Powerful Families

{XXVIII} Third Person

Will, Clint, Clarisse and Steve all ran to the pop-up armoury. Will grabbed a couple of quivers full of arrows and took Clint away to practise shooting

"I know how to shoot. I'm the best archer around." Clint bragged.

"Oh yeah? Prove it. See that billboard up there?" Will pointed to a billboard advertising a hot tub. "Hit the old guy in the left eye pupil."

"Easy." Clint grabbed one of his arrows and shot the eyeball. "Boom. And that's how it's done."

Will smirked and shouted over his shoulder. "Travis! Mount one of the pegasi and fly upto that billboard. Did he hit the old guy's left eye pupil?" 

Travis mounted Muffin the pegasi and flew upto the billboard. He flew down again and hovered about a metre above them, suspecting he'd be flying up and down a lot. "He hit the pupil, yes."

Will turned back to Clint who was arragrantly smirking. "Now use this arrow and hit his right pupil." Will handed him a celestrial bronze arrow, which was slightly heavier than the one's Clint was used to. Clint shot the arrow and away Travis flew. 

Travis came back, grinning. "You hit the cheek, just under the eye."

"What? Impossible." Clint's smug look dropped to one of confusion. 

"You may be the best archer in the Avengers, but we use different arrows to the ones you're used to. You need training." Will said gently.

"No, it's a fluke." Clint denied.

"Denile isn't just a river in Egypt. Here, I'll show you. Teenage girl, right nostril." Will notched his arrow and aimed, but just before firing, to prove his point, his closed his eyes and turned his head away. Then he fired. Travis flew up and shouted "Bullsnose!"

"But, h...how...?" Clint stammered.

"Hi, I'm Will. Son of Apollo, god of archery." Will held out his hand and burst out laughing when Clint's face dropped.

After about 10 minutes, Clint had shot 25 arrows, but from experience he knew the quivers could only hold 15 arrows. "Umm, Will. My quiver should only be able to hold 15 arrows. How have I shot 25?"

"Magic quivers. They never run out." Will answered matter-of-factly.

"I need one of these. I'm always having to pull arrows out of dead alien bodies." Both Clint and Will scrunched their faces in disgust.

For the next few hours Will taught Clint how to shoot celestrial bronze arrows through the billboard while Travis flew up and down telling them how far off they were. About an hour in, Connor got bored and became the official arrow reciever, even though he wasn't really needed.

~*~*~*~

When Will and Clint ran off with arrows, Clarisse started rifling through all the different weapons in the armoury. She would choose one, hand it to Steve and then take it away if it didn't look right. She went through sword, mace, hammer, dagger, bow and arrow and club. None of them were right.

"No. No. No. No. Mayb... no. Ahhh, what about this one?" Finally, after 15 minutes of looking, she pulled out a spear and handed it to Steve. It was the same height as him and weighed about half a stone. "Perfect. How does it feel?"

"Much better than all the other ones you've handed me." Steve threw it upwards and it landed javelin style in his hand. "How did you know it would be the best fit for me?"

"Daughter of Ares." Clarisse replied. "Even though weapons are technically Hephaestus' kids speciality, it doesn't take long for Ares kids to figure it out. All spears have a function of returning to the users side about a minute after being thrown. Now I know it didn't really fit you, but have this on your belt for such occassion." She handed him a dagger. 

"Do all demigods carry two weapons?" Steve asked.

"Very few demigods go around carrying only one weapon. Percy does and so does Jason, but their weapons return to them a few seconds after they lose them. Perks of having a godly parent with very few kids I guess." Clarisse sounded kind of bitter, but Steve didn't ask why. "Come on, let's get you trained."

Steve followed Clarisse to an open space with a few young demigods training for the war. "Get lost." Clarisse hissed and they ran off. "Ok. I'm going to attack you and you're going to defend yourself. Ok?" Steve nodded and Clarisse charged. Instinctively, Steve counted her sword with his sheild. The sword clanged against the sheild a few times before she stopped. Now she had a feel of how Steve faught. Predominately with his sheild.

"Ok, good. Now, you can't slash and dice with a spear, you can only stab and hit." Clarisse took the spear and showed him some moves before handing it back for him to try. After he seemed comfortable with it, she turned around and saw a training automaton. She retrieved it. She set it to easy. "Now, you're going to attack this automaton."

"You want me to attack a training dummy? Surely the monsters are going to be moving." Steve questioned. Clarisse just smiled and hit the start button. The automaton attacked Steve, but he quickly got over his shock and countered. After a lot of stabbing and hitting Steve finally destroyed the automaton and Clarisse got another one out and set it much harder. After an hour and a half of non-stop spear work, Clarisse taught Steve how to use the dagger, which he used on many more automatons.