[indent][b][u]December 25th, 0049 Hours
Mount Olympus[/u][/b][/indent]

[color=silver]”IT’S A [B]STRAAAAANGE[/B] TIME INDEED WHEN MY ESTRANGED [B]LEEEETLE[/B] BROTHER CALLS ME, [B]THE CREAM OF THE TITANIC CROP,[/B] TO OLYMPUS!”[/color] 

A strained, almost pained sound escaped Ted’s throat as he withered slightly his rhinestone-clad brother’s flamboyant… [i]hamming.[/i]

[color=maroon]”Laz…”[/color]

[color=silver]”...AND THEN HE SHOWS UP WITH A [B]LITTLE GIRL WEARING HIS COLOURS[/B], LIKE THEY’RE ON SOME KINDA [B]BASEBALL TEAM.[/B]”[/color] The giant a of a man continued unabated, much to the dismay of any eardrum present [color=silver]”IT RAISES SOME… [B]QUESTIONS...[/B]”[/color]

[color=maroon][b]”Laz.”[/b][/color] The shorter man began again, a hint irritation starting to snake his way into his voice, but stopped when he was cut off again by more of his brother’s… loud… [i]flexing...[/i]

[color=silver]”MAKES THE CREAM OF THE CROP ASK WHAT YOU’VE BEEN UP TO THESE PAST FE-”[/color]

[color=maroon]”Laz, wrestling’s fake. Macho Man’s dead and you do a terrible impression of him.”[/color] The more modestly-dressed Titan finally snapped, slapping the back of his hand against the palm of his other as he did so [color=maroon]”Now can you cut the shit? We kinda got a world to save here.”[/color]

For a moment, the apparently older Titan just stood there in silence and [i]pouted[/i]. Before finally snapping his fingers and disappearing in a flash of light (and no small amount of grumbling) and being replaced by a… slightly overweight version of the same man in slacks, a white dress-shirt and a Walmart apron.   

[color=silver]”Grampa’s balls; Thousands of years later and you’re still a hardass.”[/color] 

[color=maroon]”Don’t bring Grampa’s Balls into it. That’s a can o’ worms I’d rather not open in front of the kid.”[/color]

Karen had watched all of this in complete silence, her face doing its level best to remain neutral throughout the entire altercation between the two brothers. This…wasn’t exactly how she had expected a pair of ancient [i]Gods[/i] to behave. If she wasn’t currently wearing physical proof of one’s power, she would even question if they were the real deal.

Pretending she had heard nothing of testicles, she turned her attention to the world they had just entered. They were standing on a vast, circular platform that was at the base of a equally monumental set of stairs leading to what could only be described as a [url=https://i.imgur.com/tFYmi7f.jpg]city of pure, radiant gold.[/url] 

She had never felt so tiny and insignificant before...and perhaps that was the entire point.

[color=orchid]”So...whoever is behind this is in that city? I guess we have a lot stairs to climb,”[/color] she noted, remembering that she couldn’t fly like this.

Turning to Karen and following her eyes up the vast staircase towards the familiar, golden city there was a moment of pause in Ted’s mind as he actually caught sight of Olympus for the first time in… well, a long time. As familiar as it seemed, something was clearly off; The gentle, comforting and warm winds he remembered about this place were curiously absent and what used to be a vast blanket of the cosmos covering the night’s sky had seemingly been… [i]removed[/i].

There also used to be a vast, shining lake here. Floating in the ether and surrounding this platform, a work of Poseidon’s whimsy. He remembered taking a young Athena down here to fish sometimes…

And carrying her back up those stairs on his back when she inevitably fell asleep after prying him endlessly for old war stories her dad never told her instead of actually [i]trying to catch a fish.[/i]

The ancient abruptly crushed that train of thought before it could pick up momentum. He didn’t have time to reminisce.

[color=maroon]”It’s probably for the best we don’t rush anyway.”[/color] Ted stated coldly, stepping towards the stairs with a bit more drive than he’d shown previously [color=maroon]”Whoever’s up there, you can bet they know we’re here now and’ve got a few surprises in store for us.”[/color]   

Casting a glance over his shoulder towards the armoured blond, he did manage a small grin, despite his current state of mind.

[color=maroon]”Ya ready, Kiddo?”[/color]

Karen nodded once in response, and drew a deep breath. She had done a great many things this past year, but assaulting the realm of the Gods surely topped any of them by a large margin. As she gazed up at the almost endless set of stairs before them, she could already see the golden steps in the distance becoming darker, a legion of...something approaching them.

