Pain and Panic stood there gaping, then grinned.
“Hercules is alive!” the two mice cried, and started to do a little jig. Panic looked at the thread of life on his tail and grinned.
“Let’s celebrate” said Pain as he ran over to a basket of fruit that was sitting in Hercules’ bedroom.
They climbed up a table leg and clambered, unsteadily into the wooden bowl. Pain took a bite out of an apple. “Yuuuuck” he spit it out “it’s poison.”
Panic tried a bit of a grape. “You’re right these are poison” he said gagging.
One by one they each tried a little bite of fruit, and each bite they took the food tasted worse and worse.
“Come on” said Pain “ let’s go to the market, they might have some decent food there.”
As it turned out, the market did not. No matter how Pain and Panic tried, they could not eat any of the food. Even the taffy tasted like dog dropings. Also, the two demons were getting very thirsty, but they couldn’t drink any water either. It tasted like cat urine.
“Panic” Pain whispered “ I think I figured out why...”
“Ewwww” shrieked a woman “ mice!” Pain and Panic, ran away from where they had just been standing, and under the cart.
“Well, next time we won’t stand too long on top of the potatoes” commented Panic. “ What were you going to tell me Pain?”
“I think out why we can’t eat anything” Pain said. “ It’s because we ate the food of the gods, and it was so good, that now we can’t eat anything else, because it isn’t as good as the food of the gods. So” he said sullenly “I guess it’s back to Mount Olympus, being Suncat and Mistwalker.”
“Yahh” said Panic glumly “ that’s probably what we have to do, but.... but.... Ohhh, frogs legs, Pain it’s all so un-natural, licking the master’s hand and playing cute and being nice. We’re minature demons, we need to make mischief and get into trouble, not too much though, it’s in out blood. Ever since the first minature demon crawled out of the mud, he made mischief and all his decendants are doomed to follow in his footsteps. We couldn’t be cute and nice for the rest of our lives even if we wanted to. If we get into trouble once, Zeus will kick us out and we’ll starve to death!” The blue mouse sobbed.
“Well, we will just have to try extra hard” comforted Pain “ maybe be we can do mischevious things when no one is watching. I always did want to try out Hemes shades....”
“They’re gods” mumbled Panic “they’ll figure out it was us.”
“Look” said Pain sternly, waving a mouse’s finger at his companion “ we got in last time, so it won’t be too hard to get in again. We could tell Zeus what we’ve been up to”Pain suggested.
Panic looked at him like Hades had just suddenly appeared before them.
“Does this look cute?” asked Panic as he morphed into Mistwalker and lolled his tongue out.
Up they flew again in bird form to Mount Olympus. And once again they morphed into a golden cat with blue eyes and a silver dog with green eyes. But this time Eros, or cupid, as he prefered to be called, answered the gate.
“So you’re the two pets of Zeus and Hera,eh?”he asked in an innocent, childish voice.
“They really missed you two” he informed them, flapping his white wings.
“ Heads up” Eros shouted as he fired a heart tipped arrow through the clouds and down to the earth below.
“Oooopsies” he giggled, as he let them through the gate “ looks like I made someone fall in love with a turtle.”
Eros looked around “ this is just betwen you and me right?” The two pets nodded.
“Good” Eros’ cherub face brightened. The three of them walked towards the palace. Hermes came flying over to them.
“Hurry up, munchkin” he said to Eros “ the meeting is about to begin. Ahhh” Hermes said as he noticed Pain and Panic “you’re back, good.”
“Do I have to go?” complained the cupid “ I hate meetings, they are s-o-o-o boring.”
“Well, this one is very important” said Hermes.
“I have people on earth who I need to make fall in love, you know.”
“Yes, well right now I should be helping a theif talk his way out of getting captured, but I’m not. Now come along!”
“I have called this meeting” explained Zeus “because of the string of incidents that have been happening lately.”
Zeus sat upon a large throne, with Hera to his right, while all of the gods sat on thrones beside him. Except for Hestia, goddess of the hearth who was tending the sacred fire, of course.
