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It was a bright, sunny day, but pleasantly cool in the shade of the trees. It was also a Saturday, which theoretically meant that Nico wouldn't have any work to do in the Underworld.
Theoretically. Not, alas, in practice.
Which was why the son of Hades was now sulking in a graveyard near Brooklyn; he'd ditched his father in between stacks of paperwork. There were applications from those claimed to have had 'parasitic space slugs' in their heads; some who could only manage panicked whispers about bridges and creatures made of stone in California; forms that said something about card games and a 'Shadow Realm;' only a couple of inter-pantheon mixups this time, but those were easily worth the trouble of a dozen cases each; stories about actual (shockingly high-tech) fairies from some Irish fellows; the usual incoming demigods who insisted on dying heroically; and your everyday influx of mortals. Put simply, he'd been about to snap - Ghost King was NOT supposed to be a desk job, gods dam it, this was not what he had signed up for.
He took a deep breath, exhaled, and turned around, coming face to face with a girl around his own age. She had blonde hair with red highlights, which swung at her shoulders as she tilted her head quizzically.
"Anubis?" she asked.
Wait, what? Why would she think he was Anubis... unless she was Egyptian.
"Wrong Underworld." With that, he turned around and cloaked himself in shadows, effectively disappearing from sight.
"Hello Nico."
The son of Hades jumped. "Oh, it's only you," he sighed.
"What's the matter?" Anubis asked.
"Paperwork," he replied flatly. "Lots and lots of paperwork. Plus, there was this girl earlier who thought I was you."
"So that's why she was so flustered when I saw her," the god mused. "Her name's Sadie."
"She wouldn't have happened to save the world with a bookwormy-smart person?"
"Her brother Carter, actually."
"Wait," Nico recalled, snapping his fingers, "Percy said he and a guy named Carter beat this giant croc monster, and Annabeth said she met someone named Sadie and that they fought Serapis."
"Yeah, the situation's not looking too good."
"Do you sometimes feel like someone's screwing around with these things, making them happen on purpose for their own amusement?" [Uncle Rick, I'm looking at you.]
"You have no idea."