And No One Gets Hurt (A Percy Jackson AU)

Chapter 1- Leo

If he closed his eyes, just for a moment he could see it all happening again. Everything falling apart. The annoying whispers he could hear at the edge of his mind, that had been his biggest worry suddenly felt childish and stupid.

And now staring down the barrel of a hand gun, he couldn't help but panic. Especially when the person holding it at point blank range was someone he called a friend.

"Sorry." She snarled, "Nothing Personal."

He thought it sounded very Personal.

He needed everything to slow down. Just to freeze for a couple seconds. He couldn't be in danger. Stuff like this only happened in the movies. In the movies with trained actors. Not at a high school building, not with terrified teenagers. He desperately wanted this to be a prank. Something stupid that he could laugh about one day.

A cold feeling wedged down his back. Like he needed to confess everything.

It was that moment where he realized how pointless everything was. How stupid this was. He was going to be murdered. The wall behind him pressed against his palms, his head, his back. His body would be found lifeless in a classroom, if it was find at all.

It didn't matter if he knew how to find the tangent of a circle. It didn't matter if he could properly cite all the school's textbooks in MLA formatting. It didn't matter if he knew how cold and warm air masses formed. It didn't matter if he knew when the Hell, the Byzantine empire rose to power.

He was going to die.

And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Please..." He whispered,

But her finger was already moving. Sound exploded in the room with as lingering ring. He slammed his eyes closed.

And then Leo Valdez's body went limp.

***

It started days earlier. When the biggest problem any high schooler had was either how am I going to get this homework done, or how am I going to to pay for my car.

Leo had been to dozens of schools. He could almost read the thoughts going on in everyone's mind as they passed him by with a couple of strange glances. Whispers that he knew where flying around flickered on the edge of his hearing.

He'd been to dozens of schools, Half Blood High was no different.

Queen bees roamed the halls whispering to each other, setting fashion trends, laughing with mild manners, and generally thinking they were better than everyone else.

The jocks body slammed one another, talking loudly over the noise of the crowded halls. They rough housed and laughed, checking out every moving thing that walked by and had legs.

The artistic kids huddled outside a class room hanging an assortment of pictures they had created, though they mostly looked like they were all fighting to have most pictures up.

Down a bit father a girl was interviewing another for the morning announcements. Tight smiles plastered on their faces, forced to say something that the teachers deemed appropriate, and not what they actually wanted to say. And occasionally the new face on the screen of that attractive person that wouldn't shut up, that they had to endure with a grin that became more forced with every weird.

Students skirted around the masses, the people just trying to blend in rather then be the center of attention. But every once in a while they would glance at the popular kids, and you knew that they were faking. Everyone wanted the spotlight.

The teachers pets that walked with their teachers, carrying their items, grinning widely and responding enthusiastically to their mundane questions but sneeking grimaces towards their friends as if they couldn't stand another second with that particular teacher.