Chapter 1

Life is annoying. Especially as a twelve-year-old.

Oh, wait. I'm Lizzie Chase. I've been to a lot of schools. and almost all of them, I got kicked out. Almost all of them involved school trips. One of them involved a castle in England, a war-of-independence rifle, and a barrel of 'fake gunpowder' which turned out to be real. I wasn't aiming for Corfe castle, but I knocked down a battlement when my gunshot hit a barrel of gunpowder. The explosion was pretty, but a lot of people were injured, and I was expelled as soon as we got back to New York.

The time after that involved an old camera in a museum. I guess the thing was old enough to backfire and eject phosphorus out the back once I pulled the string. I honestly didn't know what would happen if I did. But regardless, I was expelled after someone almost choked to death and other people were angry "that their perfect, perfect, perfect clothes were totally ruined by an idiot little girl pulling a string on an old camera".

The next time, I was in a school with a really evil teacher who found me swimming by heart of everything in PE. She recommended me to be expelled for "being too good for the school to handle". Personally, I think she was just really evil, or jealous of my swimming without teaching. Honestly, I don't what's wrong! I've known advanced swimming since the moment I was born!

Then in the next school, it involved more gunpowder and a lighter. I was asked by a creepy guy who literally smelt like fire to hold his lighter on the top of the Hoover Dam. I dropped it when one of my classmates, who was a literal stalker and wanted his 'own way' with me, sneaked up on me and went "BOO!". I dropped the lighter down the dam and there was a stack of barrels of gunpowder at the bottom and the top one was open for some reason. It blew a satisfactory hole in the dam and messed up the machinery since it was that powerful an explosion. The dam began to vent out water from the superstructure down below. That plus explosion; got me expelled back in New York.

No comment.

You get the general idea, anyway.

So now I was at a boarding school called Nelson Academy. We were on a trip to a museum learn about the more powerful minor gods that were mentioned in Greek legends. My favourite Greek and Roman mythology teacher, Mr Harper was leading the trip. So I had hopes to quench my worry that I'd be given a lighter by a mysterious guy and knock down one of the statues. Plus, my old friend, Serena Shortwood was coming along. But unfortunately, so was the school bully. This school bully knew I was dangerous enough not to mess with, but he loved to constantly bully Serena.

Anyway, we were on the bus heading to the museum while the bully, Sammy Privett, was throwing ketchup sandwiches at the back of Serena's head. I mean: EWWWWW! KETCHUP SANDWICHES?

Whatever. Anyway, when another THWACK, followed by another SPLAT, sounded out, I threatened Sam. Another sounded out.

"That's it!" I ground out, getting out of my seat to deck Sam. However, Serena stopped me before I could get anywhere else.

"Hey, it's okay." she said soothingly. "I like ketchup sandwiches, anyway."

I thought that a little weird. But anyway, I sat back down, and tried to deal with my severe ADHD.

Oh yeah, I'm ADHD, dyslexic, and have attention problems. Forgot to say. Man, my life sucks.

Anyway, I was saved by having to keep fidgeting to control my ADHD by the announcement that we had reached our stop. Everybody poured out before Mr Harper barely stopped talking and left him saying "orderly fashion" to an empty crowd. Then he wheeled out of the bus.

You see, Mr Harper is this guy with a trimmed suit, relatively large beard, and has a motorized wheelchair. He loves teaching and has a degree reaching the top of heaven in Greek and Roman mythology. He's in a wheelchair because he has a bone disease. Anything that's sudden, painful or powerful, will break one of his bones...or all of them.

Anyway, we were all inside, and Mr Harper was telling us about a particular god.

"This god once hated Aphrodite so much, that he asked Hephaestus to create a gold net that temporarily removed the god's powers and turned them mortal for the while they were in it. Hephaestus was delighted to have an idea to ruin one of Ares's and Aphrodite's 'dates'. On the next of Ares's and Aphrodite's dates, the net, which Hephaestus had named Aurum which is gold in Latin, was dropped on the two gods. They were squirming and all the Olympian gods, and all of the minor gods went to laugh at them.

