Hey! I'm going to keep this short (because nobody really reads these, just scans them over) and just say this: THIS IS MY FIRST FANFIC SO BEWARE! Constructive criticism will be enjoyed while flames will turn me into Leo, a flaming banshee. Read and Review!

I DO NOT OWN PJO; RICK RIORDAN DOES. THANK THE GODS HE OWNS THIS, BECAUSE IF I DID, THE WORLD WOULD HAVE ALREADY ENDED.

Of Shoplifting and Hacking

Connor and Travis Stoll barged into the Big House, panting like weary dogs. Malcolm, in place of Annabeth, glared at them. "You're late," he said, checking his watch. "Three minutes and forty-three seconds late to be exact."

"We're sor—sorry. We came here as—as fast as we cou—could," Travis choked out, hands on his knees. "We ju—just got caught up in—in some bus—business." Travis heaved in one final breath of air, and then plopped down into a chair around the Ping-Pong table. Connor did the same to the right of him.

Clarisse smirked. "Oh, Travis, were you making kissy-kissy faces at Katie again?"

"No! He wasn't!" defended Connor. "Isn't Katie here anyway?" He looked around, and—there you have it—no Katie Gardner. "She isn't here."

Malcolm made a face. "Yeah, she's late. Again." He looked at his watch, counting the seconds that she was late. "And we can't start the counselors meeting without her. So I guess if she—"

Malcolm was cut off by a loud bang as the door was flung open. In pranced a smiling Katie Gardner, like there wasn't a care in the world. Like she wasn't about to be the first person in history to be killed by eyes, Malcolm's eyes.

"You're late—" Malcolm started, but he was cut off by a wave of Katie's hand.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. 'You're late by six minutes and fifty-seven seconds, Miss Gardner.' Well, I am not in a good mood today, so back off and take a chill pill."

That was a very sudden change of mood.

Malcolm's mouth open and closed wordlessly. After about ten seconds of this—by him and everybody else—Malcolm snapped his jaw closed with an audible click. "Well, you're right on one thing: you are late by six minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Now sit."

With a huff, Katie followed his oh-so-wondrous-command to the left of Travis. Suddenly, she snapped to full attention. "What, Katie?" Malcolm asked, irritated. "We have to start already."

"Two things actually. One: Where's Chiron?" Katie asked, her head swiveling around, as if Chiron were hiding in her ear.

Malcolm crossed his arms and smirked in triumph. "Chiron couldn't make it today, so he put me in charge of this counselors' meeting."

Clarisse stood abruptly, making her chair topple to the ground. "What?!" She slammed her knife into the table. "Chiron put you in charge? You're not even a real counselor for the gods' sake!" She tugged out her dagger and held it over her shoulder, ready to leap across the table and stab Malcolm in his big, fat head.

Will Solace quickly stood and tried to pry the deadly weapon from Clarisse's fingers while Jake Mason—who was in charge until Leo got back from his suicide mission, because Leo would come back—attempted to shove Clarisse back into the seat he had set back up for her. Maybe Jake could even tie her to the seat. All he needed was some rope, or even better, some wires. With enough, that stuff was practically indestructible. Of course, there wasn't going to be enough, not if he wanted to work on his new invention, a peanut butter and jelly spray gun that the Hermes cabin was paying him to build. Man, he needed that money. He could buy so much with it…

He slapped himself to stop his ADHD from going any further, and lost his grip on Clarisse. Clarisse, noticing the lack of strength holding her back, lunged for Malcolm—but was stopped by a dagger, her dagger, being thrown at her. It caught hold of her shirt and pulled her back to the wall. The dagger imbedded itself so deeply, Clarisse couldn't yank it back out.

She was stuck.

How…?

Clarisse didn't even remember someone taking her dagger. She was clutching it so tightly, not even Will could get it without her being able to notice.

So who took her dagger?

Everybody else had the same question on their minds. Heads turned to the place the knife had been thrown from… and there, standing in the throwing position, was Katie Gardner.

Jaws dropped.

Gasps escaped.

Drew Tanaka fainted, manicured hand held over her red lip stick stained mouth.

Since when was Katie—sweet, kind, quiet Katie Gardner—violent? For the gods' sake, the girl couldn't even hold a sword in the correct position, much less throw a dagger across a room and hit a thrashing Clarisse la Rue's T-Shirt! She was the daughter of Demeter who did not do violence! So she did not practice with weapons used for violence!

