Sarah

The shrill screech of the alarm pierced through my room, forcefully retrieving me from my sleep. I opened my eyes and felt like someone had spent the last 8 hours rubbing them with sandpaper. Groggily, I flopped my arm at the alarm to snooze it. Eventually, my feet found the floor and I rubbed my eyes.

I looked over at the time and realized that it was 7:20. Damn, I thought to myself. If I got another tardy I was going to be in trouble. Not that I cared, but who wants to stay after school? I ran around my room, getting dressed as fast as I could. In no time, I had eaten breakfast, gotten dressed, brushed my teeth, and was out the door. Of course, I forgot my backpack.

Luckily, my first period was freshman gym. I got changed as I made some small talk with the other girls. We got into our assigned lines, as our gym teacher came out into the gym. He was a middle aged man, but his body didn't show it. He was muscular, with sharp facial features and short hair. He looked like a marine.

"Alright, start your warm up."

I didn't say a word throughout the entire warm up. I wish I had some of my friends in this class, but they're all in the 3rd hour gym. A fair amount of the kids in this class were in the "popular group". They are so worried about who likes them or who is doing what - which is pretty much everything I try not to be. Unfortunately, that doesn't get you a ton of friends.

After 15 minutes of skips and stretches, we finally finished. We huddled around the coach. "Today, we'll continue playing soccer. Team 1 plays team 4 on field 1, team 2 plays ..."

I am team one, so I kinda tuned out after that. I heard team 4 was really good, but I can't remember who was really good on their team. My team was alright. We had a couple of basketball players who played defence, a very athletic girl who was one of our better players, and some normal kids. I played keeper and we had one soccer player, who was pretty good. He nudged me in the side.

"Hey, watchout. They have a really good player on their team. Don't get too relaxed out there."

I nodded my head, but I wasn't too worried. I mean, very few of the kids actually knew how to play anyways.

The fields we used were for 12 year olds, so it wasn't full size, but it was a good 80 yards long. The goals were of decent size, however I could touch the cross bar without jumping. We got there first so we got to pick our side. The other team came and I was quite surprised. They didn't look stacked at all. They had one kid with raven black hair and a lean build. I think his name is Liam. That must have been who my teammate was talking about, but he didn't seem much more athletic than our guy.

Our gym teacher threw a ball into our field and it rolled towards them. One of the kids tapped it to Liam, and he passed it back. My team moved up as the game was on. The game was very clumsy, with people running into each other, accidentally passing to the other team. Unfortunately, Liam got the ball before our soccer player did. He flew past our defenders, beating them with a single touch to either side and before I knew it I was staring him down.

He ran straight at me and I didn't know what to do. If I stood still, he would just tap it to the side. But if I ran out at him he could just beat me like he did to our defenders. I decided to rush him, but as soon as I started running towards him he slammed the ball into the back of our net.

For the rest of the game, he almost always had the ball at his feet. Every single pass was to Liam. He'd chase down whoever had the ball, steal it from them and then dribble a couple of people. He'd pass it off lightly, and then run around someone. They'd pass it to him and he'd continue dribbling.

I had the worst of it. He made an absolute fool of me. No matter what I did, he beat me without breaking a sweat. If I charged him, he'd either shoot while I was running or just take a touch around me. If I stayed in the goal, he would just get close enough that I had no chance of stopping it.

After what felt like all day, our coach gave a two minute warning. Liam had started setting up his teammates because they were winning by so much. It was easily 9-2 or 10-2. A passed it across the goal to a short nerdy kid who kicked it straight into the goal from a few feet away.

From the kickoff, our soccer player got the ball and started dribbling. He used a couple fancy tricks, I couldn't even describe what he was doing. He ran around the sides to avoid Liam, but Liam ran him down and took the ball. He passed it to a defender and ran towards our side as his teammate gave him the ball again. He weaved in and out of our players as he charged down the right side.

I was determined to stop him this time. Just as he got inside the goal box, I charged him. He was at the corner of the goal box, so he didn't really have anywhere to shoot. He cut inside and I moved to cut him off. I ran full speed at him and thought I had him. He stopped the ball with his left foot and rolled it to his right foot as he spun around me. I tried to stop myself, but I ran right past him.

As he tapped the ball into the net, our coach blew the whistle. Liam was breathing heavily, and just stood in the goal with his hands on his hips catching his breath. He looked over at me, gave a small smile and started to walk back to the school.

Two excruciatingly unextraordinary hours later, it was finally lunch time. I got a lunch of pizza, pretzels, and a cookie. I sat toward a table where my friends are sitting. My friend group is small, but they're really cool. A couple of them actually just moved here this year, but since I just moved up to high school I got all new friends anyways. I'll miss my middle school friends, but most of them either joined the popular crowd or go to different schools.

