Search, Retrieve, and Destroy (Flashback, Morgan and I)

This was it; the day that all of the training was going to become invaluable. Today, the past six years of hours long training sessions was finally proving it's worth. Today, Camp was at war, hulled up at a five-star in Manhattan, playing the long, defensive game against the numerous enemies of the Titan Army, hoping that the ragtag ensemble of 12 to 16 year olds was enough to keep the unfaltering horde of traitors and monsters out of Olympus.

Back at the hotel, Julien layed on the floor of one of the rooms. The unclaimed demigod had just got back from the front lines, only at the hotel because he had helped transport a wounded comrade back to the "safe" confines of their five-star rated forward operating base. However, his moment of decomposition was cut short; a de-facto officer coming in and ushering the (unclaimed) son of Nike off to a side room - he was being assigned a mission.

After several minutes of debriefing, the tired and battle worn Julien was sent off to go retrieve some mortal medical supplies from a drug store several blocks northwest of the hotel. But he wasn't alone - one of his claimed cabin-mates, the young troublemaker Lee, was assigned to help him. Or was he assigned to help her? Doesn't matter; he thought, we're all fighting on the same side here.

Lee had rarely been so exhausted in her life. Without ambrosia, nectar, and the help of the Apollo cabin, she wouldn't have lasted the day. Today she had broken her forearm, got a nasty cut on her right leg and a stab into her foot -- and those were just the major three injuries. After one hour of rest, Michael had told her she was good enough to get back up, and indeed she was. Sure, there was still some lingering pain when she walked, but everyone had their wounds and she couldn't just lay back whilst others risked their lives. So here she was with Julien, dressed in an olive jacket and camouflage trousers, her short hair all muddy and damp.

Weary but alert, the daughter of Hermes was clutching her celestial bronze discs in her hands, ready to frisbee them into a monster's face at first notice. They passed gleaming stores and skyscrapers in silence, the sound of sleeping mortals all around them.

"By Hades, this is creepy," she whispered, still bewildered by all the New Yorkers just curling up on the sidewalks or in their cars. As they walked past a schoolbus, she saw a bunch of eighth graders snoring, totally oblivious -- she couldn't helpt but notice they were the same age as her. If she had been mortal, it might've been her in that bus with them.

"Yeah, it sure is." It wasn't his first time in battle - he pulled a nasty wound on his leg last year with the Labyrinth - but Julien couldn't keep the goosebumps away while walking the streets of the Big Apple. "The city that never sleeps" they called it, but there were sleeping mortals and idling cars all around, the sureal silence being broken only by the war raging on the other end of the island.

Dressed in an orange golfing polo and some (now worn) jeans and supported by his custom made & painted armor, Julien cautiously scanned the rooftops of the lower buildings they passed. Sure, a monster would probably attack from the ground, but who's to say that they didn't already claim the higher ground?

"So, you know how to break into buildings, right?" He knew Lee was a Hermes kid - they saw each other every morning and evening - but he still wanted to know what she would bring to the table once they reached their objective.

"Are you kidding?" Lee whispered.

She was also wearing an armor -- hers was rather old and worn and had a yellow smiley face spray painted onto the back of it, which made it rather recognizable. Hopefully not too recognizable.

Weaving between cars and buses, she paid attention to everything going on around her, the faintest sound, the lightest breath. She herself was making almost no noise, her feet as silent as a street cat's. Being a child of Hermes generally made you quite stealthy.

Julien whispered back. "A little, but still felt the need to ask." She was a Hermes kid, but a young one at that.

In terms of stealth, Julien would be getting a hard B- in terms of noise. He had learned a lot from the 6 years of bunking with the crooks and comedians, but not enough to make him a master of stealth. His footsteps made sounds quiet enough not to be heard ten feet away - which was bad. Very bad. I should be killing the stealth game right now he thought, why am I not killing it?! The very idea he was making sound drove the Swiss teen crazy, but he put aside this anger for when it really mattered.

They finally arrived at the drug store. Since the employees and customers had fallen asleep in the middle of the day, the automatic doors were unlocked and the two demigods just strolled in.

"Right. What supplies do we need?" Lee asked, stepping over a sleeping woman in the queue to the cash desk.

"Wantever we can grab really." Julien stepped over a sleeping customer before sliding over the counter to the pharmacy. "Although be on the lookout for Motrin, opioids, OxyContin;" He stopped at a cabinet full of various prescriptions, taking a second to check for any alarms; "Painkillers, really."

"Bro, I'm dyslexic. Do you really think I can decipher any of this in less than five minutes?" Lee said, squinting at a box she had grabbed from a shelf. Putting it back, she shook her head. "You're better at this than me. I'm gonna go and see if I can find braces or bandages around her," the daughter of Hermes said.

"Works for me." Lee wasn't wrong; it had taken a few years to figure it out, but Julien's dyslexia was much milder than that of the other Hermes cabin campers. Which also meant his ADHD was much stronger, but that also had it's perks. Didn't keep him from getting wounded last year though.

After taking a minute to scan the cabinets of prescriptions, the unclaimed demigod had found himself the one he wanted - the one stuffed with schedule two painkillers. "Jackpot."

Julien took off his helmet, breastplate, and shirt, wrapping his right fist with the orange tee. Taking one last glance at the contents of cabinet, Julien got into a boxing stance and threw a punch at the glass, causing it to crack but not shatter.

