Heyo, it's another chapter! Hope the rally was good if you watched or checked it out!
And with that, please enjoy!
Disclaimer - All recognizable characters are Rick Riordan's.
Chapter Nineteen - Back to School
Percy burst through the classroom door just as the bell rang, door swinging open and banging loudly. The rest of the class stared at him, even those just getting to their desks stopped where they were and looked at him. For a moment, he just stared back before he grinned and said:
"Yo." Okay, perhaps he had been hanging out with Apollo too much and was beginning to show signs of dramatic entrances syndrome.
But it was pretty dam funny to see the rest of the class looking confused as heck to see him. Even just a little bit.
"Percy Jackson, glad to have you back in class," Mr. Brunner said, smiling kindly at him. Percy rubbed the back of his neck as he nodded and headed to his own seat. His knee bumped up and down with much energy despite having been up almost all night, training with Apollo until 3 AM.
Percy had woken up that morning, realizing that he'd take training over school anytime, but the thought was countered with the thought of meeting his friends again and talking with them after practically a whole week of Apollo's face being the only one he'd seen.
And then that was yet again countered with the remembrance of all the make up work he'd have.
Dammit, he thought as Mr. Brunner had everyone take out their notebooks. Can't a guy fear for his life without having to do schoolwork?
Percy shook his head to himself as he went back into the swing of school. Sort of. His mind was still very largely on what Apollo told him before dropping him off back at his house, right before he drove off in that expensive car of his.
'You've got great friends, Perce,' he had said with a grin. 'Live for their sake, fight for their sake, and don't ever forget it. You'll be fine, this Sunday.' He ruffled Percy's head, and while Percy had almost pulled away in annoyance, the look on Apollo's face made him stop. Apollo grinned. 'See ya around, kiddo.'
And as Apollo had left, Percy couldn't help but feel a dread seep its way into him as the back of the man got further away.
Percy doodled a badly drawn Riptide on his paper idly. His gut feeling was telling him something awfully wrong was going to happen, and he wasn't liking it.
Not one bit.
o)0(o - linebreak
The moment Grover saw Percy, grinning lopsidedly at him from his seat in Eco Con class, the guy practically started crying. Percy laughed at his friend's antics as he pat the teen's back, assuring him that he was totally fine and that no, the Timeless didn't try to kill him (he decided to leave out the fact that oobleck almost killed him though).
Though Grover had asked Percy for details on what he'd been doing the past few days, Percy was able to postpone the explanation to lunch, with the reason that it would've been annoying to have to explain everything multiple times, so better it was done in one go when everyone was there to listen.
After two classes with Grover and one class with Jason (Jason looked tired as heck but for some reason, he looked more energized than ever, grin on his face the whole time, to which Jason said he'd explain to Percy individually later).
And then lunch came, relieving Percy from the torturous school work that he had in fact not missed at all during his time of training.
"KEEEEELP!" The attack came before Percy could even blink as he walked in through the cafeteria doors, which meant that the fact that he was able to dodge it meant that his reaction time and ability to evade had become much faster and was purely instinctual. Not only did it surprise Percy slightly (though he realized that the training really was effective), Thalia who had ran to him with a tackle widened her eyes in clear shock.
"Oh, hey, Thals," he said with a grin. "Were you trying to kill me? Because I'd rather not be - oof" Okay, so maybe Percy's dodging wasn't perfect, because while he was able to react when Thalia came at him again, he didn't react fully (he could almost hear Artemis scolding him), and he found himself in a head lock. "GAH!"
Thalia then went on to ignore his cry for release, and dragged him in that position to their table, gaining worried and curious glances from other students in the lunch room, to which Thalia would scare away with her own glare.
"You little sh*t," Thalia said as she released him. Percy barely stumbled, surprisingly, as he straightened. He laughed, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Hey, you sure you don't need glasses like Jason?" Percy said back jokingly. "Pretty sure I'm not brown or little."
"F*ck you."
"I feel the love," Percy said, nodding sagely as Piper came in, spotted him, and grabbed someone outside the door - it was Jason - and basically ran toward him and Thalia.
