A/N: Hey, this is my first story on fanfiction . net, so be nice! It follows Nico di Angelo and a new generation of half-bloods a few years after the canon arc. Nico is fifteen.

Arrow of the Fallen - Chapter One: Molotov Cocktails

The greater difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

~Epicures

"You sure you can't come to the beach with us?" Reese whined, playing with my hair.

I looked at her. It was a shame I couldn't go to a trip like this, but Percy had insisted – "Nico you better come back to Camp Half-Blood once that last bell rings or I will personally hunt you down okay you better come fast I need you alright 'cuz there's a lot of problems around here NICO" – that I couldn't go anywhere but back to camp. Pretty freakin' sad.

"Sorry, Ree, but my brother's forcing me to pick strawberries with him."

"Dude, Percy's beast and all, but picking strawberries?" my other friend Logan said incredulously.

"He has a thing for his strawberries," I shrugged.

They all gave me weird looks.

"You know what?" Tay exclaimed. "Give me your phone."

"What?"

"Give me your phone!" She wrestled it out of my grip, her blonde hair flipping annoyingly into my face.

"Watch it!" I snarled. "What're you doing?"

She had the phone at her ear already. "Hello? Hi, this is Taylor Bridgeman, Nico's friend, and I was wondering if you could allow Nico to come to a beach party with us? I mean, all the freshmen will be there and it is like the party of the year. And sorry, Perce, but picking strawberries is lame."

"Dammit," I hissed, knowing the whole camp would ridicule me if they heard I used the "picking strawberries" excuse again.

"Please can Nico go?"

I could imagine Percy grimacing on the other end and knew it was a lost cause.

"He said no," Tay sighed, hanging up and surfing my iPhone apps. "Anyone up for a game of TapTap?"

"I'll play!" Logan grinned.

I rolled my eyes at Reese and signed all the yearbooks that had accumulated on my desk while I was listening to Tay talk to my 'brother.' After the war, Percy's mom, Sally, offered to take me in as my legal guardian and despite my protests, she did. Percy became my brother and Paul became my other legal guardian, but thankfully I kept the di Angelo as my last name. Shortly after that, they enrolled me in this school, and I met my first actual friends.

Reese Prospero keeps us down to earth, has a quirky personality, and wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up. Tay is a lot more girly, hyper, and spontaneous; her carefree, daring ways get us into a lot of trouble. Logan King's main hobbies are eating, gaming, and skateboarding, like me. We are eerily alike, and that's what makes us the best of friends. The last guy in our group, Lance Smith was already away on vacation, the lucky butt. He can make a joke out of everything, which keeps our group laughing like crazy.

"Whoa, what is that?" Reese asked in a stupefied tone of voice.

"What is what?"

"That!"

There was an explosion outside the window. A redhead girl wearing a trenchcoat and some pretty high boots was carrying a bulging Wal-Mart bag and backed up against the side of a townhouse, surrounded in smoke and fire and something moving in the midst of it all. While I watched, she drew out a medium sized bottle from the plastic bag, lit it on fire with a cigarette lighter held between her teeth, and threw it into the inferno.

"Dude, that is so badass," Logan breathed beside me. "Molotov cocktails!"

I was already out of my chair and squinting hard at the raging fire. A clawed arm whipped out from the smoke and knocked the girl down.

It could only be a Greek monster.

I snatched my phone from Tay's hand and ran out of the classroom, heart racing.

"Nico! Where are you going?" Reese yelled after me.

"Bathroom! Severe wave of diarrhea coming on!" I shouted without looking back.

"You're lying!" Reese screamed.

"Don't come after me!"

"You're dead, di Angelo!"

Yup, Reese was so mad at me.

I ran past hallways of lockers and then finally out the south entrance of our high school, the closest to Madapple Road, where the monster attack was happening. The police hadn't gathered, what with all the Mist around, but with that girl throwing Molotov cocktails aimlessly around, at least the fire brigade would come any minute now.

"Hey, what are you doing?" I screamed at the girl.

The girl whirled around in shock, an already aflame cocktail in her hand. "Who the hell are you?" she growled, turning from me to throw the cocktail into the monster again.

