In the end, after showing to them everything I found in his mind, I handed Daizo to the japanese authorities for them to deal with. Obviously this didn't endear me to many people, from those who still believed he was innocent to those who knew he wasn't and thought I should have killed him, but I paid those no mind. My job was done, a particularly dangerous criminal defeated, and best of all, I finally came by my first real clue to Raven's location.
And I did so by meeting the god of smithing. In person, may I add.
I think I should elaborate on this.
First, the bad news. The reveal that the only thing making sure they stayed behind bars was a monster made the many, many villains that Daizo had arrested in the past to bust themselves out of prison to cause havoc once more, and ironically enough some of them were villains that the original Brushogun had created, all of them to be precise. Add in the Yakuza being reborn to fill the vacuum they had left after Daizo's imprisonment, and some new villains sprouting like mushrooms, and things began to look bleak for your average tokyoite.
The good news? Just because Daizo turned out to be a sham it didn't mean that there were no heroes to stop them. They were wrong, because now they had to worry about Spartan and Wolf Princess.
Yes, Pausanias decided to accept the nickname Daizo gave him, Spartan. He obviously knew the brutal history of the real ones, but supposed it was better than being called 'greek guy'. Another interesting sidenote: this universe's spartans were essentially an entire army of original Captains America, reaching the absolute physical peak humans could get by training; in comparison, Pausanias/Spartan was Ultimate Captain America, outright superhuman, due to being the son of an amazon, and sharing her blessings. Why is this important? Because it meant that a more brutal and willing to kill Captain America would be the one cowing the bad guys in Tokyo. Yes, Daizo killed too, but he was a cop, not a vigilante.
And yes, Ayame didn't exactly like being called the Wolf Princess, but again, the name stuck. As for why did she decide to become a heroine despite being wary about humans in general, she did so for several reasons, chiefest among them wanting to help Pausanias and to fix the mess that Daizo had left. Plus, she was the closest thing to a speedster the country had, if a sloppy one.
Now to Ayame's tribe. After Daizo got behind bars, the annulment of the order that began their problem, and the government donating several million yens to them as compensation, decided to go back to Tokyo. Two, however, wanted to stay on Mars: Ayame's older cousing Akane Takahashi, and her boyfriend, both of them geologists. Naturally this meant that they practically begged me to let them stay. Several buildings had been already made, and the fusion reactor was already powering them. so I agreed under the condition that they followed the rules I made for them, chiefest of them all never straying from mine or a drone's sight if they went exploring, not because of any possible danger (remember, this Mars was fully barren of life), but for the simple fact that it's Mars.
That, and not wanting them to stumble upon a rover and blow my future surprise for Earth.
Finally, let's get back to Pausanias, or rather, the help he provided me.
He was pissed at me (mostly for not getting rid of Daizo permanently, but also for several reasons he made explicitely clear to me and which you may already know about), but nonetheless decided to help me in my search for Raven when I asked him and Ayame if they knew of her, even showing them a picture of her.
Ayame, naturally, didn't have a clue of who she was. Pausanias, though?
"I think she reminds me of someone."
He did meet her. Or rather, his father had spoken to her mother; apparently he had been too young to remember anything more than the barest details of her.
"Can't forget that white robe and purple hair. Maybe my father remembers more of her?"
A couple of days later, I paid a visit to Hephaestus and his forge, located under a dilapidated temple on a desert island in the middle of the Adriatic Sea, away from the prying eyes of both deity and mortal (well, mundane mortal, but get the point). That said, he might have expected visits, because there was a doorbell on one of the walls of the temple.
Or maybe he foresaw my coming, I'm still not sure.
"Who is it?" I heard a deep, raspy voice ask.
"Doom Slayer."
"Figures you'd end up coming one day."
"How do you know it's me and not someone else?"
"That voice of yours, too natural to be faked. Plus, you sound like Zeus in a bad day, only reserved." He replied. "Why did you come here? Want to meet a god? Need a divinely made machine gun or something? I'm open."
"Met your son, helped his ass, asked him a few things and told me you might have some answers to a dilemma of mine."
I heard Hephaestus grunt. "I suppose I can talk to ya, I don't really have anything better to do at the moment. Plus, we've always wanted to see you up close." The wall then came down, revealing a dark passage hid behind it... and a doormat of all things. "Come inside, I want to see Earth's newest self-appointed protector and Pausanias' idol face to face. And please use the mat, maybe the boys'll start doing so if they see you do it."
I was tempted to ask him why did he place a doormat of all things, but decided against it, not the time for stupid questions and came down through a dark corridor illuminated by torches, until I reached the forge.
The entire place was the perfect blend of both an ancient smithy and a steel mill, only much bigger than the latter despite being underground, at least half as big as the Fortress was, albeit more illuminated given the many smaller forges distrubited across the facility. His adopted sons were at that moment working, from walking to and fro carrying metal and tools to manufacturing objects. All of changed the moment they saw me walking in.
"Is that-"
"By Zeus' beard!"
"The camera, where's the damned camera?!"
And many others as they realized they were being paid a visit by the Doom Slayer himself. Soon, I was being surrounded by twelve excited young men in their middle twenties, barraging me with questions I didn't have the desire to answer, at least at that moment, most of them involving Pausanias.
"Excuse me." I asked the closest one, incidentally called Odysseus. "Can I ask you where your father's at? It's important."
"S-sure!"
A few minutes later, I was walking in on Hephaestus as he worked on the largest room, right in the middle of the place. Hephaestus himself was exactly as I remembered he would be, a stout, bald blacksmith on the shorter side, instead of a deformed freak of nature like his 52 incarnation who at that moment stood hunched over the mold of a sword.
