Divergent Path

Heart-Stopping Poison

Chapter 9: Heart-Stopping Poison

Back at Camp Olympus East (formerly known as Camp Half Blood)

"Leo!" a shrill voice shouted, followed by a muffled explosion and a billow of black smoke.

Out of the smoke-filled room tumbled a skinny, pointy-eared familiar mechanic giggling like a goblin. Except he wasn't skinny anymore. Years of hard work in the forges of Hephaestus and in training for the coming war had transformed the captain of the Argo 2 into someone to be physically reckoned with. He had filled out his short frame nicely, but with dense muscle rather than large, a testament to the work that goes on in his forges. But with the massive change in his physique, his personality hadn't changed a bit.

Leo wiped the soot from his face as he continued laughing and running away from the room. Behind him emerged an angry Titaness whose face was just as blackened, her white dress stained as well. She thundered towards him, tackling him before he could escape Cabin 9's new forge. Calypso sat down on his back, flattening Leo face down into the floor. He groaned and struggled but even with his newfound strength he was no match for an angry Titan.

"I'm not getting up until you promise me that we'll get these minibots done without any more explosions that get these ashes all over me," she demanded.

"But you look so pretty like that," Leo answered, still muffled while talking into the ground.

Calypso's face softened at the moron she couldn't believe she had fallen in love with. But she still stood up and kicked him in the side before walking back into the room.

"No more funny business," she warned as Leo writhed on the ground in pain, "These microbombs need to be done before the hunters get here in just over a week,"

Outside, the camp was bustling with similar preparations for the hunters' arrival as well as the impending war. The landscape of the camp only softly resembled what it used to be. The trademark training facilities were scrapped and turned into state-of-the-art war simulators: the climbing wall was replaced by a monster fight ring, where monsters were captured and kept to practice battle against. The sword fighting arena was tripled in size and now housed hundreds of automatons built by Leo and Hephaestus that could be customized to almost any skill level or scenario. Cabins had all gotten larger and there were twice as many as there used to be. But what hadn't changed a bit was the Big House, still the base of operations.

In the ping-pong room, where daily meetings were now held, sat two familiar demigods milling over a map of Long Island Sound. The woman in a purple cape gestured at areas of the ocean as she talked.

"We should dredge up underwater ditches here and here. Gods, this wouldn't even be an issue if Perc- I'm sorry- this would be much easier with someone that could control the seas," Reyna corrected.

"No, it's okay. But you're right, and we need to get started this afternoon on those trenches," replied the daughter of Athena with a small smile on her face.

"Now that that's out of the way, Annabeth, how are you?" Reyna asked genuinely.

Over a year ago, Camp Half Blood and Camp Jupiter had temporarily and unwillingly merged per request of the gods. Both camps still existed independently, but a facilitating tunnel was rebuilt by Annabeth using the reopened Labyrinth entrance to connect the two with a measly 10 minute walk. The Romans, wanting to adhere to their law of separation from the Greeks while still serving the gods, decided on minimal contact with them.

But when Cameron was outed as a traitor and the perpetrator behind Percy's disappearance, the Romans became slightly more understanding. Still, they held their pride, absolutely certain they never would've been manipulated like the Greeks were, but the camps' relationship improved. This led to a reconnection between the remaining crew of the Argo, to a certain extent, and even the strengthening of new relationships like Reyna with Annabeth, the de facto leader of Camp Half Blood.