FicWad

Hello there, it's Atlanta. Atlanta Dara if you want to get technical. I'm everyone's favorite no-skirts-kick-butt-super-fast heroine, descendant of Atalanta the runner. Not Artemis. Artemis was a virgin. I am a descendant, see the non-existent connection? Virgin means no children, meaning no descendant.

I live in a little house that the Greek gods own and I live with five boys and one other girl. There's seven of us in all. Sounds fun, don't it? Here's the catch: We all run double-lives fighting this crazy evil god by night and then, in my case, sleeping through school and getting by with meager grades.

Meager. Odie, one of the guys I live with, uses fancy terms like that a lot. 'This schoolwork is meager' or 'Cronus's meager plans will never win him a victory against us'. Weird. I should go pick out some fancy word from the dictionary and use it a lot to annoy him.

Anyways, after a rather peaceful night, believe it or not, I'm sitting here in math class and actually able to stay awake. It's quite something, especially since I've never, and probably never will, needed numbers as an important part of my life. Oh, look, I caught one deer! I see a herd of 32 deer. I live with six friends. It all sounds so stupid to me. Hm, maybe if I counted stuff more often I'll get a sense of why I need to know all this junk. My guess is they made it up so that we have something useless to make us scream in frustration when exams come around again.

Let's see... one pencil, one big textbook, one binder for paper and assignments, one calculator... one very angry looking teacher standing over my desk. Well, maybe she counts for half. She so small she's smaller than me! I'm surprised no one has stepped or sat on her yet.

"Miss Dara! I'm sick of your daydreaming in class all the time! This is a working class, where people work hard and become fine mathematicians."

Cue my fifth lecture, out of six classes, of one day.

"Are you even listening to me?"

What? Oh, right, lecture. Look scared and nod when she pauses.

"Good, I'm glad we had this chat. Now get back to work."

Mrs. Half-a-person walked away and I closed one eye and crushed her between my finger and thumb as she stomped off. Atlanta plus a negative Mrs. Half equals nothing good.

Hey, math is actually turning out to be interesting.

I go back to my work, long enough to scribble in a doodle of her getting shot by a (one) laser. Then, I hear a wonderful and glorious sound. The bell. Which means the end of school.

"Saved!" I cry and jump up, throwing everything together in a jumbled mess. I dash out of the room and race for my locker. I when I say race, I mean literally race.

Think of the fastest person you know, then smarten up and go look in a Guinness book for the actual record, then multiply that by like a hundred, and you'll have pretty much how fast I can go. I think. Wow, it did it to me again, math I mean.

So I was at my locker and throwing my stuff into my backpack as fast as I could, while everyone else was loitering, yes I do know some fancy words, in the halls and saying goodbyes and making plans. If you don' know why, go crawl back under your rock in the middle of nowhere because Christmas Break starts today! Hurray! Freedom!

I really have no idea of what I have for homework. No need to fret- it's Christmas. I throw some books from the library into my bag and then on a second thought I grab my dictionary from the top shelf and kick my locker closed. I click the lock closed as fast as I can and then turn to fight my way through the crowds of people in the halls. Most of them very close and a lot were very, very close- if you get my drift.

You see, ever since this whole mess with the Greek god of the forest, me, teenage hormones, hypnotic music and killer plants, I've been looking for someone. Being with a guy, even if he wasn't really a human guy and was being controlled by our arch enemy, woke something up inside of me. I've tried ignoring it, but seriously, everywhere I look there are guys everywhere. Also, I'm sick of being classified as 'Single' or DD- 'Desperate for a Date'. Yet, I still can't see anyone so far who would want to be my boyfriend, or who I'd want to have as a boyfriend.

