords. He's never released so much power at once, but doing so while dead for some reason makes it feel so much easier. His vision blacks out at the moment he pushes his control of the sky towards the storm clouds up above them. He barely has the wherewithal to direct the lightning where it needs to go, but he manages it. Forks of electricity pierce right into the hearts of every enemy creature within range that's about to strike a killing blow.
Another round of inspired battle cries erupt from his men-or, his former men, and Jason continues his path of destruction towards the shoreline.
He truly never realized how much he'd been holding back. His fight to the Bay is easy. Jason can't be seen by the enemy. He can pass through them, and he can't be hurt. So he doesn't bother being careful. He uses the wind to trip every monster before it can dodge. He zaps weapons out of pandai hands. He throws walls of air at soldiers who wouldn't have dodged an attack quickly enough, and he launches himself up into the sky when the next round of explosives is lobbed towards Camp Jupiter from the armada in the Bay.
Some of the barrels, he takes out with lightning. Some of them, Jason redirects with a swish of the wind and sends hurtling back towards where they came from.
The Romans seem to understand that someone is helping them. There's no way they could understand who, but their voices are raised and tinged with hopefulness that hadn't been there when he and Juliette first arrived. The front line of the fight is getting pushed further and further away from New Rome's borders. Jason kicks off the clouds and makes his way to where his girlfriend's draconic shape is fighting on the beach.
He didn't live seventeen years in defense of this place to watch it be burned down just days after he died.
When he phases in beside Juliette, she's slamming the spines of her tail into the final squadron of enemies defending the shoreline. The pandai scream and burst into ash, which gets quickly swept from the sand by the ocean. In a shower of green and yellow light, Juliette shrinks back down into a human and falls onto one knee, panting.
"Holy shit," She gasps. Jason crouches beside her as she pushes her sweaty hair back away from her face.
"Are you alright?!"
"Yeah. But Percy was not kidding about those naps."
"Legion! Set up defenses along the high tide mark! I want a squadron at every beach access for a mile in either direction! Get a medical pavilion set up a quarter of a mile west." Jason and Juliette both look over. A descendent of Mars (one Jason doesn't recognize) is in command, issuing orders to the tired Roman soldiers reconvening all around them. His golden armor is bloodstained. Regardless, the centurion holds his gladius high to Jupiter, the crossed spears on his forearm proud above three dark hashmarks, and his voice rings out steadily. "And I want ballistae on that fishing pier before the next round of speedboats comes in from those ships. MOVE!"
Juliette is slowly catching her breath beside Jason, but her legs and arms are trembling. The centurion locks on to her where she's still kneeling in the sand and beelines their way. Jason doesn't recognize this guy, but he seems so familiar. He has blonde hair and dark brown eyes. The soldier kneels down in front of Juliette.
"I guess we're lucky you decided to come back," The guy laughs, bracing her up with a hand on her shoulder. "Aster, right? What do you need from us?"
Juliette wipes her forehead on her arm, and Jason's chest clenches at the circles forming beneath her eyes. She nods towards the boats, though, regardless of her exhaustion. "Keep everybody away from the ships. I'm gonna blow them up."
The centurion raises an eyebrow, but doesn't look doubtful. "How?"
She grunts like 'I dunno,' and it actually makes the guy laugh rather than stew in anxiety. Jason laughs a bit too. It looks like the Greek way of life may be rubbing off on Camp Jupiter. The legacy of Mars nods at Juliette and reaches into his hip pack.
"Alright, well, here. I've got some unicorn draught. It's like that nectar stuff for you Greeks-"
"No thanks."
Jason frowns at his girlfriend. So does the centurion. "Are you su-"
"I'm good," Confirms Juliette, standing again. Her knees are still trembling. "Keep it. I've gotta figure out how to sink these friggen things."
Unicorn draught definitely doesn't taste as good as nectar does, but Jason is sure Juliette's never had it before. Why would she snub it now when she so obviously needs the extra boost? Before he gets the chance to question her, though, the centurion tucks the flask back into the pocket it came from and points at the line of ships on the horizon.
"Lavinia took a bunch of nereids to try and deal with them earlier. We haven't heard anything since. Try and see if you can find her before you blow them to bits?"
Juliette nods. "You got it. Who's Lavinia again?"
The guy draws his sword and begins to back towards the clumsy barricades his men have thrown together in the last minute or so. "Pink hair. Loud. You won't miss her."
