"Leo XVII," Demeter read out loud.
Leo was totally buzzing.
'Buzzing?' Hestia mouthed to Hermes with a confused look on her face.
'I'll tell you later.' Hermes mouthed back.
The expression on everyone's faces when he the dragon into camp? Priceless! He thought his cabin mates were going to bust a lug nut.
Everyone, except his siblings and father, stared at Leo with confusion.
"Lug nut?" Percy asked him.
"No thanks." Leo said, not looking up as he continued writing.
The son of Poseidon made a face. "Um..."
"It's a type of nut used to attach a vehicle's wheel to its axel." Hephaestus explained.
Festus had been awesome too. He hadn't blowtorched a single cabin or eaten any satyrs,
"You sound like you expected him to do that." Grover shuddered.
Leo set the notepad to the side and began to untie his shoes.
even if he dribbled a little oil from his ear.
"See? I told you it was just a little!" Leo grinned, kicking off his shoes.
Okay, a lot of oil.
Figures. the son of Hephaestus rolled his eyes before searching through his tool belt.
"First rule of lying: Never admit your lying!" Travis sighed. "Com'on man, that's Lying 101."
Leo could work on that later.
"Shouldn't you do it now?" Thalia asked the boy.
"No, it would take too long to fix." Leo pulled out some tools and a handful of battery packs. "I'll do some repairs on our next stop."
How long will that be? she couldn't help but wonder with a frown.
...He could tell them when he came back.
If I come back, part of him thought.
Hephaestus's grip on his screwdriver tightened.
Nah, he'd come back.
The grip loosened slightly as he continued tinkering.
...Besides, he had a fire-breathing, only slightly leaky dragon on his side. What could go wrong?
"Well, you just jinxed it now." Chris sighed, half-expecting a random monster to appear afterwards.
"When you're demigod, anything can go wrong." Percy said. "It sorta comes with the title."
Well the control disk could bust, the bad part of him suggested. Festus could eat you.
Okay, so maybe the dragon wasn't quite as fixed as Leo might have let on.
Aphrodite and Thalia tensed.
"It'll be okay," Leo said before muttering. "Geez. You guys gotta learn to trust me more on these things."
...Hey, they were under the time limit!
"Still pretty risky." Katie pointed out.
"Don't have much of a choice." Nyssa sighed. "They have three days to save Hera."
"Three days." Chris muttered in disbelief. Is that even possible? They don't even know where she is.
Three days until the solstice. They had to get going. Besides, Leo had cleaned the disk pretty well. Most of the circuits were still good. It would just have to hold together.
His bad side started to think, Yeah, but what if-
"Shut up, me," Leo said aloud.
"What?" Piper asked.
"Nothing," he said. "Long night. I think I'm hallucinating. It's cool."
"If you're hallucinating then you shouldn't be flying the dragon." Thalia grrimaced, trying not to envision the dragon spiraling down to the ground.
"I was just joking." Leo assured her.
..."Just joking."
"See?" Leo said, secretly hoping the next sentence wouldn't contradict him again. He spliced a couple wires together.
Leo decided it might be good to change the subject. "So what's the plan, bro? You said something about catching wind, or breaking wind, or something."
Hermes nodded his head in approval. "Nice. You should just forget lying and stick to changing subjects."
...Jason laid out the game plan: First, find some guy named Boreas and grill him for information-
"Hopefully it won't be too difficult. Annabeth said.
"His name is Boreas?" Leo had to ask.
"What is he, the God of Boring?"
Apollo, Hermes, and the Stolls laughed.
Athena pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Please don't actually say that to him." the goddess said with a sigh.
Second, Jason continued, they had to find those venti that had attacked them at the Grand Canyon.-
Leo purposely avoided Percy's expectant look. He kept his eyes fixated on his wires and battery packs.
The son of Poseidon scowled, but didn't say anything.
"Can we just call them storm spirits?" Leo asked. "Venti makes them sound like evil espresso drinks."
"I know right?" Apollo chuckled as Artemis rolled her eyes.
And third, Jason finished, they had to find out who the storm spirits worked for, so they could find Hera and free.
"So, you want to look for Dylan, the nasty storm dude, on purpose," Leo said. "The guy who threw me off the skywalk and sucked Coach Hedge into the clouds."
Clarisse turned to Leo. "When you find this 'Mistress', you better make her pay for what she did to Coach Hedge."
"No problem." he said, smiling as he thought about her destroyed mall.
..."Uh-huh," Leo said. "But you don't know where this place is."
"Nope." Jason admitted.
"Great." Chris said sarcastically.
Annabeth shrugged. "Maybe Boreas will point them in the right direction." I mean, the gods have to have some kind of clue on where the Wolf House is.
"There's also giants." Piper added. "The prophecy said the giants' revenge."
"Hold on," Leo said. "Giants- like more than one? Why can't it just be one giant who wants revenge?"
"Because then our life would be easier." Percy grumbled.
"I don't think so," Piper said. "I remember in some of the old Greek stories, there was something about an army of giants."
The readers paled at the thought.
...[Piper]"The giants- well, there were lots of giants in Greek mythology. But if I'm thinking of the right ones, they were bad news. Huge, almost impossible to kill.
"And we're supposed to fight these... things by ourselves?" Lacy squeaked.
"When she said 'huge', how exactly big is that? Are they Jack and the Beanstalk giant size or Giant Panda size?" Connor joked nervously. "Just asking for a friend."
