Leo had kind of hoped Reyna had been joking, yet here he sat in the damn police station, in the back room with Officer Kang, who at least seemed to be a decent person. Well, better than some of the other officers he'd had less-than-pleasant experiences with, not that that was a high standard to meet.

But Reyna had told him to play nice and to just tell Kang what he remembered, so he was. He even cut down on his hilarious editorializing just to show how nice he was playing. He'd just finished summarizing his Incredibly Awful Day and moved on to the Incredibly Awful Night, which was infinitely clearer in his head now that he'd fit in Octavian, the missing puzzle piece: "I had a couple drinks while I was working in Workshop Nine, and normally it didn't go down so bad, but it wasn't sitting right for some reason."

Kang only listened, her dark, angular eyes so serious he wanted to squirm.

Leo made a self-comforting flicking motion with his fingers and tried to look law-abiding. Be Jason, he coached himself, and be Reyna. He sat up a little straighter and aimed for a neutrally positive expression. Nailed it. "I went to go to the bathroom, and then I heard something weird, like the door being forced open." To clarify how odd this had been, he explained, "The door locked automatically, and anyone who needed in—me, mostly—just held up their student ID and it opened for you. And since this place was maintained by the shop students and a couple engineering girls—we're all good with mechanics—the lock never misbehaved. So you didn't need to force anything ever.

"When I went to go check it out, I smelled gasoline, and I saw this group of older guys, upperclassmen definitely, rummaging through one of our storage spaces. They were all kind of turned toward this tall, skinny white guy that looked like he could've keeled over sick. Octavian Augur. I barely knew him, but I did recognize him. You don't forget a face like that," he cracked, smirking a little.

She didn't react.

He smothered the grin. "Sorry. Okay, so even with a bunch of beer in me, I knew they weren't supposed to be in there, so I called him on it. I asked him what they were doing there, but all he said was that it looked like I 'wouldn't be missing anything.' Like I was gonna black out the whole thing, I was so drunk." He wasn't totally wrong, Leo had to admit, but he was just wrong enough that he's gonna have to eat his words. Then he realized he might have died in that fire, and that thought spawned an alternate interpretation: that he wouldn't be missing anything in life if he died in obscurity that night.

"He'd picked up a couple shop tools," he continued, feeling a sudden chill. "Gave them to the other guys. One of them was holding the big cans of gasoline I was smelling. I thought it was kinda weird, but to be honest, I really really had to pee, so I told them to put the stuff back and scram, and I ran to the bathroom. I figured they'd be gone when I finished. Most people don't like hanging out with mechanics while they work." He had mistakenly assumed that they were there to hang out and that they would listen to him at all.

"Do you remember what all he took specifically?" Kang asked, her first question since "Do you want a cup of water?" ten minutes ago.

Leo sucked in his cheeks, thought for a minute, and then exhaled in a huff. "The gas cans. One of our biggest combination wrenches, and a good axe. And a couple flame torches. Maybe a couple other things, but I couldn't get a good look at those." He wanted to add a heavily sarcastic not suspicious at all comment, but he didn't know how much Kang would put up with, and if he got them kicked out of the station now, Reyna would have his head on a platter for dinner.

"Could you identify those particular tools if you saw them again?"

As politely as he could without dissolving into sugar water, he clarified, "Well, I wouldn't see those specific ones again, 'cause they probably got burned up. But I know tools, and I remember those."

Officer Kang glanced up at him. "Do you know them well enough to use them yourself?"

Was she accusing him of making it up to cover his own tracks? He almost got offended, but then he remembered she was just doing her job. He gave himself legal counsel so good it was almost professional: Chill. "I do," he said. "I have to for work."

She didn't freak out or arrest him or anything; she just said, "Okay." She made a note and then set her pen aside. "So what happened after your bathroom run?"

Leo's fingers curled with displeasure at the memory. "I came out of the bathroom when I smelled even more gasoline, and I pretty much ran into this giant fire. Right in my face. I hauled ass, but someone—probably Octavian again, or one of his guys—had banged at the automatic sprinkler system that should have gone off, so it kind of spurted a little water but didn't work like it was supposed to. That place was toast." Despite the serious situation, he almost cackled at the unintended pun. That's two in one day. Then he reminded himself about the importance of timing and got back on track.

