To Riordanlover16- Popadom can suck it (regardless of the fact I made him and regardless of his stupid name) Here's the next chapter XD

To valdeznation- You'll like this one :3

To DaughterofApollo- (Chapter 8) I'm not sure when you'll see my responses to your reviews, but I'm putting them here anyway! BAD PTSD is fun to write, so... sorry-not-sorry :)

Leo whistled, Festus roaring in acknowledgement. The dragon did an about turn, landing between his master and the oncoming threat. He bit at Luke, growled warningly. Flames glowed behind his teeth. Piper leaned down to grab Louisa's hand. For once, Louisa did not resist, letting herself be pulled up.

As Leo waved them away, as Festus took to the air, Louisa felt every nerve of her body sag, liquify. She had never been so relieved to not be fighting.

"You're supposed to be at home!" Piper chided, expression softening at the terror moments from breaking free. She said nothing when Louisa grabbed hold of her, held on tight, shaking all over. She readied her megaphone, singing again. Her charmspeak and Hazel's Mist combined with the Nico-Reyna tag team down there was weakening… Popadom? OK, the name was stupid, but its owner definitely was not. How a dryad had achieved this level of power, they had no idea. This was a darkness akin to a demon, not a nature spirit.

They had to keep going. This was Leo's plan. It was easier for Percy and Jason to take on this Popadom with the others expending his magic elsewhere, breaking down his defences and slaughtering his offences.

And then there was Leo, the mastermind behind this whole plan. He was taking on Luke, the thing that resembled Luke, alone. Mallet in hand, fire unbridled lashing from his skin. Luke was merely an extension of Popadom, another branch to weaken, another root to burn.

And burn he did.

This was not the real Luke. He was a guise to a malevolence; he had none of the famed skill the real Luke had, none of the mastery. The real Luke would never, never have been this… evil. He had triumphed in the end, been the hero they had needed. Misguided, yes. Evil? No.

Leo did not let up on the imposturous monster. They could feel the heat of his fire from up above, could see it being snapped up into the encircling carnage. The fake Luke did not burn like a human, did not disintegrate like a monster. Where the flame ate away at him, glistening black goop oozed, like molten charring.

Backbiter fell from and into this goop, glomming piles of it on the bubbling tarmac. Louisa could hardly see Leo for his blaze, the infrequent glimpse of an arm or the mallet. Luke screamed in outrage, his jaw unrecognisable sludge hanging from his face like tar.

The mallet swung. Luke flopped, unable to find purchase on what remained of his legs.

"NOW!" Leo shouted.

Thunder rippled the air, the sizzle of ozone, a tingle across her scalp. Lightning bleached colour from everything and rinsed it into her eyes in blinding cascades.

Popadom landed beside his creation. All around, shadows wilted and faded, shrunk back to their natural homes. The Mist whistled almost in delight, its pale form enveloping its flailing opponent. Hazel raised her head, opened her eyes to see the damage for herself.

Leo's plan had worked.

The dryad slipped and coughed, as charbroiled as the sticky black mass trying futilely to regain its shape. Leo's fire died and he joined the circle of his friends, encompassing the fallen villain.

Percy aimed his sword at Popadom's face, his action mirrored in the others' blades around him. There was no escape. There never would be.

"Leo?" Percy prompted. Leo rubbed soot from his face, reaching into his toolbelt. The mysterious sphere that had been bothering her these past two weeks came out. He rotated the circles on it, checked it over and nodded once.

He threw it down, straight into the centre of the Popadom-Luke slush, and it burst open. A flash of white light, the ball snapped close. Every speck of burnt ooze and the pair that mouldered within it had disappeared. The ball trembled, once, twice, three times, and then stilled.

Leo punched the air with both fists, whooping victoriously. As the others sheathed their weapons and the tension fell away from them, he scooped the ball up and clutched it firmly.

Hazel unclenched her fists and swept her hands down. The Mist whooshed away.

"Inside everyone!" Leo called. "This calls for a celebration!"

Piper landed Festus inside the grounds. The gates sealed behind them. Louisa jumped from the dragon, transfixed by the sphere in Leo's hold.

"What the fuck, what the fuck?" She stumbled, multiple hands steadying her, but not Leo's. He was keeping both firmly on the sphere, searing the join shut.

"It's over, Lou," Percy soothed, his arm around her. "We got them both."

