Hello! This is the first short story in this mini-collection. Leo is a little high (so expect some OOC), Jason has a little problem, and Piper has little mercy. The two Greeks are determined to teach the Roman… how to swim. If you like it, you can tell me (You don't have to, though; it's just common courtesy). If you don't like it, please say with gentle criticism or don't review at all ("if you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all" Thumper). This story is not to be taken seriously, but I hope you enjoy it. All rights reserved to Rick Riordan and Disney.

A Reincarnation of Disney

The feelings were generally good and happy all around the arts and craft building. The campers laughed and joked with each other as they painted, colored, sculpted, photo-shopped, and smacked a mess of colors on to a white canvas. Jason Grace sat at the back of the room putting on the finishing touches to his little clay sculpture. The Hermes kids who sat around him had already lost their patience and were stowing away their artworks on the counter in the back of the room. The guest teacher, Rachel Dare, came by to inspect what Jason was up to.

"That's a wonderful piece of abstract art," she said generously.

"Thanks," he answered, unfazed. "I thought it was a nice little birdhouse, too."

"…Okay, then! Well, class, that's it for today. Free time until seven, pizza at dinner, CONNOR STOLL! You stop right there! ART! DESERVES! RESPECT!" She stormed after the art-violator, but Jason continued to work. He kept fiddling with his art while the room emptied. Tomorrow the clay art would be put in the fire to harden. But what was it missing? He snapped his fingers and added a streak of scarlet paint to his globular triangle edged with stick figures.

Just as he got up to set his art with the other clay pieces, a high-pitched exclamation in Spanish was heard just outside the arts and craft building. Leo Valdez, curls flying in every direction, ran into the building as if his imaginary girlfriend's boyfriend was right behind him. However, it was only Piper McLean, a determined look in her eyes, who followed Leo a moment later. In a splendid act of desperation, Leo vaulted over a table, skidded across another, and did an amazing somersault over a bench. His only flaw in the gymnastics performance was when he lost balance after the somersault. Jason had gotten out of the way of the chase, but when Leo tried to regain his balance, he grabbed for his friend, knocked him and his clay artwork to the ground, lost his balance again, and crashed on top of Jason anyway. Piper tried to stop mid-run, but she got caught by one of Leo's waving limbs, and fell on top of the boys.

"Ow!" Piper moaned. "Leo, watch it."

"You're crushing me!" Leo retorted.

"My ashtray," Jason mourned, and then added, "GET OFF!"

The three friends spent a few minutes disentangling themselves from each other. Jason inspected his clay piece, which had a nice long crack in it; a mug is useless with a long crack in it.

"What. Were. You guys. Doing?"

Piper smacked Leo in the arm and answered, "Looney Tune here was ditching his job again."

"I'm allowed a little free-time, beauty queen," he replied in a snobbish tone.

"Not when you take the blueprints, yell 'Ha ha ha ha ha!' and run full-tilt away from the boat-in-progress."

"So, Leo," Jason continued, "you then come in here, hoping for mercy, but instead destroy my beautiful abstract art."

"I thought it was a blob." In a moment, Leo yelped another Spanish exclamation and ran full-tilt out of the arts and craft building with Jason hot on his heels. Piper groaned and chased after the two.

Leo allowed himself to be chased in a straight direction to the Long Island Sound. Jason had run out onto one of the piers when he realized that Leo had disappeared into the thin air. He looked around for the crazy child who had been ahead of him just moments before.

"Leo?" Jason called, worried.

"AAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHHH!" Leo yelled with full force. He appeared behind Jason and hopped onto his back. Jason struggled to keep his balance, but Leo waved around and caused both boys to fall into the water (and splash an out-of-breath Piper.)

The moment they broke the surface, Leo grinned, and said, "Welcome to swimming class, Jas."

Jason would have none of this welcoming. He gasped for a breath of life and scrambled back onto the pier before Leo finished his sentence.

"Lesson Numero Uno: We are your friends."

"Contrary to the fact you just tried to kill me?" Jason exclaimed.

Piper explained calmly, "I'm sorry, Jas, for the ruse and for Leo being… Leo." (There's no other way to describe Leo after all) "He's right, though; we are your friends. And as your friends we care about your safety; therefore we have decided to take it upon ourselves to make sure you know how to swim." She asked gently "You don't know how to swim do you?"