"I got out," he said, "but I don't remember how exactly… I remember a lot of smoke, smacking my head on some pipe and then losing feeling in most of my body. But I'm pretty sure that part was SPD," he offered in a lower tone, "not the smoke inhalation or concussion. Well, maybe it was partly the alcohol.

"Anyway, somehow I made it to my dorm and passed out. Next morning, I didn't remember a thing. Or if I did, it was like a dream. I had a 'what was I just thinking about?' moment and then it was gone. And no one ever asked me if I'd been there, so I just didn't think about it for long enough, and eventually I just forgot." He winced, realizing how lame that sounded. "Then when my best friend and my girlfriend and her best friend–slash–my best friend's boyfriend—it's confusing, I know," he added sheepishly at Kang's quick double-blink. "Anyway, when they started pressing me about that night, I realized I didn't remember it, so I started digging, and with a couple different triggers, I started to remember. Loudly and painfully." He made a face and tugged at his hair, relishing the sparks of sensation along his scalp. Quickly, as a relevant side note, he told her about the confrontation in the student center, making sure to highlight the sketchy comments.

Kang flipped her notebook closed and rested one finger over the recorder's Off button. "Anything else?"

"Well, I mean, other than the super suspicious way he kept changing his story and making little jabs about me not being able to remember… No. That's all I know about the Central fire."

She turned off the recorder. A couple minutes later, a secretary brought them the transcription of his testimony, and he signed it. Once he handed the paper to her, she said, "Thank you for coming to us."

He jumped to his feet and then realized that made him look too eager to leave, so he tried to stretch a little, lean against the table like he just loved cops. "Are you gonna be able to do anything?"

"We'll certainly look into it," she assured him, "and if your story matches up with what we find, we'll definitely bring the arsonists to justice."

"Okay," he said, "great." And even though he worried that it had been too long since the fire, that Octavian and his people had had too long to cover their tracks, that the investigation should have picked up on all this originally anyway, he held his head high and thanked Officer Kang for her time and followed her out to the lobby where his three best friends waited anxiously to hear if his case had been well received.

"We'll let you know if we need anything more from you," the cop told them as she let them out.

Piper looked like Leo felt—like they were putting their trust in a system that had failed them more than once before. And Reyna looked like she was itching to have control of the investigation back in her presidential hands. It was Jason's solid, reassuring presence that got them all out of there in one piece without blowing a gasket and ruining everything they'd worked for.

"We're just going to have to trust them to do the best job they can," he said as they loaded back into his car, and there was a collective sigh of reluctant agreement.

Leo had little faith in the justice system, but he hoped. All through the next day, and the next, and then the week after that, he hoped. He hoped his law-abiding friends were right; he hoped the cops would look harder this time; he hoped that something would show up that would clinch the case for them.

AU Week came and went with no news. Once, Leo had to come to the station again to answer some more questions about Workshop Nine, but nothing came of that either. They had all but resigned themselves to having tried and failed when, just before classes dismissed early for Thanksgiving weekend, they saw red and blue lights dancing against the student center. The four of them ran up just in time to see Kang and some of her fellow cops lead Octavian and three upperclassmen out of the student center and into the police cars.

One of the upperclassmen hung his head, and Octavian and the other students were blasting him with glares. After Kang slammed the last door shut, she saw the cluster of four and walked over to them.

"Thank you for coming forward," she said, holding Leo's gaze especially. "Thanks to your testimony, we had reason to look deeper into some inconsistencies in the original investigation. We caught a break, and one of the students confessed that his group 'encouraged' the small work fire to take over your workshop and then set other buildings on fire right afterward. He told us everything."

"Rea—?" Piper froze with her lips parted in shocked joy, her eyes beginning to shine wetly even when she tried to blink it away. Her lips moved, but no words came out.

Amazed, Leo sent up a silent prayer of thanks for guilty consciences. "Did he say how they knew I was going to be in there that night?"

"Actually," Kang told him, "it sounds like that wasn't part of the original plan. The student said it had made him uncomfortable—enough to talk when we questioned him."

Apparently not enough to keep the jerks from going through with it in the first place, though. "Huh," he said; he thought that was a lot nicer than his other option, which was way less family-friendly. He could hardly believe it: sheer bad luck. Well, bad for him and for the arsonists, but good for the investigation. At least it had worked out in the end.

"Looks like a few university employees might have turned a blind eye, too. Even reduced tuition for transfers so no one would complain." She shook her head. "We won't be playing favorites this time."

