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So Jack got a wild hair up his ass and somehow we ended up heading to Greece, to Mt Olympus, up into the Greek pantheon overworld, to go talk to Zeus. Who wasn't there. So we had to talk to Hera instead.

Now, I'm not the biggest know-it-all about mythology and scion-related things, but I have heard of Zeus and I have definitely heard of Hera. I mean who hasn't? So when robo-owl came back to lead us to where Hera waited for us, I became somewhat nervous. I mean, we were basically going to ask her about the things we had come to ask Zeus about, namely, a set of Zeus's bastard children from yet-another-time he cheated on Hera with a random person. I sure hoped we didn't get barbequed just for bringing it up.

Well, as it turned out, Hera was surprisingly calm, although I could definitely see the viper under the surface. She told us that the muses were being petulant that they were no longer needed by mankind, and basically throwing a God-scale temper tantrum. Wonderful. She also told us that Padah-lin didn't really have a place with the Greeks, that we should go talk to the Hindu pantheon instead, since they were more geologically and ideologically similar.

Then Jack asked something about seeing the Muses' panty drawers up here in Olympus.

Anyway, so we left Hera and headed back down to call up George and get him working on his pantheon to see if they'll take Padah-lin into his ranks.

Meanwhile, we discuss going to talk to Nadine again and decide that since we're basically all scions, we should probably just be frank about it all. So we call her up and set up a meeting for the next night.

Nadine meets with us, and now obviously knows we're Scions, and is open with us about the Burma operation. She basically tells us that they are knowingly pirating Padah-lin's essence through the iron ore they're mining, because it has properties that make it very effective when used against Titanspawn and such. We tell her the deal with Calliope being in Padah-lin's overworld, and that we had intended to put a stop to the Burmese operation some how in order to gain access to his overworld in order to talk with Calliope.

Nadine seemed respectful of our needs, but I got the impression she didn't really think they mattered and that they had no intention of stopping the Burmese operations solely for our completely-unrelated-to-her, stupid little needs. So, I gave her some options. If she can figure out a way to get us access to Padah-lin's overworld without Padah-lin's help, then that would satisfy our needs. If she could find us a different Greek Muse to talk to that didn't interfere with their mining operations, then that would work as well.

She told us she'd go discuss it with her father (Guan Yu) and see if we could come to some kind of arrangement. My impression from her statement was that unless the Hindu pantheon accepted Padah-lin into their ranks, this was pretty much not going to happen. And what does a Demigod and God care about doing anything at all for a bunch of peon-level Scions like us? She and her father probably wouldn't help us at all, even either of the other two options that I gave her to get around stopping the mining operations. What a pisser.

We headed outside, with the intention of waiting to hear back from the Hindu pantheon, when Tommy, the scion of the Monkey King stopped us. He proposed to Jack. Um, a contest between them, and that if Jack wins, he can provide some leverage with Nadine. Jack hassled him a little, and then we agreed to do this thing in a few days' time.

In the meantime, we headed back to Padah-lin to talk to him. Jack informed him that his application for entry into the Greek pantheon was denied, but that we were working the Hindu angle. He also dropped the info on what Nadine and Guan Yu were up to. Boy these guys seem overly considerate of Padah-lin and his boy Than for some reason. Sigh, I guess we would have to figure out some way to stop Nadine's mining after all. Eyeroll.

Jack suggested to Padah-lin that he retract his essence from the iron-ore to make it useless to Nadine/Guan Yu/et al. Padah-lin said it would weaken him significantly, but Jack pointed out he was already being weakened to death anyhow, so either way this is a gain for him in the long run.

At this point, it was time to wait and see what the Hindus said. But meanwhile, we'd head back to hong kong and take Tommy up on his offer (while Niko sputtered in the background).

It was a street-racing thing. Basically, you'd get some kind of car, must have four wheels and be a land-based vehicle. The race would proceed through the city, through a military zone, and up into the hillside. This reminded me a lot of that video game Grand Theft Auto.

So we all split up to go do some varying research on street racing culture, cars, mods, engines and such. Jack decided off-roading through the mine field was the optimal path, and acquired a vehicle and gear related to that path.

Jack and Niko met up with Tommy the day of the race at the starting line while the rest of us remained and strategic locations. With the signal, Tommy peeled out, off down the road, taking the lead. Jack wasn't far behind him. George, apparently, was on the horn giving Jack directions as he hoofed it through town. Jack and Tommy roared through the city, causing all sorts of insanity, and then split up near the military zone where the minefield began.

Jack headed off road for a few lengths, and then stopped in front of the catboy brigade which I had deployed a few minutes earlier. Niko leapt out of the car, rolled under it and onto his back, and then pushed up on the under-carriage, lifting the entire vehicle up to the perfect height for each catboy to change a single street-racing tire simultaneously to off-road tires and pile the street tires into the back of the car. In mere seconds the job was done, Niko leapt back into the car, and Jack peeled off again down into the underbrush of the mine field.

Over the com I heard several things going on as I waited at my station up ahead. A helicopter had apparently showed up, as well as some tanks. Niko grumped about killing the dudes on the helicopter, so I decided to up the body-count on my end while Niko kindly took-down the military deployment. I had a work truck loaded up with all sorts of construction equipment, and I began setting it out, arranging it such that it would lead the land-vehicles chasing Jack off back down to the mine-field to blow themselves up.

I set up a pre-broken (made to look like it had been run over by Jack's car), and then left a big hole open for where Jack should actually drive through. With the fifth cat-boy and Gail, we messed up the underbrush to make it look like Jack's tracks would lead to the broken barricade, and set up another series of barricades that would inconspicuously lead the vehicles back to the minefield. I sent the info to Jack over the com link of where he should drive when he reached the barricade, and only a few minutes later he came flying through at like a hundred miles an hour.

Once through, we hurriedly setup a fresh barricade in front of the path Jack had actually taken, placed some scrub in front of it to hide his tracks as best we could with such a short amount of time to work, and hid in the construction truck behind some nearby bushes and waited. Only a few seconds later the chase vehicles came flying through as well. They took the bait, heading through the broken barricade path, and a minute later I heard an explosion or two. SCORE!

From there, Gail started up the construction truck and drove us off toward the finish line as fast as she could get the thing to go (not nearly as fast as Jack was going, certainly). We listened to the com over the speakers of the truck as we went, hearing of Niko apparently battling tanks and other such insane nonsense. We picked Niko up a minute later, walking casually among a carnage of bodies, scrap-metal, and fire.

As Jack approached the finish-line, George noted that Tommy was behind him a short ways, and that his car was not in good shape at all. Jack gunned it and hit the finish line just as Tommy's car died about a hundred yards from the finish-line. Jack turned his car around, peeled out to where Tommy sat, and had him and his co-driver hop into the back just as a fresh set of military vehicles appeared before them.