It All Started With The New Students... And The Murder

Chapter 10 : Basketball Tryouts

Thalia's POV

Thalia walked through the hallways of school at a faster pace than usual on her way to the gym for the basketball tryouts.

She didn't really have a reason to, but being in school after hours was always creepy, it seemed like a ghost town or something similar.

Suddenly, Thalia was knocked out of her thoughts by a blond boy running in front of her, chasing a small black cat that had Camembert in its mouth.

"PLAGG! Get back here." the boy shouted.

Moments later, a girl with blue eyes and black and dark blue hair in pigtails jogged across Thalia's vision as well, laughing hard at the sight. Thalia noticed there was a pretty large ladybug on her shoulder.

"Adrien, you really need to get your cat under control." she giggled as they disappeared out of view.

Unfortunately, that was by no means the weirdest encounter that Thalia had ever had in the school.

She made her way to the gym and saw a sign, which told her to get changed in the changing rooms and then meet up with the others in the gym.

Thalia wondered who would be trying out with her. She knew Clarisse probably would, being the 6'6" behemoth she was, but she wasn't sure who else she'd see and recognise.

Luckily, Thalia was very early so she had the changing room to herself. She changed as quickly as possible but froze as she noticed something on her stomach.

Her soulmate tattoo. It had changed. It used to be a golden dagger, which it still was, but the shape had changed, morphing into that of a pine tree, as well as the hilt, which was now a tree trunk and the base was a pinecone.

Thalia forced the thoughts out of her mind. She didn't know who it could possibly be. She hadn't had a deep conversation with anyone... apart from Reyna. But that had been more than a week ago. There was no way Thalia hadn't realised it if it had changed then.

She left the changing room and saw that the gym was mostly empty, apart from Katie and Travis, who seemed to be having one of their usual argument/conversations, and Percy and Reyna, who were playing a bit of 1-on-1

Of course Reyna was here. Of course she'd try out for the basketball team. And of course, she had to wear a Kobe Bryant jersey.

Reyna had told Thalia of her obsession with the Black Mamba, and more specifically, his "Mamba Mentality", how she wanted to channel it every time she was on court. Thalia admired her commitment.

Thalia plopped down on one of the benches and watched Reyna completely cook Percy. She posted him up with her back to the basket and pushed towards the hoop, before scoring with a beautiful fadeaway jumper.

It went on like that for a while, with Reyna going deeper and deeper into her bag of moves. Step back threes, nasty crossovers, midrange jumpers, layups and even dribbling the ball through Percy's legs.

Whenever Percy did get the ball on offence, Reyna was playing such suffocating defence Thalia was sure Percy would get claustrophobic. Reyna played more physical than anyone Thalia had ever seen, but still kept it all legal, which was almost as impressive as her offence.

It was very obvious that Reyna was the basketball player and Percy wasn't, but judging by their expressions, this happened quite a lot, and Percy didn't seem to mind at all. They were both having fun and messing around.

Thalia was trying her best not to stare, and was failing horribly, but was also trying to find a comparison for Reyna's playing style with an NBA player, which she was also failing at.