Placing one foot forward, she started on her journey to ascend to the throne of Olympus and topple whomever was sitting upon it. Step after step they drew closer to the onslaught approaching them, her hands flexing gently at her side.

These were  unfamiliar to her, flames instead of lightning. She wasn’t as strong, wasn’t as durable, wasn’t as fast… and she couldn’t fly. Still, she felt confident that she could probably handle the oncoming tide of--were those [i]ants?[/i] Right then, ants. She could deal with them, since she had her two newest allies fighting beside her now. In any case, she didn’t really have a choice: if she failed here, then it would spell the end of the world.

This was her life now.

[color=orchid]”Uh-oh,”[/color] Karen gasped, noting the flash or orchid up ahead. Instinctively leaping into the air, she narrowly avoided countless streams of raw arcane energy that scorched the otherwise sweet-smelling air around her.

Whatever these creatures were, they weren’t swinging around swords and axes.

[color=silver]”Your kid’s got good instincts”[/color] The older Titan mused, absolutely casual even in the face of the vast horde of Myrmidons before them and the immense volley of arcane firepower screaming through the air towards where they stood.

[color=maroon]”Not my kid, Laz.”[/color] Ted replied calmly as he removed a cigar from his jacket pocket and lit it off a small flame that spouted from his thumb. Eliciting an indignant snort from his brother.

[color=silver]”Riiiiiight…”[/color] He replied with all the sarcasm his massive frame could muster as he raised his hands before him [color=silver]”Let’s be honest here, Brother, they’re [i]all[/i] your kids.”[/color]

And without another word, the elder Titan slammed his hands together with colossal force, creating a thunderous shockwave that shot forward toward the rain of arcane death and ignited the whole volley in a massive explosion before it could reach it’s intended target. The younger taking this opportunity to take a long drag of his cigar before responding the Ant-Men’s little welcoming gift by exhaling a massive column of flame that raced forward, seemingly screaming with the sound it made as it set the very air around it alight and quickly bore down upon Myrmidons without even an iota of mercy or pity.

In retrospect, the Myrmidons [i]probably[/i] weren’t expecting to be fighting anything other than people in tights and capes today. And they’d be paying for [i]that[/i] oversight with interest.

Karen winced, watching him burn the Myrmidons to ash without a second thought. It made her quite hesitant to use her new powers, for one thing. While she had managed to gain a fairly solid grasp on how much  power to put behind her magic, she had never thought to employ [i]fire[/i] against any of her foes.

How did one hold back with fire, exactly?

Still, they seemed to be handling things pretty well as it was, and so she merely busied herself with avoiding the return fire from any surviving ant-men. Hopefully, they would make it to the throne room in relatively short order, so they could stop all of this bloodshed.

[color=maroon][b]”KAREN!”[/b][/color] Ted snapped, his eyes locked onto the girl and reading the wealth of expressions that played across her face, even as he backhanded a trio of Antmen off the staircase and hurtling into the abyss below (on fire, of course) [color=maroon]”They’re automatons! [i]Meat-robots![/i] You don’t have to hold back!”[/color]

Karen landed on the stairs after dodging the latest round of fire from the creatures, her eyes darting to the titan in surprise. [color=orchid]”Oh, r-really?”[/color]

She...supposed that made some sense, given that they were [i]ants[/i] and all, but she hadn’t wanted to assume anything based on appearances alone. Still, that made things much easier. She could probably stand to experiment with her new powers before things [i]really[/i] became difficult.

Extending her hands outwards to the seemingly endless waves, she drew upon the impossibly rich laylines flowing through Olympus, before expelling that power through her hands in the form of searing, blue flames. While not as overwhelmingly powerful as Ted’s had been, they nevertheless managed to consume their fair share of ant-men.

[color=orchid]”Holy sauceballs,”[/color] Karen muttered in amazement, glancing down at her hands.

Even though she was used to having even [i]more[/i] power than this, it still felt really...well, [i]different.[/i] She wasn’t Lady Arcana right now. She was just Karen Hernandez, and this was far more power than her very human body had [i]ever[/i] felt coursing through it.

[color=maroon]”’Atta girl!”[/color] Ted shouted as Karen scythed away a good number of their foes with her own blue flames, something akin to pride making it’s way across his features in the form of a grin, before he turned and erased another advancing column of their insectoid attackers with a quick wave of his arm and another gout of flame.

