After sending two dozen of Crusty' finest beds to Camp through Hermes Delivery Service (cue Luke's nose scrunching up), I milked the experience for all it was worth by jumping on a few beds. Luke promptly banned me when I finally fell, and Annabeth chimed in with one of her customary 'you moron' speeches. I was busily tunning out her final lines when I finally spotted it.

A flyer for DOA Recording Studios sat loud and proud on some kind of pin-up board. Thing is, that's not what I was annoyed about.

The hell-damned thing was one block away.

"Puta de vaca!" I cursed, kicking one of the beds just to watch it jiggle. "We've been wandering around the city all day and it's right there!"

"Well, we found it now," Luke said wryly. "And stop swearing, Ophelia."

I looked him in the eyes and did my best to curse until I went blue.

Ophelia: 69 Luke: 1

My impish smirk was apparently enough reason for Annabeth to hit me upside the head, which was the signal for us to start a scuffle while Luke tiredly tried to break us up.

"We're about to go to the Underworld- if you're going to get hurt, get hurt there!" he yelled. "Ophelia! No biting!"

"But it's very effective!"

"I said no! And Annabeth, I swear, I'll tell Chiron and your Mother that you've been fighting!" cried a very exasperated son of Hermes.

I love riling up Luke.

By the time we left the store, we were all hiding smiles and a lot less tense than when we entered.

oOo

We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.

Underneath, stencilled on the glass doors sat the words, 'NO SOLICITORS. NO LOITERING. NO LIVING'.

It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people. Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an earpiece.

"So, what's the plan?" Luke spoke up nervously.

"The plan is... follow my lead?"

"By the gods!" Annabeth exclaimed. "Ophelia, please tell me we haven't crossed the country just to enter the Underworld without a plan?"

"Uh… we didn't do that?" I tried.

"I'm going to kill you."

Luke quickly held Annabeth back from sending me to meet my uncle the fast way. I did the smart thing and scooted away from the dangerous girl with a really sharp knife.

"Shhhh," he hushed patiently. "Not yet. Ophelia, seriously, what is the plan?"

"Uh, you mean 'not ever', right?"

"Ophelia, either you share your impossible plan or I let go of Annabeth."

"Well!" I yelped. "My plan is to bribe Charon with drachmas in the name of his Italian suit collection, play fetch with Cerberus, march up to uncle and demand my Mãe back, give him back his helm, and go straight to Olympus."

"Wait, his helm is missing?" Annabeth asked, confused. "We have his helm? What about the bolt?"

"Right, knew I was forgetting something," I muttered. "I forgot to tell you about this."

"Ophelia!" Annabeth growled, grey eyes flashing. "Communication!"

"Communication, right! So Luke also stole the Helm, uncle was being all emo so he didn't say anything because he thought nobody would care, and Ares had the helm and the bolt this whole time. I know right, it's weird World War Zero hasn't started already. I mean, it's Ares we're ta-"

Someone let out a snarl, and I hurried to correct myself.

"When we enter the Underworld the Items will appear in our backpack, and I think that's it." I twirled to face Luke. "That's all right? I didn't forget anything?"

He shook his head in exasperation. "No, you didn't forget anything else."

Annabeth was not pleased.

"Luke. You stole Hades' Helm of Darkness." Her voice could be mistaken for sweet if you didn't see the murder in her eyes. As it was, I think I broke out in hives.

Before she started screaming at him again, I quickly cut in, "Not the time, wise girl. We have to go, so, after you."

I gestured to the Studios closed door.

oOo

We walked inside the DOA lobby.

Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were all steel grey. Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people standing up, people staring out the windows or waiting for the elevator. Nobody moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in particular, they started looking… transparent.

Sure enough, I started seeing straight through them.

The security guard's desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him. Luke didn't, but he's unfairly tall.

He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-coloured skin and bleached-blond hair shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver name tag.

"Hello, Charon!" I greeted. "How are you?"

He leaned across the desk. "Well. And who are you?" He had a strange accent- British, maybe, but also as if he had learned English as a second language.

I smiled, sweet and sharp. "Three living demigods. Persephone Jackson, daughter of Poseidon, Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, and Luke Castellan, son of Hermes."

He looked taken aback. "Well, aren't you honest, godling?"

My smile grew wider. "Yep. Now, if you don't mind, we need to get to the Underworld."

Charon made a growling sound deep in his throat.

Immediately, all the people in the waiting room got up and started pacing, agitated, lighting cigarettes, running hands through their hair, or checking their wristwatches.

"Leave while you can," Charon told us.

Luke's hand drifted towards his sword, but I pushed his hand away.

"Charon, please. I have uncle's Helm in my backpack right now. The Master Bolt is sitting right next to it. Do you want to see it? Is that it?" I said patiently.

He paled so quickly I nearly heard a whiplash.

"You have my master's helm?" he croaked.

Oooh, I spooked him.

"Yes. Now, we need to go to the Underworld. There'll be a drachma for your troubles."

He practically scrambled to help us.

