A/N: Thank you all for your reviews.

Phase 5: Christening

The wait was longer than even Athena had expected. Hermes prided himself on his punctuality in delivery.

"Ya think he's dead?" blatantly asked Ares.

Thunder boomed.

"What? We were all thinking it."

Athena's hand was fidgeting on the rest of her throne. "Hermes is taking longer than I surmised."

A few gasps rippled the silence.

"Are you sure?" Zeus asked.

The goddess of wisdom conjured up a calculator, a map, and an abacus. She studied the map, typed in some calculations, and slid some beads around while muttering to herself. When the tools she summoned vanished, she said, "There may be a factor interfering with the retrieval."

With that said, Zeus jolted out of his seat. "There is something wrong interjecting with our mission. We need to investigate."

"How, Father?" Apollo asked. "We would have to go through the Underworld—which I'm sure Hades wouldn't like. Then through Tartarus and Chaos. This would be worse than—"

What Apollo was going to say was lost forever by the sudden entrance of missing Hermes. The face of the messenger god was distant as he walked over to sit on his throne at the end of the left wing. Still, he looked unresponsive to all the gods in the room staring at him.

"I know the look of a person who woke up in an unfamiliar place anywhere," Dionysus said, taking a swig from his diet Coke.

Hermes refused to make any response.

"Did you get the essence?" asked Zeus.

He produced the collecting rod. Hephaestus reached over to take it and examined the pod.

"This is it," The god of the forge said. "You did it," he congratulated Hermes. Other gods joined the praise, except he still seemed out of it.

"Is something wrong, Lord Hermes?" Demeter asked.

He looked around at his fellow deities. His family, mostly. "He spoke to me," said Hermes.

"Who spoke to you?" asked Zeus.

"Not who. He."

Everybody went still. Never before has He spoken to any of them. Especially after He took all of their worshippers. But why now? What could He want?

"He told me that what we plan to do is against the natural order of existence but necessary for the sake of our people. That is a direct quote," Hermes explained. "He said He will allow Mars to become a new promised land for the event of Earth's health."

Every Olympian remained silent.

It wasn't until Lord Zeus thought it went on long enough that he broke the silence. "Did He… did He say anything else?" After his son shook his head, he continued. "In that case, we'll continue with our plan. Hephaestus, ready Ares's spear for the blessing. Ares, ready yourself."

The war god rose from his seat. He transfigured his baseball bat into a tall blood-red spear topped with a long Celestial bronze blade. Hephaestus took it and the collector to his workshop.

Then, they waited.

By the time Hephaestus returned, his fellow Olympians had all moved to the courtyard outside the palace. Ares's chariot was stationed out with the god of war in armor. Hephaestus returned his spear back to him. The head of it was black instead of bronze, with other colors misting around it.

His fellow gods each gave him a blessing. Most were more like "good luck," but Hermes offered for the chariot to travel faster, and Aphrodite gave Ares a passionate kiss.

Backing away, the god of war mounted his chariot, and soon enough, he was driving it up.

As he rode through the void, Apollo played Gustav Holst's suite Mars, the Bringer of War. Some other gods were either telling him to stop or making requests.

"I'm nothing but a voice command to you people," he complained. "Alexa, play Mozart. Alexa, play Madonna. Alexa, tell me the weather—"

"Alexa, off," Artemis said.

Half of the assembly laughed.

Back in the dark depths of space, Ares raced through the emptiness, holding on tight to the reins and the spear. The journey was longer than he wanted, but at least he moved faster than anything else in the Solar System. The Red Planet eventually came into focus, and he pressed onward. The rust-colored rock was undoubtedly a reflection of himself—except for the size! It was cold like his heart, violent like him, and will kill everything that tries to get near it.

Why was he doing that again?

Oh, right! The possible intergalactic wars. That will be glorious.

But he'll have to wait for the stupid mortals to belt spaceships with weapons. Why did they have to be so slow?! But perhaps the Martian colonials will organize like Earth. They'll fight, create their own countries, and then rage war. Oh, how that will be magnificent. And he'll be there in the fray.

He had just entered the upper orbit. This was it.

He stood on the edge of the chariot, staring down. "I, Ares, God of War, disown the planet Mars. May she be revived. May she grow and nurture. I hereby christen you to life. RISE!"

He stepped off. Ares dived headfirst down with his tricked-out spear outstretched. Fire burned around him as he entered the sky, but it did nothing to him. The thin atmosphere whistled by. The dust and fines in the air cleared a path for him. Clearing a path for their master.

The ground was speeding up to him. He twisted—readying himself up for….

The ground cratered. Lava spewed. The primordial energy in the spear rushed into the planet's crust.

In the god's eyes, the dead rocky embryo of Mars was gaining new life. Her heart was starting to beat. Her limbs were growing. The rusty red surface glowed from the magma, only for it to sink back down. The quakes and lava subsided, for the planet returned to the temperature it had been before. Again, through godly eyes, Ares could see that the primordial being of this world had grown. But… she didn't grow past the fetal stage.

"What?"

He tasted the air. It was still thin and tasted of solar radiation. The gravity still felt weaker than Earth's.

"No."

It didn't work.

Ares cursed. Surrounding objects were not spared from his wrath.

A/N: Some of you may think that the gods could simply snap their fingers, and the planet instantly becomes Earth-like. But in his series, Apollo has said that the godly world and science coexisted. When he turned mortal, he couldn't drive the son across the sky, but the sun still moved because the Earth still orbited around it. Ergo, I am incorporating science, giving the gods some obstacles to work around. For instance, someone said something about Hermes being able to teleport to and out of the Chaos pit, but I need to make these chapters long enough. Also, the Chaos was powerful enough to prevent Hermes from teleporting.

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