Piper watched as the girl, once again, triumphed over the other teams at another equestrienne event section.

She had promised her coach this: no magic. But it was really starting to get on her nerves that River Shine Over Meadow, or Lilac as everyone called her, was refusing to cooperate. And that this one girl with puffy black hair and deep brown skin had her horse galloped to her and wait patiently for her to 'catch' him.

It also didn't help that this girl was really pretty in purple.

Piper sat down on the wooden bench, folding her arms. Percy nudged her, slinging his whip on his shoulder.

"What's wrong with you?" He knitted his eyebrows together, his bland green eyes watching her brown ones.

"She's hot, and I can't use my magic to get rid of her." The girl stated. Percy pierced his lips.

"So go flirt with her, it's not like your magic hasn't 'accidently' slipped up before." He nudged Winters Fresh Snow, or Snowy, forward a little, smoothing out her dove white mane.

"That was one time," She sighed. "And it backfired."

Percy shrugged, his hair swaying in it's messy scrunchie. Piper didn't understand why he wanted to wear the stupid thing, his hair always fell out and he ended up looking like a brunette California surfer wannabe. At least the scrunchie wasn't his usual neon pink, but that didn't matter. They both were wearing a bright orange jacket representing their school - Psyche University College of New York. Why it was orange confused Piper, it clashed with her turquoise pendant her grandfather gave her. She also had no clue as to why the school wanted them to wear white slacks when the had to travel down to a fair in a state that's covered in red clay. It was with a lot of no staining magic that she made sure Percy and she looked better.

The other teams were a rainbow of colours too, but Piper still had her eyes on the black jeaned purple jacketed two kid from Rome, Georgia.

She noticed Percy had an eye on them too.

"What I would give to have to wear purple and black," He grumbled. "I don't want to look like a bad rootbeer float."

Piper snorted. "You? Oh please, I'd rather wear orange over black anyday."

"You say that now, but will you say that after we graduate?" Percy gently pet his horse, watching some other college take the stage. How they got to the top 50, or first in their state, still made Piper proud. So proud that she would have willingly taken someone out with magic, one by one. But with the rise of more stricter rules, and the lack of weed-high people, she couldn't do that as easily.

"He's cute." Percy mused, causing Piper to jump.

"What? Who?" She hissed. He nodded his head at a well groomed, short haired man that just so happened to be next to her afro competitor.

"Now is not the time to flirt." Piper warned. Percy shrugged.

"No, but Hedge did say that we should socialise." He smirked, then locked her arm around her and started to drag Piper around the white wall ring with a pony in the other hand. She fought for a moment, but it was no use. The two noticed the approaching orange cream floats and had taken interest in the two and their horse.

"Hi," Percy put on a smile, tugging the rope softly to let Snowy know she needed to stop. "I noticed you out in the ring earlier, and I wanted to come congratulate you for your qualifications."

Piper didn't know when Percy got so formal, but she had an idea that it had something to deal with the blonde haired boy with a scar on his lip.

The girl cleared her throat. "Thank you, but I'm sure this also means we're going head-to-head tomorrow?"

Piper liked the twang in her voice, it was soft and sweet like warm tea on a summer morning, but raspy at the same time. She glanced at Snowy.

"And who is this beauty?"

Percy glanced up at the quarter-horse. "This is Winters Fresh Snow."

Piper cut in. "We call her Snowy though, or just Snow."

The blonde boy smiled a little and offered their horse a sugar cube. Piper watched with half jealously as the lovely horse licked it up.

"You're the New Yerk team?" She noted that this blonde boy's accent was much thicker. Piper noded.

"Psyche University." She confirmed. "Where the horses think they run the place."

Percy chuckled. "That's just Lilac, but Snowy's busy trying to get as dirty as she can."

The girl glanced up at the blue eyes of the horse. "She's so pretty, is she really that white?"

Piper held back a roll of her eyes, knowing fully well how Percy would react.

