Chapter 4: Leo

Leo couldn't blame the others for keeping their distance from him since they'd left Rome. Even if the others didn't blame him and his deal with Nemesis for what had happened to Percy and Annabeth (and they'd assured him that they didn't, but still…), and even if his mood wasn't foul enough to send a full-grown Cyclops running away and cowering in fear, the racket that he was making in his makeshift workshop was a little much even for him, and he'd grown up in noisy machine shops.

Still, Leo would have liked it if at least one of his inventions could have borne fruit, one of his ideas could have worked well enough to help them to drag Percy and Annabeth out of Tartarus while allowing them to close the Doors of Death from both sides, but thus far all of his ideas turned out to be so much scrap. His extender arm turned out to be either too weak and wound up bending when carrying a load while extended, or too strong and wound up crushing whatever was in its grip. The remote-control Leo-bot proved too hard to control on the other side of a closed mortal door (and so probably would be useless on the other side of the Doors of Death), and was also prone to falling over and doing an excellent impression of a turtle flipped over onto its shell.

Still, Leo refused to give up. Dirt-lady Gaia may have used him to sabotage the peace efforts with the Romans, but Leo was going to throw a serious monkey wrench into her plans by getting his friends back and those doors closed.

It's no use, Leo, Leo could almost hear Gaia whispering, Percy and Annabeth are mine now, and you won't be able to craft or tinker your way out of this one, not as long as you have to use materials that come from me. Just relax and give up, and I'll make your death a pleasant one.

"Fat chance, Dirt Lady," Leo muttered to himself. As he worked on his latest idea, Leo wondered how Tony Stark managed to do it. The thought that he'd be comparing himself to a comic-book hero was almost amusing to him, especially since he'd shot down Jason's idea that he'd be able to fly like the Human Torch, but Leo couldn't help it. The greatest power Stark had wasn't the armor that he often fought others in; it was his prodigious mind that allowed him to invent that armor. And if Tony Stark, a mortal (yet fictional) man could come up with something like that, then why couldn't he? After all, Leo was the son of Hephaestus, who was like the god of inventing stuff.

It was when he'd had that thought earlier, after his Leo-bot flipped onto its back the last time, that Leo had come up with his latest idea. While scavenging Daedalus' workshop for anything useful, Leo had found a brilliant gem that glowed from within, which was tossed into the corner of the workshop. Very likely it was tossed because the Romans were unable to figure out what the gem did. Of course, Leo couldn't tell what the gem was used for either, but from what he could determine it seemed as if it contained vast power within. If that was true, then Leo had a good idea of what he would use it for.

Determined to succeed, Leo continued to work on his flight suit idea. If it worked, the juice contained within the gem would give the suit enough power to break free of the pull that Tartarus had on those contained within. In that case, whoever wore the suit would be able to close the Tartarus' side of the doors then simply fly on out of there, just like Iron Man.

Of course, his previous tests have thus far proven unsuccessful. Leo wasn't sure if it was because he wasn't tapping deep enough into the gem's energies, or if there was a calibration problem with the thruster output, or if Gaia was messing with them again.

Still, Leo would not let her win. He would save his friends, make sure that those doors are closed, then he would open a Leo-flavored can of whoop-ass for Gaia to enjoy.

Please dad, Leo found himself praying, help me to save them. Getting no answer that he could determine, Leo went back to straightening out a sheet plate that he'd moved out of the way so he could work on the internal circuitry, all the while thinking of all the reasons he would make this work:

For his friends.
WHAMM!
For his mother.
WHAMM!
For his great-grandfather, Sammy Sr.
WHAMM!
For Hazel, who if it weren't for Gaia, would have lived and grown up to be his great-grandmother.
WHAMM!
For every instance where Gaia had interfered and made his life absolutely sucktastic.
WHAMM! WHAMM! CRRRRAAAACCK!

A discharge of light and force knocked Leo back into the wall behind him. What just happened? Leo thought to himself. The suit shouldn't have done that just from his hitting the external plates, and that sound he'd heard…?

With an uneasy feeling, Leo walked back up to his worktable, and what he saw made his heart sink into his stomach. In his fury, his hammer had slipped and struck the power gem rather than the sheet plate he'd been working on, the force of the blow causing the gem to split cleanly in two. Praying he was wrong, Leo took some readings and found his worst fears realized: the gem had discharged at least one third of the energy it contained, maybe even more. Even if he could make it work in its current state, the suit wouldn't have enough juice to break free of Tartarus' pull. Pulling out one half of the broken gem and cradling it like a fatally wounded bird, Leo could swear that he'd heard Gaia's mocking laughter.

Fury rising in his chest, he whirled around and tossed the gem half in his hands into the stable where he'd moved the Pegasus feed to while converting this room into his workshop. As the gem glittered in the straw, Leo found that he couldn't bear to look at it anymore, so he slammed the workshop door closed and slumped against it.

As he hung his head in his hands, he found that he could still smell the straw from the stable. But that couldn't be right, he'd specifically made this room airtight so that his friends still on the Argo II wouldn't be made sick from any of the fumes created by his experiments. As he followed the smell to its source, he saw some straw scattered on the flight suit he'd been working on.

Now how did that get there? Leo thought to himself. As he started dusting it off, he'd accidentally nudged the remaining half of the gem, causing it to rotate slightly. As he did, the table and everything on it started flickering in and out of existence.

"What the…?" Leo exclaimed. Reaching quickly for the gem, he realigned it with its original position. This caused the work-desk to snap back into stability again, like a TV whose channel Leo had brought back into focus. Out of curiosity, Leo gingerly reached out, then quickly spun the gem 180 degrees in its socket, which caused the desk and suit pieces to completely disappear. The gem, or at least A gem, was still there, but in the desk's place was a large pile of straw. Not believing what he was seeing, he opened the door to look out into the stables. Sure enough, his desk and everything on it was now in the stable where the straw used to be.

"No way!" Leo breathed. Closing the door again, Leo went over to the straw and twisted the gem around in it. Before his eyes, the desk replaced the straw pile. Twisted it back, straw. Back again, desk. He was so giddy at his remarkable discovery, he didn't realize he was actually laughing until he heard a pounding at the door accompanied by Piper's voice asking anxiously, "Leo? Are you alright in there?! We heard an explosion!"

Trying to sober himself up, Leo said, "Yeah, I'm fine in here."

"Well if you're blowing stuff up, don't leave me out of the fun," said Coach Hedge, their semi-psychopathic satyr-protector and former gym coach.

"Nah," Leo responded, "No blowing up here, just an intense energy discharge, that's all. No damage done."

"Aww," Coach hedge grumped, "got my hopes up over nothing."

"Well, just be careful in there," Leo heard Jason say, "We can't afford to lose….anymore of us, okay?"

"Don't worry," Leo assured them, "I'll be fine." In fact, Leo thought to himself, if my latest idea works out, we'll get even more of us back! Of course he's have to come up with an apparatus, and he'd have to figure out a way to get it over to them, but now he had a feasible idea to work with. Sitting down at a drafting table, Leo started sketching out his idea. As the project took form, Leo got a grim smile in his face as he thought, You've messed with me for the last time, Gaia, and now you're gonna rue the day you got on the wrong side of Leo Valdez!