Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,96

trial—the pilot episode for Law & Order: Olympus.

Happened like this: There was this jerkish demigod son of Poseidon named Halirrhothius. I’m not going to claim the dude as a brother. His name alone should tell you he was no good. Sounds like some kind of throat disease. I think I’ll just call him Hal.

Anyway, Hal lived in Athens. He fell in love with this beautiful Athenian princess named Alcippe, who happened to be the daughter of Ares; but Alcippe didn’t want anything to do with him. A son of Poseidon? Gross!

Hal wouldn’t give up. He followed Alcippe everywhere, stalked her on Facebook, sabotaged her dates, and basically acted like a creep.

Then one night Hal cornered Alcippe in an alley. When she tried to get away, he knocked her to the ground. She started screaming and kicking and yelling, “Help!”

Finally she thought to say, “Dad! Ares!”

That did the trick.

Ares appeared in a flash and yanked the young man away from Alcippe.

“MESS WITH MY DAUGHTER?” Ares bellowed so loud, he made the kid’s cheeks flap from the g-force.

“Sorry, sir!” Hal said. “I give up! Don’t hurt me!”

“Oh, I won’t hurt you,” Ares promised. “I’LL KILL YOU!”

The war god pulled a knife and turned Hal into demigod Swiss cheese. Then he slammed the kid on the ground and kicked his lifeless body a few times for good measure.

The scene was so gruesome it was in the news for weeks. All the mortal commentators were asking, “Godly violence against mortals—has it gone too far?” and basically giving Mount Olympus a bunch of bad press.

Poseidon demanded that Ares stand trial for murder, since Hal was his son.

Ares exploded. “It was self-defense!”

Poseidon snorted. “Self-defense? The boy surrendered to you. Then you stabbed him six hundred times and stepped on his face. How is that self-defense?”

“I was defending my daughter, Barnacle Beard! Your punk son was trying to rape her!”

Poseidon and Ares rolled up their sleeves to fight—which would’ve been sweet, because my dad would have totally owned that idiot—but Zeus stopped them.

“Enough!” he snapped. “We will have a trial, as requested. I will be the judge. The other gods will be the jury.”

They had a trial for Ares on a hill in Athens. Zeus made a big deal about calling witnesses and hearing the evidence. I’m not sure what would have happened if Ares had been convicted. Maybe Zeus would’ve thrown him into Tartarus, or sentenced him to a thousand years of community service, picking up trash on the side of the highway. But in the end, the gods decided Ares was innocent. Sure, he’d gone a little overboard, mangling Hal’s body like that, but the guy had been assaulting Ares’s daughter. That wasn’t cool. Only gods could get away with stuff like that!

The hill where they held the trial is still there. If you’re ever in Athens, check it out. It’s called the Aeropagus, the Hill of Ares, and in ancient times the Athenians built a law court at the top for all their murder trials. I guess they figured if the place was good enough to try Ares, it was good enough for their mortal psychos and ax murderers and whatnot.

Me, I agree that Ares had the right to defend his daughter, but I still think Poseidon should have beaten the snot out of him, just because that would’ve been awesome to watch.

One more story about the war god, because I want to end with something that makes him look like a complete loser. (Which, honestly, isn’t hard to do.)

One time, these two big giant brothers named Otis and Ephialtes decided they were going to destroy the gods. Why? Probably the Earth Mother Gaea put them up to it, or maybe they were just bored. The twin brothers were called the Alodai, which means the Crushers. I don’t know if they had matching wrestler costumes, or what.

Like most giants, they were…well, giant. They started ripping up mountains and piling them on top of each other, trying to make an assault tower from which they could destroy Mount Olympus with boulders—the same way Zeus destroyed Mount Othrys back in the old days.

The gods looked down from their palace and saw these two big giants piling up mountains, getting closer and closer, and Zeus said, “Someone should stop them.”

“Yes,” Hera agreed.

Nobody volunteered. This was shortly after the fiasco with the storm giant Typhoeus, and all the gods were still a little shell-shocked. The idea of fighting two massive giants wasn’t very appealing.

Finally, Hera said, “Ares, you’re