"Sounds like a plan," Juliette agrees. And then she turns to Jason with a serious expression. "So, Captain Lightning Bolts. Any ideas on how to sink fifty cruise ships before the big bad emperors get the chance to intervene?"
Jason grits his teeth and glances at the boats in question. Obviously, they all have Greek Fire aboard, but he doubts they would keep it out in the open once the two of them use it to take even one of the ships down. No, if they want to utilize the explosives that the emperors brought in themselves, they'll need to take out all of the ships at once. He doesn't think he has another round of a hundred lightning bolts left in him tonight. But if they can figure out a way for Jason to strike just one spot with his powers and simultaneously ignite a fuse to all of the Greek Fire stores at once, then they can take out the whole fleet before Cal-...Caligula...even knows what's happening.
But how to do that?
Jason looks back at Juliette. She's staring at him expectantly, appearing to not even be bothering to think up her own plan. He's both flattered by her trust in him and disappointed that she isn't going to be throwing in any of her own wildcards for this task of theirs.
His eyes trail down to the crook of her elbow, though, where they catch on the pinprick scars left by Medea's collection of needles, and a wildcard of hers occurs to him without even needing her help. He isn't looking forward to explaining this plan to her, but, assuming it works, watching the San Francisco Bay burst into flames is going to be so, so worth it.
"Have you ever seen those videos of the coast guard burning oil spills?" He asks her.
Something wicked lights up in her eyes, and Jason can't help but grin in return.
Lavinia has heard plenty of stories about Jason Grace since she got to Camp Jupiter. She's heard even more since Apollo turned up. He's a legend around camp. And, like most legends, he got even more popular once he was dead.
She can't help but think about him when she's leaping up from the San Francisco Bay, propelled by the nereids' water magic so that she can grab hold of the lower rungs of a maintenance ladder on the largest cruise ship in Emperor Calligul-Loser's fleet.
The metal is cold and slippery, but she manages to cling on with one hand, her Docs wedged into the frame of a porthole. Lavinia turns to flash her accomplices a thumbs-up. Their fishlike faces smile back at her nervously, and she winks in an attempt to lessen their concern.
She's got this. Sure, it's the most dangerous thing she's attempted in, like, her entire life, but she's got this. The nereids put in the work and did the recon they needed. Lavinia knows exactly where the bad guys are keeping the Greek Fire and the catapults. All she has to do is...figure out how to make sure they end up aimed at one another instead of at literally everyone she knows and loves down on the shore.
She's totally got this. No problem. But she also can't help but wonder if this is the same ship that Jason Grace got shishkababed on. And if that's the same fate that's awaiting her up on the deck.
Hauling herself up doesn't take all that much effort. Lavinia's climbed a few ladders in her day. Getting over the lip of the deck is another story, though. It's weirdly flared and takes her a good couple of minutes to finagle herself over. Once she does, Lavinia's knees drop down onto the luxury tiles of this ship's pooldeck, and she finds herself highly confused by the sight that greets her.
There's her catapult, yes. There are the barrels of Greek Fire she was expecting to see. But...
Where is everyone else?
She rises to her feet, heart in her throat, and grips the belt holding her manuballista missiles tightly enough to strangle the poor thing to death. The dimly lit pool deck is empty aside from the weapons strewn about. She'd say it's quiet too, but that's hard to pretend when she can hear the cries and shouts of her fellow legionnaires down on the shore. The ship itself is silent. Why does that freak her out more than having to stealth around a bunch of bad guys would have?
She swallows her bubblegum like a pill and steps forward out of the shadows.
Oh, well.
She doesn't have the time to figure out where everybody might have gone. She also does not care, just as long as this plan of hers works. Everyone back at camp is counting on her. Camp Jupiter. Reyna. Poison Oak and the other dryads. Not to mention, Apollo and Meg. She has to make this work. No matter what.
Lavinia heads straight for the catapult. She gets about halfway there before she realizes that the shouts and cries she's hearing aren't coming from shore.
They're shouts of her name. From just down in the water. Where her nereid friends have resurfaced to scream at her to come back down.
Oh. There are all the bad guys. They're floating down there in the water.
"LOOK OUT!"
