Piper's Untold Story

by DelayedInspiration

After California, Piper's one and only hope was for a better future with her dad. Instead, he's back to being a workaholic, never at home, never around, always neglecting her. Take that huge blow, pair it up with nightmares about Jason, an identity crisis, and more, and you have Piper's miserable life in Tahlequah. But a storm is brewing, and Piper's right in the middle of it.

14. Piper's Date with Shel

Piper's Date with Shel

Boom. Another one.

Here it is, folks. As promised, Piper's date with Shel (finally), and the full history of Shel, her exes, and how she's tied to Billy.

I should mention that this chapter is where we start getting into that "ideologically sensitive stuff" mentioned in the tags, because what Shel will have to say on some things will indeed be ideologically sensitive. This story is rated MA for a reason, and not just because of violence, foul language, and teenage innuendos.

That being said, the great majority of this chapter is talking. A lot of it.

Let's get started:

Disclaimer: I don't own PJO

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Sunday afternoon came faster than Piper thought it would. She thought the anticipation would make the time drag by, but that was not the case.

She was a bit nervous, but excited, too. This would be her second first date, and this one didn't have any weird strings attached. She was also going on a date with a girl. This was going to be a huge step in finding out who she was, finding out if she was just going through some weird hormonal phase, if she was bisexual, or if she really had been gay the whole time and it took surviving a mythological war to figure that out.

Piper really had no idea how this was going to play out given that she and Shel had known each other for a month now, and had logged dozens of hours with each other playing videogames, watching movies and anime, and having Geometry for their first class of the day. Piper knew Shel, but also not really. There was a lot of stuff that Shel hadn't talked about, so Piper supposed that one way this was going to play out was that she was going to be asking a lot of questions to really get to know her.

Another thing to this date was determining that if Piper was really into girls, did she want her first girlfriend to be Shel.

Piper had her questions lined up and ready.

She was dressed in some nice jeans and her best blouse, which wasn't even hers but a hand-me-down from when she first moved to Tahlequah, and a pair of tan wedge sandals with white straps, which also weren't hers but a "gift" from Drew before Piper left CHB to return to California for school on the grounds that they just weren't her style and it would be such a waste to just throw them out. Curiously enough, Drew was two sizes bigger than Piper in terms of footwear, but the sandals had been a perfect fit. More to her appearance, Piper had gone the extra mile and applied a little bit of makeup. She didn't have a lot of hair to style, given its punkish length, but she did her best.

With the sun high in the sky on this beautiful summer day, Tristan dropped Piper off at the same Pizza Hut he had taken her a month ago after the bear attack.

"Do you have any idea when you'll be done?" he asked.

"Nope!"

Dad smiled. "Alright. Just have fun, and you can always call me, er, somehow, if you're ever uncomfortable, okay?"

"Yep!"

Piper was so full of positive energy, she was infectious.

Dad's smile got even bigger, his eyes twinkling. "I'm proud of you, Piper. I really am."

Piper smiled. "Thanks, Dad. I'm proud of you, too."

Dad nodded and drove off.

Taking a deep breath, Piper went into the Pizza Hut. Luckily, Shel was already there, and even more irony to the situation was that she was seated at the same table Piper and Tristan had been at a month ago when everything started changing for the better.

Piper sat in front of future girlfriend-to-be. "Hi."

Shel grinned. "You're beautiful."

Piper smiled, a warm feeling blossoming in her chest. "You're beautiful, too."

Shel was dressed similarly to Piper. Jeans, some boots, a nice shirt, a little bit of makeup with a dash of perfume, the hair on her head arranged as nice as she could get it, and her nose stud catching the light if she moved her head just right.

"Thanks."

"Uh, this is kinda the first date I've ever been on, and definitely the first date with a girl, so I have no idea what to do."

Shel smiled. "We introduce ourselves. I'm Shel. I was born and raised in Texas. I turned seventeen on April 12th. I like watching football, volleyball, and softball. I don't like basketball, and baseball puts me to sleep. I have played softball and volleyball. I live with my mom because my dad passed away of cancer three years ago. I am a Christian, I do believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that he died for my sins and rose again on the third day. I've known Billy all my life. I have had four real girlfriends, and there were three other girls that I dated for less than a month each.

"I like playing videogames with no particular favorite genre, and I enjoy anime. My favorite music is 80s rock, and I have no particular favorite food, but I definitely don't like most vegetables. I'll eat green beans just fine, and corn if its salted and buttered. Anything else is pretty much a no-go. The reason I live in Tahlequah now is that my mom got a promotion at work, and we moved here. I don't like being single, and I really hope that after this, we'll be official. Alright, I hope you were taking notes, because those are going to be your talking points. Now it's your turn. Who are you?"

After that tidal wave of information, Piper answered.

"I'm Piper McLean. My dad is Tristan McLean—yes, Jake Steel, King of Sparta, and so on—and my mom isn't really part of my life. I was born here in Tahlequah, but I moved to California with my dad when I was six and still in kindergarten when he got his big break. My grandmother died when my aunt was born, and my Grandpa Tom died of lung cancer a little before I was six. It was a whole different life over there. Dad's life picked up and he suddenly didn't have much time for me anymore. He was always away on-set or on-location, and he never brought me along. Today, I realize he was keeping me safe from paparazzi and pedophiles. Back then, though, I didn't understand that. I was a little girl that didn't understand why Daddy didn't pay attention to me anymore, so I started acting out by stealing things. It got me in a lot of trouble, but it also got Dad to pay attention to me again, if only to sigh in disappointment.

"It all boiled over when I was fifteen. Middle of the Fall, I stole a BMW from the dealership. That way with words I have, remember? Anyway, police pulled me over, took me in, and it was Jane, my dad's bitch of a secretary, that bailed me out and brokered a deal with the dealership. They wouldn't press charges, but I had to be 'severely punished.' What Jane arranged was for me to be shipped off to a boarding school in Nevada called the Wilderness School. Where the kids are the animals."

Shel couldn't help but snort.

Piper continued.

"It was basically juvie. Food sucked, the teachers were a bunch of hard-asses, and the majority of the kids pretty much deserved to be there. We had daily PE, which was basically Marine basic training. But the instructor was a retired Marine officer, so that was appropriate, I guess. Ten-mile runs, mud crawls, sprints up and down the football field, pushups, situps, crunches, squats, planks, wall-sits—you name it. And this place was authorized to use corporal punishment to keep kids in line."

Shel blinked. "Wow."

"I kept my head down and dealt with it. Wasn't all bad, though. It's where I met Leo. He's the annoying little brother I never had. He's like Billy, but without the scary side. That's also where I met Jason. We were the three amigos, keeping out of trouble as best we could, and over the semester, Jason and I developed feelings for each other. One night, we broke curfew when he snuck out of his dorm and got me out of mine, and he took me up to the roof. It was gorgeous up there. The school was a decent drive from any major civilization, so no light pollution. There were stars than I ever saw in Malibu. That night, we kissed, and became official. Fast forward a little bit, December, the week before Christmas, and we were on a fieldtrip to the Grand Canyon. There was another school there, the Delphi Private School from Long Island—yeah, big trip—and that was where I met Annabeth, the sister I never had. Leo, Jason, and I talked to her the whole time we were there, and when it came to leave, we pulled the craziest stunt we ever pulled: we stowed away with Delphi and completely ditched Wilderness."

Shel's eyes widened. "No way!"

Piper grinned. "Yes way."

"Never thought you were such a rebel."

Piper shrugged. "I was different person back then. Daddy issues and all."

Shel snorted. "What happened next?"

Oh, you see, what really happened is that Leo, Jason, and I were actually attacked by this wind monster called Dylan, and that's how we found out we were demigods. Annabeth arrived after the fun was over on a chariot pulled by pegasi, and took us to the place that Delphi is really called, Camp Half-Blood—took me a while to get used to that name since I'm half Cherokee, half white…technically…but anyway. Shortly after our arrival, we were claimed by our godly parents, and launched into a quest that took us across the continent, fighting through one dangerous situation after another, and ended in Sonoma Valley, California, where we fought the waking spirit of Gaea, the Earth Mother, and her son, Porphyrion, King of the Giants.

"The headmaster of the school, Chiron—yes, like the centaur from Greek mythology—let us plead our cases, made some phone calls, and we were able to transfer to Delphi. Best school I ever went to. Spent the Spring semester there, and then come summer, me, Jason, Leo, Annabeth, and her boyfriend Percy got a plane, went back to California to pick up Jason's cousin Hazel and her boyfriend Frank, and then we flew to Europe. Perks of having a rich dad. We did a lot of things over there, like going on a cruise through the Mediterranean, touring Rome and Venice, exploring this awesome acropolis in Epirus, Greece, and then we took the scenic route to get to Athens by going past Ithaca, Olympia, Pylos, Sparta, Mykonos, and Delos. Made it back home by August first. After that…" Piper sighed. "That's when things started going sideways. I think part of what happened between me and Jason is that I was jealous of Percy and Annabeth. Those two met when they were pretty much thirteen, and they went through some stuff-"

"Wait, hang on," Shel interrupted. "By any chance, when you say Percy, are you referring to Percy Jackson?"

Piper stared at her. "Yes."

"The same Percy Jackson that was tracked across the country by the police, FBI, Homeland Security, and probably the CIA a few years back and he fought a terrorist on the beach of Santa Monica?"

"Uh, yeah, actually."

Truth be told, Piper forgot that Percy was once a wanted fugitive.

"Nova," Shel grinned, quoting Cyberpunk. "Sorry. You were saying?"

"Percy and Annabeth met when they were thirteen. She got roped into that terrorist thing, so that was a pretty big moment in their relationship. How they met is that Delphi is both a private school and a summer camp. Percy joined the summer camp when Annabeth was a year-rounder. Then they sent emails to each other when school started back up, then they met again the next summer, then they spent Christmas together that same year, and they met up again the following summer, and again the summer after that, and they finally started officially dating when they were sixteen. They'd been dating for over four months when I met Annabeth. Right now, they're finishing their senior year of high school, and are going to go to college together. Pretty sure they're going to get married one of these days."

"You were hoping that was going to be the same for you and Jason," Shel surmised. "You got back from your big Europe trip—gonna want the details on those one of these days—went back to Cali for school, after all that time seeing what Annabeth and Percy had, you were trying to apply it to you and Jason, only it just wasn't there anymore. You kept trying to force it to be there, and you were tearing yourself up until you finally broke up."

"Yeah," Piper said. "Hit every nail on the head. Then my dad's life fell apart, because after I transferred to Delphi, he fired Jane and hired a new assistant, Mellie. Mellie did her best, but Jane got her revenge by having secretly screwed up Dad's taxes for years because he wouldn't sleep with her and make her his girlfriend. The bank hit him for all of it all at once. Hundreds of millions. He almost got sent to prison, but he got it worked out that his debts were covered by selling literally everything he had to the bank. All the houses, all the cars, all the furniture, the décor—all of it. Even a lot of his clothes. We were left with nothing besides our family land here in Tahlequah, and even after we got here, we still needed a ton of help from the tribe in putting food on the table and clothes on our back."

Shel winced. "I'm so sorry that happened to you. That's fucked up on so many levels."

"Only half as fucked up as how I treated Jason," Piper sighed. "My dad's life was coming undone and I was reeling from the fact that I had fallen out of love with Jason despite all the adventures we had gone through. I couldn't explain to Jason, and he couldn't ever let it go. All that stress ate at me, and since Jason kept trying to talk to me and I couldn't figure out what to say, I let my frustration get the better of me, and I started using him as my punching bag for three months. Then we were set to move, and my last day in California, I didn't know if I was ever going to see him again, and I didn't want our relationship to end with us fighting, our problems unresolved, so I lied to my dad about going to spend the night with a study group, went to Jason's, broke him out of boarding school, took him surfing during the night, and he died."

"Fuck," Shel muttered.

"Then I was fucked up for a month, nightmares every night about Jason, and my dad took himself out of my life again so he could go to work, I had no support because I was being a closed-up bitch that wouldn't let Billy in when I had him, and one night I tried to drown my sorrows by drinking four wine coolers and a Sprite. Had a nightmare and pissed in my bed. That was on a Thursday. Come Friday, though, everything started getting better."

Shel blinked. "What happened on Friday?"

Piper nudged her foot under the table. "You were in my seat on the bus."

"O-Oh, right." Shel smiled, but then it lessened. "You've really been through a lot, haven't you?"

Piper's smile was tight. "Yeah."

Shel had no idea, but it wasn't her fault. Piper was lying to her face, not out of malice, obviously, but necessity. Piper did feel bad, but right now wasn't the time for that kind of bombshell. It was Piper's professional opinion that Shel couldn't handle the real truths of the matters, that Piper had been out there fighting the forces of darkness to save the world.

Of course, Piper had already told Shel about this stuff with Jason and Dad, but it felt it good to say it again and refresh the memories.

"Anything you want to ask me?" Piper asked.

"Not a question, but an observation."

"Yeah?"

"Can well can you handle brutal honesty?"

"Well enough, I guess."

"Okay…you were really naïve to think that Jason, your first boyfriend, was going to be your one and only love, and it was really stupid of you to try and project what Percy and Annabeth have going for each other onto you and Jason. Like, from what you just told me, what they have is something really rare. They met at summer camp when they were about to turn thirteen, so twelve, went on that crazy adventure together, kept in touch throughout the schoolyear, and only really saw each other during the summers. That's crazy that they ended up together. It's crazy that they didn't meet someone else during all that time away and start developing feelings for that person. Like, I've met people that I thought were really good friends during school, then we went through summer, and come the next schoolyear, we were basically strangers, barely nodding at each other in the hall. Percy and Annabeth—yeah, that's wild."

