"Jesus Christ, you weren't pulling my leg! How the hell does this happen to someone twice!?"
"It's good to see you, too, Laney."
They found Laney Lin in her suite practicing her songs for the show in a couple of nights. She always arrived days in advance so she could acclimate to the local climate and run through her routine as much as possible. Keeping in line with her former sensei's training, Laney treated every aspect of her life in the same way that she treats her martial arts. Lying all over her room were broken heels, ripped dresses, torn guitar strings, and cracked nails. Nothing was in its place. The bedding was scattered about. All the furniture had been pressed up against the walls. And somehow, the bathroom sink had been lodged into the ceiling. She had been practicing so hard that she was visibly sweating when they walked in.
She dropped her guitar immediately after recognizing that the small, blonde woman before her was her old teacher and ran over. Without asking permission, Laney began inspecting The Metal's form; poking and prodding to see if this was reality or a mere illusion. Though peeved, The Metal was being patient with his pupil's curiosity up until the point that she cupped her breasts.
"Knock it off, Laney!" The Metal said, smacking her in the back of the head.
"Yep, you're definitely Metal," she said, rubbing the spot where she was struck. "This situation won't do at all. I can't marry someone with bigger breasts than me."
The Metal smacked her in the head again, even harder than last time.
"Jesus," she said, tending to the wound, "you're never to anger over humor. This must be getting to you more than you let off."
"Are you gonna help or should I just leave now?"
"I'm not gonna help you. You're gonna help you."
"Yo, this about that job you were talkin' about, bro?"
"Yeah, Laney posted it directly in the group chat… that she is still in for some reason. But it wasn't really clear what you wanted. You just went on and on about how you couldn't get it yourself."
"About that…"
Laney was never good at telling stories. She had a tendency to start much further back than what is helpful and rattle on about every single detail, whether it is important to know or not. Laney had heard wind of an artifact hidden in the labyrinth that could alter parts of reality. Of course, she wants it to become stronger, but it may also be useful in helping The Metal return back to her original form. She'd go get it herself, but she has a show to perform, and she was always horrible with directions, to be honest. Laney would likely be trapped in that labyrinth for days before she finally got fed up and started destroying the place.
"I have to say, Laney, I'm disappointed that you'd resort to seeking power this way."
"But, Sensei, training is so hard, and I never catch up!"
"It's not about catching up!" The Metal said, smacking Laney in the back of the head. "It's about getting better than you were yesterday." Not wanting to waste any more time, the group turned for the door and almost left when The Metal stopped in her tracks to ask, "Well, Laney, are you gonna tell us where to find the labyrinth?"
There was a moment of unsettling silence before her response. "Yeah," she smirked and giggled out, "on a singular condition."
"That ungrateful… see if I ever take in a kid off the streets again."
Even after hiking roughly eighty-five miles, stopping at two different hotels for rest, and eating several meals, the others still found themselves occasionally giggling at The Metal as she popped off into miniature tantrums, mumbling under her breath. Heels clacking down the street, the only way that spiteful woman would tell The Metal where the entrance to the Knossos Labyrinth was located was if she wore one of the many outfits Laney brought with her the entire time they were on the job. From the walk to Sylamos all the way until they brought the artifact back. In fact, Laney went to town on everything from the makeup to the accessories, dolling her up like a modern Grecian Goddess; toga dress and all. Not only was it difficult enough to walk while there were still roads, but it also became a nightmare once they had to tread off the path necessary to climb to the entrance.
You see, the Labyrinth of King Minos was much larger than anyone but the creator, Daedalus, himself knew. Although the only entrance known to Minos lay beneath the palace in Knossos, the winding structure spun many in each direction deep below the island's surface. Due to cave-ins over the centuries, almost no one is aware of this. They believe the disconnected cave beneath the palace and many others like it scattered about merely inspired the myth. And that's precisely what the powers that be would like them to believe. The Labyrinth was such an ingenious structure that after Theseus defeated Minotauros and people stopped getting thrown down there, the Gods began using it to store stuff they didn't want anyone to find. They mostly sent Hermes down there when needed, since he was the best navigator literally anyone knew. The place was so confusing and entropically silent that even competing pantheons couldn't traverse it and eventually quit trying.
