.

Nico studied and played mythomagic throughout the following days- his fingers knew the cards just as well as the knew the crumbling pages of the Italian-English dictionary.

There was a dance going to be held at the end of the month, to celebrate the start of a successful school year. To Nico, the way the year had come along was like pulling teeth. Nico wondered when it was going to end.

Bianca, he knew, was excited for the dance.

They had only spoken twice since that second day of school, and Nico spent as much time as he could in the library, not to ignore her, at least not that he would admit.

Being near Bianca was like being at home after someone else had lived there. It wasn't any different on the outside, and the inside was mostly unchanged, but there was something different hanging in the air that had warped it beyond the point to where home was almost not recognizable to Nico. Bianca was different, like a similar but not quite the same forgery of the real person.

She was still his sister, but there was nothing to talk to her about, nothing he could share about his finds on the past century that she wouldn't dismiss or look at him oddly for. He couldn't ask her about the Greek mythology, about their life at home in Venice, she just wouldn't listen. She knew something was wrong, but she didn't know what was wrong, and that was useless to Nico.

Nico wasn't excited for the dance, and was hesitant to see his sister there. He didn't have a choice.

Anthony dragged him to the dance- not to ogle girls, no, they were ten and that was far too gross for them- because that was how they were going to get dinner that night, and while Nico certainly had started to look like he'd skipped one too many meals, Anthony wouldn't.

"C-Come on." Anthony pleaded. "We just g-go in, get the f-food, and get out."

Nico didn't seem so convinced. He looked around at the entrance of the dance, which had barely started, and the people inside. Most of them seemed to be older students, like Bianca's group and another group of boys that Nico had briefly seen in the halls. "Are we even allowed in?"

"It's a s-school dance." Anthony told him. "Haven't you e-ever been to one? They're open to the entire s-school."

"Oh." Nico said. "No, I haven't been to one."

Anthony shrugged. "A-Ah. Let's just g-get some food."

Nico and Anthony slid across the walls, trying to avoid the groups in the middle. It wasn't hard for Nico to spot Bianca in the midst; she was wearing a bright yellow floppy hat that Nico had never seen before. A boy and his friend were standing close to her, whispering anxiously to each other, shooting glances at Bianca, which had all of Bianca's friends laughing.

"Neither of them better hit on my sister." Nico mumbled under his breath, scowling at the two.

"W-What?" Anthony asked, as they approached the food table.

Nico shook his head. "Nothing." He waved Anthony off.

.

.

It wasn't nothing, Nico learned. So maybe they didn't hit on his sister, but the two definitely changed the game.

Dr. Thorn was killed by some kid (the same one with his friend who had goat legs- Nico knew because of Anthony that the goat guy was a satyr) and their friend had fallen off a cliff, and suddenly there were Huntresses and his sister was going with them and he couldn't come with, and it was too much for Nico.

Nico, the forgotten kid who was curled up next to the goat-boy, who had introduced himself as Grover, shuffling his Mythomagic cards in his hands absentmindedly as he watched the other boy, Percy, argue with the Huntresses. Nico didn't even look at his sister when she left with some of the girls, although he knew that she looked back at him.

There was too much going on, and Nico was told kindly by Grover to go grab his things from his room before he left.

"We're not coming back?" Nico asked.

Grover shook his head. "Sorry, kid- uhm, what was your name again?" Grover seemed sheepish. Goatish. Whichever. "You're coming with us to Camp, it's a place for people like you."

Time travelers? Nico wanted to blurt out.

"Nico Di Angelo." He told Grover. "And what kind of people am I?" Nico nearly sighed at his grammar, it didn't sound right to his ears and embarrassed him slightly. Just when I thought I was getting a hang of English.

"Halfbloods- sons and daughters of the Gods and Goddesses."

"Greeks." Nico filled in.

"Yeah." Percy shuffled over to the two of them, and Nico didn't look at the other boy. He was maybe a year older than Bianca, thirteen, and he was tall with dark wavy hair and very, very intense blue eyes, and Nico nearly ran as soon as he saw him.

That's disgusting. He told himself. Not natural, don't think about it. You're normal. Just because he's kind of handsome doesn't mean anything. Nico wanted to hit himself. I'm ten.

"R-Right." Nico turned. "I better grab my stuff."

