A/N: So, a reminder. Cassandra is a prophetess. She is tiny, speaks with a Minnesotan accent, dontcha know, and likes to give snacks and well-meant but unsolicited advice (remember, she gave Coby cookies?). She isn't the same person as the Sybil, who is 9 feet tall and likes to insult people. They're both prophetesses I guess, but the Sybil is a churro-loving hermit who serves a special purpose in connecting the royal family to the god powers.

Ch. 8 – Sybil Disobedience

Helena had good reason to hate parties.

At her Coronation she'd made enemies of all her neighboring kingdoms, and was kidnapped by her friend-gone-power-mad.

At the last City of Dionysus festival, she had gone insane and attacked her husband, thinking he was a specter from the Gods. She'd made a lot of enemies that night too.

She shouldn't have expected a homecoming party to go any differently. It didn't matter that she was surrounded by familiar faces this time. It turned out she had some enemies hidden among the trusted crowd.

Bags' presence had been the first clue that something was wrong. As she glared him down with icy indignation, having just informed Bags that Ilium would never be home to him, she waved the Head of Security to her side.

"Paris, what is this man doing here?"

Paris blinked at the intruder in surprise, then quickly drew his bow and nocked it with a sword.

"I don't know how he got past my security," he said, narrowing his eyes. "We would have executed him on sight, Majesty. What are your orders?"

As satisfying as it would be to execute Bags, he'd argued that his retirement made him immune to her order of exile. It was semantics, but they were good semantics, and she couldn't kill him in good conscience now.

"Have him escorted out of the country," she replied, holding up a hand to Paris so that he would lower his weapon. "Bags, consider yourself personally exiled this time. I don't want to see your face here again."

Bags sighed dramatically. "Oh, phooey," he said, sounding not the least bit penitant. "I guess I'll just have to leave then, like it's my job. But first, a gift."

At a motion from Bags, Nysa approached, a large, glitter-wrapped gift box appearing out of nowhere in her hands. Helena blinked at her hitherto loyal servant, trying to fathom why she would be helping Bags of all people.

Bags took the box and held it out to the Queen, even going so far as to bow, flourishing his leg behind him for effect. Helena eyed the fat man suspiciously, as well she should.

The room had gone eerily quiet, and she found her hand creeping toward Peleus, the blade usually easiest for her to reach. Her tight sleeves made it difficult to even brush the handle with her fingertips.

"Open it," Helena commanded him, sensing a trap. The box had an unsettling smell.

"Don't trust me?" Bags asked. "Well, whatever the world may hitherto say of the Line of Prometheus, it won't be to question your intelligence." He proceeded to grab the lid of the box, and without further ado, he lifted it clear.

Helena peered into the box and the color drained from her face. Her hand had finally closed around the hilt of her favorite sword, but she didn't have the leverage to draw.

Bags looked up at her and smiled. The party hadn't yet started, but the overthrow had officially begun.

In his own chamber, Cygnus de Leda had just finished donning a royal chiton and toga. He'd never been one for suit coats and other such evening wear – they only made him look ganglier. The traditional garb of his country suited him better. Well, Helena too. When she couldn't wear her military uniform, Helena generally also preferred chitons to dresses – more leg room – but somehow she always ended up getting bullied into being the kingdom's fashion plate.

It's her own fault for being the prettier of the two of us, he thought with a smirk, briefly eyeing the rugged scratch scar Regent had left across his face.

Next he belted his sword to his side, eyeing it distastefully. He hated combat, and he hated that a sword of all things had taken on political and royal meaning. If he could have it his way, all battles would be fought with the wits only.

The King's Sword, a godly blade forged by Hephaestus himself, had two real benefits. One was that it could recognize those worthy of the god powers. Only such a one could draw it from its sheath. Historically, questions of paternity had been settled that way.

Another was that it could contend with those blessed with the protection of the gods. Unlike Helena's blade, it could harm members of the royal family like any ordinary blade, but beyond that, it could harm demi-gods, even the gods themselves some said, not that anyone had tested that theory. As King, he held a check to the gods' power.

