YOU ARE IN LOVE ↬ leo valdez x reader, book two

7. lighthearted joke

"Then I'll be ready to fly. When he kicks me over, I'll float halfway down the cliff. Then when he kicks you guys, I'll catch you."
Hazel shook her head. "If he kicks you hard and fast enough, you'll be too dazed to fly. And even if you can, Sciron's got the eyes of a marksman. He'll watch you fall. If you hover, he'll just shoot you out of the air."
"Then..." Jason clenched his sword hilt. "I hope you have another idea?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Hazel said. "We have to let Sciron win."
"What?" Jason demanded.
Hazel explained the plan.

"Finally," Sciron cried. "That was much longer than two minutes!"
"Sorry," Jason said. "It was a big decision...which foot."
Hazel was going to use the Mist to the best of her ability, but I had the utmost faith in her.
Jason stepped forward, his hands open in surrender. ""I'll go first, Sciron. I'll wash your left foot."
"Excellent choice!" Sciron wriggled his hairy, corpse-like toes. "I may have stepped on something with that foot. It felt a little squishy inside my boot. But I'm sure you'll clean it properly."
Jason's ears reddened. From the tension in his neck, I could tell that he was tempted to drop the charade and attack—one quick slash with his Imperial gold blade.

"Sciron," I broke in, "do you have water? Soap? How are we supposed to wash—"
"Like this!" Sciron spun his left flintlock. Suddenly it became a squirt bottle with a rag. He tossed it to Jason. Jason squinted at the label.
"You want me to wash your feet with glass cleaner?"
"Of course not!" Sciron knit his eyebrows. "It says multi-surface cleanser. My feet definitely qualify as multi-surface. Besides, it's antibacterial. I need that. Believe me, water won't do the trick on these babies." Sciron wiggled his toes, and more odor wafted across the cliffs.
Jason gagged. "Oh, gods, no..."
Sciron shrugged. "You can always choose what's in my other hand." He hefted his right flintlock.

"He'll do it," Hazel said. Jason glared at her, but Hazel won the staring contest.
"Fine," he muttered.
"Excellent! Now..." Sciron hopped to the nearest chunk of limestone that was the right size for a footstool. He faced the water and planted his foot, so he looked like some explorer who'd just claimed a new country. "I'll watch the horizon while you scrub my bunions. It'll be much more enjoyable."
"Yeah," Jason said. "I bet." Jason knelt in front of the bandit, at the edge of the cliff, where he was an easy target. One kick, and he'd topple over.

Jason squirted the cleaning fluid. His eyes watered. He wiped Sciron's big toe with his rag and turned aside to gag. Sciron slammed his foot into Jason's chest. Jason tumbled backward over the edge, his arms flailing, screaming as he fell. When he was about to hit the water, the turtle rose up and swallowed him in one bite, then sank below the surface. I ran over to the edge of the cliff and fell forward too, being snapped up by the turtle myself. Ouch.
Except of course that didn't happen. Jason swooped me up and we hung suspended in the air, waiting for everything to play out below.

Alarm bells sounded on the Argo II. Our friends scrambled on deck, manning the catapults. I could hear Piper wailing all the way from the ship. Leo was shouting things, shoving everyone away and preparing the ballistae.
But as Hazel was kicked off the edge, the illusion melted, leaving Sciron totally confused. The sea was at his back. He'd only succeeded in kicking Hazel away from the ledge. He lowered his flintlock. "How—"
"Stand and deliver," Hazel told him. Jason dropped me a few feet above the grass and I landed beside her, waving friendlyly at Sciron. Jason body-slammed the bandit over the cliff. Sciron screamed as he fell, firing his flintlock wildly, but for once hitting nothing. Hazel got to her feet.

Jason grinned. "Hazel, that was amazing. Seriously...Hazel? Hey, Hazel?" Hazel collapsed to her knees. Distantly, our friends were cheering from the ship below. Jason stood over her. "Hey, Hazel?"
"Are you alright?" I asked, approaching from beside her. Jason grabbed us up with his cool flight powers (I was going to make him teach me how to do that, seriously), and I tended to Hazel's dizziness. She told me it was just the stress from controlling the Mist, but I knew better.