Forgotten memories

Flag game go brrrrrrr

That night after dinner, Percy was seriously ready to beat the Hunters at capture the flag. It was going to be a small game: only thirteen Hunters, including Bianca di Angelo, and about the same number of campers. Zoe Nightshade looked pretty upset. She kept glancing resentfully at Chiron, like she couldn't believe he was making her do this. The other Hunters didn't look too happy, either. Unlike last night, they weren't laughing or joking around. They just huddled together in the dining pavilion, whispering nervously to each other as they strapped on their armor. Some of them even looked like they'd been crying. I guess Zoe had told them about her nightmare. Casandra looked at me while she strapped her armor, I glanced away from her. On our team, we had Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, a few from the Ares, the Stoll brothers and Nico from Hermes cabin, and my cabin from Apollo and a few Aphrodite kids. It was weird that the Aphrodite cabin wanted to play. Usually they sat on the sidelines, chatted, and checked their reflections in the river and stuff, but when they heard we were fighting the Hunters, they were raring to go.

"I'll show them 'love is worthless,'" Silena Beauregard grumbled as she strapped on her armor. "I'll pulverize them!"

That left Thalia, Percy and me.

"I'll take the offense," Thalia volunteered. "You take defense."

"Oh." Percy hesitated. "Don't you think with your shield and all, you'd be better defense?"

Thalia already had Aegis on her arm, and even our own teammates were giving her a wide berth, trying not to cower before the bronze head of Medusa.

"Well, I was thinking it would make better offense," Thalia said. "Besides, you've had more practice at defense."

I wasn't sure if she was teasing him. He'd had some pretty bad experiences with defense on capture the flag. His first year, Annabeth had put him out as a kind of bait, and he'd almost been gored to death with spears and killed by a hellhound.

"Yeah, no problem," he lied.

"Cool." Thalia turned to help some of the Aphrodite kids, who were having trouble suiting up their armor without breaking their nails. Nico di Angelo ran up to us with a big grin on his face.

"This is awesome!" His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big. Nico lifted his sword with effort. "Do we get to kill the other team?"

"Well... no."

"But the Hunters are immortal, right?"

"That's only if they don't fall in battle. Besides—"

"It would be awesome if we just, like, resurrected as soon as we were killed, so we

could keep fighting, and—"

"Nico, this is serious. Real swords. These can hurt."

He stared at Percy, a little disappointed, and I realized that he'd just sounded like a mother. Whoa. Not a good sign.

He patted Nico on the shoulder. "Hey, it's cool. Just follow the team. Stay out of Zoe's way. We'll have a blast."

Chiron's hoof thundered on the pavilion floor.

"Heroes!" he called. "You know the rules! The creek is the boundary line. Blue team— Camp Half-Blood—shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis—red team—shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!"

"Sweet," Nico whispered next to me. "What kind of magic items? Do I get one?"

I was about to break it to him that he didn't, when Thalia said, "Blue team! Follow me!" They cheered and followed. We had to run to catch up, and Percy tripped over somebody's shield, so He didn't look much like a co-captain. More like an idiot, but I didn't say.