Life is - hard, easy, fun, boring, scary, chaotic, unpredictable.

But most important of all, life is an adventure, both good and bad.

At least my second life is. My first one not so much.

Oh, you're probably wondering what I mean by second and first life. Well, I mean just that. I've lived two lives. Or lived one and am currently in the process of living a second.

But before I explain that, I should introduce myself.

My name is Theseus Martinez.

I know what you're thinking, Theseus Martinez, what kind of name is that?

Well, I've thought the same thing multiple times over the course of my life, but I've accepted it for what it is.

The explanation my Mom gave me was that Theseus was a great hero who went on to do many great things and she hoped I would do the same. And while I understand her desire for me to be a great person, the name just sounds odd.

When I asked her why she didn't name me after a great Mexican hero so it wouldn't sound so odd, she would always say she was so set on the name Theseus when she first heard it, she didn't even consider other names.

Luckily for me, Mom took pity on me and decided to nickname me Theo, which doesn't go perfectly with Theseus since there's an extra O but it's better than nothing.

I guess I should explain the whole two-lives thing, though it is much simpler than you may think. If reincarnation is simple to you that is.

Anyway, in my first life, I was just a regular guy who had nice parents and went to school. Online school anyway.

The reason for that was that I was sick. Very sick. The type of sick you only see in fictionalized worlds where the doctors tell you you won't live past your pre-teen years. Like glass bones and paper skin sick. That type of sick.

Because of that, I was bedridden for most of my life, and the only solace I found was through reading fiction. Reading books, comics, and manga was the only thing that made me feel like I was going to be okay. I mean the people in those stories go through way worse things than I do and end up okay, why shouldn't I? I knew it was all fake but it was the only thing that kept me going.

One book series in particular really caught my attention and that was the Percy Jackson series. It had everything I loved in a story, likable characters, action, intrigue, good character development, romance, an interesting premise, etc.

I loved it so much that I even prayed to every deity and being of unimaginable power that when I passed, I wished to be reborn in the universe of Percy Jackson.

Thinking back on it now, I kinda wish I had asked to be reborn into a different universe. Something nice like SpongeBob or some slice-of-life manga.

Anyway, not long after reading the news that a new Percy Jackson book was on the horizon, I succumbed to my illness. Thankfully it was painless and I died in my sleep. I don't remember much of the day I passed, but I do remember a feeling of relief. Relief that the pain was finally gone. Though I was sad that I would be entering Hades' domain, I was also excited to see what lay in the great beyond.

And color me surprised when I opened my eyes and saw a hospital room. I thought I had been resuscitated and was very disappointed until I realized that I was being picked up by giants dressed like nurses, then I was confused.

That confusion disappeared when I was put in my Mom's arms and the realization hit me. I had been reincarnated.

Quick side note, my Mom, Elena Martinez, was a typical Mexican mom, overbearing and overprotective but she was also very loving. She never really got mad at me for anything I did, not that I did much to make her angry because I was always more mature than a child my age should have been. But when I did, she would always talk to me in a stern and disappointed tone, which I hated to hear because I knew I disappointed her.

The only times Mom ever got really angry was whenever it involved me getting hurt, either physically or emotionally. The first time I ever remember her getting really angry was when I was young and was being babysat by a neighbor who had a kid the same age I was at the time. Long story short, the neighbor spanked me a little for something her child did and when I told Mom, she raised hell. That was when I first felt fear toward my mom and swore to never get her that angry.

She had a hard life growing up with a single mother, who has since passed leaving her with no family, and promised herself that she would never get pregnant if she wasn't going to have a partner to help her, which she laughs about to this day. She got pregnant with me during her senior year of college at NYU, luckily she was able to finish the semester and graduate magna cum laude with her bachelor's degree in accounting and she had a job lined up right after graduation.

As for my dad, I'll go into more detail about him later, but as far as Mom had told me, it was a steamy and passionate one-off night that led to me being born. Way more detail than a kid should know about his conception but that's what she told me. And so she called me her happy little accident. Of course, she meant it lovingly, and not at all did she resent me.

She also told me she had tried looking for him after she found out she was pregnant, but she wasn't able to find him. She even went back to the bar she met him and asked the bartender that was there that night if she had seen him around since then, but to no avail.

