KAT WISHED SHE had her phone. Maybe she should steal one from the nymphs, because holy shit she wants to cement this moment in her mind for forever.

Leo summoned some breath mints and a pair of welding goggles from his tool belt as if they were sunglasses. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He used some machine oil to grease back his hair, which was just disgusting. Kat would definitely make him take a shower later. He stuck a wrench in his back pocket ( why exactly, Kat wasn't sure ) and he had Hazel draw a tattoo on his biceps with a marker: HOT STUFF, with a skull and crossbones. Kat also drew a tiny pp on his arm, but he didn't know about it and she hoped he wouldn't know about it until later. It made her giggle.

"What in the world are you thinking?" Hazel asked, sounding pretty flustered.

"I try not to think," admitted Leo. "It interferes with being nuts. Just concentrate on moving that Celestial bronze. Echo, Kat, you ready?"

"Ready," said Echo.

"Ready to tease you about this for the rest of your life," agreed Kat.

Leo sent her a withering glare that honestly looked ridiculous with his makeover. He strutted back toward the pond. "Leo is the coolest!" he shouted.

"Leo is the coolest!" Echo shouted back.

"Yeah, baby, check me out!"

"Check me out!" said Echo.

"Make way for the king!"

"The king!"

"Narcissus is weak!"

"Weak!"

The crowd of nymphs scattered in surprise. Leo shooed them away as if they were bothering him. "No autographs, girls. I know you want some Leo time, but I'm way too cool. You better just hang around that ugly dweeb Narcissus. He's lame!"

"Lame!" Echo said with enthusiasm.

The nymphs muttered angrily.

"What are you talking about?" one demanded.

"You're lame," said another. Kat agreed with whoever that was.

Leo adjusted his goggles and smiled. He flexed his biceps, which honestly Kat had bigger biceps than him, and showed off his HOT STUFF tattoo. He had the nymphs' attention, if only because they were stunned; but Narcissus was still fixed on his own reflection.

"You know how ugly Narcissus is?" Leo asked the crowd. "He's so ugly, when he was born his mama thought he was a backward centaur — with a horse butt for a face."

Some of the nymphs gasped. Narcissus frowned, as though he was vaguely aware of a gnat buzzing around his head.

"You know why his bow has cobwebs?" Leo continued. "He uses it to hunt for dates, but he can't find one!"

One of the nymphs laughed. The others quickly elbowed her into silence.

Narcissus turned and scowled at Leo. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Super-sized McShizzle, man!" Leo said. "I'm Leo Valdez, bad boy supreme. And the ladies love a bad boy."

"Love a bad boy!" Echo said, with a convincing squeal.

Leo took out a pen and autographed the arm of one of the nymphs. "Narcissus is a loser! He's so weak, he can't bench-press a Kleenex. He's so lame, when you look up lame on Wikipedia, it's got a picture of Narcissus — only the picture's so ugly, no one ever checks it out."

Narcissus knit his handsome eyebrows. His face was turning from bronze to salmon pink. For the moment, he'd totally forgotten about the pond, and Kat could see the sheet of bronze sinking into the sand.

"What are you talking about?" Narcissus demanded. "I am amazing. Everyone knows this."

"Amazing at pure suck," Leo said. "If I was as sucky as you, I'd starve myself. Oh wait, you already did that."

Another nymph giggled. Then another. Narcissus growled, which did make him look a little less handsome. Meanwhile Leo beamed and wiggled his eyebrows over his goggles and spread his hands, gesturing for applause.

"That's right!" he said. "Team Leo for the win!"

"Team Leo for the win!" Echo shouted. She'd wriggled into the mob of nymphs, and because she was so hard to see, the nymphs apparently thought the voice came from one of their own.

"Oh my god, I am so awesome!" Leo bellowed.

"So awesome!" Echo yelled back.

"He is funny," a nymph ventured.

"And cute, in a scrawny way," another said.

"Scrawny?" Leo asked. "Baby, I invented scrawny. Scrawny is the new sizzling hot. And I GOT the scrawny. Narcissus? He's such a loser even the Underworld didn't want him. He couldn't get the ghost girls to date him."

