chapter IX

🌷  Daphne fell asleep the moment the cab started purring, which was an incredible feat considering how fast the driver was going.

It was Annabeth's idea, of course. She loaded them into the back of a Vegas taxi as if they actually had money, and told (commanded) the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized them up. Considering there was four of them, Daphne and Annabeth had to squeeze into one seat. For some reason that Daphne wasn't sure was legal, the driver didn't question it. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally, an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

Daphne gaped. Goddamnit, she wished that she'd kept her card now.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at them, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. It was obvious to tell that she liked the Your Highness thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

Maybe she shouldn't have told him that. The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert, and Daphne still slept through it.

"How is she doing it?" Percy marvelled. Her body was twisted uncomfortably so that both she and Annabeth could share the seat. Half of her lap was on hers, and her neck was twisted as she hung onto Annabeth's shoulders.

"Don't know." Annabeth shrugged. "But she's slept on garbage bins before, so who knows?"

At sunset, the taxi dropped them at the beach in Santa Monica. It looked exactly the way L.A. beaches do in the movies, only it smelled worse. There were carnival rides lining the Pier which made Daphne deathly jealous, palm trees lining the sidewalks, homeless guys sleeping in the sand dunes and surfer dudes waiting for the perfect wave. In another universe, Daphne could picture them all on the sand.

There were a group of teens who were grilling something. Annabeth would be the girl in charge of the food, considering she wouldn't let anybody else touch the grill. Daphne would've been the girl burying her friend, who Daphne knew would've been Grover. Percy would've been the boy in the ocean who was calling over to his friends, waving at them to join him.

Then, he did a very Percy thing and ran over to his friends, shaking a towel he'd taken with him to get them all wet. The poor boy who was their Grover got drenched in the sand, and the girl who was Daphne was tackled by him as he swooped a kiss on her cheek.

Oh, Daphne looked away from the group with a small flush on her cheeks, trying to pretend like she hadn't seen anything. They all walked down to the edge of the surf, staring out at the sea as though they were just waiting for something to happen.

"What now?" Annabeth asked.

The Pacific was turning gold in the setting sun. Daphne was about to bring up getting some churros, but Percy interrupted her train of thought by stepping into the ocean.

"Um. Percy?" Daphne called out to him. "What are you doing?"

He kept walking, the water up to his waist, then his chest.

Annabeth called after him, "You know how polluted that water is? There're all kinds of toxic-"

That's when his head went under.

"...whatever." Annabeth shook her head, kicking her feet and sitting down on the sand. "His head's polluted enough as it is."

Daphne shrugged and sat on the ground beside her. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"I don't know," Annabeth glanced worriedly at the sun. "hopefully not too long. We're loosing time..."

About five minutes passed when Daphne started to get restless. She was never so good at sitting still, especially when she was waiting on something to happen. She buried Annabeth's feet in the sand about six times before she told her to knock it off and started helping Grover pick up some of the trash which had washed onto the sand. She quickly got bored of this and found an abandoned bucket and spade, taking it over to Annabeth and Grover proudly.

Just as the perfectionist she was, Annabeth took control of the bucket and started constructing a sort of sand castle which would've put all the other seven-year olds on the beach to shame.

Finally, Daphne snapped. "What's taking him so long?" she complained, gripping onto the sand in frustration. "Did he drown?"

"Son of Poseidon," Grover reminded her, holding up the bucket for Annabeth as she measured in the perfect amount of sand for the castles right turret. It looked like his arms were starting to ache.

Daphne tried not to kick sand on them as she stood up and stomped towards the shore of the sea. "Percy?" she called out, probably looking like an absolute freak shouting out into the ocean. "Come on, we have to go!"

No answer. Of course there wouldn't be one - she was shouting at the ocean.

"Give it up, brainless." Annabeth called out at her. "He can't hear you, we don't know how deep he is right now."

Daphne shook her head, and took off her shoes and socks, leaving them by the shore and starting to wade into the sea. Luckily she had changed into some shorts in the Lotus Hotel, so the water managed to reach her knees when she stopped again. "Percy! We're all waiting, how long does this ta-"

Whatever Daphne had expected to happen, this wasn't it. In front of her, Percy emerged from the ocean, splashing water all over her.

She gasped and pushed him away. "What the hell, Bubble Brain? You so did that on purpose!"

She didn't know when the nickname had decided to stick, but it just made perfect sense to her.

On the shore, Annabeth and Grover were laughing at her. Percy grinned but apologised, "Sorry, Daphne - I didn't see you."

Daphne grumbled and started wringing out her hair, following as Percy waded back to the sand. Just her luck - as soon as she was clean from a shower, Percy just had to chuck sewage ocean water onto her.

She dragged herself across the sand and furrowed her brows at Percy. "You don't get wet?"

