Work Text:
Our story begins, as these kinds of fics always do, with our PJO fan protagonist magically transported to the PJO universe on the day of the Yancy field trip. Also, nobody realized that the group of students had a random extra student who's honestly probably older than a sixth grader (depending on how you want to do the self-insert. I mean I figure the average PJO fan is probably way older than Percy was in the first book) because then it would've been a really boring and short story. Thankfully, nothing really crazy happened until they got to the part with the stele in Chapter 1.
Chiron, er I mean, "Mr. Brunner" pointed to the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"
Luckily, Percy knew the answer. Of course he did, it was all going just like it did in the book. The next few pages would play themselves out normally, our protagonist probably wouldn't have to do anything until maybe the fight with Ms. Dodds or something.
"Like we're going to use this in real life," Nancy Bobofit mumbled behind them. "Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"
“And why, Mr. Jackson,” Mr. Brunner said, “to paraphrase Miss Bobofit’s excellent question, does this matter in real life?”
"He doesn't know," our protagonist murmured knowingly.
"On the contrary," Percy piped up. "I've actually been wondering the same thing myself and have given a lot of thought to the question."
Our protagonist froze.
"...what?"
"Yes, you see, it actually began at the beginning of the school year. I'd always found it strange that for a Latin class, you focused so much on teaching us about mythology. It wasn't even as if we were reading Roman myths in Latin, as we would always talk about the Greek versions of the myth instead of learning the titular language of the class. To be honest, I never minded it, because I didn't even want to learn Latin. I signed up for Home Economics for the free food and only got filled in this class by the administration."
Our protagonist blinked. "Hold on, this isn't part of the script-"
"But back to the original question," Percy kept on going as if he hadn't heard anything, "It seemed fair to say that for whatever reason, you seemed to place a great importance on teaching us students about the myths, and I concluded that you must have believed the myths to be incredibly important, not just academically, but for real life practical purposes."
"Uh..." our protagonist said hesitantly, "Are you sure you didn't just mean to say 'I don't know, sir.'?"
"But how could that be possible, you might ask?" Percy continued undaunted, "There were multiple explanations of course. However, after considering all the strange details I've noticed, such as the fact that the school lets you get away with not teaching much Latin for example, I was left with only one possible explanation. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said, once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Yet, even in the face of such irrefutable logic, I was reluctant to label my only remaining explanation "the truth", much less tell anyone else about my theory. After all, I'm just a sixth grader with ADHD."
"When did you have time to come up with all this?" wondered our protagonist. "I thought you were failing every class or something."
"However, since you did ask me the question directly Mr. Brunner, I suppose I could give you my answer, despite knowing how ridiculous it sounds."
"My working theory was that the only explanation for why a Latin teacher would be so obsessed with Greek mythology, and why such a wealthy private school would allow you to continue teaching here, is that the Greek gods must somehow exist in real life and in the modern world, and that their existence is hidden from normal humans through some magic force, the same magic force which is somehow involved in your employment at this school, and the answer to your question about why knowing about the Greek gods matters in real life, is that I am somehow destined to be involved in this magical world, and this is your way of coyly telling me that what you teach will be important in my real life. That is the only logical explanation!"
The entire class was dead fucking silent. Ms. Dodds looked at Percy with more suspicion than she'd ever had before.
"Percy, you're freaking everyone the fuck out," our protagonist whispered. "Just take it all back and say something like 'I don't know' or something."
"Who the hell are you?" Percy whispered. "I've never seen you in class. Also, you probably look older than a sixth grader."
"What do you mean probab- look it doesn't matter. I'll buy you a kit-kat bar if you just take back everything you just said. It's blue!"
"Why do you say it's blue like that matters?"
"Because you love blue food don't you?"
"Well, it's not that I like blue food so much as it is an inside joke between me and my mom and- wait how do you even know about something only me and mom know? Are you....are you grooming me?"
"Shut up! Look, I'll buy you two if you take back everything you said, AND you stop asking questions."
"Alright, you've got yourself a deal!"