PC: Tama 💀

[resumed]

Comments

[resumed]

[ ... ]

I guess it's more like...other people still have law enforcement to keep them in line. We still have police and firefighters and everything. Our problems are a little more...unique?

[ law enforcement is for mortals. ]

[ballies]

[ she just tilts her head at him. ]

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[ he mimics the motion. ]

...even if there aren't newspaper archives here, there's probably a newsroom somewhere. Maybe there's information there?

[ DON'T JUST IGNORE WHAT YOU WERE SAYING. ]

[ballies]

... No, rewind a moment. Other people?

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Yeah. You know. [ uh... ] People who can't defend themselves?

[ballies]

...

Those are normally the people law enforcement is trying to protect. Normally. Some parts of it suck.

[resumed]

Right, which is what I mean. Other people rely on law enforcement for their safety. There isn't much they can do for people like us.

[ballies]

... there's the "people like us" again.

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[ ...hm... ]

Tama, if someone called the police because a manticore was chasing them, what do you think would happen?

[ballies]

... They'd probably think you were drunk. Or high?

[ excuse me, a manTICORE? ]

[resumed]

[ haha. ]

I was ten and he was posing as the vice principal of the military school I was at.

[ballies]

... Doesn't a manticore have the body of a lion?

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And the tail of a scorpion. [ yes. ]

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I'm almost impressed they hid that.

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Mortals can't see through the Mist, so he looked like a regular person to everyone else.

[ normally he wouldn't be as candid about it, but it's obvious to him tama is going to have questions. ]

[ballies]

[ mist…. ]

Yikes. You could be shaking hands with a manticore and not know it….

[resumed]

That's how it is for most mortals. All kinds of monsters and items appear differently than they do to people like us because it's what their minds can accept. The Mist makes it so that things like swords look like baseball bats. Or monstrous birds look like regular park pigeons.

[ballies]

So you just get a bunch of weird, unsolvable murders and it’s because literal mythology crawled out of the woodwork and went on a rampage?

[resumed]

Well no, we kind of are there to prevent people from dying in the first place as best as we can. And it's not like they crawled out of anywhere. They've sort of always been around. When the gods moved with civilization, so did everything else.

[ and so now it's a global thing. ]

[ballies]

… So, gods and mythological creatures stopped living on mountains and got wifi, and that made them everyone’s problem?

[resumed]

Mount Olympus is at the top of the Empire State Building. [ yeah. ] And we try not to really use technology because it makes it that much easier for monsters to track us. But otherwise yeah the gods have continued living and where there's gods there's monsters, other beings who keep trying to overthrow the gods and reclaim the world, and...the children of the gods.

[ballies]

… Of all the places in the world, they picked the USA to move to.

[ wild. ]

The gods certainly didn’t have any issue having kids in the stories, it doesn’t surprise me they haven’t stopped now either.

[resumed]

Yeah. Civilization went westward, and so did they. The Olympians stayed in New York, and the Romans are based in California. [ he tilts his head a little though, going back to briefly searching through book titles for anything maybe useful. ]

Most of them haven't stopped, but three of them have. There was a pact made so no more children could be sired after a certain point, and...well. Two of them broke that pact. Zeus broke it twice. But after that, there haven't been any other children from those three.

[ballies]

That’s their loss, I guess. [ says tama, Japanese AI. ] Although I guess the summers there might be a little better than the ones we get…? Just a little.

Oh, the… Zeus-Poseidon-Hades trio? Why’d the decide to stop having children? Or… decide and then fail step one.

[resumed]

[ no she's right. ]

Maybe. I wouldn't really have a good comparison to be honest.

[ but he nods. sure. is he surprised she knows that specific trio? not really. ]

Yes, them. It was a pact they'd made several years ago. The three of them had decided that because their children were too powerful they would make a vow on the Styx not to have any more kids. It was because of the Great Prophecy as well, once they heard the prophecy from the Oracle. The prophecy was about a child of the Big Three being responsible for the rise or fall of Olympus someday.

[ ... ]

As to why Zeus and Poseidon didn't keep their oath...they're gods. It's not exactly that surprising.