A Horrible Day: Pt. 1
Whew. Finally made it back.
Birthday was way back on October 24, and what a doozy it was.
Got Cyberpunk 2077 and played that a lot, had to get a new car because mine got totaled, was dropped by State Farm because of how many claims I'd filed through them, which actually got my whole family dropped from State Farm after 30 years, and there we were, scrambling to find insurance.
We found some good stuff, but it was not a very pleasant few days, full of shouting and cursing.
But it's all good now.
I just can't have anymore accidents for three years, or I might as well just shoot myself.
Also, pro-tip: if you have to call roadside assistance and/or need your windshield replaced for whatever reason and you have State Farm, calling assistance and filing a claim on your windshield count as black marks on your record, and will get you dropped.
Insurance is a scam.
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Maybe a blessing, maybe a stroke of luck, or maybe Piper was just too worn out to have anymore dreams, but whatever the case, she got to have a few more hours of quiet sleep. It was almost ten in the morning before Piper woke back up, and she was even more confused than before.
The nightmare had changed. It hadn't changed in the two weeks since it started, except for the night Piper had her accident and wet the bed, but the reason the nightmare had changed with the wave and whatnot was because of the alcohol. This was something entirely different.
Jason had more meat on him, like he was regenerating. Shel was there in disturbing detail. The sound of her skull cracking, her head busting open and her brains going everywhere—that was too vivid. Piper had never actually seen anything on that level of gore for it to appear in what was presumably just a really bad dream, not a magic demigod nightmare. Then there were Jason's words.
Jason never talked like that. "Creamed her panties" is what he had said—but he never used the word "panties." He always said underwear (Piper thought it was adorable how he'd blush anytime the word panties came up around him). He also called her a bitch—certainly something he had never said, not even about Khione or Medea. Jason was too much of a good person to ever refer to a woman like that, even the enemy. Jason also said that Piper "belonged" to him, and he had called her a "good girl." Jason was never that possessive, and he was never that demeaning.
It just didn't make any sense that the monster in her nightmares was the vengeful ghost of Jason Grace. Even if he had been twisted by hatred, Piper just couldn't ever see him talking like that.
And just what did Shel being in her nightmare mean? Piper had known the girl for one day and she was showing up in her dreams? What was that about? She'd known Billy for three weeks and he had never shown up. Jason had never threatened Billy, telling Piper something like how he didn't like her seeing other boys, though maybe that was because Piper harbored zero romantic feelings for Billy. What that meant for Shel, on the other hand…Piper was still processing.
She still didn't know for certain if she had been gay her whole life and just didn't realize it. She didn't know if she had only started switching to being gay after the Giant War. She didn't know if "switching" was the right word to describe what was happening to her. She didn't know if she was just being silly, and her maturing body was just playing tricks on her, and she was just going through a "phase."
Piper just did not know, and she was tired of not knowing things.
She wanted answers.
Was she really gay or was she not? Had she always been gay, or had her sexuality started to naturally shift during the peace after the war? Was she really crushing on Shel, or did she think she was cute in the same platonic way she considered Annabeth to be cute? Was she really being tormented by Jason's ghost, or just some malevolent spirit that took his form? Was it even either of those, or was it just like Billy said, that all the unresolved feelings of guilt, regret, and remorse were coming together, combining with her stress, and her subconscious was outputting those horrible dreams and it was all just in her head?
Above all, though:
Just what the fuck did it mean for Shel to be in her nightmares after just one day?
And what did it mean that Jason would be willing to kill her to assert his dominance over Piper?
It was almost ten in the morning. Another four hours before Dad would be up unless she woke him up, which she wasn't going to do. Dad needed his sleep as well. Piper sighed.
At least she'd have plenty of time to prepare her lines and rehearse for the day's big talk about how crappy her life was in general, and that the biggest kick to her crotch was how he wasn't ever around to help her.
Though, to be fair, things had started to look up yesterday when she had opened up to Billy and Shel, inviting them into her house to spend several great hours together. In all honesty, so many more days of that and Piper might honestly feel "healed." But she still wanted her dad to be part of her life, and as great as Billy and Shel were, they were no substitute for Dad.
