Poseidon and Sally: Love Story

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Percy's trainers skidded against the floor as he rounded another corner at full speed.

Mom is going to kill me . . . he thought miserably, ducking as a pillar of fire seemed to fall upon him. Rolling over, he lunged for the familiar pen in his pocket and narrowly missed the bull's metal attack. Even a couple of feet away the heat seared into him. There wasn't long left until the end of the semester and there he was, ruining his chances of making a full year at a school. He had long ago accepted the fact that this could never happen, as had his mother, but it was nice to dream.

Letting out something between a grunt and a shout, he dodged out of the way of the bull and sprinted down the corridor. He wasn't trying to run away . . . he was trying to lead this thing away from his Math class where it had caught his eye in the first place. He wasn't sure what other students were hearing through the Mist, but it wasn't likely to be good.

'Come on!' he shouted, turning as he reached the doors. The bull was midway down the corridor, staring and snarling plumes of smoke, but apart from that doing nothing. 'Come on, you ugly –'

That did it. With a savage roar it hurtled towards him; without his Half-Blood reflexes, Percy would have been mulch on the wall. Darting to the side to let the bull through, he tripped back over a chair, muttering darkly to himself. He clambered up as quickly as possible, only to freeze – this was a stupid move. He was trapped. Eyes darting around for an escape, he backed up against the wall, Riptide in hand . . . there wasn't anything he could do – his sword was no use . . . this thing would just melt him . . . Gods, why hadn't he started using that extra-strong sunscreen Annabeth always went on about?

The idea triggered a thought in his head, and memories started rolling through him . . . getting expelled at the age of eight for setting off a fire alarm in his boarding school in Staten Island . . . setting it off with a lighter he had snatched from Smelly Gabe's pocket when he was passed out on the couch . . .

'You want to kill me, hey?' he said, panting slightly as he lowered his sword. 'Come and get me then.'

With a jump that astounded even him he leapt across and in front of one of the many fire alarms dotted around the school. The bull, being possibly as brain-dead as Clarisse, followed and –

The alarm broke out, shrill and piercing.

Smirking as water poured from the sprinklers - dousing the bull, which was now emitting steam and howling with anger – Percy found the bull's vulnerable spot. Twisting his sword around, he watched as it dissolved into nothing more than dust. The water was healing the burns on his arms already - burns that hadn't even hurt that much, he realised.

'PERCY JACKSON!'

Percy swore under his breath and turned around slowly, slipping Riptide back into his pocket and already anticipating the certain expulsion that awaited him.

XXX

'Wait in the car, Percy. I'm going to try and sort this out . . .'

He had been right. The school, already complaining of his decreasing grades and tendency to skip class (he couldn't help encountering monsters on the subway), didn't hesitate to expel him; Percy suspected that they had been searching for an excuse to for a while. Truthfully, Percy didn't care about any of that – it was just the look of disappointment on his mother's face when she walked into the school to speak to the Principal.

Percy sighed, settling down into the passenger seat of the car, his mood dire. There were times – more frequent nowadays – where he just wished his life could, sometimes, be normal. He wanted to be able to see his best friends normally, not just when Camp or life threatening situations allowed it, and to actually know what was going on in his life instead of slaving away because of some 'great prophecy' everybody else but himself could know about . . .