I have a lot of plot bunnies currently bouncing around in my head, and that's making it hard to concentrate and focus and finish up some of my stories. It's the start of more, though... and new chapter! This is the introduction of the actual story, and the story's picking up. Drop a review when you're done, let me know what you thought about this chapter, please?

Disclaimers: I am not Rick Riordan. I do not own anything you might recognize. This story is a work of fiction, using the characters from Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus, with a plot that is a mash-up of plots from a few books and movies. As such, it's not marked as a crossover.

Warnings: Guy x guy pairing. The romance is not the main plot, but it is an important subplot, so if you do not like this, click the back button. Rated for mild cussing that might occur somewhere in the near future. The characters are slightly out of character, too.

Summary: It was only supposed to be just one day in someone else's life, to see what the world could have been like if things had only been the slightest bit different. When the time was 3:59 and he couldn't get back, though, Nico started to realise just how much can go wrong when you climb through the looking glass without looking to make sure that this was a two-way passageway first.

'Thoughts'
"Speech"
Dreams/Flashbacks/Memories


The Invisible Killer

The thing was, he did not have many friends. He could admit that. The problem now, though, was that when he was actually seeking their company, he found that they were not around. Jason and Rachel were on vacation with their respective parents, Leo was visiting his father's family and Reyna was visiting her sister, a researcher currently doing a project in the Amazon forests.

He ended up drifting around a little aimlessly in the library. The silence was blissful, the only noise being the occasional rustle of the pages being turned and the hum of the air conditioner doing its best in summer. There was almost no one here except for the librarian and a few of the most faithful patrons.

It was mostly due to the fact that the library was located on the far side of the forest off the side of the town, with only a small, cobble-stoned path leading to it from the small road splicing off the main one.

Nico never minded, though. The walk was peaceful, and the library itself was clean. He could imagine how this place would look, however, without the care taken to maintain it. Left on its own, it would likely deteriorate to become that abandoned shack where monsters live in, the one seen in horribly done horror movies.

As he wandered down the aisles, he breathed in the smell of paper, and ink. That never failed to cheer him up. Most of the books here were old, clearly showing their age, yet they were all so obviously well cared for. Especially the ones in the classic collections and the historical ones. His favourite was the manga section, though – despite being the smallest library, it has the most extensive collection and every book there was an original copy. Even if that meant that every single book in those collections were in Japanese, or, occasionally, Chinese.

He took Japanese as a third language for a reason, after all. Of course, he was not fluent, and progress was slow whenever he tried to read, but he was willing to try. He was getting better at it. Picking out the next instalment in the series he had been following, he settled down in his corner. It was slightly dusty, but it was tolerable. It helps that there was a cushy beanbag and no one to bother him there.

Letting himself get absorbed into the world crafted out by the words and the drawings, he detached himself from reality. Time did not mean much when he was reading, and he was never one to put down a book once he got started.

"Hey," someone greeted. He looked up, annoyed. He did not like being yanked out of the comfortable little world he was in so rudely, especially if it came with the added bonus of human interactions. He limits his circle of living things to his pet dog, Cerberus, his half-sister and his friends.

Then, he registered who it was.

"Leo? What are you doing back here?"

Leo motioned for him to scoot over, before proceeding to throw himself onto the beanbag next to Nico. Never mind that there was barely enough space for a grown adult, and that they could both fit there only because they were both too skinny.

He grinned at Nico. "I missed my favourite grouchy, grumpy, little kitten, of course! I just had to get back here sooner."

The annoyance came back in full throttle. There was an edge of fondness, however, that Nico was not quite willing to look into. He settled for letting the irritation take over instead.

"That's not an actual answer, you know."

The grin simply slid off his features. Nico remained silent as Leo stared blankly at the bookshelf in front of the two of them.

"You could unload your baggage here, I'll listen."

Leo's lips twitched a little. "That's not the main problem, actually."

"What is, then?" Nico prompted.

"There's a serial killer running rampant."

Nico tried to think of something to say other than "Oh". Considering his rather extensive vocabulary, it was rare for him to find himself speechless.

Leo cracked a half-hearted smile, as if he could read Nico's thoughts. "Yeah, oh."

For a while, it appears that Nico would have to prod Leo for more details.

"They told me to leave, because the victims were picked completely randomly. There's nothing consistent, it's like the killer decided that he wanted to kill this person and just did it."

