7 - Honest Intentions

When Pain, Panic and Ganymede returned to Hades' derelict shrine, it was to a far more amicable god.

"There's my favourite new hire! How was the old bag? Any good news?" Throwing open his arms, a great, big smile warped his face.

Before Ganymede could take a breath, Hades had an arm hooked around his shoulders and was dragging him into the shadows of the shrine's façade. Smoke followed, pluming up and around them in a slow, triumphant roll.

"She- well, not exactly," Ganymede began with a teeth-filled wince. With a wave of his hand, Hades swept aside the whole unnecessary issue of unreliable fortune-tellers.

"Ah, whatever. It was a good call - you win some, you lose some." Hades slunk from one side of Ganymede's shoulders to the other. "So it turns out Zeus revealed his hand a little too early - I just got off a call and you are, forgive the pun, hot freakin' property."

Ganymede rounded on him in panic.

"Ab-ab-ab," Hades waggled his finger. "Don't worry, don't worry, you're far more use to me as a Sword of Damocles than any sort of trade. You see..."

He pulled back. Ganymede's head followed as he made a slow circle around him. "If Zeus tries to oh, for example, take the Underworld in an act of war, take my throne, and take my liver out via eagle every night for the rest of all eternity-"

"Please don't say 'eagle'."

"You could just trot on over to Wonderboy and let him know what his dear old dad is really like. Don't worry, I'd call you a cab."

"Uh-huh..."

"So long as you're under my roof, kid," Hades said, his grin stretching into a fanged and savage zipper, "I'm invincible." Then, slowly, Ganymede's grin stretched too.

"And that means I'm invincible too, right?"

Hades clapped his hand against Ganymede's back hard enough to make him stumble. "That's the spirit! You know, I've been thinking lately that what we need in the Underworld right now is a little more positivity! Now come on, boys!" With a great big gesture and all the flourish of a conductor, he summoned a portal back down to the Underworld. "Let's go home!"

Hades seemed to jog on the spot beneath his robes as his three minions joined him in the central throne room. "Look lively, boys!" Then, to Ganymede, "You ready for your big debut?" He summoned his mirror and jabbed his fingers repeatedly at a patch of floor. Ganymede stood where he was told.

"Big smiles, kid!" Hades drew his fingers to the corners of his big, toothy mouth. "The camera loves you!" Panelling a rectangle between two outstretched hands, he exuded a fizzing energy that made Pain and Panic nervous - not because this mood was dangerous, but because the greater the height he fell from, the worse the crash tended to be.

Ganymede wheeled his hand at Hades' fake camera lens like a politician and gave a mock bow. "Oh divine," Hades played along, "Just astonishing. You've got what it takes, kid. You'll have 'em eating out of your hands."

Ganymede paused in the middle of a racket-swing in a photogenic game of imaginary tennis. "Yeah," he said, "What do you want me to say?"

"Ah, leave the talking to me," Hades replied. "All you gotta do is make it clear that you're here, you're happy, and you're sticking around. If Zeus thinks you've been kidnapped he might send a rescue party."

"Wonderbread?"

Hades pulled a face. "That's the guy."

The mirror buzzed to life. Hades gasped. "Places, everyone! Places!" Then his hands clamped down on Ganymede's shoulders and the smell of cold granite rolled over him.

Zeus flashed onto the screen, standing before his throne in an empty plaza, his face a mask of implacable but wounded dignity. It shattered the moment his eyes landed on Ganymede.

"Look who I found!" Hades sang. Zeus stared at the reanimated corpse of his old cup-bearer sneering out of the darkness. That full and heart-shaped face seemed crueller now - maybe because his pallid skin seemed to sink his eyes deep into his skull, maybe because his look of disgust ran even deeper than Hades'. His brother must have been a terrible influence.

He brought forth a kindly, patient tone. "Ganymede! Thank goodness we found you! Not to worry, lad," as he spoke he watched the sneer on the boy's face deepen, "We'll get you out."

The wrenching, boiling, sinking twist in Ganymede's stomach momentarily silenced him, his knuckles writhing under his skin, but he found a growl deep in the recesses of his throat. "I'm fine right here, thanks."

Anger lighting up his eyes, Zeus turned to Hades. His brother's face was a mask of delight.

"Yeah... turns out the kid's real good at balancing a check-book," Hades said, so happy that he could barely get the words past his grin, "so I offered him some gainful employment."

Zeus lunged for the mirror like a lion at the bars of a cage. Ganymede's stomach lurched away in equal measure and he backed into Hades' smoke. The god of the dead allowed it, black tendrils curling around his ankles, and he leaned over his shoulder to add, "Besides... he, uh, doesn't seem to like you very much."

The atmosphere around them bowed to Zeus' outrage as he loomed towards the mirror. And yet, Hades remained unmoving, blinking sweetly at the mirror as the apathy of the Underworld dismissed Olympus' distant power. The pressure in Ganymede's chest cracked open and his breath returned. A vicious smile wobbled across his face.

"What's your offer, Hades?" growled the king of the gods.

"The kid's not on the table," he said shortly, "But let's just say..." He leant around Ganymede and templed his fingertips together, "I promise not to tell anyone why I've got him and why he's here, so long as you keep your business out of my Underworld." The higher Zeus' rage boiled, the more a gleeful Schadenfreude widened Ganymede's eyes. "That means no thunderbolts in my bed, no armies at my gates, and no big, wooden horses loitering outside my walls - I'm not falling for it. Nobody ever falls for it."

