i. the lotus casino
The first time it happens must be when Nico and Bianca are still in the Lotus Hotel and Casino, ten and twelve years old, with their earliest memories in the huge arcade. Nico isn't much to lose games. They've been playing here for what, a month, and Nico's already an expert at playing. Being a guy, he spends most of the time hanging around the shooting games. Bianca's just browsing, mostly, trying out the new, better games that pop up every day.
Nico isn't.
"Hey," he says, joining a kid with curly hair at the VR deer vs. human game. "Can I join you?"
The kid shrugs. "Sure," he says, like he doesn't really care if Nico joins him or not. But through his messed up mind, Nico's sure that most of the kids are like this.
And they play. The kid looks about two years older than him, but Nico wins. Of course.
After that, the kid says, "Nice playing with you, man," and goes back to single-player mode again.
And Nico sets off in search of another player. It's not long before he finds Bianca. And she's sitting, eating a hamburger.
"I saved you one," his sister mumbles, her mouth full.
"Thanks," Nico says, taking the hamburger. "Mmm. They didn't have these a month ago," he comments.
"Yes, well, things have changed a lot in a month," says Bianca.
They eat in silence for a while before they seperate. Nico wanders back over to one of the car games and inserts his card. And he drives for a moment, before he suddenly feels a hand clamp over his mouth and his vision go black.
When they're in a school, much different from a month ago, and Nico's sitting in his new dormitory, he reasons that he had to lose a game at least once in a month.
ii. mythomagic
Not long after he arrives at Westover Hall, a boy named Colin introduces him to the game Mythomagic. He gives Nico five cards and two figurines.
And then the next day he leaves.
And Nico's just a nine-year-old kid, one of the youngest in the school.
Bianca's struggling, too, he knows. It's just ... what did they call it, the people who were talking to them? ADHD. And dyslexia. The psychologists reckon that it's ADHD and dyslexia that's making life difficult, but it's not.
It's just life.
And of course, the kid that was playing the deer vs. human game goes to this school, and frankly, he's starting to freak Nico out a bit. He glances at Nico and then back at something - anything else just as fast.
And then there's the vice principal. Dr. Thorn. He really scares Nico. Maybe it's those multicolored eyes or that strict face.
And being worried is such a new feeling. Now that Nico thinks about it, when he was in the Lotus Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, he felt elated, happy. And after spending that long feeling that one feeling, he's used to it, and he's still pretty happy, with a bunch of emotions added on.
Sometimes Colin's friends play Mythomagic with him. Jacob has the most, nearly the whole collection, and when they have the opprotunity to go out at Christmas with Bianca and a group of adults, Nico takes the little bit of money he has and spends it on a teddy bear wearing a Santa hat, along with three more statues and a pack of holographic cards.
And he only gets another figure from Bianca, a statue of Zeus. In his dorm that night after Christmas, he counts the statues on his fingers, running them off. Zeus, Poseidon, Athena. He also has a satyr.
He has almost the whole collection of holographic cards except for Dionysus.
Great collection.
One day he's playing with Jacob, Andrew, and Mike, and arguing with Jacob while Andrew and Mike are playing the, "I'm Switzerland!" thing, pretending they're not there.
"Zeus is way stronger than Hades," says Jacob, trying to take away Nico's card of Hades.
"No way," Nico retorts, snatching it back. "It's mine."
"That's the point of trading, di Angelo," says Jacob irratably. "So I get the card."
It's pointless, he knows that. But nine-year-old arguments are nearly always pointless, and he feels some sort of connection to that card, and the other Hades card he has stuffed in his backpack. It's weird.
"You're not playing right," complains Nico.
"I'll give you ten dollars."
"Fine, take it," Nico snaps.
Jacob takes the card from him, and Nico leans back on his bed. This was exactly why Nico didn't want to play Jacob. Too good of a player.
A ten-dollar-bill floats down onto his bed, and Nico stuffs it into his pocket before anyone can take it.
Funnily enough, it was the second game he'd ever lost.
iii. sphinx
As he gets rid of his cards nearly two years later, he thinks about those events that've happened. A summer passed with no incident. School year passed with no incident, with the exception of Dr. Thorn, who Nico has hoped over and over again that the vice principal had gone - but that might have been too much to expect.
And then Christmas, Dr. Thorn almost kidnapped them and someone named Percy Jackson had saved them, and then Bianca, his own sister, went and joined a girl's club and went to save a goddess. Artemis, who looked nothing like the figurine he had.
