𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫. ── 𝐣𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞

𝐱𝐯. 𝐬𝐡𝐞-𝐜𝐚𝐠𝐨

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IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE TITLE REFERENCE I LOVE YOU

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JASON POV (AFTER MMOTERS)

The scene began to dissolve. "Good-bye, Jason. Beware Chicago. Your most dangerous mortal enemy waits there. If you are to die, it will be by her hand."

"Who?" he demanded.

But Hera's image faded, and Jason awoke.

His eyes snapped open. "Cyclops!"

"Whoa, sleepyhead." Aella sat behind him on the bronze dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced. Leo sat in front, driving. They flew peacefully through the winter sky as if nothing had happened.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammered. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo said. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

Jason's head throbbed. He remembered the factory, then walking down the catwalk, then a creature looming over him—a face with one eye, a massive fist—and everything went black.

Aella jumped up and snapped, temporarily making Jason fall on one side. But she caught him, their eyes merely inches apart. She blushed and went back to her original position.

"Captain Concussion! That's a good nickname," she looked at Jason and most likely saw his distraught face, and said, "don't worry, captain, I was conked out too."

Jason rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Leo. 

"How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper said. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo said quickly.

Piper laughed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

And she did—how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason and Aella, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory. Jason was impressed. Taking out three Cyclopes with nothing but a tool kit? Not bad. It didn't exactly scare him to hear how close he'd come to death, but it did make him feel horrible. He'd stepped right into an ambush and spent the whole fight knocked out while his friends fended for themselves. What kind of quest leader was he? When Piper told him about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, Jason felt like his head was going to explode. A son of Mercury ... Jason felt like he should know that kid, but the name was missing from his mind.

"I'm not alone, then," he said. "There are others like me."

"Jason," Piper said, "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know ... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..."

He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage.

"An exchange?" Piper asked. "What does that mean?"

Aella's eyes widened. "Percy. M-m-my cousin, he's wherever you were before—"

Jason nodded. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper said hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

Leo cleared his throat. "About that ... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."