With another sigh, Piper got out of bed and poured some cereal for breakfast, then she occupied the only bathroom of the house to brush her teeth, floss, poop, use the shower, and then put on some clean pajamas for the next three hours and change as she prepared to confront her dad about things.
After about only two hours of talking to herself in her mirror, getting her feelings lined up, Piper was quite surprised when she heard the shower come on.
"Huh?"
She took a second look at her clock and saw it was only a little passed noon. Dad should've been asleep for another two hours or so. Either he was up early, or someone else was in Piper's house.
Going with that latter option, Piper cautiously poked her head of her room, looking left and right down the narrow strip of linoleum that separated the house in two. The door to Dad's bedroom was open, but that could mean that whatever potential intruder was here had simply gone in there first and-
Piper stopped herself from finishing that thought.
She slipped out of her room and tiptoed down the hall to poke her head inside Dad's bedroom, and found the bed empty and made up. Piper's brow furrowed, and she knocked at the bathroom door.
"Dad?" she called loudly to be heard over the shower.
"Sorry, Pipes!" he called back. "I didn't know you needed the toilet. I'll be out in a few minutes."
"No, I already went—I mean, what are you doing up so early?"
"Today's the blowgun competition! Your cousin's defending her title later today. You forgot, didn't you?"
Piper's eyes fluttered shut as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yeah. Yeah, I did."
Piper didn't want to say she had considered her cousin's competition to be so unimportant that she forgot about it, because that would be bad, but she'd also been under a metric ton of stress lately, and that had really messed her head up. That, and she had ADHD. Allegedly.
It wasn't clear whether demigod ADHD was, quote, real ADHD, or if that was just what human doctors diagnosed as ADHD, or if just some demigods had ADHD, like Leo, but all demigods had supernatural reflexes. Annabeth didn't know either, and Piper hadn't done any proper research herself, but apparently one of the signs of ADHD was trouble remembering things.
Piper wasn't a bad cousin. She just had a lot on her plate.
A plate that apparently didn't have enough room to remember the blowgun competition today.
Maybe Piper was a bad cousin.
She heard her dad laugh from the shower. "Well, I'm glad I got up early!"
"Yeah, me too. I'll…get dressed."
"Sounds good!"
That was just great. All her practicing and hyping herself up was just thrown out the window due to her forgetfulness. Now grumpy and moody, Piper trudged back to her room to change her clothes. She might still have the evening to talk with her dad, but that was a big might. There was tomorrow, Sunday, but Piper wanted this done now, while she had the mental momentum.
Sighing as she shimmied out of her pajama shorts and pulled on some denim ones, Piper mentally readied herself for dealing with her cranky aunt and unhappy cousin, while pushing her practiced monologue to the back of her mind.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the Cherokee Nation there was the Cherokee National Holiday. It was a grand festival held in commemoration of the signing of the 1839 Cherokee Nation Constitution. There were sporting events, a parade, hundreds of vendors selling food, arts, crafts, and other awesome things. The chief of the nation gave a state of the nation address, and there was even a huge inter-tribal powwow between other tribes across the country in which there was singing, dancing, and the honoring of ancestral traditions. The whole thing drew tens of thousands of people every year across the map.
Basically, the state fair.
Tristan and Piper were not on their way to the Cherokee National Holiday held in Park Hill, fifteen minutes south of their house, because that event was held over the course of Labor Day Weekend in September. It was currently Saturday, April 30. What they were going to was a much smaller, local event, with a whole lot less vendors and general fanfare.
Tristan smiled at his daughter as she climbed into the passenger seat of the vehicle the tribe had given them after she locked the gate behind her. A white, 2010 Jeep Grand Cherokee with some dents on the windshield.
"Good afternoon," Tristan beamed. As bright as his smile was, he still had slight bags under his eyes.
"Afternoon," Piper returned, forcing a smile.
"Are you okay?"
"Angry at myself. I forgot Tsula's blowgun competition was this weekend."
