Hazel was a liar.

Okay, so, that might be a bit harsh, but anyone remotely familiar with her powers would understand that she was a liar of the highest capability, and not necessarily because of her father. (Hazel's father is Hades, not Hermes. Or, well, Pluto, not Mercury, though Mercury wasn't really known for his tricks like his counterpart was.)

But her powers extended to precious metals and stones. How limiting was that, to consider nothing but platinum and gold and rubies to be able to make something beautiful. Titanium is valuable, strong and lightweight and able to carry things much heavier than itself for long distances under extreme wear. Aluminum was valuable, the modern world could hardly live without its abundancy.

And don't get her started on copper. Everywhere she went, there was copper. Copper, copper, copper. It was in the walls, in the appliances, in some tables, on some doorknobs, wrapped around and through delicate vases—everywhere. The modern world ran on copper. No copper, and everything would fall apart.

She sensed the metals on a spectrum that she could only describe as light but sensed through something between taste and smell. Platinum smelled like the dark reddish-violet of grapes, and gold tasted blue. Titanium was a sunny yellow smell and copper tasted almost like the same burnt orange that it appeared in real life.

Hazel loved the twenty-first century. Let's not misunderstand: there were things that Hazel missed about the 1930s. She was one of the few to not really be touched by the Great Depression. She missed her mother, the woman she was before Hazel's curse came to full fruition and she became bitter. She missed the movies, the ones that could go on and on and on, with movies and cartoons (Tom and Jerry was the best) and news reports for a few cents. They were a welcome distraction from the poverty and hunger that surrounded her.

But here, lava-red steel skyscrapers towered everywhere she looked. Trump Tower glittered blue with gold. The Empire State Building that she watched grow over the news reports seethed with the burnt-orange copper of electronics, the gritty steel of the building itself, the freshly-cut-grass of titanium of vaults, and sprinkled with the royal blue of gold. It was her own personal smell/taste/sight marvel, better than any fireworks.

Here, she had her cousins. Here, there was the future. There were tiny little phones and Hazel wanted to get that NOOK that Barnes & Noble was advertising and she took apart Sally's electric pencil sharpener, just to see how it ticked.

There was the dead and the monsters and the gods, and she had to watch her back constantly, yes. But that didn't mean that she couldn't appreciate the little things.

Currently, the "little things" involved watching her cousin, Percy, out of the corner of her eye. Hazel wasn't quite fifteen yet—in fact, if you disregarded her birthday, Hazel was just a few months younger than Percy—but she knew how to drive. Rephrase: she knew how to drive a stick-shift from 1939. Thalia caught her up in five minutes.

So, despite the fact that Hazel was a) not technically the oldest, b) underage, and c) didn't have papers from this century, she was the one who ended up driving the four of them to the nearest Labyrinth entrance that wasn't the Met.

She wasn't entirely certain what she expected from her passengers, but the worst that she got wasn't even from her passengers: it was Thalia, who gave her a thirty-second dissertation on the traffic laws, which ones that are preferable to not break, which ones the rest of the world couldn't care less about, which ones the rest of the populace actively break (so watch out for those crazies), and the unofficial traffic laws that really only apply to New York City.

Percy didn't even bat an eye at the whole thing, and while she half-wished that Jason would stop his running commentary—because driving while giggling like a loon would get them pulled over faster than anything else, probably—he didn't give her any lip, either. Bianca was fairly silent on the whole thing, like she expected nothing else than a fourteen-year-old girl who was supposed to be dead from drowning in oil seventy-odd years before to drive her to the nearest entrance to a magical, underground maze.

Put like that, she had to wonder how crazy her cousins' lives actually were, that they could take her and her story in stride, only hiccupping the faintest. It had been a dizzying month or so—who knew how long they had been in the Labyrinth in real time. And what was worse: her almost-normal-looking cousin who was sitting next to her in the passenger seat was either a) extremely patient with her freaking out about the whole shebang, b) missing, or c) stabbed and dying—at any given time. Though, admittedly, it was mostly dominated by the last two, what with Percy being missing for eight days at the beginning of their acquaintance and then stabbed and dying for the last three. Just under three weeks' worth of knowing her cousins, and Percy was recovering from being beaten within an inch of his life for the majority of it.

And here he was, marching back into trouble not even twelve hours after being actually healed.

Yes, she was fourteen. Yes, she was prone to doing stupid stuff irrationally, like every other teenager on planet Earth. Yes, she didn't always plan things out totally, whether it being marching into battle or choosing her breakfast. But Percy seemed to make it an art form.

Speaking of…

"Do we know what the Romans are doing now?" Hazel asked curiously. "I mean, as far as I know, they came because we asked for help defending the Camp. Now that the Camp has been defended for the second time…"

"Reyna said that the cohort that came to help were some of the most unconventional Romans they've had in years—she was hoping that they would get along better with us than they do with the rest of Camp Jupiter," Jason said.

Percy twisted all the way around to look at Jason—who was in the back seat—incredulously. "Seriously? When did this happen?"

Hazel bit her lip to suppress her laughter at Jason's extremely dry, "The last twenty years or so."