Nico considered the new information. He reclined against the wall a little. "That would make the person a psychopath, wouldn't it? It's actually not entirely impossible."

Silence settled like a blanket. They stayed there, in the corner of an antique library.

Nico broke it.

"Why did you come to look for me, then?"

Leo startled. "What made you think I looked for you?"

"You wouldn't normally come to the library," Nico pointed out. Leo looked a little sheepish when he realised that he was truly caught out.

"True."

After a considerable pause, he revealed his true intentions.

"I need your help."

Nico's eyes flicked to his face. He looked unusually serious. "With what?"

"Research."

"Research."

"Yeah," Leo confirmed. "I need help with that."

Nico sighed theatrically. "It's always research. What're you going to do when I'm no longer around?"

Leo grinned at him. "Go to Reyna, of course." Nico stared at him. Of course that was his response. What had he been expecting when he was asking? He brought the topic back on track.

"So, what's this research about?"

Leo seemed to be thinking about it. Nico straightened up, stretching a little. Leo copied his movements, before walking off, expecting Nico to follow. "Aliens, possibly. Inter-dimensional Travel and the Multiverse theories, too."

Nico stared after him. He turned back when he realised that Nico was not following. He blinked a little.

"And portals and wormholes," he added.


The pile of books could be used to build a fortress around them, if they had been inclined to do so.

There were enough, after all. They had borrowed every book that possibly linked to the topics in question. The librarian checked everything out for them without asking questions, since she knew Nico quite well. Carting everything home was a nightmare, though. Nico's bed became the base.

"Why the sudden interest?"

Leo paused in his reading, thinking about the question. "I overheard some of them arguing over the possibility of this killer being something non-human, as in, something from another world." He motioned at Nico when he opened his mouth to give Leo his opinion. "I know. I know, it's not entirely possible, and I thought that aliens probably sound more plausible, but I wanted to be sure. Be prepared, you know, just in case it is not just a theory, that it is real that the universe had played a giant cosmic joke on us and made us the last world to find out that multidimensional travel is actually possible, although it could –"

"I wasn't going to say that. I was going to ask why they assume that this killer is not from our world," Nico protested, a little indignant.

Leo stopped talking at that, before backtracking. "I, well, sorry for assuming… But, well, they are thinking about this killer not being human because of the way the victims were killed, as well as the fact that no one can see the killer."

"The killer could just as easily kill these people when no one else is around. Then no one would have seen him," Nico pointed out.

"It's not that no one had seen him, it's that no one can see him. Some of the killings were done in public. Quite often, it was on a mostly desolated road, but there were people in the coffee shops or book shops who looked out and saw the pedestrian just being vaporized into ashes. And it's not just one or two people, every single witness found said the same thing." Seeing Nico's disbelief, he was quick to add, "And the security cameras recorded this too. So many that you can't say it didn't happen."

Nico processed the information dump.

"Can I see those videos?"

"Why do you assume I have it?"

Nico gave him a flat look.

"Okay, alright, I have it. Geez, can't you think of me as a good, law-abiding person for once, and not automatically assume that I have done something I wasn't supposed to have done?" Leo grumbled as he fished around in his pockets.

Nico smirked. "I know you better than that, Valdez. I keep quiet because I'm your friend, but you can't assume that I would think the best of you, since, even with Jason and Reyna around, I probably know you the best."

Leo paused in his search and looked up at Nico. "Did you just make a pun?" Nico flushed. "Did you? Oh my gods, you did! Nico Di Angelo finally lightened up and made a joke! Not a very funny joke, but it's still a pun, which is as good as a joke!" He cackled as Nico glared at him.

The effect was kind of ruined, though, thanks to the red colouring his cheeks.

Leo continued guffawing as Nico chucked a pillow at him.


It was six in the afternoon and they were only three-quarters done with the stack of books. Leo had to leave, though, due to some other appointment. After confirming that there was, indeed, an invisible killer terrorising the people, Leo left, leaving Nico with the big pile of papers and books and some leftover snacks Leo had not managed to polish off.

Of course, being the horrible cook that he was, Nico decided not to risk the kitchen's wrath, choosing instead to finish it up and deem it a proper dinner. After cleaning everything up, he stacked the research materials neatly on his table and waited for Hazel to come back from her date.

He had trouble falling asleep that night. The hands of the clock crawled slowly around the rim, circling the numbers. Tracking its movement, Nico contemplated his options. Continue trying to fall asleep, and eventually manage to sleep for a while after being bored to death, or wake up and do useful things, then regret the lack of sleep in the morning? He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

Then, he opened them again.