"Don't feel too bad. I had to set a reminder on my phone last night so I wouldn't forget. Things busy at school?"
"…something like that." Piper was slow to answer.
Tristan instantly picked up on the fact something was wrong with his daughter. "Wanna talk about it?"
"I wanted to talk about it when you woke up. But now we've got to watch my cousin blow wood."
Tristan couldn't help the brief snort that left him. "Be nice," he chided. "We can talk after the competition, okay?"
Piper nodded. "Okay."
"Now gimme some."
Tristan held out his fist, and Piper bumped it with her own.
"That's my girl." Tristan reached over and ruffled Piper's hair.
Piper smiled. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad today after all.
Ha!
As if.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
One Fire Field, the venue in Park Hill in which this local festival was taking place, and also the venue in which the Cherokee National Holiday took place, was located between Sequoya High School, the Cherokee Nation Courthouse, Route 62, and a creek called Park Hill Branch.
Piper had never been here in her life that she could recall. Dad told her that Grandpa Tom had taken her before when she was three, and the way that story ended was that she ate some bad food and pooped so much in her pull-up that it leaked into her shorts. Dad never let her come back to the Holiday because he didn't want her getting sick like that again, and they moved when she was six and had never come back until a few weeks ago. Piper's question to that story was why she was wearing a pull-up at that age, finding three to be too old for pull-ups in her opinion, and Dad said it was because they didn't want to worry about nasty public bathrooms or accidents, ironically enough.
Piper didn't remember that day and she had mixed feelings about it. Sad that she didn't remember a time with her grandpa, but glad that she didn't remember pooping in her pants, even if was just a little girl of three.
Dad paid the parking fee, and they got out of the Jeep. "Let's go find your aunt and cousin."
Piper nodded. "Sounds good."
They walked through the grounds, Tristan consciously refraining from just calling his little sister. Piper's eyes darted left and right, drinking in a dozen different sights with each step as her hyperactive brain processed tons of stimulus faster than any human would ever be able to. Because of that hypercognition, Piper was able to see the rabbit just sitting in the middle of the walkway between vendors.
It was just your average cottontail, with stubby ears, black eyes, and brown fur, but it was looking right at Piper with its head pointed at her, its nose twitching slightly, everyone else seemingly heedless of its presence. You'd think kids would be squealing in joy at seeing a bunny, chasing after it to hold it, but no. Even the children were oblivious to the presence of the rabbit.
Then it hopped away, but not before Piper swore it grinned at her.
Piper swallowed heavily. First, a foreboding owl with black feathers and blazing eyes of crimson, and now a grinning rabbit.
Owls were bad omens in Cherokee folklore, but rabbits…well, Rabbit, with a capital "R," was something else entirely. He was a trickster spirit, not really malevolent, but still mischievous. In the legends Piper knew, Rabbit won just about as much as he lost, such as when he stole the fur coat of Otter for a fashion show, only for Bear to catch on and expose Rabbit. In the ensuing chase, Bear grabbed Rabbit's tale but Rabbit had been running so fast his tail got torn off.
Which is why rabbits all had those short, fluffy tails.
As humorous as the tales of Rabbit were, Piper didn't like seeing one here today, especially one that carried with it seemingly supernatural phenomena. There was enough going on in Piper's life right now without having to contend with Cherokee spirits.
Like family drama. Tristan found his little sister, Piper's Aunt Tanya.
"Hey, there!" Tristan greeted, putting a hopeful smile on his face.
Tanya frowned at the sight of him. She was clearly Tristan's sister, since they had the same jaw structure, lips, and eye shape. Shorter than her brother by about four inches, putting her at Piper's height, and she had the same complexion and hair color, though her hair was obviously longer, pulled into a ponytail.
Tanya's frown deepened when she saw Piper.
"What are you doing here?" Tanya asked, her voice level.
"We came here to watch Tsula compete," Tristan answered, still smiling. "We are her family, after all. Me, her uncle, and Piper, her cousin."
"We haven't been a family since you got rich and abandoned us. Though I suppose the spirits saw to it that justice was done."
