Hey, everyone! This is my first Percy Jackson fanfiction, but I think it's fairly accurate. It leaves off from RR's reading of the first chapter, which you can watch on his website or read here on fanfiction.

I don't own Percy, etc.

Chapter 1

I Battle The Cheerleading Squad: Part 2

As the kids filed into the auditorium for orientation and the teacher introductions began, I sat as low in my seat as possible and tried to locate the girl fate had unfairly tossed into my life. She was nowhere in my line of vision. When I had deemed the coast clear on my side of the auditorium, I silently agonized over the chances of something like this happening. To a normal person, not all that high. But to me? Pretty damn high. You know those weird pervert guys who stand on rooftops and toss water balloons at unsuspecting…gifted women? Somewhere up there was someone who had a sick sense of humor, and that someone planned to toss a few doom-filled balloons at my unsuspecting demigod head every opportunity they got. All I could even hope for was to be able to roll with the punches when those times came.

I nearly flinched out of my seat and through the ceiling when the kid next to me tried to start up a conversation. I was still expecting the girl to pop up at any given moment. I hadn't had a normal conversation in a while, one about basketball and cheerleaders and stuff. Those things just didn't seem to hold any relevance to my life anymore. Chariot racing and forest combing, sure. The simple things? Not so much; it's hard to enjoy the simple things in life when the world seems to have stamped a sixteen-year expiration date on your forehead.

His friend on his other side commented on something, so he turned away from me, but he kept tossing me nervous looks. Although 5 10' is not exactly worthy of a defensive lineman, the guy was a lot shorter than me, maybe 5 3.' And I guess I looked a little touched. Everyone who's lived in New York knows that a slumped guy whose eyes keep darting back and forth is not exactly prime best friend material.

About fifteen minutes into the introductions I realized that, not only were kids no longer trying to talk to me, there were two to three empty seats between me and the remainder of the freshmen crowd on all four sides. Great, I thought. School hasn't even started and already it's gotten around that I'm mentally disturbed. And even worse: they might not be wrong.

Even though I knew it was risky -the frizzy girl could spot me- I chanced slipping out the back into a hallway to get some air. Forgive the pun, but I felt like a fish out of water. And Gods know that is a pretty uncomfortable feeling. A couple days back, for the first time since I discovered my lineage as a son of Poseidon, my mom had decided to make a kind of shrimp stirfry. It was her boyfriend's favorite, and we went to an open air fish market for the things she would need. It was also a bit of an experiment to see if I'd be affected at all by it. We had barely passed the first counter, though, before I started to hear screams in my head. Horrible, agonized, fishy screams. It sounded a bit like: 'No! What are you doing to my brother?! What are you doing to Santiago?! No! Stop! Not the boiling water! Please! You won't take me alive, you-' gurgle gurgle

Yeah. I had staggered over to my mom, ashen-faced, and begged for pork chops.

I burst into a hallway who knows where and decided to listen to a CD with the headphones Blofis had gotten me for my birthday. He was a pretty cool guy and all, it had just been awkward having him around. Plus, it wasn't easy pretending to be normal. My mom had said I was no longer allowed to keep deadly bronze weapons in the hall closet, and I was beginning to run out of room underneath my bed.

All the walls of the school were covered in faded green wallpaper. It was a good school, an expensive school, and the nicest one I'd been to since Yancey had kicked me out. The floors were even polished hardwood instead of the usual indestructible checkered tile you saw in high schools. I sat down on a bench and tried not to imagine the distance flaming balls of green wallpaper would achieve should the building go up. Instead I listened to a Green Day CD Thalia had gotten me for my birthday. I tapped my thumbs and laughed out loud when I remembered the note that had come with the present and letter she'd sent:

'Thalia, halfblood/huntress extraordinaire, improving America's taste in music one seaweed brain at a time.'

I hadn't seen Thalia since she'd become a huntress, but she'd sent nearly a dozen letters to me, Grover, and Annabeth detailing fights against boars with poisoned horns, crocodile-chimeras, and featuring pickup lines she'd endured from drunken centaurs. Me and Annabeth would probably talk through the whole movie later, each hoping to surprise the other with a detail they might not have received in a letter. Annabeth… I felt my face get hot as I remembered what my mom had said to me in the car. Even though I knew no one was around, I automatically reached up with the hand that held my CD player to mess with my already messed hair, an action meant to distract from my blush.

I jumped when I heard whoosh! and weird grinding noise. At first I thought it was a sound effect added to the song, but the CD had stopped playing completely. I looked at the player to see what the problem was, and my eyes grew wide at what I found. A giant, sizzling hole was smoking in the dead center of the device. As I watched the melted remains of the incinerated CD drip from the hole and leave burn marks on the floor like acid, I felt immense gratitude towards Blowfish- er, Blofis. If it weren't for his gift, that hole could have easily been in my head.

