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We sat at a cafe in london a couple hours after meeting with Lars, and my head was still swimming from the meth a little. Niko kept glancing away immediately whenever I looked at him; what was that about now? Anyway, we sat staring at an unopened box from BOOBS. Everyone was arguing about opening it for the longest time, as if it were some sort of bomb. I rolled my eyes and went up to the counter to order another coffee. When I returned, the box was finally open and everyone was pawing over a few nifty presents from our parents.
Mine was small, whatever it was. I plucked it off of the table and opened the tiny box. A ring? The stone looked smooth and black, circular cut, inset into a plain silver band. Well maybe it was platinum, or titanium. I wasn't really sure. Anyway, I pocketed the thing for later and sat back down. Once we finished with the oohing and aahing, we headed back to the hotel for a few hours and then that night we headed down to the airstrip and jumped on George's plane, heading off to ye olde Macedonia. Was that in Europe? Or like, the Middle East? Actually, maybe it was in Africa. I dunno, but it was somewhere that spoke Greek. Maybe it was next to Greece. Anyway.
I guess we were looking for the Temple of Clio. So we went to this museum in Macedonia, Africa, and talked to the curator for a bit. Well, Gail talked to the curator. I walked around and touched stuff I wasn't supposed to while no one was looking. Gail talked to the old chyk for a while, but without much luck in acquiring information pertaining to the location of the temple. Apparently it has not yet been found, much less excavated. Well that seemed problematic. When we finally headed out of the museum, Jack having decided he wanted to go talk to fishermen to see if he could make any progress finding the temple that way. Hookay, whatevs. This was not really my area of expertise.
There didn't seem to be a whole lot of people wandering around in town. How boring. I guess there was no fun to be had here. I wanted to go back to London, dangit.
Once we arrived at the docks, I got bored really quick while Jack wandered about looking for the perfect fisherman. I told them I was heading to the nearby pub and that they should come get me when they're ready to head on to the temple, or wherever it was we were going. A group of three Italian sailors were carousing at a table, drinking beer and laughing loudly when I walked in. I decided to go join them because they sounded like they were having a lot more fun than anyone else I'd talked to all day. They welcomed me to their table eagerly, and I had a few drinks with them while they did some body shots off of me. Before things could really get going to the fun part, Niko burst in looking for me. I told the sailors that my handler had apparently come to get me, and they took one look at large, Greek bruiser and got all quiet and boy-scouty. Ha ha!
Niko took me back to the others and we all piled in a car and drove off into the wilderness.
A few hours later, in a foresty area off the beaten path, we unlatched a locked gate with government warning signs plastered all over it, drove the car through it, and reclosed it. Gail parked the car in some hidden but pre-designated parking area, and the we treked through some trees out to the edge of a high outcropping of rock with a sheer drop to the seawater below. I guess Clio's temple was hidden here in the wilderness somewhere. I was a little distracted still from being mildly drunk and turned-on from getting rubbed all over, so I really wasn't searching too hard. I sat down on a rock and stared off the cliff watching the waves lick up against a distant shore.
Eventually I heard voices calling, apparently they'd found an entrance.
It looked like a port-o-potty and kinda smelled like one too. Inside the port-o-potty shed was an opening in the floor, with a ladder leading down. We all climbed down to the bottom where a hallway with torches lighting it extended off back into the hillside. Jack ran off ahead and the rest of us meandered on after him at a leisurely pace. After a bit, we came to an area where stairs went down into foot-deep water, and then back up again. Jack made a big deal about avoiding it by bouncing off the walls, but I simply shrugged and jumped over it. The others followed suit, and we headed on forward.
Eventually we came to a fork that, upon expection, made up a circular hallway with the inside wall being a huge mural of the complete sheep-horse panorama. I aimed all lights on it and took like a thousand pictures of it, all the way around. On the opposite end of the circle the hallway continued. Jack, apparently, heard voices, so he headed down to investigate. The rest of us stood at the opening and listened.
We heard him talking. He said he had some people back up the hallway to what were apparently guards. I made talking sounds here and there, pitching my voice to different locations, changing the tone repeatedly, making it sound like Jack had about thirty people up here with him. I guess one of the dudes was gonna go get the big boss, so Jack intercepted him and essentially a minor tussle broke out. I prodded Niko to head down and bash some heads using my foot to his ass, and he hurried on down with me following along casually behind to watch him bitchslap these suckers.
Eventually we ended up with two unconscious concussed peons and one peon with Jack's arm around his neck and hand over his mouth. We interrogated the awake one, but he “left the building” within about a minute of talking to him. So we woke up the other two doofs, and same thing. I shrugged, saying we should press on, forget these three losers.
Everyone fretted about it for a while but eventualy Jack ran off down the hall and the rest of us followed along behind.
We finally arrived at an opening into a large cavernous area where giant roman columns sat in the middle with priestly looking dudes standing amongst them holding a Clio-oriented church service. On the wall to the far right stood a choir of about five people, right in front of a pool of water. Jack decided to walk up and talk to the ten priestly dudes.
They apparently spoke sheep-horse. The conversation got confusing, eventually he came to get Gail and I, and we translated this absurd discussion. These guys basically said that Clio wanted this linguistic virus to be spread, and that it was unfortunate that we were sent by ahem, “Hermes and Aphrodite,” to stop it, because now they “couldn't let us leave”. I get the impression either Clio is with the Titans, or not with the oppressed pantheons to whom our parents belong, because after that they did a magical-girl transformation montage and then were suddenly possessed by the spirits of ancient Greek warrior-heroes.
Battle formation. I moved away from Jack and summoned the catboys. Gail sent her spirit buddy to possess Achilles apparently. Niko hacked the choir to bits in a sadly short amount of time, and my catboys made short work of a couple of these possessing heroes.
As we finished hacking up these dudes, the blood of the choir began seeping into the water, and suddenly a deadly, poisonous gas began forming at the back of the cave. Niko caved in the chest of the last hero dude with his axe and Gail suicided her Achilles-wearing ghost into the noxious cloud as the rest of us zoomed back up the stairs that lead into the hallway from where we had come. …Where we stood for an absurdly long time trying to convince the son of Ares to run back into the noxious cloud real quick and axe the columns some questions which would helpfully cause the nave of the temple to collapse. Jack poinged in and out to show off and taunt Niko (of course, he's super fast, so hardly fair). Eventually I convinced Niko to go git 'r done with another swift kick to the patootie.
Finally we got going back toward the entrance. I jumped right over the three checked-out guards without even a thought, dashed around the circular room, jumped the pool of noxious water, and then climbed back up the mine-shaft latter to the port-o-potty, and then back out into the daylight.