Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.

Piece of Darkness II - Gambit

Chapter Three

"It's hard to enjoy a practical joke when your whole life feels like one."

–Rick Riordan, 'Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian

The Hunters went to the Big House first, where Chiron greeted them on the porch. Then, with the speed that comes only with familiarity, they trooped off to the cabin area. The usually-vacant Artemis cabin was, of course, where they were to stay while at camp.

All this I registered only vaguely, however, because I was too busy freaking out at the side of the lake.

"Jesus Christ," I cursed.

(I have never gotten the hang of cursing in Greek terms. "Holy Zeus" just doesn't have the same oomph as "Jesus Christ".)

"How the hell are we supposed to fight against that? They aren't human," I went on, rubbing my brow.

"Neither am I," Kevin pointed out, in his customary, overly-reasonable tone. "Nor is anyone else at camp, apart from you."

I waved my hand wildly. "You know what I mean," I grumbled. "This is impossible. They're immortal, right? So that means some of them are centuries old. Can you imagine how much training you can have over, say, three hundred years? They probably make CIA agents look like playground bullies. Most people at camp have had three years of training, if that. Not to mention that they must be as tough as rusty nails from living in the outdoors."

"Who was it that was saying we'll think of something?" Kevin asked drily. "Anyway, how do you know we're the ones who have to come up the strategy?"

"Chiron told me."

"Ah," the son of Ares said flatly. His face dropped - probably he'd been hopefully hanging onto the idea that I'd gotten it wrong about our being the poor fools who had to beat the warrior nuns.

A heavy silence fell over the conversation like a smothering blanket as we contemplated our doom. I stared darkly into the lake water a few feet in front of me. My ever-cheerful mind produced the suggestion of jumping into the lake to end my misery, but I had a feeling that the naiads - who were peering up at Kevin and me with a wispy hint of interest in their eyes - would just throw me back out.

"Why don't we think it over for the afternoon?" Kevin proposed finally. "I have to get to my sword-fighting class, and you should get settled in, get your schedule and so on."

"Alright," I sighed. We parted there, and as I walked away, I tried to focus on the rather grim consolation that if we did fail, it probably wouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Following Kevin's advice, I headed down to the Hermes cabin, claimed a bed for myself and got my schedule from Anna. Upon inspecting it, I found that I didn't have a training session for another twenty minutes, so I decided to go find Nico.

He wasn't in any of the hiding-places which I knew about (the back of the arts and crafts building, the tree-enclosed corner at the edge of the woods, and that place near the weapons shed where no-one ever thought to look), so I resorted to going to the Hades cabin.

It was a pretty intimidating building, its imposing nature only a little lessened by familiarity. All the cabins had a powerful aura, but the Hades cabin's aura was stronger than most. The obsidian rock from which it was built had its own eerie, greenish-grey glow, and wreaths of misty darkness wrapped about corners of the cabin like incorporeal snakes. This time, I found the building more gut-chilling than usual, for the obsidian walls forcibly reminded me of Wilson's memory stone.

I shuddered as I remembered what he'd shown me. How many times, I wondered, did the son of Erebus re-live that memory, constantly forcing himself into a dark echo of an uncertain past?

With these cheerful ideas in my mind, I knocked on the door of the Hades cabin. Unsurprisingly, there was no response - even if Nico was there, he wasn't one to politely answer the door. Hell, it wasn't completely impossible for him to be asleep. Where most people had normal body clocks, children of the Underworld had leaky hourglasses.

After a pause just long enough to be considered in-keeping with good manners, I opened the door.

The inside was as discouraging as the outside, though in a different way. The cabin had three windows, all of which were firmly closed and curtained (and one of them was so dirty, from the outside it looked like part of the wall). It was a good deal smaller than the Hermes cabin, with only six beds - not one of which was occupied. It was not as insanely chaotic and untidy as my cabin, but it was pretty darn close. The only functional overhead light intermittently fizzled on and off, casting an uncomplimentary yellow glow over the room. It was not, to its credit, particularly smelly, but there was an almost palpable sense of grouchiness in the air, as though the occupant of the cabin had managed to infuse the place with the irritable air that attended him everywhere.

