#godspend

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“Fine. Bring the godspend, if you like,” Ava snapped, one eye on the fast-darkening sky, the other on the child--plopped in the dirt, fingers crammed in his mouth, ignorant to the sentence of his blood.

Godsend Mission 3: 3 Heads, 3 Missions,  1Crisis

One of Hermes' informants has revealed the location of a powerful asset in this war against the Shades. The legendary beast Cerberus had been found in Istanbul. Hermes contacted Cerberus to inform him that his team was coming by. All three personalities of Cerberus played good hosts as Phillip laid out the plan, with his microphone off.

"So you see, if you join the side of HERO, you can be partially responsible for ensuring that Hades never returns." All three personalities of cerberus confer, and agree to join.

"However, we must make one condition to our membership. This young man who has been serving you drinks is the Oracle and must be protected."

"We'll do so. And if he has a high-enough Fusion Rating, he can wear the Spartan Armor as well."  After an all too brief training session, Cerberus and His Oracle went to Centralia, PA. to engage a monster in the mineshaft. This Destan was made up of the bones of the dead miners and their gear.  Cerberus activated the Spartan Armor with the Codephrase "Olympus Ruo!" and went into action. While the Oracle kept Cerberus covered with fire from his Sig Sauer, they very quickly dispatched the creature and the minions it tried to create. When they had successfully decapitated the Destan, they claimed another Hephaestus shard. Brooke and Rhiannon deployed to Las Vegas, where the first enemy they had to face was a creature made of all the coins from the slot machines on the strip. To make matters worse, purple lotus flowers were falling from the sky and wherever their shadows fell, tarpits sprung up.

With Brooke in the Pharaoh suit, and Rhiannon providing fire from a lamppost, they managed to push the coin Destan into one of the tarpits, where Brooke finished it off with a Pharaonic Beam to the head. Finally, they had found another Egyptian power, a shard belonging to Horus.

Masami and Freya were deployed to the wreck site for the Edward Fitzgerald, and found themselves facing a Destan made of a sentient whirlpool. Freya has the backing of a full team now, and they use the fire-fighting boat they had been loaned to put the freeze on the monster. However, when Freya's timer counted down past the 3 minute time limit, she performed the day's third decapitation, coming back with a shard of Susanoo.

After the mission, Freya had to spend three hours in decontamination, and with nothing but time, she listened from inside the chamber as Rhiannon explained her history.

"So, I have no real memories of my parents. Basically, they gave me up once I started showing signs of being, well, a genius. There were other reasons, I'm sure, but that's the big one. "

"The second foster home, I was the first child the woman had, and the last. She wasn't cut out to care for a child, let alone one as unique as me, but wasn't one to admit it. She, well..."

"It's alright, Rhiannon. Say what you're comfortable with." Freya says.

Rhiannon shakes her head. "It's not you, I promise." She takes a deep breath. "She locked me in the closet when she didn't need me."

"That's terrible. I can only imagine how you felt." Freya sympathizes.

"At a later time, Rhiannon, I should tell you what became of the other children from your first foster home. Nothing bad, mind you. Just so you know." Hermes says absentmindedly.

Rhiannon shrugs. "Well, she was caught when the foster care system did a random check and caught her, and I was moved to another foster home. This one was a lot like the first, and ended similarly, as did the fourth."

Rhiannon's bitter smile returns, with a glance at Hermes. "The fifth home, well, that's where things get interesting."

"Abductions, blood sacrifices, clowns... I remember." Hermes nods as he adjusts the pressure in the decontamination unit.

"No, that's six.Five is just the sacrifice."  Rhiannon remembers that Freya and Masami will have no idea what she is talking about. "Right...My foster mother turned out to be a witch who tried to sacrifice me to meet the Hesperides. She met Hermes instead."

"But, yeah, the Greek gods sort of have issues with human sacrifice, so you can guess how that ended." Rhiannon rolls her eyes.

"In an extremely peaceful, no blood on the walls, way?" Freya ventures sarcastically.

"No blood that could be seen without a blacklight..." Hermes answers.

"Did you raise her, Hermes?" Freya asks, flipping through the dog-eared pages of a cookbook she's been provided.

"Yes. I did try."

"You did a fine job. And it's not like Dad didn't help."

Hermes looks at the clock on the Decon Chamber. "Ten more minutes to go, Freya. But I'll still have to sideline you next mission."

"What does that mean? Do I support them from the base or what?" Freya responds.

"You go with them. You provide covering fire. And when they seem to be getting too deep into the divine power, it's your job to yell in their ears and physically remove the belt from their hands." Hermes answers.

