LIFE OR DEATH DODGEBALL

Hello, one and all! It's time for the second season of Yiannis Cirillo And His Abnormal Life! Is everyone ready?

I sure was not.

It's been a month since the whole fiasco with the gods. I discovered I had two godly parents and that I was destined(possibly) to destroy(and somehow save?) Olympus. I made a new friend, Vittoria, and with her and Helen, we traveled across the US to get the master bolt back to Zeus(although it was counterfeit). Then, there was that beautiful scene at Olympus, and by that, I mean an intense screaming competition. Poseidon and Hades were yelling at Zeus for being a jerk to them, and both of them decided to break their ties with him. Hades took it one step further and broke ties with all of Olympus, joining me and my other father, Kronos, in our insurrection.

During that chaotic time, I had made one real friend besides Julien: Vittoria. She lived in DGH, so I visited her when I could and texted her when I could not. Helen had bonded with her as quickly as she did with Amelia, so there was also that. But on the flip side, I had made many enemies I would rather not have. Zeus hated me, and Ares wanted my head. A cult of fanatical Zeus worshippers was aiming for my back. A potential member of that cult was sitting beside me right now: Julien.

After I spoke to him privately about the cult and Nathan, the two of us have grown more distant. It just increases my suspicion. Vittoria told me that Julien callously shrugged off the death of one of her friends, Anna, which I find disturbing. What happens if he does the same to me? Should I trust Julien and try to get our relationship back to what it was, or should I consider this separation a boon and move onward?

I decided to pick neither and just observe Julien for now. If I stuck too close to him, he might get annoyed. If I was too far apart, he would think that something is amiss and that I'm up to something. He might follow me in secret and eavesdrop at a horrible time, like when I talk to Vittoria on the phone in private. That was a big no-no.

Luckily, I had backup. George was a double agent. He was with the cult, but who was actually a double agent. George usually gave me updates on the situation at DGH, and right now, none of the spies had been found. Nathan only just knew of their existence. He couldn't find a lead, not when he was being misinformed by his own. Nick was also a double agent, but he stayed at DGH with Vittoria. Right now, the only ally I had at school was George, who sat in between Julien and me.

The three of us had just come back from ordering at Jay's. Julien got a shrimp burrito, George a grilled chicken salad, and I got some steak nachos. Today, I was absurdly hungry, and I had to supplement what I bought with school food. "Hey, Julien, did you do the math homework?"

Julien nodded. "You should do your own homework for once, Yiannis. You'll fall behind."

"Yeah, no. Geometry's pretty simple; I don't need to study for it. Also, I want more time to myself, so I'd prefer to do the homework during lunch than at home. It helps that my best friend is kind enough to give me a free answer sheet."

"I suppose." Once he gave me his homework, George and I jotted down his answers and faked our work to make it look like we actually tried, which we did not. George breathed deeply. "Ever since I started hanging out with you two, my grades have been steadily improving. I learn more from your homework than I ever do in class. And Yiannis here says this is no sweat."

"That's because I am big-brained," I touted. "Jokes aside, your grades are pretty good. I'm not sure why you or so many kids here complain about a ninety so much. We have people here who can't manage a seventy."

"Those are exceptions. nI this school, the overall average is ridiculously high. We're talking about a ninety-three at the very least."

"You can be laxer if you do good on SATs and APs, right?"

"Yeah," Julien said. "You can be even laxer if you're in a leadership role in some extracurricular activity."

"Leadership roles are too much work," George complained. "I can handle the SAT, but I'm not too sure about APs."

I shrugged. "An AP exam is not that different from an SAT, not in my eyes at least. Both are perceived as hard, and both require some studying."

"Sure, but you think they're both easy, don't you?"

"Yeah. I'm taking my first SAT this year. I want to get it over with as soon as possible, and I feel like I can get a top score right now. What about you guys? Julien, you got a fifteen hundred on a practice test, right? Want to take it together?"

"I'll pass. I'm not taking it unless I get at least a fifteen-eighty on another test. That way, my chances of getting a coveted score will be higher."

"As diligent as ever, I see."

