5

In Greece, tourists thought they saw balls of fireworks alighting near Mount Olympus while across the world in Mexico City, guards wondered about the people in exquisite dress coming from out of the Aztec temples in the city. Limousines were traveling northward from Oslo, Norway toward the direction of Mount Glittertinden, but it was obvious they were not headed for the skiing. Airport officials at the Norse airport were screening debutantes from Bolivia, Iraq, Russia, China, Egypt and Nigeria. There was something going on that they didn't know anything about. Northwest of Lillehammer, Jerry Russo nervously tugged at the collar of his tuxedo and looked to his old buddy from Wiz-Tech. Both he and Michael Reason were graduates of Swiftwind House, and it wasn't until a few months after they had graduated that Michael had confessed to being the son of Apollo and an Aztec goddess. Attending Wiz-Tech was his method for gaining precision on his godly powers. They failed to keep in touch, but when it came to getting his daughter back, Michael was the first person he thought of to help get Alex back.

"Jerry, do you have a plan in mind?" Michael looked to his old friend. The three of them were arriving in a limo from the airport at Oslo.

"No…" Jerry reacted nervously. "I'm pretty much winging it." He paused and looked over himself. "Do you think anyone can tell I'm not Immortal?"

"Jerry, don't worry about it." Salma was Michael's date. She spoke with a rich Aztec accent. "There will be many mortals there as spouses, dates, escorts and servants, but… don't sweat so much, and you might want to act like being around gods are no big deal."

"Yeah," Michael adjusted Jerry's tie and the limo emerged from thick woods into the courtyard of a grand palace of German and Viking design. "If you calm down you're less likely to make a mistake. Just relax and try to fit in… some Immortals are uncomfortable about mortals."

"Right, calm down…" Jerry looked out the car windows. It looked like a cross between a Hollywood gala and a meeting of heads of state. One car opened after another and released its passengers before drifting on and allowing another limo through the gates to the main hall. "I don't get it…" Jerry sounded. "Why arrive in cars? Why not just…. Pop in?'

"It's in respect to our hosts…" Salma answered. "When the Norse gods celebrate a moment, you honor them by arriving on the soil of their worshippers."

"When we attended a celebration by the Polynesian gods," Michael added. "We all arrived by canoe and wood raft."

"You just have to hope no one like Loki or Coyote show up…" Salma noticed them rolling up to the steps. "Those gods of mischief have ruined many good dinners…"

"Oh…" Their limo pulled up to the steps of a great entryway. The back door of the limo opened and Salma stretched her long legs out first, standing up within a Germanic courtyard obviously several centuries old but preserved by magic against the weather. Michael came out next in his tuxedo followed by Jerry in his black and white tux. Salma grinned to Jerry and held his hand too for assurance. His hand was shaking as they ascended up a flight of twelve steps to huge immense twenty-foot tall doors into a great hall. The words curved around the arch of the door read "Aesgaard," the original spelling of the Norse hall in Runic lettering. Up ahead, the long museum-like gallery was lit by torches and filled with people from every walk of life. Immortal Incan chieftains speaking with Ancient Mexican lords, Japanese gods dating Greek divinities, Native American gods speaking to Hindu deities, Sumerian prophetesses chasing after immortal children… Except for the great surroundings, it might have been a party at the United Nations. The women were beyond beautiful and physically perfect, dressed in fine gowns and long dresses. The men all wore suits and tuxedos adorned in their native arraignment. The Native American gods wore feathers, a few Celtic immortals had tattoos, and the Egyptian and Incan gods had their proper headdresses. Jerry nervously followed close to Michael, alighting with a smile as a mortal girl served him champagne. Turning from the hall of statues and topiaries, he looked into a great gathering hall three stories wide and as wide and deep as a football field. Only immortal beings with knowledge of architecture could have built this place. Alighted with torches and burning bonfires, it was decorated with tapestries, statues, plants and fountains. The side was open to a courtyard and the far end was beneath a great arena with a figure at a throne. Stoic and beaming Alfadur Odin waved and greeted his guests from off the floor. By his side was the Lady Frigga, handsome Balder and the goddess Nanna. To the other side was the deeply restrained Thor in mortal attire, the Lady Sif and beautiful red-haired Sjofn scoping out the men for her lovers for tonight. Michael snapped Jerry from his awe by directing his gaze to the side of the room. Turning his head, Jerry noticed Jason Troy with Demetria and Alex's body by his side. Jerry gasped at how beautiful she was. She was garbed in a long white evening gown, her shoulders bare and her long dark hair brushed straight and perfect. She was smiling and happy to be by her sister again. Garbed in a long pink dress, Deirdre looked like a taller, more mature version of Alex. The two of them holding each other close, a hundred voices canceling out their conversations. Jason Troy said something to his girls as Jerry mustered her courage and descended between the guests. The appetizers ranged from oyster on the shell and meat with cooked vegetables. As he watched, Deirdre whispered something to Demetria and rushed to join someone. The former Alex Russo hugged her Aunt Aphrodite and Uncle Triton.

