Even Heroes Need School

When I woke up in the morning, I was still tired, still I got myself out of bed, took a shower, and ate some breakfast. When I had arrived Mom and Estelle were already in the kitchen. Mom was trying to get Estelle to eat but Estelle was just having too much fun refusing to eat. I grabbed Estelle and started to feed her. She ate for me without any fuss and my mom just looked over at us exasperated. I put Estelle down and went over to grab my backpack. I was just about to leave when Mom stopped me. She looked at me with this look in her eyes that I couldn't place. "Percy, I want you to promise me that you will be safe. I know that this is who you are, and this is what you have to do and I don't want to take that away from you. I don't want to stop you especially after what happened back at the Shore." She said.

I still couldn't place exactly what the look in her eyes was, but I said, "I promise I'll be careful."

She looked at me like she didn't believe me, she looked at me like she already knew what fate had in store for me and that it wasn't pleasant. It wouldn't be until much later, after I had completed some of my first real trials as a hero when I realized what I had seen in her eyes, resignation, resignation and fear.

After that strange conversation with my mom I started on my walk to school. It was the first day of my Senior year of high school. It was great being back in the city, I had never really made friends with the kids from back at the Shore. I always thought of myself more as a city boy and to be honest most of them were terrified of my powers. Honestly that part sucked but I still had some friends from here I would visit when I would spend a weekend with my dad or when they wanted to come to the beach, so it was going to be nice to hang with Grover whenever I really wanted. So at least I didn't leave any best friends back at the shore.

My walk to school took me about 15 minutes and when I arrived, I walked into the office. Paul had shown me some of the school a few weeks ago so I had some idea about how to get around. When I made my way into the office there was a very beautiful blonde girl who looked strangely familiar to me, but I shook it off it wasn't like I really knew anyone here. I gave a small wave and she did the same back to me. I walked over to the lady behind the desk and said, "Hi I'm Percy Jackson I'm new here."

She smiled back at me and said, "Ah Perseus," I winced, I hate when people call me by my full name, "Here is your schedule and all of the papers that you will need. Miss Chase over there will show you to all of your classes today."

I smiled at her, "Thank you and please just call me Percy."

She smiled back at me. Miss Chase over there stood up when she heard her name. She walked over to me and smiled. Again, she looked really familiar, but I wasn't quite sure of who she was. "Hey, I'll walk you over to your homeroom. Here let me take a peek at your schedule." I handed her my schedule without complaint and she said, "Ok it looks like we are in the same homeroom with a Mr. Blofis. I guess he must be new this year because I've never met him. It looks like we have Lunch, Gym, English and Greek together so at least you will have one friendly face in some classes."

We were walking to homeroom, "Thanks for this, I actually know Mr. Blofis, he's my stepdad. My family just moved back to the city from the Jersey Shore. Oh, by the way I'm Percy Jackson." I outstretched my hand and as she grabbed it and said, "Annabeth Chase," we both made direct eye contact, her eyes were steel gray. Between the handshake and the eye contact I was able to place her in a second and I could tell that she had done the same thing because at the same time we both gasped and said,

"Phantom!"

"Riptide!"

Afterwards both our eyes widened, and we looked around, thankfully no one was around. This was weird as hell I mean, what were the odds that the two of us would go to the same school, much less have her be my tour guide on my first day?

"It didn't seem like either of us really knew what to say at the moment, so I said, "Well at least I don't have to lie about why I'm always leaving to everyone. Well not everyone, I wasn't planning on lying to Grover because he's my best friend."

Annabeth looked at me weird, "Wait you know Grover?"

"Yeah ever since we were kids, he's my best friend. Wait you know Grover?"

After that Annabeth told me the story of how she and Grover met, apparently one day Annabeth's dog ran away. She searched for hours with no luck until Grover came back to her house with him. Grover had found him in the park and saw his collar, recognizing the family name and all he took the dog back to the Chase household and ever since they had been friends.

