Chapter Four: Natalie. I Represent Something I Can't Pronounce

This is the fourth chapter of Heroes: The New Level, the new fanfic series by DarkCyberWolf.

I Represent Something I Can't Pronounce
My mother has always loved stuff that's seriously old.

That's why she took the job she had - studying everything the ancient world has ever produced and trying to find out - "glean" she calls it - everything about the ancient world. That's also why I've spent more time in museums than I have at school. All the biggest museums in, like, forty states - plus the Smithsonian.

Last week, she had just found out that she had gotten the opportunity for something bigger than a museum. A recently-unearthed temple in some place called Tenochtitlan. In Central America.

No surprise, she took it, and dragged me along with her.

"The Aztec people migrated here over seven hundred years ago," my mother was saying. "At their peak, they had nearly five hundred communities, with about fifteen million people. They supposedly kept their crops growing by offering human sacrifices to their gods."

"Fascinating," I said, desperately wishing she could pick up on my sarcasm and switch topics to something more interesting.

One of the temple's archaeologists came over to us. "Jocelyn Rain, I presume?" he asked.

"That's me," my mother said. "And this is my daughter, Natalie."

I gave a small half-nod and went back to looking at something more interesting.

"This temple is truly a masterpiece," he continued. "It seems to be devoted to every one of the deities of the Mesoamerican people. Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, Acolnahuacatl, Chalchiuhtlicue, even Xolotl."

"What's so special about Xolotl?" I asked.

"It is exceedingly rare to find worshippers of Quetzalcoatl's malevolent twin, the god of misfortune."

"So, it's because he was the bad guy?"

"Very much so."

"So which way is the temple?" my mother asked.

The archaeologist pointed. "It's right there, just by the coast. You can't miss it."

So, my mother and I walked until we got to the seashore. He had been right. The temple was certainly unmissable. A ton of adobe and stone arranged intricately into a solid building. It was a wonder they hadn't found it until just recently.

"Natalie, I'm going inside to see if I can help glean some new data," my mother said. "You just go to the shore and behave yourself."

"Got it."

But when I got to the sea, something peeked up from the waters. It looked sort of like a mix of a dog and a monkey, but its tail had a hand attached to it.

It looked right at me and grinned.

The beginner of the Merge, it said in my mind. Then it attacked.

The dog-monkey leapt from the sea like a tidal wave and struck hard right in front of me, baring its teeth as it lunged again.

"Back!" a voice said beside me. "Return to the depths by my command." The speaker wasa big green guy. He had very prominent fangs, but those were nowhere near as bad as his huge round eyes.

The dog-monkey groaned, but knew better than to mess with the green guy. "And never attempt to take the life of one of my representatives again!" Then he turned to me. "I apologize for not arriving sooner. The Ahuizotl has never attacked this directly. Normally it just grabs sailors who enter its waters."

"Who are you? And what do you mean representative?"

"I am Tlaloc, god of rain. And you, Natalie, have much to learn of Aztec civilization."

Additive Words
Ahh, it looks like I may need more additive words for this one. The Aztec gods are not something Riordan has touched upon, though Tlaloc and the others have a reputation for being the deadliest gods of any polytheistic mythologies. So, yeah, questions to ponder now.

Who is Natalie? What is the Merge that the Ahuizotl - plus the sphinx and the griffin - have mentioned? What does it mean that Natalie is Tlaloc's representative? Why was the Ahuizotl, as Tlaloc said, behaving so unusually and attacking Natalie so directly? What is this temple in Tenochtitlan doing there and why does it worship Xolotl? How does Natalie's story relate to Tara's, Raymond's, and Eddie's? How many other characters are there going to be in this story?

Check out Chapter Five: Tara. You Know It's A Bad Sign When Death Claims You.

Or, go to Heroes: The New Level to get the full scoop on the book.

Or, if you want to read the story from the beginning, here's a link. Chapter One: Tara. Some Weird Kid Fights Something.