Capture the Flag

Disclaimer: I only own my character, Percy, the Stoll brothers and Luke – ask the RRA, I claimed them a while ago.

Summary: One-shot; a girl who was the assistant of Hades is sent to "mingle" with the campers. The first event is Capture the Flag. This is the story of how Cora McPherson and the Stoll brothers thought up an ingenious plan to thwart the Athena-Ares alliance. What happens? Pure chaos, my friends.

…

This is ridiculous.

Here I am, virtually immortal assistant of one of the big three, being sent to "mingle" with the Campers at Camp Half-blood.

Don't get me wrong, the Stoll brothers, for all the times they've tried to steal my stuff, are pretty awesome, and Percy Jackson's always up for a laugh (especially when I dared him to invent the world's most powerful water-pistol, which was basically just a load of water in a pistol shape) but the Ares cabin? Forget it. I'm not mingling with them, no matter how much I'm getting paid.

Still; capture the flag sounds fun.

Incidentally, we're playing that tomorrow, and The Hermes Cabin, where I am, has allied itself with Poseidon, along with Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Apollo (who, by the way, I've met and succeeded to beat on guitar hero – he's awesome), Morpheus, Hecate, Phobos, Nemesis and about 60% of the other minor gods – and Dionysus and Hades, my boss.

This is why Connor, Travis and I, after having discussed it with the leaders of all our allied cabins, are sat in the corner of our cabin, discussing how to set up the most insane, crazy, brilliant prank ever to stop the red team, which has both Ares and Athena cabins.

What's the plan, I hear you ask? Its simple; paintball, with a few embellishments.

I hadn't actually expected them to take my paintball suggestion seriously, but we've got the Hephaestus boys making automatons that fire paintballs out of their chests and stuff, and Connor, Travis and I are working with Nico to get the flag – we're acting as Nico's body-guards because we're the creative geniuses who came up with the paintball ambush. Percy's getting Mrs O'Leary – the most awesome hellhound ever to reach the size of a tank – to take Connor and Travis, Nico and I, because we can travel through shadows by ourselves, are using our powers to get to the hill.

"I still don't like this shadow-travel thing" Connor grumbled.

"It's a blast," I replied, "Do you know how fun it is to infuriate your opponent by appearing behind them all the time? It's awesome!"

"Yeah," Travis nodded, "But Connor and I have to rely on a hellhound,"

"Hey," I replied, "Don't hate Mrs O'Leary. She's awesome."

"We know," both boys responded.

"It's just the principle of the thing,"

"Like the Easter bunnies on Demeter Cabin's roof and the golden mango?"

"That was awesome," Connor grinned.

"What's so different about paint-balling the Ares Cabin?"

"How do you know –?"

I grinned, "Every cabin has a shadowy corner or two,"

Travis and Conner high-fived and laughed quietly.

"So," I continued, "I propose a little extra fun,"

"We're listening," Travis could barely keep the grin off his face.

"Well," I replied, also smiling, "it involves a little thing called…"

…

"All set?"

"You're insane, Cora," Percy replied, eyeing me nervously, "You're sure it'll work?"

"Positive," I replied breezily, "just be a little careful around there – does everyone on our side know?"

As if to answer my question one of the Aphrodite girls came over, "No way. I am not going through any –"

"Shhhh!" Percy and I practically tackled her to stop her blabbing, "you guys haven't been yelling it around camp have you? Or talking about it outside your cabin?"

"Hell no!" she laughed, "I'm just saying I don't want to be anywhere near it."

"Remember, don't aim for the face, because that's cheating," I yelled to everyone on our team.

"Isn't our plan cheating anyway?" one of the Morpheus boys asked.

"I've triple-checked the rulebook, there's nothing that mentions our plan in there," I replied, grinning, "There is, however, something about exploding cabbages from 1927, so we might make the rulebook with this,"

Everyone laughed. I stepped aside and let Percy take over so I could nose around the opposing team.

As it so happened I didn't need to nose around – Annabeth came to me.

"You ready to lose?" she asked as Clarisse came behind her.

"I don't think we will, somehow," I replied, "But I'll settle for a draw."

"Your whole team is going down, McPherson," Clarisse sneered.

I turned to her; "Do you really think so?"

This, as everyone on camp knew, was my dangerous question. "Do you really think you've won?" Bam – Connor and Travis are singing soprano and look like fat opera singers for a week. Yes, that has happened.

"We know so," Annabeth replied, "We have spies who've told us all about your little painting scheme –"

"Well, it's a good thing we changed isn't it?" I responded, my mouth twitching upwards, "And I've checked the rules – there's nothing wrong with our plan, but exploding vegetation isn't something they encourage."