We pushed through the crowd of waiting spirits, who started grabbing at our clothes like the wind, their voices whispering things I couldn't make out. Charon shoved them out of the way, grumbling, "Freeloaders."

He escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. Charon grabbed two spirits who were trying to get on with us and pushed them back into the lobby.

"Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I'm gone," he announced to the waiting room. "And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again, I'll make sure you're here for another thousand years. Understand?"

He shut the doors. A key card was slotted into the elevator panel and we started to descend.

"What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?" Annabeth asked.

"Nothing," Charon said, apparently over his shock.

"For how long?"

"Forever, or until I'm feeling generous."

"Oh," she said. "That's... fair."

Charon raised an eyebrow. "Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait until it's your turn. You'll die soon enough, where you're going."

"Wow, aren't you optimistic," I snarked. "I may want to fucking die someday, but not today. We'll be back."

He didn't reply to that.

I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren't going down anymore, but forward. The air turned misty. Spirits around me started changing shape. Their modern clothes flickered, turning into grey hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began swaying.

I blinked hard.

When I opened my eyes, Charon's creamy Italian suit had been replaced by a long black robe. His tortoiseshell glasses were gone. Where his eyes should've been were empty sockets- like Ares's eyes, except Charon's were totally dark, full of night and death and despair.

He saw me looking, and said, "Well?"

"It's a nice look on you, but I think you look better in the suit."

His grumbled agreement was rather amusing.

The floor kept swaying.

When I blinked again, the elevator wasn't an elevator anymore. We were standing in a wooden barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river, swirling with bones, dead fish, and other, stranger things- plastic dolls, crushed car-nations, soggy diplomas with gilt edges.

"The River Styx," Annabeth murmured. "It's so… "

"Polluted," Charon scoffed. "For thousands of years, you humans have been throwing in everything as you come across- hopes, dreams, wishes that never came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me."

As if it were waiting for it, something fell on me. Nothing physical, but rather, it was there as a weight. It felt weird but manageable, like a cat had decided to drape itself on my head. Until it shifted, starting to wiggle downwards. It got heavy, then heavier, then it suddenly felt so heavy I could do nothing but collapse.

I was a puppet with its strings cut- more helpless than a newborn babe. The world could rely on me being able to move right now, and I wouldn't be able to so much twitch.

Hopelessness made itself known, and I was nothing in the face of it.

Luke turned to me, concerned. I pleaded with my eyes, trying to draw on his strength, wanting him to help. When he knelt to sit me up, I slumped back into his warmth, wanting to stave off the numbness that gripped me like a leech.

It was like something had hit me from nowhere but left me on the edge. I hadn't fallen down into the actual panic, the precipice is never a nice place to visit.

"What's wrong with her?" Luke barked when I didn't move.

"The Styx affects many in many different ways. She's just feeling the weight of all her lost hopes," Charon remarked, uncaring.

Annabeth surged across the boat, grabbing me in a bear hug, holding me tight.

"Hurry up across the Styx then," she snarled at him.

Mist curled off the filthy water. Above us, almost lost in the gloom, was a ceiling of stalactites. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, the colour of poison.

"Godling nowadays, so demanding," he muttered but obliged after Annabeth twitched towards our bag.

The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Craggy rocks and black volcanic sand stretched inland about a hundred yards. It went to the base of a high stone wall which marched off in either direction as far as we could see. A sound came from somewhere nearby in the green gloom, echoing off the stones- the howl of a large animal.

"Old Three-Face is hungry," Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the greenish light. "Bad luck for you, godlings."

The bottom of our boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark. A woman holding a little girl's hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling along, arm in arm. A boy no older than I was, shuffling silently along in his grey robe.

Charon said, "I'd wish you luck, mate, but there isn't any down here."

Luke tossed him a drachma with a glare.

Charon sailed back over the Styx, leaving us on the shore, stranded.

Whelp. Only one way to go now.

"Are you okay?" Luke fussed as soon as Charon was out of sight. "What are you feeling?"

I brushed him off, relieved to finally be able to stand. "It was like having depression on steroids- it hit me so hard I was reeling and with no idea where it came from. It's mostly gone now, so I'm good."

"Mostly gone?" he needled, still worried.

"It's just normal depression now."

"Ophelia. Please. Not fucking now- we can talk about your desperate need of therapy later." Annabeth was officially done with my shit. I'm so proud.

We followed the spirits up a well-worn path.

I knew what to expect, yet I was still surprised at the absolute overcrowding of the Underworld. The entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between airport security and the Jersey Turnpike.

There were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through metal detector with security cameras mounted on top. Beyond this were toll booths manned by black-robed ghouls like Charon.

The howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. The three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was supposed to guard Hades's door, was nowhere to be seen.

The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked ATTENDANT ON DUTY, and one marked EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The other two were crawling.

"What do you figure?" I asked Annabeth.

"The fast line must go straight to the Asphodel Fields," she said confidently. "No contest. They don't want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them."

"Dead people court."

"Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos, Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare- people like that. Sometimes they look at a life and decide that person needs a special reward- the Fields of Elysium. Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived. Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Asphodel Fields."

