Chapter 7: I Fry The Arena

Chapter 6

Max

The Julie girl lead me on a tour across the camp. She showed me the Pegasus stables, the climbing wall, the training forests, and the cabins shaped like a big ol’ Omega. The cabins were interesting, one made of metal, another of gold, another was red and covered in barbed wire. It looked interesting, but that isn’t where we stopped. We reached the tip of the Omega to find three cabins. The first looked like a big bank with bronze doors emblazoned with lightning bolts. To its right was a big cabin that looked like a box that had white columns and was decorated by peacocks. The one on the left made of sea rocks and low to the ground.

“What are these?” I asked.

“Your cabin in front of us, my cabin to the left.” She said.

“Whats that one?” I asked, pointing at the peacocks.

“Hera’s, she doesn’t have mortal children, so nobody stays in there.” I grunted at that news. What I remembered about her, Auntie Hera didn’t like mortal children of the gods.

“Its ceremonial, she would be pissed if we didn’t have it.”

“So why are we here?” I asked.

“Well,” she pointed at Zeus’s cabin. “That is where you are going to be sleeping during your stay here at camp. Head inside and put your stuff away, then I’ll show you the sword arena. We’ll put you through your paces to see what your fighting skills are, by then it should be dinner.”

She went into the low cabin, leaving me to stare at the cabin. I walked to the doors and pushed them open. The inside was made of marble, with alcoves all along the walls, and a giant statue of a bearded man holding a freaky shield and a lightning bolt. There were no beds, but one of the alcoves had been emptied and a sleeping bag was shoved inside, pictures pasted to the inside of the alcove as well.

In front of the statue was a black bag. I walked up, tossed my backpack to the left and pulled the bag open. Inside was three orange T-shirts with “Camp Half-Blood” across the front, three blue jeans, a sleeping bag, and a heavy blanket.

I took a look around, trying to figure out where to put my sleeping bag. Problem was, no matter where I moved that statue was facing me. It was creepy. I emptied out an alcove and checked out the view, no sight of creepy statue thing. I rolled out the sleeping bag and put it in the alcove, I emptied the alcove above mine and emptied out my backpack and the bag with the new clothing into it. I put the eagle back in front of it to cover up my clothing after I changed.

When I got outside, I found Julie waiting for me, annoyed.

“Took you long enough,” she said as I finished closing the door. She turned around before I could say anything and started off down the path. I rushed to catch up to her, which appeared to make her more upset. Girls, nobody knows what goes on in their heads.

The Sword Fighting Arena was awesome. The circular fighting pit was littered with training dummies and discarded equipment of all kinds. I could have spent hours in here just checking out the things to practice with. Julie walked up to a wall and tapped it with her ring, and some water buckets popped out.

“Alright Thunderhead, we get to see how well you fight now,” she said as two daggers appeared in her hand and she charged at me. It was a sloppy move, so I sidestepped and she went sailing passed. She purposefully took a tumble so that she could roll and come up facing me again, this time being careful. I stood there with my hands at my sides waiting.

“Why are you using real blades?” I asked.

“How else are you going to get the incentive to learn faster,” she responded and charging again, this time she pulled up short and tried a few stabs, but I moved out of the way of these as well. Her form was sloppy, more likely she had learned on the streets, where wide swings kept people away more than they did damage.

“Fight back!” She yelled at me. I shrugged, which is impressive while dodging. I flipped out Watt and smacked the flat of the blade against her right hand, with a jolt she dropped the blade. My right hand gripped her left and I meant to apply preassure to her wrist, instead I ended up shocking her slightly, which also resulted in the dagger falling to the dirt floor. She danced back and looked angrily at me. Then I heard what sounded like water being slopped out of a bucket. I dodged to the side so I could keep my eyes on her while I checked out what was behind me.

The water from the water buckets was rising up, then little blasts started firing at me. I reacted without thinking, firing a lightning blast or some sort at one, blowing it up. I dodged two more, sliced a third in half (it was frozen). Then I noticed that the daggers were no longer on the floor, but in Julies hands. She hadn’t moved.

“How did you - “ I didn’t finish the sentence, as the second buckets water dumped over my head. See, water and I don’t get along very well. Whenever I am submerged, or just plain get wet, I have to keep my concentration, otherwise my entire body hurts. The weakest the pain has been is in salt water, which is like getting a million shots at once, the strongest feels like breaking every bone in my body. This was closer to the second one, the water dump having caught me off guard.

