Indigo Eyes

Chapter 46

Their team was a little pitiful compared to the Hunters if they were being honest. They had Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, a few from the Ares cabin minus Clarisse who was away on a secret mission that Percy still found suspicious. They had a couple Apollo campers who were eager to show up Artemis' Hunters in the name of their father. They had 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 armour. "I'll pulverize them!"

That then left Thalia, Percy, Cressida and Castor and Pollux to round out their team.

And despite the twins' earlier enthusiasm for the game, it had faded significantly when they found out that Percy and Thalia were team captains. Especially when Cressida was standing flanked by her brothers, all three of them dressed in armour with Cressida leaning on her thyrsus as they listened to their captains argue.

"I'll take the offence," Thalia volunteered. "You take defence."

"Oh," Percy said, and Cressida knew that he'd wanted to take offence. He had the same disability to take orders that Cressida did, but his was less pronounced. "Don't you think, with your shield and all, you'd be better at defence?"

Thalia already had Aegis on her arm, and even their 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 offence," Thalia said. "Besides, you've had more practice at defence."

"Are they supposed to be arguing?" asked Nico who had wandered away from the Stolls and over to them.

"Nope," Cressida answered. "But don't worry about it. Hey, Nico," she said. "I'd like you to meet my brothers. This is Castor and Pollux," she introduced, both of them giving him a wave.

"Nice to meet you, kid," Pollux said.

"You liking camp so far?" Castor asked.

"Are you kidding?! This place is amazing!" he exclaimed, trying to keep the blue-feathered bronze helmet from falling into his eyes. His breastplate was also about six sizes too big for him.

"If I let you hold my thyrsus, think you can refrain from hurting anyone while I fix your armour?" she asked and his eyes widened.

"Absolutely!"

"Alright," she laughed as she handed it over and he gaped and every inch of it as she began to tighten his armour, trying to get it to at least not hang off him.

"Can you make it change?" he asked as she moved from the left side to the right. Cressida simply placed her hand on the weapon as they blinked and the pinecone disappeared as the thyrsus became a staff. "Whoa!"

"Ok. I think that's about as good as this is going to get," she said as she stood straight, Nico still gaping at her weapon.

"Hey, no matter what she chooses, she'll be ok. I think we did a good job," Castor whispered to his twin.

"That we did," Pollux agreed as they busted out their handshake.

Nico lifted his sword with effort. "Do we get to kill the other team?"

"Well...no," Percy answered once he was done with Thalia, turning to the young boy.

"But the Hunters are immortal, right?"