I'm so happy people reviewed, thank you so much for the feedback :) I'm still running on the old chapters I wrote a while ago so excuse me for my clichés :P Keep reviewing if you want more, people! :D
Chapter 1: And so it Begins
The front door of the Brownstone slammed shut as a begrudging Neil stormed through, his usually-perfect blonde hair sticking up in several different directions, knotted in two others with water dripping off of it.
As the door reopened, laughter echoed throughout the dorm, earning a well-deserved glare from Neil.
"It's not funny!" he shouted, "It's not funny when you play possum! Especially when the possum falls into the pool!"
"Okay, first of all!" Herry chuckled, "Yeah, that was pretty hilarious. Second of all… possum?"
"Bait," Odie interjected.
Herry cracked up once more, slapping Neil on the back, "Good performance, buddy. Poor giant though, your scream when you hit the water was so high pitched you must've burst his eardrums! He ran crying home to Mommy Cronus!"
"He won't be coming back any time soon," Archie pointed out through muffled laughter.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever…" Neil sighed melodramatically, "But where's my mirror?"
And with that, Neil walked out of the room in search of his most treasured possession.
"Besides that, good job guys," Jay grinned before looking up at the clock, "It's only 8:00 right now, how 'bout we all-"
Jay froze as a wave of nausea hit him and clutched at his head. He brought his hand back and stared at the dried blood left on his hands from where he had been hit, an orange hue instead of the usual dark crimson.
"Jay?" Theresa asked, resting her hand on his shoulder before freezing up as a headache engulfed her as well.
She backed up slowly, looking cautiously at Jay.
Then, at that moment, another wave of nausea hit the heroes, even Neil who stood in his room, foraging through masses of clothes for his mirror.
"How about we just hit the hay?" Atlanta groaned, "I have a mega-migraine."
"I'm with ya," Herry muttered, turning away and dizzily making his way up the staircase to his room.
"Uh-huh," Odie and Atlanta nodded simultaneously.
Snapping from his reverie, Jay turned to look at Theresa, his eyes slightly glazed over, "What was that about, Theresa?"
Giving him to same look back, Theresa shook her head slowly, as if it hurt just to do so, "I… don't know. Ugh, but I think I'm going to pass out!"
Theresa blinked, her eyes hooded for a second, before fluttering shut as she doubled over onto the ground.
"Theresa!" Jay murmured, his voice slurred, before keeling over himself.
"Agnon, this is great, it's working perfectly!" Cronus mused loudly, staring into his scrying pool, maniacal laughter bubbling up into his throat.
Agnon grunted and leaned over in time to watch Neil drop his golden mirror onto the floor and collapse.
His face scrunched up in confusion, completely oblivious to why this was happening.
Noticing the giant's confusion, Cronus pulled his scythe from mid air and let it glint from the reflection of the scrying pool, "This Scythe is poisoned by Circe herself, Agnon... I cut through the skin of each of the god's little heroes and the infection now runs through each of their veins now. Now, Agnon, the results will show within a week and they'll be completely transformed. The prophecy said seven mortal, human heroes will be my downfall… oh, yes, just you watch, Agnon!"
Cronus flashed a wicked grin and swept his scythe over the image of the heroes, turning to Agnon and saying, "The prophecy is a false…"
As light streamed through the window, Theresa mumbled in her sleep, a habit she'd had since she was little, and pulled her blanket higher up over her shoulder and snuggled deeper into it.
She groaned again as her incredibly heavy blanket shifted.
Wait…
She moved to stand up, but froze as her blanket groaned in protest. She whipped around to stare straight into the face of her blanket: Jay. Her face flushed and put her hands on his chest to shove him away, screeching loudly in surprise.
At the sound, his eyes snapped open too, looking straight into her eyes, before he blushed awkwardly and rolled off of her.
"Sorry," Jay held up his hands, blushing several different shades of red.
"Yeah, no problem," she muttered, avoiding eye contact.
Breaking the awkward silence, Jay grabbed both of her shoulders and made her look at him, raising his hand to point at her eyes, "What happened to your eyes, Theresa?"
Looking startled, the red head pulled away from him and crossed her arms defiantly, "Nothing! Why?"
Her eyes had changed from the bright emerald green Jay had come to know to a dull blue; the iris in her eyes had stretched so far there was no visible white, and her pupils were narrowly slit.
