The Daughter of War and Medicine

The Smell of Coffee

The first thing she noticed was the smell of coffee. Strong coffee at that. She wrinkled her nose at the smell before opening her eyes. She came face to face with a man, staring at her with incredible curiosity. 

"Ahh!" she yelped like a schoolgirl, stumbling forwards from her resting place.

"Who the hell are you?" asked the man, fumbling through his pockets, eventually producing a knife. A butter knife.

He wore an apron with a branded cap reading Cafe Verve and looked pretty silly with his pitiful excuse of a weapon. Behind him was a sack of coffee beans, dark and rich. She assumed that's where she had been lying.

"I'm... I don't really know how I got here sorry."

The man trembled, but didn't drop the knife. Kassandra sighed. There were two options here, an easy one and a more morally correct one. 

She went with the easy one.

Before the man knew it, he was the one now lying on his back on the coffee sack, unconscious too. The daughter of (Y/N) flicked her hair back and panted, properly taking in her surroundings.

She was in a storage closet, shelves lined with everything you might find in a coffee store from cups to machinery to sweet treats all neatly packaged up. There were a few more sacks of coffee beans which really did create a hypnotic smell. Where exactly was she?

According to the hat of the employee she was in Cafe Verve, but where was that? She was lost. 

But she wasn't going to let something like this stop her. She'd find the demi-gods and satyr no matter where they were, no matter how long it took. Snatching a croissant from a shelf, she kicked down the door and marched out of the storage room.

Kassandra burst into the employee side of a counter, making quite the ruckus in a silent shop. She frightened another worker but paid them no heed, continuing her drive through the coffee shop and out the door with the pastry in her mouth.

She 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. It was perfect weather to be sitting outside, explaining why nobody was inside the store.

Across the horizon she could see a mountain that could only have been Mount Diablo. It looked serene, but she could almost feel some sort of evil emanating from the place.

If that was the place the demi-gods needed to be, she might as well tag along. Seeing that her newer prophecy was intertwined with the quest of the three, she had a faint idea that this tree thing was somehow connected.

It was weird knowing the brothers names, especially the monster summoner. Ichiro and Ikari, weird names with a style she hadn't heard before. They reminded her of something Japanese, she should look into when she got back to camp.

But anyway, now she had to find...

"Kassandra!" called out a voice close by. She was startled by her name, twisting to find the demi-gods and satyrs sitting down and enjoying the atmosphere. Quick search.

At the other tables, a mix of bicyclists, business people, and college kids sat chatting and drinking coffee. Kassandra made her way over.

When she properly looked at them, they were wearing the most outrageous outfits only Apollo could be caught wearing.

Piper was wearing a turquoise dress, with black leggings and black leather boots. She had on a silver charm bracelet and an old snowboarding jacket which may have salvaged the look. Her hair had been done too, similar to when she was claimed at camp.