"No, when did this information get passed around, because I missed this!"

"You were busy being stabbed," Jason said.

Hazel choked on her inappropriate laugh.

"Jason!" Bianca exclaimed.

Percy spluttered with laughter. "It's okay, B. I don't think that anyone is going to forgive me about getting myself stabbed any time soon."

"You survived, you daft—" Bianca started heatedly, but then cut herself off with a sharp growl. Jason leaned away from her. "No one else would have."

Hazel signaled to move over into the next lane.

"Precisely why I shouldn't have gotten stabbed," Percy said with a cheeky grin.

Hazel could hear Bianca's arms go up in the air in exasperation.

Of course, that was when something came out of a side street and slammed full-speed into the car. She says 'something' because it had no metal in it like a car would definitely have—no lava red steel or burnt orange copper or anything else.

Dangling from his seatbelt and banging against the door, Percy swore an oath that would have had Sally, Thalia, and Hazel washing out his mouth with lye soap. The only reason why he was let off the hook was because the former two weren't there and the latter was slightly distracted.

"Oh my gods," Bianca screeched in Hazel's ear.

The daughter of Pluto let out a whuff of air as whatever had the car in it's grip shook it. "Don't touch anything metal!" Hazel yelled.

Hazel seized every bit of metal in the car with an iron grip with her powers and wrenched as hard as she could. The roof crumpled a bit and the frame would probably be unsalvageable when she released it from her grip, but that was okay. The car went sailing anyway, three teenagers screaming like seven-year-old girls and a fourth gritting her teeth in concentration. Milliseconds later, the car's tires thumped safely to the ground, and Hazel put the pedal to the metal.

"Weeee're gonna die," Percy screeched, wide-eyed as Hazel wove in and out of heavy New York traffic, slowing other cars down enough for her to fit hers into the space left, triggering stop lights and causing freak accidents with aluminum cans to get pedestrians out of the way.

"Are you doing this, Hazel?!" Bianca asked incredulously.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up," Hazel chanted, the speedometer slowly creeping towards the seventy miles an hour marker, tearing through lower Manhattan like a bat out of hell.

Percy grabbed her shoulder to both brace himself physically and brace her magically. Hazel suddenly straddled a deep well of power that was Percy's, Jason's, and Bianca's power pooled together—something that she didn't actually need, but was useful for grounding herself.

Hazel said a bad word when the dragon settled down in front of them on the Williamsburg Bridge. Jason was startled out of using a bad word himself when she used a better one.

"A dragon," Percy said flatly.

"I can't remember the last time we fought a dragon," Jason agreed.

"I can't remember ever seeing a dragon before," Bianca said, sounding simultaneously fascinated and terrified. Hazel could see her face and hands pressed to the window to get a better look through her left side mirror.

"Well, you're in luck, folks," Hazel said, executing a perfect, slightly impossible illegal U-turn. "You won't have to fight a dragon today."

"How the Hades—"

Hazel floored it, ignoring the startled yelps as she drew on Jason's power and made the car fly a little.

"We have so many cops after us," Jason said. He sounded downright amused.

"Wonderful," Hazel said. "Being chased by cops and a dragon while simultaneously being underage and seventy-seven. Universe, I am bored and lacking my six impossible things before breakfast. Throw something else at us so that we can have a good time."

"HAZEL!" the entire car screamed.

Hazel let out a rather hysterical laugh.

"You are never driving again!" Jason yelled.

"The look on my face should tell you just how much I don't care about the ability to drive a hunk of metal propelled by poisonous combustion!"

Hazel roared down FDR Drive at a breakneck pace, praying to no one that she could outpace a dragon. She swerved onto East 42nd street and whipped into 3rd Avenue to a choir of honks, going in a fairly large loop to get onto the Queens Midtown Tunnel.

"Jason," she said. "We get to reenact the flying car incident in Harry Potter. I'll keep us in the air, you need to get us where we're going. Bianca…you're our invisibility booster."

"I feel like I should be offended," the daughter of Hades said.

"The Mist, B," Percy said. "You manipulate it better than I do."

"You got carried away with that metaphor, Hazel," Bianca informed her.

"No pop culture references, duly noted," Hazel said.

"Pop culture references are great outside of forming plans," Bianca corrected.

"You guys must have more ADHD than I do, because I seem to be the only one paying attention to the dragon at the end of the tunnel!" Jason said, exasperated.

"Have we thought about the problem of taking a metal car up into the air with a flight-enabled dragon?" Percy asked nervously. "Or the problem of taking three non-Zeus Big Three kids into the air?"

Hazel paused. "Um."

Then there was relative silence.

"Great," Percy said. "I feel so great about this plan."

"Jason," Hazel said. "Get ready."

"I'm ready," Jason said.

"One."

Hazel's foot hadn't let off a fraction of an inch on the gas pedal. The dragon peering underneath the tunnel was a little bit disarming, Hazel had to admit. Upside down dragon heads that appeared to be more curious than hungry was pretty disarming. Hazel really didn't trust the 'curious' expression as far as she could throw the dragon, though.

"Two."

