A/N: I won't explain any of the symbols, flashback signals, and thought indications or anything like some authors do. I feel as if it insults the readers' intelligence. But if it becomes too big a problem, I'll go back and add some guidelines.

But either way, I was so proud of this particular fanfiction when I was writing it. I thought it was going to go ravingly well, that I was going to get a whole bunch of followers from it, and that I was going to the top of the FF hierarchy-

And then I read some of Control of Chaos' stories and started realizing how much my writing sucked again. So, yeah. Kudos to you, Control of Chaos, if you ever read this, and thanks for the reality check. Your writing is amazing. I'm unworthy.

Luck of the Goddess

Summary: In which Alex learns the hard way that it's never a wise idea for him, a newly-revealed demigod, to piss off a goddess who had just saved his life. Or else it would spring a tedious mission- or rather, quest- the likes of which MI6 could never hope to achieve. If only he had held his tongue...

Prologue: Noise

Crunchy leaves under-foot.

Breath coming fast in rapid pants.

Eyes flaring wildly.

Snarls heard from behind.

A roar.

A pounce.

Lightning jolts of pain shooting through shoulder.

Bones splintering.

Blood spilling.

Scream pulling through throat.

White stings on the back of neck.

Teeth breaking skin.

Silence.

Blessed silence.

~x-X-x~

"Get up."

He groaned. Everywhere, it was numb.

Everywhere, it was cold and gone. He couldn't feel his arms, nor his legs. It was just his head. The only things he could feel were his own thoughts and emotions.

(Older-than-his-years) thoughts.

(Broken-to-pieces) emotions.

"Get up, boy," the voice called out again, silky smooth (he was so, so sick of silky smooth). "That's an order."

A snap of fingers.

Suddenly, he could feel his limbs again. He could feel his body and his arms and his hands and his-

"Get up!" the voice prompted again, tone strung maybe a bit higher from annoyance.

He was still wondering about the turmoil going on in his nerve endings. Controlled by the snap of a finger? How did that work? Maybe there was a machine hidden somewhere behind-

-there was nothing to hide it behind. Nothing.

That was the first thing he noticed when he finally sat up and looked around. Where he was happened to be empty.

There was white everywhere.

White.

White.

White.

White. White.

White, white, white white.

Whitewhitewhitewhite.

It was driving him crazy.

The way the white reflected the light coming from who-knew-where, it blinded him.

He couldn't see.

He couldn't see.

It was freaking him out. Buzzing was vibrating throughout his body and white noise was over-taking his senses.

He took several deep breaths and calmed himself down.

If his sense of sight was useless, then so be it.

He had other tools at his disposal.

So he closed his eyes and used his ears.

He pounded one of his fists onto the wooden floor (white wood?) below. He listened to the reverberations.

The results didn't make sense.

The way the sound echoed back hollowly suggested there wasn't a floor, wasn't a wall behind him- although he could feel it-, wasn't a ceiling above, or even any other blockade anywhere.

It was suggesting- plainly- that he was nowhere.

But that wasn't right.

"Where do you think you are, boy?"

He took the question into consideration as he continued to analyze the area.

Where he was... it was messing with him.

It was stripping him of his trust in his sight, hearing, touch... it was stripping him of his trust in himself.

It was-

"My own personal Hell," he whispered. "It's my own pit of fear."

"But you don't seem very afraid, boy," the silky voice purred. "You're taking it very well."

He kept silent.

There was a pause before the voice decided to continue, "You're very brave and resourceful. You trust yourself to come up with a plan, and when you can't, you give up; you know that if you couldn't find a good solution, there wasn't one in the first place. You rely on your acute senses, logic, luck, and creativity." It took a long breath. "So when those are pried away from you, you panic."

"Even then, you have abundant amounts of self-control and a sharp ability to hide your emotions. You can lie yourself out of every situation and keep the lie going for as long as it's needed. You carry a mask around with you everywhere you go."

He didn't understand why the voice was telling him this.

"And beyond that, you're swift and agile, strong. You are very much like a cat in many ways." The voice finished.

And suddenly, the white vanished, and he was back in the forest. Back in the forest where something- some monster- had gotten him.

And he was watching himself run from it.

Past-him was propelling himself with an inhuman grace, each bound carrying him a distance that only professional runners could match. His feet were placed just so, to get maximum momentum as he dashed- no, pranced; dashed didn't do the art he was seeing himself perform justice- and weaved skillfully between trees.

