Interesting Times

This is because I ordered that Chinese food the other week and the lady said she hoped I lived in interesting times.

Where do I begin?  Well, we were gathered outside the museum, when Triton, one of Poseidon's heralds, appeared(Admittedly, in a rather impressive fashion.  Style points, if nothing else.) and started making the 'sacrifice to me or I'll wreck your shit' speech.  Probably my first indication that things weren't going to go as I'd hoped when I'd been talking to Goras.  The rest showed up later.  Had to yell at Hal to bring Harmonia down to lay everything out - to her and the rest of these ingrates.  I can't believe he's really this paranoid about Goras.  Shmuck.

So I gave them the whole story.  My understanding of my fault in the Delphi mess(though calling them out for theirs,) my understanding of the simple fact that Donny has gotten a raw deal.  Just that he was the spark that led to things like a herald of a major god showing up out of a bloody fountain in the heart of a major city.  And then Lexi...god, I want to strangle her sometimes, tried to distract the issue by talking to the damn herald.  Instead of listening to me.  And trying to lead us to another six hours of faffing about, getting nothing done, and letting the world keep on fucking burning.  I know she means well, and that's the thing.  She means well, but she's clueless on everything else.  Christ, I hate being smarter then everyone around me sometimes.

So....I shut her down.  Hard.  And kept going with my explanation while Triton left.  She did back me up later though as I kept trying to talk Harmonia into helping us with Donny.  Then...well, Ares shows up.  He's just as much of a cockbiting assjackal in person as he is online.  Alot more style and understandable in person, but still.    Turns out he's Donny's divine sponsor...I should've accounted for something like this, too, it just never entered the calculations.  So, I tried convincing Ares to step aside and let us do this.

No dice, there.  He's pissed at Zeus, at least as much if not more then a lot of others.  The real bitch of it is...he had good points.  There's too much bad blood for the Sky King to take back the Olympian throne.  And he's too paranoid that one of his sons is going to whack him to listen to how things stood.  That's when the rest of it clicked.  Goras had been right, there was going to be blood.  It still had to be quick, and as clean as we could make it...but nonviolence isn't gonna work.  Some heads are going to have to be cracked.  So...I pulled out every stop I could.  Every thought, every little bit of divine birthright I could reach, Lexi's magic from earlier...everything.  And I pulled perhaps the biggest gamble I could....and told Ares to drop his shit and join me.

To keep Zeus from regaining the Olympian throne.  And since the menfolk had messed up everything, to plant a woman in the seat of power.  To be fair, it was Kennedy who really sparked the idea, too, but...I put it out there.  And...damn it all, it worked.  It worked.  Ares is in my corner, and he's got contacts.  This...is going to tweak Goras, but I suspect I can get him to at least stay neutral.  Probably the best any of us can really hope for at this rate.  So...we started getting everything into place to get things moving forward.  Like shoring up Troy's defenses....adjusting fire missions for my NATO strike force, that sort of thing.

Then Cindy asked who was going to go on the throne(Cindy...one of the big problems with today.  Later.)  We rattled off some possibilities...and I really tempted fate by just saying I'd do it myself if I had to.  I'm going to regret that later.

There are issues beyond simply Olympus.  There's some kind of...wave of apathy sweeping through other pantheons, according to Andrew.  We'll need a united Olympus, and the rest of the divine world as well, to stand against Ahriman.  Lovely.  Which is about when Artemis, having got my message, showed up.  And we learned we had a centaur herd headed right for us.  If it rains...

But...Cindy.  I think it's almost done.  She got so possessive and....I don't know.  Overbearing isn't the right word.  But it's just...acting like Delphi hadn't happened, or that it had all been meaningless, or whatever, just....set me off.  I talked to her in some quiet time after that.  Put all my cards on the table.  She...is not happy, to say the least.  And I feel like I'm getting blamed for not simply accepting her replies just because it's her.  That might've flown before Delphi, but you do not just hang someone you claim to love out to dry and treat them like a raving madwoman, then pretend she's the greatest thing since sliced bread.    It might have gone...differently, I might have even been able to talk it out more, figure out what to do, if Artemis hadn't walked in on the talk.  There's....some bad blood between her and Poseidon, and alot of that ends up catching Cindy too.  It...doesn't bear repeating here.

It's just as unfair as how Cindy treated me, and even Artemis seemed to realize it when I talked to her later.  Gods, this is all complicated.  I'm overthinking it again, and I promised not to do any of that before Troy was secured.  Just can't get a couple more thoughts out of my head.  Thing is...Artemis had another point.  She hadn't been truthful with me at the party, and I can understand why, given who all was around, and who was at my side at the time.  But it was her who appeared to me in Avalon.  Apperantly, my soul's vision summoned her directly.  But the point was...maybe there was a reason I thought of Artemis and not Cindy.  And if what she showed me about Cindy was correct...what does that say for Cindy?  Was any of this real? Does Fate just not want me to be happy with someone for more then a few months?

Fuck it.  I'm overthinking again.  I'm going to get our defenses tied in and see if the guard is back with Goras yet.  I don't have time for self-doubt right now.