Athena, the goddess of wisdom, gives Hercules a quest: to go to Sparta and steal a secret weapon that Ares, the god of war, is preparing to assault Athens with. However, Hercules' attempts ends up impressing Ares so much that he gives Hercules a quest: to use the secret secret weapon to assault Athens for him. Hercules has to figure out what you do about conflicting divine commandments.
- A Lighter Shade of Grey: Neither Ares nor Athena are either particularly admirable nor entirely bad, but Ares is still a lot more unpleasant and violent, and is also the only one of them who gets punished by the end.
- Attack Pattern Alpha: Phil has Hercules attempt Plan Alpha, Plan Beta, Plan Gamma, and all the way up to Plan Omega to steal Ares' weapon. All of them fail, and Phil laments that he's run out of both plans and letters of the Greek alphabet.
- Conflicting Loyalties: Hercules wants to be a hero, and being chosen by a god is of course a great way to do that... but he's unprepared for two different gods choosing him at the same time.
- Divine Conflict: Athena and Ares have been at each other's throats since they were tiny toddler deities.
- Dude, Not Ironic: Ares claims that Hercules being killed by the weapon he was sent to steal is ironic. The weapon in question points out that that's not irony, it's poetic justice.
- Girls Have Cooties: Hyper-masculine Ares is completely squicked out at discovering that his super-weapon has a feminine voice and personality. Turns out, Hephaestus intentionally made it that way just to mess with him.
- Irony: The ultimate weapon hates violence and would rather be a musical instrument.
- Motor Mouth: The secret weapon can talk. And talk, and talk, and talk. Phil can stand it for no more than a few seconds before he starts begging Hercules to destroy it like Athena wants him to, just to get it to shut up.
- Oh, Crap!: Ares' reaction when he realises that he just tried to use the son of Zeus for target practice. Zeus promptly appears to return the favour.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ares is bright red and is a violent but affable thug, while Athena is bright blue and is an elegant but snooty intellectual.
- Talking Weapon: The "secret weapon" is a bow that has a face, a voice and an annoying personality.
