Alyssa or Nyssa?

Chapter Eleven: Gaudium

"Sweet!" Leo yelled. He jumped up in the air.

"You," Dad pointed at Leo, "might have to sleep in a different room." Leo pouted.

"Dad," I said, "I got it, I used to have sleepovers here all the time." Dad frowned.

"You let other kids in here?" He asked, "in my house?" I nodded, smug. He looked confused.

"I've got sleeping bags," I said, "if you haven't moved them."

"No one's touched your room," Dad told me.

"So," I said, "bye?" I did a little wave, "I have to unpack, and so does Leo." Dad nodded.

"See you," Dad said, "in the morning." I watched him walk out. Leo bounced on the balls of his feet.

"So where do I sleep?" Leo asked. I pointed.

"The bed," I said simply. Leo looked confused.

"But where will you sleep?" He looked around for another bed.

"I never slept on the bed if I could help it," I told him, which was true. Pepper had always tucked me in in the bed, and I had later climbed up to the fake tree tops to drift away, "you sleep there, I sleep in the trees."

"Why?" Leo asked. I shrugged.

"I liked sleeping up high, still do," I said, "there's a spot in the fake trees where I sleep." Leo nodded.

"Are we going to get our bags?" Leo looked around, fingers fiddling with a couple scraps of metal from his tool belt, which he refused to take off, and smushed it under his armor.

I nodded.

"How?" Leo was truly confused. I sighed.

"We are going to get them, Leo," I said, "I need to work on Gaudium's magic control disk." Gaudium was joy in Latin, like Festus was happy. Gaudium was project Leo and I were working together on. We decided that Festus, the newly assembled dragon, was lonely, and needed another dragon to stay with him. Plus, we needed something to do, and building a dragon from scratch was a challenge we wanted to give a go.

Leo shrugged, "ok, let's go get our bags then."

We opened the door to my room, and looked around for signs of my dad. Nothing. We walked out. Leo walked in one direction, I walked in the other.

"Leo!" I whisper-shouted, "this way!"

"How do we know?" Leo frowned, "it could be this way." I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, sorry," I said, lacing my voice with sarcasm, "did you live here for 13 years?" Leo turned red and his nose started to smoke. I quickly covered his close-to-flames nose with my hands.

"Do not burst into flames here," I warned, "follow me." I let Leo go.

We made our way to the roof, being slow and quiet. We had to disconnect JARVIS for the time being. We grabbed our few magically expanded and lightened bags and went back inside, after packing up the chariot. Which, by the way, folded into a small square of metal, much like the Hunters of Artemis's tents.

I carried all the bags to my room, while Leo got JARVIS back online, working to avoid setting off any alarms. But children of Hephaestus were not children of Hermes, and are not good at sneaking around. Leo finished just fine, but on the way to my room, he tripped on his own feet, and I tumbled down on top of him. Dad ran out of his room and rushed to us.

"What are you two doing?" He asked, almost yelling. He didn't make any move to help as we got up. I heard Leo grumble about ever so helpful dads. I kicked him.