AN: thanks for reading this far! If you're on chapter two you must like the story, so you have no excuses for not favoriting/following, or reviewing. Go do that. Right now. Have you done it? Okay!

I don't own PJO or HoO. So don't sue me: I try not to get sued before lunch. It's bad for the health.

I didn't like the dormitory room of the new school. For that matter, I didn't like the school. It was big and square and gray, and the windows were small. There was a chain link fence surrounding it and the yard, like we were in jail and they were holding us in.

The dormitory room was small and painted gray. There was a metal bunk bed against one wall, and a desk, a pair of shelves, and a pair of chairs. My roommate wasn't too bad.

She was short and plump with a bob cut of dark brown hair and chocolatey eyes. She introduced herself as Mathilda, but the name on her math notebook was Meg. She seemed nice enough, offering me chocolate from her secret candy stash and showing me around the school, and she introduced me to her friends Danny and Trish, but all I wanted was to be alone. And anyway, there was something strange about Danny. He walked with a limp and had this strange goatish laugh, and he never took off his hat, but he was nice. I hung out with Meg and her friends, and spent the rest of my time thinking about the monster.

I had kept the sword of course, keeping it clean and carrying it in my jacket. What was funny was that nobody else seemed to be able to see it, and once when Meg had managed she had asked me what baseball team I was on.

So I got used to the new school and hoped for the best. It was only a few months, and then I would see dad again and be able to talk to him, and ask him all the questions bouncing around in my head. I would try to talk to him sooner, but he was ignoring my calls. I had even written him a letter, but he hadn't written back.

Meanwhile, there wasn't much to keep me interested. The school counselor had diagnosed me with kleptomania, so I wasn't allowed to leave the building except weekends, and even then no farther then the fence. I think they were worried I would try to run, which I might have given the chance. It was dead boring there. I couldn't wait until my time was up and I could go home.

"Hey, Felix." It was Danny, Meg's friend, leaning around the doorframe with a hand over his eyes. "Can I come in?"

"Yeah, sure." I said, after quickly pulling my jacket down over my sword. "But Meg isn't here, she's down in the library."

"I know," He said. His dark eyes were curious, and his ginger hair hung an inch above his shoulders. He still wore his red baseball cap, the one he would never take off. "I came to see you, actually. It's important." He looked wild and frightened, like a cornered wild animal. His hair was wild and his hat crooked, and there were scratches across his cheek and burns on his clothes.

"Yeah?" I asked, wondering what this could be about. Danny and I had never spent time together without Meg and Trish, so I didn't know what Danny could want to ask me.

"The monsters are coming. You've seen the monsters before, right?" He asked it so frankly and honestly I thought 'monsters' must be code for something else. He couldn't possibly mean the jolly blue giant, or the letter from my mom, or my luck, or any of the other odd things that had happened to me over the years. "Felix? Any monsters?"

"Yes." I said after a minute. "How did you know? Are you a demigod too?"

"No, I'm a satyr." He laughed. At my puzzled look, he grinned and reached up to pull off his hat.

There were two tiny horns on his head.

"Holy s***." I was about to hyperventilate, and I couldn't look away from those horns. "Holy s***. Holy s***. What the f*** is going on? Why are you here? What the h*** was that blue giant at the trainstation? Why the h*** are you staring at me like that?"

"In reverse order: because my ears are burning, a Laistrygonian giant, to bring you to camp, and I'm a satyr here to keep you safe from monsters until the team from camp arrives to collect you."

"Okay." I said, pressing my hands to my head. My voice was panicky and breathless. "Okay. Oh-kay…. I'm going crazy. That explains things. I'm nuts and your some sort of hallucination. Totally explanatory. That has to be it."

"You're not crazy, and I'm definitely not a hallucination. I think. Anyway, there are monsters coming. We have to go. And there's something I have to tell you. It's really important, shut up and listen! You have to-"

The point of a blade appeared coming out of Danny's stomach. He looked down at it, surprised, and then up at me. He blinked once, and then the blade was pulled back and he fell to the floor, that look of shock still on his face.

Standing behind him, holding a bloody sword, was a snake woman. I remembered reading greek myths in LA last year, and page with a drawing identical to this. A drakon, I remembered. It was a drakon. A drakon had just killed Danny.

I screamed, I couldn't help it. The sword was in my hand before I knew what was happening, and the drakon was stepping over Danny like he didn't matter. "Surrender, demigod!" The drakon's voice sounded like a snake's would if it could talk. "Surrender now!" I wasn't about to do that.

I swung the sword at the monster's head, but it raised its own sword and deflected the blow with a clang of metal. It stabbed at my stomach, and I turned to the side so that the blade passed my belly by an inch. The drakon twisted its sword and mine clattered to the floor with a flare of pain in my hand. I threw my hands up in front of my face as the drakon's blade flew towards my face. But I heard a sound like someone kicking a sandcastle, and opened my eyes to see what had happened.

