"To dinner, now! C'mon, go go go!" Travis whisper-yelled, poking his head through the door of Cabin Eleven. From his seat on the bed, Leo could just make out Connor's wide smirk behind Travis through the crack between the wood.
"What'd you do this time?" Cecil asked with a sigh, standing up from his place beside Leo. The two bunkmates had been discussing engineering—well, Leo had been asking questions about the machinery at camp, and Cecil had been doing his best to answer—as Leo had learned that Cecil picked up a bit from Jake while they were taking apart various machines for pranks.
While Leo would have loved to hear all about the amazing metals, tools, and mechanics directly from the children of Hephaestus, they weren't exactly on speaking terms at the moment. Hence Leo's peppering of questions that had quickly become overwhelming for poor Cecil, like a stereotypical American crying over the heat of authentic Mexican cuisine.
"I may or may not have relocated all of Katie's potted plants to the Ares cabin, and this is the first place she'll look for me," Travis said quickly, his eyes scanning the paths behind him, like an escaped convict on the run. "So we've gotta skedaddle!"
To all his foster homes and the local police departments, Leo had been marked as a troublemaker, immediately tagged by his constant grin and mirth-filled eyes. But now Leo laughed at the thought of them having to deal with Travis and Connor Stoll.
In the past two days of staying in the Hermes Cabin, Leo had grown used to the chaos, always prepared to drop everything and dodge the repercussions of the Stoll's actions. As the new kid, nobody expected him to be a part of their pranks, and Leo planned to remain the anonymous mastermind for as long as possible.
So Leo stuffed the undefined ball of metal and wires that he had been working on into his pocket, stood up from his place on the bed, and followed Cecil out the door.
The Stoll's led Cecil and Leo on a roundabout way to the Dining Pavilion, and Leo was proud of the fact that he recognized the path they were taking. Will had banned him from any of the strenuous activities that Camp Half-Blood had to offer, so Leo had spent most of his time wandering the grounds and making sure that he knew the best ways to get around unseen.
The other portion of his time was occupied by Percy dragging Leo to the infirmary for morning checkups with Will, the son of Poseidon unable to hide his anticipation of their upcoming training. Leo couldn't quite understand why Percy was so excited to start—Leo had figured that the camp hero would have been annoyed by Chiron volunteering him to train an inexperienced kid four years younger than him—but whatever the reason, Leo was just as anxious to begin.
Leo had used his fire during his journey to camp, but usually only in life-or-death scenarios, not to test his limits or his accuracy. Leo hoped that if he could prove that he had control of his powers, then the other campers would have reason to trust him.
He was honestly surprised that they had wanted him trained in the first place, rather than just banning the use of his powers. Thankfully, at today's morning checkup, Will had said that Leo should be ready to begin training tomorrow morning after one more visit to the infirmary.
The Hermes campers were one of the first to the Mess Hall, and Leo made his way to Table Eleven, sitting down beside Cecil as the Stolls claimed the other bench. Travis had told Leo horror stories of when the Hermes Cabin was packed so full of unclaimed campers that half-bloods were sliding off the ends of the benches, and Leo was insurmountably grateful that he had arrived mid-semester. He'd had enough of that at group homes.
The sun had nearly disappeared below the horizon, and the quiet glow of setting sun rays cast long shadows across the pavilion floor. The warm fire of the sconces on the dining pavilion's columns sparked brightly in the falling darkness, contrasting the cold bright flecks of stars shining in the black-blue sky above. The chill of winter had set, but the magic border of Camp Half-Blood prevented the atmosphere from freezing.
Leo could never decide if he preferred hot or cold weather. Warmth reminded him of his mom's embrace, leaving behind a melancholy void, but a chilly atmosphere made him ache with the absence of her arms around him. It was a lose-lose situatio–
Okay, nope. BAD ADHD, leave my lovely dinner alone.
"Travis, isn't this the third time you've pranked Katie in two days?" Leo asked abruptly, sparking a conversation to distract himself from unpleasant—pleasant?—thoughts.
