outside that mysterious silver cabin [private]

So the rumors were true -- the Hunters had returned to camp.

Munching on a saltine cracker, Kendall sat on a bench near the Artemis cabin, gazing off at nothing in particular in the distance. News had spread through the Ares cabin of the immortal girls' return, and the subsequent rumors of a Capture the Flag game in the making against them. Camp had lost many, many times; the Hunters were infinitely more organized and in-sync with each other than any cabin in camp could claim, except maybe the smaller cabins or the war-like Ares cabin.

But this daughter of Ares didn't think for a minute that the Hunters of Artemis had returned for mere fun. It was probably the looming threat of the Romans, or the Giant War, that brought them back from their wanderings to this place, uninteresting though it was to them.

Kendall chuckled to herself, wiping cracker crumbs off her shorts and onto the ground, where her boar Mars lay by her feet. "What do you think, lil buddy? Are the Hunters here for fun?"

The only response she got was a snort, and a bit of shuffling from the little thing. Poor thing was probably asleep; his owner's half-siblings had made such a ruckus that night straight into the morning in their excitement for the rumored CTF game, even though Chiron had said nothing of the sort was being scheduled for the camp. And why would he, anyway? They needed to prepare for war, not games.

Kendall peered up curiously when she heard a door open and shut, hand still rifling inside the plastic wrap holding her supply of crackers. It had come from the Artemis cabin -- a girl wearing the classic silver Hunter jacket had sat down on the steps, looking rather disheveled and tired judging by how messy her ponytail looked. (But Kendall wasn't the one to talk; she had done a lot worse with a lot more sleep.)

Mars grunted suddenly, snuffling at the ground and his owner's show in the girl's direction.... How had she missed that wolf? She knew the Hunters could get pets like that, and there were a few people in camp who did have exotic pets too, but Mars had never gotten used to interacting with them; he seemed to loathe anything that didn't look remotely like him (as in, another boar or pig) or Ken, who still had a bit of a strained friendship with him anyway.

"Grumpy lil' guy," the daughter of Ares remarked, nudging his rear end with her foot. "Don't you go charging that wolf, babe. Zeus knows what it'll do to you."

Mars looked about ready to either bolt off into the sunset or charge the wolf now, so Kendall stuck out her foot in front of him to form a makeshift barrier. In hindsight, it probably wouldn't do much besides trip him and get her foot stabbed with a tusk or two; her rather old sneakers offered little protection from puddles, much less a full-grown boar like the one snuffling at her foot right now.

"You don't do that," she scolded him, nudging him back with her toe. "It hasn't hurt you -- yet. When it does, you have my blessing to wreck it like you destroyed that trash can yesterday. Here, take this, it'll take your mind off it." With a little crackling of the plastic, the daughter of Ares had pulled out a cracker from her packet and tossed it onto the ground with a flick of her wrist, about a foot away from Mars. Her knife-throwing abilities had finally found a good use.

He snuffled at the cracker but didn't take it -- instead, he chose to glare at Kendall as if to say, Really? Are you stupid?

Mars squealed loudly and snuffled the ground, facing the wolf's direction; he was tense and ready to charge, his widdle piggy feet pawing at the ground like some sort of one-two dance move. Kendall put her foot out again, sliding far down on the bench to get her shoe in front of the boar's face. If only she were a bit taller.

Looking around, she spotted the wolf: large and majestic, unlike the plump boar prodding her shoe with its tusks. It was nuzzling the girl in the silver parka like some sort of large domesticated dog -- a Hunter, huh? Hm. With a boop of her foot on Mars's snout, she sent him shuffling back a few steps to allow herself to sit up a bit more on the bench.

"Hey, you," she called to the girl. "You want a cracker?"

"One cracker, coming right up." Kendall reached into her little plastic packet and pulled out one perfect cracker -- undamaged from all the hustle and bustle of running around camp and from the demigod's attempts to open the darned package in the first place. Standing, she stepped over her boar to get closer to the girl while avoiding her wolf, and then dropped the cracker in the Hunter's hand before sitting back down. "There you go. If you want another, well, just ask."

"Oh, uh, sure." Were wolves even allowed to have crackers? Like, yeah, Kendall had just witnessed the thing eat one, but were they even healthy in the long-run? Eh. Whatever. Discarding these thoughts, she pulled out another cracker and tossed it in the wolf's general direction; no way would she let its teeth anywhere near her hand. She needed it to fight, after all, and the last time she'd broken her finger(s?) she'd been forced to duct-tape a shield to the cast on her entire hand just to keep training. "There ye go."

Obviously that was a terrible idea, but it seemed good at the time.