Anyways, first there's John. He's a little on the shorter side, but athletic, with light brown hair and thoroughly normal brown eyes. He's also constantly on my case about trying harder, and doing better in school. Secondly, there's Bartholomew but we all call him Bart. He has rusty orange hair, and can already grow facial hair. I'm not sure whether his short or tall, cause he has a slight slump that comes from his legs. He also walks with kind of a limp, but he's adapted really well to it. The only thing more unique than his name is his personality. He has the morals of a hippie, the macho nonsense of a football player, and the

Then finally there's Andrew. He's tall, with bleach blonde hair and hazel eyes. Andrew is skinnier than a twig and is probably the biggest nerd that I know. He has a natural knack for video games, and every time we play he destroys us. He's pretty smart, but just hasn't found his stride just yet.

"Hey, how's it going guys?" I ask as I sit down.

"Nothing much." They chorused in the most unsynced way possible. I looked over at Bart, who was scribbling furiously on a piece of paper.

"Ha, is that the math homework for tonight?" I asked,

"Yeah, Yeah I know. I got busy last night."

"Speaking of math, we're getting those projects assigned today, right?" John asked. Mr. Woodhaven, our math teacher, had warned us we were going to have to do a project on a mathematician. He was going to assign partners randomly today.

"Uh, Yeah I think." I said.

"Who are you going to do it on?"

"I don't know, my partner will probably know."

"I'm wanna do it on Archimedes, the Greek Geometer." John said, as if him being Greek made him the most interesting mathematician in the world. Not saying much, but still. John had a strange fascination with Greek culture.

"Well I'm just gonna wing it."

"Like always." Andrew said. I just shrugged my shoulders at that.

"Hey, speaking of math, did you know that Liam played soccer?"

"Liam who?" John asked.

"Average height, black hair. I don't know his last name."

An expression flashed over John's face, but it disappeared before I could decipher it. Bart shifted uneasily in his chair.

"Oh, him. That dude creeps me out big time." John replied.

"He looks like a serial killer." Bart said.

"Hey! Be nice." I shot back."Anyways, I played against him in gym today and he destroyed us. I had no idea how athletic he was."

"He doesn't exactly look out of shape." John said.

"No, but he was really fast. He literally beat everyone by tapping it around them."

John and Bart exchanged a look. "We had no idea he played soccer."

"See ya, Andrew." I said, as he walked down the hall. His next class was on the opposite side of the school. The rest of us had the same fourth hour, so we walked together. The usual small talk dominated the conversation as we made our way towards the room. I was still trying to decipher their weird behavior at lunch.

We had World History fourth hour. However, we were going over Greek History so John was very excited. It actually was somewhat interesting, but I have to admit John's enthusiasm has gotten a little bit old. We took our seats in the back, with me on the left, John in the middle and Bart on the right. The room was buzzing with conversation as the teacher just stared at his computer screen. The second bell rang, and the conversations died down a little bit.

"Alright, let's get started." The teacher said as he stood up. He was middle aged, with black hair and a face that really showed his age. He wore a button up shirt and jeans everyday. He looked more like an office worker for an up and coming "hip" tech company than a teacher.

He clicked a little remote and the projector that hung from the ceiling turned on. On the board, the beige PowerPoint slide appeared. In plain, black letters it said "Bronze Age Greece". John had his eyes glued to the slide, while I began to absent mindedly doodle in my notebook. He taught straight out of the book, so I usually just read the textbook that night.

"First a review question. Sarah," I tried to keep my face from showing any reaction as I looked up. Most of the kids were looking at me, as if expecting some response from me. I thought through what I'd been doing, trying to think of something wrong I must've done. "Name Three Greek cities."

Oh, he wanted to ask a question. I sighed, because only he would ask a question like that. He has a really bad habit of asking common sense questions. "Um, Sparta, Athens, and…. Corinth?"

"Very good, moving on."

I hated when he called on me. Every class, he picks a few students and only asks them questions. I guess that means I'll actually have to pay attention this time. Right out of the gate, too.

"Today we're going to learn about the Trojan War. "

At least the lecture was going to be interesting, I thought. He talked about the mythology of the Trojan War; First about Eos and the apple, then Paris and the beauty competition, and finally how he absconded with Helen to Troy. As he talked about Achilles, I wondered how it would feel to be invincible. It'd be pretty awesome.

"Trevor, who killed Achilles?"

"Uhh, Hector?"

The class kind of snickered. Trevor was known to be a little spacey, and never knew what was going on.

"Now now, he wasn't entirely wrong. Achilles and Hector did duel, however, Achilles killed Hector. Paris was the one who killed Achilles. He shot him in the heel with an arrow."

