See Part One for Disclaimers

Part Three

"She went up the beach and hasn't come back."

Hercules turned to frown at the beach which was being rapidly submerged by the incoming tide.  "She hasn't come back?"

"No."  Iolaus turned from the line he was coiling to look at the beach.  It hit him that the beach was a dangerous place to be right now for a woman on foot.  A look of uncertainty crossed his face.  "I probably didn't see her."

"You were keeping a watch."

"Yeah, I was."

They vaulted the boat rail simultaneously and headed down the beach in the foaming surf.  They reached the rock where she was now standing at almost the same time.  Iolaus circled the back of the outcropping, just in case of trouble.  Ariana looked wet and surprised to see them.

"What are you doing?"

"Inventing body surfing?"

Hercules looked at her blankly for a moment.  Nothing had prepared him for a sense of humor.  "The tide's coming in."

"I know."

"You're committing suicide?" Iolaus asked, finding it difficult to keep his footing against the surging water.

"No.  Just, leaving."  She braced against the smooth rock as the surf rolled in again, the water foaming around her knees.

"Leaving?"

"Leaving."

"Why not take a boat?" Iolaus asked.

"Does Salmoneus know?" Hercules thought this was the more important question.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't want him to talk me out of it."

"I thought you were in love with him."  Iolaus' tone belied his statement.  He hadn't believed it for a minute.

She looked around at him.  "Hera's very angry with me.  You've been around Hercules enough to know what kind of a target people you love become when there's an angry goddess in the area.  Especially a not too sane angry

goddess.  He doesn't deserve that."

"But he does deserve to have his heart broken."

She took a deep breath and turned to answer Hercules.  A large breaker caught them all off guard and tumbled Iolaus back up the beach.  Hercules held onto the edge of the rock.  Ariana grimaced as she was bounced into the rock face then caught her footing on the beach sand again.  She inched her way up the rock to prepare for the next wave.

"You'd better get off the beach."

"You're coming with me."

She'd forgotten how fast he could move as he caught hold of her wrist.  His footing was not as solid as hers.  "No."

"We'll work it out."

"I am working it out."  Her eyes focused over his head and she frowned.  "We've got company," she shouted over the sound of the water.

Behind Hercules, a half dozen sea-dwelling warriors arose from the water.  Above them the sky over the beach darkened, lightening flashes illuminating the clouds from within.  To Iolaus it looked like a trap as he waded into the water and the battle.  Hercules understood it was just an opportunity for his step-mother.  He let go of the rock and let the water sweep him farther up the beach.  Ariana climbed to the top of the rock to get a good look at the opposition.  Lightning crackled and struck beside her.  She hit the beach, swallowed water and surfaced choking.  A hand helped her up.  She was beside Hercules as the enemy closed on them.

Salmoneus had gone back inside the house after Hercules left.  He'd finished dressing and looked around for something to nibble on while he waited for Ariana to return with breakfast.  The house seemed very empty to him.  He reached for the knife she used in the kitchen to cut a piece of cheese and realized it was gone.  He looked on the floor and on the table.  Understanding flowing through him like panic he went back to the bedroom.  Her traveling gear was gone.  He sat down on the side of the bed.  He felt old and empty.  She'd left him.  No note, no reason, nothing.  She was gone.  He felt like crying.

A crack of thunder made him jump.  He went to close the window shutters out of habit and looked out the window toward the harbor.  That was an awfully odd storm.  The last time he'd seen something like that -- the last time he'd

seen something like that, there had been a very angry goddess in the area.

Ariana had been sent after Hercules by Hera.  By her own admission, she had

helped Hercules and Iolaus escape.  Puzzle pieces dropped into place.

"Ariana!" Her name was a cry of denial as he ran out of the house.

Most of the rest of the town was intent on getting away from the waterfront.  Warriors covered in seaweed and barnacles kept surfacing.  The trio fighting on the beach kept knocking them down, but more kept coming.  And they were dodging jolts of lightning as well.  Iolaus and Ariana found themselves back to back battling four of the watery warriors.  Both were breathing hard.  Both swung and connected with two of their opponents leaving them suddenly aware of each other.

Iolaus nodded.  "We'll discuss our past later."

Ariana swallowed and nodded her agreement as they forged back into the battle.  She was getting tired, but she fought on despite a flickering consideration of just letting one of them take her down.  She knew it would not be permanent, just a painful excursion to the edges of oblivion.  But Iolaus would then be on his own, Hercules was occupied with a ridiculous number of the things.  Iolaus didn't have a choice.  He fought and won or he died.  Ariana was determined to keep that from happening if she could do so.

