LEO

Leo was happy he'd already eaten.

By the time Percy had finished his story, it was two hours later and no one would have had any kind of appetite after what he told them.

The whole tidal wave thing? Yeah. Not really what Leo'd consider a bedtime story. He could tell from the other's expressions that they felt the same way.

"Wait, so let me get this straight," Leo said. "That thing we saw at Cetus Outpost No. 1. That was part of this whole plot to flood the world and was sucking the water down into the earth?"

"Yeah," Percy said distractedly. "Cetus Outpost No. 1?"

Jason cracked up almost immediately as though he had predicted this would be a question of major importance. It was the details of course that mattered most.

"We needed something to call it while we waited for you." Leo grinned nobly. Percy nodded slowly, not totally convinced. "Hey, it worked in the moment!"

"Thought that counts," Frank mumbled from his seat across the circle.

"You watch it, Zhang."

Frank waved his hands above his head in feigned terror. Percy gave a high pitched almost cackle-like laugh at the strange, twitchy motion of the larger boy, and Annabeth almost fell apart herself at the sound. Beside Leo, Hazel was laughing silently into her hands, unable to control herself despite how she shook from trying. He assumed an expression of complete devastation and placed his hand over his heart dramatically. He saw Piper start to lose it, Frank was already gone, and even Nico was starting to smile. Calypso as always managed to keep cool. She smiled at him and shook her head with a small giggle.

They remained that way for a while, laughing over each other and at each other's laughs, finding it impossible to regain any kind of control. As soon as it began to subside, someone made eye contact with someone else and everything fell apart again.

"Ha - " Jason gasped, wiping tears from his eyes. "I think we needed that."

Annabeth elbowed Leo gently in the ribs. "Told you," she said quietly, just loudly enough for him to hear. He elbowed her back.

It seemed a very long time before they were finally interrupted.

The first crash came from the tents.

The pegasi who had previously withdrawn to the shade of the forest came bolting out into the open, milling around frantically and nudging heaps of strewn supplies with their noses.

The demigods watched, speechless, as something ran too quickly to see through the tents, knocking out the posts and causing overall chaos.

"What?" Leo said, fingering his tool belt but totally lost as to what he could possibly summon that would help the situation. Jason drew his sword. Percy pulled Riptide from his pocket at almost the same time and both of them took a few steps toward the tents as if they were both on the same mental wavelength.

There was nothing for them to swing at however and they remained looking around like the others for whatever it was they could attack.

Whatever it was flew through again and Frank notched an arrow. Piper held her cornucopia at the ready with an expression that said she was ready to make the most intense Thanksgiving feast of all time, and Nico had that look in his eyes that said he was about to make all of Hades erupt out of the earth. Annabeth had drawn her sword and Calypso even had an uneasy grip on a very large, pointy stick she must have found along the beach.

Only Leo remained unarmed, save for the magic tool belt and no good ideas. That was his only problem with it. No matter how cool it was, for it to function it still required that he actually put an effort into thinking up what it was he needed.

Come on, come on, come on. He wasn't really keen on sticking with fire, though that was the most obvious solution. Something told him he'd end up doing more damage than good.

"Ah!" Annabeth stumbled and toppled backward, hitting the ground hard and sending her sword skittering across the sand.

"Annabeth!" Percy started to turn when their attackers raced by once again, forcing his attention away from her.

"I'm fine," she grunted, getting to her feet and brushing sand off her pants with a scowl.

Jason was the next to go down, his gladius glinting wildly as it spun away. He made a move to go after it when his path was blocked by his invisible assailant, whipping back and forth in front of him too quickly to see.

"All right, that's it," he said angrily. A small cyclone began to form around him, but before he could do anything else, another being came at him from the side before running off again and knocking over Frank, Piper, and Nico like bowling pins. Leo heard a surprised shriek and turned to find Calypso playing an apparently one-sided game of tug-of-war over her stick-spear. He was starting to wonder why he seemed to be the only one left unnoticed when something jumped him, latching onto his back and giving him the tightest hug ever.

