Um... long time no see? So sorry about the brief hiatus I had a lack of inspiration and an abundance of school work. I'll try updating sooner from now on.
Enjoy and comment! Constructive criticism is always welcomed!
Disclaimer: I own neither Young Justice nor Heroes Of Olympus.
Nico abruptly woke up from a dreamless sleep to screaming. He turned towards the back of the van to see Hazel breathing hard and sweating, probably waking up from a nightmare. Nico climbed out of the front seat and into the back, he put his hands on Hazel's shoulders and shook her.
"What's wrong what happened?" he asked her.
Hazel took a big gulp of air but continued to breathe hard, "Me and Percy. W-we were in the… the water! He- I didn't, no, I couldn't. And Zatanna she- Zatanna!" she looked around for the magician and saw she was awake and well.
"Zatanna is fine, just calm down and tell me what happened." Nico said slowly. Hazel took another big gulp of air and retold her dream. The dream itself wasn't so weird, all demigods had crazy nightmares with mysterious meanings that will eventually come true. But the way Hazel was describing her dream was as if she wasn't there at all.
Hazel noticed Nico's confused look and cleared it up immediately, "But it wasn't in my eyes, I was looking at everything through Percy's point of view." Nico's face contorted into another confused expression, Hazel sighed, "It was like I was Percy and I was watching myself drown, I know it's really weird."
"We'll talk about your dream later, the town's up ahead." Conner grumbled. Nico could tell from the annoyance in his voice he probably just woke up too.
Nico and Hazel exchanged a look then turned towards Conner and scowled. Hazel looked at Zatanna and she nodded in agreement with Conner. Hazel looked back at Nico and nodded, Nico didn't look at anyone, he just sighed and climbed back into the front seat. "Just a little bit farther Jules-Albert." All the zombie did was nod and continue driving.
When Zatanna and Conner realized that Nico's idea of how to get them to Italy was to steal a boat and have a zombie chauffeur drive them across the Adriatic Sea, he could understand why they were hesitant. But what Nico didn't understand was why Conner was being such a colossal asshole about it. Zatanna was much less annoying and just accepted the things she didn't understand, plus Hazel liked her so he is trying to like her too.
But Conner... Conner felt the need to point out how none of this made sense or if it was "just their Team they would probably have already finish this job" and so on and so on. Nico was really good at tuning him out, but Hazel seemed to get riled up at everything he said. If he hated the Superboy then Hazel loathed him.
"That's enough Jules, stop here." The black van stopped right outside of what looked like the town square. From what Nico could see, it was virtually empty since it was pretty early in the morning. Perfect settings for them.
"Okay, everyone out." The rest of the teens followed Nico and cleared out of the van, "Hazel, do the thing." he pointed at the van.
Hazel furrowed her eyebrows at her brother, "Do the thing…"
"Do the thing please." Nico sighed.
"That's better." Hazel snapped her fingers.
"Now that that's covered, I was thinking that we cou-"
"What did you do to it?" Zatanna asked looking from Hazel to the van.
"Nothing important." Conner muttered. Hazel 's eye twitched but she managed to ignored him. She turned to Zatanna and whispered something to her that made her giggle.
Nico cleared his throat, "As I was saying, we should split up and search the whole town. Maybe we'll find a clue or something to where the chain might be." Hazel and Zatanna looked at each other like classmates who just learned they could have partners in their next project. Being the great big brother he is, Nico decided to break that up. Immediately.
"Zatanna, you'll go with me and Superboy will go with Hazel." The girls instantly ceased their giggling and looked at him.
Hazel looked ready to argue with him but hesitated for a moment, Nico used that delay to his advantage. "Holy shit are those venti!" It was a really lame distraction but it worked. Hazel, Conner, and Zatanna looked in the direction that he was pointing in hoping to catch a glance of the monsters. While his sister's back was turned he grabbed Zatanna's arm and pull her away from Hazel and Conner.
Zatanna protested, "Hey shouldn't we-"
"Nope." Nico said, not even giving her a chance to finish her question.
"I don't see anything, Nico. Nico?" Hazel turned to see her brother dragging away Zatanna. "Nico di Angelo!" she screamed, just as they sunk into a shadow.
-(Line Break)-
"So, what was the point of all of that?" Zatanna asked still winded from her first shadow travel.
"To get away from my sister, of course." Nico said with a shrug.
"Then let's never do it again." she said, but Nico made no promises.
Nico and Zatanna walked through the small town square, there weren't many people around to ask questions and there weren't many buildings to look at. Nico silently wished that he had taken Hazel with him instead of Zatanna so she could check for any odd occurrences underground or something. Or maybe the chain was made of some special material that Hazel may be able to sense. But he also didn't want to make the assumption that Zatanna was completely useless in this situation, in fact, he thought that there was something special about her. He didn't know if she was a demigod or not, but there was something about her that made Nico actually want to be partnered up with her.
