Chapter ten.
We entered the shop of water beds and found a big guy with a lot of mustard in random places of his body.
"Ah! New costumers! Welcome, my name's crust" The dude said. Bothe Me and Percy seemed to be having the same thought.
"Yeah, it's obvious."
"Do you want to test my water beds? I have one with massage, another that is unique" He said pointing towards two beds. "Why don't you, blonde, test the unique one and you, hooded boy, test the massager one?" He asked. Annie was about to say okay, but I stopped her.
"Annie, look, I don't trust this guy, so you better stay out of any danger. Let me go first" I whispered in her ear.
"OK" She said. I went in the direction of the unique bed and laid on top of it.
"Haha, silly Namikaze. Ergo!" He said and instantly a lot of robes I considered unbreakable wrapped themselves around my legs and arms. Procrustes. Damnit. This little incident made Percy, Annabeth and Procrustes stay stood up. Suddenly, the ropes on my arms started to pull, the same as the ropes on my legs, only that for the other direction. I needed all I had not to scream in pain. While that, Grover made no objections on hiding his pain.
"Your real name is Procrustes." Annabeth said matter-of-factly.
"You're right, daughter of Athena, but Crust is much better for business." Crust said.
"Yeah, I agree." Percy said. Oh, the suck-up plan.
"Do you really?" Procrustes asked.
"Yeah" Both Percy and Annie said. Not that I made objections, I mean, they're trying to save mine and Grover's lives, but my best friend and my girlfriend being suck-ups of a giant? I just didn't like the idea much.
"Well, what about we enter the business? I can sell you a water bed with the price divided in ten times, do you want?" The big dude asked.
"Okay, but we must have a guarantee that the bed is good" Percy said, pointing at some random bed.
"How do you want the guarantee?" Crust asked.
"Well, you could lay in it and say if it's good or not" Annie said.
"Okay" He said, then laid on the bed. "See? It's perfect-" But wathever he was going to say was interrupted by Percy saying Ergo. Ropes wrapped themselves around Procrustes.
"Now, let's begin adjusting the top part" Percy said and cut Crust's head off, then cut the ropes that were around me and Grover.
"You look taller, Vice" Annie said.
"Stop fucking around, I'm taller than you" I said.
"Oh, Vice, that hurt!" She said, doing a puppy dog face. How could I refuse such an angelic face? I kissed her.
"Uh… Can we go, guys?" Percy asked, doing a weird face, Grover following closely.
"Okay, since we disgust you guys THAT much, we can keep going" Both me and Annie said at the same. We found the address of D.O.A. Recording studios in Crust's shop and went where it was.
"Well… I think we're here." I said as we stopped in front of D.O.A. recording studios. Annabeth grabbed my hand and gripped it firmly. I didn't blame her, I was a little scared too, I mean, who wouldn't when you are about to enter the underworld?
We pushed the door and entered. There were several people that sat on the chairs and if you looked closely you could see the walls behind them. Phantoms.
We saw some guy in a tuxedo that was apparently alive and that seemed to be the receptionist. Charon, the boatman of river Styx. We arrived near him.
"Chiron" Percy asked after reading the badge that said 'Charon'. I hit him in the head.
"It's Charon, you idiot!" I shouted.
"That's right, I hate being confused with that horse-man" Charon said. "Unfortunately, for you, kids, you have no money, so-" But Charon's thoughts were interrupted when Percy put a Drachma on Charon's desk.
"Where did you get those?" Charon asked, obviously perplexed.
"Oh, well you see, our parents were special" I said.
"Oh, and how did you die?" He asked.
"Drowned in a bathtub" Percy said. Charon made an obviously confused face, but the returned to his usual apathetic expression.
"I see… big bathtub" He said. "Wait a bit… You kid" He said pointing at Percy. "confused me with that horse-man" Charon said. Shit. He smelled us.
"I knew it! Alive half-bloods!" He shouted. Shit. Percy put some more Drachmas on the desk.
"If you think you can persuade me, you're very wrong, Half-Blood." Charon told Percy, who sighed and put his backpack upside down to reveal a mountain of Drachmas.
"Wow… How many Drachmas are there, kid?" He asked.
"A lot, now will you let us go? I promise we will ask Hades for an increase in your payment" I said.
"OK" He said. He led us to an elevator with a lot of phantoms already in it. He pressed some button and the elevator began going down. When it landed (on water) the elevator transformed into a boat and the phantoms began turning into skeletons with Greek coats around them. Annie grabbed my hand firmly. She wanted to know someone there was alive.
We arrived at the Hades's dock and saw two queues. One going faster and another one almost stopped. The faster one said: Express death. I thought it might be the entrance to the Asphodel fields, people who didn't want to be judged, people afraid of their lives. People who just lived.
"Come on, we have to find the master bolt" Annie said. We ran forward and found out the road we were in was forked with three different paths to follow. In the middle there was a three-headed Rottweiler. Cerebrus, who groaned at us. Annabeth picked an Aqualand red ball and waved it in front o Cerebrus, who sat obediently injuring some unfortunate spirits who were passing under it.
"Good boy. Now catch it" She said and threw the ball at the head of the middle, which received some head-hits from the other two heads. We took our chance and ran into Cerebrus, who started to cry, begging for it's new friend to come back. I noticed a sad look on Annabeth's face.
"I will come back to play with you later" She whispered. She was very sad. She, like me, knew that Cerebrus only looked to be a frightening dog. Deep inside he was only a lonely abandoned puppy. I hugged Annie.
That was chapter ten for ya, guys. I'll try to write the next chapter today.