You might also be wondering how I fared when I found out I had a new mom, and to be honest it was hard at first. Especially because my first life's parents were amazing. But as I grew, I realized just how much she loves me and from then on, she was my mother.

Anyway, after realizing I had been reincarnated, I was so shocked, I fell asleep. The next time I awoke I was in a crib with my mother looking over me with a loving smile on her face which was nice, but I was thinking about other things. More specifically, I was trying to find out if I had been reincarnated in an Earth parallel or if I had been reincarnated in a fictional world I recognized. Seeing as I wasn't able to find anything weird for the first couple of years, I just put it in the back of my mind and decided to live my life.

At 4 years old, I was diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia. Now, in the PJO universe, the trademark thing about any demigod is they have ADHD and Dyslexia, add that on to my single mom, and I thought I was in the PJO universe. And I remembered that once a demigod knew they were a demigod, monsters would start to search for them.

So I waited and waited for a monster or something weird to happen so I could confirm it, but nothing did. At first, I thought maybe I was the son of a minor god that didn't have a strong enough scent to attract monsters, but eventually, I came to the conclusion, I was normal. I was just an average kid with ADHD and Dyslexia with a single parent who loved me and provided for me.

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It was a little disheartening at first but I was able to make my peace with it. Because compared to my past life, I was much better off.

Actually, is this too boring? I suppose it is. Background information and all that usually is. I'll skip to the part where my life got really interesting, it had been most of my life, but it really went next level at a certain point. But before I do that, you may be stuck on the whole I reincarnated into a world that was fiction in my past life thing. To that I say, don't. We think therefore we are.

I was 7 years old and was attending a charter school called New York School for Specialized Learning. Fancy name I know, but essentially it was a school for troubled kids who couldn't make it in public schools or kids who had trouble sitting through regular school. Clearly, I fell into the latter category with both my ADHD and Dyslexia, which was a lot more frustrating than it might've been for other kids because I knew what it was like to not have either condition.

I went to school like I usually did and sat in my seat like every other day and waited for the teacher to come in so the class could start. While waiting, I watched the other kids talk with their friends about what they did the day before and what they were going to do that day after school. As opposed to them, I would just doodle by myself to pass the time.

Unfortunately, I didn't have friends. Not that I didn't want to, but I didn't know how to. In my past life, I was confined to a bed since I was young so I never got the chance to make friends. And even among kids that were sick like me, and lived year-round in the hospital, I couldn't make friends because I knew they would only leave me. It's sad to think like that, I know, but that was the reality of my situation.

It's why it didn't bother me that much that I didn't have friends because I was used to it. It did make Mom sad to see her precious little Theo not have friends, but I told her I would make some eventually. Probably not anyone from school since most of them were little monsters with rich parents who didn't care about them.

Speaking of little monsters with rich parents who didn't care about them, the Stone twins were a pair of blond, blue-eyed, heavy-set fraternal twins that reminded me of Hansel and Gretel, if Hansel and Gretel managed to eat the entire gingerbread house and the witch. Their parents were on the board of directors of the school so they acted like they owned the place. They terrorized the entire grade and the teachers wouldn't do anything because they were afraid to get fired.

As I doodled to pass the time, two big shadows covered obscured the light and I didn't even have to look up to see who it was.

"What do you want?" I asked as I continued to doodle, which side note, I was quite good at. Skills from my past life.

"What are you doodling Fartseus? Your dad? You don't even know what he looks like." said Harry, the male twin who had a bowl cut like that blond kid from the Shrek Forever After movie.

"Hahaha! Good one, Harry." said Harriet, the female twin who also had a bowl cut like her brother.

Clearly, neither of them excelled in the smarts department.

"Fartseus? That's the best you could come up with?" I asked.

"Yeah, 'cause it was funny." he said, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

I shook my head and went back to doodling, knowing that if I ignored them they would lose interest and go pick on someone else.

"Hey, don't ignore us, Poopseus. Hahaha." said Harriet, shoving me a little before laughing at her own joke.

Before I could say anything back, the principal Mr. Haverty, a tall and lanky middle-aged Caucasian man with thinning hair and a voice that always hit the wrong note, walked into class with a woman I had never seen before in tow. I also noted that she was looking in my direction, but was unsure if she was looking at me or the situation happening in front of me.

"Alright kids, settle down and get to your seats." said the principal as the whole class winced at his voice.

"Lucky." whispered the twins as they went to sit down.

