Penny Ranger and the Lightning Thief

Chapter XXXI: We go Shopping for Waterbeds

"Where is he?" Annabeth complained as she paced in front of the shoreline.
"He's been down there for ages!"

She had been doing this ever since Percy went underwater. I would have found it amusing to see her so worried about the son of Poseidon, if it wasn't for the fact that her pacing was beginning to get on my nerves.

"He can breathe underwater." Grover calmly pointed out, in an unsuccessful attempt to calm Annabeth down.

She instead turned towards me.

"How aren't you worried?"

"Annabeth, his dad is the God of the Sea. The ocean is literally the safest place he could be aside from Camp. He's fine, relax." I told her.

She groaned and continued her pacing. She was so focused on her own thoughts about Percy that she didn't notice him coming out of the water and walking up to us.

"Hey."

Annabeth turned around to face him so fast I thought she might twist her ankles.

"Where were you? What took you so long?" she inquired.

"I met a nereid." he answered.

He quickly explained what had happened down in the deep when he talked with the nereid, why Poseidon couldn't be there himself and how the nereid had warned him about Hades's cunning. He then showed us four perfect white pearls that the sea spirit had given him. These would (somehow) help us escape the Underworld.

"No gift comes without a price." Annabeth stated with a grimace.

"They were free."

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

*

Who knew finding the entrance to the Underworld would be so difficult? We walked around using a slip with the address that we took from Medusa's shop to ask for directions. But not only did none of the people we asked know where the DOA Recording Studios were, they had never even heard of the place. It was like we'd been given a prank address.

At one point we passed through an electronics store, were some of the TVs on display were turned on. One of them was on a news channel, where reporter Barbara Walters was talking to an utterly repulsive, fat, bald man. I didn't even really need to read his name to know who he was, Percy had described him perfectly.

"Honestly, Ms. Walters, if it wasn't for Sugar here, my grief counselor, I'd be a wreck." Gable Ugliano said, motioning to the girl sitting beside him holding his hand.
"My stepson took everything I cared about. My wife... my Camaro... I-I'm sorry. I have trouble talking about it."

"There you have it, America. A man torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you again, the last known photo of this troubled fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver." Barbara Walters said as Gabe kept crying fake tears in the background.

A picture came up on the screen. It showed the four of us outside the diner in Denver talking to Ares. It must have been the one taken by the cook.

"Who are the other children in this photo? 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'll chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America." Barbara Walters said dramatically.

"C'mon." I said, wanting to get Percy out of there before he decided to wreck the TV.

Our search was still very unsuccessful. And to make things worse, it was now nighttime. And let me tell you, you do not want to be out in the streets of LA at nighttime. The streets began to fill up with shady characters everywhere you looked. I had been out in the streets of New York at night before, but this was on a whole other level.