University employees? Leo glanced at Jason, who had relaxed into relief. He faintly recollected the vice president once saying something about Octavian being related to a department head and working for someone even higher up. And Jason hadn't been allowed to talk about the transfer details, though he hadn't known why not or who said so. Ooooh, the scarecrow done messed up, he thought gleefully. Nobody's getting out of this one. Not even the big shots.

The cop shifted back toward the string of cars with their lights still flashing. "I'll let you know when we need you as a court witness, Leo. You kids have a good day." She waved and left them.

"Was she serious?" Piper breathed shakily, backhanding a tear or two from her eyes. "It's really happening. I can't believe we…" She couldn't take her eyes off the cars until they'd driven out of the parking lot and disappeared.

Jason kissed the top of her head. "Congratulations." She had waited so long to see Central avenged. He cast his own best friend a smile too—the two of them had kept secrets, investigated discrepancies, and in the end even dared to trust someone else to take care of the problem. They'd earned the victory just as much.

Reyna took Leo's hand, and he could have danced. She cast him a small, tired, but satisfied smile. "We got them," she whispered. "We got them."

Early-December snow drifted gently down from thick grey clouds, forming a thin sheet over the hard, brown ground. Huddled inside the student center at the bar alongside Nectar and Ambrosia, the four held the thick World Myth essays just returned through campus mail. The papers were folded in half and stapled to hide whatever letter Mr. D had penned at the tops. The grades weren't online yet, so this would be the big reveal.

"Remember," Reyna said firmly, "none of us could possibly have gotten an F, and that's the only way to fail the class at this point. No matter what the grade is, we'll pass." If barely.

"But," Piper contradicted her, only half in jest, "we could have gotten C's and totally bombed our semester GPAs."

Reyna glared. "It's not likely." But it was possible, and nervousness twisted her stomach. She treasured her high GPA and wanted to have a 4.0 to show her sister when they visited over Christmas break.

Piper and Leo exchanged a look. "Maybe not for you," he teased his lady love, "but we've seen our share of C's. And F's." He pretended to consider this. "Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the only reason we're doing okay this semester is because we've been hanging around you guys. Following 'rules'—"" He made air quotes around the fake-derisive word. "—and 'studying' and being 'decent human beings.'"

"Oh, did they write that on your Wilderness School report too?" Piper asked him, sounding surprised. "'Seems incapable of acting like a decent human being'? I thought they were just making fun of me."

"Nope, me too."

"Cool."

They fist-bumped.

Jason and Reyna exchanged the long-suffering looks of saints. "Why do we put up with this?" she sighed.

He tapped his chin. "Because they're cute," he suggested, and she shrugged in resigned agreement.

Piper and Leo grinned winningly.

"Anyway," Reyna redirected them, "the papers. On three?"

The others nodded.

"One—two—three."

Four papers snapped out of their staples and unfolded. Piper gave a pleased little gasp, and Leo pretended to stumble backward. "No way."

Jason wore a tiny smile as he flipped through his essay, and Reyna herself brightened at the purple A scrawled at the top of her title page.

"Damn," Piper breathed. "I'm going to buy Annabeth dinner." The architecture major had proofread their papers for them in exchange for a few cups of free coffee. "Or a house."

"As long as you buy it," Jason clarified, and she smacked him on the arm.

"I promised," she said. Then, after a moment: "How exactly did you think I was gonna steal a house?"

"I have faith," he said, which was either a reassurance that he trusted her not to revert or an answer to the question. Reyna wasn't totally sure which. Maybe both.

"You know, Annabeth's proof couldn't make a bad paper good," she pointed out to the pair that still seemed in shock. "Those grades are you guys. You did this. Good job."

Positively glowing at that, Leo did a little victory dance and then, because he wasn't allowed to kiss her in public, took her hand and squeezed it.

Piper and Jason, of course, had no qualms about public displays of affection themselves, so they shared a quick kiss—quick by their standards. When neither showed any sign of letting up, Reyna not-so-subtly glanced at her watch. "Don't you two have somewhere to be?" she prompted.

They broke apart and backhanded their mouths in sync. "Oh, yeah," Jason said, not sounding particularly thrilled, and Piper grabbed her bag of fresh clothes that had been sitting behind the counter.

"Gimme five minutes," she told her boyfriend before darting off to the bathroom to change.

