Hello again wonderfull world of fanfiction.

So I was listening to some Skrillex on youtube the other day and I heard this one song with the line "You Blocked me on Facebook, and now you are going to die" going over and over again in a British accent throughout the entire song.

It was the funniest thing I have ever heard.

Seriously though, I LOVE skrillex. You guys should listen to it, it's amazing. And electronic. I have a feeling Iron Man would love those types of songs.

At least, I think.

Anyways enough with my rambling, lets get on with the story.

Oh and I love your reviews!

We last left off with Thalia and the gang getting into the forest and then Nico dying! Dun, dun, dun….

Nico POV

I let the darkness swallow me. It was comforting, almost like a blanket of black.

Technically though, the darkness would be swallowing us all. Us half bloods were trekking though the now dark forest. The sun had set maybe an hour ago now. We had been the entire day, searching for food or water. We did find some water from small ponds and puddles, but we didn't find much food. We did find berries and stuff, but we though better then to trust them. They could've been poisonous and we didn't want to risk anyone dying or getting sick from something as small as berries. We would need all the strength we can get.

I was using my stygian iron sword to slash at the trees. We had been taking intervals so that we could take breaks when we got tired of slashing. Now it was my turn to make a path.

Clarisse was beside me helping me as well.

My sword felt cold in my fingers. Of course, it has always been cold, so it wasn't much of a surprise, but this time it was pulling me back to reality.

Somehow, the sword was pulling me into the present. Ever since I had gotten here, it felt like I was in a stupor-like it wasn't me who was doing all of this, but someone else.

It brought me to the fact that I really didn't want to be here.

I didn't know how the hell I had gotten here anyways. I was just getting into a lead on how I could see my mom, and I was pulled here randomly. I had been within hands reach of the answer, and it was ripped from my fingers. I had been so close and now I was here.

I slashed angrily at a poor tree.

We were sent here to die. I was sure of it. I knew from the minute we got here. Only one person is meant to survive here. I could feel it. And I knew with my luck that I would probably not be that person.

I let all my anger and frustration out and cut the next thick tree brach cleanly in half.

I heard someone walk up behind me and realized that it was Thalia.

"Hey, you all right?" she asked, concerned.

I sighed and said, "Yeah, I'm good."

She nodded and didn't say anything gas I continued to slash away. I think she realized that I really didn't want to talk right now. She fell in step behind me once again with Grover and Rachel.

No one talked at all as we were venturing through the forest. And to say the truth, we hadn't gotten anywhere. We hadn't found a clearing to stop and rest in or even find food.

I had all about lost all of my hope.

Though, travelling with Thalia and the others had given me a sliver of hope. That maybe we could find food and maybe the other half bloods and I would all survive this horrible turn of event, but there were way too many maybes for my comfort.

I had tried to explain this to Thalia once. I had tried to tell her that I could sense that this all wouldn't end well, but it didn't work. She had lashed out at me, saying that I was stupid for thinking that way and that I was being selfish thinking that we wouldn't survive.

It had gone quiet after that.

After that outburst, none of us said another word, thinking about what our fate would be in this place.

Thalia did come up to me half an hour later and apologized. I accepted her apology, but I was still a little mad at her for lashing out at me like that. Though, I knew I couldn't blame her for getting mad. This place was making us all on the edge of our emotions, and hope was all we had.

A little while later, my grudge against her was gone and I turned less cold toward her ad we were once again on talking terms. I think the rest had noticed my grudge because after I started talking to Thalia again, they all visible relaxed as if a weight had been lifted off the air. We had talked a bit more after that, but we all didn't really feel in the mood to talk.

So naturally, Clarisse and I were slashing away while the others walked behind us, not uttering a word.

About a half hour later, I felt sweat dripping from my forehead. It was as hot in the desert was in the forest, except that it was humid here as well. That made it all the worst. I let out quiet grunts as I swung my arms trying to clear the path. I heard Clarisse doing the same. It was almost time for us to switch roles with Thalia and Rachel. Rachel would be using one of her knives. She did have a little experience with them, because after all, you could never live in Camp Half Blood and not have experience with any sort of weapon.

A few minutes later, Clarisse and I switched with Thalia and Rachel. We fell to the back of the group with Grover. I went to the very back, not really wanting to walk with anyone.

I swung my sword at some trees behind me just for the sake of it. I hated feeling helpless-like I could do nothing to help the rest get out of here. I've never felt helpless like this, not even when Bianca died. At least I could do something then.

It was a strange feeling and I decided that I hated it.