Rhiannon continues, telling the story of how she was almost kidnapped by clowns at her ninth birthday, and how Hermes and her current guardian General Thomas Stafford saved her.

"3.2.1. You're clear, Freya. Just drink this nutrient shake and stay away from fatty foods for the next five hours." Hermes helps Freya out of the decon chamber. At this moment, every light in the base dims.

"Rhiannon, we need you up at Teleport Command. Something just came through." comes the voice over the PA. Rhiannon rushes up, finding a badly burned and naked Loki on the teleport pad.

"All the godlings I was caring for were captured, save Ares." Rhiannon takes Loki to the medical ward, and passes Phillip on his way to Bleedzone Tracking. When Phillip can't figure out all the sudden bleed zones, he calls up Rhiannon, who with a roll of 2x7 and 2x6, she's able to figure out a pattern. Several schools just like Loki's have been hit, and according to the pattern, they need to deploy to a school in Hapsburg to rescue the godlings there. While there are only two, the HERO teams don't want the shades getting their hands on Hestia and Monkey.

As they head out, Loki gives Freya a necklace worn by Ares to help track him down.

Very quickly, the teams are deployed to the school, where it starts raining teeth. Dragon Teeth. Rhiannon and Phillip attempt to catch as many as possible before they hit the ground, while Masami soon finds himself surrounded by skeletal warriors. They all beat a hasty retreat into the school to find that the entire hall was overrun with rainforest flora. The party split up, with Masami headed for the cafeteria, and Phillip and Rhiannon going to the gymnasium. Inside the gym, they found a kindergartener hanging by one leg off the long rope, throwing dodgeballs down at the skeletons beneath him. After clearing the creatures out, Phillip slapped a teleport tracker on the back of Monkey's neck to send him safely back to HERO.

Masami, having taken some time to get something to eat spots one of the kids under a nearby table. He gets down on his knees to talk with the kid, but manages to roll 3x9 on Sense and Perception to notice the terrified stare of the kid. "Let me guess. There's something big and scary behind me, right?" the kid nods and Masami slowly turns to face a banshee which screams to knock him through a wall. While he does go through the wall, it doesn't do any damage because someone on the other side has made the wall insubstantial. As he passes through the wall, someone went through the other side to protect the child. Masami could hear the banshee screaming in pain. Once again the wall becomes ghostly as his strange helper emerged. By the fox ears, he could tell she was a Kitsune.

"My name's Yuki, and I'm one of the guardians of the children here. I don't want them falling into wicked hands."

"Well, we can always use more allies. Come with us back to the base."

"Of course." Phillip and Rhiannon enter the greenhouse to find themselves confronted by an eight-foot tall creature made of vines. Rhiannon realizes that there has to be a humanoid pilot of the monstrosity, and she appeals with charm and persuasion to Hestia to come out of the creature. However, once the young Hestia exits, some powerful force takes control of her plant creature. Phillip moves between the creature and Hestia, repelling it with the force of his transformation. He attaches the Set shard to the armor, and grabs the creature to teleport it between the dimensions. He piledrives the creature from 80 feet up into the World Islands.

Hestia and Monkey are safely transported to HERO, where Yuki is given the Viking suit to test. During this time, Phillip ends up in Decon.

Meanwhile, Cerberus and the Oracle are deployed to track down Ares. They find him in Gettysburg, eating his twenty-eight plate of pancakes. After a few unsuccessful attempts to convince Ares, Cerberus finally gets him to commit his last shard to the war effort. And just in time.

Outside, an undead Caligula is leading his troops through the city. Masami in the Samurai armor, Cerberus in Spartan, Yuki in Viking and Brooke in the Pharoah armor engage the army of the undead, which after a few minutes forms into a giant undead monster, which is piloted by a person very familiar to Cerberus. Hades.

"Everyone get clear. This is going to get ugly." All the others flee, and Cerberus creates a massive mushroom cloud of lightning and miasma that instantly wipes out the undead. Hades however, is spirited away for future use. The day's activity ends with everyone in Hermes' office.

"Bad news and worse news. The Oracle just told me what the Shades are doing with the Godlings. They're taking skin samples to create homonculi so they don't have to give their shards to the Destans. It's going to get harder to find god shards now. The worse news is that we might not find the pieces for complete god armors. However, there is a ray of hope. We may be able to construct armors for specific divine domains. With one of Susanoo and two of Poseidon, I could probably design a Water Domain mode that will work across all the armors. I'll still need you to find shards of Njord and Sobek to make it happen."