The afternoon sun shone bright against the flowing grass of one of the many mock battlefields the camp had. The small field was located at the edge of the west woods, which was past the training center. Really it was one of the more obscurely located woods and just to add to Kyungsoo’s luck, he of course was assigned there. Not just Kyungsoo, no, it was Kyungsoo plus his other teammates. His teammates really wouldn’t be bad at all (it’d be perfect actually) but of course Oh Sehun just had to be on his team, and in a building-teamwork activity no less.

Kyungsoo’s other team members included Azarai, Tao, and Kai. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t happy about that last one. The only problem was that there was no way in hell he’d ever get close to him with Sehun around. Well at least he had his friends, so it wouldn’t be all that hard to be teammates. That would be true, except for the fact that Sehun was openly ignoring Kyungsoo and not in the I’m-pretending-you-don’t-exist way. Often Sehun would send him glares, cut him off whenever he tried to say anything, or just blatantly not include him. Kyungsoo had no idea he could be such a and honestly, he was getting fed up with the brat.

Kai, Azarai, and Kyungsoo sat on some logs and watched Sehun and Tao argue back and forth, on and on. They weren’t even sure about what the two were arguing about, but there was lots of insults being flung around that certainly didn’t sound like strategy. Azarai had checked out ages ago, letting his mind wonder to more interesting things. Kyungsoo was watching Kai play with the water coming from his water bottle. It was extremely interesting and, even though he just wanted to watch Kai at first, Kyungsoo found himself intrigued by all the different shapes Kai could form. He was even able to make a little animation of sorts with two characters interacting.

It was just something Kai remembered watching when he was little. That’s usually what he did when he was bored, just replicate certain things he remembered with water. He usually had to keep lots of focus to form multiple characters and make them move around. Most of it was funny instances he had seen happen, and even though he’d seen them hundreds of times, they made him feel relaxed. It was almost a way to preserve his memories. Certain things that made him happy or made him laugh, he would replay until he was able to create it out of water, and then he’d re-create it over and over.

Kyungsoo was so absorbed in the little scenes he accidently let out a small laugh at a particularly funny scene. Since he was sitting right next to Kyungsoo, the small laugh startled Kai, but not enough to disrupt his focus. He was used to people ignoring this habit. Sehun had inquired about it the first time he saw Kai do it, but after he got an explanation he stopped paying attention. More than likely it was out of respect for his memories, but Kai didn’t really mind either way.

Discretely, Kai peeked over at Kyungsoo. The boy was completely focused on the little characters, eyes all big and trying to soak in everything. Kai found it amusing that he was so intrigued, but then again Kyungsoo had never known anyone else with powers before, so this kind of thing would be new to him. Kai changed the scene to something he saw on a kid’s show when he was little. At the time, he found it really funny but now he thought it was rather silly. He hadn’t made the scene in a while, but it was still second nature to him. Kai watched Kyungsoo as the scene played out and tried to keep the amusement off his face when the boy laughed. He thought that Kyungsoo reminded him of a little kid, a spoiled one, but Kai couldn’t help it that any animosity he held towards him washed away with that big, gummy, heart-shaped smile.

“I literally cannot believe just how stupid you are!” Tao screamed in frustration. He and Sehun had been going at it for a while now, even to the point where Tao couldn’t remember what had started the argument in the first place.

Sehun scoffed. “Please, spare me. This argument is so pointless and we’re getting nothing done. Let’s just stop and get on with the mission.”

Tao gaped and sputtered. “T-that, wha-, I just!” that’s what he had been trying to say for the last 10 minutes.

The brat smirked at Tao’s flustered state and then called out to Kai, “Come on, we need to do the mission now. We don’t even have any of the supplies we were supposed to collect.”

At that Azarai cleared his throat. “Uh, actually I got some of them while you guys were…discussing things.” He held up a brown sack overstuffed with various weapon shaped objects. For the first part of the mission, they were supposed to work as a team to find weapons, food, water, and bonus “special objects” to help them with their pseudo mission.

Sehun pressed his lips in a thin line and clasped his hands together. “Right…thank you.” Everyone was just staring at Azarai, wondering if he knew what the word teamwork really meant.