Piper still had that tight smile on her face. There were several books' worth of missing information to all of that, information Piper couldn't disclose, but if she could, Shel's disbelief and awe over the fact that Percabeth was a thing would steeply wane, and then confusion would set in. It would be like, Okay, if Percy and Annabeth spent so much time apart and only so little time together over the course of three years, but went through all of that stuff together and stayed together, how is that you and Jason fell apart despite all that you went through together, and were practically glued to each other's hips in all that time?

Piper didn't have an answer other than was just how it happened. She also didn't mind Shel's brutal critique of the matter, either. It had been foolish of her to think that Jason was going to be the one and only one, and she had been setting herself for failure when she tried to apply Percabeth to her and Jason.

Or was it? Piper and Jason had certainly been through some shit together. The kind of shit that made them incomparable to other teenage couples. Their love had been tried and tested, forged in fire time and time again. At the end of it all, when they made it out alive, Jason had taken her to his cabin rooftop where they reaffirmed their love and vowed to move forward into the future together.

And then plot happened.

Anyway, Shel's observation had to be taken with a grain of salt because she was missing a volume's worth of information.

Shel continued with said observation, and hit Piper with an uncomfortable yet very real possibility.

"However, when was the last time you talked to them?"

"It's been a few months," Piper said. These evil emperors decided to cut off all communications.

"Well…how do you know they haven't broken up since then? A lot can happen in a few months. Just look at what's happened in the past month since we first met. A ton of stuff, right?"

Piper swallowed. Again, Shel had no idea. "Yep. Lots of stuff."

Piper also really didn't like the idea that Percy and Annabeth would've broken up in the time she hadn't seen them. That was just…gut-wrenching to think about. That even a relationship like theirs could one day come to an end, and not by death.

"And even if they're still together…college. There's no telling what could happen to them as they go through college and start looking for careers in their degrees. It might happen that as they're looking for internships, the best ones they find will have them working schedules that make it to where they never see each other, and that's not even accounting for their classes. They get to college, and life might change so hard for them that they just can't be together, and so they break up. Maybe on good terms, like they both look at each other one day and be like It's just not working out anymore. Thanks for the memories. We'll always have a place in each other's heart. Goodbye or it could be on bad terms, like one sees it's not working out, tries to end it, and the other doesn't want to end it and insists they can make it work, and-"

"Shel," Piper interrupted. "I'm ending this line of conversation."

Piper really did not like the idea of Percabeth breaking up over college after everything they'd been through. Mainly because she could definitely see that happening. Maybe it her possibility-sensing powers, but Piper could honestly see Annabeth getting so wrapped up in her studies and her drive and passion to be an architect, that she starts neglecting Percy like she did on their way to Rome when she was completely absorbed in preparing for Arachne.

Annabeth had a set precedent for pushing everything out of her life to dedicate herself to a specific task, and Piper could honestly see her breaking up with Percy if she thought he was becoming too much of a burden/dead weight/obstacle on her path to being a fully licensed architect when she was so close. The sheer thought of such an occurrence honestly troubled Piper's heart and made her want to go cry somewhere private.

Shel nodded. "I'm sorry. Subject change, then. Ask me something."

Piper had a mental list of questions ready to go, and she went with the one at the top of her list. "What, exactly, is the full story between you and Billy? I mean—everything. I swear you two were separated at birth or something. And what was with that look last night when I asked you out? He looked like you just admitted to killing his dog."

Shel smirked. "Woooow. Here we are on our first date, and you're asking about Billy."

"I mean-"

"Nah, just teasing a little. It's a good thing you brought up Billy, because of we do become official after this, he's going to be a whole different person. You need to know how and why."

"Okay…"

"Get comfy. Billy and I have a long history together."

It was then the waitress finally appeared after what must've been half on hour of the girls talking. She took their drink orders, and since the girls were content to simply share a large cheese pizza together, went ahead and put their lunch order in as well. She came back two minutes later and set a couple of Dr. Peppers down on the table.

Shel sipped her coke from the rim of the glass, not bothering with the straw. She was looking down at an empty spot on the table with a smile, her eyes swimming with a lifetime of memories. Closing her eyes, she gathered her thoughts and focus, and then looked at Piper.

Piper got mentally buckled in for what was sure to be a wild ride.

"You're wrong that Billy and I are basically brother and sister. We have literally known each other since before we knew how to crawl. His granny, his dad's mom, used to run a daycare out of her home for babies and toddlers. Once they hit four, she wouldn't accept them anymore. That was just her preference, nothing more to it than that. Obviously, that's where Billy's parents dropped him off when they went to work-"

"And where your parents dropped you off."

"Bingo."

Shel produced her phone and brought up her photos. She picked one and showed it to Piper, making her heart melt at the sight of a couple of babies sound asleep and cuddling with each other.

"That's me on the left, and Billy on the right," Shel informed.

Their pudgy little hands were intertwined.

"Awwww," Piper couldn't stop herself from gushing at the adorable sight.

Shel took her phone back. "Billy and I saw each other every day for years. We crawled together, learned how to walk together, and we potty trained right next to each other. I don't remember this, and neither does he, but apparently, Billy was once incredibly devastated that his parents wouldn't get him the princess pull-ups that I was wearing so we could match."

Piper laughed. Given how unhinged Billy typically behaved, and his all-black fashion sense, the mental image of his little toddler self bawling his eyes out because he couldn't have the bright pink pull-ups with Disney princess on them was such a foil that Piper couldn't help but laugh. It was also rather wholesome to Piper that Billy would desire that level of solidarity at such a young age.

"However, we got around the issue by letting me wear the boy's pull-ups," Shel continued. "Double standards, right? Billy, a boy, wearing girl's pull-ups? Never. Me, a girl, wearing boy's pull-ups? Hell yeah! What an outgoing spitfire she is! Or something like that."

Piper snorted.

"Billy's granny didn't make any exceptions for us when we hit four. It was off to preschool for us both, and we both went to the same preschool. Casa View. Christian place. Loved it there; halls were painted with kid-friendly versions of the big stories, like Adam and Eve in the garden, Noah and the Ark, Moses parting the Red Sea, Daniel and the Lion's Den, Jesus, and so on, but like I said, kid-friendly. The didn't have Jesus crucified and bleeding out anywhere. It's a preschool. Anyway, we went there together, learned all about Father Abraham and his many sons, and we knew Jesus loved us because the Bible told us so, and then we got old enough to for kindergarten. We went to the same elementary school and ended up in the same class. Same for first and second grade. When we got our classes for third grade and we saw we weren't in the same class, we both cried so hard we could barely breathe. We were crushed, Piper, crushed. We thought we'd never recover."

Piper smiled along with Shel as she recalled the wholesome times with Billy.

"But we saw each other at recess, lunch, PE, and music class, and we still had playdates, sleepovers, and birthdays, and when Billy was playing on his little peewee football team, the Longhorns, I was on the corresponding peewee cheer team. Yeah, Billy and I have been partners literally all our lives. When he accidentally killed that boy playing football, he leaned more on me than anyone else. When I was getting over a breakup, I leaned on him.

"When we got the news that he'd be moving up here to Tahlequah, we were both crying, but it was different. A couple of third graders crying because they didn't have the same class is cute; a couple of teenagers crying because they were thinking they would never see each other again is something else, especially with how long they had known each other. I swear, Piper, we both felt like our arms were being torn off. I was fucked up for a week after he moved, and Mom really came in clutch with helping me accept the fact that he was gone, and I need to put myself back together. But now here we are. I give thanks to God every time it crosses my mind that Billy and I ended up back together again."

Shel took another sip of her Dr. Pepper.

"That's pretty much the broad overview about me and Billy. We were babies when we met, went through daycare, preschool, elementary, middle, and high school together, and now here we are. I suppose you also want to know just what I was talking about when I said I was the reason Billy's going through what he's going through, and also about all my exes, and a lot of other stuff."

"Yeah."

"Well, you're in luck. They all kind of roll together." Shel took another sip of her soda, and a little grin crept onto her face. "With how close Billy and I were, everyone that knew us thought we were going to get married one of these days. Heh, obviously not."

Shel poked at an ice cube.

"I was lucky enough to start puberty at home. Went to sleep one night, and woke up to find blood all over the place."

"I was taking a shower," Piper supplied. "Was enjoying the warm water in my hair, and when I opened my eyes, blood was going down my legs."

"Dang. We're both lucky. I knew a girl who started in the middle of class. And she was wearing white jeans."

Piper winced. "Oof."

"Yeah. Anyway. I started puberty, and boys just didn't do it for me. Maybe it's because Billy was too integrated and I just couldn't see boys as partners—don't know—but I do not subscribe to the idea that I was 'born this way.' I chose girls because I didn't like boys. I like cute faces, slim figures, and big butts. Not chiseled jaws, broad shoulders, and hairy legs and chests. I don't know how that applies to you and what you're trying to figure out, but for me…I like girls. And it's that simple. I hate that 'born this way' argument. No one has ever been 'born this way.'"

The sheer annoyance in Shel's voice caused Piper to lean back a little her seat. "Okay, I get it. You don't think anyone was ever born gay. God didn't…make you gay…or whatever…actually….How do you, like, rationalize that? I thought, um, that God hated gay people, and was going to send them all to Hell or something."

Shel snorted. "You've been watching the news too much. God doesn't hate any person. He hates what people do. He hates sin, but loves sinners, and wants everyone to be saved through Jesus. It's not that gays go to Hell because they're gay—no one actually gets sent to Hell just because they're sinners. If that was the case, no one would ever go to Heaven. The truth is that everyone sins, everyone dies, and when it's time to be eternally judged, God, Jesus, the angels, or whoever is supposed to do it, is going to look into the Book of Life and be like, Okay, is this person's sins covered by the blood of Jesus? Yes. Awesome. Is this person's sins covered? No? They want to pay for their sins with their own blood? Okay. Not awesome."

"Not awesome," Piper echoed distantly.

"We all have to answer for our sins one day," Shel shrugged. "It's up to us whether we'll let Jesus cover our ass or not."

Piper couldn't stop the rush of air that left or nose at Shel's phrasing.

"How I rationalize my sexuality and my religion is simple: I don't."

Piper stared at her. "Huh?"

Shel sighed. "As you know, it's a hot topic these days, the Bible, how people live their life, how governments are supposed to balance religion and personal freedom, bluh bluh bluh. That's a conversation for another day, but for now…I have done my own research on what the Bible says about lesbians, and maybe I just haven't done good research, but in my findings, the Bible's pretty clear: being a lesbian is a sin. But so is taking God's name in vain. Goddammit."

Shel grinned.

Piper grinned hesitantly. What was running through her head right now was that if she took Zeus's name in vain, she'd be asking for a lightning bolt. Being a Hero of Olympus and Jason's ex-girlfriend would not earn her any brownie points. If anything, Zeus may actually be more inclined to smite her because, in the way a god thinks, he blames her for Jason's death. The thought of an angry Zeus looing for an excuse to vaporize her made Piper shift uncomfortably in her seat.

Shel misread Piper's shift. "Hey, relax. God isn't going to blast us because we're gay for each other. If God was out there blasting people for whatever sin they committed, none of us would be here anymore. I've come to recognize my sexuality is a sin to God, but so is saying fuck, and I don't have any problem saying fuck this and fuck that. The Bible says that one day we'll all be judged for what we did here on Earth—give an account, I think it says—and so if kissing girls and cursing like a sailor are what I account for, I say that's pretty good."

Piper's mouth set into a thin line. All this talk about God, sin, and eternal judgement had her thinking some very uncomfortable thoughts. Piper had never read the Bible or been to church, so the only thing she had to go on right now was Shel's words, and according to her, when it came time to be judged, the apparent end all, be all to Heaven or Hell was whether you had decided let Jesus's blood cover your sins or if you were paying for your sins with your own blood. Or something like that. Piper really didn't understand it.

But to that point…Piper knew for a fact that Jason, Leo, Annabeth, Percy, Frank, Hazel, so many others and herself included, had not been "saved" or however it was supposed to be phrased, and based on what Shel said, it didn't matter if they had all busted their asses to save God's world and everyone on it: without the blood of Jesus to cover their sins, the objective fact of the matter was that they were all going to Hell.

Piper did not appreciate that. There had to be more to it than what Shel said. In her own words, maybe she had done bad research. The Bible was a big book, after all, so maybe there was more to it than what Shel was aware of. Piper just could not get behind the idea that she and her friends were on their way to eternal punishment after all that they had done, all they had suffered through, because they hadn't accepted Jesus as their lord and savior.

The thought was so uncomfortable that Piper started rationalizing things in her own way.

Shel didn't know about the mythological world. She didn't know about Elysium. Piper and her friends were definitely headed for there. What did they need Jesus's blood for? They already had eternal paradise practically in their back pocket. But a traitorous thought wormed its way into Piper's head.

What if Elysium wasn't the end?

What if Elysium was just a temporary stop?

And then another thought:

Why not just do the Jesus thing?

Piper already had the internal monologue about how hard it was for her to wrap her head around God becoming a man called Jesus and dying to secure her eternal soul, but why not just cast aside her doubts, take it at face value, accept the blood of Jesus just to at least cover her ass, and then just do what Shel did? Live a good life, be a good person, and keep her sins to a minimum?