He straightened up a little. "Yes, she's one of the only showhorses who is a True White, and she knows it. Prances around after every bath behind students and next to every marble statue to show it off."

There was a small giggle from the girl before the blonde one cleared his throat.

"Sorry, where are my manners. I'm Jason, this is Hazel. We represent University of Jove here in Atlanta."

They both, like a well oiled machine, reached out and offered a hand to shake.

Both Percy and Piper hesitated, before shaking hands with the same genders.

"Piper, and this is Percy."

A whistle sounded for behind them, someone shouting scores and who's leaving. Percy sighed.

"Looks like we've got to leave to our stalls, make sure Lilac and Snowy get fed." Piper insisted.

Percy moaned a little in acknowledgment. "Yes, but it would be a pleasure to meet up after the competition, off the record books. Get to… know you both." He smiled. Piper glared at him.

Hazel clapped her hands together. "That would be a blessing! How about we all meet up at the front gates, Jay and me can show y'all round town and we can go out to a diner."

Jason watched Piper with a keen look in his eyes. "Sounds good to me."

They waited for a moment before Piper caved in. "Fine, but maybe not the diner part, I've got… dietary restrictions."

And just like that, they parted ways.

Percy collapsed on the bail of hay, unbuttoning his jacket.

"Jackson!" Piper yelped, pulling her arms over her eyes. Percy let out a snicker.

"Piper, we're siblings. You can't possibly be flustered over seeing a pair of my abs." He scolded, his jacket flying into Piper's face.

She stumbled back, making mock sounds of surprise. She glanced at Percy and batted her lashes, fanning her face.

"Oh my dear, such handsome features." She mocked a southern accent. "What a flustering sight."

Percy hissed in either anger or laughter, Piper couldn't tell.

"Which title do you want this time?" She changed the subject, unbuttoning her own jacket.

Percy thought for a moment. "Cousins?"

Piper nodded. "Cousins." She confirmed, pulling on a simple brown cotton shirt, picking her Squash Blossom Pendant up.

Percy's hands covered hers as he picked the jewellery up, pinning it in place around her neck.

"It's just a diner, Pipes." He chided softly.

"We still have our dislikes, and I'm still vegetarian." She added. Percy just smiled, and they found themselves walking arm in arm down the hot pavement to the front gate. Their hair was done up, Piper leaning against her brother's arm as they chatted and walked side by side.

"Hear any good gossip?" She hummed. Percy let a moment of silent pass.

"Maryland's Thoroughbred is having a long distance affair with Louisiana's Arabian."

Piper gasped. "No way."

Percy nodded. "Drove me nuts, hearing all the sappy love songs they keep singing to each other. Apparently this affair's been going on for years and they really want to breed together."

"Whatchya gonna do about it?" Piper hummed.

"Maybe bash my head into a plate of apples before reminding myself that Hedge did say no powers."

"You can't turn off communications like that," She noted. "You're special like that."

Before long, they caught sight of a strangely bright yellow shirt and purple bell bottom jeans that was occupied by an afro.

"That's… a new sight." Piper muttered, looking down at her creamy brown shirt and turquoise. Percy scoffed softly.

"Yeah, you'd think their uniforms would be louder than their personal." He chided. "She looks ready to party and he looks ready to do a rock concert."

Piper inspected Jason. He was wearing a black leather jacket, bell bottom jeans that were dark denim, and silver shoes. His smile was nothing close to his attire.

"Hey Percy, Piper." Hazel waved them over. Piper broke her arm link with Percy and bounced forward a little, leaving her brother behind.

"It's nice to see ya, er…" Jason scratched the back of his head.

"Outside of the orange?" Piper offered.

"Outside of the ring," Percy said at the same time. They blinked, then glaanced at each other.

"Um, both would work." Hazel chirped. "Anything in particular you'd like to go do?"

