[David's Pov]
I was grateful that we were granted a safe flight for once.
I've been sitting at the edge of Skaw's neck, ready to spray spicey nacho sauce into whatever monster might attack us, but that didn't happen.
"Maybe your father is looking after us," I suggested to Beckendorf. He, however, wrinkled his nose as he helped Silena get down from Skaw.
"I don't think that's likely," He said, "Hephaestus seldom looks down on the earth, much less look after a specific set of demigods."
I wanted to argue otherwise. It was depressing to think that even Beckendorf, one of the nicest guys in the camp, spoke ill of his godly parent.
On the other hand, I've met the god of forges in person. He seemed to dislike anything more sentient than a hunk of metal, so it would be quite a surprise if he watched over any human, much less us.
"I'd say most monsters were scared of this beast," Beckendorf knocked the hind leg of Skaw, "She's one tough dragon if you ask me."
Skaw reared on her legs and roared, bellowing fire into the air.
"Yeah, I guess she is," I agreed.
Silena stifled a sneeze and tucked a blanket around her shoulders, shivering against the cold night of the desert.
"That's the Junkyard, I assume?"
She pointed toward the uneven formation of the horizon, "That's huge. How are we supposed to find a thief in there?"
"An excellent question," I admitted.
Silena shot a disapproving glare. For someone having trouble with Annabeth Chase, she resembled her when irritated.
"We can look around the place," Beckendorf suggested, "With that much leverage room, I doubt the thief would've bothered to destroy evidence of their presence."
As he said, Beckendorf gazed toward the Junkyard. It was hard to make out his expression on a cloudy night, but his eyes twinkled like stars of their own.
"Fine," Silena sighed and kicked her shoe into a batch of sand, "I hope it's warmer in the Junkyard."
"You can have my jacket if you're cold," Beckendorf suggested.
Silena blushed and stammered that she was not that cold, but Beckendorf draped his coat around her shoulder.
He marched off to the Junkyard rather stiffly as if he was embarrassed by something.
With scarlet cheeks, Silena snuggled into the coat two sizes larger than hers, smiled, then hurried after him.
She slipped her arms around one of Beckendorf's and leaned her head on his shoulder regardless of how flustered he was.
Most campers were aware of Beckendorf's crush on Silena Beauregard. Then again, it would be easier to count those who didn't have a crush on the counselor of Aphrodite Cabin.
And from what I could gather, Silena's one pick from the myriad of her potential lovers was Beckendorf.
And truthfully, I can't blame her. Beckendorf was a solid guy, both physically and mentally. Especially compared to his Love Rivals.
You see, Ares Cabin has a...side job, so to say, as a hitman. I've only recently learned about it myself, under a swear on River Styx that I don't go squealing on Chiron.
We(and by we, I mean the Ares Cabin) would gather requests from various campers around the camp, most of whom have a grudge against the other, but any dirty deeds will suffice.
Usually, the work needs some heavy lifting, which our cabin excelled at, so we'd solve the problem for them—primarily by violence—in exchange for payment.
You'd be surprised by how much I've learned from examining the requests.
Also, how much love corrupts people because more than half of the proposal was to discriminate against their Love Rivals.
Silena was involved in more than three-quarters of that kind of request. I don't know if she was aware of the fact, but as a prime daughter of the lave goddess, I doubted she was blind to the truth.
Beckendorf was one of the few people who didn't send us any papers, and I think that fact alone makes him league above the rest in Silena's chart.
"David, you're falling behind!"
"Wha?"
I snapped out of my thoughts. The couple was a few dozen steps ahead, with Skaw nudging my back to keep me walking.
"Sorry!"
I rushed through the sand and caught up with them on a small dune.
On the sand hill, the Junkyard stretched to the earth's four corners and beyond.
In any direction we looked, mountains and mountains of trash were spread across the desolate land.
It was a depressing shot to walk upon, and Silena seemed to share my opinion as she sighed, a small cloud from her mouth.
However, Beckendorf had different eyes than us.
"This place is amazing!" He shouted in excitement, which didn't happen often.
He gazed around the field like a child who walked up on a pile of presents under a Christmas tree, "This place is full of, well, everything! Imagine what you could accomplish here!"
"It's a Junkyard," I pointed out.
