"Yep, it's me. Did you really think I would miss my best friend's birthday?"

"Well who told you about the party?" I asked.

"Well, Hades did," she told me.

"Ara, you aren't," I said.

"Aren't what?" she asked innocently.

"You're dating Hades?" I exclaimed.

"Sorry?" she asked jokingly.

"You're dating my freaking great grandfather for crying out loud, and you think that it's a joke?" I almost shrieked.

"Kinda, Nikki," she said. "And I was going to be an awesome best friend and let you come shopping with me and Alice tomorrow."

"Don't you mean force me, Ara?" I asked knowing that she hated shopping with Alice as much as I did.

"Pretty much," she said.

"Come quickly! Percy and the new kid are hurt! Something attacked them, I need help!" we heard Chiron's voice in our heads.

I cussed. "Another damn monster I'm sure of it." She said out loud. We transported ourselves to the forest, to the place where Chiron was showing us through mental images.

We appeared in the creek, not 10 feet away from a badly injured Percy Jackson. I ran to him, keeping an eye out for the monster. Then we saw it. It was an enormous hellhound.

"Ara, get the freaking hellhound! I got Percy!" I yelled.

Ara's POV

The new kid was laying down, trying to stave it off with his sword. I saw he was just as injured as Percy. Nichole healed Percy quickly, as I ran up to the hellhound. I stood over the new kid's broken body and held up my hands. An invisible current seemed to rush in the air from my body, and the hellhound fell over, dead. I had imploded his brain. Being the Goddess of Destruction, I could just do random stuff like that.

I turned to the new kid, and caught his name from some memories. Scorpius. I studied the gashes in his chest carefully. I was barely aware of the awed whispers coming from the assembled campers behind me. He had jet black hair, and from what I could tell, blood red eyes. His tanned skin was tainted with blood. He was wearing a black Guns N Roses t-shirt under his armor, and it was ripped to shreds. But what really shocked me was, he seemed really familiar.

Nichole's POV:

"Percy, are you okay?" I asked as I helped him up. "Why weren't you at the mess hall?"

"Scorpius went into the forest and I followed him."

"I'm glad you're okay, Percy," Ara said. Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus appeared in front of us.

"What happened here?" Zeus asked. Hades was moving away little by little.

"Hades, you are so dead!" Ara and I yelled as she blew up the trees around him.

"Why?" he asked innocently.

"You almost killed my brother!" Ara screeched.

"Ara, calm down!" I exclaimed. "You're gonna set my hair on fire!"

"Sorry, Nikki," she said. "Well at least we won't have to go all the way to Olympus for the council."

"What council?" Scorpius asked. We both looked at him.

"Aye-yi-yi," I said softly.

"You're telling me," Ara said.

"What council?" Scorpius asked us for what seemed like the millionth time. Ara's little brother was starting to get on my nerves, and fast.

"Scorpius, shut your pie hole before I blast you to bits," I threatened.

"Trust me, she's done it before. It ain't pretty," Ara said. She had seen me at my worst before.

"Ara, get out of here, now," I told her, my voice strained.

"Not without you, Nikki," she told me. The men were advancing quickly.

"Ara, I'm telling you go now!" We were running away from them when one of them popped up in front of us. I yelled for Ara to get out of there. He advanced on me.

"Don't run from us sweetheart. We won't hurt you," the man told me. He reeked of alcohol and drugs. The dark-haired man's friends surrounded me.

"Back off!" I screeched. I kicked one of them where the sun don't shine and made him bleed. It was then that I figured out that they were Titans. I kept telling myself that I had to be dreaming. One of them fastened a bracelet on me and my energy was drained. It felt like someone had stuck me in the middle of a freezer! They then popped me to a secluded area where they raped me over and over again. It took Ara forever to find where they had taken me. As soon as she saw the bracelet, it exploded.

"You are such a slime ball, Atlas," Ara said as she made all of the others explode. My powers were back so I looked at Atlas for a few seconds and then lightning struck him and he exploded. "Are you okay, Nico?" I shook my head, scared of what had just happened. I made someone's head explode, so I must've been dreaming.

"Just get me out of here," I asked my voice breaking. She healed me from where they had abused me and popped us to her temple.

"Dad, when did I get a throne?" I asked after he popped all of us to Olympus.

"Happy Birthday?" he asked, sheepishly. I just went and sat down.

"You still don't know how to give a goddess a gift, do you?" I asked. He glared at me.

"Don't even think about it, you old fart," Ara said, making the window behind him explode.

"Well, before you even ask, you should know that Scorpius should be the god of motion," I said. "Show them. Use Ares!" He picked Ares up and dropped him into the fire pit next to me.

"You two are so dead!" Ares screeched as he tried to crawl out of the fire. Scorpius and I held him in there with our powers.

"Well, what should you be the goddess of, Nichole?" Zeus asked me.

"Well, I'm good with the arts, any type of art actually," I told him. Ara looked at me.

"Then you are goddess of the arts."

"That means I'm gone," I said as I popped out of there. I went into my father's cabin and looked up at the sky. "Why am I this way?" I asked myself.

"If you weren't, then you wouldn't be you," Percy said as he walked in.

"Percy, I don't think I was even supposed to be born. My mother was murdered two days after I was born."

"Then your family wanted you alive."

"But who wanted me dead, Percy? Can you tell me that?" I asked him. I looked at the son of Poseidon and sighed. "Someone thinks I'm not supposed to be alive."

"I'll protect you," he told me.

"How can you protect a goddess?"