THE NERVOUSNESS ATE up Val.

Not literally, but she was still nervous. What was happening down there with Annabeth and the rest? What if one of them had died? Or their mission failed? What if—

"Hey, they're fine," Hazel's voice filtered toward Val, and she relaxed. The tiniest bit. But she still relaxed.

"Yeah," Val muttered, staring down at her arms. They were at her normal color again, back to what she had been before the curse had started to overcome her. She felt power in her veins, itching to get out of her body. "I would've died already if she died. But . . . I'm still worried."

"I know," Hazel squeezed her shoulder. "Me too. But it's for the good of the world, right?"

Val nearly let out a bitter laugh. "Yeah. The good of the world."

"Valentine! Hazel!" Leo called from above deck.

"That's our cue," Hazel started walking up, and Val followed.

Soon, they were watching the carnage down below. Val's heart sank at Percy and Annabeth, both injured, but Piper was holding her own quite well for being on her own.

"Come on, then!' she yelled. 'I'll destroy you all myself if I have to!'

'The thing is,' Jason said dramatically, 'you don't have to.'

Jason's sword gleamed gold in the sun. Frank stood at his side, his bow ready. Hazel sat astride Arion, who reared and whinnied in challenge. Val stood with her knives, smirking down at the giants.

With a deafening blast, a white-hot bolt arced from the sky, straight through Jason's body as he leaped, wreathed in lightning, at the giant king.

And for the next three minutes, life was great.

So much happened at once that only an ADHD demigod could have kept track.

Jason fell on King Porphyrion with such force that the giant crumpled to his knees – blasted with lightning and stabbed in the neck with a golden gladius.

Frank unleashed a hail of arrows, driving back the giants nearest to Percy.

The Argo II rose above the ruins and all the ballistae and catapults fired simultaneously. Leo had programmed the weapons with surgical precision. A wall of Greek fire roared upward all around the Parthenon. It didn't touch the interior, but in a flash most of the smaller monsters around it were incinerated.

Leo's voice boomed over the loudspeaker: 'SURRENDER! YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY ONE SPANKING HOT WAR MACHINE!'

The giant Enceladus howled in outrage. 'Valdez!'

'WHAT'S UP, ENCHILADAS?' Leo's voice roared back. 'NICE DAGGER IN YOUR FOREHEAD.'

'GAH!' The giant pulled Katoptris out of his head. 'Monsters: destroy that ship!'

The remaining forces tried their best. A flock of gryphons rose to attack. Festus the figurehead blew flames and chargrilled them out of the sky. A few Earthborn launched a volley of rocks, but from the sides of the hull a dozen Archimedes spheres sprayed out, intercepting the boulders and blasting them to dust.

'PUT SOME CLOTHES ON!' Buford ordered.

Hazel spurred Arion off the colonnade and they leaped into battle. The forty-foot fall would have broken any other horse's legs, but Arion hit the ground running. Hazel zipped from giant to giant, stinging them with the blade of her spatha.

With extremely bad timing, Kekrops and his snake people chose that moment to join the fight. In four or five places around the ruins, the ground turned to green goo and armed gemini burst forth, Kekrops himself in the lead.

'Kill the demigods!' he hissed. 'Kill the tricksters!'

Before many of his warriors could follow, the ground rumbled. All the gooey membranes popped and the tunnels collapsed, billowing plumes of dust. Kekrops looked around at his army, now reduced to six guys.

'SLITHER AWAY!' he ordered.

Val shadow traveled down and clapped her hands, killing them as they tried to retreat.

The giantess Periboia had thawed with alarming speed. She tried to grab Annabeth, but, despite her bad leg, Annabeth was holding her own. She stabbed at the giantess with her own hunting knife and led her in a deadly game of tag around the throne.

Percy was back on his feet, Riptide once again in his hands. He still looked dazed. His nose was bleeding. But he seemed to be standing his ground against the old giant Thoon, who had somehow reattached his hand and found his meat cleaver.

Val fought off every giant that went near her. For a moment she felt elated. They were actually winning!

But too soon their element of surprise faded. The giants overcame their confusion.

Frank ran out of arrows. He changed into a rhinoceros and leaped into battle, but as fast as he could knock down the giants they got up again. Their wounds seemed to be healing faster.

Annabeth lost ground against Periboia. Hazel was knocked out of her saddle at sixty miles an hour. Jason summoned another lightning strike, but this time Porphyrion simply deflected it off the tip of his spear.

The giants were bigger, stronger and more numerous. They couldn't be killed without the help of the gods. And they didn't seem to be tiring.

The seven demigods were forced into a defensive ring.

Another volley of Earthborn rocks hit the Argo II. This time Leo couldn't return fire fast enough. Rows of oars were sheared off. The ship shuddered and tilted in the sky.

Then Enceladus threw his fiery spear. It pierced the ship's hull and exploded inside, sending spouts of fire through the oar openings. An ominous black cloud billowed from the deck. The Argo II began to sink.

'Leo!' Val cried.

Porphyrion laughed. 'You demigods have learned nothing. There are no gods to aid you. We need only one more thing from you to make our victory complete.'

The giant king smiled expectantly. He seemed to be looking at Percy Jackson.

Val glanced over. Percy's nose was still bleeding. He seemed unaware that a trickle of blood had made its way down his face to the end of his chin.

A single drop of blood fell from his chin. It hit the ground between his feet and sizzled like water on a frying pan.

The blood of Olympus watered the ancient stones.

The Acropolis groaned and shifted as the Earth Mother woke.

* * *

This was going to be a good story to tell.

