"RACHEL ELIZABETH DARE!", Kimberly screamed as she chased after the redhead.

Rachel grinned as she gainned speed- swiftly escaping a flushed Kim's hands.

"It was only a prank!", the green-eyed eleven year old protested, laughing as she ran around the art studio, knocking down a few canvases and colorfully clothed mannequins as she tried to escape the thirteen year old's grip.

"Why you little---", Kim suddenly slipped on pink paint and fell on her face. The sting felt terrible? yes; her face throbbed with pain? yes; she wanted to send Rachel to Pluto's domain? Hell yes.

The little ray of sunshine stopped in her tracks, saw this and fell to the floor, howling in hysterical laughter at her humiliated face and pink splattered clothes.

"GRRRR... ",Kim growled and lunged at the redhead who screeched and threw a paint brush at her while running away.

Kim came out empty handed and gritted her teeth while clenching her hand into a fist.

"RACHEL COME BACK HERE YOU LITTLE--"

But the redhead was nowhere in sight, which led her to conclude that the little prankster had escaped.

She huffed in frustration. The girl was gone, and was probably upstairs, already hiding. That girl was an expert at that; one moment she's there, and then the next moment, while you were looking for her, she would jump from behind you and scare the living day lights out of you, with a bonus of a flying pie in your face.

Yep. It was annoying. But most of the time, the eleven-year old was tolerable... In a way...

Sighing to herself, Kim ran a hand through her annoyingly messy jet black hair. She glanced behind her and realized how messy the studio was: the mannequins were scattered around the floor, splatters of paint were splotches here and there in a pattern of colorful droplets, the racks of clothes she had made were toppled over and the art supplies stacked in the corner were not in their designated place.

It was a nightmare.

Grumbling, the green-eyed girl grabbed a mop from a nearby closet and started mopping away the paint on the floor.

-----

A sigh of relief escaped Kim's lips as she slumped on a chair in exhaustion, her muscles sore. But at least the studio was finally clean.

Not sparkling clean because, well... Because she was lazy. But it was clean enough.

'For a group of artists, we sure are messy',  she thought, frowning.

Suddenly, a blue satin dress she had designed fell from a clothes rack and it pooled on the floor, followed by the clattering sound of the clothes hanger slamming on the floor.

"Ugh!", she groaned and stood up from her chair, practically dreading every step she took towards the fallen article of clothing.

She hastily placed it back on the rack, when suddenly, a cockroach scutled past her left shoe.

You know what happens next right?

"AAHHHHHHHH", she screamed like a banshee as she bolted away from the scurrying insect. She was about to step on it when it suddenly started flying.

Screaming like a lunatic, she dashed around the room away from the flying cockroach, knocking down a few mannequins as she passed. Her hands placed over her ears, incase the creature would you know, fly into her ears.

Not a good thought.

She froze when she realized the cockroach was nowhere in sight.

She sighed in relief, that is, until she felt something weird, itchy and alive crawling up on the back of her shirt. Kim unleashed a high-pitched scream and frantically started running. The cockroach flew off her back and started flying a different direction.

Her feet stopped stepping over each other when she realized the cockroach had left her back. The girl panted and frantically ran her hand up her body, in case there was a cockroach hiding somewhere in her pockets.

Fortunately, there was none.

Sighing in relief, she rested her hand on the wall, a hand on her thigh as she leaned toward the wall, sighing in exhaustion.

And then, it happened.

A blue triangle glowed on the wall from where she stood.

Crrrrk! Crrrrk!

The sound of creaking gears, unlatching bolts and clashing metals filled her ears, she looked up, confused, not noticing the glowing blue triangle she placed her palm on. The section of the wall suddenly vanished, and with her body leaning on the now vanished wall, she fell forward into a dark tunnel, hitting her forehead on something hard-- it felt like a chain.

"Mars Almighty!", she yelped, stunned as she stumbled forward and landed in an awkward position. With great effort, she scrambled to her feet, and her eyes widened as she realized she was in complete and utter darkness.

