The Problem With Leo Valdez

"Valdez, can I talk with you for a minute?" Piper's voice rang out as she tried to find her friend. He had told her that he was going to raise the anchor, but the Argo II was docked in the sky, not water.

If he was going to lie, he could have at least put some effort in to it.

Still, he had been acting so oddly earlier... it worried her. It wasn't weird for Leo to be... well, weird, but running out like that wasn't like him.

"Maybe he went back to bed?" Hazel offered, flicking on the lights in the dining hall as they entered the room. Piper shook her head, a slight frown was visable on her face.

"He's just hiding somewhere."

"You know that he doesn't need to apologize to me, right? I guess I am a bit freaky with this whole Mist stuff." The daughter of Pluto admitted, tugging on a few strands of her curly hair as she thought about the situation.

Piper looked down at her, "Being able to control the Mist isn't freaky, Hazel. That'd be like saying my charmspeaking is evil. Besides, what you can do helps us a lot. Remember, you're a big reason why Percy and Annabeth are back."

Hazel lifted her shoulders a little bit, "You think?" she asked, her face beaming.

"Levesque, I know." Piper nodded, nudging her friend with her arm, "And Leo does owe you a few words, he's been a grump this morning."

"To be fair I probably scared him."

"The kid slept in sewers, Hazel. Nothing should scare him."

The daughters of Aphrodite and Pluto went silent for a few minutes as the continued to wander around the ship in the search for Leo.

Normally whenever the guy went missing, the first place to check was the engine room. However, when Piper swung open the door the only thing she saw was Buford, Leo's table pet thing that to be honest, creeped her out a bit.

Tables were meant for putting stuff on, not cleaning windows and asking for Pine-Sol.

"...I think he went back to bed." Hazel finally announced, repeating her guess from earlier.

Piper closed the engine room door and rubbed her forehead with her hand. "Where would he be?" She murmured, wondering if Leo had built some secret passageways into the ship that no one knew about.

"How about we check his room?" Hazel offered. She now sounded a bit annoyed that the other girl wasn't listening to her, but there was no trace of anger in her tone.

Piper glanced over at her. "I'm sure there's much better places to hide."

"Who say's he's trying to hide?"

The girl paused and thought for a moment before nodding.

"Let's go check it out, then."

---

"You open it." Hazel said, taking a step away from Leo's door and pushing Piper towards it.
Piper lowered an eyebrow. "What, you're scared?"

"No way, but Leo smells enough just as it. Imagine what his room is like." Hazel said, plugging her nose shut with her fingers.

Piper rolled her eyes but cracked a smile, "I didn't need that thought, thanks." she chuckled, reaching out to the doorknob and twisted it so the door would open.

Immediately the two girls stepped back.

"Oh my gods, is it bad?" Hazel asked, squeezing her eyes shut and covering her mouth, "I can't look."

Piper's shoulders drooped. "What did he do...?" The girl whispered, cautiously taking a few steps forward.

The smell was awful, that was certain. But the room didn't stink in the way either of them had expected. It smelled like... fire. The burns on the walls, floor, and desk chair looked like Leo had personally attacked all of them.
It was if he had 'flamed up' and saw his room as a battle ground.

"Holy Pluto." Hazel gasped as she stepped up besides Piper. "Maybe he sneezed too hard?"

Piper was too busy examining the room to reply to Hazel's comment. The place itself was a complete mess, but the odd thing was that it looked like someone had purposefully trashed it. Papers had been wiped clean off Leo's desk and scattered all over the floor. Pencils had pens had been snapped in half, also covering the floor. Clothing items were burned, diagrams were ripped up.

"Gods, I hope it's not always like this." Hazel remarked, looking at a hand print scorched in the wall.

Piper knew that it wasn't. She had been in the room yesterday afternoon, and back then it had been near spotless. It was like the disaster zone had just happened over night.

"I'm going to talk to Jason." Piper announced, turning back towards the hallway. Hazel quickly caught up with her.

"What? Aren't we kind of busy at the moment?"

"He might know where Leo is, they're best friends."

Hazel made a face. "I always thought you and Leo were best friends."

Piper blinked, "They were buddies since Leo came to the Wilderness school, Hazel. That's long before I did."

The daughter of Pluto reached for a strand of her curly hair and began twirling it in her fingers.

"Oh, well... I guess some of your memories are still fuzzy thanks to Juno's fantastic plan, but you've known Leo longer. Come on, don't you think you have any idea where he is?"

Piper's eyes narrowed. She knew that Hera had toggled with her memories, but meeting Jason and Leo felt so... real. Even after learning of the truth that Jason had just been edited in to her life.