She could feel Jason shifting, likely trying to ground himself or get comfortable.

"Three!"

She lifted the car almost straight up into the air, almost running into the very surprised dragon. The momentum of the car carried them forward a little bit—going ninety miles an hour through a tunnel will do that—and then they were flying high. Even though the windows were shut, Hazel could hear the massive amounts of wind that Jason was whipping up blowing over the car.

Hazel cut the engine, and Bianca and Percy yelped a bit. She gave them odd looks. "You do realize that this is not actually a flying car? That the engine is doesn't actually have to be on to keep this in the air?"

"You are never driving again," Jason sighed.

Hazel laughed.

A thankfully uneventful hour later, they discovered just how hard it was to land without crashing.

"Left!" Hazel shrieked, the wheel twisted all the way to the left even though the tires had absolutely no influence on which way the car was going.

"Your other—CRAP!" Percy yelled when the winds pushed them right into the lake with a huge FLOOOM of bubbles.

Hazel scrambled to get out of the sinking death trap, popping all the doors off in her haste. She swam to the surface and coughed. Bianca popped up next to her, breathing heavily for a moment before giving up and floating on her back.

The naiads were giving them some seriously ugly looks. Hazel sighed. She gestured weakly and the car started sluggishly half-rolling, half-floating up the bottom of the lake to get out of the water.

As if to announce that it was well and truly done, the hood popped and the car let out a shudder and a huge puff of black smoke.

"Wonderful," Percy groaned.

"I'll get Sally a new one," Hazel said tiredly.

"At least it wasn't a Whomping Willow that we crashed into," Jason said.

Hazel inhaled water when she started to laugh and coughed instead.

"Out of the lake," Percy decided, and the water started pushing them gently to the shore.

Centurion Gwen helped Hazel up, laugh lines prominent around her eyes as she grinned. "Does it help if I say that that was probably the best entrance I've ever seen?"

"I don't know," Hazel said. "I'm not allowed to drive anymore even though I out-drove a dragon. And three-quarters of New York's police department. I only completely busted the car in the process."

"You bent the frame," Nyssa from the Hephaestus cabin said in awe, her voice muffled because she was scooching under the soaked and smoking car. "How the hell did you drive it with a bent frame?"

"Don't touch it!" Hazel yelped. "You'll lose a hand!"

Beckendorf yanked Nyssa out from underneath the car by her ankle.

Bianca opened a hand and hellfire sprang around the car, sending people lurching backwards.

"I can control valuable stones and metals with my powers, but if anyone but me touches it after, they'll be cursed with bodily harm of some sort. The more valuable, the worse the curse. A ruby touched with my power is more like a grenade," Hazel said. "I drove it using my powers after the dragon picked us up and I managed to get it to drop us."

"Not to mention making us fly," Jason said. "That poor pigeon."

Hazel spotted Percy biting his lip, as though he was trying not to laugh at Jason's vague distress.

"What happened to the pigeon?" Gwen asked.

"It hit the car," Hazel said shortly. "The car of cursed metal that was going a hundred miles an hour through the sky."

Gwen followed Percy's expression and bit her lip to poorly disguise her grinning laughter.

"It was vaporized," Jason said gloomily.

"Jason," Bianca said, sounding exasperated. "It's a flying rat. There are plenty more pigeons. It's not like it was a macaw or a bald eagle."

Hazel resisted the urge to laugh at the mental image of a sudden poof of blue-green and yellow feathers raining over New York City.

Jason grumbled.

"Good to see you up and moving," Gwen said, still grinning. She was looking at Percy when she said it.

"Good to be up and moving," Percy said. "Don't count on it for too long."

Bianca slugged him in the arm. "You do another laughing-in-Death's-face stunt and I will lock you in the Underworld's palace with no one but Hades and Civil War skeletons for company for three weeks!"

"I think you just got threatened with the ultimate form of grounding," Jason said, grinning a bit.

"That's pretty ultimate," Hazel agreed. "Also, we did come here for a reason, and it wasn't grounded-by-Underworld. Percy and I have a quest to finish."

Percy gave her a questioning look.

"And Annabeth," Hazel added.

Percy nodded once.

"You have everything you need?" Jason asked quickly.

"It's in my cabin," Percy said. "You?"

"B and I will hold down the fort."

The two fist-bumped and then hugged briefly.

"See you on the other side," Jason said.

"Such faith," Percy teased.

Jason snorted, and with that, Percy walked away. Hazel waved at Jason and Bianca before following Percy down to the cabins.

At the crest of a hill, Hazel almost ran into the other demigod. He'd stopped.

"I don't understand," he said. "I don't understand why they would only build twelve cabins. There are gods more powerful than Zeus and they don't even get their name on the Honorable Mentions list. For Hera's sake, Hera doesn't even have kids, nor does she have a band of married women kicking butt and taking names."

"But she would be mad, if she didn't have a cabin," Hazel said reasonably.

"So is Hades, and he's a bit more immediately terrifying than Hera. Not to mention, he actually has kids," Percy pointed out. "Also, he's a member of the Big Three. What's the matter with this picture? Lady Hestia has a fire pit that she can attend to, but most don't even know that she exists anymore."