A blacksmith who immediatly discerned my true nature the moment he saw me.
"Never expected a god to use mortal guns. Hermes and Ares do, but Hermes is Hermes and Ares doesn't really count given his job." He snorted at that. "The others like swords, spears, the like, but not shotguns. Tartarus, they see the use of anything that came after the discovery of gunpowder as too demeaning for them."
"How did you know about my... physiology?" I had no need to hide the (partial) truth from him.
"You reek of power, divine one to be accurate." He shrugged as he sank the sword on a nearby water barrel to cool it. "You know, my family would pay things you might imagine of just to know how did you slip by them, and to be honest I wonder that too, but I'm not exactly the kind of god who asks unneeded questions. Remind me Slayer, what are you here for?"
"I wanted to ask you something that Pausanias told me you could help."
"Ah, right. Say, would you be willing to answer a question of mine first?"
"Can't see why not." Technically I wasn't in a hurry, all things given, since if neither VEGA nor John could find Raven, not many others could, not even gods as I ended finding out.
"Do you know how Pausanias is doing? I know he calls himself Spartan now, but still, fathers worry about their children." He said before pulling out the sword and laying it on a table, after which he grabbed another from the forge and began folding it.
"What do you know of him."
Hephaestus shrugged. "Only that he's decided to become a more practive copy of his namesake and go to Japan to do so. I love him but he's an adult, I don't have to monitor him all the damn time, not that I can either."
"He nearly died fighting an ink monster turned police officer he couldn't hurt." I told him, making him stop hammering, as if digesting the news. "Although to be fair to the boy, this one put up a good fight agaisnt me, could have given even Superman trouble, if only for a few minutes." And that was at best.
After a few seconds of silence, he harrumphed. "Fighting against metal monsters and fake nazis doesn't really prepare you for a real fight, but no, he had to prove himself, I'm sure of it. Damned honor. Shouldn't have read him those old war stories." He then took a nearby hammer and began shaping the blade. "Did he fight well at least?"
"They would have killed Daizo if he hadn't been immune to conventional steel." I pointed out. "At the very least, he would have given him a good fight."
"'They'?"
"Wolf Princess was with him in the fight." Seeing his puzzled expression, I elaborated further. "A supernatural woman; her people were being hunted down by the monster and Pausanias decided to help.
Hephaestus muttered something before restarting his hammering. "Knew it would end up coming to this. It always happens. Anyway, what do you want to know?"
Rather than replying outright, I displayed a hologram of Raven's current appearance. "Any idea of where Rachel may be? Pausanias told me you met her before."
Hephaestus inspected the hologram before nodding "Hmmph, I actually met her mother, Arella. Yeah, met her once, twenty years or so before. Nice girl despite her circumstances, and good with spells. Imagine my surprise when some random woman actually managed to come here; even a powerful mage like her would have had it hard to find the island. Of course she had the help of a cult, a good one. All just for a trinket, albeit a nice-looking one with a neat trick."
"What did she ask you to do?""
"She asked me to make her a necklace, but not for herself. I think you may already know this, but Rachel's father is Trigon, and he wanted her back. Not Arella, the girl, and I'm fairly certain he hasn't given her up, or will for that matter." He then grunted, but this time out of anger. "I know his type."
"Why did you help her? A mortal, I mean."
He sighed. "Because I may have been an Olympian, but was also a parent like her, Slayer. She asked me for help to save her daughter from Hell because she could not remain here on Earth with her, a decision that tore her soul apart, and I agreed to help her to at least make sure Rachel would be safe from her father's ambition." He then chuckled as he remembered something. "Besides, screwing with Trigon was always something I wanted to do, and still do."
So, Hephaestus (and maybe the rest of the pantheon) had been involved with Trigon? Naturally that revelation caught my interest. "You met him?"
"I fought him." He corrected me. "And believe me, it isn't something I want to do again even though I didn't personally fight him. Bastard was just too strong, even for Ares. Only Zeus could fight him one on one."
So, we talked some more about several topics (including him mentioning something about sending more effective weapons to Pausanias in case something like Daizo happened again) before he gave me something to help me on my mission: a bronze globe that showed every type of sorcery ,wizardry and overall magic in different colours, Raven's necklace included ; all it required to work was some magic channeled to it, and John could take care of that.
"Just a small warning for you: you may be powerful, and I know what you think about creatures like him, but Trigon has existed for several million years, and fought Zeus on even terms. I don't know if you can match that kind of power."
"I don't plan on fighting Trigon nor Hell, at least not until I prepare for it." I assured him. "I just want to help Rachel."
Raven's necklace color was obviously a mysterious, glowing jet black, the blobs that portrayed it small but bright.
Yes, blobs. Apparently Raven had been in several locations across the world. At least largest splotch of black was located in the American Northeast.
Specifically, it was located in a marsh mere miles away from Gotham. The discovery annoyed me, but it wasn't because I'd have to tell Bruce that Raven may or may have not been hiding in his city, or that I'll had to ask him for permission to get there and swear I wouldn't pay a visit to Arkham, as much as I wanted to, but because of the marsh itself.
It was called Slaughter Swamp.
Also known as the resting place of a Cyrus Gold, a criminal from the 19th century.
I don't think I have to tell you by what name he went nowadays... or the problem he'd end up posing to me.
Did I write Hephaestus right, especially when it came to his children? He's supposed to be the nicest Olympian both in the comics and in myth. Anyway, in the next chapter the SI will be forced to talk to Bruce, and let's just say he (Bruce) is not going to like it... nor the unavoidable confrontation with a certain local legend-turned-monster.