The kids looked worried, but slowly nodded. Percy turned to Morpheus and called the God over. One by one Percy and Morpheus sent them away. Percy would pick the child and ask them their address, after memorising it he would have Morpheus send them away by waking them up in the real world.
It took some time, but it was done. Percy and Morpheus then walked up to Julia, who had by now arranged all of the people, putting the ones into the army with Rob, or putting them aside to be sent back him.
"So how many people decided to stay?" Percy asked.
"Most of the college aged students stayed," Julia smiled at that, "including a few older members of the society, luckily though they are still in top fighting form. The elders and young children are obviously not fighting, including certain couples with kids, as they probably don't want to die and leave their child orphaned."
"Alright, so how many demigods do you think we have?"
"Well let's see," Julia calculated in her mind, "we have all the roman legionaries accounted for. That makes a total of 200 Romans, well 202 if you include me and Rob. that plus around another 240 retired romans at college age and adulthood. We have around 442 people on the roman side."
Percy nodded, "right, and last I check we had around 140 greek campers or something. Which makes the grand total at around 582. Not much I know, but believe me when I say they are strong enough to fight back hard."
"We should have enough," Julia nodded turning to Morpheus, "how many monsters can Hypnos summon?"
"Around 10,000 is his limit, any more than that and this realm would break down and him along with it," the god of dreams supplied.
"So we have to assume we are going to face 10,000 of those upgraded monsters along with Kronos himself," Julia grumbled.
"We have around 600 demigods," Percy shrugged, "we'll be fine. Plus I'll be using my servants to provide back up in case you all need it, by the way Morpheus, can I summon Cerberus from the underworld here?"
The god of dream shock his head, "no, you can't."
"Damn, that would have been a boon on our side," Percy cursed, "no matter. Julia you and Morpheus get to sending the remaining demigods back home, I'll speak to Rob and finalise a fighting strategy."
"Got it," Julia nodded as she and Percy went their separate ways. Morpheus watched as Percy vanished in a blur of speed into the army of demigods appearing before Rob. "You coming Morpheus?" Julia called back.
"Yes," the god followed the Praetor. As they walked through Morpheus began to speak, "tell me Praetor Julia, why are you so comfortable taking orders from a Greek?"
Julia looked over her shoulder, "what do you mean?"
"Don't romans usually stay away from greeks? Distrust them? What makes Percy Jackson so special that you would obey his every command without question?"
"Because it isn't a command," Julia responded, "or at least I don't see it that way."
"What do you mean?"
"I may not be a child of Minerva, but I do have a brain. And if I was in Percy's shoes I would be making the exact same calls he's making. It isn't orders as much as guidance."
"I see...and if it was an order?"
Julia stopped and turned around. She narrowed her eyes, "what do you want Morpheus?"
"I want to understand," the god replied, "I have seen your nightmares Julia Roberts, you fear losing yourself to camp, you don't fear death, you fear life. You don't see a reason for yourself to live past being a Praetor, and that scares you. Your loyalty to Rome is unquestioned, and yet, here you are, obeying a greek demigod."
"I don't see him like that," Julia responded, "he isn't just a greek to me. He's a friend. He's...he's the only one who can stop Saturn. Not the Roman army, not me or Rob, not even Thalia. And in our hearts we all know it. Percy Jackson is the one who will save us, and for that I will follow him into the depths of Hades itself. He's making like better for all of us, he even brought those pills that mask our scent, did you know that it really works? For the first time we have a chance at a better future. And it's all thanks to that man there."
Morpheus remained silent, Julia continued walking leaving the God behind. They eventually got to work sending those who didn't wish to fight away, but all the while Morpheus had something else on his mind. He was distracted, and he didn't understand why.
Percy had finished talking to Rob, the romans had their alligments ready making everyone line up based on their cohorts. After making sure that was taken care off Percy ran up to Thalia who had all the greek demigods around her.
"Alright sweetie, please give me some news," Percy said as he appeared by her side.
Thala smiled, "well-"
"-Percy?!" a familiar voice called out. Percy looked amongst the crowd and spotted Annabeth running towards him.
"Annabeth!" Percy called out as he hugged the child of wisdom, "oh my God it's so good to see you!" After Percy had discovered the mark of Kronos Athena had gathered her smartest children and took them away in order to create a team to research the mark. As such Percy hadn't seen Annabeth in real life for a long, long time.
