The Return of Leo Valdez (After Blood of Olympus)

12- Nyssa

The Hephaestus kids charged out of the cabin trampling some innocent Satyrs along the way.

When the campers ran inside the forge, the sound of buttons and clanking of metal soon filled the air. The campers didn't need blueprints, they already knew how to build things.

Yelling filled the room and tools flew back and forth. Sawdust went everywhere.

The campers began to assemble the Leo Valdez Finder and it was looking just as Nyssa hoped.

"Cottus!" Nyssa yelled. "Get the iron out of the furnace!"

"Got it!" Cottus yelled rushing to the furnace.

Nyssa crossed her arms and smirked with pride. The boys were working together, and to her, that was awesome.

"Chris! Get those wires away from the oil! Your going to kill someone!" Nyssa yelled.

Clanking and the sounds of saws filled the air. Nyssa liked that sound, she founded it soothing, while others thought it was loud and irritating.

Withing 4 hours of building the boys stepped back from the Leo Valdez Finder.

"Nyssa," Jake Mason said. "I think we're done."

All the boy's faces shined with confidence, even if all of their faces were covered in oil grease.

"Nyssa would you like to do the honors?" Shane asked.

Nyssa thought for a moment. "We need to get the whole camp here. When we contact Leo Valdez, I want to everyone to see," Nyssa said.

***

The Hephaestus campers gathered up all the other demigods and made then circle around the forge.

Everyone was talking, excited about the news. The crowd quickly quieted when Chiron shushed them.

Nyssa took a deep breath in. The Leo Valdez Finder looked like one of the best machines the cabin ever built in a long time. The iron sides were clean and no wires were sticking out of place, and nothing went wrong during the experiments. A screen was in front of the machine next to a button. Maybe the curse was really broken. Perhaps they didn't need Leo to brake the curse, but they still wanted him back obviously.

Nyssa set her hand to the button, she looked at her cabin members, they were all biting their lips on fear.

Nyssa pressed the button. The whole camp was biting their nails, lips, hair in fear or nervousness.

The machine began to shake, which was a good sign. Europe showed up on the screen, but no red dot showed.

The whole camp gasped.

Then the machine shook more rapidly and then boom! It exploded. It wasn't big, but enough to blast Nyssa and the Hephaestus campers backwards.

"Ow," Nyssa said rubbing her head.

The Leo Valdez Finder was in pieces, and it even burned the table.

The whole crowd frowned, some even had tears in their eyes. The Hephaestus cabin failed again...and this brought the Hephaestus campers right back into their slump.

***

Back at the cabin, Nyssa and the other campers examined the remains of the Leo Valdez Finder.

Finally, Nyssa pushed the remains away. "I can't find anything wrong with it," she said sighing. "Everything was perfect. The wire sequence, the tightness of the screws, it was all perfect. I don't know what's wrong with it."

"It's the curse," Jake Mason said from across the room where he sat in his wheelchair. Poor guy, sitting in his wheelchair and body cast all day. Nyssa thought. The Apollo cabin said that he'll be walking in about 2 years, but that's a long time.

"We know nothing about this curse," Nyssa finally said. "We need to learn more about it."

"How? This has never happened to any of the other cabins before," Marial said.

"We need to go to the scene where Beckendorf died," Nyssa said.

"The princess Andromeda sank after the battle of Manhattan, it's somewhere in the water now," Shane said.

"We need to assemble a team. A minor quest, we can call it," Nyssa said. "We'll need Percy Jackson, so he can go and scout the scene when the boat is underwater, we'll also need someone who's great with maps and strategies..."

"How about Annabeth?" Patrick suggested.

"No," Nyssa said shaking her head. "I want her to focus on Olympus, and she's pretty broken since the last quest."

"How about Malcolm, he's from the Athena cabin," Cottus suggested.

"Yeah that's a good idea," Nyssa said. "I'll also go on the minor quest if you guys don't mind. Malcolm and Percy will need someone to tell them what to do, and we're the only people who fully know the plan."

"So I guess we'll tell them tonight?" Marial asked.

Nyssa nodded. "Tonight."

"Wait," Jake Mason said furrowing his eyebrows. "No one knows where the princess Andromeda disappeared, it could take weeks to find it."

Nyssa smirked. "Looks like we have another invention to make boys."