Theeeeere we go. That's more like it.
Piper
Piper felt very, very tired. Her shoulders were stiff and tense, and she felt like there was a weight resting on her shoulders. Couldn't this just be done? But no, instead it had to go and get weirder. This random girl shows up. And Adrian? Seriously? Now, normally Piper wasn't terribly judgmental, but what sort of girl was named Adrian? And, more interestingly, why did she show up just after Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus?
The only thing that kept Piper calm about the situation was Tyson. If Tyson was with this Adrian girl, then something had to be right about her. Piper trusted Tyson, and and she knew that he would have seen straight through it if Adrian had tried to lie to him. The girl's story was too weird for Piper's taste, though. Adrian's story was even weirder than Hazel's story, and to be honest, Hazel's story was weirder than a Pegasus riding a unicycle. The daughter of Queen Elizabeth and Poseidon? Granddaughter of Jupiter? ... What?
Jason didn't seem too keen on the girl, either. Piper suspected his pride had been injured when the girl wasn't intimidated by his sword. Piper made up her mind not to judge the girl too quickly; she seemed nice enough, and helpful enough, after all. But she certainly wasn't going to lend this stranger her trust. She decided she'd keep an eye on Adrian, and she was prepared to use her Charmspeak if she needed to.
Jason's squeezed her shoulder gently, bringing her back into focus. The railing of the deck was cool and smooth beneath her palms, and Jason's arm was warm and heavy. She leaned into him, staring off at the ground far below the hull of the boat.
"So," she said, breaking a long companionable sort of silence.
"So," he replied. There was reluctance in his voice, like he didn't want to end the peaceful quiet, but he also sounded eager to talk. Perhaps he wanted a distraction from his thoughts.
"What do you think is up with the red-head?" she asked, trying to sort through her mental stack of questions.
"I think we might as well give her a go, and kill her if she becomes a threat," Jason replied thoughtfully, his hand on his sword. "I think she's kinda like... a goddess. That kind of magic, anyway. We could use that to our advantage. And because she's not really a demigod, it's not like she would curse our quest."
"What do you mean, she's not a demigod?" Piper asked. "She was born between a mortal and a god, doesn't that make her just like us?" She looked up at him. His face was etched in gold cast from the setting sun. It made that little scar she loved stand out white against his skin. His stormy eyes had lines that caught the cold in them, making them star-shaped and entirely otherworldly. She got caught in his eyes for a moment, only to be shaken from them when he answered her question.
"Well, she's 3/4 god... and then she was gifted by Hades, so doesn't that cancel out the other 1/4 human blood? Doesn't that make her a god? Or goddess, whatever," Jason said, looking down and smiling at her lopsidedly.
"But she's mortal," Piper said. "There's no such thing as a mortal god. The only label that would fit her is demigod."
"True," Jason said. "But I never liked labels." He bent down and kissed her on the lips, then straightened and continued staring off over the railing of the ship.
"Me neither," a voice behind them said. Piper looked up in surprise and glanced over her shoulder to see Adrian standing on the deck. She had changed clothes into faded jeans and a camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Where she got those clothes, Piper hadn't a clue. Hanging outside of her shirt was a small metal disk. The amulet depicted a caricatured bolt of lightning striking waves. There was a somewhat uneven glass bead on either side of the amulet.
Adrian glanced down at herself, and tugged at the T-shirt. "These are new. When I was there, we only got the necklaces with beads. Now you've got your own shirts... pretty nifty. Isn't that what people say nowadays?" She glanced up, fixing her eyes on Piper.
Her eyes were unnerving. They just weren't right. Sure, Piper had seen people with two different colors of eyes before. There was even this one guy she had known in grade school who had one eye that was brown, and then one eye that was half blue and half brown (which was totally cool). But this was different. Adrian's eyes seemed like they were electrified and unnaturally bright. It looked as though someone had taken one of Percy's and one of Jason's eyes and brightened them with some sort of filter, and then put them back into this girl's head. And then there was the black ring around them...
Piper broke the eye contact quickly. The girl shrugged and walked away, leaving Piper and Jason alone.
Piper turned back to him, but the moment was broken. She leaned into his chest and felt safe there, and closed her eyes momentarily. She felt certain then that no matter what might happen, Jason would keep her safe. She reached for the dagger and pulled it out, ignoring the shaking in her hands. She stared into the surface of the blade.
For several long moments, it was a blank slate of bronze metal. Then it rippled and a place that was very familiar to her appeared. Her new home, Camp Half-Blood shimmered in the midday sun. In New York it was still daylight, but Piper could tell by the sunlight that the scene she was seeing was a couple hours in the future. The image in the dagger whirled like someone was holding a camera and spinning.
The hill that crested on the horizon came into view, and it trembled. Then a single person appeared, outlined against the sky. The person was skinny and his armor was slightly too big, and a purple cape flapped over his shoulders. Hundreds crossed the hill behind him, decked out in the latest Roman battle gear.
Piper's heart fell into her gut. The images swirled across the metal, showing her battles and crimson puddles. She saw satyrs and naiads lying in pools of their own blood, staring unblinkingly at the sky above them. She saw Romans and Greeks alike laying perfectly still on a hill slick with crimson mud, and the lake itself was tinted red with the blood of the dead. She saw Chiron take a sword between the muscles of his foreleg and hip bone, and he fell.
She saw demigod killing demigod, and a deep fear took hold of her. She was scared; very, very scared. She wasn't sure what they could do about this. Was there any way to avoid it? Could she charmspeak her way out of this?
At least they had some time... But how much?
