Piper's eyes widened as the campers, led by Percy, emerged from the undergrowth.
"What happened?"
"What d'you think?" Percy said dryly. "We lost."
Piper's jaw dropped as she counted the number of campers. "That's half of you missing. How—"
"Thalia." Percy said curtly.
Malcolm, all business, shouldered his way to the front. "Everyone back to your stations! We don't have much time before they mount an assault."
The campers redeployed to their defensive posts.
"What exactly happened?" Piper asked.
"Thalia blasted the creek with lightning as we were charging through it." Percy shook his head. "Should've seen it coming."
"Should've shot her down first." Malcolm pounded the vine dome in frustration. "I told you to aim for her!" he shouted at an Apollo archer.
"They all look the same!" the archer protested. "How am I supposed to know?"
Katie Gardner's head snapped up. "The vines are twitching."
Malcolm turned to her. "An animal? Or…?"
"It's coming from all around us." Jake Mason stared at the readings from his array of sensors. "Even…even above us." Both him and Malcolm looked up.
"Can you vine them up?" Piper asked Katie.
"Not all," Katie shook her head. "There's like twenty of them."
"Do all you can." Malcolm, who'd pulled off his helmet in an attempt to cool himself, pulled it back on. "Everyone stand ready!"
"They outnumber us two to one," Piper muttered.
"I'm worth three of them by myself," Percy said. "Maybe four."
"So is Thalia," Piper said dryly.
The Hephaestus traps activated as the hunters closed in. Some were enveloped by weighted nets. Others fell into pits of barbed wire. A few of them triggered a trip wire.
"Oh, that's it." Jake Mason grinned.
A dozen hornet nests fell from above, smashing onto the ground with a sound like broken jars. The hunters screamed as they were enveloped by clouds of angry buzzing wasps.
"Be careful," Katie Gardner teased from the other side of the vine dome. "Those things are poisonous."
Despite the situation some of the campers cracked up laughing.
"Let's see you zap that, Thalia!" Percy yelled.
Then an explosion rocked the ground, silencing the campers' cheers.
"What was—" A second explosion erupted before Piper could finish her sentence. Everyone spun around as a big hole was blasted into the wall of the dome, flames licking the edges of the singed vines.
"Oh, shit." Percy drew his sword.
"Explosive arrows!" Jake Mason yelled.
More explosion blasted into the dome from every side. Percy and the others dived out of the way as an arrow blew a hole directly above their heads, bits of charred vine falling from the gap. Arrows began to fly in from the gaps, cutting down campers and forcing others to scramble for cover.
"Hold the barrier!" Malcolm ordered.
"Can't!" Katie and the Demeter campers worked frantically, but in the time it took them to repair one hole the hunters made another five. It was hopeless.
Malcolm swore in frustration.
"Surrender," Thalia yelled from outside. "Or we'll bury you in vines."
Percy and Piper shared a glance.
"No thanks," Piper cracked her neck. "Why don't you come in and get us?"
"You asked for it." More explosions filled the air. The vine dome began to sag.
"Are you going to let us be flattened by vines?" Malcolm asked Katie.
"No," Katie was pouring sweat, her voice was strained with effort. "But…we need to wait."
"Wait for what?" Percy winced as another explosion sent blackened vines flying past his head.
"The vines," Katie grunted. "I need them destroyed."
"Looks pretty destroyed to me." The sagging dome looked ready to collapse.
"Not…yet…" Another explosion struck. The vine dome started to cave in with a massive snapping, tearing sound. Katie took a deep breath. "Now! Everyone get down!" The Demeter campers pushed as one towards Percy's left.
The vine dome lurched outwards to one side like a massive smoking net as it collapsed at last, pinning a few unsuspecting hunters who'd been shooting at it to the ground.
"ATTACK!" Malcolm knew they had to strike first before the hunters recovered and pinned them down with their arrows.
Outnumbered but defiant, the campers charged out.
Thalia seemed to have vanished in the chaos and the hunters seemed unsure of how to react. Some of them carried on shooting with their bows. Others advanced with knives drawn. They easily had enough numbers to crush the remaining campers, but the lack of organisation allowed Camp Half-Blood to close before they were destroyed.
"Get the flag!" Lanesra yelled, knowing they had lost the opportunity for a quick dismantling of Camp Half-Blood's defence.
The two sides clashed in a melee of flashing bronze and silver. The hunters outnumbered the campers almost two to one, but they were spread out around the perimeter and could not bring most of their numbers to bear against the campers' concentrated assault. Several hunters went down in the first few seconds. The remaining hunters didn't dare open fire for fear of hitting their own comrades in the melee, then both sides suddenly realised that Camp Half-Blood's flag was now wide open.
"Shit!" Percy spun around, realisation dawning in his eyes.
"Back to the flag!" Piper yelled.
The campers' brief exultation turned to fear. They started back towards Zeus's Fist, but a shower of arrows forced them to take cover.
"The flag's in the killzone," Malcolm shouted. "If we go in there we're all dead."
"You want to just let them take it?" Percy shouted back.
"Phalanx formation!" Malcolm yelled. "Everyone get together."
The remaining campers huddled together with their shields raised, but there were only six of them now against a dozen hunters who were slowly advancing under arrow fire.
"They're almost to the flag!" Piper cried.
"We need to stop those arrows or we're all gonna die." Malcolm swore as an arrow clipped his helmet. "Now."
"I can create some smoke," Lou Ellen, one of the surviving campers, offered.
"I've got tomatoes," Katie Gardner added. "What?" she said when the others gave her odd looks. "They're vine plants. They're tangly."
"On three," Percy propped his shield against his head to free his hands. He plunged his sword to the hilt in the ground.
"What're you gonna do?" Piper asked.
"Gonna shake things up."
