Pola
Wow, thanks for the anticlimax, Ryan.
Not that I really mind. At least now I get to take the reins and tell everyone how awesome I was being while you were standing around next to your flag.
See, some people like to overcomplicate capture the flag, but most of the time, the teams just charge each other and duke it out. This time was only different because our odds were two to one. I had serious doubts that the five-minute version of Roman combat training would do us any good, but our formation was pretty solid. We marched in sequence, with me in the middle of fifteen soldiers carting swords or spears and shields. It was pretty cool, actually. Not that I'd ever tell Ryan that.
Our objective was pretty simple. Get the flag, huddle around whoever kept a grip on it, and make it as far as the river. In practice, it wasn't that neat.
Thanks to all the time someone spent sitting around and talking, we barely made it a couple hundred feet before we ran straight into the main force. A couple of guys peeled off past us, but with all the archers we left behind, I wasn't worried so much about them.
About the twenty-five guys in front of us with Clarisse and Lamer II (I wondered where she kept getting those electric spears) at their head…yeah. A little more pressing. They were pretty disorganized, but that didn't matter as much as you'd think. Most of them were looking at us like we'd dropped off the moon. Big sis glared at us, and I could tell she recognized the formation.
"You can't organize a solid phalanx with just fifteen people." She said simply.
"Not a phalanx." I said. "Manipular, but without the skirmishing bit." I mean, we had the 'javelins' to do that with, but no backups. Our boys and girls would be running away with nothing but armor. Not so great.
"That's stupid." Clarisse shook her head.
"You're stupid." I said, and chucked what was basically a tomahawk at them. Not my best line, but it got the point across.
Let me take a moment to tell you about what I was wearing. When I go into a fight, I don't pick a set of weapons. I take all of them. I had knives, stones, and slingshots up my sleeves, axes and swords strapped to my waist (held together by a ghetto belt that doubled as a chain), plus a bow, a bigger axe, and a spear on my back.
Okay, yeah, it was super hard to move in, but there's nothing I hate more than going into a fight unarmed. Plus it wasn't like I needed armor with all of the weaponry shot-blocking like it was. At best, I just had to pack some sturdy pants.
The guy I hit with my tomahawk took the blunt side to the face and went down. Everyone took that as an order to charge, and the whole place basically devolved into a brawl. Luckily, my guys had the sense to keep formation, but there was no way I could help out a Manipular group with the gear I was carting. So I got myself out of dodge. Most of the other side went for the biggest threat (I guess they didn't think it was me, the punks), leaving me one-on-three outside a big cluster of violence.
I drew a sword and slipped a dagger from my left sleeve, dropping into a fencing stance. You know that move Obi-Wan pulled in Episode III, the stupid-looking pose where he drops his main sword-hand back behind his head and puts his exposed fist in front? This was like that, but I knew instinctively that I was doing it properly. Namely, I actually had a weapon in both hands.
The idea is to parry an attack quickly with the dagger and thrust with the sword when I had my attacker off guard. Great for duels. I never tried it against three guys at once, but then, there's a first time for everything. The first to charge was Sherman, one of my half-brothers. He had an axe.
It wasn't like I had a lot of time to compose a poem about how the wind ruffled the plumes of his helmet, okay? I stepped a little to the side and knocked the axe out of his hand, but he came in too close for a follow-up, so I just punched him in the face. He went sprawling, and Malcolm, Athena cabin's new replacement counselor, took the opportunity to try and knock me in the ribs from the right side with what was either a club or a mace.
Well, I had another big ol' knife up my right sleeve, so I just dropped my arm and let the weapon rebound off of my little surprise. It stung, but it made a pretty good gauntlet. I tossed the knife I actually had in my hand at the third guy, whose name I was pretty sure was Michelle.
(Ryan tells me it was probably Michel, like the French name. I don't really care.)
Michelle had to duck and ruin his flanking maneuver, which gave me the opportunity to step back and swipe the air above Malcolm's head. He went low, and I grabbed a rock I had pinned to my belt and gave him a solid whack with it. He practically ran right into the thing; it was hilarious.
I chucked the rock at Michelle, giving it wings. It bounced off his kneecap and he hit the dirt. One quick pommel strike later, and he was out. It's probably a good thing I had to kneel a bit in order to do that, because Lamer II almost gave me a haircut. I could feel the electricity swirling above me, trying to find a contact point to shock me with.
