"Perhaps we should leave, yes? Before the local mob decides to blame everything on the nearest teenager?"
Alex turned away from the carnage that had once been downtown Athens. Zeus stood behind him. The god put his hand on Alex's shoulder and gestured to the nearest alley.
Alex didn't say anything. He didn't think anything. He just stood and moved into the alley. Zeus followed and they both stopped under a bright light outside the rear exit of a Mexican restaurant named Taco Loco.
The light hurt his eyes, so he turned and faced the mouth of the alleyway. "I can't go back." Alex looked at Zeus. "I can't go back to...to the way things were, can I? It's all gone. My whole life, it's just--just gone."
Zeus sighed and sat on an empty tortilla crate. "Such is the curse of all knowledge."
"I don't--what do you mean?"
"Every time you humans learn something about yourselves, you can't forget it. It's not the way you're designed. Your kind can, however, choose to ignore it as you often do with disastrous consequences. You ignored what you were and look what happened."
"I didn't ignore it, alright? This--this just doesn't make any sense! In one day--just one--I went from being a nobody to the son of a freaking thunder god. Can you understand how maybe this would take a little bit of time for me to adjust?"
"Last son."
"What?"
"You're not just 'the son.' You're the last son of Zeus. And that makes you special, not just to me but to the other gods as well."
"That's why..." Alex pointed to the street. Somehow the fire had spread to one of the buildings. Alex couldn't tell which one.
Zeus nodded. "That's why. Some of them want you. Some of them need you. They all hate you."
"What? Why? What did I do?"
"Quite simply, you were born. Born during a time when all gods are forbidden to have children."
"Wait a minute. You're the big guy. You're like the daddy god. The big, bad uber. So who could've forbidden them?"
Zeus straightened his pant leg.
"You? You told them not to?"
"You should've seen us, Alex. We were pitiful excuses for deities. We were supposed to help humanity, in a way to atone for The Fall. Instead, most of us used them like toys. We only helped them when they provided some form of entertainment or, at the very least, distraction. So many mortals came to our temples, praying to us when they lost their way." Zeus seemed to look past the brick wall of the alley. "How ironic that we also lost ours."
Zeus stood. "I grew sick of it. I told the gods no more. No longer could they use their powers or have any children here on Earth."
"But..."
"Oh there are those who still try. Most of the time it's small enough that I can ignore. Occasionally, one will go too far and I have to punish them. As I soon will tonight."