"Your eyes…" Jay said hesitantly, "They're, uh, blue now…"
"Um, well they sometimes change in the light, I guess," Theresa raised an eyebrow at him quizzically before snorting loudly, "Hey, whoa! Ugh, your breath stinks!"
Like any normal man would do, he stuck his hand in front of his face, blew into it, and sniffed the air before pulling a grossed out face.
"Ugh, yeah, you're right!" Jay moaned.
"Jay, when was the last time you brushed your teeth!?" Theresa yelled suddenly, reaching up and pulling back his lower lip to examine his gums.
"What are you, my dentist?" Jay snapped, slapping her hand away.
"No, it's just… you know what, just look in a mirror!"
Theresa grabbed his wrist and dragged him in to the bathroom, pointing at the mirror, "See? Look at your – OH MY GOD!"
Theresa promptly ignored Jay and leaned over the sink to stare at her eyes, "What the heck happened to my eye!?"
"See?" Jay rolled his eyes, before jumping at the sight of his own teeth.
Getting nice and close to the mirror, Jay flashed his fangs at the mirror, pulling his lips back farther with his fingertips to stare at his blackened gums.
He exchanged a worried look with Theresa.
"I think there's something wrong with us."
...
Atlanta punched her pillow, fluffing it up before letting her head sink into it, lazily attempting to itch the back of her calf with her foot.
"Owwwwwwwww…"
Atlanta feebly opened her eyes to stare back at the back of her leg which sported a fresh, thin scratch stretching from her calf to the back of her knee.
"What the?" Atlanta grumbled, leaning her back up against her headboard and gently running her fingertips across the long scratch.
She raised her finger to eye level, staring at the blood, wondering what had just caused the wound. She scratched her head in confusion before yelping in pain, feeling blood surge to the surface of her skin once again.
Looking at her hands again, she squealed in surprise as she saw her fingernails slowly grow upwards into a point, before growing thicker and curving over like into a sharp V of claws.
"Holy-" she yelped, looking down at her feet to see claws protruding through her socks, covered with blood.
She had raked her claws across her skin, she noticed, and the blood was seeping into the sheets. Ugh, more laundry.
"Archie!?" she called hesitantly, hoping for the purple-haired teen to burst through her door at the sound of his name.
Sighing to herself, she realized Archie probably couldn't hear her tiny cry, so she regretfully pulled the covers off of herself, shivering as she stepped out of bed. Guiding herself with her hands through the dark, she pulled open her blinds, letting bright rays of sun shine through, forcing her to shield her eyes with her hand.
Finally, she padded out the door and crossed the hall in a few strides until she stood outside his door.
She knocked three times and slowly opened the door, peeking her head around the corner.
"Archie?" she called out through the dark, not seeing his sleeping form on the bed. In fact, the bed was made too, like he hadn't slept in it at all, "Archie!"
She stepped in and walked to the side of the bed, almost tripping over the unconscious bundle that was Archie.
"Arch?" she repeated, leaning down to shake his shoulders gently.
She rolled her eyes and prodded him with her finger, grimacing as one of her claws pierced the skin on his forearm.
"Whoops," she grinned sheepishly.
When she got no reply, she started to worry; Archie did kind of look dead right then, but she knew that whenever Archie was asleep he looked limp and just really not alive.
She looked him over again and sighed in relief at the slight rise and fall of his chest, then stood and raised her foot to kick him in the side.
She stopped her foot in its path as she realized something was missing from Archie.
Drawing a sharp intake of breath, Atlanta bent down again and felt Archie's head where his ears were supposed to be and held her breath as she only felt the smooth surface of his skin.
His ears were gone.
"Well, that's nasty."
She was tempted to punch him awake because this was getting ridiculous now, but refrained and instead, as calmly as she could, let her fingers trace his hairline until she reached the top of his head. Her fingers ran over a soft furry thing that she knew wasn't his hair (mainly because it took a lot of gel to make Archie's hair and that stuff wasn't definitely wasn't soft). Upon further examination, she discovered his ears had migrated to the top of his head in the form of the ear's a dog would have. They were jet black and boy were they noticeable.
Right then, Archie's eyes snapped open and he blushed furiously, "What are you doing, Atlanta!?"
In explanation, she flicked his left ear and said simply, "I think there's something wrong with us…"
...
Herry awoke to an awkward pain in his ankle, his eyes slowly creaking open and a groan escaping his lips.
