Inspired by Community S2E4: "Basic Rocket Science"

Percy POV

Things haven't been awkward at all since Percy and Annabeth had their moment during the paintball game last semester. Who knew all they needed was just to let off a little steam? Well, actually, Piper knew, but she doesn't need to know that anything came of that observation.

Percy isn't exactly known for being a good secret keeper, but he is a loyal friend, and he and Annabeth are friends at the very least now.

Friends that have seen each other naked, sure, but they're friends nonetheless.

And nobody needs to know the details of that friendship—oh, Annabeth looks great today!

"Hey there, Wise Girl," Percy says.

"Shut up." Ah, that's his Wise Girl, chipper as ever. 

"Who brought coffee? Piper brought coffee!" Piper slams a paper tray full of Starbucks cups on the table.

Jason follows suit, passing one cup of coffee to Leo and another to Hazel.

"Oh, that's nice!" Hazel exclaims.

"Thanks, Pipes." Annabeth takes a swig of her coffee, and Percy wonders if it's not hot enough to burn, or if she just doesn't care about a scalding tongue.

He presses the paper cup to his lips; it's a nice contrast to the muggy weather.

"Well, hello! Isn't this lovely! What is this, like a study group or something?"

"Hello, Dean," everyone mumbles.

"I hope you all haven't forgotten about our service hour requirement here at New Rome."

Jason chokes on some coffee. "Our what now?"

"Don't worry, Chase. We've got something available today that'll call for... seven helping hands," Dean D says, counting the members of the study group to be sure.

Percy rolls his eyes. "Okay, then. What's the service project?" he asks.

Annabeth elbows his arm. "Don't entertain him."

"Well, thank you for asking, Peter!" says Dean D. "We're unveiling a mural today made out of Coke bottle caps. I need you all to paint and glue the caps onto the wall on the quad before this afternoon."

That's ridiculous! Percy's in.

"C'mon, it'll be fun, and we'll fulfill a service requirement!" he says when the others start to protest.

Dean D drops a manila envelope next to Percy. "Fantastic. I knew I could count on you, Johnson. I'll see all of you in a bit."

✎✎✎

Leo pulls the zipper on his white jumpsuit all the way up to his neck. "I can't believe you signed us all up for this, man."

"For once, I agree with Leo," Frank mutters as he tears the feet out of his jumpsuit. He's too tall, so his grey Nike sneakers stick out the bottom.

Percy tilts his head upward so he doesn't get his chin caught in the zipper. "It'll be fun though! We're all together filling a service requirement on a project that's kind of cool."

"The volunteer club was taking a bus of people to the nursing home to play board games with senior citizens," Piper says. "I'd like to be there."

Annabeth throws her paintbrush on the ground. "Don't you idiots get it? There is no service hour requirement! This is just Dean D riding my ass again!"

"Why would he do that?" Hazel asks.

"Because," Annabeth says, "it costs money to paint and paste tiny little bottlecaps to a wall, and New Rome is getting money from Coca-Cola for doing this."

Percy cocks an eyebrow. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's pretty sure he's not the only one who isn't connecting the dots here. Sometimes, he swears that Annabeth is just too smart for her own good. That must be really frustrating.

She groans. "He's using us as unpaid labor so the school gets more money to fund his Coke addiction!"

"Wait, Dean D is addicted to coke?" Jason asks. He lowers his voice. "You mean like, cocaine?"

"No. I mean diet soda! Have any of you ever been in his office?"

Now she's making some sense. Yikes. How could Percy have been so stupid?

"Guys, I'm really sorry about this," he says.

"Oh no, Percy!" Hazel goes in for a hug.

"Percy, it's really fine," Frank says.

Leo holds up a bottlecap. "Look, I made a smiley face!"

"Bro, if you wanted to hang out with us, you should've just said something!" Jason wraps the group in a hug.

Annabeth clears her throat and protests that they're living in a pandemic, and Percy's almost tempted to remind her of the germ-swapping they did in the study bubble.

But that never happened. They talked it over, because that's what you do when you have sex with someone in your close friend circle, and they mutually decided that neither of them exactly regrets what happened between them, but they also decided that it's best to act like it never happened in the first place. You know, for the sake of the group dynamics.

She totally loved it though. Granted, so did Percy.

Jason releases his grip at last.

"Hey, what's that?" Leo says.

Percy follows his pointer finger to some sort of Coke bottle on wheels. "Is there a parade or something?" he asks.