Piper was making a huge deal about sin and judgement, but when the ticket out was apparently so easy to get, what excuse did she really have?

"Here you go!"

Piper nearly flung herself through the roof of the restaurant when the waitress materialized out of the ether with the large cheese pizza. Which happened to be so hot they couldn't eat it. As they waited for the pizza to cool, Shel continued her story by bringing out her phone and showing Piper a selfie of her and another girl.

They were both the same age, looking twelve or thirteen. Shel's hair was a little longer, and she didn't have her nose stud yet. The other girl had honey-colored hair that fell straight down her head to her shoulders, and bright almond eyes. A little smattering of freckles graced her cheeks.

"That was Elizabeth, my first girlfriend. Ironically, we met in church. We were in Sunday School together. She caught me staring at her one too many times and asked me what was up. I threw myself off the cliff and told her I thought she was cute, and went the extra mile by asking her if she was doing anything tomorrow night, that being Monday. We went on a date like you and I are doing now, talked a bunch, and we decided to become official. Being a couple of thirteen-year-old girls in church, we kept that a secret as best we could, but Billy figured it out."

"What'd he say?"

"He told me that was a sin, and that I knew the consequences of sin. I told him to fuck off." Shel sipped her Dr. Pepper. "Fast forward nine months, from September to June, and Elizabeth and I were still a thing. Summer hit, and we went to church camp. A ranch about two hours from the church. We left Wednesday afternoon and made it in time for dinner. We were going to be there the rest of the week and be back Sunday in time for service.

"Now, when you think church camp, you think a nice place, good kids that are kind, loving, compassionate, and all that jazz. You think of good people in charge, respectable adults. You'd be right for the most part, but…at the end of the day, people are people, even if they go to church. They'll do what they want to do, like sneaking in a bottle of whiskey that you stole from your parents. Wasn't me, was one of the older girls, and her boyfriend brought tequila. I let myself get roped into their drinking game because I wanted to try drinking, and I pressured Billy into joining me. I didn't tell Elizabeth about it."

Piper swallowed, starting to connect the dots. Shel was absently staring at the pizza, her eyes showing she was in a different time.

"I got drunk. Mixed both drinks and took half a dozen shots. I remember Billy tried to be cool, but I got him to drink a few. Called him a pussy, and he took that personally. He got drunk too."

"You had sex," Piper concluded.

"Oral sex, yeah," Shel confirmed in a quiet voice. "I sucked his dick, and he ate me out. Wasn't actually my first sexual experience, me and Elizabeth had been having sex for a few months now. Us good Christian girls were actually kinda wild thanks to Liz's big sister Grace. Her and her boyfriend were freaks, too, and she had some extra toys she never used that she gave to me and Liz. Some butt plugs, dildos, vibrators, handcuffs—you know, standard stuff."

A dusting of red adorned Piper's cheeks as the unbidden memory of the time she was picking up the cabin burst into her mind. She was straightening Drew's bunk, and she came across her sister's vibrator that she haphazardly left around. Piper was glad it was just her in there, because she had let out a startled cry at seeing the toy. She had discreetly confronted Drew, telling her to do a better job at putting away her things, and Drew had gotten the hint. Piper would never forget the blush on her cheeks, nor would she forget how that was one of the few moments they were on the same wavelength.

Even Drew wasn't so much as a bitch to leave her toys in places that their younger siblings could find. Both of them were utterly mortified at the thought of little Lacy finding the object and endeavoring to figure out what it was and what it did. Piper never found another of Drew's toys again. However, Drew was older than Piper by a year, and Shel and Elizabeth were thirteen.

Piper was friends with Shel, and so she was doing her best to reserve her negative thoughts about a couple of thirteen-year-old girls having sex.

And also her utter horror that Shel had gotten drunk, pressured Billy into getting drunk, and then sucked him off. At the age of thirteen. And they were supposed to be Christians. Like, it was bad enough for normal kids that age to do stuff like that, but hearing Christian kids did it was somehow worse in Piper's mind. Kind of like meeting your hero and finding out they were a complete douchebag. Your expectations were shattered and your opinions forever altered.

Piper always thought religious people were supposed to uphold a moral standard. Hearing that the religious kids were just as bad as anyone else, perhaps worse, was just...crushing...mind-boggling...otherworldly to Piper.

Piper recalled a month ago when she first invited Billy and Shel into her house, telling them she had beer, and Billy had told her about Tipsy Shel, and how Tipsy Shel had once brazenly grabbed his crotch and he punched her in the face. Back then, she had thought that was a funny story. Today, however…

"The thing I got out of that," Shel said, "was that I was weak to alcohol, and I was definitely gay. I have tasted semen, and found it to be disgusting."

"O-Oh."

Shel's brow furrowed slightly. "You never gave Jason a blowjob?"

"I am completely and totally a virgin," Piper informed. "No handjobs, blowjobs, feetjobs, lap dances, titjobs, anal or vaginal."

"Have you at least fingered yourself?"

"I have done that."

"Okay, so more like 99% virgin."

"Does that bother you?"

"It means I've got a lot to teach you," Shel winked.

Piper blushed.

"Real talk, it makes me feel bad. I'm a Christian, I'm supposed to hold myself to a higher sexual standard, and I got drunk, cheated on my girlfriend, and basically raped my best friend by seducing him with alcohol. Then there's you, who's not a Christian, who had a boyfriend, who was super rich at one point, and you two never did anything frisky. Makes me feel like I've failed."

"Shel…"

Shel shrugged. "No use crying over the past. I don't like semen, and that pretty much cemented my sexuality. For Billy…that was how his porn addiction started. He got hooked on orgasms. It's a chemical reaction, you know, like taking drugs. Orgasm releases a ton of those feel-good chemicals, serotonin and dopamine, and they're addictive. It took Billy one orgasm to get hooked, and he started masturbating a lot. As for me…I did my best to keep what Billy and I did a secret from Elizabeth. I tried to play it off, forget it happened, but I couldn't shake it. Two weeks, I finally broke down and told her what Billy and I did. Elizabeth broke up with me."

Piper winced, but she also understood. If she found out that Jason and Annabeth had gotten drunk and did sexual things together, she didn't think she could ever look at Jason the same way again, same for Annabeth. "What happened next?"

Shel was staring at the pizza again. "…she completely cut me off. Blocked me on everything, changed classes at church, and I never got the chance to say sorry and make it up to her."

"Did she move?"

Shel shook her head. "The following August, a few weeks later, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Died before school started."

Piper's hands flew to her mouth as she recoiled.

"I almost shot myself," Shel admitted. "Billy got to me first, and punched me in the face. Knocked out my last baby tooth, actually. I cried with him for an hour until I exhausted myself and fell asleep. The only reason I made it through the funeral was because of Billy. Grace was there—I mean, obviously she was there; she was Liz's big sister—and she told me that Liz had been writing apology letters, trying to figure out how to say she was sorry, that she felt like she had overreacted, and wanted to try again. It helped me get closure and move on."

"Closure and move on."

"She was dead, Piper. I wasn't doing anyone any favors by staying hung up on her. Besides, what was I supposed to? Never love anyone again because my first girlfriend and I broke up and she died of leukemia? Maybe I'm mean, but I think that would've been rather pathetic of me, unable to put myself back together and move on with my life."

Piper did not miss the pointed look in Shel's eyes. Again, though, Piper and Jason could not be compared to normal teenagers, and so the stick by which Shel measured her teenage relationships could not be used with the demigods. That being said, the part about being unable to move still applied.

Everyone needed to move on one way or another.

If you got stuck in the past, you could never move into the future.

"That's how I caused Billy to develop a porn addiction, my first girlfriend, and how that ended," Shel summarized.

"But…how did Billy start…doing that to himself?"

Shel's mouth set into a thin line. Piper could tell she was debating on how to answer. She'd already crossed the line twice, telling Piper about the scars, and telling her that she was the reason they existed. She did further reveal more to Billy, and tell Piper how Billy had gone from masturbating three times a day to slicing his legs?

Apparently not.

"I'll let Billy tell you that, if that ever comes up in a conversation between you and him," Shel said stoically.

Piper nodded, accepting that the boundaries had been pushed enough. "I guess we're out your second girlfriend now. Esther, right?"

"Yeah."

Shel got her phone out and showed Piper a picture of Esther. Vibrant red hair and bright blue eyes. A little on the pale side. Piper thought she was a very beautiful young woman. She also didn't forget how this was the girl that had committed suicide in front of Shel by jumping off the bridge.

"Esther Blanchett," Shel said. "My second girlfriend. She transferred to my school in November after Elizabeth passed away. We were fast friends. Eventually, I asked her out, and she freaked out."

"Huh?"

"She was Jewish," Shel said, as if that explained everything.

Piper stared at her blankly. "About the only thing I know for a fact about Jews is that people hate them, and the Nazis tried to kill all of them."

"Oh. In that case, the short version is that Jews are Christians without Jesus."

"…huh?"

"Okay, wow," Shel said, utterly befuddled that Piper didn't know religious history. "Um, so the way it goes, is that the Jews used to be called the Israelites because they were the descendants of Israel, who used to be called Jacob. Or Joseph. I always get them mixed up. Anyway, that guy got his name changed by God after they wrestled or something, and he was called Israel. For centuries, Israel fluctuated between a world superpower and a bunch of slaves based on whether they were remaining loyal to God or were committing a whole bunch of sin. Eventually, the term Israelite kind of just…fell off, something like that, and up popped the term Jew. Then Jesus came along, the son of Joseph and Mary, Jews, and began preaching about sin, salvation, and eternal life. Through Jesus, anyone who calls themselves a Christian can trace themselves back to the Jews."

"Okay, then what separates Christians from Jews?"

"Jews don't believe Jesus is the Messiah."

Piper stared at her. "They…don't? Why?"

Shel shrugged. "The short version of how I understand it, is that the Jews believe the Messiah will make them a world superpower again like back in the old days. They're looking for a conquering hero who will make the world bow its knee to them. Thing is, that's what Jesus already did. When He comes back, the world is going to bow, and it will bow to anyone that believes in Jesus. For all the Jews who don't accept Jesus as the Messiah…it's not going to end well."

"That's…" Piper was trying to be nice and keep an open mind, appreciating that her only source of information on this subject was Shel, who herself only had a limited understanding, "…kind of arrogant."

"Well, God did tell the Jews that they are His chosen people. If you were told by a higher power that He was going to have your back and make you a powerful, untouchable nation, wouldn't that go to your head and make you a little arrogant? Like, Oh, yeah, tough guy? Well, I've got God backing me up, and He's gonna kick your ass for me! Thing is, that's exactly what God did. Anytime Israel was in trouble and they were faithful to God, He was saving their asses, wiping out armies, toppling kingdoms and empires."

"Oh."

"And then when Israel wasn't being faithful, God let them get steamrolled for decades on end."

Piper's face screwed up. "That's…a little petty, isn't it?"

"Not really. God specifically chose the Israelites to be his people through Abraham. He got them out of Egypt's oppression, provided them with limitless resources, and even promised them a paradise of land. All they had to do was honor Him and keep his commands. I think that's fair. God wants to offer me His eternal protection, provide me with everything I need, and even give me what I want from time to time, I think it's fair that I should be required to do what He tells me, especially when what He tells me is basically just be a good person. Israelites weren't doing that, they were committing sin, and so God was well within His divine right to punish them for their sins. But we are getting way off topic here. We were talking about Esther freaking out over me asking her on a date."

"Yeah."

"Well, you could say the Jews learned from thousands of years of fucking up, and these days you could almost call them fanatics when it comes to God's laws. Obviously, it varies from house to house, synagogue to synagogue, and person to person, but for the most part, Jews are strict about the law. From my limited exposure to Judaism, they are arrogant, and they are assholes. Back in Texas, there was a converted Jew at the church—not related to Esther—and the way his story goes is that when he came to Texas for college, he was hard-up about following God's laws, and basically refused to associate with any of those Gentiles—people that aren't Jews. But the girl who became his wife talked to him, talked to him, and talked to him some more, convinced him to go to church, and he eventually converted to Christianity, accepting Jesus as his lord and savior. He called his Jewish parents, excited to tell them about how he had been saved, and his parents disowned him over the phone. Stripped his family name, told him he was no longer welcome in their house, and he was never to return."

Piper felt sick. "What happened to him?"

"He was knocked down, but the church helped him get back up. He got a doctorate in some religious field, married the girl who helped convert him, they started a family together, and now he's the pastor of his own church. Pretty good ending, if I say so myself, and last I heard, he hasn't talked to his parents since his conversion. That was years ago."

"Sounds bittersweet to me."

"It is what it is. That's just how some Jews are. They get so caught up in following God's law to the letter, they forget His greatest commandments: to love Him with all their heart, mind, body, and soul, and to love their neighbors as they love themselves. God made it clear that everyone is their neighbor, but the bad Jews will shit on anyone who isn't Jewish. Esther happened to be the daughter of bad Jews.

"Piper, you just think Christians frown on homosexuality. Jews are even worse. I didn't know Esther was a Jew until I asked her out, and she proceeded to inform me of her religious affiliation in a very loud voice. Didn't talk to me for a week. When she finally did again, she was almost a different person."

"What changed?"

"She got curious," Shel grinned. "Bit of a classic case, really. Good girl spends her whole life basically locked up behind rules and laws, then gets her first taste of freedom and goes wild. I didn't mean to spoil her, but that's what I did. We went out, became official, and had to be really careful about it because of her parents. I celebrated my fourteenth birthday with her, and then that summer…"

"Bridge," Piper whispered.

