Hello!

I am here to present to you folks here today a REQUEST CHAPTER! YAY!

It was mentioned by Gabsters, and I thought it was too much of a good idea not to pass it up.

So YAY! The chapter is dedicated to him/her, so without further ado, I present to you LEO'S NEAR SLIP OF SECRETS!

(Ha ha... I came up with that name...)

Leo

Leo munched on his taco happily as he made his way back to the forges. His half-siblings should be there, as they always liked to be every free second of the day. Piper had gone to bed.

Leo entered the forges to be nearly decapitated by a flying squirrel. "Whoa!" he yelled, narrowly avoiding it.

"Sorry, dude," Jake called out to him.

"No problem, man," Leo replied. The squirrel landed on a table, and Leo made a face at it. The automaton made a face back at him.

Harley went up to Leo. "Okay, so Leo, I was wondering something," he started. "So, like, there's this fun thing I'm working on, but it's really dangerous, and everyone else is busy, and I just need someone to hold down one end so that everything doesn't explode, and could you do it please please please?"

Leo was about to tell him that he was busy as well, but Harley gave him a wide-eyed innocent puppy-dog face. "Okay, champ," Leo told him as Harley led him to a table in the center of the room. "But this better be quick."

"Okay," Harley said, giving him a pair of heavy-duty gloves and goggles. "Just put these on, because this part is really heated and you don't want to get burned. So just press down on this end, because if you don't it will fly upwards taking most of us out along with it."

"This sounds dangerous," Leo noticed as he slipped on the gloves.

Harley shrugged. "I've done worse."

"And did that worse thing do what it was supposed to?"

Harley thought about it. "I decapitated two nymphs and sent the entire Demeter cabin to the infirmary," he declared.

Leo patted him on the back. "You're too young for this," he told him.

"That's what I'm told." Harley grinned.

Leo held down the end Harley wanted to be held down while the latter unscrewed a small compartment on the side of the machine and took out a blowtorch. "Okay, hold down… now!" Harley flicked the blowtorch on and set the fire close to the inside of the machine. Through the gloves, Leo could feel the machine growing warmer. The end he was supposed to contain bucked furiously, and he had to throw his entire weight down on it to keep it from throwing him off.

"Uh, Harley?" he said. "Maybe this is a bad idea."

"Nonsense!" The kid was using a blowtorch without any protective gear or mask. He laughed.

Suddenly, the bucking stopped. Harley frowned and turned the blowtorch off. "That's weird," he decided. "That isn't supposed to happen—"

Something sizzled underneath Leo, and he realized that the gloves he was wearing were literally scorching and burning to a crisp. He yanked them off and threw them away, where they landed on the floor and sunk half a foot into the ground.

"Not supposed to happen!" Harley yelled. He turned to the rest of the cabin and in a voice a small child like him was not supposed to have, he bellowed, "DUCK!"

The Hephaestus campers heeded the warning and stopped whatever they were doing, threw themselves to the ground, and covered their necks with their hands. There was no screaming or panic. Apparently this sort of thing happened a lot.

Well, unfortunately, this was Leo's first time. He didn't get under cover quick enough and Harley's device exploded. He felt white-hot screws and nails pummel into him, and he raised both hands to his face in effort to protect himself. A large part of machinery was rammed into him and it threw him backwards, sending him crashing into tables. A few more seconds of exploding machines and then there was silence.

Leo groaned, trying to haul the thing off him, but it was too heavy. He realized that it was burning off his clothes, but he didn't feel anything. He tugged, but the thing wouldn't budge. He wasn't afraid of being smashed, or even the heat boiling him to an unrecognizable crisp. But his half-siblings would come over to check that he was alright and would notice how he wasn't screaming in agony.

He carefully lit his hand on fire and burned the sheet of metal to a liquid before his cabin could get up. He detangled himself from it, wiping large gooey globs off his clothing. Harley jogged over.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "I'm so sorry, and—"

"I'm fine," Leo told him. "Just don't ask me to do any more favours for you anymore."

He glanced back at what remained of the sheet of metal. Safe. For now.

Well, wasn't that fun?

Now review. The next chapter stops becoming filler, so the more reviews the quicker it comes!

IMPORTANT NOTE!

Also, I want to write a new story, but I'm still writing this one. I won't start favouring one story over another, but this WILL result in slower updates, possibly only one or two chapters per week. I have a poll on my profile, though, so you don't have to go up in my face if you want me to wait. (I'll be keeping it up for three more chapters.) Thanks!