"What? What d'you mean? What—?" Ice trickled down her spine. "You're bleedin'." The sight of her brother's blood rocked her, sent her back. A bed in the infirmary, a gouge smiling across his throat.

No, this was from a cut on his face, scarlet spotting on his chest plate. The colour narrowed her vision and she searched the rest of them, finally taking in their armour.

Traditional style Greek and Roman armour, but not? She could tell it had been Leo'd, modernised. It was slimmer, lighter, had the fit of a long-sleeved shirt, covering to their knuckles. No exposed throats or skin, accompanied by over-the-knee greaves, bronze-toe-capped boats and helmets clearly designed to match the wearers. Nico's looked like a skull, Hazel's a raven, Jason's a wolf, Frank's a bear. Percy had a trident shape upside down, framing his eyes, the middle point covering his nose. Piper had the eyes and beak of a dove, its wings folding down over her ears and to her jawline. Reyna had a two-toned greyhound, one side Aurum, one side Argentum, ruby eyes above her own.

They were bruised and weary, but there was nothing serious of their injuries, not with Leo's attention to detail protecting them. Percy's cut face was the worst of them and that was easily patched up.

Leo ushered them inside. Mellie and Coach were waiting with nectar-infused hot beverages and little Chuck was toting plate after plate of snacks.

Louisa stopped a few feet from the front door, sinking to her knees.

"Oh!" Leo said, hurrying back to her. "It's OK," he promised, crouching next to her. He did not let go of the ball.

Louisa swallowed dryly.

"They're in there?" she rasped. Leo nodded, smiling broadly.

That had been his plan. The sphere, the cube. Louisa would not feel safe with Popadom (such a stupid name) and the entity calling itself Luke still out there. Her aspirations for a normal life would forever hinge on what they would do next, what means they would exact over her this time.

So, Leo had devised a plan to fix it. And the plan had worked.

He told her everything, finally bringing her out of the dark they had kept her in.

"We wanted to do this for you, Lou. You shouldn't have to fight anymore." He had sent Percy down to the tree, imprisoned at the bottom of the ocean. Had him loudly proclaim that the tree looked dead and that he would report back to Louisa so, a Louisa that thought it beneath her to come and check for herself. He was free to toss in his own insults as well, something Percy had taken great joy in.

Enraged, Popadom would rise up to attack Percy for this slight, for all the slights as he had been rather creative, and he would, without a doubt, summon Luke in the hopes of drawing Louisa out from wherever she hid. "You weren't actually supposed to show up," Leo sighed. "I was using you as a bluff, you're supposed to be at home with Bradley."

"Maybe I would've been if y'all clued me in."

"You wouldn't," Leo retorted calmly. "You'd want to be in the thick of it."

"Well, she showed up anyway," Hazel pointed out. Her golden eyes sparkled bemusedly. "You never do as you're told, do you?"

"No," Louisa said flatly, "'n' I won't."

"So, anyway," Leo pressed on, "I got the band back together and… well, you saw what happened. We couldn't take him on all together, no. We split up to spread his power out all over the place, fighting it from every angle. It worked like I thought it would, because after a point, he couldn't keep his concentration going on all of it."

"You caught them in a Pokéball," Louisa said, pointing. "That is very much a Pokéball." Leo hunched his shoulders.

"It worked, didn't it? Yes, I caught them in a Pokéball and now I'm going to trap them in a Rubix cube."

"Harvey said you were after spells for entrapment. What the fuck?"

"For a three-by-three Rubix cube, there are over forty-three quintillion possible combinations," Leo said smugly. "That is forty-three followed by eighteen zeroes, yes, eighteen. Once I put this," he showed her the ball, "in the cube, it will power up. It will be constantly shifting and changing and there is no way anyone will be able to break in or out of that thing. Forty-three quintillion possible combinations of a range of protective spells? Yeah, there is no way."

Louisa bit her thumb. Leo leaned forward in his seat, grinning impishly. "Nothing will ever be the same for anyone to figure out how to solve that cube. I deliberately designed it to be unsolvable. I know we couldn't kill the tree without it hurting you, so I thought why go for the tree? Why not go for the hijueputa himself? He'll be trapped until the heat death of the universe and you never have to worry about him ever again."

Louisa began to cry. All manner of emotion bubbled up inside her and then she was crying, sobbing. All her terror and all her pain, all her relief and all her joy, all her muddled up myriad of every feeling and no feeling reduced her to a hysterical, babbling mess.

