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(That was me freaking out on my keyboard.)
OHMIGODS GUYS, over seventy reviews! You guys totally deserve virtual cookies!
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Last weekend of the school year! So excited! Four more days, and then it's swimming and summer camps and reading in the hammock in my backyard (assuming it'll never rain, of course)!
Leo
Throughout the hours of the next day, nothing happened to Piper. No halo, no claiming, no parent. Nada. She still seemed pretty miffed about it, though she didn't complain too much. Once or twice she's bring it up, how embarrassing it all was, how annoying it all was, but then she'd let the subject drop again and they'd start talking about something else.
"Capture-the-flag tonight," some black-haired, green-eyed guy told his girlfriend as they walked past Leo and Piper. "Athena versus Poseidon."
"Hope you brought your armour, Seaweed Brain," his girlfriend teased. "You're going to need it."
"Capture-the-flag?" Leo asked Piper once they were gone. "Like, normal capture-the-flag, or capture-the-flag demigod style with a bunch of hellhounds chasing you while you hack your way through enemy lines?"
"Way to make me feel uneasy about it," said Piper, rolling her eyes. "The entire Hermes cabin is talking about this game—saying you haven't lived until you've played it or something. It's pretty much exactly how you described it."
"Way to make me feel uneasy about it," Leo mimicked.
So that evening they ate their heartful and fulfilling meals and readied themselves for the game. Leo and Piper were (fortunately) on the same team, even though Leo would be setting up defending traps near their flag with the Demeter cabin and the rest of the Hephaestus campers while Piper went with the Hermes cabin to create a distraction over to the far left of the forest. They had gotten a fairly good team, which included the Apollo, Poseidon and Demeter cabins, but not the Ares or Hecate, and not to mention Athena, who always had this plan that was always executed perfectly.
Piper gave Leo a good-luck thumbs up before heading off with the rest of her (hopefully) temporary cabin. Leo wasted no time watching her leave—he got to work immediately, helping Nyssa and Jake with one of the more complex traps. The Apollo team watched above, hiding in the trees with their arrows, playing defence.
Leo managed to get two-and-a-half traps set with some Demeter kid called Miranda Gardiner before the first enemies crossed over. They weren't even trying to hide themselves, but instead talking and blabbing to each other as if they had no care in the world—or the game.
"So the stupid little runt got what he deserved," one of them was finishing. Leo and Miranda dove behind a nearby bush, Leo flicking the mechanical traps on. Miranda tapped him on the shoulder and mouthed, Hecate. Leo gritted his teeth. Great. If they found them, they'd be burping out frogs for a week.
The Apollo kids fired, distracting them from their traps. One of the campers shot an incantation so fast that that the three arrows disintegrated mid-air, turning them to black ash before they hit the ground. Four more arrows shot out, but they were all easily dodged.
"Stupid archers," muttered one of them, flicking off arrow dust. "Getting ashes all over my armour." The two of them marched on, right into the two traps Leo and Miranda had laid out.
Leo had been still mentally debating if whether or not he should ditch Miranda and try to run for it, when one of the Hecate kids yelled out, "Hey!" and went silent. Leo and Miranda peered from behind their bush to find one of the campers hanging upside-down from the ankle, weapon and source of power (a.k.a. Harry Potter wand) lying beneath him just out of arm's reach, and the second one wrapped in vines and held two feet in the air, a twig wrapped around his mouth so he couldn't yell a spell that would blast Leo to bits.
"Thank the gods for modern-day mechanically engineering and Demeter-plant magic," Leo muttered to himself. Miranda grinned and fist-bumped him, and they ran off in their own directions to help lay out more traps for whoever needed them.
Well, the game promptly ended and their team won, all because of this Poseidon kid who seemed to be everyone's celebrity. The Ares warriors seemed awfully upset, especially this one girl who looked as if she could turn Leo into a relatively appetising dish of entrails and organs without the slightest amount of effort, as well as the Athena cabin.
