Curse of Twins

6. Capture the Hellhound

About an hour later, we arrived back at camp just in time to pick up my new armor and eat dinner before Capture the Flag.

After dinner, everyone gathered at the Arena and started to prepare for what they seemed to think was a battle. Everyone was putting on armor and sharpening swords and spears. Chiron explained the rules, many of which used the words maiming and death. Then, he told us the teams, blue team was Apollo, Athena, Demeter, Nemesis, Hypnos, Hecate, and Poseidon cabins and red team was everyone else. The game would start in a half an hour. Percy walked up to me as I stood confused. He tapped me on the shoulder.

"Hey I'd like to introduce you to someone." He turned away for a few seconds and waved for someone to come over. A girl walked over. She had her blonde wavy hair with a streak matching Percy's tied up into a ponytail and stormy gray eyes. She was very pretty but looked like her words could kill. "This is my girlfriend, Annabeth Chase. She is the head of Athena cabin."

I smiled. "I'm Bl-Icara, Percy's sister." I stuttered still trying to get used to the new name and the fact I was Percy's sister.

She looked confused and glanced at Percy before saying "It's nice to meet you. I didn't know Percy had a sister." She shook my hand.

"Yea, well, neither did we until this morning. I'm his twin. We were separated at birth."

"Oh. Ok, well welcome to Camp Half-Blood." She started to talk about strategy for the upcoming game and told me she was going to station me in the west part of the North Woods to distract the enemy from the flag. Man, weird things like this must happen a lot if she could just let go of that realization. I was still trying to sort it out. I nodded and tried to understand all of the technical talk.

I glanced around and saw James. He caught my eye and gestured for me to come over to him. I excused myself from Percy and his brainy girlfriend. They didn't seem to notice me leave while they were calling each other names like Seaweed Brain and Wise Girl. I walked over to James nervously still wondering if he hates me.

"Hey, I'm sorry about asking you those questions last night. I didn't mean to upset you I just..." I started.

"I don't care about that anymore. You were just worried about me but, I can take of myself, you know?"

"Yeah I know." I looked at the ground.

"So, I hear you've chosen to go back to your birth name. Icara Jackson?"

Man, news travels fast. I raised my head. "Yea. I want to forget about my old life. You know?"

He looked kind of sad. "Yea I wish I could forget too."

"What's wrong?" I asked feeling his mood change.

"Nothing. Just a bit tired." I knew something else was up but I didn't push. He would just get upset again. We talked about our day, about my arrowless bow, sword skills and that he had heard about my fight with Clarisse. "Always like you to get into a fight on the first day."

"Well, she pissed me off, acting all high and mighty like she was the best thing since sliced bread."

"Yeah, yeah. That's what you always say. Too bad I wasn't there I would've loved to see her beat you." He teased.

I swatted at him. "Hey! I totally won that fight!"

"Mmhmm sure you did." He said sarcastically.

I swatted at him again, this time harder. "Ow! That hurt." He said rubbing his arm and making his green puppy dog eyes pout at me. He knew I was always weak against that but I still laughed. He seems much happier here. His skin had more color than it used to and I could see the resemblance across the Apollo cabin. His sandy hair that brushed across his forehead and how the sunset seemed to glitter gold in his eyes. The whole cabin seemed be full of the same traits. I was happy he had found a new family and new happiness.