Pantheon of Heroes

The Gathering

The alien massacre continued to rage across the face of the Earth, the alien forces spreading outward and carving a path of death and destruction that knew no end. The Gods had to work fast. The original eight reached out, first to their own pantheons, and then to those that surrounded them, alerting all they came across of the plan.

On the Caribbean island of Haiti, the Vodou God Baron Samedi stepped out of a nightclub where he had spent much of the previous night engaging in all his favorite forms of hedonism and debauchery. He flourished his long coat, tucked his cane under his arm, and lit up a new cigar, looking out on his island just as the alien armada reached it.

"Well, well, what have we here?"

Baron Samedi took a long drag from his smoke, watching as the island's population was decimated in minutes. He glanced to the northwest, where he could see mortal military around Cuba trying its best to hold off the attackers, but nothing they tried had any effect.

Samedi turned away. Human wars were a constant occurrence, and death was a mere passing from one stage into another. What did he care? Honestly, the most interesting part was that a new player seemed to have entered the game.

He twirled his cane as he walked down the lane, humming to himself a song that had played in the club the night before. A mother and her child ran past him, only to be sliced in half by an alien's large green sickle. Samedi stopped, adjusting his gloves as he prepared to do his job as a psychopomp. He bent down over the two corpses and reached out his hand, but stopped.

His eyes scanned the two bodies. Something was wrong.

He looked around the street around him. Bodies lay everywhere, all just waiting for him to help guide their souls to the afterlife. But for each and every single one, something very specific was missing.

Samedi's hand clenched around his cane.

His thoughts were distracted as a loud roar pierced the sky, and a humongous feathered serpent slammed into one of the alien ships, clamping onto it with his big jaws and tearing at it viciously.

"You dare to attack my people, monsters?" the creature shouted, tossing the ship at one of its fellows and swooping down to scoop up a number of the aliens in one bite and swallow them whole. He was about to attack another ship when a blast hit him in the side.

Samedi raised his cane, considering making a move, when a second feathered serpent rushed through the sky above, slamming into the ship that had shot its fellow as a monkey and a spider leapt off its back and started bashing every alien they came across. Baron Samedi slinked back into the shadows at the sight, considering it best to wait and observe for now.

"Are you alright, Brother Quetzal?" the second feathered serpent asked.

The first shook his head, rising back into the sky. "I am only singed, Kukulkan," he said. "What is happening here? Why are you accompanied by Gods from across the sea?"

"We have formed an alliance." Kukulkan filled in his Mexica counterpart on everything that had been discussed at the meeting in Palestine.

"It is a daring plan," Quetzalcoatl said. "You can count on my aid."

"Thank you, my friend. I intend to cross the sea, recruit the Gods of the Maori, the Hawaiians, and all others of the Pacific. Can I count on you to travel South, reach out to Viracocha of the Inca and the others of South and Central America?"

"You can. But what of North America?"

"We've got that covered," Sun Wukong said, landing on Quetzalcoatl's back and picking through his feathers for bugs. "Nancy and I have a couple of friends up that way. KK here was just giving us a ride."