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Kharon's boat was occupied, dug into the sand near the shore, and his hellhounds--Hell and Hound--were nowhere to be seen.
Inside the boat there seemed to be a man who radiated power. A black cloak enveloped his body, but a sliver of his greenish face peeked through. He was hunched over, leaning on a staff. He raised his head when Kharon, Augustus, Patro, and Achilles arrived at the banks of the River Styx (a normal river in the Dolomites) but it simply shifted the fabric, not revealing more of his body.
"Give me back my fucking boat!" Kharon yelled, angstily.
The man raised a spindly green finger. "What is your name, boy?"
"Kharon, and I'm an adult."
"Funny. Mine is Charon." He laughed, a sound that reverberated through the night. "Of course, I knew that already. I just wanted to see the look on your face when you recognized your true self."
"My... what?" His face turned red.
Three more men appeared on the boat. One was older, a laurel wreath crowning his balding head and a red cape pinned to one shoulder, another a tall, lean blond in skirt-like armor, and a shorter yet no less muscular brunet wearing the same.
Charon pointed to each one. "Augustus, Achilles, and Patroclus."
The boys were stunned. Kharon broke from that daze and scoffed. "Who are you supposed to be, a Spartan?"
"Like the city-state?"
"What the Kronos is a city-state?"
"And your swears are ungods-ly stupid as well." He rubbed a hand on his chin, then picked up an oar from inside the boat, slamming it into Kharon's head. His skull cracked in two, and as he fell over his blood tarnished the water by the shoreline. "Okay, who's next?"
"Who are you?" growled Patro.
"Charon, ferryman of the underworld." He bowed, still holding the bloody oar. "At your service. I suppose you're next."
Patroclus stepped out of the boat and stabbed Patro through the chest with his gladius, pulling it out and letting his blood mix with the wet sand. As he coughed and hacked, groaning out for Achilles, Patroclus paid him no mind.
"Why the hell are you wearing a muzzle?" the real Achilles asked.
Stupid-Achilles simply growled at him.
"If he speaks, you go insane," explained Augustus, refusing to let himself tremble and show weakness.
"His presence is already making me go insane." Charon nodded to the real Achilles, who used an even bigger gladius to slice off his counterpart's head.
Now Augustus trembled.
"I saved the best for last," Charon said.
"My name is Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, emperor of Rome." He saluted to him.
"Rome? You mean like Sparta?"
Emperor Augustus facepalmed. "I should have just killed him immediately." He took out a glock from his toga and shot Augustus until his magazine ran out, then threw the gun at his corpse.
Achilles and Patroclus got back in the boat, leaving the corpses at the shore. "Now we just have to find the real-life version of Alexis," Achilles said.
Charon shrugged. "The literal only similarity she has to Hercules--Herakles, if you will--is that as a child she encountered a snake. Let's just get her annoying ass an honorary PhD for solving the fucking Riemann hypothesis somehow."
And then they rowed off into the night.