In the following few weeks, Kirei took part in many activities each day. Each activity had varying levels of success when he did them.
The first activity was learning Ancient Greek in the mornings. While Kirei was an extraordinarily fast learner, he only managed to keep pace with the other students. It was probably the activity he was worst at as he was not Dyslexic, or rather hard-wired for Ancient Greek, as most of the other campers were.
Then came the physical activities. Kirei excelled in most of the physical categories. He failed to excel in canoeing, whereas he easily conquered archery, foot racing, and wrestling. Kirei expected this to be the result, as he had intense training every day since he was eleven years old, and that was before he was de-aged when he was unwillingly transported to the world he was in. Fourteen years of his life he had served as an executor for the holy church.
An executor was a weapon of the church that specialized in killing mages and dead apostles, Kirei was a first-rate executor among other members of the church, before temporarily halting his duties due to the holy grail war. Though he had still managed to keep up his intense training regiment for the past four years even after being transported and de-aged.
As an executor, he had killed a few dozen mages and come back from many missions as the sole survivor. So he was no stranger to foes beyond common sense. Paired with his super Bajiquan, his personal style of the Chinese martial art which he created to take the shortest possible route of attack without any initial movent. These skills combined allowed him to defeat a normal person in one hit, if not killing them.
He was highly trained and most prepared to take on almost anything that came his way, as mages were highly unpredictable and powerful foes. Except when it came to sword fighting, where he simply was not as capable as the other campers.
Kirei thought the reason behind his struggle to learn the way of the sword was due to his martial arts training. Bajiquan was originally designed to be used with the spear, so it was only natural that he could not even keep pace when sword fights. Kirei lost in sword combat every time as a result of Luke proving his expertise in sword combat.
He kept up his personal, more difficult training at the camp partially in secret. Well, as secretive as he could, the camp was large enough that he was spotted too many times to call it a secret. There was simply nowhere he could hide. Many of the other campers were excited to play capture the flag, an event which would be coming up relatively soon.
Three weeks into his daily life at camp, he was spotted by Annabeth while training. She made no attempt to approach him, instead opting to write something down in her journal and walking away.
Kirei began hearing footsteps nearby, he knew exactly where Annabeth was even though he could not see her. This was because he had spent many years mastering his martial art, he also mastered the ability of 'hearing a move'. Where he knew what actions his opponent was making even if he had no sight of the opponent.
He turned around directly to Annabeth's location, only to see that there was nothing there. He began approaching the location that he had suspected her to be, only to begin hearing footsteps slowly backing away.
"Reveal yourself," Kirei said.
The footsteps stopped backing away, and in the blink of an eye, Annabeth shimmered out of invisibility. She was holding a Yankees hat up above her head in her right hand.
"So you figured out I was here? Impressive, I give praise where it is due." Annabeth said, hiding the nervousness in her voice. "I just wanted to see your training regiment up close and without binoculars you see." She said.
"Very well, your curiousity is only natural." Kirei said, walking back to his original position and continuing his training like before.
His training consisted of hundreds of repetitions, and strength training of a scale Annabeth would have never expected from someone outside of camp.
After a half-hour of those, which he did very quickly, Kirei headed towards the archery range.
What is he doing, he does not have a bow. Annabeth thought to herself.
Kirei pulled out a red hilt from his jacket and pointed it at the target momentarily. He currently stood around 20 meters away from the targets. He placed the hilt back in his jacket. Within a third of a second, Kirei had thrown four blades at the targets with a single throw of his right hand. Each of the four targets that were hit had a blade directly on the bullseye. He was an expert at wielding the black keys, often considered to be one of the best wielders of them back in the church. The blades had the same red hilt and were each just under a meter long.
"What are those?" Annabeth asked, her excitement getting ahead of her. Kirei looked at her, a bit unsure about how to respond.
"These… Are Black Keys. These are a gift from my father." Kirei responded, technically not lying. The four he had thrown in particular were the final four black keys from his ten key set that he had received on his twelfth birthday as a gift from Risei Kotomine. He went and picked the four black keys he had thrown off of their respective bullseyes. When the keys touched his hand they reverted back to hilts, which he promptly placed into his black jacket.
Kirei silently walked away from Annabeth until he was back at cabin eleven. It was currently seven in the morning. He proceeded with the rest of the day like usual, with the exception of a few new unwarranted stares from Annabeth.
