After Percy, Annabeth, and Grover arrive in Los Angeles, they go to the beach, and Percy steps into the water. He really doesn’t seem to have a plan, but he walks in until he’s up over his head, and then he forces himself to inhale water. He seems to be hoping for some assistance from his father or some inspiration about how he and his friends can proceed on this quest. He finds that “[he] could breathe normally.” He meets with a Nereid who gives him the three pearls, a gift that will be very helpful in the Underworld. Percy’s willingness to take his life into his own hands, risking personal peril, in order to help the quest is quite heroic.
Once the friends walk away from the beach, they are attacked by a gang of kids; Percy attempts to stand up to them, uncapping Riptide, and this is pretty heroic. Though they are outnumbered, Percy doesn’t immediately run away, and this takes a lot of guts (especially because he knows that Riptide won’t work on regular mortals).
However, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover eventually run down the street to get away, going into the only store that looks open: Crusty’s Water Bed Palace. Once there, Crusty traps them, binding them with magic to water beds with the intention of stretching them until they are six feet tall. He reveals himself to be Procrustes, “‘The Stretcher’ […]: the giant who’d tried to kill Theseus with excess hospitality on his way to Athens.” Percy cleverly turns the tide on Crusty, binding him to a bed and then cutting off his head so that he can free his friends. This use of intelligence and quick-thinking is heroic.
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