Alex, with a mostly rejuvenated body, raced back to the Elysium fields. He figured since he had some time before his marriage was dissolved, he should pick up Jessica and rip Odysseus a new one.
Alex found the ancient hero at the tip of a long, wooden jetty. There Odysseus sat with his bare feet dangling in the water and his eyes looking out to the western horizon. The sun had begun to set and cast a warm glow over the ocean. Aside from the brief neighing of Alex’s ponies, which Odysseus apparently either ignored or did not hear, the only sounds about were the lapping of the tide and the occasional cry of a seagull overhead. The air smelled of its usual salt, but had a crispness to it as well. Altogether, Alex knew he would have found it a relaxing scene, had he not been so utterly pissed off.
“Get up,” Alex said, stepping off his chariot and marching up behind the man. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“In a minute,” he said, still sitting and looking out over the waters. “Why don’t you join me for one last sunset?” he asked. “A lasting image might help you endure your journey in Tartarus.”
“I’ve been to Tartarus already,” Alex replied. He nudged the man with his foot. Sure, it was probably rude, but it wasn’t as bad as a kick to the head, and that was about to follow if Alex didn’t get what he wanted.
Odysseus glanced over his shoulder, looking ready for a fight, but the man’s anger dissolved in a flash. His eyes softened, and he jumped to his feet. “The wheel was not kind to you, I see.”
Alex looked himself over. His fingers had regrown, as had his ears and nose. Patches of charred skin remained, but most of it was a bright, rosy pink. “I’ve looked worse,” he stated, still in pain.
“I suspect you have,” Odysseus replied. “Did you find what you need?”
“Find what I need?” Alex said, twirling the chain Odysseus had given him. “Tell me, good sir, what exactly do I need?”
“Seems you need a lot more than I had originally thought,” Odysseus said. “I know I had said five days on the wheel, but I suppose what you’ve done must do. On to your next task.”
“There’s no next task!” Alex said, swinging at the man’s chin with a right hook.
Odysseus stepped into the attack. He caught Alex’s forearm with his left hand, and at the same time, he smashed his right elbow across Alex’s chin. “For twenty years I fought,” he said as Alex stumbled away. “Ten on the shores of Troy and ten more trying to come home to my dearest Penelope. You think you can beat me with such a pathetic attack? Have you gone mad?”
Alex grunted as he crouched. Odysseus’s words barely registered in his mind, and all Alex could think about was how best to take down this new enemy of his that stood tall, proud, and mocking.
Alex drove forward and caught Odysseus about the midsection. Blows rained on his head and sides, but he didn’t care. The two struggled, trading punches and kicks. Alex tried several times to take the man to the ground and finish him there, but Odysseus was too skilled to be brought off his feet.
“An angry warrior is a dead warrior,” Odysseus said, locking his arms with Alex’s and laughing. “You’re like the boars we hunt. Angry and blind to everything that matters.”
Alex broke apart from the entanglement, and when Odysseus did not follow up with an attack, he took the moment to regain his breath. “You sent me on a wild goose chase!”
“I sent you for ingredients, not a goose,” Odysseus replied.
“For something that doesn’t exist!” Alex said. “This agape potion of yours is a farce!”
“My help is no farce.”
“You promised me a potion!” Alex said, muscles tightening and ready to spring him back into the fight.
“I promised you answers!” Odysseus retorted. “Are you so dense you can’t see them?”
Alex, thrown by the man’s response, straightened. “What the hell are you talking about? I’ve gotten no answers. I’ve got nothing to show. I’m exactly where I was when I first came here.”
“Not true,” Odysseus said. “You’ve done and gone through much.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, smirking. “You’re right. I’ve been beaten, broken, eaten, and burned. All for what?”
“You tell me, Alex,” the hero replied, dropping his guard. “Why did you do that?”
Alex laughed at the stupidity of such a question. “What do you mean why? You told me to. You told me to fetch you supplies for your moronic, non-existent potion.”
“Why did you want the potion, Alex?”
“Is this twenty questions now?” Alex said, shaking his head. “See? I can do it too.”
“It’s only as many questions as it takes to get through that thick skull of yours,” he said. “Humor me. Why did you want the potion?”
“To find out where my heart was!” Alex said, throwing up his hands.
“Oh,” Odysseus replied. “I was under the impression you wanted to have an adventure.”
“Adventure?” Alex yelled. He brought his face only a few inches away from the Odysseus’s. “You think I did this for fun? Because I was bored?”
“Well, you are a hero,” Odysseus replied calmly.
