Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!

"Oh, this is fun," she said, reaching into the blood-tsunami and pulling out Amphitrite, Goddess of the Seas and Poseidon's wife, who had come to help. "Look what I found! Your wife, covered in the blood of children you drowned for sport."

She tossed Amphitrite at Poseidon like she was playing cosmic catch. The two gods collided in mid-air, both choking on the blood of their own victims.

Ares charged with his divine blade raised, screaming a war cry that could shatter mountains. Eris didn't even look at him—she was too busy painting her nails with what looked like liquified chaos.

"Ares, sweetie," she said without glancing up, "who are you fighting?"

The God of War stopped mid-charge, confusion flickering across his features.

"Poseidon," he said confidently. "No wait—Zeus. Hephaestus you son of a bitch you insulted my mother. Or was it Apollo? Wait, where's Apollo?"

Apollo, God of Music and Prophecy, chose that moment to loose an arrow that could pierce the fabric of reality itself. Eris caught it between two fingers and used it as a toothpick.

"Thanks, brother!" she chirped. "Now, Ares, be a dear and go kill... hmm..." She pointed randomly. "That one. And that one. Oh, and definitely that one."

Suddenly Ares was seeing enemies everywhere. He began fighting Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth, who had never raised a weapon in her immortal life. Then he turned and started attacking Iris, who was still recovering from Zeus's redirected lightning. Then he charged at his own father, Zeus, screaming about how his mother had been dishonored.

"This is better than reality TV," Eris giggled.

Hephaestus raised his cosmic hammer—the one that could forge new realities—and brought it down with enough force to crack the foundations of existence itself. The weapon that had created divine armor and weapons of mass destruction was swinging toward little eight-year-old Morpheus.

Phantasos, who looked barely older than a child herself just like her brother, appeared in front of her dream-brother and caught the cosmic hammer with her pinky finger.

"That's not very nice," she said in the voice of every nightmare that had ever been dreamed. "Trying to hurt my little brother with your big scary hammer."

Hephaestus blinked, suddenly finding himself in a reality where he was eight years old and Phantasos was a giant looming over him with disappointed parent energy.

"Now you're in timeout," dream-Phantasos said, and suddenly Hephaestus was sitting in a corner of existence, completely unable to move, experiencing the cosmic equivalent of being grounded.

But real-Phantasos wasn't done. She turned to Dionysus, who was trying to drive everyone mad with wine-dark power, but he was starting to regret why he did come here. Brewing wine was better than getting himself killed to avoid his father's threats.

"Oh, you want to play with minds?" she asked with the innocent enthusiasm of a child who'd just discovered a new toy. "My turn!"

Suddenly Dionysus was trapped in a recursive nightmare where he was attending the world's most boring party.

Forever. With no wine. And everyone was sober and talking about their feelings. And the music was elevator music. And every time he tried to leave, he found himself back at the refreshment table with the same stale crackers and warm soda.

"NO!" Dionysus screamed. "ANYTHING BUT SOBRIETY!"

Philotes was having her own fun with Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, who had tried to drain all life from the throne room as a desperate attack. Instead of countering the attack, Philotes simply... agreed with it.

"Oh yes," she said with genuine enthusiasm. "Let's feel what death is like. But let's also feel what every plant felt when you let them die during your tantrums. Every crop failure you caused out of spite. Every family that starved because you were in a mood."

Demeter suddenly experienced every death she'd ever caused through famine, multiplied by a thousand, while simultaneously feeling the desperate love of every parent who had watched their children starve because the Goddess of Harvest was having relationship drama.

She collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably.

But the real entertainment was Nemesis, who had spotted Hera, Queen of the Gods, trying to coordinate the other goddesses into some kind of formation.

"Oh, Hera," Nemesis called out sweetly. "Let's talk about justice, shall we?"

Suddenly, every person Hera had ever persecuted out of jealousy—every mortal woman Zeus had seduced, every child born from his affairs, every innocent bystander caught in her divine tantrums—appeared in the throne room as spectral figures.

"Tell her what you think," Nemesis suggested helpfully.

The specters began speaking, all at once, their voices overlapping in a chorus of justified rage. Hera tried to cover her ears, but divine justice wasn't something you could block out.

"I WAS INNOCENT!" screamed Lo, who had been turned into a cow.

"MY CHILDREN DID NOTHING WRONG!" cried Leto, who had been forbidden from giving birth on solid ground.

"YOU DESTROYED MY LIFE FOR HIS CRIMES!" sobbed Semele, who had been tricked into asking Zeus to appear in his true form.

The spectral chorus grew louder and louder until Hera was on her knees, finally feeling the weight of every innocent life she'd destroyed in her quest for revenge against her cheating husband.

Nyx watched from her throne, slowly shaking her head like a mother watching her children play a bit too roughly with their toys.

"They're showing off," she murmured to herself.

Aphrodite, still flanking the throne, couldn't help but wince as she watched Hephaestus—her husband—get lectured by a cosmic eight-year-old while stuck in divine timeout.

"Is it wrong that I'm finding this therapeutic?" she asked quietly.

Artemis, watching Apollo get his arrows used as toothpicks by Eris, shrugged. "They started it. Besides, when's the last time anyone put Zeus in his place?"

More gods kept arriving as backup—Hestia, Iris, Amphitrite, Persephone, Hecate, minor gods and goddesses whose names mortals had forgotten—and each one immediately got swept up in the cosmic playground that Nyx's children had created.

Hypnos put half of them to sleep just by humming a lullaby.

Thanatos played tag with some nature spirits, except when he tagged them, they experienced death for exactly three seconds before coming back to life, screaming.

The Moirai—the three Fates—were having a delightful time showing various gods exactly how and when they were destined to die, complete with visual demonstrations.

And through it all, the Six were laughing.

Not cruel laughter. Not vicious mockery.

They were having fun.

These cosmic forces of destruction were playing with the Olympians like children with action figures, and they were genuinely enjoying themselves.

Which somehow made it so much worse.

"This is humiliating," Artemis observed, watching her father get tossed around like a rag doll by a darkness entity who was clearly not even trying.

"This is overdue," Aphrodite corrected, watching more gods pile into the throne room only to get casually swatted aside by beings who treated cosmic battle like a casual Tuesday.

It had been going on for nearly ten minutes, with gods arriving, getting defeated in increasingly creative ways, and then lying around groaning while the Six moved on to their next playthings.

Keres was now teaching Ares proper sword technique by beating him unconscious with his own weapon while critiquing his form.