Chapter 6: The Problem Child

When Leo woke up, he was confronted with bliss before he remembered what had happened the previous day. Fortunately, it was the weekend, but that did not eliminate the mess Leo had made out of everything. He could feel the guilt course through his veins. All of this was his fault. Leo had screwed up big time.

Therefore, Leo decided to spend his weekend in the lab with Mr. Davenport, cleaning up Chase's mess and listening to Mr. Davenport complain. Hopefully, Mr. Davenport would forget the whole football game incident before he realised that Leo was the one who begged Mr. Davenport to let the Lab Rats go with him. It was a stupid idea, but it was all Leo could think of.

Now, Leo was making the lab look 'presentable', or at least less of a mess, pushing broken inventions to the side of the room since Mr. Davenport insisted that each invention or at least the parts were salvageable. Therefore, whilst doing so, Leo checked to see if each invention worked somewhat and told Mr. Davenport the status of each invention one by one.

Leo was bored out of his mind, but the job was way better than handing Mr. Davenport tools as he rebuilt the broken capsules. Both Leo and Mr. Davenport realised that Leo was useless at doing so within the first 10 minutes of him trying. Leo had no clue what any of the equipment and tools were called, and he also dropped almost every tool he tried to hand to Mr. Davenport. Honestly, Leo had no clue how Chase consistently helped Mr. Davenport (and how he consistently liked helping him).

Fortunately, the inventions scattered throughout the lab were already broken, so it did not truly mattered how many times Leo dropped the invention. However, Leo wished he could be with Adam, Bree, and even Chase. Sure, Chase was unconscious and Bree and Adam could not move too much to prevent dangerous glitches, but at least they were above ground, free from work and guilt. Even if working in the lab was a choice, Leo still felt forced to do so, and that bothered him the most.

"All three capsules are done, and it only took me 2 days!" Mr. Davenport declared proudly on Sunday evening.

2 days! It felt like 2 years!

"Who is the genius? I am!"

"Great job Big D," Leo muttered halfheartedly. Honestly, he just wanted to eat dinner and go to sleep.

Mr. Davenport looked in Leo's direction, "You did good work too Leo, not genius quality, but at least people can walk through the lab."

Leo looked at Mr. Davenport and smiled in response, his pep coming back. Mr. Davenport did not often give compliments to anyone but himself. Plus, Leo could finally feel the guilt seep away from him. Obviously Leo was to blame for bringing Adam and Bree to the football game, but how was he to know that both would spaz out and glitch? Leo was just being a good brother, and nobody could fault him for that.

"The exoskeleton is shattered," Leo informed Mr. Davenport as he kicked it into the side with all the other broken inventions.

He only had one more invention to test: the neuroscrambler. Leo had saved the best for last, knowing that he could have fun for the first time in 2 days (though freezing Mr. Davenport with the cryoblaster was fun before Leo's mom came down for lunch and made him thaw Mr. Davenport out). Carefully setting the neuroscrambler to 30 minutes, Leo pointed it at Mr. Davenport.

Noticing Leo's plan, Mr. Davenport yelled, "Leo, no! You do not for sure if the neuroscrambler wo-"

Then, a few seconds after Leo pulled the trigger, Mr. Davenport's expression dramatically changed.

"What happened? How-? How are the capsules finished? I was almost done, but I was still working on them. And you… you had at least 5 inventions left."

Smirking, Leo put the neuroscrambler on the center lab table, "The neuroscrambler works though there is a delay of a few seconds."

"Do you know how dangerous that was?" Mr. Davenport exploded once more, grabbing his head to check for abnormalities. "I could have lost my memory or even worse, my beautiful genius brain."

"Chill Big D," Leo tried to stop from laughing. "Your invention worked successfully. Didn't it?"

Mr. Davenport huffed, "You are so lucky that it did."

Angrily, Mr. Davenport backed up, trying to restrain himself when he bumped into a covered invention. Leo immediately stopped laughing as Mr. Davenport pulled back the cover to reveal the cracked and unplugged LEMP.

"You forgot an invention," Mr. Davenport casually said. "The LEMP is still operational even though it is cracked."

"But it is unplugged. Right?" Leo squeaked. Fortunately, Mr. Davenport could not tie Leo to the broken LEMP, at least Leo hoped Mr. Davenport could not.

"That explains the glitching. I put the LEMP to charge the other day because it is battery operated. The crack caused a leakage of the LEMP, causing Adam, Bree, and Chase to glitch."

"Makes sense," Leo knew that he needed to change the subject fast.

"It is too late today, so tomorrow, I will have to patch up the crack. Obviously, I will need some overnight shipping, but that should not be a problem. However, for the LEMP to cause the glitches, wouldn't the LEMP have to crack before Chase glitched in the lab, meaning-"

Leo's eyes widened. Mr. Davenport was on to him. Who else was clumsy enough to crack the bionic 'glitch machine' and stupid enough to try to hide it? He was done for, and the guilt started to pound within his heart again. However, Leo was not going to give up yet. Mr. Davenport still had no clue Leo was the cause. Plus, if he ever did find out, Leo had a foolproof backup plan. Deny! Deny! Deny!

Stumbling a bit, Leo faced Mr. Davenport, "I am g-going to… um… tell Adam and Bree that they both and Chase can sleep in their capsules tonight. There is school tomorrow anyway."

With that, Leo raced out of the lab and out of suspicion (at least in his mind).

Author's Note: …And I am back from the dead.

I have been super busy lately, and my emotional state has not been the best, so I cut off from FanFiction for a while. I did write a lot though, so updates will be frequent.

I also edited the plot for most, if not all, of my chapter stories to make future chapters more exciting and not all filler. This story in particular had a major editorial change, but now, the entire story is written, and I am satisfied with my writing. So hopefully, you like it all too. :)

I am sorry to anyone who I have been PMing for the LONG wait, but I will reply to all my PMs in the next few days. Hopefully, everything will run smoothly again.