Gods weren't omnipotent. Even when the god's believers imbue them with ultimate power, they lack one of the most basic tenets of omnipotence; freedom of will. Sure, Athena had a personality of her own and could choose which favors to grant and which to ignore, but during the height of power in Greece and Rome, she'd been constrained to the laws that they had set upon her.
That was the one blessing to existence after her pantheon had fallen from grace. Her followers were few and most of them held no consistent beliefs about what she was supposed to be like. Sure, they mouthed the platitudes that had come down since ancient times but the actual beliefs tended to shift based on the underlying mores of the day.
As powerful as they had once made her, Athena hated the Greeks with a divine passion. The bastards philosophized for hours on end (in her very temple!) about the nature of the universe and the freedoms afforded to mankind.
Man
kind! Even in such a supposedly enlightened society, women had gotten the shaft. And to emphasize the point, they'd set up the same double standard for their deities that they chose to live by. Of the Olympian women, three were virgins and another was expected to hold faithful to a husband who slept around more than any two other gods put together! Only Demeter had been allowed to have any fun and she actually had less chances than even Hera.
Somehow, Athena managed to survive the dark ages, where freedom of thought had been ruthlessly squashed by the leaders of yet another religion. Democracy and knowledge had come back from the brink of destruction. Now, her spheres of influence had never been as powerful, thanks in no small part to America; between the invention of the Internet and the necessity of tactical doctrine over wars of attrition.
Even Hermes had to share some of his control over communications technologies with her, given the overlap with information technologies.
Best of all, however, was the laxity of belief in specifics. Yes, they remembered she was supposed to be a virgin but nobody really believed it. This was an era of free love, as much as free information, and it was hard for the people to envision a strong, independent, woman who was not in control of her own sexuality.
Athena had to admit, if only to herself, that she relished the newfound independence as a bit intoxicating. It might have been egotism, but she thought the protest movement of the end of the nineteen-sixties might even have been a cultural response to her own rampant experimentation. She'd made Aphrodite look downright prudish. It had to be less than coincidence that the country that most closely followed the tenets of her faith devolved into the Summer of Love in quick succession.
It had taken Athena no little time to regain the composure she was so well known for. After too many millennia of repression, she had reveled in hedonism. Not so incidentally, she'd lost quite a bit of status and power in the process. Almost all of what she'd lost had gone straight to the goddess of love.
Now, Athena had to remind herself that just because Aphrodite seemed like a brainless bimbo, most of the time, her half-sister's brain was just as devious as her own. The tactics of love were no less vicious or conniving as those applied to war. That was undoubtedly why Aphrodite had pointed out that the age-old restrictions no longer held sway.
Mournfully, Athena wondered what Hera would have thought of that, or Artemis for that matter. Neither goddess had survived to see the end of the dark ages. The huntress would have wholeheartedly approved of the frontierswomen that America had spawned, not to mention the strong-willed "rednecks" that followed. Hera, on the other hand, would probably have died from depression or ennui, when she saw the deplorable state that marriage had fallen to.
Athena stopped in her tracks. If her thoughts had once more descended to her former rivals, rather than more pressing concerns of those that remained, her own mood must have fallen to the stage that had prompted Aphrodite to "console" her those decades ago. It was the same vulnerable state that had led her to succumb to the treachery of her half-sister.
Still, the therapy proposed at that time still had merit. It wasn't the fault of the analysis that Athena lacked the wherewithal to control herself in her explorations. It wasn't a situation that would be repeated. Like any teenager, suddenly freed of heavy restrictions, she had eventually remembered the worth of self-restraint.
In the words of her half-sister, Athena needed to get laid.
The question was, who. After her fuck-fest, Athena had learned to have some degree of standards. It truly didn't matter to her whether her partner was male or female. What mattered was the level of intellectual stimulation her prospective lover offered. She didn't need them to "talk smart" to her, or anything like that, she just needed to be able to respect them to be aroused. And if she wasn't aroused, a simple fuck wouldn't do her much good.
The bright neon signs that flashed at her from every angle gave her an idea. Athena saw just what she wanted half a block farther up the street and headed for the shop.
Although gamblers had prayed to other gods in her time, she had always found their games intriguing. While heavily influenced by luck, there were rare few games that did not involve strategy on some level. These days, that was even more true. Between collectable card games, model gaming and video warfare, so many modern youth were practically weaned on skills devoted towards Athena.
An amused smile tugged at one corner of her mouth as she opened the door to the shop. If there was ever a store devoted exclusively to her worship, it would have to be this. Boxes lined the wall behind the proprietor's counter. Each carried dozens of cellophane and foil wrapped packs of cards. Along another wall were models and books, all devoted towards strategy as entertainment. In the center of the room stood a dozen tables, currently covered in the paraphernalia of any number of games.
It was the back wall that interested Athena today, however. A dozen screens lined the area. From each extended a controller. In front of most sat young men, intent on the latest craze in third-person shooter games.
Athena made for one of the open seats. As with her preference for someone who challenged her, she knew that the type of man she wanted would be more impressed with a woman who challenged him right back. Sure, virtually every eye in the shop followed her from the moment she entered. Any one of them would undoubtedly drool over the possibility that she might take them out back. Unfortunately, if it was that easy, it wasn't much of a challenge. In this, she imagined, she must be a bit like Ares and want to fight to earn her pleasure.
No magic was needed for the screen to light up the moment she slid into one of the chairs stationed on the floor. The proprietor had seen her intent and activated the equipment from behind the counter. In moments, her avatar sprang to life amid the war-torn scenery of the game. It was a testament to modern beliefs, not to mention an increase in female sales, that she didn't even need to rig the game in order to acquire a female form for her digital persona.
She was off. A mere glance informed her that the current game was a free-for-all rather than a team event. That was better. She could prove herself instantly rather than be subjected to the assumptions that her team needed to carry her dead weight. There would be no question of her superiority.
The numbers began to pile up nicely. Even though she'd come in in the middle of a match, Athena quickly passed by the lowest ranks. It didn't take long to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Soon enough, the field narrowed down as she and her true opponent almost negligently killed off the lessers, time and time again, while they hunter each other.
Athena had come to love these video games. Aside from the homage they paid her, the way that they trained modern youth to be her disciples, she found the games themselves to be a challenge. The medium itself limited her innate abilities to alter reality. What was left was a combination of her reaction timing and her tactical acumen. As a result, elite players among the mortals could actually prove a challenge, even if they usually couldn't defeat her.
Slowly, she began to realize that the competition between herself and her opponent truly had become exclusive. Scattered throughout the wrecked battlefield were the prone figures of the various other avatars. They would only remain that way if the players failed to resurrect them. Rather than continue in the futile attempts, those players had shifted to surround the obvious two masters as they darted and jumped across the field in search of each other.
Athena glanced down the line of chairs. She was a bit relieved to discover a second clump of avid fans at the far end of the row. With games like these, it was always possible that her opponent was not physically present. As it was, she couldn't see whoever it was behind the marine armor and alias "Heartrender".
By the end of the match, everybody inside the shop was clustered around one of the two stations. In unison, they counted down the last few seconds. The frozen screen, when time ran out at last, remained almost anticlimactic after such a duel. Given the weight of the challenge, Athena almost expected to find her enemy in her sights one last time, moments away from death. Or, maybe, be on her own back staring up as her opponent inched a little closer to equality with the goddess.
The controller dropped from her fingers when Athena slumped forward. Her body didn't sweat. Her pulse remained steady and even her breath was constant. Her posture was the only acknowledgement to how hard she'd had to work for the win.
At least, outwardly.
