Author's Note: So, don't hold your breath or anything. Feel free to comment. Let me know what you think! Even if it's just "Liked it" or "You could do better" or "I hate your guts, you gravy-sucking pig!". I want your feedback!
Brandon
I finished up at the Lava Rock Wall and started to make my way to the arena. I was able to add three more near-death experiences to my running total of seventeen. I like to count my near-death experiences because it keeps me in reality. The fact that I could die at any given time is on my mind constantly.
I spend all my summer called Camp Half-Blood where I learn to fight monsters and survive. You see, my mom is Athena, goddess of wisdom. And my dad is mortal and lives in Portland, Oregon. I'm what you might call a demigod, half human, half Greek god. Me and other kids like me come to this place to train.
The first day of hand-to-hand combat class was unlike any other. For one thing, our teacher was unlike any other. He was a Marine. His name was Jon Luke but everybody at camp just called him "Big Luke" because he was six-four and two-hundred, forty pounds of all out muscle. Big Luke was probably in his early twenties. He was the only one at camp that used a firearm instead of a sword or a knife. Everywhere he went he had his custom built 1911 strapped to his right thigh in a hard plastic holster. The handgun had a flat black slide and a stainless steel frame with dark wood grips. He wore desert style combat boots with the bottoms of a pair of digital desert uniform pants tucked into the tops. He wore an orange camp T-shirt that was tucked into the pants. He had a military style haircut under a patrol cap that matched his pants.
He was standing in the middle of the arena with his feet shoulder width apart and his hands grasped behind his back. The whole class was lined up, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to get started. He spent the first, what felt like thirty minutes, of class just standing there staring at us, probably sizing us up. He looked my direction more than a couple of times.
"Today, we start the long process of teaching you ladies how to defend yourselves when you are stripped of your weapon in combat," He spoke in a thick Cajun accent. I guess it should be noted that not all of us were girls, but he didn't seem to care. "For the duration of the course you will train on each other and my automatons, if you break one of my automatons you will get both a cherry flavored lolly pop and a ten mile run. You won't need any weapons of any kind. Now to show you one of the first things you will learn," he pointed straight at me and motioned for me come to over. He held out his hand and I shook it. His grip nearly broke my hand. "What's your name?"
"Brandon Collins, son of Athena," I answered.
"Where you from?" he asked
"Portland, Oregon," I answered.
"Well, all right then," He squinted slightly as if looking into my soul. Then he turned to the class and spoke. "What we will be learning today is how to take a punch," He turned back to me and ever so blatantly said, "Punch me in the face".
I thought that was a rather odd request. So, I balled my right fist and took my best swing. Bad idea. Big Luke stepped into my punch, grabbing my arm at the wrist and pushing it upward. Meanwhile, he was stepping behind my heels; putting his tree trunk of an arm around my chest and slamming me on my back. He lent me a hand and I stood up.
He demonstrated the maneuver again but this time explaining everything he did as he slammed me on my back again.
"See, nothing to it! Now everyone will practice on an automaton."
The moment he said it, a small army of about thirty-five to forty human-like automatons marched into the arena. I coughed twice and got to my feet. Each was the size of a average man, about six feet tall. They were real basic with Terminator like features with red eyes and metallic plates for bone structure. The army broke formation and stood in front of a student in line, one even walked up to me.
"Soldiers, introduce yourselves!" the Marine shouted and all of the robots extended his hand. No human moved for a second, and then I reached for my automaton's hand and shook it. Again, the grip nearly crippled me. The automaton nodded his head slightly without saying a word.
We all began practicing the throw on the robots. I couldn't see why he thought we would break them. They were so robust that even after being thrown on the ground dozens of times, they never received even a scratch. At the end of the hour, we shook the automaton's hands and went our separate ways. All of us except me.