Leo runs over to where it's parked and runs his hands along the outside. That Leo Valdez sure isn't afraid to touch things. "Look, a door!"

Sometimes, even Percy forgets to lock his Jeep. He's got ADHD. It happens sometimes, but he doesn't keep anything important in there, and he always takes the key with him.

Thus, he's not too surprised when Leo doesn't have to pick the lock to get the door open—not that they would have let him—but he is surprised at the contents of the giant Coke bottle.

"It's like some sort of supercomputer..." Jason looks around in awe.

Hazel squeals. "The buttons are old-timey bottle caps! How cute!"

"Guys, are you sure we should be in here?" Frank asks. "We've barely started the mural."

"Wait, this is one of those rocket simulator things!" Annabeth says. "These were really popular in the sixties."

"Gee, I wonder how they got one of these," Hazel says.

Leo cracks his knuckles and pushes the green Sprite bottle cap.

"Woah!" Frank trips and falls into the rocket simulator as the hatch closes.

"Can't snitch on us now, Frank!" Leo teases.

"Bro!" Jason shouts. "You just locked us in a giant bottle of Coke!"

"A giant bottle of Diet Coke," Leo corrects. "Oh, what's this button do?"

Frank bangs his fists against the wall. "Oh my god, I'm trapped in a tight space with six ADHD college students!"

Jason crosses his arms and starts frantically pacing back and forth in the tight space while Piper tries to calm him down, but she's nervous too. Percy can tell because she's wringing her hands.

Leo happily pushes button after button. Hasn't he done enough already?

Hazel sits down at one of the control desks and puts her head between her legs.

"Wise Girl, you good?" Percy asks. Everyone else is looking distraught, but Annabeth is flat-out rough. Her grey eyes are glazed over, and she's hugging her ankles against her chest.

"I can't take this! I can feel that coffee from this morning getting ready to make another appearance!" Frank yells.

Oh no. Frank is lactose intolerant and prone to what he calls a 'nervous tummy.'

"Okay, everybody!" Percy says. The others looks at him expectantly. Wow, that wasn't supposed to happen. They usually only quiet down for Piper or Annabeth.

Well, guess it's speech time. "We're going to get out of this. Leo, what button did you push to seal the hatch?"

"This one!" The automatic door does not open. Instead, a screen lights up, and "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga starts blasting over a buzzing, most likely waterlogged speaker.

"Agh!" Jason shouts as a disco ball lowers from the ceiling, hitting him in the head.

Piper rushes to his side. "Oh my god, Jason, are you okay?"

He does not answer.

"Bro?" Leo asks.

Jason's head lifts ever so slightly, and then he falls unconscious.

"Oh shit, I killed Jason!" Leo yells.

Annabeth rocks back and forth like an insane person. "Can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face..." she sings.

"Should we call 911?" Hazel asks.

Percy's a lifeguard. He's got this. "Is he breathing?"

Piper presses her head to Jason's chest. He better be breathing. Percy does know CPR, but he really doesn't want to perform mouth-to-mouth on Jason. Jason's great, but they're just bros.

"He's breathing," Piper declares.

"Great. Take his mask off and get him out of the way."

"Like, you want me to drag him to the back of the spaceship?"

Frank grabs Jason by the wrists and grunts as he shoves him into some sort of compartment. "There." He wipes his hands against his white jumpsuit.

"I'm gonna... I'll try this button..." Leo hits an Orange Fanta button.

"Welcome to the C.O.K.E. space shuttle!" says an A.I.

"Oh, fantastic, I love instructions!" Leo says sarcastically.

Percy leans over the control panel. "Great, I bet we can just run the simulation and we'll be out of here. Everybody take a station."

Everyone, except for poor, probably concussed Jason chooses a seat.

"Guys, I don't feel so good..." Hazel says.

"Can we do something for you?" Percy asks.

"Probably not. I'm just prone to motion sickness."

Piper drops a soda can on the ground. "Wait, we're moving?"

"We're all going to die!" Frank yells and starts to bang his fists against the wall again.

"Ow!" Annabeth yells. "C'mon, you can't concuss two of us!"

Well, at least someone's come to their senses.

Percy retrieves the thick instruction manual that hit her.

Hold up.

Percy opens the thick instruction manual and starts to read, but the lighting in the simulator is super strange and dark, and the letters are just dancing off the pages. What a great occasion to be dyslexic!

"Frank," Percy demands. "You're the only one of us that doesn't have dyslexia. Read this manual and get us out of here."