Hazel hesitated, trailing after Percy. He'd decided that loitering on the hill wasn't going to make a difference, so he decided that moving along would be better. She thought that Percy made some valid points, but also wondered and the financial feasibility of actually building new structures for other demigods of non-Olympian parents to stay in. Camp Half-Blood made their mortal money off of their strawberry farm. Hazel could see how they could break even when she accounted for godly powers allowing them to grow strawberries even out-of-season, but anything more?

It was unlikely. That would mean that they would have to petition the gods for help, or ask one of the demigods who had made it big in the mortal world.

It didn't mesh well with Percy's vision of suddenly building twenty or more cabins to house demigods, that was for sure.

They stepped into Percy's cabin, and Hazel was hit with a brick with the simultaneous sense of wrong and right, making her dizzy.

"Dad," Percy said heavily. "Leave her alone."

Hazel heaved in a breath when the clashing senses righted themselves.

"You're okay with Nick and B, what's your problem with Hazel?" Percy asked thin air.

"She's put you in danger," thin air responded.

Hazel whirled around in alarm, tripping over a box filled with Hera-knew-what and falling flat on her butt.

"I do just fine in putting myself in danger, and Hazel's generally pretty good about getting me out of danger," Percy retorted, not even missing a beat.

Hazel wondered just how often Percy and Lord Poseidon had these kinds of chats to not even think twice about appearing in the cabin or responding to suddenly-appearing gods with no hesitation.

"She surrounded you in cursed metal and took you into the sky!" Poseidon yelled. "With a dragon in it! Not to mention getting the entire Council's attention when there were four Big Three demigods in a small car racing away from a dragon only slightly smaller than a skyscraper!"

"She saved our lives!" Percy retorted, not even looking up from his packing. "She drove a car irreparably broken with her powers only and made it so that we didn't have a rematch of Forks!"

Hazel had no idea what forks had to do with anything. Maybe it was a place. That poor place, being named after an eating utensil. She shook her head. Focus, Hazel.

The god took a step back.

"Out," Percy said firmly, turning to his father and making a shooing motion with his hands. "If Thalia and I can set our various talks aside until after the quest and everything involved in it, so can we. I don't need you menacing my cousin just before we set off into a known demigod-killer."

Hazel's heart ached at the look Poseidon was giving Percy, like he was afraid he'd never see his son again. "Percy, give the god a hug. It's the most terrifying quest of the century and his only mortal son is on it," Hazel said shakily.

Lord Poseidon looked at her like she was simultaneously a fluffy kitten, Lady Athena, and a jack-in-the-box: cute, terrifying, and unpredictable. Hazel resisted the urge to giggle hysterically. Percy, however, slung his backpack over one shoulder and obligingly gave the god of the seas a hug. "Dad," he said, "I don't know if you've noticed, but it's pretty darned difficult to kill me."

The god just vanished into a puff of sea mist.

"Well," Percy said. "I think you just stunned the god of the seas, Hazel. Well done. Normally I'm the only one who can do that."

They snickered and giggled inappropriately all the way to the Athena cabin.

Hazel caught Jason eyeing them warily from a distance, and snickered even harder.

"No Tyson and Grover?" Percy checked with Annabeth as the three of them stood at the Camp's entrance to the Labyrinth.

"Tyson was called back to the forges," the blonde said. "Atlantis is going to be attacked soon, and Lord Poseidon wanted every available smith working. Grover found a lead on Pan."

"Pan?" Hazel asked.

"As in frying?" Percy asked.

"Pan, as in the god of wild places," Annabeth said.

"Oh yeah, you told me about this," Percy suddenly remembered.

"I haven't been told," Hazel said.

Annabeth nodded. "Mortals have been polluting the earth for so long that it was rumored that Pan had faded almost two thousand years ago. Satyrs never gave up, though, and regularly go out searching. It wasn't until recently that they started coming back. Damien, the son of Demeter, ended up finding the Golden Fleece. It puts out so much nature energy that satyrs thought that they had found Pan and went looking for it. The problem was, it was guarded by Polyphemus, a satyr-eating Cyclops from legends of old. Now that we have the Golden Fleece and Polyphemus is still stuck on an island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, we don't have to worry about satyrs never coming back from their searches."

"That's disturbing," Hazel said.

"You don't get to talk about disturbing," Percy told her with a grin.

"And no one found out that the satyrs were being eaten until recently? How did you find out?" Hazel asked, ignoring Percy.

"Nope," Annabeth confirmed. "It's a story. Ethan poisoned Clarisse's tree, which holds up the barrier that was keeping monsters out and keeping this a safe haven. A few of us went on a quest to find something to either save Clarisse's tree or something to replace the barrier. We ended up finding the Golden Fleece almost by accident. Grover had disappeared around the same time, and he has an empathy link with Damien, which is how we even knew that there was a problem. Grover ended up mostly saving himself via wedding dress—"

"What?" Percy asked, laughing. "You didn't tell me this part!"

"Wedding dress?" Hazel said incredulously.

