~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Fire Boy

{Kiara}

Through the tears in her dark eyes, Kiara saw Leo roll aside just as the truck steamrolled over the machinery. If he'd been a half-second slower, he would've been smashed.

   He got to his feet, and Ma Gasket spotted him. She yelled, "Torque, you pathetic excuse for a Cyclops, get him!"

   Torque barreled toward him. Leo frantically gunned the toggle on his makeshift remote.
Torque was fifty feet away. Twenty feet. Then the first robotic arm whirred to life. A three-ton yellow metal claw slammed the Cyclops in the back so hard, he landed flat on his face. Before Torque could recover, the robotic hand grabbed him by one leg and hurled him straight up.

   "AHHHHH!" Torque rocketed into the gloom. The ceiling was too dark and too high up to see exactly what happened, but judging from the harsh metal clang, Leo guessed the Cyclops had hit one of the support girders.

   Torque never came down. Instead, yellow dust rained to the floor. Torque had disintegrated.

   Ma Gasket stared at Leo in shock. "My son... You... You..."

   As if on cue, Sump lumbered into the firelight with a case of salsa. "Ma, I got the extra-spicy—"

   He never finished his sentence. Leo spun the remote's toggle, and the second robotic arm whacked Sump in the chest. The salsa case exploded like a piñata and Sump flew backward, right into the base of Leo's third machine. Sump may have been immune to getting hit with truck chasses, but he wasn't immune to robotic arms that could deliver ten thousand pounds of force. The third crane arm slammed him against the floor so hard, he exploded into dust like a broken flour sack.

   Two Cyclopes down, but Kiara had already lost all hope. Leo was breathing hard, a grin plastered on his face, when Ma Gasket locked her eye on him. She grabbed the nearest crane
arm and ripped it off its pedestal with a savage roar. "You busted my boys! Only I get to bust my boys!"

   Leo punched a button, and the two remaining arms swung into action. Ma Gasket caught the first one and tore it in half. The second arm smacked her in the head, but that only seemed to make her mad. She grabbed it by the clamps, ripped it free, and swung it like a baseball bat. It missed Kiara, Piper and Jason by an inch. Then Ma Gasket let it go—spinning it toward Leo. He yelped and rolled to one side as it demolished the machine next to him.

   Kiara knew by then Leo had started to realize that an angry Cyclops mother was not something you wanted to fight with a universal remote and a screwdriver. The future for the son of Hephaestus was not looking so hot.

   She stood about twenty feet from him now, next to the cooking fire. Her fists were clenched, her teeth bared. She looked ridiculous in her chainmail muumuu and her greasy pigtails—but given the murderous glare in her huge red eye and the fact that she was twelve feet tall, Leo wasn't laughing.

   "Any more tricks, demigod?" Ma Gasket demanded.

   Leo glanced up. "Heck, yeah, I got tricks!" Leo raised his remote control. "Take one more step, and I'll destroy you with fire!"

   Ma Gasket laughed. "Would you? Cyclopes are immune to fire, you idiot. But if you wish to play with flames, let me help!"

   She scooped red-hot coals into her bare hands and flung them at Leo. They landed all around his feet.

   "You missed," he said incredulously. Then Ma Gasket grinned and picked up a barrel next to the truck. Kiara immediately knew what it was—kerosene. She cried out as Ma Gasket threw it. The barrel split on the floor in front of Leo, spilling lighter fluid everywhere.