Disclaimer: I don't own PJO and I don't make money from this.

AN: I'm back! So sorry for the wait on the chapter, all. It's been a manic few weeks but hopefully shortly things will slow down a little. I'll try to have another chapter up for you all this week but I can't make any guarantees. Then again, lovely comments do tend to help boost those creative juices. As do reviews and feedback, please! Thanks again for your patience.

Tempting the Fates

Chapter Twenty Five

Piper Packs Punches

Piper

Being removed from a mission was more or less unheard of— and the only times that it did happen, something was massively amiss. The last time it had happened someone had nearly died and being sent back to camp with their entrails nearly falling out seemed like a self explanatory reason for not being allowed to continue. After all, the satyrs weren't really big fans of losing the demigods they spent so much time undercover in hopes of discovering and ushering to sanctuary. That, and Chiron frowned upon it.

For Piper it had been nothing so honourable as being disemboweled— and on a normal bad day that would sound like one of those silver lining things that self help books her father's various personal assistants might read because oh, hey, at least you weren't disemboweled. But no. That would have been completely favourable to what actually happened. And that was that her boyfriend, Jason Grace, has basically told her that she was completely untrustworthy and had benched her from her own mission.

At first she'd been furious, then she'd moved onto sappy music on the ipod depressed as she lay in her room wallowing. But after that? She'd gotten to suspicious. Something was clearly going on here and the daughter of Aphrodite might not know what but she did trust her gut instinct and something was really wrong. And not just wrong in the way that Jason had approached her on the deck of the Argo II to tell her that her powers were going as schizophrenic as her godly parent at the moment but off kilter in the way that Athena's daughter was allowed to make a grievance against her and the boy she trusted with everything hadn't been willing to stick up for her.

That never happened.

Something was going on and Piper had every intention of figuring out what.

She had been thinking on it for hours— from the point she'd turned off the sad/sappy playlist every girl had programmed onto their ipod (no really, even if they wouldn't admit it, they totally had one and Piper was no different). There was only so much to put together if large portions of the picture was obscured from view but she'd always liked puzzles even if she hadn't been terribly gifted at them. That was completely irrelevant because she was convinced (much like one of her father's personal assistants self help books) that if she tried long and hard enough eventually she would be successful. So that just took a lot of concentrating and trying to fit all the corners in place so she could build inwards.

That lasted until her brain felt like it was going to pop out her ears. Thinking took a lot of effort especially when you weren't really sure what it was you were looking for; maybe she had to give Annabeth a little credit. How that girl clicked everything into place twenty four seven was ridiculous. Her mother's gift unto her children must be immunity from tension headaches because jeez, Piper's shoulders were killing her. She was slumped over the side of her bed, head hanging down towards the floor, attempting to relax a little. Plus the blood rushing to her head made her a little woozy and that was a better feeling than mistrustful, upset, concerned, anxious, fretful and a whole other string of words that the aforementioned daughter of wisdom could probably come up with words a lot longer and prettier sounding to describe a little better.

Twisting her finger around the necklace she wore, she stared at the door in her room from the opposite to normal perspective upside down and low versus right side up and higher. Maybe the change of perspective would shake something loose in her head that wasn't coming to the forefront straight away. Or that was just one of the many things that made her fundamentally different than her other half brothers and sisters on her godly mother's side— she'd always been a bit weird. Piper sighed and sucked on her bottom lip until the last of the cotton candy flavoured lipgloss she was wearing was worn off completely; it wasn't something she normally took to wearing but lately she'd been making more of an effort for Jason.

"Ugh!" She growled just for the sake of using her own voice in a way that didn't merit her friends looking at her while they pretended not to. Since when had they been scared of her? Or what she could do? They all had gifts and they all used them to protect themselves and their friends and their world. And sometimes even their parents. Why did that make her different? Words weren't that powerful, were they? Certainly not as strong as Leo's fire or Frank's transformations or Percy's ability to turn into a one-man-storm. Or Jason's ability to make anyone extra crispy in a matter of seconds. Words weren't much in the long run. Not compared to all of that.

A pillow collided with the cabin wall as Piper threw herself into a sitting position. This was getting her nowhere. She only sort of hurt her little toe when she jammed her feet back into her slip on shoes (hey, not everything could be sneakers and hiking boots all of the time, sometimes a girl needed to have a few comforts of home even if they were small ones) and headed out. Only the door didn't open all of the way because it was too busy slamming into some unseen force on the other side.

"Ow! Son of a drunken drakon…"

"Sorry!" She shouted, all of the pomp and circumstance gone right out of her and second leg of her mini mission of finding out what was up forgotten. "Sorry… are you okay?"

"You weren't up top," was muffled by Jason's hand over his face, cupping around his nose. "I guess you didn't hear us come back."

Throwing a glance over her shoulder, Piper looked only a little guiltily at the ipod on her bunk that was still playing music. Fortunately she didn't crank it up nearly as loud as Leo so it wasn't apparent to the other demigod why she hadn't heard them. Buy why hadn't her friends gotten her?

Probably because they're too busy being scared of you. And believing Annabeth over you. The thoughts creeped into her mind like shadows crept into corners: a little too easily.