Piper had to admit, her accent was beautiful. Percy nudged Piper's shoulder.

"What?" She looked up at him.

"You're the one who's a bit more picky then I am." He teased lightly.

She glared at him, but shrugged. "Are there any vegetarian places?"

Hazel glanced at Jason. "Yeah, Valdez's restaurant does vegetarian." She mused. "He's known for custom orders."

Piper nodded. "Let's go there then… is it close?"

Jason pointed behind him using his thumb. "Just up the street, we can dr-"

The look on Percy and Piper's faces answered his question. Instead, all four of them started walking.

His name was Leo, and Piper was surprised at how short he was. Which sounds like an exaggeration, but Leo was what Hazel kept calling a 'little person', He was the height of her little sister Sage, who was 7.

"Vegetarian, ya say?" Leo tapped his chin. "You don't like milk either?"

Piper shook her head. He snapped his fingers. "I've got it, see ya in a jiffy."

He left the four in their red faux leather booth, at the silver grooved table. Jason and Hazel were sat across from Percy and Piper, glasses of Coca-Cola bubbling between them.

"So you two are Navajo?" Hazel asked with piqued interest.

Piper nodded. "We're cousins, so to speak."

Percy rolled his eyes. "We're siblings and cousins. It's a common thing for sisters to marry the same man in our community, my mom is her aunt, my dad is her dad."

Jason nodded. "Doen't it get confusin?"

Piper shook her head. "Not unless you make it."

Hazel leaned forward. "So, do you.. Ya know… make magic?"

Piper crunched her nose together. "What makes you think that?" She defended.

Hazel shrugged. "Grandpapa use to tell me stories about Navajo in the world war, about how them can do magical things."

Percy glanced at Piper with a hard gleam in his eyes; Not now.

Piper looked back at Hazel while shaking her head. "Just stories." She reassured. Leo bounded in, sliding steaming plates in front of them.

Hazel and Jason got cheeseburgers and fries, Percy and Piper got a steaming bowl of rice covered in a multitude of beans, tomatoes, leafy greens, olives, and in Percy's case, goat meat.

"Y disfrutar" He bowed. Piper watched him bounce off.

"Okay, this does look good." She admitted, then started to eat.

The next day, while Percy was out showing, Hazel knocked on the stall door. Piper looked up from her notepad, stopping her drawing of a simple bird to see purple and black.

"Can I help you, Hazel?" Piper got up, pulling the sall using the bars to let the girl in.

Today her hair was in a head wrap, so the black kinky hair ha a shock of bright purple in it.

"Yeah, actually.. 'Bout yesterday." Hazel rubbed her hands together.

Piper's eyebrows knitted together. "What about it?"

The girl waved for her to shut the stall and pull the makeshift curtain over the opening. Piper hesitated, but pulled the curtain shut.

"It's 'bout the magics question." Hazel fumbled her hands together. Piper noticed her nails were painted gold. "I were actually hopin' you could help me with something."

Piper didn't notice it at first, but a wisp of smoke trailed off of Hazel's hands. She did a doubletake, watching as the smoked sparked with purple and gold.

"You… you can…"

Hazel held her hands out. "It didn't start until early this semester, Jay is the only one who knows. We tryin' to figure it out, but the only thing we find is old stories of greece and a Navajo story me grandpapa use to tell me."

Her dark eyes watched Piper's with hope. Piper sighed.

"We… do have magic. My people don't like to talk about it, a lot has been taken from us, and we don't want people to know much about our magic."

Hazel nodded, and sat down in Percy's chair. Piper sat down across from her, holding her hands.

"Do you remember what you were doing the first time it happened?"

Hazel nodded. "I was alone with our stallion Arion, when I thought I saw somethin in the corner. Like, a person. Well, I went over there, and found out it were a person, one of the seniors who didn't like me because my…" Piper nodded, she knew what Hazel was referring too. "He tried to do something, but there was this flash of gold and he went sailin' into a bail of hay. Then, he looked at me, and his eyes flashed blue. Then he were confused."