Before she can react in any kind of soldierly way, Lavinia just pierces out a scream and ends up pummeled to the ship deck by an enormous, scaley creature that smells like wet reptiles, death, and terror. Flailing, screeching, and smacking the thing in the chest with her manuballista over and over again, Lavinia decides that when this thing kills her, she's going to come back as a ghost and haunt Apollo for ever showing up at camp and murdering her chill spring vibes.
Her eyes are squeezed shut, so she doesn't notice when the monster shrinks down into a girl her age until her weapon is getting yanked irritably out her her hands. Lavinia snaps her gaze up and onto her attacker, jaw slack.
If Lavinia wasn't positive she was into women yet, this moment would definitely have sealed the deal for her. She's on her back, pinned by the torn jean-clad knee of the hottest demigod Lavinia has ever laid eyes Poison Oak is her number one always, but damn.
Jason Grace is one lucky bastard. Or, she guesses, he was. Y'know...pre-skewering. Anyway-
"You're Julie Aster?" Lavinia squeaks. The girl's bright green eyes glance up to Lavinia's hair and back. Then she nods and drops her manuballista back into her hands.
"Yes, Lavinia. Hit me again, and I'm gonna break that thing."
"You know my name?" She squeaks.
Juliette stands up and offers her a hand. Lavinia takes it eagerly and lets the daughter of Venus pull her to her feet. She watches the other demigod brush past her and head to the edge of the ship where the nereids were yelling from.
Aster leans over the edge and cups her mouth. "Hey! Get everybody who doesn't work for the Triumvirate out of these waters! Things are about to get hot!"
Then Julie turns back to Lavinia, who's trying to remember how normal humans stand properly, and starts leading the way into the inner cabin of the ship.
Lavinia watches her go, brain buzzing blankly as the girl's hips sway with each step. It takes a randomly heavy gust of wind that nearly knocks her off her feet to remind her to stop staring and start following after the other demigod. Juliette gets to the door and looks back at her impatiently as she jogs to catch up.
"We blowing this thing up, or not?"
"Yes! I'm on my way!"
The door to the inside of the ship is heavy and metal, like the emperors had prepared for this vessel in particular to one day be under ballistic assault. Lavinia definitely would not have been able to push it open herself. Juliette has no issue simply kicking it inwards, though. She doesn't even jump like Lav does when it makes a deafening clanging sound against the back wall it slams into.
She starts walking again, and Lavinia's struggle to keep up with her becomes a background focus compared to her befuddlement at Juliette's one sided conversation that's definitely not being held with her.
"You said it's this way?" asks the girl.
Lavinia frowns. "I didn't say-"
"How many barrels? Or vases. Whatever."
"Of Greek Fire? I think they're up on the deck sti-"
"Ssh!" Juliette hisses at Lav. "I'm not talking to you." Her eyes are, in Lavinia's opinion, unnecessarily irritated. It's spooky down here in the dim light of the cruise ship hallways. Lavinia shuts her mouth obediently and puts a little more space between them.
This chick is terrifying. Worse than Reyna. Lavinia almost misses the praetor.
When Frank and Apollo went on and on about Juliette and the Seven before during mealtimes, they never mentioned any imaginary friends. They did mention that Commodus and Caligula had her locked up for a while, though. Lav really hopes that her time in the slammer didn't cause the one sane cordolium they've got on record to crack. Especially not if Lavinia is currently trapped in an enclosed space with her. But that'd definitely be just her luck.
Julie stops suddenly, and Lavinia almost walks right into her back. Before she can question the other girl, the strawberry blonde leading the way turns 90 degrees down a shorter hall beside them and begins counting the doors out loud. Lavinia watches with an awkward expression.
"-ive, six, and seven. This one, right?" She looks at the space beside her for confirmation.
Lavinia looks at that space too. All she sees is horrible seashell patterned wallpaper. "What's in there?" She asks hesitantly.
Juliette looks at the the door. For long enough that Lavinia starts to bounce on the toes of her shoes, fighting the urge to break into nervous dancing. To calm her anxiety, she hops her way through ballet positions and avoids making eye contact with her companion.
"So, that's why she was doing it..."
The statement is barely more than a whisper. The agony behind it stops Lavinia in her tracks, though. She freezes halfway into fourth-position and blinks as Juliette begins to tremble.
Lav is starting to wonder if there actually is another person here who she can't see. Because the shaken, gut wrenching smile that Juliette sends to the empty space beside her is so real and heartbreaking that there must be a target for it. She's even more sure when the girl shakes her head and mutters, "How can it be your fault when you're the one who saved me?"