"What d'you say?" Ganymede said, and both Olympians looked down at him in surprise. "We got a deal?"

Zeus tried gentleness. "You don't have to do this, lad..."

A wicked laugh broke from Ganymede's chest. "Oh?" He reared at the waist like a viper to look up at Hades, jabbing a thumb towards the mirror. "Did you catch that?"

Hades' joy, which had been snowballing since the moment this negotiation had begun, made him more than happy to announce, "I think I just heard a guy declaring he was all out of options!"

Zeus tried to interject. "But Hades-!"

"Pleasure doing business with you!" Hades crowed. "Buh-bye, Zeus-y!"

He cut the feed and swept back as the mirror vanished. "That was just-!" he kissed his fingers, "Mwah! Perfect! What a performance!" Pain and Panic bounced over to join them.

Ganymede tried to move his body, his hands shaking. "No problem," he croaked. It took effort to tuck a twist of hair behind his ear, not just because his fingers were shaking too much to control, but because each arm felt as though it were being pinned down by a stone gauntlet.

Spinning around in a whirl of smoke, throwing his hands wide with cheer, Hades continued, "You're some meal-ticket! Theeere, you see?" He stood triumphant. "We didn't even need your stupid cup!"

Ganymede's breath snapped shut, his fingers still against his scalp as his limbs curled in on themselves like a dying spider's. The imps came skidding to a halt at his feet. "The cup," he said.

Hades paused his one-man dance. "Say what now?"

"Zeus doesn't have the cup!" Ganymede stumbled around to face him, throwing all of his weight into flinging his heavy hands into the air. "He can't!" His voice broke at its highest point as he advanced on Hades, desperate to make him see as his insides shook with renewed fear.

But Hades needed no convincing - the logic dawned over his face immediately. Ganymede's own opened with shock, and suddenly he could breathe again.

"If he did..." the god began, his eyes widening, "he wouldn't need you."

Ganymede matched him thought-for-thought, relief and terror smashing into each other with every beat of his heart. "Because he could have destroyed the evidence!"

Pain and Panic sighed as Hades and Ganymede cried in unison;

"We've gotta find it!"

"Ladies! Gentlemen! Please!" Zeus' patristic voice boomed over the crowd. "You'll all have your voices heard!"

The gods and goddesses of Olympus called over one another in their impatience; Athena's voice shouting over Apollo, Hestia shaking her fist over Dionysus' head as Hephaestus - Zeus' old, reliable ally, bellowed unheeded for them all to calm down. The clouds around them thinned to rags as their jostling bodies frayed the vapours apart. Hermes fluttered at the front, buffeted by the shoving of their bodies.

Hera stepped out from Zeus' shadow and, with pinched finger and thumb, drew a clean line through the air. Immediately, silence. Her glittering veils came to a rest at her husband's side and the royal family of Olympus stood before their subjects, separated from the mob by barely half a foot of marble platform.

With quiet sorrow, Hera opened her arms and invited them to speak; "One at a time, please." Looking between themselves, their comments rolled out one-by-one.

"Hades attacked Olympus!"

"How can you let him get away with this?!"

"Our honour demands retribution!"

Zeus held out his hands, grieved by their suffering. "Yes, Athena, of course! Of course. This is just all so unprecedented - you must understand that this is something to be handled carefully!"

"He may be your brother," Athena's deep voice carried the sentiments of all the gods on its back, "But he has made himself our enemy! He has declared war!"

Hermes sank nervously as the crowd began to roil again. Glancing up, clutching tight to his harp, his eyes found Hera behind his dark glasses. Her chin raised, her eyes lowered, she stood as still and as dignified as a caryatid, carrying the weight of the gods on the top of her head.

"Rest assured, Hades won't get away with this!" Zeus announced, "But who would fight in a war between the gods? How many people would suffer?"

"How many suffered thanks to the Titans? We owe them retribution!"

"We must think with cool heads!" Zeus's voice rose, "Not with emotion!"

"He tried to kill your son!" cried Athena.

Hera's eyes flew open. The crowd's tumult fell dead at her feet. Athena doffed her helmet instantly.

The clouds darkened, rumbles of thunder building to a crash. Lightning lit them up from within, first on the crowd's left, then on their right. The pink pillars that marked the end of the platform twisted like turrets of smoke and rose up behind him, arching and twisting until the sky itself had Zeus flanked by the mirage of some monstrous beast, its eyes black but for flashes of thunderbolts slicing through its body.

"Enough!" he roared. "You want justice?! I'll give you justice! But!" His raised fist demanded silence, his voice booming through the mountain. "You leave Hercules out of this! If anyone drags my son into this mess, they'll be taking my brother's place down there! Do you all understand?!"

Bitter cheers sounded throughout Olympus alongside the clanging of swords and shields. Zeus stood triumphant on his platform, a statue of victory, but his face held no enthusiasm and his eyes no warmth. A brush of silk slipped past as he glared into his own stone-faced musing - his wife drifted off the stage and vanished.

"Hermes!" Zeus called. Hermes zipped to his elbow, clutching his harp to his chest.

"Y-yes, your highness?" Zeus leaned in close, and though he spoke to his messenger his eyes remained on the gods preparing for battle.

"Get down to the Underworld," he said, his voice as low as the movement of the earth's plates. "Hades stole something of mine... and I want it back."