Hey, I'm backkkk!

Damn, this is like the 3rd week I'm updating semi-regularly. This is weird.

*Proceeds to get pelted by cabbage*

Anyway, the next installment of the Orion Goes to Therapy series is here! This is a direct continuation of the previous chapter, because I had to cut it in half because it was getting too long.

Enjoy, and leave a review!

Orion slammed the door shut the moment the kids tumbled out the door, his mechanical eyes doing the equivalent of narrowing threateningly. He wasn't going to hurt them. Probably.

The kids in question beamed, "Hi!"

Orion blinked, not expecting them to be that cheerful after getting cornered by a stranger. Didn't anyone teach them about the dangers of strangers? Orion had hunted fish with a better sense of self-preservation than that.

"What are you doing here?"

"We're here to say hi!" the first kid said. "Teucer said he knew you, and you're a good person, so now we're here!"

A good...person? Orion's brain practically short-circuited. If they thought he was a good person, he'd hate to see what they considered bad. Were they talking about the same person? Children were easily confused, after all.

He shook his head. "Is that all?"

"Yep!"

Orion found that hard to believe. "And you were hiding behind the vending machine why?"

"You saw that?" the slightly older girl looked shocked. "But we were so careful! Did your eyes come with X-ray vision?"

Orion froze. Whoever those kids are, they could see through the Mist.

In other words, they knew he was a giant.

His cover was about to be blown.

Which wasn't a big problem. He could always go back to the wilderness. Fake his death, perhaps. Find a cozy cave and become a hermit. His boss would bemoan the sudden loss of profit. His therapist would wonder why her client never showed up anymore. Childe would probably be upset that he's gone, though he would probably be relieved that he didn't have to pay for his food anymore. Eventually, everyone would move on. But to his surprise, he was actually pretty upset by the idea. He had built a decent life here. Somewhere along the line, he had gotten attached to it.

Kill them, suggested the bloodthirsty part of him, the part that Tartarus had brought out and fortified. Get rid of the witnesses.

"Uh...are you okay, sir?"

They're just kids, he thought firmly. Stupid kids, but kids nonetheless.

You've killed before for less.

"Sir?!"

Yes, and I'm trying to not do that anymore, he thought irritably.

"Aiya, kuai dian san kai!"

"...What?"

"Hurry up and scatter!"

A burst of wind hit him in the face, successfully snapping him out of his internal reverie. He snarled and instinctively threw the knife he was holding.

Wait.

When did he pull out a knife? Oh no, he was about to murder children. The knife planted itself an inch from the boy's face, who was shocked into crying. Orion breathed a sigh of relief at his poor aim.

"You made my brother cry!" The older girl had gone from polite and smiley to fuming with unadulterated rage. "Only I can do that!"

She pulled out a staff, and Oh, she's an Egyptian magician. That makes more sense now, and shouted a spell, probably one that rained down destruction and doom.

At the same time, the smaller girl shouted "Cheese!" A strange battle cry, but he had heard weirder ones.

Over the next three seconds, Orion learned three things:

One: the spell the older girl shouted meant melt.

Two: the word "Cheese" is, in fact, not a battle cry.

Three: Spells could interfere with each other when cast at the same time.

For the second time that month, Orion once again found himself hopelessly stuck in something. Still, being stuck in a block of partially molten cheese was slightly more humiliating than being entangled in plant matter. It was going to be a nightmare trying to get it off his clothes.

It took fifteen minutes and five juice boxes to calm Teucer down. Tonia glared at the giant man with extreme vitriol.

Teucer sniffed, "Where did you get that many juice boxes?"

"Um," Nao'hai had, in fact, been raiding the Nome's kitchen way past her bedtime, because sneaking out at night was a fun activity that was best done alone if one didn't want to get caught. "Anyway, what do we do now? And how come the giant man attacked us? You said he was nice."

"He was!" Teucer looked like he was about to cry again. "He taught me how to shoot a bow and everything!"

"Alright, alright," Tonia looked very keen on avoiding that exact eventuality. "It's not your fault. We can call Childe and have him deal with this problem."

Nao'hai frowned. "What if he confissates my Appa plushie?"

She wilted a little under their unimpressed stares.

"Wait, Childe?" the giant man spoke up for the first time since getting trapped in a giant mountain of cheese. Tonia redirected her glare at him once more.

"Yes?" She lifted her staff casually and tested the tip. A few hieroglyphics floated off into the air. Nao'hai's eyes widened. She didn't know that Tonia was so scary!

"I know Childe. He's a friend."

"Yeah? Then how come you don't recognize Teucer?"

The giant man squinted. "Actually, now that I think about it...you do look familiar."