"Demetria…" The goddess of love was almost nude in her scanty dress. "You should find someone to dance with."

"But who would I dance with?"

"Can I have this dance?" Someone asked Demetria. The young lady looked over and recognized Alex's father. He took her lightly by her left hand and her hip and started swaying with her out on to the floor as if it was Alex's Quincenera all over again.

"What are you doing here?" Demetria tried not to make a scene. She looked over to her father. "I'm not your daughter."

"Yes, you are…" Jerry glared upon his daughter's face. "And I'm not kidnapping you. I'm just trying to get your great-grandfather's attention."

"You can't kidnap me." Demetria looked at him. "I could turn you into a cockroach if you tried. You'd need another Immortal helping you."

"Maybe I do…" Jerry was guiding her over to Michael. Alex's face alighted with stunned surprise. Her Uncle Michael had always had a soft spot for mortal man. Jerry was forcibly swaying her toward him. The dark-haired god of propriety created a small ball of light and tossed it to Jerry to take from the air. At that moment, Jason started looking for both his daughters. Deirdre and her fiancé were communing over near the fountain with one of the Muses, but when he looked to the edge of the hall, he noticed his daughter being carried away from him. It took him only a second to realize who she was dancing with. Jerry took the ball tossed to him by Michael and cast it hard to the floor, the two of them vanishing into a burst of light and smoke.

"Jerry?" Back in Waverly Place, Theresa turned round in the loft to his sudden arrival. He looked good in his tuxedo, and Alex resembled a princess in her glowing white dress. Justin and Harper stood alarmed at their arrival. Realizing where she was, Demetria looked round once, realized where she was and locked eyes on Alex in Harper's body. Even without her body or her magic, Alex was ripping her hair out.

"I want my body back!" She grabbed Demetria by the hair and pushed her back to the kitchen counter. Jerry started rushing to separate them.

"Get off me, cretin!!" Demetria lifted Alex in Harper's body off her feet and tossed her across the room, but where Harper's body should have hit the wall, a small lamb instead bounced and skidded across the wood floor. Justin dived behind the sofa, and Max hurried to join him, but he wasn't fast enough. When Justin looked up, there was a small capuchin monkey hopping up and down. Jerry and Teresa huddled behind the counter. Her lips peeled back into a snarl, her brown eyes contorted into a vicious and hostile grimace, Demetria spun round firing lightning bolts across the room shattering books and decoration and blasting the bricks in the walls loose.

"When I get through in here, it's going to look like the waiting room on Noah's Ark!!!" She blasted the dinner table for the heck of it with an explosive ball of energy. Out the corner of her eye, Justin tried to dive for his parents protected by the counter. He distracted Demetria from one end of the sofa and then rushed out the other end, sliding over to his parents in the kitchen nook.

"Great idea, dad!" Justin gasped as Demetria shattered the microwave with a bolt of lightning. "The new Alex is so much more nicer than the last one!" They heard the TV shattering into its core pieces and the spiral staircase collapsing. In his tiny monkey form, Max was hopping up and down chattering and screeching to be turned back to normal. Alex as the baby lamb was squeezing under the sofa.