Her braid hit her shoulder when she turned back around and briefly snapped her back into reality. They were thin and like whips, snapping against the tanned skin of her shoulder exposed because she was only wearing a vest top (there was much to be said about the heat of the Mediterranean). Jason stood before her, blue eyes wary and blonde hair more static electricity than she'd ever seen it— probably because it was growing out from the short close-crop style the Romans preferred to the more carefree length that was associated with the Greek camp.

When he didn't move his hand away from his nose, her eyebrows knit together.

"I fink you might huv bwoken my noth?" He tried unhelpfully to answer the question she posed to him without words.

However angry she'd been dissolved right then as the red went from her vision. Jason was stood before her, she'd very nearly killed him with the door, and his nose was bleeding. "Shit," she swore in ancient Greek as she fluttered about her room looking for tissues. She came back with a handful and shoved them at him so he could clean his hand and plug his nose. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were about to come in! I was about to head up to the deck," she babbled apologetically, though a knot formed in her stomach.

Leave it to her generally perfect boyfriend to spoil a dramatic exit, and to make her seem foolish for being upset about that in the process.

Holding his free hand up— the one that wasn't currently covered in his own blood— he waved her off. "Dohn worry. Totally my fault. Should huv knocked first." Tilting his head back, Jason attempted to stop the bleeding by applying pressure as he pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand and plugged up the offending nostrils with the offered tissue.

Piper sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. Her hand breezed against his cheek, just barely touching, as she caressed him. Whatever her mind might want she wasn't able to stay raging at him for long. Especially not when he was looking pathetic and nose slightly crooked; now that she thought about it, it might actually need to be snapped back into place. Piper's knees were a little weak at the thought— they'd have to get one of the other demigods to do it. The choices weren't many as Frank would probably faint but Leo might be willing. After all, he was good with his hands and could fix pretty much anything. A nose shouldn't really be any different…

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up," she ushered him to the bathroom.

—

Jason sat on her bed with his eyes opened even though Leo had advised that closed might be best.

"I want to look you right in the eyes while you do this so you know how seriously I am when I say that I will fight you if you ruin my face."

Leo laughed but when Jason didn't join in went still (which said a lot for a son of Hephaestus who was always bouncing and tinkering perhaps more than any other demigod children). "Hah ha— oh well. No worries. I'm no son of Apollo or anything but give a little credit where credit is due, dude. What haven't I fixed so far?"

"Would you like a list?"

"Not really."

"What about the time you set the pavilion on fire—"

"That wasn't me! Just because I those firework prototypes were totally boss— you should have seen the massive ones I mean like if Chiron hadn't flipped after— doesn't mean I'm the one who lit the fuse. It was the Stolls they stole them…"

"Or the thing with the Big House…"

"Rachel said it was too dingy so I figured open plan living room… like open plan to the outside…"

"Or the…"

"Enough!" Piper snapped interrupting them. "Can we get this finished before it swells too much? It's only going to make it worse."

Both boys quieted and Leo gave a brief nod her way. She pretended not to notice the way that his eyes didn't quite meet her own. Turning around, she folded her arms across her chest and busied herself with the task of looking through some of her things as if to put them away or tidy. In the end she just moved them, never doing much more than displacing something already out of place.

A silence blanketed the room and was broken by the 'pop' of a bone going back into place, then punctuated by Jason's growl. Leo flew passed Piper, smacking into the back wall, the scent of ozone crackling in the air. He crumpled to the ground, his clothes smoking and a little burnt but fortunately not on fire.

"Jason!" Piper shouted, turning to face the other. A small trail of blood was trickling from the other's nose; he smeared it when he wiped the back of his hand across it. Shoulders rose and fell in a half hearted shrug.

"It hurt! Sorry, Leo, but man that smarted."

"Completely cool. Just a little… I'll just stay down here for a minute. Until I catch my breath." A half wheeze half chuckle left his lips as he stayed at the awkward angle on the floor.

Scrunching up his nose a few times, Jason nodded after a second. The first sign of bruising was forming under both eyes blossoming violet. The bridge of his nose was swollen and red but there wasn't ice or anything to hand to help with the fact it would probably keep ballooning up. Piper used her cornucopia to scrounge up a bag of ice. She'd never tried anything so specific and not exactly edible before but was surprised when a chunk of ice plunked on the ground. No bag but then again, maybe it could only handle things that were completely edible. Grabbing a towel, she wrapped the ice in it and handed it to Jason.

"Thanks," he mumbled as he lifted it to his face. His blue eyes met hers and he smiled— not the heart melting kind he normally gave her.

Then again, she didn't even know what had happened with Diocletian's sceptre. She was assuming they were successful but it had to be more complicated than that.

When aren't things more complicated than that? She mused. She couldn't remember the last time though it was probably some time prior to realising her heritage and even then… complicated had always been part of her lifestyle. Maybe she'd never really moved beyond that.

When they locked eyes, her stomach knotted.

"Hey, Leo? You mind giving us a few minutes. I want to talk to Jason."

"Ugh, yeah. Yeah, I'm going." The elvish boy pushed himself to his feet and waved his best friend and stumbled out into the hallway. "Uh guys? When you're done… might want to clean it up. Looking a bit grim out here what with Jason's face shape in blood."

"Oh gross…" Piper moaned.

"We'll clean it up in a second," Jason seconded.

Leo shut the door behind them and silence fell across the room again.