The man’s lackadaisical attitude boiled Alex’s blood. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t stand still. He wanted to drive his fist through the man’s teeth but didn’t, only because he knew he wanted to inflict more pain than that.
“You are on Elysium,” Odysseus went on. “Being a hero is the national pastime around here.”
“This is not a damn game!” Alex yelled. “You think I’d suffer through all this needless garbage for fun?”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No, I wouldn’t! I’m doing this to hopefully save my wife, my marriage. I suffered for her, damn it—” Alex cut short his frenzy-filled monologue as his last words drilled home. “I suffered for her,” he softly repeated.
Odysseus smiled knowingly. “Do you have what you need now?”
“Yeah, I think I do,” Alex said, his inner fire now extinguished. Could he not be loving someone in the face of so much self-sacrifice? Surely he must be. The only thing he wondered now is how such an obvious answer had eluded him for so long. Alex extended his hand, sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel like an ass. I hope you accept my apology.”
“I do,” Odysseus said, shaking his hand.
Alex avoided the man’s gaze for the moment, still feeling a little off. “Now what?”
“You tell me,” Odysseus replied. “Love is a choice. What are you going to choose to do, Alex?”
“I’m meeting Aphrodite in the morning,” Alex said, fearful at what it would entail but elated now that his heart soared above the clouds. “Once I decline her help, Ares is going to come at me again and again and again. So I’ve got until then to figure something out.”
“I’d help in that regard if I could,” said Odysseus, rubbing his chin and looking out over the water. “But as I said when we first met, Ares is one of the most powerful Olympians. No mortal has truly defeated him in battle, only sent him running to lick his wounds.”
“Yeah,” Alex said with a smile. “I managed to do that once.”
“You did?” Odysseus said, turning toward Alex and sounding impressed. “Do tell. I was under the impression that you beat him in the Olympics, not in mortal combat. The only other man that hurt Ares was Diomedes.”
“I did beat Ares in the Olympics,” Alex said, feeling his head swell. “Granted, I had a javelin from Artemis, but I won just the same. After that, I beat him in an arena.”
“Diomedes used a spear from Athena,” Odysseus said. “Did you use the same to beat Ares?”
“No. I had a pineapple from Hephaestus,” Alex replied with a smile. “It’s not a fruit,” he quickly added, realizing that Odysseus would be at a loss as to what he was talking about. “It’s a weapon we invented not too long ago. I knew Ares wouldn’t know what it was, at least, not until it blew up in his face. Literally.”
“Clever,” said Odysseus. “Perhaps you can use that same ingenuity again.”
Alex shook his head. “Ares will never fall for the same trick twice.”
“He might not fall for the same trick twice, but I suspect you could lure him into another ruse,” Odysseus said. “A man as creative as you should be able to come up with any number of things.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Alex admitted. At this point, he was open to a complete game plan since the number of viable ideas he’d come up with could be counted on no hands.
“What do you have to work with?”
Alex shrugged. “Wedding presents. Plenty of those. Winged sandals. Ponies with chariot. And some yarn.”
“Going to battle is as much preparation as it is determination,” Odysseus said. “If I were you, I’d do three things. First, take an exact inventory of what you have and what you may need. Second, study your opponent and study him well. Learn his habits and his weaknesses so you can exploit them. You’ll not conquer Ares otherwise. Last, I would go to Hephaestus again. If any Olympian will aid your cause one more time, it will be him.”
Alex committed Odysseus’s list to memory. Though the instructions were simple and made a lot of sense, he had reservations about the hero’s last point.
“Hephaestus might help, but even if he makes me another weapon, so what?” Alex said. “I can’t kill Ares no matter what Hephaestus gives me, and he’ll keep coming at me over and over.”
“You don’t have to kill him, just beat him.”
“Easier said than done.”
“You don’t even have to beat him,” Jessica said from behind.
“How’s that?” Alex said, turning to face her.
“All you have to do is to remove Ares’s desire to fight you,” she said.
Alex chuckled. “You think I can turn Ares into a pacifist? I’m not sure I can really picture him with flowers on his head singing Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
“I don’t think that’s what she meant,” Odysseus said, his face beaming with approval. “Whatever you do, if you can get Ares to not want to fight you specifically, that will be good enough. Perhaps you can convince him that a better battle elsewhere will satiate his lust for war.”
“Or get him to realize any victory over you is a Pyrrhic one at best,” Jessica added.
“I like it,” Alex said, thoughtfully. “I like it a lot. How did you come up with that?”
