Percy Jackson, The Missing Hero.

31. An Unexpected Guest.

I just want to start this with a massive thank you to -concrete-rose- who was the unlucky soul who had to put up with my inane ramblings and suggestions as I plotted the next few chapters before being the first one to read them. I think she is yet to forgive me.

Bellerophon grabbed him and dragged him back outside, worried that he had accidentally woken the Cabin's occupant. Or, if Percy had seen clearly, he should say occupants.

"Blue!" Bellerophon hissed.

"Did you not see that?" Percy asked, gesturing viciously towards the door.

"What?" Nico asked.

"That!" Percy repeated, stunned.

"Blue, stop repeating yourself and just tell us what you saw." Silena instructed gently.

"Has anyone been in his Cabin recently?" Percy directed at Nico. He knew Leo wouldn't be able to answer with his common absences from Camp. "Cabin Inspections are still a thing, right?"

"Annabeth, Jason, Clarisse and Nathan do them." Nico huffed. "I refuse to let him in my damn Cabin; Chiron himself had to ask if I would unlock the door and allow Nathan to do the inspection because the other three were busy one time, which I reluctantly agreed to. Weirdly, Nathan said he never wanted to step foot in my Cabin after a random skeleton appeared to chase him around Camp afterwards."

"His Cabin does actually get checked, right?" Percy asked.

"As far as I know, yeah." Nico nodded.

"Then how the ever-loving fuck does he manage to hide another whole ass human being in there?" Percy gestured widely to the Cabin. "One that should be as dead as the teddy bears he used to maul."

Nico wrinkled his nose. "Ew, Octavian." Then it seemed to sink in. "Wait, Octavian is in there?"

"As in my legacy kid from Camp Jupiter who was actually an evil little shit?" Apollo asked, slipping around them and opening the door. Seconds later he was closing it and coming back, face pale. "Yeah, you do mean my legacy kid from Camp Jupiter who was actually an evil little shit."

"He should be dead." Nico looked thoroughly disturbed. "Like, deader than dead, he literally died in a flaming ball of demigod."

"Want to say a variation of dead one more time, Spooky?" Luke asked teasingly before frowning. "Is this guy the one that disembowelled your panda?"

"Yes." Percy pouted, the panda pillow pet still a sore subject.

"He's the one that launched himself from an onager?" Leo recalled. "He was the fireball that screamed like a little girl?"

"How is he walking the earth again?" Bellerophon frowned. "Nobody escaped when you were pulling us out of the Underworld, right?"

"It was all on Hades to round everyone up and let you out and he closed the Doors immediately after you all passed through." Percy shook his head.

"We've got less than an hour until sunrise." Apollo was the one who intervened. "I'm as freaked out about this as all of you, if not more. That's one of my line in there and he's not the one I ever wanted to see rise from the grave. But if you want to steal Burns' sword and disguise it as something else, we need to do it now."

"He's right." Percy sighed.

"We need to split up, half of us need to get the stuff we nicked from the Cabins off the meadow and into our Cabin and the other half need to steal that sword and cause some chaos for Burns," Beckendorf suggested.