Water swirled around them, almost hip deep now.  She caught his arm and pointed up the beach toward where Hercules fought.  "Off the beach.  Maybe they're not as good on dry land," she yelled over the storm and surf.  He nodded his agreement and they began to make their way up the beach to shallower water.

The storm overhead grumbled and growled.  It felt like things were gearing up for a final all out assault as Iolaus and Ariana reached the area where Hercules was holding his own against the strange warriors.  They seemed slower in the shallower water.  Engrossed in their battle, none of them saw the lone figure heading toward them.  Salmoneus wasn't certain what he could do against the warriors, but he wasn't going to let Ariana go without doing something.  He tightened his grip on the only weapon he'd come across, a large, long handled copper pot; and continued toward the fight.

The last of the warriors fell back into the water, dissolving like seafoam and swirling away.  Iolaus and Ariana were leaning on each other for support while Hercules looked around to make certain that was the last of them.  They all saw Salmoneus just as the largest lightning bolt of all arced down out of the cloud toward them.  He waved the pot overhead and yelled something they couldn't distinguish.  Ariana howled and broke away from Iolaus as she realized what was about to happen.  The pot acting like a lightning rod drew the strike directly down on Salmoneus.  He was knocked back out of the surf, landing on dry sand with a limpness that appalled those watching.

The storm dissipated, the sun shining down on the scene as Ariana reached him.  She skidded onto her knees, checking for a pulse in his neck, for breathing, for a heart beat.  There was nothing.

"No!" The word was a scream of defiance to all the puny little gods in this universe.  "No!" She felt Hercules and Iolaus arrive behind her as she worked to straighten Salmoneus out on his back.  She dredged up everything she had ever learned in CPR classes.  Her actions bemused the other two as she blew into Salmoneus' lungs and then followed with heart compressions.  Lightning strikes tended to stop the system, but not to the point of making them impossible to restart if you knew how.

"What are you doing?" Hercules knelt down behind her.  There was a rhythm and purpose to her actions.

"Where I come from, it's called CPR.  If I do it right, and there isn't too much damage, he'll come back."

"OK."

Iolaus looked like he thought she was crazy.  Salmoneus had been struck by the power of the gods and was dead.  Only it didn't always work that way.  He remembered getting struck by lightning once.  It had made his life very interesting for a few days.  He'd seen the future and almost gotten the wrong

person killed at one point.  For that matter, he'd been dead, too.  With a

philosophical shrug of his shoulders, he decided to wait and see.  For now,

Hera seemed content with the havoc she'd already wreaked.

Salmoneus was standing in a line that was moving forward slowly.  His right hand hurt -- sort of.  Maybe it didn't really hurt, he just thought it did.  Or that it should.  He tapped the shoulder of the fellow in front of him.

"Excuse me."

The man turned to look at him.  "Yes?"

"What are we standing in line for?"

The man turned back toward the front of the line and pointed.  There were four people in front of him.  Beyond that was a boat.  A boat?  This wasn't the harbor.  This wasn't the beach.  This was --

"Oh, no!  Wait a minute.  I'm not supposed to be here --"

"So many of them say that," somebody grumbled as another person moved forward into the boat.  "It's I'm not supposed to be here' and this can't be right' and I want to talk to Hades'.  You're here.  You're dead.  You're posted through to destination."

Salmoneus recognized the grumbler with dismay.  Charon.  Then this was the river Styx and he was -- he was -- he was choking.

"Come on.  Salmoneus, please.  Come back."  A woman's voice pleading in the -- the sun?  He blinked and coughed.  A face came into focus, tears streaking the cheeks.  A pretty face.  He blinked and choked again.  Someone hauled him into a sitting position and held him while the coughing subsided.  Ariana smiled over his shoulder at Iolaus.  It was a watery smile.

Salmoneus sat back and looked at her.  Then he looked at Hercules and Iolaus.  "Hello.  Do I know you?"

The three looked at each other in shock.  They hadn't expected him to have his own memory loss.

"Yes.  I'm Hercules."

"Hercules!" There was recognition in the voice.  "Big guy.  Fights monsters.  Nice guy.  I'm tired."  He sounded puzzled by this.

Hercules and Iolaus looked to Ariana in concern.  Should he be tired?

"It's OK.  Let's get you home and you can lie down."

"Thanks.  That'll be nice.  Where's home?" he burbled as they helped him

to his feet.

"This way."

They got him back to the house and into bed where he curled up and fell peacefully asleep.  They gathered back in the living area to dry out and

discuss what to do now.

"Is that normal?" Hercules asked.

