Cross My Heart | Jason Grace x Male OC

Chapter 14: Why Did It Have to Be Toilets?

(I just realized, we haven't heard from Leo yet, have we? Whoops!)

As he tumbled through the sky, Leo cursed himself for thinking this would be an easy quest. He just had to jinx it, didn't he.

Far below he saw city lights glimmering in the early dawn, and several hundred yards away the body of the bronze dragon spinning out of control, its wings limp, fire flickering in its mouth like a badly wired lightbulb.

He screamed and tried to grab at the clouds. "Not coooooool!"

Distantly, Leo heard his friends voices somewhere above him. He ignored them, trying to figure out a way to get to Festus without dying. This was all his fault, he should've known he wasn't fit to go on this quest.

Still cursing and flailing, Leo felt two bodies slam into him. Some part of him felt concerned for his missing comrade, but he was still focused on his automaton.

"Stop fighting!" Jason said. "It's me!"

"My dragon!" Leo yelled. "You gotta save Festus!"

Rationally, he knew there was nothing Jason could do. He was already struggling to carry him and Piper, there's no way he could handle several tons of metal as well. There was an explosion down below. A fireball rolled into the sky from behind a warehouse complex, and Leo sobbed, "Festus!"

Jason's face reddened with strain as he tried to maintain an air cushion beneath them, but intermittent slow-downs were the best he could manage.

Rather than free-falling, it felt like they were bouncing down a giant staircase, a hundred feet at a time. The baloney sandwiches Leo had eaten threatened to make a surprise reappearance.

As they wobbled and zigzagged, Leo could make out details of the factory complex below—warehouses, smokestacks, barbed-wire fences, and parking lots lined with snow-covered vehicles. They were still high enough so that hitting the ground would flatten them into roadkill—or skykill—when Jason groaned, "I can't—"

And they dropped like stones.

They hit the roof of the largest warehouse and crashed through into darkness.

Fortunately for Leo, he landed on the massive cushion known as Jason. The two went rolling across the floor of the warehouse, with Jason ending up on top of him.

Jason sat up, his arm digging into Leo's ribs. "Piper! Where's Piper?"

"Ow, bro!" Leo groaned. "That's my back! I'm not a sofa! Piper, where'd you go?"

"Here," they heard her say, though her voice was barely a whimper.

Both boys got up as quickly as possible, feet pounding on the metal steps as they ran in the direction of Piper's voice.

She was laying on a metal catwalk, looking worse for wear.

Leo started to ask, "You okay ... ?" Then he saw her foot. "Oh no, you're not."

He may have thrown up in his mouth a bit. Her ankle was clearly broken, sneaker pointing in the complete wrong direction. 

"Thanks for the reassurance," Piper groaned.

"You'll be fine," Jason said, though Leo could hear the worry in his voice. "Leo, you got any first aid supplies?"

"Yeah—yeah, sure." He dug around in his tool belt and pulled out a wad of gauze and a roll of duct tape.

"How did you—" Piper tried to sit up, and winced. "How did you pull that stuff from an empty belt?"

"Magic," Leo said. "Haven't figured it out completely, but I can summon just about any regular tool out of the pockets, plus some other helpful stuff." He reached into another pocket and pulled out a little tin box. "Breath mint?"