“Bumped into a harpy earlier after Heracles ran after a manticore,” she said. She then nodded to the spear she was carrying. “Not sure if I’d have won, damn thing was scary and fast, but I put up enough of a show that she knew I wasn’t worth the risk.”
Alex whistled, thoroughly impressed. “Jessica the Monster Slayer. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“I do,” she replied. “When I get home, I’m going to make that into a book and then a movie and then a huge line of toys.”
“Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”
Jessica shrugged. “Never too early to think about merchandising.”
“I’ll leave that up to you,” Alex said. “I’ve got to get going.”
Jessica planted the spear in the ground. “Why am I not surprised you’re leaving me again. I came to help, remember?”
“I know,” Alex said. “And you have been, immensely.” He hugged her tight. “But this last fight is mine alone.”
Jessica settled into the embrace. “Fine, be that way. It was good seeing you again, though.”
“Hey, don’t act like I’m not coming back.”
“You will. I know,” she said. “But when you do, you’ll have your bride back and this will be over, and I’ll have to go back to the mundane life.”
Alex straightened his arms so he could look her in the eyes. “I’ll pull some strings,” he said, smiling. “Your adventures don’t have to end here.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely.”
As Alex turned and went for his ponies, Jessica called out one last time. “Hey, one other thing, if you could?”
“What’s that?”
“If you meet any single, hottie Greek heroes, send them my way?”
Alex laughed. “As you wish.”
* * *
Alex bolted down the dark tunnel the moment he saw the warm glow of Hephaestus’s forge. He stubbed his toes and bruised his shins a half dozen times along the way, but he cared not. Eagerness drove Alex forward, eagerness to see his plan come to fruition. All he lacked was one little item from the god’s armory.
“Alex, good friend,” Hephaestus said as Alex exited the tunnel. “Back sooner than I thought, yes, but back the victor.”
Alex skidded to a stop a few feet behind the still-working god. “I haven’t won yet,” he said, raising his voice so he could be heard over the sounds of hammer and anvil. “But I will soon.”
Hephaestus’s arm froze, mid stroke, and he turned around, confusion on his face. “We beat him in the arena, did we not? We used our weapon, our pineapple, and sent him running.”
“We did,” Alex replied, fidgeting with the bag that was slung over his shoulder. “Sadly that wasn’t enough. He cheated me out of my victory.”
Hephaestus narrowed his eyes and let slip a low growl. “Cheat, yes. Ares cheats often, as do others,” he said, returning to his work. “They’re all cheats. We should’ve known better.”
“I fight him again tomorrow morning,” Alex declared.
“We wish you the best,” the god flatly replied.
Alex stepped forward. “But I need your help.”
“We helped you once already,” Hephaestus replied. His face hardened and the blows from his hammer fell faster and heavier.
“I appreciate it to no end,” Alex said. “As you said before, we beat him in the arena. We can beat him again.”
Hephaestus grunted and smirked. “To what end? We waste our time fighting. We try, and he always escapes, always laughs at us.”
“I know,” said Alex, gritting his teeth and sharing the god’s frustration. “This stupid war should’ve never happened, but it did. It should’ve ended, but it didn’t. I know I can’t beat Ares—”
“This is supposed to give us confidence?” Hephaestus interrupted with a smirk.
“No,” Alex replied, shaking his head. “But I know how to get him to stop. All I need is your net.”
Hephaestus laughed heartily. “You think we’d give our prized possession so easily so that Ares can take it from you?”
Alex backed, hands up. “No, you’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “I’m not going to give him your net. I’m going to take him down with it.”
Hephaestus shook his head. “No, good friend, he’ll take it from you as he took Hades’ scepter.”
“I swear by the River Styx he’ll do no such thing,” Alex said, hopeful that the oath would sway the god’s mind.
Hephaestus motioned to the countless weapons and shields that hung on the walls. “You may use anything else,” he said, returning to his work. “We must have our net. We must have it to catch them again when the time is right. We cannot make another.”
Alex pulled the bag off his shoulder and took out the recently purchased laptop from inside. “Hephaestus,” he said, waiting until he had the god’s attention before going on. “Hear me out before you say no.”
Hephaestus put down his hammer. “What is that?”
“A laptop,” Alex said, flipping it open and booting it up. “I downloaded some movies off the Internet. Movies of Ares fighting Athena.”
The look on Hephaestus’s face changed from skeptical to inquisitive. He walked over and inspected the laptop like any master craftsman would marveling at something new. “Tell us plainly what you mean.”
