Chapter 23

“Hi Guys,” Ahayuta said from behind them. Hep and the others turned around, shocked.

“How the hell did you guys get in here?” Hep asked.

“Our translucent friend here helped us find our way,” Ahayuta said, pointing to a partially see-through person. It was Dan! “We were able to duck into the tower here while you guys were distracting the goons outside.”

“Dan, what the hell were you doing in the city drains?” Sarah asked.

“Trying to find my way back out, of course,” Dan said. “The funny thing about being a new ghost is that you have to figure out how to move around without the benefit of friction. I wound up underground somehow before I got the hang of it.”

“Right,” Hep said. “Ok, so, where do you think Tim is at in here?” he asked the group.

“Why don’t we check the room over there marked ‘Temple’?” Heitsi asked in reply.

Across the room was, indeed, a pair of large, ornate doors with a rather ostentatious sign declaring, for anyone who was interested to read, that this was the Temple.

“So, is it Tim’s Temple, or the Temple of Tim?” Hep asked.

The group walked over to the doors and opened them. The interior of the temple appeared to be the bastard child of a corporate boardroom and mega-church. There were several long tables arranged so those sitting at them would all be able to turn and see the stage. The chairs at the tables were plush leather, and the tables themselves were some kind of dark wood, polished to a high gloss.

At the front of the room was the stage. At the back of the stage, several banners were hung, declaring that this was, indeed, the New Paradigm. There was also a podium, a table with a briefcase on it, and a sturdy wooden chair.

Strapped into the wooden chair was Pan. Near the podium, Tim was waiting with his hands held behind his back. And in the plush leather chairs surrounding the tables were a couple hundred True Believers in gold colored track suits. They all turned to face Hep and the rest of the crew, and stood up.

“Welcome!” Tim called from the front of the room. “I was beginning to worry that you weren’t going to find us in here, and that we’d have to come looking for you.”

“Let Pan go,” Hep said to Tim.

“Let him go? After all the trouble I’ve gone through just to catch him again? I think not, you silly man.” Tim said, and chuckled. “No, in fact, I’ve only been waiting until you were here to kill him.”

“Why are you doing all this?” Hep asked.

“Well, partly it’s the challenge of the thing, and partly to remake the world as I see fit, but mainly I’m doing it for the power rush and the chicks,” Tim said. “Now, is there anything you’d like to say before I kill Pan here?”

At that moment, Hep had a revelation that he wished would have occurred much, much sooner. This whole mess could have been prevented if it had.

“Fuck it. Kill him!” Hep said.

“What?” the rest of the group, and Pan, asked. Tim smiled cruelly and turned to Pan.

That’s when the toys made their move. The Hamburglar, Princess and Robot leapt out of the briefcase, charged across the table and leapt on to Tim’s back. Hep and the rest of the group couldn’t believe they’d just seen that. Tim struggled vainly to brush the toys off of him, but they clung tenaciously to him.

Tim remembered he had more important things to worry about, and hurried to the pick up the wand of the god-killing machine. The toys clambered around on Tim, doing a great job of annoying the hell of out him.

Hamburglar reached Tim’s shoulder, and crawled out onto his face. Tim swatted at him, to no avail.

“Fuck you, shithead,” Hamburglar said.

Tim reached out to touch Pan with the wand. At that moment, Hamburglar shoved his hand up Tim’s nose, grabbed onto whatever he could, and pulled as hard as he could.

“Gaaaaah!” Tim yelled, and dropped the wand. He reached with both hands to grab the toy. Hamburglar chose that moment to shove his other hand into Tim’s other nostril and grab on.

From the back of the room, the gods, Sarah and Chris saw Tim apparently trying to pull an action figure out of his nose and screaming hysterically. Tim’s cries got the attention of the True Believers, who turned away from Hep and the others to see what was happening to Tim.

Hep saw the opportunity and said “NOW!”

The gods, Chris and Sarah ran down into the group of True Believers, catching them by surprised. Hep, meanwhile, vanished and reappeared on the stage behind Pan. He got to work on freeing Pan from his bonds. Tim continued to stagger around the stage, fighting off the toys who had proven their ability to be very, very annoying.

“Fuck it, kill him?” Pan asked Hep. Hep grunted as he untied the last knot binding Pan.

“I’ll explain it later,” Hep said. “Let’s get him.”

Hep and Pan rushed Tim, tackling him and dragging him over to the chair. They quickly bound him, and stuffed a rag in his mouth. The three toys moved and sat on Tim’s shoulders, looking up at Hep and Pan. The Hamburglar idly wiped his hands on Tim’s jacket.

“Can you guys keep him entertained for a few minutes?” Hep asked the toys.

“You bet your fucking ass we can,” the Princess said.

“Good deal,” Hep said. He and Pan joined the fray between the True Believers and the gods.

The toys looked up at Tim, and discussed among themselves the myriad opportunities for mischief that could be wrought up him. Hamburglar stood up and walked over to Tim’s ear. He flicked Tim’s ear lobe.