"You're welcome," she replied, leaning back on the bench. Mars had settled down a bit now, sitting tensely between Kendall's shoes -- probably waiting for the wolf to try taking a bite out of his rear end. Zeus knows what a boar tastes like raw; it was probably just pork, but... you never know. Kendall's feeding him a weird assortment of table scraps might contribute to a slight deviance in the traditional flavor, but she was no animal-raising expert or chef. "How long you Hunter people been here at camp? I didn't notice you all moving in -- might have been asleep or something."

Yesterday, huh? Kendall couldn't remember what she was doing yesterday, although she did distinctly remember tripping over Mars while looking for her sword, Bloody War, around her general bunk area. Her cabin counselors -- Clarisse and some other dude -- were a 'little' lenient in regards to cleanliness, which tended to be a bit of a mistake when one considers that it was the Ares cabin: there were weapons everywhere, making it infinitely more dangerous to fall inside that place.

But no matter. "Where were you guys coming from? Some Hunt off in the countryside or what?" Mars snuffled at her foot but remained where he was, looking a bit sleepy from his afternoon snack; it was around his self-imposed naptime, anyway.

"Mhm. Sounds nice, travelling everywhere. How long have you been in the Hunt?" The daughter of Ares leaned forward to pet Mars on the head; he snorted but did nothing other than let his foot twitch occasionally and maybe shift around a little to get a bit more comfortable by Kendall's feet.

This Hunter was nice -- she couldn't really understand why most of her siblings in the Ares cabin didn't like them. Was it because they weren't fighting for no reason? Or because her siblings were all just dumbasses? She couldn't tell, honestly, it was so difficult to talk to some of them without being put in a headlock and forced to toss the person off her using some wrestling technique she'd learned in the stupid wrestling class they all had to take.

Or maybe it was because the Hunters almost always beat the campers at Capture the Flag; while Kendall herself hated the game, her siblings' pride depended on whether they won or lost and how they did so.

So, this Hunter had lived for almost two centuries under Artemis -- that was... pretty cool. Kendall knew a lot of Hunters were at least a few decades old, but outside of maybe attacking one in a Capture the Flag game she had never had the opportunity to speak to one -- peacefully -- without screaming obscenities in the heat of the moment. Truly, the way the Ares cabin could get during those games was embarrassing; they were very good at strategy and fighting, yeah, but a lot of them were just blockheads. She couldn't understand how they'd managed to survive until they got to camp.

"And you've gotten to go everywhere," Kendall mused, almost wistfully. Since the day she had wandered up to camp, her head bloody and with no memory of anything that had happened to her ever, she hadn't left camp at all, besides leaving for Olympus trips -- but even then, she barely went to those. She knew of people who snuck out of camp all the time, and frankly it didn't seem like Mr. D or Chiron really cared: so why couldn't she do the same? She had the opportunity and the time, but.... "Almost two centuries of living? Doesn't that feel a bit odd, seeing everything change?"

Kendall paused for a moment as she was reaching for another cracker, letting what the Hunter had just said sink in slowly. Seeing isn't my specialty but I can hear the world changing. Oh Zeus, was she...?

Studying the girl closer from where she was sitting on the bench, the daughter of Ares noted that she couldn't really see her eyes very well from this angle -- perhaps they would have indicated the girl was blind, if Kendall had only deigned to look. Gods, this was embarrassing: she had been too busy yapping on about travelling and the Hunters to even closely examine her conversation partner.

She cleared her throat and lowered her hand away from the cracker packet. "Gods, I'm sorry -- I hadn't realized you can't see. I feel like an ass."

Kendall blinked for a moment, shifting around uncomfortably on the bench. Well, if the Hunter wanted to move -- so be it. At least she hadn't thrown something at the daughter of Ares's head, or else Ken might have let it make contact.

"Chiron? Well, he's okay, I guess, I don't talk to him much. But he's infinitely better than that Tantalus guy who replaced him when he got accused of poisoning Thalia's tree." Even though the former king had been particularly nice to her cabin counselor Clarisse, Kendall had found him a bit... detestable, if only for the crime he committed to be sent to the Fields of Punishment in the first place. She wondered briefly if the gods just liked messing with their kids, because there certainly should have been better people to replace Chiron. "Camp's okay. We're still sort of recovering from the Titan War, and now we're leaping into the Giant War. I shouldn't be complaining, really, my siblings and I love fighting, but can't we get a break?"

"I'd guess not, except for, like... how much destruction could happen." Kendall remembered reading -- or trying to read, anyway, because of her demigod dyslexia and all -- about the history of weaponry, and being particularly interested in the evolution of bombs and guns over the centuries. The atomic bomb would have been enough to destroy most ancient armies as well as some of the more modern ones, such as the British army around the Revolutionary War era, within probably a fraction of a second after landing. Surely that would be a large difference from the wars this Hunter had experienced back when she'd first joined Artemis.

The daughter of Ares picked up a cracker and munched on it thoughtfully, trying not to inhale too deeply and choke on a crumb. "Any Hunter plans for this new war against the Giants and Gaea, or is that supposed to be secret?"