Keep Calm and Stab Robots

Alex approached on of the robot--no, automaton dummies, gripping his knife tighter. After about an hour of practice on the straw dummies on the far side of the arena, his counselor had told him to go give these machine thingees a try. It was just set to level one, so it should be as easy as possible. He remembered seeing a few eight or nine year old's dispatching these robots easily, and the thought relaxed him. He loosened up smiling at the dummy and bringing his two knives into the ready pose he had been shown. He studied one of the dent-covered arms of the robot, examining its bronze armor with wires squeezing between the plates here and there. As his counselor pressed the start button, the automaton began to swing its sword in a horizontal arc towards his torso. Alex stepped in and crossed his two shorter blades, blocking the swing close to the hilt before it could gather much momentum. Keeping the other blade trapped with his, he stepped forwards and brought his elbow crashing into the bronze face of his electronic opponent. The shield moved to knock him back, so Alex sidestepped and thrust his knife into the machines side. As it shuddered to a stop, he smiled and looked up. he went to pick it up, but the automaton was one of the big, slow ones. He noticed a girl wandering into the arena, and called her over. "Hey! If you, ugh, don't mind, I need a little help over here."

Jade entered The Arena and looked for someone that called her, then she approached him and talked to him,  "Oh sure! What should I do to help you? By the way, I'm Jade, daughter of Athena. You?" That was her 2nd day on the camp, and she hope she has new friends from the other cabin, even though she already has some cabin mates.

"Alex Smith, son of Zephyros," He told her. He gestured to the fallen machine and began to lift. With her help they soon had it up from the floor, barely looking any worse for wear despite the huge dent in its forehead. "Thanks," he told the girl. "I'm still new here, so I don't have a sparring partner yet. Want to help?"

"No problem Alex, its nice to meet you!" She thought about sparring partner, and she remembered that she hasn't any sparring partner yet. "Oh sure I want to be your sparring partner, because i haven't any partner."

"So where are you from?" asked Alex. it seemed like she had a bit of an accent, but he couldn't place it. He slipped into the ready stance again with his new blades and waited.

She daydreamed about her family in Indonesia, she miss them, "I'm from Indonesia, but I grew up in US. How about you?" Suddenly she worried about her father's condition now.

"Canada," he replied, slowly taking an easy swing at her with one of his knives. The swing was just to test her reflexes and see if she was any good, but he had been told it was the only safe way to start a practice fight against someone you didn't know. "It was just me and my mom until I came here. Did you have any siblings?"

She easily dodged the swing. "Yeah, but it is my step-siblings, and i don't know where are they now." She thought Alex is a good guy at sword fighting, "Can you teach me how to sword fighting?" She is bad at sword fighting, because when she was 6 years old, her hand injured bcs of sword and she gave up. So she wanted to learn that again.

Alex moved back into the ready stance and waited for a counterattack, arms up and blades crossed in front of him. "Well, I mostly use knives, but I suppose so," he told her. "When do you want to start?"

"Yeah of course I want now." She pressed her necklace's bead and transformed became a sword made of Celestial bronze. "Start with what?" Finally she has a friend and felt very happy.

Alex laughed. "Sparring, of course," He told her, and began to attack. He swung left and right as he had been shown, trying to force her to defend. His chest was left exposed, but unless she wanted a nasty cut, she would have to block.

Jade blocked and swung her sword to his feet, he defended and their sword hit and attacked each other. They easily blocked every single swung. She saw he was tired, Jade sighed, "Well you are professional at this." She said to the son of Zephyros. While they were practicing, she want to know more about Alex by asking some question, "So how is your cabin?"

"Great," Alex told the other demigod. "A little quiet, though--Theres not too many children of the wind gods. How about yours?"

"Great too. I found many cabin-mates, they are all nice people. But I think I was too talkative ." She laughed a little, "How and when did you get to the camp?" Jade likes when someone talk about his/her journey to the camp until they arrived into camp.