He was sitting in an Oregon coffee shop, contemplating as he often did.

No one seemed bothered

by the fact that his outfit was several decades out of style, then again no one noticed him at all.

Magic is useful like that, he didn’t even pay for the coffee. He just walked behind the counter

and made it himself. He has actually gotten pretty good at making coffee, he has gotten a taste

for Frappuccino. If the other patrons of the Coffee house could see him they might ask, Where is

the Convention? It would be a fair question as though he updated his look in the thirties, he still

kept the Red, White and Blue color scheme. The overall look is kind of like someone tried to

make an Indiana jones/civil war reanactor/Captain America outfit. Which would not be an

entirely false statement, Billy Yank is one hundred and sixty years old, and he was a god. Sorta,

It is kinda complicated.

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In the beginning there was an island on the back of a turtle, on that turtle was an apple tree.

From that tree fell two of its fruit fell. One split open and became Columbia, Mother of the Soil. She

took the other apple and carved a man, Paul Bunyan. Together they took the seeds and planted them.

From the seeds came all sort of grains and from the plants came the corn mother. Paul chopped down

the tree and out came Johnny appleseed. Together they grew the island into a continent, Paul digging

canyons and mountains. Johnny and the Corn mother planted fields and forests. Columbia molded

animals from mud and men from stone, populating their new world.

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Or at least that is the story they tell themselves. Even Legends can have Myths. Any who

would have remembered it are not quite the same people any longer. Corn Mother and Johnny

Appleseed faded into their fields and forests, Columbia is aloof, and Paul… Paul has never been

the same since he died the first time. Still those days are past, it is now and these times need him.
Billy stared at the clock, John should have gotten here by now. He said it was urgent and when

John Henry says something is urgent, it is. He heard the bell at the door and in walked a giant of

a man (impressive even to Billy who had seen actual giants). A man seemed to be carved from

black marble, beautiful in a rough hard way, dressed in work overalls. The Giant sat and began to

speak, “Hello Billy, I will forgo the pleasantries and I will speak plainly. I need a god of war like

you, for a… mission.” Billy raised an eyebrow quizzically. Billy spoke “you can just call it a

quest, we are demigods. No one would blame us for using fantasy terms. Besides, what would a

God of Labor need from an old warrior like me?” John spoke “well, how to discuss it… a certain

god may or may not have had… intercorse with a mortal and the product of the union may or

may not be reaching their majority.”

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Once upon a time there were two Nations trying to exist in the same space. The natives and the

colonists of New York wanted to control the island. The Colonists prayed for the island so they could be

free from the old world and the Natives prayed for justice for the land that was stolen from them. The

faiths of these two people created two goddesses, Lady Liberty and Lady Justice. The Battle lasted for

generations and then Boston brahmin, the patron god of Boston, intervened. He showed them that their

fighting fueled the hatreds of their peoples and causing strife on their island. Though the goddesses

stopped, it was too late. The Native’s days in Manhattan were numbered.

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Billy raised his voice “What? There has not been a living Half-God in Decades, not

since… since… Sinthia.” John saw the melancholy in his face and began to speak again “I know,

but you see why this is so important. If this Half-god is left to their own devices or worse if it is

found by one with evil intent. Then the consequences could be catastrophic. Find them before
that happens.” Billy stroked his beard, he was concerned. He would do it of course, but there are

problems. Who is the god that John is talking about, why the secrecy? He looked out the window

and he saw something, something no one wants to see. Something with wings, a harbinger of

doom. The Mothman. Billy didn’t even have time to scream as the shop was destroyed by a

missile.

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The Goddesses had found that their hate had turned to love and they were married. Together

they had a son, Yankee doodle. He was a trickster demigod, dressing like the rich dandies that

populated the rich port. For centuries he played with the humans, even their revolutionary war was

more of a game to him. He was amused with how his name was in their songs and they called the

revolutionaries “Yankees”. But with those songs and his increase of influence came an increase in

power and his dark side grew with that power. He became a reflection of his “worshipers”, he became

an American. Everything good and bad were amplified within him, creating a war within. The only

thing that kept him sane was the influence of his “Uncle” Sam (formally Brother Jonathan, the

patron of New England), then came April 12, 1861. The beginning of the American civil war, at that

moment the contradictions of his own existence became untenable.

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Billy and John stood up from the wreckage and followed the smoke trail of the rocket to a

man in a red and white mech. Billy breathed a sigh of relief, it was the minor god America

Mecha. For a moment he thought he was the vastly more powerful Military industrialist. Looking

around the shop at the bodies, anger grew in Billy. He knew, AM knew the missile could not hurt

them. Why did he slaughter all of these innocent mortals? Why? In a brief moment of lucidity

among his grief he realized something. American Mecha has a brother. Then he ducked, missing
the blade by inches. It was Mall Ninja, Personification of Cheap Swords (his actual domain and

title are slightly more dignified then that. But who cares). Billy drew his saber and deflected the

next strike, Mall Ninja began to cackle “Hello Old Man, sorry to pop in but Johnny is paying a

pretty penny for your head.”

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Yankee Doodle was split into two beings, the devote abolitionist and skilled fighter Billy Yank

and the classy gentleman and fierce confederate Johnny Reb. They battled day after day, and when

the war ended and it was time for them to return to being one, Billy refused. He had come to despise

both his shamelessly bigoted and cruel other half represented by Johnny, and his self-absorbed and

vain Yankee Doodle persona. He killed Johnny to kill the evil in him, inadvertently creating an

entirely new being in the person of Johnny Law, the personification of manifest destiny and American

imperialism.

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Billy smirked, “I may be old. But I had something you don’t. A pistol at my hip.” He

pulled his revolver and shot him in the head, maybe his next incarnation would have more sense.

However Billy doubted that, he was two young to have any substantial change to his aspect. John

was outside swinging his mighty hammer, American Mecha dented and buckled. No matter how

strong the armor, no matter how powerful the machine, John Henry was a steel driving man. He

defeated the Steam Drill, Tammany Hall, and Automation in myriad forms. John Henry existed

to fight machines. When the dust settled, American Mecha was ripped into pieces and steel was

spread across the street. Billy has conflicting feelings, on one hand they had vanquished their

foes (for now anyway, no fight is ever truly over when dealing with immortals), but they died

before they could provide any additional information. Billy said “I will take the job John, but I
need to know. Why in the Six Circles of Suffering Souls is this Half-God so important? Johnny

Law rarely gets involved in such matters, he would rather instigate riots and misappropriate

government infrastructure funds for militarizing the police.” John nervously looked around,

probably worried that there were more than just two potential assassins. Once he was satisfied

that no one was listening, he spoke “it is a child of Iktomi,”

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The firstborn son of Inyan, the Rock, who was originally named Ksa. Iktomi is born full-grown from

an egg and is the size of an ordinary human. He was the Spider god of the Lakota Plains, he wove the

web of language and was capable of speaking to any living being and any stone. He thrived in his

culture, until his tribes were devastated by the wars of man. He grew weak and was dying, until he

discovered telegraph. The telegraph was a web without a spider, so Iktomi became it’s master. Then

came the telephone and then the internet. His web came to encompass the globe, the little trickster

became the master of the digital world. Ikotomi, God of the World Wide Web.

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