The Titans Curse: Apollo's Daughter

Sky vs Sea

Percy's POV

I walked next to Grover the next morning on our way to the dining pavilion. "You remember what you said, about how it was weird the Hunters just happened to show up at Westover? I think they might've been scouting us." Grover said, fiddling with a piece of paper.

"Scouting us? What do you mean?" He gave me a brochure. It was about the Hunters of Artemis. The front read, A WISE CHOICE FOR YOUR FUTURE!

Inside were pictures of young maidens doing hunter stuff, chasing monsters, shooting bows. 

There were captions like HEALTH BENEFITS: IMMORTALITY AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU! and A BOY-FREE TOMORROW!

"Will found it in Skyler's desk... hidden under a couple books and pictures," Grover said.

I stared at him. "I don't understand."

"Well, it seems to me... maybe Skye was thinking about joining."

....

That night after dinner, I 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.

On our team, we had Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, a few from the Ares cabin, the Stoll brothers and Nico from Hermes cabin, 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 Skyler, Thalia and I.

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

"Oh." I hesitated...because I'd been about to say the exact same thing, only reversed on Thalia's part. "Don't you think with your shield and all, you'd be a 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."

"Yeah, no problem," I lied.

"Cool." Thalia turned to help some of the Aphrodite kids, who were having trouble suiting up their armor without breaking their nails.

"Percy is something wrong?" Skyler asked as she pulled on her gold blue plumed helmet her gold bow slung over her shoulder. Her blue eyes were full of concern as she looked up at me.

I remembered the brochure and my heart sank. Would she really join the Hunters and leave me behind?

"Uh...no, no. Everything is fine." I said with a forced smile.

Nico di Angelo ran up to us with a big grin on his face."Percy, this is awesome!" His blue plumed bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big.

I wondered if there was any way I'd looked that ridiculous when I'd first arrived. Unfortunately, I probably had. 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--"