Prompt: "What's wrong?" "I need help studying for the quiz tomorrow." "...That's why you called me at two in the morning!?"

Cohort: Third

Words: 2355

Notes: Human AU. Power rule and chain rule are mentioned in this prompt. They are methods of finding derivatives. Derivatives are also talked about, and the derivative is the slope of a tangent line. There are also a lot of other calculus references in this prompt, and if you don't understand it… well, neither do I. There are also other school-related references (AP, honors, etc) but they shouldn't be too hard to understand.

Jason Grace was known as being a good student in his high school. The fact that he was also the star of the boy's track team didn't dampen his reputation either. Whether it be amongst the "nerds", "jocks", or otherwise, Jason Grace had a place in his high school.

Although, he didn't really hang out with either. Sure, he was friendly with the members of the track team, but he wasn't exactly close with them. Besides, they had different interests than him. And the other classmates of his AP and Honors classes were cool and all, but no one really took time out of their day to really get to know one another in those classes. Besides, while the people in AP Calculus BC seemed nice, a lot of them were math nerds. And Jason was not a math nerd; he was taking the class for the credits. Sometimes he wished he had stuck to AP Calculus AB, which would be much easier…

But in truth, Jason still hung out with his group of friends from middle school, and was closest to his elementary school friends. They had done a lot of stuff together - including accidentally blowing up the school trash cans. But in his defense, that was Leo Valdez and Percy Jackson. Luckily Piper McLean, his girlfriend, convinced the teacher it wasn't their fault, otherwise… Well, Jason didn't want to think about what would happen again.

To be fair, they had gotten into trouble a fair few times. Percy and Leo probaby tied for first; while Frank Zhang, Annabeth Chase, and Hazel Levesque probably had gotten into trouble the least. But while Piper had been sent to a few principal's offices before (on accounts of stealing numerous snacks from the cafeteria), she had always managed to talk her way out of it. A skill Percy and Leo - and the rest of their group of seven friends, for that matter - did not have.

Luckily for them, they had definitely toned themselves down quite a bit. The days of Leo "accidentally" setting fire to things (Jason could never tell whether Leo had meant to or not) had faded away, which was quite a relief. Now they could just relax in their senior year at high school. Which was good for Jason, as his parents had ramped up the pressure of him getting into a good school. Their hopes were set on Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Princeton - the other schools were "lesser" in comparison. His father, Jupiter, had even considered Oxford and Cambridge - but his stepmother, Juno, had refused to consider that. It was all just one big headache, really.

Not to mention that they were the ones that really controlled his schedule - had Jason wanted to take AP Government? Not really, but as his parents were really set on him being a lawyer (they had decided acting was too risky, especially considering what had happened to his mother, which was an entirely different matter), it was what they wanted him to do. And not taking AP Latin was out of the question - it had to be done. There was, of course, BC Calculus, which was fine enough for Jason. AP Physics was good; Jason had wanted to do that. But it would be nicer if his parents hadn't signed him up for the classes instead of him, but that was just his opinion.

The rest of his classes were honors or requirements - Phys Ed, Honors Humanities, and, of course, his study period. Really, his classes were geared towards him getting the maximum weighted GPA possible, and the highest credits to satisfy his parents.

But at least he was doing pretty well in his classes.

Sadly enough, the same could not exactly be said for some of his friends.

At exactly 2:12 AM on November 9th, Jason was awoken from his peaceful slumber by a muffled ringtone.

Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he at first attempted to turn off his alarm, thinking it was time for him to get up - but was greeted instead by Piper's phone number and name flashing across his screen. Bewildered, he checked the time - it was now 2:13 AM.

Piper had never called him at this hour before. What could be so urgent? Quickly, he accepted the call. "What's wrong?"

"I need help studying for the quiz tomorrow," Piper answered, yawning.

Jason sighed. "...That's why you called me at two in the morning?"

"Hey! Mr. Chancellor's derivatives quiz is not something I'm looking forward to tomorrow. And you already took it since you're in BC Calc, so we figured you would… er, tell us what's on it - or at least help us!" another voice yelled. The voice was rather tinny and high-pitched, but it sounded like Leo's.

"Wait - is Leo at your house?"

"No, dummy, he's on call - we're trying to figure out chain rule; it doesn't make sense. And we're willing to risk Mr. Chancellor's wrath, or rather, we thought you would be willing to risk it, and decided to ask you for help," Piper explained.