She was safe. She and Bradley were safe and it was all thanks to Leo. Just as he had promised.

Her friends swarmed her, hugs and kisses and countless words of reassurance. She had no idea who was saying what, or even what was said on more than one occasion, but there they all were. They had banded together, for her, and now the source of all her anguish was trapped inside a copyright issue.

They stayed for a while, resting, enjoying the array of snacks and the company. Percy was the first to leave, wanting to check on Annabeth and Tobias. The others gradually filed out, even the Hedges who weren't going to say no to a paid afternoon off.

That left Louisa with Leo, who was yet to put the ball down. She dragged her sleeve over her face, blew her nose on the tissues Mellie had provided. Oh, gross.

She sniffed, glancing at the ball with undoubtedly red, puffy eyes.

"You said they can't get out?"

"No, they can't. It just makes me feel better to hold it until it's in the cube." He smiled at her. "Come on, I'll show you." Hands occupied, he offered his arm to her. Louisa smiled, folding her left over right in his elbow.

He rapped the ball on the side of the cube, a tap-tap-tap of Morse code. "Don't worry," he said, "it's a one-time code. Once the ball is in there and I've shut the door," the panel he had knocked on popped open, "it'll never open again."

"What powers it?" Louisa asked. Leo grinned slyly and her heart had its own spate of Morse code.

"Popadom."

"What?"

"The ball traps his magic but also radiates it. The cube absorbs that magic and uses it to power all the spells."

"Can't he use it?"

"Nope. Once it's out of the ball, it is no longer his. Harvey helped me put a thingy-thing in there that cleans the magic up, turns it from dark magic to light magic we can use for power. I thought of everything, check it." He rolled the ball in, down a chute and into a small, spherical chamber. It landed on a rest, an upside-down tripod, the legs of which clamped the ball in place.

Leo shut the panel and lights flickered over the carved runes, a soft hum emitting from the whole contraption. A rainbow of colours adorned his face, brightening his grin as the cube began to click and twist and turn itself at random.

Louisa bit her thumbnail.

"What if he runs out of magic?"

"He won't. His tree is still alive and will be for as long as he's trapped. He's his own perpetual motion generator." He laughed victoriously, patting a hand on his chest. "Super clever, me, remember?"

Louisa watched the cube shift and rotate, fidgeting her hands. Click, click, click, went the cube. Thump, thump, thump, went her heart.

Leo was admiring his handiwork, arms folded, aglow with pride. Louisa studied him, his profile, the gleam in his eyes, the self-assured mischievous grin.

Click, click, click.

Thump, thump, thump.

He was the furthest character from normal anyone could ever get, and yet… he was the normal he had promised and the normal she wanted. Just watching him, accomplished and triumphant, never a doubt in his plan, never a doubt in his desire to protect her.

The tension in her shoulders, in her chest, drained away bit by bit. He was at her side, where he was supposed to be, and she found she could breathe again. Her best friend, her rock, her love, her hero. She filled her lungs, let her arms drop to her sides as the last of her worry filtered from her.

"Leo," she said. "Marry me."

Colour and expression drained from him, head snapping round to marvel at her with eyes like saucers. Thump, thump, thump, thumpthumpthump.

His brow knit, mouth a fine line. Louisa stepped away. Why had she said that? What on earth had possessed her to say that?

Ooh, the worry was coming back now, but for completely different reasons.

He gave a funny little noise, something between a squeak and a grunt. Spun on his heel and disappeared into the Bunker. There was a crash, a curse, some hurried footsteps.

Louisa backed away, hands shaking, legs shaking, everything shaking. Nausea gripped her gut, a clamp around her lungs.

She was halfway back to the door when Leo's hand closed on her wrist.

"You!" he protested. "You!" he said again, when no other words became available. "You— you— you!" His grip tightened when she tried to pull away, tugging her forward and silencing her upset with a firm, breath-stealing kiss. He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, hands gentle on her face. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded. "You can't do that to me and just leave."

"I… I…"

"Dammit, woman! I had this whole thing planned!" His hands dropped to hers and then he was on one knee. "I was going to wait until Valentine's, but noooo. Now I've got to come up with something else. Ooh, you sure know how to put a spanner in the works, don't you?"

"What are you doin'?"