Val was there, in all of the carnage and chaos. She could say she'd seen the clouds parted over the Acropolis. Instead of blue skies, she saw black space spangled with stars, the palaces of Mount Olympus gleaming silver and gold in the background. And an army of gods charged down from on high.

It was too much to process. And it was probably better for her health that she didn't see it all. Only later would she be able to remember bits and pieces, and she'd told those bits and pieces avidly to her crew after.

There was supersized Zeus riding into battle in a golden chariot, a lightning bolt the size of a telephone pole crackling in one hand. Pulling his chariot were four horses made of wind, each constantly shifting from equine to human form, trying to break free.

On the underbelly of the Argo II, the glass bay doors split open. The goddess Nike tumbled out, free from her golden net. She spread her glittering wings and soared to Zeus's side, taking her rightful place as his charioteer.

'MY MIND IS RESTORED!' she roared. 'VICTORY TO THE GODS!'

At Zeus's left flank rode Hera, her chariot pulled by enormous peacocks, their rainbow-coloured plumage so bright it gave Jason the spins.

Ares bellowed with glee as he thundered down on the back of a fire-breathing horse. His spear glistened red.

In the last second, before the gods reached the Parthenon, they seemed to displace themselves, like they'd jumped through hyperspace. The chariots disappeared. Suddenly Val and her friends were surrounded by the Olympians, now human-sized, tiny next to the giants, but glowing with power.

Jason shouted and charged Porphyrion.

The rest of them joined in the carnage.

The fighting ranged all over the Parthenon and spilled across the Acropolis. Out of the corner of his eye, Val saw Annabeth fighting Enceladus. At her side stood a woman with long dark hair and golden armour over her white robes. The goddess thrust her spear at the giant, then brandished her shield with the fearsome bronzed visage of Medusa. Together, Athena and Annabeth drove Enceladus back into the nearest wall of metal scaffolding, which collapsed on top of him.

On the opposite side of the temple, Frank Zhang and the god Ares smashed through an entire phalanx of giants – Ares with his spear and shield, Frank ( as an African elephant ) with his trunk and feet. The war god laughed and stabbed and disembowelled like a kid destroying piñatas.

Hazel raced through the battle on Arion's back, disappearing in the Mist whenever a giant came close, then appearing behind him and stabbing him in the back. The goddess Hecate danced in her wake, setting fire to their enemies with two blazing torches. Val didn't see Hades, but whenever a giant stumbled and fell the ground broke open and the giant was snapped up and swallowed.

Percy battled the giant twins, Otis and Ephialtes, while at his side fought a bearded man with a trident and a loud Hawaiian shirt. The twin giants stumbled. Poseidon's trident morphed into a fire hose, and the god sprayed the giants out of the Parthenon with a high-powered blast in the shape of wild horses.

Piper was maybe the most impressive. She fenced with the giantess Periboia, sword against sword. Despite the fact that her opponent was five times larger, Piper seemed to be holding her own. The goddess Aphrodite floated around them on a small white cloud, strewing rose petals in the giantess's eyes and calling encouragement to Piper. 'Lovely, my dear. Yes, good. Hit her again!'

Whenever Periboia tried to strike, doves rose up from nowhere and fluttered in the giantess's face.

As for Leo, he was racing across the deck of the Argo II, shooting ballistae, dropping hammers on the giants' heads and blowtorching their loincloths. Behind him at the helm, a burly bearded guy in a mechanic's uniform was tinkering with the controls, furiously trying to keep the ship aloft.

The strangest sight was the old giant Thoon, who was getting bludgeoned to death by three old ladies with brass clubs – the Fates, armed for war. Val decided there was nothing in the world scarier than a gang of bat-wielding grannies.

Val watched as Jason and Zeus left to go and charge Porphyrion. Well, that looked like a lot of fun. She would hate to be Jason in that scenario.

But the power high got to her. She was alone, no gods to help her fight, but she didn't need one. She'd summoned her guard dogs again and she had butterflies to do her bidding, flying up to distract the giants' eyes as she stabbed them in the back.

"I wish that you could see how I killed you," Val pouted on the giant's shoulder , her hand shooting a wave of darkness down to ensure the deadness of the giant. "But, alas, you can't get everything you want."

The giant disintegrated into ashes, and she was free falling for a moment before her wings took flight, unsullied white that showed her angelic side, as she flew to fight more and more giants until all of them were gone.

That was when Val's head started ringing. The power was getting to her, her body wasn't used to it. But she closed her eyes and tried to suppress it, save it for later. She just saved the world, did the consequences need to come now?

She felt a hand on her shoulder, then two. "Hey, V, can you hear me? Are you okay?"

"Just a headache, Annie," Val whispered. It was already fading from being close to her. "An after effect from the power high I got from my fathers. But I'm fine."

She opened her eyes, and Annabeth gasped.

"What?" Val frowned.

"Your eyes . . ." Annabeth looked at her, worried, and . . . a little scared? "You look like you don't even have eyes, Val."

Val's frown deepened. What? She brought out Piper's compact mirror and looked at herself. She found she liked the look.

Which was surprising, but what was more surprising to her was the anger and frustration that she felt was coming out of her.

"It's not my fault that I inherited my eyes from my father," Val said quietly, but she could hear the anger in her voice. Annabeth recoiled, as if she wasn't used to it. Which she wasn't.

"Now we have to go get yelled at from the gods who are going to blame this situation on us." Now, Val felt like she'd changed. This battle made her realize that the gods didn't need her respect, her obedience, after what they'd done to her. She'd had to ask her dads for power in order to save their asses, power that she should've had in the first place? Screw them.

She walked away from Annabeth, to where the gods were circling.

haha 69

also i'm doing a college research project and this website has told me that i don't have a sense of humor and that i should be an explosives worker.

<3 maybel