"He explicitly said not to help anyone in AB," Jason tried weakly. Well, at least now he knew why Leo sounded like he had ingested helium.

"Ehh - whatever," Leo laughed crazily - sleep deprivation, perhaps? Or maybe it was just his usual self. "Not like we care."

Jason took a moment to facepalm. He could remember quite clearly Mr. Chancellor's words on why they shouldn't give hints to his AB Calculus class. As BC Calc was a harder class, they also moved through material quicker, which meant they had quizzes and tests before AB did. Theoretically, a BC student (Jason) could help AB students (Piper and Leo), and essentially let them cheat. Mr. Chancellor had made quite a passionate speech on this subject.

"Anyway," Piper interjected. "Can you help us with the practice problems? Like, I don't get it - why can't we just use the power rule for everything?"

"I know! He even said all we needed was power rule once!"

"... That was for a specific problem." Jason was trying to stay patient but he was so tired and Leo and Piper were not really helping.

There was a moment of silence from the call. "Still," Leo said finally, sounding almost sulky.

"Alright, fine, I'll help - but let's make it quick, and Mr. Chancellor cannot hear a word of this. So, what have you been doing with the practice problems? Have you been trying to solve everything by using power rule or something?"

"Um… no?" Piper answered, clearly lying. "Okay, fine, maybe we have, but we just can't figure out when to use chain rule, let alone actually use it - so we've just been using power rule instead-"

"Which hasn't been working out so well!" Leo interrupted, his loud voice making Jason wince.

"Haven't you guys been paying attention in class?" Jason asked exasperatedly. "I know for a fact that Mr. Chancellor has been going over the problems you do in class."

Jason could imagine Piper and Leo's looks of mild shame and guilt at that moment. And since it was their fault he was so sleepy, he didn't care too much.

"You try to pay attention to Mr. Chancellor when all the numbers and letters don't make sense," replied Piper indignantly.

"Well, perhaps paying attention would be more beneficial since you two don't even know how to use chain rule when you have a quiz tomorrow." Jason was developing a mild headache at this point. While he wasn't really mad at Piper or Leo, he was certainly exasperated. No one had told him he would have to be woken up at two in the morning to discuss chain rule of all things.

"We're sorry," Piper said unconvincingly. "We'll pay attention in the future."

"Let's just get to the problems. Which ones were you having trouble with?" Jason asked, giving up.

"Questions 2-5 on the practice quiz! And that doesn't include the problems we haven't tried yet… which are problems 6-10… but at least we did the first one?" Leo tried.

"... Didn't Mr. Chancellor go over the first problem with you in class?" Jason asked pointedly, a pained look making its way to his face.

"To be fair, we were doing the homework before," Piper said, attempting to justify herself as she ignored Jason's question. In a quieter voice, she added, "Which we were doing with Frank, but he went to bed around an hour ago…"

Jason took a moment to give his silent condolences to Frank. "Did you at least… get through it okay?"

"Yup! Frank explained why we had to use chain rule and power rule for the problems - which we understood. But we just don't know how to do that for the other problems… and we also spent a lot of time trying to do notations correctly..." Piper's voice trailed off as she laughed nervously.

Leo muttered, "In our defense, this is the first quiz of the unit, and we learned power rule and chain rule two weeks ago. And his rules on notation seem completely arbitrary."

It was easy to see why they had taken about an hour to attempt five problems. Leo and Piper were not always… entirely focused on their work and had a tendency to deviate from their tasks.

"Question two… what's confusing about it?" Jason asked, stifling a yawn.

"Everything? Well, it's the derivative of the quantity four X cubed plus one to the fourth. Wait no, fifth," Piper answered. "And… How do we use chain rule on it? Or do we use… power rule? Or pronoun - I mean, product rule?"

"You're… confused on that problem?" questioned Jason faintly, his hopes vanishing. "You know that's one of the easiest problems he'll have on the quiz? That doesn't even involve trig!"

"... At least the quiz is tomorrow?" Piper coughed slightly.

"Never mind. Start with defining Y and U, which is the first step of chain rule."

He could hear the faint sound of papers shuffling. "Oh, okay… Well, er... U could be…" Leo started. "Four X cubed?"

