"Okay, here's a question for you guys," said Valerie, "Would you join the Hunters of Artemis?"
It was the Tuesday after their fight with Eve, and the four of them were hanging out at break, doing what they always did: talk about random stuff.
"No," Isaac said simply.
"Oho?" Valerie perked up a little, "Why not?"
"Because I'm not a girl," he replied.
Valerie's face fell.
"Okay well, yeah, no shit, but I meant like, what if you were one, you know?"
Isaac considered this briefly.
"But I'm not," he said.
Valerie groaned, then turned to Arthur.
"Okay what about you? Would you join the Hunters of Artemis?"
"Ummm..." he said, his voice gradually fading. It didn't look like he had anything else to say, so Valerie turned to Katrina.
"Would you-"
"No," Katrina said immediately.
"What the Hecate?!" Valerie said with exaggerated surprise, causing the boys to smile and forcing Katrina to bite her lip, "Why not?"
"Because it sounds super terrible?" Katrina said in a tone that implied she thought it was obvious, "All you do is just hunt down monsters and that's it. I wouldn't want to spend my whole life on something like that."
"But Kat, what about the immortality?" Valerie coaxed, "What about all the forever sisters?"
"Yeah, exactly!" Katrina cried, which wasn't the response Valerie had been expecting, "You're not even allowed to die, you're just stuck with them forever! The only way to escape is to die in combat which, on its own, is pretty bad, but also until then, you're just trapped in the body of a child forever, and the only other people you get to hang out with are the other Hunters, who are probably all super messed up because at one point, they thought that everything I just mentioned sounded cool!"
She stopped. Her friends were now looking at her with mild concern.
"Well jeez, that's one way of looking at it, I guess," Valerie said.
"Okay well, what's your answer then?" Katrina asked.
"Oh, I don't know, probably not?" she said, then saw Katrina glaring at her for judging her when she herself didn't have a good answer, "What? Dude I'm thirteen! I'm not old enough to make a commitment like that, and by the time I'm old enough to, I'll probably have done a ton of stuff and they wouldn't let me in anymore."
Katrina gave her a weird look. Isaac's face was as blank as always. Arthur...looked confused.
"What kind of things?" he asked.
"Like uh..." Valerie tried to give him her best meaningful look, "Like...you know..."
"No I don't know," he replied.
Valerie sighed, reluctant to say what she was thinking. "Like uh...hand-holding," she lied. Arthur nodded in apparent understanding as Valerie did her best to ignore Katrina's amused expression.
"Oh, I think you'll be fine then," Isaac pitched in, "The Hunters won't exclude you for something like holding hands, only if you've done something like have se-"
The bell rang loudly just then, covering up whatever Isaac had been trying to say, and the four of them headed towards their final class of the day. Halfway there, Valerie stopped.
YOU ARE READING
The Vesta House Squad
Fanfiction25 years have passed since Percy Jackson defeated the titan lord Kronos on Mt. Olympus. The word is a very different place now. For demigods, who are no longer ignored by the gods or oppressed by society for their differences, there's never been a b...
