madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-fire VS ice-

Teqi was not in any way an optimist. As is pretty obvious. 

Her way of looking at bad things wasn't 'it will all be ok, sunshine's and lollypops!' it was more, 'this shitty thing is pissing me off so I'm going to destroy it and then feel better'. Surprisingly, for such a violent outlook, it worked in most situations.

Not to do a Coach Hedge, but Teqi had destroyed many things, and proved many times that she was not weak, or pathetic. For some unknown reason [sexism] she was still overlooked. It was incredibly irritating, but it was also satisfying to then show people that she was actually quite strong and good at fighting.

In this specific situation though, there was no way to prove she could fight, because it meant certain death. She couldn't trash talk and then stab at least fifty monsters, she couldn't patronize and then flip the switch of sanity on a giant in a rock body bag, and Teqi could certainly not sneak up and then choke a goddess to death with grape vines.

She didn't have a backup plan for things like this, she just kept swearing and punching until the fight ended. Now, she couldn't do that. She actually had to think of a full proof plan. Ughhhh. Teqi's thoughts were not in order, at all. Shock does that to you, they should put a warning on the label.

Thalia was like a rock, not Dwayne Johnson, but a rock in Teqi's life, even if they weren't together, Thalia was always somewhere. Teqi didn't have a lot of reliable people in her life, not that she didn't trust her friends, but not everyone was the same every day, not everyone was stable. Will was stable, Thalia was stable, and Tony was, had been stable.

Teqi wasn't good at metaphors, considering her limited education in nearly every subject apart from weapons, music, and fictional characters. But this was the closest metaphor at the time, a stool. A three-legged stool, those little old fashioned wooden ones. These three stool legs, or three people, had been there from the start, and Teqi was perfectly happy with her small chair. Unfortunately, it is hard to sit on a two-legged stool. 

If only Tony had considered that before he went and got beheaded.

Now that Teqi's already wobbly stool had been reduced to one wooden leg, one stable person that she hadn't even seen in gods know how long, she had fallen off the stool, landed on the ground, and broken something on the way down.

Now Teqi was laying on the ground next to her broken stool, surrounded by monsters and two angry goddesses, plus a giant. Her perfectly good knives were now blinding to look at, and hurt her hands. Four demigods had approximately five minutes until the king of the giants busted out and destroyed them. 

Teqi was still completely drained of power from a few hours ago, and was trying not to slip into giggly happy land again.

This meant she had to rely on one whiny imprisoned goddess she had sort of helped to trap, one hello kitty obsessed girl with daddy issues and a dagger, one guy with broken glasses who was holding a plank of wood, and Leo, whose cute face and good hugs was not going to help in this situation. 

Sadly. 

She was also still processing her own trauma in the quick breaks between action.

"What've you done?" Jason demanded, lifting his useless plank of wood like it could do any damage.