What a stroke of luck!

Gem had thought she’d never see her hellhound friend again. He was just as fluffy and smelly and adorable as ever. So much had changed since she’d last seen him, but at that moment it felt like nothing had.

“You… know this monster?” Jason asked cautiously.

“He’s not a monster,” Gem insisted, wrapping her arms around Cat’s neck and beaming. “He’s just a lil’ lonely doggo! He’s friendly, come pet him!”

Reyna was apparently a dog person. She was the first to come pet him. “Why’d you name him Cat?”

“Because I had a cat named Goose and a horse named Moose and a Ravager named Cow at the time I named him,” Gem answered. “I wanted him to match, but I didn't get to bring him home because we couldn't get him through airport security.”

Jason pet Cat too. “What’s a Ravager?”

Strangely, he didn't ask about the other animals or the airport security. Gem took that to mean he'd given up on trying to understand her antics. Good.

Still, Gem did not elaborate. “We need to go find the leopard,” she said. “My pets in Season 8 aren’t important right now.”

Reyna nodded in agreement. “Do you think the other hellhounds-”

Cat barked excitedly before the daughter of Bellona even finished and licked her face.

Reyna sighed. “I have had enough magical animal slobber on me today for the rest of my life. If I get pets, they’re gonna be automatons.”

“Was that a yes?” Gem asked Cat, releasing him. “Your friends can help us?”

Cat wagged his tail and bounded off to the circle of hellhounds still surrounding them.

They all held a staring contest.

Then they started barking at each other.

Gem couldn’t really tell what they were saying, but their tails were all wagging, so she decided it was probably positive.

“They’re probably planning to eat us,” Jason muttered to Reyna.

Gem whirled back to look at them, horrified. How dare he suggest such a thing? Cat was a perfect baby and she would not stand for this mendacity!

Cat nudged her with his nose and stuck out his tongue. There were two other hellhounds next to him, a snarly rugged one with lots of scars and a tiny little skittish one with wide eyes and spindly limbs.

Gem pulled Reyna and Jason to the hellhounds and had them each put their hand on one.

“Why do I get the wimpy one?” Jason complained.

The little hellhound whined in protest.

Gem pouted. “Be nice! They volunteered for this! I assume.”

Then she climbed onto Cat’s back, since he was big enough. “Brace yourselves!” she said cheerfully.

“What?” Reyna asked.

The three hellhounds and the demigods with them stepped into the shade of the sad little shack the hellhounds lived in.

And then suddenly everything was dark and spinning, like Gem was on the tilt-a-whirl at that Waterland park she’d been to a year and a half ago. She held onto Cat a little tighter. She didn’t particularly like the feeling of whatever shadow travel hellhounds did, but she’d rather be doing that than in a cage, no matter how friendly the other inhabitants were.

Once the shadows had successfully rearranged Gem's sense of direction, they spat her and Cat right into the leopard enclosure where they started this whole gladiator ordeal.

“I'm going to throw up,” Reyna gagged.

“Well, don't tell us that, just go throw up,” Jaron told her.

Gem figured she was a little green in the face herself. But she didn't feel like choking up her bagel from the hotel's complimentary breakfast that morning, so she turned her attention to the leopard. It was now sitting on a branch again, licking its rear end. You'd think divine symbolic animals would act more… I don't know, divine? Not licking their butts?

Maybe all immortal beings licked their own butts. Maybe cats just licked their own butts because they thought they were gods. But if that was the case, at least other gods had the decency to lick their butts in private!

Reyna, apparently recovered, approached the leopard. “Do you want to go back to Bacchus?” she asked it.

The leopard purred obliviously.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Reyna decided. “But we still need to wait until nightfall and steal a truck. Can you drive?”

Gem and Jason shook their heads.

“I'll figure it out,” Reyna nodded. “If we die, blame Bacchus.

“That's a terrible idea,” Jason protested. “I rather like being alive, thank you very much, so let's just find that son of Mercury who got us here.”

Gem nodded in agreement. If she had to die, she'd be happy to blame it on Mr. D/Bacchus, but joining Scar and Cleo in the Underworld was definitely not a desirable outcome of this quest.

Reyna nodded. “Hm, yes. That is more sane. Let's go with the more sane option. How do we get in contact with him?”

“The praetor gave us his address,” Jason answered, as if it was a completely normal thing to turn up at someone's door with a hellhound, a leopard, and several sharp objects.

Gem still didn't know how addresses worked in this world. The best she could assume was that they were something like coordinates, but the X coordinate was letters and the Y coordinate was numbers and the Z coordinate was also letters. She didn't think it actually worked that way, though, because Clarisse had used actual coordinates last summer on the Sea of Monsters quest, but those were only two numbers-

This world was so horribly confusing.

The Sea of Monsters quest… it felt so long ago. Gem liked Reyna, but she really missed the Hermits.

She realized Jason and Reyna were already leaving, Reyna coaxing the leopard with the promise of tasty chicken for dinner. Cat nudged her with his nose, trying to get her to follow.

“Sorry, Cat,” Gem told him as she started walking. “I just want to go home.”

Cat whimpered, and Gem remembered how lonely he'd been when she first met him. He didn't really have a home to go back to.

“We'll find a way to get you back to Camp Half-Blood,” Gem promised. “Or, I will.”

Cat's tail wagged.

They caught up to Jason, Reyna, and the giant cat - which Gem decided impulsively to nickname Stripe (because that made perfect sense for a spotted cat) - only to find a very angry emperor, wearing his bedsheets and pointing an Imperial Gold sword at them. About two dozen monsters stood behind them, ready to attack.

“That's quite enough,” he growled.