"Bridge," Shel confirmed with a heavy sigh. "Her parents found out and kicked her out. Literally kicked her, courtesy of her father. In the face. Broke her nose. Yeah, it wasn't just that she was dating a girl, an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, but that she was dating a Christian girl, a Gentile. She ran away, called me, told me she was heading for the bridge, coming to my house, and I stole Mom's car to try and meet her halfway. I got there, got out, hugged her as she cried and bled on my shirt, told her it was going to be okay, but she told me it wasn't. She leaned on the railing, told me she was a sinner, that she would never be redeemed, that she had disgraced herself and her family all for a teenage, hormonal fling…and then she jumped."

"Fuck…" Piper breathed.

Shel sipped at her Dr. Pepper. "That fucked me up, but we've already had this conversation."

Piper nodded, remembering that Shel was left traumatized and unable to cross bridges, and when her mom tried to force her to get over her trauma by driving her over that specific bridge, Shel jumped out of the car and dislocated her shoulder. And Billy punched her face, which set her straight. Er, in a manner.

"What happened to Esther's parents?" Piper asked.

A dark, vindictive smirk appeared on Shel's face. "They died."

And Piper's first thought was, "You and Billy killed them?"

Shel snorted. "We're not that depraved, but we did talk about it. No, what happened is that a winter storm blew in and froze the roads. I don't know if you know this or not, but Texas's grand weakness is ice. The roads ice over, and us Texans cannot function."

Piper internally smiled in spite of herself, recalling how Leo was from Texas, and he could just melt the ice. "Let me guess: they wiped out?"

"God wiped them out," Shel confirmed with a nasty smile.

Piper blinked. "How do you know that?"

"From the report. Investigating the car, authorities identified brake failure along with a blown-out left front tire. The tire blew, they lost control, couldn't stop, and plowed through the barrier three hundred feet high. The car landed on its nose and crumpled instantly. They got crushed, but they didn't die. They died in the ambulances on the way to the hospital. That's not the best part, though. See, the car fell forward and landed on the roof, and with the motor in the front seat, the heater was out. It took over thirty minutes for the paramedics to get out there with the road conditions, and then it took them another fifteen minutes to get Esther's parents out and onto stretchers. Those bastards spent the last hour of their lives freezing in agony for what they did to their daughter."

"They didn't feel any remorse or guilt about Esther committing suicide?"

"No. She was punished by God," Shel said sarcastically.

That's how Piper knew Shel had confronted them. As for Piper's thoughts and opinions on what happened to Esther's parents, "They got what they deserved."

"Yes, they did."

Oh, yeah. Piper felt nothing but satisfaction that divine justice had been carried out. A father that abused his daughter, a mother that stood there and let it happen, both of them feeling nothing for their daughter's suicide, and all of that culminating in the parents' slow and painful deaths. This was good in Piper's mind.

If you think that's extreme for Piper, do remember back in the Burning Maze, when Piper had stormed the Labyrinth all by herself, eventually aided by the Meliai, just to kill Medea in the name of revenge for what the vile witch had done to Piper's dad, and the part she played in Jason's death. In the right circumstances, Piper could be just as vengeful and brutal as any antihero, and as such, was perfectly okay with the idea that God had claimed the lives of Esther's parents for their horrible treatment of her.

"We should probably eat some of this pizza," Shel said.

"Oh, yeah. Right."

Was it bad that Piper had forgotten about the pizza even though it was sitting right in front of her?

Funnily enough, as the girls ate their pizza, a different waitress came up to them and informed them that their previous waitress had gone home, and that she would now be serving them. She brought them refills of Dr. Pepper, and Piper had to look at the analog clock mounted on the wall.

By the gods, it had been almost three hours since she and Shel had started their date. The sun was starting to go down, and Piper felt their date was barely halfway over. She still had a lot of questions to ask, and Shel still had two girlfriends and three not-really girlfriends to tell her about.

"What about those girlfriends you had that weren't really your girlfriends?" Piper asked.

"Two of them I met on a dating app, and I caught them cheating on me within a month each. The third was Jessie. She was a friend I had in a class. We dated for almost too months. One day we kinda just looked at each other and both agreed that we just didn't like each other like that, and so we broke up on good terms. We still follow each other. I've sent her a text every now and then, staying in touch."

"Oh."

"Yep, sorry. No grand story to tell there. Maybe a lesson, I guess. Don't use dating apps."

"Why were you using a dating app?"

"Was between girlfriends at the time. I couldn't find anyone for a while, so I started looking online. I don't like being single, but I'm not going to throw myself at someone, either."

Piper just nodded, then she changed the subject. "So. Third girlfriend."

Somehow, Shel managed to look embarrassed and pissed off at the same time.

"Wow," Piper said. "That bad?"

"Well, of my main exes, she was the one who cheated on me."

"I'm sorry."

"Nah, it's cool. She's also the weirdest girl I have so far dated."

"Oh, really?" Piper asked, trying to keep the challenge out of her voice. She quite confident that if she and Shel became official, she would be the weirdest girl Shel ever dated.

"Oh, yeah. Without contest."

"And what made her so weird?" Piper reached for Dr. Pepper.

Shel smiled lucidly. "She had a diaper fetish."

Soda exploded out of Piper's nose and all over her pizza.

Shel hid her laughter behind her hand as Piper coughed, wiping her nose of Dr. Pepper and her eyes of the water that had sprang up in them. A few heads turned to look at them following the dramatic event, and the waitress came back over in a hurry.

"Are you okay?"

"No," Piper wheezed.

"Are you choking?"

Piper waved her hand, and finally got a good breath in her lungs. "Sorry. My friend here said something, ah, really…uh…"

"Weird," Shel supplied.

Piper nodded. "That."

"O-Okay," the waitress blinked, her eyes darting back and forth between the girls. "Let me know if you need anything…"

"We will, thanks," Shel said.

When she walked off, Piper stared across the table. "She had a what?"

"Diaper fetish," Shel grinned, keeping her voice low.

Piper continued staring. "I don't understand."

"Brianna's kink is ageplay. It's a subsection of BDSM roleplay where one partner pretends to be older or younger than they are, and the other partner plays along. For Bri, her 'age' was three. Whenever we got into ageplay, she pretended to be a three-year-old girl in a diaper, I was her mommy. Mommydom kink."

Piper had yet to stop staring at Shel in utter disbelief. "What?"

Shel shrugged. "We all have our secret side. A fantasy that we want to live out, a certain kind of itch we want scratched. Even Liz and Esther. Liz and I discovered we like it freaky. She liked to be dominated, I liked dominating her. Esther's thing was feet. She had a foot fetish."

"That I've heard about," Piper said, still trying to figure out if she didn't just want to skip over this particular girlfriend and spare herself whatever depraved story Shel had to tell about this girl.

"Hey, ease up, alright? Yeah, it was weird, but she wasn't hurting anybody and she wasn't hurting herself. And there's a lot more to it than that. Besides, I'm a lesbian, and you are potentially a lesbian, too, or bisexual. To a lot of people, we're weird. As a pot, I try not to accuse the kettle of being black."

Piper tried not to judge people, either, but this was ridiculous!

"You've probably got some kink in you that you haven't figured out yet," Shel surmised.

Piper's nose scrunched up. "Maybe," she conceded, "but nothing like that."

"Don't knock it till you try it," Shel winked. "I bet your butt would look cute with a diaper on it."

Piper's face heated up to the point that steam started rising from her head. "M-Moving o-o-o-on."

Shel snickered at Piper's expense, but then she became lucid again. That same faraway look in her eye when she was talking about Liz and Esther came back, and Piper knew she was in for one of the wildest roller coasters through memory lane of her life.

"All jokes aside and in all seriousness, being a TBDL is how Bri copes with her trauma. Wearing a diaper and pretending to be a little kid is her coping mechanism." Shel sighed. "She wet her bed until she was nine, so that was already an extended stay in diapers—well, Goodnites, but basically the same thing. She has ADHD, and there's a link between ADHD and bedwetting. There's some chemical our bodies make that shuts our bladders down when we sleep so we don't piss ourselves, but ADHD messes with that chemical."

Piper swallowed. She had ADHD and wet her bed till she was seven.

"So, she wet her bed till she was nine. When she was ten, her mom and dad started fighting, and eventually her dad walked out on her and hasn't been seen since. That fucked her up so bad she started wetting the bed again. Another thing to bedwetting is it can be triggered by shock and stress. So that was another six months of her life wearing a pull-up to bed. She got back over it by the time she turned eleven, but during her fifth-grade year, she was at recess and needed to poop. Her school didn't have restrooms on the playground, so she had to ask one of the teachers to let her back into the school. That dickhead refused, and she had an accident."

Piper's sympathy kicked in. "Damn."

Shel snorted. "Don't feel too bad for her. Bitch ended up cheating on me. Anyway, after she pooped in her pants, she was taken to the nurse's office where the nurse cleaned her up. Problem was, nurse didn't have any spare panties in Bri's size. She did, however, have some diapers for the special needs kids, and so Bri wore one of those since she couldn't just go naked until her mom got there and picked her up."

"They didn't have any spare boy's underwear that would've fit her?" Piper asked incredulously.

"Maybe," Shel shrugged. "What I'm telling you is what she told me. So, there she was in the nurse's office, wearing a diaper and a spare skirt, when her mom got there with some clean panties and pants. Bri didn't care about changing her clothes. She just wanted to go home, so her mom took her home. On the way home, though, she suggested they get some ice cream. Just some pints from the gas station. Bri was okay with that, so her mom pulled into a Valero, one that happened to be getting robbed at the time."

Dread settled over Piper, a cold lead weight appearing in her stomach. "Oh, no."

Shel was staring at her soda again. "Long story short, Bri got to watch as her mom was shot in the back of the head as she was trying to run back to the car. Brains got blasted all over the place. Bri wasn't even ten feet away when she watched that happen. Even got to see some goo splatter on her window."

"Fucking hell," Piper gasped.

"The reason Bri lived was because this was in Texas. After that sick fuck shot her mom in the back of the head, the other people getting gas saw that as a great opportunity for some target practice. Three people with guns lit the fuck out of the robber. Autopsy counted at least 27 individual bullet holes, but the true total was estimated to be almost 40. Some of those holes were really big. As for Bri…she was fucked up. There she was, sitting in a diaper after having pooped her pants earlier because of an asshole teacher, just wanted some ice cream, and then she got to witness her mom's murder. Can you make the connections as to why Bri wore a diaper?"

Piper shakily nodded her head. "Y-Yeah," she said, completely truthful.

Shel continued her story. "Bri's mom had a sister, thankfully, and the court gave her custody. Bri moved in with her aunt and uncle, and they enrolled her in therapy and counseling while doing the best they could. Bri's bedwetting came back, and she had nightmares. It wasn't until she was thirteen, over a year later, that she finally started showing real progress of healing from that. Scars were fading, but still there. The best way she found to cope was wearing a diaper, which wasn't hard since she had plenty of them given her bedwetting. She was fourteen when she met her first boyfriend, Bryce. Thanks to him, what used to just be her coping mechanism, her security blanket, became her fetish. He introduced her to ageplay, and she enjoyed having him as her daddy given the fact that her actual dad abandoned her. You know, daddy issues."

Piper swallowed, not liking the similarities between her and Bri. They both had ADHD, they both wet their beds for what most would consider to be an extended period of time, they had issues with their father and their mother (though nowhere near the same level, thankfully), and they both dated boys and eventually turned to girls.

"What happened to Bryce?" Piper asked.

"Don't know," Shel said. "One day, he said he got a call from an old friend and had to leave. Never saw him again."

And suddenly, a whole bunch of dots appeared in Piper's head, and she started making connections. "By any chance, was his last name, er, Tanaka? Bryce Tanaka?"

Shel blinked. "No, it was Lawrence. Bri showed me some pictures of him, and I thought he looked really creepy."

"Oh. Okay."

Piper sipped her Dr. Pepper, thinking Brianna was lucky to have survived her relationship with Bryce Lawrence, the legacy of Orcus that murdered his own centurion and wrought general havoc upon the legion and New Rome. Reyna wanted him dead, proving how brutal the daughter of Bellona could really be, but the evidence was flimsy and so the best she had to settle for was banishment. Then Octavian brought the psycho back into the fold, and Nico killed him for threatening Reyna.

"I think he took advantage of her," Shel revealed. "I think he manipulated her trauma and her vulnerability. I know he got a kick out of her sucking his dick to, ah, earn a diaper change."

Piper's stomach twisted and she had to fight to keep her food down. Nico had let Bryce off easy by just turning him into a ghost. Maybe she could have a word with him when she was sure communications were online again, tell him about the other things Bryce did, so Nico could pass world along to his father. If Hades was willing, she'd go down there herself and take a sledgehammer to the sick bastard's crotch.

"So, yeah. What started off as Brianna's way of staying sane and coping with her trauma then became her fetish, and that's what I got to deal with. However, since my last girlfriend's way of dealing with her trauma was to fling herself off a fucking bridge, I was more than happy to play mommy if it meant this girl wasn't out doing drugs, alcohol, smoking, or anything else illegal. I mean, when it comes down to it, of all the things Bri could've gotten herself into, ageplay is not that bad."

Piper was steeply inclined to disagree, that a teenage girl wearing a diaper was…well…abnormal. Wrong. Of course, all due respect to all the girls out there that had medical problems that required them to wear a diaper, but Bri didn't have any medical…any physical medical problems.