Beckendorf nodded, "Exactly!"
I turned to Silena, expecting her to be exasperated as well.
Instead, she was staring with a similarly excited and admiring expression. Only she was looking at Beckendorf instead of the Junkyard.
They looked so happy together; I was going to let them have their moment for a few more minutes when suddenly—
FWOOOOOM!
Silena shirked and jumped into Beckendorf's arms. Skaw screeched and flapped her wings in alarm, creating a sand slide down the dune.
A giant column of flame erupted in the middle of the Junkyard. The pilar easily topped over 30 feet, lighting the surrounding area like daylight before shutting off.
Silena and Beckendorf glanced in my direction.
"What do you think we should do?" Beckendorf asked.
"Why do you ask me?"
"You're the leader, David," Silena pointed out, "This is your quest."
Beckendorf nodded in agreement, "You're making the primary decisions."
I glanced back at where the flaming pillar was. Again, being a cloudy night didn't help much in sightseeing, but I was positive that a large scorch mark was left after the show.
"Let's check that out."
[Line Break]
Skaw didn't want to fly, which threw a wrench in my plan.
From what I could gather, the transmission towers surrounding the outskirts of the Junkyard made her nervous about going near on air.
I couldn't understand why a 30-ton metal dragon would be afraid of some electric wires until Beckendorf explained it to me.
"Electricity is like drugs to them," He said, "When they get shocked, it messes up their control panels or the brains. And you DO NOT want an automaton that has gone haywire under any circumstances."
I didn't want to walk all the way through the Junkyard after my last experience with the place, but without her, the only method of traveling available was on foot.
Sadly, neither of my companions shared my view.
Beckendorf was, of course, more than excited to explore his father's trash pile, and Silena swallowed her stress with ease when she saw her crush so pumped up.
...I miss Zoë. She would've hated this Junkyard just like I did.
I kicked a random scrap into a pile of Helios-approved Sun-melting microwaves. One fell off the stack and activated itself.
The microwave whirred and heated the ground around it to an alarming degree until Skaw swooped in and gobbled up the entire thing.
"Are you alright? That looked dangerous."
Skaw shuddered, let out a clunky burp with a puff of black smoke, then rubbed her spiky forehead into my side.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. You're a tough dragon—ow."
I pushed Skaw away when she started to nibble around my head.
From a few feet ahead, Beckendorf was tinkering with some materials he picked up. Silena watched him work with interest, and soon, Beckendorf held out a small box in his hand.
A magnificent piece of melody jingled out, accompanied by a dancing ballerina on the top of the box. And I mean actual dancing, not simply spinning in the spot like those cheap ornaments you'd find in a miscellaneous store.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake," Silena said in a stunned voice, "It's so amazing, isn't it?"
I had no idea who Tch—whatever was or a lake he owned, but I suppose the music was pretty good.
However, the calm, graceful mood reminded me of Zoë even more, which wasn't helpful in my current mindset.
"Let's get going," I said, "At this rate, we'll reach the fire pillar in summer."
Both Beckendorf and Silena seemed to notice immediately that I was in a somewhat foul mood, and they tried to cheer me up.
Beckendorf made a super-cool hammer with a built-in rocket for an extra boost and let me have a swing.
I accidentally set the rocket too strong, and the hammer rocketed out of my hand and flew into the field like a wild animal.
"Uh," I brushed my hands together as the hammer bounced further away, "Sorry about that."
Beckendorf chuckled and casually waved off my apology, "It's fine. We can't take anything from the Junkyard anyway."
Silena froze in the middle of her step, "Why not?"
"Things aren't thrown away without reason. They're either defective or cursed," Beckendorf said, "Besides, Hephaestus hates others meddling with his stuff. Junk or not, this is still his domain."
"I see..."
Silena quietly set down the music box from her pocket, though she kept glancing at it as we walked away.
We started picking our way through the hills and valleys of junk. The stuff seemed to go on forever. All the mountains blended into a single scenery of trash and rubbish.
Soon enough, we were lost in the middle.
"What is that?" Silena gasped.
Beckendorf raised a hammer, a fitting weapon for a Son of Hephaestus, while I activated the shield from my metal arm.
However, Silena was pointing at something poking out of one of the biggest hills in the whole yard.
