𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚜

This is Fine

AS I FELL I THOUGHT, "well, this is normal". Far below us I saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb. A body shot past me—Leo, screaming and frantically grabbing at the clouds. "Not coooooool!"

I made myself dive towards Leo, wrapping him in a hug, he yelled out in surprise. "It's just me," I said.

"My dragon!" Leo yelled. "You gotta save Festus!"

"JASON!" I yelled, catching his attention. "CAN YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT FESTUS?"

Jason shook his head, he seemed to try to help, but that only sent Piper and Jason falling faster. I heard an explosion below us. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, "Festus!"

Jason and Piper landed on us, and Jason tried to keep us all from falling. Key word, tried. In the end, his energy gave out and we dropped like stones.

I, of course, just had to land on my ankle in a bad way again, while Leo and Jason landed a bit to my right, Piper was nowhere to be seen.

"Ow, shit shit shit, ow, not my ankle again." I continued hopping around and cursing.

"Take some ambrosia, Kode," Leo said.

"Oh yeah, gimme a sec." I hopped over to the stairs to the catwalk and pulled some ambrosia out and ate a piece. "Piper, where are you?" I called.

"Up here," she stuck her arm out somewhere above me.

Jason, Leo and I climbed the stairs, me wincing a bit, but noticing that the ambrosia was kicking in.

Leo started to ask, "You okay ... ?" Then he saw her foot. "Oh no, you're not."

"Thanks for the reassurance," Piper groaned.

"You'll be fine," I said. "Leo, you got any first aid supplies?"

"Yeah—yeah, sure." He dug around in his tool belt and pulled out a wad of gauze and a roll of duct tape—both of which seemed too big for the belt's pockets.

"How did you—" Piper tried to sit up, and winced. "How did you pull that stuff from an empty belt?"

"Magic," Leo said. "Haven't figured it out completely, but I can summon just about any regular tool out of the pockets, plus some other helpful stuff." He reached into another pocket and pulled out a little tin box. "Breath mint?"

Jason snatched away the mints. "That's great, Leo. Now, can you fix her foot?"

"I'm a mechanic, man. Maybe if she was a car ..."

"Give her some ambrosia," I said.

"There should be some in my bag, if it's not crushed."

Jason carefully pulled her backpack off her shoulders. He rummaged through the supplies the Aphrodite kids had packed for her, and found a Ziploc full of smashed pastry squares like lemon bars. He broke off a piece and fed it to her.

"More," she said.

Jason frowned, and I shook my head. "Piper, we shouldn't risk it. Too much could burn you up. I think I should set your foot."

Piper's stomach fluttered. "Have you ever done that before?"

"Yeah, I'm a son of Apollo, I've done a lot of things, though, I can say I don't really like this stuff, it grosses me out, I still know how to do it.."