Seeing as their team's flag was already Poseidon, the Hermes cabin received the victory because of their distraction being the thing that had actually allowed the Person Jackson (or something like that) actually capture the other team's flag.
Piper was bouncing with glee as they walked toward the campfire after the game. (Did they really have one of these every night?) "That was fun, that was fun, that was fun," she kept repeating to her skip. "There was this one time this Ares camper was about to slaughter me, and then out of nowhere this hellhound appeared and chased him away." She stopped skipping and sighed dreamily. "You can never get bored in this place."
"Capture-the-flag is so boring," someone walking by them said to her friend. Leo and Piper hurried to one side of the path to let Drew and one of her Aphrodite siblings walk by. She didn't even acknowledge them. "I mean, what's the point of running around with swords and hacking monsters just to get a stupid flag? I say pageants have much more excitement than this…" Drew's voice trailed off as she got farther away.
Leo nudged Piper. "You are so daughter of Aphrodite," he told her.
"You are so right," said Piper, mimicking Drew's oh-my-gods-I'm-so-popular voice. "We could totally be BFFs and text every day and do our hair while we swoon over a poster of One Direction and gossip and prank-call our crushes and make out with random guys and do other girly-girl popular stuff."
This thought was so absurd that they both burst out laughing. Drew and her friend turned around to see what was happening and roll their eyes, and Drew muttered something probably very mean and sassy but inaudible.
At the campfire, Piper was forced to sit with the Hermes kids, the champions of the game, so Leo just sat with the rest of his cabin. Lucky for him (sarcasm in use) he got a seat right next to Harley, who wouldn't shut up about his hero, Percy Jackson. Leo pretended to pay attention, but was really sneaking glances at Piper that said, Help. Me.
"And then Clarrise dunked his head in the toilet! But not for long, and Percy made the entire washroom explode with water! And then Luke taught him how to fight, and he beat up a lot of monsters too! And there was this one time where he, his half-brother and Annabeth took off on fish-ponies for the Princess Andromeda! And another time, where he fought Medusa and won! It was so cool—oh, and then he sent Medusa's head to his dad on Olympus! And—!"
"That's pretty wicked, Harley," interrupted Leo, praying to his father that Harley would just shut up.
"I know!" yelled Harley, his eyes lighting up. Leo understood immediately his mistake of speaking up. "And this other time—!"
Luckily Chiron saved Leo from listening any more. "Campers!" he announced loudly for all to hear. "We have a special visitor today—please welcome back Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Oracle of Delphi!"
"Rachel!" some younger kids cheered, including Harley. Some redhead chick stood up from her seat near the front and walked over to Chiron.
"Rachel here has delivered a prophecy," Chiron continued.
"In the middle of Social Studies," finished Rachel. "As you can imagine, my fellow classmates will be calling me a freak from now on, but anyway, the prophecy went something like this." She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to remember how it went. Then she started—
"When the past isn't told correctly,
And we're living in damaged time—
The Lost Heroes haven't been found yet,
So their journeys have never been rhymed."
Rachel looked around to make sure she still had everyone's attention, then continued.
"The Romans are missing their role model,
The person we Greeks should have exchanged,
But the goddess of marriage was reluctant,
And that has all been changed.
"Now there is only one possible way
To save the future's fate;
The forge and the dove must work together to
Change their persuasive rate.
"This way is the only means
To end these real high stakes,
But sometimes even a goddess
Can make some very deadly mistakes."
*silence*
What the heck does that mean? I guess you'll never know unless you review!
Disclaimer: I don't own HoO. I forgot to mention that at the beginning because of the cookies! :)
And thank you for the wonderful reviewer TheColorsOfTheRainbow, who reviewed every chapter (I'm pretty sure it was all of them), even if it was to point out a funny quote. (And I read your story. Chapter Five literally made me cry.)
Now review, because that prophecy took a while to write. (And I know it doesn't follow the same prophecy format it's supposed to. So what? I'm making this story unique!)