shatterverse | New Underworld Order

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New Underworld Order

It came to Hades in a dream...

It's pretty dead out in the New Mexico desert, at least as far as sentient life goes. It's also bright, and hot.

But when a pillar of smoke resolves into a god, the landscape seems to take on some shades of blue and gray to compete with the sand and scrub. "Well. This could just work..." A flick of a hand, a wave of an arm, and the Bat Ampitheatre is suddenly a bit more gothic, a bit more forbidding (not that, in the portable gloom, it wasn't forbidding enough in the first place), the path lit by dimly glowing torches. It is, Hades decides as he majestically descends the stone steps, a very good place for a temple.

The mouth of the cave widens as Hades approaches, stretching into a gaping maw edged in streaks of stone that could look like flames-- or teeth.

It needs a guardian. It needs a lot.

But as Hades descends into the vast cave that will begin this broken world's Underworld, it's with a light heart and blue flame slipping pleasantly down his shoulders.

It will work.

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Renee, on the other hand, offers Hades a bright smile.

"It'll be good to see her again."

...

Having a conversation with a comfortable, relaxed Renee Cooper often involves a distressing amount of logical disconnect.

Really, the signal to summon a minion doesn't need to be anything fancy or difficult. It's essentially a subtle sort of 'hey, you, c'mere.' (He just liked to scream for Pain and Panic because it was what worked best when they were within earshot.)

He realizes after he's done signalling for Alice that he started just after Renee started talking.

"... You're the one who sees." It's totally not a question.

As far as what Anne's watching? It's quiet, in its way. As though this is what has always wanted to be here, even if it's... not, quite. It's what needs to be here now, now that all this has happened and somewhere needs to be this way. It's divine and mutable and as though it has always been, even if the changes haven't yet crept across the big room yet, much less into any of the other caves.

They'll get there.

There's a puff of flame.

"You beeped, boss?"

"Sis!"

Okay, glomping. Renee first, then Anne.

"Yes," she says to Hades, and "Hello," to her sister.

Following which the Coopers have quite the group hug.

It's only missing one member, and really, all things considered they'd like to wait a long time to see Lucy again.

Anne lets go first.

"Nice work," she tells Hades, nodding at the caves. "Very cleanly done. I approve."

What? She was big into transmutation when she was alive, even if now her powers are mostly reduced to catching the echoes.

"Not nearly finished," Hades says, though mentally he's still working on that myth-- three of the four sisters were reunited in the Underworld, first among the shades. "But hey, gotta get the framework up before I let belief start shaping things, right?"

On the other hand, if peace is being with your loved ones again, it looks like the place came with that factory-installed. "Still needs a couple of things, though."

"Yeah, sweet cave, boss."

It's sincere, in its own Alicey way.

Dryly: "Letting belief shape things around here is going to get interesting."

Through long experience, Anne is able to offer, "That wasn't her talent speaking. Just common sense."

Hades is rather used to Alice's Alicey ways, and just eyerolls a bit at her.

The other two, on the other... uh, hand... (the narration believes the narration is getting away from itself here) just get a shrug. "Considering the last Underworld I ruled had two different Good Endings, a river and a spring that did the same thing, and a river that was at once the River of Souls and the River of Sorrow, I think it'll work out okay."

These things were mutable. Beliefs changed.

"Go ahead," Renee tells her younger sister patiently.

Alice scuffs burning feet on the ground.

"Uh, boss? You need a guard or anything for this place?"

"More like bouncer," Hades says.

"Waste of a good minion, but I was gonna ask anyway."

This is most likely a 'yes.' He's smiling, anyway.

EEEEEEEEE :D :D :D

Beam.

Glomp.

"Thanks so much, boss!"

...and okay, invasion of divine personal space will be ceasing now. Embarrassed scratching-back-of-head and backwards shuffle to rejoin her sisters.

Anne smiles in exasperated fondness, ruffling Alice's fiery hair.

The kids, what can you do look is universal, isn't it.

"Yeesh, babe, go hug your family or something, huh?" Not that Hades doesn't appreciate the literally flaming hot babe hugging him, but jeez, a little professional decorum in front of the other dead people!

Who happen to be her sisters.

Okay, so maybe 'professional' is the wrong word around here.

"You can probably pull off a mostly harmless look, too, if you think about it. Underworld, dead chick." It's a distraction!

"I can?"

Blink.

She can!

"Hey, awesome."

"Badaboom," Hades says, as though he had something to do with it in anything but an indirect sense. "Well, you are dead, and this is the Underworld-- now-- so the shapeshifting rules get a little... different."

Anne looks thoughtful, and snaps her fingers.

A tiny light appears in the air in front of her. She grins at it.

"... So," Hades asks nobody in particular and everyone in general, "How many of you Cooper ladies to I have to hire? I mean, not that that isn't a nice trick, because seriously? Not bad at all-- but a god's gotta have some boundaries."

Definitely needs a Maguffin Of Forgetfulness, before any shades with soul-based powers and a reputation Hades dislikes turn up. Oh yes.

"There are only four of us," Anne points out. "And I'd be happy to help you out in any capacity you can reasonably suggest, of course."

Especially if she gets to be near her sisters.

"For my part, if you've need of an oracle..."

Renee spreads her hands and inclines her head.

"Oracles are very rarely not handy," Hades agrees, briefly folding a hand over Renee's shoulder. Nyah, take that, Mort.

There are many, many more caverns, not all of which have taken full shape yet-- there are doubtless more than one that are now waiting for the Cooper Sisters. At least the already dead ones.

"You, on the other hand," and he's suddenly rather close to Anne-- Alice is probably used to this nonsense by now, "I actually don't know what you do. You sing stuff, I know that, and you roped off Kansas.

"And you make little glowing marbles."

This is a highly unorthodox request for a resume.

She snaps her fingers again, causing the light to dissipate.

"I manipulate the sound that exists beneath matter."

Pause.

"If you don't want the entire obscure physics treatise, just write me off as a very peculiar sorceress and move on."

"Someday when I'm bored, I'll ask," Hades assures her.

Okay, so this is going to work... exactly how...

And he set the three sisters in places of power, the one who burned to guard the gates of the Underworld, the one who saw to sit at his hand and share her visions, and the one who sang to...

Do that thing she did?

Maybe there was a reason the myth-writing was left to priests and philosophers while the gods and heroes went about the myth-making.

"I don't suppose you two'd be into the same deal I offered Miss Alice, here?" Hades asked. "Ability to move around in the mortal world, affect things-- okay, so it's less in a human shape and more in something... like a very distilled version of what you work with, but..."

He's actually not sure it will work, unless their affinites are as strong as Alice's for fire, but it's worth a shot.

New Underworld Order

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