“Well there’s still more stuff out there. I mostly just grabbed weapons and some water.” He offered. “Here,” he dumped the contents of his bag on the ground. “we can split up these and then go find more.”

Everyone except Kyungsoo scrambled forward to get their hands on their preferred weapon. Sehun picked up a small knife, inspected it, looked back at the other weapons, and wrinkled his nose. “So you didn’t find anything like, I don’t know, a bow and some arrows, or something like that?”

“No…but we can go look for it. I was only out there for a little bit.” Azarai said. Tao rolled his eyes and pocketed a knife and a small axe. Meanwhile, Jongin grabbed two short swords and Azarai gave Kyungsoo a flint knife. The group had to admit that Azarai had found some really great weapons, those including a long sword and dagger he kept for himself. The problem was that they still needed food and more than the one flask of water. It was clear where the son of Ares’s priorities laid.

“Alright!” Sehun stood and presumed position of leader, but no one wanted another argument so they kept quiet. “Let’s start by looking in the places Azarai hasn’t.”

“I could have told you that.” Tao mumbled and rolled his eyes for like the thousandth time. Kyungsoo just elbowed him to keep quiet but smiled to let him know he thought the same. There really was no arguing with Sehun, so everyone followed his “orders” as he led them the opposite side of the clearing that was closer to the end barrier.

Apparently the woods were completely full of these supplies, but so far the only things the group found were some rope and a container of crackers. Every once and a while one of them would throw Azarai a questionable glance, wondering how in the world he found so many good weapons. They came across several more flint knives but left them there, as they had no need for more. Furthermore, it seemed as though Azarai wasn’t even looking anymore.

Finally, Tao spoke up. “So Azarai, you just decided to give up or…?” he had stopped wrestling with a vine that got caught in his boots on an attempt to search a questionable tree. The irritation was clear in his voice and he stood looking straight at Azarai, hands on hips and boots still tangled.

Azarai, who was just standing there, hands gripping the sack straps, looked surprised for a moment before smiling. “Oh well, I figure you guys would want to look first since I already got this stuff.” he said gesturing to the sack.

“Do you not get the whole “team effort” thing?” Tao's voice strained as he tugged at the vine again. no matter how many times he cut the vine, he still could get it untangled.

“Of course I do," Azarai answered, " I do my part, you do your part, he does his part, and so on.” Sehun, Kai, and Kyungsoo stopped looking around and tuned in on the conversation.

Tao finally wrenched his feet free of the vine, huffing a bit before saying, “Uh huh, and since you feel like you’ve done your part, you’re waiting for us to do ours?”

Azarai nodded.

At this point everyone had stopped to look at the large guy again. Sehun squinted his eyes and crossed his arms. “No.”

Azarai turned towards Sehun and blinked in confusion. “No?”

“No. Since it wasn’t a team decision for you to go on your own and suspiciously collect weapons, it doesn’t count.” Sehun said holding his chin up. He was the leader of this group and he wouldn’t stand for members who wouldn’t follow rules.

“Suspicious?” Azarai said a little offended. “How was it suspicious?”

“Well,” Tao spoke up. “We can’t find anything worthwhile with four people looking and you found all those weapons by yourself. That’s a little suspicious.”

Azarai looked over to Kyungsoo for help, but the son of Hades just shrugged. He couldn’t really argue with it and he wasn’t about to take sides in a teamwork mission.

“I just, it was easy for me I guess? I don’t know maybe I picked a really good spot. I mean, this spot is right next to the barrier? Maybe they figured no one would go this close to it and hid less stuff? Geez, I’ll help you guys look this time if it makes you feel better.” Azarai said. He couldn’t believe he was being questioned in a teamwork mission. Honestly, most of the stuff was hidden up in the tree branches and under rocks. Not to mention Kyungsoo and Sehun were literally just looking. They weren’t moving anything around or searching, they just looked around with their eyes expecting something to just pop out at them.

“Let’s just move further south, okay?” Kai suggested and everyone shrugged and followed him. The woods were a little more dense and darker. Tao seemed to move more cautiously and stayed rather close to Azarai, much to Sehun irritation. Sehun knew Tao was scared of the dark, but Tao would never admit it or even just man up and face it. So, of course, he would cling to the large, muscular guy to shield himself against any “harm”. What a user, Sehun thought. He just used people to make himself look cool. He wasn’t cool himself. He was a stupid scared-y cat.