It was like a metal mesa, the length of a football field and as tall as goalposts. A row of ten thick metal columns wedged tightly together at one end of the plateau.
"They are toes," I recognized, "Sherman has a collection of pickled toes in his dorm room."
"Excuse me?" Silena yelped.
I tried to explain it in detail, but she waved both arms, saying that she didn't want to know any further.
"Let's not get close to that," Beckendorf said, "And we need to go south from those things. I saw them from the dune beforehand."
We walked for what felt like another half an hour, and the line of toes vanished behind mounds of other junk.
"How can one man have such a horrific collection?" Silena muttered in disbelief, still traumatized by Sherman's collection.
My mouth itched to inform her that Sherman's collection was far from the worst Cabin 5 had to offer, but before I could elaborate, something swung around and smacked me on the forehead.
"γαμώ!" I cursed.
Skaw hurried over, nearly trampling Beckendorf and Silena on the way, and nudged me with her nose.
I never realized it before, but Skaw didn't have a tongue, not even a metal one. Not that I wanted to get licked by a metal tongue.
Thankfully, Silena deduced that it wasn't something serious. I barely got a scratch on my forehead.
"And please, don't say γαμώ, David," The counselor of Cabin 10 sighed, "You're one of the few Ares Cabin-ers that have a clean mouth. I would prefer it if you keep it that way, D'accord, ma chère?"
My head gave another throb. I clutched my forehead.
"What was that?" I asked.
Silena shrugged, "It's French for Alright, my dear, why?"
She added that French was considered the language of Love, and all Children of Aphrodite were familiar with the language to some level, but my mind wasn't on that small trivia.
That exact French phrase jogged something from my memory. Ever since I learned that someone had tampered with my head, I tried to grasp whatever I could remember from my past.
Most were about my stepfather throwing beer bottles at my head, but there were some tidbits of other kinds of stuff.
I racked my brain to recall the specifics of the memory. It had something to do with chocolate...
"David, watch out!"
"Huh?"
I looked up just in time to walk straight into a giant billboard. I staggered back and glared at the sign, which had a drawing of a peachy angelic baby.
It was armed with a golden bow, aiming at something with a heart-shaped arrow. Under the pudgy feet of the baby angel, some French was scribbled on it.
"Visez votre Valentin..." Silena read with a fluent tongue, "I remember this. It's one of those commercial things on Valentine's Day. My father had one of these over his shop."
"Your father has a shop?" I groaned, rubbing my nose and pushing aside Skaw, trying to bite on my head out of concern.
Beckendorf wrinkled his nose, "Mr. Beauregard owns a chocolate shop at...Maine, right?"
He turned to Silena for clearance. She nodded, "Hancock County, nearby Bar Harbor."
"That's..." My head swayed like the ocean. The cupid on the advertisement seemed to loom over me, as it did all those years ago.
"...Your father had a security camera behind one of those plackets."
Silena frowned, "How do you know that?" She asked.
I tapped on the side of my head, "I, I was there before."
I tried to grasp the specific imagery that popped into my head: It was a cold winter night, Rose and I were out in the streets for some reason...and I sneaked into a brightly lit shop...and...
"Dude, are you alright?" Beckendorf put a hand on my shoulder with a concerned look.
Silena poked over his shoulder with an equally concerned expression, "Maybe you should take some rest, David. You did fly us the whole way here."
"I'm fine," I tried to argue, but my voice only confirmed their concerns.
Before I could complain, Silena spread her shoulder blanket on her lap and invited me to lay my head on it.
Some of the guys would kill to be in my place. I had to admit; it was pretty tempting. I glanced at Beckendorf, but he didn't seem to mind. He wasn't someone who'd get jealous of others.
"Take some rest," He said, "I don't think the fire pillar will be going anywhere."
So I lay on Silena's lap. It was more uncomfortable than I thought—nothing against Silena, but she only made me think of Zoë yet again. It didn't help that she ran a finger across my hair.
"Hey, I'm not a baby," I complained, which only made me sound more like one.
Silena smiled and continued to move her finger back and forth, drawing circles and some other shapes on my scalp as she hummed a short song in French.
"...Oubliez ce que vous devez oublier, chevalier.(...Forget what you have to forget, knight.)
