An Unusual Proposal

The fight

"So you really believe you stand a chance Coral head?" Artemis asked, genuinely curious at what the boy believed.

"Sure I'll give it a go, probably won't win, but you never know Bambi." Percy replied light heartedly bumping his shoulder into the lunar goddess as they entered the arena. The goddess merely rolled her eyes at her friend.
To an outsider it would be an odd sight seeing the maiden goddess joking around with the hero of Olympus, but then again most people didn't know how they were friends. After the whole Atlas incident Percy had many encounters with the hunt, earning him enough trust to lead them against Kronos in the battle of Manhattan. Since then they grew closer as they saw each other whenever the hunt stopped by at camp or they ran into one another while Percy was on a quest, sometimes literally.

As the two entered the arena silence encompassed the place before it was abruptly broken by the pound of feet was heard as the occupants scrambled out of the arena. Artemis turned and raised an eyebrow at Percy who simply shrugged not knowing what happened to them. In truth they were terrified from earlier events, having seen what the bane of monsters did to poor Karl this morning, and well Artemis just added to that. Not to mention it was time for capture the flag

"Well that was unexpected, yet useful." The demigod stated bluntly as he surveyed the arena's condition. All it was was a large circular pit in the ground with plain stone walls covered with indentations and cuts from the thousands of fights it had seen over the years. Along the edges were an assortment of wooden racks covered in every weapon, armour, training dummies and wooden barriers which could be used to make an obstacle course. The centre had been cleared for a lesson with a couple of water bottles having been forgotten in the rushed exit along with a few odd pieces of fruit round edge.

"So how do you want to do this, Perseus? All out or skills only, or do I need to tie my hands behind my back to give you a chance?" The goddess taunted as she summoned in her silver recurve bow along with a quiver and a couple of hunting knives to her belt.

"Why not skills only, mi'lady? We don't want you getting washed away too quickly do we?" The demigod retorted uncapping riptide and activating the shield his brother had given him. The shield had been reinforced with imperial gold over the years so it would take a bit more than a few manticore spikes to dent it. He also had a knife stored on the back of his belt just in case.

"Whatever makes you sleep at night." Was all that the huntress responded with as she got into position. The son of the sea did the same on the opposite side as they both began circling one another, each analysing the other for a single sight of weakness in their defence. In the distance the conch horn sounded giving the unofficial signal to begin.

Immediately the demigod began to rush the archer, shield raised and without his heavy armor to slow progress, he got halfway before being stopped by an onslaught of arrows ricocheting off the shield into the arena around him. The demigod had planned to rush the goddess to disable her bow before it became of any use knowing he would be trapped if he didn't. Proving his theory, the goddess stood strong firing off arrows faster than a machine gun with no sign of running out of arrows from her limitless quiver, unfazed by the repetitive strain of loading the bow due to her divine status as one of the twin archers.

The goddess frowned seeing her barrage was useless against the shield as the demigod had taken to kneeling down in order to be completely covered by the shield, which was now plastered with scratches from the deflection of godly arrows but was still able to hold strong. Smirking, the goddess continued the shower of silver while creeping towards the fortified position of the demigod slowly gaining speed until she was sprinting towards the kneeling demigod firing the occasional arrow in hope of breaking the defence. However the demigod's defence held true, bronze shiny in defiance.