Hello! So I hope everyone is having a great weekend! Thanks for the reviews too! It really means a lot. :) Just so you know, I'm supposed to update on Wednesday. That might be pushed to Thursday, or the chapter might be shorter than normal. I have a gig Tuesday, so I'm not sure when I'll be back, or if I'll have enough energy to work on the chapter or not. Ok, just a heads up. In case I forget to mention it on Monday (next update). Anyways, my poll is still up! I own nothing, but you can enjoy the chapter!

PS: for all you boys out there, if you're still in school and eating lunch in the cafeteria, if a girl accidentally takes your seat because she's late to lunch, don't make an argument with the entire table on why she should leave. Give her your seat and sit with some other friends. And if you don't, the least you can do is apologize and thank her for moving. And make sure that she isn't a daughter of Hades, for they are known to hold grudges. And also, if she has to move, why don't you two just move together? That way it's fair. And then she isn't sitting all alone at a table with the one friend that moved with her, feeling too awful to eat any lunch. Just a tip fellas.

Percy's POV (Percy wouldn't do that.)

When Pat turned around, I caught a glimpse of brown hair. Still shivering at the sight of my gun (still aimed), Pat announced, "My boss wants me to take you somewhere."

"And if I don't want to go?"

A new voice piped up from somewhere behind Pat. "I can always make you little brother."

Surrendering, I said, "Ok, ok. No need to insult Oldy. I'm going. I'm going."

Pat turned around and waddled out of the room. I followed in their wake, pulling the weightless chest behind me. I was too lazy to carry it. Sue me.

Trudging into th hallway, Anne led Pat and I back the way I had come. Passing doors, the rare window, other hallways branching off from this one, ans occasionally a servant. That caught my attention, because last time I was in the hallways, there were no servants around.

"Why're there so many people now?" I asked the two people in front of me. "There weren't any a little while ago."

"Yes there were," Anne answered. "You just couldn't see them. They were either in the bUNOs, waiting to be called on, or they were invisible. Moctezumal didn't like seeing the "help" everyday all day, so he cast a spell to make them invisible. They're good at moving silently as well. That way they could avoid the king. When Moctezumal died and his spell wore off, then they all ran and hid, worried at being seen. They thought they'd get the usual treatment."

"And that would be...?" I asked.

"Torture."

Anne's POV (ooh!)

I saw the look of horror on Percy's face, but it was true. We were tortured. It was awful, absolutely, but it was true.

"Do you have a problem with that?" I asked him, pretending to be offended. It's better if he thinks I live by my old ways and not the ways he (and the others) taught me.

Always honest, Percy told me, "Yes, yes I do have a problem with that. That's cruel and a horrible way to treat a human being."

I looked around. "We really aren't human beings anymore." I gestured to myself and the others. "See? Our skin is blood red. We're Aztecs, Moctezumal's people. He made us into something other than humans. We're all mutants basically. Well, not you and your friends."

Percy looked hurt. I could tell he as about to say something; but we had reached our destination by then.

"Here's your stop. You're to stay here with Pat until I get back with the others."

Percy nodded, and he and Pat walked into the room and closed the door. Turning around, I walked back down the hallway.

Its better this way. I need to distance myself, because if I do it'll be easier for them to leave me. I can't go with them to the surface.

First of all, I'm red. I'll be ridiculed, and made fun of. The worst part is that Percy would stand up for me. I'd ruin his social life, and his everyday life, just with my presence. I couldn't do that. Not to him.

Secondly, what about my family? I basically left them. I've been 'alive' for years, but not once did I stop by. My loving mother who was always there, even if she should've been off having fun and publishing her books. Poseidon, who stood by my side and cast the Mist over our family so I wouldn't have to leave Percy. I never even thought of them, let alone if sending them a sign to say I lived. And Percy, he took it so hard that I had to make him promise on my deathbed not to commit suicide and join me. He even developed a multiple personality to deal with the anguish and sorrow. At least if I stay here, they might not remember me living again.

Finally, I don't belong there. I didn't twenty years ago, when I died, and I don't think I will now. Even amongst my family that I dearly love, I just didn't fit in. Like Harry Potter at the Dursleys. Eventually, he left because he didn't like living there, and that wasn't where he belonged. I don't belong up there, normal people with normal things. Normal feelings, normal thoughts. Normal lives. Even normal skin colors. Not red. I doubt there's one single person with red skin. There might be red hair, red eyes, red fingernails, red blood and cuts. But no one has skin that's entirely red. No one normal.

I mi can't tell Lercy though. I can't let him know that I can't come. He'll be heartbroken, and I can't have my last memories of him as heartbroken. So for now, everything has to be okay. At least in everyone else's life. At least on the outside of me. Because no one, not even me, knows what the inside is like.