Yay! You guys did good! Congratulations. I'm proud of you. My little fanfictioners are growing up! How cute.

This chapter is loooooong. Like, 12 pages. You're welcome. :)

On another, less happy note, I am losing my family Fantasy Football league. Our dog is winning. The irony is not lost on me.

The next two days, absolutely nothing happened. Which was weird. Usually, I would have been able to recreate the principal's office in my mind after two days.

But no. I was safe, for now.

Safe is boring.

Tess didn't agree. "I'd rather be safe than running for my life," she said heatedly.

"But running for your life is fun," I told her. "There is a chair in the cafeteria with my butt imprinted on it. How is that okay?"

The only reason I saw Tess before Monday was because, oh yeah, my roommate was her brother. Obviously, a certain horse wanted us to keep in contact, which we wouldn't have if I had any choice in the matter. Which I didn't.

Well played, Horse Man, well played.

I didn't see Tess's roommate at all. Then again, I don't think that she did either. From what I could tell, Tess was avoiding Aven as much as possible.

"She's weird," she told her brother in a whisper that anyone could have heard.

She shouldn't have acted so surprised when I answered. "Yeah, Cason. Even us half-bloods who chase monsters in our free time and have super powers have standards."

I don't think I deserved the punch that she gave me.

It wasn't hard for Tess to avoid her though. Aven spent every spare minutes she had out of the dorm room. She went to the dance studios, walked with a few friends to the art rooms, and ate enough food for two people at every meal.

However, it was harder on Monday, which was officially my first day. Sure, you had all of the artsy classes (geez, can't wait), but you also had math and science and English and history. After music, yippee, was math. Of course, they gave me that in the morning, before my brain worked. It was the easiest class they offered, but it was still enough to make my brain fry.

Not that the dyslexia didn't have anything to do with it.

Gods, I hate school.

Then a (semi) familiar face popped into the classroom, a mountain of books in her arms. She looked at me, zeroing in. I started squirming. But then she smiled and walked over and sat down in the empty seat next to me.

Kevin, who I could already peg as a teacher's pet, pouted. "Your seat is over there," he said, pointing to the chair in the front row.

"This is Melanie's seat," Aven said, shoving papers into a folder unceremoniously. "And she's gone now. So now it's my seat."

She smiled at him, and to my surprise he just sniffed and sat down. She winked at me. "What's up?"

All I could think of to say was, "You chose a seat in the front row?"

Aven looked like she wasn't sure whether she should be laughing or not. "Sure." Then she giggled. "We aren't all back seat students."

I was wondering what was going on. See, normally, I kind of secrete death, which is gross and nasty, but there it is. Most people don't like that attribute of Nico di Angelo. But Aven didn't seem to notice. She kept talking to people around us, introducing me, the new student.

It was the closest I had ever come to torture.

Aven sneezed, rubbing her unusually small nose like it hurt, as the teacher walked in. She zeroed in again, like she had when she had seen me. But she didn't stop and smile, either. She just looked at the teacher, perplexed.

There was nothing special about him. He was short, with a buzz cut and glasses, wearing a blue shirt and a patterned tie. The name on my schedule said something like rM. Sonma, which Tess had translated as Mr. Mason.

He talked slowly with an accent that I couldn't place. I found it hard to listen to him. I slowly got sleepy and was about to pass out by the end of the class. The only thing that kept me from doing so was Aven, nervously tapping her pencil on the desk and sitting up straight like someone had replaced her spine with a metal pole.

I guess the second part was the fact that she was a dancer and stuff. But the pencil was seriously annoying. Anything that keeps me from my sleepy time should not exist.

I looked up at her. "Could you stop?" I asked, trying to drip irritation the way that Tess dripped sarcasm.

She raised an eyebrow. Then she took the pencil and tapped it on my head. "Nope," Aven told me, smiling.

"Miss Arnett, Mr. di Angelo, please stop talking," said Mr. Mason.

Aven went all stiff again and didn't say anything the rest of the class period, not even raising her hand to answer a question, which I thought was a thing that all Front Row Kids did. Towards the end, she was trying to balance the pencil on her pursed lips, looking ridiculous, her eye looking up to the sky like she was trying to figure out the Answer to the Universe.

Which is 42, by the way.