Jason avoided their eyes. "Do you know?" he mumbled.

"Oh please," Leo drawled. "Not only do I hold the title of being the camp's only firebender, I am also the camp's only firebending swimmer."

Not bothering to explain to him that he wasn't technically a firebender, Piper said that her dad had signed her up for swimming classes, among other useless courses, when they first moved to California. "So can you swim?"

Jason answered with a small shake of his head.

"Great!" Leo cried. "Let's get started!" He lobbed his shirt and shoes onto the pier, disappeared under the water, and reappeared singing The Little Mermaid at an obnoxious volume that previously had earned him a hard smack from his sister. Jason asked Piper if she was going to swim too.

"Actually, no. I spent the whole morning having my canoe flipped over by Drew. Again. And again. And again. And again. I think it was because-" catching Jason inattentive to his surroundings, she easily pushed him into the water.

Poor Jason floundered in fear before grabbing one of the pier's beams and holding onto it for dear life.

"We have a four month goal to teach you how to breath, kick, paddle, tread, and float."

Jason raised his hand, and Piper acknowledged his question. "Can't I learn how to swim in a safe, dry classroom with a PowerPoint presentation and multiple-choice tests?"

"Nope. We want you to learn how to swim so that if the Argo II mysteriously gets a large hole in it's hull, and we all fall into the Atlantic Ocean, we won't at least have to worry about you drowning."

"You'll have to worry about Leo. Because if there's a hole in the hull and we all fall into the Atlantic Ocean, I'll kill him."

"Leo! Get over here and stop singing Mulan!"

Leo appeared beside Jason and retorted, "It was Tarzan, Miss I-Don't-Watch-Movies. Okay, Simba," he said to Jason, "Let's start with the breathing." He dunked Jason underwater. After a few moments, he had to pull his friend out, spluttering and coughing. "Not bad, Peter Pan. You say this is your first time?"

Piper stretched out on her stomach and reprimanded, "A little instructions first, Valdez. The first thing to remember…"

They taught him the basic rules of swimming (as well as the lyrics to several Hercules songs.) It still took a half-hour, though, to convince Jason to try breathing again. It took twenty more minutes for Jason to actually try again. His friends tried to be patient.

After his attempt, they thought they ought to go into the basics of kicking. The two boys kept inadvertently kicking each other.

"Leo, more over before I kick you in the shins."

"You're not even trying, Tweety Bird. You kick like this." He splashed water at Piper. "Oh, lose the shoes. They'll make you sink faster."

Nearly as fast as a lightning bolt, Jason threw his shirt and shoes onto the pier and resumed clinging to the beam for his life. They tried the kicking again and this time Jason did actually kick Leo in the shin.

Then Jason asked a very important question. "How many fizzrockets went off in your face today, Leo?"

He paused in his Disney singing and thought. "More than 18 and less than 32." Five fizzrockets in the face was an equivalent to a sugar rush and ten was an equivalent to getting high; Jason gave Piper a very worried look.

After Leo floated away on his back, Jason's kicking improved slightly more than his breathing with the help of Piper's instructions.

"Da! Da! Dun, dun, dun-dun-dun. Da! Da! Dun, dun, dun-dun-dun." Leo sang drifting farther away from the pier.

"Morse code?"

Piper looked at him in mock sympathy. "Pirate talk for 'let's start on your dead man's float.'"

"My WHAT?" Someone ran up behind Piper and greeted them. Embarrassed, Jason ducked under water, realized that he couldn't inhale, and came back up gasping.

"Way to go, Jason!" Piper congratulated, ruffling his wet hair. "You've learned how to breathe underwater. What's up, Annabeth?"

"Not much, really," Annabeth Chase answered, staring curiously down at them with her hands on her hip. "I was just practicing for capture-the-flag this Friday. What are you guys doing?"

"We're teaching Jason how to swim."

"We?" the daughter of Athena asked, tilting her head.

Jason slowly let one hand go of the beam and sent a mild electric shock out to where Leo floated like a dead man. Leo made a gargled-gasping sound, and dived under the waves. He popped up next to Jason and smacked him on the arm saying, "BAD Sparky, BAD! What did we say about shocking Uncle Leo?"

