Chapter 62: We take out the trash

==========================

This chapter was quite hard to write, I hope you people like it.

...

' Percy '

...

I blinked a few times with my eyes.

After a few seconds I noticed I was standing in front of my friends, who looked at me with worry in their eyes.

"Are you alright?" Bianca asked.

"What did Ares want?" Zoë growled.

"Rebel suddenly appeared." Nyx said pointing at Rebel who was playing with his own tail.

"Aphrodite wanted to speak with me." I said, "In fact she was actually really nice to me."

Thalia sighed in relief, "I was afraid Ares might have done something to you, after you fried his ass."

"You fried his ass?" Bianca asked with a mixture of awe and fear in her eyes.

"You kissed Aphrodite?" Nyx asked with a neutral face.

"Yeah," I said, "She made me her champion."

Thalia's eyes widened, "What?"

"She kissed you?" Nyx asked suddenly really interested.

"Yes, it was the only way to make me her Champion, not that I had much choice in that matter," I said.

"How many blessings do you have?" Thalia asked.

I counted on my fingers, "Demeter, Hestia and Aphrodite."

'And Chaos.' Chaos added.

'Hey, do you know what you would need to do to become my champion?' Nyx asked with a teasing tone.

'Mom.' Hemera said, sounding annoyed and embarrassed.

I had no idea why but before we could discuss this matter Zoë snapped me out of my train of thought.

"It's not a good sign if Aphrodite takes interest in you." she said.

I'm not sure, she sounded like she really wanted to help." I said. "Aphrodite was surprisingly nice to me, also Aphrodite also warned me not to take something from her Husband's Junkyard." I said.

"Junkyard?" Bianca asked.

I pointed at the mountains of trash in the distance, "Those are defect and scrapped junk Hephaestus made, we need to go through that junkyard. Preferably without activating one of the defect machinery."

Zoë frowned, "Are you sure Aphrodite said that?"

I nodded, technically she had said it my past life so I wasn't lying.

"Great...we have to get through the junkyard." Zoë muttered before she began to walk towards the junkyard.

"Come on." she yelled, clearly annoyed, "Artemis is not going to free herself."

We followed her to the junkyard.

"Wow." Bianca said with awe as we passed a mountain junk, "Look that bow."

"A metal horse." Thalia said pointing at a metal horse with a missing head.

"Aphrodite warned us not to take anything." I reminded them.

"Yeah but it looks so cool." Thalia said.

"Listen to Percy. It's thrown away for a reason." Zoë demanded.

Rebel was running around the junkyard, but he was smart enough not to touch anything.

We passed through hills and valleys of junk under the cover of moonlight, listening to Bianca and Thalia pointing out peculiar objects in the piles and Nyx complaining about getting tired of walking.

When the exit was about half a mile away from us we ran into ten large toes.

"Wow." Thalia said, "Are those-."

"Toes." I finished her sentence, "Let's go around them.

"But the road." Bianca said.

"Around." Zoë repeated.

We made our way around the toes and walked for another few minutes in silence, as if the owner of the toes would suddenly wake up if we made noise.

When we stepped on the highway Zoë let out a sigh of relief.

"We made it." she said.

Clank

We all turned, behind us we heard the sound around of thousand compactors crushing metal.

The toes began to move, slowly a large figure got up from the piles of junk. A bronze giant in full battle armor rose up and began to look around.

He was tall, too tall for my likings, he was as tall as an skyscraper, like a robot Godzilla.

Zoë's eyes widened, "Talos."

But it wasn't Talos but a failed model. His face was deformed and his joints made a Screech sound that could not be good.

"Failed Model, one of you has taken something." I said accusingly and turned towards Bianca.

"You…" I sneered, I had hoped warning her would be enough but it wasn't.

Bianca's face turned red, "I-"

"What did you take?" Zoë said reading Bianca's expression.

Bianca took something from her pocket. Nyx snatched it out of her hands before we could see it.

"The Hades figurine!" she called out, "I don't have this one yet."

She showed us a figure of Hades, "See, its Hades!"

Zoë glared at Bianca, "Why'd you take it?"

Bianca's expression turned to shame, "I wanted Nico to have it, it's from only figurine he doesn't have, to say sorry."

Talos unsheathed his sword, a 100 feet long metal sword screeched as it was drawn.

"Too late now." I said looking at the defect Talos who made his way towards us, estimating from his steps it would take at least 2 seconds before he reached us.

"Scatter!" I yelled and we split up.

Nyx ran away with Bianca and Thalia while Zoë and I ran away to the left side of Talos.

