FanFiction - Mark of Athena

Chapter 11

I do not own Heroes of Olympus or the Percy Jackson series, because I am a child.

PIPER

PIPER DIDN'T SLEEP WELL AT ALL. She kept having nightmares about bad things that might happen today, on the quest. She knew Gaea was doing this on purpose, but the dreams where really bad.

She was also having uncomfortable premonitions about the quest. The feeling reminded her of when Jason, Leo, and Piper had crashed at Ma Gaskets place. Something felt wrong.

She got up, subconsciously gagging at the smell of various perfumes fragments. The smell was seriously overkill. She jumped into the shower, brushed her hair before ruffling it, and threw on some clothes.

The rest of the cabin was still asleep, and Piper wasn’t eager to wake them. The last things Piper needed now were dramatic hissy-fits.

Since the Hephaestus cabin was closer, Piper decided she’d meet up with Leo and then get Jason, for a quick breakfast before the quest. Piper was glad Leo was back to normal again, the Leo at the Senate Meeting with the Romans, unsure and guilty, recapped his expression of when he talks about his mom.

Piper faced the big, round, intimidating vaulted door, and knocked on the bronze metal door. She waited, nothing happened. Piper found the door slightly open, so she though, what the heck?

She opened the door and entered.

Her first impression of the room: Warm… Very, very warm. The room reeked of metal and oil. Piper noticed that, even though nobody was awake, machines were working. The room was basically a mini factory, a slight smoke hung in the air, emitting into the chimneys. The steel beds, which were at the end of the room, were camouflaged by all the other metal. Except the bedding, that was bright yellow. Each bed seemed to have an automatic lock or something, since everything was blinking with small lights, gems, and more vaults. Piper felt a bit envious, because this room looked really cool.

Piper noticed a fireman’s pole drop from a hole on the ceiling. She found that odd, since the cabin didn’t look like it had two floors from outside. Piper gasped as she realised the room had three floors, as there was a swirling staircase leading down to some sort of basement. The walls were covered with tools and weapons, and there wasn’t a free space on the workbenches. Everything was crowded with scraps of metal. There were also some tools there that Piper had never seen before.

The walls were bronze, and so were the random objects flying around the room. Piper grabbed a flying Pegasus out of the air and was about to admire it, when all of the objects fell to the ground with a loud, Plonk.

The Hephaestus campers all woke up, aware of their creations. There was a lot of whirring of gears as beds were released from their locks, and Piper saw a bed appear from the floor. Jake Mason looked around for the problem, saw Piper and quickly pulled his bed sheet up to his chin. The yellow of the bed sheet clashed with his now pink face. “Jeez, Piper. Don’t you knock?”

“I did, but you guys slept through.” Piper defended, slightly blushing too.

Leo got out of the bed that had circulated from the floor, and stood up like nothing just happened. He had tired eyes but his smile intact. He got up and patted Piper. “Yeah, Pipes. There are boys in here you know.”

Only then did Piper realise that all Leo was wearing were his boxers. She immediately covered her eyes.

“Leo, if you don’t put something on right now, I swear, I will…” Piper couldn’t think of a good enough threat.

Leo took his hand from her back immediately, and backed off toward a closet.

“Calm it, Beauty Queen! No need to get stressy!” Piper heard Leo walk off into a corner, and hoped he was changing.