Chapter 31: hard fight or hardly a fight?
Seeing that the magic that was put in place to prevent any Teleportation was somehow by passed and allowed Athena to somehow escape, Zeus made his way to the underworld to confront the witch that he had trusted with the issue, it was certainly a major breach of security either that or Athena was especially crafty as he would expect of his daughter. It would have been better to round up all the traitors in one fell swoop but Zeus felt it was paramount to ensure the defences of Olympus were intact, if the anti-teleportation magic had been dispelled that meant surprise attacks from Enemies Could happen at any time plus Zeus felt he could deal with the traitors any time he wants as such he took to the underworld.
Unfortunately he was met with a displeased Hades who seemed to not like the fact that Zeus showed up unannounced.
"both you and Hestia need to learn to call before coming here, I don't appreciate my time with my wife being interrupted"
Hades explained, both he and Zeus were at the living area of his castle both sitting in such a way that they were facing each other with Zeus holding onto a glass of white wine and sitting in a much more relaxed way than he should be.
"I see my daughter has you smitten brother"
Zeus chuckled at his own words, interestingly enough Hades had never shown too much interest in women before meeting Persephone, while he and Poseidon enjoyed themselves Hades always seemed to ignore any flirting or advances from women and seemed to enjoy his alone time.
"What of it? I don't see how that's a problem and what do you want?"
"no need to be defensive brother just mentioning something of note and what I want, I'm looking for Hecate, last time I checked she lived in the underworld with you."
"She indeed does live in the underworld but not with me, she's someone who likes research so she's probably doing something down to the souls on level 4, I haven't seem her in– I don't know how long"
Hades did Indeed accommodate Hecate a few years back but for some reason she left saying she wanted to experiment on some souls and things so Hades told her to go to the 4th level to do that and she hasn't been back ever since and he can't really remember how many years it's been, naturally he wouldn't bother thinking about other women when his beautiful beloved Bride existed.
"well why are you looking for Hecate anyway? I thought you had your hands full with the Apollo situation."
He asked completely oblivious to the news of the current state of things.
"Right, you don't get much news down here"
Zeus then proceeded to explain what was currently happening and Hades did not seem to be surprised at all, he had a rather dull expression on his face. To him the situation hadn't really changed it was still Zeus's children, he figured that Apollo never had the spine to be a traitor, the young God practically worshipped Zeus, so hearing that he was a traitor was quite the shock but it seems that was just false information.
"Having your wife hate you enough to plot to kill you isn't the type of problem I would have"
That could never happen to him, he loved Persephone very much and she in turn loved him, she fulfilled his every need and he fulfilled hers as such he was absolutely certain that something like that would never happen to him.
"So are you going to help? I've already apprehended Hera and Themis, only Ares, Hephaestus and Athena and those 3 are not to be underestimated at least Athena is not to be underestimated"
"What about Aphrodite? you don't seem to count her"
"She's not all that powerful, plus I plan to have my way with her once I give her an ultimatum, so far I've only left her alone cause I didn't want Hera to kill Her and I wouldn't care enough to stop her so this is the perfect opportunity."
So he basically was just saving Aphrodite up for later, he didn't want her to be killed if he did have an affair with her but if he did have the affair he wouldn't care enough to stop hera from harming Aphrodite. The logic behind it was a bit childish and hardly seemed coherent to Hades so he simply shrugged his shoulders and sighed.
"well whatever you can search for Hecate at the 4th level I don't really care"
He expressed, he was willing to help if the whole ordeal was external, like if Apollo was the traitor and he brought forth an enemy army or freed the some of the Titans in Tartarus but this seemed to be a family issue and had nothing to do with him and his wife. Incidentally the thought of having children crossed his mind but he shrugged it off.
"You aren't going to help?"