[color=silver]”Right, [i]definitely not your kid.[/i]”[/color] Laz managed to muse [i]just[/i] loud enough for his brother to hear as he shot past him to take advantage of the window he’d opened the Myrmidon lines to charge into the thick of them, sliding on his knees (lubricated along the way with goopy bits of Ant-men) and making another colossal clap upward, sending another platoon skyward.

[color=maroon][b]”Shut up, Laz.”[/b][/color] Came the fire-god’s expected reply just before he shot his hand upward and ignited the now airborne Bug-Gunners in another massive fireball. To which he was met with more snickering from his bearded brother.

[color=silver]”When was the last time we got together like this, anyhow?”[/color] Laz finally inquired, deciding to give his brother a rest from all the teasing as he grabbed two of his attackers by the throat and spinning like a top, sending their fellows flying off the staircase, some of them in a semi-liquid state.

[color=maroon]”I wanna say… Egypt? With those ‘Sea Peoples’ or whatever they were called?”[/color] Ted replied unsuredly, hopping over the gap his brother had made in a single bound and firing another column of flame forward as he landed.

[color=silver]”Oh, yeah! the Atlantean death-cult with the doomsday weapon!”[/color] Laz laughed a little as he charged passed his brother, arms outstretched at his sides and knocking scores of them down like messy bowling pins [color=silver]”Grampa’s Balls, that was [i]a while ago.[/i]”[/color] 

[color=maroon]”What’d I tell ya about Grampa’s balls?”[/color]

[color=silver]”Ha!”[/color]  

Shaking his head a bit at that, and almost, in some people’s eyes, looking like he might be [i]enjoying[/i] having his brother around in spite of all his grumbling, Ted took a minute to stop and assess the situation. There was… a [i]lot[/i] of these things. And if their Terrific Trio kept the leisurely pace they were going through this horde, Karen’d be dead of starvation and her bones turned to dust by the time they got to the top.

Honestly, he’d been holding quite a bit through this whole picnic, if only because he didn’t want to give any more clues about his identity to whoever was sitting up in Olympus right now… buuuuut, the time for subtlety had passed them somewhere around the time this encounter took long enough for the topics of Atlantean Death-Cults and [i]Grampa’s Balls[/i] to come up again.

Letting out a sharp exhale, the scarred Titan stepped forward, in front of Karen and his brother as he rolled up his sleeves.

[color=maroon]”Hey, Kid. Wanna see something cool?”[/color] He asked with a glance back towards the Usually-Wizard, the olive skin on his arms breaking and flaking away, revealing blackened flesh broken by cracks and veins of glowing orange.   

Karen blinked at him in surprise for a moment, but quickly offered him a beaming grin. [color=orchid]”Always!”[/color]

Clicking his tongue in approval at her enthusiasm, Ted brought his now ember-like arms together… before suddenly snapping them apart as they suddenly burst into white, wreathing flame.

If the heat of his fire had made the air around it scream as it burned before, now it was [i]absolutely shrieking.[/i] 

Without any further preamble, snappy one-liners or cutting remarks, the paradoxically short Titan shot his arms forward, unleashing a column of flame that dwarfed all others before it… and [i]didn’t stop[/i], snaking it’s way up the vast golden staircase before them and revealing [i]just how many more Ant-men had been waiting for them,[/i] hidden by the lack of light from the empty night sky, even as it quickly consumed them as it made it’s way all the way to the top where it abruptly slammed into some distant structure in the Home of the Gods. 

To put it very simply, the way was now clear.

But if there’d been any doubt by those inside about who was knocking at the door, well, it had been [i]thoroughly[/i] evaporated now. 

Calmly blowing the residual steam off his ember-like arms, before his “normal” tanned flesh grew back over them, Ted cast a glance back towards his teammates.

[color=maroon]”So… shall we?”[/color]

If he was hoping for an astonished reaction on Karen’s part, then he would get it. For what seemed like an entire minute, she simply stared at the now sterilized pathway ahead of them in blank amazement. Finally, she was able to find her voice.

[color=orchid]”...That was brilliant!”[/color] She exclaimed, staring up at Ted with an open grin. [color=orchid]”I’ll bet you can handle whoever is behind this all on your own at this rate!”[/color]

[color=maroon]”C’mon Kid, don’t make an old man blush.”[/color] Ted snorted as he started forward again [color=maroon]”’Sides, whatever’s up there, it dethroned an entire [i]Pantheon.[/i] [i][b]This is not going to be fun.[/b][/i] ”[/color]