The Vesta House Squad

26) A Literal Personification, Part 1

It was a bright and beautiful Friday morning at Demigod Academy. Of course, mornings were always beautiful at the academy and Fridays were always looked forward to, but this one was special. Not only was it their last day of testing, but they only had one class before getting the rest of the day off. On top of it all, their one class for the day happened to be their Forge class, with their class's "test" being that they had to present what they had been working on in the forge over the past three weeks, and everyone was looking forward to seeing what kind of cool things the Hephaestus kids made for their projects.

As an additional bonus, the four of them have had no strange encounters with any demigods that week (even the Gang of Delinquents had cut back on the secret midnight meetings), likely as a result of everyone having to study for their tests. No water tentacles or crazy diseases, just a week of relative peace and quiet, something Valerie was quick to point out.

"Holy shit guys, I can't believe we've made it through a whole week without any crazy encounters," she said as the four of them were on their way to their first class of the day.

Arthur and Isaac looked at each other. Katrina facepalmed.

"What do you mean?" Isaac asked.

"Well because...you know..." Valerie said slowly, hoping someone would 'get her' so she wouldn't have to explain what she meant, "We keep on getting into wacky fights with the other kids at this school?"

"Is that a thing now?" Arthur asked.

"No, it's not," Katrina said firmly. "It's not a thing."

"What do you mean it's not a thing?" Valerie asked.

"It just isn't!" Katrina cried. "It hasn't happened enough times; it's got to happen like three times for it to be 'a thing'."

"Three times huh?" Valerie said. "Alright. There's the fight with the Poseidon kids."

"Okay that's one."

"Then there was that one crazy girl who tried to give us all ebola!"

"I mean I'm pretty sure it wasn't ebola but yeah, that's two."

"Then there were those fifth graders who tried to take all of our money by making us bet money on games of tag!"

"Ok first of all, that was you, not us, so it doesn't count," Katrina retorted. "And second, they didn't 'make' you do anything, you just went with it and realized way too late that you fucked up."

"Okay fine," Valerie admitted. "But then there's still that Capture the Flag game where a bunch of crazy shit happened. Boom! That's three!"

"Nope," said Katrina. "That one was a school activity, so it doesn't count either."

Valerie let out a sort of frustrated whine.

"Just you guys wait!" she said. "I bet like fifty bucks that before next Monday, we'll end up getting in some fight with some other crazy demigod. Like there's gonna be like a child of Dionysus with like wine or theater powers and they'll...I don't know, try to wine or theater us to death or something."

They finally reached the school's forge where forge classes were held. Their teacher, Mr. Valdez, gave a quick announcement at the beginning of class, and then presentations began. Mr. Valdez had all the non-Hephaestus kids go first, since their projects were generally the easiest to grade.

"Okay first up is Arthur Foxglove," said Mr. Valdez.

Arthur felt his face getting warmer as he shuffled out of his seat. He always hated speaking in front of the class, and the fact that he wasn't very good at forging didn't help.