"And nothing like me, I see!" George whined. "Am I the only ordinary one here? To my left is a studyholic and to my right is a low-key genius."

"I don't study that much," Julien disagreed. "Just four hours a day."

"That's too much!"

The bell rang. Julien and I said our goodbyes to George and walked to our lockers. We shoved our bookbags into them and walked up a flight of stairs, entering the gymnasium. The teacher had told us we were going to play dodgeball.

I wish I had been informed beforehand that it was going to be a life-or-death game.

My teacher, Ms. K(her last name is long and hard to pronounce, so she tells us to call her by an initial), took attendance. My class had been divided into two, and each of us was equipped with a deflated soccer ball. As the rule of dodgeball goes, get hit, and you're out. Whichever team had more players remaining by the end of the period was to be the winner.

I've sparred with gods and held my own against them. You'd think that with the immortal blood running in my veins, my physical abilities are insane and that my team would undoubtedly be the winner. While that's true, I can't show them off in the human world. I'd get too much attention, with news outlets highlighting how a kid has superhuman abilities. Or maybe the mist will warp their perceptions, and they'll see something else, which might get me even more unwanted attention. The old me didn't care much about sports and kept his bum on the bench, and so would need to maintain that appearance. Julien usually sat with me, but he wanted to play this time around. So, like a caring friend, he abandoned me on the bench for some meager entertainment.

What a jerk. Why is Julien so cold to me nowadays?

The game quickly devolved into a mess(what did you expect from a big crowd of young, hormonal monkeys?). Soccer balls moved so fast they looked like they were teleporting, and they were all over the place. In the first minute, half the class was out. The remaining half had used them as a meatshield, which was an amusing spectacle. Now there was actually space to dodge. In dodgeball, Julien was a sniper. He always had perfect aim. Julien hit someone in the crotch, and I sympathized with him. Poor soul; if he'd only been smart enough like me and sat this game out. His future children could have been preserved.

Halfway through the period, there were six people on either team. But something made me shiver. There was nothing wrong with Julien's team, but I couldn't say that for the other one. The kids on that team were odd. Aside from looking like hyenas, their bodies also had black spots on them, and it didn't appear to have come from some disease. I eyed Julien. He seemed to have noticed it as well because the smile on his face vanished. He picked up one of the balls on the ground and threw it at one of the kids.

That's when things started to go south, and my other life began to interfere again. Those six hyena-looking kids(I will refer to them as hyenas from now on) were cannons. They threw soccer balls so fast that they broke through walls. They most certainly weren't mere mortals, and they might not be mortals at all.

Kids screamed. The gym teacher whistled, saying the game was over, but one of the hyena kids threw a ball in her face, severing it from her body. My classmates tried to make a break for the exits, but many were pulverized to the ground. If Julien hadn't been here, I would have frozen time, then cut off those kids' heads. So I had to improvise.

I jumped down from the bench, narrowly avoiding a soccer ball that formed a crater. I gripped Julien's arm and dragged him behind the now very deformed bleachers. "Hey, what's going on?" I asked. "Are those kids demigods? Monsters?"

"Probably monsters," Julien said. "If there were other demigods besides you, me, and George, I would have known."

"Alright, then what should we do? We can't slash them with our swords in public, can we?"

"Maybe. We demigods can control the mist. I can just make it look like we're beating them up." He felt around his pockets. "Damm it. I left my sword in my bookbag. I'll likely die here before I get anywhere near it."

I pressed my hand on the wall. "Easy fix." As the son of Hades, I could solidify shadows and create whatever my mind conjured. I made two black longswords and tossed one to Julien. "Thanks, Yiannis. Your power's pretty handy. I kind of wish I was a son of Hades."

"Kind of?"

"Zeus is the strongest of all the gods, and so his children triumph Hades'. I'm not trading that for a weaker legacy."

That depends on what constitutes in your mind as "weak." Zeus was rotten filth, undeserving of his throne, as well as the other Olympians. The strongest god tried to kill me but instead zapped my mother to death and crippled my younger sister. He feared that as Hades's son and someone prophesized to save Olympus, I would go against him. Zeus was just a coward, plain and simple.