And then Percy Jackson and his sister and a couple other people who Nico didn't care to remember went to save Artemis and Percy Jackson's current girlfriend, Annabeth Chase.
He hadn't been able to sleep for that long. He'd been wondering, being tortured that his sister wouldn't be okay, but Percy would protect her, wouldn't he?
And then Percy came back and told him that Bianca was gone. Not just gone, dead. Died saving Percy Jackson.
And Nico hated, hated, the boy that was Perseus Jackson. He was a life that she didn't deserve to die for. He was some stupid kid, one who was too dumb to live by himself.
He still hates Percy.
She disappeared that fast, and he didn't even get a chance to say good-bye. He didn't even get a chance to hug her.
Bianca wasn't even allowed to hug him, because of that stupid girl's club thing. What was it? Oh, yeah, swear eternal contact from boys. Nico was a boy.
Sometimes he wonders that if he was a girl, would everything be better? Nico could have been the one taking care of his sister. Nico could have stopped her from dying. At least if she died for him, well, it'd be better, because Nico could have hugged her before she went and Artemis would be, "so what?"
And he found out that he was a child of Hades. Percy gave him the statue. Bianca died, and all that Nico gets is a stupid old statue? Forget it.
He feeds the cards into the fire, watching them burn, when a shadow appears over it.
"Persephone," he says immediately, knowing that it's definitely his stepmother (or his cousin, ick) that is standing behind him. He just knows. Maybe it's a perk of being a son of Hades.
And there's no reason that she shouldn't be here, anyways. Because he shouldn't be in her garden in the first place. He shouldn't be burning cards. And most importantly, Nico di Angelo should not be talking to an evil king while doing it. He went away for a bit, though, so Nico doesn't have to worry, yet.
These three things combined plus Persephone will probably mean that he'll get a ticket straight to hell for a bit while she's flipping out at him - if he wasn't already in hell.
"I'm going, I'm going," says Nico calmly, standing up and shaking his shaggy hair to the side and getting up to get out of Persephone's garden as fast as he can. The cards can stay. The fire can stay. All he knows is that he's turned into a daisy before and he's really not anxious to repeat the experience as any kind of flower.
He's out the door before his stepmother can say anything else and he's travelling through the Underworld - black sky, black grass, and on Nico is black clothes. A great fit.
He decides that it's probably nighttime up in the real world and decides to go up because if Persephone catches him again, gods, it's not going to be pretty.
Too bad he has to take the ferry back. Charon's pretty terrified since he's got his sword next to him and he knows that Nico can curse him into anything. So he's pretty good at chartering him to and from the Underworld.
Gods, he's changed since a couple years ago. He was all happiness then, all perky, and a silly little ten-year-old. Short hair, pretty cute, bright clothes like all the other ten-year-olds in the school.
He's eleven now. He's not completely happy anymore. He's full of rage. More specifically, rage, love, sadness, and a thirst for revenge. His hair is long and shaggy, he's grown at least six inches, he is most definitely not cute, and he's wearing ripped jeans, Converse, an aviator's jacket and a black t-shirt. He's not sure which band, but he made sure to pick one with a big skull on it.
Well, not on anyone, though if he could, he'd definitely pick Percy.
He just wants to get Bianca back, and Minos promised he could do that. But Daedalus, where the hell is Daedalus?
Nico waits at the River Styx for Charon. After about five minutes the boat comes in sight, and when Charon sees Nico waiting there, his face morphs into an expression that Nico can easily translate to, "Oh, no. Not the Hades kid again."
He has to surpress a laugh. He loves it when this happens, but Nico doesn't want to laugh. He's the Hades kid, as Charon so nicely put it on his first time down here: "The Hades kid? The scary 70-year-old one?"
"No, you idiot. The one that can curse you into oblivion if you don't take me down there."
Okay, so that was kind of blowing it up a bit - no, a lot. But the stupid guy certainly deserved it.
"I want to go back up," says Nico mildly to Charon as the whispering souls leave the boat into the EZ-Death line. "I don't have any coins this time, but I'm sure my father wouldn't appreciate it if you kept me down here. And you know how my father is."
He boards the boat without incident.
Five minutes. That's how long it usually takes.
Nico makes his way out of DOA Reccording Studios, pausing only once to chat with a little girl who's crying for her mother. He's not very good at it, but he tells her that her mother will be there soon, if she's unlucky. She doesn't understand it, so Nico probes her mind. Died from sickness. Her name was Jennifer McKennel.