The smile dropped from Tristan's face, replaced now with a defeated countenance. "You're going to bring that up here and now, on the day we're here to support your daughter?"
"I'm going to bring it up every chance I get to make up for the past ten years of you living the high life," Tanya returned.
"I was willing to send you however much money you ever needed, whenever you needed it," Tristan fired back. "You always refused."
"As if I'd accept your pretend money. All you ever were was just a pretender, getting paid exorbitant amounts of money for lying about who you were, for denying who you are. You were always ashamed of us, and the first chance you got to leave us behind, you took it. And only after you've been rightfully stripped of your fame and fortune after you got greedy—only now do you come crawling back to us, taking advantage of the tribe's generosity to pad Father's home and load your pockets again."
"I am working three jobs, Tanya. Believe me, I'm not pretending anymore. I've made my mistakes, I've learned form them, and I'm trying to be a better uncle, a better brother, a better man, and a better father. Now, Piper and I here today to support you and Tsula because we are family. I'm not here to argue about the past. I'm here to start building a future."
"Maybe I don't want a future with you in it," Tsula returned.
Tristan recoiled hard. "Tsula," he breathed, his eyes wide.
Piper was just as appalled with how deep her aunt's hatred ran, but what she said next was the icing on the cake.
"Speaking of mistakes," Tanya started, her eyes sliding to her niece. "Why don't we talk about the half-b—"
That was as far as she got before Tristan's arm snapped out like a striking cobra, latching onto Tanya's shirt to yank her up to his snarling face. Piper was too stunned to do anything. Whether Tanya had been about to call Piper and half-breed or a half-blood didn't matter. It was the fact that she was about to call her own niece a racial slur right there in front of her father, her own big brother, here in a public setting.
The gall of this woman.
Then there was the look of pure, primal rage that blazed across Tristan's face. Piper had never seen him so angry. Even Tanya looked completely terrified at her elder brother's palpable emotion.
Tristan's lips were literally curled up into an expression that made him look disturbingly like a very angry wolf. "Despite what you may think, I really do love you. And I really hope that one day we can fix our relationship and be like we were when Dad was still alive. Now, I'm willing to forgive you for a lot of things, but calling my daughter that name, right here in front of me…that is unforgiveable."
Tristan let Tanya go, and her ankles finally rested on the ground again. She was visibly rattled and shaken, but she quickly put up a mask of composure, and briskly walked off without a word.
"Dad, I-" Piper choked.
Tristan yanked her into a very tight hug, and just held his daughter for a minute before speaking to her. "I'm sorry you had to see and hear that."
"Dad, it's fine. It's-"
"No, it is not fine, Piper. I want to make something very clear to you, right now. You are not a half-breed or a half-blood or a blood-traitor or whatever bullshit term can be thought of because your mother was white, and you dated Jason. You are a Cherokee through and through, but more than that, you're my baby girl and you will always be my baby. Do you understand me?"
Piper was too emotional for words. Watching her dad and her aunt argue, her aunt about to call her a horrible term in the context she was about to use, her dad's speech just now—Piper just nodded. Tristan wiped her eyes.
"Now, come on. Let's find a place to sit."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Finding a comfortable spot in the bleachers provided for the event, Piper couldn't stop her mind from drifting down the rabbit hole about how the relationship between her dad and her aunt had soured so badly.
For starters, Piper's grandmother, Teresa (Yes, all of Piper's relatives had names that started with "T," Thomas, Teresa, Tristan, Tanya, and Tsula, and then there was her with a name that started with "P." Piper had been told that her original name was going to be Taylor, but then she was born screaming and Grandpa Tom decided to name her Piper) had died of pneumonia when Tanya was two and Tristan was five. The loss of her didn't really affect the kids much because they were so young, and Dad said that Grandpa had seemed to cope well from what he remembered.
Of course, the loss of Teresa meant the loss of another source of income, meaning Grandpa had to raise two kids all by himself in all aspects. It was a financial struggle and Piper knew that. Her dad had grown up just above the poverty line, which was why the McLean home only had two bedrooms and one bathroom that had to be shared between three people.
