Ares sets their police cars on fire, and the crowd disperses.Instead of seeing a god and demi-god fighting with swords, they see a tough-looking dude and a young adolescent boy shooting at one another. Percy tries to use his sea powers to his advantage, but Ares makes this hard, keeping Percy away from the water. Ares and Percy start fighting one-on-one.Ares sets a wild boar on Percy, but Percy lops its horn off and makes a wave crash upon it and pull it into the ocean.He's definitely been having dreams like Percy's been having dreams – vivid ones in which an evil voice tells him what to do. Ares is super-offended by this – he doesn't take orders from anyone but himself.Percy guesses that Ares is taking orders from the voice in the pit, in Tartarus.When he found the theft, he decided to let the thief go scot free so that he could sit back, relax, and watch the war begin. Instead, he was sent by Zeus to find the thief. Percy guesses that Ares didn't orchestrate the stealing of either symbol of power.Ares looks like he's listening to another voice somewhere – he is momentarily distracted.
So, just as Riptide always finds its way back into Percy's pocket, the master bolt would find its way into Percy's backpack as soon as he made it into the underworld. The backpack Ares gave them in Denver was enchanted.And Hades would still be looking for his helm of darkness, which, doggonit, Ares just happens to have with him. Hades is supposed to have Zeus's master bolt, causing Zeus to get really mad at him. He tells Percy that he's messing up his strategy for igniting a war: Percy was supposed to die, causing Poseidon to get really ticked off. Ares tells him he got someone else to steal the symbols of power, but he won't say who.Percy accuses him of stealing the helm of darkness and the master bolt.In the distance, they see Ares on his motorcycle with a baseball bat, waiting for them.By sundown today, there will be a three-way war. Percy realizes that someone other than Hades stole both the master bolt and the helm of darkness and framed Percy because his dad is Poseidon:.They walk for miles on the beach discussing what has just happened.They stumble onto the Santa Monica Beach at sunrise, while Los Angeles burns behind them.Their radios were jammed with distress calls.
A Coast Guard boat picked us up, but they were too busy to keep us for long, or to wonder how three kids in street clothes had gotten out into the middle of the bay.