Chapter 9:

Erikka's P.o.v.

"LET IT GO! LET IT GO! CANT HOLD IT BACK ANYMORE!" Anna and I screamed at Brian. He laughed before he pretended to lift a cheek and 'let it go.'

"You guys are so weird!" Anna said, laughing and fanning her hand in front of her nose. "Did you just pretend or did you let it all out?" Brian shrugged and gave one of those Hermes smiles that scared the pee out of me.

I laughed and grabbed a chicken leg from the KFC bowl Connor had managed to steal for his 'not-date' with Anna. Anna, seeing it as just that, had invited Brian and I to join. Connor was slumped against the picnic table in a depressed mood that I had yet to see him in. "Aw, Con. Don't me be so mopey! Even though you're adorable when you're mopey!" Anna said as she pinched his cheek, making him duck his head to hide the redness.

"Guys, lunch is over. Let's go back and we can start training some more." Connor said, turning away from all of us to get out of the seat. Anna pouted her pretty, full lips.

"Oh yeah. Laurie and I kicked you out." Her sad demeanor changed to angry; a glare was thrown at Connor when he turned around. "And for good reason." He gave a sheepish smile and grabbed the chicken bucket (it was empty thanks to me) to use as a shield.

"Back, she-devil! Bringer of death to all fun!" Anna's jaw dropped.

"Did you just call me a buzz kill?" She pushed up the sleeves of her orange camp shirt and gave a fake glare this time. "That's it, Stoll! Come here and get your butt handed to you like a man!" He laughed and ran out of her reach as she followed close behind.

My smile grew as I watched them before Brian nudged me and explained about the butt kicking we would get if we were late to the strategy meeting with the Athena cabin. "What about Connor?" I asked, gesturing to him running around like an idiot.

Brian shrugged. "He never comes to the meetings, but Rikki, your new and Annabeth is not the first one you wanna tick off." I laughed, because she wouldn't be.

The first person for me to tick off here, was Leo. I gritted my teeth, because once my thoughts were on Leo, they didn't let me focus on much else. So as we walked to the Firewall to meet the other cabins, (Athena, Apollo, Poseidon, Iris, and more that I couldn't remember) I prayed that Annabeth would have something to say that was good enough to distract me. Because Leo Valdez was a topic my brain and I needed to stay far away from.

XxXxXxX

"Say WHAT?!" I yelled, my mouth dangling open. Annabeth wrinkled her eyebrows.

"You're on offense. Yes, that's what I said." I ran a hand through my loose hair before throwing it into a ponytail.  Taking a deep breath, I turned to Annabeth.

"Listen," she raised an eyebrow at me as I spoke. "You've seen me in action. I suck. You want that to try and win you a flag?" A smile graced her lips as she watched me quizzically.

"Yes."

Of course she would say that. She shot me a look that told me to just trust her, but I had trust issues: just saying. My mouth opened to retaliate, but instead closed to bite down a yelp. I glanced at Brian who had just ground my foot into the floor. I glared at him as Annabeth went back to telling everyone the plan. Apparently, her 'swell, ingenious plan' involved me going into a tree and staying there. After this was explained, my fear of accidentally stabbing myself lessoned and I was beginning to like her plan.

After an hour or two of training and strategizing, (both I failed at miserably.) we went to dinner to eat and pray before the game began. "-where you belong!" Annabeth yelled at Connor a little bit away from the Mess Hall. He looked sheepish as he mumbled something.

Realizing that would be going on for a while, I stood up to offer my food with Travis in the lead. The eyes didn't follow me as much this time, and I supposed they were beginning to believe that the game would get me claimed. I thought it was unlikely, but you can't change everyone's mind.

However, the stares I was quickly becoming accustomed to was nothing like the burning one on my back. On it's own accord, my head spun to look behind me like a compass to north. My eyes fell on a brown pair where they stayed, unblinkingly.

Leo's eyes stared at me with such intensity that my breath caught in my throat. With all my attention focused on him- that seems to happen a lot- I ran into someone- which also seems to happen a lot. "Watch where you're going, klutz." I steadied myself with a near by table before glancing at my victim.

"Sorry. You're right though, I'm a major klutz." The large girl who looked like she was about to cream me, looked taken aback before she cracked a tiny smile. Before we could say anything else, a guy came over and led her away, probably afraid she would pummel me.

"Careful, Foster." Anna said, coming up behind me. I pursed my lips at my last name that Anna insisted on calling me. Normally, I wouldn't have had a problem with my last name, but it was my dad- my stepdad's last name. "Next time you're sneaking some eye candy, wait until you're sitting so you can really enjoy the dessert."

She laughed at my expression and popped some food into the fire. I rolled my eyes, trying desperately to hide my blush. While I ate my dinner- pizza tonight thank goodness- I tried to think about annabeth's plan, rather than how I might fall out of the tree and land on my sword. Brian had tried to make some small talk, but he stopped after I gave him a few two syllable word answers.

Finally, after finishing everything, Annabeth nodded to her allied cabins to go suit up. Unfortunately, the Dionysus cabin was on the red team because of Connor and Travis, so Anna would not be going with us at the moment. "Nervous?" Lisa asked, coming up next to me and grabbing my hand. I glanced at the sky as I shrugged.

"Maybe a little." Lisa let out a giggle that made me smile largely at her. "What's so funny?" I asked, fairly curious.

She pointed behind her to where the mess hall was. "I think it's funny how Fire Boy thinks he is gonna get you tonight. Because he doesn't know you're like a bird sitting in a tree!" Sweat pooled in my palms at her words. Letting go of Lisa's hand, I quickly wiped them on my jean shorts before letting her take it again.