"Brandon, stay here a moment would you?" Did I have a choice? Probably not. I stayed back and talked to Big Luke. "So with this Percy Jackson showing up and Luke Castellan's betrayal, Chiron sees war in the future. That being said he knows that I have extensive combat experience and a lot of connections that could potentially help us out a lot in this war," He paused for a moment, questioning his next words. "Look I'm just going to say it, he wants me to put together a Strike Team. We are to go on super secret operations, I mean seriously on the DL here. For the kind of ops he's got for me, I know it takes at least three people. I need a Engineer, someone who can think something up to solve a problem under stress. You being a son of Athena and seeing how you managed the robot, I think you would be a good fit. That's if you can be trusted and you think your up to the task."
This took me off guard a bit.
"Can I think about it?" I replied. I had so many more questions and he might have expected an answer right then and there.
"What do you need to know?" he asked back, as if reading my mind.
"Well for starters, unlike you, I don't have any combat experience, nor do I have any training besides what I get at camp-"
"When do we get to the question?" he interrupted me.
"I was getting to that. Where would I'd get trained? I'm just a kid from Oregon."
"I would train you, both in and out of class. I'm a little rusty myself so it would be good for me too. I want to give you something," he stepped over to a table in one corner of the arena and picked up two of four books and brought them over. He handed them to me and I looked at the titles, one was the Art of War by Sun Tzu and a copy of the Army Sapper handbook. "I want you to read those. Learn everything you can from them."
"Hang on, you said that these operations require three people. Who's the third?" I asked.
"He should be here any second now. I need a sniper, someone who can see and shoot a long ways away. This particular kid I've been watching from a far, outside the archery range. He's pretty good with a bow, I'd like to see him with my M40."
"I thought you only had the pistol?"
"How many rednecks you know that only have one gun?" he replied with a smile and with that long southern drawl of his.
Big Luke was real arrogant. I never liked that much. He also struck me as a person that always kept to his word, if he said he would do something, he was going to do it.
"Oh, here he comes now," I turned to see a short kid who looked about sixteen.
He was probably five foot, six inches and around one-hundred forty pounds, Asian in ethnicity. He had this agitated look on his face and he was walking towards us like he had a bone to pick with Big Luke. His eyes never came my way.
"What do you think your problem is?" he confronted Big Luke. If this kid was planning on fighting Big Luke, I would know, he'd be in for a ride.
"How do you figure?" replied Big Luke calmly.
"You were watching me at the archery range last week, through a rifle scope!" Apparently, this was a problem with the little guy. I couldn't blame him, I would want to know when someone had a gun trained on me too.
"I don't have a pair of binoculars with that kind of range," calmly replied Big Luke. "Good eye by the way. I'd like to say that I was pretty well camouflaged and at a range of two-hundred yards you could see me, just like that," he snapped his fingers just before he said "just like that". "Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Jon Luke but everyone just calls me Big Luke," he extended his hand.
"Name's David, everybody calls me David. I've seen you around here and there," he grabbed his hand and nearly fell over from Big Luke's grip. David seemed to have calmed down a bit. "Now, why were you watching me?"
"I was seeing how good of a shot you were. And by judging how you did at the archery range, I'd say your pretty good."
"No, the best," David corrected. Great, more arrogance.
"Either way, I want to see how good you are with a real weapon," he walked back over to his table. I hadn't noticed it before but there was an object under a blanket underneath the table. Big Luke knelt down on one knee and pulled off the cloth to reveal a bolt action rifle. The rifle had a pistol grip style sniper stock with both adjustable cheek piece and recoil pad. On the forend was a black bi-pod. The stock was a flat dark green (Olive Drab?). The barrel was plenty thicker than a standard hunting barrel. Up top, he had a full-length sniper scope. Big Luke picked up the rifle and a silencer that were also under the blanket. He walked back over.
"This arena is about seventy-five to one-hundred yards long. I want you to put three rounds in that target," he pointed to a large berm made from a pile of red dirt in one corner of the arena. In front of the berm was a post with a two foot square board nailed to it. On the board was a target. "Think you can do it? Right now the scope is sighted in for about three times that distance so you will need to aim down a few mil-dots, but for someone who is 'The Best' it should be no problem."
