Anti-Hero || Leo Valdez

10 - Apollo Doesn't Get Why Pat Doesn't Like Ice Cream

Leo woke up to Pat and Agamethus standing — well, floating, in Agamethus' case — over him as he lay on the floor.

"There you are," Pat said, looking a bit relieved. "Agamethus, can you tell Emmie and Jo that we found him?" The orange ghost gave Pat a thumbs up before drifting away which seemed to amuse the guy. "Thanks, dude."

"What's going on?" Leo asked.

Pat frowned. "What's going on? Dude, we woke up and nobody could find you. We've been looking for you all morning so you could go on your quest with Meg and Apollo."

"You've been looking all morning?"

"Yeah, you were supposed to leave at first light or whatever, right? It's more like third or fourth light now."

He looked Leo up and down, his frown deepening as he stared at his face, which Leo now realized was throbbing with pain. He rubbed the side of his nose, where most of the pain was coming from.

"You look like shit," Pat said finally. "What happened to you?"

"What happened to —" Leo frowned, trying to remember how he'd gotten there when the last thing he knew was that he was walking to the med bay to get more melatonin gummies from Via, and —

Then he realized.

Oh, gods.

Via.

He sat up in a flash, looking around the med bay. Via was obviously nowhere to be found. Her medical bag that had been packed with supplies was also gone. That meant that the dream vision he'd just had was also real: Via had made it to the emperor's palace, all right. She'd made it all the way to Georgie. And then she'd been captured by Lityerses.

"Woah, hey, what's wrong, man?" Pat knelt next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. "What happened?"

"Via," Leo said. He laughed humorlessly, shaking his head. "Via happened. I can't believe — dude, she knocked me out!"

"Wait, Via?" Pat repeated, his eyebrows flicking upward. "What do you mean, Via happened? And how did she knock you out?"

"I came down here because she'd offered me these melatonin gummies to help me sleep, and I saw her packing up to leave with this weird armor on. She was going to go get Georgie by herself."

"What?" Pat interjected in a panic.

"Yeah, and when she realized I was going to stop her, she knocked me out! She just grabbed me, and she went —" Leo grabbed the air in front of him and imitated Via headbutting him.

He would never admit that his first thought when she grabbed his collar was that she was going to kiss him. He wasn't sure why — he guessed she just seemed like the type to dramatically kiss someone for shock value. It would've gone with the "scared and worried older sister" act she'd been laying on pretty thick, and it definitely would've stunned him long enough for her to get away. The headbutting and knocking him out was more effective, though.

He couldn't believe she'd all but deceived him with that whole sob story / rant and the rapid-fire Spanish. If she hadn't been wearing that weird suit, he would've believed her, written off her unusually nervous behavior as concern for Georgie, and gone back to bed. She was a terrifyingly good actress.

"Oh, no." Pat's breathing started to accelerate.

"I know, right?" Leo rubbed his nose, which was probably bruised now. "Dang, she's got a hard skull."

"No, not you!" Pat snapped. "Via!" Leo raised an eyebrow. Pat had the decency to look a bit sheepish before continuing. "Not to say that I don't care that you got knocked out — actually, I don't really care. Yeah, I'm sorry she knocked you out, but I don't really care. Because my sister snuck out and she's gone on a fucking suicide mission! She could've been captured or worse —"