When the bell rang, she stood up so fast that all of her books fell to the floor, scattering her papers everywhere.

Kevin sniffed. "You do that every day."

"Maybe that's why you're late all the time," offered a red hair girl behind us like she thought it would be helpful.

"Or maybe, I just don't like Mr. Mason," Aven said, picking up her papers.

"Dislike?" the girl laughed. "You hate him."

Aven looked genuinely troubled.

"Oh, I forgot," the girl with red-hair said, scratching her head. "You don't hate anyone."

Aven scratched her head guiltily. Then she scooped up her stuff and ran out of the room like it was on fire.

"I'm not that bad," I muttered.

I am not bad at all. I'm wonderful. Sometimes, people just don't realize that.

The red-haired girl smiled. There was something about it that I didn't like, like she was thinking about how it would ruin her reputation to be seen talking with the new kid.

Then something caught my eye. An orange Buzz Lightyear folder, on the floor, half sticking out under the desk. "That's Aven's," I said, pointing to it.

The other two looked at me.

"Oh, okay. I'll just go chase her down and hand it to her, even though I have no idea where she went. No big deal." I rolled my eyes when they all nodded in agreement and walked out the door. I grabbed my own things and went out searching for my fellow demigod's roommate.

Maybe it was the fact that Aven had somewhat normal hair in a place where everyone dyed theirs neon colors, or that she was wearing sweatpants I'm pretty sure she had bought in the boys section, or that the papers jutting out of her folder had been very roughly handled, but she was not hard to find.

"Hey," I said, walking up to her, holding out her folder.

She looked at me, her mint green eyes moving from me to her folder, for a few moments before she took it, shoving Buzz into the mess that she held in her arms.

"Thanks," she said, smiling, but her attention was at the big, rampaging gorilla a few yards away.

Okay, so he wasn't really a gorilla. But he was the closest thing to one I had ever seen. And I go to camp with the children of Ares, so that's saying something.

I'm talking a massive caterpillar for an eyebrow, because he only had one. His nose looked like it had been broken at least twice, his shoulders were hunched. He was, quite possibly, the ugliest thing I had seen in a letter jacket.

If this guy was a gorilla, the poor soul he was shoving into the locker was a hamster.

"Hey," I said, cupping my hands around my mouth for a make-shift megaphone. "What are you doing?"

Hamster looked like he was two breaths from having an asthma attack.

I took a wild guess. "Probably something you aren't supposed to be doing?"

Gorilla grinned. "The fifth time today."

"Must be some kind of record." I wrinkled my nose. "Maybe you should stop before he has some kind of attack."

Hamster nodded vigorously, his glasses falling down on his nose. I sighed. He really wasn't helping his case.

Gorilla narrowed his beady eyes. "You're just some transfer with an attitude problem."

"What are you, then?" I asked, grinning. It wasn't every day I found someone new to annoy. "Just some kid who hasn't fully evolved from being a monkey yet?"

He would have knit his eyebrows if he had more than one. "Hey...wait..."

"Dude, just stop." I shrugged. "Hasn't he suffered enough?" I was itching to break his nose a third time. But Chiron made me promise that I wouldn't break a mortal unless he made a move first. So I was trying my hardest to give him a reason to throw a punch.

Aven, however, was not under any kind of agreement.

One minute, she was a few steps behind, chewing on her lip worriedly. The next, she had propelled herself forward like only a dancer could, planting her fist on the guy's massive nose. His nose cracked. Lucky number three.

When he hit the ground, I looked back in awe. But Aven didn't look angry. Upset, a little guilty, maybe. Not the kind of face you expected to see on a girl who had just defeated a gorilla with one hit.

Aven held out her hand to him. "Sorry," she said, and she was. Genuinely.

He looked up at her, clutching his face with a hand the size of a trash can lid, everything in his eyes that was missing from hers. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down to the ground. I didn't know where she had put her books and folders, but if she were still holding them, they would have flown everywhere and it would be raining math homework.

Aven rubbed her forehead. "Ow."

Then I kicked him in the balls.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you manners?" I him.

Aven scoffed. "You're just looking for a reason to hit him."

"Either way, he isn't having any kids."

"You're a hero to girls everywhere." She smiled, rubbing her button nose like it was hers that had been broken. "Now where did I put my things?"

