𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐒 leo valdez

x. FESTUS SMELLS LIKE SHI-

LEO.

——-      Leo wished Festus hadn't landed on the toilets.

A line of blue Porta-Potties would've been Leo's last choice for the dragon to land, but unfortunately, he fell right onto a dozen of them lined up in the factory yard. 

Good thing they hadn't been used in a while and the crash had incinerated most of the contents, but some pretty gross chemicals still leaked out of the wreckage. Leo had to hold his breath as he picked his way through the debris as heavy snow chilled the air.    

Despite the frigid atmosphere, Leo could see steam from Festus floating up from the distance.

Leo heard snow crunch under Y/n's shoes behind him as she followed. It reminded him of that night back at camp when she followed him from the campfire when Leo left to find Festus.

After all the times Y/n had helped him with Festus, Leo wondered if she may be a Hephaestus kid; he sure hoped not.

On the bright side, he usually fixed the dragon himself and Y/n offered assistance when he asked rather than leading herself, which seemed like a good sign.

Finally, he found it — the smoking dragon laid in a puddle with water-soaked dirt underneath. He crawled around the body, checking for any damage while Y/n stood back and watched, lightly shivering and holding her arms.

As he inspected, Leo found no signs of malfunction. For a dragon that blew up midair and fell from several hundred feet in the sky, he barely had a dent.

Actually, there weren't even any scratches to be seen. The fireball must've come from the built up gases from inside the toilets, rather than Festus. His wings were intact as well.

"Not my fault. Festus, you're making me look bad." Leo mumbled. He reached out for the control panel on Festus's neck, and when he pulled it open, his stomach sank.

"Oh Festus, what in the — ?"

Festus's wiring was completely frozen over. Leo worked so hard to repair all the damage to the corroded lines, but somehow, something caused a flash freeze inside his brain where it should've been too hot to form ice. The frost made the wiring overload and char the control disk, and Leo had no idea how that could've happened. Yes, the dragon was old, but that shouldn't be possible.

Leo could easily replace the wires, but that wasn't the problem; but the charred control disk, that was a problem. The Greek letters and pictures carved around the edges were all blurred and blackened, and unintelligible.

The one piece he couldn't replace — and it was damaged. Again. He thought back to what his mom used to say.

"Most problems look worse than they are, mijo. Nothing is unfixable."

He hoped that were true.

His mother could repair just about anything, but Leo was sure she never worked on a 50 year old magically metal dragon. He bit his lip and decided he has to at least try. There's no way he and his friends could walk from there to Chicago in a snowstorm, and he refused to be responsible for stranding his friends.

"Right," he muttered, and brushed the snow off his shoulders. "Gimme a nylon bristle brush, some nitrile gloves, and maybe a can of that aerosol cleaning solvent."

The belt obliged. Leo smiled as he pulled out the supplies. The tool belt's pockets did have limits, unfortunately. He couldn't summon anything magic, like Jason's sword, or anything giant like a chainsaw. He tried asking for both, and if he asked for too much, the belt needed to cool off before it worked again. The more complicated the request, and the longer he had to wait. But anything small and simple that you might find lying around a workshop — all he had to do was ask.