"Hopefully, you'll never know that answer." Athena said gravely.
"Even more impossible then defeating a Titan?" Percy whispered to Annabeth.
Annabeth nodded.
"It's impossible for a demigod to defeat a giant unless they have the help of a god." Annabeth muttered quietly. "But since the gods have gone silent..."
"We're doomed." Percy finished with a grimace. Why are they never there when we need them?
...Leo whistled. "So... giants who can throw mountains. Friendly wolves that will eat us if we show weakness. Evil espresso drinks. Gotcha. Maybe this isn't the time to bring up my psycho babysitter."
"That one was pretty good. Granted, you weren't trying to trick anyone at the time, but still, that was a nice change of topic." Hermes happily told Leo. "Just keep practicing and you'll be able to get yourself out of even the most toughest conversations."
"I'll keep that in mind." he responded, looking over his notes.
"Is that another joke?" Piper asked.
I wish. Leo thought, keeping his eyes on the paper.
Leo told them about Tia Callida, who was really Hera, and how she'd appeared to him at camp. He didn't tell them about his fire abilities. That was still a touchy subject, especially after Nyssa told him fire demigods tended to destroy cities and stuff.
Nyssa frowned. "Sorry, Leo."
Her brother shrugged it off. "It's fine. Even if you hadn't told me, I still would've kept it from them."
..."That's... disturbing," Piper said.
"That's my life!" Leo said with forced cheerfulness.
"Please don't joke about that." Hephaestus told him.
"'Bout sums it up," Leo agreed. "Thing is, everybody says don't trust Hera. She hates demigods. And the prophecy said we'd cause death if we unleash her rage. So I'm wondering... why are we doing this?"
"So what are you suggesting?" Hera sneered at the boy. "That you should leave me to die?"
"Of course not!" Leo responded in feigned innocence. He placed a hand over his heart. "I would never leave my tía in a horrible place like that! ...Well... Technically you're abuela, so, should I call you that from now on? Or do you prefer something in the middle like tía abuela?"
The goddess just rolled her eyes as Demeter kept reading.
...He just wished that if there were four more demigods destined to help them, they'd show up quick. Leo didn't want to hog all the terrifying life-threatening adventures.
"I'm sure they're eager to have some." Percy said sarcastically.
"Besides," Jason continued, "helping Hera is the only way I can get back my memory.
Thalia scowled.
And the dark spire in my dream seemed to be feeding on Hera's energy. If that thing unleashes a king of the giants by destroying Hera-"
"Not a good trade-off," Piper agreed. "At least Hera is on our side- mostly. Losing her would throw the gods into chaos. She's the main one who keeps peace in the family. And a war with the giants could be even more destructive than the Titan War."
"Exactly." Hera said. She looked a little too pleased with the fact that they had no choice but to rescue her.
"Your friends are reasonable people." she told Leo. "You should listen to them more often."
...[Jason] "Chiron also talked about worse forces stirring on the solstice, with in being a good time for dark magic, and all- something that could awaken if Hera were sacrificed on that day. And this mistress who's controlling the storm spirits, the one who wants to kill all the demigods-"
"Might be that weird sleeping lady," Leo finished.
"It would make sense. They do seem connected somehow." Athena said.
"Dirt Woman fully awake? Not something I want to see."
It's not something anybody wants to see. Annabeth thought with a shudder.
...He'd never told anyone about that night at the warehouse. Even if he hadn't give them the whole story, it still felt strange, like he'd opened up his chest and taken out all the gears that made him tick.
At least I told them willingly. Leo thought with a bitter smile. He'd rather tell Piper and Jason about that night at the warehouse a hundred times than continue reading this book.
...The forge and dove shall creak the cage. Wasn't that the prophecy line? That meant Piper and he would have to figure out how to break into that magic rock prison... Then they'd unleash Hera's rage, causing a lot of death. Well, that sounded fun! Leo had seen Tia Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes, and pitting babies in roaring fires.
Hestia frowned at the last part.
The goddess of marriage just looked annoyed.
"What makes you think that the ones who are dying are innocent people?" she argued. "How about, instead of me causing deaths to innocents, it could mean the same monsters who kidnapped me and are holding me against my will."
Hestia brightened up at that.
"I think you're right!" she agreed.
"I know myself will enough to know my actions." the goddess smiled.
"I'm still wondering if it's worth the risk." Annabeth said, earning a glare from Hera.
"Why don't you get some sleep?" Piper said in his ear. "You were up all night."
"Good idea." Thaila mumbled, plucking her bow's string.
Leo wanted to protest, but the word sleep sounded really good. "You won't let me fall off?"
Piper patted his shoulder. "Trust me, Valdez. Beautiful people never lie."
Drew snorted. Okay, but he's not trusting a beautiful person, he's trusting you."
"Right," he muttered. He leaned forward against the warm bronze of the dragon's neck, and closed his eyes.
"Finished." Demeter said, tossing the book on Hades' lap, startling the god.
"I don't see you doing anything important, so why don't you read, Hades."
"I don't want to read." Hades said, rolling his eyes.
"Well, too bad! Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do. Like how I have to help Persephone pack every last day of summer before she goes to the Under-"
"Alright, I'll read." Hades groaned, picking up the book.
"Leo XVIII," he began with a sigh.
Great, the god of the Dead is reading my thoughts. Never thought that'd happen. Leo thought. It would've been funny if Hades wasn't reading his point of view.