In the forge, Hephaustus was busy hammering out a piece of armor, when the three orichalcum clockwork maidens (the original 'fembots') began hiccuping, rapidly. He glared at his retcon detector (because Hephaustus was master of glares and the frown king) and sent a quick note sideways outside space-time, so that when the hiccups stopped it would drop back in and remind him of something important.
A half hour later, he was thinking that an all-nighter to make this armor was just not appropriate. There was no hurry anyway; the order wasn't due for another decade, and there would be change requests at least three times more before he got anywhere.
A folded brass-sheet airplane popped into existence and bounced off his head.
"Look at the retchronometer. Something changed that might mess up your plans," it said in his own writing.
Hephaustus stood up on one leg -- the clockwork maidens moved in to keep him from falling but he didn't need them this time -- and he hopped over to the flat device made of clockwork, gemstones, and threads cut away from the start-points of the Fates' Loom, tiny bits of possibility that were essentially scrap but that he could put to use.
He watched the new centaur boy and his sister being rewoven to the new centaur twin brothers.
"Ah. That'll be trouble. I got Derrick's permission but not Jules' and if I do anything fun to one of them it will affect both, because of that tight bond. And it's a major policy breach to change them without permission. Well. Let's correct that oversight."
He hadn't quite decided what his changes would be. The other Olympians were so good with biomorphics and metamorphoses, but his own work was equally profound, even if he WAS expected to spend so much time on weapons and armor. Well. Perhaps this would be ... yes. When in Troy, dress like the Carthaginians. (Not the African ones. The earlier ones.)
"Bring me the Shire walker," he said. The Olympians -- especially Ares and Aphrodite -- were mocking or horrified by the twisted wreck that his right leg had become when he was thrown from Olympus to fetch up against Vesuvius. They didn't realize that after several thousand years, he'd used his craft to replace them with something else, because except for a few of the less Lofty, they carried grudges for how he picked on Aphrodite and Ares when he caught them in bed together.
Which ... honestly ... if they'd not been sneaking around and being all 'ew ick gross cripple' he might have forgiven back then. Things got better in the ensuing years, but only one of the top twelve had realized he had replaced his damaged legs with machine parts that only looked like the originals -- and that he could replace them with other parts. And that one was a secret collaborator and didn't bother to enlighten the others.
The Shire walker was the body of a Shire horse made of silver, carbon steel, carbon fiber because why should mortals have all the good ideas to themselves, electrum and orichalcum. The Clockwork Maidens wheeled it into the room and then lifted him up, one per side, and he released his legs which fell with a thump, false brace and all, and then the Maidens elongated slightly to move him over the slight hollow of the place where the neck would be. The ichor that was the Olympian equivalent of blood was coating the underside of his body, because his legs actually did attach into his hip socked and there were still some flesh connections, but the Shire extended carbon-fiber and orichalcum structures up to integrate into his body and the extremely tiny clockwork devices connected him into it, and he was linked... and then the Shire became his lower body. It came alive with his energy. The Maidens picked up his legs-harness and his clothing and moved them to their respective storage-and-cleaning containers. He walked around a bit, then picked up one of his toolkits and hung it on his back, buckling it around his human waist and letting it cinch itself up around the barrel of his lower chest.
"Now, let us go talk with our young admirers," he said, and made his shop exit open next to the Gymnasion. He walked through the entrance, aware of the stares of a few of the late-night exercise junkies. Unlike his damaged lower extremities, Hephaustus' upper body was a work of art and power, rival to Hercules and Zeus. He kept his hair bound behind him tightly, his beard cut short, and his body had little hair because it burned away in the heat of the forging, and he gleamed with the traces of metal dust that had become ground into his skin; as well as that, his Shire walker was a perfect model of a magnificent Shire stallion, and matched him perfectly.
The twin ... yes. That was it. The twin sons of Hebe were each paired off with one of the two guests, now twin brothers. He knew he had talked to Derrick, but he couldn't tell easily which was which -- and he realized that Derrick would probably be the one who was five minutes older. Their mother had pushed them out as if she were in a race, it seemed. At least in the revised reality. There might be paperwork to cover the change since it wouldn't vanish like the rest. But then, neither would his, because it wasn't strictly part of the magical weave.
"Derrick?" Hephaustus said to the older one.
"Yes sir?" Derrick answered, without interrupting his pull-up-dips. His human part almost effortlessly lifting his entire body, horse-half and all. It was beyond impressive.
"Your brother. Jules. He's over there?"
"Yes sir." Derrick answered again.
"I need to talk with him. I realized I can't fulfill your wish by playing with you without getting his consent as well."
"Oh, well, in that case," Derrick said, "Hey JULES! Come over here!"
The other centaur-twin was doing lunges with heavy weights strapped in bags across his horse-back and with heavy kettle-bells in his hands, and he called out, "I'm almost done here," so Hephaustus watched him until he was done. He pulled out a small puzzle and played with it while he waited for the exercise-drugged young centaurs to finish and realize that they were wanted.