The tone of her sentence even hurts Lavinia. Her chest twists, and her stomach drops. She watches silently (for once) as Julie shakes her head, closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and pushes open the seventh door on the right.
She steps through the threshold, and Lavinia follows her close after.
The hallway leads to another hallway, but this one has higher ceilings than the last and is lined by metal garage shelves. Every shelf is filled, laden with such enormous vases or steel kegs that the metal centers are bending down under the weight of it all. There have to be at least three or four hundred of those giant containers in this hall, each strained at the lip with a strange purple-ish black goop.
Juliette is stopped a few feet into the room. She seems to be scanning over every single vase individually. Like she's trying to determine just how much volume they all hold, and she's very not happy with the answer she's getting.
Lavinia tiptoes in behind her and approaches one of the containers. "What is all of this stuff?"
Juliette finally looks at her. This time, her gaze is much more soft and patient. "You really don't want to know."
Lav opens one of the lids. The gunk inside of it sticks to the top like sticky melted cheese. She gags at the smell. Rotten eggs and seawater. She closes the vase again quickly to cough it out of her lungs.
Julie is more stoic than even before. Her face is blank, her eyes smoldering as she approaches one herself. Lavinia watches her spot a smaller container off to the side of one shelf - an empty glass vial about the size of a water bottle. She ends up closing her eyes and gagging repeatedly when Juliette plucks it up and kicks the lid off of one of the vases, but she can infer from the 'sploosh' noise right after that she's filling the thing up with whatever this vile shit is around them.
It takes Lavinia a bit to get used to the smell enough to reopen her eyes. When she does, Juliette is tucking the bottle into her pocket and turning her direction. Finally, she's got an expression on other than terrifying sociopathic blankness. The cordolium is smirking, a hand on her hip, her fake leg propped up onto one of the vases stored on its side.
"Guess what we're gonna do," She grins at Lavinia.
Honestly just thankful she's actually talking to her this time, Lavinia hesitantly returns her smile and shrugs. "Um...What?"
Juliette crosses her arms, cocks a hip, and beams.
"Pollution!"
Frank knows Jason of the Seven and Jason Grace of Rome as two different people. Neither one of them does he know very well. He thinks, given recent events, that's an issue that he needs to fix. And he's hoping with all of his heart that he gets that chance.
Even if Jason makes it back, Frank still needs to be here. And that possibility is looking shakier and shakier by the second.
Commodus and Caligula are blocking the path back down the hill on their chariots pulled by wingless pegasai. Lester is dying behind him, poisoned and no real asset to whatever fight Frank and his men could still put up with their backs to the Caldecott Tunnel.
Grunting in pain as he reaches up to tug three full arrowheads out of his left shoulder, Frank grits his teeth at the irony of where he's stranding right now. Is this gonna be it? Are they about to lose this battle at the very spot where he and Hazel first found Percy Jackson less than a year ago?
Frank's ribs are broken. That's making it difficult to breathe, but he forces himself to pretend he's unharmed, straightening his back and flexing his battered muscles for his men's sake. Hannibal is stomping. Frank glances at him sadly. Elephants have good senses of smell. He isn't fooled by the purple cloak barely hiding the stab wound in the right side of Frank's chest.
Yeah, alright. Jason and him are probably going to have to catch up later than expected. In Elysium one day. After Jason has lived the full life that he deserved.
Because there's only one way that this battle is going to end with Frank's soldiers still alive. And he doesn't expect Pluto to be releasing two souls back for a second chance.
"I have an alternative solution," He pants, a hand subtly pressed to the arrow wounds on his shoulder. Caligula raises an intrigued eyebrow. Commodus continues to squint in a futile attempt to see out of his ruined, melted eyes. "Spolia opima."
Commodus gasps in delight, his crowned helmet nearly toppling off his brown curls and onto the ruined street. "Single combat! I love this idea!"
Frank nods. "That's right. I'll take the both of you. You two against me. And if you win, my men will let you through this tunnel, and camp is yours."
The soldiers behind him uproar in denial. Frank silences them with one hand. Caligula's beady black eyes focus on the fresh blood between Frank's fingers as he leans in suspiciously.
"This seems to good to be true, praetor," He murmurs. "What are you playing at, Zhang?"
