Apart from almost being killed by my my band director, and being flown across the country in a rickety chariot that was piloted by some random girl- who turned out to be my sister- I'd have to say my first day at camp was pretty good.

The next morning after breakfast Annabeth had Lexie take me to the weapons shed so I could get a weapon. "So, let's see... what kind of weapon would you use?" she asked herself. She looked me over, analyzing every part of me before saying, "Here try this," and holding out a rather large sword to me. I took it hesitantly from her, glanced at it skeptically, and then looked back at her for reassurance. She nodded, "Go ahead, give it swing."

"Okay." I said nervously. I swung the sword figuring the task was a simple enough, but before I even knew what was happening the momentum of the sword overpowered me and the hilt flew out of my hands. I glanced up in time to see the blade fly within an inch of Lexie's head before embedding itself into the wooden wall.

"Uhhh..." she glanced sideways at the sword next to her head, "I'll just put this back then." She yanked the blade out of the wall and put it back into the shed with the other weapons. She turned around to face me with her hands on her hips, "How do you feel about daggers? Or maybe you could join the peace corps and save us both the time."

"Or you can go be a target on the archery range," I retaliated. Before I could even laugh at my own joke I was pinned up against the shed with a dagger against my throat.

I have to admit this is not how I saw my week going. Yet there I was pinned to a wall with a knife a my throat by my little sister- who I didn't know even existed earlier this week. "Now do you want to rephrase what you just said or do you want to put your money where your mouth is?"

I didn't speak until she removed the blade from my throat. "Didn't mean to strike a nerve, I think I'll pass on the dagger."

She smirked at me before sliding the dagger back into the sheath on her belt. "Not exactly my thing either, but they have their uses... Such as dealing with annoying siblings. How about this?" She handed me a sword.

"I don't think this one is the best either..." I insisted after I taking the sword, it still felt slightly awkward in my hand, but it was better than the first one.

"Well we have plenty of other swords, but I can't guarantee a perfect match. So we could continue searching or you could just use this one until we get the time to make you one in the forge."

I took another glance into the shed and decided there were way too many weapons to try out, "I think I'll just stick with this one for the time being..."

"Thank gods," she said throwing the weapons she had started to pull out back into the shed. They landed with a loud clang and knocked down several other weapons in the process. Lexie cringed and turned to me. "I'll clean that up later..."

"Sure you will..."

She rolled her eyes and leaned back into the shed to grab something, "Here," she tossed me sheathe, "I think this one goes to that sword. So now that you've got a weapon, let's teach you how to use it." She smirked and motioned for me to follow her.

As I went to catch up to her I heard her chuckling. "What's so funny?" I asked once I was next to her.

"Oh nothing... this is just going to be a lot of fun."

She brought me over to an arena where the rest of our siblings already were. The arena was surrounded on one side by a black, metal fence and the other side had stone seats that looked down upon the sandy floored center. I could see Annabeth and Malcolm sparing at the center of the pit. Our other two siblings were sparing in the opposite corner.

"Okay, here's a shield." said Lexie shoving a chunk of metal into my hands.

The shield was a solid piece of rounded wood with a bronze center and had an arm strap on the opposite side. She waited for me to place my arm in the strap before she pulled out her sword and put on her shield.

"Okay, now copy my stance." She ordered. I lifted my sword and pointed it at her, over my shield like she was doing. She shook her head and said "hold it closer to the blade, it'll improve your balance." She released her pose and grabbed my sword forcing me to correct my stance.

"Thats better. Now, knock me over." Did I hear her right? Did she just say to knock her over? I gave her a confused look. "Well what are you waiting for? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Don't waste it!"

I smiled slightly, "If you insist." I lowered my sword and leaned forward with my shield and swung it at her. I thought my shield was going to strike her, but she rolled out of my way and kicked out my feet. I fell to the ground with a heavy thud!

"You didn't think I was just going to stand there did you?" She chuckled. "Try it again."She pulled me back up and braced herself again. This time I watched my opponent. I looked at her knees to see when she was going to move. When I tried again I shoved my shield high towards her upper chest and kicked out with my legs. This time she jumped back avoiding both assaults. "Thats better, but you're going to need more to get me." She smirked.

Now I was put on the defensive. She bashed me with her shield with such fury that all I was able to do to keep from being pummeled was duck behind my shield.

"Okay, okay. White flag, I surrender."She slowly ceased her assault on my shield and retreated a few meters away.

"You shouldn't surrender so easily" she said angrily. "I would have kicked at the person's feet and hoped to knock them off balance. This went on for half an hour. Lexie was unrelenting. She repeatedly pummeled me with her shield. By the end of it I was covered in black and blue bruises.

"Are we done yet?" I pleaded as I held my bruised shield arm.

"No way, we're just getting started, now lift up your blade" she barked. Once I had the sword halfway up she sung her sword towards me. I parried the swing but just barely. "You should be better than this!" she taunted. "Mom would be embarrassed!"

I got angry, I swung my sword in a wide arch. She used her sword's cross guard to deflect the blow and yank it away from me. She continued her slicing motions against my shield. On her final blow the shield snapped. The sword went through the splintered shield and into my arm.

Pain shot up my wounded limb. I yanked the shields velcro strap off my arm and squeezed my arm trying to stop the blood from gushing out.

"Annabeth get a medic!" screamed Lexie. Annabeth ran off to find somebody a few seconds later. Lexie dropped her sword and crossed the small amount of distance between us. She took the strap from my shield and tightened it back around my arm. "You're gonna be fine. It happened to me the first time too, well actually it was my leg" she comforted.