Tiredly, he rolled off his bed and onto his feet, but lost his balance and fell backwards with a whoosh of air leaving his lungs as he hit cold, punishing tiles.
"Whoa," he moaned, leaning against his mattress and examining his ankle.
He looked at his sock in confusion as it sagged at an odd angle, as if there was a space where his toes were supposed to be.
Curious, he pulled off his sock and his face scrunched up in confusion.
"What!?" he asked to no one in particular, his eye twitching as he tried to touch the brown paw that sat where his foot was supposed to be.
Not sure how he should be reacting to this, he scratched the back of his head, his face calculating.
"I am dreaming…" he declared.
So he ignored the brown fur that stretched from his paw to his knee, stood up, took a few steps, and fell flat on his face.
He crawled back to his bed and glared at the paws, "Okay… I'm not dreaming. I'm just delusional because I'm hungry!"
In a fit of denial, he slowly started the trek to his closet, limping and stumbling as his paws failed to support the rest of his body weight. Five minutes later, he managed to successfully pull on his usual pants before slumping back on his bed at the effort..
Looking down at his paws that were unfortunately still there, he decided that was a problem that could be fixed and pulled out his brown shoes from underneath his bed, stuffed a few socks in it, then slipped his paw in.
"There!" he beamed.
With much trouble, Herry stumbled to his door, flung it open, and tripped flat on his face before crawling to the staircase, mumbling that he could do this.
He paused and buried his face into the carpet.
"I think there's something wrong with me."
...
When Neil woke up, he was slumped on the floor, his hand inches away from his mirror.
Making an unintelligible noise, Neil slowly rose to his feet and stretched out his arms and yawned loudly.
"Mmmfmm, mirror," his whispered inaudibly, standing straighter to stretch out his back as he yawned.
Answering his own question, he glanced down and grinned, energy returning to the young descendant, "Oh, there it is!"
He bent down and picked it up, examining himself in his mirror while kneeling. It only took him two seconds for his obnoxious expression to transform into one of utter horror and shock; the mirror slipped from his hand and clattered onto the floor.
"Oh. My. God!" Neil yelped through clenched teeth, standing abruptly and rushing to his full-length mirror to gawk at himself.
His skin was ghostly white, his eyes had shifted colour from brown to a shiny red; he looked like the result of some bad lighting and an unprofessional camera flash!
That wasn't all, he noted with discontent, his arms had long strands of white hair sprouting out of them and the same symptoms showed on his legs.
"I'M A HAIRY, ALBINO FREAK!" Neil screamed in horror, his hands pulling at his now-bleach white hair.
...
"Quiet it down!" Odie shouted at the wall, throwing his arm over his eyes in a vain attempt to block them from the sunlight.
He sighed loudly and rubbed his forearm with his hand, stopping through mid-exhale and freezing. His eyes snapped open and he turned to look at his arm with wide eyes. It had felt too smooth under his palm and had felt abnormally warm which arose the suspicion in Odie's dark brown eyes.
"What the!?" Odie cried in surprise, staring down at his arm.
Where there had been his dark skin, pitch-black feathers were now randomly sprouting out of his arm.
Odie looked both ways, terrified that someone would see him like this, and snatched his regular red jacket from the floor and wrapped it around himself.
He ran to his door, fitting his arm through the sleeve, and opened it, cautiously peering through.
"This isn't right," he whispered to himself, zipping up his jacket, "but nobody has to know about this…
Later that same morning, Archie was armed and ready with a tight fitting toque to cover his ears. Atlanta stood next to him, clad in a pair of mismatching mittens.
As the two walked into the kitchen, they saw a hunched-back Herry rummaging the fridge hungrily, Jay staring at his meal self-consciously, and Theresa who was taking a small bite of her cereal sporting a pair of shaded sunglasses.
Jay looked up, looking glad to have found an excuse to ignore his meal, and stared at the two of them, "Going somewhere?"
Archie looked surprised at his comment and opened his mouth to reply, but Atlanta beat him to it, "Yeah, just going for a run, what does it look like? Come on Arch!"
Archie looked slightly putout and sighed, "Yeah... running... that's what we're doing."
As soon as they were out the front door and in the cool, fall morning air, he turned to her with a frown.
"Good idea and all," Archie commemorated sarcastically, "but I'm hungry… couldn't we have just stayed for breakfast?"
"Too bad," Atlanta rolled her eyes, "You'll survive."
"Well, I don't know…" Archie grumbled, patting his stomach.