I was now close enough to her to see her face. She seemed about my age and she could only be a demigod, giving that she could see through the Mist. She could also be like Sally, but monsters were only attracted to half-bloods, and not mortals with a sharper eye. Her eyes right now were narrowed at me with distrust but really her pupils seemed diluted with shock, or fear.

"Shit, man, get out of here!" she warned.

"I should be telling you the same thing," I said sarcastically, jammed my hand into my pocket and took out a cigarette lighter, not unlike the one she was holding in her left hand.

"What are you doing, smoking at a time like this?" she screeched as the monster crashed into view.

It was gruesome and terrifying giant, bleeding blue green blood from burn wounds – so the Molotov cocktails did work, a little. The monster stood five stories high. It saw the two of us and roared monster obscenities then opened its mouth incredibly wide and red orange fire shot out of its jaws in gushing jets.

I laughed. "Fighting fire with fire, aren't you?" I smirked at the girl. "It was a good idea to throw one of those cocktails into his eyes. I approve." The monster was blinded so his fire hardly reached us.

"You can see him?" the girl gasped incredulously.

Without an answer, I flipped the top of my black cigarette lighter and my Stygian iron sword extended into its three feet of badass.

"Mother," the girl breathed.

"Go take cover. I'll take care of this!" I yelled back at her.

Then I rammed my sword into the ground. "I am Nico, son of Hades! I summon souls of those who will fight even during death!"

Six skeletons leapt up from the crack I made in the ground. The monster was way too big for just me to take on. The skeletons ran towards the giant, slashing Stygian daggers and shooting celestial bronze bullets into its legs and arms.

"RAUGHHHHHHH!" the giant howled, collapsing onto the ground. It breathed a huge stream of fire that killed off four of the skeletons and I winced. This had to end now.

I took a running start and ran up the side of a Dumpster, bent my knees, and projected myself thirty feet in the air, not as tall as the giant but it was enough. Through the air, I sliced through the giant with both hands on my sword for extra power. The monster shrieked in an eerie tone and disintegrated into dust and I landed with a roll on the ground to protect my back. The cement still jarred me and I suppressed the urge to cry out.

The remaining two skeletons bowed to me before disappearing into the ground, back to the Underworld. I lay there, panting hard, and the red-head girl ran over, hands at her mouth.

"You could have died!" she said. "You could have died! What were you thinking?"

"I'm trained to kill monsters," I explained, digging around in my pockets for an emergency supply of ambrosia. "You're hurt."

A gash the size of Texas ran down her back and arm, the trenchcoat torn open. "It's nothing," the girl said.

I broke off a tiny piece of ambrosia and gave it to her. "Eat up – don't argue."

She glared at me but ate it and her face relaxed. "What is this stuff? It tastes like the best brownie I've ever had in my life!"

I grinned, eating my own piece even smaller than hers to regenerate energy from summoning the skeletons. "This is ambrosia, the food of the gods. It can't be consumed by regular mortals or they'll die."

"Then what am I?" asked the girl, horrified.

"You're like me. You're the child of one mortal parent, and one parent who is a Greek god or goddess. Awfully powerful god parent too, with that mother of all monsters," I said, gazing at the place it once stood.

"I'm pretty sure it was a 'father' of all monsters."

I looked at her thoughtfully. "True dat."

"You know I don't really believe you?" she said softly. "Greek gods don't exist. Any kinds of gods don't exist. I learned about Zeus and all that in fourth grade, I think they're all kind of silly."

Thunder pounded loudly overhead. "Don't insult Zeus, please," I told her. "And you have to believe me. I have to take you to Camp Half-Blood, and our leader Chiron will tell you all about your new life."

"I don't want to have a new life! I like my life here!"

"I'm a son of Hades and I still live in Manhattan. Are you going to spend the rest of your life throwing Molotov cocktails at monsters that aren't even that affected by them? You were pretty banged up today; if I didn't have ambrosia with me you'd have a massive infection with demon-fire and the hospitals here won't even know how to fix you up. You'll die. If you come to camp, you'll learn how to defend yourself, and get medical supplies for the real life."

"You're a bastard," she told me.

"I'm a bastard that saved your ungrateful little life. And, hey, you still haven't told me your name."

"It's Cres. Cres Fallen."

Please review! Next chapter is at camp! And if you're wondering what the monster was, its name is Kakos, or Cacus. It's an Italian fire-breathing giant originally defeated by Hercules.