Well, that's not quite true in itself. There is Archie... Yeah, Archie Storm- currently my best guy-friend, maybe even my best friend, and also fights along side me to defeat Cronus. He's the one with the bad fashion sense, wearing a blue hoodie and blue-yellow shorts and sandals most of the time. Even said, the sandals are because pretty much nothing else fits around his ankle brace. Archie is the direct descendant of Achilles though he must not have inherited any of the womanizing Achilles is/was famous for. Archie's as dumb as a door hinge to me whenever I try to get him to notice me, in the dating sense.

It's not that I try at every turn to seduce him, and I honestly don't walk around being sexy or wearing skimpy clothes to get his attention, and thinking of that now maybe that's the reason I have no boyfriends? But it's just not me and I want someone who likes me for who I really am, me, Atlanta.

Anyways, so I started reading my dictionary aka my 'How to Annoy Odie With Over Two-Hundred-Thousand Words' book while pushing my way through tons of people.

Okay, let's see.

Abattoir... no way- that's a slaughterhouse! Abdomen? That'd make me sound creepy. Abhor? Naw, I don't talk like that. Aborning? Nope, don't like the sound of that.

I stumbled as someone crashed into me and very quickly reacted by shoving them back into the crowd. Staring at these pages was making my head hurt. See what I go through to annoy you Odie? I finally stopped reading it page by page; that was something Odie could do, and flipped it open to a random page. There was nothing good on that page either, I quickly found, and so I opened yet another page. Hopefully I'd find something good before my brain exploded.

Kith? It sounds good, but it almost seems too short. Haha, I should use kitsch on Archie sometime. Kleptomania? Sounds good- but no one I know has a 'persistent, abnormal impulse to steal'.

Onus? A burden, unpleasant duty?

Bingo.

Slamming the book shut, I threw my arms up and cheered, unfortunately, my cheer also came out.

"Yes! I found onus!"

An eerie silence followed. But thankful for me, teenagers nowadays are very well known for their short attention span. Even more thankful, I wouldn't be seeing these butt-ugly faces for a long time now.

Chatter resumed quickly and I sighed with relief.

Way to go, Atlanta. You are sooo lucky you're not coming back tomorrow.

I was about to take another step when massive, muscled arms wrapped around my stomach and the boy threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. He bowled through the rest of the kids like they were noodles... or cotton. Let's not mention food to Herry when he's on a mission.

"Hey, Herry! Put me down!" I scream. I may be used to being tossed around by giants or ancient Greek monsters, but this is just embarrassing!

"Hold on, Atlanta, we're almost through," Herry laughs. I punch him in the back for a reply.

Herry's a great big, loveable, farm-boy, teddy bear. He's as strong as anything, maybe being a descendant of Hercules might have something to do with that, but I bet he eats his veggies. Even the ones that look like they came from another planet. He's so cute though, in a teddy-bear way, with his fuzzy sideburns and his mop of brown hair. Olive skin and a huge build, I bet he's like nearly seven feet tall. But that's just me... and I'm still hovering at Five foot four.

I gave up, knowing that Herry won't let me down. That's when I noticed Odie and Neil tagging along behind Herry and sprinting a little to keep up. My cheeks began to sting form the wide grin on my face.

"Herry, put me down, I'd hate to be an onus to you," I deliberately said onus slowly and loudly, so that Odie would hear. He sighed and rolled his eyes and tried not to get caught by my trap.

"Zip it Atlanta. We just want to get out of here," he sighed.

Aside from Odie, who probably had an extra head growing in his spoof of hair, I was the shortest. And youngest. But only by a little.

Odie was African-American, had dark skin and a ferocious appetite for women. Too bad he'd already fallen in love with Calypso. That nymph who Odysseus, Odie's ancestor if you haven't guessed, stayed with for something like ten years and she's never gotten over him. He goes to see her from time to time and loves all the attention he gets from her.

Neil, even I must admit, is a walking beauty for both genders. Perfectly styled blonde hair, which he checks every thirty seconds in his three-paneled mirror, bright blue eyes and perfect complexion and designer clothes. He's everything a girl could ask for or want. Except for one thing. He loves only himself. Yup, he's the descendant of the guy they named the flower after- (or maybe his parents were at a lack of names or rushed when he was born and named Narcissus after the flower?) -Narcissus.

