The Beginning of the End (J. Grace)

XIX: Piper almost kills Elara and Annabeth while driving

Elara's PoV:

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Piper was bouncing around the room like an excited puppy, opening the curtains to let unbearably bright light stream in onto their faces.

Elara groaned and rolled out of bed, making an extremely loud thud sound as she collided with the floor of Piper's bedroom; Annabeth sat up on her elbows, rubbing her eyes and laughing at the daughter of Hermes's rude awakening.

It was the third of June; do you know what that means? It's Piper's birthday!

The trio were staying at one of the McLean's mansions. They had arrived the previous day at around midnight after numerous monster attacks. But they'd made it in one piece: so it's a win in their books.

"Happy birthday, Pipes." Annabeth beamed as the daughter of Aphrodite came over and plonked down on her bed. Elara picked herself up off the floor, rubbing her throbbing head. "We've got you your present!"

"Wait- you got me something?" Her eyes widened with shock; being rich, she probably doesn't get presents from friends that often because... well... she's rich, Elara realised.

"Of course we did, Dove." The daughter of Hermes kissed the top of her head tenderly. "I hope you don't already have one of these, though." She joked, but on the inside she was serious.

"Close your eyes and hold your hands out." Annabeth instructed.

The daughter of Aphrodite obliged without question, her legs swinging back and forth really quickly.

Elara looked to her blonde friend before placing the keys to a Yamaha R5 motorbike into her hands.

Piper's eyebrows furrowed with confusion as she felt the keys. "Wait, what is it?"

"Open them!" Elara laughed.

She did so and her eyes instantly went from dark brown with flecks of silvery-grey (her confused colour) to curious (sea green with flecks of silvery-grey) to dark blue with chestnut brown around the edges (surprised) then settling on her excited colour: light blue with sunny gold. Those transitions looked incredible.

"Oh, my Gods! Is this for a motorbike?!" She squealed. "But I'm not allowed to drive." She looked from one demigod to the other and realisation seemed to sink in. "You didn't..."

"Hey," Elara held her hands up in surrender. "If I have blackmail on the Gods, I'm gonna use it. Besides, we're demigods, we've done much more dangerous things than driving."

Piper burst out laughing. "Thank you both so much!" She enveloped each of them in turn in bear hugs, still giddy with excitement. "Come on, let's get dressed: I wanna ride my new bike!"

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Oh, my Gods is Piper a dangerous driver.

Okay, in her defence, she's never ridden a motorbike before and when her dad came out to tell her off for underage driving (even though Elara managed to get her a driver's licence), it did startle them. And, maybe, Elara and Annabeth shouldn't have been sitting on the back of the motorbike, hanging onto Piper for dear life...

Reference for the motorbike in this comment:

Gods, it was more terrifying than most monster fights. But, comparing it to that one time when she followed Luke down to... there... it wasn't so bad, really.

Besides, they only nearly died, like, twice! That's not bad going if you think about it!

Piper made last-second turns and swerved around her front garden like she was from some action film while the older girls cheered her on, screaming and whooping with joy from the back. Fist-pumping the air when she did a wheely and crying out for help while laughing uncontrollably when they were continuously almost falling off.

By the time Tristan finally managed to get them to stop, he had bribed the trio with jet-skiing and a trip to the spa. That sounded brilliant. Although, what did it for Elara was the offer to go to one of those sushi restaurants.

What? She's hungry!

As all three got off the motorbike, their legs were shaking and their breath was short, but they were grinning from ear-to-ear.

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Jet-skiing was brilliant, they raced each other across the open seas and when they finally stopped for a break far away from shore, Annabeth and Elara told the birthday girl about their time in the sea of monsters with Percy.

Piper's a great listener: gasps in all the right places, squeals when the suspense is building up, lets out a sigh of relief when they got past one monster and -quite hilariously- glared at Annabeth for trying to swim over to the sirens.

Later that day, once they had come back out from the sea, the three went to a fancy sushi restaurant, a spa, then stayed up till way past midnight focused purely on boy-talk; something Elara and Annabeth rarely ever do, but Piper made so fun that they couldn't resist.

Hey, I know this is a short chapter, I've been having a bit of a writer's block and didn't know how else to finish it, so I'm giving you all a double-update! :)