DEJA VU || Leo Valdez

four

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Brooke rushes over to Leo once she gets over her pain.

She turns him over. "Are you okay?"

All she gets is a groan in response. But at least he wasn't dead.

Soon Piper and Jason come rushing over next to them. If Brooke was so worried about Leo and her own pain she would've thought to ask how they survived a five hundred-foot drop. Or how they got back up.

"Stupid ... ugly ... goat," Leo mutters.

"Where did he go?" Piper asked.

Leo pointed straight up. "Never came down." Brooke explains.

"Please tell me he didn't actually save my life." Leo asks.

"Twice," Jason said.

Leo groaned even louder. "What happened? The tornado guy, the gold sword ... I hit my head. That's it, right? I'm hallucinating?"

Jason had forgotten about the sword. He walked over to where it was lying and picked it up. The blade was well-balanced. On a hunch, he flipped it. Midspin, the sword shrank back into a coin and landed in his palm.

"Yep," Leo said. "Definitely hallucinating."

Piper shivered in her rain-soaked clothes. "Jason, those things—"

"Venti," he said. "Storm spirits."

"If you want to call them by their Roman name." Brooke inputs.

"You acted like ...like you'd seen them before. Who are you?" Piper finishes.

He shook his head. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. I don't know."

The storm dissipated. The other kids from the Wilderness School were staring out the glass doors in horror. Security guards were working on the locks now, but they didn't seem to be having any luck.

"Coach Hedge said he had to protect four people," Jason remembered. "I think he meant us."

"And that thing Dylan turned into ..." Piper shuddered. "God, I can't believe it was hitting on me. He called us... what, demigods?"

Leo lay on his back, staring at the sky. He didn't seem anxious to get up. "Don't know what demi means," he said. "But I'm not feeling too godly. You guys feeling godly?"

"Okay I can explain all of that the second we get off of this deathtrap." Brooke tells them.

There was a brittle sound like dry twigs snapping, and the cracks in the skywalk began to widen.

"Yeah, we need to get off this thing," Jason said. "Maybe if we—"

"Ohhh-kay," Leo interrupted. "Look up there and tell me if those are flying horses."

"You might have a concussion." Brooke assumes before she sees the dark shape descending from the east—too slow for a plane, too large for a bird. As it got closer she could see a pair of winged animals—gray, four-legged, exactly like horses—except each one had a twenty-foot wingspan. And they were pulling a brightly painted box with two wheels: a chariot.

"Reinforcements," Jason says. "Hedge told me an extraction squad was coming for us."

"Extraction squad?" Leo struggled to his feet. "That sounds painful."

"And where are they extracting us to?" Piper asked.

"It wouldn't happen to be a camp would it?" Brooke asks somewhat nervous and urgent.

Jason nods confused hearing the tone of her voice. "Yeah why?"

Brooke watched as the chariot landed on the far end of the skywalk. The flying horses tucked in their wings and cantered nervously across the glass, as if they sensed it was near breaking. Two teenagers stood in the chariot—a tall blond girl maybe a little older than the group—Oh boy, Brooke thinks—And a bulky dude with a shaved head and a face like a pile of bricks. They both wore jeans and orange T-shirts, with shields tossed over their backs. The girl leaped off before the chariot had even finished moving. She immediately ran up to Brooke and engulfed her in a hug.

"Annabeth. Hi." the girl says slowly hugging her back.

"Brooke. I'm so glad you're okay. I've been so worried."

"I'm fine, I'm okay. We're all okay." Brooke gestures to the others.

Annabeth then pulled a knife and turned toward the rest of the group.

"Where is he?" the girl demanded. Her gray eyes were fierce and a little startling.

"Where's who?" Jason asked.

She frowned like his answer was unacceptable. Then she turned to Leo and Piper. "What about Gleeson? Where is your protector, Gleeson Hedge?"

Leo cleared his throat. "He got taken by some ... tornado things."

"Venti," Jason said. "Storm spirits."

The blond girl arched an eyebrow. "He means anemoi thuellai." Brooke clarifies.

"Who are you, and what happened?" Annabeth asks.

Jason starts to explain, to the best of his ability. About halfway through the story, the other guy from the chariot came over. He stood there glaring at them, his arms crossed. He had a tattoo of a rainbow on his biceps, which seemed a little unusual. When Jason finished his story, the blond girl didn't look satisfied. "No, no, no! She told me he would be here. She told me if I came here, I'd find the answer."

"Annabeth," the bald guy grunted. "Check it out." He pointed at Jason's feet.

Jason hadn't thought much about it, but he was still missing his left shoe, which had been blown off by the lightning. His bare foot felt okay, but it looked like a lump of charcoal.

"The guy with one shoe," said the bald dude. "He's the answer."

"No, Butch," the girl insisted. "He can't be. I was tricked." She glared at the sky as though it had done something wrong. "What do you want from me?" she screamed. "What have you done with him?"

The skywalk shuddered, and the horses whinnied urgently.

"Annabeth," said the bald dude, Butch, "we gotta leave. Let's get these four to camp and figure it out there. Those storm spirits might come back."

She fumed for a moment. "Fine." She fixed Jason with a resentful look. "We'll settle this later."

She turned on her heel and marched toward the chariot.

Piper shook her head. "What's her problem? What's going on?"

"Seriously," Leo agreed.

"We have to get you out of here," Butch said. "I'll explain on the way."

"I'm not going anywhere with her." Jason gestured toward the blonde. "She looks like she wants to kill me."

Butch hesitated. "Annabeth's okay. You gotta cut her some slack. She had a vision telling her to come here, to find a guy with one shoe. That was supposed to be the answer to her problem."

"What problem?" Piper asked.

"She's been looking for one of our campers, who's been missing three days," Butch said. "She's going out of her mind with worry. She hoped he'd be here."

"Who?" Jason asked.

"Her boyfriend," Butch said. "A guy named Percy Jackson."

Brooke felt her heart drop. "Percy's missing?" She asks dejectedly.

"Who's Percy?" Leo asks the girl. "And how do you know this Annabeth?"

"Not right now." Is all she curtly says before she follows Annabeth to the chariot.