Unclaimed~A Percy Jackson/Leo Valdez Fanfiction

Chapter 5: I Find Out That I'm Not A Complete Failure

"Welcome to archery!" Chiron announced, "For most of you, you've done this before and you know the drill. Some of you need a bit of practice, also known as Percy Jackson."

Most of the kids started laughing. I found it kind of funny how some amazing hero, who's stories of quests and victories are told all over camp, couldn't shoot an arrow to save his life.

The blonde girl he was talking to at the dining pavilion ruffled his hair a bit, "You'll get the hang of it Seaweed Brain," she smiled, "Or not."

Percy playfully punched her arm, "Oh shut up Annabeth," he laughed.

"As I was saying," said Chiron, "For some of you, you have never shot an arrow in your life. Today we are just practicing shooting on targets. I have Will and Frank here to help you guys out," he gestured to Will and an Asian boy beside him, "Good luck."

"Great." I said sarcastically.

"Frank and Will are here to help, don't worry," Kylie assured me, "Trust me they're pretty good teachers. Frank's only been here since yesterday, he's one of the seven, so I've only seen him teach once but from what I've seen he's great."

"Huh," I gripped onto my bow not sure what to do with the thing. God, er gods, was I going to fail miserably.

"Hi!" said a voice.

I looked over to see the Asian boy standing in front of me. He was pretty tall and muscular. He held a bow in his hand with a quiver across his back.

"I'm Frank. You must be Rowan? The newbie?"

"Yeah. I have no idea what I'm doing."

He laughed, "Well I wouldn't really expect you to after only being here half a day. It's actually kind of easy as long as you have good aim. That is, unless you Percy."

Suddenly an arrow came whizzing past Franks head burring itself in the outer ring of my target.

"I HIT IT!" Percy yelled.

"It wasn't your target Percy." Frank said.

"So? I hit one. That's good enough!"

"See what I mean?" Frank asked me pulling the arrow out of the target.

"Yeah, he's pretty bad at it." I laughed.

"Okay so I'm going to demonstrate how to use it to you first then you can give it a try okay?"

I nodded.

"So you hold the bow in the center of the wooden part, the string facing yourself. Then you notch the arrow onto the string and pull back wards. Finally you simply aim and let go."

Franks arrow went flying into the target hitting it directly in the center of the target.

"Wow," I said, "I'm assuming you're an Apollo kid too?"

"No actually," he said lowering his bow, "I'm a child of Mars, the Roman version of Ares."

"Really? Seeing your archery skills, people would assume you were."

"Yeah, well I grew up using a bow and arrow. I guess practicing a lot helped. Now let's see you try."

I reluctantly grabbed an arrow from my own quiver and notched it into the string.

"As you pull back the arrow," Frank said, "try to use your back more than your arms."

As much as that didn't make much sense I tried anyways.

"Good but try not to pull back too far or not enough. It's all about judging your distance. Also try to steady yourself. If you're too shaky then who knows where your arrow will go."