"Hold up," I held up a hand. "King Minos was an arse who sacrificed kids, TJ deserved the Miku Binder treatment- he was a slave owner, Shakespeare- while a great writer, truly- was still anti-semitic; why the fuck are they in charge of judging people? They should start with the man in the mirror."

Luke huffed, "We know, but they need bad guys to even out the fact that Mother Teresa is also judging since she's very merciful. What's a Miku Binder?"

"You really don't want to know." I gave him a shit-eating grin.

A couple of black-robbed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar.

"Who's that?" Annabeth asked, pointing.

"A corrupted preacher," I replied.

I've seen him on TV a couple of times at the Yancy Academy dorm. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New York who'd raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an indoor putt-putt golf course. He'd died in a police chase when his "Lamborghini for the Lord" went off a cliff.

"What're they doing to him?" I wondered.

"Special punishment from Hades," Luke guessed. "The really bad people get his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Kindly Ones will set up some kind of eternal torture for him."

"That could be us," I whisper, horror washing over me at the thought. We're walking towards a god who takes no excuses as to where his Helm was. He thinks we stole it. He will punish someone. He'll punish Luke and Annabeth.

The thought of the Furies made me shudder. I was in their home territory now. Old Mrs Dodds would be licking her lips with anticipation.

"Not yet," Luke stated, putting a hand on my shoulder. "They don't have enough evidence and we won't give them any. We aren't dying yet. We still have time to get better."

"Yeah, we do." I think of that day in the waterpark- is that being better? Is that enough for him to punish me? Or do I still have time to correct all my mistakes?

We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground at my feet, but I still couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

Then, about fifty feet in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.

I hadn't seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked solid. And it was staring straight at me.

All I could think to say was, "I hate this."

"Seriously?" Annabeth bit out, dagger already drawn. "I couldn't tell."

I flipped her off.

The dead walked right up to him- no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even crouching.

The dog's middle head craned toward us. It sniffed the air and growled.

"It can smell the living," I said faintly.

"But that's okay," Luke said, tense next to me. "Because you have a plan."

"Right," Annabeth said. I'd never heard her voice sound quite so small. "A plan."

We moved toward the monster.

The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.

"Ophelia, what's the plan?" Annabeth asked, quietly.

"Slowly reach into your bag, you have a Waterland Park ball still. We're going to play fetch with him," I told her, not taking my eyes off the massive dog.

"What?" Luke hissed, "That is not a plan!"

But Annabeth's eyes lit up.

Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. She raised the ball and marched straight up to Cerberus. She shouted, "See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!"

Cerberus looked as stunned as Luke was. I was just smirking smugly.

All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.

"Sit!" Annabeth called again.

Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who'd been passing underneath him in the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated, like when air gets let out of tires.

Annabeth said, "Good boy!"

She threw Cerberus the ball.

He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew, and the other heads started snapping at the middle one, trying to get the new toy.

"Drop it," Annabeth ordered.

Cerberus's heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at Annabeth's feet.

"Good boy." She picked up the ball, ignoring the monster spit all over it.

I grabbed Luke and started tugging him towards the EZ-DEATH line.

Cerberus started to growl.

"Stay!" Annabeth ordered the monster. "If you want the ball, stay!"

Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.

We made it through. Cerberus wasn't any less scary-looking from the back.

Annabeth praised, "Good dog!"

She held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I did- if she rewarded Cerberus, there'd be nothing left for another trick.

She threw the ball anyway. The monster's left mouth immediately snatched it up, only to be attacked by the middle head, while the right head moaned in protest.

While the monster was distracted, Annabeth walked briskly under its belly and joined us at the metal detector.

"You're the baddest bitch in this world and don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise!" I told her, beaming. "I love you."

She rolled her eyes but smiled back at me. "Thanks."

"You're both insane and are going to make me grey early," was Luke's reply. "Now if we could please go."

We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned pitifully from all three mouths. Annabeth stopped.

She turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at us. Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at its feet.

"Good boy," Annabeth said, but her voice sounded like melancholy uncertainty.

The monster's heads turned sideways, as if worried about her.

"I'll bring you another ball soon," Annabeth promised somewhat. "Would you like that?"

The monster whimpered. I didn't need to speak dog to know Cerberus was still waiting for the ball.

"Good dog. I'll come to visit you soon. I- I promise." Annabeth turned to us. "Let's go."

Luke and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed and set off flashing red lights. "Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!"

Cerberus started to bark.

We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which got even more alarms blaring, and raced into the Underworld. A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the Furies.

I pretended not to see Annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend.

Hades is ahead of us, behind lay heartbreak, and around us was certain death.

This was never going to be fun.

a/n

Raven: Ok! Underworld, Mission: Start! The first part isn't really all that interesting, but I'm hoping we did a decent job anyways.

Izzy: This part mostly follows canon, but I can assure you the next few parts will not! I wasn't able to finish writing on Friday like I thought, so here's a Sunday update!

Also, sorry for the long wait between updates, we had our first round of exams- they sucked- and we had to be studying.