To live is to struggle 1/2

"Arghhh!" screamed Thalia while shooting a bolt of lightning from her hand, the bold of electricity hit the javelin that was stuck in one of the scorpions, successfully killing it. She couldn't celebrate however since there were still two other scorpions to worry about and they just lost one of the two javelin's they had.

"Why are they in a group?!" screamed Annabeth. "I have never seen scorpions in a group!"

"I don't think they were traveling as a group." said Luke while still running. "Three different scorpions must have all smelt us and so they came." continued explaining Luke. It did make sense, after all four demigods would attract pretty much every monster in a huge radius, especially when one of them was the child of the king of gods.

"Just keep running!" screamed Thalia while trying to get them to preserve energy and escape. They didn't know for how long they would have to run so wasting time and energy talking was a terrible idea.

While they continued running, the two remaining scorpions maintained the pursuit without any trouble. These scorpions were hard to deal with, even when alone, because of their hard shells, having them attack as a group was much, much worse.

"Throw it now Cristina!" said Luke while entering an alley. Christina nodded and threw a small smoke grenade she made a while back. Under the cover of the smoke, the four demigods got out through the other side of the alley and kept running, successfully gaining a bit of distance.

"Get ready to throw the javelin Annabeth!" said Luke, making Annabeth hold the javelin she was carrying tightly, a determined expression appearing on her face. "You know what to do once the javelin hits the scorpion." continued Luke, this time looking at Thalia.

Thalia, who was panting a little, nodded seriously. Using her powers was tiring, extremely so, but there was no other choice right now. They made a plan to deal with monsters that have a hard shell, now was not the time to change things just because she was a bit tired. She already knew they would have to deal with one of the scorpions without using their current method, so she needed to kill the other one.

"Now!" screamed Luke as soon as one of the scorpions entered their range.

Annabeth, who as the one in the group with the best accuracy, threw the javelin at the closest scorpion, stabbing it in the eye and causing it to make an awful screech. Thalia immediately summoned lightning to the palm of her hand and threw it at the javelin, electrocuting the scorpion and forcing it to drop to the ground, unmoving.

Thalia as well dropped to her knees due to the fatigue, making Luke tighten his grip on the baseball bat he was holding and getting between her and the last scorpion. The bat was made by Christina and had some arrow tips through it, giving it the capabilities of killing monsters. This bat however would be useless against monsters with such a hard shell, and Luke knew that perfectly well.

Looking at Christina, he nodded his head, indicating her to begin their plan. Christina nodded back in agreement before pulling out of her backpack a small object. Luke rushed in the monsters direction as soon as he saw Christina pull out their last resort. It hurt having to use it now, especially against a monster they already created an effective method to defeat, but there was no other way. Thalia couldn't use lightning again so they had to do it.

While Luke was keeping the monster distracted, Christina gave the object to Annabeth. Annabeth already knew what to do, they had done a serious meeting once this thing was completed because they all need to now how to use it, it was their counter against a monster they couldn't defeat with normal means after all.

Luke continued to avoid the scorpion's strikes, still close to it so that it didn't focus on the others. After a few second that felt like hours, he heard Annabeth's voice as soon as the monster opened it's jaws to eat him. "DUCK!!" screamed Annabeth, and Luke immediately crouched down just in time to see a small object fly above him and into the monsters mouth. Seeing the plan succeed, Luke jumped back and held his club tightly, while inwardly relaxing a bit.

A loud bang resounded from inside the monster and as soon as it happened the scorpion dropped dead, it's body slowly turning to dust.

"It worked!" exclaimed Christina happily, making the other three look at her bewildered.

"You weren't sure!" asked Thalia while still on her knees panting.

"Well... I hoped it would work obviously, but it was my first time making something like that you know? Besides we didn't have enough materials to experiment and perfect it so yeah... I wasn't like 100% sure it would work." replied Christina while scratching the back of her head with a small, awkward smile.

"Sigh... well it worked and that's all that matters." said Luke. "Now we just need to find more arrow tips of Celestial bronze and put them in a bomb again. It was very effective actually... killing the monster from the inside." continued Luke while slightly chuckling. "Good job little genius." he said while ruffling Christina's hair.

"Hey! But thanks..." replied Christina while pushing his hand away.

Suddenly, Luke's instincts flared up, warning him of the incoming danger. As if time had slowed down, he saw the stinger of the scorpion Thalia electrocuted thrust forward, stabbing Christina who had barely managed to react, successfully avoiding it from being a deadly hit but not enough to actually avoid the full impact. As the stinger made it's way through Christina's leg, Luke's eyes widened and the grip on his bat tightened. He moved as fast as possible, hitting the scorpion's 'tail' and separating Christina form the monster.

Thalia, who was still on her knees, felt something break inside her as she saw the monster she killed... the monster she was supposed to kill, stab her little sister. Annabeth moved in Thalia's direction, helping her up and moving her away from the monster.

As they backed up, the monster slowly got back on it's legs, failing to move well but still dragging it's body closer to them, even if very slowly.

Luke looked at Christina's pained expression as she slowly bled out. He knew the stinger must be poisoned so he was panicking on the inside. He knew they didn't have enough ambrosia left to fully heal her, using all they had left might destroy the poison, but it wouldn't fully heal her pierced leg.

Annabeth looked at Luke with fear on her eyes. "What do we do?!" she asked desperately, it felt just like when Christina and her fought the dracaena, just like then Christina got wounded, maybe if she did a better job at throwing the javelin... maybe if she had stabbed the javelin deeper it would have died instead of being knocked out... maybe if she had...

While her mind was being filled with pained thoughts, Thalia found herself in the same state.

Luke, noticing they were most likely blaming themselves and panicking at the same time, grabbed Christina and poorly bandaged her wound as best as he could before placing her on his shoulders. "Let's run!" he said while looking at Annabeth and Thalia. "Annabeth, help Thalia move and I will carry Christina."