AN: Heres the next chapter, see you at the bottom!
Chapter One: I Accidentally Vaporise My Pre-Algebra Teacher
All eyes turned to Zeus and he shifted uncomfortably under the burning gazes of the Primordials. Frowning, Chaos sat forward,
"Let us continue reading," he said opening the book.
Chapter One: I Accidentally Vaporise My Pre-Algebra Teacher
Hermes and Apollo snorted, drawing the disapproving glances of the other immortals.
"What?" Apollo asked,"It's funny. I think I like this demigod." Hermes nodded in agreement.
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.
"Why ever not? The son of an immortal- he should be honoured!" Nyx frowned angrily. Athena shook her head.
"In our world, demigods were hunted by monsters; if they did not have the correct training they were killed." Nyx blinked and sat back.
If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.
"Not bad advice," Hermes nodded approvingly.
"It never works though, they always get killed in the end," Dionysus said from behind his magazine. Artemis glared at him.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways. If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think it's fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened. But if you recognise yourself in these pages- if you feel something stirring inside- stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.
"Who's they?" Aphrodite asked.
Artemis rolled her eyes, "Monsters, idiot."
Don't say I didn't warn you.
"You didn't warn us," Hermes and Apollo chimed i unison earning themselves several rolls of the eyes.
"So childish," Athena sniffed.
My name is Percy Jackson. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York. Am I troubled kid?
"Why would you diss yourself like that?" Apollo gaped. He earned himself a slap around the head from his twin.
"Shut up!"
Yeah. You could say that.
Apollo was spluttering for words.
I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan- twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.
"BORING!" Apollo and Hermes said loudly.
Artemis smirked, "You do know you just 'dissed' yourselves, you idiots?"
They were left confused.
I know- it sounds like torture.
"Torture?" Athena protested hotly, "No appreciation for history at all! He has to be one of yours Kelp-Head!"
Poseidon feigned a look of hurt, "You wound me Owl-Brain with your harsh digs at my children's mental capability."
"You mean the fact that it's non-existent," Hades muttered, examing his nails. Poseidon huffed and settled for glaring at his neice.
Most Yancy field trips were. But Mr Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes. Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorised wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep.
Athena's eyes narrowed,"Sounds awfully like Chiron."
"Who's Chiron?" Clotho asked curiously.
"Our brother who happens to be a centaur," Hades said nonchalantly, still picking his nails.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get into trouble. Boy, was I wrong. See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course I got expelled anyway.
Apollo and Hermes were in stitches, gasping for air and even Hades had a small smirk painted on his thin lips.
Athena, meanwhile, was pointing out the fact this was his fifth-grade school meaning he'd only been there for a year before he was expelled.
And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim.
"Priceless!" Apollo laughed.
And the time before that...Well, you get the idea. This trip, I was determined to be good.
"Good luck with that," Thalassa muttered disbelievingly.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, red-haired, kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend, Grover, in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter and ketchup sandwich.
"Ewwwww!" Aphrodite wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"Isn't Grover one of the satyrs from the camp?" Artemis asked. Zeus scowled.
"Hopeless! He doesn't deserve the responsibilty of demigods- he can't even look after himself!"
"What camp?" Atlas asked. Immediately Artemis rounded on him.
"Stay out of it!" Zeus raised a hand to stop the Titan from enduring another tongue-lashing.
"It is the place wher our demigod children can live safely from monsters, and learn how to kill them and about our world under the tutelage of Dionysus and Chrion." Silence followed until Chaos resumed reading.
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth-grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like evry step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Hermes groaned,"Way to bust your cover! Rule 21: never bust your cover and if you do, get the hell out of there!"
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her because I was already on probation. the headmaster had threatened me with with death-by-in-school-suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.
"I'm going to kill her,"I mumbled.
"Tell her!" Ares snarled, his red eyes blazing manically.
Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."
Demeter raised an eyebrow.
He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.
"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
"You're already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."
Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get myself into.
