Chapter 163 - Prejudice

Since Nuwa is extending an invitation, it would be impolite to pay it no mind. Indeed, Ares' eyes linger on Nuwa's chest for slightly longer than is required by courtesy. However, having been a God of War for millenia, he has developed a strong commitment to honorable conduct. He refuses vehemently, "My Lady, there is absolutely no need."

This time Nuwa brushes off the rejection casually. She waits for other angles.

Ares continues, "My purpose for helping Zagreus up to the Surface is purely to reunite our family.. and.. perhaps spar for a bit of sport down the line?"

It becomes eminently clear that Ares is a terrible liar with that statement. His tone and facial expressions make it clear he is not explaining the full truth of the matter, but for the sake of civility and aforementioned gratitude, they do not ask him to elaborate.

Zagreus skims over the unspoken point and says jovially, "Let's hold off on sparring in person until I attain Godhood as well, Lord Ares."

"Gah!" Ares immediately shows a look of extreme regret and puts on sad puppy eyes, which somehow do not seem out of place on his extremely masculine body. "That could take anywhere from decades to centuries.. Cousin, I have not the patience. Surely, this projection is weak enough to suffice?"

Zagreus rubs his chin and shoots back, "Wouldn't I lose out on my chance for a blessing if you spent all your energy fighting me? I'm not sure if I could give it my all with the incentives misaligned like that."

"Nonsense!" replies Ares, "War is my Authority. I only gain energy from fighting!"

Now that he knows what Zagreus wants and their interests align, Ares' eyes blaze with excitement. His expression switches to a smirk and the veins on his biceps bulge as he grips his sword and points at Zagreus, "Cousin, I'll bless both of you if you agree to a spar! Win or lose, it matters not!"

This is exactly what Zagreus wants, but there is one major hang-up remaining that leaves him groaning, "Lord Ares.. as much as I appreciate your generosity, we lack your resilient constitution and have a limited amount of health to work with before we die."

"..Curses! No offense to your older brother, Thanatos, but he does tend to cut my fun short. Mortals drop like flies! Even those heroes I am allowed to fight don't last long before he takes them away." Ares says while growling with consternation.

Nuwa can easily imagine her Big Bro Than's deadpan look when he escorts souls away from a warzone while Ares unsuccessfully attempts to stop him, so that he can have more fun. Rather than the two killers having a relationship of friends like Ares proclaims in his messages, it is more than likely that Ares views Thanatos as a frenemy and Thanatos thinks of the God of War as nothing more than an acquaintance and possibly even an annoyance.

Both mens' gazes unconsciously wander to Nuwa's breasts, which are jiggling with her raucous laughter. Her seduction techniques do not quite match up to her natural beauty and temperament, and therefore, ironically, Ares is more attracted to her now that she's not even trying than when she had been. Being a true gentleman, he turns his head and eyes away, but irresistibly peeks back now and again. Thankfully, his boner is safely hidden under his plateskirt armor.

Zagreus also pops a boner at the jiggling pillows, but he recovers faster, and spots Ares taking several ganders at them as well. Zagreus cannot stop his lips from curling upwards into a proud smile. Azula would be perfectly happy to keep Nuwa's sluttiness all to herself, but Zagreus.. no way. He is looking for more. He wants to show Nuwa off to everyone! All the shades and Gods will soon know that he is fucking the hottest babe in the Underworld and wallow in jealousy! His heart beats rapidly at the sudden ego inflation.

Sensing her brother's thoughts take an uncharacteristically dark turn, Nuwa's laughter tapers off and she hugs her body against his arm. She transmits to him, 'What's wrong, Zag?' She starts to think she might have done something wrong. 'Is it me?'

Although Zagreus is unused to the concept of multi-tasking in his communication, it is necessary for him to maintain a courteous conversation with Ares and resolve Nuwa's worry in parallel. Zagreus continues the conversation with Ares as if that pause never happened, "There are no other Gods to spar against? What about Than himself?"

Before he finishes asking those questions to Ares, he starts to transmit back to Nuwa, 'Of course not, babygirl. You're doing great. As for me? Besides during sex, I've never felt better!'

Nuwa looks at her genuinely happy brother with confusion. She is used to getting easy reads on the people around her, but her Big Bro Zag's mysteriousness does not make for an easy read. It both worries and fascinates her mind. Baby-snek-Nuwa was too naive to analyze personalities beyond the surface level.

Ares replies to Zagreus in a downcast tone, "Death is a massive bore when it comes to fighting. Have you seen him in action? He's got but two moves and it ends in an instant if that scythe so much as touches you! The others always make excuses." Ares remembers something and perks up, "Oh wait, Father Zeus and Uncle Poseidon give me satisfactory beatdowns occasionally."

Zagreus also perks up with excitement, "Did you ever win..? Against your father."

Flashing a battle thirsty smile, Ares chuckles fondly and says, "Sure. When he handicaps his power output to match my maximum, it's 50-50."

Zagreus looks at Ares with wonder and pesters him on all the details of how it had gone down. They are so absorbed in conversation that Nuwa is excluded.

Huffing with boredom, Nuwa taps her foot with impatience. Even with one of her tits lewdly squishing upon Zag's arm, he is not paying her any attention. The men are in their own little world of obsessing over fighting and beating up their dads. After listening for two minutes or so, she couldn't take it anymore.

"Guys.. guys.. ! I don't care exactly how far to twist the waist for the ideal spear throw." Nuwa whines, "Can't we have an inclusive conversation with our limited time?"