"Yeah, but the opportunities just kept popping up, and I couldn't let them pass by, now could I?" Travis replied with his hands raised beside his shoulders in a 'what can you do?' gesture.
"Sure you couldn't," Connor said with a smirk, elbowing his brother in the ribs.
It wasn't long before Demigods began filing into the Mess Hall, and Leo ducked his head when he saw Chiron and Mr. D enter, the two of them keeping up a quiet conversation as they sat at Table Seven.
Chiron had given Leo a quick welcome to camp during his first dinner at the Mess Hall, but Mr. D had yet to say a word to him. Leo wasn't sure if he was avoiding Leo specifically, or just hated all half-bloods in general. Leo figured there was a high chance that both were accurate.
He watched Percy and Annabeth make their way to their separate tables, then Holly and Laurel as they bickered over something that Leo had learned to never ask about—unless he wanted to become an honorary referee and future punching bag—and made note of the fact that no Hephaestus kids had shown up yet.
That wasn't the strangest thing, as other campers would often need to drag them away from a project, but Leo had been paying special attention to Cabin Nine.
Leo had won over most of the other campers with his smiles and excellent jokes–at least, he thought so, and people usually laughed–but the Hephaestus Campers had remained as distant as ever.
And despite promising to do so at some point, Percy had never really told him why, so it was up to Leo to get on their good side—just as soon as he figured out how .
He thought of making them gifts, but anything they really wanted they could make themselves. He thought of inviting them to a game or movie night that Leo set up, but he was sure they wouldn't even show. He even thought of deep cleaning the forge, but he couldn't enter without hostile looks or pointed comments.
So in the end, Leo resolved to watch and listen for anything that would give him a hint on how to win them over. As of now, he had absolutely nothing.
The campers lined up to sacrifice a portion of their food to the gods, and when Leo's turn arrived, he scraped a large portion of Camp Half-Blood's signature brisket into the flames, offering a prayer. He'd done so every dinner, but no response. Maybe third time's the charm?
Dad, whoever you are, can you help? You did it before with Firebug when I really needed you, and I need you again. Please, claim me, or show the others that I'm not a curse.
Leo then shuffled back to his place at the table, picking at the grapes on his plate as he vaguely listened to the boisterous conversation between the Stolls and Cecil, slipping in a joke here and there.
And that's when the piercing cry of distant screams shattered the amiable peace.
Half the campers jumped to their feet, Percy uncapping Riptide and Annabeth brandishing her bronze dagger, and Leo snapped his head in the direction of the shouting.
Red and orange billows of flame blazed a river in the winter sky, and a winged shape rose from behind the Pegasus Stable—its warm shiny body contrasting the cold blues of the sky—before diving into the farthest corners of the camp's forest.
Percy, Annabeth, Chiron, the Apollo campers, and Leo began sprinting in the direction of the fading fire, but were stopped just a few feet from the Mess Hall when Nyssa ran out of the cover of the trees, her chest heaving and her clothes smudged with soot, but otherwise appearing unharmed. More half-bloods gathered, surrounding the Hephaestus camper, and Cecil came to stand beside Leo, the Stolls close behind.
"Will– Apollo campers, help," Nyssa begged breathlessly, and Leo could see the barely-contained anguish in her eyes. Will, Kayla, and Austin were watching her urgently for directions, ready to set off the moment they were given. "The bronze dragon went berserk– it got Jake."
Leo felt Cecil stiffen from where their shoulders touched, and the Stolls a little ways behind were quiet for once, their attention locked on Nyssa and Chiron.
"How badly is Jake injured? Is the automaton currently a danger?" Chiron asked calmly, but the concern in his eyes was evident.
"The dragon's escaped to the woods, it won't be a problem for now," Nyssa answered quickly, her eyes darting the way she had come and her foot tapping as if she wanted to take off running immediately. "And Jake's in bad shape, we've got to go now. Like, now now."
"Alright, Apollo campers, go with Nyssa," Chiron said, and Will wasted not a second as he sprinted in the direction Nyssa had entered the mess hall from, his siblings and Nyssa close behind. "Everyone else, stay in the Dining Pavilion until everything is sorted out."