A look of sadness crossed Hestia's face as she sympathised with the boy who was about to get his whole world tipped upside down.
Mr Brunner led the museum tour. He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black and orange pottery. It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.
"Better start believing it boy," Hades smirked darkly.
He gathered us around a four metre tall stone column with a big sphinx on top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everyone around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
"Why does she sound familiar?" Athena mused.
Mrs Dodds was this little maths teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last maths teacher had a nervous breakdown.
"Wonder why," Ahena muttered.
From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, 'Now, honey,' real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after school detention for a month. One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old maths workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs Dodds was human. He looked at me real serious and said, 'You're absolutely right.'
Understanding dawned on Athena's face which wasn't reflected by anyone else and a small smirk breached her lips.
Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
"Cheery isn't he?" Apollo said lightly.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"
It came out louder than I meant it to.
"You don't think?" Dionysus snorted.
The whole group laughed. Mr Brunner stopped his story.
"Mr Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"
My face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."
Mr Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele.
"Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"
I looked at the carving, and I felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognised.
"That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"
Kronos looked a little green as the glares of Hades, Hestia, Demeter, Hera and Poseidon hit him.
"Yes," Mr Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. "And he did this beacuse..."
"Well..." I racked my brain to remember. "Kronos was the king god, and-"
"GOD!" The Olympians snarled.
"An insult to us!" Artemis hissed.
"I'm sure Chiron will point out his mistake," Poseidon said mildly.
"God?" Mr Brunner asked.
"Titan," I corrected myself. "And... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead."
"You really are stupid if you couldn't tell the difference between an immortal baby and a rock, aren't you?" Athena sneered.
"And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"
"Ewwwww!" Aphrodite shrieked.
"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.
"-and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," I continued, "and the gods won."
"Did he just sum up a war in a few sentences?" Demeter asked disbelievingly.
Some snickers from the group. Behind me, Nancy Bobofit, mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on out job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids'."
"And why, Mr Jackson," Brunner asked, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question. does this matter in real life?"
"Busted," Grover muttered.
"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair. At least Nancy got in trouble, too. Mr Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears. I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."
"I see." Mr Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.
"Boys are doofuses," Athena and Artemis said in unison, looking pointedly at Apollo and Hermes.
"What? Us? As if!" They defended.
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr Brunner said, "Mr Jackson."
I knew that was coming. I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned towards Mr Brunner. "Sir?"
Mr Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go- intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.
"You have no idea, boy," Hades laughed without humour and the mood in the room went down a few notches.
"You must learn to answer my question," Mr Brunner told me.
"About the Titans?"
"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."
"Oh."
"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson."
I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armour and shouted: 'What ho!' and challeneged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped.
"Every single Greek?" Hermes said faintly.
"I'd die!" Apollo agreed.
But Mr Brunner expected me to be as good as everyone else, despite the fact I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life.
"He is definitely one of yours," Athena said to Poseidon, "there is no way a child of mine could be that stupid. It is impossible!"
"Ever heard of modesty?" He asked lightly.
No- he didn't expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn't learn all the names and facts, much less spell them out correctly. I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr Brunner took one long sad look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.
"He probably had," Apollo commented.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch. The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue. Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes.
"Wonder what it is this time?" Hera huffed. Athena was strangely quiet and only Chaos noticed the widenng of her eyes and the darting glances that she flicked between Hades, Poseidon and Zeus.
I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in. Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's bag, and , of course, Mrs Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.
"Talk about favouritsm!" Hermes cried indignantly. Athena observed in silence, pretty certain it wasn't favouritsm.
Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school- the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.
"He is too harsh on himself," Hestia murmured sadly.
"Detention?" Grover asked.
"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean- I'm not a genius."
Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, "Can I have your apple?"
I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it. I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again.
Athena looked ready to faint.
I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me. Mr Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorised cafe table.
"Awesome!" Apollo exclaimed.
I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends- I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from tourists- and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.
"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spary-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.