Tim made a mildly annoyed sound. Hamburglar looked back at the others, grinned, and turned back to Tim’s ear. He bit into Tim’s earlobe, pulled back and shook his head.

This time Tim made a significantly more panicked noise. Hamburglar let go, and walked back to the other two, smiling.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” he said.

While the toys took out their plastic rage on Tim, the other gods took out their frustration on the gold clad True Believers. For their part, the True Believers didn’t know whether they wanted to fight or run. There were embarrassingly few exits for the Temple, however, so even those who wanted to run had to stay in the room.

Ares and Sekhmet quickly grew bored with killing fish in a barrel, and so devised various challenges to test each other’s skill and creativity in doling out death and destruction. Sekhmet tore out the throat of a True Believer and used the blood that gushed out to make a giant Tic-Tac-Toe board on the floor on the room.

“So do you want to play headless or disemboweled?” she asked Ares.

“Headless, definitely,” he said. “Shall we flip for the first move?”

“Oh yes,” Sekhmet said.

Ares grabbed a nearby True Believer, and told Sekhmet to call it.

“Heads,” she said.

Ares flung the True Believer into the air. He bounced off the ceiling and came crashing down on to the floor, landing head first.

“Yes!” Sekhmet said. She caught one of the True Believers and made quick work of disemboweling him. She tossed the body onto the upper left corner of the tic-tac-toe board.

Ares, for his turn, beheaded one of the True Believers and tossed the carcass onto the center square.

The game continued, and ended in a draw.

“Should we play again?” Sekhmet asked.

“Nah, tic-tac-toe isn’t really my thing anyway,” Ares replied.

“Chess?” she asked. Ares looked around at the room and the True Believers. The True Believers were reaching new heights of panic

“Nah, none of these people will be able to sit still long enough,” Ares said. Suddenly he brightened a bit. He turned and grabbed a nearby True Believer who had been standing stationary, screaming in horror at the mess around him. Without blinking an eye, Ares popped the True Believer’s head off. He held it up in front of him.

“Bowling?” he asked?

“Oh! I love bowling!” Sekhmet said.

Thor had made his way to the stage, and saw the machine Tim used to kill gods. He crushed it with one blow of his hammer, destroying it completely.

He looked over at Tim, and saw the toys had made what looked like a human chain off the top of Tim’s head. The last toy on the chain, Robot, was poking Tim in the eye.

Thor walked away chuckling to himself.

Soon the fight had ended, and Hep and the rest of the gods made their way to the stage. Well, the rest of the gods except for Ares and Sekhmet.

Sekhmet and Ares were playing volleyball with the head of a former True Believer.

The gods gathered around Tim.

“So what should we do with this guy?” Thor asked.

“I say we kill him!” Ares called from where he was. Answering the question had distracted him, and he missed the head as it flew towards him.

“Yes! I win!” Sekhmet said as the head rolled around on the floor.

“Kill him? That’s hardly a divine punishment,” Thoth said. “We gotta make him push a rock up a hill for all eternity, or hold the universe together with his nostril hairs, or make him work for the postal service or something.”

Pan smiled and said, “I’ve got a good idea.”

***

A small group of pagans were gathered around the fire pit in a public campground. They had reserved several neighboring campsites to make sure they wouldn’t be disturbed by other campers. They had learned through hard experience that nothing freaked out a group of normal folks like stumbling upon a bunch of people in white robes chanting in a circle around a bonfire. Especially when one of them is mostly transparent and wearing a ceremonial mask that looks like a cross between a tree and an Aardvark. And extra especially when with them are a motley crew of deities in their true forms.

The pagans had brought with them epic quantities of wine, grapes, bread, cheese and other delicious foods.

Hephaestus stepped forward and said “We dedicate this sacrifice to Bacchus.”

With that, the pagans and deities threw the majority of the food and wine into the fire. It smelled wonderful.

A few minutes after the last of the food had burned away, a stout man in a toga appeared next to Hephaestus.

“Hey Hep, what did I miss?” Bacchus asked.

Hep clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Just the usual, Bacchus.”

“That much, huh?” Baccus said. “Well, seems like I probably owe you a drink. Let’s go back to my place and get tore up, everyone!”

The gods cheered, and one by one disappeared.

“Are you coming, Dan?” Hephaestus asked. He turned to go.

“Damn straight!” Dan said. “Bye, guys!” he said to the pagans.

With that, Hephaestus and Dan vanished, leaving Sarah, Chris and the other pagans staring in disbelief.

“I guess we finally did it right,” Chris said to Sarah.

“I guess so,” she replied.

With that, it began to rain, and the pagans ran for cover under a nearby gazebo. Soon the rain became a torrential downpour, and even under the cover of the gazebo the pagans got soaked.

“Did all of that really happen?” one of the other pagans asked Sarah.

“It sure did,” she said.

“Kind of makes you wonder if the universe is in good hands,” the pagan said.

Sarah laughed for a long time. Slowly, she recovered from her laughter, and wiped tears out of her eyes.

“The universe is in terrible hands,” she said, “but I think it’ll be ok. Things have a way of working out.”