He continued on about how they believed Apollo guided the arrow, and about the massacre at the temple of Apollo, the disease they believed he brought upon them. As he went on and on, I just had to ask. I raised my hand.

"Sarah?"

"So if these events actually happened, how come most of them involve Gods and Goddesses?"

"Great question, and this is an important lesson to learn about the Greeks. Often in their literature the Greeks would tell stories where Gods and Goddesses influenced real life events. However, when reading these stories, the modern reader recognizes that the Gods and Goddesses are just metaphors for the events that really transpired. Apollo symbolized the spread of disease, Ares the mayhem of combat, and Poseidon the storms that ravaged the coasts."

"Thanks."

John gave me a smug look, and I shot a puzzled one right back at him. He went back to taking notes, but he was still smirking. The teacher continued on about the war, and I did my best to not doze off.

Finally, I arrived at math class. My day kind of resembled a video game. It started off with gym, the easiest class, and then progressively got hard. Math was the final boss of the day. I didn't like math at all, but the fact that it was my last class of the day made it easier to swallow.

I took my seat and nodded a greeting to Liam.

He returned the gesture.

"Alright, pick a partner, and then write your names next to a mathematician written on the board. I have the laptop cart in the corner over there. Find your partner and "

The classroom was taken over by the buzz of conversation as people scrambled to pair up with their friends. I didn't really know anyone in this class, so I just kind of sat there awkwardly. I was just about to just pick someone random when I felt someone nudge me. I looked over and saw Liam looking at me expectantly.

"Wanna pair up?" He asked. His voice was low, like the sharpening of a heavy blade. It was kind of unnerving. Even with such an innocent question, his voice made it sound like there would be dire consequences if I said no.

"Sure." I said. I took a good look at him. I had never really paid any attention to him before. He had neatly trimmed black hair that was so dark I wondered if he dyed it. His facial features, especially his jaw and cheekbones, were defined as if they were chiseled from stone. As a 15 year old, he looked like a 30 year old villain from a detective movie. The look was ruined by his jeans and soccer jersey.

We went up to the board and he picked up a marker. He looked over the list once and wrote our names down. I looked over and read the name.

I arched an eyebrow. "Euler?"

"Yeah," He said, "He had a huge influence in many areas of math and science. He should give us material to work with."

Whatever, I thought. How he knew that, I had no idea.

He grabbed the computers and we sat down in our seats. I opened it up and asked me for a password. Someone else's username appeared above the box, but I couldn't figure out how to change the user. He leaned over and hit the escape button and two boxes appeared.

"Thanks" I said.

He nodded back and logged into his computer.

"How are we going to break this up?" I asked.

"I was just thinking about that. You have the rubric?"

"Yeah." I opened my notebook and handed it to him. He opened the wikipedia page for Euler and scrolled through it quickly.

"Alright, so it should take about 6-7 minutes to get his early life, around 21-23 minutes for his education, probably 40-43 minutes for his impact, and finally about 13-14 minutes for his biographical information. I can take either his impact, or the other three parts it doesn't make much of a difference."

"How do you figure the times?"

"I estimate a lot."

That wasn't exactly the answer I was looking for, but I decided to drop it.

"I'll take the early life, education, and biographical information. I don't want to deal with any math"

"Okay."

I went to wikipedia, and started reading through the page. We researched in complete silence. I would occasionally ask Liam a question, and he'd answer it. He seemed to be completely entranced by the computer as if his life depended on him finding out everything about some swiss mathematician.

"You play soccer?"

"Yeah."

"On the high school team?"

"I play high school in the fall and on a travel team in the spring." His eyes never left the screen as his scrolled through the page.

"You play forward?"

"I play center attacking midfield. Similar, but fairly different in its own regards."

"Yeah, I'm not built athletically enough to play sports."

"Ah, nonsense. Athleticism is a state of mind." He gave me a meaningful look. "Athleticism is a mindset. With hard work and some desperation, you can accomplish anything."

"Pfft, that sounds like some self-help crap that a teacher would tell me."

He gave a chuckle, which sounded like thunder rumbling in the distance. I could see how John and Bart were scared of him. There was definitely something off about him. I was determined not to be bothered by it though. He turned back to his computer.

"I believe," I continued. "that a person is born with skills; strengths and weaknesses."

He smirked. "With that philosophy, you'll only be as good as you tell yourself you are."

"If you say so."

"I do."

We worked in silence for a little bit. I finished reading through the page, and looked at the time. It was almost exactly 45 minutes since we started.

"Damn," I told him. "You hit that timing right on."

"Yeah, we got distracted for a minute or two there, so we weren't exactly on schedule."