Katie cleared her throat loudly. "I still have a second question," she announced, taking her seat.

"Umm… umm… okay, Katie, what's—what's your umm… second question?" stuttered a still baffled Malcolm.

Katie reached down and grabbed ahold of Travis's right wrist hidden beneath the Ping-Pong table then raised it for everybody to see. "What—is—this?" she growled out in a low voice, glaring at the Stoll brothers.

Connor blushed nervously, playing with his left wrist. "It's a new fashion statement? Yeah, it's a new fashion, wearing this… umm… bracelet. Yeah, that's what it is." His face flushed even darker to an unnatural dark shade of crimson red.

There was no lying through this one, because on Travis's wrist—visible to everyone now—was a flashing silver handcuff, cut off at the chain.

This started a whole new riot.

Shouts of "You got arrested!" and "What did you do?!" were flung through the air. One after another until the words seemed to mold into one deafening sound the words were spat. All the while, Travis and Connor, who lost his bright red face, became a chalky white.

"Shut up!" shouted Clarisse, still trying to escape from her dagger. So far, the only way she could figure was to have someone else pull out her dagger—which would not do, because it involved help—or rip her shirt—which would also not do, because, well, she was a girl, and girls don't do that. Clarisse had picked a horrible day not to wear her armor.

Everyone went silent after Clarisse had said shut up, then began to snicker, because Clarisse looked ridiculous, twisting and turning, trying to get a good grip on the handle so she could break free of the dreadful position. Clarisse glared her I'm-going-to-kill-you-later death glare, and everyone stopped laughing, because no one wanted an angry daughter of Ares hunting them down.

Malcolm turned to face the Sons of Hermes. Then his eyes traveled across the room. "Okay now, how about only one person talk at a time?" Mouths opened to speak. "And by 'one' I mean me," Malcolm finished.

He stared down the pale Stoll boys. "Okay, what did you do? And make this good, or I'll tell Chiron."

"First of all," Connor started, "this is the first time this has ever happened. We've never been arrested by the cops before. It wasn't event that bad, either. We just stole some video games, you know, for our X-box."

"That's it?" Katie asked. "You two dweebs got arrested for stealing video games? Oh no, the world is going downhill fast. Real fast. Faster than I thought." She had mumbled to herself the last part, but everyone heard. For their own good rather than anybody else's, they kept quiet.

Travis gulped. "Yep, that's it."

"Wait." Katie scanned over Connor and Travis carefully. "That still doesn't explain why you guys aren't locked up, or why your fashionable bracelets are broken."

Travis's eyes darted around guiltily. "Well, we might've… maybe… umm… knockedoutthepoliceofficersw hiletheyweredrivingusandused ourweaponstobreakapartourhan dcuffs!"

"Dude, you need to work on your lying skills," muttered his brother.

"What?!" Malcolm shouted. "You used force against—against mortals?" Steam was practically exploding out his ears and his grey eyes were bulging out of his eyes sockets. Quite literally, it seemed. Not a pretty sight.

Katie shrugged. "Hey, at least it was against trained mortals."

Malcolm gawked at her. "No. Rules are rules. There is no using force against mortals, trained or not." He faced the Stolls. "I'll have to show this to Chiron, you do know that, right? This will be forever on your permanent record!"

Connor held up his hands. "Hey, hey, we don't want this on our permanent record either." He paused. "What if—what if we cleaned our record? It's only one time, right? We can do that. Right, Travis?"

Travis was already nodding his head vigorously. "Yeah, we can do that."

"Impossible!" Malcolm boomed. He slapped the palms of his hands against the table. "It's already on your file. You've been arrested! It's official."

"Unless you get a hacker," Katie said. She looked at the Ping-Pong table. "I'm gonna put my feet on the table." With that she plopped her feet atop the table. At the same time, Drew was standing up after fainting to the ground. When Katie set her feet on the Ping-Pong table with a loud thud, mud flew to the awakened Drew and landed in her mouth. Drew let out a terrified squeal through the large hunk of shoe mud in her mouth. Her eyes rolled to the top of her head and she fell flat on her back on yet another dead faint.

"Will, you're a son of Apollo! Do something!" Malcolm started breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. This meeting wasn't going as planned at all, not at all.

Will peeked over the edge of the Ping-Pong table at Drew. "She looks fine to me."

Malcolm tugged at his hair. "Can you—oh, I don't know—check to make sure?"

"I did."

"You just looked at her. How can you tell if you just looked at her?"

