Helios grinned as he waved the silly message away. A challenge was exactly what he needed to get his blood pumping again! He hated these modern times; it was going to be so good when he could use his full power again, instead of limiting himself to dribs and drabs, but he could already feel the magic levels rising. They wouldn’t hit the level for his full power for a long time, but he already felt the warmth where he’d been growing cold.

Closing portals was simply a matter of throwing enough power at them; they were hard to keep open in the first place. If he had trouble, he’d just kill whoever was holding the portal open. Getting to them might be a little tougher, but that just meant he’d have to blow up more things. It would be fun.

Who did this ‘leader’ think he was, anyway? Challenging Helios to a scavenger hunt was simply foolishness. Very few things could hide from the light of the Sun, and he could see wherever the Sun’s light fell.

Yes. It would be fun, and then he’d find out who this challenger was. If it was fun enough, he might even let the challenger serve him.

“That’s all the help I can give you for a favor, even one related to the reason I offered it. Look me up after you Ascend; bring Rissa with you. I could do with some divine visitors that aren’t either completely focused on their Concept or crazy after millenia of power starvation and death. Plus, I like people; I just don’t let mundanes know I’m a goddess. Now if only I didn’t always get treated like I’m underage, I used to be an adult.” Psyche’s voice grew quieter as she talked.

Serenity shook his head. “I’m not going to Ascend. I have no interest in being worshiped or managing peoples’ lives. There are other ways to gain power and have it be my own, instead of borrowed from others.”

Psyche gave him a sad smile. “We don’t always get what we want.” She stood and brushed off her jeans.

Serenity noticed her slippers again. “I kind of hate to ask, but why bunny slippers?”

Psyche didn’t seem at all bothered by the question; that was almost a surprise. Most sixteen-year-olds would have been annoyed by someone pointing out they were dressed inappropriately. Of course, Psyche wasn’t really sixteen. “They’re comfy and warm; this is what I was wearing when you called. I didn’t bother to change. You aren’t a worshiper, I don’t need to always think about my image.”

She started forming the same inefficient tear in space she’d used when she originally arrived; right before she stepped through, she looked over her shoulder at Serenity. “I’m living in Canada these days. I’m sure you can find me if you try, but please don’t until you’ve dealt with Helios. I don’t want him finding me through you.”

She stepped through the tear and was gone before Serenity could come up with a reply.

When Serenity stepped into his treehouse, he found Rissa waiting for him. She was napping on the pile of pillows.

He never had gotten around to getting actual furniture for the room, and wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to. It was nice to have a place where you had to lounge, and it wasn’t like he was doing anything in the room that required a table.

“Rissa?” Serenity touched her shoulder, then checked the time. It was after five; there was no longer a hurry. They wouldn’t be leaving tonight. He plopped down next to her.

Rissa stirred at the light touch. “Serenity? Oh, I must have fallen asleep.” She sounded groggy, but pulled herself to a sitting position anyway. “Didn’t mean to pass out on you. How’d it go?”

“Better than expected. I think we’re going to need to change the itinerary.” Serenity shared his version of the Quest with Rissa, then remembered he hadn’t mentioned something important. “Psyche thinks it’s Helios, because Apollo died in an attack on … well, Atlantis. I didn’t get the full story out of her, but I’m pretty sure it’s the second time Earth’s Core was broken.”

After a moment’s thought, Serenity added, “I don’t think she knows the whole story. From what she said, everyone who was there died.”

Rissa’s mouth quirked as if she were suppressing a smile. “I don’t think I’m going to look. It sounds like it’d be unpleasant.” She lost the battle against a grin and leaned over to hug him.

They stayed like that for several minutes before Rissa relaxed her arms and leaned back. “So you combined dealing with the curse with closing the portals. Clever, but where do we start?”

“I’ll call Dad. He’ll have an idea where we can make a difference. Probably head back to the Big Apple in the morning anyway, we’ll need to pick up the rest of the team. Before that, though, we should probably start with dinner. It’s about that time.” Serenity stood, then offered Rissa a hand up. She didn’t need it, but she took it anyway.

Where they should start was apparently London. Serenity had expected the answer to be Denver, but the Sterath weren’t there yet and the portal hadn’t been located. On top of that, there had been two more small assaults out of the London portal after the British thought they’d locked it down; both were repelled, but no matter what they did, they couldn’t find the portal.

Serenity found it hard to believe no one had come up with an illusion-piercing spell, which meant that the portal wasn’t where they thought it was or it wasn’t just hidden by illusions. Serenity distinctly hoped it wasn’t another case of clever portal use to hide where the actual invasion portal was; they didn’t yet have a spare portal detector.