Damn.

She certainly had a mental medical problem. Bruce Wayne watched his parents get gunned down, and he handled that by becoming a vigilante in a bat costume that spent his nights beating up the criminally insane. Bri watched her mother get gunned down, and found comfort by wearing a diaper. Then that sick freak sexually abused her so subtly she didn't realize it.

Piper suddenly realized something from Shel's wording. "You were coping with your trauma, too. You weren't able to be there for Esther, so you were making up for it by going along with Bri's thing without questions."

"Well, yes, but actually no," Shel said. "True, I did feel like I had let Esther down, and I was determined not to let Brianna down. She needed help, and I could help her. But there were questions. Don't think for a second that I was completely onboard with everything Brianna wanted to do. Like I do with all my girlfriends when it comes to our bedroom stuff, after she told me what she was into, we sat down and ironed out the boundaries."

"Boundaries?" Piper blinked.

"Boundaries, yeah. Things I wasn't at all comfortable with doing and would never budge on, things I would consider doing if I was in the mood or for a special occasion, and things I was perfectly okay with. And the same for my partner. For Liz, us just getting started in the world of sex with the toys her big sister gave us, we made a safe word for if one of us started going too far and did something the other didn't like. For Esther and her foot fetish, she liked my feet; liked cuddling with my feet, kissing my feet-"

"I get it. She liked your feet." Piper was blushing a little as Shel recalled the sexual interests of her past girlfriends. TMI, she was thinking to herself.

"But I wasn't letting her get anywhere near my feet until I had thoroughly washed them, and I wasn't getting anywhere near her feet until she had washed them. Dirty feet would not be tolerated, because I didn't want either of us to get some kind of disease."

Piper just nodded, already firm in mind that she wasn't getting anywhere near anyone's feet.

"With Bri, obviously things had to be adjusted given what she was into." Shel paused. "I guess now's a good time for me to go over the standard I have for all my girlfriends."

"Sure."

"Zero PDA tolerance. In public, we do not kiss, hug, hold hands, and definitely do not touch each other. No, it's not because I'm afraid of persecution or anything like that; it's that I have respect for people's boundaries, and it's no business of mine to be all over my girlfriend and making a scene. I don't like it when straight people do it. Shows a lack of professionalism."

"Okay," Piper nodded.

She didn't completely agree, actually. She could get behind the kissing and sensual touching, but holding hands and hugging? That shouldn't be a problem. You know, other than the wildly conflicting social views.

And it was right then that Piper noted something about Shel: she didn't flaunt her sexuality.

"It's also a great way to avoid unnecessary drama. Case in point, us right now. Other than the waitress, we've been left alone by everyone here. At a glance, we're just a couple of girls having lunch together. Maybe we're best friends separated by a long distance, you found the time to come to town, and now here we are catching up. If they knew we were on a date, swapping stories and sharing personal info to see if we're a good enough match to start a gay relationship, we may very well have been asked to leave."

Piper swallowed.

Yeah, that was one thing she didn't like to think about regarding her potential sexuality: the social backlash and, like Shel had said, persecution. Did Piper think her friends would reject her if she came out to them? No, she didn't. For one, Nico was gay, and everyone was cool with that, and two, they were all cool overall. Granted, they'd all be a little surprised to see Piper bringing a girl to the table, especially because with communications cut off, none of them would know about what happened between her and Jason.

Well, Leo knew, but that was because he had been with her on the journey to Tahlequah. Hazel, Frank, and Reyna might know depending on if Apollo and Meg told them, but Percy and Annabeth definitely did not know. They would be shocked. But Piper was certain they would recover and understand what happened between her and Jason, and while they may be bummed out that she and Jason didn't work out after all, they would accept that sometimes that's just how it is.

"Has that ever happened to you?" Piper asked. "You were on a date with one of your girlfriends, and the restaurant made you leave?"

"Yes," Shel answered with a tone of annoyed anger, but Piper detected it wasn't at the restaurant. "With my fourth girlfriend, but I'll get to her in a moment."

Those empathy powers were something else. Piper could feel the thunderstorm of emotions that coursed through Shel when she mentioned her fourth girlfriend. Hate, anger, revulsion, sadness, pity—whatever happened between them, it was ugly.

"Back to Brianna," Shel said. "The way she came out to me was that she had booked us a concert, and had this wild suggestion that we wear diapers. Both as kinky fun and also to avoid having to use those nasty concert restrooms."

Damn. Piper had been to a few concerts before, and the state of some of those restrooms honestly would've made it a hard choice for her to decide between squatting over the toilet (because there was no way she was planting her butt on that seat) or using a diaper.

"I thought she was just being cute and funny, and wanted to try something new," Shel continued, "so I went along with it. I'm open to exploring and trying new things. She'd gotten over her bedwetting at this point, but still had her diapers lying around, so she put one on me, and I put one on her. We had the great idea to sneak in some alcohol, got a little tipsy, and we both pissed ourselves."

Piper recoiled. "Eww."

Shel snorted at Piper's expression. "To be fair, you pissed yourself a month ago, also because of too much beer."

"Yeah, but I was disgusted and still am."

"Oh, I was a bit grossed out myself when my head cleared, but that wasn't until the following morning. Before that, Bri's aunt came and got us, and thought it was cute that we were both borderline drunk. We got home and had the bright idea to change each other, and used that as a great opportunity to finger each other too."

"O-Okay," Piper blushed.

Shel smirked, enjoying making Piper squirm, but then she got serious again. "Come morning, Bri asked me what she thought of the whole thing. I told her I thought it was cute, and maybe something I'd consider doing again, but I wasn't going to be pissing myself again. That's when she got quiet, and then told me that was her thing. She told me the finer details about her tragic backstory and what she and Bryce did, and after processing that real fast, I sat down with her and hugged her. She broke down in tears, told me she was terrified that I'd reject her and call her a freak. I told her she was my little freak and that I loved her. We do things for the people we love. After she calmed down, though, we outlined the boundaries.

"She wanted me to wear a diaper with her sometimes, and I said only if I wanted to, and that was nonnegotiable, and I would never be using a diaper. When we were roleplaying, she wanted me to be her mommy, and that was fine with me so long as she understood that I was not a substitute for her actual mother, God rest her soul. In public, standard PDA rules applied, but I added one: not wet diapers in public. She tried to fight that on the grounds that she had secretly been wearing diapers around me the whole time, and had peed in them, but I told her that was then and this is now. That was my boundary. In private, that was different."

"You mean you really-"

"Changed a teenage girl's diapers? Yup. But those were the only kinds of diapers I changed. While we gave and took on some other things, there was one ironclad, never-gonna-budge-on, secret 11th Commandment rule that I was never going to compromise on." Shel stared into Piper's soul with this one: "No. Messy. Diapers."

It took Piper a second for the phrasing to click, but when it did, she actually to swallow a spurt of bile that shot into her throat. She had to guzzle the rest of her Dr. Pepper, and then she reached across the table to guzzle Shel's Dr. Pepper.

After muffling a big burp thanks to all that carbonation, Piper looked at Shel in utter disbelief. "You mean she really pooped in her diaper? Willingly?"

"Thanks to Bryce," Shel said firmly, making it very clear just how warped and twisted that boy was. "Before him, she just wore a diaper and took it off to use the toilet. Then he came along and ruined her."

"Ugh," Piper shuddered. Yeah, she was definitely talking to Nico about this one.

Whatever that rotten little shit Bryce was going through in the Underworld, he deserved worse.

"Yeah. I mean, I loved her at the time, but not so much that I was going to wipe her ass for her when she was perfectly capable of doing that herself. If something had happened to her, that would've been different."

Piper blinked. "Huh?"

"It's something I came to think about when it comes to the people we love. You know, like our partners. You and Jason. Percy and Annabeth. Me and Bri. Our parents. Our kids. We say we love them, sure, but if we aren't willing to wipe their butt, is that really a true statement? Can you really say you love someone if you aren't willing to wipe their butt?"

"U-Uh," Piper stammered, not at all prepared for that one.

"Well, think about it like this: back when you and Jason were still a couple, and something super serious had happened to him, and he couldn't go use the bathroom by himself—like, he was paralyzed from the neck down, suffered brain damage, had a stroke and could barely move, etc.—would you have been willing to help him with all of that? You know, you say you loved him, but if he couldn't do it himself, would you have helped him use the bathroom? Getting him to the toilet, taking his pants and underwear off, helping him sit down, keeping him from falling off, waiting for him to finish, wipe him, get him dressed, and even more. Would you have brushed his teeth, bathed him, fed him, changed his clothes? And if the reverse happened, and suddenly you couldn't take care of yourself, would Jason have done all of that for you?"

Piper's gaze traveled to the pizza as she was suddenly hit with those hard questions. Yes, rather extreme and outlandish, but Shel had brought up a very good point. Piper and Jason said they loved each other, but if something really bad like Shel described had happened to either of them, would they have been willing to go that far for each other?

It was such a silly question, but it still had heavy merit to it.

If Jason had been unable to wipe his butt, would Piper had wiped it for him? If she had been unable to do something so simple as clean her bottom after she pooped, would Jason have been willing to clean her? Same with Percy and Annabeth. They had as strong a relationship as Piper had ever seen, and she had wished so much for hers and Jason's relationship to be like that, but it just didn't happen and that wasn't the point right now. If something serious happened to Annabeth, would Percy have undertaken the job of being her caregiver, bathing her, cleaning her up after helping her use the toilet, and—and Piper just realized this one—helping her with her period?

Would Jason have helped Piper with her period?

A very, very uncomfortable question and possibility, but on a serious note…would they?

Would you?

You said you loved someone, but just how far did that love really run?

Shel also brought up parents and their children. Piper's dad had loved her enough to change her diapers and pull-ups, and he had cleaned her up when she had an accident; when he got old, and his mind and/or body deteriorated to the point where he couldn't get his body to function properly, would Piper be willing to return the favor and clean her elderly father like he had cleaned her when she was a baby?

And was there to say about the parents that weren't willing to wipe their baby's bottoms? The husbands that always made their wives do it, the wives that always made their husbands do it, or those parents that both shirked the dirty deed and had a nanny do it because they were rich enough to afford that kind of service?

Tying back to Shel's question, could you really say you loved someone if you were unwilling to wipe their butt if they couldn't do it themselves, asking Piper about her and Jason, Piper's answer was, "Yeah. If something that serious happened to me or Jason, then we would've done what needed to be done for each other. Same with Percy and Annabeth."

Shel nodded. "Same. Only Bri was a fully capable teenager, and I wasn't going to be doing that if I didn't have to. As long as she could take a dump by herself, then she was going to do so."

Piper became a little forlorn. "Let me guess: the reason she's your ex-girlfriend and cheated on you is because she couldn't take no for an answer, went behind your back with someone who was into…that…and so you dumped her."

"Almost," Shel said. "Bri and I started dating right before school started, the same summer after Esther's suicide. About a month later is when she told me about her fetish. From there, whenever we would have a house to ourselves, we'd play. Fast forward to coming up on my fifteenth birthday, and she was sick. Real nasty stomach bug. Fever and everything. Remember what I said about not wiping her ass as long as she could do it?"

Piper knew exactly where this story was heading. "Yeah. And she was so sick she had an accident, and you cleaned her up."

"Bingo. Fast forward to summer, ten months of dating, and Bri decided we had been together so long that maybe we could renegotiate the boundaries, and so she went with a beg forgiveness rather than ask permission approach."

Piper's eyes widened and she was pretty sure her face turned green. "Gross."

"Very. And I was not happy. I let her explain herself, told her she was wrong, made her take a shower, and I reminded her what my boundaries were and that she had disrespected them. She said she was sorry, we hugged, and I thought we put it behind us. A week later, she did it again. I had left the room to go use the bathroom, ironically, and came back to smell shit. I only needed to pee, so…yeah."

Piper couldn't repress a shudder. "What happened next?"

"I yelled at her," Shel answered. "I told her she knew I wasn't okay with her doing that, reminded her about last week, and told her that if she couldn't respect by boundaries, then we needed a break. I called her aunt and kicked her out. Now, I said a break. I meant for about a week of no contact, that way she could think about what she had done, but she-"

"She hooked up with someone else."

"Yeah. Thing is, she started hooking up last week. She knew I'd be pissed off with her if she messed again, and she decided to use that as her out. She didn't want to be the one to break up with me, so she cheated on me and intentionally pissed me off so I would break up with her. But I didn't break up with her, I just wanted a break. She didn't care for the difference. She just took it and ran away with it. Blocked me on everything. I found out a few days after her little episode because she changed her Twitter, and I confronted her about it after school. She even had the gall to be with her new mommy, too."

Piper winced.

"Little skank told me it was my fault for not accepting her as she truly was. I told her she was damn right, and I that I hoped she had a great life. Never talked to her again. She's still alive, though. In a sense."

"In a sense?" Piper asked. "Did something happen to her?"

Shel got out her phone. "She lost all sense of morality. This is her Twitter now."

She showed Piper Bri's Twitter, and Piper jerked away. "Please excuse me while I go bleach my eyeballs."

"She even has an OnlyFans account."

"I don't know what that is, and I don't want to know."

"For twenty dollars a month, her fans get to see pictures and videos of her-"

"Stop! I get it. Moving on. I don't think I can ever look at diapers again the same way now. Or ever have a baby."

"Well, if you stay the gay way, that'll be naturally impossible."

"You know what I mean."