Leo heard the beginning of protestation from Percy, but Annabeth grabbed his elbow and dragged him back to the Poseidon table. Chattering erupted between the campers, but Leo wandered back to Table Eleven in silence, his mind racing.
Did Nyssa say that a bronze dragon is what injured Jake? How had Leo been at the camp for an entire week and had never heard of a literal fire-breathing metal dragon? Who had built it? Was it magic, or entirely mechanical? And Nyssa had said ' finally went berserk,' as if she had been expecting it for a while.
"Okay, someone please explain to me what-in-the-fire-breathing-bronze-dragon is happening right now?!" Leo exclaimed to no one in particular, but thankfully the Stolls had settled back down across from him and were happy to answer. Cecil remained quiet, gazing at his plate in a tense sort of silence.
"No, that about sums up the situation," Connor grinned, but it was overshadowed by the worry concealed in his pinched eyebrows. Leo knew from his short time at camp that the Hermes campers and Jake had some sort of friendship, but Leo was too caught up on the dragon automaton to sort through feelings .
Leo glared at him, and Connor sighed and continued. "Fine, fine. The bronze dragon was repaired by the Hephaestus Cabin, but it's been losing it for a while now, and Cabin Nine hasn't been able to fix it again due to the fire breath anytime someone gets close. And now it's finally cracked."
' Cabin Nine hasn't been able to fix it again due to the fire breath.'
Hadn't Leo just asked his father for a way to show Cabin Nine that he wasn't a curse? This was an opportunity served up to him on a silver platter . Leo and his fire-resistance had the best shot at getting close to the bronze dragon, and he was positive that with his engineering prowess, Leo could fix the dragon.
"Nuh uh," Connor reprimanded sharply, his usual mischievous demeanor deafened by his worry for Jake, and now Leo. "I can see the 'I'm about to do something stupid' gleam in your eyes, absolutely not."
"Dude, bad idea," Cecil added quietly, finally piping up to join the conversation after several minutes of eating his dinner in silence. "Fire might not hurt you, but sharp teeth and talons that can crush you absolutely will."
"But it makes sense!" Leo exclaimed, frustrated at being found out before he'd even made a plan. "And you're doubting the epic skills of Supreme Mechanic Valdez."
"Sorry bro," Travis said, setting down the fork he had been poking his brisket with. "Even I can see that it's a bad idea!"
"But we realize that it won't be easy to convince you of that," Connor interjected, the ghost of a smirk on his lips. "So we'll have to bring in the big guns."
"PERCY!" Travis bellowed at the top of his lungs, standing to his feet and throwing his head back for dramatic effect—ignoring the fact that Percy was sitting barely fifteen feet away. "COME TELL LEO NOT TO BE AN IDIOT!"
Other campers scowled at the Hermes Table before turning back to their private conversations, and Leo groaned and hid his face in his hands. A pair of footsteps drew near, and the slight shifting of the bench indicated someone sitting down beside him.
"Leo, don't be an idiot," said Percy, his intense green-blue eyes catching on to the situation without any unnecessary explanation.
"But it makes sense," Leo repeated, his voice muffled beneath his hands. "I'm the only one who can get near without being burned to a crisp. And it was literally you who told me I needed to 'become worthy' of being claimed or whatever. This is the perfect chance."
Leo removed his palms from his eyes to glimpse Percy's expression, and was surprised to see that Annabeth had come too, sitting directly across from Percy. She was frowning slightly in thought, and cut Percy off as he opened his mouth to speak.
"He's not wrong. Leo would be the best one for the job-" Annabeth stated, and then hurried on when Percy shifted to stare at her incredulously. "-If not for his lack of training. It's not smart to do anything right now before he's even had one session with Percy."
"One session wouldn't be nearly enough," Percy interjected. "And it took Beckendorf's skill to fix the bronze dragon the first time."
"Who's Beckendorf?" Leo questioned, not sure if he had heard the name before.
That caused everyone, even the Stolls, to fall silent for a moment, their hands stilling on their cutlery and their expressions a mix of sorrow and reminiscence.