The tiny chunk of firewood in Frank's breast pocket weighs about a thousand pounds right now. He swallows around the dryness of his throat and shrugs. "Either I kill you, or I die. Get through me, and you can march right into Camp Jupiter. I'll order my remaining troops to stand down. You can have your triumphal parade through New Rome like you've always wanted."
Frank is not bluffing, but he also has no intention of it coming to that. There's a statue of Jason Grace in the center square of camp now. There's no way in Olympus that Frank will let this man destroy his friend's life and legacy within a week of each other.
He's backed the emperors into a corner. The troops behind their chariots are muttering, looking at their leaders expectantly. This is, by all appearances, an easy win for the two immortals. One injured son of Mars, and the battle is theirs. If they refuse, they're cowards. If they accept...
Frank breathes in. It's strange how much adrenaline your body will give you right at the end. Like it's still trying to save you, even though your brain has decided you've reached the end of the line. If everything goes to plan, these are the last few moments of Frank's life. He's just really glad that he kissed Hazel goodbye before this fight began. She'll be okay. But gods is he going to miss her.
The thought almost springs tears to his eyes. He forces them back before anyone can notice.
Frank didn't know either Jason Grace very well up until this moment. He understands everything about his friend now, and he thinks that the two of them would have been much closer if they'd given each other more of a chance.
"Wait," chokes Apollo behind him. The poor guy is struggling up to his feet, paler than Frank's ever seen a person look. Even Nico on his worst day. Still, the former god struggles to Frank's side and grips his arm pleadingly. "Two. Two versus two. I'll fight as well!"
Caligula bursts out laughing. Commodus does as well after a moment, but it looks more to Frank like he's just laughing because he thinks he's supposed to. Thepraetorsighs and shakes the Sun God off of his arm. "No, Apollo."
"Even better!" Commodus howls, slapping the handle of his chariot.
"I must!"
"Apollo, no. I can handle this. Clear off-"
BANG!
One strike of lightning, and then an explosion lights the horizon a fiery red and orange, and Frank's eyes widen in an instant.
"GET DOWN!" He orders, throwing Apollo down onto the street and crouching beside him. Frank hears his men do just the same, Hannibal trumpeting in complaint as he's roughhoused back into the tunnel for safety just in time for a wave of heat and dust and smoke to blow over them as quickly as a spinning tornado.
Frank grunts against the winds that have suddenly overtaken them. His vision is blocked by the black smoke. It's filling his lungs as well, choking coughs from him that he can hear wracking Apollo's mortal body as well. The enemy forces are shouting in surprise. Their mounts are whinnying and crying in complaint, and both of the emperors are shouting orders for their troops to hold position as everyone is scooted at least a foot backwards from their initial position.
Frank forces his eyes back open. There's lightning crackling in the sky. There's thunder rolling above the torrent of wind and smoke still overpowering them all. The explosion and its resulting storm lasts long enough that Frank's lungs start feeling like they're going to burst if he doesn't take in some amount of oxygen soon.
And then, all at once, it stops.
The winds halt, and the black smoke disappears.
On his knees, Frank coughs out the dregs of it, gasping in air and blinking away the involuntary tears blinding him still. He can hear his men and Apollo doing the same. Caligula and Commodus were knocked out of their chariots, but they're standing up now without any harm to them. They look to be the only ones who weren't nearly suffocated by whatever just went down. Their position in the center of the new clearing that explosion made is where Frank looks first once he can see again.
Then, he looks wheretheyare looking. And they're looking at the space right beside him.
Standing to his right, on her feet, face turned away from him and towards their enemies, is the only person whom Frank is aware of who knew both versions of Jason Grace to their core.
Juliette doesn't look down at Frank or Apollo. She does reach out a hand, though, and pat it gently onto Frank's sweaty, bloodied hair. She steps in front of him, eyes on the two emperors now out of their chariots at the head of the enemy army, and tosses something his way over her shoulder.
Frank catches the object easily, but he doesn't have any idea what it is. It looks sort of like half of a tiny wooden canoe. The edge of it begins black and sharp around the edges, emitting a deep purple light that feels like Hazel's magic. The center bit, though, is blue. Blue like an underwater stone arch and speckled with tiny coral colored sand dollars and starfish. That part glows a shimmering sea green which reminds Frank of a mysterious black haired boy he found wandering around the streets of San Francisco.