I leapt up from the bench, pulling out Riptide as I did so. From what I could see there wasn't anyone in the hallway on either side of me, but that only made me feel worse. When I heard a voice, I spun around prepared to strike and found-

Um, a cheerleader?

"EEEK!" she screamed. "What, are you, like, in, like, the drama club, or something?! What do you think you're doing, freak?!" She was blonde, freckled, and 110 percent mortal. She looked from Riptide to me like I was some kind of psycho.

"Erm, yeah," I said, lowering my weapon. "I'm in the drama club. What did you think?"

She rolled her eyes. "I think you freshmen, like, get freakier every year! If it weren't for the fact that you were always trying to get out of orientation, we cheerleaders wouldn't have to patrol the hallways! Go back to the auditorium!" She snapped her fingers repeatedly under my nose, her long fingernails obviously fake. I imagined myself turning Riptide back into a pen and putting a giant ink blot onto her uniform. I wondered for a moment why the mist wasn't disguising my sword, but then I remembered the drama prop comment. To her, the sword probably looked like a cardboard cut-out, and she was scared regardless. I'd once seen a group of cheerleaders scatter like stampeding bulls when a miss-thrown football landed in their midst, so I wasn't altogether surprised.

She reached into a pink bag at her side and pulled out an equally pink cell phone just before it had started to buzz. Most teens have the ability to psychically predict when their phone is going to ring. Monsters could track them, so I didn't own one. My mom was convinced I'd become a zombie if I did.

"What?" she snapped into the phone. And then she got a floaty look on her face, and she spoke in a voice as sweet as expired milk mixed with chocolate syrup. "Oh, hey Davey! Sure I will! I love you too, woobums."

"Hey, you! New girl!" She spoke to a cheerleader behind me that I hadn't even noticed before. It was as she was one with the wallpaper. "Take this goon back to the auditorium. I'm going to go meet the quarterback, and he's going to ask me to the prom! I promise you!" And she floated off, gazing around as if she were a queen in her domain. Ugh.

I turned to the other girl, and my brain was immediately wiped of all thoughts. I just stared, she was so… I can't even explain. At first I thought she Aphrodite, but I realized she had a different feel about her. Aphrodite could make a guy feel like a complete idiot, bumbling and uncertain. This girl's presence made me feel at peace and confident, like a king who could handle anything. I even dropped my sword, wondering why a guy could ever need such a thing.

"Hello," she spoke, her voice wafting gently around me. It cleared away all my fears and stresses, including my worries about the prophesy. I stared into her pale, heart-shaped face. It was framed by long, wavy black hair, held back by small silver clips. She reminded me of the moon against the night sky, a sight that made me feel even more at ease, on account of the tides and being a son of the Sea God. I was completely surrounded by all the sensations that I liked: the smell of salt in the air, the sound of waves, and I could almost feel sand shifting beneath my shoes. It didn't even occur to me that these things weren't commonplace in a high school, I was so drowsy.

"Hi," I responded, my voice sounding very far away. I took a step towards her, though it was very difficult. My legs felt heavy for some reason.

"My name is Lamia. I'm supposed to take you back, but out here no one will see." She took a step towards me and more cool breezes filled with her scent swirled around me.

"See what?" I asked.

Quick as lightning she reached out with both hands, seizing my upper arms and pulling me towards her. And then, before I could even react, she kissed me. My first kiss, I guess, if you didn't could all those weird spin-the-bottle incidents in elementary and middle school. I'd always thought I'd be nervous, stepping on the girl's toes and all that, but I just closed my eyes and enjoyed the opportunity to run my fingers through her long, soft hair. I could feel my senses slipping from me. It was almost as if I was falling asleep… She pulled away for a second and whispered something so quietly I almost didn't catch it.

"Your destruction."

As she went on kissing me, my brain struggled to regain some small ounce of function. Destruction? I thought. Wait, isn't that bad? I tried feebly to break away, but I just didn't seem to have any strength left. She gripped my arms even tighter. Gone were the feelings of peace and safety. Instead, I was beginning to feel sick and increasingly weaker. I was having huge difficulty piecing thoughts together, though one managed to break through. Annabeth…

"Hey! What're you- Ew!" A voice on the other side of the corridor spoke. Lamia tossed me away from her, and I landed hard on the floor. I was feeling feeble and nauseous, but already I could tell my strength was returning. I sat up, panting hard because I hadn't breathed in over a minute, and thoughts began clicking again. Lamia was the one who had attacked me! She was a monster!

Lamia bristled, turning to the girl who had seen us, and let forth a terrible, inhuman shriek that caused the girl to jump, and she dropped her tattered Harry Potter book on the floor. The girl had frizzy red hair, holey jeans, and a tattered Harvard sweatshirt.