Frank furrows his eyebrows and takes the book, opening it up to a table of contents.

"Okay, there should be a green Dasani water bottle button on the left-hand side of the spaceship.

Piper pushes the button.

Everybody watches in anticipation.

"Now what?" Percy asks.

"Well, we wait for mission control," says Frank.

"Woah!"

"Oh no!"

"I'm gonna be sick!"

The simulator goes over a bump in the road, sending the not-quite astronauts tumbling into one another. Finally, it comes to a complete stop.

"Get off of me, Seaweed Brain!" Annabeth yells.

"I can't! Frank's butt is in my face!" Not only that but Percy's starting to understand firsthand what Frank meant when he warned everyone of the coffee making a second appearance. That's why Frank doesn't even risk the soft-serve ice cream.

"I freakin' hate heterosexuality! Dean D! I got 'em!"

"Fantastic work, Neil!"

"Look, it's Nico!" Hazel shouts.

Sure enough, Nico di Angelo and Dean D are pictured on a grainy screen. It doesn't even have color. If Dean D wasn't so generously endowed, there'd be no telling which of them is which.

"Guys, I did something right!" Frank yells, scrambling to his feet.

Percy sits up and addresses the screen. "Can you get us out of here?"

"Perhaps," says Nico. "I found a YouTube video of some geek completing the simulation."

Fantastic. They're getting out of here!

"Okay," Nico says. "Everyone should choose a station-"

"I call the gunner!" Hazel shouts.

Why there's a gun on the Diet Coke space shuttle is beyond Percy, but if anybody's going to man it, it better be Hazel.

"Okay, first, you technically have to take off. Everyone needs to buckle their seatbelts and hit the orange button on the ceiling," Nico instructs.

"I have a question!" Piper interjects. "If our seatbelts completely came off the wall when we tried to buckle them, should we just skip that step?"

Percy gets his seatbelt buckled with no problem, and then pushes the button on the ceiling.

"Congratulations!" The A.I. voiceover gives them some more instructions, but the only ones Percy wants to take are from Nico.

Nico sets his black Hydroflask down on the table in front of him. "Now these little puzzles should pop up on the screen-"

"Yes, the snake game!" says Leo.

Percy looks at Annabeth's screen next to him. Damn, she got a solitaire game.

"Shit," Percy swears. He got a word search. "Frank, trade with me!"

"You guys don't actually have to do the puzzles!" Nico yells. "Just click the red arrow and then the button on the ceiling again to bypass the games."

"Excuse you," says Annabeth, "but I am kicking ass at solitaire right now."

Percy is still repressing some feelings for Annabeth deep down somewhere inside him, but does she really have to be this annoying? Like, all of the time?

Without a word, Piper reaches over and presses the orange button on the ceiling above Annabeth.

"Congratulations, Cadets!" the A.I. says.

The hatch slowly opens. Ah, fresh air! It's wonderful, and sort of headache-inducing!

Percy unbuckles his seatbelt and runs to the exit. One small step for man, one giant...

Empty wasteland? What is this, Death Valley or something?

"Percy, can you see a water fountain out there? I'm kind of thirsty," Hazel says.

"You... you don't want to come out here..." he says as a literal tumbleweed floats across the dusty road.

"Why not?"

"Move! Guys, I'm really feeling claustrophobic!"

"Oh my god, Jason, you're alive!" Piper yells.

Someone needs to take some action. Might as well be Percy. "Leo, tell Nico what's going on!"

"We lost connection!" Leo hollers back. "But the Lady Gaga button still works!"

Sure enough, the speakers are blasting more tacky club music. "I want your love and I want your revenge!"

Anyways, Jason has seen better days. His jumpsuit is unzipped to his waist, and his purple New Rome Community College t-shirt is drenched in sweat.

Not to mention that he bangs his head against the ceiling when he bursts through the hatch, sending him head over heels and back into unconsciousness.

"We're lost!" Frank yells, pulling at his hair like an insane person.

"Frank, chill out!" Annabeth says. "C'mon drink a sixty-year-old soda! You like soda!"

"Yeah!" Hazel encourages. "Soda doesn't make you nearly as gassy as coffee does."

Piper cracks open a Coca-Cola can and offers it to Frank.

Frank takes the aluminum can with shaky fingers and pours the drink into his mouth, spilling some of it down his chin and onto the white jumpsuit. Percy supposes that they can call their painting suits spacesuits now though.