Zeus continued. “Hercules was in a coma, for starters. The people of the Underworld broke free, and Cerberus didn’t even stop them. Hercules’ thread of life was stolen from the three Fates” he nodded to the three hags to his left “ half the pantry of the gods was emptied, and our two pets went missing. But I am glad to see that we have them back” he said as he reached down and petted the two animals which lay shivering at his feet.
“We must find the people who have commited these atrosities. To do that we must have a soul search. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, will search the souls of all of the mortals in hopes to find the guilty persons.”
Athena put her fingers to her temples and began searching. The silence yawned. Pain and Panic shook with fear.
“If they find us...” murmered Panic to Pain.
Suddenly Athena had finished her searching. She looked puzzled. “None of the mortals, living or dead have commited the crimes. But you will be pleased to know that Hercules has fully recovered.”
“By thunder, that is good news” said Zeus with a grin and Hera sighed with relief.
“But” Zeus’ grin had disappeared “ that means that one of us must have commited these deeds. I will give the persons responsible for this time to confess, but if no one does, Athena will have to do a soul search of everyone in this room.”
“We understand, Sir” said Hermes “ but what will be their punishment?”
“ If they do not confess now they will be punished very severly. I will chain them to a wall and have an eagle rip their skin off every day. And at night they will be haunted by ghosts and demons, worse than those in the Underworld. And I will make them drink the worst water imaginable, so they will vomit up their own intestines. By thunder, I’m getting more creative as I get older! I will set their bodies on fire. And they will be stabbed with sharp knives every five minutes. And I will play the xlophone with their spinal cord. I will rip their limbs from their bodies and......”
“OKAY, WE CONFESS IT WAS US!!!!!!” screamed Mistwalker. All of the gods turned to them with shocked expressions on their faces.
“Yes us” continued Mistwalker, his eyes wild and crazed “the pets, the e-e-e-e-vil pets. The golden cat and the silver dog, who are going to be tortured and hurt and have a mutitude of bad things happening to them!!!”
Mistwalker morphed back into Panic, and started punching himself in a crazed frenzy. Suncat morphed into Pain, and looked at his companion with a very scared yet concerned expression.
“You two did all this?” said Hera disbelievingly.
“Well uhhhh.. yes” muttered Pain as he tried to calm his friend down. Panic was rapidly shape-shifting.
“Why didn’t you tell us it was them?” Zeus asked the Fates.
“We didn’t feel like it” said Clotho “ besides, we knew this would happen, anyway.”
Zeus gave an exasperated sigh “I can’t get anywhere with you three hags.”
Then he turned back to Pain and Panic. Panic had scared himself into a tapor and was lying down, stiff as a board. Pain was shuffling his feet and wishing he was somewhere else.
“ So, why, more importantly how did you attempt to murder Hercules?” Zeus asked.
“We didn’t mean too” Pain whinned “ we were going to get gold and stuff from Hercules’ treasurey. We were going to give people money if they would rule the Underworld, you see. It really isn’t a nice place, now that Hades is gone and all. So, when we were robbing his treasurey Hercules heard us, I guess we shouldn’t have sung so loud, and when we tried to escape with the gold, we probably knocked Hercules over and sent him into a coma. Then when we leaned what we had done, we felt really yucky and we went up here to ask the three Fates whether he would die. When we found out he was going to, we kind of stole the string so he wouldn’t die.”
Pain ran over to Panic and untied the string from his tail. He cautiously handed it to the Fates.
“ We knew you were going to do that” they said in unison as he handed it to them. Pain stared at them with an annoyed look on his face. Then he just looked at the ground and shuffled his feet.
“ Continue” coaxed Hera.
“Well, we hid in the pantry and then we heard Hermes saying to Zeus that everyone from the Underworld had escaped. We knew it was our fault, but there was nothing we could do about it, you guys were going to take care of the situation anyway. And you did that very well might I add, eventhough you did scorch a few trees. And about eating everything....” Pain paused “ Panic made me do it!”
