madness and ecstasy // leo valdez

-teqi is a projectile!-

⋆˖⁺‧₊🎧🧨⚖️🎬🍓₊‧⁺˖⋆

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Teqi shrunk into herself with wide eyes. She pulled her knees up as high as she could and tried to become small, which was very hard when gravity didn't understand her situation. She begged it to flip everything around a few times and plonk her down anywhere other than here. She'd take the moon, even.

She could see the tip of the spear coming toward her– well, it was so big it would just crush her middle until all that was left was soft hair and glitter and white sneakers and a lot of blood. She knew she should think of something, escape in some daring, drastic way, but she didn't think Jack Sparrow had ever been in this kind of hostage situation before, so she hadn't been taught how to get out of it.

Funny, she thought. All that effort to stay alive, and then, boom. You just hang there helplessly while a fire-breathing giant impales you. Was it going to have all been for nothing?

Leo's voice yelled, "Heads up!"

A large black metal wedge slammed into Enceladus with a massive thunk! The giant toppled over and everything did in fact, flip around a few times. He crashed into the broken peak of Mount Diablo. Teqi went flying from his grip. Flashes of smoky blue sky and wind that stung her eyes.

Something solid crashed into her and in a split second of recognition she latched on, curling green vines plaiting themselves around her arms and hands and holding her tight. Her head pounded and tears blurred her vision.

Sound wobbled in her ears, but she recognised her name. Piper ran over, missing a shoe, and Teqi realised that she was clinging to the ground and not dangling from a precipice. 

Earth moved beneath her shaky fingers. Enceladus slid clumsily into the crater he had made behind her, roaring with pain, or rage, or whatever he felt that was nothing compared to Teqi's pain, and rage, and fear.

"Teqi! Teqi get up!" Piper called, and then pulled her up by the armpits, wiping her face and pulling her stretched clothes back into place. "Don't die on me. You are not dying on me, do you hear that?"

"Uh hu," she mumbled, split lip swelling by the second.

About a hundred feet away, Leo was standing over a piece of construction equipment—a long cannonlike thing with a single massive piston, the edge broken clean off. He waved, a little figure on a very big piece of machinery.

Teqi had lost feeling the left side of her body. Probably the shock and and adrenaline disguising the pain of the impact with pure nothingness. She had to look down to make sure it was all still there. Then she looked down in the crater and saw where the other end of the hydraulic axe Leo had fired went. Enceladus was struggling to rise; an axe blade the size of a washing machine stuck in his cracked open breastplate.

Amazingly, the giant managed to pull the axe blade free. He yelled and the mountain trembled. Golden ichor soaked the front of his armour, but Enceladus stood.

Shakily, he bent down and retrieved his spear.

Teqi looked up at him.

"Good try." The giant winced. "But I cannot be beaten."

As they watched, standing with weak legs and bruised faces, the giant's armour mended itself, and the ichor stopped flowing. Even the cuts on his dragon-scale legs, which Jason had worked so hard to make, were now just pale scars.