I woke up to the sound of sirens. Not the Sirens, but blaring warning sirens accompanied by flashing red lights. People were scrambling all around me, yelling all kinds of stuff I didn't have the attention span to listen to.

"What the Hades is going on?" I asked one mortal rebel.

"The Titan fleet was spotted in the sea of monsters. The entire fleet. They've found us," he said grimly.

"Oh," was my intelligent response.

I ran to the command dome where Athena and the other gods were. They were all working frantically to help the others. Athena was in the center of it all, shouting orders to everyone.

"Poseidon, see what you can do about those boarding pods!" she shouted.

My dad nodded and ran off the deployment/living area dome.

"Ares, you're with the vanguard, I want as many of the enemy destroyed as possible before they reach us!"

"On it!" he responded as he donned underwater equipment.

"Apollo! Artemis! Get outside and back up the defense turrets."

The twin archers nodded and donned their equipment.

"Athena, what's going on?" I yelled.

She turned toward me. "Percy? What are you still doing here? We're running out of time. You need to engage Kronos, now!"

"What about the army?" I asked. "I can help."

"Your fight isn't here Percy," she insisted. "Now go! We'll hold them off as long as we can!"

I realized she said hold off, not win. They couldn't win this fight. They needed me to help. But they also needed me to defeat Kronos, and if his army was here, then he was all alone.

I nodded and headed for the deployment dome. I exited Typhon's Prison and swam for the surface, blasting a few Titan ship/subs to bits on my way. 

When I emerged, a ship that hadn't dived yet aimed its cannons at me. The gunners were about to open fire when they were killed by...Luke?

"Get going Percy!" he shouted. "We'll take care of things here!"

So Luke was with me too. I thought.

Ordinarily I'd be angry with Luke for daring to show his face, but at the moment I was just glad my friends had more help. And if Luke was willing to fight to the last breath like every other rebellion member, he'd make a good asset. Taking to the skies with the power of Zeus, I flew off for Mount Othrys.

I heard Athena call my name. I ran over to her, wondering what she wanted.

"Annabeth, you're leading the vanguard," she told me.

My eyes widened. "What?"

"You're leading the vanguard, now move! The others are waiting," she told me.

I was confused, but I took off, donning a suit of underwater gear as I ran. I met up with the rest of the vanguard, which consisted of Clarisse, Chris, Thalia, Nico, Ares, Travis, and Tyson. When they saw me, their eyes widened.

"What are you doing here traitor?" Clarisse asked.

"Leading the vanguard," I said matter-of-factly. "Athena's orders. Got a problem with that Clarisse?"

She gritted her teeth. "Listen Wise Girl, if you think–"

"Look," Thalia hissed. "We need all the help we can get. If Athena has asked Annabeth to lead the vanguard, then she's leading the vanguard. If anyone's got a problem with that, they can take it up with me."

"And me," Nico said.

"And me," Tyson added, folding his arms.

I blushed a little. After everything I'd done, my friends were still, well, my friends.

"Let's move," I ordered.

While we were walking, I fell in line with Thalia and Nico. "Thanks," I told them.

"Just don't make me regret backing you up, Annabeth," she said.

"I won't," I told her and myself.

Grudgingly, my companions trudged along. Clarisse gave me her you-are-so-dead-punk look she got from her dad. I gave her the I'm-going-to-kill-you-slowly-and-painfully look I got from my mom. Clarisse backed down.

We swam out of the hatch exit and headed for the ships. Two ships tilted their noses at us and open fired torpedoes.

"Incoming!" Nico screamed over the communication band in our helmets.

Tyson caught the torpedoes, which exploded in his hands.

"Tyson, you okay?" I asked.

"It tickles," he joked. Or maybe he wasn't joking.

I could make out dozens of Titan ship/subs already coming within firing range, and I knew hundreds, maybe thousands, more were still diving or on the surface. We were eight heroes. No way could we take on an army.

All the same, we were going to try.

"Fan out," I ordered. "We'll all have to take a ship. If we focus on one too many will get through."

We spread out, each going for a separate ship. Travis swam the length of one ship, cutting gashes along the hull with his two swords. The ship soon sank, crushing another ship on its way down. Ares hurled a javelin through the water, which penetrated the hull of a ship and came out the other side. He then pulled out a sword and hacked away until the ship sank. Tyson grabbed one ship by he nose and after spinning around a few times, he hurled it into another. Both ships went up in a massive fireball.