As I was walking, I passed some strange looking vegetation. I saw this one tree that looked like a bumblebee crapped on it. It had black and yellow stripes going up and down the trunk. They were subtle, but you could still notice the stripes. I knew better than to touch it of course, so I just walked past.

A few minutes later, I approached a tree different from the rest. It was radiating something-like a rainbow glow of some sort while the trunk was brown and the leaves were green. It was oddly beautiful. No one else seemed to notice the glow of the tree.

I walked toward it slowly, almost like I was in a trance or something. I couldn't stop myself. It was like I was watching myself go up to this tree from afar-like it wasn't me. I was detached from my body.

I saw myself reach out my arm and touch the tree bark. The others didn't notice what I was doing yet.

I tried to stop myself from touching the bark, but I couldn't. I knew it could be poisonous, but I couldn't do anything. I knew this could only end badly, but I couldn't stop it.

I tried to pull my hand away, but all I did was hesitate a fraction before I touched it. I felt something like lightning course through my body. My hair stood on end as was fried from the inside out. White hot pain flowed throughout my entire body. My hands and legs went numb and I couldn't feel anything anymore. I felt myself sink to the ground and crack my head on the floor of the forest.

The last thing I heard before I sunk into oblivion was someone calling out my name and a deafening shot through the air that almost sounded like a cannon.

Then I sunk into the sweet darkness.

…..

The first thing I noticed as I woke up (or at least I thought I woke up, it felt like I had just closed my eyes for a second) were the noises and the smells.

Around me, I heard the strange clatter of bones which I've heard too much before. It was a strange click click, like the chatter of a skeleton or a ghost in the fields of asphodel.

The next thing I noticed was the smell. It smelt like the dead. Of course, I could smell dead almost every day since people died almost every second, but this was different.

There was so much dead.

It was almost overwhelming. It was all around me. Engulfing me, surrounding me. In fact, if I didn't know any better, I would've thought that I was dead as well, but of course I couldn't be. I had to be with the other half bloods in the forest.

Finally, I opened my eyes.

I did not like what I saw.

I was in a line with a bunch of other people. A bunch of dead people.

To be utterly specific, I was in the underworld waiting to be judged.

I knew where I was, the moment I opened my eyes. I had been here too much to forget how it looked. But I'd always come here on will. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't come here in the middle of a crisis situation with the hunger games or some next shit.

I looked down at myself and found something I really wished wasn't true. My hands looked like they were see-through. I could see right through them and saw the floor beneath. My eyes widened in shock. I have seen a lot of people who looked like this. They were all dead.

Could I be dead?

I couldn't be dead! I was with the Half Bloods just minutes ago! I was sure of it.

The fragments slowly came back to me. I had touched that strange looking tree and now I was here. Was I dead because I had touched a tree?

Wow, what a stupid way to die. I always thought I would go down fighting with my friends. Not by touching a goddamn tree.

I knew it was a bad idea from the start. I knew touching the tree would never bring me any good, but I had no choice. But still…how could I be dead. I felt alive…I felt conscious. I tried talking to the dead guy behind me and found out that I could still form words. I wasn't talking in the clatter of the dead people.

Maybe that was an advantage that came with being the son of Hades.

The line moved forward ever so slowly. I took another step forward and waited once again in the line of death. I tried to step out of line, but something was preventing me from doing so. It was like I was faced with an imaginary barrier.

I had to find a way to get out of here.

What about the other half bloods? I needed to help them win!

I had to get out of here somehow.

I was thinking of just booking it and running, but where would I go? Its not like I could escape the underworld.

I had no where to go and I was trapped.

For now, I had no choice but to wait in the death line and hope that something would happen soon. The line shuffled along slowly and I was dying (quite literally) on the inside. I hated not being able to do anything.

I took another step forward in the line. It had been at least another ten minutes and I could faintly see Cerberus in the distance, guarding the gates. I had seen him many times before, but always when I was alive. Never when I was actually dead. I still couldn't believe it.

Suddenly, in the distance I heard the flapping of wings. I could recognize that sound anywhere. It was a fury. I had seen them enough to know that whenever they appeared, it was never for something good.

I waited in anticipation, hoping that they wouldn't land near me, but of course with my luck, I was wrong. I saw it flapping its wings to come in for a landing and it came to a stop right next to me.

It was a hideous thing, with its wings all skeletal and its strange body all rotten. I had never gotten used to the fury's appearance before, and I knew I never would.

"Nico, son of Hades, come with me," She said in a raspy voice.