Hamster skittered off, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

"You're welcome," I muttered, but Aven didn't seem to think anything of it.

Then she reached down a hand to Gorilla, who was dry heaving on the floor, curled up in a pathetic little ball that I looked upon with satisfaction.

"I'll help you to the nurses office," she said, her face contorted into something like concern. I was astonished.

So was Gorilla. He stared up at her, his face beaded with sweat and as red as a beet. Then he growled, staggering to his feet. He was leaning heavily on the lockers behind him, glaring at Aven like he was imagining her suffering a terrible and no doubt painful death.

Well, that just wouldn't do.

"Calm down, idiot." I grinned wolfishly. "I'll make sure that there is permanent damage the next time."

Unlike usual, when I tried my hardest to be nice and stuff, I let my inner Hades radiate, and I knew that it worked. Fear can be oh, so useful. He paled, his face turning from red to snow white like someone had shut off a switch in his head. He shuffled down the hallways, still panting.

I consider that a job well done.

Aven tried to tuck her bangs behind her ear, only to have them fall back in front of her eyes a moment later. "I need a haircut," she said factually.

"That's it?" I said, walking after her, because she had already set off down the hallway again, her papers back in her arms, like nothing had happened. "You just punched a guy in the face and then apologized."

Aven raised an eyebrow. "Is that weird?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

She just shrugged, and I was left behind to find my own way to my next class.

I looked up at the sky. Gods, please save me from the oddities of women.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I had to put up with Aven in four classes, Tess in three, and they expected me to actually have the energy to learn at the same time. Now, I might be half-god, but really. This is impossible.

And then they have homework. Homework! I live in a dorm (for now). I don't have a home. How can I do homework when I don't have a home?

My teachers did not appreciate my insights.

Mrs. Rapier snapped her ruler on the desk where my hand had been a second before. "Mr. di Angelo. I don't care where you do it. You can do in a freaking Porta-Potty. Just get it done."

I'm not sure whether I like her or not.

And, when I get back to my dorm, Cason and Tess are reading matching dictionaries in the corner. I stood in the doorway. I'm pretty sure my jaw was practically unhinged, so I probably looked really funny. But Tess just looked at me like I was something nasty on the base of her shoe. "I came over here to help you with your guitar."

"So you sit in my room and read...something really big and most likely ridiculously hard to understand?" I tried to read the title of the book she held in her hand, but my dyslexia made the letters swim around.

Tess snapped her book closed. "I was waiting for you."

I looked at her, really wanting her to go away. "Well, what'd you do that for?"

Her gray eyes narrowed. "Come on," she said harshly, getting up and throwing the book on the desk—my desk. Okay, really Cason's desk. But in my room. Our room...but the point is, not her room. "I need to go get my tuner."

"Well, why didn't you do that while you waited for me?" I asked her crossly.

"And give you a chance to run away? Not a chance. I'm not letting your lack of any talent whatsoever humiliate you, and me by association."

"I'd be perfectly happy if you didn't associate with me."

"That can be your Christmas gift."

It didn't take long for us to walk down to hallway. I was hit by a sudden wave of dismay as I realized that the devil's dorm was right around the corner. It's like knowing there is a mass murderer behind the shower curtain, only worse, because it isn't quite so cliché.

She fumbled with her room key and slipped inside. "Don't come in. Aven is taking a shower."

I wrinkled my nose in distaste. "She isn't my type."

She raised an eyebrow. "She's a girl, di Angelo. That's about as good as you are ever going to get."

"Oh, har har."

She closed the door. I was left standing awkwardly outside of her room, hands in pockets, wondering how on earth I had gotten stuck with her. The question would haunt me for several more weeks.

Then came the bang. And the crash. And the crunch. And a lot of other scary noises that I didn't think were Tess. I knocked tentatively on the door. "Tess? Are you wrestling an elephant or do you need to go on a diet?"

Another crash. "Now isn't the time for humor!" she screeched. "Get in here."

I tried the doorknob half-heartedly. "It's locked," I told her, shrugging.

She growled. Like, seriously growled. Then, right when I took a step back, the door went flying off of its hinges, ramming into the opposite wall, Tess riding on it as she slammed up against it. Kids poked their head out of their rooms, murmuring something about new kids. I grinned. Then I waved my hands, manipulating the Mist as well as I could. "Nothing to see here. These are not the droids you're looking for, and all that jazz." They nodded sheepishly and ducked back into their rooms like there wasn't a smoking door crumpled in a heap in front of them.

