As the two groups proceeded to Zeus’ office side by side, Zee took charge of the situation. She had more access to Zeus on a regular basis, so she knew how to deal with him. Not that her plan didn’t amount to common knowledge anyway.

“As everyone knows, Zeus is a womanizer,” Zee explained. “We were going to sneak up to his room the back way, through here, and then have Holly be our leading lady to seduce everything we need to know out of him. We could have her ask on your behalf, or you could send in your own agent. Harley? Kim?”

“I’m in,” Harley said.

“I’ll pass,” Kim grunted. She didn’t like having her physical form, and she especially didn’t like having it ogled by other people.

“Understandable,” Holly said. “You want to go in one by one or team up, Harley? If the two of us are working together, we could tempt him with a threesome. Or actually have a threesome, if you’re up for it.”

“I am always up for a threesome, however, Zeus is a bit yucky,” Harley said. Holly nodded in agreement. His list of sexual misdemeanors was a mile long, and while Holly was willing to bite that bullet, she wasn’t eager. “We could have a go with Vell later if he’s up to it, though.”

Holly looked past Harley and raised an eyebrow at Vell.

“Let’s, uh, put a pin in that until later,” Vell said, trying to stall as politely as possible. “See how the day goes, you know.”

“Cool. Still, though, you want to go one by one or pair up?”

“Let’s go one by one,” Harley said. “It’ll be a little less suspicious if we keep some distance between us.”

And it’ll keep you from overhearing anything related to Quenay, Harley thought to herself. All five of the Einstein-Odinson loopers were on the same page when it came to keeping their secret goddess a secret. The single braincell the loopers shared manage to carry that thought along with it as it bounced between them, at least.

The underground lockers of the Einstein-Odinson sports facilities were surprisingly labyrinthine, and it took some time for the paired teams to find their way to Zeus’s temporary office. It sometimes seemed to Hawke that the entire island was designed to make things more complicated then necessary, but he kept that thought to himself. He felt like saying it out loud would make the problem even worse. Hakwe kept his suspicions bottled up inside long enough for the two teams to sneak their way to the door of the Zeus-Stephanide’s locker room, and through the empty, very sweaty smelling chambers within.

“He should be shacked up in here,” Zee said, pointing to a door in the back end of the locker rooms. “Probably sleeping. Holly, Harley? Who’s up first?”

“You’re the guests,” Harley said, gesturing to the door. “You’re up.”

Holly saluted once and then kicked the door open, making a spectacular entrance. The room crackled with electricity for a moment as the door open and then shut again, a clear marker of Zeus’ presence. The remaining members of the team waited patiently while Holly poured on the charm.

“So do you guys have trouble with the Marine Biology department too?”

“Oh lord, so much,” Zee said. She rolled her eyes as hard as they could be rolled. “Those idiots are always causing problems for us.”

“And do you have someone with a name like Michaela who’s weirdly creepy about Holly?”

“We do, actually,” Zee said.

“Okay this is starting to get sort of weird,” Hawke said. “Are we all just carbon copies of each other?”

“I don’t think we’re exact copies,” Lee said. She gestured to Zee’s dark skin vs her own pale complexion. “For obvious reasons.”

“I’m sure if we dug deep enough we could find a lot of differences,” Zee said. “Let’s try it. Lee, tell me a few things about yourself.”

“Well, let’s see, I hate my parents, I’m studying hydrokinesis and magikinesis, I’m an RA, I’m...seeing a girl named Adele…”

“Okay, there you go,” Zee said. “I have a great relationship with my mom, and I’m straight. I am a magic expert and an RA, though, so that’s the same.”

“See, there we are,” Lee said. “Superficial similarities, mostly. We still vary at our heart.”

“It’s still weird,” Jay said. He ignored the irony of echoing Hawke’s sentiment while complaining about being an echo. “Between the two of us and those weirdos from Patschke-Puck, why are there so many copies?”

“Maybe the entire universe is just a simulation, and the developers saved resources by copy/pasting us with slight modifications,” Harley said. It had been meant as a gag, but she could see Jay and Hawke both look very concerned all of a sudden. “Guys, no, it was a joke.”

That didn’t stop them from being scared. Nothing could stop Hawke and Jay from being scared. Their fear could, at least, be briefly interrupted by Holly exiting Zeus’s office. She readjusted her shirt collar to show less cleavage and gave a thumbs up.

“Alright, I know where we’re headed next,” Holly said. “We got to check under the stands.”

“Are we in a hurry, or do we have time to spare?”

“We got time,” Holly said. “Enough for Harley to sneak in and ask some questions. Should be easy, he seems like he’s in a good mood.”

