Piper woke up feeling as though she was falling.

Then her eyes fluttered open, stung by the whipping wind that roared in her ears, and she watched as the ground below her grew larger.

She barely began to scream when she was jerked upwards by an arm wrapped around her waist.

Unfortunately, the grasp of Jason Grace, who could have stopped the fall if it was her alone he had to prevent from plummeting, only slowed the descent due to the fact Lance and Leo were also hanging off him much like herself. They spiralled downwards, Piper whimpering as she watched her knuckles, desperately gripping at Jason's shirt, whiten, not fast enough to kill them upon impact but likely fast enough to hurt.

"Oh god," She heard Lance say.

"What?" she asked, face determinedly turned upwards so she didn't see the fast-approaching ground below her.

"Look down for a second," He told her, voice carried away a fair bit by the roaring wind around them.

"What? No! Why?"

"Because we're about to crash into a warehouse!"

Then they began to speed up, falling faster and faster until the only thing Piper could hear, drowning out even the noise of her own screaming, was the whipping wind that surrounded them in their fall. Then the noise was stopped by the shattering, splintering noise of the old roof they went crashing through.

Piper could hear mutters of pained complaint as she, with complaints of her own, pried herself off of the floor. It was cold where she had landed, damp beneath her and beginning to soak through her clothes.

Her breath was heavy, panicked, but slowed a little as she felt that familiar arm around her waist once again. She leant back, eyes closed, into him as she heard the gentle pants of laboured breath around her begin to slow.

Leo sat, back pressed against the dusty wall, clutching a little piece of bronze in his hand, digging into his palm slightly, leaving an impression, a line of pink and white.

"Festus," he mumbled as he watched the dull glinting of the metal he held, eyes catching Lance's after skimming over Piper and Jason.

There was an unspoken communication between the two with a gentle nod.

"We're going to try to find Festus." he declared as Lance pushed his back against the wall and brought himself up onto his feet.

Piper nodded slowly as she watched her friends begin to walk away.

"Well," Lance began as he looked around "he can't be far…" He didn't understand why he liked Festus as much as he did, clearly much more than Piper did. There was always that weird image in his mind he couldn't believe when he began to think of the bronze dragon as anything more than the conglomerate of mechanical parts it appeared to be. The clarity of that image he didn't dare mention was startling, especially amongst the haziness he had begun to think characteristic of his resurfacing memories.

"He isn't," Leo confirmed as he gripped the tiny little bit of metal he held in his hand that little bit tighter and pointed over at a metallic glint that was barely visible in the ever dimming sunlight that illuminated the world around them.

"He's not moving though," Lance commented as they made their way over "aside from a few little bits of shrapnel like the bit you have he looks pretty much intact."

"Must be an internal issue," Leo mused as he looked over the large automatum and began to search for the problem he knew was there.

He searched around for a bit until he came across the problem.

He furrowed his brow as his calloused hand gently brushed the control disk. He withdrew it quickly, feeling the bite of the cold violently assaulting his nerves.

"That's strange…" he mumbled as he began to work on removing it from the gargantuan automatum.

"What is?" Lance asked with an eyebrow raised, hands on his hips as he watched Leo as he pulled the control disk from Festus, speaking loudly to be heard over the clinking of tools against metal.

"It's frozen…"

"How?" Lance was just as confused as Leo "Working mechanics generate heat-"

"So it shouldn't have been able to freeze." Leo finished for him, sitting back on his heels as he did so, control disk, iced over, sitting in his hands.

Leo's hand found its way deep into the interior of his tool belt, slung lopsidedly round his narrow hips, as he dug out the supplies necessary to clean it. He paused after a moment, spotting a figure in the area that was so barren of life as it was; a figure that held no semblance to Lance who was ducked down behind him, checking whatever aspects Festus' condition he was able to. He squinted his eyes, watching the figure as it lapsed into focus, a blur that gradually grew in clarity before him.

A nerve in his mind was struck by the sudden, unnerving appearance of that familiar frame. It was earthen and feminine, but, for all its soft-seeming grace, he couldn't associate that familiar appearance with any pleasant experiences.

He heard her voice, dancing on the wind, all deceptively soft tones as it spat words like venom. A tentative glance behind him proved to Leo that lance had not noticed, or perhaps had deemed her presence unimportant.

Then the voice grew in volume, approaching him steadily as the woman moved over the floor as though she was gliding rather than walking. It was then, when the illusion of gliding was broken by the snapping of a twig underfoot, that Lance, slightly startled by the sudden somewhat jarring sound, looked up.

He looked around for a moment before his eyes settled on the woman of earthen tones. He jumped up, feet having been tucked beneath him as he crouched. Seeing Leo so on edge and having learnt from his earlier mistakes, Lance slung the bag from his back before the woman could prove herself to be a danger.

He held the rifle in his arms as he watched her, distantly wondering what the mist he had heard about made the weapon he held appear to be. He was sure it would be a rather strange thing, but as long as it wasn't another potentially lethal weapon he supposed it was an improvement.

Then the woman lunged forwards, the words leaving her mouth suddenly very easy to hear, sending shivers rushing down both Lance's spine and Leo's.

"Come on," She urged in that silky tone of hers "Come on, leave them," A smile found its way onto her face as her tongue lashed those words, laced in all manner of deadly poisons, like a whip, pushing it passed those lips that seemed to spit each of them. All the feminine gentleness had been pushed away by the glint in her eyes, like steel, that looked sharp enough to cut.

"Join me!" She urged, lips splitting into a smile as her face dimpled around it.

"I won't!" Leo declared, holding the words tightly before he spoke them in an attempt to ensure they did not shake.