As we ran a Rune appeared above his head, he changed into a full grown Nemean Lion.

"We have to deactivate it." Zoë yelled as we nearly avoided being stepped on.

Talos swung his giant sword at our direction. He missed us but hit the mountain of junk behind us and made trash rain over us.

I pulled Zoë towards me and avoided that she would be crushed by an all-inclusive fridge.

We both fell to the ground. The mountain of junk began to shift again.

More junk began to rain over us, Rebel leaped into our direction and landed with his paws to our side and covered us with his giant body, blocking trampolines, broken chariot's and to many sharp objects to count.

They all fell onto him, but his fur protected him and indirectly us.

From underneath the lion I saw that Nyx had shadow traveled on top of Talos, only to fall of a second later. Bianca tried to shoot at Talos but it had no effect.4

The arrows scattered upon contact.

Thalia tried to fight it, stabbing her spear into one of it toes, Talos kicked Thalia away with his feet however Thalia managed to protect herself with Aegis.

Nyx shadow traveled to the spot where she would crash and caught her.

When the mountain of junk stopped crashing down on us Rebel opened his mouth and roared angrily at Talos, he charged at it and began to dig his claws into Talos.

I remembered the story of how the only thing that could penetrate his fur were his own claws, well right now these claws were shredding apart the legs of Talos.

However in one glance I could see that Talos was simply too big for Rebel.

I had the idea that when Talos would step onto Rebel his fur would not help him against being crushed.

Nyx and Thalia stepped out of the shadows behind us, Bianca ran towards us across the junkyard, Rebel was now getting the full attention of Talos.

Rebel managed to avoid being stepped on but dodging the 100 feet long sword was a lot harder. Multiple time he was hit and swung into a mountain of Junk.

If it wasn't for his fur, he would've been dead.

"Underneath the shoe." I said and pointed at the Giant's sneaker, "The right feet has a maintenance hole."

"I shall go inside." Bianca offered.

"No, I'm going." Nyx said determined, "I can shadow travel outside, you will be stuck inside if that things falls down."

I wanted to protest, but she had a good point.

"How would you get in?" Zoë asked.

The Nemean lion was smashed into a mountain of junk again but this time Rebel didn't get up. Talos made his way over to the mountain to kill Rebel.

"Distract it! I'll freeze it," I said and ran towards Talos.

"You're crazy!" Zoë yelled but nonetheless she followed me and began to shoot arrows at Talos's head.

"Hey ugly!" Thalia yelled as she approached the Giant.

I made a wide arc around Talos, who was now facing my friends. Confused why these ants were insulting him.

Bianca shot another arrow at Talos's metal eye which angered him.

I reached the side of the giant and began to pour water out of the air and shot it at the knee caps of Talos, however there was not enough water to turn into solid ice.

I poured more water out of the air and made it swirl around his kneecaps.

Talso lifted his feet to crush Thalia, who stumbled over a broken bow, I forced the water to turn into solid ice.

Instantly the kneecaps began to freeze, ice spikes began to form around it and prevented it from moving his leg.

"Now!" I yelled at Nyc who watched in awe.

She shadow traveled underneath the foot and climbed into the hole.

As soon as she entered the ice around his knee scattered and I was no longer able to restrain him.

Thalia had already rolled away and managed to escape becoming a demigod pancake.

Talos began attacking us as he normally would but I knew it was now only a matter of time before he would freeze and deactivate.

We ran around him and attacked his toes and knees.

However, Talos realized he had an easier prey and ignored us but made his way over to Rebel who was still unconscious.

He had found an easier prey.

He lifted his sword and brought it down onto my unconscious lion.

An few inches before he hit Rebel with his sword, he froze.

Nyx appeared beside me and grinned wildly.

"I did it!" she yelled.

"Nyx." Zoë cried out as she ran towards us, she glanced at Talos with awe in her face, "You did it."

Nyx nodded proudly, "I did it!"

Talos fell backwards, all the limbs went numb, and he made a loud Clunk sound as he fell.

The ground shook, and a small earthquake was caused by us.

Thalia and Bianca strolled towards us, Thalia was covered in black stuff I assumed was motor oil.

"Is it dead?" Bianca asked.

"Hell yeah!" Nyx cried out.

Meow I heard and looked down to find Rebel back in cat form, he looked up at me, Told you I could take it his expression seemed to say.

"You did amazing." I told him, and I picked him up and cuddled him in my arms.

Rebel closed his eyes and snored with satisfaction.

We survived the land without rain.

==========================

So this was the battle between the questers and Talos, hope you people liked it. Also Bianca did not die this time. Good news right?