"What?" he asked, before looking down at his dry clothes. "Oh. No, apparently I don't."

"And you were still confused about who your dad was?" Daphne blinked at him. "Didn't you ever shower?"

"What? Of course I showered!"

"Then how-"

They reached Annabeth and Grover. She interrupted their quarrelling, "Let's talk about that later. Percy, what are you holding?"

Daphne looked down at his hands which were concealing four white pearls. They were glitteringly pretty, and she suddenly had the feeling that Percy was holding out on them.

He started to recount what had happened beneath the sea. He'd met with a Nereid, an ocean spirit who served in Poseidon's court, and she'd given him the four pearls as a gift from his father.

Annabeth grimaced. "No gift comes without a price."

"But... they were free." he said cluelessly.

"No." She shook her head. "There is no such thing as a free lunch. That's an ancient Greek saying that translated pretty well into American. There will be a price. You wait."

"Well, that's cheerful." Daphne whispered. On that count, they turned their back on the sea and started walking to the sigh of the sun dipping beneath the horizon.

With some spare change from Ares's backpack, they took the bus into West Hollywood. Percy showed the driver the Underworld address slip he must've taken from Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium, but he'd never heard of DOA Recording Studios.

"You, ah... remind me of somebody I saw on TV," the bus driver told Percy. Daphne wondered why they let Percy go first when he was a wanted criminal. "You a child actor or something?"

Uh ... I'm a stunt double ... for a lot of child actors." he stuttered.

"Oh! That explains it."

They thanked him and got off quickly at the next stop, wandering for miles on foot, looking for DOA. Nobody they asked seemed to know where it was and it didn't appear in the phone book. Twice, they had to duck into alleys to avoid cop cars.

At some point, Percy froze in front of an appliance-store window to stare at one of the televisions playing an interview. The guy looked nothing like Percy at all - he was greasy and slumpy, and reminded Daphne of melted ice cream. He was talking to Barbara Walters - as if he were some kind of huge celebrity. She was interviewing him in some apartment in the middle of a poker game, and there was a young blond lady sitting next to him, patting his hand.

A fake tear glistened on his cheek. He was saying, "Honest, Ms. Walters, if it wasn't for Sugar here, my grief counselor, I'd be a wreck. My stepson took everything I cared about. My wife ... my Camaro ... I-I'm sorry. I have trouble talking about it."

Stepson? Daphne glanced towards Percy and saw him glaring at the man with loathing. She mentally added him to the list of things she wanted to talk to him about.

"There you have it, America." Barbara Walters turned to the camera. "A man torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you, again, the last known photo of this troubled young fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver."

The screen cut to a grainy shot of the four of them standing outside the Colorado diner, talking to Ares. Daphne cursed herself for letting her hair look so scruffy.

"Who are the other children in this photo?" Barbara Walters asked dramatically. "Who is the man with them? Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America."

"C'mon," Grover told Percy, hauling him away before he could punch a hole in the appliance-store window.
It got dark, and hungry-looking characters started coming out on the streets to play. The four of them started clinging closer to each other, huddling like the teenage gang the press liked to say they were. Now, Daphne was used to hectic and winding streets; she'd been living on them for longer than she could count. But there was something about LA that was freaking her out. They were lost and couldn't count their steps, and Daphne didn't know how they were ever going to find the entrance to the Underworld by tomorrow, the summer solstice.

They walked past drug dealers, bums, and street hawkers who sized them up and looked at them like they were trying to figure if they were worth the trouble of mugging. Considering they only had a backpack between the four of them, Daphne didn't think they were.

As they hurried passed the entrance of an alley, a voice from the darkness said, "Hey, you."

Like a gang of idiots, they stopped.

Before she knew it, they were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled them. Six of them in all-white expensive clothes and mean faces, like the rich brats Daphne would run into on the streets which gave her dirty glares as she passed them.

Instinctively, she felt her hand reach the holster on her side. Her knife was there, but she hadn't used it in a while and felt rusty. Percy uncapped his sword which casted a shy bronze light on them.

When the sword appeared out of nowhere, the kids backed off, but their leader was either really stupid or really brave, because he kept coming at Percy with a switchblade. She wondered what the mist made them see instead: probably a baseball bat, or something.

But Percy made the mistake of swinging at them with it. Daphne unsheathed her knife and held it threateningly, in case they tried to attack back.

The kid yelped. But he must've been one hundred percent mortal, because the blade passed harmlessly right through his chest. He looked down. "What the ..."

Daphne figured she had about three seconds before his shock turned to anger. "Run!" she shouted at Annabeth and Grover, grabbing Percy by the arm and pulling him behind her as he blinked at the switchblade kid.

She pushed two kids out of the way and raced down the street, not knowing where they were going, turning too many sharp corners to count.

