Chapter 2
Frank Zhang walked back in his office and sat down. His team had dug out some really interesting clues today, he was glad to have Piper working with them. Even though she was a pain in the ass, she got things done. Plus the new agents in his team were warming up to her too. Agent Chase then knocked and stood by the open door, and said, "Sir, we all are done for the day, some of us were going to the new pizza place, I wanted to ask if you would like to come."
Frank replied almost immediately,"No, Chase, I had to meet my wife for dinner, we are having over our son Sammy too. But why don't you ask Piper?" Malcolm nodded and said, smiling a bit, "Yes sir, Agent Dare already did, they seem to be quite good friends."
"Why, yes, Agent. Piper's almost become family to Rachel and me. Oh, Hazel sometimes even calls her our daughter." Zhang said, chuckling. He then added after a few seconds, "You live near her place, don't you Macolm? Why don't you two stop by for dinner someday, Hazel's half-brother, Nico would be coming-" He was cut off by an amused Piper, who had just stormed into his office and was looking around. "Nico DiAngelo is coming? And you didn't even tell me? Zhang, seriously! Oh, and just cause you gave me this information does NOT mean that I'm over the fact that you called my dad, and oh," She then turned towards Malcolm, who had an eyebrow raised and was staring at her, surprised that she just walked in and started speaking, it would take a while for him to adjust to her behavior, she continued, "By the way, Chinese isn't going to walk to us on chopsticks. And Dare is literally starving! We need to go!"
Malcolm smiled, Piper acted like a sweet and annoying little kid sometimes, but he saw an extremely different face of hers when she worked, she was quite serious with her investigation. The two left the cabin to join the others downstairs, as soon as they got inside the elevator, Piper burst out, "Seriously though, how are you able to put up with Zhang? He's so annoying! Half the time he's keeping information from you, and that too really, really important information! If I would've known Ghost King's coming-" Malcolm cut her rant, asking, "Ghost king?" Piper chuckled and said, "Oh yeah, Ghost King! My sweet little Nicokins! A long, long time ago, child, I was a little girl of 6 and he was 8, we were neighbors and we used to play together. I used to be Persephone and he was Hades, and we used to speak in Greek, it was fun."
"So, are you two close even now?"
She grinned again, and said, "No, not that much, now that he's in grade 12 he has lots of studying to do, but he did come to visit me once, though." Malcolm nodded, they reached the ground floor and got out of the elevator, where the Stolls and Rachel were waiting. "What took you two so long? Were you with Frank or in the janitor's closet making babies?"
Malcolm's eyes widened, whereas Piper simply smirked and said, "Oh, don't worry Dare, if I get pregnant, I promise you'll be the godmother, happy? Now lets go, don't want to keep the baby starving, now do we?" Just for an extra effect, she rubbed her belly. The Stolls snickered and Rachel sighed, shaking her head.
-X-
"Guys, what do you all want? I'm ordering."
There was a change in the plans, they were all at Piper's place, because she wanted them to come over and stay with her, to catch up properly. When she was asked by Chase what 'properly' meant, Piper said that it involved loads of cheese pizza, shouting at the Stolls, and him doing her homework.
At the current moment, Piper was sprawled on the floor, frowning at her assignment which she had gotten as homework for AP maths, how the hell did I get AP maths? But oh, she had already gone over the stupid topic with Jason, the sweet guy in her class. Malcolm was studying her with a smile on his face as she bent over the sheet and read the questions, all her hair falling in her face. The Stolls were at the Foosball table they had discovered in the basement. How it got there, Piper had no idea.
At the mention of food, she looked up from the damned sheet and smiled at Dare with big, bright blue eyes. "A big, cheesy pizza! With extra cheese, and olives, and cheese, and mushrooms, and oh, did I mention cheese?"
Rachel rolled her eyes, but nodded anyways. Surprisingly, or not so surprisingly, the twins had heard her in the basement and were running up the staircase. "A pepperoni and cheese pizza!" One of them shouted, "And a barbecue chicken pizza!" the other shouted, Dare sighed, she wondered how they became officers with such behavior. "And you, Chase?" She asked, Malcolm spoke, "Something with mushroom and olives would do."