Danny was still on his back on the floor, his stomach bloody, but he was playing a song on a pair of reed pipes. Thorny vines had grown up out of the wood in the floor and strangled the drakon just before it killed me.

Then Danny fell to the floor, his hands limp, face pale, eyes glazed. He didn't move again.

I set my sword down on the bed with trembling hands and crouched next to Danny. I had barely known anything about him, and he had given his life to help me. I wondered why, and I wondered what the "camp" that he had mentioned had to do with this. I reached forward, hands still shaking violently, and closed Danny's eyes.

I didn't know what to do next. So I didn't do anything-I just left. I packed some clothes and candy from Meg's stash in a backpack with my coin and mom's letter. I changed into my green hoodie, jeans, black snow boots, and black t-shirt with my sword strapped to my belt. I didn't want to bring it, but I couldn't very well leave it behind.

Danny's body disintegrated into soil in a few minutes. I remembered reading that satyrs reincarnated into, like, plants after they died or something. I hoped Danny became something nice, like a flower.

I climbed out the window of the bedroom before Meg came back, closing it behind me. I wouldn't miss this place, but I didn't know where I was going. I didn't even know how to mourn Danny, because we weren't really friends but he had died for me. And what was he trying to tell me that was so important? Where was the camp he had mentioned, and why did Danny want me to go there? I didn't know, and I wasn't even sure I wanted to.

I climbed over the fence that surrounded the school and dropped down on the other side. It was cold and dark, but I wasn't going back. The school was out in the forest, so I followed the road as far as I could into the city, hid at the back of a bus to downtown, and then got off without paying. I could go home right now, I knew I could. But I didn't want to. I was angry at dad, and my disappears-for-fourteen-years-and-sends-me-a-letter-saying-she's-a-f***ing-goddess mom, and even Danny, though the last part wasn't fair.

I would find my own way in this city. And I wouldn't have to go back to dad for help.

***ONE MONTH LATER***

I crouched on the edge of the rooftop, frowning down at the city below me. I was at least twelve stories up. I had climbed here up the fire escape, just to see the view. I might even spend the night up here, but I hadn't decided yet.

"What are you doing up here?"

I jumped, startled, and nearly fell forward off the edge of the roof. A hand caught the back of my green hoodie, dirty and patched on one elbow but the same hoodie I had worn the day I left. Whoever it was pulled me back from the edge just before I could fall.

I twisted to see their face, scrambling to my feet, careful not to trip near the edge of the roof.

"Woah, watch it! Don't wanna fall from up here!" It was a tall boy in grass-stained jeans and a black t-shirt. He had olive skin and dark brown hair that hung down just below his ears, dark green eyes, and a broken nose. There was a tattoo of a flaming torch on his neck, the flames wrapping around his ear. His accent was faintly southern, but you could hardly tell.

"I wouldn't have if you hadn't snuck up on me like that! Who are you, anyway?" I swatted his hand off my arm. I didn't want peoples help.

"I'm Ziggy," he said like it was a totally normal name. "Call me Zig."

"Fine then, Zig. I'm Felix. Felix McMandy."

"Well I wasn't sneaking, Felix. You were lost in thought, I was even being noisy on my way up." He motioned to the fire escape, the same path I had taken to the roof.

"Why're you even up here?" I demanded. "This building is scheduled for demolition."

"I know, that's why I'm even up here." He grinned. "Might as well enjoy it before it gets destroyed, right?" Then he asked, "Do you live near here?"

"No. I don't really live anywhere." He raised an eyebrow.

"Me neither. No family, no parents, no friends." And he looked so sad that I blurted out the words before I could stop them.

"Well now you have one."

"Thanks, Felix. Nice of you."

We didn't have to say anything else to decide to sit on the edge of the roof together. Then later Zig and I found our way back down together. We ran into each other again a few days later, when the minotaur attacked in the middle of downtown. It turns out that Zig was a demigod, to-a son of Alastor, the god of family fights.

When that minotaur attacked, I saw something frightening in my friend. It was his power, that he hadn't mentioned at our first meeting.

Zig could make people angry when he wanted to, so angry that his enemies turned on each other in a rage. He made them turn on their allies, their friends, their family. Anyone they cared about. It was impressive, but also scary. Of course, some might say my powers ares scary, so I'm not one to judge.

After that, Zig and I did everything together. We never stopped moving around, skipping between cities and living wherever we wanted. Once we even rode a train all the way down to florida and back for a two-week vacation (not the legal way of course, we stole aboard on top of one of the cargo cars). I might not have a functioning family, but I had found a best friend.

AN: thanks for reading. Please review/follow/favorite.