Harley waited a few seconds and then headed into the office. The away-team coach’s office was not very large, but Zeus had made himself comfortable regardless, with a cooler full of ambrosia leaning against the wall and his feet up on the desk. He stopped midway through a sip of heavenly nectar and raised an eyebrow at Harley.

“Back for more already, eh?”

The lord of the heavens sat up a little straighter, and puffed out his incredibly hairy chest. The air crackled with lightning and his carpet of chest hair stood on end as he tried his best to shoot Harley a seductive gaze, which quickly turned into a confused gaze instead.

“Wait, are you-”

“Not the girl who came in earlier? Yeah, no,” Harley confirmed. “It’s like a weird doppelganger scenario. We don’t know what’s going on either.”

“Huh.”

The heavy brows of Zeus furrowed as he realized he would have to start over. He flexed his divine muscle and shifted forms, and Harley watched with casual awe as he shifted into a goose.

“Then hello,” said Zeus’s new feathered form. “Can I interest you in a flight of fancy?”

Harley stared blankly at the goose, unsure of what to make of the ruffled feathers and preening beak. Zeus maintained his flirtatious birdatious routine for a few seconds before his feathery chest deflated.

“Not working for you, huh?”

“Not really, no,” Harley said. “Does it work on other people?”

“Yeah,” said Zeus. “You would be shocked how much tail I pull with this routine. Especially after I drop a line like ‘ready to be seduced by the Zeus Goose?’ or something like that.”

Harley failed to stifle a chuckle.

“Okay, that’s kind of funny, sure,” Harley said. “But I’m not here to be seduced, Zeus or goose. I had a question for you.”

Zeus sighed and resumed his human form. Under normal circumstances, he might’ve pursued Harley more aggressively, but he’d gotten enough warnings about inappropriate advances. The goose trick had already been pushing it.

“Alright, what can the thunder god do for you?”

“I was wondering if you could tell us something about an old god,” Harley said. “Someone you might’ve known.”

“Oh, I’ve known gods of all kinds. Not many left, though,” Zeus boasted. The Olympian gods had lasted longer than most non-tricksters owing to them being kind of assholes people were less likely to worship, but even so, many had faded away. “Aphrodite’s still around on OnlyFans, I think, and Ares is undoubtedly here somewhere, you mortals love war too much to be rid of him, and of course I’ve had a few pantheon crossovers, mostly with the tricksters, of course. Did you have anyone specific in mind?”

“Any chance you’ve heard of someone named Quenay?”

“Can’t say I have,” Zeus said. He sipped at his ambrosia and put his feet back up on the desk. “What’s their deal?”

“Super mysterious, very powerful, has slightly mismatched eyes,” Harley said, listing off what little they knew of Quenay. “She’s a god of life, too, and she likes to set up weird games where people have to find the meaning of life.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Zeus fell silent for a very long time. Harley assumed he was just thinking about his past until she looked a little closer and saw that the ambrosia bottle in his hands was shaking.

“Zeus?”

The thunderer slammed the ambrosia bottle down on the desk so hard the glass nearly cracked.

“Alright, here’s what I’m going to tell you,” Zeus said. “You need to stop whatever you are doing, you need to leave this school, you need to change your name, possibly get plastic surgery, then you need to sell all your worldly possessions and move to a small shack on a small island somewhere in the Mediterranean, and also keep a loaded gun on you at all times so that if she ever comes near you again you can eat a bullet.”

Zeus said it all with a straight face, staring down at Harley with an intensity that made the air crackle like lightning.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m being entirely serious,” Zeus said. The fear was apparent in his otherwise mighty figure, as his bright blue eyes darted from side to side, checking every corner of the room. “I don’t know who this ‘god of life’ is or what she wants, but I’ve seen the game get played before. It never ends well. Just ask Atlantis.”

“Ugh, this again,” Harley sighed. “Atlantis doesn’t exist, we already proved that.”

Plumbing the ocean depths had turned up several cities that might have inspired Atlantis, but the mythical continent itself was nowhere to be found. Ancient gods and other entities with long memories still maintained that the city had existed, but could never give any proof.

“Not anymore it doesn’t,” Zeus said. “Not since they tried to untangle your mystery god’s riddle. Wiped themselves off the map and out of mind, just like the Tunguska Academy.”

“Just like the what?”

“I’d wager it’s happened a few other times, too,” Zeus said. “Can’t say say for sure, though. I don’t know any other than those two times, and twice is enough.”

Zeus, who had been caught up in his fearful reverie for a moment, remembered Harley’s presence and looked at her with a mix of fear and pity, but mostly fear.

“Oh, also, get out of here, never speak to me again, and you better start shopping for Mediterranean real estate. Alternatively, embrace death.”

Zeus then ducked for cover underneath his desk, the better to avoid Harley and the hypothetical wrath of Quenay. Harley wasn’t sure how much good the plywood desk was going to do him, but Zeus clearly wanted nothing to do with her, so she left.