I pouted and remained hanging lifeless on Herry's shoulder. Suddenly, I felt a large rush of cold air on my rear and the world became blindingly white.

"Kay, Herry, put me, your onus, down! I'm done being your onus!" I called loudly, and saw Odie roll his eyes and fight the urge to correct me on my use of the word. Now, I know that it's not the coolest thing to do to bother and annoy your friends all the time, but I guess I'll have to learn that the hard way sometime. Herry isn't exactly the smartest guy around, and he knows that I like to tease Odie, but he knows how to get back at me for bugging his best buddy without really getting back at me.

"Sure thing Atlanta."

Wait, something sounded different in his voice. Like he was smug. Why hadn't he put me down right away? Was he walking to a snow pile to dump me in? Was he going to dump me into his truck (what a kind thing for him to do!) what was he planning? I tried twisting to see around him, but it was no use.

"Herry! Just put me down now!" I begged.

"Hey, Archie, catch!"

And suddenly I was airborne.

I wondered if this was what it was like to be a bird. No feeling of the ground and only air all around you. Or maybe a football after someone throws it in a nice spiral. All I needed was a good receiver, and if Herry's aim was true, then I had one.

"Ommf!"

The wind was knocked out of me and my face was pressed in the snow, but other than that I felt pretty okay. I was only a little, itty-bitty bit worried about Archie. For all the good things I say about him, he's a lightweight and a bit of a complainer. Probably just because of his heel, which causes extreme pain if he bumps it against something while not wearing his brace, but in other terms he's just a wimp.

"You're heavy," Archie mumbled, lifting his head. I grinned back at him, for a moment lost in his blue eyes. He doesn't have blue eyes like Neil; his are more grey and darker. There's nothing really abnormal about them or sparkly like you always here about with the signs of love. But they were mesmerizing in their own way, rather calming really. Or maybe it was my weird liking of eyes acting up again.

Yeah, I like looking at people's eyes. A lot. They're so pretty and, like they say, a window to the soul.

"Love you too, dork," I heard myself reply, half wishing he were saying those words to me. Without the dork would be preferable, but beggars can't be choosers.

So here I was, lying sideways across Archie's abdomen. Where had I learned that word? Right, reading my 'How to Annoy Odie' book. Back on topic, I was lying on his abdomen, staring into his eyes and playfully flirting with him. You'd think someone would sort of notice that I haven't scooted away all embarrassed-like but was feeling quite comfortable. That's not Archie.

He shoved me off into the snow, the jerk, and stood up as he dusted himself off. See what I mean by ignorant? But being the nice guy he is he pulls me to my feet and I brush myself off of loose, cold snow.

"Arch, sorry, but you're okay, right?" Herry asks as he, Odie and Neil trot over.

"Yeah," Archie snorts, "but you need to work on your throw, Herry, she hit me sideways." Archie gives Herry a friendly punch on the shoulder.

"Oh really," I feel arms grab me around the waist again, "go long, Arch!"

"Herry!" I near-shriek, "I am not a football! Use Odie as your foo- onus instead!"

I bet Odie's sick of me already. Which is good, 'cause I'll get him a nice present for Christmas so he'll know I still love him? In the brother-sister way.

"Onus?" Archie echoed, "and what is that supposed to mean?"

"It's like a burden, or an unpleasant duty," I explained. Funny, I'm still on Herry's shoulder.

"Sounds like Jay," Neil finally added in, admiring himself again in the mirror for the gods-know-what this time.

"Where are Jay and Therri?" I asked Herry.

"They finished school early so they went out," Archie replied for him.

I gasped, "Not fair!"

Archie nodded, "My thoughts exactly."