I looked curiously into the room. "Hmm. What's that?"

Tess looked at me in disbelief. Then she rose to her feet grudgingly. "Mr. Mason," she spat.

"Last time I checked, he wasn't a dog," I said after her, following her into her dorm.

Mr. Mason, still dressed in his shirt and tie, was standing in front of us, his canines looking unusually sharp. That might be because his head was twice the size it usually was and looked like a nightmarish Scooby-Doo. His shirt was ripped, and one of his teeth was missing, but Tess, in the few seconds after he had crashed in through the window (I assumed, seeing as the window was broken and he had glass in his...fur/hair) hadn't done that much damage.

I looked around and reached into the shadow of her bed stand, pulling out my sword. Sometimes it's handy to be a son of Hades. Storing things in easily accessible shadows is one of those times. Tess looked at me. "Nice trick."

"Isn't it?"

Mr. Mason barked.

Tess scowled. "Cynocephali," she hissed.

"No, he's a dog." I ducked as he swung a giant, rather meaty hand in my direction. I could feel the air whistle above my head. "That's not good."

I ran at him with my sword. He deflected it with his hand, clawing my stomach. I jumped back in a fashion that might have been embarrassing if I weren't, you know, worried for my life. My shirt ripped. "That was my favorite t-shirt!"

"All you have is t-shirts!" Tess screamed. I ignored her.

My sword swung down. His ear fell to the floor at my feet. Tess jumped away from it with a muffled complaint. I took a step back as Mr. Mason advanced, somehow tripped over a bed. Success for Nico di Angelo. Blood dripped down the left side of his head, trickling into his wide eye. "It's only my first day, Mr. Mason. Really, couldn't you have waited?"

"You're much stronger than my current prey," he said, his voice deep and muffled. He laughed. "So long. I've waited so long to taste demigod flesh again."

"That's gross," I said sincerely.

He barked. Or laughed again. Wow. This dog thing is really confusing. Anyway, he made some sort of doggish noise, and I rolled out of the way of his hands. He attacked one of the pillows. I really hoped it was Tess's.

I stood up and realized, all too late, that I was still standing on the bed, and hit my head really hard on the ceiling, nearly missing the swaying fan that would have chopped my handsome face to pieces. And who would want that?

No one, that's who.

"Ouch." I sat back down on the bed.

"Nico!" Tess scolded. I wasn't sure whether I should be offended that she was still mad about her pillow and didn't sound worried at all.

Then an arrow embedded itself in the wall next to my ear. "When did he get a bow?" I shrieked (which would have been unmanly if I weren't me) and backed away, almost falling off of the bed I kept forgetting I was resting on.

But Mr. Mason did not have a bow. Instead, he had a huge hole in his chest. He howled like a werewolf from one of those stupid Halloween movies that are totally fake and collapsed on the floor, which looked strange, since he was simultaneously blowing away in the wind.

Aven, go figure, stood behind him in the doorway to the bathroom, a bright green bow in her arms. Steam billowed out from the shower. There was a puddle by her feet. She was wrapped in purple towel, her hair still sudsy from shampoo and sticking to her face. I backed up again, really falling off of the bed this time.

She shook her head like a dog, her hair slinging water and soap all over the room. Then she looked at me and Tess, who was standing with a broken chair in her hand like a club in the doorway.

"You guys are sooooo loud," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Now, do you guys need some explanations, or can I finish my shower? I would prefer to finish my shower."

Without waiting for us to answer, Aven turned on her heels and marched back into the bathroom. Tess slid down the wall behind her. "This is going to take a lot of lying to get away with."

I hefted my sword over my shoulder and grabbed the whistle thingy on Tess's bedside table. "Your tuner," I told her when she looked at me in shock. "You were going to make me not such a failure, remember?"

So, the big question. Nico needs a lady.

Aven or Tess?

Prepare to explain your answer. :)

Now, as we all know, there is this handy little feature, called a review, in which you can tell me which one you would rather have, what you think, and basically just tell me how awesome or not awesome I am. And guess what? It is right below this sentence! Convenient, huh?