"Uhhhh!" Aphrodite squealed. "How could you walk around like that? Why didn't he say something?"
I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears. I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"
Silence. Then the ozone in the air became more prominent and Zeus turned to Poseidon, a thunderous expression on his face.
"If he happens to be another of your offspring..."
Poseidon frowned, "You have no right to accuse me, brother- you are the womanizer in the family!"
Hades scowled, "Both of you are hopeless! And they say I'm the one who has one rule for himself and another for everyone else!"
Zeus had the good grace to look abashed.
"Look you don't even know if it's his kid yet, do you?" Apollo pointed out.
"Yeah, because he's just dumped a kid on her ass in a fountain, without touching her. Who else could it be, idiot!" Artemis sneered.
Mrs Dodds materialized next to us. Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see-"
"-the water-"
"-like it grabbed her-"
Zeus and Hades looked as though they were going to explode.
I didn't know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in trouble again. As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-"
"I know," I grumbled, "A month erasing textbooks."
Hermes groaned, "Never guess your punishment! Man, I need to teach him some moves!"
That wasn't the right thing to say.
"Come with me," Mrs Dodds said.
"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I pushed her."
I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs Dodds scared Grover to death.
"There is something really off about her," Apollo frowned. Hades caught Athena's gaze and his eyes widened. From then on he avoided Poseidon's gaze.
She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.
"Wimp!" Ares snorted to a glare from Aphrodite.
"I don't think so, Mr Underwood," she said.
"But-"
"You-will- stay- here."
Grover looke at me desperately.
"it's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."
"Honey," Mrs Dodds barked at me. "Now."
Nancy Bobofit smirked. I gave her my deluxe I'll- kill- you- later stare. I then turned to face Mrs Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
How'd she get there so fast?
"That's what I'm wondering to," Poseidon said, his voice dangerously soft. Hades gulped.
I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank space behind it. The school counsellor told me this was part of ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things. I wasn't so sure. I went after Mrs Dodds. halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr brunner to know what was going on, but Mr Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall. Okay, I thought. She's going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.
"You wish, boy," Artemis murmured.
But apparently that wasn't the plan. I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section. Except for us, the gallery was empty.
"Time to get out of there, kiddo," Hermes muttered, "Like now."
Mrs Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.
Everyone tensed and Poseidon's face blackened even further.
Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverise it...
"A monster." Nyx said shortly. Athena nodded, her brow furrowed.
"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said. I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes ma'am."
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"
The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.
"No duh! She's a monster!" Hermes joked in an attempt to lighten the mood. It didn't work.
"Not the time idiot," Artemis said shortly.
She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.
"Alas," Demeter sighed.
I said, "I'll- I'll try harder, ma'am."
Thunder shook the building.
"We are not fools, Percy Jackson," Mrs Dodds said. "It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess and you will suffer less pain."
I didn't know what she was talking about. All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room.
Apollo snorted.
Or maybe they'd realised I got my essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade.
"Sounds like something you'd do Ares," Athena smirked, "I bet you're just as stupid as he is."
Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.
Hermes laughed at the expression on Athena's face.
"Well?" she demanded.
"Ma'am, I don't.."
"Your time is up," she hissed. Then the weirdest thing happened. her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shrivelled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.
"You sent a Fury after him? That is stooping low Hades!" Poseidon growled through his teeth. Hades shrugged,
"This happens in the future, remember?"
"Well good luck to him is all I say," Hera said.
Then things got even stranger. Mr Brunner, who'd been out in the front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air. Mrs Dodds lunged at me. With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen any more. it was a sword- Mr brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.
"Anaklusmos," Poseidon whispered, his eyes far away, seeing into nothing.
"But I thought that it was lost in the Battle of Troy," Athena said, confused. She was met by silence.
Mrs Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes. My knees were jelly. my hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, "Die, honey!"
And she flew straight at me. Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword. The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she was made of water. Hissss! Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporised on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.
Silence followed.
"You have a very powerful child there, Poseidon," Hestia whispered softly.