Wordlessly, Atlanta sped up, leaving Archie yards behind.
"Hey, wait up!" came his shout of surprise.
After circling the park a few times, Archie finally coaxed Atlanta into going back to the dorm with him for food.
As soon as they had burst through the front door, Archie had stomped off to go lie on the couch and catch his breath.
Smirking lightly, Atlanta walked into the kitchen and caught a snippet of Theresa's conversation.
"-Contacts! Yeah, did they scare you or, uh, something?"
"What's happnin'?" Atlanta asked coolly, taking a seat at the table across from Theresa and Jay.
"Theresa got new contacts…" Odie said weakly, pointing at her eyes.
Theresa bit her bottom lip and smiled nervously, "Um, yeah…"
"I saw them at the eye doctor, and since Halloween's coming up, I thought, why not?" Theresa shrugged.
"Theresa… Halloween was a month ago…" Herry pointed out bluntly.
"Was it?" Theresa asked in a high pitch tone, "Oh, yeah, well, y'know… it's still coming up in about… a year."
Cutting off all of their suspicious looks, Jay stood abruptly with his bowl of cereal, "Yeah, I think I'm going to go eat in my room…"
Odie shrugged and turned back to his meal, oblivious to the looks Jay was shooting Theresa, "Good for you, man."
"Oh!" she spoke in realization, "And I'll go take off my contacts!"
Quickly she sped off after Jay down the hallway.
"Atlanta!" Archie's voice rang from where he sat on the couch, tinged with panic.
Atlanta stood up and walked up to the kitchen doorway so she could see him, "Yeah?"
He sprung to his feet and rushed over to her, then, placing both of his hands on the back of her shoulders, pushed her over to the couch and sat her down.
"It's spreading!" he said simply, gesturing at her arm which was now covered in large, black splotches, "Should we go see Chiron about this?"
"No!" Atlanta said, "I mean, we should go tomorrow… what if it's only a one day thing and we wake fine, like, without the ears, claws, and black dots! Plausible? Totally."
"I seriously doubt it," Archie said dubiously before suddenly slipping off his blue jacket and handing it to, "Just… put this on to cover your arms, okay? Then go upstairs and find another jacket you can wear."
Atlanta nodded sharply and pulled her arm into one of the over-sized sleeves, "Okay."
After successfully zipping up the jacket, Atlanta looked down at herself, then up at Archie dubiously, "You're kidding me, right?"
He stood back and admired her for a second, before shaking his head seriously and pushing her towards the stairs, "No, now go!"
"Wait, Arch," she called, and then quieted her voice as he turned to look at her, "Do you think we should just tell the others?"
Archie hesitated, his mind drifting back to his not-so-rude awakening when Atlanta had his hands through his hair, studying him like he was a specimen that she just had to know about. He looked up and saw how great the fiery red head looked in his jacket, so much smaller and gentler than she usually did when she was beating him in every race and mouthing off at him… and all of a sudden he just didn't want to tell the others. It felt like a secret the two of them alone shared, and he felt blood rush to his cheeks at his selfish thoughts. Still, he voiced aloud, "No, no, no… uh, we should figure what's going on first just in case."
Atlanta sighed, eyeing him as she climbed up the stairs, bumping into Jay, Theresa, and Neil on her way.
"Whoa, what happened to you?" Atlanta blurted out rudely, causing Neil to pull his baseball cap lower over his face and to whimper.
"What happened to you?" Theresa countered, gesturing down at her, "Did your boyfriend lend you his jacket?"
Thinking quickly for a fault in Theresa, Atlanta retorted, "Yeah, well, nice ears!"
Atlanta stormed passed her up the stairs, while behind her Theresa was feeling wildly for the ears on her head, squealing loudly as she felt them on top of her head like Archie's.
Theresa snatched the hat off of Neil's head and slapped it on to cover her ears, then grabbed Jay's hand and hurried him down the stairs faster so nobody would see her.
Halfway down the hall to her room, Atlanta froze as her words sank in.
Where were Theresa's ears?
Was she like Archie too?
Quickly, she dismissed the thought; she had probably just imagined it. So instead, she entered her room and pulled on a grey sweater with long sleeves that hung off of her wrists, which would hopefully protect both her claws and spots from view.
Stomping down the stairs, she went to go join Archie at the table and finally have breakfast.
AN: Soooo yeah. That's that. Hope you all liked it :)