There was once a time he'd refused to carry it except at royal functions. He'd been a staunch pacifist back then, and had refused to learn swordplay on principle. After having to contend with the might of the World Government firsthand, however, –after losing his wife and a thousand of his most trusted men because he couldn't fight by any means other than the god powers, he had realized the error of his idealism. Unfortunately, he had become a cripple, and no longer had the option of learning to fight.

When Helena had healed him, he'd finally agreed to train with her. Perhaps it was too little too late, though. At this age, he would never hope to be much of a threat in battle. At least he could defend himself, though.

And at least the country had Helena. She had not yet reached the sword mastery of her mother, but she had leadership skills, and an idyllic vision for the country that she had only recently rediscovered. Zoro had restored that in her, he knew.

Cygnus' reverie came to a sudden, unexpected end when the door to his private chambers burst open. Turning in alarm, his now trained hands immediately flew to his sword pommel, but they soon relaxed as he stared in surprise at the completely innocuous intruder.

"Cassandra!" he cried, reproachfully. "You gave me a real fright." Then his brow furrowed. "How in Hades did you reach my quarters? You're not supposed to be back here! Can't your prophecies wait until morning? I haven't the time for them right now."

The prophetess had pestered him daily since Helena had gone to sea. She'd handed out snacks and given her usual, "Ilium will fall, dontcha know!" schpeal, the one Helena had usually had to put up with, only Helena had always faced it with humor. Cygnus hadn't been sure whether or not to take the woman seriously, and so found her prophecies flustering at best. Usually they were a call to check his daughter, which wasn't really something he was certain he should do anymore. Cygnus had good reason to fear idealism, but something about Helena inspired him now.

The short, hunched Cassandra didn't look at him right away. Chest heaving, wrinkled face a sheet of sweat, she pushed the glasses up her tiny snub of a nose, gripping the doorframe to keep herself steady. It was as if she had sprinted through the palace to find him.

When she spoke at last, it wasn't to call him to repentance, or offer him chocolate sandwich cookies. She got straight to the point, skipping pleasantries to go into prophetess mode.

"CYGNUS DU PROMETHEUS," she boomed, "FLEE!"

"What…?" Cygnus blinking at her. "Cassandra, what's all this?"

"DEATH HAS COME. IT IS AT YOUR DOOR. ILIUM WILL FALL TONIGHT."

Well, at least that put a deadline on things. If it didn't fall as she said, perhaps they could tell Cassandra to drop all this and take up a career as a snack saleswoman. Something was different this time, though. Her voice sounded strange, almost like it didn't belong to her.

"THE SUN QUEEN HAS FAILED. YOU CAN NO LONGER SAVE HER. SAVE YOURSELF."

Then he saw her eyes, magnified by her spectacles. From the whites down to her pupils, they had gone completely silver. That had never happened before.

She fell back against the doorframe and sank to the floor, tears streaming down her face as she lost her frightening demeaner and her eyes returned to normal. "Why didn't you listen?" she moaned, gripping her wild nest of red hair. "Why didn't any of you listen?"

"Helena!" Cygnus gasped, dashing past the weeping prophetess.

The sweeping halls of his ancestral home seemed to go on forever, and yet he arrived in the throne room in less than a minute.

Though Cassandra's warning still rang in his ears, part of him dared to hope that she had been wrong. -That he would find Helena happily greeting guests while grousing about her dress under her breath. Instead he found her staring into a box presented her by their former World Government Liaison.

The contents of the box stared unseeing back.

The box contained the decapitated head of the Sybil.

Helena didn't say a word. Not that she could have gotten a thought in edgewise.

After Bags revealed his 'gift,' the Cipher Pol agents around her sprung into motion. The thick, sturdy fabric of her glittering golden dress left her to struggle helplessly for her weapons as party guests and guards alike fell to the ground around her. Paris leaped to her aid, but though he tried to fire at Bags, the fat man vanished the second he loosed his sword.

