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Hephaestus wasn't expecting someone in the junkyard.
The blacksmith god was just a few meters from the Talos wreckage he'd seen in his mind moments ago. It was one of his great creations before, now hay-wired and could not be fixed by the god himself. His gigantic automaton lay in pieces around him, still smoking. The smoke smelled like burnt electrical wires. He started to look around, saw that some power cables were down.
The questing group searching for Artemis had been here, he thought, and that was when he saw her.
She was there, amidst piles of metal plates and dysfunctional appliances. Her breaths were hard and slow like every breath might be the last. Her skin and clothes looked like it had burned in a few places, her pale face tainted with grease oil and dark blood. Apparently, the questing group hadn't tried hard enough in searching.
If they were, they would've found her.
Hephaestus walked towards her, then carried her in his arms. He stared at her, immediately felt that she was a half-blood by her aura. Her aura was so close to fading his heart raced with worry. He knew he couldn't just leave this poor girl here to die, whether her death was proclaimed by the Fates or no.
Summoning a vortex of fire around him, Hephaestus headed for his workshop in Lemnos, the place that no one- not even the gods- would dare enter lest he said so. He remembered a funny memory of that- Ares never stood a chance against him. Along the way, the god had learned valuable things from just peering at the girl's past.
She had a younger sibling, and both of them were children of Hades before the Pact had been set on the stones. Trapped in the Lotus Casino, she had to be her little brother's sister and mother. A lawyer came to take them out, but Hephaestus was no fool. He saw through the lawyer's guise- it was one of the Furies. The siblings had attended a military school, still in the dark about their true parentage until someone let out a signal.
The son of Poseidon, the daughter of Zeus, and the daughter of Athena came to save the siblings with 'unknown' godly parents. Soon, she'd taken the oath to become a Hunter, chosen by Artemis' Lieutenant to go with her quest to 'prove herself'.
Her name was Bianca di Angelo.
In his workshop, his humanoid automatons interrogated him to no end until he said that the girl needs help. One of them ran a quick scan of Bianca's body and assessed that some parts might need replacements, lest they wanted Bianca to die. That was the hard part for the blacksmith god. Intervening in this quest meant that he must not let anyone know about her existence or the fact that she was still alive. He couldn't ask Apollo for help in an operation, much less Artemis who'd been taken captive.
One shall be lost in the land without rain. For Hephaestus, that didn't mean she had to die. Just lost. And if he could help her, then he would.
He ordered the automatons to do the necessary procedures to keep her alive, even if it meant cutting a few parts and hooking an IV of nectar to her veins.
"No organs to fix?" he'd inquired.
"No, Lord Hephaestus," one of the automatons said. "The nectar and ambrosia might be enough to fix her from the inside. But if we don't cut her left leg and right arm, blood poisoning would kill her."
He set to work, making her the best left leg and right arm for her to use. The god intended to make her feel as normal as she could with her prosthetic, like it had been a part of her all along. Once that was done, Hephaestus breathed longevity to his creation. Make her live.
The operation was a long, arduous process. Bianca was losing so much blood at every cut, her life aura waning despite the nectar's help, but Hephaestus had already set her automatons to find her compatible blood bags, and that pretty much kept her alive throughout the hours. Connecting the prosthetic limbs were easy after they've cut the poisoned ones. Drop after drop of the nectar, Hephaestus knew her life was going back.
After the successful operation, five automatons wheeled out a still-unconscious Bianca di Angelo out of the makeshift operating room. He told them to guard her at all costs, and never let anyone inside except him. The rest cleaned up the blood spills and operating tools.
Outside his workshop, Hephaestus psyched himself to have a word or two with her father.
*