Állaxe //HOO x m.oc\\ (ON HOLD)

28

Jace Anderson fell out of a chair.

He had no idea what had happened but somehow, he had just been sitting in a chair by a round table, and now he was on the ground because said chair had fallen over when he woke up.

He was just falling, right? How the hell was he at a cafe?

The ground was hard. He should get a new job as a ground hardness tester. He was seemingly really good at falling onto the hardest grounds ever. This ground was A tier, not exactly A+ tier— it wasn't smooth enough and the little rocks softened it too much.

It was a sunny morning. The air was brisk but not unpleasant for sitting outside or on the ground as it was in Jace's case. At the other tables, a mix of bicyclists, business people, and college kids sat chatting and drinking coffee. He could smell eucalyptus trees. Lots of foot traffic passed in front of quaint little shops.

The street was lined with bottle-brush trees and blooming azaleas as if winter was a foreign concept. In other words: they were somewhere in California.

"Mother!" Piper yelled loudly and woke Jace from his momenteral new job.

Jason flinched, bumping the table with his knees, and then all of them were awake.

"What?" Hedge demanded. "Fight who? Where?"

"Falling!" Leo grabbed the table. "No—not falling. Where are we? Jace, why are you on the ground?"

Jace brought himself up to his feet and when he looked down at his legs, his shoes were different.

He was wearing a loosely fitted, high collared, dark gray sweater with a woven in dark blue figure of a wolf and an owl with an added zipper at the top that ended at his chest. They didn't have any color inside and were just simplified outlines that wouldn't get much attention. The brand new jacket he had gotten from Thalia was gone and he couldn't lie and say he didn't already miss it.

His pants had gotten swapped with baggy light gray? Maybe blue, jeans that fell on top of his shoes slightly. His shoes—

"What are you wearing?" Jason asked suddenly. Jace looked up from looking at his own clothes to look at the girl. She had a light blush coating her cheeks. She was wearing a turquoise dress with black leggings and black leather boots. She had on a silver charm bracelet, and her old snowboarding jacket that Jace had seen her wear when she arrived at camp.

"It's nothing," she said. "It's my—" She cut herself off. "It's nothing."

Leo grinned. "Aphrodite strikes again, huh? You're gonna be the best-dressed warrior in town, beauty queen."

"Hey, Leo." Jason nudged his arm. "You look at yourself recently?"

"What ... oh."

All of them had been given a makeover. Leo was wearing pinstriped pants, black leather shoes, a white collarless shirt with suspenders, and his tool belt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a porkpie hat.

"God, Leo." Piper tried not to laugh. "I think my dad wore that to his last premiere, minus the tool belt."

"Hey, shut up!"

"I think he looks good," said Coach Hedge. "'Course, I look better."

"You look like shit asshat." Jace answered back at the satyr that definitely looked worst of all of them. At least in his eyes, Mellie probably would have had drool falling out of her mouth just from the sight.

"You just don't have taste— you look like every single, boring, mellow, angsty teenager." Hedge spoke in a clearly staged accent that Jace couldn't even tell where it came from.