𝙸 𝙲𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚂𝟺𝙴𝟷𝟶: 𝙴𝚊𝚝 𝙻𝚎𝚜𝚜 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚔𝚒𝚗

Jason sets a stack of papers on the study table and then slumps back in his chair. "They offered me a job in the classics department upon graduation. We're so understaffed that I'll get to teach a class and work on my master's degree at the same time. They'll even give me some money towards my classes at Berkeley."

"You're not going to take them up on it, are you?" Frank asks. "We won't be mad if you do."

"I might be a little mad," says Leo.

"No, I probably won't," says Jason. "I just don't want to give them an immediate answer in case my other plans don't work out. I mean, no offense to New Rome, but I don't want to be here after graduation."

"What about Dean D?" Nico asks, trying to bring the group back on task. "Was Dean D there?"

Jason winces. "He was in the fetal position cuddling Seymour."

"Seymour?" Piper asks.

"Don't you remember when he bought the leopard head with the commercial budget?"

So Dean D is currently incapacitated. What else could go wrong?

Nico stands up at the head of the table. "So we're on our own to save New Rome-"

"Oh! I just got it," says Percy. "The Save New Rome Committee. Clever."

Nico rolls his eyes. "So New Rome Community College was founded by a man in the early nineteen hundreds, but legend has it that it may have been much earlier. Like, New Rome was a gladiator training school."

"How does that work?" Annabeth asks. "I mean, Jason can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure there were no gladiators in North America."

"That's why they call it a legend." These people are idiots. "So apparently the founder of the school, Terminus, was like a minor god or something, and after some sort of incident, he sealed himself somewhere inside the school. That place should have the original deed to New Rome Community College. With it, we'll be able to stop Chick-fil-A from going through with the transaction."

Percy raises his hand. "Like, which building? Because the student union isn't that old I thought, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were in the biology lab. That place gives me the creeps."

"Did you bring the scroll?" Nico asks his half-sister.

Hazel puts a face mask on for the first time since their sophomore year and pulls an ancient-looking scroll from her backpack. "Watch out, I think it's like- Oops!" And with that, a grey cloud of dust clouds the room, tickling Nico's nose. That's going to come back to haunt everyone later.

"Jeez, Hazel!" Leo shouts. 

"Sorry, I tried to warn you all that-" She sneezes. Her sneezes sound like kittens.

Frank points to a spot on the map. "This is allegedly the map that Terminus used to seal himself and his gladiatorial projects away."

"Did you bring the blueprints, Annabeth?" Nico asks.

Annabeth dumps a bunch of blueprints onto the table. "I asked you which building you wanted and you just said 'yes.' That's not an answer, Nico!"

"Let me see the Big House. That's the oldest building on campus."

And this is where shit gets all Indiana Jones. Nico takes the ancient scroll, which oddly enough hasn't disintegrated, and the blueprint Annabeth stole from the architecture department, and arranges them just so on the table...

"It looks like a butt," says Piper.

"No, it does not," says Nico. He tilts the scroll a tiny bit more on top of the blueprint and then he's got it. "There's an entrance to a secret passageway in the Big House."