Piper frowned. "Confused?"

Hazel nodded. "He said he ain't rememberin' me, like he don't know me. The next day he unenrolled from the school, claiming he didn't know anything."

"I… that's really strange, I've never seen magic like that." Piper admitted. "Did that happen again?"

Hazel shrugged. "Not in the same way, A rider in our school, she were our original competitor, had the same eye flashy thing happen, and she didn't remember how to ride a horse. A little boy about 5 years old suddenly could do calculus, I can't even do calculus."

Piper went to say something, then the hairs on the back of her neck tinged.

"Hazel?"

"Yes?"

"Why does Jason know about your abilities?"

She bit her lip for a moment. "Jay went through the same thing. Well, not the same, but he got the ability to use the wind and lightning and rain. Like one of them gods in greece."

"Zeus," Piper recalled the vague lesson Percy gave her. She wasn't interested in other Mythologies, but Percy had a thing for the Greeks. "He was the sky god and lightning god."

Hazel nodded. "We were talking about stuff and Jay accidentally slipped up. So we decided to figure this out together."

There was a knock on the wood door of the stall door. Hazel pulled her hands away from Piper's, which gave the Navajo girl a weird saddened feeling.

Percy looked at them from his place at the now open stall.

"...What's going on?"

Hazel pressed her lips together, looking down at her lap. Piper stood up.

"Hazel and Jason seem to be dealing with… spontaneous magic."

That night it was the four of them, sitting by a lake on the campus of an Atlanta college, with a stallion and a boat.

"So you can speak to them horses?" Jason looked up at Aaron, who whined a little. Percy winced.

"Yeah, and you need to stop giving him sugar cubes, it's tainting his language."

Piper waved her brother's statement off. "Okay, let's go over this again. You can control rain and wind," Jason nodded, "And you can implant or replace memories."

Hazel shrugged. "Seems like that."

Percy and Piper shared a look.

"Piper can control emotions, so hopefully you two should cancel each other out." Percy said before piper could counter anything. "Jason and I can… Go to a higher part of the campus, maybe a tower of sorts, and handle things from there."

Aaron snorted at the statement, and Piper felt Percy's cheeks flared with emotion. She glared a him, but Jason nodded.

"Sounds good me. Let's get Aaron back to his stall though."

Percy agreed, then the two were walking off.

Hazel tapped Piper's shoulder.

"What's the boat for?"

Piper glanced at her, smiling a little.

"For us. We need a more remote location, it's harder to get to things when they're on the water."

Hazel seemed a bit skeptical, but she smiled anyways. "Okay! Let's go do this."

The girl grabbed Piper's hand, and she swore that she saw a spark of pink in their hands.

As the brackets brought down more and more states, the four grew a tighter bond. Even if that bond was two girls trying to figure out the powers and two boys trash talking each other's routines.

Piper definitely noticed the apparent crush Percy and Jason had on each other, and while it was rather frustrating to watch, it was even more frustrating when Percy pointed out she had a crush on Hazel.

"I do not."

Percy smiled. "Oh come on. Holding hands in the stalls, whispering to each other, lingering eyes on her-"

"What the- Percy, stop it. I'm the one with the Frenzy Path, not you."

"I'm the one who hears nothing but Pipazel gossip in the stalls, the horses know about it so I know about it."

Piper paused. "Pip…azel?"

Percy nodded. "That's what they're calling it. First part of your name, second part of Hazel's."

"Why are the horses mixing names now?" She cried out, throwing her hands up into the air. "Dear immortals, you've gone mad."

Percy snorted. "Piper, admit it. You like Hazel."

"And you like Jason." She snapped back. "But you're not going to-"

She paused right there. Percy bit his lip and rubbed the back of his head.

"No." She pointed at him. "Nooo."