"This god was the lord of the region of sea we call the North Sea, and the god of time. He was son of Poseidon, and one of Poseidon's favourite sons. His name was Perseus. The story of his young Demigod life is depicted here." he rolled over to the Statue of Perseus and pointed at a gazillion-year-old stone tablet with Ancient Greek on it. "He was born in Sparta, and personally knew the king of Sparta, Menelaus, and his wife, Helen. He was named after the son of Zeus, Perseus, slayer of Medusa, since he was one of the few heroes who had happy endings in Greek mythology.

"He grew up strong, all the time unaware that his father was Poseidon. All he had was his mother and an abusive stepfather, whom he nicknamed, roughly translated, Smelly Gabe." we giggled then he carried on. "He found he was the son of Poseidon when he almost killed a fury. After that, he was accused of stealing Zeus's lightning bolt, which he did not steal, and returned to Mount Olympus to return the bolt.

"Next, he sailed across the sea to to the land of the Cyclopes to save Sparta by returning the Golden Fleece.

"After that, the Titan Atlas was rising, along with Kronos, to help destroy the world. Perseus trapped Atlas under the sky again and returned to Olympus in the welcome of an Olympian party.

"The time after that, Kronos's army was about to attack Sparta via the labyrinth. Perseus was sent to get help from Daedalus, the brilliant inventor, who then collapsed the labyrinth by the taking of his own life in mid-battle.

"After that, there was the second Titan war, resulting in the 'death' of Kronos, and the surrender of the rest of the Titans. He refused the first offer of godhood out of love for his," he coughed as if embarrassed. "to-be-girlfriend. After that, the second giant war, in which Sparta supposedly united Greece and the Roman Empire to fight Gaia herself and her giants, to put her back into a deep slumber. He reluctantly accepted the second offer of godhood in fear that the gods might vaporize him if he didn't, and so he was made into the god of time, and a servant of Poseidon, respectable lord of the North Sea.

"His Demigod fatal flaw, as all demigods had one, was loyalty. To save a friend you must destroy the world. But he managed to save his friends and save the world. Anyway, Time for lunch."

We poured outside he could say anything else. We were all sitting in the free courtyard which the museum saved for lunch for school trips, only just started eating lunch when it began to rain. Hard. They had a motorized umbrella set-up protocol though, so all of us were sitting under umbrellas that set themselves up. We were barely touched by rain.

I was really expecting Sam to come up to us and drop a primed nuclear warhead on our laps in his idea of a "little joke". Then I suddenly saw Sam in a blurred vision coming up behind us and fiddling with the latch that adjusted the umbrella's height. The umbrella itself came crashing down on me and Serena. The vision ended. I cautiously looked behind me and – no prizes for guessing – There was Sam, who had quickly retracted his hands from the latch.

"W-what?" he asked, obviously trying to make his voice blunt and fearless, but he stuttered; he knew I was dangerous enough not to mess with. He actually dared messing with me. Now, he was afraid. I decided to take advantage of this and warn him.

"Sam. How about you don't mess with me or my friend. Especially not my friend." then I cursed him in Ancient Greek, which I wasn't expecting. Surprisingly, I understood it to mean "You will burn eternally in Tartarus! Begone!". I automatically raised a three-clawed hand and pushed it outward – a ward against evil apparently – and he went scrambling backwards. Then he stood up effortlessly, evil grin plastered on his face, as if I'd done something he'd waited for all period.

"Well then, Elizabeth Jackson Chase. Goodbye. I'll be sure to mess with Serena Sanders Shortwood later."

"All-right," the other teacher, Ms Bailey, called out as if on cue. "Time to continue the lesson about that god we were talking about."

The geeks and people who were actually interested, including me (although I don't consider myself a geek), rushed in without a word. The rest groaned and followed reluctantly, sheltering themselves from the heavy rain with their lunch-boxes. Although I was still creeped out by Sam knowing mine and Serena's full name without us telling him.

"OK. Continuing lessons about Perseus."

OK, I know that those stories with this god, Perseus, never happened, neither reality, or mythology, but bear with me :).

Anyways, love it, hate it?

Please review, either praise or flame!

Also, there is a prize for reviewing and guessing correctly who exactly Perseus is. Don't worry, the prize will go out to everyone who guesses correctly. Not an individual.

(written 24/03/12, 11:40)