Guess who's story just got added to the community "Nico will rule the world"? Minee! Yay! Thank you xxZebraStripessxx for recommending it to the community(:

Creo que mi perra es muy molestosa. Se llama Jamie. Ella come mi cena! (la hamburguea y las papas fritas!) Aye!

(Sorry, I had the urge to speak in Spanish about my dog and my dinner)

Disclaimer: I don't own anything (except my annoying dog)

I know I probably should have been terrified.

There was a hellhound and something else viciously attacking each other in the middle of who-knows-where in front of 4 demigods with a trashed car, but I wasn't scared.

Instead, I felt like I was having a serious adrenaline rush. My heart was pounding, my hands were itching to grab my sword, and I felt like letting out a battle cry. I wanted to jump right into that fight and kill both those things. But, using my immense amount of willpower, I just stood there curled my hands into fists.

Percy looked like in his head he was chanting those things on. I understood him; we haven't had much entertainment lately, and this sure was entertaining.

What was the other thing? What idiotic creature would purposely pick a fight with a humungous hellhound, for no reason? And also, where did it come from?

That's when it hit me. No creature, no matter how idiotic, would attack a hellhound for no reason. It had a reason: It was defending us.

And what was the only large, black, furry thing that I knew, that could come out of nowhere?

Well, our dearest beastly friend Mrs. O'Leary, of course!

Now that I knew what it was, I felt stupid for not realizing it earlier; you could see her oversized ears flopping around from a mile away.

And that's when I became scared.

This was Mrs. O'Leary. This was the hellhound that acted like an overweight golden retriever. This was the reason that I sometimes sneak extras at dinnertime so I can feed them to her. This was the beast that licks you until you're soaking wet. This was the creature that whimpers if you call her a "bad dog".

And the other hellhound? He was a vicious, heartless, monstrous, demon that would be glad to rip my beloved dog's head off. And guessing by his size, I don't think he would have a hard time doing it.

But I couldn't let that happen.

So, I did what any rational person would do when watching their "pet" fight an evil and vicious hellhound:

I charged.

Thinking back on it, that wasn't the smartest thing to do.

I could barely tell which one was the one I loved from the one I wanted to kill. And if I mixed the two up? Well, that wouldn't be too good, now would it?

Plus, when I got to where they were fighting, I didn't know what to do. Should I stab? Should I hit? Should I jump? Should I dance?

(Just saying, that last ones not as crazy as you would think. I can't think of a single living thing that wouldn't give all their attention if they saw me "bustin' a move". It would serve as an excellent distraction, don't you agree?)

In the end, I decided not to dance. Instead, I figured out which one was the one I wanted to kill, and slashed at its front leg. I was hoping it would fall over onto it's back and I could very easily stab it into non-existence and that would be that, but instead it just snarled at me at took a swipe with its paw. I had just jumped out of the way in time, or else I would have been sent flying a couple miles back to my dear bird friends at the farm.

I realized that while they were fighting, I was really just an annoying pest trying to get in their way. But that was okay; I was a pretty good distraction. I mostly went for the legs and the stomach; slashing, stabbing, jabbing, and hitting. A couple of times I heard a hideous cry come from the hellhound, and I would almost feel sorry; but then I would think that if I didn't kill it, it would kill Mrs. O'Leary.

So, just as I was about to stab the stomach again, the hellhound saw me and attacked. It raked its paw across my face; its nails piercing my skin and leaving a bloody trail. I let out a surprised gasp, and then fell to my knees. I held my hand up to my face and felt the hot sticky liquid soak my fingers.

From the distance, I heard Annabeth scream out my name, but it sounded like she was miles away. Blood from a gash above my forehead dripped down into my eyes, and my vision turned into a red blur.

For a moment, I was sure death was upon me…

But then I realized that I was just being overdramatic.

It was a couple of cuts on my face, nothing too deep. The blood could be washed away and the wounds would heal quick enough. They may not even leave scars.

I took my sleeve and wiped the blood off my face, then got back on my feet and started towards the fight again. Once again, I could hear Annabeth screaming for me to stop and come back with the group, but that monster just cut up my face and I was pissed.

I was not gonna go sit back down and watch how this turns out. Instead, I did probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life: I grabbed onto the hellhound's tail and swung myself up onto its back.

I was doing this all on an adrenaline rush, and I really had no clue what exactly I was doing.

When the monster felt my on his back, he freaked out, flipping around and trying to get me off. For a moment I was reminded of a cowboy on a mechanical bull. I was slightly tempted to shout out "Yee-haw!", but I restrained myself to save myself from further humiliation.

To keep myself from being flung off the monster, I clung onto its coarse fur and tried to ignore how nauseous the rocking was making me.

I grabbed onto the beast's ears, dug my claws into the thick skin, and started pulling. Unfortunately, this didn't have the effect I had hoped for. Instead of being able to use the ears as reins to control the dog (I watch way too many movies), the dog just got even madder and tried harder to get me off it's back.

It was jumping, and spinning, and flipping around; and I was terrified that he would roll over and I would be squished like a bug. But fortunately, it wasn't smart enough to think of doing that. It just thrashed around, attempting to free itself from my grasp.

There was good news and bad news to this situation:

The good news was that I finally had the hellhound's full and undivided attention, meaning it wasn't focusing on Mrs. O'Leary anymore.

The bad news was that the monster was stronger than I had previously imagined, and I was just barely keeping myself from being flown through the air.

My legs clung uselessly to the sides of the dog, and I struggled to keep a grip on its fur. Well, this was not quite how I had imagined saving Mrs. O'Leary from possible doom. But I guess I was still saving her… right?