Shel smiled. "I do know what you mean. In all my relationships, I've looked back on them and looked for something to learn. With Elizabeth, I learned the importance of drinking responsibly, and that actions have consequences. With Esther, I learned how important it is to not stand so far away. With Brianna…well…I learned a lot. I learned how to change a diaper, how to fix a bottle and a sippy cup, how to bathe someone else, how to bake cookies and brownies—basically, how to be a mom. With Bri, I learned that I want to be a mom one of these days. I want to have a baby girl—a real baby girl—of my own. I've looked into adoption and sperm banks. A sperm bank would be easier, but there's something more meaningful in adoption. Giving a good home to some poor kid whose parents didn't want them for whatever reason sounds better to me than injecting some guy's unused spunk."

Piper saw the dreamy look on Shel's face at the prospect of having a child, and it made her wonder. If she and Shel became official, and stayed so through high school and got good enough careers going that they could support a child, could she get Shel pregnant? Piper was a demigod, after all, and her godly family was rife with stories of strange births, and being half god herself, maybe that strangeness could apply. Or, alternatively, if she ever got things squared away with her mom, maybe she could pray to Aphrodite to grant them a daughter.

And then Piper had to wonder just where the fuck did that line of thinking come from.

This was their first date—technically not even a date, more like a meeting to see if they wanted to date—and here she was thinking about how to knock this girl up.

"What about you, Piper? Have you ever thought about being a mom?"

Piper shook her head. "Not that I can recall, no."

"I think you'd be a great mom."

Piper blushed. "Thanks?" She wasn't sure how to take that compliment.

"You're welcome," Shel smiled, and then it faded. "I guess now it's time to talk about my fourth girlfriend. Avery Smith."

Piper felt the atmosphere change. She had no doubt in her mind right now that if Shel was a Big Three demigod, the elements would've been responding to her emotions. Lights would've shorted and sockets would be sparking if she was a child of Zeus; glasses would be overturning and the plumbing would be rumbling if of Poseidon; and the shadows would be twisting and turning, the windows freezing over, if Hades was her father. Piper gulped.

Shel was not happy talking about Avery.

She leaned forward in her seat a little bit, clasping her hands together in front of her. She fixed Piper with the hardest, most serious stare she had ever set upon Piper, and Piper knew that the fun was over. Up to this point, things had been casual, just them swapping stories and answering the questions about each other's pasts. Now they were getting into the real stuff, the stuff where their thoughts and opinions may vary so wildly that they found they were actually incompatible.

Piper steeled herself for what had now become a hard conversation.

"What I'm about to say could make or break any romantic relationship we have," Shel said. "It may very well cost us our friendship, too. However, if you are going to be my girlfriend, if you are going to be gay with me, then what we're about to talk about is crucial. Knowing about my exes is one thing, but now you're about to know the important things about me. Are you ready?"

Piper took a deep breath, figuring everything she thought about Shel was about to be changed. "I am."

"In all the times you've been in my room," Shel started, voice level and calm, "have you ever seen any pride flags? The rainbow one or that orange and purple lesbian one?"

Piper racked her brain, and to her surprise, the answer was no. Even in her initial visit to Shel's house the night she ran away from home, she had seen no pride flags in the lesbian's bedroom. In answer to Shel's question, Piper shook her head. "No."

"Have you ever seen me with any pride paraphernalia, such as a t-shirt, pants, a hoodie, pajamas, patches on my backpack, stickers, bracelets, armbands, non-permanent tattoos, etc.?"

Piper shook her head again. "No."

"No. The reason for that is because I'm a traitor." She smirked. "I'm a traitor to the cause. An enemy. Not a real lesbian…somehow. Piper, I do not support the LGBT movement. I think they are a coalition of bullies, full of hateful, angry people, that will stop at nothing to force everyone on this planet to bow to their ideology, and I oppose that. I will never fly any of their flags—I don't even know how any of those flags came to be. I have no idea how the rainbow came to be used as the general pride flag, and I don't even know what the colors on any of the flags mean, not even the lesbian one—and I will never go to any of their parades, rallies, or any of their gatherings.

"I disagree with them on a fundamental level. I believe that pride is a sin, and so their whole gay pride thing is not compatible with me, and neither is their behavior. They wave their sexuality around like it's some kind of shield that protects them from criticism, and some kind of badge that lets them get away with doing whatever they want to do. They are also hypocrites, preaching about tolerance, but they viciously go out of their way to attack anyone who doesn't fall in their line. Case in point, J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author. She is one of the few people brave enough these days to say that transgender women are not women, and these very tolerant people are incapable of tolerating her.

"They slander her all over the internet, showing just how toxic they really are. To me, it shows how emotionally unstable they are, and just how deep their insecurity runs. Their whole life comes apart because some author has a contrary opinion to their worldview, and they cannot handle it. More than just tearing Rowling apart, the LGBT will go after bakers and wedding planners. Up in Colorado, Jack Phillips was taken all the way up to the Supreme Court because he wouldn't bake a wedding cake for a couple of gay dudes because he's a Christian. Piper, the Supreme-fucking-Court, the highest legal body in the country…because of a wedding cake. A fucking cake."

"Why didn't they just…go to another bakery…?" Piper asked hesitantly.

"Good question. Anyway, SCOTUS actually ruled in Jack's favor, but now he's in trouble again, this time because a trans 'woman' wanted a birthday cake to celebrate his transition, and he refused. And I'm just like, Dude. Why did you think it was a good idea to call this guy after he was all over the news for not baking a gay wedding cake? That tells me he either wasn't paying attention, or he was just looking to start something. The LGBT's even going after a wedding website designer, Lorie Smith, also in Colorado, also a Christian, because she won't make websites for gay couples, and it's still the same thing: go talk to someone else. I do not understand why these nutcases get so hung up on just one person, when there's a hundred others that do the same thing."

Piper was brutally honest in her assessment. "That's crazy."

"Yeah, and it's always Christians. You never hear about the LGBT going after Jews and Muslims."

"Why not?"

Shel snorted. "Because the Jews will lower their credit scores and the Muslims will chop their heads off."

Piper stared at her. "Muslims will do what?"

"Oh, yeah. Decapitation is one of the ways the Muslims are permitted to punish sin, and in the Quran, and in the Bible and Torah, being gay is a sin. Therefore, by Allah, praise be unto him, Muslims are permitted to chop gay people's heads off."

Piper was at a loss for words on that one.

"So it's always funny to me when LGBT people in America and parts of Europe will complain about how hard their lives are, and I'm just like, Feel free to go to the Middle East. Over there, it's legal for the townspeople to drag you into the street and murder you."

Piper swallowed. "They really do that over there?"

"Yep. God bless America, land of the free, home of the brave."

"Y-Yeah."

"Yeah," Shel sipped her Dr. Pepper. "I will never stand with the LGBT. I don't consider my sexuality something to be proud of. I'm not ashamed of my sexuality, don't get me wrong, but I'm not proud of it. I don't need to tell the world I like girls. I don't need the world to validate me. Those nutjobs do. They need everyone on the planet to recognize their sexuality and gender identity, they need everyone's validation because they're insecure about who they are. They need people to tell them who they are, and they get angry when people tell them something they don't want to hear. I'm different, and that's why I'm a traitor. I don't need anyone else's permission or opinion to justify my sexuality. Do you?"

"I'm still trying figure out what my sexuality is."

"Have I been any help, or are you ready to be done with me forever and it's time for us to part ways?"

Piper shook her head. "You have been a great help. As for all of this…it's been very insightful. I had no idea that was what they were up to."

Shel shrugged. "Something they can't comprehend is that you can be gay without being part of the LGBT, just like you can be black without being part of the BLM."

"The what?" Piper blinked.

"Black Lives Matter. Domestic terrorist organization whose idea of 'protesting' was to burn down buildings and destroy peoples' property. The leaders of the movement got busted for embezzling hundreds of millions in donation money, and they fell apart after that."

"Wow," Piper blinked again.

"Content of their character," Shel shrugged. "Do you have any experience with the LGBT?"

"Not really. Percy's got a younger cousin, Nico, and he's gay, but I honestly don't see him ever going to a pride event unless his boyfriend drags him to one. Nico's…kind of like Billy, actually. They both wear all-black all the time, and they only socially interact if they're forced to."

Shel couldn't help but laugh a little at Piper's comparison of Nico and Billy.

"As for me personally," Piper continued, "I mean, back when I was still going to private school in Malibu, there was an after-school gay club, but they weren't really a big thing. They kept to themselves and didn't bother anyone."

Shel nodded. "Good. That's how it should be. We operate in our own little corners and respect people's boundaries, and don't breach them to shove sexuality this and gender that down everyone else's throats. I've got to ask you: what do you think of transgender girls and women in boy's and men's sports?"

"I…haven't thought about it," Piper answered truthfully.

"What about the general notion that a boy can be a girl if he takes a bunch of hormones and cuts his penis off? And the reverse, in that a girl can be a boy if she takes a bunch of hormones and cuts her breasts off?"

Piper felt uncomfortable. "I haven't thought about that, either."

"What do you think about it now?"

And so Piper thought about it.

Intrinsically, given the current state of the Riordanverse, Piper would be totally in favor of it. More to that, given the current state of the Riordanverse, the above conversation will never happen. More likely, the next canonical time we see Piper, she'll have a pride flag in her bedroom, the canon character of Shel will be decked out in pride stuff, and the two will be at every pride event they can go to, with a rainbow tattoo on one cheek, and the orange and purple tattoo on the other. Piper and Shel will be the complete antithesis of the characters herein, and will be consumed with gay this, and gay that.

Because in the Riordanverse these days, in a time period that Rick himself says takes place "now" so he can throw in as many pop culture references as he can and touch on whatever issue he wants, even though "now" sees such things as collapsing banks, rising inflation, continued social unrest, actual war, disease, and a ton of other extremely important problems, the most important thing we need to focus on—

Is what underage minors do with their genitals.

Because of this heavy focus, the canon Piper, and also the canon Shel, would be totally in favor of boys being in the girls' locker rooms, playing in girls' sports, and the same for girls in boys' locker rooms and sports.

But this was not canon, and therefore this Piper was not bound by the rhetoric.

And so, as she thought about her answer, and as she understood that Shel wasn't looking for the answer she wanted to hear, but Piper's own personal thoughts on the matter, Piper gave Shel her answer.

"We're supposed to be about freedom and personal liberty, the right to choose how we live without restriction from anyone else, and so if a boy wants to take hormones and transition to being a girl, then he is free to do so. Same with girls wanting to be boys. However, I can see how it gets messy.

"Back at Delphi, they had this cool system where all the kids were separated into cabins based on your 'godly' parent—they had a huge Greek mythology theme—and I got put into Cabin 10, the Aphrodite cabin. All of them were co-ed. I also got to be the head counselor of the cabin, and because we were all 'children' of Aphrodite, that basically made me everyone's big sister. So I had to step up and be responsible for my siblings. That included knowing about allergies, any disabilities, any illnesses, any altercations between my kids and the kids of another cabin, who wet their bed so I knew who needed extra time in the bathroom to change in and out of their pull-up, and now that we're having this conversation, that would also include any trans kids. I didn't have this problem, but it would've been up to me to decide how to operate the cabin. In the mornings and evenings, when it came time for changing clothes, I kicked all the boys out so us girls could change, and then I had all the girls get out so the boys could change. You know, privacy. If I had to figure out a trans kid…I don't know. How much do I consider their feelings, versus how much do I consider everyone else's feelings?

"If it was a trans girl, and the other girls were uncomfortable with there being a person with a penis in the cabin while we were all getting naked and changing our panties, do I make the kid wait outside with the boys, or do I tell the other girls to suck it up and deal with it? Or do I try to keep it a secret and hope no one ever sees the kid's penis? Same thing with a trans boy. Let him change with the boys and hope no one sees the vagina, keep him outside with the girls because the boys are uncomfortable, or tell the boys to behave and just deal with it?"

Shel smirked. "When I played softball back in Texas, last semester, actually, in the Fall, we had that exact situation. Trans girl moved in from California, and he wanted to play softball. Might've gotten away with it if he didn't feel the need to announce to everyone that he was trans, and if his parents didn't endorse him and make money off of him. Anyway, this being Texas, the whole team and I, and the coaches, and the athletic committee, and the school board, and the general populace of the town, were not onboard.

"See, just like I don't support the LBGT in general, I definitely don't support transgender ideology. As a girl, it makes me angry that a boy thinks he can be a girl just by mutilating his body and jacking himself full of chemicals. I think a transgender woman participating in women's sporting events takes away from women, lessens our value, and puts us at an unfair disadvantage because men are biologically stronger than us. I find it ironic that people will preach about women's empowerment, women's freedoms, women's rights, yadda yadda, but when a woman speaks out against transgender girls playing with the boys, then she needs to be silenced and canceled because she's a close-minded bigot. Case in point, Lia Thomas."

"Who?"

"Transgender swimmer on the women's swim team who set new records in the Ivy League when he decided to transition and swim as a girl. In a competition against other women, he beat them all and won gold. He got to be in the girl's locker room, and they weren't happy about that. They felt violated and dismissed, and that they had been cheated. I'm with them. Those girls on the Pennsylvania team had been swimming all their lives, training for those events, and then some guy comes in and kicks their asses. I know what they feel like.

"Back to my Texas story, this trans kid wanted on the softball team and thought he was entitled to it because he was trans, everyone said no, so his parents filed a lawsuit and it went up to the state level, and long story short the kid got on the softball team. Yeah, none of us were comfortable with that."