Leo had been around enough orphans to decipher the pained look in the eyes of a person who had lost someone, and suddenly, the reality of the life he was now living became so much more real. Demigods had died.
Sure, Leo knew that it was likely, what with the constant monster attacks. But he had never seen or experienced a monster actually take the life of a person, so the danger had never been as potent as it should have been. It had felt more like a dream, with terrors around every corner, and yet the vague acknowledgment that you would wake up; that you would make it through alive to continue the story.
But Beckendorf's story had ended. And in that moment, Leo felt an insurmountable grief for a person he had never—and would never—meet.
"Beckendorf was the Hephaestus Cabin's Counselor before Jake," Annabeth said finally, when it became obvious that no one else would jump in to explain. "He died early on in the Second Titan War. He was a hero."
At that everyone nodded or mumbled their agreement, but Leo was stuck on Annabeth's blaise mention of a literal war. Leo hadn't heard news of a war in the past few years, and yet it had to have been recent since the grief of Beckendorf's passing was clearly still fresh.
A question for another time it seemed, as Percy finally lifted his eyes from the hole he had been staring into the table's wood.
"Beckendorf, Silena, Annabeth, and me, were the ones who found the bronze dragon the first time," Percy said, his voice soft with grief. "Beckendorf repaired it, and the dragon became kind of a pet project for the Hephaestus cabin."
"But after Beckendorf's death, whatever passed as the automaton's brain began degrading, and none of the other Hephaestus kids have been able to do what Beckendorf did," Annabeth added, sipping from her cup of—was that seriously just water?!
The goblets can summon pretty much any drink, and Annabeth was just drinking water? Did she still think that limiting questionable-chemical intake was important even though they'd all likely be dead before their unhealthy lifestyles had time to catch up with them?
Wait, no, Leo. Focus. Important potentially life-changing information being shared over here.
"They've been trying for ages—which is where they were tonight—but I guess the bronze dragon finally snapped for good, and poor Jake paid the price," Annabeth finished.
The table fell quiet once more as everyone's thoughts turned to Jake Mason—his fate, or even the severity of his injuries, still unknown. Leo's one interaction with the Hephaestus camper had been short, but where Nyssa had behaved in a cold and defensive manner, Jake had been hesitantly polite, and Leo thought that they could have gotten along well.
But for the most part, Leo's thoughts were occupied by the bronze dragon. He assumed that meant celestial bronze, which could harm both demigods and monsters. Leo could only imagine how fearsome the automaton would be in battle, if only it was repaired.
Annabeth had said that 'whatever passed as the automaton's brain began degrading,' and Leo had already narrowed down the options for what mechanical piece that could be. The dragon was a complicated combination of machinery, but the most valuable part would be where the Artificial Intelligence system was stored.
Which meant that whatever the piece was, it had to be small, and easily removable, so that if the dragon's exterior was damaged, the simpler parts of the automaton could be rebuilt and the AI system easily inserted.
That reduced the options to two likely forms of storage; a chip, or a disk.
And if Annabeth was right, and the degradation of that chip/disk is what caused the bronze dragon to go haywire, then the root of the entire problem could be as simple as mildly rusted metal.
If that was the case, then all Leo had to do was find the dragon, locate the piece that housed the AI system, and clean it; just without being flattened by heavy talons, snapped in half by sharp teeth, or smashed by a tail that weighed more than a full grown oak tree. Easy.
As Leo looked up from his long-forgotten meal, he saw that the other demigods at Table Eleven were engaged in separate conversations, the topics of which Leo had forgotten to pay attention to long ago. Every demigod, except for Annabeth.
His finger—which had been tapping unconsciously ever since Leo had begun his train of thought—stilled as his gaze was caught by Annabeth's. Her sharp gray eyes were narrowed, trained on him, and Leo knew that the daughter of Athena could tell exactly where his mind had gone.
Just as she opened her mouth to inevitably make him spill every factor of his ill-thought-out plan, Nyssa entered the Dining Pavilion, and all conversation ceased as the campers waited to hear news on Jake.