"How have you all been?" Annabeth asked as he hugged Thalia next.
"Fine, fine," Thalia smirked, "what about you? We hardly ever seen you these days!"
"I'm good, lot's of work and all that," Annabeth grumbled.
"Still no lead on what the marks are?" Percy asked.
"No, still no leads," Annabeth sighed regretfully.
"It's fine," Percy sighed, "we need to focus on this for now anyway." Percy looked around and spotted Ed waving at him. Percy blinked, "Ed? What are you...oh yeah, demigod, I forgot."
The son of Hermes smirked, "thanks for that kiddo, and here I was thinking I made an impression on you."
Percy smiled, "right. So what are you doing here exactly?"
"What do you mean? You said it yourself, I have to stand and fight!" Ed struck a mocking pos making everyone laugh.
Percy grinned, "you sure you won't pull a muscle old man?"
"Oh that's mean kiddo. And no, I won't, don't worry," he grumbled. They were about to continue when suddenly;
"Percy!" the small voice of Nico called out as the son of Hades run up the demigod hugging him hard, "yes! We've been looking for you everywhere!"
"Hey Nico, what's up little man?" Percy asked with a grin as he hugged Nico back. He looked over his shoulder and found Percy Decker and Bianca following behind Nico, rolling their eyes at Nico's antics.
"We need to talk to you, right now!" Nico said breaking the hug, stepping back to be with his sister.
"What do you need to talk about?" Percy turned to Bianca turning serious, "what happened?"
"It's about Hermes squad," Bianca began, "we were following a pretty good lead about Kronos' army when we got sucked in here. But the thing is where the lead said the army would be found. Percy...Kronos' base made his base at mount Tamalpais, their very close to San Francisco."
Percy cursed, "how the Hades did they make it so close without the Romans noticing?"
"Maybe someone helped them?" Annabeth suggested.
"A mole in the Roman army?" Percy asked with wide open eyes, "that doesn't seem possible. Those guys are loyal to a fault, borderline fanatics."
"Either way we need to warn them, and soon," Bianca spoke, "from what we learned, they are planning on invading camp Jupiter soon."
"As if we don't have enough on our plates," Percy growled, "okay, we'll deal with this later, after we get out of here. For now keep quiet about this Bianca, and tell everyone else in the Hermes squad to do the same. We don't want people to start panicking, not now."
"Right," Bianca agreed.
Percy turned to Thalia, "so do we have everyone here?"
"Yeah, and then some."
Percy blinked, "what do you mean?"
"Well," Thalia pointed to a couple standing away from the greek demigods, they were speaking in hushed tones, but Percy immediately recognized one of them.
Percy smiled, "I'll be right back. Does everyone here remember their squad?"
"Yes sir!" the greek demigods cheered, some laughing as Percy rolled his eyes at the 'respect' they should him.
After meeting the Romans the Greeks decided they needed to be more effective. Hence they decided to make themselves into squads of ten, each member specialising in one branch of military, be it attack, support or defense.
The Ares kids were obviously had attack squads while the Apollo kids were support squads, sniping with arrows from a distance while healing any injured. There were a total of 14 squads in the camp, and each had been training all summer to work together.
"All right then, every get into your squads and report to Rob, that big muscular Roman guy. He'll put you all to work!" Percy turned to Thalia, "think you can handle them?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Go, you haven't spoken to him in a long time."
Percy nodded, he gave her a parting kiss and walked towards the demigod. He smiled as he walked up to the man, "John! I haven't seen you in a long time!"
John, the son of Poseidon and man out of time, looked around, and smiled. "Percy!" the two half-brothers gave each other a strong hug. Percy broke it and stepped back, he looked over Jon and smiled, the older son of Poseidon looked well, he wore a red hoodie and a black shirt underneath. He had black jeans on and a scarf tied around his forehead like a bandana.
"I haven't seen you for months! Where have you been?!" Percy asked.
"Father sent me on a quest Percy," John explained, "he realised that I wasn't exactly...fitting in at camp. So he suggested thought it would be best that I go out and see the world."
"So what did he ask you to do?" Percy asked in surprise.
"He sent me to find this," John reached under his shirt and pulled out a medallion. It was a strange design, it looked like a moth with it's wings closed around a big blue stone in the middle, "he said it was important, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is."
