Chapter 1
Nico P.O.F. (Point of Focus)
Nico walked through the large school doors, his body looked small and frail. His eyes scanned the kids in the hall, seeming scared. Many of the students ignored him, but a few detached from their groups to stalk toward him like sharks. Their eyes were filled with a similar looks of bloodlust. There were about half a dozen of them, all boys. The largest one grabbed his arm. “Come on, new kid. You’ve gotta be initiated.”
Nico attempted to pull his arm out of the behemoths grasp, but to no avail. “Let me go! I need to get to class!”
This made the group of sharks laugh. “Oh you do? Well I’d hate to make you late.” his captor says before pushing open the bathroom door.
~ ~ ~
‘You did it again.’ Nico thought to himself. ‘Why do you always let people walk all over you?’ He sat on the tile floor of the bathroom, trying to hold in his small gasps of pain that came with being beat into a toilet and stall. This happened every time. Every. Single. Time. He would go to a new school, be there for a little while, maybe even make a few friends, but it would all come crashing down the minute he met a bully. He would be beaten to a pulp, left for dead, then abandoned by any of his friends.
‘No one wanted to be friends with a bullied depressed kid.’ he thought, slowly losing consciousness.
~ ~ ~
Percy P.O.V.
It was a full ten minutes into class before anyone noticed that something was off. Annabeth was the one to raise her hand. “Mr. Brunner, weren’t we supposed to get a new student today? I was supposed to show him around.”
The crippled teacher turned to her from the chalkboard. “I believe you’re right, Ms. Chase. Mr. Jackson, Mr. Solace, and Mr. Grace, would the three of you mind looking around for him? He’s probably lost or in a bathroom.”
The three of us stood up. “Yeah, we’ll be back soon.” said Jason, deciding that he was leading the charge. We walked out of the classroom and into the locker lined hall. “Alright then, Percy, you take the bathrooms. Will, you look on the second floor. I’ll look in the halls on this floor. If you find him, text me.
“Calm down, Grace. This isn’t a military operation.” Will sassed. Jason stuck out his tongue.
“Just try to find the kid.”
We split up and combed through as large of an area as we could. It wasn’t long before I heard light gasping noises from the men’s bathroom near the side entrance.
“Hello?”, I called, “Is anyone there? I’m coming in.” The sight shocked me; a frail looking, blood covered boy collapsed on the floor next to the sinks. All around him, there were red splatter marks; he had been coughing up blood.
I decided not to text Jason and Will yet. I was worried that the three of us would shock the poor guy. Upon closer inspection, I realized that he wasn’t conscious. Screw scaring him, this boy needed help. A quick, frantic message was sent to my two co-searchers. Within five minutes, they both had arrived.
“What’s the matter? Why did you say you needed medical hel-” Will stared, open-mouthed, at the kid for a while before realizing that he was the one who was medical-ey. He jumped into action, “How did this happen? Do you know the extent of his injuries? Is all of this blood his? Dammit, Percy, answer me!”
Jason caught on before Will and followed my gaze. Slowly and softly, he removed a small piece of paper with an odd symbol drawn on it. He attempted to choke out the name we all already knew.
“Gaia.”