They both look at her speechlessly. Zagreus cannot think of anything else to talk about now that he's in that zone, while Ares narrows his eyes and states, "My lady, I have treated you with utmost courtesy, but I am not sure if you are spoiled, stupid, or arrogant to the extreme. Know that us Gods do not tolerate interruptions to our conversations for the sake of a mortal's entertainment."

Nuwa shrinks away and her hair snakes droop. The pleasant mood in the room is gone. Zagreus shouts angrily at Ares, "Hey! What was that for? Dude, you can't talk to my sister like that."

Shaking his head, Ares explains with a stoic expression, "You are but a pup, Cousin. Let me be the one to tell you the harsh truth. Only Gods and Godlings are our real family. The others? If they are not killed, chances are high that they will die of old age within a few centuries, unless they can make many breakthroughs. Though your sister's Chthonic constitution confers her some degree of protection against death, even the spirit will grow weary with age. Gods like us keep our souls rooted to this World with Authority. Once you own an Authority of your own, Cousin, you will understand. Without it, perhaps only the strongest of us would have remained sane throughout the long millenia."

Nuwa knows that Gods have a much higher social status and she should not have interrupted. Indeed, she too had felt she behaved in a spoiled manner initially, but the moment Ares denied her being "real" family, her ears started to buzz, slowly tuning the rest of his words out. Never had she ever been so thoroughly disrespected and felt so much rage, not even when Combustion Man almost killed her along with all of her friends!

Nuwa's rational character itself is normally slow to anger. She deliberately suppresses these impulses so she can make apt decisions on the fly and not make blunders. Meanwhile, Zagreus pushes down his own rage to transmit to Nuwa, 'Calm down, love. This is how it is for Olympians. No matter what they say, you'll always be part of our family!'

He knows that if there hadn't been a coincidental kernel of truth in what Ares had implied, Nuwa would not be so affected. After all, when she first came to the Hades Record, she wasn't actually family. Nyx sealed her in order to make it so that she became family. Ares somehow had poked that insecurity while condescending her about something entirely different, her likelihood of reaching a t4 soul, which truthfully is very low for most demigods.

Trembling with rage, Nuwa slowly withdraws Coronacht from her back. She pulls back the bowstring and a glowing white arrow materializes. It points directly at Ares' head.

Zagreus gets in the way of the arrow's path and raises his hands, "Babe, let's not get hasty.."

Ares swishes his cape with a laugh and proclaims with machismo, "Little girl, I've spent thousands of years on the battlefield. Arrow salvos are more common than rain there. Even with that overpowered artifact bow, even with there being only three meters between us, I can guarantee that you cannot hit me. Maybe if you were t3 like your brother, I'd be a little wary.."

Zagreus turns around to face Ares and shouts, "Shut up, man!" Nuwa's boiling rage has bled over into his mind too and compounded with his own. Even though he is a non-confrontational person, he has to visibly restrain himself from pouncing on his cousin. After listening to messages from Olympus for so long, he has some familiarity with how it works up there. 'That mentality is just how it is on Olympus, especially since Uncle Zeus is always impregnating mortals and Aunt Hera kills them.'

The two men hear a soft, gruff voice say, "Take it back."

Zagreus does not even recognize who said it at first. Ares smiles and as if looking directly through Zagreus, addresses Nuwa to say, "Or else what?"

Zagreus feels the onset of a bad premonition. He abruptly turns to see Nuwa raise her head. Her eyes are leaking purple blood. Before he can get a glimpse of her eyes, he curls over due to an unexpected flood of excruciating physical pain coming through their psychic link.

At the end of Nuwa's crosshairs, Ares once again has a direct view of Nuwa's lovely body. This time though, all he can see are two large snake eyes staring at him, as well as a circular arrangement of additional snakeheads also glaring at him. He mutters, "How beautiful."

A glint is released from all of her eyes at once and she releases the arrow, which is now pink.

It is then that Ares recalls he had once blessed a hero by the name of Perseus, who later slew a snake-haired woman called Medusa and paraded around with her head. That head would petrify any mortal who gazed upon it and turn them into stone.

Ares attempts to turn his head away from the arrow, and it should have been an easy dodge, but he finds himself momentarily frozen by her Gorgon Queen Gaze. The energy arrow penetrates his forehead with a dull thwack, jolting his head slightly, and causing him to twist his lips into a wry smile. The petrification effect is only momentary, but it is enough. He says, "Nice one." and starts to fall backward.

Nuwa is under no delusion that his divine projection is down for the count. The moment she released the arrow, she could feel the bloody aura in the air around her spike and only grow thicker from there, despite the pink arrow still hissing in his skull. She twists her body downward and leaps up like a spring to land on top of him as he hits the floor.

Under her bare feet, Ares twitches his fingers and legs, apparently having trouble using his voluntary muscles with an arrow in his brain. Nuwa is so angry that she's repeating, "Die, die, die!" while firing several more arrows down at his face in almost point blank range. In a bout of extreme dexterity, Ares is able to swing his neck to dodge all of Nuwa's follow-up arrows at his head. His autonomous reflexes are enough to avoid them all. This sobers her up to the fact that she cannot expect to be Ares' match in the field of battle.

Nuwa sits down atop his torso, while he is slowly regaining more of his movement. The Authority of War makes the air heavy and tinged with the scent of blood. Nuwa reaches backward and pulls down his skirt armor. She slashes his briefs with her bow to unveil a big black dick popping upwards towards the ceiling, fully erect due to the Dao String of Sex injected into his brain. She licks her lips and says, "Alright you bastard. It's time to level the playing field."

(A/N: Next up, indignant wench vs insensitive wargod!)