"Bro, I thought there was only one entrance to this joint. Why are we out in the middle of the countryside and not at that rich dude's castle?"
"Blame Daedalus."
"Pardon?" Sentri whipped out.
"As you likely know, Daedalus was a caring man. Maybe too caring for his own good. When designing the structure, he felt pity for anything, man, beast, or whatever, that might be imprisoned within. So, without telling anyone about it, he built in a backdoor."
"A backdoor… to a giant labyrinth no one can navigate?"
"It wasn't a great solution, but the only one someone in his position could take at the time. Now, this door is the only one that the few beings that run through here can use. I was aware it existed, but I had no idea where it would be until Laney hunted down the information for me."
"How on Earth did you trust she would even know where to look?" questioned Buck.
"Oh, that's easy," she said, feeling around on a natural-looking stone wall. "I did a little manipulating and pushed her in the right direction. I don't even think she's realized I was the one who pulled the strings to get her production company to hold a concert here in the first place."
Buck was floored to hear this information. He didn't believe it past The Metal to do such a thing, but he was still surprised all the same. And just like that, a segment of the stone clicked in, and a doorway emerged from its surface. One after the other, the four miscreants made their descent down a dark stairway until they came to a drop at the end. The Metal crouched and felt the lip of the platform, finding narrow cracks spaced like rungs in a ladder carved into the wall. Much too thin for the monstrous hands and hooves of Minotauros to use, but not for most humans. That is, if they are properly dressed for the occasion.
"Damn…"
"What is it now?"
"There is a ladder carved into the wall, but there is no way these heels will fit with how thick the bases are."
"Then take them off. We're like a hundred miles away and in the actual Labyrinth. It's not like Laney will know."
"I know you never got into the martial arts as deep as the rest of us, Sentri, but Laney is still my disciple regardless of whether she abandoned us or not. As her sensei, I'm only as good as my word. Besides," she said, letting out a hefty sigh, "she probably has something on this ensemble bugged."
The other three all smacked their foreheads in near unison.
"Welp, guess it's good I'm not wearing my weights due to this stupid deal."
The Metal then slid off the edge, spinning around and gripping the stone slits on her way down. She attempted to climb down swiftly using only her upper body strength, but after only a few rungs the others heard a scream, followed by some distant swearing, and eventually a loud thump. Worried, the others followed down the ladder as quickly and cautiously as they could. It took several minutes to creep down the fifty-foot rockface, and at the bottom, they saw The Metal massaging her sore body after having fallen buttocks-first into the stone floor.
"What happened, yo?"
"You know, the thing is, you never realize how difficult climbing can be until you forget that you now have tits."
She got back to her feet, and they journeyed into the labyrinth. Every wall intentionally looked exactly the same as the last to be as confusing as possible. They wandered from one corridor to the next for hours, but at no point did they feel lost. It's never made any sense to them, but everyone has grown comfortable with the fact that The Metal's gut has already led them to exactly where they were heading. Even at times when the words coming out of The Metal's mouth indicated she had no idea about their location at all. It's just about the weirdest ability a person could have, but an unbelievably handy one.
Around three hours in, the group stopped for lunch. Out from her hammerspace, The Metal pulled out an entire picnic full of submarine sandwiches, bags of chips, packaged fruit slices, and cans of soda-pop. Though she had to quickly double-check that what she was handing them were actually sodas. If sharing a meal in the middle of a cross-section of a massive maze in a foreign country on the opposite side of the planet wasn't a unique enough experience for them, it got a lot weirder when they heard footsteps echoing down the cold and stony halls many yards away from them. Confused, they stalled in the midst of their respective bites to peer over toward the sound. They weren't too concerned at first. What could it have possibly been, another human that followed them in? Thanks to Theseus, they didn't need to worry about Minotaurus, even if it could live that long. And it was a man, but not one they were prepared for.
