Ch.7

Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble of the pavilion.

"Heroes!" he announced. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire

forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!"

He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment: helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.

"Whoa," Percy said. "We're really supposed to use these?"

Luke looked at him as if he were crazy. "Unless you want to get skewered by your friends in cabin five. Here—Chiron thought these would fit. You'll be on border patrol."

I laughed at him as his shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the middle. It probably weighed about a million pounds to him. I could have snowboarded on it fine, but I didn't seriously expected him to run fast. Our helmet, like all the helmets on Athena's side, had a blue horsehair

plume on top. Ares and their allies had red plumes. I of course looked for an axe, I didn't find one but with me increasing my skill through blood echoes I could handle a sword pretty well already.

Annabeth yelled, "Blue team, forward!"

We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off toward the north.

I followed Percy as he ran to catch up with Annabeth trying not to trip over his equipment. "Hey."

She kept marching.

"So what's the plan?" Percy asked. "Got any magic items you can loan me?"

Her hand drifted toward her pocket, as if she were afraid he'd stolen something.

"Just watch Clarisse's spear," she said. "You don't want that thing touching you. Otherwise,

don't worry. We'll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given you your job?"

"Border patrol, whatever that means."

"It's easy. Stand by the creek with your brother, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me. Athena always has a plan."

She pushed ahead, leaving us in the dust.

"Okay," he mumbled. "Glad you wanted me on your team."

It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in and out of view.

Annabeth stationed us next to a little creek that gurgled over some rocks, I knew we were bait but this wasn't going down the way she thought it would. Then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.Standing there alone, with our big blue-feathered helmet, I felt like an idiot. Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me like a deer, leaped through the

creek, and disappeared into enemy territory.

Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up even my spine, a low canine growl, somewhere close by. Percy must have heard it as heraised his shield; I could feel the bloodlust of something was stalking us, I knew it was the hell hound but this thing sounded as bad as the boss monster I'd just killed in Yharnam.

Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.

On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors came yelling and

screaming out of the dark.

"Cream the punks!" someone I assumed to be Clarisse screamed, based of the books description of her.

Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a five-foot-long

spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had only the standard-issue

bronze swords—not that that made me feel any better.

They charged across the stream. Percy managed to sidestep the first kid's swing, but these guys were not as stupid the Minotaur.

They surrounded us, and Clarisse thrust at Percy with her spear. His shield deflected the point, but I knew the electricity must have hurt him. Deciding it was time to show everyone what we had I yelled at Percy,

"Dropped that shitty shield and get in the creek with me."

As he came towards me the water started to speed up around us. It was slow at first I didn't want to scare them off and they not follow us in.

"The biggest and ugliest seems to have an issue with you Purse, I'll leave her to you don't worry about these small fry." I said with a smirk.

"Do you think I can take her?" Percy asked.

"Yeah man just remember that sword fighting class you told me you got." I replied while looking at the rest of Clarisse's pissed friends. They had started yelling insults at me after I'd called them small fries. Holding my hand up, I gave them the universal sign of "come at me bro" and that seemed to make them more mad as they immediately charged at me. That's when the water started truly speeding up under my control, every step they took looked like they were walking through... well... water.

Dodging the first strike at me I slammed the flat of my blade into said attackers head. After increasing my strength through the doll I could hit hard, so hard in fact they went down like a sack of bricks. With one of the four already down I only had three left, glancing over at Percy I saw he was doing well as of right now. Deciding to take down the last three quick so I could help if I was needed I charged, getting to them faster than they could me I struck. Making a yanking motion towards myself pulled the one's feet closest to me out from under them, as they were falling my foot struck out and knocked them out in one kick. The last two were even easier as I made a pulling motion with my fist and a wave struck them in back, punching one in the face and slapping the other with my sword I had easily finished them. Using the water to push them all on shore, I looked back over to Percy to see how he was doing against Clarisse.

~ Percy Pov~

I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.

Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.

"I'm about to give you a haircut," Clarisse said. Thats when I heard Adrian tell me to drop the shield and get into the water.

I managed to get into the creek. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.

"Oh, wow," Clarisse said. "I'm scared of this guy. Really scared."

"The flag is that way," I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it didn't come out that way.

"Yeah," she said. "But see, we don't care about the flag. We care about a guy

who made our cabin look stupid."

"You do that without my help," I told them. It probably wasn't the smartest thing to say.

She came at me. I backed up toward the shore, trying to raise my sword, but Clarisse

was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I hadn't been wearing an armored

breastplate, I would've been shish-ke-babbed. As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. Seeing my own blood made me dizzy—warm and cold at the same time.

"No maiming," I managed to say.

But then something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I'd just had a bag of my mom's double-espresso jelly beans. Clarisse kept coming though, the point

of her spear crackling with energy. As soon as she thrust, I caught the shaft between my forearm and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.

"Ah!" she screamed. "You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!"

She probably would've said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backward out of the creek.

Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing toward the boundary line with the red team's banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple of Hermes guys covering his retreat, and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.

"A trick!" she shouted. "It was a trick."

They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the creek as Luke ran

across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers. The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders. Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.

The game was over. We'd won.

I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth's voice, right next to me in the creek, said,

"Not bad, you two."

I looked, but she wasn't there.

"Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?" she asked Adrian. The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.

I felt myself getting angry. I wasn't even fazed by the fact that she'd just been invisible. "You

set me up, us up," I said. "You put us here because you knew Clarisse would come after us, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all figured out.

Annabeth shrugged. "I told you. Athena always, always has a plan."

"A plan to get me pulverized."

"I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but ..." She shrugged. "You didn't need

help."

~Adrian/Mc Pov~

I decided to cut in at that point,

"Why lie? You were watching us the whole time. Purely to see what we are made of. Maybe even find out who our godly parent is."

"So what? You guys clearly could handle your self" Annabeth responded.

Just as I was about to say something back a howl ripped through the forest.

The campers' cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient Greek, which realized was "Stand ready! My bow!"

Annabeth drew her sword.

There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.

It was looking straight at Percy and I.

Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, "Run!"

She tried to step in front of us, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her—an enormous

shadow with teeth—and just before it hit me, I felt a tig in my gut and a wave reached up and pulled the hellhound into the creek, there was a cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after the other. From the hounds neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster

fell dead in the water.

Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.

"Di immortales!" Annabeth said. "That's a hellhound from the Fields of Punishment. They don't ... they're not supposed to ..."

"Someone summoned it," Chiron said. "Someone inside the camp."

Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.

Clarisse yelled, "It's all Percy's fault! Percy summoned it!"

"Be quiet, child," Chiron told her.

We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the ground until it

disappeared.

That's when I noticed everyone looking above our heads.

By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out the hologram

of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a trident.

"Your father," Annabeth murmured. "This is really not good."

"It is determined," Chiron announced.

All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they didn't look happy

about it.

"My father?" Percy asked, completely bewildered.

"Poseidon," said Chiron. "Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus and Adrian Jackson, Sons of the Sea God."

_____________________________________________

I decided to write this chap as I knew it wouldn't be hard. I really only had to change a few things from the book, to be honest from here on out things will start to get hard for me as there will be big changes and I won't be able to pull from the book so easily. The next chap will also have a big change in the way BB works for the Mc. It won't impact the story to much but should make it to where he doesn't beat BB in just a month or two.

Should the Mc leave the camp at 14 for our Roman friends?

Yes"

No"