With all the junk I was carrying, I couldn't exactly tumble, so I more stumbled forward. I felt a boot connect solidly with my rump, and I landed face-first on the forest floor. I rolled to the side, reaching back to grab my bow. I came up with an arrow nocked, and I meant to hit Clarisse with it, but I saw another archer off in the distance making bullseyes at me, so I let loose and snapped her shaft but good. I heard her shout something that I bet she thought was mean or something, and I dropped my bow. Clarisse was closing way too fast to justify mounting another ranged attack, and I'd dropped my sword when she kicked me, so I pulled my chain belt. About a dozen weapons clattered to the dirt, and I swung it in an arc to ward her off the attack. She wasn't impressed. All she had to do was tap the chain with the tip of her spear, and I got blow back by the shock. I dropped the chain, but my new position of my back (again) gave me a neat vantage point to see the rest of the fight with.
Imagine my surprise when I saw that we were winning. Our miniature formation had only lost a couple of guys, but they had turned a defense to all sides and were just strolling right on through, beating down anyone who tried to stop them two at a time. I just had to keep Clarisse occupied.
I reached for the big axe (heh, big-axe) on my back, but it shocked me when I gripped its metal hilt. Well that sucked. Half my armory had metal grips. That just left…
I could feel Nemesis laughing at me. That left me in a spear-fight with Clarisse.
I dropped everything I could (including my traitorous arm-knife, which was now giving me a neat dose of lightning) and rolled back, into a standing position. I drew the spear and threw another rock to distract her. It didn't really work.
I weighed my options. On the one hand, my brain was practically exploding with cool ways to use a spear. On the other, my opponent had way more pure experience, which I figured put us at an even level. I'd fought Big Sis before, but I never won, much less when we were using the same weapon. That said…I did have an advantage this time. We weren't in the training ring anymore. Clarisse was good, but she trained to kill, not to K.O. And she was so far above me that I really had no choice but to pull every last resort I had.
In short, she had to hold back and I didn't. I hoped that would be enough.
Gripping my spear in both hands, sizing her up. She had a shield, which would make getting hits through a pain, but I had more leverage and more reach. Which was a pretty hefty advantage, since the whole point of using a spear was to be able to hit someone from a bigger distance than if you used a sword. Clarisse could pinch me from the range of a broadsword, maybe a hand and a half.
We circled each other, and I kept on her left side, where the shield was. For a few long minutes, we were at a complete impasse. I'd move at her head or legs, she'd adjust her shield and lunge, I'd backpedal, and we repeated. Problem was, I'm not an endurance machine. I'd get tired way before her.
Eventually, we spun to the point that I saw the original battlefield behind her. It was empty, and my formation was long gone. The creek, the point where a team had to carry the flag over to win, wasn't far past that point. If I could keep Clarisse on her toes…
I guess she thought it was suddenly too quiet, because her head turned so quick I was sure she'd snap her own neck. I ran toward her while she was distracted, and my face met shield. Okay, maybe she wasn't as distracted as I thought.
I lost my hold on my spear, but I didn't drop. It didn't make much difference, though. Lamer II was heading straight for my chest. It probably wouldn't kill me, but it'd definitely take me out of the fight.
That was when something really weird happened.
Everything around me slowed down. Everything is already stuck in the Matrix when adrenaline hits you, but this was ridiculous. The issue was, I had no control over myself. All I could do was watch and feel as my hands lashed out. Unlike everything else, they were moving so fast that they looked to be at regular speed.
For just a split second, something crossed my mind, the same instinct that hits when I 'learn' how to use a weapon. But before I could even figure out what the Hades it was, the thought faded.
My feet pivoted, leaning me to the right. That would have been enough to send Lamer II sailing right past me, but my left hand reached out and caught it just below the tip. Before it lost any momentum, my other hand shaped itself into a solid palm and smacked the spear dead center, shattering it like a twig.
My right elbow followed the rest of my arm, focusing what felt like my entire body weight into the point, and it hit Clarisse so hard that she straight backflipped away from me.
The bad news? I'm pretty sure I broke my entire arm from the force.
Both of us stood there in the quiet for a looong time, staring at each other. I was coming off my adrenaline high, and let me tell you, a broken elbow hurts. Bad. Clarisse massaged her broken nose (yeah, like that was a fair trade) and stared at the splinters formerly known as Maimer II.
"What in Hades is it with my spears getting broken all the time?" She asked numbly.
"Maybe you should give the normal ones a shot." I joked, but I was in so much pain that it was more like a whimper.
We heard a whistle blowing, signaling that my team had won. I should have been happy, but I was scared out of my mind. What was up with my new ability to snap magic spears in half? Not that it wasn't badass, but it hadn't felt like me. It was more like someone else had taken me over and pulled some Judo moves. And I hated feeling like I wasn't in charge of myself.
A blurry form came out of the woods and walked up to me. I could barely make out his face, but his staff was more distinctive. Mike something. I'd seen him talking to Rachel earlier during lunch. "Fight's over." I told him.
He shook his head. "I have not, and never will participate in this game as a fighter."
He whispered something, and my head felt three times its normal size.
(Shut up, Ryan)
The last words I heard out of him before I ate dirt were: "That would be unfair."
