Define 'Harm'

A quick and simple fix to Hercules' Problem

Story Start: Colosseum

As Hades flew away cackling his triumph, Hercules and Megara had their not so joyful reunion interrupted as a clapping sound echoed through the empty colosseum. They followed the sound to one of the closest entrances where a man dressed strangely in long pants, a loose shirt and a loose jacket, all of which were made out of unknown materials, was walking towards them.

As the man came closer to the two, he stopped clapping and said in a rather bad accent "Congratulations 'hero', you've managed to set a rather easy term to get your powers back and yet you're still dumb enough you haven't already used it to go after that charbroiled bastard."

"What do you mean, and who are you anyway?" Hercules asked, turning defensive, even moving slightly in front of Meg despite his current feelings of her.

"Oh no one important in the grand scheme of things." The man said waving his last question away as he finished walking over to them before he stopped just before them and grinned as he said "And as for what I mean, did you or did you not set the term of the agreement as and I quote: You've got to swear that she will be safe from ANY harm, end quote? I notice neither of you actually defined 'harm' though."

Before the two Greeks could respond to that, the man quickly moved towards them, easily shoving Hercules out of his way with one hand while the other drew a strange object out of his coat pocket, thumb hooking into a hole at the top and flipping it on a hinge showing it was a small knife. Megara had barely widened her eyes in alarmed surprise before the knife flashed and she yelped, taking a startled step back as her left hand shot up to her right shoulder where a small trail of blood was already flowing.

"Meg!" Hercules shouted before he was suddenly holding the man up in the air with his left hand and his right chambered for a punch. He hesitated though as the man grinned down at him and said "Well would you look at that, you can actually pick me up with no problem now, and all it took was giving your little girlfriend a small, completely harmless cut on the arm." Hercules gained a surprised look as he lowered the man and looked at his fists in disbelief. The man rolled his eyes before he turned back to Meg who, somewhat wisely, took another step back away from him. Rolling his eyes again as he wiped his knife then closed it with a snap, he said "Calm down lady, I'm not going to hurt you again now that the deal's been broken." He took two quick steps and put a hand on her shoulder as he continued "I'm just going to clean the wound and bandage it so it doesn't get infected, it will sting a bit though."

The man proceeded to pull a small glass bottle out of his other jacket pocket and poured some of the substance on the wound gaining a small wince from Meg before he put a pad of gauze on the wound and then a strip of some strange substance that kept in place. Giving a nod, the man turned back towards Hercules and said "Well, don't you have a god of the dead to stop?" He pointed to the stables as he said "Your feathered horse friend is tied up over there. Ciao." The man gave a wave before he started walking off, with hands in his pants pocket. A moment later, a glowing blue portal sprung up right in front of the man causing the two Greeks to jerk in surprise and he walked right through, the portal closing immediately after him leaving only the pad on Meg's shoulder as proof he had ever been there. The two stared in stunned surprise before they both jerked as they remembered just what the man had 'helped' them with and the two took off to get Pegasus free.

Scene Change: A Universe Much Like Our Own; Present Day

The man walked out the other side of the portal into a laboratory and one of the men behind the large three man control console shook his head and said "I still cannot believe that you selected the Hercules movie for the test run of the Dimensional Pathway Generator."

The man shrugged with a grin as he said "Yeah, well, that little bit with the deal had always made me want to throttle the kid for his stupidity. I mean, he made such an EASY loophole in his deal with Hades and didn't even think of giving her a simple papercut before he took on the Cyclopes."

"True that, Disney really dropped the ball on that one, even if it was to show that his strength wasn't the only thing about him." Another technician said with a grin before he picked up a list on a clipboard and made a check mark as he said "Alright, well the first test obviously worked, so let's go to the secondary test. Would you prefer fantasy or sci-fi next?"

END

Author's Note: this popped up in my head at work a couple nights ago and would not leave me alone, so here you are. Maybe now I can get back to my Sensors story in peace.