Her feet tentatively stepped forward trying to find a way back to the studio, but the hole she had fallen through was back, at least she thought so, she couldn't see any signs of the art studio's light nor could she smell the familiar scent of paint and fabric that she grew used to smell whenever she was at the art studio.

Instead she smelled blood and something -- maybe the corpse of a rat-- that made her want to hurl.

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a wristwatch. Placing it into her arm, she tapped it twice and in a quick and fluid motion it spiraled into an round Imperial Gold sheild the size of a steering wheel.

How?

Magic, durh. She was the daughter of Hecate.

Usually, she preferred to fight with both hands, since she tended to use magic or throwing knives, or magic throwing knives to fend off enemies. But this was different.

Why?

She left her throwing knives inside her bag.

Yes she had throwing knives in her bag. But the were enchanted, so they turned to coins when she didn't use them. The only way to turn it into a deadly firing projectile, was to lift the magic.

And if you're wondering 'What if you accidentally buy something using the enchanted coins instead of the normal coins? '. That actually already happened more that once, four times actually; she had to run back to the convenience store to make up some random excuse to get her coins back.

Sighing to herself, she flashed her golden shield around, frowning when she realized she was in some sort of old corridor with dusty walls and floors. She was right; the way back to the art studio was gone.

In her mind, she suddenly heard what sounded like a goddess cackling with glee, which quickly vanished. She had no idea what it meant but it didn't seem good.

Cold air that carried the feeling of danger and evil suddenly crept up on her skin, eerily slow. She shivered against the cold wind's touch, the hairs on her arm gave a standing ovation, every nerve on her body screamed at her to get away.

Kim turned to fled, wanting to get away as fast as possible: the place literally seemed to scream: GET OUT OR DIE, having experience at being a demigod, that was a good sign to scream and run to Camp Jupiter.

Still, she couldn't help but felt drawn to the place, like it was tempting her to travel inside it, explore it's treasures and satisfy her burning curiosity-- but she didn't care, she would not let herself end up like those people in the horror movies, that one chick who stupidly says 'hello?' instead of screaming and running to the nearest priest.

Trying to calm her heart, she sat down on the dusty ground a tried to calm her breathing: she was claustrophobic ,even though the corridor wasn't narrow or anything, but she felt trapped and that was enough to shake her. She tried to use her senses. She was right; the place she was in had magical properties-- powerful magical properties actually, it was as if it was alive.

The daughter of Hecate rose to her feet and tried to rack her brain-- trying her best to recall what the place was. She searched her pockets for something useful-- a flashlight maybe, a dagger, food, the sword of Godric Gryffindor, anything really-- but all she found was a small pack of skittles and a dime.

Her eyes widened-- the dime was one of her enchanted throwing knives! Hooray for convenience!

She'd save the skittle for later, though. The weapon was a good thing too, but they weren't really good as flashlights, the shield was better, it had a more polished glow and lit up more areas than the knife, but at least if she encountered some random annoyingly strong Roman monster on the way, at least she'd have something to cut their faces off with.

Sighing to herself, she held the shield up to see what her forehead had slammed into. She screamed when she found out it was a corpse of a grown Cyclops suspended above her by chains-- shiny metallic chains that gleamed like malelovent smiles in the darkness of the corridor-; its wrists and  ankles were cuffed and stretched at either side of him forming an unmistakable letter 'x' above her head.

The Cyclop's corpse looked recent, she could still make out the battered and bruised face, the single swollen shut eye, the slightly open mouth and missing teeth, and the blood-- the blood, the wounds and the injuries-- was too much for her to bare, she looked away and fought the bile that forced itself up her throat.

Remember how she tried to calm her breathing?

Yeah well that effort was useless.

She burst into a run, her feet carrying her further into the corridors that split into more corridors, she didn't know where she was going but she didn't care, she wanted to be as far away from that rotting Cyclops corpse as possible.