Will frowned. "Are you underestimating me? Do you think I don't have enough Apollo awesomeness to know when something wrong happened? Huh? Huh?"

"No! It's just— ah!" the Son of Athena slammed his head on the table, hard. "Never mind. Let's just go with Katie's plan on cleaning the Stolls record."

Everyone looked pointedly at a bored Katie Gardner.

What was wrong with her?

"What?" she asked. "Oh, yeah. I know a hacker that can wipe clean your file. Even make it better." She swiped her hand through the air to emphasize her sentence.

Travis looked pleadingly at Malcolm with his bottom lip sticking out. "Please?" he begged. "Pretty, pretty please with a cherry on top?" Travis got down on his knees as well as Connor. Together they begged: "PLEASE!"

"Fine!" Malcolm relented. "Just never—and I mean never ever—do that again." He turned to Katie. "So who's this hacker?"

Katie smiled a vicious smile. "We all already know the hacker."

Murmurs circled around the room.

"Who?" Malcolm asked.

"I'll tell you this: the hacker is on the Argo II. That's all you need to know." Katie popped up from her seat. "Now we can IM them and…" She watched as the Stoll brothers, identical broken handcuffs jangling, moved at an unbelievable speed and create a rainbow in the span of seconds. "Wow," she breathed. "Y'all are desperate."

"'Y'all?'" Butch from the Iris cabin asked.

"Have a problem with 'y'all?'" Katie snapped.

Butch flinched at the glare he received. "No, no, not at all."

"Good." The Daughter of Demeter turned on her heel and flipped a drachma into the rainbow. "O goddess, accept our offering." She paused as the drachma disappeared in a golden shimmer. "The Argo ll," she requested.

The mist then showed a slightly disturbing image.

Leo Valdez was laying down on the dinner table covered in thrown food. Making an angel. He was moving his arms and legs back and forth, back and forth, screaming at the top of his lungs. *"SNOW ANGEL, SNOW ANGEL, SOMEDAY I'M GONNA FLY—"

"LEO! SHUT UP!" Piper screeched. Her ever-changing eyes were bright and fiery, as if she were about to become homicidal.

Jake, who was worried for his brother's safety and sanity, asked, "What happened?"

Jason Grace rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his furious girlfriend. "Leo thought it would be a great idea to see if his tool belt could produce Red Bull, then drink said Red Bull. He's been like this for almost an hour already."

"WOW! DIDYOUGUYSSEETHATFLYOVERTHER E! RIGHTTHERE! THEREITGOES! WATCHIT! WATCHITFLYALLAROUNDTHEROOMLI KEJASONTHEBLONDESUPERMAN!" Leo took in a deep breath of air. *"P-P-P-POKER FACE, P-P-POKER FACE—"

Gleeson Hedge held up his club. "Okay cupcake, I know I'm supposed to protect you and stuff, and I am, because I'm about to shut you up before Piper does—for good."

"No bashing, Hedge."

Everyone looked at where the commanding voice had come from. Sitting calmly and working on Daedalus' laptop was Annabeth Chase. Her bloodshot eyes were locked to the screen and hadn't moved an inch, not even to look at the Iris Message.

"Annabeth?" Malcolm asked. "Are you okay?" He was still slightly worried about his sister. She hadn't been quite the same since her descent into Tartarus.

Then she looked up and pushed her laptop away. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Umm… okay… Where's Percy?"

Annabeth pointed behind her back, and sure enough, Percy came limping up. "Hey." He waved, a smile forming on his lips. Strangely enough, Tartarus hadn't seemed to change him all too much. Barely at all, actually.

Connor and Travis didn't like the long hellos. They wanted a clean record. Not knowing who the hacker was, Connor decided that Leo, being a child of Hephaestus, was good with technology, probably enough to be able to hack into the police system and clean their records forever. "Leo," he said.

Leo, who was trying to catch a buzzing fly, turned at the sound of his name. "Yes?" he asked.

Travis shoved his brother to the side. "We want you to hack into the police system and clean our permanent records because we may have accidentally got arrested."

"No can do," Leo replied.

"What?! Why?!" Connor screamed.

Leo, still jittering from his high on Red Bull, frowned. "Because I don't know how to hack into Annabeth's computer, much less any police system."

Travis glared accusingly at Katie. "But Katie said—"

He was interrupted by a grumbling daughter of Ares. "Katie said the hacker was on the Argo ll. She didn't say Leo was the hacker." She played with the part of her ripped T-shirt. Clarisse had just escaped from the death trap and even she knew what Katie had said. "The hacker's probably Annabeth. Right, Annabeth?"