I was forced to sit still with the searing pain until Annabeth came back with one of the Apollo campers. He and Lexie Lifted me onto my feet and helped me get to the Big House.

I was upright on a cot in the infirmary. The Apollo kid was sitting next to me stitching the wound closed. Damn it hurt.

He had sent Lexie to go get something he called nectar. When she came back she was holding a glass of something that looked like apple juice. "I'll be right back, don't let him drink too much of that" he smiled at Lexie before he walked away.

"How you feeling?" asked Lexie as she handed me the glass.

"Like I was pummeled by an entire football team" I groaned. "And stabbed."

She smiled like it was a compliment. "Just drink it, Ginger." She punched me lightly on the arm.

I took a sip from the liquid. Gods it was good. It tasted a lot like Ginger Ale. I immediately started gulping it down as if I hadn't had anything to drink for a week. When I was halfway done with the glass she stopped me.

She placed the glass down on the floor at her feet. "That's enough, you'll combust if you have any more." she warned. "It's called nectar, it's the drink of the gods." I could feel my arm get slightly warm. I felt the skin under my cast tightening around where I had been cut. "It has healing properties to it, but if we drink too much of it we'll burst into flames."

"Wow, that's a little scary..."

She nodded then asked me if i was ready to go. Once I was standing, she followed me out the door. Annabeth had told us they would probably be down at the archery range when we were done.

When we got there none of our siblings were waiting. Lexie pointed to a note that had been left on the bow rack.

We ended early, gave everyone the rest of the day off.

~Annabeth

"Well then, there we go" said Lexie happily. "Day off, good because I really didn't want to go to Ancient Greek today." Lexie walked away from the archery range and back towards the cabin. "I have some things I need to finish for tomorrow's capture the flag, go find something to do, see ya at dinner." Then she disappeared down the road.

I wandered around the camp for about an hour. There were kids barely older than eight running around chasing each other with swords, people climbing on a gigantic rock wall that was spilling out large amounts of lava at random points - I thought it all looked very dangerous, I couldn't believe a summer camp like this existed. Then there were slightly more normal things like teens playing basketball or fishing.

I stopped at the volleyball courts and watched a few people playing. One of the girls came over to me after her friends called a break to drink some water. She had dark brown hair that hung down to her shoulders. Her eyes shifted from gold to silver every few moments.

"You wanting to join us?" she asked awkwardly. Then I realised I had been staring.

"Oh.. uhh" I stuttered trying to remember what she had just said. "Sure, but I'm not very good."

She laughed. "It's just a friendly game, you'll do fine." she removed her gray and yellow jacket and placed it against the wall, revealing her orange sports top.

Her friends had started to assemble around the net. She had me follow her over. The girl was actually really good, it was her and me against two of the Hermes campers I remembered from dinner the previous night.

When the game was over we- well, she because I didn't really do anything- had scored more than twenty points, while the other team had barely scored ten. The Hermes campers walked away angrily from getting their rears kicked. We walked over to the stone wall that surrounded the court and sat down on top of it.

"I don't think I ever got your name." I said tiredly.

"Ellie, my mother's Nike." she answered. "I've been here for a three years now and I haven't seen you before, are you the new kid?"

I nodded, "Yeah, name's Sean, Athena claimed me last night."

She smiled, "Then you don't know much that goes on here do you?" I shook my head, I was a little embarrassed to admit that I honestly had no clue what was going on. "Well tomorrow is capture the flag night, I see that you've at least tried to use a sword." She pointed towards my wounded arm.

"Sister's way of saying she cares." I joked.

"Obviously." She stood up and looked back towards me. "Well nice meeting you. Don't let your sister win every time, winning is one of the best feelings in the world..." She trailed off before climbing over the wall and disappeared in a crowd of other kids.

When I returned to the Athena cabin I saw Annabeth and Malcolm huddled around a map of the camp. Amanda, one of my other sisters was talking was talking to Matthew. Lexie was sitting on her bed checking her arrows.

"Oh, hey Sean." Said Annabeth without looking up from the map. "Malcolm found some armor that should fit you, he placed it on your bed." She pointed over to a large pile of bronze and a metal helmet with a small blue plume at the top. "Try it on and see if it fits." She ordered.

I walked over to my bed and started attempting to put on the armor. After about three minutes of fiddling with the straps I was able to get the chestplate on. The bracers that covered my forearms were a little harder to attach but finally I was able to get all of the set on.

Annabeth looked at my weirdly, "You do know you put the chestplate on backwards right?"

Ammanda and Mathew snickered a few feet away. I looked down and sure enough she was right.

"Okay, well as long as it fits, you can take it off. Go place the armor in your trunk. It should be under your bed." Then she went back to figuring out a plan for capture the flag.

I pulled the heavy trunk out from under the bunk. When I flung the lid up I noticed that there was already stuff inside it. There were two daggers and assorted clothes. Lexie looked over at me. "Is this stuff Kim's?" I asked.

She nodded and sat down next to me on my bed. "I guess we forgot to clean out her stuff..." She leaned over and grabbed one of the small blades. She twirled it in its sheathe. "Her dad will probably want her belongings." She closed the trunk without placing the dagger back in. "You don't mind not having a trunk for another day do you?" I shrugged and she said "thanks" but she didn't stop looking at it.

"You were really close to her huh?" I asked placing my hand on her shoulder.

Again she nodded. "Other than Malcolm, she was my best friend. I was able to talk to her about anything." She smiled as she looked at the small blade in her hands. She seemed to be remembering something from her past that must have involved her and KIm.

"Want me to leave you alone?" I asked. She nodded and I stood up leaving my sister to her memories.