He lost his balance and fell, only to realize that Percy was finally down too, unarmed and furious.

Leo had no way of knowing how many there were - it seemed like they were everywhere. Jason was apparently in the same predicament as Leo, because he was thrashing around in the sand like he was trying to fight off a cat that'd had a little too much cat-nip.

Leo caught sight of Piper, cornucopia aloft, aiming uncertainly at some place over Jason's head. Squeezing her eyes shut, she let loose something that looked suspiciously like a Pillsbury crescent-roll, sending it spiraling like a buttery grenade through the air until it found its target in a fantastically miraculous hit. Jason rolled to the side and stumbled to his feet as the creature zipped off into the trees. He looked over at Piper, shocked and smiled widely until he realized Leo was still in trouble. Both of them ran towards him as he wrestled under the surprisingly heavy weight of the apparently small being.

Oh come on, he thought. Fine, have it your way. He let a few warning flames dance under his attacker and heard a faint little yelp. It drew back immediately and disappeared behind the last.

"Good?" Jason said. Leo nodded and the three turned back to see how the others were faring.

Percy and Annabeth had both gotten back up and were chasing the whatever-they-were's blindly down the beach. Percy gasped as his feet suddenly went out from under him and he flew through the air, headlong into the dirt. Groaning and hoisting himself up again, he raised a hand impatiently like he was hailing a cab.

"Okay, I think we're done here," he muttered.

A wave of salt-water much larger than the rest crashed on the shore, sending everything in its wake, which unfortunately consisted of most of their camp, washing across the beach.

"Gods, thanks, Perc. I needed a shower anyway," Jason coughed, back on the ground once more with a coil of seaweed over his shoulder.

"Watch it!" Annabeth said, pulling Leo out of the way just in time as a confused creature rushed by them, a little slower than before, and disappeared into the trees.

"Over here," Nico said. "I think this one's out."

The others rushed over to where he stood, sword drawn and held loosely over the small little green body of a girl.

"You don't think she's - " Frank said softly.

"No," Nico confirmed. "She's still alive."

As if on cue, her eyes snapped open, wide with fright and colored a deep, rich emerald green.

"And maybe she can tell us something."

"No!" Her voice was more like the shriek of an angry bird than that of a nymph. "No help!"

"Look, we're uh - really sorry about all this," Percy said. "But if you can just tell us why you, you know, attacked us, that'd be really great."

"No help!" she repeated, crossing her arms stubbornly.

"But why won't you help us?" Annabeth tried. "We didn't know you were here, and certainly didn't know you didn't want us to stay. Otherwise, we would have left."

The little nymph's face softened a bit, still cautious but less angry. "No help to titans," she said, nearly a whisper.

Leo looked around at the others to see that all looked to be just as confused as he was. "What do you mean?" he said. "You mean Koios and Oceanus? We aren't helping them. We're trying to stop them."

She looked at him skeptically and then back to Annabeth.

"That's right," Annabeth confirmed. "You can trust us."

"But that one washed away my sisters! And that one hit one of them on the head, and that one burned another one!" she cried, pointing accusingly at Percy, Piper, and Leo.

"I know, and they are very sorry," Annabeth continued soothingly. "They didn't mean it, but can you tell us why you attacked us?"

"We thought," she began, glancing around warily at her unwelcome company. "We thought you were from Koios. No strangers come here, and the good goddess of Delos does not wish the titans to succeed. We must protect her from those who they send."

"Have they sent others before?"

She nodded.

"When? Who did they send?"

"They came in the water - swam around the rocks for a while. I don't know what they were doing, just watching us. And then they left. That was right before the whirlpool, actually. I think they did it, but then one day it just went away again."

Annabeth and Percy shared a look. "What were they?" he said.

"Merpeople."