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"Happy birthday Dia!" Katy exclaimed, leaning over her best friend over the bed. She, along with Meg, had skipped school just to see Dia. Aidon had woken up right before they had arrived and was lucky as he had slipped out of her bed and into his own room. After Dia's heartfelt speech, he had hugged her and she had fallen asleep on him which made him lean back against the headboard of the bed and go to sleep himself. He watched as her friends fawned over her, showering her with little presents. He closed the door and walked off to the living room, only to find it occupied by the one person he was not anticipating to meet.

"Hello." She smiled at him.

"Hera." He mumbled.

"Your place looks really expensive." She commented.

"It is."

"How are you so rich though?"

"What exactly do you want from me?" He asked calmly. Her smile faded for a second.

"I need... I really can't tell you any more than I have can I? I already said that I wanted to be your friend." She beamed.

"I never agreed. I don't do friends."

"But you do Dia?" She smirked. He stared at her for a few minutes.

"That was a pun I did not expect. And no. I don't do her sexually."

"Why not? You're a guy, you have needs." She wiggled her eyebrows up and down in a teasing manner.

"What? You think you can sate them or something?"

"Nope." She shook her head. "I really don't do men anymore."

She's lesbian?

The thought screamed in his head.

"You're homo?" He questioned, now interested in the idea of considering her invitation to friendship.

"I guess yeah."

"So wait... You aren't interested in Dia are you?" He frowned as the idea came into his head, providing many unpleasant fantasies of her leaving him and him being jealous.

"I could be. She is very attractive... But you don't have to worry about that though... It's not her I'm interested in. It's her mother."

Her mother?

What was the name of Dia's human guardian again?

"Diane Grand?" He asked, hoping he got the name right.

"No." Her answer got him thinking. Deducing. Something was very wrong here. "Her real mother."

"What?"

"Aphrodite."

"Excuse me?" What was up with this mortal girl?! Best to play dumb but why was she saying all this?! How did she even know?

Did Dia mention it to one of her mortal bestfriends? She couldn't have... Could she?

And while they were speaking yesterday about her being an atheist, she had referred to the God as 'them'. She had said that she believed in them.

He recalled the scent coming from Hera. The familiar aroma he hadn't smelled since Kylie passed away. It suddenly dawned on him. The scent had nothing to do with Kylie. When Kylie died, he had walked out of the Underworld. He hadn't smelled the familiar scent of the souls and the dead since she died.

This girl... Hera... Smelled like the Underworld.

"Who are you?" He frowned at her, realising that his attraction to her was due to the fact that she was meant to be dead. This was no mortal. He was speaking to the resurrected forbidden Demi-God, the child of Zeus.

"Heracles."

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"HERACLES IS A WOMAN?!" Idon yelled at Aidon. After Hera had revealed herself she had disappeared from his home. Dia's scream alerted him and he rushed up to see her sitting up. She pointed at the window. Katy was lying half across the bed, unconscious. He asked her what had happened and she managed to blurt out that Hera had appeared in her room and kidnapped Meg, jumping out of the window. He knew checking would be useless as they wouldn't be found. Neither of them. He called Phaeton and Idon immediately who arrived on the spot. "How the fuck can the most powerful demi-god actually be a woman?! Have you not heard all the stories about her?! Heracles and the 12 Olympic labours. Heracles defeating the two snakes as an infant. As far as I'm concerned, he was a fucking boy."

"Well she isn't a boy." Aidon began in a mocking tone.

"This is basically just one of those gender thingies. Over the years her gender must have-"

"No." Phaeton interrupted them. "Are the Moirai going to stop me?" Phaeton jokingly looked around, pretending he could sense the fates in a mocking way. "No? Alright. The reason why Heracles is searching for Aphrodite is because she believes she has been cheated. She was successful, powerful, glorious. She could have won her place on Mount Olympus... But she hadn't... Why? Why had she been forced to do the 12 Olympic labours? Well... For one thing, back then, women did not have much of a status among people. Which is why the ruler of the time, King Eurystheus, wanted to test her. And he did. But to his surprise, all her hard work paid off and she was just a step away from success and victory. However... The ruler struck a deal with an Olympic God. No matter what, he wanted her to be a failure and kept beneath men, as all women should."

"And she believes my mother is this God that the ruler used?" Dia asked.

"Yes. Because her one weakness, was the person she fell in love with. Just as the stories say, she fell in love, with a woman. And the woman loved her back. She believed it was an injustice to her, the fact that she fell for a woman, never being allowed to marry, her people looking at her as if she was a disgrace and a shame. All because homosexuality was such a big taboo back then, among the mortals, I mean. So she murdered the woman. This banned her from entering Elysium. But she had many other lovers. The majority of them; male."

"She said she was homo." Aidon protested.

"In those days, bisexuality in women was unheard of. It was either the woman be fully straight, or a shame."

"Wow... That is some hot ass girl on girl I swear." Idon mumbled.

"That is not the concern. She was sent to Tartarus, banished from Earth. Where she should have won, she sinned. She attacked her own father, mistaking the man for Hera." Phaeton shook his head.

"She's back for her revenge..."

"I'm not sure if it ever occurred to you people but it can't be a simple co incidence that Dia's 'friend', Meg has the same prefix in her name as Heracles' first lover Megara?"