"What did you want, Rick?" Jules asked, walking over to where Derrick was on his last set. The son of Hebe was with him. Hephaustus couldn't tell them apart without their name tags.
"This is my friend, I told you about earlier. From the forge."
"Oh! You're also a centaur? Rick, you didn't say he was a centaur."
"I'm a forgery of one, yes," Hephaustus said with a mischief-breeding smile.
That got both of their attention, as they looked over his centaur body. It even showed his arousal, which they found confusing.
"I'm fully integrated into it," he said to them. "It's not just a prosthetic. It's a fully functional equine body with senses, organs, and artificial muscles and nerves."
"Why don't you use this when you work?" Derrick asked.
"Because my family thinks I'm a deformed cripple," the forge-god said, flexing his arms to show how untrue that was.
"Wow. I should be so crippled," Derrick said, and Jules reached up and felt the biceps revealed by the flex, pulling himself up from the ground.
"Yeah. Me too," Jules said. Nic and Alex glanced at each other in alarm.
"No worries," Hephaustus said to them. "I won't hurt them. Jules, your brother gave me permission to play with him, but I can't unless I have your permission to play with you too."
"Sure," Jules said, before Nic or Alex could make their terrified faces of NOOOO!
"Then let's start. First thing, you're both small again. Now, you both have SOME Shire and SOME of that hot, giant Celestial stallion that together will make your horse components giant-sized, but that's not really enough for my tastes. The Drum Horse baseline also looks really good, but for a centaur warrior fantasy, you need the extra size."
Jules and Derrick looked at each other and Alex and Nic winced again, but politely, out of their line of sight.
"You two. I saw that. Come here and help out. Put 'em back at their peak."
"But they can," Alex started, and Nic finished, "do that for themselves."
"Oh? Then tell them how."
Alex and Nic did a quick round of scissors-paper-stone and Nic won.
"You tell, Alex."
"Of course," he grumbled. "OK, you can both return to the full-size form you had, or back to this scale, by focusing on wanting to, and becoming aroused. It'll work faster if you..."
He stopped because Derrick and Jules were doing the Secret Twin Handshake -- that was their word for it -- by kissing in public. The kiss wasn't the kind you give your elderly aunt who smells like dolmas either. It was a full on, tongues-and-groping kiss. They were also swelling up quite rapidly, and not just their stallion parts. Alex and Nic had to step back, and the centaur brothers had to move to the side into the aisle, so they wouldn't bump into or knock over the equipment.
"Are all twins this erotic?" Hephaustus said, rhetorically, but Alex and Nic answered anyway.
"No, only on Olympus. Incest taboos are still alive and well on Earth."
"Drat," Hephaustus said dryly. "Well, they're back to full size and we don't want to clean up the equipment here, so lads, that's good enough."
Derrick and Jules broke their clench, though it clearly took some mental effort, and then laughed, a bit embarrassed.
"Now let's go down to the forge. I have some equipment there and there's a private paddock adjoining, where we can test out some things, and perhaps one of my friends will join us. You two as well, " Hephaustus said including Alex and Nic.
"I have some things you might find useful for your real job."
It would be difficult for anyone to actually hurt Alex or Nic, especially here in the special part of Mount Olympus that they were the guardians for. So they went along, a bit hesitant. Hephaustus had his arms each around one shoulder of the once-again massive centaur brothers, and he was using just the slightest hint of his Aura of Power to lure them, but that was legit because they'd already said yes. They went through the stables entrance, and an extremely good-looking stable-hand was grooming the most blindingly white palomino horses. It was actually almost as bright as day in the end of the stables where they were being combed and fed. That almost gave pause to Alex, though Nic was confident that they could handle what they thought was coming. It would be fun though, even if they couldn't.
The two centaur brothers and the centaur-shaped god of the forge stepped out into a paddock, and though it was dark, the light from the stable and the light that was gathering around the brothers lit things up.
"Now, lads. I have something here..." Hephaustus reached back around and pulled some harness and tack from his pannier. It was jet black, and it had small gemstones. It looked like it was designed to fit behind their backs at the point where the human spine and the horse spine curved together, with a strap running between the horse pectorals down to a belt that fit around the barrel of their horse body, and a second strap that led from the belt up to meet with in a "Y" that ran along what would have been the hipline of their human waist, and a circular gemstone-mount fit in front of that spot that would on a normal human be where the genitalia would be located.
"These are a special thing I made for centaurs who want to be able to mate with humans," Hephaustus said. "All you have to do is put them on, activate the magic, and you'll have properly sized equipment for whatever fun you want to have."
That seemed almost too good to be true, and Derrick and Jules were a bit skeptical, but then, this whole trip had been impossible things, and they were centaurs. So it was worth trying.