Rounding the corner was an incredibly built man standing approximately six and a half feet tall. He was more muscular than an athlete, but it was still yet more practical, unlike a competitive bodybuilder with no self-control. Atop his torso was a finely tanned, lionskin pelt fashioned into a vested tunic that draped almost as far down as his knees. Aside from the belt keeping it tight to his body, that was all he wore. His skin was nearly as pale as half the people in this room and unfitting of a man from this area. They couldn't really make out his face very well as much of it was obscured by thick, curly, dark, dirty blonde hair sprouting from both his crown and jaw. All that was visible was his rather large nose and eyes like crashing waves in the dead of night. The man seemed as surprised to be running into anyone else in here as they were, but then he got a good look at the woman in the back.
"You!" he barked as he pointed at The Metal, still in mid-bite of her sandwich.
"Me!?" She barely got out with her mouth full of food.
"Metal, what the hell did you do this time?"
She simply shrugged at the question.
"Playing dumb, are we? It might have been five hundred and forty-seven years since we last crossed paths, but don't think I forgot about you stranding me in the middle of a place that shouldn't exist!"
"You know, this time I believe you. That guy sounds more nuts than you usually do."
Still with his arm extended toward them, the man cupped his hand as brilliant lights swarmed into it like water down a drain. Once condensed within his palm, the energy sprang forth to form a xiphos in his grip. He juggled the sword once to catch it by the blade, then lobbed it with the speed of a ballistic missile at The Metal. Wide-eyed and heart pounding, she narrowly avoided her head being split in twain. The blade continued to travel twelve feet into the nearest wall, which erupted into an explosion of stone and dust from the sheer kinetic force. Everyone was physically rattled by both the consecutive sonic booms caused by the sword's flight and the collateral damage following its landing. Then, light gleamed out from the rubble where the xiphos had stopped and funneled back on a path to the goliath's hand.
Not waiting for him to do it again, The Metal once again accessed her hammerspace and pulled out a silver-colored can. As she shook it up, the other realized what was going on, and each immediately pulled out something akin to a gas mask. She didn't even pull the pin. The can was hurled at the large man just in time for it to be pierced by the newly formed blade. In a flash, noxious fumes spewed in all directions and consumed the halls for a quarter-mile radius. If the pressure zone that it created alone didn't make a person's organs churn, inhaling the vapors would. Seconds later, the four of them plunged out of the smoke while outpacing its dissipation through the rest of the Labyrinth.
"It's been a while, but that's basically tear gas, right!?" Sentri asked loudly through his mask.
"If you managed to crank it up a hundredfold… yeah, more or less. Not intentionally, mind you. Just a side effect."
"Do you think that'll do the trick? Who the hell was that anyway?"
"If I were to go on a hunch, I'd say that was Herakles just from the lion skin tunic alone. So, probably not."
"Herakles!? The demigod?"
"Yo, didn't he die?"
"Eh, a lot gets changed in stories from one retelling to the next. Metaphorically, he might have died to separate his human half from his godly side, but there really is no such thing as a demigod. You're either a normal person or not. Given that he is the son of Zeus, I think it just meant he stopped living the life he was born to and joined the rest of his family."
"I'd call bullshit on that, but it makes just about as much sense as anything else has today."
Looking back to see if he was following them, The Metal misstepped in her horrendous footwear and went tumbling forward through a nearby wall. The others popped in to see if she was alright and found what looked to be a shrine. It was a secret chamber decked wall to wall with murals, statues, and potentially priceless artifacts. The entire thing was gilded, and in the back was exactly what they were looking for. The Metal sprang to her feet and snatched a crummy-looking sack off a pedestal and raised it above her head as if this moment was her victory.
"Ahahahaha! I told you guys, I always end up exactly where I'm trying to get to."
"Ummm…. Metal," Buck said cautiously, "I think I know why Hercules wants to kill you."
Coincidentally, behind her happened to be a statue of the Goddess Hera reaching out with one hand on her hip and the other reaching toward the heavens in a pose not dissimilar to the one The Metal was striking. Due to Laney's area-specific fashion choices, the outfit wasn't that different either.
"Jesus! Aside from the amount of hair she has, you are practically the spitting image."
"Yo, isn't she the one that actively fucked with that guy his entire human life?"
