mastermind - percy jackson

xi. mount st. helens

"come back alive barnacle brain. okay?"

Cassandra thought they had lost the spider until Tyson heard a faint pinging sound. They made a few turns, backtracked a few times, and eventually found the spider banging its tiny head on a metal door.

The door looked like an old-fashioned submarine hatch— oval, with metal rivets around the edges and a wheel for a doorknob. Where the porthole should've been was a big brass plaque, green with age, with a Greek Eta inscribed in the middle.

They all looked at each other.

"Ready to meet Hephaestus?" Grover asked nervously.

"No" Percy admitted.

"Yes!" Tyson said gleefully, and he turned the wheel.

As soon as the door opened, the spider scuttled inside with Tyson right behind it. The rest of them followed, not quite as anxious.

The room was enormous. It looked like a mechanic's garage, with several hydraulic lifts. Some had cars on them, but others had stranger things: a bronze hippalektryon with its horse head off and a bunch of wires hanging out its rooster tail, a metal lion that seemed to be hooked up to a battery charger, and a Greek war chariot made entirely of flames.

Smaller projects cluttered a dozen worktables. Tools hung along the walls. Each had its own outline on a Peg-Board, but nothing seemed to be in the right place. The hammer was over the screwdriver place. The staple gun was where the hacksaw was supposed to go.

Under the nearest hydraulic lift, which was holding a '98 Toyota Corolla, a pair of legs stuck out— the lower half of a huge man in grubby gray pants and shoes even bigger than Tyson's. One leg was in a metal brace.

The spider scuttled straight under the car, and the sounds of banging stopped.

"Well, well" A deep voice boomed from under the Corolla. "What have we here?"

The mechanic pushed out on a back trolley and sat up. Cassandra, had seen Hephaestus multiple times, but mostly in passing. Seeing as her mom was the goddess of ice and he was the god of fire, she didn't exactly feel super comfortable standing next to him.

Hephaestus must have cleaned up when she saw him on Olympus, or used magic to make his form seem a little less hideous. Here in his own workshop, he apparently didn't care how he looked. He worked in a jumpsuit smeared with oil and grim. Hephaestus, was embroidered over the chest pocket. His leg creaked and clicked in its metal brace as he stood, and his left shoulder drooped, so he seemed to be leaning even when he was standing up straight. He wore a permanent scowl, his beard smoking and hissing like it was on fire, because it was on fire. His hands were the size of catcher's mitts, but he handled the spider with amazing skill. He disassembled it in two seconds, then put it back together.

"There" He muttered. "Much better."

The spider did a happy flip in his palm, shot a metallic web at the ceiling, and went swinging away.

Hephaestus glowered at Cassandra and her friends— well, mainly Cassandra. "I didn't make you, did I?"

"Uh" Annabeth said, "no, sir."

"Good" The god grumbled. "Shoddy workmanship."

"Hey!" Cassandra protested.

He ignored her and studied Annabeth, Percy, and Cassandra. "Half-bloods" he grunted. "Could be automatons, of course, but probably not."

"We've met, sir" Percy told him.

"Have we?" The god asked absently. He didn't seem to care either way. "Well then, if I didn't smash you to a pulp the first time we met, I suppose I won't have to do it now."