“People can make movies with things called cameras,” Alex explained. With a few taps of the touchpad, he opened one of the movies he had downloaded for Hephaestus to see. It was a video Alex had found that one of his old neighbors had made when Athena and Ares decided to duke it out in front of his former home. The audio was crap and filled with expletives, and some of the shots were ruined by someone swinging the camera wildly, but it still managed to faithfully capture most of the fight.
“Cameras record events as they happen,” Alex explained. “That way people can come back later and see what happened.”
Hephaestus smiled like a father proud of his children. “What fine smiths you mortals have become to produce such a thing,”
Alex hit the replay button once the video finished. “I’ve studied this countless times and learned a few things about Ares,” Alex said. He watched the timer at the bottom of the screen, and when it reached 0:42, he paused the video. “This is the second time Ares throws a car at Athena. At first glance, it looks like a good throw, but he always throws a little right of center. Always. The first throw was the same, but it’s harder to see thanks to the terrible camera angle.”
Hephaestus didn’t immediately reply, and Alex resumed the movie until another thirty seconds had passed at which point he stopped it again. This time, instead of a frame displaying an airborne auto, the screen showed Athena deftly spinning out of one of Ares’ holds. “This is Athena getting away, obviously,” Alex said. “Ares likes to grab the forearms and pull in close. I imagine he likes to be up close as he pummels his victim.”
“Athena fights better than we do,” Hephaestus said.
“She does,” Alex acknowledged. He then moved the play bar up a few minutes to where Ares and Athena wrestled on the ground, covered in the remains of Alex’s house. “But I’m not about to fight Ares hand to hand,” he said. “This is after they nuked my house, my fish…my piano. You can see Athena is trying to get out of her brother’s hold on the ground, but she’s struggling a lot at this point.”
“Which means what?”
“It means Ares knows he excels when the fight hits the ground,” Alex explained. “If the fight lasts long enough, he’ll want to play to that strength and get things on the ground as quickly as possible.”
“Knowing he’ll probably charge is one thing, knowing when he will is something else.”
“True,” said Alex. He backed the movie up about twenty seconds. “But look what happens when Athena turns her back on him right before they obliterate my house,” he said as the video played. “It takes a few seconds, but what she does really pisses him off. I know you can’t see it well, but I was there. He turned crimson right before he charged. I don’t think he could control himself if his life depended on it at that point.”
Alex checked his watch. “I’m out of time,” he said. “I’ve got to get back soon, and I’ve still got to get to the River Acheron. Please, we could easily be here another hour discussing everything. Lend me your net. I can get him to run right into it, thus defeating him, ending this war, and regaining my bride.”
When Hephaestus hesitated, Alex quickly added, “I’ll even have him promise to leave your wife alone.”
The god cracked a brief grin. “We appreciate your friendship,” he said. “But even if you could end his lies, what would it matter? She still sneaks about. She still takes advantage of us when our back is turned. No, good friend, ridding us of Ares does not solve our problem. It does not save the marriage.”
“Then what would?” asked Alex.
Hephaestus grunted. “Don’t pretend you can fix such things. We’ve tried for eons, but they are so elusive now. How can we confront her lies without proof? And if we cannot confront those lies, how will we ever fix that which is broken? How can we convince the others that they are still sneaking off behind our back?”
Alex chuckled, then immediately straightened, looking mortified at his behavior. “Sorry,” he said, hoping he didn’t have to dodge a hammer. “But if all you need is a way to keep an eye on her, take my laptop. We can put some webcams around and voila! You’ll not only see what’s going on, but have proof of it, too.”
“Won’t she see these cameras?”
“No,” he said. “They’re super tiny now. And you can always disguise them as anything you want and place them anywhere you need. Play to her vanity if you must and give her one as a gift.”
The god sucked in a long, slow breath, and smiled. “This could work.”
“It will work!”
“Then in exchange for your laptop and help getting cameras, and most of all for being a good friend and keeping your word and your desire to help, we will loan you our net.”
“Thank you!” Alex said, grabbing the god’s hand and shaking it. “You’ve no idea how appreciative I am.”
“And you have no idea what we will do to you if it’s lost,” said Hephaestus. “Hades might not be able to make chains for his wheel, but we can. We can make a great number of things that can tear flesh and sanity with ease.”
The God of Smiths limped away and plucked the net from the wall. A brief twist of its links turned it invisible. “Do like this and it fades from sight,” he said. “Twist back or catch your prey and all can see its golden links. My net will close on whatever you cast it upon, and it will only release when you desire it to.”
Alex took the net from Hephaestus, noting it was far lighter than he had expected. “Thank you again, Hephaestus. The next time you see me, I’ll return your net and give my eternal thanks once more.”