"I've got a plan!!!"

Demetria blasted the room with volumes of force and bolts of lightning.

"What?" Theresa turned sarcastic. "Getting struck by lightning and turned into a goat!!!"

"Demetria!!!" Jason's voice filled the room. Things calmed down and became quiet again; the three Russos not turned into animals slowly began looking over the range top. Jason and his daughter reunited hugging, but with them was another bold figure. He was over six-feet-tall and powerfully built for a man seemingly in the twilight of middle age. He had long red hair trussed back in a small ponytail and a powerful red beard, which smirked as he surveyed the loft. Dressed in a tuxedo tailored for his physique, he honorably reached down and helped the restored young girl under the sofa to her feet. Max slowly started peeking out next to Justin then started checking if he still had a tail.

"Jerry…" The creator of the Greek Minoan Empire looked around the room with his dashing blue eyes and steely patriarch presence. "You have my attention… this better be good."

"Lord Zeus…" Jerry choked a bit and encouraged his family to bow, but Zeus just discouraged the bowing. After hundreds of years, he was tired of it. "Sir…" Jerry stammered nervously. "You who created the heavens and the Earth, the rain and the thunder, the clouds in the sky, the…"

"I know what I did and what I made." Zeus was trying to hurry him along. "Now, hurry up and get to the point. Odin and I have a bet that Ammon-Ra can't eat a hundred deviled eggs in one night."

"Sir…" Jerry looked to his family, over to Harper and back to the king of the Olympian gods. "I understand the gods respect science in all its forms."

"Yes…"

"The debate here is whether or not that girl is really my daughter…" Jerry nervously responded over his words. He spoke solemnly and with great emotion. "But I contend she is because… as any biology book can tell you, a child is a product of the heredity of their parents. If you look upon her body and the substance she is made up of, you will find my DNA and the DNA of my wife. No matter whose spirit is within her, that girl's body has my DNA and if she has my DNA, then she is my daughter… and I want her restored to me, please… She's my daughter, and I love her."

Demetria was clinging to her father unwillingly to let go. Within Harper's body, Alex realized she was no longer a small lamb and rushed over to hide behind Justin and her mother, peeking out over Max's head to hear her father. Zeus took a deep groaning breath as he lifted his head up to mull over the plea of mercy.

"Please, Lord Zeus…" Jerry's heart was breaking within his tuxedo. "Your fairness and compassion for mortal man through history was always great. I ask for the same compassion… as one father for another…"

Zeus sighed and walked around the sofa, loose bricks shattered in Demetria's rampage were jumping up and reforming in the wall as he walked past them. The TV pulled itself back together and books vaulted back to the bookcase sliding itself back together. Even the door to the microwave hopped up and rejoined the restored microwave. Jason and Jerry awaited his decision. Known as Jupiter to the Romans and Taranis to the Celts, the former ruler of Greece looked to Jerry and turned to caress his great-granddaughter's face with paternal admiration.

"Though he was of Hebrew blood, I very much respected King Solomon of Canaan…" The mighty thunder-striker spoke. "He studied our Olympian heritage and compared it with the laws of the Torah and the Talmud. You see, Jerry, there is only one religion here on Earth… but many ways to observe it. Every parent loves and raises their children as they see fit, and Jerry, considering the lengths of creation and danger you faced for your daughter… you convince me you deserve to have her returned to you."

Jerry lightly grinned out of joy. Theresa clutched her chest unable to believe it. Even Alex deep with Harper's form was stunned, but Justin and Max just looked at each other unable to accept it.

"Grandfather…" Jason contested his decision.

"Jason, there are three things we have no power over…" Zeus looked to him. "Fate, free will and that which Infinity has created. We cannot undo what he has set into motion." He motioned toward Demetria, levitating her body up into the air with a stunned expression in her face. With his other hand, he lifted Harper's stunned body up into the air, over the heads of Jerry and Theresa and brought the two girls drifting toward each other over their heads. Their bodies glowing with light from within their bodies, they became two brightly growing forms of light pulled together into one form. Jerry shielded his eyes with his arm, and Theresa looked away with her sons closing their eyes. When they looked again, Alex and Harper were dropping on to the sofa. Their godly guests had vanished in the burst of light, departing Earth once more. Alex bounced a bit and slid to the floor. Jumping up once more, she looked at her hands and back to Harper.