"Won't people here the shot?" asked David.
"That's what the silencer is for, and judging by the way the arena is designed, the sound will dissipate rather quickly," I explained. "One of the girls in my cabin is really into architecture. The rest of us never hear the end of it."
David shrugged and took the rifle. He worked the bolt once to see if it was loaded, one round spilled out of the action. "You keep this thing loaded?"
"In the words on John Wayne, 'a gun that ain't loaded and cocked ain't good for nothin'," a direct quote from the movie True Grit. David picked up the spilled round and slipped it back in the gun.
We took our position on the opposite side of the target and David took aim. We were prone on the ground facing the target, David in the middle, Big Luke on the left, I was on the right. I saw David's back rise and fall as he was breathing. In through the nose, out from the mouth. He took one more breath and as he exhaled, he slowly pulled the trigger. The gun went off and even with the silencer, the shot was extremely loud. Yet I had no ringing in my ears afterward. None of us had any kind of hearing protection on.
"Low and left," relayed David "Two dots low and one dot left."
"So, adjust your sight picture," Instructed Big Luke.
David worked the bolt and by doing so, loaded another round into the chamber. He took aim again, started breathing slow again, pulled the trigger again. The same bang rang from the M40, different point of impact. I could tell by the initial punch of the paper when the round made contact. This time closer to the center, but it was really hard to tell from where I was.
"Dead center," relayed David.
"Do it again," ordered Big Luke.
For a third time, David fired the rifle. However, this time, the paper never moved. I had thought he missed.
"Dead center, same exact spot," said David.
"No way. Let me see that rifle," exclaimed Big Luke.
Big Luke took the rifle and aimed down the scope. Smoke was still flowing out of the barrel as he held it still.
"Well, the dirt around the target is undisturbed. I'm still not convinced, though," Big Luke stood up and opened the bolt. Letting the casing spill out of the chamber and set the rifle back down, action open. He began walking down to the target when David and I stood up and ran up behind him.
All three of us peered at the dirt directly behind the target board. Two salad bowel sized craters lay in the dirt. One was slightly bigger as if it was struck twice.
"Well, the available evidence would suggest that I hit that in the same exact spot," David concluded.
"I guess so. I got a question for you," said Big Luke.
"What question?" asked David.
"You want a job? It doesn't pay but it might save all of our lives as we know them."
"What would I be doing?" so many questions, not enough answers.
"You know this Percy Jackson character? Well, with him being the son of the Sea God and all, Chiron is expecting war. Since I'm the only one that's really been in a full out war, he's gotten me a list of tasks that he needs accomplished. I figure I need a small team for most of them."
"What kind of tasks?"
"Luke Castellan has his army spread out in little hollers around the country. Our job is to find and take them out. That and whatever else he has for us," explained Big Luke.
"Would we be killing demigods?" David asked.
I never really thought of having to face another demigod. Demigods don't die like monsters do. It's much, much more terrifying and heart breaking.
"For the most part it will be monsters. We may run into a few merc's along the way, along with those who have turned. Your going to have to start preparing yourselves for killing another human being. It won't be easy and it's a really hard thing to get used to," answered Big Luke. He handed David the other two books from his table, another copy of the Art of War by Sun Tzu and a book about being a sniper.
"What was it like in the Marines? What's your story?" I asked Big Luke.
I didn't really know the big guy, I had my first impressions and what I had heard but I didn't know what he was all about as a person. I didn't even know who his godly parent was.
"Maybe I'll tell you guys someday. It isn't happy and I'm still waiting for a happy ending," he replied.
"Like a Hero's Death?" Everyone at camp let that cling to the back of their minds, how they were going to die. The most feared was a Hero's Death, going out fighting. Dieing in violence was never good for anybody.
"I hope not. But if that's how it's going to go down, I don't want any unfinished business before I go," he replied.
On that happy note, the dinner bell rang and the new found team headed to the dining pavilion.