“Most helmsmen would’ve been satisfied with a pilot’s wheel or a tiller. Leo had also installed a keyboard, monitor, aviation controls from a Learjet, a dubstep soundboard, and motion-control sensors from a Nintendo Wii. He could turn the ship by pulling on the throttle, fire weapons by sampling an album, or raise sails by shaking his Wii controllers really fast. Even by demigod standards, Leo was seriously ADHD.”

“Destroy it?' Leo was appalled. 'You've got a life-size bronze dragon, and you want to destroy it?''It breathes fire,' Nyssa explained. 'It's deadly and out of control.''But it's a dragon!”

“They kidded him, calling him Admiral, but for once Le accepted the title. This was his ship. He hadn't come this far to be stopped.They would find this House of HAdes. They'd take the Doors of Death. And by the gods, if Leo had to design a grabber arm long enough to snatch Percy and Annabeth out of Tartarus, then that's what he would do.Nemesis wanted to wreak havoc on Gaea? leo would be happy to oblige. He was going to make Gaea sorry she ever messed with Leo Valdez."Yeah," He took once last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning bloodred in the sunset. "Festus, raise the sails. We've got some friends to save.”

“Leo gestured to the empty core. “The syncopator goes here. It’s a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The dozen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful, dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad’s forges. This murky stuff here? That’s water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational.”Leo tapped the digital clock, which now read 65:15. “That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we’ll get a very nasty reaction.”Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he’d been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he’d used English.”

“They would find this House of Hades. They'd take the Doors of Death. And by the gods, if Leo had to design a grabber arm long enough to snatch Percy and Annabeth out of Tartarus, then that's what he would do. Nemesis wanted him to wreak vengeance on Gaea? Leo would be happy to oblige. He was going to make Gaea sorry she had ever messed with Leo Valdez. "Yeah." He took one last look at the cityscape of Rome, turning bloodred in the sunset. "Festus, raise the sails. We've got some friends to save.”

“Leo could run pretty fast when someone was trying to kill him. Sadly, he’d had a lot of practice.”

“Leo drummed his fingers. “Great. I should have installed a smoke screen that makes the ship smell like a giant chicken nugget. Remind me to invent that, next time.”Hazel frowned. “What is a chicken nugget?”“Oh, man…” Leo shook his head in amazement. “That's right. You’ve missed the last, like, seventy years. Well, my apprentice, a chicken nugget—”“Doesn’t matter,” Annabeth interrupted.”