‘Just follow me and you’ll be safe’

Perching on a branch of a tree, Momo has herself thoroughly camouflaged; hiding within the dense forest has always been her favourite part of the entire game.

‘As in, only shoot when I say so’ Momo clarifies as she notes the confused look on Mina’s face, there wasn’t anywhere to go except for staying among the branches and leaves, and Momo wasn’t expecting her to fly from a tree to another right?

They’ve found themselves a tree near their own flag and were more or less the last line of defence. Mina doesn’t want to sound like a whim but she silently prays that her team gets the flag before the opposition reaches them, shooting an arrow at a fellow human being feels weird, even if the arrowhead was replaced by paintballs, to quote Momo ‘I worked with the Hephaestus cabin’s head counsellor, Shownu for this baby, meant to hurt as bad but with no physical implications, except for a bruise, oh, and did you know, there’s this tiny suction cup attached to the end of it so it’s pretty hard to get rid of it, exceptionally good at being a pain in the ’.

Mina hasn’t quite forgotten about the smirk Momo had on her face as she described it. Were all demi-gods as sadistic.

‘If you’re still thinking about the paintballs, just know that only Apollo cabin has it, and now you of course. You probably won’t be touched unless they throw a spear at you, something they don’t do to newcomers, especially not an Aphrodite kid, so you’ll be safe!’

Okay, all demi-gods are sadistic. And if that was supposed to make Mina feel better, her churning stomach surely proves its ineffectiveness.

…

It’s been 10 minutes into the game, and there hasn’t been a single sight of their opponents. Momo doesn’t know what to feel about it because she’s itching for some kind of action, but at the same time she has Mina to look after and she doesn’t want Mina to have a brutal first capture the flag game, she’s a newcomer after all. But this means that the team is doing great, they better be, after what Momo is about to put herself through, especially Hermes cabin, they better be doing a damn ing good job.

Another 5 minutes has passed, and Momo sees Mina fiddling with the bow, looking bored. Maybe they could advance down and look at how the team’s progress is going, it’s about time for them to have captured the flag anyways, or better still, she could bring Mina over to the river where the flag bearer will have to cross to win the game, it kind of looks magnificent Momo must say. Looking at Mina, Momo was about to suggest so when she sees the leaves on those shrubs move in her peripheral vision, followed by heavy footsteps. Okay, so maybe her team wasn’t doing as well as Momo has expected.

Momo looks over to Mina and sees Mina stiffening up while reaching for her bow. Reaching over, Momo gives a pat on Mina’s hand and smiles at her, hopefully reassuring her and her anxiety, from... whatever.

It didn’t take long for the owners of those footsteps to reveal themselves, running into one of the rare open areas, the duo is revealed as they pause to survey their surroundings.

Ares kids, Momo should have had anticipated them, but those burly kids just reinforced why Momo likes to stay above the ground, hand to hand combat isn’t the brightest thing to do with them, even if they weren’t the brightest kids on earth.

Why you may ask. Because if they were, they wouldn’t be spinning in circles for the next 3 minute wondering where the flag was. And Momo should probably be thankful, cause if they decided to think for once, they would have climbed a tree near them to look for the flag and eventually spot Momo and Mina. Then again, it was one of the reasons why Apollo cabin can rarely stand to be on the same team as them. This situation is fantastic, just fantastic.

Momo and Mina look on in amusement as the duo tries to navigate their way to the flags, and their efforts are proved to be futile when they fail to do so. Mina decides that this may just be enough to make up for the boredom that she faced for the past few minutes.

Okay, decisions shouldn’t be made so lightly, Mina realises as one of the duo stops beside the tree that she and Momo are in, oh god, please do not choose this tree to climb.

Nope, to hell was god gonna be in their favour.

Mina panics as she sees one of the guys squat down, ready to propel his other mate up onto a tree that was about 3 trees away, close enough for their cover to be blown. Holding her breath, Mina desperately tries to not make a sound and looks at Momo for help, to only see that blonde kid draw 3 arrows. What the mother ing plan is this?

Mina draws an arrow and aims, or at least try and aim at the unguarded knee of the guy that was s