I was alone. There was a ballpoint pen in my hand. Mr Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me. My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.
"Sadly, no," Clotho murmured.
"The gift of ignorance can be both a blessing and a curse," Chaos murmured.
Had I imagined the whole thing? I went back outside. It had started to rain. Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs Kerr whipped your butt."
I said, "Who?"
"Our teacher. Duh!"
"It must be so annoying for that to happen, the Mist can be so very frustrating to those who are ignorant to it's present," Hephaestus rumbled.
I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about. She just rolled her eyes and turned away. I asked Grover who Mrs Dodds was.
He said, "Who?"
But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.
"Satyrs always have been bad at lying," Athena observed.
"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."
Thunder boomed overhead. I saw Mr Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved. I went over to him. He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr Jackson."
I handed it over. I hadn't even realised I was still holding it.
"Sir," I said,"wher's Mrs Dodds?"
He stared at me blankly. "Who?"
"Chiron is a wily old centaur if there ever was one," Hermes commented,"he can lie through his teeth and never bat an eyelid."
"The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."
He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned.
"Percy, there is no Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?
"And that's the end of the chapter," Chaos murmured quietly. Everyone was silent as they took in the new information they'd learned. The quiet was broken by a rippling in the air in the middle of the room, and a sound that sounded like plastic flexing. Then light poured into the room, blinding the immortals and two soft thuds could be heard.
As the light subsided, the boy and the girl on the floor rose, looking warily around and only relaxing slightly when their gazes rested on the Olympians. The boy's pale face and coal black hair and eyes, matched Hades' features perfectly and his hand was gripped firmly around the hilt of a Stygian Iron sword.
The girl had taken up a defensive pose, her bow in her hand and her electric blue eyes flickering.
"Where are we?" she asked quietly. It was Chaos who answered, "In the palace of the Primordials. Would you care to introduce yourselves?"
The pair shared and uneasy glance before the boy stepped forward.
"Nico Di Angelo, Son of Hades and Maria Di Angelo and Prince of Darkness."
If possible, Hades whitened further. Before he has time to comment though, the girl shouldered Nico aside.
"Thalia Grace, Daughter of Zeus, Leader of the Hunters of Artemis."
Artemis' mouth fell open, "What happened to Zoe?"
Thalia's face sombered.
"She died a hero's death, my Lady." Artemis retreated behind everyone, her silver eyes glimmering with tears and her fists clenched.
"Who are you, anyway?" Nico asked Chaos, his voice suspicious.
The Creator raised an eyebrow at his hostility.
"I am Chaos."
Nico didn't relax. "Why are we here?"
"I could ask you the same thing."
Chaos sighed. "We are in the middle of reading a series of books given to us by the Fates. Clotho said they would help me make a weighty decision."
Thalia's eyes widened slightly as she saw the three Fates but she said nothing.
"What's the series called?" she asked.
"Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief-"
"What?" Nico shouted.
"How is that even possible?" Thalia whispered.
"What do you mean, girl?" Athena asked curiously.
"Percy was- is- our best friend. From the time we are in... he is missing. Nobody knows where he is, not even the gods."
There as silence. "So," Athena cleared her throat, "What year are you from?"
"2014."
More silence.
"Well it seems you are here for a purpose; it cannot be just coincedence we are reading about your dear friend, can it?" Chaos sighed.
"They must stay until we have finished the book," Clotho said, her eyes glazed.
Still tense, the two demigods walked over to the Olympians and sat a short distance away from them.
"Well! Now we have that disturbance sorted, shall we continue reading?" Chaos suggested. General assent sounded and he turned the page.
Chapter Two: Three Old Ladies Knit The Socks Of Death
AN: Thanks for being patient guys, for those of you who have done fics like this one, you'll know how long it takes to copy down the text from a book. Trust me, it takes forever! This chappie is 5k+ words! Please review because it gets me to update sooner, knowing I have people's support and interest.
Dreamshadow102 :-)