She waited. At first I didn't know what to do, but then I realized that she wanted me to follow her. I stepped out of the dead line tentatively and found that I wasn't stopped by that invisible barrier anymore.

As soon as I stepped away from the dead, they started to clatter and clack as they noticed that I could escape. They all started to try and push out of the line, but they couldn't. The barrier was still stopping them. It slowly got louder until all I could here was the clatter of dead speech.

To silence them, the fury screeched into the air of the underworld. It was animalistic and raspy, but it worked. The dead silenced and stopped trying to escape. They stood back in their lines as if nothing had happened.

I looked back at the fury, waiting for her to do something. When I turned my attention back to the dead and I suddenly felt something sharp on my back. The fury had grabbed me with her sharp talons. She beat her wings and started to fly away with me dangling from her claws.

"Whoa, whoa. Hey!" I exclaimed in surprise as she lifted me up into the air.

"Where are we going?!" I shouted at her as we flew away. She didn't answer me.

We kept flying through the air, my "invisible" hair flowing in the wind. A couple minutes later, I realized where we were going. In the distance, I saw Hades's grand palace standing like a castle overlooking its kingdom. It was such a contrast between the flat of the underworld.

The fury carried me to the doors of the palace and set me down, none to gently at the entrance.

As I got up from the floor of the cold ground, I looked behind me and noticed that the fury was long gone.

"ok…" I muttered.

I walked up to the huge doors and stared at them for a few second. I then sighed and said, "Well, here goes nothing."

I pushed open the doors with the palm of my hand and they budged ever so slowly with an ominous creaking sound. The doors opened to reveal a huge throne room. In the throne room was a single chair turned around to face a hearth. I cautiously approached the chair, not really liking where this was going. I knew Hades was sitting on it of course.

"Hello Nico," said Hades in an equally ominous, dark voice.

"Um…hello?"

"Come here," he said as he turned around in his chair. He was in human form, thankfully.

As he turned around, I saw his face for the first time. It looked gaunt, as if he had a thousand burdens on his shoulders. I knew something was wrong. His shoulders were slumped and his eyes didn't have the dark, evil fire shining in them that they usually had. Now they were more like black voids.

I walked over slowly to him and once I was ten feet away, I stopped. I didn't bow either.

"What happened?" I asked curtly.

I saw a very small flicker of hurt flash briefly though his eyes, but it was quickly replaced with the black nothingness once again.

"You're dead," he said, a bit surprised, more like a statement rather than a question. I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach.

"Yeah." I said, as curtly as possible. I was determined to stay as cold and calculating as I could.

"How are you here?" he asked, actually having the decency to look confused.

"I died." I said in the most sarcastic tone I could muster up.

"You're supposed to be in the hunger games!" he roared, actually showing some emotion for once.

I paused, about to retort when I realized something.

He knew about the hunger games.

How did he know? The gods surely couldn't know about it, could they? Oh, who was I kidding? Of course they knew. They probably don't care and think that we can win it without any help at all from them.

"Yeah and I died." I finally replied.

Hades sighed deeply. He probably found out by now that I wouldn't let up with the attitude.

"Are the gods even trying to help?" I exclaimed.

"Yes we are. We're trying to find out where you are. And we still cant intervene with a half blood's quest."

"Quest?! What quest?! Does this look like a quest to you?" I shouted.

I saw a dark flame flicker in Hades eyes, but it was quickly extinguished once more.

"It is not a quest." Hades agreed, shifting slightly in his chair. "You were pulled into it forcefully."

"No shot…" I muttered. "And what about Luke? How did he escape the underworld?"

Hades eyes grew darker that they ever were before.

"That I do not know. It is a magic older than us gods." He paused. "Or a technology far more advanced then we could ever believe. I do not know."

Hades grew quiet for a while. I didn't say anything either.

Finally, Hades said, "We do no know how this happened. We did not know that the future has the power to do this, but now we know that even the future of our own world could be our enemy." He paused, as if he was thinking over what he was going to say next.

"Not only one person has to win."

I frowned up at him, half with anger and half with confusion. That was impossible. Someone had to win. They couldn't have more than one winner.

"How?" I asked. "The point of the game is to kill everyone until there is only one person standing."

"There is a way." Hades repeated. "You just have to find it."

"Well that's a lot of help." I said, being very snarky.

Hades gave me a dark dangerous look and I figured that it was best if I didn't say anything else.

Hades sighed. "I will cast you back to the world of living. But you have to promise me one thing. The only way to escape is by allying with the avengers. If you do not, there will be no chance at all."