After five weeks at camp, Chiron arrived back at camp. Kirei had expected Chiron to confront him about the situation. But the confrontation never came.
The day after Chiron arrived, so did another demigod. Conveniently, they arrived a few days away from when all the campers would be participating in capture the flag. Kirei was envious at the convenience of the arrival. Even he was slightly excited for the game of capture the flag, although it was for less than moral reasons. Luckily, he was able to see who the demigod was when he showed up to cabin eleven.
"Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven." Said Annabeth. Percy looked around, most of the cabin was sizing him up or looking like they wanted to steal something of his. However, upon closer inspection…
It was him.
Percy could have spotted those dead eyes of his out of a where's Waldo Book. It was Kirei Kotomine from Yancy, the one who punched the beast, Mrs. Dodds, like a truck.
Kirei met Percy's gaze, making him anxiously look away.
He could hear faint whispers, 'He is the one who slew the minotaur?' was the main one that he could hear. Though the only thing on his mind were those empty eyes, he could not describe them before but now he was able to see it clearly. It felt like Kirei's eyes stared into his soul and grabbed hold of his greatest weaknesses, a very unsettling feeling.
Three days passed, between which rumors of Percy and toilet water were heard non-stop from nearly every person that Kirei had seen. As for him, he had been purposely avoiding Percy as he did not want to be another victim of Percy Jackson's toilet water attack rampage. As described by a daughter of Ares named Clarisse.
However, today was able to force his hand in a confrontation with Percy. Everyone had gathered for the capture the flag event today after dinner, it was also his first time climbing the 'wall of doom' which he did in the afternoon. Luckily Kirei was more skilled than most in the art of free-climbing, he likened climbing the wall to walking down the street.
Once everyone's plate was cleared, a conch shell was sounded. Everyone stood up at their respective table except for those carrying the two respective flags, the flags were brought into the center pavilion.
Kirei was announced to be on Athena's team along with everyone else in Hermes and the Apollo cabins under the grey flag with the owl and the olive tree on it. With the rest of the cabins being their enemies with the red flag with the boar's head on it.
"Heroes!" Yelled Chiron from up on the marble stage. "You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!" He waved an arm causing the tables to suddenly be covered in weaponry and armor.
The only thing Kirei wore was the helmet with the blue plume on it. It just so happened to be required to be worn, so that his enemies and allies knew who was who. The red team had red plumes on their helmets. He approached the team leader, Annabeth.
"I will bring back the flag." Kirei simply stated. Annabeth had a look of shock inside her eyes momentarily, before her grey eyes settled back to a look of calm.
"Be quick about it 'Mr. One Man Army'." She made sure to say, sarcasm was dripping from her words.
Kirei stood at the creek, waiting for the signal of the conch horn. Sure enough, in the distance, the distinct sound of the horn could be heard.
It was his time.
Kirei leaped across the creek with ease, his allies stared in shock after seeing him jump the couple dozen feet of water.
Immediately on his landing, he began running into the woods at breakneck speeds. Despite the uneven woodland, he managed to easily pull off 60kph without breaking a sweat.
He began passing the enemy if the red plumes on their heads were anything to go by. Unfortunately for the red team, none of them were able to attack him at his speed. Kirei could not attack either, a single one of his attacks would likely cause permanent damage. He did not know for sure, however, he was still unwilling to take that gamble considering that he had killed at least a single magus with each and every move that he had for the super Bajiquan technique.
They are demigods. They should be able to take at least a single hit in a nonlethal area. Kirei thought.
The enemy team's flag came into view, alongside the two unfortunate demigods guarding the flag.
Before they could even react to his approach, Kirei had already swept the half-blood on the right of the flag off his feet. There was a violent thud against the ground a fraction of a second later, which prompted the other one to raise his spear in his direction.
However, he was too slow to react as Kirei initiated the least lethal super Bajiquan technique he could think of, Sixth Grand Opening-Elbow Upthrust.
He grabbed the boy's arm with his left hand as they tried aiming the spear at him, and then thrust his right elbow into their gut. The armor protecting his stomach gave way with a sickening crunch. The boy coughed up saliva and recoiled in pain momentarily before Kirei used the arm he was holding onto so he could throw the boy's incapacitated body nearly a dozen feet away.
Kirei could hear the boy he had swept off his feet groaning and struggling to get up. He groaned and tried to reach for his sword, only to receive a stomp on the arm. He did not realize it consciously, but he had a slight grin across his face.