Some of the sinking ships opened their hatches, and out came a storm of Telkhines. The others turned to see what was happening.

"I'll take the Telkhines!" I shouted. "Stay focus on those ships!"

I swam away to meet the Telkhines, my sword ready. I slashed and hacked and spun and kicked until the water around me was thick with monster dust. And I still kept fighting. At some point, I heard a Telkhine bark in pain behind me. I turned to see an arrow sticking out of its neck. I turned to Thalia.

"I told you to focus on the ships!" I shouted.

"You're welcome..." Thalia muttered.

We hammered our way through the fleet, but several ships got through. We were too busy to go back, and I was sure those ships were going to tear the Prison apart. They fired off a salvo of torpedoes. For some reason, all the torpedoes veered off course. I saw two figures shooting arrows through the water at the torpedoes. The harpoon turrets pivoted and open fired, sinking two of the ten ships that got through.

The remaining ships launched boarding pods, pods that latched onto the side of ships–or in this case domes–so that the occupants of the pod could enter. I made out sixteen pods, all of them aimed at the deployment dome.

That's where Poseidon came in. He willed the currents to attack, and several pods crashed into each other. Others veered so far off course I think I might find them in China one day. But three lucky pods latched on, and the various monsters poured out.

I turned my attention back to my fight. We were doing our best, and I alone must've sank a dozen ships already, but it wasn't enough. They just kept coming.

"Downside of fighting an army of monsters...even if you cut they're numbers in half, sooner or later they all regenerate and you're right back where you started," Nico mumbled.

I swam to the nearest ship shoved my sword into its propeller. The propeller blades shattered, and the ship went dead in the water. I swam to a different ship/sub and hacked to seal off the exit hatch, letting water flow in and sink the ship. Travis swam by me at one point, followed by a ship that had its torpedoes trained on him. Another time, I saw Clarisse fighting of several Telkhines that had escaped a sinking ship.

I kept fight, each strike I made a little bit weaker than the last. We slowly pushed our way surface-ward, with Nico the farthest ahead. We made it to a ship that hadn't dived yet and climbed aboard. Onboard, two figures were struggling for control of the wheel. I recognized one of them as...Luke? What was he doing here?

Luke kicked his adversary overboard and spun the ship's wheel hard. We were all thrown to the ground as the ship veered to the left and crashed into another one. Ares got up first and manned the nearest cannon. He got to work blasting apart the ship that we'd crashed into. When Luke saw us, his eyes widened.

"What are you guys doing here?" he asked.

Thalia pointed her spear which now crackled with lightning. She couldn't have done that underwater for obvious reasons. "A better question is what are you doing here?"

"Helping you!" Luke quickly explained.

I told them Luke was with me and that we needed to get back to work. Thalia eyed me like I was insane, and Travis still seemed like he was thinking up the best way to kill me, but they all nodded, and some dived overboard to swim to other ships that hadn't dived yet. So did I.

While I was fighting the crew of one ship, I got a call over the communication unit.

"Annabeth, get your team back down here now!" Athena shouted. "We're being overrun!"

"On it!" I responded and relayed the new orders to my team.

We all dived in, leaving Luke alone to fend off the portion of the fleet that was on the surface. He didn't have the specially made diving suits we did.

Back at Typhon's Prison, things were ugly. Poseidon was single-handedly holding twelve ships at bay, but many more were already inbound, and he needed help. Artemis and Apollo were still adding to the fire of the harpoon turrets, but they were running low on arrows. We cam in and went to work, taking down several inbound ships and all of the ships Poseidon was fighting.

But before we could get to the Prison itself, a torpedo streaked by and exploded. I couldn't see Poseidon anymore. Another salvo flew in Apollo's direction just as he cried, "I'm out!"

Artemis swam away, barely dodging the torpedoes aimed at her. We were out gunned, out numbered, out flanked, and all around out matched. We'd lost the exterior fight. Travis, Tyson, and Ares stayed back to keep fighting the enemy fleet while the rest of us, including Artemis, swam into the deployment dome to help our friends.

Inside was chaos. The Titan army held a tight formation as they battered our own defenses. People from both sides were dropping everywhere. The Titan army had their backs to us, so we charged.