"Percy!" Piper exclaimed loudly, wrapping a sisterly embrace around him quickly before letting go and looking at him up and down. She wriggled her eyebrows. "Well look at you, gaining some muscle." She lifted her own arm and flexed, poking at her own bicep in demonstration. Percy blinked, but realized that, yeah, he probably did gain some muscle over the past few days. He'd hope he did, or else he'd have suffered for nothing.
He grinned at her. "Yep. Though, your boyfriend's got some thicker muscles than me though, eh?"
"Well, I do workout here and there," Jason replied with his own grin as he punched Percy in the shoulder. "I already said it, but good to have you back, Perce."
"Percy Jackson," said a voice behind Percy, and the flutter in his heart knew who it was before his brain did.
He turned with a large smile. "Wise-girl!" And the storm clouds were at it again, making Percy want to grin even wider, but if he did he might split his face in half so he refrained. A bit.
Annabeth in all her golden haired, sun kissed skin like glory looked at his with an unimpressed look but she was smiling. Percy wondered why seeing her again after only one night was making him feel so elated. Perhaps it was the glint Annabeth had in her eyes, a barely veiled joy. Percy didn't know what she was so happy about, but whatever it was, it was making Annabeth look brighter and more vibrant than ever, and Percy was hoping it wouldn't stop and that the girl in front of him could be this happy ... well, forever.
"Hey, Seaweed Brain, how's school doing for you?" she asked with a hint of amusement when Percy's face immediately dropped.
He groaned. "There's so much makeup work!"
"Hey, guys!" Luke said from behind Annabeth, and immediately, Percy could see the light in Annabeth's eyes blur a bit. Percy himself stiffened, but hoped it wasn't obvious. Luke noticed Percy and his eyes brightened. A small voice - Riptide's - gave a small sound of warning in the back of his mind, as Like waved. "Hey, Perce! Finally back from training?"
Tiller, John, Abigail - Percy grinned, ignoring the echoing of past memories, ignoring the fact that Luke was a spy, the fact that Luke was part of the Timeless. "You bet," he said as if challenging Luke, letting him know that he was trained and he was ready.
Luke looked over the group, then to the table and asked, "Uh, well, if I can ask, why are we all still standing?" The group was silent before Thalia laughed.
"You right, Luke!" she said as she unceremoniously threw herself on the lunch table bench. "Welp, my legs are feeling lazy, so I'mma be here, sitting." The rest of the group broke out into laughter as they all took a seat themselves.
"Percy's back!" Grover exclaimed as he ran up to them, flailing his arms. He then noticed Percy. "Oh, hey, Percy."
Percy laughed at the guy, clapping his back as he took a seat next to Percy. "'Sup, G-man?"
"Well, more than what's up with Grover here, I think we're all wondering what's up with you," Luke answered with a bright smile and a strange flash of eagerness, so different from the eagerness shown in Percy's other friends' faces. More...malevolent. Percy internally groaned. Now that it was almost certain whose allegiance Luke had, it was majorly difficult not to hint to the fact that Percy knows that.
But problem: Percy was not known to be good at hiding his emotions whatsoever, and the slight raise of Luke's eyebrow and the slightly 'I want to facepalm right now' look in Annabeth's face told Percy that his hesitance needed to stop.
He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Right, I'm sure all of you want to know how my 'training' went. Well, the first thing that happened was me running from a giant fireball." And from there, Percy dove into the story of his extensive physical training with a side of near death suffocation by oobleck, to which his friends, particularly Grover, had gasped in shock, and from there to the story of the cold man-not-really-hating Spirit Artemis, all the way to training with Apollo again until 3 AM.
With a stern look from Annabeth and a small slight gesture from Jason, Percy effectively left out his encounter with the two with the hope for a full explanation for why they wanted him to leave it out other than the obvious Luke Castellan sitting in front of them.
"Aaaand that about sums it all up," Percy said.