"Wait - what about the plus one?" Piper interrupted. "Wouldn't it be… Four X cubed plus one? That… kinda makes sense?"

Jason sighed in relief. Maybe he could still hold on to some of his tarnished hope. At least they could figure out simple chain rule problems… hopefully.

"Oh yeah," Leo said. "I forgot about that. Jason? Is that right? Jason?"

"Of course it is," Jason groaned. "Okay, next step. What's Y?"

"U to the fifth?" Leo answered. Jason hummed in response, nodding his head. "Okay then, so now we find… du/dx and dy/du?"

"Maybe," Piper said. "This is the part that confuses me - do we use power rule within the chain rule? Or only chain rule? Or no rules? Or-"

"Let's use power rule," Leo interrupted. "It's easier."

"Well, of course you use power rule!" Jason sighed. ¨When there are polynomials, you almost always have to use power rule. In this specific problem, we use power rule within chain rule.¨

Leo and Piper made sounds of realization. "I kind of get it now. But why didn't Mr. Chancellor say that in class?" Leo asked, confused.

Facepalming again, Jason's mildly tortured expression grew worse. "He did… You would've known if you paid attention… Whatever. So you have to use power rule. How are you going to do that?"

"Du/dx would equal… twelve X… squared?" Piper answered; the sound of a pencil scribbling furiously in the background could be heard.

"Uh-huh," said Jason as encouragingly as possible.

"So that means… dy/du is five U to the fifth, no, fourth?" Leo tried. "Hold on, I'm looking at the answer sheet Percy sent me - we did it!" Piper cheered in response.

"Wait, how did you get an answer sheet from Percy?" Jason asked, confused. "He isn't taking BC or AB Calc-"

"He got it from Annabeth," Piper interrupted. Hearing this, Jason sighed in exasperation. "But that's not important right now - so how do we get to the answer again?"

"Multiply dy/du by du/dx," Jason replied slowly.

"Ohhh," Piper muttered. "So that's... what… sixty X squared times… four X plus…"

"One to the fourth?" Leo finished. "Hey, we did it! Or at least, that's what Annabeth had."

"Does Annabeth even know you have a copy of her study guide work?" Jason asked. "And that's right, by the way."

Piper and Leo cheered. "Well, I think she knows. We didn't want to bother Annabeth - something about a chemistry test - so we just asked Percy when he was over at her house. He took a picture and sent it to me, and that's pretty much it," Leo explained, sounding mildly proud.

"If you had a copy of Annabeth's work - as weird as that is - why couldn't you just have looked at that and not called me?" Jason asked, confused.

Piper coughed, murmuring, "We couldn't understand parts of her work; the process was too unclear for us to follow. And besides, we asked Percy if he could ask Annabeth for the work, so technically Annabeth should know we have it."

Groaning, Jason shifted slightly. "How's this - why don't you use Annabeth's work to check your work as you do the other problems, and I can go back to sleep? I can look over your work tomorrow when it isn't at such an ungodly hour? And I can help you prepare for the quiz as well… after I get my sleep."

"Sorry," they chorused sheepishly.

"Hmph," Jason muttered. "Well, if that's it, I'll be going back to sleep now."

"Okay!" Piper said cheerfully. Jason didn't know how Piper could be so cheerful - he was dreadfully tired. "Thanks for the help Jason - you're a lifesaver. Have a good rest."

"Sweet dreams!" Leo said in a terrible falsetto. "And thanks, man."

At the very least, they sounded grateful. But as much as Jason groaned and grumbled and grouched, he didn't mind helping his friends.

Yawning for what felt like the hundredth time, Jason cracked his knuckles. "No problem. Good night." He ended the call and put his phone away, rubbing his eyes. Blinking, he laid back in bed and sighed. Derivatives at two AM? He never wanted to do it again.

A/N: That was a lot of dialogue… too much dialogue… The beginning was more than a little random, but I didn't just want to jump right in, so the awkward beginning will have to stay. The calculus parts (dy/du and whatever) were confusing to write, so credits to my sister for helping me with the calculus related stuff (basically providing the problem/telling me how to explain it). If you have not taken calculus, this prompt may have been a little confusing to follow at some points. Apologies for that, but it was one of the only concepts I could think of (as Mr. Chancellor is heavily inspired by a certain calculus teacher).