Zatanna stopped walking, "This is pointless. Why don't we go search cities that actually have ties to Greek and Roman mythology, like Rome or something."
"You think I wanted to come here?" he asked her.
Zatanna got a confused look on her face. "Didn't you tell the zombie guy to take us to here?"
"Nope, all I told him to do is take the boat across the Adriatic Sea so we could get to Italy. There were a bunch of other places that would have been much easier to dock at but he choose this small town, Lecce." Nico said nonchalantly. His outward composure betrayed what he was actually thinking. What if a god was controlling Jules-Albert and made him stop at Lecce? Worst case-scenario: the god was Hephaestus and he heard them talk of using the Necklace of Harmonia against him and took the false threat seriously.
But Nico didn't say any of that, for the fear of scaring Zatanna. "I think that a god might have guided us here to help us find the chain. My guess is it's somewhere in this city." That was the best case-scenario and probably the most unlikely one. Nico knew from his experience that it was rare for a god to go out of their way to do something for a couple of lowly humans and heroic demigods.
Zatanna stood in place for a while. "So what you're saying is you think that a goddess-"
"Or god."
"Is helping us out." Zatanna stood there for a while longer, staring at her feet. At first Nico thought she was thinking this over or assessing the situation or something, but when he stepped closer he saw her lips moving silently. Was she talking to herself?
Suddenly Zatanna raised her head, "I've got it, let's go!" the magician grabbed Nico by the collar of his skull t-shirt. She continued to drag him into the empty streets of Lecce but Nico made no move to use his own legs. He primarily relied on Zatanna's strength to take him that far. Apparently Zatanna was done with his shit because she stopped pulling him and told him to get off of his sorry ass.
Of course that wasn't exactly what she said but it was close enough.
"I'm not moving until you tell me where we're going." Zatanna sighed and let go of his collar letting him fall to the ground, "Up to that church." Zatanna pointed to what might have been the biggest building in the small town. "Basilica di Santa Croce, the Church-"
"Of the Holy Cross." Nico finished, "What's there that's so important that you literally dragged me here."
"Well… my gut tells me that we should be here for some reason. If my gut could give me a hint as to what the reason is, it would be really helpful!" She said, looking up at the sky with an angry expression on her face. Her anger at the sky reminded Nico so much of a certain son of a sea god that he wondered if she was screaming at Zeus himself. Of course she wasn't screaming at her gut, because that would be ridiculous, Zatanna was talking to someone else.
Nico narrowed his eyes. Who was she talking to? Some demigods had their godly parents speak to them inside their heads, but he had never seen a demigod get mad at them. The only other person he's known to get upset about it is Frank, but he had two gods of war arguing in his head.
"You can yell at your gut later, let's go." Nico and Zatanna quickly made their way up to the church. Upon arrival Zatanna talked to herself one last time, to ask "her gut" if they were really at the right place. Nico ignored her self-debate and slowly opened the church's doors. The inside of the church had old marble pillars lining the walls and each pair of pillars held up its own arch. There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, each candle was lit giving the room an eerie kind of lighting. The pews reached from the doors all the way to the front of the church where the priest sat flipping through a Bible.
The duo walked down the aisle until they were in front of the altar with the bishop sitting off to the side. Nico looked at Zatanna to see what they were supposed to be doing. Most of what he knew about Catholicism had to do with how they handled their dead, which he realized was pretty unhelpful at the moment.
Zatanna went up to the bishop and said something in Italian quietly and quickly, Nico almost didn't catch it. Something about him confessing. Confessing about what?
And since when could Zatanna speak Italian?
"Nico," Zatanna said motioning towards the now standing bishop, "It's time to make your confessions." The fact that she purposely said all of this in Italian had Nico thinking about what she was planning. But he didn't argue, he followed the priest to the Confession Box and for a while he talked about a bunch of "bad" things he's done in his life. A lot of them were things he's actually done, but never realized were the wrong decisions to make. Being a demigod must have warped his morals a lot.
After ten minutes of confessing Zatanna sneezed obnoxiously loud, which must be the code for "I did whatever I needed to do." He uttered a small grazie to the priest and exited the box to find Zatanna standing in the exact same spot as when he entered it. He looked around suspiciously but nothing changed from when he first went in the box.
"Grazie" she said to the priest before they exited.
Once they were standing outside, Nico looked at Zatanna who had a smug smile on her face. "What was that all about? You kind of put me on the spot in there."
"I think you handled the pressure well."
"You think I handled the pressure well! What if I hadn't spoke Italian, we would've been screwed!" Nico said, slightly upset at Zatanna's impulsive actions.
"But I knew you could speak Italian."
"How'd you figure that out?"
"You knew exactly what 'Basilica di Santa Croce' meant."
"That was one phrase!"
