You've heard about this one. They say he's immortal. That he can shape shift, influence others' minds, and even shoot lighting out of his fingertips.

They say that other bounty hunters have gone after him before. None have even made it back alive, much less with the bounty.

They say all this and end it with "we want him alive."

You know it's a bad job. Normally you wouldn't take it. But you're strapped for cash. The last 3 jobs didn't pay out and you're getting desperate. Desperate enough to take a sketchy job.

You pull together the last of your funds for the trip. You don't have enough but eventually a sleazy barge captain offers you passage in exchange for a cut of the bounty. It's either this or nothing, so you accept.

You don't have enough money left over for ammo, which is ok since you have to take the bounty alive. You don't have enough money left over for armor, which is less ok, considering the lightning thing.

You have just enough money left over for one vial of Star-Whale tranquilizer. Ever since Star-Whales were hunted to extinction, the stuff has been super cheap; even a small amount of Star-Whale tranq is enough to kill pretty much anything smaller than the beasts, which includes but is not limited to small planets.

You hope that what they said about him being immortal was true.

Four days of crappy cooking, less-than-stellar living conditions, and listening to the barge captain tell you about all the crimes he has committed (you almost consider capturing the captain, instead. Alas, no bounty) you finally arrive.

Your target has chosen a back-water planet to live on. Apparently, the local civilization is hundreds of years away from space travel. A guide book you picked up says the civilization is in the "Bronze Age." You find out that that means the civilization uses bronze tools.

No wonder your target chose this planet. As an immortal being living in a civilization that doesn't even know space exists, he must be treated as a god or something. That would be the life, you think. You bet gods don't have to pick up sketchy jobs out of desperation. You think they probably give out sketchy jobs for fun.

The barge captain lets you borrow the landing craft. It barely makes it through the atmosphere. You land in a forest and hide the craft with branches. After the atmosphere, you're worried that the weight of the foliage might break the craft forever.

Your target lives on a mountain. The tallest mountain in the area, in fact. It takes you half a day to walk from the craft to the base of the mountain, another day-and-a-half to climb it. You arrive at the false peak, where they said he would be, in a state of near exhaustion. You have nowhere to rest: the false peak is above tree-line and it is windy! This job sucks, you think. At this point, you believe, death would be a good option.

You find him sitting on a rock at the apex of the false peak. He faces away from you, staring intently towards the peak.

He is not what you expected. He is old, almost ancient. Long, white hair and tangled beard. Skinny, frighteningly so. Skin clinging desperately to bone. His eyes are white: he is blind.

"Zeus?" You ask in confusion...

To be continued when I figure out how to end it

"Hell's Gates, this is Anubis speaking."

"Hey, A! It'sth Peter."

"Oh hey, Pete! What's going on."

"Tho we got a weird thituation up here. We got a guy, a really good guy, lived a noble life and everything, thaying he doethn't belong in heaven. Not like 'I'm not thuppothed to be dead,' but like 'I don't wanna be in heaven.'"

"Oh, that's different. Is he asking for hell?"

"No not really... Lithen, I'm really buthy right now. Can I just thend you the file and the guy?"

"Yeah sure, Pete. I'm not busy at all."

"Ok great I'll thend them over.

"Pete, that was sarca.... Oh, he hung up..."

A few minutes later

"So you must be Eddie. I'm Anubis, nice to meet you. So, tell me about your problem."

"Yeah, so it's like that other guy said, you know the one with the lisp?"

"You mean Thaint Peter?"

"Haha, yeah that's the guy. I just don't think I want to go to heaven."

"Well, your file says you've lived an exemplary life. Special Ed teacher for 20 years? Started an organization for underrepresented Latinos? And that's just a smidge of your overall accomplishments. You definitely qualify for heaven, you even get to skip the line. Why don't you want to go?"

"Yeah, well, it sounds kind of boring, to be honest with you. The Bible says when you go to heaven you "get" to sing praise to God for the rest of eternity. I hate singing. I'm not even good at it."

"That's the Christian bible. Perhaps it got parts right but maybe it got heaven wrong? Personally, I've never been so I don't know for sure. Hell, for all we know, it could be like that Norse place."

"Isn't Valhalla in hell, though?"

"Um okay it's not like Valhalla."

"Plus, what if I want to, like, do something raunchy?"

"Er, like what?"

"Have sex? Masterbate? Play with my dick?"

"Oh, no worries there, those things don't go to heaven."

"MY DICK WON'T GO TO HEAVEN?? Alright, I'm definitely not going. Would my dick go to hell?"

"Purgatory, I think."

Well, can I play with my dick in purgatory? Are there women in purgatory?"

"At the moment."

"Sooo can I go to purgatory?"

"Well, I mean I guess so. It's just that purgatory is more like a queue than an actual place. At a certain point, the queue leads back to me or Peter. So at a certain point, we would have to do this again."

"Fine by me! Send me and my penis to purgatory!"

"Ooookay... See you in about 100 years. Goddamn, that prude, Pete, always sends me the weird ones."