The two sections are fit together like puzzle pieces. Frank turns the object over in his hands, frowning in confusion.
"Keep that safe for me, Frank. It's important."
He jerks his head back up to look at his newly arrived friend. She doesn't glance at him, but he can hear veiled anger in her voice. He swallows his guilt and securely tucks the object into his armor.
She knows exactly what he was about to do. And, with whatever this thing is, which is now stored just beside his remaining bit of firewood, she has forbidden it.
Well. Frank can't say that he isn't relieved.
One glance to his right explains where that explosion came from. There's a line of burning wreckage floating in the Bay where there used to be a fleet of cruise ships. Frank watches Caligula notice it as well, and he grins around the blood in his mouth at the way the man's eyes flash with rage and frustration.
Commodus doesn't have the ability to see how badly their forces just got burned. So, instead of holding his ground defensively, he steps forward and scowls.
"What in Rome's name was that?!" He screeches.
He takes another step forward. Caligula watches him do so cautiously, but doesn't move to stop him.
Commodus' arms go up into the air, his unblemished armor gleaming in the moonlight. "Did another one of your witch's toys go and blow up something else important?!" He sneers at his colleague.
Another step forward.
"Honestly, Caligula, you should really have thanked that boy before you murdered him. The Grace boy ridding you of that wench was the only useful thing he ever did in his sorry li-"
Juliette's talons through the emperor's throat interrupt that sentence. Frank sits up sharply. Apollo swears colorfully in a language he doesn't know. The soldiers behind them all gasp and murmur amongst themselves.
Juliette isn't transformed. She is still human from her head to her damp, borrowed blue tennis shoes the Frank knows she found in Jason's old apartment. But her hands are reptilian, enormous, webbed between the fingers, and capped with six-inch long, razor sharp talons.
Three of those talons have punctured Commodus' windpipe. The emperor's eyes bug. His mouth opens in shock. He reaches forward to grab Juliette's wrist, and she yanks her nails out of his throat.
A strange mixture of blood and ichor leaks out of the man's neck as he drops to his knees, choking on more of it.
That's right. Apollo and Reyna destroyed what made the emperors immortal.
Maybe...Maybe they do have a chance.
Frank tears his gaze from the unkingly, hacking man on the ground to look up at Caligula instead. The other emperor seems to be studying the scene, tense but bearing no sign he intends to help his partner.
Well, Frank certainly isn't going to stop Juliette as she leans down and closes her hand around Commodus' bleeding throat. The brown haired man jerks, choking on his blood. He reaches up and strikes her in the chest - a blow that Frank knows should free him instantly.
He may as well have punched a stone wall. His captor doesn't even react. Instead, Juliette uses her free hand to snap the bones of his arm to prevent any further struggles from the man.
Commodus screams. Or, he does his best to. Juliette's grip on his throat is so tight that his blood is trickling from his nose now as well. Frank's heart is pounding. He can't see Juliette's face, but he knows it must be blank. That isn't normal for her. This is a moment that has been a long time coming.
Apollo is trembling next to him, eyes wide and filled with tears as he watches the scene. Frank can't seem to catch his breath. But that doesn't mean he isn't cheering his friend on in his mind as she reaches up and pinches Commodus' cheek between her thumb and her forefinger. It's creepy. Strangely terrifying. Like a grandmother about to disembowel some thug on the street.
She leans in close to Commodus' ear and asks, "Who's a pretty dead man?"
Frank blinks.
So does Caligula and all the troops he can see from here.
Commodus doesn't seem confused by her question, though. The sound of her voice makes all color fall down out of his previously sunkissed skin. He stammers, trying to form orders but unable to make real sounds, kicking uselessly as Juliette raises him up above her head by his throat. All the way above her. Until her arm is straight up, and they're all watching as a previously immortal emperor, previous dictator of Rome with centuries of innocent blood on his hands, squirms and struggles between her fingers.
Then, the scales spread down Juliette's arms. She grows upwards and out into the wyvern that Frank knows. The one that has saved his life more times than he can count. The one he watched fly patrols around the Argo II. The one that fell from the sky to shatter during the fight with Gaea. The one he's raced with on wings around Camp Halfblood. The one that does barrel rolls in the sky for the delight of younger campers.
That wyvern lowers Caligula to its jaws, sinks its fangs into the howling, crying man's torso, and tears a millennia-old immortal king into two limp pieces.
