𝙸 𝙲𝚊𝚗'𝚝 𝙲𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝚎𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚜

𝚂𝟷𝙴𝟷: 𝙾𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗

Based on Community S1E1: "Pilot"

Percy POV

New Rome Community College. It's the best he could do, okay? He's dyslexic and has severe ADHD, so getting into any school for him is an accomplishment in itself. His high school grades sucked, but his essay about his 'enriching experience' at horse camp was apparently inspiring beyond belief.

So here he is, Percy Jackson, about three-thousand miles away from his mom, doing college 'his way.'

Percy wonders if he can still call it 'community college' if it's not even in his own community. There's real grass here. The grass in New York City is either dead, dying, or fake.

"Ah, yes, welcome back to another semester, kids, er, students." A man in a leopard print shirt stands at a podium underneath a purple and yellow balloon arch. Nice touch.

The man clears his throat and continues to speak, but the microphone cuts out and Percy can no longer hear.

"Hey, hey!"

Percy looks down at the source of the greeting.

A short Latino guy with pointy elf ears and a bandage on his nose leans in to speak: "My name's Leo. Bad-boy supreme, at your service. I'm here on a mechanical engineering scholarship, my dad's been missing since I was born, my mom's dead, and I was abused by my babysitter, so I've seen a lot of trauma. I'm also a pyromaniac. Wanna be my friend?"

What the hell? It's at this moment that Percy begins to regret his decision to enroll. The New York fire department has a great program for new high school graduates. It's not too late, is it?

The microphone makes a loud crackling sound, getting Leo and Percy's attention.

The man clad in leopard print continues. "You may think that New Rome Community College is for washed-up high school athletes, idiots, druggies, and dropouts of all ages."

There's no 'but.' He just pauses there and then introduces himself. "My name is Dean D. I am the dean here at New Rome Community College."

"Dean D?" Leo questions.

Percy chuckles. It is pretty funny.

Then someone catches Percy's eye.

"I'll be your friend if you can tell me about her," Percy says, referring to a blonde woman sitting on a curb with her nose buried in a textbook. A textbook already? Classes just started! Percy hasn't even bought his books! Yet, somehow, it makes her even more compelling. Percy studies her features: a leather jacket, a fake Kånken backpack, black jeans, and she's even wearing a black paper face mask despite keeping a well over six-foot distance from everyone around her. Maybe she's just about everything Percy isn't, but he knows more than anyone that looks can be deceiving.

Besides, isn't college more about hooking up than actually dating?

"Oh, her, yeah. We talked earlier," Leo says, snapping Percy out of his daydream.

"And?" Percy says, not taking his eyes off of her.

"She's an architecture major from San Francisco, but she's not commuting. She might be minoring in politics too. She's also not interested in dating, at least, that's what she told me. We're in the same Latin class though," Leo says.

"Does she have a name?"

"Didn't catch it," says Leo. Geez, this guy is like some sort of well-oiled machine. All of his responses are mechanical as if Percy had Googled his question and the first thing that came up was an entire Wikipedia article about this girl.