i used to be half alive [private]

Isaac spent most of his time in the armory. No surprises there, considering his heritage. He'd work from the moment he got up and into the night. He'd skip the rest of his camp classes to just warm up in the endless heat. It's not like he's missing anything new, anyway. He had already been in this place for two years.

Two years in, and I still suck.

Isaac stopped to look at his progress, his lips twitching into a frown. He was almost done. He had already attached a sewn leather cylinder where you could put your arm through, and he was pretty sure he had worked out everything else. See, he was a disc thrower. Attach it to your arm and you can shoot frisbees with one press of a button. It'd be useful for dog owners, he thought, but then it could also double as a weapon. Later, he would make custom discs with bladed edges. Load them up and watch your enemies get sliced by discs from hell.

But there wasn't really a problem there. The problem was whether it would really work or not. If it did, yay. If not, well, he was used to failure...

Isaac wiped his brow with his sleeve. Now for the moment of truth. He carefully slid a frisbee inside the thin slit, and pressed the button on the side.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the disc thrower started smoking, and Isaac knew what was going to happen before it did.

"Oh sh -"

He ducked under the table before he could finish, just as...

Boom!

The device exploded into bits of metal and leather. The small blast shook the armory, and Isaac felt like all eyes were drawn to him.

He waited a couple of seconds before straightening up. His nose wrinkled at the stench of smoke, and he nudged the still burning remains of the disc thrower now mixed with the melted plastic from the frisbee. Not caring if everyone was looking at him, he pounded both fists on the table and roared out a mix of curses in English and Ancient Greek.

Well. Looked like he screwed up again. No surprises there...

Isaac was still in dark mutters when the girl spoke. Her voice snapped him out of it, at least for a little while, and he blinked a couple of times as he turned to look at her. Once he was absolutely sure that she was talking to him (as if there was anyone else she could be talking to), he sighed and swept some of the ash off his desk.

He hadn't really expected comfort. Here in the armory, everyone would just mind their own business and that's that. In fact, those who had noticed the explosion had already gone back to their own worlds. Isaac really liked that about his siblings. They didn't tease, they didn't taunt, and when you screwed up, they mostly didn't care.

Not that he didn't appreciate Kat's gesture. It was nice to feel that somebody cared. He just wasn't used to feeling it.

"It isn't worth anything though. Still broke," He tried to return her smile, but his lips only half-heartedly formed a grin. Then he looked at the useless pieces of metal on his desk. "Couldn't even make a stupid disc thrower. That's another couple of dollars lost..."

The truth stung. He would see his brothers and sisters making cool stuff like touch screen gadgets and customized weapons from scratch. Isaac burned with envy. He could never invent things from scratch. He could only barely fix anything, and if he modified something and made it work he would already count himself lucky.

He eyed the remains with slight repulsion. Burned melted plastic wasn't good for the nose. Swallowing back the bile that rose to his throat, Isaac fished out a greasy rag from the small bag tied around his waist and tried to wipe the disgusting goo away. It would be more advisable to wait until it has cooled off, but with the neverending heat in the armory, Isaac doubted that it would ever cool down into a low enough temperature that he could just scrape it off.

Feeling the slight heat of it burn his palm, Isaac suddenly remembered that he had company. He nearly groaned, biting his lip closed to prevent the sound from coming out. Where the hell were his manners? Maybe they were in the same place as his inventing abilities.

"Sorry. I'm Isaac." He offered her a smile that was a little less forced this time. It quickly melted into a slight frown. "I'm sorry, were you doing anything? Don't let me bother you."

He looked around and saw an empty station with a car engine. It must've been where Kat was working until she came to join him - there was hardly an empty place anywhere. Isaac jerked his head towards it. "You working on that? Doesn't it belong to... what's his name again... the one whose car just broke? The guy who forged IDs?"

Isaac barked a laugh. He gestured to the smoking metal. "There are too many problems that I don't know where to start. Besides, it's basically a pile of ash now. It's just... I don't want to start everything from scratch, you know?"

He tucked the cloth inside his bag and stretched out his arms. He'd been working hours, and in one second everything just vanished. All his hard work gone in the blink of an eye. Why did it have to explode, anyway? Why couldn't it have just fallen apart without burning up? The thought of it made him want to flip the desk, or throw something, or punch the wall...

"I appreciate it, but it's okay," he said, waving off Kat's offer. "I'll work it out eventually. We all do in the end."

Maybe if he believed it enough, it would come true.

