True Blue ✷ Leo Valdez.

09 : Hot Stuff and Mrs. Magic?

     BLAIRE'S SEARCH FOR Leo led her to a line of blue plastic porta potties that were completely flattened into disgusting piles of sludge. The son of Hephaestus was kneeling by Festus' body which miraculously seemed perfectly fine. Not a single dent tainted his shiny bronze being despite the gnarly fall he'd endured not even an hour earlier.

    "How is that possible?" Blaire spoke up, evidently frightening Leo who nearly leapt twenty feet in the air at the sudden sound of her voice. She crossed her arms over her coat, cradaling her broken wrist, and cocked her head in suspicion. "He should be in complete shambles right now."

  When Leo's eyes fell upon the girl he seemed to relax slightly. It was just Blaire—not some scary monster. Though he suspected the two aforementioned threats were equally as dangerous.

   "I don't know," Valdez admitted wearily, before turning back to the dragon. "Why'd you come find me? I thought you wanted to stay with Jason and Piper."

Blaire shrugged meekly, "Changed my mind, I guess."

    She wasn't going to tell Leo that she really came and found him because she heard the others talking badly about her. That would for sure bruise her ego.

At that Leo smirked devilishly, raising both of his eyebrows. "Just couldn't stay away from me, huh?"

Blaire laughed loudly the second the words left his mouth, the melody that was her chuckle ricocheting off the walls and gracing Leo's ears. Leo, however didn't seem to find humor in the situation. And upon sensing the boys serious demeanor, Blaire sobered up, her laughs dying down, leaving the two in silence.

  "Oh, shit. You were being serious?" Blaire questioned with a scoff. "I figured that was some sort of weird self deprecating joke."

  Leo didn't seem too sure of himself anymore. For he didn't say anything in response, he just turned back to the dragon and resumed his investigation, posture suddenly rigid.

For awhile, he poked around the dragons machinery in silence, as Blaire watched from nearly a yard away, making sure there was enough distance between herself and the disgusting chemical sludge.

Until he spoke up, "Oh, Festus. What the heck?"

Leo turned to Blaire, a frown etched across his chiseled features. "His wiring froze over. But that's not really the problem— it's this disk tha—"

"Cool," She cut him off with a hasty wave of her hand, "can you fix it? Or are we stranded at your faulty hand?"

Leo sighed, letting his head hang low. He seemed ashamed, but the cloudiness that was evidently looming above his head faded as quick as it came. "Nothing is unfixable."

Blaire wanted to argue that he was totally incorrect and there were certainly things out there that couldn't be fixed— but she didn't. She just let him get to work. Becasue the sooner he fixed the dragon, the sooner they left the warehouse. The sooner they left the warehouse, the sooner the quest continued.

The sooner the quest continued, the sooner they were home.

"Gimme a nylon bristle detail brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent," Leo said aloud, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to his belt and not her.

When the belt obliged, providing Leo with the tools he requested, the two elapsed into another bout of silence. Leo contiuned working on the dragon, glancing back every so often as if to make sure Blaire was still there.

Then, Leo somehow summoned a ball of fire above the length of his grease-covered hand, which Blaire figured impossible. Sure, his father— Hephaestus— was the god of fire, but she'd never met a Hephaestus kid with such an ability before. Perhaps it came along with his weird ability to raise his body temperature and such. That didn't make it any less odd though.