Nico wonders if the gods bothered to answer her much back home. Ares always seemed like a real crappy dad to have: Hades wasn't exactly father of the millennium, and for the first few years when they were still using Bianca as a terrible bludgeon against each other at every opportunity Nico might have been stupid enough to wish he could switch, but by that point he'd already seen enough dead kids of Ares in the Underworld to know that it wouldn't have been a step up.

So he doesn't think that just because Ares spent the majority of the height of Nico's ridiculous crush picking fights with Percy, thank you.

He purses his lips and decides not to voice any of that because he's not looking to get punched on this fine evening. "Right." He looks down at the muddy footprints he's been tracking through the store. A day ago the prospect of having no godly errands to run or mishaps to fix or apocalypses to stop for seven months would have seemed a lot more appealing, but a day ago he could eat lunch with Will or go on a field trip to visit Hazel and Reyna. He could send an Iris message to check on Coach or Jason or Percy. He didn't, like, always do that stuff, but the important thing was that the option was there. He looks back up to Clarisse, and actually finds himself surprised she seems to be holding it together. "Then, what do you do here?"