You forgot about the part where you met Annabeth and Jason, Blackjack commented to which Percy pointed out to him internally that Annabeth and Jason didn't seem to want the others to know about that particular time.
Luke whistled. "Wow, Perce, that's...something, right there." Percy shrugged, but before he or anyone could say anything else, Luke leaned forward a bit, seemingly unconsciously, "So, we heard about the whole war thing going on; did Apollo mention anything about it?"
Percy scoffed. "Did he tell me anything about it?" Percy asked with a shake of his head. "I didn't even know that there was a war till Jason told me about..." Annabeth's face practically screamed 'ABORT ABORT' from Percy's slip up of revealing that he had met Jason before. "...it...IN CLASS!" he said, maybe too loudly.
Luke looked at him weird as did the others who were not blonde, but seemed to accept the strange outburst.
Nice save, Percy thought to himself with an internal sigh of relief.
"Dang," Luke said, leaning back.
"Well, I guess now you know," Jason said with a grin veiling his own sort of relief. "So, we should be discussing exactly what we're doing on Sunday now that we're all here together," he deduced and the others nodded in agreement. Percy frowned slightly. How were they going to talk about their plan without letting Luke know?
He glanced at Annabeth, and though she didn't say anything about that particular worry, the way she carried herself with confidence the next few moments eased a lot of that concern away.
"Well, the general gist of the plan is what we've discussed in Green's Forest last Sunday with the main concerns being: keeping the Jackson family safe, be ready to alert the police, lure people out onto the streets, lure whatever Timeless are there for Percy out onto the streets, and get the police to come prepared." Piper gave a hum as her eyes lit up in a sort of 'I've got an idea' way, but before she could say, the bell rang.
Annabeth gestured to the clock on the other side of the cafeteria. As the sounds in the cafeteria got louder as students started to stand leave, Annabeth said, "We'll all meet up again at Corind Park, and we'll discuss further."
"Let's go, team!" Percy cheered as the other laughed at that. He walked up to Annabeth who nodded in acknowledgment as they started toward Pre-calc with Ms. Dodds. As they made it out of the cafeteria and into the hallways, Percy looked at her with a rub to his neck. "Hey, so the whole plan thing - how's that going to happen with -" Suddenly there was a finger to his lip and he reeled back in shock.
"Jason and I made a groupchat with you in it; you should've gotten an invitation," Annabeth said swiftly. She eyed him as they continued to walk. "We'll explain everything then. With that being said, what Piper said was no lie - you've gained some muscle."
Percy nearly blushed at the compliment. He stuttered before getting out, "Oh uh, thanks."
Genius. Boss is an absolute genius, Blackjack said sarcastically.
When Percy finished grunting a bit at Blackjack, he noticed Annabeth's face form a weird expression, almost as if she was listening to...something.
Or...
Percy's eyes lit up and he pointed at her in realization. "You can hear your Inte -"
"Gods, Seaweed Brain, don't go blurting that out to the world," Annabeth said as they stopped in front of their classroom. She rolled her eyes a bit, as if annoyed but the smile that embraced her lips said otherwise. Oh, Percy understood. That's why she was so happy today. She's been forgiven. The most liberating of all: knowing that you were forgiven. Percy's experienced it himself, though it was a while ago.
Before Annabeth walked through the door, she turned a bit to Percy, eyes glinting brightly. "And yes, yes I can."
Percy was left with a somersaulting heart.
Heyoo. So this was a pretty short chapter, sorry, but yeah, this whole week I was prepping for the online rally that I mentioned, so I didn't have much time this week. But next one will be back to at least around 4,000 words I'm sure.
Sadly, because it was short, it sort of felt like a filler, and sorta was. Not much happened, though it did show slight results of training, sus Luke, and a reunion of the whole gang, some strange Apollo moment, and some slight Percabeth that I hope didn't feel too forced in there?
Anywho, I just wanted to point out that anyone who looks happier looks prettier (or handsomer, whichever yall prefer lol). BE HAPPY GUYS AND PEACE STARTS WITH ME
Have a wonderful day :)