"What?" Annabeth asked, bemused.

"There was something about exploding cabbages in the rulebook," I replied, "Probably a joint Hephaestus, Hermes and Demeter scheme, I wouldn't be surprised."

Clarisse snorted and returned to the tent. Annabeth and I exchanged threats and jibes for a few more minutes before she did the same.

I returned to the group and concentrated, trying to hear any updates on their plans; a little talk about littering from the nymphs at first, but I managed to eavesdrop on the enemy tent.

"– problems,"

"We'll be fine," I heard Annabeth's voice, "Not even Percy would come up with something involving hellhounds – he wouldn't think of it"

I snorted; how very wrong she was.

"And what about their flag?" One of the Zeus kids, I recognised him as Mitchell Heeley, pointed out, "If they're guarding the Flag using automatons we'll have no chance,"

"They short-circuit," Annabeth replied, "We'll take them out easily,"

Not our ones, Annabeth; they're programmed to self-destruct in a flurry of blue paint, and they aren't guarding our flag – their spy wasn't keeping them very well informed.

"And the trees?"

"They can paint on the trees all they like," Clarisse replied, "We aren't stupid, we're not going to fall for their little tricks."

Okay, so maybe the painting trees thing was my fault - I "accidentally" let slip to Annabeth that we were planning to paint all the trees in their territory with a blue cross when we passed them. What we were actually doing, was shooting them with blue paintballs, which is much more fun.

I listened for a bit longer and then shifted position to see if they knew I was there and, once deciding they hadn't a clue, sat up ant turned to Percy.

"They still think we're going with the old plan," I informed him, "But I'd like to keep some of the Hades kids to guard the flag, if that's okay,"

"Why?"

"They all know that I'll get them back if they're turncoats," I replied, "so if we keep about 6 in reserve then we won't have to worry about any betrayals."

We assigned 6 children of Hades to guard the flag before the conch horn sounded and we all took our positions.

"Campers!" Chiron announced, "You know the rules; no maiming, and whichever team takes the opposing flag is the winner!" he blew the conch horn again and we all charged, firing blue paint at everyone – I am glad to say that we shocked Annabeth and her team so much that they couldn't react – the automatons did their jobs beautifully, letting loose hand grenades that exploded in a shower of blue.

I love this game.

Nico and Mrs O'Leary took their orders from me, and Connor and Travis were having far too much fun shooting at the passing red team. I counted; one… two… three…

"Now!" I ordered; we all vanished into shadow and within seconds we were on their hill, shooting paintballs at them and kidnapping their flag.

"Muahahahaha!" we chorused, as was our traditional battle cry before we ran down the hill. Without thinking, I grabbed Nico, who was only 15, bless him, and hoisted him into a piggyback while he was grabbing onto the flag.

We passed enough of their team to let them know we had it before I jumped into the canopy and shadow-travelled to the stream. I dropped Nico halfway there and covered his flank as the Ares cabin ("COME BACK HERE PUNK!"), angry at us for stealing their flag (never would have guessed) attempted to trip him. He struggled on and planted the flag in the ground, where it changed from red with a boar's head to (a very predictable) black emblazoned with a silver skull.

Annabeth, coated from head to foot in electric blue paint, came charging down the other side just as the flag changed with our flag in her hand – only to be knocked over by the enthusiastic blues, who picked Nico up and cheered him out of the forest.

Annabeth looked at me, her eyebrows raised.

"Paintball?" she asked.

"Paintball," I agreed, "and Hell hounds, and automatons – oh, and a little bit of blue paint-swamp."

"Paint-swamp?"

"Didn't you notice when your team stepped in it?"

We laughed and returned to the pavilion.

…

"I didn't expect paintball, blue team," Chiron commented, "I'm not sure if that's allowed,"

"I looked in the rulebook, sir," I stood up and interrupted from the grinning Hermes table, "No mention of paintball or hellhounds or automatons – but exploding food was mentioned,"

The entire camp roared with laughter.

"Yes, yes, yes!" Dionysus interrupted, "So the blue team has won and now they'll have bigger heads. Congratulations. Personally I couldn't care less…"

I switched off and stared over at Mitchell Heeley, who was staring back.

"Two nil," I mouthed.

"Shut up," he responded.

I smiled and took a sip of blue cherry coke.

Maybe summer camp wasn't so bad after all.

…

That's it! Hope you liked it (sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation of writing a Percy Jackson fic) Review and tell me what you thought of it! What? I wanted to include paintball!

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