I stared at Hades strangely. The avengers? The half bloods and I had enough to worry about without the avengers getting in our way. We didn't even know who the hell these people were and what they could do. What if they turned on us if we did join them? And where are we supposed to meet them anyways?

"Just promise me this one thing, Nico" For the first time since I arrived here, he called me by my first name. I looked up and saw something different in those dark eyes of his. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was different. I softened a little bit and though about what he was talking about.

It did make sense. If we joined the avengers, we would have power in numbers. And all of half bloods together could kick their ass any day for sure. So I said, "Okay."

I heard Hades sigh in relief, but that was all. No show of emotion farther than that. I looked for a sign of reassurance in his face, but found none. Who was I kidding? Hades never showed softness. Not even to his own son apparently.

"I will send you back now." Hades said as he turned his throne chair around to face the fire in the hearth once more.

A few second after he said that, I felt something like the sucking of air pulling at my body. I was being harshly pulled away from the throne room. I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I finally gave in to the winds.

The last thing I heard Hades say was, "Goodbye Nico."

He sounded melancholy, as if her were never going to see me again. I didn't have time to think about it before I was sucked into the strong winds. The next thing I knew was a deep, dark black, just Hades' eyes.

…..

I opened my eyes.

Someone was shaking me harshly. Who was it?

My eyes opened sluggishly, like they were glued together. Once they did open, I saw the silhouette of four people surrounding me.

I realized that I was on the soft ground of the forest. How did I get here? That's when I slowly remembered what happened.

The three silhouettes slowly came into focus and I saw Rachel, Thalia and, Grover and Clarisse. Thalia had been shaking my shoulder the entire time.

"I'm up, I'm up…" I mumble in a stupor. Thalia stops shaking me.

I push myself up with my hands into a sitting position but as soon as I did, I started feeling woozy. I saw black spots swim into my vision.

"Hey, take it easy." I heard Thalia say as she held my shoulders with her hands.

I groaned. "What happened?"

"Well, you touched a tree and you fell." Rachel said, quite bluntly.

"And then there was this weird cannon sound." Clarisse stepped in.

"Yeah, I heard that…" I mumbled.

"And then, your face appeared in the sky," said Grover finally.

Thalia sighed. "You weren't breathing. You were dead." She looks me in the eye and I see a glimmer of hurt and concern, but it quickly disappears.

My eyes darken. "I know." The others look at me strangely. Finally, Rachel says, "What happened?"

"I was in the underworld." I reply. "I was dead and was waiting to be judged. Then one of the furies took me to see Hades."

"Wait so you were dead?" Thalia asked, looking a bit shocked.

"Yeah."

"And you saw your dad." Grover says, more like a statement than a question.

I frowned when he said "dad". He wasn't my dad. He would never be my dad.

"Yeah."

"What did he tell you?" asked Clarisse.

"He told me to promise that we would join the avengers. I have no idea why, but he said that the gods didn't know that this had happened until now. They just found out that this happened and he said that he didn't have enough power to help us."

"Well that's useful." Thalia muttered with a dark look on her face. "But what about the avengers? Those people who were at the cornucopia with us?"

"Yeah. And we have to find them." I said grimly.

"But how can we trust them? And where are we supposed to find them?" Grover asked, annoyed.

"That's what I asked…" I said softly.

"He didn't tell you how, did he." Rachel knowingly stated.

"Ding ding ding!"

"Now that's really helpful." Thalia said, loaded with sarcasm.

There was another second of silence, before I spoke again.

"He also said that we could get out of here without anyone dying."

"Yeah? And how are we supposed to do that?" Clarisse asked, bitterly.

"I don't know. Hades didn't tell me."

There was another stretch of silence as I slowly got up off the floor. I swayed a little, but Thalia steadied me.

I looked up at Thalia. She had a look in her eyes like she was trying to figure out what do next. Like she was lost.

Rachel saved her. "Come on; let's go find a clearing to sleep in."

And find a clearing we did. Half an hour later, found us settling in a gap through the trees.

I had learned my lesson now. No touching anything that was glowing.

I sat down on the jungle floor. It was warm here at night, unlike the desert. The ground was soft because of the many leaves. It was a lot better than sleeping in the desert.

As I placed my sword next to me, I drifted off into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

Phew, finally!

Sorry it took long. I had to do an essay for my English class and it took forever.

The next chapter is Percy's pov with Annabeth and Bruce!

And please, review! It brings joy to my pitifully boring life!
-detective DG