"Wow…" Harper was reeling from her experience. "The colors… the colors…." She started grinning as if she was drunk.

"Dad!" Restored once more, Alex raced to Jerry and hugged him. He started crying tears of joy as Theresa joined in on their bond, hugging Alex tightly and kissing her over the face. Standing by the counter, Justin rolled his eyes, clicked his tongue and glanced to Max. They were both unsure how they felt.

"What was it like being a monkey?"

"I liked the tail." Max answered.

"Wait a minute…" Alex turned with excitement and checked on her best friend. "Harper, are you okay?"

"Is this another magic thing, Alex?" She was rather confused over the last few hours. "I am getting so sick of this!!"

"You have got to be kidding me…" Jerry staggered a bit on his feet. "I can't believe that worked."

"Just one more thing…" Alex noticed her wand on the bookshelf near her. She took it in the tips of her fingers and waved it to the shattered stairs. "Transformus repairus!!!" Her spell hit the shattered stairs standing up again like an accordion stretching back out with the supports and railing fusing back into place. The dents and distortions all straightened, and the imperfections popped themselves out from the spell. Alex grinned and blew out the tip of her wand.

"I'm back!!!" She grinned adorably. Alex shined and hugged Harper so glad to be a wizard and in her own body again. Her father awed over her proudly and her mother hugged her tightly so happy to have her back.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Justin and Max wandered glum and not so excited toward the stairs. "She's back. Big deal. Everybody loves Alex… Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going up to my room to study and maybe hang myself."

"And I'm going to help him." Max sighed unexcited. "Hey, Justin, are those stairs safe?"

"They seem to be." Justin was treading lightly up them expecting them to fall apart then jumped onto the top landing before they could. Laving his sister behind to his parents, he and his brother were just dejectedly shaking their heads depressed. With Alex back, they now had to go back to the vicious practical jokes, venous insults and slander and the cons, blackmails and extortions. Max was still shaking his head in disbelief, but Justin wandered into his room depressed and in a state of shocked disbelief. He stepped into his sci-fi obsessed room filled with science fiction movies and memorabilia. Decorated with models of spaceships and figures in famous movie scenes alongside stacks of science magazines and robotic schematics, the room was still Justin's sanctum away from his lazy and selfish sister. As he swung the door behind him, he hastened to lock it against his sister, but she was already in it and hiding behind the door. He jumped back from her surprised. Dressed in a long white strapless evening gown, she lightly glided up to him.

"Justin." Demetria stood in her duplicate of Alex's body. "Did you forget we have a date?"

"In Asgard?" Justin was stunned. "Are you kidding?"

"No, I'm not…" She sidled up before him romantically, her hands stroking the front of the tuxedo he was now suddenly wearing. She had conjured it on to him. Tilting her head up to him, she pressed her lips to his. Justin's senses inhaled the wonderful aroma of kissing a young goddess. She had a scent of roses and jasmine, her skin felt like velvet and hair was as soft as silk and then he realized… he was kissing a duplicate of his sister!!!

"Oh god!" He bolted backward in shock.

"You better believe it." Demetria was pulling him back toward her. "Come on, I've got almost two thousand years of making out to catch up on. My cousin, Alyssa, thinks she's the goddess of making-out just because she's the granddaughter of Aphrodite. Have I got something to show her!"

"Demetria, please, god, no, this would be like dating my…" She was pulling him toward his bedroom window; shining through it was a ray of light turning into a boundary between earth and the heavens. On the firmament between the planet known as Earth and the hereafter known as Elysium were several islands, and Demetria was leading Justin to one of its brightest glowing lands beyond the eyes of mortals in the space where angels and faeries passed between worlds.

END