Return of the Hero 11 - Who He Was

Breakfast was a quiet affair. Getting out of the facility around the gate had been fairly simple, all things told. The guards had looked the other way despite their burning curiosity, and none of the equipment had registered Scathatch’s visit, thankfully. The twins then took him to a breakfast burrito truck on the way back to George's place, which was closer than Elizabeth's penthouse, and was also where he was going to tell them stories of his time in Heaven.

Lucas had inhaled his burrito, moaning with delight at the spicy chorizo, even despite how overly greasy it was. Some of the workers had recognized his siblings, which was partly why they didn’t interrogate him then and there.

"So," George said when they were all back in Elizabeth's car, questions burning him from within while Elizabeth drove through the empty, early morning streets, not heading into the city, but somewhere on the edge of town. "Who was that, exactly? Scathatch. Sounds like a cartoon character."

"I think I heard her name in an anime once," Elizabeth muttered.

"Liz, you watch anime?" Lucas perked up, and Liz, wisely, kept her mouth shut. He didn’t hold it against his sister, he didn’t care what she watched. But she was correct in assuming that any ammunition she gave him, would be ammunition he would use. Within reason. With a huff Lucas sat back, considering what to say.

"Well, I don't know much about the folklore around her, admittedly, but I can tell you about the pantheon she is most closely related to. I hesitate to call her a part of the pantheon, because I'm genuinely not sure she is. Pretty sure it's the Irish mythology? She's also what I would consider a B-rank existence. Trainer of heroes. Warrior woman. I only met her once when I coordinated with her for a battle." Lucas rambled a little, organizing his thoughts and what he knew of her in his head. He hadn’t expected to have to explain that particular pantheon.

"Really? It felt like there was some tension there. I know how you are with strong women," George teased. Lucas snorted.

"Nah, not even close. She’d sooner kill me. Anyways, the Tuatha De Dannan are the pantheon she tends to appear alongside. Morrigan, some other scary god-like beings are among them. Kind of. They’re also called the Aos Si, I think? They're...well, you can consider them to be like fairies. Not the cute ones, but the scary ones. A race of immortal people. But they're less mischievous tricksters, more dangerously polite. When dealing with them, always remain polite. Always. We shouldn't have to deal with them, that was the first time I'd sensed their presence in this world, but it's a good thing to know." He said. George and Elizabeth remained silent as they turned a corner, what looked like abandoned warehouses running down this new street. "Where are we, anyway?"

"We're almost there. You said you weren't one of the...what, the Tuatha De? Then who did you - I mean, what..." George said, clearly struggling to put his question into words. Lucas rubbed his chin thoughtfully, parsing out his meaning.

"Who did I hang out with? Who was my pantheon? Lots of people, really. My primary contact, or handler, I guess, was the Archangel Michael. Good guy. Very serious. Very powerful. Very scary. But a very dry sense of humor - the kind of sarcasm that was so deadpan, you weren't always sure if he was serious or not." Lucas smiled to himself, recalling meeting Michale for the first time. It had been right after he'd been summoned, appearing in the lofty halls of Heaven, all that power radiating from everywhere...the confusion...

And then Michel had shown up, his unrestrained presence bringing him to his knees almost instantly. He’d even shown his true form. Lucas frowned. "He was also a sadist."

"You mentioned Hercules," George said, as they turned into one of the warehouse lots, the entire place ringed by a large, metal wall topped with barbed wire. The gate was wrought iron, and inside, peering as best he could through the front windshield, Lucas could see what looked like a massive yard full of junk.

"Heracles. Not Hercules. Only call him that if you want to piss him off. Which I did. A lot. This is where you live, George?" he muttered, eyes furrowed as his brother got out of the car and messed with the gate long enough for him to realize that since he could fly, George probably never really used said gate. It also explained the helicopter pad-like construct on top of the warehouse.

Only when George got back in the car did he continue. "Heracles and the Olympian Gods were later in my career. I helped them repel an invasion of their lands by the Unspoken Ones, fought alongside them for a few centuries. That was just before the final battle, honestly. That..." he trailed off, lost, for just a moment, in memories.

Then they pulled into George's place, and he found his words were lost for an entirely different reason.

The little bit of land around the warehouse was filled with junk. Bits of a statue lay just beside the entrance. An old tractor, practically more rust than tractor, was uselessly sitting just beside the bay doors. Elizabeth cursed a little as she wove around something in the driveway - Lucas peeked out of the door window to see what might have been part of a fountain, just laying there.

"I collect stuff," George explained, sounding a little embarrassed. "Things I find in Gates, things that get trashed by gate emergences...lots of things. I have a piece of the Roman Coliseum, after it got broken during a double S-rank gate emergence. The Italian government let me keep it as thanks for helping out."