Still reeling from Zeus’ apocalyptic warnings, Harley got a violent snap back to reality when she nearly ran into her own doppelganger on her way out. Seeing Holly reminded her of the bullshit she dealt with on a daily basis, and got her head back on track.

“Got everything you need?”

“Not by a long shot,” Harley sighed. “But it’s a start. We can talk about it later.”

“In the meantime, we got a date beneath the bleachers,” Holly said. “You guys want to come?”

“Of course,” Lee said. “Many hands make light work.”

The two matching groups retraced their steps through the underbelly of the island, slightly less silently this time. Kim found herself stuck walking side by side with the K.I.M. unit from the Zeus school.

“So, uh...K.I.M. What’s that stand for?”

“Komputational Intelligence Machine,” K.I.M. said flatly. “Spelled with a ‘K’ because Zeus-Stephanides student number 65432, alternate designation “Numbnut”, invented a version spelled with a ‘C’. I am the superior model.”

“Kimmy there is my most advanced model yet,” Holly said. “Still working out some kinks in imitation neuroplasticity, but if my work is heading in the right direction, I might make the first ever fully sapient machine in a couple years!”

Holly took the twenty-second long awkward silence that followed as proof the loopers were jealous.

The long march through the underground ended, and the matching teams marched into the light. A high-stakes game of Ballball unfolded immediately overhead, as two teams competed on the levitating spherical field.

“You know, when Leanne’s not around to completely trivialize it, that sport’s actually kind of cool,” Harley said.

“You guys knew Leanne?”

Zee wasn’t even a sports player, but notes of fear still crept into her voice as she spoke of Leanne. The legend of the seemingly invincible sportswoman from Einstein-Odinson had spread far beyond the immediate sporting circles she dominated. Any student of a rival school had come to know her name and tremble.

“Oh yes, she was on our team until she graduated,” Lee said. She waved both groups in the direction of the bleachers.

“That explains Lorraine,” Holly said. “Though she wasn’t quite as, you know, incredibly powerful.”

“Yeah, our school is just built different that way. No offense to you guys, but if there was like a scale of all our weird doppelganger groups, we’d probably be on the top, you guys a close second, and way way way way in last place would be -well, those guys.”

Harley pointed across the way, below the bleachers, where the gaggle of students from Patschke-Puck lurked. The haphazard collective of half-rate students stopped what they were doing to scowl at their counterparts.

“Oh great, the two flavors of trash have met,” Leigh said. The leader of the Patschke-Puck collective squared off with her counterparts, Zee and Lee.

“Who’re you calling trash, garbage?” Zee retorted.

“Yes, you have no reason to be throwing out insults, considering you’ve lost every conflict we’ve ever had,” Lee said.

“You guys cheated!” Leigh snapped back.

“What the- You have literally and openly cheated every time we’ve met,” Lee said.

“Same with us,” Zee said.

While the three variants squabbled, Hawke and Jay watched from the sidelines.

“Is this getting a little hard to follow for you too?”

“Little bit,” Jay said. Having three different versions of every person involved in the conversation made it a bit hard to track. “I’m just going to nod and act like I know what’s going on.”

“Good plan.”

“What is even going on with you people nowadays,” Harley said. “And who is this? Is that just Leanna wearing a metal helmet?”

The “robot” at the back of the Patschke-Puck group leaned over to Leigh and tried to whisper through her helmet before giving up and pulling it up to expose her mouth.

“I told you they wouldn’t fall for it,” Leanna said. She was starting to regret getting held back. Moreso than she already did.

“Shut it! That isn’t Leanna, that’s our very advanced and definitely more advanced than yours robot, uh...L.I.M.”

“Does that by any chance stand for Leanna In Metal?” Zee observed, as one of the metal tubes that had been repurposed into an “arm” started to slide off Leanna’s sleeve.

“No. And hey, what about you, Einstein’s, you don’t even have a robot.”

“Nope.”

“No.”

“Definitely not,” Vell added.

“No robots here,” Kim said, giving an exaggerated shrug. “You definitely got us this time, people I’ve never met before.”

“The first of many victories!” Leigh declared triumphantly. “Or perhaps second, if you count...this!”

Leigh dramatically swept her hands and gestured to the side, towards a box with a cloth over it. Hawke’s apparent counterpart turned his head past the box, prompting Leigh to slap him.

“Take the cloth off the box, Chicken,” Leigh demanded.

“Oh. Okay.”

“His name is Chicken?” Hawke asked.

“No, but he’s afraid of most things and I can’t remember his actual name,” Leigh said. Chicken grabbed on to the cloth covering the box and waited for a second cue. “Now, behold...this!”