I gingerly stepped further into the room, being cautious, lest the paranoid son of Hades have planted deathly, skeleton-summoning snares. The demigod himself was not in sight. I waited a moment, in case he was lurking in a shadow, but I heard not a sound and sensed not a soul. Nico, it seemed, was simply not at camp.

I sighed, and tried not to feel too disappointed. If I was honest, I had been hoping that he'd help Kevin and I to scramble a strategy together, so it was a little frustrating that he wasn't there to bail us out.

I left the cabin, carefully closing the door behind me. Deciding not to worry about the capture-the-flag game until later, I headed for the lake to have my first lesson of the summer: canoeing.

Percy Jackson was a good friend of Nico's, as well as being his cousin on the godly side. I'd gotten to know him a little over the last year. My initial impression of him - which had comprised entirely of disbelief at the idea he was a valiant and outstanding hero who had saved the world from the evil Titan Kronos - had not been lessened over time. To be honest, I was becoming increasingly convinced that there was some mistake. This goofy guy, the hero of Olympus?

(I shouldn't talk, though. I was a geeky, introverted mortal who apparently had a big role to play in a coming clash between the gods and a bunch of ancient scary bad guys, which sounds even more unbelievable than the story about Percy.)

I got down to the lake a little early, and was greeted cheerfully by the son of Poseidon.

"What's up, Cyrus?" he said, giving me a manly hand-clasp. "I was hoping I'd see you here! You definitely need the training."

"Percy, you think everyone needs training," I said. "But it's good to see you! How's Annabeth?"

"She's good, she's good," Percy nodded, suddenly looking a little alarmed, like a rabbit in the headlights. I didn't ask what was wrong - I really wasn't in the mood for hearing about other peoples' woes.

"Are you still teaching sword-fighting?" I asked hopefully. Percy was a much better teacher than Clarisse - he didn't threaten to beat me up if I didn't do something right, for one. Those few sessions I'd had with Clarisse last summer were seared indelibly into my mind, and that sword-fight in front of camp was a traumatic experience from which I would never recover.

"I am!" he nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah, it should be good. Hopefully you'll make a little progress this summer."

I winced a little. My sword-fighting was still pretty bad - once the sword was in my hand, I tended less towards a structured system and more towards wildly hacking at anything that moved. It wasn't exactly the most efficient of fighting styles, though for some reason I was a little better when I was using a knife.

"Well, as long as I don't have to save the world in a sword-fight," I murmured.

By now, the rest of the canoeing class had arrived. The session kicked off, and so my summer training began.

It took less than five minutes for me to end up drenched and embarrassed.

Chiron officially announced the capture-the-flag game at dinner.

I had been harbouring a vague hope that Chiron would change his mind about the game - perhaps the Hunters wouldn't be able to stay for long enough to hold it, or maybe the fact that Mr. D was not present - strangely, he was nowhere to be seen at camp - would be grounds to delay the match. The universe is not so kind to me, though, and as the campers finished dinner, the centaur rose to his feet.

"As you have all no doubt noticed, the Hunters are staying at camp for a few days," he began. "I would like to welcome them, and express my hope that they will enjoy their stay."

He bowed his head towards the Hunters, who were, of course, at the normally-vacant Artemis table. They bowed their heads in reply. I eyed them carefully. They were quite an insular group, with most of them not talking to the campers, instead enjoying one another's company. It was a little difficult for me to look at them for too long, as their auras became blinding pretty fast, but one thing that struck me about them was the sheer confidence in their bearing.

Formalities completed, Chiron continued.

"As is traditional," he said, "we will hold a friendly," the centaur paused uncertainly for a brief moment, just long enough to show that previous games had been anything but friendly, "game of capture-the-flag. This will take place tomorrow night, after dinner. Both campers and Hunters should use tomorrow to prepare. Kevin Andrews and Cyrus Wright are chief strategists and will prepare the plan for the camp's team."

I heard more than one groan at this announcement. Chiron tactfully ignored the dissent, and sat down.

I exchanged mournful glances with Kevin, who was at the Ares table. Then, my gaze drifted over to the Athena table, and I accidentally met Zack Walker's eyes. I didn't look away right away, but waited to see how he'd react. As I expected, a sneer began to form on his lip, and his eyebrows raised in contempt.