"Be careful." Grover called after him, and Nico gave him a tiny smile.

.

.

He had three pairs of clothes, two history textbooks, Relevant Inventions of the Past Century, and the Italian-English dictionary shoved in a bag he got from Anthony. His mythomagic cards were stuffed in his jacket. As soon as Nico stepped outside he was hustled back over to the Huntresses, where he was pushed into another corner and forgotten.

Nico was used to it.

Bianca was in a tent with Percy and the goddess Artemis, planning or plotting or something that Nico wasn't included in and doubted he would be. Grover was napping by the fire, ignorant to some of the girls laughingly placing flowers all over him. Nico figured that when he woke up he'd be a bush.

There was a wide berth around Nico, but he could hear some of the whispers. "Quiet", "shy", "little brother" was what he heard often, and Nico bowed his head and shuffled his cards.

Halfblood. Nico repeated in his head. Halfblood.

Who was his father?

Nico paused his shuffling. He stood up, and headed over to Grover, and gently shook him awake, crouching around next to him. Nico felt bad for a second at Grover's sleepy face, but there was so much missing and so much confusion running through Nico, it covered the guilt.

"Sorry to wake you." Nico apologized. "Who's my father?"

"Father?" Grover yawned. "It could be anyone. Hermes, Apollo, Ares-" Those didn't sound right.

Hades. Nico thought.

"What about Hades?"

Grover sat upright. "The Lord of the Dead?" Grover's eyebrows raised, and he looked around for a split second. "You shouldn't suggest such a thing."

"Why not?" Nico was confused. Hades seemed right to him, he had seemed right to him ever since he first talked to Anthony about Mythomagic and that terrible River Lethe, and now that Nico was apparently related to one of them, well, it made sense didn't it?

"About sixty years ago the Big Three made a pack- the Big Three being-"

"Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. I know." Nico interrupted.

Grover nodded. "The Big Three would not have anymore children with mortals, because they were too powerful and too big of a risk. Of course, that didn't last very long. Percy is the son of Poseidon, and there was a daughter of Zeus, Thalia, but she died four years ago."

"Oh." Nico said.

"Yeah, you see why you can't say that about Hades? If you said that he didn't keep his oath, it'd be blasphemy!"

Nico stood up from where he was crouching next to Grover, and dusted off his pants. "Hades kept his oath." Nico said blandly. "He kept it alright."

Grover watched him in bemusement as he left.

.

.

The Huntresses moved fast. They got them down from Maine to New York in one day, although how Nico didn't understand (he figured maybe it was an eighty-years-later-technology, or possibly just a supernatural thing, so he didn't question it), but it was an enjoyably quick ride down the coast.

They entered through the forest, far away from the road that Grover told Nico was due north of them. They arrived sometime in the late afternoon, when all the other campers were eating dinner, and Nico felt almost as out of place standing outside of the dining pavilion as he did his first time standing onstage helping his mother during one of his mother's shows.

He could hear the whispers of "The Hunters!" and "Percy and Grover are back!" but as soon as people caught sight of him their whispers were quieted and they turned back to their meals.

Nico was too exhausted to be offended.

He was ushered inside of the Big House, where there was a disgruntled god- Dionysus, Nico was filled with childish awe, oh my god that's a God- and a centaur waiting to introduce him, and Nico accepted to watch the welcoming video, because there wasn't much he was too unsure about, but nothing quite distinguishably known either.

"So, we'll get claimed?" Nico tested, after he watched the video. "By our parents? At some time?"

Chiron nodded. Nico absentmindedly wondered how the centaur got up and down stairs. "Yes. Do you by any chance have any idea who your parent could be?" Chiron asked.

Nico hesitated. Grover seemed offended almost, and what if he was wrong? (He could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.) "Had-." He paused. "I don't know." He needed to stop making enemies wherever he went.

Chiron caught his slip up, Nico could tell by the way his eyebrows quirked downwards, just like his old math teacher did. Nico hoped the old bat was in having a good time in Heaven.

"Well then." Dionysus interrupted. "Nathan, go with-oh, what's his face- Lucas Castaway."

Chiron saw Nico's puzzled look. "Luke Castellan. He's the head of the Hermes Cabin."

"And my sister?" Nico couldn't help but ask.

Chiron put his hand on Nico's shoulder. "There's nothing about her we can do."

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