Page 26 of Hera

Augustine grinned. “Most definitely. You aremine.”

Hera shivered at his possessive tone. “You’d better watch out for me, too. Once I’ve got you in my sights, you’re done for.”

“Your challenge has been heard, milady,” he replied gravely. “And it will be answered.”

The whistle blew and the attendants opened the gates. “Five minutes until the whistle blows again and you may start,” they told the group at intervals as they flowed through into the arena.

Hera and Augustine separated, each trying to find a defensible position to start out from.

The arena was basically a large field, half in the forest, half on grassy plains. There were various shelters scattered at intervals, ranging from hay bales, to pallets leaning against each other, to an old car with no doors, and everything in between.

Hera knew that there was absolutely no way she could run as fast as the soldiers that had already disappeared amongst the trees. She found a spot in a corner of two pallets and, after a bit of a struggle to get the angle right, managed to release the clip that held her gun to the tank.

A whistle blew, sharp and long, carried on the wind that rustled her hair, whipping the strands in front of her face.

Hera grinned, excitement running through her. She pulled the goggles down over her eyes and peeked around the corner of one pallet. Quite a few people had already started running from one hideaway to another. She raised her gun and sighted along it, pulling the trigger multiple times and hitting a person with each paintball.

This is fun!

She giggled, feeling giddy. She ducked back behind her pallet and looked out the other side for more targets, shooting several more people.

When she turned back to the other side, she saw that a number of people in white coveralls were pointing in her direction and waving at their friends.

Oops.

I guess I should have moved!

She resisted the urge to use her power to teleport herself to another location—that would be cheating, after all—and peeked out again. The others were a lot closer, now.

Yikes.

Counting out her options was futile. She could run and possibly get hit, or she could stay put and definitely bear the brunt of multiple hits until they got bored.

Run it is.

Looking through the slats of the pallets, she could see that the group on the right was a little closer and there was a car on the left that looked closer than the hay bales on the right.

Hera took a deep breath and readied herself to run to the left, and then a thought occurred to her.

If I shoot at the people on the right, they might think I’m going to run that way.

She jumped out to the right, taking a chance, and shot a stream of paintballs at the four humans that were creeping up on her hiding place. They dropped to the ground and, in the confusion, she whipped back around the pallets and started running to the left, the tank thumping lightly against her back with each step.

Every second that passed, she expected to feel little balls of paint splatter against her back, but she never did. She dove behind the car and pressed herself against one of the wheel wells, chest heaving as she fought to catch her breath. She glanced out behind her, expecting to see the group on the left sneaking up on her again and wondered if she’d be able to run again so soon.

The group was still there, looking in confusion from the pallet where she had been hiding to the group on the right, as if they hadn’t seen her dash across the empty space at all.

She shrugged and crawled over to the left side of the car, keeping herself low. On this side, she could see some more pallet hiding places and had just made up her mind to run to those when the car rocked violently on its base.

Hera glanced up anxiously and watched as a big man with blond hair swung himself through the open front part of the car, landing beside her. He shot her a grin and her heart thumped unsteadily. “You found me quickly,” she whispered.

“I watched you take out those four people and thought you might need a little help getting past the five on the other side.”

“You knew I was going to run the opposite way?”

Augustine chuckled. “I made an educated guess.”

“Very smart.”

---