I looked away again before I started punching things.

After everyone else had left the pavilion, Kevin and I held a council of war at the Hermes table.

"So, have you ever faced the Hunters before?" I asked, as Kevin sat down alongside me with an air of forlorn resignation.

"No," he replied, rubbing his eyes, as he always did before he started planning, "though I've heard stories. In one game, two children of the Big Three together - Percy Jackson and Thalia Grace - weren't even enough to beat them."

"And what is it about them?" I asked exasperatedly. "What do they have that makes them so much better?"

Kevin dug into one of the deep pockets of his many-pocketed army trousers. He withdrew a thick, compact notebook, and quickly flicked to a page of carefully-written notes.

"It seems like the environment plays a key role," he said thoughtfully. "They are hunters, after all, which means that they are very skilled in the forest, while almost all the campers are about as skilled as kangaroos."

I snorted as I imagined the demigods being magically turned into kangaroos. There were certainly some who would benefit from such a transformation.

"Another important factor is that they are in fights a lot more than us campers," Kevin went on, turning over a page. "Because they live out in the wild, they come upon a lot more monsters. Many campers, on the other hand, have never fought a monster, particularly any of those younger than thirteen or fourteen."

"Why's that?" I asked, curious.

"During the two big wars, huge numbers of monsters were killed, and they take a long time to reform," he answered. "Most of the monsters who normally hunt for half-bloods in the city were sent to Tartarus, which means that far fewer half-bloods have had to deal with attacks."

I nodded. What Kevin was saying sounded vaguely familiar - a memory of Chiron mentioning something about it rustled in a corner of my mind.

"Maybe if we could get the Hunters out into one of the more open areas of the forest," Kevin mused. "That would take away one of the main advantages."

"But they'd be expecting that," I pointed out. "They probably split up into small groups to avoid large numbers being caught in the open."

"Excellent point, Cyrus!" a cool voice said behind us suddenly, making me jump.

"Hi, Zack," Kevin said dully, not turning, as I whirled around with the speed of a ninja.

(Or the speed of a scaredy-cat. Whichever you prefer.)

Sure enough, the son of Athena had come back to the pavilion and was now standing behind us, wearing the usual contemptuous expression with which he always greeted our attempts at strategising.

"I suppose you've come to tell us that we suck and we're going to fail, Zack," I said flatly, turning my back to him. "Don't worry, I've been telling myself that all day."

"No," Zack said in an unauthentically cheerful tone, as he walked around to sit down across from us. "I came to help."

"This may come as a shock, Zack, but insulting people doesn't generally help them," I said caustically.

He sighed annoyingly, and paused annoyingly, before saying annoyingly, "Look, I know we dislike each other, but I don't want camp to lose this match, so I really do want to help."

I examined him for a moment. He had grown an inch or so in the past year, which meant that he was still considerably taller than me. This did not, as you can imagine, lessen his affected superiority. His skin was a little less pale and his frame had broadened. His grey gaze was as cold as ever, but his greyish-blue aura did not have the aggressive tremble which it usually took on when Zack spoke to me. I could only conclude that, much to my annoyance, he was actually telling the truth.

I met Kevin's eyes, and gave him a nod. He raised his eyebrows in surprise, but I shrugged just a little as if to say, what harm can it do?

"Okay," the son of Ares said to the son of Athena. "Have any ideas?"

Zack rested his chin on his hand and gazed at the table for a moment, deep in thought.

"We need to avoid any direct confrontation with the Hunters," he said finally, his tone of contempt easing away as he focussed on the problem at hand. "They're too formidable for us to take down in open battle. Even one-on-one fights are a bad idea."

"But then how do we stop them from getting to the flag?" Kevin interjected.

"That's the issue," Zack agreed. "The game has two principal problems: how to get the opponent's flag, and how to stop the opponent getting our own flag."

We all fell silent as we considered the challenge. For once, I sorely felt my inexperience. I'd never even taken part in a capture-the-flag match, so I had only a general idea of what was involved. Furthermore, I had no real experience of combat, so any advice I could contribute was purely theoretical.

