Percy Jackson, The Missing Hero.

55. A Son of Poseidon Wants to Fight the Sun.

Percy didn't attempt to stifle his yawn as he walked into the War Room to find his entire team, present and whole again. Only Nico and Apollo were missing; the former either still asleep or catching up with Will, while the latter had left for Olympus late the night before to inform them of Eros' presence after Percy had finally managed to kick them out of his room. The love god had taken up residence in Apollo's barely used room, having refused to accompany Apollo while his powers were still fluctuating between non-existent and barely existent. The sun god had promised to be back before mid-afternoon, saying that there could be nothing that would have him separated from his son for too long.

The absences provided Percy with the perfect opportunity to catch up with his team; something that they had only barely managed to do the day previous. Even at the campfire the night before, they had barely been able to reunite properly with Percy's attention forced in multiple directions.

"He lives!" Orion proclaimed from where he was sitting beside Theseus, smile bright. "Little brother, it is wonderful to see your face."

"I'm so glad you're all here now," Percy admitted, looking around the room and smiling. His team was whole again, a fact that he kept having to remind himself of. He hated it when they split up and had hated it even more when he'd had to split off from his own half of the group to chase after Nathan and Octavian. "I've missed you."

"You owe me five drachmas," Jason - the original Jason - laughed, elbowing Odysseus in the ribs. "I told you he would tell us that he missed us."

"Ah," Odysseus smirked. "You specified that it would be the first thing he said. It was the second, so you owe me five drachmas."

"I thought you'd learned by now to never make bets with Odysseus?" Percy raised an eyebrow as he flopped into the empty chair between Luke and Icarus.

"Nobody listens to that advice." Odysseus winked at him. "So please stop reminding them."

"He even managed to win the bet of how much longer our Quest would last," Theseus grumbled.

"You were going in circles last I saw you, I didn't think I'd find you back at Camp," Percy recalled his trip to see the others, along with the words he'd heard from those he'd stolen away. "I thought you wouldn't be here for another few weeks at the very least."

"We live to surprise." Orion quirked a smile at him.

Phoebe elbowed him in the ribs and rolled her eyes. "What Orion means to say is that after your visit, it was as if everything aligned for us to finish as swiftly as possible. We had Tyche on our side all of a sudden, after weeks of everything going against us."

Percy frowned.

"It was weird," Achilles agreed with her, nodding his head. "Obviously I wasn't there for the resolution but when I was reunited with Patroclus and was given the opportunity to discuss our venture with him, we both agreed that everything was too suspicious to be a coincidence."

"It was like something was intentionally screwing with us, preventing us from finding an easy resolution," Patroclus spoke up to support Achilles.

"We established that the source of the problems was a low-level trickster god, but we found their body shortly afterwards and they'd been dead for longer than they should have been." Theseus shook his head, looking a little confused and frustrated. "It didn't make sense; if the length of time they'd been dead for matched how long we'd operated unplagued, it would have been fine. But Chaos called and said it was time for us to move on, so we let the matter be. We wanted to be reunited with the rest of you."

"My tracking spells didn't work until the final day either, when they should have led us to the body from the instant he died and his shielding spells with him," frustration coloured Alabaster's tone, a matching scowl on his face.