Percy narrowed his eyes and observed the strange amulet;
Amulet of Mothera,
An amulet that stores the monster known as Mothera. It is known to be a monster of epic power that is rumored in legends as being able to topple mountains with a bat of it's wings.
Mana needed to summon— 50,000
Percy whistled, "damn, where did you find that?"
"In an underwater cave in the middle of a lake," John supplied with a grin.
"Do you know what it is?" the woman standing besides Jon asked. Percy looked at her, she was tall, almost taller than Percy himself. She looked around twenty with red hair and green eyes, she did not look nice. If anything she looked annoyed. She wore a red red tracksuit and carried a baseball bat in hand. Percy looked at her name;
Artemis Todd, daughter of Apollo
Lv— 18
Percy blinked, "you're kind of old to be a demigod huh?"
Artemis blinked in surprise, "how did," she grew angry, grabbing her bat, "how did you know?!"
Percy raised an eyebrow and turned to John, "kind of violent isn't she?"
John chuckled, "she's a redhead, what did you expect."
"Oye! Watch it old man!" Artemis growled before she turned back to Percy, "and how did you know I was a demigod?"
Percy shrugged, "didn't John tell you? It's one of my powers. I can tell someone's parent just by looking at them."
"Artemis, this is my little brother Percy, he was the one I was telling you about," John explained, "Percy Artemis is...well she really is a special case. The lake this medallion was in had a small town living next to it. This medallion had some kind of charm that prevented monsters from entering the town, so Artemis was safe from them, she grew up like a normal person."
"That is until you came and removed the stupid thing," Artemis growled.
John sighed, "even if I hadn't you would have had to eventually leave your town, and the moment you had you would have been dead meat. I saved you Artemis, whether you want to admit it or not."
The girl clicked her teeth before turning to Percy. "So, you know what that stupid thing is or what?"
Percy sighed, "it's a storage box for a monster. It's similar to my gem," Percy revealed the charm over the stone he had imbedded inside his skull displaying the blue gem to Artemis and John, the former gasping in surprise, "it is storing a monster inside of it called Mothera or something. Apparently you can use this thing to summon said monster. But unfortunately it takes an immense amount of mana to use the thing."
"I see," John looked at the amulet and sighed, "can you use it?"
"No, it's too much, even for me. Plus putting a new weapon so far into the battle isn't a good idea, especially one that we have absolutely no idea about."
"So we are really going to do this then?" John asked putting the amulet away, "fight Kronos?"
Percy grinned, "yup, you in for another war soldier?"
John laughed, "so does that mean you're my commanding officer?"
Percy shrugged, "whatever works," Percy then turned to Artemis, "do you know whose child you are?"
Artemis blinked, "I ah...no."
"Apollo," Percy answer, "you're the daughter of the sun god."
Artemis looked surprised, as if realisation finally dawned on her. She looked at John who just smiled, nodding his head, "makes sense," the soldier said, "there was no other way you got that good with a gun so quickly if your dad wasn't the god of archery."
"John, archery isn't the same as shooting a gun," Percy rolled his eyes.
"What? Of course it is! Point and press, same concept!"
"No man, believe me, it isn't, I've used both," Percy chuckled, "so if she's a better shot than you then it means you just suck at using a gun, Mr. Navy."
John grumbled, "I hate having a brother."
Percy smirked, he turned to Artemis, "if you want, I can introduce you to him after we're done here." Artemis looked surprised at that. Percy then turned to John, "where exactly have you been though? I mean yeah the amulet probably took some time to get, but why haven't you come back to camp?"
"It's a long story," John grumbled, "we were planning on coming back, but on the way we sort of ran into another son of Poseidon."
Percy's eyes went wide, "what?! Another one?!"
"Yes, but he isn't a demigod, he's a cyclops," John explained, "his name's Tyson, and a very nice fellow. You would like him Percy, he's sort of a giant baby."
"So...what happened?"
"Well when we met him Tyson was sort of running for his life from another tribe of cyclops and then from there we heard rumours about a monster running lose in Chicago, so we thought we would check it out."
"Turned out to be a mistake," Artemis grumbled, "all we got out of it was a couple of wanted posters and a stupid wise cracking pegasus."