11:47PM.

He rolled over, facing the wall. Hazel's light snores filled the silence.

She had passed out on her bed moments after she fell into it, dreaming her night away peacefully. Nico wished that he could be like her. He wanted to shut down his brain and just stop thinking so much, but, apparently, that is way, way, too much to ask for, no matter how reasonable it was. Seven months with barely five hours of sleep every night caught up, though, and he finally fell asleep due to sheer exhaustion.

It was not that long before he jerked awake with a gasp, almost hitting his head on the bunk above.

Not wanting to wake Hazel in case a repeat of what happened the last time he woke up this way, he bolted for the bathroom. Taking a deep breath, he braced himself against the wash basin, heart still racing wildly. The nightmares doesn't happen often, thank gods, but when they do, they were brutal. And the emotional baggage they unearth left him reeling every single time, forcing him to keep up the mantra to remind himself that it wasn't real, that it was just that – a nightmare. Not reality.

Bianca had died long ago in reality, and Percy had not broken up with him that way. They had never even been an item to begin with.

He splashed some water on his face, hoping to clear his mind.

Glancing at the clock hanging on the wall beyond the door, he saw the time.

3:56AM

Nico couldn't help the semi-bitter smirk that formed.

'Seems like there's no point trying to fall asleep again,' he thought. He stared at the wash-basin, fascinated by the water swirling into the sinkhole.

'Wasn't there a story in which someone was on a boat in a whirlpool like that? Or vortex, whatever it was called?' The question popped into his mind randomly, and he thought about it for a while. Eventually, he decided that he should call it quits, as there was no way he could force himself to remember the name.

He straightened up with the intention of picking up where Leo and he left off and burying himself in the research. Before he was out of the toilet door, however, a movement in the corner of his peripheral vision caught his attention. He whipped around, a little tense and stared at the mirror.

His reflection was not staring back at him. In fact, he had just walked out of the shower, dripping wet and wrapped in a towel, apparently talking to someone outside the closed door. The one that was very much open in front of him.

He should have flipped. He should have lost his composure and possibly thrown something at the mirror, screaming that it was possessed, that someone should look into either replacing it, or exorcising it.

He did not.

He did, however, spare a moment to wonder if he had finally lost it, due to sleep deprivation and the ton of emotional baggage Hazel had always told him was unhealthy, and had gone out of his mind. Maybe he should have looked into the therapy sessions that even Rachel had suggested he attend.

His reflection turned around and spotted him. Completely unaware of how Nico was feeling, he greeted, "Hello, I've been waiting for quite a long while to meet you in person, Nico of Earth 197."

Suffice to say, Nico would never admit to having fainted.

He only suffered an overload and found it hard to maintain a conscious awareness of what was going on around him. Yes. That was exactly what it was.

There was someone saying something to him as he came back to the land of the living, breathing and sane. Opening his eyes, he registered that he was still in the bathroom. More importantly, he was lying in the bathroom floor, indicating that he likely had been there the remaining of the night.

Secondly, Hazel was looking down at him with concern, her hand on his forehead and sounding as if she was trying not to panic. She visibly relaxed when he blinked at her while she waved her other hand around more.

"Why are you here?"

"I…'m not sure…I think I fell…."

She looked a little alarmed, before proceeding on to gently chastise him for not being careful about watching where he stepped. As she helped him up, she went back to being concerned as he swayed on his feet for a while, dizzy after being in a horizontal position for that long. She asked if he was feeling alright. He could feel the migraine coming on.

Nico was still trying to orientate himself as she led him to their room. He nodded mutely in response to all her questions, adamantly refusing to acknowledge the part of his brain screaming at him that something had, indeed, happen the previous night, or, rather, earlier in the morning, that there was someone else in the mirror and that he had the right to have lost his composure and passed out on the spot in shock.

After she left to prepare breakfast, he went back and checked the mirror, just in case. There was absolutely no one hiding there, and nothing to indicate that anything could have happened the night before. It was just an absolutely normal and innocent mirror.

As he changed, Nico wondered if he should take up Jason's and Rachel's suggestion of taking pills to help him fall asleep. If he was already starting to hallucinate, this lack of sleep was more serious than he had thought it actually was.


*** NaNoWriMo 2014 Winner ***