"no, this is a dispute between you and your family, I'd rather stay neutral, but you can ask Poseidon I'm sure he'll help you"
"Alright, by the way two of my enforcers are currently standing guard in Tartarus so I'll meet up with them before looking for Hecate"
"You didn't need to tell me that but Alright"
He had thought Zeus would try and persuade him to help but it looks like he wasn't, that was good, now he can have time with his wife or at least he would if Hestia had left.
.......
The question posed by Aphrodite to him had been a simple yet puzzling question and strangely enough he had never considered it, no one ever thinks about what love actually is when they're in love you just feel it and trying to rationalize emotions almost always failed, emotions are irrational by nature. Hephaestus tried to think of a good way to explain the concept of love but any explanations he came up with weren't satisfactory.
After a few seconds of silence Hephaestus thought of a way that should explain love or rather it didn't explain it at all.
"love is an emotion you feel"
"Yes I know that but which emotion?"
"I don't know, you just feel like you love someone or something, only you can tell what is it that you love and what you don't"
To be honest he still felt like he needed to explain it better, he had always never liked how incomprehensible emotions were, humans could explain which chemical and hormones made you feel a certain way but what are emotions? Are they just hormones and neurotransmitters or are they something more?
"so If I love something I should be able to know that I love it?"
"Yes"
"Then I think–"
Aphrodite was interrupted mid sentence as Hephaestus suddenly shoved her Away from his body sending her flying back and as she flew back Hephaestus seemed to lean back by a bit and as he did he lifted up his leg and delivered a swift knee to the blurred object she couldn't recognize, it seemed to be moving faster than she could properly perceive.
She closed her eyes bracing for impact against the wall. Once she slammed onto the wall causing notable cracks she opened her eyes again and Hephaestus was gone and there was a hole on her roof.
"what happened?"
Her question was followed by a sudden Shockwave that shook her entire house and not a second later another shockwave followed not giving her a chance to stand up, the shockwaves were continuous with barely any pause after the other.
In about a second later something crashed through her ceiling and slammed on to the floor. Looking at it she saw it was a person with dark skin, however before she could process who it was, Hephaestus dropped on top of it using both of his knees and slammed on to their stomach generating a Shockwave that cracked the walls of her palace her roof was gone and now the walls threatened to crumble, luckily her palace was made with mithril, a strong metal.
The nymphs in the palace got hit by the debris from the falling roof and the others were flung to the walls.
"Hephaestus My palace!!"
Her words cause Hephaestus to look at her however that split second distraction allowed Ares to land a devastating blow on his face bypassing his durability and causing one of his tooth to fly out of his mouth.
Aphrodite felt a pang in heart as she saw Hephaestus suffer such a blow, she definitely didn't like That. She felt the need to avenge him, How could Ares do that to Hephaestus.
Her feelings were immediately alleviated the next moment when Hephaestus returned the punch slamming his first on Ares's face and generating another shockwave, unfortunately he held back as he heeded Aphrodite's words about her palace. Due to Hephaestus Holding back Ares used his legs to grab Hephaestus by the neck and flung him off towards the wall and thus allowing himself to get up. Hephaestus stopped himself mid air so as not to crash through the walls.
"The fuck Ares?? What are you doing?"
Incidentally this was the first time he had uttered a profanity in this life, he was certain that he and Ares were not friends and they would never be friends however he didn't think he'd suddenly attack him completely unprovoked, yeah sure they had bad blood but it certainly wasn't enough to attack him out of the blue Like this, on Olympus no less.
"You are an obstacle on my path"
With that one sentence, Ares launched himself at his and landed a nice clean punch to his jaw and sent Hephaestus through the wall and outside. Ares could feel the power within him steadily increase not only that but getting into a fight with Hephaestus also helped increase his power as such right now he was definitely strong, far stronger than he ever was before but he was still Nowhere near On the same level as Zeus but he was definitely stronger than Hephaestus or so he believed.
.....
A/N: I swear the cliffs aren't on purpose it just happens.
Joyboy is here, let's freaking Go!!!
how was the episode? has toon force been debunked? I don't think so
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