"Kids, your teacher Ms. Helga had to quit because she was moving, so this is your new teacher Ms. Lock. I expect you all to behave and welcome her to our school. Ms. Lock, I leave it to you." he said before exiting the classroom.

Ms. Lock was an average-height woman with long curly hair and a mean face. Her most distinct feature was the big mole on her chin and to make matters worse, it had a single hair sticking out of it.

As soon as the door shut behind the principal, Ms. Lock turned to look at her class with an expression so mean, I thought she was going to physically assault us.

"Listen up, you filthy children." she said as she picked up a piece of chalk before writing her name on the board.

"My name is Ms. Lock. You will only refer to me as Ms. Lock. No teacher, no Ms., nothing, only Ms. Lock. Is that understood?"

With no one replying, she started to drag her long and gnarly fingernail down the chalkboard causing everyone to cover their ears.

"Is that understood?" she asked.

"Yes, Ms. Lock." said the whole class.

"Very good. Now, I know a lot of you have trouble reading and that your previous teacher was working on that, but clearly, it didn't work. I will be much more strict and will have you all reading in no time. Take out your books." she said.

As the whole class was taking out their books from inside their desks, the kind that opened up and had storage inside, I noticed that Ms. Lock was looking at each student carefully. And she would stop for a moment on each student and her nose would twitch before moving on to the next.

When it was my turn, I noticed that her gaze lingered for half a beat longer than everyone else before moving on.

'I don't smell do I?' I thought while discretely smelling myself only to get a whiff of laundry detergent.

"Everyone turn to the first page of chapter one. You will silently read for 10 minutes. After those 10 minutes are up, I will call each of you one by one to read out loud to the class. I expect you all to read it correctly, or you will start over until you have gotten it right. Begin."

Hearing Ms. Lock's plan for the beginning of the day sounded like torture, but since I didn't want to spend more time reading out loud than I had to, I forced myself to concentrate on the book. Unfortunately, neither of my conditions were the type of condition to be cured by concentration alone. The letters would rearrange themselves and even float out of the book, and each time they did I would pinch my thigh to reset them.

When I was barely halfway through the chapter, Ms. Locks cleared her throat.

"Time's up. Does anyone want to go first?"

At that, I raised my hand, along with everyone else, because I felt it was better to be first and get it over with than to be last and have to read something I hadn't read yet.

"Lots of eager participants. You first." she said, pointing at not me.

And then the kid read the first two paragraphs, stuttering throughout the entire thing before she chose someone else. And so it went until I was the last one and we had more than gone past what I had managed to read.

"Who's left? You." she said pointing at me, "What's your name?"

"Theo." I said.

"That's not his name Ms. Lock." said Harry, tattling on me while his sister smirked at me.

"Your full name. Not your nickname, boy."

"Theseus Martinez." I said, not fazed by the slight snickering from some of my classmates, the Stone twins included.

"Theseus? As in the Greek hero of old? You? Haha." said Ms. Lock, openly laughing at my name.

Seeing her laugh from comparing me to my namesake didn't bother me at all, after all, it had happened before. But I didn't like that she made fun of the name my Mom chose for me. When kids did it, it didn't phase me because they were kids, but she was an adult. A teacher. She should be encouraging kids, not laughing at them.

"I don't know why you're laughing, you have a hairy mole on your chin, and it looks like a piece of poop."

Immediately, the class descended into silence. The laughing from Ms. Lock stopped, and the kids all just looked at me like I was crazy. The Stone twins looked at me with so much schadenfreude hoping to see me get in trouble.

"What did you say?" she asked through gritted teeth.

"I said it looks like you have poop on your face. Ms. Lock." I said emphasizing Ms. Lock.

At that, I could see her shaking from anger, vein bulging on her forehead, hands gripped from trying to control her anger, and I swear I could see her teeth turning razor sharp, but after blinking to make sure I was seeing correctly, it was gone. I assumed it was just my ADHD making her look uglier.

"Go to the principal's office! Now!" she yelled in a voice so shrill, I could've sworn some glass cracked somewhere.

Normally, I would never disrespect teachers because they put up with a lot of crap from students, principals, and parents, but she had crossed a line. So, I left the classroom, among the snickering of students, with my head held high, and walked to the principal's office. As I walked there, I realized something.

'Mom's going to kill me.'

And then I was scared.