His eyes frantically scanned the environment once again. He bitterly noted, much to his chagrin, life would appear not to be the only thing the scene was barren of. There was very little in ways of anything in their surroundings.

He searched again, growing ever more desperate for a solution. Then he saw it and, with a slight snicker, an idea came to mind. He held a hand out behind him, an action that indicted for Lance, ready to move, coiled like a spring, to stay where he was as Leo sprinted towards the lone porta potty in their immediate vicinity.

The woman made a sharp turn when Leo abruptly moved, running towards the porta potty he was stood behind, holding his breath against the potent stench and feeling his head begin to spin.

But he saw his chance as it came and definitely was not prepared to miss it. He pressed his back against the outer wall of the porta potty and heaved, using his legs to push back into the stall as it began to tip and Lance, seeing his aim, rushed to help him. It didn't take a moment for the woman to be crushed beneath the awful smelling cubicle she had seen tilting as she rushed in pursuit, not stopping speaking those awful words of hers, like weapons unleashed from her mouth, until she had been entirely covered by the dark shadow of her impending doom via portable toilet cubicle.

Leo felt all the air in his lungs leave, releasing the tightness in his chest that had built up progressively the longer his ribcage had served as an actual cage for air.

He slumped to the floor, feeling a dull ache in his legs as he watched Lance move to collect the control disc that had fallen from Leo's fingers when he had run. But he didn't have time to thank lance, his thoughts were soon ruled by the loud bang and sudden scream that had pierced the air like a blade.

Lane looked around as leo did the same, both pairs of eyes landing upon the warehouse where hey had landed and running towards it as fast as they could, Leo pulling a hammer from his belt as they ran, Lance cradling the weapon in his hands tighter and closer to him as, disjointedly and differently paced, both his footsteps and Leo's hammered over the ground.

Leo felt the heft of the heavy hammer in his arms properly for the first time as they drew to a sudden halt and the excess weight proved rather jolting. He got over it quick enough as, with a gentle breath as his hand hovered over the door, Lance opened the entrance to the warehouse they had earlier found themselves in.

The door creaked as though it were protesting against being used and, in the dark, near empty space, their footsteps echoed, sounding much louder than they had the right to.

As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, Leo found the problem to become immediately evident.

His friends were bound and gagged, unable to move and hovered over by three hulking forms.

The forms were not quite human yet not far from. He didn't know what they were until one turned, alerted by the noise, and, as he and Lance dived as quietly as they could behind the cover of what appeared, in the darkness, to be an old, partially assembled car, let them see his face. It was rather ugly but, amidst the boils, warts and greyish pallor the skin had adopted in the less than ideal light, there was one rather defining feature.

"Is that," Lance kept his voice down, watching the scene through eyes that seemed to analyse with a sort of semi-familiarity Leo didn't want to know the origin of and was sure Lance himself didn't know the story behind "a cyclops?"

"I suppose it is," Leo responded, voice just as quiet. He watched the scene himself, through the veil of the dust floating in the air before them, lifted from the blanket of it decorating the car by their breath.

"What do you suggest we do?" Leo asked after a moment of watching his friend's squirm and struggle against the rope that was surely rubbing away at their wrists and ankles as they tried desperately and hopelessly to release themselves from its constraints.

"Good question," Lance's eyebrows knitted together as he looked for any solution he possibly could "There's a lot of old machinery here…" he observed before his eyes flashed bright with the light of dawning realisation "You can control some of it, surely. You'd just have to make a remote and I can make sure those monsters can't do anything to you while you work, I'll shoot them if they get near but if that happens our cover's blown so just-" he bit his lip as he scanned the scene again, almost like a routine as he took in everything, moving over his suffering friends as quickly as he could.

"Just what?"
"Just be quick," Lance finished "And quiet," he added as an afterthought.

But then the largest of the monsters lunged forwards at Piper and he yelled before any harm could come to her. The monster stopped in its tracked, turning its single-eyes line of vision to Lance as all three made lumbering movements in his direction. He shot at the first, sending a bullet into its chest, making it fall back as it began to crumble, arms, held to either side of it like a poor imitation of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil. The arms that had not yet rumbled into the same dust knocked its companions back.

Lance ducked behind the aged vehicle once again.

"I thought you said be quiet!" Leo hissed, his position still unknown even if lance had given his away.

Pushing himself from his knees to the balls of his feet as he prepared to move away and join the battle he had made inevitable he commented "Consejos vendo y para mí no tengo," as he stood.

Then he ran and Leo's hands began working at much more urgent speeds to create the remote.

He grimaced as he watched the first of the monsters resurrect itself from a pile of dust like a phoenix from the ashes, body coming together in a grotesquely fascinating manner Leo was well aware he had no time to waste watching.

A/N

It's late because technology hates me, but it's here and, fingers crossed, I'll be able to get the next update up on time.

Just a quick message from me that has no significance to the story so there's no pressure on you to read it, but has anyone watched In a heartbeat? It's adorable and the animation is really high quality so I'd recommend, if you haven't, that you send four minutes of your life watching it.

Another quick recommendation from me would be that, if you can, you should really watch the film Dunkirk. It's accurately full of British actors (you know how refreshing it is for me to hear such familiar accents in a film?) and Harry Styles is actually very good in it. The film doesn't actually have a plot, it just shows these different sections of things that would have happened at Dunkirk so it's very easy to follow. It's also not romanticised or made more heroic than it was meant to be. We lost that battle and there was no romance involved.

As always, feel free to tell me if there are any particularly annoying typos, if you tell me where things are it makes them much easier for me to change them.

Thanks to anyone who has read, favorited, followed or reviewed, it means a lot to me. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

All the best,

~We'reAllABitOdd