Still, being unacquainted with something can make it easier to think outside of the box.

"What if we put the flag in a really obscure place?" I suggested. "Like in a tree in a far corner of the forest?"

Kevin shook his head. "It's a rule that the flag has to be openly displayed," he said.

"Oh."

After another minute's thought, I proposed, "What if we leave almost all the team at the flag to defend it, and send one or two of our stealthiest half-bloods to get the Hunters' flag?"

"Tried that, I believe," Zack said. "Annabeth told me that they did that a few years ago, but the Hunters took down the two runners almost immediately. After a while the defense team got bored, and most of them went off to see what had happened. In a moment, a Hunter slipped past them."

"Great," I muttered, burying my face in my hands. "This is impossible. What do we have to do, kill them?"

There was another long pause. Then, I sensed a sudden change of mood. I looked up, and saw that Kevin had gained that air of satisfaction which always came over him when he had a good idea.

"We can't kill them," Kevin said cheerfully. "But we can trick them."

Zack's gaze focussed on him. "How?"

"We have to openly display the flag, right?" he said, leaning forwards eagerly. "But no-one ever said which flag."

Zack and I stared at him blankly at him for a moment, before comprehension began to blossom.

"You mean…" Zack said slowly.

"We have two flags," Kevin said excitedly. "Between the Athena people and the Hecate cabin, we can make one that looks identical to the real thing, right? And then we put that up in the usual spot, at Zeus' Fist. We have the other flag nearby, but we get the Hecate guys to veil it so the Hunters won't see it."

"And then the Hunters will take a dummy flag?" I said.

"Yes," the son of Ares nodded. "They won't realise it's the wrong one until they get back to their side of the river. By then, it'll be too late, because one of our guys will have made it to their flag."

"Meaning the Hunters won't have time to go back to Zeus' Fist to find our real flag," Zack finished. "That's a great idea, Kevin. I'm impressed."

"Isn't this kind of bending the rules, though?" I said uncertainly.

Zack laughed. "Chiron is the one in charge, and I don't think he'll care. He's been hoping for camp to win for decades."

We sat there for another while, fleshing out our hopefully winning plan. As we discussed it, I began to be a little suspicious of Zack. He was being very emphatic in terms of talking about "we" and "us" and "our plan". I could understand him being eager to beat the Hunters - after all, one of the reasons he disliked me was that he saw me as a blight on the honour of camp - but this focus on "working together" and "being a team" was very far from the supercilious son of Athena who I knew.

Finally, after considering his strange emphasis on camaraderie for ten minutes or more, it hit me.

"You don't really care this much about camp winning, do you?" I said, as the conversation began to wind down. "You're just interested in getting the glory of winning, and getting to take the credit for it."

Zack's gaze turned icy-cold, and he glared at me with an anger that did nothing except confirm my suspicions.

"So?" he said coldly. "Maybe so, mortal. But then you wouldn't care about glory, would you? After all, you will never be a hero."

He stood up slowly. I thought he was going to say something else, but instead he just turned and stalked away.

I looked at Kevin, expecting him to be pleased that I'd outed Zack, but to my surprise, the son of Ares just looked pained.

"Why did you have to say that, Cyrus?" he said quietly, putting his head in his hands.

'What?" I said, confused. "He's obviously just trying to take the credit. That's not fair! I was right to point it out!"

"I don't know…" Kevin murmured, rubbing his brow. "He was helping, and for once he wasn't fighting with us. Maybe it would have been better just to let him take the credit."

I stared. I knew Kevin didn't like confrontation, but this made no sense to me.

"How could I leave it?" I asked. "If I see something, I have to say it."

"Maybe sometimes you're better off not saying it," he replied, meeting my eyes with a disappointed gaze. "Maybe sometimes it's better to be tactful, to let things slide."

"Are you saying I'm not tactful?"

"Yes," Kevin said immediately. "To be honest, you're the least tactful person I know."

He paused, looking at his notes again, before shrugging.

"Let's leave it at that, I guess," he muttered, rising.

Kevin didn't mention his observations again as we walked back to the cabins, but I didn't stop thinking about them, even when I was falling asleep.