"What do we do?" Gem asked.

Reyna drew her sword.

Jason quickly put a hand on her arm. "We can't hurt it," he said. "Otherwise Bacchus would turn us into... I dunno. Dolphins or something."

"I know," Reyna hissed. "But what else am I supposed to do?"

"Be friends with it," Gem suggested.

Jason looked like he was against that idea.

Reyna decided she would rather be friends with a cat than turned into a dolphin. How hard could it be? They had lions back on Circe's island. Sure, they were tame, but they were cats. Even domesticated cats were unhinged sometimes. There couldn't be that much difference, could there?

The leopard lunged.

Reyna changed her mind.

The croud roared, and the leopard answered with a roar of its own, except it wasn't really a roar, more of a strangled rasp. Like a handsaw.

While the leopard was distracted by snarling at the noise, Jason lunged toward it, tackling it.

Reyna never thought she'd see the immaculate Jason Grace wrestle a cat, but here they were.

She decided to join in.

The leopard threw Jason off easily and swiped at him. Jason yelped. Blood spattered into the rough sand beneath them.

Reyna jumped from behind, landing on the leopard's back and wrapping her arms around its neck. For a zoo animal, this thing was muscular. Perks of being immortal, she supposed.

But Reyna was the daughter of Bellona. She would not fall to this.

Gem crouched down and touched the ground. Vines sprouted up and wrapped around the leopard's legs.

Reyna tightened her hold, and finally let herself slip off the beast's back when she realized it could no longer move.

The audience was chanting for death.

Reyna decided to humor them for a moment and held her sword over the leopard.

Then she let it fall into the sand.

Booooooo, the audience screamed.

Reyna sat down a safe distance from the leopard and extended her hand to it to sniff.

Please don't bite my hand off, she thought.

The leopard did not bite her hand off.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Reyna told it. "We're friends of Bacchus."

Gem and Jason approached her. Jason was clutching his abdomen.

The announcer was saying something, telling the crowd to calm down and that there was more coming. Reyna's ears were ringing as she scratched the leopard's chin. It really wasn't that different from the lionesses on Circe's island.

Gem let the vines relax.

The leopard walked towards Reyna and head-butted her in the chest.

"You're just an oversized housecat, aren't you?" Reyna asked, amused, even though she was really more of a dog person.

The leopard sat on her and purred.

"Awwwwww," Gem laughed. "He likes you!"

Reyna was too busy trying not to inhale a lungful of fur to reply.

"What an interesting turn of events," the announcer said, with a hint of desperation in their voice. "They appear to have befriended the leopard! However, if the audience agrees, and if the Imperator approves, why dont we put this newfound companionship to the test?"

Reyna finally managed to pinpoint their location. They were in the top box of the arena, an enthusiastic purple glowing being with a headset and a foam finger. A Lare, the Romans had called them. Next to them was a huge chair in which sat a bald dude in a purple toga.

“Imperator?” Jason cried. “This guy is an emperor?”

Last Reyna checked, California didn’t have an emperor. Then again, last Reyna checked, California also didn’t have a colosseum in San Diego.

The grate on the other side of the arena opened, and the announcer regained their bubbling energy. "I give you the mighty monoceros!"

It was some sort of mash-up between a horse, an elephant, and a stag - horse body, elephant feet, stag head, minus the antlers. Instead, it had one long black horn protruding from its forehead.

"Danger unicorn!" Gem yelled.

"THE DANGER UNICORN IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE CATCHABLE!" Jason yelled, even louder.

"What is it, a Pokémon?" Reyna demanded.

The danger unicorn took offense to that and charged. For having elephant legs, it was quite fast.

"Heck, no," Gem muttered. "I'm not dealing with this."

"Me neither," Jason agreed, and drew his sword.

The leopard leaped off of Reyna and pounced at the monoceros.

Reyna started to join the fight, but Jason grabbed her arm again. What was his problem? Why couldn't he just let her stab things?

Yeah, it turned out she didn't need to stab things, because the leopard was standing in a pile of dust a moment later, looking disappointed that its prey was in Tartarus.

"Remind me never to piss off Bacchus," Reyna said.

Gem snorted, probably thinking about the Dionysus on her side.

The crowd was in chaos. The announcer was stunned into silence. The emperor had stood up and was looking down at the leopard with interest. Reyna didn't know what the big deal was, but she decided now was the best time to escape.

"And that was a monoceros," Jason explained, unprompted. "They're supposed to be unkillable, untrappable."

"Well, the Leopard of Bacchus is sort of immortal," Gem reasoned.

"Come on," Reyna told both of them, and took off running across the arena. The other porticullis, the one the leopard and the unicorn had come out of, was still wide open.

The emperor took the megaphone from the sportscaster Lare. "Demigods!" he yelled.

The porticullis slammed shut again. They were only halfway across the arena.

"There has been a change of plans," the emperor said. "You have befriended the leopard of Bacchus. Congratulations on that small victory, but I'm afraid it won't last."

Reyna skidded to a stop and started looking for another way to escape.

Jason was running their options out loud. "I can fly, but I don't have enough power to fly all three of us plus the cat. If we could break the porticullis somehow-"

"You can fly?" Gem demanded.

The leopard growled. The audience was chanting something along the lines of “DEATH! DEATH! DEATH!”

“Silence!” The emperor commanded. “They cannot be used for Ludum Venatorium, as seen by their inability to fight. Instead, the Vespasian exhibit will provide you with a most interesting and entertaining spectacle! In three hours, remember to step, or slither, or crawl, or float over to the hellhound exhibit for feeding time!”

Gem gasped. “Feeding time? Do we get to watch the hellhounds get treats? Do we get to give them treats?”

“No,” Reyna grumbled, offended by the inability to fight comment (it wasn't her fault that Jason wouldn't let her kill things!) “We get to be the treats.”

Gem’s smile faded. "Wait-"

And then a hidden trapdoor opened up under them and they fell into darkness.

---

When light finally flooded Reyna's senses again, they were surrounded by about six very hungry, very large canines.

But something was stopping them. They were circling the demigods and growling and slobbering and generally being dogs, but they weren't going in for the kill.

Jason was already awake. Gem was just starting to stir.

As soon as Gem sat up, one of the hellhounds bounded forward, barking. Around its neck was a collar of wilted, brown flowers. Its tail was wagging. Gem's eyes widened.

Reyna and Jason were too slow to draw their swords as the hellhound pounced, tackling Gem back to the ground and... licking her face?

Gem cried out and threw her arms around the hellhound's neck.

"Cat, I missed you so much!"

~~~

This is a very janky chapter, for which I apologize. I had a lot of writers block and I'm trying to keep a schedule now and I really just wanted to finish this chapter and get it published so it was over with.

Anyway, Cat the Hellhound has returned :D

-Indigo