"He has severe burns and several broken bones, but Will says he'll make a full recovery," Nyssa declared, her eyes shining with relief as the other campers cheered or relaxed their own tensed muscles.
"Then all of you are released for after-dinner activities," Chiron said from his place at the edge of the Mess Hall, and Leo wasted no time standing from his seat, dodging Annabeth's attempt at confrontation, and making his way out of the Dining Pavilion in the direction of Cabin Eleven.
He could hear crunching grass behind him in two directions, and assumed that the Stolls were following. Cecil must have stayed back at the Mess Hall, maybe for more information on Jake? Had he been more concerned for the son of Hephaestus than Leo had believed?
Now that Leo thought about it, he could recall Jake being mentioned multiple times while Cecil and Leo were having their conversation before dinner, but Leo had been too focused on the mechanical side of things to question it.
And then Cecil had been silent for most of dinner, ever since Jake had been announced injured by Nyssa. Leo's bunkmate had probably been worried over who Leo now realized was Cecil's friend. And Leo had completely neglected to ask if his bunkmate was okay.
Instead, he had run off the second he could, planning to tame a bronze dragon rather than invest in one of the first true friendships he had gained in years.
Well, I'm a bit of an idiot.
The trio entered the Hermes Cabin—Leo had been too deep in thought to notice if the Stolls had been talking or not. Hopefully he hadn't ignored them and ruined another friendship—and Leo stood at the entrance, staring numbly at the bunk he shared with Cecil.
"Hey guys, Cecil and Jake are pretty close, aren't they?" Leo asked the silence, desperately hoping that the Stolls hadn't wandered off. There was a beat of quiet, and then:
"I'm gonna be completely honest, I thought we'd be fighting to keep you from running to your death, not gossiping over whose friends with who," Travis said, sharing a surprised look with his brother.
"It's only, what, 8-ish? We've got time for both," Leo quipped, albeit half-heartedly. He hadn't even bothered to stare pointedly at his non-existent watch.
"Well, yeah, the two of them are friends—have been ever since Cecil showed up at camp and Jake gave him the tour," Connor replied, seeming mildly confused by the shift in conversation.
"Before you, we would get Cecil to go bother Jake for help with pranks that involve tech," Travis added, his eyes to the roof as if reminiscing on glorious past stunts.
None of them had moved from the entryway to settle in bed, or change for nightly activities. The Stolls appeared to be waiting for Leo to make the first move, but Leo was in a state of indecision.
Should he go check on Cecil? Or make plans for finding and fixing the bronze dragon? Maybe he should just leave now, and see where his feet take him?
"I don't know what you're thinking right now—your face is doing a whole blank staring thing—but I do have a suggestion before that look clears and you decide to do something," Connor said, shattering the moment of uncertainty.
"Okay, what d'you got?" Leo asked with a sigh.
"Before you do anything, go to training with Percy tomorrow," Connor answered, the usual mischievous gleam in his eyes fading into a borderline responsible Cabin-Head look.
It was so easy for Leo to forget that—despite how utterly unserious and mildly insane the Stolls were most of the time—they were also responsible for keeping all of the younger campers in their care safe. At dinner, the Stolls had shared the same grieved look as Percy and Annabeth had when Beckendorf was mentioned, the guy who had died in a war.
"Fine, but I can't promise anything more than that," Leo finally said, plopping down on his bed and kicking off his shoes. "The Flaming Valdez needs his opportunity to shine."
"We would expect nothing less of our honorary member," Travis smirked. "But when the time comes-"
"You better take us with you," Connor finished, his own face splitting in a wide grin, and Leo felt his heart warm from the force of their smiles.
When the time came, Leo had no clue what he would do. But he did know that he would figure it out tomorrow, after training with Percy and checking on Cecil and Jake. Maybe Leo could offer the Hephaestus Cabin help in some way—whether that be with the bronze dragon, or even chores—or at least not give them another thing to worry about until Leo knew that Jake would really be okay.
But one thing he did know, was that he finally had friends who were willing to fight with him, and Leo would not let them down.