I screamed out as the water engulphed me. My scream must have shocked Julie because instead of floating around, all the water dropped and hit the dirt floor, turning it to mud. Julie stepped forward but I put out my hand and gritted my teeth through the pain.

“No closer,” I managed to gasp. Then I closed my eyes and concentrated. I learned long ago that envisioning a door closing helped stop this pain, but it was really hard to concentrate. If I was prepared, and then entered the water, the pain was negated completely, or quite minimal. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to concentrate. After what seemed hours I finally got it right, and the pain lightened. It was still there, like a million papercuts now, but much better than it was before. I opened my eyes to find the stands of the sword arena surrounded, with Chiron and Annabeth at the edge of the mud, looking at Julie.

Julie was standing stiff as a pole, with her eyes wide and teary. I took a look around and saw that all the ground was wet with mud. Annabeth looked at me.

“What have you done?” She demanded.

“I am the one who got dosed with water, thank you very much. What the heck are you talking about?” Mark, wearing rediculous looking rubber boots and gloves, walked onto the mud and over to Julie.

“I thought this might be the case with all the lightning control you have been showing, plus the hair thing when we picked you up.” He said as he picked up Julie. As soon as her feet left the ground she collapsed in his arms crying. He carried her over to Chiron and Annabeth, who took her from him and called for some children of Apollo. He turned towards me.

“Do you need help too?” He asked. I shook my head and unsteadily walked over to the opposite side of the arena and stepped off the mud and onto the stone floor. The kids who had been standing on this side of the arena had moved away as I approached. I was used to this. It was at times like these when Mom and I would end up moving away before people started thinking about it too much. Someone with a red bandana came up with what looked like a bronze fan and directed it at me. Within a few seconds I was dry and it was moved on towards the Arena floor. The operator was careful not to touch any of the wet mud. Mark sat down next to me.

“So, does this happen often?” He asked. I nodded.

“If I am not prepared to enter water, I feel pain. The purer the water, the worse the pain.” He nodded.

“Makes sense. The glove, the sword, you have a greater than normal electrical charge.”

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t quite understand it myself, but every person has an electrical charge. It is what allows their brain to communicate with the body. It really doesn’t do much more than that, and it doesn’t leave their body. You, it appears, have such a powerful electrical charge in yourself that you can do all these neat things. The downside is that you tend to be rather conductive yourself. Thats why the lightning bolt from the Venti at the train station didn’t do much more than fry your clothing.”

“So you cannot control it?” Annabeth said from behind us. I turned to look at her, her eyes looked like thunder clouds. Chiron stood next to her, looking kind of sad.

“If I know I am stepping in water, like when I go to the pool or am taking a shower, I can prepare myself. Shut off my charge, if what Mark is saying makes any sense. Any more sense than the rest of this does anyways. But she just hit me with a barrel of water from nowhere, I had no time to prepare.” Annabeth nodded, and looked less angry.

“I guess it works like Leo’s power. He has to have near boiling showers sometimes, otherwise the water just evaporates when it hits him, a downside to extra power. Does it hurt?”

“Does it always feel like that?” Julie asked, holding onto the rails for support as she tottered over to us, another camper hovering over here telling her she shouldnt be moving.

“How did it feel for you?” I asked.

“Like I was being stabbed all over with daggers dipped in alcohol.” An interesting description.

“Huh, must dissipate with distance,” I muttered. “Sometimes it feels like that, other times it’s worse, others its better. Mostly depends on the water purity.” I said louder.

The camper gave up asking her to stop moving and grabbed both sides of her head, speaking rapidly in another language, I guess Greek. She stiffened, but then relaxed when he finished. She stood up straighter, not needing the rails to help her stand up anymore. She was about to say something when her eyes widened and everyone yelled.

“NO!” I froze, and I guess I freaked out a little because electricity sparked over my and went into the ground. Then I saw that they were looking behind me, and I turned to see a girl with green eyes and hair that stood up like the “Bride of Frankenstein.”

“What?” She asked.

“He may be dry, but its probably best not to sneak up on him like that Jackie,” Mark said. She shrugged and put her hands on the side of my face. Then she started speaking that same language the other guy had. I got a warm fuzzy feeling, my whole body going numb. She removed her hands and I felt a lot better, just sore with sore muscles instead of paper cuts.

“What did you do?” I asked in wonder.

“Jackie Snowsong,” she introduced herself. “Daughter of Apollo, the god of healing.”

“Nice to meat you, Max Aldo.” The conch horn blew in the distance.

“Alright campers, lets have dinner.”

Chapter 8