"Three!" Malcolm yelled.
While smoke billowed from the ground under the hunters' feet, obscuring their aim and making them cough. Before they could react tomato vines sprouted, winding up their legs, sprouting green tomatoes that swelled and ripened in seconds. The hunters yelped at the winding, tightening sensation and fumbled for their knives.
Then the ground began to shake violently. All the hunters fell to their knees. Lanesra, who'd climbed Zeus's Fist and was just reaching for the flag, tumbled off the cluster of rocks and landed on the ground with a thump.
A powerful jet of water erupted right below the Second Lieutenant, tossing her six metres into the air with a yelp. Hunters scrambled backwards on their butts as the geyser widened, spraying water in all directions.
"Let's go!" Piper led the charge to save their flag.
The six campers hit the centre of the hunters' line, swords flashing. Percy and Piper were unstoppable, carving their way through the soaking, tomato-laden girls.
But for all their superior skill the demigods were still heavily outnumbered. Lou Ellen collapsed as a blunt-tipped arrow hit the side of her head from point-blank range. Katie was disarmed and pinned to a tree trunk.
Percy fought with superhuman speed, disarming three hunters as they leaped at him from all sides. He back-kicked one girl in the stomach, punched another flat and knocked the last one out with the flat of his blade.
"Percy!" Malcolm yelled.
The son of Poseidon spun around. To his horror, he realised that a few hunters had scaled Zeus's Fist and cut the flag down. The silver-clad girls jumped the six-metre drop without hesitation, landing effortlessly on the ground and sprinting away.
"Stop them!" Malcolm yelled.
Percy and Piper raced after them.
To their left, a section of the collapsed vine dome exploded upwards in a blast of electricity. Thalia emerged from the newly-blasted hole in the vines. Her hood had come off at last and there were bits of green stalks in her bright pink hair. She looked livid.
"Oh, no." Piper's eyes widened as she caught sight of the daughter of Zeus.
Percy merely grunted and kept on running, as if Thalia was no more than a hurdle on a track.
Thalia took in the scene and moved to block their path. Percy raised his sword and met her at full speed.
What happened next was so fast that even Piper's ADHD brain almost couldn't process it.
Percy ducked right and went left towards Thalia's spear side. Thalia read the feint and jabbed with her spear. Percy swept the spear aside with Riptide and punched his sword hilt into Thalia's face. The daughter of Zeus fell flat and didn't get up.
"Holy shit," Piper muttered.
But the four hunters with the flag were now ten metres clear and getting further. Percy had no hope of catching them. To make matters worse, an arrow whizzed past Piper's head, a clear warning shot.
"Surrender!" Piper turned to see two hunters levelling bows at her. She sighed in defeat and dropped her sword. Behind her Percy screamed and hacked at the ground in frustration. For a single, heart-aching moment, the game seemed lost.
Then, just because the game hadn't had enough twists already, the dirt erupted in front of Piper's feet. A dozen skeletons in ragged clothes emerged from the ground. Piper broke into a smile.
The hunters opened fire. The arrows whistled harmlessly through the skeletons' empty eye sockets and ribcages. The skeletons charged, pumelling the girls with their bony fists, elbows and knees. The two hunters screamed as they were beaten to the ground in a rain of bones.
"Get the flag!" Piper tried to tell the skeletons, but, obviously lacking ears, they didn't listen. Piper turned towards the fleeing remnant of the hunters, trying one last time to stop them.
She needn't have bothered. Shadows condensed in front of the sprinting girls. Nico di Angelo materialised in front of them, looking as menacing as he'd ever been. The Italian's face curled into smile as he spotted the four hunters.
"I've been looking forward to this." He rolled his shoulders and raised his sword.
The first hunter went down with two throwing knives in her left thigh. The second tried to dart around him and went flying as Nico swept her legs out from under her with his sword. Blood splashed into the air as the remaining two girls leaped at him from both sides with knives outstretched.
Nico attacked without hesitation, dancing to the outside of one girl and opening her leg to the bone with a long slash. He spun around to strike the second girl, using the longer length of his sword to his advantage and forcing her to parry. Nico rolled under her counterstrike and slashed her calves as he came up kneeling. The girl collapsed in agony and Nico straightened, marching towards the fallen hunter who clutched the flag in one hand, trying to crawl away. The hunter heard him coming and pulled out her bow. Nico sliced it in half and stamped on her wrist with a steel-clad boot. The hunter screamed as her forearm cracked under his weight.
"Nico! Hey!" Piper ran up to him. "Stop!" she said breathlessly. "What do you think you're doing?"
"Winning." he said simply. He stooped and plucked the flag from the ground.
"Those were serious injuries you inflicted," Piper said. "You can't do that!"
"Don't care." Nico turned to her, his face blank, but the malevolence in his eyes made Piper recoil. "They took Bianca away from me."
"Uhhh." Thalia groaned as she opened her eyes. Every part of her body seemed to ache, including her face. Especially her face. She sat up. "What…happened?"
Percy, seeing that she was awake, offered her a hand. "Sorry I knocked you out."
"That's what happened?" Thalia got to her feet, slightly wobbly. "Unbelievable."
"Congratulations." Nico told her. "You've finally masterminded a Camp Half-Blood win."
Thalia frowned. "You didn't get our flag."
"We'll go get it now." Percy said.
"No need." Nico waved him off. "I got it." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ridiculously tiny square of silver that he shook out to reveal the hunters' silver banner. Percy laughed as Nico flapped the flag in the air like a piece of laundry. Campers and hunters stared in a mixture of surprise and disbelief as the flag shimmered and changed into the black skull design of Hades.
For the first time in fifty-six games, Camp Half-Blood had won.
Well, that's done. The game's won at last. The story isn't over, though. As always, thanks for the views!