Annabeth hesitated, looking at the entrance to the Labyrinth. "Look, we'll have story time after the quest, I'll tell you guys the whole thing, but it's a long story. Let's finish this quest now?"

"Fair enough," Percy agreed.

Malcolm, son of Athena, waved at them from the watch pavilion, then went back to his book. Hazel thought that it was something involving math, and resolved to ask him about it when she got back.

The three of them looked at each other and jumped into the Labyrinth once more.

Hazel set off immediately, directly in front of them. This was despite the six other doorways offering other options. Her senses opened up, feeling the glittering flakes of mica and gold mixed with dead stone and clay. She could feel the shift of hallways down the immediate right path and the vibrations of something very large rattling through massive amounts of copper behind them.

She went forward, and tried not to let fear suffuse her scent or look like she was running.

"I think you told us that there was a specific unlock code to Daedalus's workshop, but I can't remember what it is," Annabeth told Hazel.

Hazel nodded, leading them into a doorway on the left. "And therefore, you think that I'm leading you in loop-de-loops, circles, or am just completely lost and/or nutty."

"I don't think you're nutty," Annabeth protested. "Confused, maybe, but not nutty!"

"Well, if it helps any, we just passed through Manhattan," Hazel said.

Percy and Annabeth gave her identical blank looks. It was fairly amusing, especially since they looked so different but were able to make the same face and get the same point across.

She could feel whatever had been charging through the copper barreling along behind them. Hazel slowed it down with a nice spot of gold. Very cursed gold, in fact.

"When we turned left, we passed through Manhattan," Hazel said. "Just under the Met, actually. From here, we're going to go three doors on the right, take another left, go through the arena that we went through before, then count sixty-five doors on the left and take the next right, climb through a window, turn left, and find the door."

"That's it?" Percy said sarcastically.

"Breathe," Annabeth laughed.

Hazel led them through another doorway on the left and it opened up into the arena, eerily empty without its master or his audience of monsters.

"This place gives me the creeps," Percy muttered.

"Hurry up, we don't know if something's coming," Annabeth said.

"Something's coming," Hazel said. "It's behind us. I've slowed it down a little with some gold, but there isn't all that much down here beyond some dust."

"Some gold?"

"Very cursed gold," Percy explained.

"Ah."

Annabeth sounded like she didn't understand despite her noise of understanding, but left it alone anyway. It wasn't a story that Hazel was fond of repeating, anyhow, so she was grateful to Annabeth for dropping it.

Doorways unfolded before her, thousands of possibilities echoing through her powers as she passed doorways. She silently counted the doorways on the left.

"Are we supposed to be going straight for this long?" Percy asked around doorway thirty-three.

"Hush," Hazel said absently. "Yes. Thirty-six, thirty-seven…thirty-eight—"

Annabeth said something in Greek that Hazel was fairly sure was a rather choicy oath, but didn't make a whole lot of sense to Hazel. She paused and looked at the daughter of Athena.

"Annabeth…?" Percy asked warily.

The blonde was looking down at the ground. Hazel felt whatever was after them tromp through the gold that she had set up.

"Keep moving," she urged, physically pushing the two of them along.

"This is igneous rock," Annabeth said.

"Bless you," Percy said.

"So?" Hazel asked.

"We're standing on a volcano."

"So?" Hazel asked again.

"So, whatever's after us is likely the guardian of the volcano," Annabeth said. "And I'm not fireproof."

Percy, on the contrary, actually perked up at that tidbit of information. "The last guardian of the volcano that I met was pretty friendly."

"Are we counting Kronos?" Annabeth hissed.

"He's not a guardian, he was a fool for making his home base in a volcano," Percy said.

Hazel tuned out their conversation and concentrated on keeping count of the doors and an ear out for whatever was behind them.

"Sixty-four, sixty-five—right here," Hazel said, steering the lightly bickering couple through the next doorway on the right.

"What was next, climb through a window?" Annabeth said. "Should be pretty easy. Does it have to be any particular window?"

Hazel glanced around the sunroom they'd just walked into, complete with sunlight streaming through the windows. "Um. I don't know? I've never gone to Daedalus's place before. I've never needed to."

"Well then," Percy said, and busted a window with the butt of his sword.

The girls paused and looked at the demigod incredulously. "Was that really necessary?" Annabeth asked.

"It doesn't open," Percy said, demonstrating the lack of locks or sliders to indicate that it could open. "So, yeah, actually. Annabeth, this isn't exactly our first B&E."

Hazel looked at the two of them skeptically. "I'm never taking you two anywhere again."

Percy clambered through the window as he said, "That's okay. I'm never getting into a car with you behind the wheel again, so we're pretty even so far."

Annabeth stifled a laugh as she climbed over the broken glass. Hazel swiftly followed. "Turn left," she said, and followed her own directions.

"That's a wall."

"There's a door here," Hazel said confidently. She ran her hands over the smooth stone, searching for divots.

"This doesn't make any sense," Annabeth muttered as she looked for the door's key. "This should be in the oldest part of the maze. Instead, it looks like the side of a pub."