"It's okay, Jennie," he says softly. "Your mother will come soon. She'll be here."
He quickly pulls over another motherly figure and asks her to take care of the little girl until they see her mother, which hopefully for Jennifer's mother won't be for quite a while, and he carries on.
Finally, he finds the Greek Delta, the sign for Daedalus and the signal that one of the many entrances to the Labyrinth is here. He presses it and slips inside.
He can feel the last ten cards in his pocket, and it bugs him because his jeans are so freaking tight, but he carries on until suddenly lights flash on and theme-show music plays.
"Holy crap!" yells Nico. "What the he-"
His words are cut short by the sight of the creature in front of him - a lioness, with the head of a woman. A sphinx. Great. Not another one. He knows the whole riddle thing, though he has no clue what she's going to ask.
"Do I really have to play this?" asks Nico irritably as an annoying voice proclaims that he'd be on a theme show if this was taped - thank the gods, it's not.
"Of course!" the sphinx says cheerfully.
"I know, but..." Nico scowls as he tries to think of what to say. "I'm really not good at answering riddles and stuff. Just saying. So maybe you can give me like, an easier riddle."
Somehow, he thinks that this sphinx will be much harder to scare than Charon.
"Oh, it's not one riddle," says the sphinx brightly, her chocolate-brown eyes filled with happiness, which annoys Nico. "You have to answer twenty!"
"What?" splutters the eleven-year-old boy. "I am not answering twenty!"
"Oh, yes you are," says the sphinx. He sees the glint of her claws and suddenly he's quite eager to answer these questions and get away from it.
"Fine, hit me," he growls, now fighting back a smirk while holding his sword in case he needs to do some quick fighting instad of quick thinking.
The sphinx smiles brightly and for a second he's reminded of Hermione Granger, the smart girl from the Harry Potter series that they had to read when he was still in school.
"Question One," says the sphinx. "Who was the first president of the United States?"
That one was easy, thank the gods. "Uh, George Washington," he says in a "that's so obvious" tone.
Applause plays. It's lame.
"Question Two, how many books did CS Lewis write?"
Nico's impulse is to answer, "Who the hell is that?" but then he sees those claws again and decides to think it over.
"Uh, seven?" he says, taking a random guess.
More applause.
"What is the simplified form of three-hundred over one thousand?"
Great. Math. Nico's never been good at math. Of course, if she really wanted him to lose she should have made him read a book.
"Look," says Nico impaitently. "I don't have time for this."
"Answer the question!" snaps the sphinx angrily, her eyes flashing brightly with anger.
"Okay, okay, something like three-fifths?"
Booing.
Uh-oh.
"Look, I'll just go now," says Nico, a slight tremor in his voice. "See you."
He pulls his sword from his sheath and runs away, fast, feeling the pounding boom, boom, boom of the great sphinx running after him. He takes a turn down a narrow path, and turns, and the sphinx is working on getting through.
He's not going to last long, though.
Right. Left.
And then when he feels the tunnel shake again, he's climbed up through a grate into a farm and has run, hoping the owners will take pity on him.
iv. percy
Percy and Nico are pretty much friends.
By "pretty much", it means that in two more years Nico's helped out with Percy's problems, and Percy cursed him for about five minutes and nearly killed him.
Oh, the joy.
But that's not much different than what he tried to do to Percy, so Nico accepts it as fair. And anyways, they've had time to get pretty close since Nico shows up at least once a week in Percy's room, always scaring the living shit out of him.
Well, if he doesn't mess the time zone up if he goes from Italy to New York because he's been doing a bit of digging around for more family history.
Then Percy might be out, or sleeping, and as a thirteen-year-old, seeing someone four years older than himself crashed out on the bed in only boxers isn't really a nice sight.
At least he can do a favor for Annabeth and give pictures of him shirtless (though, quite honestly, he doesn't know if his girlfriend appreciates it).
At first, he was just coming because he knew that after summer, after the thrill of surviving the battle had worn off, he knew that Percy wasn't feeling too well. During that time, Nico would sit in the corner while Percy rambled off things, his voice cracking sometimes as if he was going to tear up. He wanted to check up on him most of the time. They didn't really talk.
"They shouldn't've died for me," was among one of the things Percy used to say. "I'm not worth dying for." Or another time: "It feels like I'm swallowing a razor." Yet another time he's said, "I could have saved them. All of them. I didn't want anyone to die for me." They knew that Percy was referring to Bianca, but neither Nico or Percy mentioned anything else.