"I count one or two minutes off as a success."

"It's decent."

I shook my head. I got the feeling he was a bit of a perfectionist.

"So can you wanna head to the library after we're done? Start writing up the powerpoint?" I asked.

"I have a soccer game this evening, so today won't work. Does tomorrow work?"

"Yeah, sure. What time?"

"Anytime after 5:30 will do."

"How about 6:00? At the district library?"

"Sounds good."

The teacher spoke up from the front of the room. "Time to pack up guys."

Liam closed up his laptop, and turned to me.

"Here, I'll take yours up."

I was packing up my bag when the bell rang. Finally, I thought, school is over. I hurried up, and headed towards the door.

John

Bart and I headed back to the hotel. We knew we had to talk, but we'd rather not draw the attention of mortals. We got to our room, and unlocked the door. I set my backpack next to my bed and sat down on it.

"Hey, I'm going to e-mail Sarah, find out who her partner is."

"You know who it is."

"Yeah, well a little confirmation couldn't hurt." I snapped back at him.

Bart just shrugged and laid back onto his bed. Grabbed my computer, and sent an email to sarah.

Hey, Sarah.

What's up? Did you choose someone for your math project? Wish we could've done ours together, Bart is still refusing to work on it. You wanna hang out tomorrow? Bart and I are gonna work on it for a bit, and then we'll be free.

I waited for a reply. With any luck we'd be heading back to camp Half-Blood in the next few days. We don't know if we'll make it out alive, though.

"Bart, we need to get a plan."

Bart sighed.

"We can intercept him en route."

"Well, duh. But we don't even know where they're meeting."

Bart sat up and folded his hands.

"The way I see it, we have two options. We can try and get her to tell us where they're meeting and ambush him, or we can follow him home after school."

"Trying to get him at the meeting place is way too hit and miss. We don't know enough about where they're meeting, where he lives, what route he'll take."

"Where he lives?"

"Oh, I guess I never thought about the fact that monsters don't really live anywhere."

"That's not entirely true, sometimes monsters have nests."

"Well, if we're not guaranteed to find a nest, we don't have time to try. We need a surefire plan. Or at least a way to confront him. The school year is coming to a close and a monster this patient won't let her get away easily."

My laptop pinged, and we both stared at it for a minute. I reached over and clicked on the notification. I cursed under my breath. At least we have a window to work with.

"What does it say?"

"They're meeting tomorrow at 6."

"Well, crap."

"Yeah, that gives us a 4 hour window to track him down and kill him. It's better than if they met after school, but not by much."

We thought for a minute. I got up and walked back and forth. I was never good at strategizing. I'm no child of Athena.

"He has to know who we are by now." I said. Bart just shook his head.

"Not for sure, he might have smelled us, but in a crowded area he might not be able to pick us out. We haven't met him in person yet."

"Well let's change that."

"Are you nuts?!"

I stopped pacing, and turned to face Bart.

"No, that's it! We'll ask if we can work with them. I told her you've been refusing to work on it, I think she'll buy it."

"Hey!" He yelled, but I just smirked back at him.

"In all seriousness, we can meet her there. If we kill him before hand, great. If we don't, then we will be there to protect Sarah anyway. We can kill him on the way out."

"That might be very hard to pull off."

"You have a better idea?"

Bart just shrugged, so I wrote up another email. Emails are usually dangerous for demigods, but it's the least personal form of online communication. That makes it the safest for us.

The same Liam that you were talking about at lunch? Weird. Hey, do you mind if we join you tomorrow? Maybe you can get Bart to actually work on the project.

I clicked send. Then I went to my backpack and got the map of the town. We didn't have very many materials to work with. I have a sword, Bart has some pipes and a club. Even with the element of surprise, there is a distinct possibility we will be outmatched. I took out a sharpie, drawing a circle around a building on the map.

"That's the school, and we're over here. First question is, do we try to bring our weapons to school, or do we come back to get them. When we timed it, we could get back to the room in 15 minutes. That's 30 minutes round trip."

"Without knowing where he will go, this will be tough."

"Wait, she said he was pretty amazing at soccer, so maybe he's on a team. We might be able to get him at practice."

"Hey, moron. He's a MONSTER. He doesn't actually play for a team. It's probably some modern/european interpretation of his mythology. We'll just get him when he tries to make a move. That's the only time he'll be vulnerable."

"This is weird, monsters aren't usually this patient. It's like he's waiting for us to make a move."

"We'll just have to be prepared for it."

That night, I could barely get to sleep. Our survival and hers depended on a couple of hours. If we didn't use that time wisely, then she would die. I've done extractions before, but none of them ever came this close. Nevertheless, tomorrow, I was determined to do everything to kill that monster one way or another.