Piper was really, really keyed up this morning. She'd repacked her bag twice and run three miles with Jason—and it was only five-thirty. She hadn't even had any coffee, which was weird in itself.

Strangely enough, as she and the other counselors ran around doing final checks on the Argo II, she couldn't see Leo anywhere. Maybe he was still asleep—but Piper kind of doubted that. Leo was so protective of his ship that he'd taken to guarding the door of Bunker 9 himself in the final few weeks of building; there was no way he'd miss this important inspection on purpose.

Footsteps pounded down the deck behind her, and Connor Stoll shouted, "Piper, think fast!" She only barely managed to get out of his way in time as he and his brother Travis ran past her with an enormous crate balanced between them. As quickly as they had come, they circled the stack of supplies now towering on the deck and were gone.

"Piper!" It was Clarisse now, stomping over to her agitatedly. "Have you seen Valdez anywhere? Annabeth needs to ask him about—"

She was cut off by a high-pitched screeching noise from below, causing everyone on the deck to freeze and look down immediately. Several people reached for weapons—the Athena cabin's command post of sorts near the bow of the ship exploded with paper as a flurry of sudden movements disturbed their carefully stacked notes—and others shouted orders above the din.

"What in the name of Olympus is that?" yelled Malcolm over the noise. "It sounds like—"

The son of Athena never got a chance to finish his sentence, because at that point the screeching noise burst into song: "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAAAAAS IS YOUUUUUUU!"

"Holy Hephaestus," Jake Mason said incredulously, "is that Leo?"

"AND FOR MY NEXT NUMBER—DRACO LIKES HAMSTERS, DRACO LIKES HONEY—"

"DRACO LIKES TOOTHPASTE!" yelled Connor from somewhere out of sight.

"DRACO LIKES MONEY!" answered Travis.

"For the gods' sakes," snapped Annabeth impatiently, "what is going on here? Is this some sort of prank?" She fixed her glare on everyone individually, but no one seemed to have an answer for her.

Meanwhile, Leo kept singing—something Piper could barely make out as a song about…chicken nuggets, maybe?

"NUGGET, BISCUIT, NUGGET IN A BISCUIT, DIP IT ALL IN MASHED POTATOES! DIP IT ALL IN MASHED POE-TAYYYY-TOES, DIP THE MASHED-POTATO-COVERED-CHICKEN-NUGGET-BISCUIT IN THE BARBECUE SAUCE!"

"What in the actual heck," said Clarisse, which in Piper's opinion pretty much summed up the whole incident.

By this point the other campers had started to wake up, coming outside to witness the ship preparing for departure and instead witnessing something very different.

"SOULJA BOY OFF IN THIS OH, WATCH ME CRANK IT, WATCH ME ROLL! WATCH ME CRANK DAT SOULJA BOY THEN SUPERMAN DAT OH, NOW WATCH ME YOOOOOOU!"

"There are little children here!" Jason exclaimed weakly, speaking for the first time since Leo had started his little recital. "What's he even doing down there, anyway?"

"Apparently," said Connor, who had gone downstairs to find out, "he's testing out the shower."

Moaning, Clarisse slid down one of the masts to the deck and muttered, "Please just let me die."

"ROXANNE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO PUT ON THE RED LIGHT! WALK THE STREETS FOR MONEY, YOU DON'T CARE IF IT'S WRONG OR IF IT'S RIGHT!"

A brief pause.

"TONIGHT, I'M GONNA HAVE MYSELF A REAL GOOD TIME! I FEEL ALII-HI-HI-HIIIVE!"

After another hour of preparations, the sun was just barely beginning to peek over the east horizon. During this time, Leo successfully completed the rap sections to four different songs, almost set the bathroom on fire twice, translated an entire Taylor Swift song into alternating lines of Spanish and Greek, and generally got on everybody's nerves.

Piper gently touched Annabeth's shoulder as they were taking one last look out at Camp Half-Blood—maybe the only time they'd see it again for a while. "Don't worry," she said. "We're going to find Percy, and he's going to remember you. And if he doesn't, Jason and I will help you kick his butt six ways to Sunday."

The head counselors—still assembled on the deck for final goodbyes, hugged Annabeth and each said something along the same lines.

Nobody, however, expressed the sentiment better than Leo, who ran down the deck wearing nothing but a towel and shouted, "EVERYBODY! EVERYBODY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE!"

A/N: HERE IT IS! :)

In this update there is (see if you can find them all): one Tobuscus reference, one Potter Puppet Pals reference, one reference to the Royal Wedding Entrance Dance video, one reference to The Perks of Being a Seaweed Brain's promised off-key Mariah Carey ballads, one reference to the totally unauthorized parody of this fic by Iris' daughter, and my eighty-seven bazillionth reference to Leo Valdez being a completely amazing and utterly adorable weirdo.

Totally dedicated to mcfuz for mentioning this fic in her story "The Perks of Being a Seaweed Brain", TailsDoll13 for her idea with the Draco song, wombat-of-awesomeness for not thinking I'm weird when I ask her for song suggestions on the bus home from school, Iris' daughter for her parody fic "Roxanne" that's based off of BGB, and YOU, lovely readers, for reviewing this story! It's gotten so popular now—thanks so much!

EPC