A/N: Thank you so much to all of my readers' for their wonderful existence. This is a truly awesome community of people. Remember, every time you review, a kitten is reincarnated from the dead and sent to authors to make their day. Keep Nico di Angelo busy giving authors ghost kittens. Or would they be skeleton kittens? Or maybe zombie kittens.

Keep Nico di Angelo busy making a zombie horde of kittens to attack local authors near you. Review your stories.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fake twitter account posting controversial things to confuse the fandom. Still not Rick. Don't sue me.

Chapter 3: Confrontation

Leo was unsure of how to continue. On the one hand, he had just created the best entertainment since pranking Hazel about the modern world. On the other hand, he was very close to revealing the one thing that he promised himself he wouldn't do, stupid Valdez.

Take deep breaths. Remember what she said. Take deep breaths, count to ten.

But it was all good. Right? They didn't know about that. They didn't know that they were better than him in every single way. They didn't know that they were ultimate perfection for the sole reason that they didn't beat themselves up for every single mistake. Percy had ADHD, look how well he could save the world. He wasn't stupid, he wasn't an idiot who messed up every single thing about the prophecy.

Calm down Valdez. Stupid little thing, can't even function by yourself.

There they came now. It was all going to be over. Sooner or later. It was all going to be over, and then they would either accept him or reject him. Like it always went. Except, Leo was kidding himself. No-one wanted him. No-one wanted the factory reject, tainted with talent that smart people should wield, cursed with potential that better people deserve.

And that's why he worked. And how he worked. He tested, and tried, and designed, and welded, and soldered, all to prove that he was worth it. And it was never enough. He would always find a way to derail all of his accomplishments in a matter of seconds. 'That part's wrong.' 'That could use improvement.' No matter how nicely he tried to phrase it to himself, he always would berate himself. He would always find something wrong.

His stupid fatal flaw? Inferiority. Well, not the act of being inferior, but the principle of thinking he was. The idiotic notion that he was less. Yes, he knew it in his head, but deep down, he knew he was a disappointment.

Percy's fatal flaw was loyalty. How much more noble can you get? He was such a good person, his fatal flaw was literally that he valued his friends over the world.

Annabeth's fatal flaw was pride. She made and designed much better things than Leo, she had so much self-confidence, she didn't act like a snob either. She had things to be proud of.

Indecision. That was Jason's fatal flaw. Whether to ruin Percy's life or Leo's? Whether to be perfect in the Greek camp or the Roman camp? No, Jason was too nice and chivalrous for that. He wouldn't stoop that low.

Frank's was, or used to be, insecurity. He was so humble over himself, he didn't notice how muscular he was, how easily he destroyed all those monsters, saved the seven's lives countless times. Even if Frank's fatal flaw was kind of ridiculous, it was better, and he actually got over it. 'Unlike some people I know.' Piper's was the same.

Hazel? Hazel's fatal flaw was the most human and perfect thing in the world. Guilt. Her fatal flaw existed because she was a good person, and because she cared about her actions, and reflected on their consequences.

All Leo did was fix things, things that only he broke in the first place. Everything was his fault. It would be, wouldn't it, when trapped with children of divinity. The lesser was always to blame.

-LineBreak-

They had searched the entire ship for him. Leo wasn't in the engine room, where they had originally thought he would be, half-hidden in a wall, using his toolbelt to make creations out of nothing.

He wasn't in his cabin room, designing and sketching, now that they looked at it, very detailed blueprints of the chicken-nugget smokescreen Leo had joked about earlier. There were also models of ship parts, and pieces of scrap paper filled with proportions and equations and observations. In short, Leo's desk was messy, but Leo was more proactive than they had all thought. Just one thing of many that they were wrong about with him.

Leo wasn't wandering the halls, he wasn't on deck, he wasn't on a balcony. He wasn't steering the ship using the Wii controller, which Annabeth logged onto to find that Leo had shortened the entire ships command using Javascript onto the simple buttons of the controller.

Leo wasn't even on the mast, checking Festus' head, or looking out from the crow's nest, shouting 'Land ho!' randomly, and other pirate sayings.

"I made tacos for dinner!" Of course, Leo was going to be in the one place they expected him the least. The kitchen, where he had spent one hour there prior to the seven's knowledge. But apparently, everything about Leo was off. He had sound excited speaking, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. Little observations like that. Frank took a bunch.

Leo was making tacos, a food that he almost never made unless they had fought a hard battle, it was a comfort food. He also called out with energy, but when they went into the kitchen, he seemed down before noticing the others and perking up a bit. Leo also was very interested in cooking, measuring out everything, and not looking up to say hello to the seven. He was very uncharacteristic.

"Hey Leo, we were wondering-" Hazel started before being cut off by the sound of a frying pan. Apparently, you needed one of those to make tacos. Frank wasn't convinced.

"Leo, dude, it's nearly the end of the day-" Jason tried again, but he stopped mid-sentence when he noticed Leo wasn't even listening to him. The others just sat down at the table, hoping to get this over with.

After watching Leo struggle making the food that he seemed to love, Nico walked into the room, immediately spotted what Leo was doing, and looked at him with calculatingly. Recognition entered Nico's eyes as he understood what Leo was doing, and he looked...Pitiful? Why was Nico looking like that towards Leo? Frank never understood him.

"Leo Valdez, I demand that we know what your fatal flaw is," Piper spoke up, charmspeak flowing into her words, every crevice. Frank already felt his tumble out of him, and heard many others do the same. Not Leo though.

"Me? I'm sure you can take a stab at it. It's still not the end of the day," Leo bit his bottom lip, but his eyes were calm, in the sense he knew he was in control.

"Mania."

"Guilt."

"Lack of self-care."

"Bravery."

"Putting others before yourself."

"Curiosity." They all said their guesses, well except for Nico. He looked Leo straight in the eye and gave him a knowing look. Frank was really tired of those.

"Superiority," Nico said. Leo looked at him with a manic expression, his eyes glinted with hilarity. He laughed humorlessly. It was bone-chilling to hear the usually happy Leo laughing like he knew the pains of the world. When he usually acted so immature, the world to him held no bounds.

The scariest thing? This laugh was genuine. This laugh, was real.