She had felt like a outsider complete outsider hanging around with the two boys. They acted like they were brothers, she was just the new kid desperate for friends.
Dylan had been bothering her none stop since she showed up at the school, though, and all of a sudden Jason and Leo came in and told the guy to knock it off. Leo had actually thrown a screwdriver at him at one point, gods know where he got it from...

It hadn't been real.

"Piper, are you okay?" Hazel asked, snapping the daughter of Aphrodite out of her thoughts.
She nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking about where he'd be."

"You know... I guess it doesn't really matter." Hazel said suddenly, shrugging her shoulders. "I mean, he'll show up when he wants to, right? We can ask him then."

Piper frowned. "I'd prefer if he gave an explanation now." She sighed, "Honestly I don't know why he'd do this."

"Maybe his power just went wacko for a few minutes?" Hazel tried to reason. "Hey! He might have been acting weird because that's what happened!"

"Maybe." Piper allowed, staring at all the burn marks in dismay. "But..."

Hazel's shoulders sagged, "But what?"

"I just- why wouldn't he tell someone?"

"Apparently he thought someone was going to kill him, so..." Hazel reminded her. "Not much time for explaining?"

Piper rolled her eyes, "You know what I mean, Levesque."

"Alright, alright! What do you think happened then, Miss I-Now-Know-Everything?"

"I don't know."

"Well that's certainly helpful." Hazel snorted, folding her arms across her chest. "How about we ask Leo when he shows up instead of getting tangled in it now? He was right about what he said earlier, we need to get to Athens."

Piper sighed, "I know."

---

"This is ridiculous." Annabeth growled. She was glaring at the controls to the ship with such frustration that Piper fully expected her to punch one of the screens.

"Hey, just send an Iris Message to Coach Hedge if you're so confused." She offered, reaching for a drachma from her pocket. "Iris can't be too affected by the Greek and Roman stuff, right?"

Annabeth furiously stabbed at a few buttons. "No, I know how to work this, Piper. It's the stupid screens that aren't cooperating."

Piper raised an eyebrow. "The screens?" Last time she checked (which admittedly wasn't often... or at all) ships didn't need screens or computers to function. Especially in the engine room... where the actual engine to the ship was along with other explosive things.

Then again, it had to be accounted for that Leo was the one who had designed the thing. Shaking a certain Wii remote would flush the toilets and saying 'turtle' would turn off all the lights, for pete's sake.

"They're not showing what I'm asking them to." Annabeth hissed as she typed something on the iPad keyboard. Seconds after she stabbed 'enter' pictures of kittens popped up on the computer screen in front of her.

"Look at that!" Annabeth snapped, clicking off the iPod and shoving it away from her. "What in the name of Athena did Leo do?"

Piper frowned. Leo, unfortunately, was still M.I.A.

If he was there with them at the moment, though, Piper was sure that Annabeth would smack him up-side the face.

"Here. Just sent an Iris Message to Hedge asking him what commands to put down." The girl said, taking the drachma out of her pocket and tossing it to Annabeth.

The blonde turned it around in her fingers before leaving the engine room. "He's probably too busy challenging the Ares kids to sword fights..." The daughter of Athena grumbled as she walked out the door.

Now alone, Piper slid into the seat Annabeth had sat in and began typing away at the computer. Surely working a complicated thing such as the Argo II wasn't as hard as it sounded, right?

Piper could talk people into giving her cars. Making a fancy little ship agree with her should be a cake-walk.

>404 Bad Gateway
Was what showed up on the screen.

Piper narrowed her eyes and typed the command again.

>Perhaps you meant: How many elephants are in a herd?

Was this really what Leo programmed it to do? Search for elephants of all things?
Sighing, she tried again.

>Hm... so that wasn't it. Let's try again?

Now Piper was getting annoyed. She typed in a new command, which requested turning on the lights in the mess hall.

>Can't do that! Here, would you like to look at kittens instead?

A Google webpage popped up on the screen and Siamese kittens were the images that it displayed.

Still optimistic, Piper stayed persistent.

>You would like to access security footage? Here, let's take a look at [Leo Valdez]'s room! Hopefully no monsters are attacking, am I right? That would suck.

The webpage closed and the video popped up. Since Piper had seen it before, she wasn't surprised when the disaster-zone of a room began playing.
It was hardly passing as a bedroom in the first place, Leo had made it worse by adding his own personal touches to it.

Frustrated, Piper leaned back in the chair and uttered a few choice words. She obviously didn't know how to get the system working, Annabeth was having trouble, and Leo was...

Piper's eyes widened when the drifted towards the screen.

"Oh my gods..." She whispered.

Notes