"Better?" Annabeth asks.

"FRANK! SMASH!" Frank pulls Leo's seat out from the floor with him still in it and tosses him across the spaceship.

In his surprise, Percy drops Jason's body. "Frank, man, this isn't worth it!"

Frank pulls the computer monitor out of the wall, revealing a driver's seat.

The spaceship was just the back of an automobile this entire time.

"Move over! I've hotwired a few cars in my day!" Piper shouts.

Percy would love to hear that story, but he decides it might be best not to distract Piper since she's driving, apparently.

"Have you ever noticed that we always let Piper drive even though she's terrible at it?" Leo asks.

Percy covers his ears when the engine roars. Wow, so this car does not have a muffler.

"Awesome," says Piper. "Everyone keep an eye out for a road sign or something."

Leo interjects from somewhere in the space shuttle. "Nobody cares? Just me? Okay, then."

This is great. Their luck is finally turning around! They've got a car!

"Shit, this crazy thing's low on gas," Percy notes as he buckles himself in the passenger seat.

"Annabeth!" Piper shouts. "Check Jason's pockets! He usually keeps a twenty on him!"

"Why me?"

Percy turns the lever and rolls the window down, fighting the temptation to stick his head out the window like a labrador retriever.

New Rome Community College, here they come!

✎✎✎

Percy has never once in his life been happy to see Dean D, but as the Coke space shuttle rolls onto campus, he's completely overjoyed to see that tacky zebra print shirt.

"Guys, I'm feeling kind of carsick..." Hazel warns.

Not paying attention to this information at all, Piper runs over a curb, causing Percy's seatbelt to lock and almost strangle him.

There's cheering throughout campus. People Percy doesn't even know are chanting his name.

"Guys, I'm okay!" Jason yells. "Has anyone seen my wallet?"

Percy lets out a sigh of relief.

"Well, it looks as if our mission is complete! Everyone congratulate our brave heroes!" Dean D shouts through a bullhorn.

"Piper, you can slow down now," Annabeth says.

"Yeah, Pipes, maybe pull over in the fire lane and put the flashers on," Percy agrees.

"That's a great idea!" The giant bottle of Coke swerves to the right, almost slamming into the on-campus gym, and does not stop in the fire lane.

"So theoretically," Piper says. "If the brakes weren't working and we were flying at about forty miles per hour towards the woods, what would you guys want to do about that?"

Percy never thought it would end like this, in a giant bottle of his favorite soda.

Leo opens the hatch. "Everybody, make like my family and abandon ship!"

The door drags along, ruining the nice landscaping before detaching from the vehicle altogether.

"Geronimo!" Leo's voice carries in the wind as he jumps

Frank lets Jason wrap his arm around him as a crutch and follows Leo, tumbling into the field below.

Hazel jumps next, landing flat on her face, but hey, if anyone can make that look graceful, it's her.

Percy catches Annabeth's smirk in the rearview mirror and watches as she backflips out of the moving vehicle.

"Cocky much," Percy notes. He unbuckles his and Piper's seatbelts and opens the passenger door.

The grass isn't as cushy as one might think. He's definitely going to have a bruise on his ass for a week. Piper will be just fine though. Percy knows this because she uses him to break her fall.

"Well," says Piper. "You know that space movie Tristan McLean was in where-"

BOOM!

The space shuttle bursts into flames upon impact with a pine tree. Gas pools under the vehicle, but Percy has a feeling it always had a leaky tank.

"Look, there's everyone else!" Piper scrambles to her feet and runs towards their friends.

"Is everybody okay?" Frank asks.

The group starts talking all at once.

"Oh, nice to see you've gone back to normal, Hulk," Annabeth teases.

Leo turns to Piper. "That's the last time I ever get in a car you're driving!"

Piper starts to tell her Tristan McLean story again. "Okay, but has anybody ever seen-"

"I'm okay, Frankie, how about you?" Hazel asks.

"Can someone please fill me in on what the hell just happened?" Jason asks.

"Guys!" Percy yells.

Six pairs of misfit eyes turn to him.

"You were all really great crewmates. I know it was kind of freaky, but someday, we'll all look back on this moment and-"

Thud!

"Aw, not again, Jason!" Piper shouts. "Let's get you to the health center."

Frank and Percy pick Jason up from the ground. They can talk about their space adventure later.

"Nice job back there, Seaweed Brain," Annabeth says, elbowing Percy.

Or maybe they can just forget about the whole thing.