"No, not the coliseum!" Lucas cried, genuinely upset by the idea of the monument being destroyed making his heart clench uncomfortably. He gasped and put a hand over his chest, leaning back in the car seat, flinching as some spark of electricity beneath the leather reached out to zap his spiritual senses.

"For the record, I got a pair of custom-made boots from the country's most expensive leatherworker for free. George got a rock." Elizabeth said, pulling the car in front of the bay doors and throwing it in park. Lucas considered that for a moment, rubbing his side, where ethe electricity had gotten him.

"Liz, no offense, but I think George won that one. In terms of coolness, custom Italian boots are up there, but not 'gifted a piece of the coliseum for saving their city' cool." Lucas nodded to himself as he opened the door and stepped out of the car, getting a better look at the property.

It smelled like an industrial complex and oil and rust and dying machines. The energy that ran through the ground beneath his feet buzzed with a metallic flavor, like the land itself was polluted and not cleaned properly.

"Thank you! See, I told you, Liz. Lucas may have many, many flaws, but his one saving grace is he has good taste," George exclaimed, heading toward a side-door Lucas hadn't seen when they entered. He slid open the thing and gestured inside, while Elizabeth scoffed.

"Taste. Right. Look around your place for longer than five seconds, and then tell me who had better taste," she said, shaking her head. Lucas skipped forward, slipping into the warehouse and beheld...chaos. Utter chaos. Along the furthest wall was a series of rocks and other things in jars or sitting on workbenches, some of which radiated magical and spiritual energy, some of which didn't. They were accompanied by about a hundred different tools, and electronic or mechanical devices half taken apart. The walls had flags and posters and half of a billboard nailed to them. More broken statues, a broken down car, and just...junk was scattered around the warehouse floor, including an old prop plane that was covered in more junk.

"I see now why you wanted me to stay at Liz’s place. When you said you had a piece of the Roman Coliseum, I was expecting something a bit more orderly." He admitted, shoulders sagging in disappointment. It had the potential to be an epic man-cave, but it was just not.

"You're right, George," Elizabeth said, stepping up to stand beside Lucas and sneering at the mess, kicking an empty beer can with her boot, that clattered against a box of vinyl records. "He does have good taste."

"Oh shut up. The place is a mess, I know. I haven’t had time to organize it. Your Bel Air is over there." George grumbled, pointing to a corner of the warehouse, where a vaguely car-shaped object was stored hidden beneath a cover. Lucas made a noise of distress in the back of his throat, but resisted the urge to run over to it. This discussion was more important than his silly car.

George led them up a set of metal stairs up to an office space set up above the main floor, in a corner. They were surprisingly sturdy, and Goerge chattered nervously about his collection as he walked.

"That's part of a statue from Atlanta, when a gate opened in downtown. That over there was a piece of a building I ran into in one of the gates - I think it was an A-rank? I don't quite remember, but I remember the sky was red, and the brick was scorched. Took me ten minutes to tear a piece free. Then over there..." he pointed to a few more things before pushing into the office space and, thankfully, it was actually a livable space.

The entire room had been refurbished into a small apartment. There was a kitchenette in one corner, an electric fireplace in another, a bed pushed against the wall, and multiple glass cabinets that contained various knickknacks and curios. Lucas squinted at an action figure of George, dressed up in his Cyclone superhero outfit. George pointed out the bit of stone from the coliseum, a white stone that was maybe the size of Lucas' fist, some books he'd kept safe, and, admittedly, a few expensive, nice paintings he had legitimately rescued from disaster situations and had been allowed to keep.

There was nothing like the Mona Lisa or any other such paintings, not even anything ridiculously expensive, from what little Lucas knew of art, but it did bring Lucas’ respect for his brother up a little despite the mess outside.

"So...why live here?" he asked.

"I was nineteen when I bought it. Living here sounded cool, and the thought was that I would be able to maintain the place. Work on projects once we stopped getting called away so much. I've been wanting to restore that tractor out there, for example, for years. Things just never calmed down enough for me to do so." He admitted. "I ended up hiring someone to come make this space into an actual, livable home. They added a whole bunch of security systems and things around the property at the government’s request, too, so it's pretty safe. Don't have to worry about anyone stealing my stuff, or rent, really. Kinda nice."

"Huh," Lucas said, examining a book George had laid out on a coffee table. It was some mystery novel he’d never heard of.

"So." Elizabeth said, sitting in an armchair beside George's bed. He glared at her, gesturing vaguely to the chair, then rolled his eyes and sat on his bed, looking at Lucas expectantly.

"Sew buttons on ice cream and see if they stick." Lucas muttered, fixing a judgmental glare on an admittedly well-designed poster of both George and Elizabeth in their superhero costumes hanging on the wall. Bit narcissistic, in his opinion, but it was also a cool poster.