"I don't know.  Lightning is a capricious unknown even in my time.  Some people don't even get knocked out.  Some die.  Some lose motor skills -- coordination.  Some lose memory.  He seems to be all right.  I'll keep an eye on him."

"No more body surfing?"

"Not for now," she assured him as she sat down.  She got an unfocussed look as tears spilled down her face.  She wasn't wailing or sobbing, just quietly crying.  Salmoneus had gotten hurt just as she had feared he might, because of her.  It was as though all the deaths she had ever witnessed suddenly piled down on her.  The reaction caught both men by surprise.  Yet it was Iolaus who found himself reaching out to comfort her.  His eyes met Hercules' over her head and he grimaced ruefully.  He really didn't hold grudges well.

"I'm sorry," she apologized soggily as she laid her head against his shoulder.  "I didn't mean to --"

"It's all right.  Really.  I'm not mad anymore.  Can't stay mad at someone who helps save my life."

He got a watery smile for that.  "I am sorry.  I just wasn't quite sane,

I think."

"Just now?"

"No.  Just then."

"I'd like to understand," he said slowly.

"I don't belong here.  I come from -- I don't know exactly.  I used to think it was from the future, but some of what I've run into doesn't jibe with what I thought I knew."

"Try that again."

"OK.  Hercules is a major mythological personage.  Son of Zeus.  Very strong.  Stable cleaning a specialty.  Intelligent but not wise.  Admittedly, myths and history are written to suit the tenor of the times, but there are some major points that differ.  Not to mention the time line itself.  I ran into Julius Caesar a while back."

"Who's he?"

"Roman general.  But if this is the time of Hercules, then he's not due to be born for another 700 to 1000 years."

"He's not?"

"No.  Not by the recorded history of my time.  And not by the historical record we can verify with physical remains -- cities, burials, etc.  That was one of the things that started to clue me in to the fact that I might be crazy but this was real and not a hallucination with a lot of interesting detail."

"You thought we were an hallucination?" He was following, but he wasn't any closer to understanding than when she started.

"If this is really my world, where I belong and the time of Hercules are separated by 3 to 4 thousand years."

"Thousand."

"Thousand."

"In the future?"

"Yeah."

"This is crazy."

"You got it."

"But you're not crazy."  She was pleased that this was a statement rather than a question.

"I don't think so.  Although I think I was when we first ran into each other."

"Why did we go through all that?" Hercules asked quietly.

"Because I wanted to go home," she answered with a sigh.

"And Hera promised --"

"To send me home if I brought her Hercules.  Of course, that was nearly 5 years ago."

"You'd been looking for me --"

"For almost 5 years.  It had begun to occur to me that it was a little doubtful that a goddess who couldn't obliterate her own stepson would be able to summon up enough power to put me back where I belong."

"You dropped the key."  Iolaus looked puzzled.  "The key we found on the floor."

"That unlocked the doors."

"And the manacles of Hephaestes."

Understanding dawned.  "You helped us get out."

"As much as I could, having just called Hera a liar and a cheat; not to mention an incompetent bungler."

"You called -- She's mad at you."

"No," Ariana responded in mock disbelief.  "Whatever gave you that idea?" she asked with a laugh.

"Surf's up?"

They both laughed.

"Seriously.  You're in love with Salmoneus?"

"Seriously."

"How -- I mean -- Sal's a nice guy, but --"

"But why not a lean, muscular good guy?" she asked leaning toward him and staring deeply into his eyes in a manner calculated to play havoc with his

respiration and temperature control systems.

"Yeah," he responded huskily.

"Because after 65 years of falling for world savers, I'm tired of losing them."

Iolaus felt his jaw drop.  World savers.  Well, yes.  Sort of.  Hercules, was, anyway.  He just tagged along for the ride.  Sixty-five years???  His mouth refused to cooperate with the words.

"Yes."  She looked around to include Hercules in her explanation.  "I'm immortal.  At least, technically.  I believe there is an amount of damage

from which I probably could not recover, but I haven't hit it yet.  I'm --

counting the 5 years here, about 90."

Iolaus couldn't resist the look up and down.  "You don't look it."

That made her smile.  "Believe me, the mileage is all there.  I spent a

lot of time where I belong doing what you and Hercules do."

"But -- why?"

