madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

- a hot psychopath, what's not to like?-

Jason glanced at their friends from behind Teqi, and then they ran off in different directions spontaneously. Jason charged Enceladus, while Piper rushed to her father, and Leo dashed for the discarded machinery, which stood between Mr. McLean and the Earthborn. No one yelled at her for anything, so she stood there for a moment, trying to work out what one look had meant.

"No one tells me anything..." Teqi muttered bitterly, re adjusting her grip on the golden knives and chasing after Jason. Leo was swinging around a small crane thing at the mud men, and Piper was helping untie her father. Jason was running around the giants' feet like a headless chicken, and Enceladus was stabbing randomly between his toes.                                                                           Teqi held her knives between each finger like wolverine, and ran behind his huge feet. The muddy sandals covered the week part of his ankle, so she gripped onto the leather and scrambled up his leg, holding onto the chinks in his armour. It was quite disgusting really, and it disappointed the girl that no one would even know what she did to keep the peace on earth. She didn't want to be famous, but being behind the scenes in every fight, every fight, got your self-esteem down a little bit after a while.

Jason was scraping his gold sword around Enceladus's' legs, leaving small marks, like paper cuts  spilling blood that matched Jason's sword dripping down his legs. Teqi held onto Enceladus's belt, trying to catch her breath, and squinted to see if her other friends were okay.

Two of the little giants went down under a fiery avalanche and melted back into the earth—hopefully to stay for a while. Leo was driving the machinery around manically, but it was working well, the harvesting thing at the top of the tractor would knock the mud men out, and they would turn back into sludge and disappear.

The other four ogres stumbled across burning logs and hot coals while Leo brought the tractor around. He fumbled with something, and on the end of the crane arm the wicked rotating blades began to whir. It was like it had been specifically designed to kill these things, which wasn't likely, but Leo might have made some adjustments while Teqi was running from the mud guys.

Out of the corner of her eye, if she twisted her body around enough, she could see Piper at the stake, cutting her father free with her knife. Coach Hedge was still heroically passed out with his goat tail sticking up in the air. The whole side of the mountain would soon be ablaze. The fire wouldn't bother Leo, but if the rest of them got trapped up here.....

One of the Earthborn—apparently not the most intelligent one—charged the wicked machine, and Leo swung the crane arm in his direction. As soon as the blades touched the ogre, he dissolved like wet clay and splattered all over the clearing, like someone had forgot to put the lid on a blender. The tractor thing spun around, and the last three mud people backed away quickly, obviously not wanting to become a dirt smoothie.

"Bad vroom-vroom!" one yelled, pouting sadly. "Yeah, that's right!" Teqi could hear Leo yell over everything else that was assaulting her ears. "You want some bad vroom-vroom? Come on!"

Unfortunately, they did want more vroom vroom. Three ogres with six arms, each throwing large, hard rocks at super speed— Teqi held her breath, but couldn't look away as they fired the missiles. Somehow, Leo launched himself in a backward somersault off the harvester half a second before a boulder demolished the driver's seat. Rocks slammed into metal, leaving large dints that would have made the police pull the machine over on the road. By the time Leo stumbled to his feet, the harvester looked like a crushed soda can, sinking in the mud pitifully. But at least Leo was okay, that didn't seem to be his biggest concern though.