Leo woke up to the sound of someone attacking the bedroom door.

He glanced over at the electronic clock beside his bed and groaned in annoyance when the time flashed 5:14 AM.
Not only had he woken up early, but he earned a rude awakening as well.

"What do you want?" Leo called, tossing the blankets off him and groggily walking over to the door so he could open it. His feet crunched on crumpled up pieces of paper and dull pencils that he had at some point thrown on the floor.

Why was anyone awake, anyway? He was aware that Percy and Annabeth were recently both experiencing night terrors (obviously, they had just gotten out of Tartarus) but never did either of them come to Leo for comfort.
He was probably the last one on their People To Go So I'll Feel Better lists.
Heck, who was he kidding? Leo wasn't on the lists at all.

The boy swung open the door and glared at... no one? He looked behind him in case Buford had been the one throwing a fit in the hall, but the table was nowhere to be seen.
No one was seen.

Leo's brow furrowed, "Bet it was Jason." he grumbled, swinging the door shut again and turning back towards his bed. "Ooh, let's play nicky-nicky-nine-doors on Leo! Hehe, won't that be fun, Piper? Let's be funny." Leo muttered, mimicking Jason's voice. If his memories were right (which a lot of them weren't, thanks to Hera) he and the son of Jupiter were best friends.
Jason, however, was absolutely terrible when it came to pranks.

Leo was the funny guy one the ship. Jason was a blond version of superman. It was just better if the two stuck within their own categories.

Leo rolled his eyes, tapping his fingers rapidly on his pajama pants as he thought. Wouldn't he have at least heard Jason running away if it had been him? He could have flown or something, Leo assumed...
He was way over thinking it.

"Not funny, Jason! ... Or Piper." Leo shouted, just in case either of the two really were snickering outside of the room.
"Or... whatever." The boy added in a mutter, kicking one of the crumpled pieces of paper on the floor with his foot. The garbage rolled under his bed, sneaking into the shadows that, according to Leo, were secret portals that somehow got rid of the trash in his room.
If he couldn't see it, it didn't exist anymore. All problems solved.

Leo shook his head. He had the attention span of a walnut. A peanut? Hazelnut, maybe.
The sudden thought made something click in his brain.
Hazelnut...
Hazelnut...
Hazel...
Oh, right. Hazel.

He had to apologize to her.

Leo frowned as he glanced over at his bed. Sleep sounded so good to him right now, but then again he couldn't let his current situation with the daughter of Pluto continue with it's dead silence.
Heh... dead. Pluto. Leo chuckled to himself.

The boy had been talking to Hazel normally not even a full day ago. Then, at dinner, he had gone and said something stupid that upset her.
Maybe making jokes about the girl's boyfriend wasn't such a good idea, but how was Leo of all people supposed to be aware of that?
Of course Frank had already made it clear that he didn't appriciate Leo's humor, but it had been an innocent little joke that Leo had assumed would be taken lightly.

Still, he felt a stab of guilt when Hazel had refused to talk to him all throughout the rest of the evening. He had to apologize for it, to make the pesky little feeling go away.
Apologizing to Frank too was a good idea. Leo didn't feel like getting on the bad side of a son of Mars.

---

Tap-tap-tap

Leo fumbled with the buckle of his toolbelt as he tried to fasten it around his waist. He needed to get to Hazel's room so he could say he said his apologies to Frank, then go to Frank's room so he could really say his apologies.
He didn't have time for uncooperative toolbelts.

Tap-tap-tap

It was such an easy thing to do.
Just fasten the stupid belt buckle already, the boy thought to himself. He needed the lights on to see what the heck he was doing.
His hands weren't working with him, though. They just kept fumbling with the metal and shaking as he tried to stick it into the right spot.

Tap-tap-tap

Suddenly Leo dropped the toolbelt entirely. With a thud it dropped to the floor, landing in a circle around the boy's shoes.
He looked down at it, scowled, and bent down to pick it up.

Tap-tap-tap

When his legs stopped moving, Leo became aware that the footsteps he was hearing weren't his own. He narrowed his eyes as he snatched his toolbelt off the ground and hastily clamped it around his waste. Thankfully, this time his fingers didn't resist what he was trying to get them to do.

It was probably just one of his friends trying to scare him, right? There was no way that a monster could get aboard the ship... unless it had wings and a good sense of smell.
The boy looked behind him and, with pure confusion, saw a shadow following him. Not a person, not an object, not some weird machine he had left lying around that found out how to
walk.

