Zeus was imprisoned on top of Mt. Whitney, being tortured by two eagles whose favorite pass time was clawing at his innards. Sounds like a great way to spend the year. I was expecting to come across hundreds of guards and traps, but instead there were about twelve traps that whacked me in the invulnerable face with spikes. There were a few catapult traps that sent me flying into bushes with Celestial bronze thorns.

Nico and Thalia however, didn't get hit by a single trap. Mostly because I was on point and took all the hits for them. But, Nemesis must've decided to fix the balance, because Nico got pretty busted up in his own way. Thalia kept catching Nico staring at her, and she kept slapping him upside the head.

"Eyes on the trail Ghost Boy," Thalia warned.

I laughed. Maybe it was my Aphrodite love senses acting up again, but if Nico were a few years older and Thalia wasn't a Hunter, they could have something there.

That aside, however, their yammering was driving me insane. I was almost relieved when Zeus's howling screams of eternal agony pierced our ears with the force of jack hammers.

There still weren't any guards or defenses. Just, you know, two metal eagles. I made the pft sound.

"Thalia, take the one on the left, I got the one on the right," I said.

We notched our arrows and took aim.

"Hey what am I supposed to do?" Nico asked.

"Just sit back and watch Ghost Boy," Thalia joked.

We fired, and both eagles turned toward us with fire in their eyes. We gulped. They soared toward us, claws ready. Nico stepped in front of us and slashed out with his sword. Both eagles turned to dust.

"Sit back and watch, huh?" Nico asked. "Yeah right."

Zeus's wounds slowly started to heal. I walked up to him and held out my hand.

"Let me help you with that," I said, and healed his wounds until he was fine.

He looked up at me incredulously, as if he'd never seen a hero he'd thought was dead show up not only alive but with the power of most of the Olympian gods. Then again, he probably hadn't.

"Percy Jackson, you're alive," Zeus said.

"Long story, look I'm–"

"Why do you have the powers of the gods?" he interrupted.

"Yeah, about that, I kinda need your powers to complete the set, so if you could just–"

"Absolutely not!" Zeus roared.

That caught me off guard. All the other gods had given up their powers easily enough; I'd thought Zeus would too.

"If you want my powers, you're going to have to prove yourself," Zeus told me.

"How am I going to–"

"Retrieve my master bolt and return it to me, so...so I can say goodbye to it. Do this and I will give you my powers," Zeus told me.

"Gee Uncle, didn't know you had a soft spot underneath all that I'm-going-to-blast-you-to-bits talk," I joked.

"And don't worry," I reassured Zeus. "I'll give your powers and the bolt back when I'm done with them."

I turned to go, motioning Nico to follow me. Thalia raised an eyebrow, and Zeus looked at me in shock.

"Thalia, stay here and keep an eye out and IM us if anything dangerous shows up. Nico's with me," I said.

"You're leaving me here?" Zeus asked.

"Yup," I said, and snapped my fingers.

The dust that had been the eagles swirled, and reformed back into Zeus's torturers. Zeus started begging for me to call off the eagles. I laughed that crazed, proud laugh again. Nico looked at me like I was the scariest thing he'd ever seen. Considering he was a son of Hades, I must've looked pretty scary.

The Titan armory held the master bolt, along with Poseidon's trident and Hades helm of darkness. This was going to be a snap, considering the raven haired girl had sabotaged the place earlier. I turned to Nico.

"How accurate is your shadow traveling?" I asked.

"Haven't screwed up since that time I ended up in Thalia's tent," he told me.

"That was an accident?" I asked.

He laughed. "Well, the first time was."

We both shadow traveled to the armory. I ended up on a broken rafter, while Nico landed smack dab in front of a monster guard. Before Nico or his new Telkhine buddy could draw their weapon, I fired an arrow and the Telkhine turned to dust. I dropped down and together Nico and I continued through the wreckage of the armory. There was a lot of reconstruction, so we had to kill or disable a lot of workers. Finally, we reached the main vault. The problem?

The entire place was surrounded by monster and demigod workers. Directing it all was my old buddy Luke. He was yelling things like "Get those turrets reconnected" or "Somebody get that crap out of the way".

I looked at Nico. "You get the weapons, I'll take the crew," I told him.

Nico made the pfft noise that I'd been hearing a lot lately. "You get to have all the fun."

He went his own separate way while I snuck up behind Luke. I just stood behind him for a while, wondering if he'd notice me. He didn't, so I cleared my throat.

"What is it?" Luke groaned.

He turned and his eyes widened when he saw me.

"Hey cuz," I greeted, and then punched him in the face. I heard a crack and he crumpled to the floor.

I must've made more noise than I thought, because suddenly I saw Nico fighting off three armory guards. One of them looked pretty beat up and he was missing a hand. The other two were still fit and ready for battle. One engineer desperately worked on the automatic arrow launcher coordination grid. He connected one final cord, and the turrets sprang to life, pouring their magazines out at me.

I just stood there casually as the arrows bounced harmlessly off my chest. When the turrets ran out of ammo, the remaining crew looked at me in awe.

I cracked my neck and knuckles. "Now that was rude," I told them flatly, and then I unleashed Hades on them (Again, not the god).

I was down to one last monster, a mammoth sized hellhound when suddenly I collapsed to the ground. My vision went blurry and red. My heart beat started racing I heard it in my ears. My vision started to go darker red as the burning sensation in my chest took over. The cuts of golden light opened back up, and I felt like I was about to explode. Another cut opened up parallel with my rib cage. I coughed, and tainted ichor came out. My lungs collapsed, and tendrils of black started to enter my vision. The cuts of light opened up more.

Suddenly, it stopped. My vision cleared and I saw Nico's sword shoved into one of my open light cuts. The pain disappeared, and Nico's sword started to vibrate. He pulled it out just in time, and it exploded. Nico fell to the floor with a bleeding chest wound. He had Stygian iron shrapnel in his chest, and it was slowly absorbing his life force.

I shoved him to the ground and turned my sword back into the knife. I really hoped the powers of Apollo extended to things like being a skilled surgeon.