The one in the back that Dad currently slept in used to be Grandpa's, and the room that Piper called her own used to be split between Dad and Aunt Tanya, though Dad had migrated to the couch when Tanya got older, she started puberty, started caring about privacy, and was uncomfortable sharing a room with her big brother while she was on her period. So, Dad had done the responsible thing and turned the living room into his bedroom.
The rift between the siblings started when they were teenagers, Dad had said. He had started caring about money, thinking about college and his future, and growing up borderline impoverished, he was conscious about finances. Tanya had been the opposite. She didn't care about money at all, only family. Dad's opinion back then had been that you couldn't have a happy family without money to support them, or yourself.
Another wedge in the rift was religion. The Cherokee believed in spiritual things, obviously, but like with all people, groups, and cultures, belief, and the level of belief, varied from person to person and household to household. The McLean house was no different, with Grandpa Tom scoffing at the notion of any other divine beings besides those of the tribe, and Aunt Tanya had bought into it full force. Dad didn't.
He couldn't explain it himself, but he had always harbored doubt and skepticism about spirits and gods. Just as well, Piper supposed, because a year and a half ago was when she had rescued him from Enceladus, and his sanity had nearly crumbled. For whatever reason, Dad could not handle the supernatural.
The siblings' relationship had grown tight in their teenage years due to money and religious topics, but it came to a head when Grandpa Tom got cancer and died. They hadn't had the money for treatment, and in the Cherokee belief, every disease that befell a person was a curse from a vengeful spirit. That really did not help Dad with his spiritual matters, that his kind, benevolent, and loving father that he loved second only to his little girl would be cursed by a spirit with a disease that they couldn't cure because they didn't have enough money.
Then Dad got his big break, and never looked back.
His Cherokee heritage and general past were badges of shame and pain to him. Shame that he was part of a culture that put stock into magic hedgehogs and talking animals, and pain because of the memories of poverty and death. In addition to trying to keep Piper safe from the insanity of Hollywood and celebrity life (and also keeping her safe from all the sexual predators that prowled around show business), Dad had worked his ass off and given everything he had in every performance so that he could make top dollar and always provide the good life for Piper.
He never wanted her to experience what he did growing up, having to skip meals, having the water or electricity shut off, having no gifts to give or receive for birthdays and Christmas, struggling to buy clothes, etc. Dad had almost become obsessed with money, and always having more than enough of it, and it was the final straw between him and Aunt Tanya.
Money and religion.
Go figure.
At least Dad was trying to be better. He was trying to reconnect with his sister, be a supportive uncle, rebuild the family, but he was still hung about money and the false promises of it. In his own words, he was working three jobs to bring in about $1700 a week, and that was Piper's consternation. All that money was costing her her dad due to how much time was required to make it, and in his efforts to be a better brother and husband, he was failing in being a better father despite his claims.
That's what Piper was going to talk to him about later if her nerves held up.
And then Aunt Tanya wanted to show her ass. Instead of being totally on board with her big brother wanting to be part of her life again, she was now using this opportunity to project ten years of abandonment, jealousy, pain, loss, and more, while also coupling that with newfound sentiments of tribal extremism that Cherokee blood needed to stay with the Cherokee. Her rationale was that this prevented some random person generations down the line with diluted genes from trying to claim any right to the tribe, as many people had tried to do.
Not just Cherokee here in Tahlequah, but in tribes across the States across the decades. They either forged documents, or presented evidence that their great-great-grandmother was some person. If that was the case, it was up to the tribe in question as to whether they'd accept the applicant or not.
Blood quantum and all.
It really didn't help with Piper's identity struggle, her own aunt not considering her to be true Cherokee because her mother was "white."
She was the Greek goddess Aphrodite, and since gods don't have DNA, that meant that all of Piper's genetic code technically came from her dad. Which, by all counts, meant that she should've been a perfect clone of him with a penis and everything, and yet she had a vagina and the period to go with it.