En avant vers la gloire future...
(...Forward to future glory...)"
I couldn't understand a word, but the pain subsided soon after. It also made me slightly tired, so I picked myself up when I felt well enough.
"You good?" Beckendorf asked.
The fragment of the memory that had popped up had already faded, which was a bummer, but otherwise, I felt better.
I stretched my neck from side to side, "Yeah. Sorry about the hold-up."
"It's fine," Silena said with a bright smile, "Sometimes you need moments like these."
She tucked her blanket into the jacket and gave me a wink.
We were about to continue through this maze when suddenly, Skaw lifted her head from her paws.
Beckendorf frowned as well, gripping his hammer tightly.
"Something is nearby," He said.
"What?" Silena asked, confused. She looked around with one hand on her dagger, "I can't find anything."
I also looked around the area but couldn't find anything either. And, not to be rude, but Beckendorf wasn't famous for his tracking skills, anyway.
Before I could call it a false alarm, however, Skaw rose from her seat and screeched loudly at a pile of metal junk.
The junk pile shuddered. A familiar rumbling came from the rubble.
"Did that hill just—"
The mountain of trash and junk exploded with a loud FWOOMM! as a streak of lava burst from the top like an exploding volcano.
Silena's scream was barely audible over the roar that shook the ground. A giant turtle with a volcano on its back climbed out of the melting slope of various metals.
The small mountain on its back was spraying molten lava in 5 feet diameter, heating the place to an astonishing degree.
I recognized the monster. It was the one that attacked us at Starbucks.
"That's the Tofu turtle!" I shouted earnestly.
Silena and Beckendorf looked at me like I had gone crazy, but I was dead serious.
That thing took the combined effort of everyone on the quest and Argus to defeat; it would be much harder this time.
The turtle swept its glowing scarlet eyes around until stopping right on me.
"Rarr!" It roared and leaped down the hill.
The tofu turtle landed on the ground with a heavy thud and barreled in a straight line toward me.
Beckendorf and Silena were knocked aside by the sheer mass of a charging turtle monster, and I prepared myself to roll under its belly.
We had to make it land on its shell to defeat it. I was unsure if I had the strength to manage, but it wasn't like I could throttle it around the neck.
"Scree!"
Before we clashed, Skaw swooped between us and bashed her head against the charging turtle.
Ironically, Skaw was the one that was flung back as the turtle stopped in its track.
"Skaw, get back!" I yelled, but Skaw didn't listen.
She screeched in anger, clambering back to her feet, then breathed white-hot fire onto the turtle's face.
The force of the dragon breath was enough for the turtle to grumble and step back, but when Skaw stopped exhaling, it barely hurt.
Its scarlet eyes were still fixated on me.
Then, I realized something. I couldn't feel any hostility from the turtle.
It wasn't trying to fight me.
"Grrr..." The turtle stepped forward.
"Skaw, wait."
I went under my dragon's wing and carefully approached it.
As I got closer, I noticed a cluster of faint scars around its feet, as if it was peppered with arrows at some point.
"It's you!" I shouted with glee.
I hugged the tofu turtle on the nose, and it flung its head up so that I could ride in on top of its head.
Beckendorf and Silena approached with confused expressions as I laughed on top of the reptile friend.
"David, do you know this...uhm..." Silena trailed away, looking at the turtle apprehensively.
"It's one of the guardians of the Junkyard," I explained, "When I was here before, it was badly hurt, so I put it to rest."
Beckendorf frowned, "So you mercy-killed it...and it likes you now?"
"Basically, yeah."
I rubbed the tofu turtle on the nose. The tortoise smiled, or I think he did. It's hard to read a reptile's facial expression. They are not expressive like humans are.
"Skaw, what do you think?"
I turned to my pet dragon, but she was acting odd.
Skaw paced in a circle, keeping a firm distance from the tofu turtle. Her ruby eyes shimmered brightly. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she was glaring.
I climbed down from the turtle, "Skaw, what's wrong?"
I tried to pet her on the nose, but Skaw suddenly snapped violently and nearly bit off my hand—my flesh hand.
"Hey!" I raised my voice, "Where did that come from—"
"SCREEEE!!!"
Skaw wailed at my face so loudly that my eardrums popped. Then, before I could object, she turned her back and flew away.