"Eww," said a nymph.

"Eww!" agreed Echo.

"Stop!" Narcissus got to his feet. "This is not right! This person is obviously not awesome, so he must be . . ." He struggled to use his two brain cells. It had probably been a long time since he'd talked about anything other than himself. "He must be tricking us."

Apparently Narcissus wasn't completely stupid. Realization dawned on his face. He turned back to the pond. "The bronze mirror is gone! My reflection! Give me back to me!"

"Team Leo!" one of the nymphs squeaked. But the others returned their attention to Narcissus.

"I'm the beautiful one!" Narcissus insisted. "He's stolen my mirror, and I'm going to leave unless we get it back!"

The girls gasped. One pointed. "There!"

Hazel was at the top of the crater, running away as fast as she could while lugging a large sheet of bronze.

"Get it back!" cried a nymph.

"Shit," Kat whispered, before turning and dashing to Hazel's side.

"Yes!" Narcissus unslung his bow and grabbed an arrow from his dusty quiver. "The first one who gets that bronze, I will like you almost as much as I like me. I might even kiss you, right after I kiss my reflection!"

"Oh my gods!" the nymphs screamed.

"And kill those demigods!" Narcissus added. "They are not as cool as me!"

"Give it to me," Kat told Hazel.

"What?" she asked.

"How'd you think I got here this quickly?" Kat hissed. "I'm strong. I literally carried Jason down and up three flights of stairs."

"Can vouch for that!" Leo yelled from just behind them. She looked back to grin at him and saw that Narcissus was nocking an arrow, but it was so old and brittle, it broke into splinters.

"Ow!" he yelled very attractively. "My manicure!"

Normally nymphs were quick — at least the ones at Camp Half-Blood were — but these were burdened with posters, T-shirts, and other Narcissus™ merchandise. The nymphs also weren't great at working as a team. They kept stumbling over one another, pushing and shoving. Echo made things worse by running among them, tripping and tackling as many as she could.

Still, they were closing rapidly.

"Do it!" Kat yelled, and Hazel let go of the Celestial Bronze. "Fuck, this is heavy," Kat muttered before sprinting away along the edge of the water.

Eventually, she had to stop, catching her breath because even she had limits. She squinted and found that she was still a ways away from the Argo II.

Well, she thought. Time to swim.

She did love the water; it's basically her home, after all. Still, she didn't really fancy swimming with a fifty pound hunk of bronze.

You've done worse, Mikhailova, she scolded herself. You can do this too.

But this is something that's been eating her up her entire life, like a parasite. Not the swimming part, but the nepo baby part. Because, if it wasn't obvious, which it really was and is, she is a nepo baby, and it's gotten her many luxuries in life that most people will never have. And the rest of her family was also famous and successful and all of the above.

That conversation with Nemesis brought those insecurities back into existence. Kat is only here because of her family. And, well, fate and prophecies, but still. She just wants to abandon her last name or something. Or just abandon everything.

But she can't do that. She has Leo and Frank and Piper and Jason. She can't leave them.

. . . right? They'd understand. Yeah. They'd understand as the world burned down around them because Gaea destroyed the world. Great thoughts.

Whatever. Before Kat goes on to live her life as a master criminal or vigilante or some shit like that, she has to make sure she actually has a world to travel to and fro. And a plane so she can travel everywhere. And maybe a home in New York with Jason and Piper so she has a place to go to when she wants to be with them.

Hm. Is she moving too fast with them? Maybe. She's been hopelessly in love with them since the beginning. She's said the coveted "I love you" because she's always been the type to feel emotions too soon, too quickly. And she's the type to say shit she regrets. Neither Jason or Piper are those people, so they haven't said it yet, but Kat's not too worried about that. She doesn't care.

Suddenly, she saw a blur of motion and a horse stopped in front of Kat. A horse that had Leo and Hazel on it.

"Get on!" Hazel looked over her shoulder. "They're not close, but—"

"Yeah, yeah," Kat snapped out of her momentary trance, shoving the bronze in Leo's hands as she hoisted herself onto the horse, and it immediately sped off faster than Kat could run at her peak.