Piper had asked Annabeth just how exactly demigod genetics worked, and she theorized that it had something to do with the gods themselves. All of Athena's children were crafted in her head, so Annabeth applied this across the board in theorizing that the will of the god in question had something to do with it, though she admitted this made much more sense when it came to the goddesses because of the time for pregnancy.
Neither Piper nor Annabeth could fathom a god getting it on and thinking to himself sometime during intercourse, "Ah, yes. This one's going to be a boy with my hair and his mother's eyes."
Above her theories, however, Annabeth had a simple answer when it came to demigod genetics: "Don't think about it."
Rather ironic, a daughter of Athena advising someone to not think.
However her genetics worked, Piper was technically a full-blooded Cherokee since all her actual DNA came from her father, but she obviously didn't feel that was the end all, be all of the matter. She was still in process over how she fit into the tribe, and her aunt did not help.
Piper was broken out of her thoughts when the announcer called for Tsula McLean.
She had the last name because Aunt Tanya had divorced her husband after he was busted for child pornography and sentenced to life in prison.
Piper did the New York whistle Annabeth had taught her. "Go, Tsula!"
Her cousin glanced at her and offered a fake courtesy smile for the small crowd. Her mother's teachings were ingrained in her head.
The range for the blowgun competition was at the southern end of One Fire Field, and beyond the range was the thick line of trees that surrounded Park Hill Branch. The competition itself was not limited to age, or even just to Cherokee Indians, but at this small competition there were only a handful of competitors and all of them were Cherokee.
The crowd quieted in respect so Tsula could focus. She loaded her dart, brought the blowgun to her mouth, and fired. Perfect bullseye. A second dart, another bullseye, just slightly off center of her first. Her third dart entered the gun, she took aim, and then she froze.
Everyone froze.
Piper's blood chilled in her veins.
Lumbering out of the trees came an absolute monster of a bear. Bigger than a grizzly, with fur black as night and eyes that blazed like coals in a furnace. He had a big hump on his back, and his whole body rippled with muscle with each movement of his paws.
"Everyone, stay calm!" the event coordinator said loudly. "No sudden movements."
He brought his radio up and reported the situation, calling for security and animal control.
But Piper knew better. She had no idea what everyone saw, but they only seemed to see a bear, not the horrific monstrosity she saw. Her pulse quickened as adrenaline began seeping into her bloodstream. A bear with black fur and red eyes—just like the black owl with red eyes. Was it the same creature? Right now, it didn't matter.
What mattered right now was the fact this monster was here specifically for her, and she needed to get out of here before people got hurt in the fight.
Piper started to stand, but her dad clamped his hand on her shoulder.
"What're you doing?" he hissed.
Piper's jaw clenched. Obviously, she couldn't just tell him that the bear was here for and she was going to lead it away before kicking its fuzzy ass. Before she could think of something to say, the bear put the words in her mouth for her.
With a horrific bellow, the bear charged. His trajectory put Tsula right in his path, and Piper sprang into action. She leapt from the stands and tackled her cousin out of the way. The bear was right on top of them.
Piper shoved Tsula away and rolled, ignoring the grass stuck in her air. The bear's claws raked the ground where Piper's head used to be.
She popped to her feet, and the bear reared back on his legs, letting out a roar that had his lips rippling. People were screaming and shouting, Dad being the loudest of all as he was held back by other men from charging into the fray.
The bear swiped at her, and Piper just leaned back. She backpeddled a few steps as the bear kept swiping at her. It was refreshingly easy to dodge the bear, her hypercognitive brain easily processing the attacks in slow motion, and her body could keep up. But she couldn't keep this up.
Not because she would tire out, but because everyone here was watching her dodge through the bear's attacks with apparent ease. Not impossible, but highly implausible that any human would be able to weave through the assault of an animal, especially a teenage girl. Piper needed to get somewhere secluded to finish this.
Security showed up with police and the animal control guys, all armed with guns and tranquilizers. It was Piper's firm opinion that their weapons would be highly ineffective. They were shouting at her to get away, as if she could just do that while a bear was trying to rake her face off, because she was in the line of fire.