It was just... a shadow.

Leo blinked. When his eyes opened, the shadow seemingly vanished.
Was he hallucinating? It would explain why no one was outside in the hall when he had checked earlier, but the thought wasn't very comforting. Hearing and seeing things, how terrific.

He shook his head and shrugged it off. Obviously he was bound to go crazy for real some time, maybe it was better that it was happening now.
He turned around and was about to take a step forward when he walked right into something.

What a daring hero he was.

"Stay back!" Leo snapped, grasping for a weapon from his toolbelt. When his hand whipped out of the pocket, the object clutched in his fingers wasn't what he had intended it to be.
"Breath mints?" A familiar voice laughed, breaking Leo's serious 'I'm ready to fight you' attitude.

The lights in the hall flickered on and suddenly people began appearing around him. There was Piper, Jason, Percy, and Hazel.

Percy was the one who was laughing.

"C'mon Leo, don't you have anything better than that?" He asked, folding his arms over his chest.
Hazel casted him an annoyed glance, "You broke it, Percy." she complained.
The son of Poseidon held his hands up in the air, "What? Oh. Sorry."

"Good show! Man, Leo was totally-"

"The Mist?" Leo asked, interrupting Piper's sentence. He felt his shoulders sag as he stuffed the package of breath mints back into the toolbelt.
Hazel nodded, "Impressive?"

"More like annoying." Leo grumbled, scratching the back of his neck, "Was all that really necessary."

Piper rolled her eyes, "Aw don't be like that, Valdez! Look how good Hazel's gotten, you've gotta give her credit for it."

"I thought I was gonna die."

"Well if you really planned on using mints as your defense..." Jason said, raising an eyebrow in amusement. Percy grinned and nudged his arm, "They're great Life Savers, Jason." he laughed.
The son of Jupiter didn't get the joke. "Excuse me?"
"You know... the mint." Percy explained. Jason just stared at him blankly.

Leo shot an angry look at them, "That wasn't funny."

"Well sorry." Percy grumbled, looking a bit offended by the criticism of his comedic skills.

"Not you." Leo snapped. He looked over at Hazel. "Why'd you do your freaky Mist stuff on me?"

"I was just- ...Freaky?" Hazel repeated with a hint of surprise in her voice, "So now you think I'm a freak?"

Piper looked back and forth between Hazel and Leo. She blinked, then a slight frown spread across her face.
"I'm sure Leo didn't mean it like that, Hazel." Piper said reassuringly, and Leo could detect the charmspeak in her voice. When he did, his body instantly stiffened. It felt like alarm bells were going off, but he had no idea what was causing them. Piper wasn't dangerous. She was trying to help.

Leo had already made such a mess of things with Hazel during the dinner last night, he was thankful that Piper was trying to mend things a bit for him.

The charmspeaker. A voice in his head thought randomly, causing the boy a moment of hesitation before he replied to Piper's attempt in settling things.

"What? Yeah! Of course I didn't mean it that way, Hazel. What I meant was-"

Stay away from the charmspeaker.

Immediately Leo glanced over at Piper with a look of confusion mixed with curiosity. Her?

She is no good.

Leo's brow furrowed.

Nothing she says can be trustworthy.

Of course she's trustworthy, Leo argued.

"Leo?" Hazel interrupted. The boy's eyes darted back towards her direction. "Are you going to finish talking or...?"

It is time to go. His brain shouted him. All of a sudden Leo felt an urge to get as far away from Piper as he could. He had tons of time to talk to Hazel, and heck, he wasn't even mad about her using the Mist on him anymore.

He just wanted to leave.

"I'm gonna raise the anchor." Leo announced. All four of the demigods around him showed confused expressions.

"Dude, don't you think you owe Hazel an apology?" The son of the sea god told him.

Leo waved it off and began running towards the stairs. "We gotta get to Athens!" Was his only answer.

When he left, Hazel's gaze dropped to the ground, "He doesn't seem okay."

"And you put up with that guy for how long?" Percy asked Jason, who in return just narrowed his eyes.

Hazel looked over at Piper, "Do you think he's alright?"

The daughter of Aphrodite shook her head, "Not completely."

Notes

This chapter consisted of Leo wondering why there's so many pencils on the ship and acting like an idiot
Oh, and a little bit of Hazel's 'controlling the Mist' stuff, too.

I promise the next chapter will be much better.