Piper's brow furrowed a little. "Wait, if you're gay, then-"

"That wasn't something I advertised. None of them knew that about me, and I know how to keep my eyes to myself. So, there we were, a boy in our locker room. Our head coach was a guy, but he always sent in the assistant coach, who was a woman. If Coach Slade ever had to come into the locker room, he would bang really hard on the door and shout I'm coming in! You got ten seconds to get decent! and then he'd count down from ten and we would all get a towel or whatever, and then he'd shout again Alright! Y'all decent? and we'd all go No! even though we were, and then he'd be like Too bad! I'm coming in! and then he'd come in with his hand over his eyes anyway. Good times."

Piper smiled too, reminded of Coach Hedge. Her thoughts briefly drifted to his current occupation working as the defense coordinator for the Sooners over in Norman. It had been a long time since she had spoken to him. With Summer coming up, maybe she could arrange lunch.

Shel continued. "Then we had this dickhead in our locker room who turned everything upside down, not just for us girls, but for the whole school. Suddenly, being gay was trendy, and a bunch of people came out. This boy started an LGBT club by threatening to have his parents sue the school again if they didn't let him, and he started pushing for holidays and other stuff, like making all the teachers wear pride flag pins on their shirts. He was a bully. He used his gender identity as a shield to defend his behavior, and as a sword to justify it. He was trans, and therefore untouchable. He got his claws into Avery, and turned her into a monster."

Shel got out her phone, her fingers flew across the touchscreen, and she pulled up a picture of Avery. Piper's breath left her lungs at the sight of the mugshot. Avery might've once been a beautiful young lady, but that the time of this photo, her hair was in a buzz, the left side meticulously dyed rainbow, the right side just as carefully dyed in the lesbian pride colors, she had an ugly nose ring, huge gages in her earlobes, and was quite chubby.

Piper made a face.

Shel took her phone back. "This is what she used to look like."

Piper had been right, Avery had been beautiful. Athletic frame, wavy chocolate hair, green eyes, flawless skin, and a dazzling smile with clean, straight teeth. The polar opposite of her mugshot.

Shel was bitter and sad. "I honestly thought she and I were going to get married. We hit it off instantly, and I felt for her unlike any girl I've ever felt for. Everything just clicked between us. I genuinely thought of proposing to her this summer, but that bastard came in and ruined her. I didn't like the LGBT even before he came to our school, and I like them even less now. Avery wanted to go to one of his afterschool clubs, and I was hesitant but willing to give it a shot just for her, and I couldn't leave fast enough. The room the school gave him had pride flags for every facet of the LGBT I didn't even know existed. Lesbian pride, gay pride, transgender, nonbinary, asexual, pansexual, bisexual, genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, genderfae-"

"Gender what?" Piper broke in, her mind whirling at the moment.

"I don't actually know. I don't want to know. And there were a bunch of others, too, including the Christian flag with a big red 'X' spraypainted on it."

"Oh." Just envisioning this room made Piper's skin crawl.

"Yeah. I left, Avery stayed. I should've either dragged her with me, or stayed with her to keep the poison out of her mind. We started drifting after that. She got obsessed with the patriarchy and body positivity, started eating junk and gaining weight. She stopped going to church with me, insisting that God was the enemy of queer people, and anyone who followed Him was also the enemy, and anyone who didn't say that it's okay to be gay needed to be reported for bullying."

Piper stared at Shel. "Huh?"

"Yeah. One day, that cult went around the school, asking kids in the hall, even going into classrooms, asking for everyone's name and asking them if they thought it was okay to be gay, and anyone who said no had their name marked and were reported to the principal, and then the trans kid that started this mess once again threatened legal action if the principal didn't give all those kids the policy-defined punishment for bullying."

"That's insane," Piper said, appalled.

"That's the LGBT," Shel said lowly. "They will go out of their way to force people to bow to them, and they'll destroy anyone who doesn't. Shoulda seen Billy."

"Oh, my God—what'd he do?"

"He punched the trans kid in the face and knocked out three teeth."

"Let me guess: he got sued?"

"Nope. Trans kid touched him first. What happened was that the trans kid organized this trans day of visibility or some shit like that, and wanted the whole student body to dress up as the opposite gender so they could learn what it feels like to be trapped in the wrong body. It split the school, with some kids staying home, some kids going along with it because they thought it was funny, and then there was Billy who rolled up to class in his signature black outfit. The trans kid went for him personally in the hall, and demanded to know why he wasn't crossdressing."

Piper couldn't help but feel a grin spreading across her face at the thought of Billy decking this asshole. "What happened?"

Shel grinned too. "I was with him, so I know he said this, Your pronouns are about to be was/were if you don't get the fuck out of my face."

Piper snickered.

"Kid took exception to that and grabbed Billy. Now, at this time, Billy was still playing football and still working out. There's a reason he was the starting varsity linebacker at sixteen despite being shorter than we are, and that's because he was big. He didn't take steroids, but he was still big. That kid grabbed Billy's shirt, and his fist came around like a wrecking ball. Smack! Dude, it was awesome. Head cracked to the side, teeth went flying and skittering across the ground, and that bastard dropped. Billy knocked him out. Since I was a witness and the whole thing was on-camera, Billy got off on self-defense."

"Nice," Piper grinned.

Shel grinned too, but then her bitterness came back. "Avery got worse and worse. She cut her hair off, got fat, put those gages in her ears, got that nose ring, and though we never officially broke up, she took care of that all on her own."

"The mugshot," Piper said. "What happened?"

"She helped torture a man to death and burn down a Chic-fil-A with him still inside."

Piper's brain short-circuited. She would've been less stunned if Shel had spoken in Klingon. "What?"

If a girl ever had a grim expression on her face, Shel certainly did. "This was back in February. Avery, the trans kid, and the rest of the LGBT club decided to block off a Chic-fil-A in protest of their Christian morals and values. They barricaded the doors and the drive-through, didn't let anyone inside. People were pissed off, of course, and the police were called, but right when they were about to just round all those idiots and haul them down to the jail, the manager of the Chic-fil-A showed up.

"David Castillo. Tall, handsome, used to be married, but his wife died in childbirth and the baby was stillborn. He stayed true to God, though, and ended up running the Chic-fil-A. He was a local hero. Used his money to help kids go to church camp and mission trips, helped do fundraisers, and he was the teacher of mine, Billy, and Avery's Sunday School class."

Piper felt the color drain from her face. She saw the morphing look on Shel's face, the way her eyes were starting to water, how her lower lip was starting to tremble, and she knew that this was tantamount to impossible for Shel. "You can stop now," Piper whispered.

Shel shook her head. "You need to know."

Piper didn't understand why Shel though such a thing, but she remained quiet and let her continue.

"David showed up, and instead of letting the police take all the kids away, he instead offered them free lunch. He'd make it all himself just for them. The only thing he wanted was for them to sit down and talk, ask them why they were doing what they were doing. David was awesome like that. He always wanted to talk to you, always wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on so he could pray for you. He was the best man I ever knew that wasn't my dad or Billy. Anyway, that's what he did. That damn trans kid let it happen just so he could literally spit in David's face and pour his food and soda all over him. David just sat there and took it, and told the police to let him, Avery, and two other go home, no charges. The others that stayed to have lunch, David talked to them, and he cleared their minds. Got them either to turn to Jesus, or turn back to Jesus, and renounce the cult they got roped into.

"That night, the trans kid, Avery, and the two others broke into David's home and kidnapped him out of his bed. They broke into the Chic-fil-A, and right there in front of the camera, the trans kid sodomized David. After he was done, Avery used one of the kitchen knives to castrate David, and then she carved a cross onto his chest. The other two ruptured the gas lines in the kitchen and got the security footage out of the main office. The trans kid lit a match and burned the place down with David still inside. In the cleanup, they found his crispy skeleton. Still had meat on it."

Shel stared angrily at her pizza, a few tears running down her face.

"They were proud, Piper. Fucking proud. Police got there and they admitted everything and used the footage as proof. They genuinely thought they had done a good thing by getting rid of an 'institution of oppression' and killing 'one of the vile patriarchs of the day.'"

Piper was horrified. Horrified that anyone would ever be willing to commit such evil against another person, especially a good man like that who had been well within his rights to see them all arrested, but instead opened his doors to them, gave them food, and a listening ear.

And Piper appreciated the fact that there were other psychos like that out in the world, people that wanted to cause that kind of harm to others for whatever reason they felt was justified enough. Piper thought back to her conversations with Jisdu, their talks about power, responsibility, and the order of priority regarding all the problems in the world, and what people like her, people with power, were supposed to do about them. Right now, Piper was thinking in ways that would've made the likes of the Ghost Rider and the Punisher very proud.

Shel was struggling to hold back her tears, and so Piper got up and sat next to Shel, pulling her into a hug. Shel's breath started coming out in shudders, Piper's shirt getting wet. The waitress started to come over, but Piper made a quick motion with her hand while sending a very clear warning look, and the waitress backed off with a startled expression.

"I fucking hate the LGBT," Shel muttered.

Right now, Piper couldn't say she was fond of them either. "What happened next?"

"They were tried and convicted, but I think the judge was corrupt. Only gave them a few months in juvie."

Piper's jaw dropped. "That's it?"

"Like I said: corrupt. They never got to serve it, though. All four of them died. Avery too."

Piper picked up on the knowing tone in her voice. "God got them?" she guessed, thinking back to Esther's parents.

"Yeah."

Piper nodded.

Oh, yeah, Shel knew a lot more than just "yeah," Piper knew that, but today was not the day she wanted to find out all that was behind "yeah." Not because she would revile Shel as a monster herself if she admitted to having been the one to kill those four, but because today simply wasn't the time.

Do not be mistaken about Piper's sense of morality and justice: she had gone out of her way to kill Medea in the name of revenge. She was perfectly fine with the way Esther's parents had died, and she was perfectly fine with those four kids having been killed before they could serve their meager sentences. Hell, if she had known Shel all her life like Billy had, she probably would've killed them herself.

When she wanted to be, Piper could be brutal.

Shel wiped her eyes and sat up straight. "That's all four of my girlfriends. Elizabeth, Esther, Brianna, and Avery. That's how I view my sexuality, how I deal with in terms of my faith, how I feel about the LGBT movement, and transgender ideology. Now that you know all of that about me, would you still be willing to date me? What would your friends say? Would I be too much of a wedge between you and them?"

"My friends and I never talked about the LGBT, but I don't think you'd be a wedge. As for still wanting to date you after all of that…yes. Yes, even after all of that, I still want to date you."

Shel was positively radiant. "I'm glad. Do you have any other questions you want to ask me, or can we move into the…final stages?"

"If we did start dating, what would you expect me sexually?"

Piper meant it seriously. She and Jason never had sex, but Shel had been having sex with her girlfriends since she was thirteen. Piper wanted to know what kind of expectations she was dealing with.

Instead of cracking a joke, Shel answered seriously. "I would expect you to be honest with yourself, and with me. If we're going to have sex, it's going to be because you want to have sex, not because you're feeling pressured or anything like that. Then, after we agree that sex is what you want, then we can talk about what you want to do. A position you want to try, a toy you want to play with, a fetish, a fantasy—communication is key, Piper. Sex is supposed to be fun and enjoyable for us both, and to do that, we need to be open. I'm open to pretty much everything, so if you ever want to try something, bring it up with me. If there's something I want to try, I'll bring it up with you. That's how I've always worked, and that's how I'm always going to work."

Piper nodded. "What all would we do to prepare?"

"Firstly, time of the month."

Piper just nodded at that one.

"Secondly, diet. What we eat and drink has a big impact on our pH balance, which affects how we taste. Worse it is, the worse we taste. Better it is, the better we taste. Water and oranges are my favorite ways to go. Thirdly, panties. If you don't have any cotton ones, get some. The material helps our skin breathe better, which keeps us cleaner. Fourthly, shaving. Full-body shave: arms, armpits, legs, toes, any fuzz you have on your face, neck, and chest, and obviously your pubes, taint, and butt."

"That won't be a problem," Piper said. "I don't do any body hair. Since the first day I saw little hairs springing up on me, I've been lathering myself in removal cream every couple of days."

Shel nodded. "Cool. That's it, really. Just be clean. Now, that's vaginal. Doing anal is different. There's more to that than just shoving something up your ass. That's a great way to hurt yourself. And get dirty. However, I don't really like anal outside of a buttplug, and even then I gotta be in a really specific mood to play with my butthole."

"We can talk about that later," Piper said. "I, uh, once put my finger in my butt. Wasn't all that fun."

"Came out with some poop on it, didn't it?"

Piper just blushed.

"That's why I don't do anal that often. Anything else you want to ask me?"

"What happens if we decide not to date?"

"We remain best friends, I hope, and I'll start looking for another girl to date. I don't like being single, and if you don't want to date me, that's more than fine, but I'll look for someone who will. I'd rather it be you, though."

"So, if not me, then just someone else?"

"No. Piper, I've never looked for just someone else. I've never looked for a replacement or a substitute. I've always looked for someone new, someone to make new memories with. You wouldn't be the newest name on the list or anything stupid like that."

"Okay. Why do you want to date me?"

"Well, right off the bat, I like your body. Your face is gorgeous, your eyes are breathtaking, your figure is fantastic, and girl…you have got ass for days."

Piper blushed a little as Shel complimented her ass.

