After the meeting at the Senate House, I decided to put a big picture of Octavian on my wall. To Shoot at. I shot at it five times, each, as a son of Apollo is expected to be able to do, ripped through the last one, so I ended up with four less arrows by dinner time.
Everyone at the table was depressed, with the answer to why being obvious, like Jack and I, everyone at the Fifth Cohort thought of Percy as a hero, not an enemy. He brought back our eagle, defended New Rome against the fleet of monsters lead by Polybotes, defeated him, and became a praetor. Even Dakota was not drinking his red Kool-Aid, which was very unlike him. Eventually we did start eating our food, halfheartedly of course, but ate none the less.
In the morning, Reyna Reluctantly announced that there would be a siege battle in preparation for the actual siege against Camp Half Blood. It was the first battle since the fifth cohort won, and now that Percy left, the other cohorts started treating us like crap again. However, Jack and I thought of a plan for us to win. We will use two pairs of speed sandals that Jack got from Mercury, use them to outrun the water blasts from the cannons, use them to run up the wall, yes you can do that, and get over to the other side. Then we will open the castle doors, get into the Banner room, and steal it.
"Well, hope this works," Jack muttered, "if it doesn't, well…see you in the infirmary."
"It's going to work," I said "at least, I hope," I added under my breath."
When we got back to the Cohort, people were putting on their armor, some were still sad about the whole Percy being the enemy thing, but most were excited to show their skills. When we got to the battlegrounds, Gwen, one of our Centurions, said our plan, which is by now a saying for her-
"We are going first to soften the first and second cohorts up." Everyone groaned at those words, but we went along with it. I nodded to Jack, and both of us went to the back room of the mini base that the fifth cohort used, and I put on the speed sandals.
"IdontfeelmuchdifferentbuteverythingismuchslowerJackwhyareyoublinkingsoslowlyandwhyisQwentakingforevertosayyes?!" I exclaimed very fast.
"Calm down Max," he said, which to me sounded much slower, "when I put my speed sandals on, I will be going at the same speed as you," He put on his sandals while I tried not to hyperventilate, and he came up to my speed.
We ran (or Sonic the Hedgehog ran) down the hallway, and bursted towards the enemy base. As soon as one of the defenders saw us he said-
"Guys, victims to the left! Let's see if they win now that Percy is gone!" But when they tried to hit us, they couldn't keep their cannons locked on us. Hope this works I thought, and when Jack whistled he and I bolted towards the wall and ran up it. I shot the guards with my bow, which they couldn't have dodged even if I weren't going as fast as a Concorde, than we went down the wall, and took off the speed sandals.
We calmly walked in, me with my bow drawed back, and with Jack having his leaf blade sword that Jason gave to him before Leo shot on New Rome. We came across the campers who were supposed to be guarding the banner, but instead were playing Pokémon, and I immediately shot one of them in the head with a blunt arrow and knocked him out cold.
"Sorry for interrupting your game!" I yelled and started shooting at the ones with swords while Jack started slashing and stabbing the archers. I picked up the banner and slipped my feet into the Sandals. "let's get out of here!" I yelled to Jack. He slipped on his sandals and yelled back to me-
"Say Maia!" I didn't understand why, but I didn't argue. I repeated the line and suddenly felt taller and a little bit unbalanced. It was only when I looked down that I realized that the sandals had sprouted wings.
"Whoa!" I exclaimed, "wings?!"
"Yeah" Jack Answered, "Maia!" The wings responded to my thoughts, so I thought, Forward, fast and it did so, I opened the castle doors to let all of the teammates and Hannibal (did I mention we have a war elephant?) in. than Jack and I flew towards the team base without much difficulty. Sure, there were 50 feet long puddles with three to ten campers in them, but we just flew over them. We planted the banner at the entrance to show that we won.
Our Cohort lare, Vitallius, came up to us and said-
"Two wins in a row, one without that Percy kid!"
"Yeah, that's a start," I said while scratching the back of my head. After that, the cohort went back to the cohort house, that is, everyone except Jack and I, who were lifted up in the air. We had a celebration party, which included a very drunk Dakota. He thought that he should put 5 times the amount of sugar, yeah, didn't work out so well. And after the party, I went to bed, ready for a long month, but things happen even before we leave, you'll see.