Hazel personally thought that it made perfect sense that it was in a more modern part of the Labyrinth: Daedalus was an engineer of the highest caliber. He wouldn't stand settling for stone when he could have steel and glass.

Percy jabbed something with his finger. "This is it," he said, and true to his word, a delta glowed pale blue.

Hazel couldn't help making Diagon Alley comparisons when the brick casually sidled out of the way, flipping over each other to make a short hallway with an arc. It was magic, to be sure, but when they walked through, it was a workshop that any engineer would drool over. Hazel's senses absolutely exploded with the sudden feedback and she staggered a bit, trying to control the input that she was getting from her powers.

Hazel liked taking things apart to figure out how they worked intrinsically, so seeing the guts of some circular thing spilled over one table was an absolute delight. Her cinnamon hair bounced wildly as she squealed quietly and managed to get to the table in three large bounds. She crouched, trying to figure out what the sphere was for from the parts that she could see. She was very intently focusing on not touching anything, either with her powers or with her hands.

"Oh, wow," Annabeth breathed. Hazel looked up to see the blonde looking at a laptop, sleeker than anything on the current market with a three-dimensional rendering of…something…on the screen.

"Holy shit," Percy exclaimed loudly from behind a large filing cabinet, a few yards to Annabeth's left. "Guys, come look at these!"

Hazel left the sphere and Annabeth left the laptop to come look at whatever Percy was 'ooh'ing at.

"They're wings," Hazel said.

"Look at the craftsmanship," Annabeth exclaimed, looking at the feathers—metal feathers. "The level of detail is exquisite. It would take us years to be able to replicate just a few feathers, and we would have to have lasers—just look, it has the interlocking tines to it!"

Hazel knew, she could sense it. The feathers in front of her—copper, steel, silver, brass—hummed with magic unique to Athena's and Hephaestus's children.

The daughter of Pluto backed up and almost ran over Annabeth. "Oops, sorry," she said.

"No problem," the blonde said, distracted.

Percy squeaked in alarm and both girls whipped their heads around to see an automatronic bird—perhaps a hawk? an eagle?—perched on Percy's black bird's nest of hair, apparently grooming itself.

"Um," Percy said, his voice high. "What do I do?"

"Oh boy," Hazel sighed.

Percy's eyes shot towards the door just before another voice said, "He likes you."

Hazel turned. There was a middle-aged man standing in the doorway to the workshop, looking both amused and resigned. He had thinning brown hair streaked with grey and hands peppered with scars. He was pretty fit for an older man, but Hazel did a double-take when she said the distinctive grey of Athena's eyes.

"Quintus?" Annabeth asked incredulously.

"Yes," the man named Quintus said. "And no."

"Daedalus," Percy said quietly, standing very still under the metal bird.

"There's the ticket, lad," the man said. He lifted his arm—his bare arm, Hazel noted with surprise. "Brody, come here."

With only a little bit of a wince on Percy's part, the bird lifted off in a stunning display of mechanics and aerodynamics to fly the short distance between the two demigods. Hazel was in awe that a bird of metal could fly.

"How did you get here so quickly?" he asked.

"Well, we've only been on this quest for a month…what's your definition of 'quickly'?" Percy asked sarcastically.

"You've been in the Labyrinth—this time—for less than fifteen minutes and you found my workshop. Maps don't work," he said knowledgably, "so I want to know just how you three got here so quickly if you didn't know where you were going."

Hazel said, "Most demigods don't like the underground places because they're too small to swing a sword or fire a bow in. They can't see. I like the underground places because I can sense almost everything coming my way and where certain areas go."

"We've come for Ariadne's String," Annabeth said.

Daedalus's lips twitched. "You're welcome to it." He pointed to the table to Hazel's right. It was one of the few cleared tables there, with the exception of a pile of dirt on the right side of the table.

Hazel extended her senses. No, it wasn't dirt. It was silver, extremely aged silver woven into some other object that Hazel thought might be linen or thread. She silently held her hand out for a high-five to Daedalus. The man slapped it, grinning.

"I missed something," Annabeth said, sounding frustrated.

Hazel raked her fingers through the pile of decomposed thread and aged silver. "This is Ariadne's String, Annabeth. It was just string at the time of when it was made, woven with silver. Hideously expensive for the era, I have no idea what she was thinking when she gave it to Theseus. It might have been enchanted so that the Labyrinth didn't close over it, but unless you're Hecate herself, enchantments don't last longer than eight or ten years."

"How do you know that?" Daedalus asked.

Hazel smiled. "I have a curse on my powers. Every valuable thing that I pull out of the ground will cause bodily harm to someone who isn't me or my father. The more valuable it is, the more dangerous the curse. But the gems that I pulled out of the ground seventy years ago are all perfectly fine."

There was silence as Daedalus obviously tried to reconcile the fourteen-year-old in front of him and the 'seventy years ago' comment.

"She's weird, we love her anyway," Percy summed up succinctly.

Annabeth snorted.

Daedalus shook his head. "To answer your question, Ariadne gave silver string because silver is easier to enchant than something previously living, like wool or leather."

Hazel noted that for future reference. She would probably start doing the scientific method with her gems wrapped in leather and see how long it would take for the curse to break, and if it was affected by different types of leather.