"Do you see the perfect way you run, the way you can gather all resources- any law of physics that could help you- and utilize it just to go faster?" The voice was cooing into his ear, pointing out everything he had already noticed. He never paid it any attention when he was in the position. It was just an unconscious effort that he strived for when and because-

"-you're running for your life," the voice whispered before he could think it for himself.

The perspective changed, and for the first time, he could see the monster that had been chasing him. It was beautiful, in a horrid, morbid kind of way. Even with the way he was running, the monster was still catching up with its strong limbs stretching twice the span his feet could ever hope to achieve. It was down on four legs, huge and lanky, with golden fur lying matted against its flank.

It was a lion.

A giant lion.

Its bushy, lustrous mane was streaming behind as it bore down upon past-him and unsheathed its claws, digging them firmly into his shoulders before letting loose a mighty roar and sinking its massive fangs into past-him's neck.

It was a clean snap.

Present-him didn't even flinch.

"Why are you showing me this?" He was pretty sure the voice had been coming from somewhere beside him, so that was where we aimed his question. "Is this like an instant-replay of my death? Now are you going to show me my bad qualities and bring my soul to the Devil?"

A chilling laugh rang through his bones.

"You underestimate yourself. I don't quite believe you belong in Hell," the voice replied. "I like you."

The forest disappeared.

Suddenly, he was standing in a dimly-lit room with pure-black walls.

How did that even work?

"My name is Nemesis," a slim figure stepped out of the shadows. "The Greek goddess of balance and revenge. What do I look like to you?"

He studied the woman in front of him.

"Unruly black hair, pale face chiseled with dark contours, red jacket, black leather pants, buckled boots-," he paused, "- black top and angry, narrowed red eyes."

The woman smiled- or rather, smirked, as negative of a word it was- as she murmured her next words.

"As I suspected. You see me as myself."

"Normally," Nemesis said, "you would see me as the person you most want revenge on."

He shrugged.

"But I see you've lost too much to want retribution on a single person that much more than others," she continued. "So you don't care. You go on as life goes and occasionally, if it's convenient, you'll pull justice on those who wronged you. But you see them all the same. That type of people- those who don't favor to have revenge on any single enemy- usually deserve to reap retribution more than any other."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked calmly. "If you're a goddess, why do you dabble with regular mortal lives?"

Nemesis raised an eye-brow, "You believe what I'm saying?"

"This isn't a hologram, or an illusion. I've been in both before, and they're definitely not like this. Not as... realistic," he reasoned simply. "You showed me a real scene from my life: the attack. As far as I know, nobody could pull off recording all of that, processing it, and setting up a trick like this without making a mistake. There hasn't been a single mistake yet, or else I'd have noticed it."

He wasn't bragging, just stating a fact.

Nemesis was staring at him dubiously.

"That's all, boy? I'm slightly disappointed."

He shook his head, "I was attacked and severely injured." He pulled up his shirt, and turned around so that his back was showing. "Where are the scars?"

Sure enough, there were other, terrible injuries recorded on his back, but not any to match his run-in with the lion. Burns, knife wounds, whip-marks, all criss-crossed on their own little pedestals, only half-concealed by last-minute skin grafts. The only thing missing was claw-marks.

"That's much better," Nemesis purred. "Go on."

He pulled his shirt back down.

"I know for a fact the attack was real. I'm immune to hallucinogenics," he went on. "Injuries like that always scar. So the fact that there aren't any marks recording that event shows that you, being an all-powerful entity, somehow pulled me out of the situation unscathed. Maybe my soul instead of my physical body?"

He scrunched up his face in momentary concentration.

"It's either you're telling the truth, or this is some trick of my own messed-up mind as it's dying. Either way, the best way to proceed would be to play along."

Nemesis nodded.

"See? Sense, logic, and creativity," she purred. "You were truly blessed. Too much, in my opinion."

He raised an eye-brow.

Nemesis crossed her arms.

"But anyways, to answer why I'm dabbling in a regular mortal's life-," she paused, "-who ever said you're a regular mortal? You don't seem very 'regular' to me."

She looked down at him as she continued, "You're truly talented, and most of all, lucky; and normally, I'd pull some trick to even it out on you. But you've already lived through Hades and over again. So I won't touch that."

She took a breath before tagging on, "But you don't know who your mother is."

He stiffened.

"What did you just say?"

"You heard me. You don't know who your mother is."

Nemesis had hit a bad subject.

§~

He clutched at a thick, manilla file folder, many-colored sticky notes sticking out the side and giving it a happy look it didn't quite deserve. Its very content size suggested that the person in question was constantly monitored and observed. Every detail was carefully recorded and filed away without their knowing. It was somewhat morally incorrect, but it would help serve his purpose.