"Oh my God you're the guy Grover wanted me to meet! He's been telling me for weeks that his best friend was coming back and that we had to meet. I had no idea that was you!"

We decided then and there that we would take away the pleasure of introducing us away from him.

Annabeth showed me to homeroom. Nothing really happened in that 15-minute period except Paul called all of our names and gave us our seats.

After the bell rang Annabeth brought me over to my first class of the day Physics, honestly what a boring class to start my day off with. My teacher, Dr. Boring (I kid you not his name is Dr. Boring) went over classroom rules and just that.

In all honesty nothing really happened until lunch, each of my teachers made everyone introduce themselves, had us pick or assigned us seats and they went over what they expected of us and the classroom rules.

As Annabeth had told me earlier in the day, we did have some of the same classes and whenever we did, she would sit with me or chat. Between each class she would also show me around from place to place. We talked a lot about just school and a little about each other. I learned a lot about her and it was really cool, she was awesome, and I could see us becoming really good friends.

Lunch was the best part of my day by far. While Grover and I were in Math (besides my math class wasn't until after lunch) and Home Ec together we didn't really get a chance to hang until lunch. Besides Annabeth and I really wanted to see what his reaction would be.

I arrived at the lunch room and walked onto the line so that I could buy my lunch. Today was chicken nuggets with mac and cheese and green beans. (The green beans were gross but everything else was actually pretty good.) Moving on though after I got my lunch, I started to look around the lunch room searching for Grover and Annabeth. I didn't see them for a minute but then I heard Grover's voice shout to me, "Hey Percy over here!"

I looked over and saw Grover waving at me. Now Grover was the most environmentally friendly person I had ever met, and he dressed like it. Today was no different as he was wearing his favorite "RECYCLING" shirt. As I got a little closer, I saw that Grover hadn't really changed all that much ever since I had last seen him about 6 months ago. He was a little taller, and his goatee was a little bit fuller, but his curly brown hair was still tucked into that same Rasta cap he loved. As soon as I got close enough Grover gave me a hug, I eagerly returned it. It was so nice to see my best friend again after all this time.

Grover looked behind him and I saw Annabeth standing there. Grover got this gleam in his eye and was about to introduce us when I nonchalantly said, "Oh hey Annabeth what's up?" The way Grover's face dropped when I said that to him was priceless, he was so disappointed. Neither Annabeth or I could keep ourselves from laughing.

As soon as I stopped laughing, I said, "Annabeth has actually been my tour guide for the day. She has been showing me around and all." After Annabeth and I told all this to Grover the three of us started to talk. Apparently, Grover also knew that Annabeth was Phantom, apparently something happened, and Grover saw that she turned invisible. Afterwards it was pretty easy to figure out that she was the hero who could turn invisible.

When lunch finished, I only had one more class Algebra. It was so boring, and I am so bad at math so this would be a difficult class.

After that first day of school was done, (Or as I like to call it the day of the obscenest amount of coincidences, it was like the guy writing the story of my life was just too lazy to do anything but just make everything a coincidence.) I started to walk over towards the Hero training center. When suddenly I was bumped in the shoulder by Annabeth. She smiled at me and said, "I bet I know where you are going," I smiled back, I was finding out that hanging around Annabeth was easy. I felt like I had known her for a while.

"So how did you like your first day at Goode?" She asked me.

"I really liked it! I mean some of the people there are a little crazy I mean I met this blonde girl who I swear she's obsessed with me. I mean geez I get it I'm lovable but you're coming on strong." I smiled as I said that.

Annabeth laughed, "Shut up, jerk." but she was smiling so I don't think she was really calling me a jerk. I know because I'm perceptive like that.

Our walk over to the training center was like that, easy conversation with a lot of laughs. Annabeth told me a little about the others and what her experiences had been like this year. This was going to be her 6th year as a hero having started when she was 11. I knew she had started as a hero young, but I was still shocked that she started at 11. She really knew a lot about what it took to be a hero.

