Percy Jackson and the Avengers

School Sucks

Annabeth didn't know where she was going. Most people had partnered off, though most were still watching her. She felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Hey, uh Annabeth?" A boyish voice asked. She spun around to find a boy with bright green hair, brown eyes, and porcelain coloured skin. Upon closer inspection, he had light freckles dotting his face. "Wanna partner up?"

He seemed pretty nice and there wasn't exactly an overabundance of partners to choose from.

"Sure. What's your name?" She asked, taking a seat beside him.

"Thomas, I know yours though." He chuckled awkwardly. Annabeth grinned.

"Nice to meet you, Thomas. I'm Annabeth."

"Are you really fluent in Ancient Greek?" He asked, though she couldn't tell if it was said in awe or with dubious intentions.

"Yes. I am. Is that a problem?"

"No! No, of course not! It's actually really cool. I guess I was just wondering... how?" By this point he was blushing furiously, scratching at his hair.

And so, until a couple of minutes before the lesson ended, they worked on the quiz. Afterwards, they used the extra time to get to know each other. Thomas, feeling responsible for making the new students feel at home, invited her to sit with him at lunch.

Annabeth hesitated, "Can Percy come?"

"Yeah sure!" He exclaimed, "The more the merrier."

In the corridor, Annabeth rushed up to Percy to share the lunch plans. With a quick kiss goodbye and a promise to catch up more in History, they split up to get to Mathematics.

The lesson didn't go very well, with all the distractions and Percy's lack of interest. However, Percy's math teacher, Miss Lee, was probably his favourite teacher so far (second only to Paul of course).

In History, Percy all most fell asleep. It was... less interactive than the other subjects, and everything the teacher said seemed to enter in one ear and out the other. Luckily, Annabeth was willing to share her notes.

By the time lunch finally arrived, Percy was ready to collapse. Annabeth easily spotted Thomas' bright green hair amongst the students and pulled Percy along to the table. Seated there were 3 other students. After greeting and introductions, they took a seat.

Jake was unfairly tall and well built, captain of the soccer team. He was extremely nice, with tousled black hair and blue eyes. Percy thought that perhaps he should feel threatened or something, but frankly he was too tired. Had school always been so tiring?

His sister, Jade (because their parents were obsessed with the letter J) was a year younger than them, but preferred their company over her own grade. To the newcomers, it was fairly obvious that she simply didn't want many friends and she rarely participated in this group's discussion, choosing instead to sit on the side reading a book on her phone.

The last member of the group had black hair with one purple streak. She was called Robbie, though her actual name was Robin. She didn't mind either.

"So what's with the hair dye?" Percy asked, gesturing to Thomas and Robin. The group glanced at each other and Jake laughed.

"Twas a dare." Robin mumbled. Thomas interjected.

"Yes, but I rather liked my green streak and decided to go all out. Robbie's only keeping it till the end of the month though."

Jade finally looked up from her phone in the middle of her conversation. "Hey guys? What is 'poe – loe – nium'?"

She mostly received blank stares, rolling her eyes in response. Jake playfully muttered something about 'teenagers'.

Annabeth set down her sandwich. "Polonium? It's an element of the periodic table. It's radioactive, it's a chalcogen and it's lethal. Don't eat it. Why?"

The stares shifted over to her, she looked confused now, looking back at everyone. Percy just slumped an arm around her.

"You must absolutely love school, wise girl."

"You don't, Seaweed Brain?" She responded, swiftly returning his arm. Jake and Thomas still weren't moving. "I think I broke them?" She whispered to Percy.

Jade shrugged and whacked them both on the back of the head, effectively bringing them back to complain.

"Soooo abusive!" Jake complained. Jade ignored him.

"Well thanks Annabeth." She paused, considering something. "Hey do you know a lot of random stuff like that?"

Annabeth raised an eyebrow. "Uh, it wasn't really random. Knowledge of the elements is kind of useful in science, which I find interesting. But I suppose I do if you mean-"

"Great! Hmm meet me outside the Junior lockers if you want to try out for the Academic decathlon team." She announced, grabbing her stuff an leaving before Annabeth could respond. The bell rang and eventually, the rest of the moved off to class.

By the time Annabeth met up with Percy in gym, he looked ready to head home.

"Annabeth," He whined, "School sucks!" English hadn't been great, but such was the life of a demigod. At least that he could blame on his dyslexia. In music however, he had no such excuse. Piper or really any Apollo kid or kid with a music related hobby would have been perfectly fine. Still, he felt the lesson was unreasonably hard.

Luckily, Percy managed to enjoy gym, though he couldn't go all out in volleyball. It was a challenge for once, as hitting hard didn't actually give him much of an advantage when he couldn't aim it at all. By the end of the lesson, his forearms were burning. Volleyball was torture. Perhaps he should have spent more time playing at camp.

Once again, Annabeth left him to go to try out for the Academic Decathlon team and Percy didn't know what to do. Whatever happened to school being fun?