Disclaimer: I don't own the Percy Jackson characters at all.

"You've got to put more effort into your swings!" Hazel told me, while I swung my sword (that I supposedly retrieved from Zethes, one of Khione's brothers) towards the practice dummy. I frowned when the dummy remained stable for the eighth time that day. And yes, I had been counting.

And to top it all off, the sting from the Pit Scorpion still ached on my back. Sometimes at night, I could see the yellow pus still oozing out of the wound. But I know I shouldn't be complaining. Even though we got out of the battle alive, some of the campers had worse situations than I did.

"I'm trying, but the stupid dummy refuses to budge!" I replied, while kicking the dummy in frustration.

Even though I'm having a hard time at this, I feel more bad for Hazel than I do for myself. She told me this is the second time she's been teaching me this move (first time being before I lost my memories), and I gotta say, I suck. Real bad.

"Maybe you shouldn't be placing your feet like that." Reyna said, while glancing down at my feet. My feet were only a foot away from each other, and now that she points it out, I notice how uncomfortable it is to swing the sword like that. So I spread them a little farther apart from each other, and I try swinging again.

That wasn't the case at all.

"I'm hopeless!" I concluded, while throwing my hands in the air with frustration.

"No, you just need more practice. And plus, you've been doing good in all those other moves I taught you. You'll get it eventually." Hazel added, with a small encouraging smile on her face.

"I've been practicing for over a week now, and I'm getting nowhere with this move!" I said, while finally sitting down from about two hours of standing up.

"Maybe, you just weren't meant to fight." Reyna said, while glancing at the perfectly still dummy.

...

Ouch.

...

Hazel glared at Reyna, her eyes saying something like, What the fuck are you saying, lady?

Then Reyna, who just noticed, opened her eyes wide in realization of what she said and quickly explained, "No! I didn't mean it like that! I mean maybe you weren't meant to fight with a sword. I saw you fight with your dagger against those Pit Scorpion last week, and you did well with that."

"But I didn't even know what I was doing! And, I'm pretty sure a dagger won't help me kill the Goddess of Snow!" I protested.

"It helped you kill her the first time." Hazel pointed out, now agreeing with Reyna, "Maybe it'll do so again."

"Okay... so can you teach me how to use my dagger?" I asked, now feeling defeated.

Hazel frowned. "Sorry, but I have bad experience with daggers. Maybe you should ask help from Annabeth."

"Okay."

I started getting up to go visit Annabeth, but I got stopped by Reyna.

"Not now. I can see the wound starting to open up again, and I think you need to rest for a little while."

She didn't need to tell me twice.

Even though I was exhausted, sleep refused to come to me. It seems to me that sometimes when I don't want sleep to come, it overwhelms me anyways, and refuses to come to me when I feel like I really need it. Right now is definitely one of those times.

Now that I conclude trying to sleep is useless right now, I got out of bed to go talk to Annabeth. I knock on the door of Athena's cabin, and wait for someone to get the door. Instead of Annabeth, her brother Malcolm answered it. I opened my mouth to ask for Annabeth, but he seemed to already know what I was going to say because he cuts me off.

"Annabeth, Piper is here!" He calls out to the cabin. O-kay then...

"Yeah, tell her I'm coming in 10 minutes. I'll meet her at the Sword Fighting Arena." I heard Annabeth's reply. It turns out Hazel and Reyna already told her about the training I desperately needed.

Malcolm turned to me and said, "She said to meet her-"

"Yeah, I heard her." I cut him off as nicely as possible despite my irritable mood. Malcolm shrugged helplessly, waved goodbye, and shut the door.

When I turned to exit, I saw myself face-to-face with one of the Hermes' twins, one of the few campers who I learned to know the name of recently. Travis Stoll. "Hey, Piper."

"Hey."

"You wanna help me prank Katie?" Katie? Who was that again?

"Katie?"

"Yeah..." Travis noticed my confused face, and raised an eyebrow. "You know, the promise you made last year, before you left on the Argo II?"

"Uh, yeah..."