Paris slumped into her a moment later, blood seeping from a wound in his chest. A bullet wound. How could he have a bullet wound when no shots had been fired?

She screamed out to him as she caught him. The sword and bow dropped from his lifeless fingers, and his beloved camera snail fell from his pocket. It's flash temporarily blinded the queen as it struck the palace tiles, taking one final "shell-fie" of its master before Paris' eyes fell shut.

If she had had just a second or two more to think, the queen would have drawn one of the swords from his quiver. However, in her hesitation, shock and grief, someone trapped her arms behind her back.

"Orpheus?" she gasped, catching a glimpse of him over her shoulder as he bound her wrists with a broken, steel guitar string. "Orpheus, why…?"

He alone remained of her favorite childhood band. The rest of the musicians lay unmoving among their ruined instruments.

When he wouldn't answer her, she caught sight of Calypso, eyeing her predicament with a look of…satisfaction? He had blood on his hands.

"Calypso, help!" she cried, but he just grinned at her.

"You shouldn't have chosen that pirate, mon," he scolded her with sadistic vindication written all over his face. "None of this would have happened if you'd run away with me."

Helena could see her father now. Nysa had caught in a doorway leading to the throne room, cuffing him before he could draw his sword.

Diddy appeared a moment later. Helena knew she had been helping Kuina get ready. For whatever ridiculous reason – perhaps pride in her stupid creations – the fashion designer had finished dressing the young Princess up in a great, fluffy golden gown to match her mother's, only to bind her up with a length of ribbon afterward.

"Kuina!" Helena screamed as the child gnawed at her satin bonds with a fierce look on her little face. "Let her go!"

In that moment, Helena felt power well up inside her and pulse through the room. Orpheus lost his grip on her as he took a step back in surprise. Bags, Calypso, Nysa and Diddy all flinched.

In the pause, Cygnus shucked his sandal, and with a loud, "Honk!" he grabbed his captor by the ear with his toes, smashing her into the marble floor of the throne room.

Not to be outdone by her father, Helena spun and rammed her shoulder into Orpheus' gut, felling him.

Their resistance was token at best. Calypso soon had her trapped against him with a machete to the throat while Bags shoved Cygnus face first into the ground and sat on him with his great girth.

"Really, your majesties," Bags informed them, nonchalantly trimming his pipe with bubble juice as he spoke. "You made this all too easy for us, like it's your job. –Offending all the gods as if they weren't your only real protection from us." He patted the struggling Cygnus condescendingly on the head with blood-stained hands. "You loved your daughter too much, and disobeyed Zeus in his commands to check her. Such a foolish mistake for one who was once so wise and pious, Philosopher King. That was really the last straw, from what I understand."

Helena struggled against her captor, gritting her teeth at Bags as he surveyed her from his perch. Calypso tightened his grip on her, letting the machete bite into her skin in warning.

"That's to say nothing of you, Sun Queen," Bags went on, puffing on his pipe. "You're the one who offended all of them in the first place, weren't you? Forbidding worship. Declaring war on Hera, like it's your job." The fat man shrugged his portly shoulders. "–We mostly just had to wait for your patron goddess to give up on you. Athena was the last one really pulling for you, after all. But eventually she had to concede, didn't she? It's unprecedented. Never has Ilium boasted such a disobedient royal family. The gods won't come to your aid unbidden, and without the Sybil, you have no means of forcing them to help."

"We are more than our gods," Helena seethed, surprised, but not wasting her breath questioning how he knew all this. She could still feel that power, that haki coursing through her in her rage, and she focused it at him as best she understood how. "You may have gotten the drop on me and my palace guards, but ultimately you will fail."

"Calypso, take care of her before she causes any more problems," Bags instructed, ignoring her threat with frightening sangfroid.

"With pleasure, mon," Calypso replied, his breath hot on her skin. Was it her imagination, or had the scoundrel just brushed a kiss on her cheek?

Before she could retaliate, the butt of his machete connected hard with her skull, and everything went black.