Tonia grumbled under her breath. "I'm telling on you."

Childe ran into the back of the archery range, out of breath and his heart in his throat. "Tonia! Teucer! Nao'hai! Are you-" he caught sight of Teucer, surrounded by empty juice boxes, Nao'hai anxiously trying to cheer him up by stuffing his face with seaweed (so that's where all the snacks had gone...he was starting to wonder), Orion looking miserable under a pile of cheese, and Tonia overlooking the whole scene with all the vigilance and murderous intent of a god about to smite (she took her older sister duties seriously, despite being a middle child).

Childe took a deep breath, and started laughing.

"Alright," Childe still looked like he was on the verge of laughter. "Promise not to kill everyone if I let you out?"

Orion grumbled.

Childe uttered a single spell, the mountain of cheese disappeared, and Orion found himself face planting on the concrete at the sudden lack of support below him.

Orion managed to avoid breaking his nose, though his forehead felt bruised. He held back a curse.

He was never fighting children ever again.

Said children are staring at him, wide eyed and without a hint of fear. Which he supposed was fully justified, considering how badly he'd been humiliated.

"So," he said, choosing to focus on Childe instead, who seemed significantly less dangerous at the moment. "You didn't tell me that you were an Egyptian."

Childe shrugged. "You didn't ask."

"But you knew that I'm a giant?"

"Well, I was fairly certain it wasn't a medical condition. I didn't know which pantheon specifically, though. You looked friendly enough, at any rate, so I didn't try to kill you or anything."

Why did everyone keep thinking that?

"Friendly? I'm afraid you've been a terrible—wait," he paused in the middle of his dramatic you-should-not-trust-me-if-you-know-what's-good-for-you speech. "So you never figured out which pantheon I'm from? How could you not know? I literally call myself 'Orion Gigantes'!"

"Exactly!" Childe put up his hands in defense. "There's no way 'Orion Gigantes' could be your actual name! It's too obvious!"

"Too obvious-"

"Wait, Childe," The oldest out of the children, the one that was glaring daggers at him, spoke up. "What did you mean 'which pantheon'? Aren't there only one?"

Childe hesitated. "Not quite. There are other gods around. Greek. Roman. Norse, and so on. Pretty much if there's a name for it, it exists."

The kid's eyes were wide. "Really? How come nobody ever told us?"

"It's supposed to be a secret. A big secret," Childe admitted. "I only found out about it by accident. You have to promise not to tell anyone, okay?"

The other girl, who had finally stopped feeding Teucer seaweed frowned, "Wait, that's a secret? But I play with my relatives in Suzhou all the time!"

Silence.

"Nao'hai," Childe said, looking like he was afraid to know. "What do you mean, 'relatives in Suzhou'?"

Nao'hai frowned. "They're my relatives? Sometimes my moms take me to Suzhou and I play with my…" she frowned thoughtfully. "Mom's uncle's grandson."

"Cousin," Childe offered.

"What? No. Mom's brother's son is called a cousin, so Mom's uncle's grandson can't be called a cousin."

"They're all called cousins in English."

"Weird," Nao'hai frowned. "Anyway, we used to play and my uncle used to make me do Tai Chi Chuan with them."

"Oh," Childe began to relax. "So it's not like you met a —"

"And I've met Sun Wukong," she said cheerfully. "He's a monkey, and he's really funny!"

Silence again. Orion stared at Childe in sympathy.

Thus marks the end of the chapter! And the second time Orion got defeated by preteens. Oh gods, what if that was the key to defeating him? That would be hilarious.

I chose Suzhou to be the Hub of sorts for Chinese Mythology (well one of them, anyway) for historical reasons, which you are welcome to Google if you want. And Shanghai is the location of one of the Nomes, also for historical reasons. Geographically, they're pretty close to each other, and the local dialects are actually related enough that it's mutually intelligible! Which is a miracle considering what Chinese dialects are like.

Sun Wukong: Pretty much the most prominent figure in all of Chinese Mythology. If you heard anything about Chinese Mythology, you've probably heard of this guy. Like Guanyin? Who's that? Jade Emperor? Never heard of him. Sun Wukong? Oh yeah it's the Monkey King. If you haven't heard of him, you've probably of Son Goku, which is the Japanese On-yomi pronunciation of the kanji. You've heard of Dragon Ball, at least, right?

If you want to learn more, I recommend the Overly Sarcastic Production videos on Journey to the West. They are hilarious and they accidently makes you learn stuff!

So yeah, hope you enjoyed this.

Be sure to vote for what you want!

A. Orion going to Therapy

B. Aradia in Medieval Tuscany

C. Iphigenia

D. AI

E. Suggest your own prompt!

I look forward to your responses!