"Well…"

"Oh my gods, Percy you actually-"

He nodded.

"Go ask out Hazel, Piper. You like her, and I'm pretty sure she likes you back."

With that, he grabbed his whip and left her in the stall alone, her face red with realisation.

"You son of a-"

Piper stalked down the hall, reversing her lines in her head.

She muttered them, syllable after syllable, before she almost ran into a wall of muscle.

The air around her thickened, and she stopped mid fall. Jason grabbed her wrist and pulled her up.

"Wow, are you okay?" He dusted her orange coat off. Piper nodded. "Where are you going in such a rush?"

She glanced behind him. "I'm actually going to go see Hazel." She stated quickly, before trying to walk off. Jason grabbed her shoulder.

"Piper-"

"I'm not going to talk-"

"Hazel's lookin for you right now." He interrupted. Piper blinked.

"She is?"

"Somethin 'bout 'magical training'," She heard a hint of humour in his voice. "A little tip, Hazel's weak for chocolate milk shakes, and Leo knows how to make vegan milk shakes."

With that, he let go of her shoulder and walked off the the direction of her stall.

She blushed a little, before dusting her pants off and turning to walk down the horizontal walkway, in search of the kinky haired girl.

"Wait, you've never had a milkshake?!" Hazel exclaimed loudly, before covering her mouth. Some people glanced over, but no one payed mind to the outburst.

Piper smiled sheepishly. "Navajo don't own cattle, so we don't drink much dairy. Most of the time, only some of our young drink goats milk, but nothing beyond that because we're not tolerant to it."

Hazel mouthed the word 'Wow', before waving down Leo. "Leeeeo, we need an almond milkshake quick, she ain't ever have one."

Piper saw the thumb of the mini man from behind the counter, and she rolled her eyes a little.

In no time flat, there was a dark creamy brown drink in a thick glass between the two girls, a purple and a yellow straw on either side.

"Try it." Hazel nudged the glas across the table. Piper gently took the straw and gently pressed her lips against it. Hazel waited patiently, her wide brown eyes flickering over her features.

Piper blinked at the taste, then took another.

"Wow." She whispered. "That's good."

"I know!" Hazel exclaimed before taking a sip from her yellow straw. "You been missing out."

Piper laughed, her heart doing weird flips and flutters. She reached out and held Hazel's hand, letting them rest on the table.

"Maybe I have been." She cleared her throat, then leaned over the table to let her lips meet Hazel's.

There was a soft squeak of surprise, before Hazel pressed back against Piper. When they parted, they heard a lady telling them it was easier to kiss when there wasn't a glass of milkshake in front of them. Piper laughed when she realised she got vegan whip cream on her shirt.

"Oops."

Hazel giggled at this. "Maybe we could just finish the shake first, then go on a date later?"

"Agreed."

Piper held Hazel's hand while they heard the last 3 places being announced.

Nebraska won the 3rd place prize, which left only Georgia and New York. For Piper and Hazel, they've decided that they didn't care what prize they got. Hazel wanted to move up north with Piper, meet her family and be closer. Percy was going to stay down south with Jason, but Piper saw the competitive gleam in her brother's eyes. Boyfriends or not, he still wanted to win.

Hazel leaned against Piper's shoulder, her hair tickling Piper's neck. "I might have tipped the scales."

Piper gasped. "You performed magic on the judges?"

Hazel laughed a little. "In all fairness, Nebraska would have been first, and we'd never hear the end of Percy and Jason's bickering."

"So who's gonna win?"

"And in first plaace!" The announcer stood on the podium, snapping Piper's attention from her girlfriend.

Girlfriend… Piper smiled. She liked that term.

"New York!"

"Oh thank the immortals." Piper sighed. Hazel laughed.

"You did care."

"I don't want to hear Percy's moping every family meeting."

"Just don't tell him that I interfered." Hazel whispered. Piper kissed her nose.

"I won't."