We Are Cursed (A Percy Jackson AU) || BOOK 2

Chapter 11 || Leo

Leo normally didn't have a time constraint on building projects.

But here he was, having so much fun measuring the barrier entrance. 30 feet wide. That was as far as Leo could go without getting the ship caught up in the doors. That would be bad on the day of their escape. Walking to the Hephaestus hall, he spotted his sister, Nyssa.

"Hey, Nyssa! Uh... do you know if there's any scrap metal laying around? Like... sturdy but not heavy? Light enough to get in the air?"

"Another invention?" Nyssa raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah..." Leo said, looking away. "Sorry."

"No, no, don't be sorry, Leo. With Percy pretty much gone, the whole Hephaestus hall has been making weird gadgets all day. You're not the first person to ask. And yeah... I think there was a failed project to make a metal dragon... Beckendorf should know where it is." Nyssa cracked her knuckles.

"Thanks, Nyssa!" Leo called as he knocked on Beckendorf's door. "Hey, Beckendorf? It's me. Leo."

"Come in!" Beckendorf's voice rang around the halls.

Opening the door, he saw Beckendorf with his screwdriver, tweaking the metal clasps on a new device.

"What are you making?" Leo asked.

"I honestly don't know why, but I just thought about how every mortal person uses phones and we're literally dying from this quarantine, so why not build phones that release signals enemy agents can't pick up on?"

"Smart... I was just thinking I'd build a device that could sail in the air, but when I checked all the scraps, there wasn't any metal sturdy enough or light enough to go in the air... but Nyssa said that there was a failed dragon project I could use."

"Oh yeah," Beckendorf said. "If you don't mind waiting, I can take you to the spot in the forges."

"Cool," Leo said, leaning against the wall.

Beckendorf pressed a button and a tray came extending out of the wall next to Leo. On it we're bottles of blue coke.

"Blue coke?" he asked. "It's actually pretty good. Percy's not crazy for once."

Leo felt a sharp jolt in his chest when he heard Percy's name. The dude had always been there for Leo, especially at his rough times. It only drove his determination to find the cure.

"Sure," he said, taking a bottle. He smirked. Beckendorf was a heck of a cool older brother.

As Leo waited, he spotted a blue guitar resting on the wall. Much like the one Percy used when Leo was sick with a bad case of pneumonia.

--FLASHBACK--

Leo moaned in discomfort as his breathing crinkled like a plastic bag. In and out, in and out... He grabbed his oxygen mask, shoving
it against his face. Knocking.

"Come in!" he coughed.

Percy was there, a blue guitar strapped around his shoulder.

"Whoa, Leo... You good?"

"It's pneumonia. What do you think?"

"I'm guessing no..." Percy took a seat. "I made some blue cookies, if you want them. I know how much you like them by the many times you've asked me if I could bake them with you."

"That day hasn't come yet!" Leo pouted, trying to lighten the mood, but he burst into painful coughs.

"Hey, hey, hey..." Percy soothed, laying a cool, damp washcloth on his forehead. "Calm down, man. Leave the jokes to me. You know I'm the king when it comes to this anyways."

Percy flashed Leo a smirk and Leo laughed slightly from under the oxygen mask.

"As if," he managed to say. "What's with the guitar?"

Looking over at the open door, Percy closed it and positioned the guitar.

"You have to promise me you won't tell anyone about this. Okay?"

He nodded, before Percy began to strum the guitar.

(A/N: These are my original lyrics from my own song. Please do not copy these lyrics. It's really disrespectful to do that to someone's work.)

"I was just a little boy when my mother gave me a key... Little did I know how much faith she put in me. Happiness is what she found deep in the darkness. And now, she wants me to do my best..."

Leo began to grow drowsy at the peaceful acoustic guitar sounds, his eyelids drooping.

"She told me that if I gave up, I planned to fail. If I got up, I had to keep going down the trail. Through valleys and peaks I moved up and down. She declared me victorious without a crown."

Leo had fallen asleep by then, Percy's voice ringing in his head.

--FLASHBACK OVER--

"Let's go for the forges, lil' bro."

Beckendorf led him into a room, where a big dragon head with big dragon wings lay, the rest of the metal laying in tatters.

"It still works for some reason, even if we tried to put it out."

"What's it's name?"

"Festus. He's kinda like... my way to happiness. I think of him all the time. What it'd be like if I continued to build it. I originally was building it for Silena and I to ride on before I heard she had some bad PTSD from a dragon incident when she was scouting. I hope you take good care of him, Leo."

"I will." That was a promise.

___

Leo frowned, staring at his blueprints. The pieces of metal had been placed together, forming the walls on the ship. He had constructed the wood inside of the ship to make rooms, adding wires leading down to the control room for electricity. Now, it was time to add on the dragon head.

"Come on, Festus, buddy... when your head gets put on, I want you to connect to it automatically. I can't crawl in you to connect the wires, okay? That is a bit weird."

Festus creaked in response as Leo mounted the head. Staring at his work, he let out a sigh. Polishing was all he had to do at this point.

"Wait! I need to steal all the furniture!" he gasped.