Well, Piper thought to herself, time to scare everybody.
She turned around and bolted.
The bear chased after her.
People screamed.
"Piper!" Dad shouted. "PIPER!"
Piper felt bad for scaring everyone like this, but this creature was here specifically for her, and so she needed to get away from people, both so she could protect them and so she could cut loose. Piper ran to the southeast, where a thick swath of woods was adjacent to One Fire Field.
She had to measure her pace, though, that way she didn't just rocket away and really scare people by turning into a blur.
She got to the woods with the bear as close to her heels as she wanted it to be. Then she was dodging through the trees, getting deep enough into the flora that she wouldn't be seen or easily happened upon by anyone giving chase. The bear was still following her, thundering through the brush.
When Piper felt that she had gotten far enough from the field, she stopped. The bear closed in, and Piper whipped around, striking the monster directly across its jaw with her fist.
The bear's head snapped to the side with a crack, and he went down with a heavy thud.
Piper had killed it with one blow.
Then she was stuck staring as the bear's body dissolved into a black mist that was sucked into the ground.
The sound of slow clapping had her whipping back around to see a man wearing a cloak made of black snakeskin with a mantle of bloodied eagle fathers around his shoulders. The cloak was held around his frame by a string of bones across his pectorals, and from that alone, with his tan arms held out, Piper could see that this guy was built. Like he spent his free time wrestling bears. A large hood threw his face into shadow.
Every hair on the back of Piper's neck was standing on end.
The unknown man spoke. "Very impressive."
Piper swallowed hard at the sound of his voice. Deep, masculine, powerful, flowing like warm honey and rolling like distant thunder. It was the voice of a man in his prime that commanded respect with nothing but his mere presence, and could bring silence to a loud room with nothing but a syllable.
Piper had met her fair share of gods, but none of them seemed as godlike as this guy.
"Thanks," Piper managed. "Who are you?"
"You may call me Incognito."
"…okay. What do you want?"
"I have already acquired what I wanted. We will next speak when I desire to do so."
He dissolved into the same black mist the bear did, and that mist vanished into the earth.
Piper swallowed.
She just stood there for a few minutes, processing all that had just happened and what it could all mean. She made some inferences and developed some theories, but she had nothing concrete to stand on due to lack of information. Seeing that she wasn't going to get any answers just standing here, she sighed to herself and started to make her way back to One Fire Field, mentally readying herself for more excitement.
Paramedics were going to want to look over her, police were going to want to talk to her, Tahlequah was going to be a hotbed of activity for a while as people would be nervous about a bear running around that was bold enough to attack a group of humans in broad daylight, school was going to suck as the story of her fighting a bear would spread like wildfire, which also probably meant that Piper was going to have to face camera crews trying to get her inside scoop on what it was like to fight a bear, and how she escaped it, and above all of that was Dad.
After he bawled his eyes out and told her a million times how relieved he was to see her, then she was going to get the riot act on how stupid and careless she was, how lucky she was to be alive, and that she was grounded until she died.
And she still needed to talk to him about how much he was working and how much it was hurting her due to everything going on in her life.
Only now it seemed she could add spirit monsters and unknown bad guys to the mix.
Despite all of that, Piper couldn't help but feel a spike of vindication.
Back in LA, when she, Meg, and Apollo fought Medea, the sorceress confessed that it was her idea to defame Tristan and effectively sentence him and Piper to a life of "exile," where they would slowly go mad from "boredom and hopelessness" on a "dirt farm."
Well, the McLean house was not situated on a dirt farm, Piper was not in any form of exile, she was going through some stuff but she wasn't without hope, and things were certainly not boring.
Things had just picked up.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Yes, Piper killing the bear with a single punch is taken straight from the movie Prey.
I've been doing my research on Cherokee legends and familiarizing myself with the spirits, so I've got some fun things in mind for our new villain, Incognito.
Spoiler warning:
He's not behind the owl or the nightmares.
More fun family drama next chapter!
Fav, Follow, and Review please!