"I'm glad that no one can have Ariadne's String," Annabeth said. "But we're still in danger of invasion into our Camp. How do we destroy the Labyrinth?"

Daedalus shrugged. "You can kill me. The Labyrinth is tied to my life force."

Hazel stilled. "That's it?"

"There's no other way to collapse the Labyrinth," Daedalus said. "I've tried. Even worse, the tunnels that I managed to force to collapse destabilized the buildings overhead. So when the next earthquake hit San Fran…"

Percy covered his face.

Hazel hesitated before she spoke. Her cousins would likely not approve of her going off on her own again, but she was tired. She was used to being alone with her drawings and pencils and the occasional horse. And, frankly, her cousins (and half-siblings) were exhausting with the amount of drama that surrounded them constantly.

"It's not as bad as it could be," Hazel said. "I'm perfectly capable of watching the monster hideouts in the Labyrinth. Besides, this whole…" she gestured expansively, indicating the insanity that she'd been brought into, "thing isn't what I came back for. I can watch for the Doors of Death down here even easier than I can up there."

Annabeth and Percy looked at each other. Hazel knew that they were together, but it was different seeing them able to look at each other and know what the other was thinking.

"We have to get back to Camp first, and there will be a lot of talks," Percy said reluctantly. "Mostly between Thals and me, admittedly, but some full family talks, too."

Hazel prayed for patience. She didn't know who the god or goddess of patience was, but she was pretty sure that there was one, and she desperately needed it.

"Thank you for your time," Hazel told Daedalus, who looked vaguely amused at what was evidently a plea for patience on her face.

"You were much more polite than the last group who asked for it," Daedalus said, amusement in his voice.

Percy led the way to leave, and Annabeth just behind him, though she took another look around the workshop.

"Out of curiosity," Daedalus said quietly before she left, "did you figure out what the sphere is?"

Hazel looked at it, with the gears and mechanisms spilling out of it. "It was a demigodly Swiss Army knife. It won't work, though, even if you put it back together. The enchantments are gone. It was probably built by one of Hephaestus's kids."

Daedalus picked up a piece and flipped it over, showing runes etched on the other side. "It works," he said. "It just has to be powered by something. I'll figure it out."

"Neat," she said. She smiled. "Happy puzzling."

"Good-bye," he said.

As soon as they got back to Camp Half-Blood, Hazel perched atop the watch pavilion for the Labyrinth and hid herself mostly-successfully using the trees.

She said 'mostly successfully' because while no one gave her strange looks when they weren't looking for her, Nico was able to find her in three minutes flat when her cousins and half-siblings realized that she wasn't there. Admittedly, that was over an hour after she settled in her perch, so she was rested enough to dive back into the drama.

"Why are you up here?" Nico asked curiously.

"I don't bother Malcolm while he's reading and he doesn't bother me while I'm drawing," she said, erasing vigorously at the side of the circle that was extremely lopsided. "And no one knows I'm here unless they're looking for me, which suits me just fine." She paused. "I assume you were looking for me?"

He nodded. "All of us Cousins have a meeting."

Hazel shut her notebook and slipped her pencil in the spiral. They stood. Nico offered her his arm, and Hazel took it without hesitation, slipping her arm into the crook of his. "Lead the way," she said cheerfully.

They stepped into howling darkness for but a second, and then emerged into the Poseidon cabin, making the other four jump at their sudden appearance.

"You're a lot easier to do that with than B," Nico said, shooting a glance at his sister. "She tries to light the place up."

"I lived in the Underworld," she said simply.

He paused. "That could make a difference," he said, shrugging.

"Can I assume that Ms. Sally's would-be murderer is enjoying the Fields of Punishment?" Hazel asked.

Nico grinned evilly, and that was answer enough.

"Good," she said simply.

"Hazel," Thalia said. "You want to go back to the Labyrinth?"

"Yes," the daughter of Pluto said. "You people are overwhelming after years of taking care of myself, being dead, or taking care of myself."

Percy burst into laughter.

"Fair enough," Bianca said ruefully. "I know that Nico and I thought that these three were absolutely crazy when we first joined them."

"This past month was more stressful than dying," Hazel said dryly. "I'm seriously ready to go find a horse farm and draw or read for a few weeks."

Thalia looked reluctant.

"I am actually safer in the Labyrinth than I am above ground," Hazel said. "I can lose monsters and find safe spots that normal demigods can't. Your mission is to help Percy win the next war…my mission is to not have another."

"She can check in from time to time," Bianca said, seeing Thalia's reluctance. "And if worse comes to worst and we need help, we can IM her."

"I don't mind popping in and saying 'hi, I'm not dead'," Hazel agreed.

It was a novel thought that she had someone that wanted to check in on her, and she would probably forget, but she could try.

"Every week?" Thalia asked.

Hazel grimaced. "Time is tricky in the Labyrinth. I'll try, but don't panic if I don't IM or show up on time. Just send me an IM if I haven't done it."

Thalia nodded. "Do you have everything you need?"