"A very complicated phrase! Plus your full name is Italian. I heard Hazel scream it back there so I kind of made the assumption that-"
"That doesn't explain how you speak Italian."
"My dad's Italian and he taught me a whole bunch of stuff before…" Zatanna trailed off.
Nico quickly changed the subject, sensing that her father was a something Zatanna wouldn't like to touch upon. "None of this explains what you did in the church."
Zatanna's smile returned to her face, she slowly reached into her jacket and pulled out a golden goblet. Nico stared at it for a while, "Zatanna, did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?" he said deadpanning.
"Shut up," she said as she reached into it and pulled out a compass, "What's inside the goblet is what we really came here for." she tossed the goblet aside as if to prove her point.
"How'd you know that would be in the church?"
"I used to go to a Catholic school and this is a Roman Catholic church. There's this thing at church where you drink a little wine and everyone gets a little piece of-"
"No, Zatanna, I'm talking about the compass. How'd you know that the compass would be in the goblet?"
She smiled nervously, "Um… in Catholic school we learned that there is always a compass in the goblet." Nico was obviously not buying that bullshit so Zatanna tried to maneuver around his questions. "What's with all these questions, just trust me. There's no time to explain, let's get back to the van!" Zatanna tried to take a step forward but Nico blocked her path. "What are you doing? Aren't we pressed for time?"
"There's something you're not telling us. And I doubt that you've told your teammates either," Nico said firmly, "For me to trust you any further you have to tell me what's going on."
Zatanna's face suddenly became serious, "I… you're not going to believe."
"I've been through a lot, Zatanna, I doubt that there's anything you can say that I'll think is too unbelieve."
Zatanna still look really hesitant to tell him anything, so Nico decided to make her a promise. "How about this: you tell me your secret and I'll tell you one of mine. Deal?" Zatanna gave him an incredulous look but nodded in agreement.
"I'll tell you about it on our way back." she said quietly.
-(Line Break)-
"So how many people know?" Zatanna asked him.
Nico shrugged, "Just a handful of friends. I don't try to make it some big secret." Telling Zatanna his secret wasn't a big deal to Nico, in fact he didn't care if everyone knew. "But I don't go around telling everyone, either."
"What about..."
Nico didn't even have to hear the full question. "Yup, her too."
"Speaking of my sister." Nico said as he pointed at Hazel who was sitting by their black van. Conner stood, leaned against the side of the van not too far away from her, "Just ask her about what she did to the van earlier then tell her about the voice." After Nico confessed his own private affairs he made sure Zatanna told him about her own secret, which didn't come as a huge surprise him.
"Okay, but I don't know what the van has to do with the voice in my head."
"Just trust me on this one." Zatanna just nodded and looked over at Hazel.
The demigod saw them coming and walked right passed Zatanna and straight towards her brother. "Where have you been?" she yelled at him.
Of course Nico expected the smaller girl to snap at him, he did suddenly leave with her new bff without saying when they were getting back or where they were going. Plus he used shadow travel, which she and Will both call the "forbidden technique", without her permission. So Nico did the only thing he could do. Avert the attention away from himself. "Zatanna what was that?"
She looked bewildered, "I didn't say anything."
"No, I think you did. Zatanna has something really important to tell you, Hazel." he said as he pushed his sister towards the magician.
Hazel's expression changed to one of concern instead of anger, "What's wrong?"
"Well, um- I…" Zatanna began.
"I guess I'll leave you two lovebirds to talk things over." Nico said as he gave Hazel a pat on the back, before going inside of the van. While opening the passenger's door he happened to meet eyes with Conner, who immediately turned away. Nico couldn't help but wonder what it might have been like for Hazel to partner up with him for more than an hour.
Nico sat himself down in the passenger's seat and took out the compass that Zatanna stole from the church and examined it. It looked like any old fashioned compass but completely brand new, as if someone brought it from their local Walmart this morning. Was it a clue? Or was it enchanted in some way? If the goddess helping Zatanna was who he thought she was, the compass could have some mystical properties.
Nico decided that instead of staring at an old compass for twenty minutes straight, he was going to compare it to another one. Nico took out his own compass from his bag and held it right next to Zatanna's stolen one. He instantly noticed a difference. His compass pointed north but Zatanna's was pointing east.
What kind of compass doesn't point north?
And why east of all directions? What was in the east? Nico placed Zatanna's compass on the dashboard and just stared at it for a while. Then he turned towards Jules-Albert, "What do you say, Jules? Are you ready for another road trip?" The chauffeur responded with a very undead moan that must have been zombie for "anything you wish master."
Taking that as a yes, Nico rolled down his window and yelled at his companions, "Get in loser, we're going on a journey to the east."
I had a little trouble writing Nico's character, but I hope I didn't make him too OOC. Also I'm not a Conner hater I'm just trying to leave some room for character development.
Comment if you enjoyed this! A new chapter will be up hopefully earlier than 3 week from now!