Aide hadn’t yet managed to build one for Serenity, either. He was having trouble miniaturizing some of the components enough; apparently, a cell phone was far easier to integrate than enough equipment that it required a van to transport it, even if Serenity could avoid certain things like the batteries.

Worse, the components themselves were proving surprisingly hard to obtain; they were specialized and usually had several-month lead times, which meant that most of what Aide was able to locate was older equipment. Even with used equipment, he hadn’t gather the parts for a complete duplicate of Dr. Allen Ridge’s setup, and his estimate was that if they were lucky he’d manage it in a couple of months. At that point, Serenity would either need to absorb it (and hope Aide had solved the size problem) or put it together himself.

The long and short of it was that the British had a problem and Lex Rothmer offered Serenity as a solution. Lex laughed as he told his son that he’d originally offered to send Serenity the day after the Sterath situation was resolved. “I knew you’d accept, even if you couldn’t go immediately, but I was turned down. I don’t know what changed their minds, but you should be careful; something did, and it was sudden. The people who didn’t even want to talk about it came to me yesterday and asked if the offer was still open. I know you’re capable, but be careful.”

Serenity nodded even though his father couldn’t see him. “I’ll take my whole team. They’ll watch my back and guard against whatever the problem is.”

“Good. You’re headed back to New York City, then?”

Serenity nodded unconsciously, forgetting that his father couldn’t see him. “Yeah, we’ll be on our way in the morning. I’ll send you the flight info as soon as I have it.”

“Good. I’ll send you your flight info for the trip to the UK. You and Rissa should take your passports; from what you’ve said, the others aren’t US citizens?” Lex waited for Serenity’s confirmation.

“That’s right. Katya’s human, if that helps?” Serenity wasn’t certain how that would work.

Lex chuckled. “Not really. I’ll just have to make sure everyone’s included on the visa to enter the country; it’ll be a special one anyway. It’s not like you’re going there as tourists. Hopefully it will be fast to arrange, but we’ll see.”

Serenity had expected to land at Heathrow. They didn’t.

Instead, they landed at an RAF base in London. Once they went inside, they were met by the Prime Minister herself. Serenity hadn’t expected that.

“Serenity Rothmer? I’m Prime Minister Elliott. I’m so glad you could come.” She held her hand out to him and smiled warmly; Serenity could see why some people called her “Mother Elliott”. Rissa had told him all about her on the trip over; he hadn’t realized she followed world politics that much.

Serenity shook her hand, careful not to grip too tightly. He grinned; it was good to be off the plane and it was even better to know he’d be accomplishing something else soon. “It’s good to be here. Thanks for the invite.”

Serenity paused. Should he ask? It couldn’t hurt anything and it might help. “If I can ask, what changed your mind? I was told that you didn’t want my help then suddenly changed your mind?”

The Prime Minister frowned. The expression disappeared fast enough that Serenity would have missed it if he weren’t watching her carefully. “Two things happened.” Her voice was chilly. “First, your Secretary of Defense’s offer finally crossed my desk three days ago. I hadn’t heard about it before that. Second, we located three more portals. You know of the map?”

Serenity nodded.

“I thought so; it was provided three days ago, directly from your Ambassador. Coincidentally, it arrived about two hours before the offer of your assistance reached me.” The tone of Prime Minister Elliott’s voice said that she considered it anything but coincidental. “It was helpful, but it indicates that even after the three it helped us find, we are missing up to three more. It is likely one is in Ireland and the other two in France, but we cannot be certain. Whether we are missing any or not, we cannot afford four fronts to this battle.”

She looked evenly at Serenity, seeming to consider him for a moment before continuing. Her voice was no longer cold. “If the offer had made it to my desk earlier, I’d like to believe you’d have gotten the invitation sooner. With the newly located portals, it wasn’t a question. Now let me introduce you to your liaison, Mr. Williams.”

The first place they went was a hotel. Serenity was grateful that they weren’t expected to close the portal immediately after the very long flight, but he was also puzzled by the lack of urgency. Mr. Williams had explained that a few hours wouldn’t matter since it had already been there for weeks, but it still seemed strange to Serenity. On the other hand, they didn’t have a way to find it, so he supposed they didn’t have much choice except to wait until he was ready.

He also asked about their progress on a portal detector. The answer was annoying: they had one. It was how they’d found the other portals.

It even pointed more or less at where they were pretty sure the portal was, but they couldn’t manage accuracy better than a hundred feet or so (well, he’d said thirty meters, but Serenity was pretty sure that was about a hundred feet). Whatever the distance was, it wasn’t accurate enough for them to want to shoot blindly in a city, hoping to find it. They’d tried low-power options up to and including Silly String as well as having people walk through the area, but nothing revealed the portal.