Percy pulled Daedalus' laptop to him.

Annabeth's eyes widened. "What? No, I'm not going to hack into a police system and clean the Stolls' permanent record. For one, it's illegal. And two—"

"—you don't know how to hack into the system and clean the Stolls' record." Katie crossed her arms and rolled her eyes, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Annabeth became a faint shade of pink. "No!" she squeaked.

Clovis, whom everyone thought was asleep, realized that Annabeth wasn't the hacker and asked the question that was on everybody's mind: "Then, who's the hacker that Katie was talking about?"

"What's a hacker anyway? What's one supposed to do?" This was Hazel who had asked these questions. Poor Hazel Levesque hardly even knew what a computer was. Now she had to know what a hacker was?

Frank Zhang and Nico di Angelo realized that Hazel was lost beyond comprehension, and quietly scooted closer to her to explain.

Travis got up in Katie's face. "Katie Gardner, you better tell us who the freakin' hacker is so that we don't have to tell Chiron—"

"—that you guys stole video games from a mall. Ha! That is hilarious." Percy wiped an imaginary tear. Then a slight frown appeared on his face. "Wow. The world is heading downhill fast, very fast. Seriously, you guys got cuffed for stealing a few video games."

Everyone stared at Percy Jackson, Hero of Olympus, who was currently staring at Annabeth's laptop screen with a small, lopsided grin on his face.

But he wasn't finished yet.

He slammed the table. "Oh, but wait! This was just the first time you guys got busted for shoplifting. You guys have stolen video games and other things in the mortal world several other times apparently." He chuckled to himself.

Annabeth gaped at her boyfriend. "Percy, how do you know that?" She snatched her laptop from him and her eyes widened in surprise. "Percy, you hacked into the police system? But… it's—it's illegal."

Percy snorted and pulled the laptop back to him. "Well, so is shoplifting." He turned to the screen, his fingers whizzing around the keyboard so quick they were a blur. "Hey Katie," he said, not looking up. "Should I check the prez's email?"

Katie nodded. "Yeah. I haven't seen what's been up in his life since before the Titan War."

Leo peeked over Percy's shoulder. "From Mrs. Obama." His eyebrows raised and an elfish smile overcame his face. "'Don't forget your rash cream, honey. There's no need to repeat the last incident.' What?"

Katie laughed. "Oh. My. Gods! He has another rash! Hey, Perce, do ya think it's in the same place?"

Percy held his aching stomach after a short laughing fit. "From the part 'There's no need to repeat the last incident,' I'd say yes!"

Katie threw her head back and her chair flipped back over, but she didn't seem to care, she was laughing too much. "Oh, poor Mr. President! Man, if only you could put this on the internet, but you'd be arrested." She frowned. "Again."

Percy nearly fell over in his seat, too. "You still sore on the whole arrested thing? We were ten!"

Annabeth murmured, "They knew each other when they were ten?"

Hedge stood up. "You got arrested, when you were ten! For what?"

"Hacking. Duh."

Connor yelled. "Well if you can hack, clean our record!"

"Oh, okay." Percy moved the curser and clicked on the minimized page of the list of arrested peoples. He typed in some things, then clicked once, twice. "Okay. Done. You're clean." He looked up, and then back down again. "Someone got arrested for pushing a car into a river. But get this: it was his own car." He shook his head, bewildered. "That's crazy, even if it's for insurance to cover it."

Malcolm, who had been silent for quite a while, said, "Well, now that the Stolls' records are clean, were just going to say goodbye. So, goodbye." He waved his hand in the mist and turned to all of the cabin counselors. "Well, that was interesting."

"Yep," Katie sighed. "And would ya look at that—this meeting is over. Peace!"

"Katie, wait." Malcolm placed a hand on Katie's shoulder. "Why would you be sore on Percy getting arrested? Did you get arrested too?"

"I think the real question is this: Why were the Stolls sharing a handcuff?"

First * -Snow Angel lyrics by Over the Rhine (Truth be told, I've never heard of them before; I just needed a song that had the words "snow angel" in them.) I DO NOT OWN

Second* -Poker Face lyrics by Lady GaGa (You should know this.) I DO NOT OWN

Hoped you liked it. I'll probably have more (better) one shots up later. Review! Please!

Peace and all that other stuff.

Kk. Bye.

~XxxXGreek GeekXxxX