XLIX

Leo

(A/N: Nice good chapter. Could have been better, but the next one will be. Read. Review. Chapter 50 is next HYPE)

Leo was quick. He immediately raised his hands, and the ice melted into puddles of water. He immediately fired a blast of flame at Khione, melting her into a puddle of water. He then proceeded to run towards the mountain, using his rocket booster hands to boost him up the slope. Meanwhile, Khione kept trying to freeze him or halt his progress, but whatever she threw at him didn't work. His fiery protection kept melting it before it got to him.

He shot himself up slopes, crevices. But at the very end, he saw the longest, steepest part of the mountain. He knew that he couldn't propel himself up the slope. He was stuck there until he could think of a better idea.

Khione shot a beam of ice at him, immediately freezing his left hand to the cliff face. He melted through it, but then got his right hand the same treatment. He picked up a ball of snow, melted it in his hand, and threw it at her. It didn't seem to do much, but she got really annoyed. The snow started to whip around him, nearly sweeping him off his feet. Snow pelted him, this time actually making it through the fiery barrier. The temperature dropped rapidly, making Leo feel cold even through his flame coating.

Leo forced himself to push up the mountain, pushing his fingers into the rock to make his own handholds. Every so often, Khione would fire a beam of ice at him or summon giant icicles to spear him, and he had to create a handhold that would allow him to swing around to avoid it. Then he kept going up.

Unfortunately, sometimes he couldn't dodge it. Once, his leg froze. Another time, his head got caught in ice. He had to melt it and shake off the woozy feeling that it left him with, and keep going.

Then he reached the top of the world.

Leo lay on the ground, panting. His stomach didn't feel too good. It was so cold that it was cramping up. Khione descended out of the clouds, laughing. "Idiot." she said. "You have no idea where the anchor is, do you?"

She was right. Leo didn't. The mountaintop looked just like it should- flat, with a lot of space to stand on and appreciate the view.

Laughing, she summoned a snowstorm, flinging him completely off his feet. The wind picked up, visibility dropped to zero, and he was flying through the air, spinning wildly. He couldn't tell which way was up or down, and for all he knew, he was a mile away from Everest.

He immediately made a barrier of fire around his body, trying to keep himself from freezing to death. Then he sent fire to his hands, blasting himself in the right direction. As the snow cleared, he could see Mount Everest, about half a mile away. Using periodic bursts of energy, he managed to fly pretty far. The sky was crystal clear, and despite everything that was going on, he was captured by the beauty. The snow glistened on the mountain slopes, the cold air blew over the peaks.

He got back to Everest, where Khione was sitting on the peak. "That took you long enough," she yelled at him. "Would you like to do that again?"

Leo's response was to send a huge blast of fire straight at her. She easily escaped, leaping into the air, but the fire also melted all the snow on the peak. Then, Leo could see what he hadn't seen before.

The top part of the mountain was actually a completely different color from the bottom part. The bottom was just like regular rock- grey- but the top meter of rock was slightly different. It was light brown, and it had streaks of black on it.

Khione rushed at him before he got the chance to process this. He had to turn his attention to her. Immediately, he fell down onto the mountain and fired a few shots at her just to make sure that she kept away. Then, he realized that the brown part was the anchor. It had been there forever!

He fired another few blasts of fire, then turned his attention to the rock below his hands. Surprisingly, it wasn't very hard- he would have thought that Gaia would have made it harder for him to destroy it. He heated up his hand and pressed it against the rock. Immediately, it started to turn red-hot, turning into a thick goo. He kept pushing it deeper into the rock, trying to get to the core, which was where he assumed Gaia was going to be exerting the most force.

Suddenly, he felt colder. But he was too focused on what he had to do- if he stopped to turn around, he feared that the ground might cool down. All that he could do was make a thin barrier around him with as little fire as possible, just to hope that any cold things that Khione threw at him melted.

He heard a whistling. Khione must have shot tiny ice missiles at him, because he could hear them whizzing through the air. He didn't feel anything, so he decided that he just had to concentrate on destroying this.

Khione screeched in outrage and Leo heard a whistling again. She must have raised the size of the ice shards now- Leo felt them piece his skin. He felt the sharp sting of the wounds, but couldn't feel much blood.

Khione fired a huge beam of cold air at him, hoping to make the flame die out. Leo hunched over his flame, making sure that it didn't happen. He could sense that the fire was nearing the middle, but the rock was getting harder and harder.

Finally, he reached the middle. But judging by what little progress his fire had made, it was pretty hard- nearly as hard as the rock that had tried to take down Olympus. He decided to focus on just one point, and knowing that he would probably regret his decision soon, he removed the barrier of fire and focused all his energy on one spot. Perhaps it was because of all the lava on top of it, perhaps he had gotten stronger, but as he heard a slow groan, which probably meant that she was going for the giant icicle approach, he got to the core of the anchor.

The mountain exploded, sending Leo flying off the edge. But this time, he couldn't fly. He had spent all of his power. He could see a smoking crater where the tip of Mount Everest used to be, charred beyond recognition. He wondered how the world would see this incident.

Then, he felt himself freeze. He was suddenly surrounded by a block of ice, perfectly molded to his body shape. His head couldn't cope any more with the cold.

Just before he blacked out, he saw a shadow outside his ice block, catching him and putting him into a cart.