"There!" Annabeth shouted.

Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The sign above the door said something like...

"What the hell does that say?" Percy frowned at it.

"Crusty's Water Bed Palace." Grover translated.

"Crusty?" Daphne wrinkled her nose.

It didn't sound like a place she'd ever go except in an emergency, but this definitely qualified. They burst through the doors, ran behind a water bed, and ducked. A split second later, the gang kids ran past outside.

"I think we lost them," Grover panted.

A voice behind them boomed, "Lost who?"

They all jumped. Daphne's hand tightened around her knife, but she hid it behind her back in case he was a mortal too. Standing behind them was a guy who looked like a raptor in a leisure suit. He was at least seven feet tall, with absolutely no hair. He had gray, leathery skin, thick-lidded eyes, and a cold, reptilian smile and moved towards them slowly.

His suit might've come from the Lotus Casino. It belonged back in the seventies, big-time. The shirt was silk paisley, unbuttoned halfway down his hairless chest. The lapels on his velvet jacket were as wide as landing strips and he had too many silver chains around his neck to count.

"I'm Crusty," he said, with a tartar-yellow smile.

Daphne resisted the urge to say, Yes, you are.

"Sorry to barge in," Percy told him, sweating. "We were just, um, browsing."

"You mean hiding from those no-good kids," he grumbled. "They hang around every night. I get a lot of people in here, thanks to them. Say, you want to look at a water bed?"

Daphne was about to say No, thanks, when he put a huge paw on her shoulder and steered them deeper into the showroom.

There was every kind of water bed you could imagine: different kinds of wood, different patterns of sheets; queen-size, king-size, emperor-of-the universe-size.

"This is my most popular model." Crusty spread his hands proudly over a bed covered with black satin sheets, with built-in Lava Lamps on the headboard. The mattress vibrated, so it looked like oil- flavored jelly.

"Million-hand massage," Crusty told them, encouraging them to take a step forward. "Go on, try it out. Shoot, take a nap. I don't care. No business today, any-way.

"Um," Daphne said uncomfortably. "I don't think ..."

"Million-hand massage!" Grover cried, and dove in. "Oh, you guys! This is cool."

"Hmm," Crusty said, stroking his leathery chin. "Almost, almost."

"Almost what?" Percy frowned.

He looked at where Daphne had slid over to Annabeth. "Do me a favor and try this one over here, you two honeys. Might fit."

Annabeth backed away, "But what-"

He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and led them over to the Safari Deluxe model with teakwood lions carved into the frame and a leopard-patterned comforter. It was a queen sized bed which fit the both of them on it. When they didn't want to lie down, Crusty pushed both of them onto it.

"Hey!" Daphne protested. She tried to push herself back up when Crusty snapped his fingers. "Ergo!"

Ropes sprang from the sides of the bed, lashing around Annabeth and Daphne, holding them to the mattress. Her knife was knocked away from her hand, clattering onto the floor away from them. They thrashed, trying to pull free. Grover tried to get up, but ropes sprang from his black-satin bed, too, and lashed him down. "N-not c-c-cool!" he yelled, his voice vibrating from the million-hand massage. "N-not c-cool a- at all!"

The giant looked at Annabeth and Daphne, then turned toward Percy and grinned. "Almost, darn it."

He tried to step away, but his hand shot out and clamped around the back of Percy's neck. "Whoa, kid. Don't worry. We'll find you one in a sec."

"Let my friends go." he struggled against his grip like a kitten who had been picked up by the momma cat.

"Oh, sure I will. But I got to make them fit, first."

"What do you mean?"

"All the beds are exactly six feet, see? Your friends are too short. Got to make them fit." Annabeth and Daphne kept struggling while Grover yelled, his voice coming out echoey from the massage.

Daphne paled. "What did you just say?"

"Can't stand imperfect measurements," Crusty muttered. "Ergo!"

A new set of ropes leaped out from the top and bottom of the beds, wrapping around Grover, Daphne and Annabeth's ankles, then around their armpits. The ropes started tightening, pulling them from both ends.

"Don't worry," Crusty told him happily. "these are stretching jobs. Maybe three extra inches on their spines. They might even live. Now why don't we find a bed you like, huh?"

"Percy!" Grover yelled. Daphne was thrashing so harshly that she elbowed Annabeth in the face, in the same place Grover had earlier.

Her mind was racing, arms already starting to ache. "Do something!" she begged, shuddering in the cold.

Instead of freeing them with his sword, Percy turned to the salesman. "Your real name's not Crusty, is it?"

"Legally, it's Procrustes," he admitted.

"The Stretcher," Annabeth whispered in horror. She remembered the story: the giant who'd tried to kill Theseus with excess hospitality on his way to Athens.