"What you just told me to do!" he countered indignantly with a voice two or three pitches above usual. He produced a ring, one he had clearly made himself for there was and would be nothing else like it. It was equal parts bronze and gold, two halves put together. On top, two wings crossed at the lower joint; one a bronze dragon wing, the other a golden wing of a pegasus, neither overlapping the confines of the ring and the tips of which melted into the surface, blending the colours.

Leo glared at her. "I even had a speech ready, I had something to say, look what you've done. Thrown me right out! Oh, the nerve of some people." He tutted at her, shook his head. "Don't give me that look, this is all your fault. I was so ready and now look what you've done, you horrible woman, you beautiful woman, mi vida."

"You're confusin' me." It was better to be confused than what she had been feeling seconds ago though. She hadn't botched things, hadn't ruined the day. He looked set to throw something at her, but she could tell it was all in love. "I don't understand."

"Yeah, well, that's what you get for stealing my thunder," he scoffed. Louisa squeezed his hand warningly.

"I don't steal thunder, I make thunder."

"Yes, yes, it's your birthright, I know." He rolled his eyes. "Listen, you pain in the ass. Will you do me the honour of finally matching me and Bradley?"

He was mad at her, but mad for her as well. He had planned more than just Popadom's imprisonment, planned for more than just what she was seeing before her now. Something inside her leapt, excited at this prospect. Now more than ever was the chance to grab onto normalcy with both hands and normalcy was still glaring at her, awaiting an answer.

"'N' you told me off for sayin' 'fuck it'," she teased, drying her eyes on the heel of her hand. Leo huffed.

"My legs are starting to cramp," he prompted grouchily. Louisa laughed and held her hand out. "Bastard," Leo muttered. He looked microscopically less grumpy with the ring on her finger, another smidgen so when she pulled him to his feet. "How could you?"

"I love you."

"I love you too," he sulked, pulling her in for a kiss. "Asshole. Perra. Mierda, the things you put me through." He kissed her again and again, mumbling swears in a mix of Spanish and English. Louisa wrapped her arms around him, fingers folding in his hair. He sighed when she started giggling, but they both knew what it meant.

She was happy.

And so was he, though he wasn't going to let her know that yet. Not after she had ruined his carefully constructed plans. He had even, inspired by Harvey, asked Jessica for permission! She had thought it silly, at first, and then sweet. Ruffled his hair and told him to get a wriggle on. Gone the whole hog, made the ring himself, was in the throes of finding a nice box to put it in and then debating where to take her for Valentine's. Proposing at dinner in a fancy restaurant was overdone. He needed something bigger, something better, something she would remember forever. Maybe the rage room again, that had been fun. Maybe spelling out the proposal in chicken-nugget scented fireworks or charging gallantly in on Festus blasting 'Here Comes The Bride'.

Instead, she had beaten him to it and foiled everything he had worked for in the span of a few seconds.

Bastard.

Try as she might, the giggles were getting the better of her. Leo decided to let her work through that in her own time, kissing along her jawline and down her neck, lingering at the curve to her shoulder. She squirmed but did not let him draw away. She was not uncomfortable, he found, just ticklish. Something he could use to his advantage, targeting the other side of her neck.

"No, no, that's not fair," she whined, voice warbling with lingering mirth.

"Not fair?" Leo demanded. "Not fair? Oh, you are the embodiment of not fair! Look what you did!" He kissed her mouth heavily. "Ruined my plans!" His hands on her hips. "You—" She didn't let him finish, muffling his protests beneath her hand.

Eventually, he quietened. When he did, she took his hand and led him back into the Bunker. Back past the cube, which she gave a middle finger. Back past his workstation, which was messier than usual in his frantic bid to find the ring.

To the stairs to his home-away-from-home.

Leo hesitated at the bottom, coming to a halt. He gripped the banister, jarring them both. She was one step up, looking back quizzically.

"Leo," she urged, tugging on his hand. "Come on."

"But—"

"I'm fine. 'N' I mean it for real this time, I'm fine." She smiled, leaning down to kiss him. Leo's hand strayed to her waist again, forever drawn there. "Please, Leo."

"You'll tell me if—"

"I will," she smiled gratefully, "but I'm fine." She pulled again and, this time, he followed her.

Awwww, Leoisa

I am away next week on holiday. I will TRY and update, but we're going to a forest and I'm not sure what the WiFi situation is like. Also, I'm allergic to trees, so send help