He ran over to the flag and took it out of the ground. He began taking it back to the team, going back to running once more. Although, the flag seemed to slow him down quite a bit. He only was able to manage a speed of around 50kph.
Kirei met the rest of his team halfway, there were about twenty other campers being led by Luke into the enemy territory, all of which paused after he got within twenty feet of him.
"Seriously?" Exclaimed one of the campers in his group.
Above his head was a dim purple glow, looking up at it displayed a skull that had horns like a bull on it. Kirei had seen it in the Ancient Greek textbooks before.
A hologram of the mark of Hades floated there above his head for a couple of seconds before shimmering away. Luke walked forward from the group of campers.
"Kirei, I sure did not expect you to be a son of Hades." Said Luke with a chuckle, he approached Kirei and took the flag from his hands. "You did not show any clues for having that kind of power, other than that otherworldly strength of yours." Luke patted Kirei on the back before walking to the large group of campers, now with the flag in hand.
"I mean, with a face like yours I would not have been surprised if you were a daughter of Aphrodite," Luke said, causing the formerly silent group of campers to burst out laughing. From the distance, he waved at Kirei and cupped his hands in front of his mouth. "Be sure to get your sleeping bag, I'm not sure you will be able to stay in our cabin tonight now that you are claimed."
Luke was right, he probably would not be able to sleep in the same cabin he did as the night before. However, there definitely was no Hades cabin to speak of in the camp. Kirei had checked at least half a dozen times, with no luck whatsoever.
Kirei ran into the forest in a different direction from the main group, when he had heard a low growl nearby. It came from the direction near the stream to his right, in fact without his trained ears he probably would not have heard the noise whatsoever.
He jumped across the stream, it was less narrow than the part he had jumped earlier. Percy was upstream and jumping at him was this foul wolflike creature. Annabeth was nearby but seemed to be frozen in shock.
The five weeks of learning about Ancient Greek mythology at camp was not for nothing, after all, Kirei knew at a glance that the creature was a hellhound. Call it a hunch, but it looked about ready to maim and kill whoever it was about to pounce on top of.
Kirei pulled a single black key out of his jacket and threw it at the skull of the creature.
The blade almost seemed like a bullet to Annabeth as it pierced through the skull of the hellhound. She recognized the meter-long blade from two weeks ago, it was one of Kirei's black keys. In the blink of an eye, four bronze arrows pierced the beast's skull alongside the shimmering blade.
Kirei was running up the coast by the blue team's base towards Percy and Annabeth. Chiron was also a few dozen meters behind Kirei with a bronze bow in hand.
Not half a minute later around ten campers were by Percy's side to watch as his wounds healed while in the water and a hologram portraying the trident floated above his head. He was a son of Poseidon.
Of course, as a daughter of Athena, she had suspected this to be the case. But she decided to feign shock, give him his moment and all that jazz. From the corner of her eye, she watched as Kirei picked up the Black Key. It had been two weeks and she still could not understand how the weapon worked no matter how much she thought about it.
Come to think of it, Annabeth had never seen Kirei smile. The only expression she had ever seen on the boy's face was an empty look of indifference, no matter the activity.
Luke was running towards the group, he arrived within a few seconds and was out of breath, standing in place for a couple of seconds to take a deep breath.
"Kirei… Kotomine… Son of Hades… Also… We captured the flag." Luke yelled in between breaths, he must have sprinted a long distance to get there based on how tired he looked.
Almost everyone, including Annabeth, turned their heads towards Kirei. Chiron averted his gaze. She turned to Percy and then to Kirei.
Two children of the big three gods claimed on the same day at nearly the same time. Not to mention I did not expect Kirei to be chosen as the son of the big three in the slightest. Annabeth paused, Wait couldn't have Kirei summoned the hellhound on Percy? No, he killed the hellhound as it attacked Percy. He isn't an idiot who would kill his own hitman while on the job. Annabeth's thoughts came to a halt as she glanced over to Chiron.
Instantly something clicked inside her mind, Chiron did not seem surprised at all, in fact, he seemed to be avoiding looking at Kirei with his gaze focused onto Percy like his eyes were glued to him. Chiron must have known and hidden the knowledge about Kirei's father for the boy's sake.
Chapter 3 is completed! Feel free to leave a review and tell me your thoughts about the chapter, In the next chapter this ragtag bunch will begin their departure to Los Angeles!