After a few minutes we arrived at the training center. I knew that once I walked into those doors, I would be a hero, I could turn around or I could go through. I didn't hesitate to go through. I looked around it was a state-of-the-art place. Annabeth gave me the tour of the place, I joked that if she gave me one more tour, I'd have to start paying her. We shared a laugh it was a good time. We finally made our way to the gym where all the other heroes were waiting for us. None of them was in costume which was pretty cool. All together there were Seven of them.

The first guy that walked up to me was a blonde dude with sky blue eyes who was probably about 25. He was definitely a handsome guy and the dude had muscles like serious muscles but not in the way that look like steroids, just a sort of I work out kind of muscles. He was dressed in business casual with a nice pair of gray slacks and a blue dress shirt. There were two flaws in his appearance that made him look a human and less like a statue, he had a small scar on the corner of his lip and there was a grove in his hair like he had been grazed by a bullet. It wasn't until he stretched out his hand to me that I noticed on his forearm that he had a tattoo of an eagle. "I'm Jason Grace, but my hero name is Whirlwind, it's a pleasure to meet you I look forward to protecting the city with you." I wasn't all that surprised when he told me that he was Whirlwind, there was a tension in his shoulders, like he could never put down the weight of the world.

Before I could get in a word to Jason a really pretty brunette with kaleidoscope eyes and who looked to be of Native American descent. She was dressed simply in jeans and a tee, like she really didn't care about what she wore out of the house. She like Jason was probably in her early to mid-20's. She leveled a huge smile at me and said, "I'm Piper but my hero name is Charm," she smiled deviously, "So how do you and Annabeth know each other?"

I blushed, I don't know why but I did. I looked over at Annabeth and saw that she was blushing too. I didn't know what else to say so I just replied, "We met at school today, and we both realized who the other was. She actually was my tour guide today and she and I are both friends with this guy named Grover." I was rubbing the back of my neck and I could feel that all the blood was still rushing to my face. I couldn't even meet Piper's eyes, I looked at Annabeth and she was in a similar position as me, red faced and no ability to make eye contact. There was no reason for us to be embarrassed but the way Piper implied stuff just caught me off guard.

Before I had to explain myself any further and maybe embarrass myself more a Chinese guy walked over and said, "Hey I'm Shifter but you can call me Frank." When I say this dude is huge, I mean like 6'5 and built like a wrestler or a football player. This was a dude who could probably bench a person on each arm like it was nothing. He had a kind face though like he couldn't hurt a fly, though his military haircut and general appearance would lead people to believe the opposite. I wasn't sure how old Frank was, but I assumed he was probably about 27

The next and final person to come up to me was an African-American girl with curly brown hair she was probably about 25, "I'm Hazel, I also go by Gem when I'm doing Hero work." She was pretty but the thing that stood out to me the most about her where her eyes, they were pure gold. She was short probably the shortest out of everyone here being only around 5'5.

After I had met all of the others, I decided to tell everyone a little about myself, "Hey guys it's really nice to meet all of you, my name is Percy I guess I'm also going to be going by Riptide pretty soon. My power allows me to manipulate the elements each to different levels and power levels. I am from New York City but a few years ago my family moved down to the Jersey Shore. We only moved back about 2 weeks ago."

Before I could continue Jason, interrupted me, "Wait wasn't there a huge NEXT battle down in Asbury Park about a month ago? After the initial reports we didn't hear anything about it."

I answered as honestly as I could, "Yeah half of that was me. This NEXT calling himself Nemesis approached me on the beach. He told me to come with him or else he would kill my family. Long story short we started to fight, and I realized that everything I was doing to him was also hurting me at three times the strength. So, I held him underwater, I can't drown so I didn't feel the effect of his powers. He passed out and I leveled about 3 blocks worth of beachfront property. After that my family and I decided that it was time for me to become a hero. So that's a little about me. I look forward to getting to know all of you better." I smiled, and everyone seemed happy with that.

"Well now that the meet and greet is over let's go train!" Jason said with his arms outstretched.