The Capture

LEO

Leo Valdez wasn't keen on building a whole extra cabin for a guide.

Months. Months, Annabeth spent convincing Leo it was a good idea. Jason was on board in instant, he didn't have enough resurfaced memories to be an instant source of trust, and Piper wanted all of the help they could get. No, it was only Leo Valdez who had a problem.

Since finding out that he was a demigod, he'd met many beings that fit the bill for 'strangest person I've ever met'. He would've thought that'd wind up some sort of monster. Not a demigod.

On the outside, Liona di Angelo appeared incredibly run of the mill. Dark hair and eyes, average height, no off-putting facial scars or creepy attachments to weapons. That was before he found out she was a daughter of Hades.

He didn't know much about her, truthfully. He knew she had an only-slighty-less creepy than her brother. But she was very much a camp outsider, with a sticky tendency to stick her hand through people's bodies during capture the flag.

Suffice to say, he wasn't thrilled when he found out Annabeth was intent on her coming to Camp Jupiter with them. He had the conversation burned into the back of his mind.

"Oh, hell no!" he had said instantly.

"Leo, look. She's done work with Reyna before, so it's a second friendly face seeing as Jason won't exactly be their same one. And she can sense causes of death. She knows when we're walking into a trap."

"We always walk into traps!"

"She's coming, Leo."

"It'll throw my numbers off! I've got eight cabins for the lower deck. She can sleep in the galley."

"Leo Valdez, she's coming. She can take your cabin and place in the seven if you'd prefer? Nothing to say the angel in the prophecy can't be one of the seven demigods." Annabeth's stony eyes glared into his, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "I can assure you, she's much more skilled at a lot more useful things than you are, Leo."

He would never admit it, but that stung. "She's a kid, Annabeth."

"She's actually 78."

"What is she, 12?"

"She's 14."

"She's a child."

"She's seen a lot, Leo. One of the most powerful demigods at camp."

Leo scoffed. "Yeah, right."

"I've seen her in action. Her and Nico are terrifying, much better than me or you."

Leo was stuck with replotting and replanning everything on the bottom deck of the Argo II, which was not a fun job, but allowed for that extra cinema room which Piper and Coach Hedge campaigned for. She'd never admit it, but Piper loved watching her father act.

The morning they'd set sail on the Argo II, Liona and Annabeth were engrossed in a fast, hushed conversation, sitting on a bench just out of earshot of where Leo kept the ship on course. He occasionally court a few words, but heard recurring words or phrases, such as 'Nico', 'Percy', 'deceitful Romans' and 'imminent death'. It bothered him how, every single strategy meeting, he was left out. Annabeth had brains, Liona had warnings of death, Jason had Roman expertise, and Piper had an enchanted knife.

He thought it was kind of weird that Liona literally spoke to no one. Annabeth she did, sure, and she had a couple friends at camp, but made utterly no attempt to speak to Piper, Jason, or himself. Her lack of socialising or any hint of a sense of humour seriously weirded Leo out.

He also thought it was weird that her and her brother would vanish for weeks at a time from camp, into a world that was very impressed on them to be incredibly dangerous, especially for children of the Big Three. Blacl eyes and pale skin and prophecies of death. They were seriously strange.