Thunderstorm ➪ʜᴀᴢᴇʟ Lᴇᴠᴇsǫᴜᴇ [𝟷]

𝗫 𝗜

𝙱𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚎 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚍𝚒𝚍 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝙻𝚎𝚘 𝚍𝚒𝚎. Actually, it was probably the opposite of what she wanted to happen. She'd done everything she could to give him a fighting chance, and now . . . Her eyes squeezed shut. 

She heard truck steamrolled over the machinery, but not the sounds of Leo dying. She opened her eyes again, and saw Leo getting to his feet. 

Ma Gasket spotted him. She yelled, "Torque, you pathetic excuse for a Cyclops, get him!" 

Torque barreled toward him. Torque was fifty feet away. Twenty feet. Bronte resisted the urge to shout at Leo to run. He'd lasted this far. He had to have a plan.

The first robotic arm whirred to life. 

Leo must've connected it to a handheld remote somehow, because a three-ton yellow metal claw slammed the Cyclops in the back so hard, he landed flat on his face. Before Torque could recover, the robotic hand grabbed him by one leg and hurled him straight up.

"AHHHHH!" Torque rocketed into the gloom. The ceiling was too dark and too high up to see exactly what happened, but judging from the harsh metal clang, Bronte guessed the Cyclops had hit one of the support girders.

Torque never came down. Instead, yellow dust rained to the floor. Torque had disintegrated.

Ma Gasket stared at Leo in shock. "My son . . . You . . . You . . ."

As if on cue, Sump lumbered into the firelight with a case of salsa. "Ma, I got the extra-spicy—"

He never finished his sentence. Leo spun the remote's toggle, and the second robotic arm whacked Sump in the chest. The salsa case exploded like a piñata and Sump flew backward, right into the base of Leo's third machine. Sump may have been immune to getting hit with truck chasses, but he wasn't immune to robotic arms. The third crane arm slammed him against the floor so hard, he exploded into dust like a broken flour sack. 

Ma Gasket got angry. She grabbed the nearest crane arm and ripped it off its pedestal with a savage roar. "You busted my boys! Only I get to bust my boys!"

Leo punched a button, and the two remaining arms swung into action. Ma Gasket caught the first one and tore it in half. The second arm smacked her in the head, but that only seemed to make her mad. She grabbed it by the clamps, ripped it free, and swung it like a baseball bat. It missed Piper and Bronte by an inch. Then Ma Gasket let it go—spinning it toward Leo. He yelped and rolled to one side as it demolished the machine next to him.

Leo was starting to realize that an angry Cyclops mother was not something you wanted to fight with a universal remote and a screwdriver. The future for Commander Tool Belt was not looking so hot.

She stood about twenty feet from him now, next to the cooking fire. Her fists were clenched, her teeth bared. She looked ridiculous in her chain mail muumuu and her greasy pigtails—but given the murderous glare in her huge red eye and the fact that she was twelve feet tall, Bronte wasn't laughing.

And she couldn't even do anything. She was trapped, arms pinned to her sides, and no weapons left except for her powers. 

"Any more tricks, demigod?" Ma Gasket demanded.

"Heck, yeah, I got tricks!" Leo raised his remote control. "Take one more step, and I'll destroy you with fire!"

Ma Gasket laughed. "Would you? Cyclopes are immune to fire, you idiot. But if you wish to play with flames, let me help!"

She scooped red-hot coals into her bare hands and flung them at Leo. They landed all around his feet.

"You missed," he said incredulously. Then Ma Gasket grinned and picked up a barrel next to the truck. 

Bronte had just enough time to nervously shout "Leo!" before Ma Gasket threw it. The barrel split on the floor in front of him, spilling lighter fluid everywhere. Coals sparked. Leo closed his eyes, and Piper screamed, "No!"

And, sure, Bronte logically knew that Leo was fireproof. But in practice? It was scary, watching your friend go up in flames like that. 

Ma Gasket shrieked with delight, but Leo didn't offer the fire any good fuel. The kerosene burned off, dying down to small fiery patches on the floor. He was perfectly fine, and Bronte relaxed slightly. 

Piper gasped. "Leo?"

Ma Gasket looked astonished. "You live? What are you?"

"The son of Hephaestus," Leo said. "And I warned you I'd destroy you with fire."

He pointed one finger in the air and shot a bolt of white-hot flames at the chain suspending an engine block above the Cyclops's head. The flames died. Nothing happened. 

Ma Gasket laughed. "An impressive try, son of Hephaestus. It's been many centuries since I saw a fire user. You'll make a spicy appetizer!"

The chain snapped and the engine block fell, deadly and silent.

"I don't think so," Leo said.

Ma Gasket didn't even have time to look up. Smash! No more Cyclops—just a pile of dust under a five ton engine block.

"Not immune to engines, huh?" Leo said. "Boo-yah!"

Then he fell to his knees, face paling. 

"Leo?" Bronte said. She wiggled in earnest, again. 

After a few minutes Leo managed to stumble to his feet. 

"You planned!" Bronte said excitedly, as he approached. "You thought it through!"

It took him a long time to get Piper and Bronte down from their chains. Then together they lowered Jason, who was still unconscious. Piper managed to trickle a little nectar into his mouth, and he groaned. The welt on his head started to shrink. His color came back a little.

"Yeah, he's got a nice thick skull," Leo said. "I think he's gonna be fine."

"Thank god," Piper sighed. Then she looked at Leo with something like fear. "How did you—the fire—have you always . . . ?"

Leo looked down. "Always," he said. "I'm a freaking menace. Sorry, I should've told you guys sooner but—"

Bronte opened her mouth to retort, but-

"Sorry?" Piper punched his arm. Shewas grinning. "That was amazing, Valdez! You saved our lives. What are you sorry about?"

Leo blinked. He started to smile, but their relief was short-lived. Yellow dust—the powdered remains of one of the Cyclopes, maybe Torque—was shifting across the floor like an invisible wind was pushing it back together.

"They're forming again," Leo said. "Look."

 Piper stepped away from the dust. "That's not possible. Annabeth told me monsters dissipate when they're killed. They go back to Tartarus and can't return for a long time."

"Well, nobody told the dust that." Leo watched as it collected into a pile, then very slowly spread out, forming a shape with arms and legs.

"Oh, gods," Bronte said, eyes widening in horror. "We have to go!"

Piper turned pale. "Boreas said something about this—the earth yielding up horrors. 'When monsters no longer stay in Tartarus, and souls are no longer confined to Hades.' How long do you think we have?"

Bronte thought about her nightmare, and the voices telling her she was out of control. "I don't know," she said. "But we really need to get out of here."