Frowning again, I realized I was still on Herry's shoulder. You'd think something like this would, I dunno, make me happy to be getting all this attention from guys? Especially these cute guys. I admit it, every guy I live with could be a good boyfriend, except maybe Neil but you know why, except I only love them in the brotherly sense. Except maybe Archie, but he's in his own category.

I wiggled on Herry's shoulder and he didn't move. Yeesh, he can be so dense sometimes! Forgotten me already, ouch. This called for drastic measures. I rolled against the arm holding me on his shoulder and the next thing I knew, I was airborne again. For about five seconds as I fell seven feet and somehow landed on my rear. Hey, maybe I'm part cat and if I'd had a longer fall I would've fallen on my feet?

"Atlanta, you okay?" Herry suddenly cried, realizing I wasn't on his shoulder anymore.

I slowly got to my feet, rubbing my hind gingerly.

"Yeah, yeah, I think I'm alright," save for my dignity, tailbone and that poor cement I fell on.

"Well, we might as well head back, I guess," Herry shrugged.

"Race you to the truck, 'Lan!" Archie called to me.

Oh, so he thinks he's going to take advantage of me because I'm injured and can't run? I think not. Just you wait buddy, I'll kick your butt with a broken, bruised butt! Now, where's the truck? I should be able to muster up enough speed to make it to the truck before I become totally immobile... hey, I don't see it anywhere. There's still plenty of cars here, and Herry's truck is very big, but I can't see it. Archie must have been thinking the same thing,

"Herry," he said, "where's your truck?"

"It's in for repairs. Needed some good snow tires and a few other little things that needed Hephaestus to look at," Herry shrugged, beginning to walk towards the Brownstone.

"What?" I heard myself demand, as did Archie, Odie and especially Neil. Wow, Neil had actually heard that? I thought he was still admiring himself. The surprises don't end.

"Yeah, besides, walking is way better for you, don't you agree guys?"

Wait, he was talking seriously? When it's like way too far below zero to be normal here and when I can barely walk? He's got to be kidding, lease let him be kidding.

"You're serious," Odie gaped. As smart as he was, Odie grew up in a warmer climate more down south. I guess he doesn't have the same immunity to cold and snow we sort-of have. Hey, I still get cold and sick in the snow. Except Archie, he doesn't get sick. Which makes it really annoying when you do.

"Completely," Herry looked at us with bewildered, hah; I used another cool word, eyes. He didn't see the problem we did. By vehicle, it took us a few minutes to drive to school, but on foot it could take, like, fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes in the killer cold. Fifteen minutes could morph into twenty minutes or even thirty because of my poor bottom. Excuse me while I go hail a taxi.

"Herry, we need o drive! It's insane to go walking in the middle of winter, we'll freeze!" Archie complained. He doesn't get sick, so you can see why I call him a whiner.

"It's way too cold. This dry air could kill my perfect complexion!" Neil shrieked. Even I can't hit pitches that high.

"Atlanta, what are you doing?"

Oh, who, me? Nothing, just standing on the side of the road with my thumb pointing in the direction I want to go. Someone, please stop. Please stop- oh! I think someone's stopping! Yes they- never mind. It was the street cleaners.

"That's illegal, Atlanta," Odie told me in his flat no-nonsense explaining voice. I snorted.

"Well I want a ride!"

I heard Herry crack his knuckles and chuckle, "That can be arranged," he said.

Help?

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Yay, new story! I've been wanting to write a story from someone's perspective, possibly Odie or Herry because they don't get all that much attention- but that'll be another time. Atlanta wanted a story and she wouldn't leave me alone!

Anyways, I'm not too good with this Point-of-View (POV) and so I tried making it a little funny, though my humor is about as fun as a needle. Not at all. But if it made you laugh or giggle at any part that's good!

And I hate to say this, because I don't think I should have to, but please don't ask about 'Demons Within Me' and when I'm going to update it. I'll let you know I'm going through a lot of difficulties with my computer and so DWM is a little hard tow rite right now. I'll get it updated soon enough though, just be patient.

Thanks again,

Demenior