Not Quite Mortal • HoO

XV Miranda Atwood

"Pineapple-mango for Miranda."

I walked up to the counter and grabbed my smoothie from the counter just as Andrew arrived.

"Sorry I'm late," he said.

"Not a problem."

He nodded his head slightly and turned to make his order. He requests a medium strawberry banana smoothie, pays for it with cash, and then joined me in taking a seat on the bar stools facing the window.

"Maybe we should just forget about camp," Andrew suggested.

I laugh, once. "Just forget when we might be closer than ever? Lara just proved that this isn't an impossible task, we can figure this out! We're just as smart as she is."

"I wasn't doubting our intelligence," he protested. I wait a moment while he goes to grab his drink. "I just think that they'll be on their guard for tricks like that now. It won't be as easy."

"I never said anything about easy, I just said it was possible."

Both of us turned as the door to the shop opened. I familiar face walked in.

"I thought they had an emergency at camp," I whispered to Andrew. It certainly couldn't have been much of an emergency if she could be here on a date, or at least that's what it looked like.

Andrew did look suspicious after that. However, he had a more straightforward way of dealing with the problem. I was going to suggest we just watch from afar, but he went for the confrontation.

"Hey, Piper!" He called out.

Piper turned around with surprising speed, holding her milkshake out like she might throw it at whomever had called her name. "Oh, hi!" she pulled herself into a more relaxed position and walked over, pulling the blond boy over with her.

"Andrew, Mira, this is my boyfriend Jason," she introduced.

Jason looked like what I had come to see as the typical camp kid. Fit and muscular seemed to be one of the things that qualified a person to get into the mysterious camp, and even those that didn't seem to be particularly athletic, like Leo, still looked like someone you would lose a fight with. Both Jason and Piper were wearing t-shirts so thoroughly splattered with paint that you could barely see what the original color was. Their jeans hadn't escaped the paint treatment either, although they were less colorful.

"Nice to meet you, Jason." Andrew held his hand out and Jason shook it. Jason looked over at me for a moment, hand half outstretched to shake mine, but I didn't take it. Jason dropped his hand looking uncomfortable.

"What was the emergency?" I asked Piper.

She smiled, a little too knowingly. I probably hadn't covered my irritation very well. "Fire in one of the cabins at camp. They wanted counselors to help move some of the younger kids. Nothing we couldn't take care of. Leo and Annabeth stayed though, and I'd guess that Percy did as well."

"Everyone got out safely?" Andrew asked politely.

"Everyone was fine, thank you for asking."

She and Jason stood there a moment longer before Jason took Piper's hand and started towards the door. "Nice meeting you two," he said. "Sorry for interrupting your date."

My mouth dropped open to throw some kind of retort back, but I changed my mind. Had Jason's comment been directed at how we had interrupted their date, or had it been genuine? I really couldn't tell. Either way, it didn't really matter what Piper's boyfriend thought.