No More Olympus

Chapter 9

"Oh my god!" Athena exclaimed in disgust.
She was staring up at a giant poster that was hung up on the stadium wall next to one of the gates to enter the basketball arena.
On the poster was a picture of Hermes, The messenger god and second youngest of the Olympians. He was dressed in a white and gold basketball uniform with a pair of shoes with tiny graphics of wings that were almost at the centre of the picture,
On his face was a mischievous toothy grin that Athena was all too familiar with. She saw it whenever she found cockroaches in her bed back on Olympus, whenever someone put a 'kick me' sign on her back, or when someone spiked the soap she used to clean her hair with green dye, leaving her with a head that looked like unkempt seaweed for weeks.
It was the smile that Hermes had whenever he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing.
And she knew it well.
For some reason or another, Hermes's favourite target was Athena, and he had been torturing her with his pranks ever since he was up to her knee in height.
Artemis would one day explain to Athena that since she might have been one of the most composed yet proud of the Olympians, their little brother took the most joy in breaking that composure, a challenge which he found remarkably easy.
"Oh my god," Athena repeated in a much lower voice.
"You know the more you repeat that phrase, the more ironic it becomes," Ares commented.
"I get that, but..." Athena was at a loss for words. She just kept waving her hands at the poster, "Oh my god!"
"And you call me the god of broken records," Ares sniped under his breath, checking the clock on the wall, "I am getting in line for beer. Would you like a beer?"
"No, thank you. I'm fine," Athena sighed, repeatedly rolling her eyes at the poster.
"Your loss," Ares shrugged, walking over to the line.
Aphrodite then strolled up next to Athena.
"Where have you been?" Athena asked, still not taking her eyes off the poster.
"Sorry about that," Aphrodite apologized, "I had to go to the little goddess's room."
She quickly noticed that Athena's gaze could not be pulled away from the giant yellow poster that was in front of her.
"That's a pretty good picture of him," Aphrodite remarked, "He always did have wonderful teeth."
"Didn't he get the memo that we're supposed to be hiding?" Athena asked, "I thought he was supposed to be smarter than this. I made sure he was smarter than this."
"I mean, it's not like he's hovering around the court with those magic golden boots of his," Aphrodite said, playing devil's advocate, "Give him some credit. He always was remarkably tall, so he fits in quite well among the crowd."
"I suppose you have a point," Athena surrendered.
"It also doesn't hurt that he's rich as shit and worshipped by millions," Aphrodite grinned.
"Good," Athena nodded her head, "Then he can pay us back for these absurdly priced tickets."
"That's the spirit," Aphrodite cheered, patting Athena on the shoulder before waving at Ares to grab his attention, "Can you get me one?" She requested.
Ares nodded.
"Besides," Athena continued as the two walked into the arena, "I suppose he was never that bright, just clever at inconvenient times."
"I think you're selling him a little short," Aphrodite defended,
"Oh really," Athena debated, looking over her shoulder to make sure her brother was out of earshot, "Remember when he locked Ares in that magic jar?"
"How was he supposed to know what was going to happen?" Aphrodite asked, "It's not every day that giants randomly raid the mountain."
They were referring to a time back on Olympus, specifically during Hermes's younger teenage years, when he felt the need to make advancements to his pranks. To do this, he went to Hephaestus and asked him to build a giant container that could not be broken from the inside. Luckily, Hephaestus had never once before asked a god why they needed what they requested he build, and he didn't start then.
Once Hermes had been given the jar, he worked through the night, digging a hole in the middle of the Olympus courtyard in front of Athena's temple where he could bury the container, covering the top with large leaves to conceal his trap.
Like most of his pranks, he intended for Athena to be his victim, but unluckily for him, she had slept well the night before and was especially observant that morning. Quickly picking out the trap among the perfectly maintained lawn, she then pulled the young god and gave him another one of her lectures on 'maturity.'
While she was doing this, Ares was walking by on his way to the dining hall for breakfast, and inconveniently for him, depending on how you look at it, Aphrodite had recently acquired a new silk robe and was trying it on rather obviously in full view of the courtyard.
As Ares committed every newly revealed curve of her body to memory, he failed to watch where he placed his feet and fell right into Hermes's trap.
Using his lightning-fast speed, he quickly sealed the giant jar tight with a lid before anyone could realize what had happened,
Ares pounded on the inside of the jar, shouting curses and every insult he could think of toward Hermes.
Surprisingly enough, Athena was nowhere to be found to witness the events.
When asked later, she simply said that some godly business required her immediate attention at this moment, she refused to explain exactly what this business was and got very defensive when pressured on the issue.
As Hermes began to negotiate with Ares on what favours the latter shall bestow upon the former in exchange for his release, a sudden scream emerged from Olympus's largest centre temple, home of Zeus and Hera, followed by a large crashing sound as a pair of giants were flung out of the tower window and into the grounds below.