Julien cocked his head. "What's wrong, Yiannis? You're glaring at me." I shook my head. "No. Sorry about that."

"It's cool. So, how do you want to deal with those kids?"

"I would like to get the other kids out of here, but I don't think we can do that while fighting them. Those hyenas are likely to keep throwing stuff at us, so all we need to do is avoid them. The issue is there are two of us and six of them, which improves their odds of hitting us." We would have to avoid more than one ball every instant they threw. If we got close to them, they'd have no trouble hurling a ball at us, and we would die in the same way as our former gym teacher. I could stop time, but I didn't want to use it in front of Julien. I couldn't trust him, and to be frank, we weren't friends anymore. We were enemies. I sided with Kronos and vowed to topple the gods. Even so, I couldn't kill him. I wouldn't be able to do it, and it would be an ill move on my part. I only recently proved my innocence to Nathan. If Julien is a watchdog on his behalf, killing my best friend would make me suspicious all over again. And I didn't want to. I wanted to believe that Julien cared for me, that he wouldn't fling me aside like Anna, the way I would eventually have to discard him.

"I have a plan. But I need you to do some things for me, Julien."

"Sure. What's the genius come up with this time?"

"Stop calling me that. I'm some outstanding prodigy. Anyways..."

Julien and I popped out of the bleachers. The stench of blood hung in the air. Corpses lay on the floor, some of them mangled. It looked like they had been bitten. When I saw the blood on the hyenas' mouths, I put two and two together. Human flesh was their choice of meat.

The hyenas snarled at us, their mouths dripping with saliva. As expected, they immediately started the dodgeball game without even asking us if we wanted to play. But I bet what they didn't expect was to see a giant seven-foot black wall barricading us from them.

I fell on my knees, panting. Julien helped me up. "You ok? Don't overdo yourself. I can't have you die on me."

"It's fine," I breathed. "Using my powers like that just tires me out."

"But you'll collapse if you use it too much, right?" I nodded. "So I'll call a time-out for now." I opened a slit in the wall as big as my hand. "It's your time to shine, Julien."

"Right." Back when we were still camping under the bleachers, I had made a bow, some arrows for Julien. He wasn't as good of a shot as Helen, but he was still way better than me. He could actually hit things with his arrows.

Julien crouched near the opening I made. He pulled back the string and let his arrows fly. I couldn't see what was happening, but I knew from the cries I heard that Julien was doing good work. The wall I made wildly shook, but those hyenas could not break it. Using the wall was cheating, but so was using inhuman powers. It was fair game.

When Julien ran out of arrows, I was refreshed. If I was a character in an RPG, my mana had been replenished. I grabbed Julien's hand and used shadow travel to get to the other side of the wall without the hyenas noticing.

Julien had done better than I expected. He had taken out three of them, and we killed one each with our sneak attack. There was just one more hyena left, and it was the biggest of all. Julien swung his sword, but the hyena dodged it. "It would seem I'm at a disadvantage." His human body morphed into that of an actual hyena.

"A Crocotta!" Julien lunged, jabbing his sword into the hyena's leg, but it just bounced off. The hyena smacked him with his tail and whammed Julien into the wall. "Now there's just one left, and he certainly looks tasty." The big cat lunged at me, but since Julien was out of the picture, I could freeze time now, which is what I did. The hyena was suspended in the air as I observed its body. Julien couldn't slash through its skin, so it had to be super tough. But there had to be a weak point somewhere, and I thought it would be the underbelly. Thankfully, my rotten luck decided to accept me for once, and I shoved my sword into the hyena, then hacked him furiously.

What surprised me was that the hyena could still talk even after that. "You may have won... Yiannis Cirillo, but DGH is in danger. Kronos will acquire the golden fleece, and when he does, your hotel will crumble along with Olympus."

"Go to Tartarus," I retorted. The creature's body began to dissolve, meaning he was dead. But what he said stuck with me. Kronos is after the golden fleece? The one from the legends? Why didn't he tell me? and what plan did my old man concoct this time?