By this point, I had lost all will to retain my dignity, and I was shamelessly clinging to the beast and praying to every god I knew that my short life didn't come to a horrid end. With my eyes squeezed shut, the only thing I was aware of was how nauseous I was and how holding the hellhound's fur as my lifeline was giving me some pretty painful blisters on my fingers. Ouchie.

Dear Dionysus,

I know you really hate me and I go out of my way to aggravate you every day of my life, but right now-

I was cut off from my prayer when my fingers slipped from the monster, and I was suddenly hurling through the air.

They say when death is before you, your life flashes before your eyes.

And yes, something was flashing before my eyes.

First, a Big Mac with a large order of fries, and a Coca-Cola.

Next, a Grande Soft Taco with a side of nachos, from the one and only Taco Bell.

After that I saw a Bacon and Cheese Whopper.

Mm… I could feel my arteries clogging already…

Maybe death wouldn't be so bad after-all. Hey, maybe my dream will come true, and they'll build a Taco Bell in the Underworld! That would actually be pretty darn swell.

I thought about what I would order when I got there. I hear being dead tires you out, so I'll have to get something big, and full of saturated fat. What about an-

Thump!

I landed unceremoniously on top of Mrs. O'Leary's snout. It was harder than I had imagined; like there were rocks under there or something.

I rubbed my head, which I had hit on my landing.

But unfortunately, Mrs. O'Leary's snout was big, but not big enough to carry a teenage boy; so I started slipping off. I clawed at whatever I could reach, desperately trying to save my own life. If I fell and hit my head again, I would be visiting my father sooner than I had expected.

I silently begged the dog to gently lower its head, delivering my safely to the ground, but no such luck.

I turned my head and looked over to where my friends were standing, but all that was there was our destroyed car. All 3 of them were gone. Did they leave me? Am I here alone? Will I d-

Ow!

Something smacked against my leg, cracking like a whip. Who was hitting me? I tried looking down, but lost my grip for a second and scurried back to my original position.

I felt it again; this time it was higher, reaching my lower back. I got a glimpse of whatever it was this time. It looked tan or brown, and must have been pretty long to reach my all the way up here.

A third time some unknown person threw that thingy, and this time it looped over my head, slipped down my body, squeezed at my waist, and pulled me off the dog.

Falling, I thought of what had happened. There was nobody else there but the 4 of us, and the other 3 were nowhere to be seen. Was whoever's attacking me got them first? Or maybe they really did leave me?

I thought for sure this time I would break my neck and be sent down to daddy dearest, but once again, there's some invisible force that is intent of making sure I survive long enough to see my adult years.

I crashed down, but landed on something relatively soft. Like in those cartoons where they're falling to their doom and suddenly a mattress appears beneath them. Actually, just like that.

I looked to see just what exactly I had landed on, and was surprised to see a car seat sitting under me. A car seat from the truck I was just sitting in 10 minutes ago. How did it get out here? Maybe that force is stronger than I thought…

But there was still the thing that pulled my down. I looked at my waist, and saw a rope tied around it. It honestly looked like a very unfashionable belt. I was embarrassed just wearing it.

But then I saw the belt had the rest of the rope leading somewhere, and it was getting higher as it went on. I followed the rope with my eyes until it reached a pair of small, feminine hands.

Great, my life was just threatened by a girl. What a horrible way to die that would have been…

But when I looked farther up from the hands I saw the oh-so-familiar face of Jill (I don't know her middle name) Mistero. She had a smirk on her face and laugher in her eyes.

I thought back on what just happened, and realized that she had lassoed me to get me down.

Lassoed me!

You might as well give me a cowboy hat, get her a pair of leather boots, and we could be characters out of a cheesy old western film. Well, an old western film with demigods and demon hounds.

To try to minimize the amount of embarrassment, I used some of my unlimited humor.

"Hey, princess. How come you never told me you grew up lassoing cattle? Or are you just so unbelievably talented that you can learn things on the spot like that?" for the first time since I've known her, she blushed. Her cheeks turned a rosy color, and she crossed her arms.

"Shut up! I used to spend my summers at my uncle's farm in Kentucky." She said defensively.

"I thought that was all a myth. Ya know, cowboys and farmers lassoing sheep and all that jazz."

Jill rolled her eyes and smiled. "Not to my uncle. Thanks to him I know how to play a fiddle, lasso sheep, and I can ride a horse better than any teenage girl I know. He was supposed to teach me how to dance a jig last year, but I had to go to Camp Half-Blood instead; thank the gods."

Wow. I seriously thought they only did those things in movies.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was talking to a real-live cowgirl." I stood up and dusted off my jeans, then bowed in a mocking manner.

For the umpteenth time that day, she rolled her eyes.

"I am no cowgirl. I grew up in New York City." Hm, I'm learning all different kinds of interesting things today.

"Like Percy?" I asked.

"Kinda. But we don't like close to each other at all. Actually, I'm pretty sure we live a couple of subway trips and a taxi away." Strange, I just assumed they lived close.

Suddenly I realized something. The whole reason we were here was because of a giant hellhound that was trying to kill us. A giant hellhound that was nowhere to be found. But, sure enough, in the distance Annabeth had her dagger out and was cleaning blood off of it with a big green leaf.

Ah, you can always count on Annabeth to kill any stray monsters running afoot.

After shimmying out of the rope tied around my waist, I turned to Jill.

"Heh… so I guess it was pretty stupid of me to attack the hellhound like that, eh?" she smiled.

"Actually, no. For once you actually did something helpful. Good job."

Translation: Oh my gosh, Nico you are so fantastically amazing and gorgeous and your muscles are the hottest things I've ever seen and I'm so unbelievably in love with you, will you please marry me?

Yayy! I finally finished this chapter, it took me forever. Review!