Apparently, these giant brothers named Ephialtes and Otis had decided that they wished to marry Olympian goddesses, and in the middle of the night, they went and built a mountain next to Olympus out of large stones. A structure large enough for the brothers to jump from peak to peak and sneak past Olympus's defences. They had then climbed their way to Heras chambers, where at the time she was busy having her morning bath as she always did.
She was somewhat startled to see that this particular morning a pair of ugly giant faces were peeking in through the window, watching her bathe. Once she regained her composure, she quickly covered herself and telekinetically threw them away, destroying a section of wall in her tower and sending the two giants flying.
In the panic of being discovered, the two brothers scrambled. In their confused states, they believed that the giant jar that had since been dug up and had a voice emerging from it held Athena rather than Ares. Considering it was buried in front of her temple, the two believed it was not the massive leap in logic that it was.
Not wanting to leave empty-handed, the two grabbed the jar and leapt down the mountain, and considering Hermes was far too young and still too weak to stop the giants, Zeus was off consorting with the woman that would one day be Dionysus's mother, Hera was still in her bath, Aphrodite was busy appreciating her new robe, Athena was god knows where. The rest of Olympus was asleep, and Ares was stuck in the jar, the two giants got away rather easily.
Hermes panicked and immediately began furiously knocking on the temple doors of the remaining Olympians. Eventually, Artemis answered her door, clearly unhappy with being woken up prematurely and the state of the lawn.
After explaining the situation, Hermes eventually convinced the goddess of the hunt to help him retrieve Ares. Using her unmatched tracking skills, the two quickly found the giants furiously arguing over who got to keep 'Athena.'
Hermes quickly came up with another scheme, Artemis would waltz in there and distract them while Hermes snuck around and grabbed the jar.
Having no better plan as well as no patience, Artemis agreed.
What followed Hermes would later describe as the worst seduction technique he'd ever seen.
He would compare it to a drunk horse trying to convince an oak tree to go and rob the local king rather than anything resembling a successful flirtation.
But strangely enough, this seemed to work on the giants, who promptly entered an all-out brawl for the right to be with the goddess. The confrontation ended with the two brothers both simultaneously shooting each other with arrows, ending the fight as Artemis stood there stunned, eventually the three gods returned to Olympus all refusing to admit what happened back with the giants. Unluckily for them, Helios the sun titan saw everything and quickly spread the story to any god who would listen, the story would soon become a favourite at their nightly feasts.
Athena and Aphrodite quickly found their seats and made themselves comfortable.
Athena took a quick look around the stadium. Several hundred fans had piled into the bleachers. More than half of them were either wearing white and yellow body paint or shirts with the same wing symbol she saw on Hermes shoes in the poster.
"Are the white and yellow guys all here for Hermes?" Athena asked, having to shout to be heard over all of the noise generated by the crowd.
"He's a big deal," Aphrodite explained, "From what I've read, the consensus seems to be that he's probably the best guy ever to play the sport."
"Probably doesn't hurt his chances that he can run a couple of hundred times faster than the speed of sound," Athena said cynically, "Not to mention fly."
Loud rock music then blasted through the stadium speakers, bringing a hushed excitement to the crowd as the lights dimmed to highlight the course.
Ares quickly rushed to his seat, handing one of the two plastic cups in his hands to Aphrodite before sitting down next to Athena.
First, the cheerleading team skipped onto the court and began dancing and flipping to pump up the crowd, earning whistles and shouts every time one of them jumped high enough to catch the air with their yellow skirts.
Athena noticed Aphrodite sulking at this, enviously mumbling something to herself along the lines of, "I could do better than that."
Two teams of very tall men filed onto the court forming two lines horizontally to each other.
Athena quickly scanned the line of the team dressed in white and yellow named 'The Killer Rams' for Hermes, but he was nowhere to be found.
"He's not there," Athena pointed out to her fellow gods.
"He should be playing tonight," Aphrodite thought aloud, "Maybe he's coming in later in the match."
The crowd also seemed to be noticeably disappointed that Hermes wasn't in the lineup. Multiple whispers of confusion and even some quiet boos emerged from the crowd.
"What, that's not right!" The announcer said in an over-the-top voice as the music disappeared, "Where is he?"
The song 'Rock you like a hurricane' began blasting through the stadium loudspeaker as a spotlight pointed itself at an open door leading to the court.
A figure in a dramatic white cloak then emerged from the door. The crowd began to rile up as he walked further and further onto the court.
"So what are the chances that this is not him?" Ares asked in a dry tone as he continued to drink his beer.
The song continued as the figure slowly walked into the middle of the court.
As if to answer Ares's question, the figure slowly reached up and unbuckled his cloak.
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" The announcer began, "I present to you, the man, the myth, the miracle maker, James Hermes!"
The moment the screechy-voiced singer of the song uttered the line 'Here I am,' the figure threw off his cloak.
The crowd erupted in cheers as Hermes presented himself to the masses, posing for the hundreds of photos that were presumably being taken at that very moment.
"Oh my god..." Athena groaned, cringing at the sight before her.