"Where did you hear this, Lis?" I asked, forcing the waver in my voice to take a chill pill.

Giving me a wide eyes honest look with her big cow eyes, she said, "My friend Laney in the Nemesis cabin told me that they were gonna work him up or something. Make him angry so that everyone will have to go save you. But you are safe in a tree!" I gave a nervous laugh.

"Y-yup! That's me! Safe in a tree!" Lisa smiled as if the whole world revolved around her, and I just gave myself a pity party as we walked to the armory because I was definitely dead meat if Leo Valdez had painted a target on my back.

XxXxXxX

The Frozen show tunes were officially my theme song as I sat in the tree humming, "Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?" The game had been going on for a good half an hour, and my butt was starting to get numb. Yawning, I adjusted my sword and wiggled my butt around to get in a better position.

Just as I was about to settle back down, a noise came from twelve feet below me. "Crushed her, dumped food on me, shows up at my forge and falls into a fire. If I find her, I'm letting out some steam." I squeaked, knowing Leo was right beneath me. The muttering stopped and I was afraid I'd been too loud.

Hidden in the foliage, only my face could be seen if he looked up. Leaning back to stay in the shadows, I felt nervous beyond relief. Nemesis kids had riled him up for sure and I did not want to get in his way.

Which makes what happened next incredibly ironic.

Apparently I'd leaned back too far and came crashing out of the tree. You're probably thinking, 'OMG! She landed right at his feet!' Well, if you were thinking this, kind readers, you would be wrong. It was worse. "Ugh!" I landed on top of him. Like a puma.

"Holy crap! I am so sorry! Why does life hate me?" I scrambled off of him as quickly as I could and started running in a random direction, afraid he would try and kill me before accepting my apology. Unsurprisingly, he followed me.

The trees zipped past me as I sped away from him, afraid to see how close he was. However, sometimes curiosity out weighs fear. My head snapped back for a second and saw flames racing up his arms as he ran, an odd look in his eye. He looked mad, and crazy, and that's when I slammed my heels into the ground.

He quickly dug his heels in, too as I walked up to him angrily. "What do you think you're doing?" He blinked down at me, the flames disappearing slowly. I'd address that problem when I got there. "Do you think that just because I'm new, clumsy, and unclaimed that you can 'flame on' and chase me? Huh?"

Leo stuttered and glanced around, as if waiting to be told it was all a joke. Angrily, i placed my hands on my hips and glared. With a grunt, I continued ranting while he stared at me like I had two heads.

"I've had a lot happen in one week. Things I am not going into with a stranger. So if you could get that stick out of your fiery, well defined caboose, that'd be great." Leo was speechless and I turned around to walk away. Seeing the flag only a foot or two away, I walked to it, waiting for someone else to show up.

Grabbing it from where it was hidden and walking back, I glared at Leo, who was still blinking confusedly at the spot I had occupied earlier. As I kept walking, I passed my tree and the creek before anyone was even visible. They were all fighting and narrowing in on our flag, meaning that no one had noticed me yet. "Hello! Guys? What do I do now?!" I yelled to them, trying to get them to notice the game was over.

At some point, Leo must have followed me because he was suddenly screaming to the campers, "YO! GAME'S OVER!" Almost every one turned to see me holding the flag as a loud gong rang out. I gulped and shoved the thing into Leo's hands, not wanting to be looked at anymore.

Slowly, I tried backing away, but a crowd of the blue team had started to swarm around me. "See? I told you to trust me." I whipped around to find Annabeth with a smirk on her face. Mine, however, glowed red.

"Trust? Torch Boy over there almost roasted me!" Annabeth laughed, her grey eyes sparkling with amusement.

"Well, I needed him to be distracted, and I figured you'd get found eventually. I was still looking for the exact location because I was given false information on where it was." She paused to glare at a black haired kid I knew only too well. By the smile he gave her (not to mention the kiss on her cheek) I took a gamble that Percy and Annabeth were dating.

I shrugged my shoulders while I was still getting pats of congratulations and words of how awesome it was even though no one was there. "So?"

"Sooo," annabeth said patiently over the noise while we were herded toward the armory to take off the armor. "He was the only defense because they had a really dumb battle strategy. If he was distracted, I could grab the flag. However, I was not expecting you to basically run right to the flag and then blow up on Leo." Warmth flooded my cheeks as I bit my lip.

"You saw that?" Annabeth nodded with a laugh that sounded a little weighed down by too many bad things for someone so young. Percy must have heard it, too, because he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

"Of course I saw- Anna? What's wrong?" Anna had just run up to us, out of breath and with a scared look in her dark brown eyes.

Sucking in a lungful of air, she shot the words out in a rush. "Annabeth, Percy, it's Rachel. There's something wrong with her and she's all twitchy and stuff. Chiron thinks it will have something to do with the pr-"

"Probably check on her?" Percy cut her off, glancing at me. "Yeah. Let's go." Annabeth started to follow Anna with Percy, but he suddenly stopped. "Maybe you should come, too, Rikki." I shrugged, but followed him. As usual, my curiosity had gotten the better of me. But I couldn't help it. So, as we ran to the big house, my only thought was, 'What was wrong with Red?'

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Kind of a long chapter, but you guys deserve it :) So I want comments! I need help with something in the writing so if you don't mind a spoiler and would like to help, kik me at Briebear1 . Thank you and I love you guys! ~BrieD