"Why does it matter if she's wearing her coffee shop uniform to meet my dad and stepmom?" he asked Reyna. "She always looks great."

She raised her eyebrows. "Think for a second," she said. "It'll come to you."

A moment passed with his forehead crinkled. "Oh," he said finally, startling a little at the reasoning that had finally made its way into his head: 1) his dad was the university president and 2) Piper was serious about Jason and therefore wanted to make a good impression on his family.

"Yeah, oh," Reyna teased him. Jason's relationship with his parents was tense enough that this meeting, an attempt to mend the bridge, might not make much difference in the long run, but at least they were making the effort. She respected them for that.

He glanced at the bathroom, from which his girlfriend hadn't yet emerged. "Did I tell you I'm meeting her dad next week?" he asked in an undertone.

Leo laughed. Cackled, really.

Reyna ignored this. "Yes, you did," she told her best friend, "and you'll be wonderful."

Jason sucked in a long, uncertain breath. "I hope so."

"I know so." She patted him on the head just as Piper ran back up, panting a little but dressed to impress in a black peplum dress, lace-patterned tights, and short-heeled black boots. She'd thrown her hair up in a short ponytail, but one tendril had fallen out; Reyna tucked it back in for her.

"Thanks." Piper tucked a hand into the crook of Jason's arm and tried to calm herself down. "Okay, we should probably go, then, I guess."

"Good luck," Leo joked in his worst you'll need it voice.

Reyna swatted him. "It's going to be fine," she reassured the suddenly pale Piper. "You'll wow them."

She didn't seem completely convinced. As if trying to get her going before she backed out completely, Jason led her toward the doors. Reyna saw him kiss her on the top of the head before they left the building.

Leo sucked down the last of his coffee and then tossed the empty cup at the trash can, crowing when it made it in. "Basketball champ!" he cheered himself. "Wow, what skill. I'm so good at that. Goin' pro."

"It was two feet away from you," said Reyna.

"Pro," he repeated, and she laughed.

She finished her hot chocolate and asked, "Are you ready to go look at those places?" His lease on the shed-house was almost up, and between the two of them, they'd lined up a few tours of little cheap local options that would hopefully be budget-friendly and have decent living conditions.

He brightened. "Yeah. You still want to come with?"

"Of course," she said primly. "Who else would keep you on track?"

Pouting his lower lip in grudging agreement, he pointed at her. "Rude, but true."

"What are you going to do without me over break?" she teased, referring to her upcoming trip to visit Hylla in Seattle that unsettled her with, for once, more excitement than anxiety.

He pretended to wipe away a tear. "Cry a lot, probably."

They headed outside, climbed into Festus, and drove to the first appointment, a one-room apartment just outside the town limits. The landlord, who was supposed to lead the tour, wasn't there just yet, so they stayed in the warm car until she showed.

"Remember," Reyna encouraged him, "these aren't your be-all end-all. It's okay to live somewhere less-than-pristine when you need to, or you can move in with us too. No one's going to judge you." The tours today might turn out not to work with his income, which would mean he'd need to pick another option for his living situation. There was no reason for him to feel ashamed of being tight on money, and she reminded him of that every chance she got.

Leo nodded. "I know. But I'm hoping something'll work out."

"Something will," she promised.

He fiddled with the radio and then glanced at her with a clear change of subject in mind. "Does this count as being in private?" he asked.

Snorting, she glanced around. No one in the area that she could see. "I suppose," she allowed, "but not for long."

He grinned, and the dimples that popped out made her smile as well. "Kiss time?" he asked through the impossible grin.

"Kiss time," she confirmed, and she popped her seat belt and leaned over to the driver's seat to press her lips to his. He laughed a little in delight at her initiating but didn't waste any of the little time they had to themselves. Though neither of them were naturally talented kissers, they were both more than willing to hone their skills through practice. His slender fingertips wove into the underside of her casual braid, tracing tingling lines up her scalp. Inhaling at the touch, she shifted to place one hand against his door, and when he mumbled something teasing that sounded like overdone-French hon hon hon, she tugged playfully at his hair with the other. "You're such a dork," she whispered.

He crinkled his nose. "Yeah, but it's worked for me so far. And," he added with a trickster gleam in his eyes, "it seems to be working for you too."

She couldn't help the stupidly sappy smile that overcame her. Despite their many differences, she wouldn't choose anyone else. "Obviously," she agreed.