"HAA!"

- Gus Fring

"I can relate."

- Shimako Kai

"But what's the use? You've cooked my goose, 'cause you took advantage of me."

- Real Genius

"POH TAY TOES?"

- Samwise Gamgee

Shit gets weird when grubs gobble goddess brains. All knowledge was taken from the Mortal Ones, reducing the species to a herd of superstitious cowards. Rulers became grovelers. The Pantheon shrank into a cupboard of toy gods and goddesses who owed all their power to a despot. Society regressed into a bleak era where all the universe's lives were dependent on a single twisted deity.

It was a pretty fun time.

The once pure and sacred Palutena proclaimed herself to be the ruthless Goddess-Queen of all existence, and then proclaimed someone should help her find a way to cure her massive headache. The Chaos Kin had evolved past being a simple parasite irritating her scalp and fully fused itself with her mind, becoming one of her immortal organs. At first, she hated living with it. Now she wouldn't be able to survive without it.

The demonic insect was perpetually driving the goddess to madness, or just filling her empty head with it. It sat on top Palutena's head gleaming with her natural radiance. No one dared to remove it or even acknowledge its presence out of fear of making the queen irate (more that she usually was). It was basically a headdress with a little bit of blood and a single eyeball that was constantly looking around.

The goddess sat on her skull throne with her legs crossed. Her maggot-encrusted staff was propped next to her right armrest. Her only companion in her day-to-day functions of ruling the world under a tyrannical fist was the ancient, reanimated, tragic almost-hero Dark Pit, who was standing in emotionless silence at her left. Let's call him Dit.

The temple's broken marble floor rumbled as a swarm of diseased tree roots spread out in front of the Goddess-Queen's throne. The Goddess of Nature materialized out of the trunk of the warped tree that hadn't existed five seconds earlier. She was probably the only being in the existence who looked more infested than Palutena.

"Any special requests from my Lady Lu today?" Viridi asked with a tiny head tilt and a suggestion of a demented grin. Her voice was in the higher octaves of a dying squirrel.

"Nice to see you, Rida. Just the usual," Palutena answered her confidant with an amused sigh. The Chaos Kin made a soft chittering sound as its hidden mandibles took a nibble out of the spongy pink ambrosia inside her cranial bowl. "Rain fire and brimstone on all the temples not dedicated to me. Taint their surrounding seas with frog's blood. Make sure their poison ivy is extra itchy. Am I forgetting anything? Oh, and make sure someone keeps disemboweling Prometheus."

"Aah. Still punishing him for trying to empower the mortals by teaching them how to use fire?" Dit sneered playfully beside his queen with his arms crossed.

"No. I just really hate that movie," Palutena grumbled.

"Is there anything else I can do to tickle your… tendril?" Viridi glimpsed at the pulsing yellow eyeball sitting above Palutena's forehead while not making it obvious she was staring directly at it.

"Who is the God of Lasers and Explosives?" the Goddess-Queen asked with a growing smirk. "It's been a while since we had fireworks around the palace."

"Which one do you want? Lasers? Or explosives?" Viridi replied.

"Which one did we use to fry all those Argonauts last week?"

"Lasers, your majesty. Would you like me to summon Archibeamies for you?"

"No." Palutena waved her hand in decline. "Let's go with explosives. Which god takes care of that?"

"That would be Lord Dinomytus. I'll send for him immediately," Viridi answered without having to think about it.

"Please be quick, Rida," said Palutena. Her voice became colder as her green eyes darkened. "I'm a Goddess of Knowledge and War with a very short fuse."

Viridi tipped her head again in respect. The tree trunk she had sprouted from dissolved into fungal-decaying dust, taking the forest goddess with it. The dust disappeared in a swirl and erased all the evidence it was ever there. This was her main method of teleportation ever since the Great Infesting.

Palutena sank back into the throne as she scratched a spot beside her right ear. The Chaos Kin snapped its bony legs in small waves around the circumference of her head, glittering like a living black tiara as its proboscis siphoned another milliliter of her divine spinal fluid. The only sounds in the temple were the low crackle of the flaming torches and the light slurping of the parasite.

Dit remained beside the throne with his arms crossed in silence and his sandals planted firmly on the marble. This was how he spent most of his time—Guarding his master with the same unwavering patience as a statue.

But every once in a while, he would look from side to side just to watch his surroundings. Curiosity tinted his face as he peered toward his glamorous goddess with a watermelon-sized louse attached to her head.

"Is this the weirdest thing that's ever happened to you?" the undead bodyguard asked, stretching his half-melted wings.

"In the course of 4,785 years spread across 561 different worlds?" Palutena shrugged carelessly. "No. This is probably only the second weirdest."

Her long emerald hair brushed over her bare shoulder as she rested her cheek against against her fist in thought.

"The weirdest thing was when I met this Japanese geneticist from one of the Post-Industrial Eras. Real shady guy with a really strange family name. Minmay, or Megumin, or Mikazuki, or whatever. He thought he had some brilliant idea for how to help the mortals evolve faster. He said his group was very interested in acquiring my… I'd rather not talk about it. I told him to go bother some other bird with his science project."

"Sorry I cracked the question," Dit apologized. Palutena shuddered lightly before she collected herself.

"You look so bored, Dit. You should go on one of your adventures. Why don't you wave your flaming sword around for a while and subjugate the mortals with your Olympian rage?"

"I thought you didn't like me wandering too far from the temple on my own," Dit said with uncertainty. It made the goddess giggle and the abomination on her head clatter.

"That's just because I worry about you getting hurt," Palutena smiled. "But the only thing that could really hurt you is if you fly too long in the sunlight." Her smile turned ominous. "That's why the sun was the very first thing I replaced with a bottomless void of Chaos."

Author's note: Something something Sunlight Maggot Helmet.

Author's note 2: Did u know "Palutena" is just shorthand for "Pallas Athena"?