Hearts Crossed - Kayla Knowles (2)

Nico I (SON)

Chapter Title: I Hate Hera So Much Now

Nico's Current Thoughts

There should be no way in the whole world. There should be no way that now, after dropping off the face of the planet for months, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Michael Yew, and Colton Reynolds just suddenly reappear as amnesiac demigods in Camp Jupiter. I mean, I had heard that they could be here, but there has been nothing.

Nothing.

For nearly six whole months.

Until now.

Now, here were the four dudes that I had chased so many leads and found nothing while I was looking for them, at Camp Jupiter of all places. I didn't know if I wanted to hug them for being all right after all, or simply slap each of them in the face. Actually, I probably should not do either. In the first case, as Jason had mentioned, they likely don't have their memories right now and in the second case, Colton's holding the rifle right now and probably wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through my head without his memories if I did that. So, best to play it cool and act like I don't know them.

I definitely felt like smacking Hera in the face though over this. Like, how do you not tell us where exactly you put these four? Oh right, Zeus.. after all the progress I thought I have made with him, he screwed it all up.

Okay.. focus, Nico.. you can do this.. you can make it through this.. here we go..

- — - — - Switch To Third Person POV - — - — -

Hazel felt like she had just introduced two nuclear bombs to each other, or five as it seemed like at the moment. Now she was waiting to see which one of them exploded first.

Until that morning, her brother Nico had been the most powerful demigod she knew. The others at Camp Jupiter saw him as a traveling oddball, about as harmless as the fauns. Hazel knew better. She hadn't grown up with Nico, hadn't even known him very long. But she knew Nico was more dangerous than Reyna, or Octavian, or maybe even Jason.

And then she met them, and out of all of them, there was something about Colton that made Hazel's body feel a bit on edge whenever she was around him at all, even if she didn't show it. She too had been absolutely caught off guard by his unusual fighting style, and had never seen anything like it. A demigod using a bow and arrow or some other ancient Roman weapon as a ranged fighter — say as like a son or legacy of Apollo, that she could see made sense, but a son of Mars literally picking up a Civil War era weapon made by mortals while amnesiac and then proceeding to kill two Gorgons with one bullet where Frank's arrow had failed to even kill one of them.. as if Colton had used this weapon for a very long amount of time, it was absolutely beyond logic in Hazel's mind.

Aside from him, something about Luke seemed off, like there was more to his past than he seemed to give, judging from the rest of camp's reaction to him.

Michael may not have looked like a son of Apollo, but there was no mistaking that he inherited the sun god's legendary temper, that was for sure.. or the lie detector part either. The fact that red X's appeared in Michael's eyes as Reyna said she didn't know the final member of this unusual quadrant of newcomers was something to behold.

And then there was Percy.

At first, when she saw him stumbling up the highway with the old lady in his arms, Hazel had thought he might be a god in disguise. Even though he was beat up, dirty, and stooped with exhaustion — then again all four of them were, Percy had an aura of power about him. He had the good looks of a Roman god, with sea-green eyes and wind blown black hair.

She'd ordered Frank not to fire on him, or any of them for that matter. She thought the gods might be testing them. She'd heard myths like that before: a kid with an old lady begs for shelter, and when the rude mortals refuse—boom, they get turned into banana slugs.