"Physical traits are always what I check for first," Shel said. "Then I get to personality. You're funny, passionate, friendly, loyal, devoted, and strong. I can trust you. I can have faith in you. You can tell me what's on your mind and not keep secrets from me. You're someone I feel like I can build a strong relationship with."

Piper frowned a little as doubt crept in. "But what if it's all for nothing? What if we break up?"

"That's how Billy thinks, Piper. Billy won't get into a relationship with a girl because of the possibility of them breaking up, and he says he doesn't want to waste all that time, money, effort, and energy on a girl just to break up with her. I'll tell you what I've told him: that's a pansy-ass, cowardly, bullshit way of looking at things. Only with Avery did I ever entertain the possibility that we were going to go all the way. Always with Liz, Esther, and Bri did I appreciate the possibility that one day it could end, and I always appreciated how that's life.

"Piper, that's life. Relationships end, nothing's set in stone. Yeah, very rarely, like with Percy and Annabeth, does a young couple make it all the way, but for the most part, it's like you and Jason. You have a great time together, but one day, it just ends. Does that mean it's always pretty? No. Does that mean we're nonchalant and happy about it? Also no. We're allowed to cry and be upset that a good thing we had going is now over for whatever reason. All this being said, does that mean I think that one day you and I might break up? Yes, it's possible that one day you and I might break up. We're not even juniors in high school yet. There's no telling what could happen between now and graduation."

Oh, you have no idea, Piper thought to herself, considering the emperors, Incognito, and literally anything else from some random monster catching her off guard to the return of Jesus Christ.

"But that's not an excuse for us not to date. The possibility of one day breaking up is not good enough to keep anyone from dating. If that's how jaded and cynical you are, then you're never going to be happy. Even with all my exes, and how all of them have ended in failure save for Jessie, I still look forward to meeting a new girl and starting a new relationship with her. I look forward to starting a new relationship with you. If we date for a couple of weeks and are both just like Alright, it's not working like I hoped it would, then so be it. Piper, I would be your first girlfriend. This would be more of an experience for you than it would be for me. Maybe you date me and you realize that you don't like girls after all. Maybe you date me and you just don't like me romantically. I might be a little stung, yeah, but don't let that stop you. If you're not happy with me, say so. I'd rather us break up and be best friends than you be miserable with me."

Piper nodded. "I think that's it for now. Do you have any questions for me?"

"Nope," Shel smiled. "Which means we can get into the final stages of our date, which means I do have a question for you. What are the red flags that you see about me?"

"Alcohol," Piper answered immediately. "You get alcohol in you, and things start going sideways."

Shel nodded. "That is true."

"The unknown," Piper said. "I don't know how my friends would react to your opinions on things. Granted, I truthfully don't know if I'll ever see any of them again. Leo moved to Indianapolis, Frank and Hazel live in Berkeley, California, and Percy and Annabeth are moving to Berkeley for college. I'm here in Tahlequah. To that point, your opinions and what my friends might say might not ever be a problem."

"Fair. Anything else?"

There really wasn't, actually. Piper didn't know if that made her shortsighted or something, but those were really the only red flags she saw at the moment. She shook her head. "That's it. What are the red flags you see in me?"

Shel looked at her with a knowing grin. "You're secretive."

Piper stiffened.

"You're really good at telling half-truths. I mean, you, Leo, and Jason ditched the Wilderness School and stowed all the way to Long Island, from the Grand Canyon? No one noticed you were gone? The police were never called? The Delphi guys never noticed you and stopped the bus? And then you and a bunch of teenagers just backpacked across Europe for the summer? Yeah, there's a ton more to it than that, girl."

Piper remained composed as best she could.

"But I know you wouldn't just arbitrarily lie to my face. Whatever you're keeping from me, you're doing it for a damn good reason. I suppose it's one of those when you think I'm ready kind of deals?"

Piper supposed there was no point in trying to play it off. "Yeah."

Shel nodded. "Okay. Better be one hell of a story."

"I-It is."

"Cool. Looking forward to it." Shel sipped her Dr. Pepper. "So…"

Piper swallowed, feeling her heart start to thump faster in her chest. "So."

"Are we official?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was just three words.

Three words that needed only a one-word answer.

Piper knew what she wanted to say, but suddenly, inexplicably, unexplainably, she was plagued by doubt. This long, winding road she had just been on, filled with humps and hills, twists and turns, and where she had made it to the end of the tunnel to see the light, now she was suddenly against a wall.

What was stopping her? What was holding her back? It was just one word. One little word.

So why was she hesitating?

Shel noticed this, and gently grabbed Piper's hand. "Is it your dad?"

Piper shook her head. "No, he's cool. He was excited, and he's supportive. He told me earlier today he was proud of me for going out with you today."

"Is it your friends? Are you worried they might think badly about you if they found out you were gay?"

Piper shook her head again. "No. They'd be shocked, I think, but they'd get over it. They'd be happy for me, that I found someone to love again after—"

And then it struck Piper as to why she was hesitating to answer Shel's question.

Shel figured it out, too. "It's because of Jason."

Piper could barely force the word out. "Yes."

"Can you explain?" Shel asked softly, like a therapist.

"He's been dead almost two months now. I thought I made peace with him, then the nightmares started, then I met you and finally let Billy into my life, and then I finally punched nightmare-Jason in the face. Haven't had a nightmare since, and I think that was three weeks ago now. But now…here I am, about to officially start a new relationship, and I…fuck, how do I put this…?"

Piper struggled with her words while Shel just sat there patiently.

"I still feel…like Jason and I are a thing…despite how we haven't been since December. I still feel like there's stuff between us…and since we never got it resolved….Oh, goddammit, I still feel like we're together! I'm still hung up on him after all this time, and Shel, this is going to sound really stupid, really bad, really crazy, and not make a lick of sense, but I feel bad by dating someone else. I feel like I'm cheating on him, but we broke up almost six months ago. It's almost June! And he's been dead for two of those months."

Piper pitched her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands, letting out a heavy sigh.

Shel's hand gently came to rest on her shoulder. "That doesn't sound crazy to me at all. That sounds exactly what I felt like after Elizabeth passed away and Esther jumped off the bridge. What you're feeling is a lack of closure. Like you said, you and Jason never got it resolved, and now it's eating at you."

"What did you do?"

"I made myself move on. I had Mom, Billy, David, and after Elizabeth I met Esther, and after Esther I met Brianna. I had a support group, and then I had someone I wanted to be with more than I wanted to stay feeling guilty. You've got a support group, Piper. Getting over a dead loved one is never easy, but we're all here to help. As for wanting to be with someone…well, not to sound too pretentious or anything, but I'm ready and willing."

"But what if…what if I'm not really gay after all, and I -"

"Piper," Shel said gently. "How are you ever going to figure out if you're really gay, bisexual, or straight, if you don't ever date a girl and find out?"

Piper looked up from her hands, and then looked deep into Shel's dark eyes for a time. Then she said, "Come with me."

Piper got up from the table and headed for the doors.

"Uh, gotta pay real fast," Shel said.

Piper paused. Right, they had to pay. Almost killed the moment, right then, but Shel was fast, slapping a couple of twenties onto the counter and told their waitress to keep the change. Then they were outside.

It was dark now, the night cool and a little nippy. The girls had gone in for their date with sun high up, and now it was gone. Tristan was in the parking lot, parked next to Ms. Regan. They were talking from their vehicles. They both saw Piper and Shel finally come outside, but Piper shook her head.

Not yet.

Gently grabbing Shel's hand, she led her to the southern side of the building, the one away from the main road. Out of everyone's site for the most part, Piper stopped and turned around, grabbing Shel's other hand.

Shel smiled, her eyes shining with hopeful light. "Now that you've brought me over here where no one can see us, what're you planning to do to me?"

Piper shut her eyes and pitched forward, her lips smashing into Shel's. Shel kissed back, wrapping her arms around Piper, and Piper wrapped her arms around Shel.

A kind of fire coursed through Piper that she hadn't felt since she was still in love with Jason. Because she felt that way, Piper knew she had made the right choice.

Piper broke the kiss and brought her arms down, coming to clasp Shel's hands again. Piper was smiling the biggest smile she'd smiled in months.

"We're official."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Tristan was more excited than Ms. Regan, but Ms. Regan knew that six of her daughter's seven romances had ended in failure, with three of the girls being dead, the other three being cheaters, and then one seventh is the only one that ended happily.

The key to predicting the future was to look to the past, and Shel had a very unfortunate pattern to her. It made Ms. Regan worry for Piper's future fate with her daughter.

The girls slept in their own beds that night, and as Piper rode home with her dad, she was positively glowing.

"Well, Dad, I'm officially gay now."

"You're officially gay now," Dad beamed. "Do I need to go get a shirt or something?"

"Absolutely not," Piper said, and then she gave Dad the short version of how Shel viewed her sexuality and didn't like making it publicly known. Piper agreed with this idea.

"I can respect that," Dad nodded. "But don't ever be ashamed of you are, Piper, got it? You'll always be my daughter, no matter what."

Piper nodded. "Thanks, Dad. I love you."

"I love you too, Pipes. Always."

That night, Piper could barely get herself calmed down enough to sleep she was so brimming with energy. She eventually managed, however, and her good mood quickly turned sour as she found herself back on that infamous beach.

"Ugh, this again?" Piper growled. "Alright, let's get this over with."

But Piper paused when she noticed several things were different about the beach this time. There were no waves; the water was just a flat, mirror-like surface, and reflected upon it was the visage of the full moon surrounded by millions of stars. There was no breeze, the landscape being completely still. The whole place was unnervingly calm.

Then there was Jason himself.

Piper's eyes narrowed, and she got ready to fight.

Jason was just standing there, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes closed, and he was full regenerated. All his clothes were fully formed, and so was his body. He looked like he had just walked straight out of his dorm room at his old boarding school.

"Hello, Piper," he said calmly. "Thanks are in order."

"For what, imposter?"

"For helping to complete me."

Jason's eyes snapped open, revealing fiery pits, and Piper yelped as she was thrust backwards by an explosive wave of heat and fire. She got to her feet and beheld a horrible sight.

Jason's body was growing bigger, his anatomy changing. He ripped through his clothes, and his skin changed, becoming glittering scarlet scales. His legs changed shape, becoming digitigrade, a tail burst from his backbone, ending it a forked spike. His hands became claws, and from his back sprouted leathery wings. Jason's jaw split up to his ears, and all his teeth became pointed. His ears became flushed to the sides of head, growing pointed as well. His blonde hair remained, but an upward spike sprouted from his forehead, and then six others burst out around his head, shorter, all evenly spaced.

In the center of his chest was a glowing, pulsing light.

The dragon-like demon that dared to look like Jason Grace spread his arms and wings wide, threw his head back and roared, releasing a massive tongue of flame that set the sky ablaze, turning the night into the day.

Piper was so engrossed in the inferno, that she was completely taken by surprise when Jason shot at her faster than a bullet. His clawed hand clamped around Piper's throat, and he lifted her off the ground, her kicks connecting with nothing. Jason opened his huge maw, strings of saliva connected his teeth.

Piper stared at him with wide eyes, rational thought leaving her as this nightmare unfolded.

With a roar, Jason threw his head forward, and Piper almost shot through her ceiling when she bolted away, dripping with sweat and almost hyperventilating.

Piper stood stock still in the center of her room, a hand over her chest and she got her breathing back under control.

Great.

The nightmare was back, only this time Jason was now an ugly lizard man.

Piper shook her head and wiped her face with a shirt that she left lying around. That wasn't Jason. She had determined that when she punched him the face the last time she had that nightmare. It was some imposter, one that was apparently now "complete" thanks to something she did, whatever that meant, and now Piper was ready.

She crawled back in bed, figuring she wouldn't have another nightmare for the night, but come tomorrow, or whenever she next dreamt of that creature, she was going to kick its ass.

Piper didn't see it because she got back in bed, but outside her window, sitting atop the awning over the Jeep, the black owl with the red eyes was staring right at her through her blinds and curtains.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Finally. I didn't think I was ever going to finish this chapter.

23k ladies and gentlemen. I think this is the longest chapter I have ever written in my life, and it's for a story that barely anyone reads.

So, so much to unpack in this chapter, with more character to Shel than we will probably ever see in canon. I can't take all the credit for Shel, however, as a lot of her actually comes from one of my old coworkers from when I worked at UPS. She was called Stormie, and she was a Christian lesbian like Shel is. She worked in the nursery with her girlfriend, and their political views are reflected herein.

I haven't talked to Stormie in years since we lost contact after she quit UPS, but I hope she's okay.

And how about Jason, huh? The Inspiration for his appearance comes from a mix of Duncan from Firebreather, Akira from Devilman, and from the Dota anime, Davion's partial Slyrak transformation.

Feel free to use Google and YouTube.

If you're burned out on talking, then I have good news! Next chapter is action, featuring Piper finally fighting Incognito!

But it won't be the last chapter of this story, I'm afraid. There's still a lot more I have in mind, like one more big chapter between Piper and Billy to give him the kind of deep dive that I just gave Shel, and then yet more after that.

Spring Break is over, unfortunately, with the 20th of this March marking the return to college, and the return to tons of homework and lectures. Yuck.

I want to give a shoutout to Monster King, who I can count to always tell me awesome work, so thank you very much!

No disrespect to you, but guys. I worked my ass off to crank out a 23k+ novella of a chapter in three fucking days. Can I please get more than two or three Reviews? With all the stuff in this chapter, there's plenty to Review. There's also no telling when the next chapter is going to be out thanks to my upcoming workload.

So please Fav, Follow, and pretty please Review!