Leo generally considered himself a very mild mannered person. In fact, he would even go as far as to say he was easily the most amicable out of all his friends (who, coincidentally, were the famous and legendary group of seven demigods who had saved the world from complete destruction by an angry but weirdly hot Earth goddess dy. Yeah, that was just how he rolled. No biggie.)

  Not that it was much of a competition anyways. If he had to sort his homies into groups, half would probably go into the 'looks like a cinnamon roll, could kill you' category, and the rest 'looks like could kill you, would kill you'. Jason might seem totally chill, but Leo had seen the guy patrol his cabin for seven nights in a row with that big scary spear of his to catch a donut thief.

  Leo always made sure to leave Jason and his donuts alone whenever he saw them out and about.

  But normal rules had went out the window the moment Leo had opened his eyes to the huge glowing peepers of a very big and very scaly dragon who looked like he could swallow a Leo-sized object with one gulp.

  He may have screamed a little and immediately scramble to get up and away, but it was dark all around and Leo was still groggy from sleep, so he tripped before making two steps and ended up in a rather disgraced heap on the ground. He groped around for something to defend himself with and came up with a leaf, which promptly spun in a circle and hit him in the face when he threw it at the dragon.

  Naturally, that was the perfect time for someone to clear their throat and signal him to their presence, right after he made a complete fool of himself. Leo looked up to see the whole gang - Percy, Annabeth, Piper, Jason, Hazel and Frank - all seated in a circle around a bonfire with the light casting eerie shadows on their faces, staring right at him with expressions ranging from concerned (Jason) to gleeful (Piper).

  "Okay, what the fuck?” He demanded loudly to no one in particur, struggling to stand up and muster as much dignity as he could. "If you guys wanted to invite me to a 2 A.M. slumber party, you could’ve just knocked!"

  Jason opened his mouth to answer, but another unfortunately familiar voice cut through the chilly night air before he could.

  "Not a slumber party, I’m afraid, Liam.”

  Oh, great. Leo didn’t even need to turn his head to see who the speaker was. He sighed, turning toward the source of the voice. "Sup, Mr D?"

  The man - or god? - in question narrowed his eyes. Leo tried to look as respectful and demure as possible, always a smart go-to move when faced with a cranky god capable of turning him into grapes with a snap of his finger. A leaf fell on Leo’s head.

  "Watch it, on your right!"

  Leo ducked a second before a screeching harpy would have taken his head off, Hazel’s warning registering just in time. He flung a fireball in the general vicinity of the murderous squawks, and didn’t wait to see if it had hit before sprinting behind his friends out of the Parking Lot of Doom.

  No, really. That was the name, showcased in rge glowing neon letters at the top of the building. Any other time, Leo would have appreciated the heads-up, but it wasn’t like they’d had much choice. He really would have preferred a 'WARNING- CRAZY BIRD LADIES INSIDE WHO WILL TRY TO EAT YOUR BRAIN AND CAPTURE YOU TO HER NEST' sign instead.

  As it turns out, Mr D must not have been overly impressed by Leo’s revert face, because he sent them out in the dead of night to retrieve a - he cimed - 'object of great divine and celestial power, deadly should it fall into wrong hands'.

  Percy tried to ask why Dionysus couldn’t just get it himself, but it just got them magically ejected from camp into a patch of thorny vines, hopefully until they found whatever it was Dionysus wanted. Probably.

  At any rate, nobody was much in the mood to argue after that.

  Annabeth was the first to recover, which Leo found unfair since he still felt like his lungs were going to explode and she’d been straight up cornered by at least twenty of those barbaric birds straight in the door, gotten at least a third of her hair ripped out and most likely hit by a ten-ton bear mascot costume at some point. Maybe. That had been after Leo got smashed in the head with a baseball bat.

  She struggled to her feet, and rummaged in her bag while the rest looked up at her from their various positions ft on the ground. Pulling out a bright pink map, she frowned at something written on it.

  "All right, bad news-" "Golly, more?" Leo grumbled, throwing an arm up over his face. Annabeth ignored him.

  "So it looks like the map Dionysus gave us isn’t that accurate, because it does say that our next step is to… " She squinted at the paper. "Fly over the Empire State Building?"

  Frank turned into a hamster.

  2 hours, one sea serpent, three more swarms of harpies, four swamps of mud and one particurly insistent sphinx who seemed hell-bent on capturing them to write quiz trivia with her ter, they finally reached the destination. Everybody was exhausted and battered. Piper was dripping with a strangely glittery turquoise slime. Leo just hoped she had been doused in green paint at some point, because none of the alternatives were very good.

  "Alright, a few more steps and… " Annabeth suddenly stopped, causing Leo to almost run into her. That would not have been a good idea for many reasons, forefront due to the fact that Annabeth had been underneath the sea serpent when she slid its belly open with her dagger, and she had been drenched in blood for a while now.

  Funnily enough, none of the te night mortal stragglers they’d come across looked the slightest bit taken aback. Maybe they just thought she’d been enthusiastic about her fries or something.

  Speaking of fries, though. Leo looked up at the sign in front of the building they’d stopped at. He frowned. "Uh, Annabeth? You sure you didn’t hold that map upside down?"

  Because this was a McDonald’s.

  Apparently, Dionysus thought this was hirious. He had enough dignity not to ugh in their faces, but Leo could tell from the slightly less nasally voice he’d spoken in when the seven demigods confronted him back at the Big House.

  "What?" He lounged on the couch on the patio, sipped his Diet Coke. "I thought it was obvious."

  They were all too tired to punch him in his pudgy face, and probably wouldn’t have been able to handle the quest for the Holy Band-aid that would be soon to follow anyways. So Frank just dropped the McDonald’s bag at his feet, and they all turned in back to their cabins.

  Leo was never eating McDonald’s again.