A/N: The chapter may look a little different, now that I can actually indent it and stuff to make it look like a book.
Chapter Six:
Percy woke up with that lingering feeling like: Something exciting was going to happen today. What was it, again? And then remembered, and got that fluttering feeling in the chest. It was finally Friday: Capture the flag. He went through the list of cabins he had arranged an alliance with the night before. Athena, Hephaestus and Hades. He tried to get Clarisse to make an alliance, but she just grinned evilly and said she wanted to make tonight's capture the flag match "A little more interesting," and rejected his offer.
Percy didn't like the sound of that. Ares had their strength in numbers for one thing, and the armory of a cabin. Among other things. Athena cabin had called for a strategy meeting after breakfast, as always.
He swung his legs over the edge of his messy bed and got ready for the morning. He stood up fully, and looked up at Sam, who was quietly snoring. Poor kid…must be tired from swimming, Percy thought. He was about to shake his shoulder, but checked outside. Nobody was lined up outside yet. Nobody was even outside. The grass sparkled from the light dew, it had a light orange hue from the rising sun. He decided to leave Sam alone, he knew personally how it felt to be woken up early.
Percy wandered about the cabin, collecting the pieces of his armor that were strewn about the floor and under the bed. He sat down on his bed and took to rearranging the pieces, checking for dents, and polishing it until he could see his own reflection. He checked outside again, a few people here and there stumbled out of their cabins, still slightly dazed in their partially-awake states.
Percy stood again,
"Sam," He whispered. Sam's identical sea-green eyes slowly cracked open. He stretched, and scratched his head, "Time to get up, kid.
Sam mumbled something, and then flipped over, "Five more minutes." Morning laziness must've run in the family.
"C'mon, Sam…we don't want to miss breakfast." Sam made no attempt at moving a muscle.
Percy thought of another bargaining chip, "I've got a present for you."
"Yeah, right."
"Two, actually." Percy corrected. Sam rolled back over, and was now facing Percy.
"Did you notice that your sword was missing?" Percy grinned.
"Oh, yeah…Where is it?" Sam asked, and sat up.
"You're going to have to get out of bed if you want to see it." Percy coaxed. Sam shook his head, and plopped back into bed.
Percy sighed, "Want me to propose the other present?"
"What?" Sam grumbled, his face buried in his pillow.
"I don't know…Maybe I got someone to make you…" Percy cringed, and rubbed the back of his neck in fake pain, "I'm not sure if I should tell you." Sam sat up again, his eyes narrowed,
"What?"
"Get out of bed and I'll tell you." Sam narrowed his eyes some more.
"Fine." Percy stood back so Sam could jump down. Sam folded his arms over his Batman T-shirt, "This better be good."
"I got someone to make you a set of Batarangs." Percy said simply, shrugged, and turned around. He grinned when he heard Sam's reaction.
He gasped, and made some sort of squalling noise that a cat would make, "Really?"
Percy turned back around, "Yes, really. Why would I lie about something like that?" Sam made a few more strange noises, and then ran off to get dressed. Percy shrugged,
"I guess he's happy." He walked outside.
After breakfast, Percy gave Sam his sword back and promised he'd get his Batarangs soon. They walked over to the Athena cabin, which was where the cabins were supposed to meet up and plan their strategies. They walked through the open door, and found the campers from the cabins sitting around a whiteboard, which had been made into a makeshift table. They were the last to arrive
"You took your time! We've got a war to plan." Jake grumbled sarcastically. There were murmurs of agreement here and there.
"Yeah, yeah." Percy raised his arms in defense, taking a seat at the table. Sam took a seat beside him. Everyone sat around the table in awkward silence, waiting for Annabeth to start. Well, they usually looked up at her during the strategy meetings. Instead, she was fixed to looking at a few papers in front of her. After a few more moments of this, Malcolm, her half-brother, cleared his throat.
"Well…um," He unraveled one of the maps; people leaned forward to look at it. It was, of course, of the forest. There were various notes scribbled here and there. Mostly near important places like vantage and weak points, "I- I mean...Annabeth, has everything planned out already. On the uh, map at least. We still need to set up traps and stuff." Percy looked around and took a quick count. His cabin and the Hade's cabin, that only consisted of Nico, didn't offer up many people. The Athena and Hephaestus cabin offered up the average amount of campers.
"Well we definitely don't have our strength in numbers," Percy said simply.
"Numbers don't win battles." Malcolm shot back.
Percy shrugged, "Fair enough."
"From what Nico can conjure up, and the gadgets Hephaestus has, we'll be fine for the most part. We have a shortage of people, but we shouldn't let that stop us. Jake, would you like to show us some of the traps you and your cabin built?"
"Gladly," Jake pulled out a small leather messenger bag from under the whiteboard. He unfastened the bag, and pulled out a thin wire with two strange boxes on each end, "Tripwire. If we set up a few of these on each flank point, anyone within twenty feet will be stuck with a sticky substance."
Malcolm nodded of approval. Jake carefully dug through the bag some more, and pulled out a small jar, "Greek water. Not as good as the fire, but it'll have to do. This stuff, if we toss some into the creek, will make it dense, and gel-like. Anyone who steps in this will have their legs frozen." There were oo's and aa's.
Malcolm nodded again, "Anything else?"
"One more thing," He dug through his bag. He pulled out a handful of small, spiked, metal balls the size of baseballs, "If you throw one of these, it'll fire a round of paint-balls at anyone within range. Doesn't seem like much, but it hurts, believe me."
"Thanks, Jake." Malcolm said.
"We'll need to set these traps up fast, since we won't get any time in advance to. And be careful where you walk." Jake added.
"Now, we need to pick a captain and other assignments." Annabeth suddenly came back to the world and raised her hand,
"I'll be the captain." She volunteered.
"Um…okay. Let's figure out the offensive and defensive positions." People here and there volunteered for the two positions, and then the smaller, more intricate jobs. Percy got Sam to go on offense with him.
"Okay…this is good. We're going to have a great capture the flag match." Malcolm said, and the cabins cheered.
After the meeting, the cabins split up to make traps, practice, and ready their armor. Percy and Sam headed down to the arena.
"Ever fenced or anything like that?" Percy asked his younger sibling.
"Does playing pirate count?" Sam asked.
"Close enough…This is sort of like this only a little more," Percy clicked his pen, "Dangerous." The pen magically grew into its sword form, "Now try chopping that dummy's head off." Sam stalked towards the dummy, swung the sword like a baseball bat, and lodged his sword in the stuffing.
"Not bad, not bad. But you need to keep the sword close for protection," Percy kept the blade out in front of him until he got close to the dummy, "And then you go in for the jab once you're close." He stabbed the air off to the side, and then helped pull the sword out of the wooden neck. "Try it again." Sam followed through perfectly, and the head went flying off the dummy,
"Nice!" Sam grinned, "Now obviously, you can't do that in the arena, but you can still disarm someone." He instructed Sam on that, and then left him to practice the move on an armed dummy…
"Percy! Percy! Get up!"
A/N: I know I said I would post the Capture the Flag Match in this one, but for one, my two-week time limit I give a chapter was nearing an end. I thought a chapter for now would suffice while I worked extra-hard to make the match epic and amazing. Please don't hate on me, I'd appreciate it. I felt bad for cutting it off, so I added a cliffhanger to "Make things interesting."