Since it was considerably darker, Kyungsoo opted to just use his spidey senses to feel around him, expanding and stretching his personal bubble instead of actually putting forth effort on his own. As it turned out, he could find the hidden supplies by feeling them. Now that was cool.

“Hey! You guys I think I found something!” Kyungsoo suddenly shouted, making Tao jump and grab Azarai’s arm. Sehun rolled his eyes.

In a hole at the bottom of one the trees, Kyungsoo pulled out a pack. Inside it there was bread, meat, cheese, and most importantly (to Kyungsoo) money! He dropped the pack on the ground and jumped up enthusiastically while holding the money. It was a roll of twenties with a piece of paper that said, “Congrats! You found a special bonus object!”

“Whoo hoo! I found money!” Kyungsoo said as he stuffed it in his bag.

Kai raised an eyebrow. “You know, in this situation I think the food here is more important.” He picked the pack up off the ground and dusted off the dirt, before putting it in his bag.

Kyungsoo scowled (pouted). It was just that he hadn’t held good ole American paper in his hands for a while, so he was excited to have some (there was a different currency used in the camp, earned through various activities and competitions). “Yeah, well, if something happens and we end up out of the camp, we’ll definitely need it so.” Kyungsoo reasoned.

To his surprise (and Sehun’s) Kai chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” He said, and Sehun almost fell out.

The noodle boy could feel the spear of betrayal being shoved violently into his heart. Sehun huffed. “Well, we still need to find more water so let’s continue to look around!” and with that he started vigorously searching to hide the aching pain.

The group managed to find a sufficient amount of food and water, blankets, a vial of healing potion, and a shield before they realized that the woods were so thick it looked like nightfall.

“So, we should probably head back. I’m pretty sure we’re at the very back end of the camp.” Everyone agreed and started back.

A strange feeling settled over them as they began to hear faint noises the closer they got to the camp.

“Hey,” Kai was the first to speak up. “you guys hear that right?”

Everyone nodded.  “It kind of sounds like—” A strangled scream interrupted Azarai. It was loud, but far enough away to still be rather faint. Everyone stopped for only a moment before breaking out into a run.

“What direction did that come from?!” Tao shouted as he ran.

Azarai looked back and forth trying to remember the sound. “I’m not sure! But I think it was from the practice field on the training grounds!”

Kyungsoo could fell his heart thundering in his ears as a feeling of dread washed over him.

“That! That’s where Baekhyun’s group was at!” Tao said panickingly and he started sprinting. was all he could think, because this wasn’t a training mission. That scream was real and could have belonged to one of his best friends.

All the noises continously grew louder until the group finally burst out from the woods, only to have their legs fail to bring them any further. In front of the young demi-gods was a scene straight from their nightmares. Their worst fear was staring back at them.

Fire

Screaming

Blood

Fighting

Demons.

Tao’s body lurched forward when he saw Synthia, a girl from Baekhyun’s group fighting in the middle of the field. It could only mean that his group was attacked, but before Tao could get anywhere, he was grabbed by Azarai and dragged back into the woods. Kai held Sehun by the arms with a hand clamped over his mouth. Kyungsoo was in shock. He had never seen anything like that, could have never even imagined anything like that. The images of young kids lying on the ground covered in blood wouldn’t leave his mind. That’s what they were afraid of. That’s what all of them were always afraid of. Why? The camp was supposed to be safe. Why? How did the demons get in? How?

“Let’s go!” Kyungsoo faintly heard someone say. His body was pushed forward and then he was running. Tao was still fighting against Azarai, but he was no match for the huge guy, and Sehun was stumbling around practically being dragged by Kai. They ran and ran until they were back in the dark woods and then they kept running straight over the barrier that was no longer there. All Kyungsoo knew was that they were running south. They ran south until night had fallen and their legs collapsed from exhaustion. 

Oh

things are getting serious

yeah

now we're getting into some serious plot man

of course I couldn't leave this all happy-go-lucky romance

there won't be any real important character death, like no main characters

Well I hope you read and enjoyed~

I'll try and update as soon as I can heheh :}