𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐁𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐲.

Capture the flag

There was a buzz in the air as it came time for capture the flag.

There were only thirteen hunters including Bianca Di Angelo and around the same amount of campers.

"Out of the campers, there was Charles Beckendorf and a couple other Hephaestus guys, a few from the Ares cabin, the Stoll brothers, Celia and her siblings, Nico and the few from Aphrodite cabin who were there. It wasn't common for many Aphrodite campers to participate, but they really hated the hunters.

"I'll show love is worthless." Lilia muttered pulling her helmet over her head, pushing any thought of ruining out her brain.

That left Percy and Thalia.

"I'll take offence, you take defence." She offered.

"Oh well I was kind of thinking, with your shield and everything, you'd be better defence?" He hesitated giving her a wary look.

"Well I was thinking it'd make better offence, besides you have a lot of practice in defence." He frowned slightly not sure if she was mocking him.

"Yeah no problem." His jaw was tight and he had a defeated look in his eyes.

Lilia walked over giving him a sympathetic smile. Her hand reached up to his shoulder and fixed his armour strap.

Before Percy could even process the action, she patted his chest and walked off toward the Apollo kids. And Nico came running towards him.

"Percy, this is awesome!" His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big.

Nico lifted his sword with effort. "Do we get to kill the other team?"

"Well... no."

"But the Hunters are immortal, right?"

"That's only if they don't fall in battle. Besides-"

"It would be awesome if we just, like, resurected as soon as we were killed, so we-"

"Nico, this is serious. Real swords. These can hurt." Nico looked slightly disappointed and Percy realised he'd just sounded like a mother.

"Hey, its cool. us follow the team. Stay out of Zoe's way, we'll have a blast."

Chiron's hoof thundered on the pavilion floor.

"Heroes!" he called. "You know the rules! The creek is the boundary line. Blue team Camp Half-Blood shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis red team shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!"

"Sweet," Nico whispered next to me. "What kind of magic items? Do I get one?"

Percy was about to break it to him that he didn't, when Thalia said, "Blue team! Follow me!"

They cheered and followed, Percy had to run to catch up, but tripped on someone's shield.

"So much for co-captain." He muttered rolling his eyes.

The campers set their flag at the top of Zeus's Fist. It's this cluster of boulders in the middle of the west woods that, if you look at it just the right way, looks like a huge fist sticking out of the ground. If you look at it from any other side, it looks like a pile of enormous deer droppings, but Chiron wouldn't let us call the place the Poop Pile, especially after it had been named for Zeus, who doesn't have much of a sense of humor.

Anyway, it was a good place to set the flag. The top boulder was twenty feet tall and really hard to climb, so the flag was clearly visible, like the rules said it had to be, and it didn't matter that the guards weren't allowed to stand within ten yards of it.