Hazel nodded. "I have a safe room in the Labyrinth. It's seven left turns from any entrance if you need to find me in person, the door is on the opposite wall that you came in. You might have to find the mark to open it."

"How did you find that?" Percy asked.

"I asked myself, what's the most unlikely combination that anyone would do?" Hazel laughed.

"Why not do seven right turns?" Jason asked.

"Because being left-handed used to be called sinister-handed or devil-handed, and my sense of humor is out of whack," she said.

Everyone else burst into laughter.

"Also, seven right turns is a dragon's lair."

Bianca choked and coughed and asked, "You're serious?"

Hazel sighed.

"Yep, she's serious," Thalia said.

"Is there anything else that we had to go over?" Hazel called over the guffaws.

"Communication and location," Thalia said.

They all winced.

"Specifically, Percy and Nico," Thalia said.

"You've made it so that we're trained enough to take care of ourselves, Thalia," Jason said, jumping to the defense. "And, let's be honest, bored demigods are not a good thing in a small house like Ms. Sally's."

Hazel quietly giggled.

"I don't mind so much you guys disappearing," Thalia said tiredly. "It's more of me minding you guys disappearing and then showing up injured or rumored to be very, very dead."

Percy and Nico, the most recent culprits, winced.

"Even better, by the rather terrifying combination of Kronos and violently exploding volcano," Thalia said. "It stresses me out and it freaks out other people that the Big Three's children are so powerful but still killable, mostly because they wonder what the Hades was bad enough to kill us. And your mother, Percy," Thalia said, and then just stopped.

"We had to tell your mother that you were missing after hours of searching for you," Bianca said flatly. "And then Hazel and Annabeth turned up, saying that you couldn't have possibly survived."

"We are not telling Ms. Sally about the stab wound," Jason said. "Mostly because there's no point and she really would have a conniption at how close you've come to dying so many times in a month."

Percy lifted his shirt, showing the rather large white line on both his abdomen and his back. "No shirtless days for me for a while, huh?"

Hazel honestly felt like she was intruding.

"No," Thalia agreed. "Not around the house, at least."

"Well, darn," Percy said lightly.

And, because most demigods are severely ADD, the topic changed with absolutely no warning. Hazel wondered how she was the only Big Three demigod without ADD or ADHD or dyslexia.

"Are we sending Hazel off?" Jason asked.

"No," Hazel answered. "Mostly because you guys are worse than any bad luck spell and I don't need help."

"'Bad luck spell'?" Jason asked.

"Those exist?" Percy asked, right on the heels of Jason.

"I don't know," Hazel said. "But if they do, you people are worse than any of them."

Bianca laughed. "She has a point. A very good point. We have a habit of things going spectacularly wrong even though we mostly land on our feet."

"I'll see you guys later," Hazel said. "Say, Tuesday?"

"Tuesday sounds good," Percy said.

"Are we doing every Tuesday?" Bianca said.

Hazel nodded. "I'm usually out of the Labyrinth on Tuesdays to do shopping."

"Do you need money?" Thalia asked.

Hazel shook her head. "I have a vase," she said sketching the dimensions in the air, slightly smaller than her torso, "of the gems that I rose back in the thirties and forties. Harmless, now, after time. I pawn them from time to time to keep myself in food and water."

"You're fourteen," Thalia said doubtfully.

Hazel shrugged. "I've never had problems before."

They looked at each other and moved on.

"See you Tuesday!" Bianca said, giving the other girl a brief hug.

"Are you coming by or IMing?" Percy asked.

"Probably coming by," Hazel said. "I don't think that I'll find anything too interesting in three days."

Two days later, Hazel popped out of the Labyrinth into a field and encountered a skittish and impossibly fast horse blitzing from one end of the field to the other in three seconds flat.

She IMed Percy to tell him that she wasn't coming to the Jacksons' apartment.

So, this chapter is shorter than most of the others because Hazel's POV just wasn't coming. I think that I've scrapped and rewritten this chapter five or six times now, along with some severe editing. Because I have had some rather severe health issues lately, I've been having a ton of fun in the hospital and I wrote the majority of this while being monitored within an inch of my life. Mostly literally. It was bad. Then I spent the next five months editing it. So you people can sort of thank whatever it was that tried to kill me for this chapter. I'm sure that it'll be very grateful for your praise.

Also, yes! I have been gone for a year and a half! That's what happens when your author has college classes, a social life, a job, extracurricular activities, leadership positions, and then health problems on top of the rest of it. Now I'm busy banging my head against my transfer college looking for money, so I don't see myself slowing down anytime soon.

And, if anyone has ideas on mitigating (or avoiding) bronchitis or any lung-based illness, please speak now. My chronic bronchitis that was previously irritating just got potentially deadly and no one knows how to fix it.

(I've got a twitter handle now, (at symbol)redheadauthor, come join me and we'll rant about Marvel and our poor widdle superheroes together, or Percy Jackson and our poor widdle demigod heroes together. Or even Harry Potter. I'm pretty flexible when it comes to fandoms.)

-Ruby

PS: Also, I have a tropical storm hitting me tomorrow night? It's not even hurricane season yet? WTF Mother Nature