Piper glanced up from her worksheet which she was cursing a couple of minutes back, and smirked at him, with a crazed look in her eyes, "You see Chase, you cannot run away from the power of mushrooms and olives, it drags you in, and then you can never escape, never." The two brothers once again started laughing. Even Rachel managed to crack a smile.
After 30 torturing minutes of trignometry, the pizza came.
Ding dong!
"I'll get it!" Piper shouted, she wanted to fly away from homework to pizza land. She opened the door and saw... Leo?
"Leo?"
"Beauty queen?"
Her eyes brightened, "Hey, Leo! And, oh, if you want to have kids, do not call me that."
She knew Leo from her Chemistry class, and he was sitting with Annabeth at the lunch table, that morning. He was funny, and cool.
"So... It's a nice place, your house, I mean. You live here with your family?"
Piper slid out her wallet and took out the money, then she looked at him, and said,"Uh, yeah, I live with my dad, but, he's gone out for work." She gave him the money and took the 5 huge pizza boxes in her hands, she was able to handle then well, even Leo had some problem doing that.
"So... You wouldn't ask me why I'm doing a part time job?" He asked her. Usually people did, and then they'd stay away from him. This was the reason he didn't have many friends like Jason or Percy. Piper knew that this was a difficult topic for him, his eyes said that, so instead she replied, "No, but I will ask how did you make that helicopter fly during Chem. It was so cool!"
Leo was surprised, he was about to answer, but Malcolm appeared from behind Piper, and asked, "Seriously Piper, are you making the pizzas here?" Even before Piper had a chance to respond, Leo spoke, "Hey, wait, aren't you wise girl's elder brother? The one working in law enforcement?"
"Uh..." Piper started.
He then looked at Leo, and said, "You're one of Annabeth's friends, right? The one who works at the mechanic shop nearby?" Leo just frowned, and nodded. After looking at the two of them for some time, Leo asked, "What are you guys doing together? Are you like... Dating? And does Annie know?"
Piper shook her head, and lied smoothly, "No, no, we aren't dating. We have some mutual friends, and since I'm new around, and he lives nearby, we were just hanging out and he was telling me about the restraunts around." Leo nodded, convinced, he said, "Alrighty, then I guess I'll see you around tomorrow at school?"
Piper nodded and they went in. Malcolm turned towards her and asked, taking a few of the boxes from her, "How are you able to lie so smoothly?" She kept the pizzas on the table and said, "The human mind first searches for changes in the voice, does statement analysis to detect deception, and then it tends to read the facial expressions and body language. You simply need to control your reflex actions, the minute, sudden ones, like the eye movement... And I'll give you a proper speech on how to control your reactions when tied up to a lie detector, or while giving a polygraph, but you don't need to know my tricks, agent. Besides, I'm hungry AF. Into the land of pizza, now!"
! #$%^&*()_++_)(*&^%$# ! #$%^&*()_++_)(*&^%$# ! #$%^&*()_++_)(*&^%$# ! A LINE BREAK.! #$%^&*()_++_)(*&^%$# ! #$%^&()_++_)(*&^%$# !
The next morning, Piper woke up early. She grabbed an apple, stuffed her books inside her bag, and walked out of the door. It was early, school didn't start till half an hour later, then what the hell am I doing here, leaving my boyfriend, Mr. Warm Cosy Bed? She asked herself, she could take her car, but when she looked at the sky, she saw that the weather was pleasant and shrugged, walking wouldn't kill her. It was the second day, she had memorized the route to school last day only. She liked to be prepared for stuff.
Entering the school building, she saw Annabeth talking to Percy, or rather, Annabeth scolding Percy. She chuckled at the scene in front of her. Annabeth noticed her, and smiled, "Hey! Piper, good morning!" Smiling, Piper made her way to the couple, it felt odd, a funny feeling appeared in her chest, someone of her age wanted to talk to her, she was finally making friends, and they weren't colleagues who talked about murderers or rapists or revolvers or semi automatics... though those semi automatic pistols were so cool!
