The Lobby

When I opened my eyes again I was lying next to a torch standing upright and someone was hanging over me.

"AAAAAAH, sorry, I got startled from waking up with you standing over me like that."

The girl, no I should say the woman had long black hair, bright red eyes that seemed to contain fire, slim curves and wore a white dress that was pretty loose. She had an innocent face and her smile disarmed me immediately. But the most notable thing about her weren't her eyes, it was the strong overpowering pressure

"No problem, I probably would have screamed myself. Hello, my name is Hestia."

She extended her hand to me.

"Wait, w-w-w-w-WHAAAAAAAT?"

I fainted again, yes, I fainted a lot ok. I don't do that anymore but I was a little bit fainthearted at the time.

When I woke up Hestia was hanging above me. 

"Do you have some kind of disease that makes you faint regularly or something?"

I wanted to hit myself. "No, I just got surprised a lot. Sorry for that."

She giggled, it was warm and welcoming. Her aura made me feel at home even though her pressure was crushing me. 

"Where are Homer, Bolt and Kirby?"

"Who, oh you mean Leo, Thea and Kirby. Well, they're debriefing but Leo asked me to show you around the lobby. If you're ready let's go."

I stood up and we walked inside the tower standing.

"This tower was built on the destroyed grounds of Olympus. It uses pocket dimensions to house the three organizations that operate from here, do you know them?"

I shook my head, "I just know about The Order of Heroes." 

"Makes sense, they are the only group that operates in Atlantis. The other two are the Mages Spire, a group that gathers powerful magic users and researches magic and The Comrades, a group that gathers unique powers that are great for working together, they always operate in groups. 

This is a meeting ground for the three groups and when a threat above god class appears they work together to fight it. They also each have special measures for an Armageddon level threat."

We entered the tower and I was in awe. It looked like the lobby of a big hotel. It was bustling, people were lounging in a certain area, others were having a meal and others seemed to be looking at missions. 

The sheer amount of languages that could be heard was astonishing. I could hear everything from English and French to Japanese and even Atlantean. 

"What do you want to do, want me to show you around or do you want to explore and have me explain."

The twinkle in my eyes already showed that I wanted to explore.

First I looked at the food, I discovered it was a mall, shops sold clothing (armor included), weapons, food, and even video games.

The food was also in an insane variety, with that I mean that you had a little bit of everything, I could so typical Atlantean dishes served next to Karage or Ramen. Belgian Fries were served next to Maniok Bread. They also had drinks of almost every nation: Wodka, beer, Tequila, Whisky, etc.

I entered one of the shops that sold clothing and saw that it was just like the tower, bigger on the inside. I had watched the first episode of Doctor Who (the reboot) and I now understood what Hank meant, both about the joke he wanted to tell as about watching pre age of power shows.

It sold everything from casual clothes to wedding dresses.

Then we went to explore the lounge. It was just as massive. Turns out that the lounge also served as a giant library.

It contained rows and rows of books, manuscripts, light novels, movies, etc.

when we walked a little further we also found an arcade, a few halls showing movies and even a bloody bowling alley.

"This all was placed here to give those in the hero business a safe place to relax." Hestia stated.

After that I wanted to look at the missions board but stumbled upon a wedding. Yes, you heard that right, a wedding was being held. From what I could gather it was between a hero and a witch.

I apologized for interrupting but they brushed it off saying that they also got lost often. Nice people, beautifull ceremony to from what I had seen.

Because of that I also found out that they had places of worship for every major religion and embassies of every nation.

When I finally found the missions hall I found that it was modeled after those in fantasy stories. It gave this air of adventure to the place.

I looked at the board and saw ... nothing.

"Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. The missions board uses magic to show people missions pertaining to the domain of the group they belong to, their rank and the type of powers or magic they have. Since you don't belong to any group you can't see anything."

That was a bummer but at least I had explored the lobby. seeing the lobby made me wonder, how big are the rooms, they must be massive.

Later I would learn they weren't, the lobby was so big because it needed to be able to accommodate billions. Rooms were small and scaled with rank since they needed to accommodate only one person.

Sigh, at least I now knew where I had to find everything. Leo and Thea, I still thought of them as Homer and Bolt, and Kirby were done and we met up to get me registered.