He took a deep breath as he swiftly flipped the top open.

Photos of every flavor and variety spilled out. ID photos, grainy black-and-white school photos, and then there were the other photos. Those that were snapped at the corner of streets and from behind old buildings. Discreet, clandestine photos that came from tails tagged onto the subject's every movement.

They were all of the same person. The same woman.

She was truly beautiful, with a stunning smile that could've lit the sun. She had fair brown hair that settled around her cheeks in lustrous waves.

Tears formed in his eyes.

She reminded him so much of himself when he looked in the mirror. He had her beautiful eyes, his rendition severely dimmed from endless trauma and depression. He had her bright smile that he never used often in earnest.

He had never personally met her. She had died long before his memory had truly started to solidify and set in.

But there was no doubt who she was.

"Mother."

~§

He snapped.

"Don't you dare mention my mother," he hissed. "Helen Beckett. Of course I know who she was!"

"Do you really?"

"What, are you saying you know more about her than I do?"

Nemesis raised an eye-brow, "Of course I do. I go around correcting her unfair blessings."

A pause.

"... What?" he asked incredulously.

"It shall become clear in due time," Nemesis whispered.

That was it.

That was bloody enough.

"This-," he snarled, accent he had previously been hiding leaking through with his emotions, "-is plain barmy. First, crazy hell-holes. Then, supposed Greek goddesses who don't look very Greek at all, and cryptic messages thrown left and right! Either you're some crazy, senile terrorist who has a fetish for mythology or I've gone crazy! This has gotta be some kind of weird creation that my PTSD-infested mind has given to entertain me as I die at the paws of a-"

Suddenly, Nemesis lost all pretense of calm she had given before as she snapped out, "Shut it, you insolent mortal! I might like you more than others, but you have pushed the limit."

He immediately silenced.

"Now," she hissed. "You deserved something of a saving grace for all of the things you suffered, but for your plain idiocy, I'll throw in the complications as a punishment for showing disrespect to an immortal."

He was bewildered.

"You see," she whispered coldly. "You haven't quite died yet. I was going to save you and send you on your way to camp, but then you back-talked, punk. You made things so much harder."

She snapped her fingers. A picture of the sleek lion he had seen before appeared in the black room.

"This-," she explained. "-is a Nemean lion. You remind me very much of it. Not quite the smartest thing in the world, but next to invincible when it comes to physical prowess. Because, you are a demigod. And you need help getting to Camp Half-Blood. But you aren't getting in that easily now."

And then the world blinked-

-and he was back on the floor of the forest, claws digging into his shoulders, fangs bared behind his neck.

The Nemean Lion roared.

And froze.

It's golden pelt gleamed in the sunlight as a wisp of something red drifted from its gaping maw and sank harmlessly into his chest.

It crumbled into dust.

~x-X-x~

Crunchy, dead leaves under-paw.

Breath uneven from pain.

Blood trickling from injury in back.

Roaring inside.

Snarling outside.

Eyes flaring wildly.

Steps graceful with the knowledge of both a veteran to espionage and an ancient mythical monster.

Half spy, half demigod, half Nemean lion.

A/N: One of my greatest pet peeves is when I get something wrong. The only thing that tops it is when I get something wrong and I don't know why.

I can't place it, but something's wrong with this. Something's just wrong with my writing style. Can somebody point it out to me? My own opinion is already biased beyond recognition.

So yeah, review and all that stuff...

My blessings from Hell.

-Devil's Den

(Edit PS: If anybody finds me using "you're" in a possessive context or "your" in place of "you are", point it out. I assure you, I know the difference. My iPad's autocorrect is just going bonkers on me.)

(Second Edit PS, VERY IMPORTANT TO READ IF YOU'RE GOING TO REVIEW: Alright, can I just point out that literature doesn't exactly have to make sense? February 16, I just got my third review about the "half spy, half demigod, half Nemean lion" thing. Yes, I know my fractions. Yes, I know it puts him over one entity. Yes, I know I'm being very rude right now (just woke up from nap). I felt the half, half, half just rolled off better than third, third, third. If I get three more reviews on the subject- and I won't pay attention to any reviews that involve the matter unless they note that they've read this PS- then, fine. I'll change it. I just thought I'd point that out.)

(Please don't review anonymously if you can help it. I like being able to reply. But if it's just because you don't have an account, it's fine. Actually, I wouldn't be able to tell. That kind of renders this note useless, no?)