Returning to the real world, Piper smiled at the two and said, "Good morning!" Percy smiled back, and said, "Morning! Hey, so, did something happen between you and Leo last night? He called me and started ranting about you, pizza, Malcolm -who by the way is wise girl's brother- and your coolness." The brunette smiled as he brought Leo up. She was about to say something, when the Latino elf himself came running and interrupted them.
"I heard the word coolness, so I just wanted you all to know, that if you search the word 'coolness' on Google, you would see your very own McShizzle's photo, or... no. Wait, I'm not cool. No. Never. I'm soooo not cool. I'm hot. Extremely hot. I'm-"
"Fine, Leo. We get it. Now I'm getting late for class so we should... Oh, Piper, uh, hi." Jason said, the two hadn't noticed each other until now. Apparently, Leo had dragged him with himself to the group. Wow, group, and I'm kind of a part of it...Piper mentally smiled as she realized this, maybe coming over here wasn't that bad, maybe after the case was over she could stay over here, surely, her dad won't disagree, and-
"Uh, hello? Hello from the other side? Earth to Beauty Queen?"
Beauty Queen.
This was enough to get her out of her trance, she frowned and smacked Leo's arm, hard.
"OW! WOMAN! THAT HURT!"
Everyone around them burst out laughing. The bell rang, and students started to file out. Annabeth dragged Percy behind herself, towards their class, saying, "I need to get early to the class. I need to maintain my GPA to get to an Ivy League college. And studying a bit won't harm you either, Percy." As their backs disappeared into the sea of teenagers, Piper turned her head and saw Jason smiling at her. When he knew that had her attention, he asked, "So, we have trig, can we walk to class together?"
Piper shrugged and nodded.
"So, Leo told me that you live around here, near Annabeth's house. Is that true?"
"Yup. We live nearby."
"And you know Malcolm?'
"Yup We have friends who know each other, though why are you asking?"
"Oh, just like that. Leo was speaking a lot about you last night. Percy called me at 11 in the night to warn me that Leo would call, but I missed it and thus ended up staying up staying till four in the morning."
"Oh god. Leo!" Piper facepalmed, and spoke from between her hands.
Jason chuckled. Piper asked him, "So, in all those five hours of speech on the topic 'Piper: The Cool Girl', what did you learn about me?"
"Well, I learned that you are a really awesome person, who, and I quote, on the scale of awesomeness, is a 9, not a 10 because Leo is the 'awesomest' person alive." This caused Piper to laugh, they reached the classroom, but when Piper was about to get into the classroom, Jason grabbed her hand and made her turn towards him, so that they were face to face, with barely an inch between them.
"But above all I learnt that you're a caring person. Leo needs a good friend. He's got no one except me or Percy. All he needs is a friend who is with him throughout the time. These days we've been neglecting him, I've been focusing on studies and Percy is spending more time with Annabeth. He likes you like a friend. I hope you'll be his."
Piper smiled, he sure did care a lot about Leo. She nodded, and turned her attention to the kids sitting in their were staring at the two with their jaws dropped, the teacher wasn't in the classroom yet. While going towards her seat, Piper was about to pass Drew who was glaring daggers at her and she immediately knew what was about to come. She stepped lightly on the orange 'tanned' leg that was in 100 inches high heels which was out to trip her. She carefully avoided the bone, and used just the force to make her grab her foot and let out a shriek.
She casually walked to Jason, who was now in his seat, and slid beside him. It was when Drew started shouting profanities like a mad woman that the teacher decided to enter. She ignored Drew, and spoke, "I hope all of you did that assignment I gave you. I want you all to hand it over to me after the class."
Piper grinned as she remembered that she had finished it all last night. "Class, that was the basics, today we will start with-"
Piper McLean is requested to report to the Principal's office. I repeat, Piper McLean is requested to report to the Principal's office.
Jason's eyes turned from the teacher towards her. She groaned, "Zhang!"