The Life of Zander Hamilton

That night was probably the best night of my life.

It was a capture the flag game, one of my favorite things at camp. “Heroes,” Chiron called out over the pavilion, “You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line. The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be in plain view with no more than two guards. Prisoners may be disarmed but not bound. I will serve as referee and field medic. Arm yourselves!”

I grabbed my armor and tied the straps. I was standing waiting for everybody to finish getting ready and looked over to the new kid. I didn’t know is name but he looked like an average kid. He was about 16 years old; 5’9”. He also had blonde hair blue eyes. Percy had brought him a few days ago from California. He was struggling to get his armor on so I put down my sword and walked over.

“Here kid, let me help. The strap goes through this hole first, then that one” I said showing him how to tie on the armor.

“Oh, that makes sense now that I look at it.” He said holding out his hand, “Cody Smiles.”

I took his hand firmly and shook it one time. “Zander Hamilton.”

“So, is your godly parent your mom or your dad?” he asked curiously.

“Dad” I replied.

“Who?”

“I, uh, I don’t know. He has yet to claim me.”

“Really? How long have you been at camp?”

“Five years.” I replied simply.

“Wow. Okay, normal transition here. Who are the team captains tonight?”

“Poseidon is leading blue and Ares cabin, red, the usual. Luckily, the Hermes cabin allied with Percy so we have a higher chance of winning.”
When the horn sounded signaling that games had begun, I felt very confident that we would win. Not only did we have Percy on our side, but we also had a great plan. Some people, not too little or too many, would stay a small distance away from the flag to guard it. A majority of our group would charge out to find their flag. Once they found it, someone would run to Percy with his sword, Annabeth with her knife, Leo with his magic tool-belt that he could use to summon any material that could fit in the pockets, and myself and tell us where it was. Then the four of us would sneak around the right side and behind them, grab the flag and book it for the creek.

It was a good plan. But we didn’t know that one of us wouldn’t be finishing the game with us.

They had their flag on Zeus’s Fist, a tall rock formation deep in the forest, so we would have to climb up the back side to avoid detection. We were almost to the back of the boulder when we were ambushed by Clarisse and seven of her brothers.

“Where do think you’re going Prissy?” she said with grin that would make the Grinch proud.

“Well, I was thinking that I’d climb that rock, and then I was going to run it back to our side of the creek.” He said it as if he did it every day, but knowing him and knowing the fact that we were demigods, he probably did.

There were enough of them so that we could fight two to one. Clarisse immediately went after Percy, but she had decided to take him on alone. Two of her brothers went after Annabeth, same with Leo. That left three for me. Great, I had about three minutes before I died.

We fought for a while before they managed to back me up to a tree and couldn’t go anywhere. There was a blur of attacks coming from three sides, but whoever my father was he must have been helping me somehow because I managed to block all of them. I heard Leo scream in pain off to my left, but I was too focused on not dying for it to register in my mind. I dodged an attack from the left by ducking under it. When I came back up, I used the pommel of my sword to smack him in the side of his head crumpling his helmet and sending him to the ground. I used my shield to block another and hit him in face with it; he fell to the ground holding his probably broken nose. Ares Jr number three, who was considerably smaller than the rest and had a Vandyke on his face, swung his sword as hard as he could at me, I put my sword up in defense, but his sword took my blade off at the hilt, he was about to bring the blade of his sword down on my neck when something stopped him; it was Riptide, Percy’s sword, sticking out of the tree and blocking my death. He had already finished off Clarisse and looked just in time to throw his sword and save my life. I took this as my chance and punched the guy in the face. He stumbled back a couple steps before I kicked him as hard as I could in the stomach. I looked around to see if Annabeth and Leo had fared as well as me and Percy had. I saw Annabeth kneeling down next to a screaming Leo lying on the ground clutching his leg with blood covered hands. Apparently, one of the guys he was fighting had slashed his leg. ‘That’s what I heard earlier, how could I be so stupid?’ I thought to myself.

Annabeth was trying desperately in vain to stop the bleeding. I thought of something I had learned in health class last semester. I had Leo grab some cloth from his magic tool-belt while I looked for a short but strong stick. When I found a piece of wood that work, I wrapped the cloth around his leg above to cut and tied to ends of it to the stick and twisted it enough to slow down the blood flow just enough for me see what I was doing. I grabbed a few other sticks and asked Leo to light them since he was the only son of Hephaestus that had powers over fire. I felt really bad about asking Leo to help me while he was bleeding out, but it had to be done as quickly as possible.

“Annabeth, could I use your knife, please?” I asked urgently.

“Sure.” She said, handing me her knife.

I held the blade over the flame until it was red hot. “Okay, Leo. This is going to hurt, a lot. Here, bite this stick.” I said, holding a piece of wood in front of his mouth as he bit down as hard as he could. I pressed the flat of the blade onto the wound cauterizing it and stopping the bleeding. Leo screamed as loud as he could through gritted teeth. I found two pieces of wood that would be about the same length of his leg and some strong vines and tied the two pieces of wood to either side of his leg as tightly as I could to immobilize his leg, keeping it from being damaged further.

It was around this time that Chiron showed up with his medical kit to take care of the other things that I had left out.

“Well done Zander. If you had not done what you did when you did, Leo would not be alive right now.” Chiron said after he had tended to Leo.

“Thank you, sir.” I said gratefully.

“Well, don’t waste time talking to me, you have a flag to capture.”

“Right.” I said, remembering that we were in the middle of something. I ran to Zeus’ Fist and climbed as fast as I could, grabbed the flag, jumped down the other side, and ran as fast as I could for the boundary line. I ran past another group of Ares kids who were guarding the flag. When they saw I had their teams’ flag they started to chase me. They were gaining me when I passed a kid from the Persephone cabin named James. Luckily we had allied with them, so when he saw me coming with a group of Ares brutes chasing me, he went into action straightaway. He used his powers to make sun flowers grow behind me just high enough to trip them. With the time that gave me I ran across the creek line winning the game for my team.

I stabbed the flag pole into ground giving a shout of victory. I had been on teams that had won before, but I had never been the main cause for the win. Usually, I was part of the main fighting group or just a side distraction to throw them off the main group. For me, this was a major achievement. Little did I know that this was only the first thing that night that I could mark off my bucket-list.

Notes

Greetings readers. I decided to scrap my whole "No post until completely finished" crap. You liked my story enough I thought I'd give the people what they want. Special thanks to my cousin who helps edit my story sometimes.

To those who like: Thank you.
To those who hate: Goodbye and see ya never.

Bubba Boy