Isaac's eyes flicked to the engine, remembering the times his grandpa's tractor broke down. He remembered staying up all night to read the manual. Then in the next morning, he would get to work. It would take him a couple of days to figure everything out, but he did alright. It was really something back then. Isaac was only in his early teens and he could fix tractors. Now he was eighteen, and he couldn't even get a damn disc thrower to work.

That thought was always going to bite him back. Isaac Nichols, the sorry excuse for a son of Hephaestus...

He shook the thought off, barely hearing Kat speak.

"Oh, uh... where were we? Uh... right, Lucian..."

Lucian, the son of Hermes. Isaac personally had no need for his services but he knew that the guy was good with a pen, and that he had the uncanny ability to make fake licenses and other legal things. It came in handy, his talent. Last time Isaac saw him was when he was busy counting dollar bills in the secluded corner of the courtyard. The guy had obviously listened to the Joker. If you're good at something, don't do it for free...

Now if Isaac was good at inventing things, he could've sold his works and made a fortune by now. He toyed with the idea for a while. He'd charge for simple fixing and occasionally rooting and jailbreaking because let's face it... how else was he supposed to get any cash? He wasn't like the others, who had families which sent daily allowances. Isaac was on his own.

Right now though, he was in the middle of a conversation and he needed to stop zoning out.

"Oh! Uh, nothing. I saw him bringing it in. I think he needs it today, though? Heard him muttering about a date today... or something..."

Isaac zoned out a lot. It was an established fact. Sometimes he wouldn't notice, and he'd stare at nothing in particular for a long period of time before someone could snap him out of it. It was yet another thing he disliked about himself. Why? Because he hardly paid attention to his surroundings, and that usually meant ignoring whoever was with him at the time.

He looked at Kat, wondering if he had missed anything of importance, before dismissing it as an idle thought. Maybe she had zoned out too. It made him feel a little bit better, but not by a lot.

"Oh," Isaac mused, his eyes nervously flicking to the doorway as though expecting a giant to punch it down. "I hear he has quite the temper..."

Yeah, he wouldn't put it past Lucian to suddenly burst in and demand his car engine back. It wouldn't be a pretty sight.

Biting his lip, he looked at his desk. The melted plastic wasn't completely wiped off - traces of it remained on the singed surface. The smoke had almost faded now, thankfully, and hopefully the stench would fade along with it. Isaac didn't feel like putting the stuff back together. As if there's anything left to put back.

As for Lucian's car engine, however...

"I can help you with it, if you want? I used to work with a tractor so I know a thing or two about engines,"Isaac offered, smiling his best. "If we work together, maybe we can fix it before Lucian comes."

Isaac shrugged, biting back a smile. "That could work. But he's a pretty handy guy to have on your side, with his forgery skills and all."

His eyes flicked once again to his unsuccessful work and his shoulders visibly drooped. Looking at it made him want to flip the table. "Positive. Take the scraps if you want 'em. I don't really care." Not when it keeps reminding me what a freaking failure the whole thing is...

Shaking the unwanted thoughts off, Isaac returned Kat's smile with one of his own. He really wanted to help her. Anything else was better than this stupid scrap of burnt metal and ash. To be honest, Isaac just wanted to pretend that the explosion didn't happen, but the thought was surely going to haunt him for a long time.

Since going to camp, he'd been insecure about his abilities. Before, he thought he was quite the hotshot when it came to machinery. Hell, he even thought he was some kind of prodigy. That changed, though, when he arrived in Camp Half Blood. You could say it came as some sort of a shock... well, saying that would be a bit of an understatement. Turned out that he was in the bottom of the Hephy cabin when it came to technical skills. Certainly made him wonder how big his head would've gotten if he didn't discover the family he never knew he had.

Family. Until now, he wasn't used to associating that word with his siblings. Sure, they all shared the same father, but they felt more like classmates than siblings to Isaac. Camp was like school, and everyone else were his classmates, in some cases friends. But they were more of acquaintances, more of allies than brothers and sisters. But then, Isaac never really went the extra mile to get close to any of them. Mostly he just minded his own business. Life was much simpler than way. Kind of lonely, but simple at least.

"Well, I don't have anything else to do so," Isaac skirted around the desk, already on his way to the engine. He gestured to the ash and metal. "If you don't want any, just leave it there and I'll just toss it to the recycling area later."

He didn't wait for a reply as he peered at the engine, his eyebrows knotting together. It looked fine at first glance, but Isaac knew better. "What's the problem here? Engine misfire? Something wrong with the starter?"