Kim stopped and leaned against a nearby wall and held back a sob. Fury, disgust and fear burned in her. Cyclops like all monsters, when killed usually explode into a shower of dust and get sent to a happy vacation into Tartarus-- but why was that Cyclops still there?

Whatever the case she didn't want to be anywhere near it, whatever could've killed that cyclops she didn't want to run into them.

Yes she had killed her spare of Cyclops, but that was because they were doing something wrong, and when she killed them, she did it as quick as possible, and at night she would pray for forgiveness and sometimes even cry.

But giving them unnecessary torture? Displaying their corpse like a trophy? That was just wrong. She had a soft spot, yes. Some may call her weak even, but she knew what was wrong, she had never even taken any remains of the fallen monsters, she just thought of it as a way to respect them. Sure, they killed for food, for survival-- was she any better than them?

After her mini-break she started walked again, hoping that maybe- just maybe, she'll find a way out of this place. Kim found it weird how the walls were changing, though; from stony walls to bricks, to tiles, to mossy stones, and dusty hundred-year old looking walls.

It freaked her out a lot, especially when the walls started to get narrower and narrower, giving her a hard time to squeeze through them.

Finally after who knows how long, she stumbled upon a grand open place, with dusty marble floors and painted walls.

She whistled, whoever painted the walls was a good artist. But strangely, the gods depicted in the paintings weren't how they looked. They looked strangely playful. Not like the disciplined and extremely serious gods she met in Camp Jupiter.

These guys were more: 'yo let's chill and drink wine. But cross me and you die though.' The Roman gods were more: 'die honorably or I'll kill you'.

She decided that these paintings were the Greek version of the gods, it was strange, in a way.

A roar and grunt suddenly came from behind her, her reflexes kicked in and she spun, only to fall awkwardly to the floor, something heavy and taller than her came crashing down on her.

Kim winced as her back hit the floor and she felt movement from either side of her head. The daughter of Hecate looked up and blinked as she realized it was a boy, an unfamiliar boy her age.

His panicked brown eyes looked into her and she saw the shock that reflected from his eyes. His hair that was slightly long was dirty blonde in the little light of the room. The boy was wearing jeans and heavy bronze armor over his orange shirt and had a leather necklace with a few clay beads, he had his tanned arms a few inches away from either side of her face,a bronze sword that probably belonged to him was a few feet away to her right.

A blush spread on Kim's face when she realized the position they were in.

"Ummm... "

The boy rolled of her, his damaged armor weighing him down. He didn't seem flustered at all, instead he looked worried.

Grumbling, he took off his very damaged bronze armor and it clattered to the ground.

"Who are---"

A roar erupted from the direction he came through.

Wide-eyed, the boy's hand shot out frantically, clamping his hand over her lips, silencing her. Her eyes widened when she saw what was charging from the other side of the tunnel.

It was a ten-feet tall Cyclops.

As it entered the room, it carried the scent of sour milk, vinegar, blood and wet clothes; Kim tried her best not to gag, she knew the boy could smell it too, for when she looked up, he looked like he wanted to run to the nearest perfume store. The Cyclops was obviously blind though, because for two reasons: one, it was sniffing the air frantically and two, because it didn't charge and eat them yet.

"Don't move an inch" , the boy whispered in her ear, making her shiver. He let go of her mouth and carefully bent down and picked up his sword.

The towering giant monster stood only a few feet away, smelling the air frantically, she wondered what he could probably be smelling, she could only smell the guy's horrible stench.

Suddenly, the monster froze, so did the boy.

And for a scary moment, a deafening silence fell on the room.

And then, it happened.

It looked straight at Kim with an hungry expression and it screamed one,unmistakable word:

"SKITTLES"

-----------------------------------------------

A/N:

Lol, haven't you heard? Skittles are monster's favorite food too, that is, aside from donuts and half-bloods.

Lol.

Sorry it took so long to update.  ;-;

Thanks for reading!

Bye!

~Lu