The sudden noise made Lee's head snap up. "What the hell was that?" she whispered in Ancient Greek. In a split second she stood behind Julien, and realized what had happened. Well, what a waste of my super speed, she thought. "Dude, warn me next time. I freaked out," she said, and went back on her quest for braces.

"Whatever you say Lee." he said not breaking his focus or the glass. After a minute of fruitless abuse to his hand, Julien threw his shirt back on and drew his sword. Since fists didn't work, the glass was already beaten, and he had an abject that can break stuff, Julien wondered why he didn't go with the xiphos in the first place.

Stepping beside the cabinet, he swung the celestial bronze blade at the broken glass, finally breaking it open...and setting off an alarm."Um, Lee? You can shut alarms down, right?" Julien nervously asked, looking around for a bag or something to store everything in.

Lee popped her head out from behind a shelf. "What did you do this time," she said under the noise of the alarm, jogged over and took a look. Right. The daughter of Hermes briefly closed her eyes, scanning all electronics in the perimeter. "Stay here," she told Julien, and walked through the wall on their right. After sprinting up a flight of stairs, she arrived in a room equipped with two computers, in which a man was loudly snoring, his head on one of the keyboards. His mug was still half full with cold coffee.

Lee found the control unit in no time, opened it, and unplugged the leads, which shut the system down. She then went on to jam the intra-home communication to prevent another alarm-style device to go off in the next best police station, or wherever the Hades this drug store was registered.

Slipping back through the wall, she nodded at Julien. "It's done. Let's grab everything we can and get the hell out of here."

"Got it!" It had taken a second to find a bag large enough to take all the meds, but Julien used one of the sleeping customers' backpacks - probably some tourist coming to pick up some last-minute supplies for the trip home - and cleared the cabinet of painkillers.

"Alright," exclaimed Julien; "I've got enough painkillers to get half the camp addicted." With the backpack all zipped up, he threw it on and headed back to the front to see if there was any unwanted visitors.

"Here are all the braces and bandage rolls I could find," Lee said. "As well as some bottles of disinfectant."

She threw everything into her own bag and followed Julien out. "Everything clear?" she whispered softly.

At the front window, Julien took a look around the immediate area. Sleeping mortals, noiseless cars, and plenty of buildings lacking other humans on their roofs. "Yeah, we're clear." he confidently replied, stepping out into the street.

But just as he left the building, Juilen clutched his left shoulder, falling to the ground with a loud "AGH!" He turned to look at the area of pain, noticing a celestial bronze tipped arrow lodged in his skin.

"Scythian dracaenae, run," Lee said and grabbed him by his good shoulder. Her parkour skills came in handy. She slid over car hoods, jumped onto vehicle roofs, rolled away underneath a garbage truck. She was quick on her feet, very agile, and seemed lighter than she actually was -- she hopped over a barrier, hugging her knees as she spun through the air, and resumed her run as soon as the soles of her shoes connected with the ground.

Julien followed Lee through the streets, trying to keep up between her freerunning, the meds, and the arrow in his shoulder. And about that arrow - it stung. Bad. Like "salt-in-the-wound-mixed-with-arsenic" bad. He wasn't going to give up - some internal sense in him forbade that option long ago - and through the pain, Julien kept on Lee's tail.

Or at least he did before their path was blocked by 4 demigods and a hellhound.

"S***..."

OOC: I'm considering the enemies as NPCs, so you can use any of them as you please.

Lee skidded to a halt. This did not look good for Julien and her.

"Get them!" One of the demigods shouted, and everything from there on became a blur.

Lee immediately moved to get her back against Julien's, snapping her discs from her bracelets. They grew in her hands until she was holding two heavy bronze discs twice the size of DVDs. Her armor appeared on her upper body, just in time to prevent a stab to her chest to become lethal. The blade dug into her breastplate and she knocked it to the side with one disc before frisbeeing the other into the demigod's thigh.

OOC: Lee's fighting relies on speed and surprise techniques. Just throwing that out there cause Julien and Lee are supposed to know that kinda stuff about each other.

OOC: Good to know. Julien relies on a more direct style of combat, so basically what you'd expect from the kind of kid that shoots golf balls at landmines.

BIC: The demigod attacking Lee, a turncoat of Demeter lineage, was knocked down by the disc to her thigh. However, she didn't spend much time on the ground, getting up and sending another jab at the daughter of Hermes.

As for Julien, he dealing with another xiphos-wielding treasonous b*stard, taking a defensive role as the demigod kept swinging and stabbing at the unclaimed Swiss. After several of his attempts at severing one of Julien's limbs were blocked, the Titan-aligned demigod decided to thrust their xiphos at Julien, only for the blade to be knocked from their hands - Julien's demigod ADHD working at its finest. With the traitor disarmed, Julien wasn't about to let him run away. He slashed at the fallen demigod's legs, cutting the boy's left shin before moving into the next attacker.

OOC: Actually, disregard anything I say about a character's fighting style. It's probably gonna be misleading anyway.

Lee was surprised. The sharp-edged discus had left a deep wound in the girl's thigh, that was now gushing blood, but she still stood up to keep fighting. Lee opened a gloved hand and the discus flew back to it. She sent her other one spinning at the hellhound's throat, who exploded into golden flames, whilst knocking the girl's stab downwards with the celestial bronze guard on her arm.
She tried keeping her back against Julien's for mutual protection but the other demigod had a tendency to slip away. Lee stumbled to the side under the attack of another demigod, then decided to just fight with her back to one of the cars.