"You said you would help me prank Katie so I could win her heart, even though you told me it would be 'completely useless and utterly pointless'" He reminded, using air-quotes.

"Umm, yeah." I said, starting to get really uncomfortable.

Don't trust anybody, Chiron's voice echoes in my head.

"You seriously don't remember that? We were pranking her for like 4 months straight!" He said, really starting to get confused now.

"She's really tired, Travis, remember? She got stabbed in the back by a Pit Scorpion." A new voice said. We turned around to see who it was, and I was sort of surprised to see Leo there.

"Oh. Oh yeah. Well, see you around." Travis said starting to walk away with his head down, looking disappointed.

Ugh. These people are growing on me fast.

"Wait, Travis."

"Yeah?" He turned around looking a little hopeful.

"Maybe later I'll help you prank Katie. Even if it is very stupid." I said with an apologizing smile.

Travis's eyes brightened up. "Okay. Thanks Piper!" Then he ran away back to his cabin, to do who-knows-what.

As soon as he left, I turned to Leo and let out a long sigh of relief that I hadn't noticed I had been holding in. "Thanks, Leo!"

Leo smiled and patted me on the back, and (much to my annoyance) he replied with a smirk, "No problem, Beauty Queen."

As I walked towards the arena, I noticed Reyna already there standing off in the corner somewhere, her eyes glazed over, confirming she's deep in thought. I walk towards her, and she greets me with a friendly smile then turns her attention back towards the practice dummies. It is then that I notice Jason and Frank sparring with each other on the other side of the room. That brings a question in my mind that I've been meaning to ask for a while, so I do.

"So... what's going on between you and Jason?" I asked, while trying to suppress my growing smirk.

That got Reyna's attention. "What? Wa-Where did Jason come into this?" Reyna stuttered. I could see her blush threatening to appear on her cheeks, but she swallowed hard and her face hardened once more.

"Oh, don't give me that 'I don't know what the crap you're talking about' face! I see your constant stares in his direction. Don't think no one's noticed." I exclaimed, waggling my eyebrows, now starting to get why my mother is Aphrodite.

Instead of a flustered face I was sort of expecting to see, she gives me a sad one. "Yeah, well. It wouldn't work out anyways."

I frowned. How would it not "work out"? Reyna's amazing, even though her glares can freak people out. She's beautiful, powerful, nice, and a very good person in general.

And Jason... he's decent enough. Well... more than decent actually, but I'm not dumb enough to say that out loud. During the past weeks or so, he's been sort of... flustered around me. He would sometimes talk to me, make a stupid joke or something, but then he would end it and always break his eye contact with me. It was weird... and sort of cute. But I chided myself for thinking like that. There's just too much going on right now, and I really shouldn't be thinking about... that.

"Why would it not work out?"

She didn't answer for a while, and I thought she never would, but she did. "He's interested in someone else."

Oh. There was this new feeling stirring violently in my chest, but it dissipated as quickly as it came when Reyna uttered those words out.

"Really? Who?"

But that question never got answered because Annabeth finally arrived.

"Tell me later, okay?" I asked Reyna. And even though it came out as a question, I secretly meant for it to be a statement. A demand. And I have no idea why.

She nodded but I heard her mutter, "if I can manage to." Then she glanced one more time in Jason and Frank's direction, then walked away.

Eeep! Don't you love how Piper's so clueless when it comes to her own love? And can I just say, 'Damn you, Annabeth for freaking ruining the moment!' (Even though it is partly my fault as well.) Sorry this chapter was so small by the way... I hope the next one will make it up...

Next chapter, prepare for a small sparring scene with Piper against Annabeth. And maybe, a JASPER moment? I don't know, it depends on what you guys want. I was sooo excited about writing the last part to this chapter, and I'm happy about how it came out... was it alright? I also recently made another fanfiction focusing on JASPER, and I'm going to be updating that one tomorrow and then it will normally be updating every Sunday. But this one is still going to be updating ever Saturday... so yeah...

It would be nice if you review, please!

Till next time,

Penguin