"You're damn right she is!" Herakles explained while bargaining in on them. The Metal hurried to shove the bag into her hammerspace and was promptly tackled by the son of Zeus. She reacted by giving him a left hook into his grizzly beard, but he was not even phased. In fact, he was mildly confused by it. Only for a brief moment, though, as The Metal panicked and planted her heel directly into the warrior's scrotum. She may not be a Grecian God like her opponent, but the force of a freight train crashing into your gonads is enough to catch nearly anyone by surprise.
She took the opportunity to toss the lug off of her and dart out the hole in the wall she originally fell in through. The others just stood to the side because they were not going to stand in the way of the great Herakles. That sounded like a death sentence. At best, maybe they could tail them and find the way out of here in case The Metal actually survives. Oddly, Herakles paused to give the Kidd a strange look of bewilderment before pursuing the one he thought to be Hera.
"You can't run from me forever, Hera!" echoed down the corridors
"Listen, bud! I ain't your auntie!"
She rifled over and over again through her hammerspace looking for something that might be helpful, tossing aside lots of pointless junk she had been unintentionally collecting over the years: pamphlets, a decade's worth of encyclopedias, old cell phones, a jar of fire ants, et cetera. She had just tossed in the air a set of trading cards from a game she designed, and it instantly burst into confetti when an arrow fired by Herakles soared through it. Despite the particulates scattered through the air behind her, the second arrow did not miss. It wasn't a direct shot, but even clipping The Metal's shoulder was enough to spin her around and knock her against the wall. The draw weight of that bow must have been well over a ton. Her arm was torn wide open, and blood flowed all around. Herakles didn't even pay it any mind as he approached his target and gripped her by the throat.
"Finally. After all these millennia, you are mine… is that blood?" Herakles questioned after finally noticing. He dipped his fingers into the crimson pool and tasted a sample. "Sídēros. Yes, that's definitely not Ichor. You're not Hera, are you?"
"I'm fairly certain that I already made that clear."
"My apologies. No one comes down here except those from Olympus. So when I saw someone with the seemingly unmistakable visage of my aunt, you must understand how certain I was in my pursuit."
"I'd say I don't blame you, but I'm never that certain about anything anymore. Why'd you come down here in the first place, anyway?"
"To find you. Or, more so, who I thought you were. We heard a rumor that Hera and Poseidon were spotted wandering around Crete, so I came down. Normally, Hermes is the one who navigates these halls, but he wasn't sure he could handle himself around them. Not that it ended up being a problem anyway. Turned out they just mistook you and that chubbier fella who looks to be your kin, for them."
"Why would that be a problem? I'd think they'd be free to wander around here like anyone else."
"Do the mortals here not know? The original six Olympians, my father among them, have been missing for a couple millennia now. They just left one day, and the cosmos has been a chaotic, territorial battleground between the different pantheons since. Athena is at her wits' end handling the reins in Father's stead. My goal was to bring them back, but I just can't help myself when it comes to Hera after all she put me through."
"Times like this, I'm glad I live in a protected neutral zone where the different factions wouldn't dare lay claim or fight for it. Anyhow, I guess I should give this back," she said while retrieving the tattered bag from her storage.
"Nah, keep it. Anything truly valuable we'd keep back in Olympus. Everything down here is just useless crap that holds nostalgia value to some of us. We just set this up to bait in other gods and fuck with them as they get lost in this maze. Consider it compensation for all," he paused, waving his hands around the arrow wound, "... this."
Herakles' brow frilled as if he had a realization. He then spat in his hand, rubbed them together until oven-like heat crept off them, and then slapped The Metal's wound. She screamed for just a second, but by the time the large man's hand was removed, the wound had vanished as if it had never been there.
"Hey! Thanks, Herakles."
"Oh, please, don't call me that. I only started using that name originally to insult Hera, and it sadly stuck. Can you believe people actually think I like being called that? My friends call me Al." He stood up and began strolling off into the other direction, before turning back around and saying, "You know, it's so easy to get lost in here that even I have a hard time finding my way out. I was just gonna call on Hermes to pick me up. Is there anywhere you want us to drop you and your party off?"
"Actually, Al, there is."