Arsonist's Lullabye ──── Leo Valdez

𝟏𝟕: 𝐔𝐧𝐦𝐨𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬

─────𝐋𝐞𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐭𝐬.

Of all the places to crash, a line of Porta-Potties would not have been his first choice. A dozen of the blue plastic boxes had been set up in the factory yard, and Festus had flattened them all. Fortunately, they hadn't been used in a long time, and the fireball from the crash incinerated most of the contents; but still, there were some pretty gross chemicals leaking out of the wreckage. 

"This is just like the time that one baby shat in the living room and I swear the smell was deadly," Vincent hadn't let go of Leo's hand even as they walked out. Leo wasn't sure why but it made him feel all kinds of fuzzy and warm on the inside.

They had to pick their way through and try not to breathe through their nose. Heavy snow was coming down, but the dragon's hide was still steaming hot. Of course, that didn't bother Leo.

After a few minutes climbing over Festus's inanimate body, Leo started to get irritated. The dragon looked perfectly fine. Yes, it had fallen out of the sky and landed with a big ka-boom, but its body wasn't even dented. The fireball had apparently come from built up gasses inside the toilet units, not from the dragon itself. Festus's wings were intact. Nothing seemed broken. There was no reason it should have stopped.

"Not my fault," he muttered. "Festus, you're making me look bad."

"Hey," Vincent lay a hand on his shoulder and then scrunched his nose, realizing that was a bad idea, considering what they'd been digging through for the past few minutes. "Forget what Jason said. I know how good you are with machines. I know it wasn't you fault."

A few simple words shouldn't have made Leo swallow thickly and feel his eyes prickling. Vincent sounded like a Muppet since he was trying not to breathe through his nose and his voice was nasally.

But his words warmed Leo.

Then he opened the control panel on the dragon's head, and Leo's heart sank. "Oh, Festus, what the fuck?"

The wiring had frozen over. Leo knew it had been okay yesterday. He'd worked so hard to repair the corroded lines, but something had caused a flash freeze inside the dragon's skull, where it should've been too hot for ice to form. The ice had caused the wiring to overload and char the control disk. Leo couldn't see any reason that would've happened. Sure, the dragon was old, but still, it didn't make sense.

"Khione," Vincent mumbled. "She didn't seem to be very thrilled about us. Could be her work."

Leo faked a smile at Vincent, and hoped the boy wouldn't be able to tell.

He could replace the wires. That wasn't the problem. But the charred control disk was not good. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges, which probably held all kinds of magic, were blurred and blackened.

The one piece of hardware Leo couldn't replace—and it was damaged. Again.

He imagined his mom's voice: Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable.

His mom could repair just about anything, but Leo was pretty sure she'd never worked on a fifty-year-old magic metal dragon.

He clenched his teeth and decided he had to try. He wasn't walking from Detroit to Chicago in a snowstorm, and he wasn't going to be responsible for stranding his friends.

"You can do this," Vincent said, stepping closer. He rubbed his hands on his pant, grimacing at the smell. "I know you can."

"Right," Leo muttered, brushing the snow off his shoulders. "Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent."