Prank War

Disclaimer: PERCY JACKSON IS MINE!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! And so are Luke, and the Stoll brothers. NYAHA!

And the great thing is, you can't sue me because you don't know who I am! *cackles insanely*

Summary: Next instalment of the Servant of Hades one-shots. Cara, after being moved to the Hades cabin, gets sick of the Hermes Cabin's little pranks and enlists the help of the Zeus, Apollo and Poseidon cabins to get them back in style.

…

The shrieking of the whole Aphrodite cabin woke me up.

Seriously, the least they could do was put a sound-proofing spell on that thing – it's ridiculous how loud they scream.

So, being careful not to wake up my boss's kids (I got moved to the Hades cabin after he decided to claim me, regardless of the fact that I'm not his daughter) I crept out of my bunk and snuck outside.

"What's all that noise?"

I jumped nearly ten feet in the air (yes, that is literal) and turned to face my cabin and the Poseidon cabin.

"Jesus!" I gasped, glaring at Percy, "Do you have to do that?"

I wasn't the only one who noticed the Hermes Cabin laughing their heads off.

The entire Aphrodite cabin was spewing sludge-green bubbles and was covered in toilet paper.

"Right." I walked over to the nearest cabin, coincidentally the Zeus one, and hit my head on the door.

"What?" Mitchell Heeley, half asleep and, I was rather embarrassed to note, only wearing his boxers, opened the door.

"Sorry about that," I replied cheerily, "But I was wondering if your cabin would like to participate in a little revenge against the Hermes cabin?"

"What've they done –?" Mitchell stared in horror at the Aphrodite cabin, the occupants of whom had basically woken the entire camp with their screaming, "Holy… count us in."

"Good," I nodded, for once offering him my hand to shake in allegiance, "tomorrow at 3 then? By the beach?"

"Deal," the door closed and I turned to the other campers.

"What about you guys," I asked, "Think you can meet us there?"

"Easy," Percy replied; his cabin and the Hades cabin both nodded.

"Count us in," the Apollo cabin stepped forward. I grinned at them all.

"See you all there," I said.

… 3pm, long island beach, camp Half-Blood…

We sat on the beach, Nico and the other Hades kids having sent hellhounds to guard for us against a certain god of tricksters and his cabin, and were discussing how to get back at the Hermes cabin.

"We could try water-pistols?" a little girl from the Poseidon cabin suggested.

"It's a bit too obvious," Mitchell replied, "Nice idea though,"

"It's given me an idea," I grinned, "How many of you could get hold of some bird's custard and a couple of large buckets each?"

The group stared at me.

"Cora, you're insane." Mitchell was laughing, "If you think they'll fall for that trick –"

"Hecate was nice enough to say that if I ever needed a hand with something," I reminded him, my eyes glittering as they usually did when I thought up an evil plan, "I could always ask her. And Meniloe's not bad either."

"No," Nico said, "Totally and categorically no."

"What?" I asked, "All we need to do is ask her to lend us a poltergeist for a couple of days, give him the ready-made custard – let's colour it pink!"

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Percy grinned, "but if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, it just might work,"

I grinned at him; "Let's dig out those old paintball guns."

…The day of the prank…

We timed out set-up perfectly; the Apollo Cabin had pieced together some really bad music and poetry, which they were setting up in the Hermes Cabin (basically, a few wireless loudspeakers hidden under all the beds), the Poseidon cabin had paintball guns loaded with blue paint ammunition, the Zeus kids had yellow paint and us in the Hades cabin were in charge of managing the poltergeist and custard (Hecate had placed an invisibility charm on it that could be activated by a click).

All this was very well, but we had also added a hyper Mrs O'Leary to the mix; Percy had told her to keep the Hermes kids busy while we set up and cleared out, and the results of that were audible throughout the whole camp.

In 20 minutes, everything was set up; the custard buckets were hanging from the ceiling and looked like they were about to fall, which were going to be activated when everyone had left, the poltergeist was hiding under one of the beds (Nico and I had told him that if he tried anything other that what we'd told him to do we'd get him the worst torture in the fields of punishment – which is actually possible because I'm the one who deals with most of the paperwork).

Everyone else crept through the door before I set the trip wire, which I did when outside. When that was sorted out I clicked my fingers and smiled as all the evidence of our plan was hidden.

We scarpered back to the Aphrodite cabin, which had been cleaned and was conveniently opposite the Hermes one (they'd given us their permission) and waited with video cameras and paintball guns (I kitted up the other Hades kids with black-ammunition paintball guns and handed out orange grenades to the Apollo kids before picking up my special black grenade belts).

…10 minutes later…

Mrs O'Leary had done her job well; the Hermes kids just wanted to get back to their cabin and relax for a bit, so they opened the door –

And were promptly attacked by clashing music, bad poetry, cold custard and a very hyper poltergeist.

"Now!"

We all charged out of the Aphrodite cabin, hollering battle cries at the tops of our lungs (for example, the Hades battle cry; "MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!" but only when it suits us) and firing multi-coloured paintballs at them (we'd set up a score system – the cabin who hit the most people, as shown by the paint colours, would win).

Naturally, the Hermes cabin had last-minute retaliation pranks, like one of the old automatons from Capture the Flag, so they set them off and hid in the cabin.

Not, unfortunately, good enough when some of us have paint grenades; the Apollo cabin and I, in true battle fashion, unpinned several grenades and threw them through the windows. The cabin promptly exploded in a flash of orange-and-black paint.

Annabeth and Grover had volunteered to hold cameras for us, so they, naturally saw the whole thing unfolding from their vantage positions in nearby trees, whilst laughing quietly at the most insane payback prank in the history of camp half-blood.

When the automaton had shut down and we'd run out of ammo, we tallied up scores, decided it was impossible to score points because everyone in the Hermes Cabin was officially covered in all kinds of paint and legged it to our classes (or, in my case, going to the big house to learn pinochle from Chiron) before the Hermes cabin could do anything back.

Revenge, my friends, is very sweet.

…at dinner…

Everyone was laughing and joking at the Hermes cabin's expense (mainly because we'd shown them all the videos), heck – even Dionysus was laughing (how that happened I'll never know because, seriously, I swear that guy never laughs at anything we do).

I was chatting with Nico, one of my personally more favoured ones of Hades' children, when Connor and Travis came over.

"Yes?" I asked, grinning at them.

"We just thought we'd let you know –" Travis began.

"– it's on," Connor finished, "officially."

I nodded, still grinning, "You guys might like to know that your hair's still got custard in it."

…

TADA!!!!! Finished! I have to say I liked writing this one; it was rather fun to come up with random prank ideas.

And for those of you who would like to know this useless piece of information – the custard idea came from mine and my sister's "custard campaign" which basically means that we're trying to get our mum to let us eat the custard. Don't ask.

Also, for those of you who have alerted my story but not reviewed, could you please review? I like feedback! Thank you!

Click the green button! You know you want to!