madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

- NYPD put your hands up!-

Teqi and Harley seemed to have wasted time running through the forest, and once they got to the clearing everyone else was there already. Leo's hand was on fire, and his siblings were gathered around looking dumbstruck. Jason and Piper were there too, in clean camp clothing and a multitude of band aids.

Jake Mason, who was out of his body cast but still on crutches, said, "Holy Hephaestus. That means—it's so rare that—"

"Sorry I'm late Valdez, I was busy ending your brother." She huffed, holding Harley over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he was giggling, the only reassurance that Teqi hadn't actually killed a child.

"No, no, go ahead." Leo grinned, happy that she was no longer ignoring him, even at the expense of his brother.

The massive stone door swung open in front of them, and everyone's mouth dropped. Leo's flaming hand seemed insignificant now. Even Piper and Jason looked stunned, which was surprising, considering what they had just done. Only Chiron didn't look surprised. The centaur knit his bushy eyebrows and stroked his beard, as if the group was about to walk through a minefield. What reassurance.

Leo and Teqi walked through the large doors without hesitation, having been in there before, and then turned around when they both noticed no one else was with them. "Welcome to Bunker Nine," Leo said cockily, his stupid cute grin on his stupid cute face.

"Duh nuh nud nuh nuuuh." Teqi sang out the Brooklyn nine nine intro.

The group was silent as they toured the facility. Everything was just as Leo had left it—giant machines, worktables, old maps and schematics. Tools scattered around the spot where he had fixed Festus. Only one thing had changed. Festus's head was sitting on the central table, still battered and scorched from his final crash in Omaha. The ice on him had melted off, and a small puddle had formed around him.

Leo went over to it and stroked the dragon's forehead. "I'm sorry, Festus. But I won't forget you." Jason put a hand on Leo's shoulder, and Teqi held his sleeve comfortingly. "Hephaestus brought it here for you?"

Leo nodded, looking at the dragon head. "But you can't repair him," Jason guessed quietly.
"No way. But the head is going to be reused. Festus will be going with us." Leo replied.

Piper came over to them and frowned. "What do you mean?" Before Leo could answer, Nyssa cried out to them, "Guys, look at this!"

She was standing at one of the worktables, the one Teqi had slept on, flipping through an old sketchbook—diagrams for hundreds of different machines and weapons. "I've never seen anything like these," Nyssa said. "There are more amazing ideas here than in Daedalus's workshop. It would take a century just to prototype them all."

"How long would it take to build that one?" Teqi pointed at a sketch of the iron man suit on the table. Nyssa frowned in confusion, picking it up. "Aren't these eons old, how did they?" she wondered, until Teqi interrupted her.

"Yeah, yeah, I drew that one."

"Who built this place?" Jake Mason said, ignoring Teqi's questions about building an AI called Jarvis. "And why?"

Chiron stayed silent, but Leo was staring at the wall map. It showed Camp Half-Blood with a line of triremes in the Sound, catapults mounted in the hills around the valley, and spots marked for traps, trenches, and ambush sites. Teqi saw the pavilion and an older looking big house to the side, there was booby trap looking things around the Cabins, though there were fewer cabins anyway.