"That it doesn't happen often enough!" Jason fired back, smacking Leo in the arm. As they got down to business of a regular ole catfight, Annabeth bent over and whispered to Piper, "So. I get that Jason is good without Leo, and Leo is okay without Jason, but what I don't get is why you hang out with both of them together?"

"Because my siblings are worse." Annabeth nodded in understanding. "Hey, Annabeth, do you think you could do us a favor? Can you make sure no one comes by here for a little while?" They looked down at the two impossible boys. "We are going to be here longer than I thought, and a little privacy would be great."

"Sure. Not a problem. As a matter of fact, I need to round up the camp and have a run-down of the rules for April Fool's Day." She thought about the rules. "Which is basically: the prank should not be fatal…" She raised an eyebrow at Valdez. "Um, is he okay?"

Leo squirted water at Jason, who hit him again and answered, "He thinks he is a reincarnation of some Disney character."

Leo put a hand to his heart and said dramatically, "I must find out who was my past life and reconnect with them. Only then, shall I complete The Circle of Life." He sank into the waters.

"Fizzrockets?" His two friends nodded. Annabeth shrugged and waved goodbye, catching a demigod coming down the pier and leading him away from the trio.

"All righty, then. I think we have had enough of breathing and hitting and kicking and hitting for today. Dead man's float, gentlemen?"

"Look, Piper, look! I'm treading water!" Leo resurfaced and bit Jason's hand that was holding the beam. "Ow!" He let go and floundered around helplessly before sinking under the waves. Leo caught him and helped him re-grab the beam.

"That wasn't very good treading, mate. Better luck next time!" Jason glared in response.

All in all, they spent two hours going over how to float, another hour on kicking, and a fourth hour on treading. You would think they would have made some progress.

Leo returned to floating on his back, his eyes closed, and his skin all wrinkly. "I think next time will go better, and the next time, and the next time, and the next time," he yawned. "We'll make you into a Michael Phelps in no time, Dumbo. Don't worry."

"Granted you can get me back here," Jason mumbled.

In an uncanny impression of Scar, Leo assured him, "We have our ways." He cackled and continued rambling on in the same voice to himself.

Jason gave Piper a beautiful, heart-breaking pout (one she had been ignoring all day), and asked, "Can I get out now? We're late for dinner."

She stretched her back and said sure. It only took Jason a few seconds to scramble out of the water. He hugged the pier murmuring, "Land. Land!" In a burst of affection, he hugged a surprised Piper, kissed the top of her head, and hugged the pier again.

"I just don't get how you never learned how to swim before. Come on, Leo! It's time to go!"

Jason lay on his back, breathing contently. "I don't really know. I know Romans aren't very fond of water, but… I think whenever I came close to going into the water, I got a bad feeling like I shouldn't be in Neptune's territory or something."

Piper frowned, worried. "So what you're saying is that we could be condemning you by putting you in the water?"

"No. You're condemning me by making me listen to Leo and his singing. Hey, Nemo, is there a song you haven't sung yet?"

Leo grinned up at them. "As a matter of fact," he turned to a deep baritone, "'A dream is a wish your heart makes…'"

"Let's go."

Jason pulled on his shirt and shoes while, Leo returned to rambling on about naiads. Finally, they threatened to have Nyssa come down and clobber him if he didn't get out of the water.

Leo was tugging on his shirt and shoes when a brilliant idea came to him. Muttering crazily, he grabbed Piper by the shoulders and stationed her to a spot ("You would clobber me if I made you the warthog") and he moved Jason behind Piper ("You're Simba, so remember you get older") and then stood between the two and began belting out what could only be The Lion King.

"He's kidding, right?" Jason mouthed to Piper. She shrugged, unsure what to do.

"Come on, guys! You have to sing and look bare nesscessital. It's the only way to cross the waterfall."

"Okay, from here on out, you are restricted to solely woodwork. No more fizzrockets for you!"

"Only if you sing," Leo coaxed.

The two who were still somewhat sane shrugged at each other. After all, not everyone had a friend who was a reincarnation of Disney. Knowing they looked like complete fools, Piper, Jason, and Leo sang their way off the pier and towards the pavilion. Hakuna Matata.