"Skaw!" I shouted at her back, but combined with the ringing in my ears almost made me puke.
Silena helped me steady myself. The bronze dragon disappeared into the Junkyard.
"I don't understand; where did that come from?"
"Speaking as the counselor of the Love Cabin," Silena glanced to where Skaw had vanished, "I'd say she was jealous."
"Of what?" I demanded.
Silena pointed at the tofu turtle over her shoulder. Beckendorf was tentatively feeding it shovels of metal scarp, which the turtle slowly chewed on.
I recalled having a similar conversation before with Zoë.
"Dragons, especially younger ones, tend to be very territorial over what they consider their property. This includes their lands, treasures, and if they ever have one, their friends or master."
"You've got to be kidding me," I grumbled.
How could Skaw be mad at me when I was the one who had to struggle with her various tantrums in the Camp? She nearly set fire to the place at least half a dozen times already!
"Shouldn't we follow her?" Silena asked, worried.
"No," I snapped, "I won't let her have her way again."
"If we don't have Skaw, how are we supposed to return to camp?" She asked back.
I had no straight answer to that, but I didn't care. I am not going to let her keep winning over me like that.
She was a giant metal dragon; it was time she acted like one instead of a spoiled puppy.
Silena tried to convince me that was a horrible idea, and it was not at all how you handled relationship troubles, much less a misbehaving pet, but I ignored her.
After everything that happened in this godforsaken Junkyard, I was more than eager to get the job done and leave.
When Silena tried to object, I said, "You said I'm the leader. And I'm saying that we leave Skaw be."
We glared at each other for a few seconds. Silena was an inch or two taller than I was, but that didn't mean I backed down.
Finally, after muttering what sounded like several French curse words, Silena raised her hands and backed down.
I glanced at Beckendorf, who had taken a huge interest in a cracked bronze mirror during our argument.
"What about you?" I demanded.
Beckendorf shrugged, "I have nothing to say, man. Automatons are difficult. Human mind? That's three times more difficult."
I turned to the tofu turtle, who was least interested in the conversation out of all of us.
"Hey, buddy," I rubbed him on the nose—I'd assume it was a he, as I couldn't outwardly check between his legs at the moment.
"We're looking for a thief that might be lurking around the place. Do you have any idea who that might be?"
The turtle rumbled his throat and nodded. He started to stomp over the hill he burst out of.
"Alright, let's go."
[Line Break]
[3rd Person's s Pov]
Skaw flew through the air, fuming both figuratively and literally.
She bleched fire all over the field, torching the top of the hilltops and setting ablaze over flammable furniture.
The dragon was furious that her human partner had the galls to try and ride on something else.
Why was he always so eager to try on different creatures? What could he possibly want for more when she was a metal dragon?
...Was she not good enough?
No! That is impossible!
It's all his fault!
"Screee!"
Skaw screeched in another fit of rage and blasted a ball of fire onto a smoldering pile of junk. When the flames lit the pent-up gas, the hill exploded like a handful of TNT.
"Wooh! That's amazing!"
Skaw whipped around, expecting to see her partner have followed her—like how he always did whenever she threw a tantrum.
Instead, there was someone much less impressive, flanked by a pair of metallic angels.
Skaw stared at the small Latino elf kid clapping and whooping from witnessing her showcase of skill.
It wasn't a bad feeling. Besides, her partner never allowed her to sneeze a flame, much less fire off a proper blast.
"You're one hot spanking machine creature, aren't you?" The boy called.
"They are called Automatons," The metallic angel pointed out, but the Latino boy waved it off.
"How about it?" He reached out to Skaw with a lascivious grin, "Wanna be on Team Leo?"
Sorry for being late.
I ended up writing three different versions of this chapter because this site basically shredded my previous versions.
Apparently, this site hates autosave.
Due to that, and the fact that exams are coming up again and I'm busier than ever before, I'm concerned the writing didn't hold up as well as I hoped.
That being said, I want to hear it from you guys on how this chapter felt. I don't want to do a rewrite as I did before(because that's cheap), but I'll have to consider it if the general audience is more negative.
Either way, I hope I'll come around by the next chapter!
I hope you all had a fun time reading, and I'll see you all in the next chapter!