Chicken dramatically swept the covering off the box, revealing not just an ordinary box, but an animal crate. One which contained a very annoyed looking eagle, prompting Zee to gasp with relief.

“Aetos! There you are!”

“That’s right, you Zeus worshiping idiots, we captured your eagle!”

The Zeus-Stephanides students shared a quick, knowing glance, and then burst into laughter. Holly even hit a button to make K.I.M. give an electronic giggle. Their delight multiplied Leigh’s already visible frustration.

“What are you ingrates giggling about?”

“Listen, love, your only accomplishment here is keeping Aetos in a cage,” Zee said. “This little guy finds a way to get out of his cage every day.”

“And we get him back in every day,” Jay added. Lee bit her tongue for a moment.

“Wait, hold on, this is what you do every day,” Harley said, gesturing to the eagle cage. “You rescue a lost eagle?”

“Sometimes even twice, yeah,” Zee said. The loopers drew away from their counterparts and shared concerned glances among each other. Zee couldn’t help but notice the look of hesitant confusion on all their faces. “Why? What do you guys do?”

Lee struggled to come up with an answer to that question, but never got the chance. Above them, the metal of the stands buckled and groaned under intense weight it could no longer support. Harley looked up and saw that several of the support beams to the bleachers had been sabotaged, and now the entire construct was coming crumbling down. As the metal started to break and bodies started to drop, Harley pointed up at the wall of metal and meat that was about to crush them all to death.

“That.”

----------------------------------------

One time loop later, Harley’s more than slightly murderous doppelganger Harmony was once again sawing her way through the support beams of the bleachers. She was just about to finish her first one when Kim appeared as if from nowhere and slapped the saw right out of her hands.

“Cut it out,” she demanded.

Close behind Kim, the other loopers, and their counterparts in the Zeus-Stephanides group, arrived to keep the Patschke-Puck doppelgangers in check

“Yeah, fuck off, you little murder goblin,” Harley said. Harmony hissed at them and scampered off, leaving a very concerned Harley behind. It worried her that Harmony was apparently an alternate version of her.

Thanks to some streamlined conversations -and Harley not asking any questions about Quenay on the second loop- both groups had arrived in time to prevent Harmony’s sabotage from reaching its completion. While the two groups drove off their Patschke-Puck counterparts, and Vell repaired the single broken beam, Lee helped Zee retrieve Aetos the eagle.

“There we go,” Zee said. The eagle perched calmly on her covered shoulder, glad to be out of the tiny box. “Our mascot back in safe hands. For now. I know how antsy you get, Aetos.”

Aetos merely preened his feathers, fully ignoring Zee’s words. As much as an ordinary eagle was capable of consciously ignoring anything. Lee regarded the majestic yet mundane animal.

“So...you have to rescue this fellow every day?”

“He’s smarter than he looks,” Zee said. “But not that smart. You guys said you deal with something similar, right?”

“It’s similar, but uh…”

“It’s mail,” Harley interrupted. She’d spent a little more time plotting out their lie. “Every day with this shit, there’s some letter going to the wrong place, so somebody thinks they’re getting funding they aren’t, or an experiment starts that shouldn’t start. It’s hectic, you know, we got to keep ahead of it.”

“Oh yes, that’s us, the mailroom,” Lee said, quickly nodding along with Harley’s absolute bullshit.

“That does sound pretty chaotic, ladies,” Zee said. She shrugged, slightly upsetting the giant eagle on her shoulder. “Sorry, I think we better get this guy back to his roost. Maybe we can meet up later, and swap stories?”

“If the mail doesn’t eat up our time,” Lee said with a smile. Zee shot them a thumbs-up and then walked off with her team, to escort Aetos the Eagle to safety. While his erstwhile counterpart walked away, Hawke sighed heavily.

“For a second there, I really thought our lives had gotten at least a little more normal,” Hawke moaned.

“It would’ve been nice to have some company,” Lee said. “But it looks like we’re alone after all.”

“Some of us more than others,” Kim said, as she side-eyed Vell. She had counterparts -horrible ones, but counterparts nonetheless. Across the this reality and others, Vell seemed to be alone.

“Yes, I do wonder where all of Vell’s counterparts are,” Lee said.

Hawke made a very notable grunt of distress which became more notable for how hard he tried to pretend he hadn’t. It only took a few seconds of staring to make his facade crack.

“I mean, I had a thought. Maybe. I kind of figured we were on the same page, didn’t think it worth mentioning.”

“What thought is that, Hawke?”

“Well, you know, I thought, it sort of seemed logical to me, that Vell’s the only Vell because all the other versions of him...stayed dead?”

A raucous cheer rose up from the crowd above the bleachers, contrasting nicely with the dead silence that reigned below it. All eyes fell on Vell, and he was the one to break the silence.

“Well, fuck me, I guess.”