"Yeah," the salesman said. "But who can pronounce Procrustes? Bad for business. Now 'Crusty,' anybody can say that."

"You're right. It's got a good ring to it."

Daphne stopped thrashing and looked at him incredulously. What was he doing...?

His eyes lit up. "You think so?"

"Oh, absolutely," Percy grinned. "And the workmanship on these beds? Fabulous!"

He grinned hugely, but his fingers didn't loosen on Percy's neck. "I tell my customers that. Every time. Nobody bothers to look at the workmanship. How many built-in Lava Lamp headboards have you seen?"

"Not too many."

"That's right!"

"Percy!" Annabeth yelled, her voice coming out a lot louder right beside Daphnes ear. "What are you doing?"

"Don't mind her," Percy told Procrustes. "She's impossible."

She heard Annabeth gasp with indignation beside her and almost laughed at the look on her face.

The giant laughed. "All my customers are. Never six feet exactly. So inconsiderate. And then they complain about the fitting'"

"What do you do if they're longer than six feet?" Daphne shouted out to him, starting to sweat with the pressure of the ropes. She couldn't feel it before, but now they were starting to tug at her uncomfortably.

"Oh, that happens all the time. It's a simple fix."

He let go of Percy's neck, but before he could react, he reached behind a nearby sales desk and brought
out a huge double-bladed brass axe. He said, "I just center the subject as best I can and lop off whatever hangs over on either end."

"Ah," Percy said, swallowing hard. "Sensible."

"I'm so glad to come across an intelligent customer!"

The ropes were really stretching them now. Beside her, Annabeth was turning pale and Grover made gurgling sounds, like a strangled goose. Daphne was breathing harshly, sweat dripping down her forehead. There was another harsh tug at the bottom of her ankles, pulling the muscles in her legs.

"So, Crusty ..." Percy said, trying to keep his voice light. He glanced at the sales tag on the valentine-shaped Honeymoon Special. "Does this one really have dynamic stabilizers to stop wave motion?"

"Absolutely! Try it out."

Daphne was really starting to ache now.

"Yeah, maybe I will. But would it work even for a big guy like you? No waves at all?" she finally caught on to what he was doing, but couldn't he hurry up a little? Her waist was starting to hurt.

"Guaranteed."

"No way."

"Way."

"Show me."

He sat down eagerly on the bed, patted the mattress. "No waves. See?"

Percy snapped his fingers. "Ergo."

Ropes lashed around Crusty and flattened him against the mattress.

"Hey!" he yelled.

"Feels bad, doesn't it?" Daphne shouted, her throat starting to constrict.

"Center him just right," Percy hummed.

The ropes readjusted themselves at his command. Crusty's whole head stuck out the top and his feet stuck out the bottom.

"No!" he cried. "Wait! This is just a demo."

Finally, Percy uncapped his sword. "A few simple adjustments ..."

Can't you go a little faster? Daphne inwardly begged. Grover was starting to whimper so loud that she could hear it from where she sat.

"You drive a hard bargain," Crusty shouted. "I'll give you thirty percent off on selected floor models!"

"I think I'll start with the top." Percy raised his sword.

"No money down! No interest for six months!" he begged.

Percy swung the sword and Crusty stopped making offers.

"Hurry up!" Daphne moaned. Percy quickly hurried over and cut the ropes on the other beds. She sat up, coughing and spluttering, clutching her stomach like it was going to fall off.

Annabeth helped her to her feet as Percy helped Grover. They were groaning and wincing and cursing his name. A lot.

"Took your time, didn't you?" Daphne complained, massaging her legs.

"You look taller," he noted with a grin.

"Very funny," Annabeth snapped. "Be faster next time."

Percy went to look at the bulletin board behind Crusty's sales desk as the rest of them kept massaging their sore parts. Daphne sympathised with Grover's goat legs, figuring that they must've hurt more because they had less bones, or something. She didn't really understand the anatomy.

"Come on," Percy suddenly reappeared beside them as Daphne was in the middle of stretching her legs on the floor and Annabeth was groaning, laying down with a hand on her abdomen as though she'd been poisoned.

"Give us a minute," Grover complained. "We were almost stretched to death."

To death, Daphne realised. That was scary. She'd been so close in the moment and hadn't even realised it. She shuddered, trying to stand up without grabbing someone's arm for support and picked up her knife which had fallen uselessly on the ground.

"Then you're ready for the Underworld," Percy grinned. "It's only a block from here."

౨ৎ ˖ ࣪⊹ 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆
🌷🪷🌊

ʚɞ DAPHNE CALLING PERCY BUBBLE BRAIN !!!!!!
also also.......

CAMP HALF BLOOD SHIRT GUYS !!!!!!!!! Cosplaying Daphne soon ig🤓🤓