madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-in his healing gym girl era-

merry christmas for yesterday [and happy random tuesday to those that don't celebrate] 

<3

Leo stood on the deck; a purple fire blanket tied around his neck like a superhero cape. He had never felt less like a superhero. He felt even less like a superhero when he started thinking about who liked superheroes.

He wiped his face and groaned, his chest hurting with a dull ache. He reached into his toolbelt. Nothing fell into his hand when he thought about how much he wanted to hug Teqi, so he just pulled the blanket around his shoulders that were starting to smoke and stomped down to the deck everyone else was milling around waving instructions and tools on.

The cheese sandwich Jason had made him before leaving to talk to the God of the East winds about finding Piper was now a cheese toastie in his hands, but it tasted good anyway.

Leo bit into it, watching as Coach Hedge was launched into the sky by a stray catapult Leo had forgotten he'd installed. He waved his breakfast, or lunch, at Frank, "oi! You can't just go pressing buttons, do you know how many lasers I got in there?"

"Leo?" Frank croaked, looking like he'd seen a ghost.

"You gotta you pull out the switches under the checked panels to time the oars together, otherwise we'll just go in circles," Leo instructed, and when he only got dropped jaws and blank looks he rolled his eyes and pulled the base off one of the oars panels along the side of the ship and flicked a switch, catching the pulley that dropped down.

Frank leaned over to whisper in Hazel's ear as Leo sat cross legged, retying down the pulley and finishing his sandwich. "Why is he wearing a cape?"

"I can hear you, you know," Leo called, not mentioning that he was wearing a cape so that he wouldn't burn the boys stick and kill them all. "Now are you gonna rewind the pulley's so we can go find Piper... or do I have to do everything myself?"

Frank scurried away, but Hazel just adjusted some flowery thing holding her hair back. She walked up to Leo and crossed her arms over her jacket. He was pretty sure it was actually Annabeth's, "excuse me?"

He slotted the pulley back into place and dusted off his hands. "Hm?"

"You go hiding away for days without talking to any of us," Hazel fumed. "And yeah, okay whatever, but then you waltz back up here and complain that none of us have done anything, like we haven't been working our bloody asses off trying to fix this ship when you could've done it in a second?"

"...Hazel, maybe we should just," Frank started, walking up cautiously, but she just held her hand out at him and he shut his mouth.

"No," she said. "I stabbed Jase about a million times just trying to sew up the main sail, we cannot decode your instructions book, Hedge has been thrown into the water so much he's made friends with the starfish-"

"It's true," Hedge nodded, chewing on a celery stick. "Very respectable people."

Frank squinted. "They're starfish."

"And I have burns all up my arms, because none of us know how any of this works, and its fine that you're upset and need to be alone, I get that, but how dare you complain that we haven't done anything?" She spat, curls dropping in front of her eyes. Her hands turned to fists and she straightened her back. "So just... don't come up here dressed like a superhero to fix all our problems!"