She took a moment to think how to explain the about face she'd pulled since being here, since her initial meeting with Hera.  "Things had gotten very -- tense, that's a good word -- just before I got dumped here.  I'd retired from being heroic and couldn't seem to keep from attracting the kind of trouble that gets the people around me hurt.  I'd lost the last of my closest friends.  I'd solved a major problem, but not before a dozen people died.  It was fast, probably relatively painless, but it wasn't fun to watch and be helpless while it happened.  I'd sat down on the side of a desert mountain to see if I could find a reason for it all.  And just about the time the dehydration hallucinations were due to set in, I found myself face down in a grassy meadow.  And there's a throne and this woman with the wildest eyes I've ever seen.  I thought I was crazy.  For about three and a half years, I thought this was all inside my head."  She gestured to indicate not just the room and its occupants, but the world they knew.

Iolaus looked like he was having a hard time with this concept.

Hercules, having dealt with his own variant of such madness just nodded.  It

made a distorted sort of sense to him.

"I figured Hera was just a -- a representation of authority of some sort and finding Hercules and bringing him to her was symbolic of dealing with my problems and freeing myself from them.  Follow the scenario and eventually

get untangle brained and wake up to the real world."

"Only it didn't happen."

"No.  It occurred to me that being the sort of person I am, it should never have taken that long to find my symbol and deal with this.  I'd gotten kinda straight line in my search, not paying a lot of attention to who I went through -- barring obviously innocuous people like kids and most of the women who crossed my path.  I think I panicked when I realized this is all real.  The things that didn't fit, were that way because this was real, not mythology playing out neatly in my well educated mind.  Suddenly, I had to find Hercules and I didn't care who got in my way or how I accomplished it.  I had to get home, back to the safe and sane world I knew."  She laughed at that.  "Safe and sane.  Right.  As though those things had ever mattered to me."

"You poisoned me."

"Well, not exactly."

"Not -- I couldn't move."

"No.  But mostly that was hypnotic suggestion and the smallest trace of one very rare drug that makes people very suggestible."

"You lied to me."  Hercules didn't sound particularly upset about it now.

"Yes."

"You could have told me."

"I know that -- now.  Then, I didn't trust anyone.  I couldn't.  I didn't trust Hera, and she was my ticket home."

"Only she wasn't.  So you had an alternative plan.  But if you didn't care --"

"Too many years of being one of the good guys, I guess.  No, I knew your

reputation and nothing you did while in my company negated it.  If -- No,

when I confirmed my suspicions about Hera, I didn't want your death on top of

everything else."

"So, how did you meet Salmoneus?  We're miles away from the temple.  But you met him within hours of it collapsing."

"I think I have Hera to thank for that."

"Hera?"

"Well, there was this sort of updraft and then I was falling.  I vaguely

recall smacking into a number of trees.  And then there was Salmoneus.  I

think he was expecting bandits and hoping for rabbits."

"That sounds like Salmoneus."

"Unless he's looking for quail."

"He's a very good quail hunter," she agreed with Iolaus.

"So, now what?"

"Well, if he still wants me around when he wakes up, I guess I'll stay with Salmoneus."

"No adventuring?"

Her face darkened for a moment.  "Not deliberately.  Mind you, with his penchant for wandering around --" She looked up at answering grins.  Their paths were certain to cross again.

They got dry, Ariana fed them and they took turns checking on Salmoneus through the night.  They let her sleep when he woke up hungry at dawn.  He ate and went back to sleep for a while.  When Ariana awoke, she took her basket and went down to the market.  She answered questions about Hercules and his cute blond friend as patiently as she could before heading back.  It was nearly noon as she walked up the street toward the house.  She enjoyed the quiet as she neared the doorway, then froze just as she reached the entrance.

The silence was absolute, all motion seemingly frozen.  Not even flies buzzed in the lazy heat.  With a muted roar a black whirlwind sprang from nowhere, enveloping her completely.  She felt her feet leave the ground, then all sensation stopped until she hit a stone floor with a thump.  It was dark and cold and felt like she was enclosed for all time in this invisible place.  She sat and waited.

Hercules and Iolaus burst from the house as the whirlwind descended on Ariana.  They launched at and through it only to fetch up against the wall on the other side of the street.  Her basket sat neatly in the street.  Ariana was gone.  Salmoneus appeared in the doorway and walked out to see what was going on.

"Hercules."  He offered him a hand up.  "Iolaus.  What are you doing here?  Come to think of it," he continued as he looked around and absently scooped up an apple.  "Where is here?"

"Piraeus," Hercules said gently.

"Piraeus.  Piraeus.  What am I doing in Piraeus?  Last thing I remember I was leaving Thrace.  There was this woods.  I was a little worried about it.  Piraeus.  Well, what brings you to Piraeus?"

"It's a long story ---" They walked back into the house, Iolaus bringing the basket and the rest of the fruit and wondering just what Hercules was going to tell Salmoneus.

Conclusion

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