The last time that happened was when Percy had said, barely audible, "Why couldn't I have died for them? I'm less worth it then they are."
That was when Nico had shadow-travelled right out of Percy's room, nearly frozen with fear for the older boy's life, grabbed Annabeth, Rachel and Grover and they'd appeared back on his doorstep half an hour later with movies, chocolate and Coke. Rachel had said, "I've seen your death, Percy. It's not here. Not now. And for the gods' sakes, you don't kill yourself. Got that?Now let's go watch some badass movies and later we can kill some monsters or whatever it is you men do when you're depressed."
After that, Annabeth had just launched herself into Percy's arms, in tears and apologizing over and over again that she'd hardly contacted him that fall.
And after the five had spent a couple hours watching a movie, Percy had apologized and said that he would not say anything like that again, and that he didn't want to scare anyone. Annabeth had attached herself to her boyfriend for the next week and would not leave his side.
It was pretty much the most terrifying thing Nico had witnessed. It wasn't like Percy to be sad. And yeah, surely the loss of so many of his friends would do be a bad blow to anyone, but when he was convinced that it was all his fault, well, that was not good.
He'd become so used to it that he still visits, but not as often. It's been, what, a year now?
Anyways, he just appears out of the shadows in Percy's cramped bedroom with a, "Hey, Percy," which makes Percy jump, as usual.
"Don't do that," the older boy complains. "I never know when you're going to show up in my room. Can't you give me some warning or something?"
Nico can't help but notice that Percy never complains about him being in his room but of him showing up at unexpected times - for instance, him accidentally transporting a few meters off and seeing Percy in the shower.
Nico will never, for as long as he lives, get that image out of his mind. All he can say on that matter: thank the gods that Percy doesn't know and will hopefully never know.
"Can't," Nico says, sitting down on Percy's bed. "It's gonna give you two nasty scares."
"Guess I don't want that," Percy says, turning his chair around. "Hey, man, Mom's not home, so what if I go play some video games and you do my homework for me?"
Nico scowls at him. "No way," he says. But he makes sure to put a hint of a joke in both the scowl and the voice.
"Okay," Percy says slowly. "How 'bout we just go and play video games together?"
Yeah, Percy Jackson saved the world from an apocalypse, but he's really just any other seventeen year old boy.
"Sure," Nico says, "but that's unfair."
Percy raises an eyebrow. "Really? You want to do my homework after all?"
"Uh, no. No fucking way. I've only had two years of school, and that was grade three and four."
"Yeah? So why's it unfair?" Percy asks, getting up and stretching. "What's unfair is the fact that I'm working on a project today when I've had two weeks to do it."
Nico ignores the last part, because he hasn't remembered homework. Not that much of it, anyways.
"What's unfair is that my earliest memories are playing games, and you're not going to stand a chance," says Nico.
"Ha-ha."
"I'm serious."
Percy opens the door and pokes his head out. "Okay, safe," he says. He goes to the TV and starts up the PlayStation. He takes a quick look. "Mario Kart or-"
"Of course Mario Kart," says Nico sarcastically. "I don't suppose you have any bloody two-person games, do you?"
There's a bit of rummaging around before Percy manages to find one. "Okay, got it. Best out of three, if my mom doesn't catch us."
Nico shrugs. "Sure."
The first time, Nico beats Percy within five seconds, and thinks he's on a roll.
Well, until Percy beats him once.
The last round, well, it's long. Nico's just gotten the hang of the game, but eventually Percy's the one who wins.
Nico curses at the TV while Percy yells, "In your face, Nico! I win!"
They both pack up the game and talk about what's going on in the living room for a while until the lock clicks.
"See ya," Nico hisses to Percy, and he steps into the shadows and disappears.
Shadow travelling can really come in handy.
v. life
Life's a game.
Nico watches Percy and Annabeth grow up. He's there in a suit when they exchange wedding vows. He's there the day after their first child, Luke, is born.
He goes around, checking up on people, dropping in on people for a quick chat as he goes around. Eventually he finds a girlfriend. Her name's Ashleigh from the Hecate cabin - or at least, she used to be. She's living in the mortal world now.
Percy's there, too, for most of his life. Ashleigh realizes the differences between them and they seperate, leaving her with a child that Nico never got to see. And Percy sometimes goes to talk to the little girl's mother and update Nico in it.
Life's a game, and Nico knows that.
He hasn't lost it.
But he hasn't won it.