School was one of those places that TV shows as being way more exciting than it actually is. I mean, I had a good time at school; tons of people would talk to me & my grades were pretty good too but... even in my junior year, I was reluctant to get to know people. No one was ever rude to me or anything like that; in fact, I was considered popular. It just felt very fake to me; but there was one person I had actually wanted to get close to. He's sitting in the back of the class before it starts, headphones in. His hair is messy, dyed a dark purple color & his pale face had a large bandage on his left cheek. I take a deep breath & begin to walk over to him. Thankfully, my gym shoes don't make too much noise as I get a closer look at what he's wearing. There's a black short sleeve button up with a red shirt underneath; he's got on black pants while one foot is on the desk & he scrolls through his phone. I count three black rings on his hand, pointer, ring & pinkie, all linked via a silver chain, that connects to a thick black bracelet. Crow Case, the person everyone in school agrees will beat you up without a second thought. But he gave off a different feeling to me; on the few occasions when I've talked to him, he was mostly polite. "H-Hey C-Crow?" he glances up at me, brown eyes a bit confused as to why I was talking to him. "Oh, Luna. Hey." he says, taking his foot off the desk & sitting up. "Somethin' wrong?" I shake my head. "U-Um, n-no... uh, see I was at the mall & I saw these um... j-just... here." I hand him the bag & he looks at the bag, then to me, then back at the bag. "Didn't peg you for a Hot Topic girl." he says, taking the bag & pulling out the earrings. "The hell...?" I got worried. "U-Um, w-well, in that fight last week I-I saw your piercings get pulled out so I thought that I-I'd get you some... new ones? Heh..." he looked at them closely. "Purple?" he says. "Y-Yeah... t-to match your hair... i-if you don't like them, I ca-" "They're perfect. Luna, thanks. If my ear didn't hurt so bad, I'd put them in right now." he says, giving me a smirk. "N-No problem. A-Anyway, see you."

Kids start funneling in & I got to my desk on the opposite side of the class. That went better than I thought it would. The Ancient Mythology teacher, Ms. Lewins was a chocolate colored woman, with a large amount of curled hair; if you were a bully, she would've been fat, but most everyone agreed that she was small. I noticed there was a blue ribbon in her hair, which was odd. She wore black clothes a lot, which was fine. Today it was a black short sleeve shirt, black dress shorts too. Huh, they reminded me of the shorts they wore in the 40's; kinda baggy & made of a nicer material than denim, especially with the black scarf with red polka dots on it through the belt loop. She had black leggings on underneath & tall back boots. Guys & girls in the school had crushes on her big time. While I'll admit she was very pretty, I didn't look at her like that, even if she was only 22. As she spoke, I kept catching him staring at me, with a smirk on his face. "Alright... now time to choose a partner. Crow, you go f-" "Luna." he says quickly; everyone's heads turn to stare at him. Crow was usually the type to work alone, so to say that he wants a partner & to have it be me of all people, it was a shock. "A-Alright... Luna is that alright with you?" the teacher asks; I give a few quick nods. After a few minutes, everyone had a partner & the teacher let us sit near each other. Crow was next to me so quickly, I jumped. "Alright everyone... tell me something. What do-" she began writing on the chalkboard. "Osirus & Anubis, Hades, Odin but mostly Hel & Freya have in common?" no one spoke. "Death...?" a girl said. "Yes, but not quite. Specifics people!" she says. "T-They preside over death?" I say. She begins circling over their names, drawing lines to a skull she crudely drew. "Give the girl a cookie! Luna's right. But why! Each god is from somewhere totally different, most civilizations never really coming into contact with each other besides trade routes. So why?" no one had an answer. "Ego! Or so I'd like to think. You have the best civilization & suddenly you come across another who has similar gods? Well the only way that's possible is your gods ran to a new land, blending in with these new people to look like them & rule different things. Hence your project due in a week. I've got a ton of names here of different gods; you all are gonna adapt them for today's standards. Write a story on the new, or most interesting change. Now, c'mon up & pick, then get to it."

Crow had gone up & selected Odin. We were stumped, reading nearly every article on his powers we could find. Problem was that nearly every major player back then got their hands on him & twisted him around. "Wait, look-" I show Crow a passage. "He finds warriors who died in battle huh...? Ok, so now what?" he asked, but immediately had an idea. "What? You thought of something?" he nodded & started scribbling stuff down in a jet black notebook. "I-this is gonna be-Luna, trust me on this ok? Here, my n-oh no but wait-" he was going a mile a minute, like his thoughts were all fighting for a chance to be spoken.

"C-Crow, hey-"

"Ugh, but then this wouldn't-no, yes it would, just have him."

"Crow, wait a second!"

He immediately falls silent & I realize what I've done. He doesn't seem phased, so much as he realized what he had been doing. "W-Woah... sorry, I usually don't get excited like t-you good?" my head starts to hurt & my eyes burn. "Y-Yeah, I-I'm fine." he looks at me closely. "You don't look f-" "Knock it off. I said I'm fine." he shrugged. "Ok... sorry. I was worried." he says plainly, scribbling in his notebook silently. "N-No... I'm sorry." he ripped a corner of paper with some numbers on it. "Take this & call me later ok?" I nodded, putting the slip of paper into my pocket. "A-Alright."

I got home & immediately screamed to let out frustration. "Didn't go well?" Demi called from the kitchen. "How could you tell?" I grumbled. "I gave the earrings to Crow & then we got paired for a group project & to top it all off, I accidentally used my power on him." I said. "Crow... as in Crow Case?" uh oh. I made my way into the kitchen to see Demi staring at me, tapping her fingers. "I-If that was the Crow I was talking about... how would you feel about that?" she sighed heavily. "Besides the fact that he's regularly getting into fights... well, he could be sex trafficker, so I guess it could be worse." I hugged her, purring. "Yeah, yeah. So, this group project is about what exactly?" I told her as we started to eat dinner. "You could do a lot with that." she commented. "I'm coming up empty though. Crow seems to have an idea, but he was so excited about it, he scribbled it down in a notebook & didn't really tell me." in that instant, my phone began to ring. "Hello?" it was Crow. "Hey, so listen. The idea that I had in class was this; a kid dies right? He sees Odin who finds out the kid lost a fight with his abusive dad. Sound good?" I nodded, but realized he couldn't see that. "Yeah... s-sounds good..." there was hesitation on his end of the phone.

"You don't sound too excited about it."

"S-Sorry just... it's kinda sad."

"We can change it if you want."

"Tell you what... d-don't scrap the idea. I'll think on something tonight."

"Luna, it's fine. We don't have to do my idea."

"But you've done everything so far..."

"I don't mind. I like this kind of thing."

"But-"

"Alright. Fine. Think on it; we'll talk at lunch tomorrow."

"O-Ok... see you."

"Bye."

I hung up the phone, telling Demi everything. "Honey, tell me something... are you sure he isn't involved in the c-" "No! No, he's not..." she sighed once again, coming to give me a hug.

"All I'm saying is... well, quite frankly, no one except C-"

"Don't."

"Except him has really captured your attention like this..."

"I would've noticed though... I still remember all of their faces..."

"Ok... ok. Sorry, I didn't mean to make you worry."

She begins petting my head, applying some slight pressure as she runs her hand through my hair. "Just be careful with Crow alright?"