Sam

“There's your problem," Leo announced.
Jason scratched his head. "Uh.... what are we looking at?"
Leo thought it was pretty obvious, but Piper looked confused too.
"Okay," Leo sighed, " you want the full explanation or the short explanation?"
"Short," Piper and Jason said in unison.
Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The doxen 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.... 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.
"Um..." Piper cleared her throat." Could you make the short explanation shorter?"
Leo palm-smacked his forehead. "Fine. One hour. Fluids mix. Bunker goes ka-boom. One square mile of forest tuns into a smoking crater."
"Oh," Piper said in a small voice. "Can't you just..... turn it off?"
"Gee, I didn't think of that!" Leo said. "Let me just hit this switch and - No, Piper. I can't turn it off.”
― Rick Riordan, The Demigod Diaries

“This is the Propylon." He waved toward a stone path lined with crumbling columns. "One of the main gates into the Olympic valley."
"Rubble!" said Leo
"And over there - " Frank pointed to a square foundation that looked like the patio for a Mexican restaurant - "is the Temple of Hera, one of the oldest structures here."
"More rubble!" Leo said.
"And that round bandstand-looking thing - that's the Philipeon, dedicated to Philip of Macedonia."
"Even more rubble! First rate rubble!”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“The end of the world made gelato taste a lot better”
― Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

“Jason looked like her was trying to figure out an equation. "Let me get this straight. Your table ran away ... because you polished him with windex.”
― Rick Riordan, The Demigod Diaries