Havoc - Piper McLean

15: Piper is NOT attracted to girls

|piper is NOT attracted to girls|

 —"Cyclops!"

Camilla almost fell off the dragon when Jason woke up screaming.

"Whoa, sleepyhead." This time, it was Leo, then Camilla with Jason behind her and Piper at the very last on the bronze dragon, holding his waist to keep him balanced. They flew peacefully through the winter sky as if nothing had happened.

"D-Detroit," Jason stammered. "Didn't we crash-land? I thought—"

"It's okay," Leo said. "We got away, but you got a nasty concussion. How you feeling?"

Camilla didn't blame him for his confusion. Everything had happened so fast.

"How did you—the Cyclops—"

"Leo ripped them apart," Piper said. "He was amazing. He can summon fire—"

"It was nothing," Leo said quickly.

Piper laughed. "Shut up, Valdez. I'm going to tell him. Get over it."

And she did—how Leo single-handedly defeated the Cyclopes family; how they freed Jason, then noticed the Cyclopes starting to re-form; how Leo had replaced the dragon's wiring and gotten them back in the air just as they'd started to hear the Cyclopes roaring for vengeance inside the factory.

When Piper told him about the other kid the Cyclopes claimed to have eaten, the one in the purple shirt who spoke Latin, Camilla looked back and Jason's expression seemed to say he knew something. 

"I'm not alone, then," he said. "There are others like me."

"I can speak Latin too" Camilla told him. "I understood the prophecy you said at the campfire, and I didn't realize it was Latin until Piper told me"

"And anyway, Jason," Piper said, "you were never alone. You've got us."

"I—I know ... but something Hera said. I was having a dream..."

He told them what he'd seen, and what the goddess had said inside her cage.

"An exchange?" Piper asked. "What does that mean?"

The only way to bring peace. The enemy counts on our divisions, and if we are divided, we will be destroyed. You are my peace offering, Jason—a bridge to overcome millennia of hatred.

Jason told them. He shook his head. "But Hera's gamble is me. Just by sending me to Camp Half-Blood, I have a feeling she broke some kind of rule, something that could blow up in a big way—"

"Or save us," Piper said hopefully. "That bit about the sleeping enemy—that sounds like the lady Leo told us about."

Leo cleared his throat. "About that... she kind of appeared to me back in Detroit, in a pool of Porta-Potty sludge."

Camilla wasn't sure she'd heard that right. "Did you say... Porta-Potty?"

Leo told them about the big face in the factory yard. "I don't know if she's completely unkillable," he said, "but she cannot be defeated by toilet seats. I can vouch for that. She wanted me to betray you guys, and I was like, 'Pfft, right, I'm gonna listen to a face in the potty sludge.'" 

Camilla tensed. She wanted to turn around to look at Piper, but she sat up straight and looked down to her right, watching another city go by.

"She's trying to divide us." Piper spoke up. Her voice sounded shaky.