"Huh?"

"Nothing. Where was I?"

"Olympus,"

"Right. Those guys." Lucas nodded sagely. Then, despite really wanting to ask what they wanted to know, because that sounded like a cop out when they probably didn't really know which questions to ask, he launched into another story. "Met Zeus a few times. Nice guy. Completely different from the myths. Very scared of Hera. I told him about the swan myth - the one where he supposedly seduces someone by turning into a swan? Turned white. Pale as a ghost. Hera thought it was hilarious. Still made him sleep on the proverbial couch, just because she thought it funny." Lucas chuckled at the memory, sobering up a bit.

"That was the thing about meeting all those guys. It told me how people can become myths," he sat down on the floor, meeting his siblings eyes while sitting straight. "I met legends. People who were considered fiction, and do you know what the strangest thing about them was? They were real. Not 'fiction come to life' real, but they were real people. Humor, thoughts and desires. It's hard to describe, and I know it sounds silly to hear, but it’s like your fame. People built them up into something they’re not; just like how some people are scared of you two. The myths, I had to look them up when I got back. See what I remembered about them, how accurate they were. And they just...they caricaturized them. Turned them into lessons and histories, without really touching on what made them great in the first place."

"And what was that?" Elizabeth asked.

"That they were regular people, once, and chose to be great anyways. That like you and me they have the capacity for great evil, and every day they chose great good." He laid his hands flat on the floor, not looking at either of them. None one on earth had seen these great legends. Seen the way Heracles' eyes grew distant when he talked about his deceased wife - whose body hadn't been slain, but her soul. The normally lovable, amiable, idiot himbo of a man turned somber for just a moment.

They hadn't seen them in the depths of battle. The way Michael wept for every lost soul, but still found in him the strength to comfort a mother who had lost her child, so save said family despite his lifeblood staining the ground below. Not just once. But over, and over, and over. Every single planet, every single city, expending pieces of himself over and over again because that was simply who he was.

They hadn't seen Zeus bring cleansing rain to a war-torn landscape despite being nearly unconscious, then be cursed because he couldn’t do more, when he'd -

That had been one of the worst parts. The lack of gratitude, sometimes. The lack of understanding. But that was, he supposed, why the myths were what they were. These people he'd fought and bled with and watched die, were the heroes of society dialed up, elevated to true heights. Telling the myths like they had was easier for the average person to understand, and connect with. Someday, that would probably be him. A bastardized myth. But that was ok. He was who he was.

Lucas let out a breath, bringing himself back to the present forcefully.

"Anyways," he trailed off. "Yeah. It's been a long ride."

"You mentioned the Unspoken Ones. They keep coming up. What are they?" Elizabeth asked after a moment of silence.

"Honestly? I'm not sure. I'm convinced that they're extra-universal beings, but all I really know is that they're wrong. They twist and destroy and corrupt in ways that are vastly different than what demons do. Their existence seems to be anathema to reality, but at the same time, they wish to conquer it? I was never really high enough on the totem pole to be privy to the more interesting details. Nor did I really care. There were monsters that needed slaying." Lucas explained honestly, glad to be momentarily distracted from his other train of thought.

But his expression still darkened when he recalled planets that had been shattered, entire peoples wiped out, their souls consumed and twisted into something beyond mere pain.

"And this was what caused the gates to appear?" George pressed, hastily changing the topic. He shared a quick look with Elizabeth that clearly read as 'shut it' that Lucas definitely did not miss. He smiled at his brother sadly.

"That's what I said might be the case." He said with a shrug. "Any further questions?"

As it turns out, they did have questions. But nothing of real importance. They asked him about various religions, and he answered as best he could. They swapped war stories for a time and toasted fallen friends. George pulled out beers from a mini fridge stocked only with liquor, and just...talked. It was nice. A nice break. A nice way to talk to his siblings, despite the heavy topics. And a way to connect to them, even if he kept the worst of his thoughts and memories out of it.

Even if there was still a distance between them, that he tried to close. He could feel it, the differences in their perspectives, despite similar enough situations. He had to actively search for moments to ground them, and his own stories, in reality. Give them context they could grab onto because he was just so different now. Maybe not in personality, but in mind and perspective.

As Michael had once told him; they didn’t stop him from knowing how to be human. They had only made him more himself.

They talked all through the day, George and Elizabeth ignoring whatever phone calls they received, thankfully none of which were form their work, and Lucas was even reunited with his car, the Bel Air. He swooned over the black-painted thing, the interior just as pristine as he had left it, albeit with a layer or two of dust.

And, at least for a day, Lucas existed on Earth as both who he had been, and who he had become.