Panic woke up.
“ Did not” he cried “Pain made me eat it.” He turned back into Mistwalker and lunged at Pain, who had turned into Suncat and pounced on Panic.
“Enough!” roared Zeus. The two combatents stopped dead in their tracks. “So how did you end up back on earth?”
The two demons morphed back looked at each other. “We don’t know” Panic said.
“ My Lord” interrupted Hermes “ I think the floor must have opened up again.” “Ahh yes, the clouds must have parted and you probably fell through” said Zeus “ that is beging to be quite a problem. I knew we should have called a better matinence man.You may continue.”
“ So we were really hungry and thirsty, but we couldn’t eat or drink anything, because we had already eaten your food. So we dicided that we had to come back here as Mistwalker and Suncat and be cute for the rest of our lives, or else we would starve to death” Panic finished up quickly. “ So, PLEASE DON’T HURT US !!!!!!!!”he wailed.
“Well, we need to think about this” said Zeus. All of the gods moved to another room.
“Pain, if I never see you again” Panic sniffled. “I just want you to know that...... that you’ve been like a brother to me!” A few tears ran down his cheeck, and he wiped them away with a scraggley arm.
“You’ve been like a brother to me too!” Pain said. The two of them looked at each other, then started sobbing their heads off.
After a while though, they finished. Pain looked at his feet. “This does not mean I’m gay” he said after a while.
“I know” Panic replied, nodding his head.
After a very long while the gods came back into the throne room. They all took their poper seats. After everyone was seated Zeus spoke.
“We have dicided that you are two very stupid little imps. But you have tried to make up for all of the foolish things you did. Even though you did steal my son away when he was a baby, Hades made you do that, so I suppose you’re clean there. We have also decided you shall not live with us, but we will give you two gifts to ease you hunger and thirst.”
Hermes brought out two horns. “ These are the horns of plenty, and they can never run out. One is filled with meats fruits, vegetables and cheeses, the other is filled with milk, water, wine and nectar. You may keep these under two conditions: do not tell anyone you were here and never come back.”
“Oh thank you Great and Allmighty Zeus, and all of the Great and Allmighty other gods whose names we have forgotten” said Pain and Panic, bowing respectfully.
“Also “ Zeus continued “ Aphrodite, goddess of beauty , has voulinteered also to be the goddess of the Underworld.”
“ Thank you, Aphrodite” said Pain and Panic, turning to the beatiful goddess with blond hair, saphirre blue eyes, and a skimpy outfit.
“ Yah, talk to the hand imp boys” she said in an unconcerned attitude “ I just signed up for this gig so I can decorate that Underworld. I mean grey is just such a, like, tacky color. I was thinking more of a fuscha look to it, with a bit of orange in there too, like, of course.”
Pain raised an eyebrow. “ She will be the ruler of the Underworld?” he asked scepticaly.
“ I had my doubts too” whispered Zeus.
“Well, goodbye” said Pain and Panic as they scampered back down to earth.
“This is the life, Pain!” Panic said, as he sipped milk from a cocanut.
“Isn’t it Panic?” Pain asked, sipping some more cocanut milk, and lying down on a sandy beach.
“I just said it is the life, you moron!” Panic replied, slappoing Pain on the head, who slapped him back. The two of them had gone off to live in tha Bahamas, and had flown there on AirGreece, for a minimal fee. So, all in all, it was a very good life.
After a little while of sunbasking, Panic said: “What about the Underworld?”
“Relax!” Pain said. “They’ve got a democratic system now, they’ll be fine!”
“Call me crazy, but I still like Republicans” Panic said. Pain glared at him, and Panic covered his head with his hands. Despite this, Pain still slapped him.
The two of them sighed, and went back to resting in the sand. Life was very good!
Hi, it’s the Muses again! The moral of this story is: If you beg and grovel for forgiveness, people will be so digusted with you that they’ll let you off the hook.
Now we gotta go, we’re selling falafels at the Greekfest. See yah around!