His Pain

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I'm very, very, very (not) sorry for that April Fool's joke, but you can't be all that made at me. I was originally going to make the story and the summary one regarding an idea I've had about Percy being the son of Star Wars' Abeloth, the One that is the Mother, and the most powerful being in all of Star Wars, more powerful that Darths Vader, Sidious, Revan, Nihilus and Vitiate combined, and more powerful than Masters Yoda, Luke, Shan, and stronger than even Anakin Skywalker…combined.

But my friend instead suggested making the story and summary a sequel to something already up, and that was a better sinker than my idea.

So blame my friend.

This is the last chapter of memories. After this, it's back to the present with the fallout of seeing the things Shin'en did…some of them, anyway. Still trying to decide if the Greeks should retain all these memories, keep some of them, some Greeks keep varying amounts, or if they should all forget.

Suggestions?

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or PJO

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With Asteria's influence and control, both in and out of school, she made it to where she and Annabeth had the exact same schedules, beyond just at Goode. At Yorkshires, the grocery store they worked at, Asteria had it in stone that she and her girlfriend, after they got out of school at two o'clock, on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, they had work from three in the afternoon to closing, which was ten.

So, a guaranteed twenty-one hours a week, and with their payrate at thirteen an hour, that was a solid two-seventy a week, as Yorkshires paid weekly. That was on top of any hours Asteria decided to put in for the weekend, if she and Annabeth didn't have any outstanding plans for Saturday and/or Sunday.

Of course, with Annabeth's religious inclination, the morning of Sunday was usually spent at the church, and then the rest of the day at work, as Yorkshires, denoting themselves as a Christian company, paid a whole extra dollar per hour for those that worked on the Day of Rest. Eight hours for fourteen dollars each hour was rather hard to ignore.

However, none of the money could compare to the other thing Asteria had done to Yorkshires when she took over the store: she had made it the kind of retail haven all retail workers yearned for.

The place in which they didn't have to hold their tongues in the face of or kowtow to the whims of rude customers.

Much of the clientele had sharply dropped when Asteria implemented her dictatorship, but the way the telepath saw it, all those lost customers had been the rude and disrespectful and entitled adults who came in here with the mindset that they could walk over the sixteen and seventeen-year-old cashiers and bag boys/girls.

Not on Asteria's watch.

"Why are you like this?" Annabeth had asked after Asteria sent out a crabby old lady.

"Because," the telepath answered with a superior smirk, "Uncle Ben made it clear that those with great power have a great responsibility, and since I have great power, I have a great responsibility, namely holding all of these disrespectful adults accountable for their deplorable behavior towards teens."

Annabeth just sighed.

Shin'en's introduction to the grocery store had come several days ago when he had wanted some eggs and Yorkshires had been the closest store to the neighborhood he had settled down in. He hadn't been bothered in the slightest by the eight o'clock dredges, but over the days, as he spent more and more time in the grocery store, he found his opinions regarding the human race starting to sour even more than what they already were.

Which was really something considering he wiped the human race off a planet one time.

There was a pattern to the days, Shin'en noted.

When the five o'clock hour hit on Monday and Tuesday evenings, there was suddenly a massive rush of people that didn't die out for almost three hours straight, and most of the shoppers were women in business attire and men in work clothes.

The conversations he picked up on between the cashiers and the customers was generally the same:

"Didn't do your shopping over the weekend?"

"Nope. Got too busy."

"Mm-hm."

So, Shin'en saw too things in that situation: One, people wanted to maximize what little time they had over the course of 48 hours to spend it with their families, presumably, and two, absolute laziness.

The general opinion of the present workforce was that people needed to get off their asses and get up here on the weekend so they didn't have to come bother the employees with their weekday bullshit.

That was the first two days of the week.

Shin'en didn't know what Wednesdays were like because Asteria and Annabeth didn't work Wednesdays, and he wasn't going to waste his time in a grocery store when the only two people he had any real opinions over weren't there.

The Thursday crowd was much like the Monday/Tuesday one, only instead of it being people that hadn't done their grocery shopping over the weekend, it was people that didn't want to their grocery shopping over the weekend…and typically ended up back here anyway because they forgot something.

Once again, the general opinion was that everyone just needed to do their shopping on the weekend.

And then the weekend actually came, and it was the same song and dance every time. The morning hours were predictably slow, with generally only the old people showing up because they got up early, but by the nine to ten hour, things began picking up as people got their days started by getting the weekly grocery shopping done.

There was also the college football fans, who came in before game time and brought grocery carts laden with chips, dips, beers, and grilling foods up to the front. They were always an enthusiastic bunch. The NFL people weren't much different.

The weekends were typically had a steady rate of people, with the only rush times being between noon and five. After five, there was usually a medium flow of people, as not many wanted to grocery shopping during their Saturday evening, when they could be having dinner with the family, and it was even less on Sunday, in which people had to be thinking about getting in bed so they could get enough rest for the Munday morning sludge.

Shin'en also noted how the weekends usually brought a more upbeat and relaxed feel than the weekday evenings, and he had a theory as to why: the frontend employees were all high school students, at least, the evening shifters were, as it was the older ones that covered the days. When the high schoolers got here for their shifts, they were already tired and worn out from a day of lessons, classwork, tests, teachers, and fellow people, so they were hardly in the best of moods when it came to having to spend their remaining hours of the day at work, doing things they didn't want to do with people they didn't care for, especially when they had homework hanging over their heads.

When the weekends came, yeah, they weren't particularly thrilled with having to spend their time away from school at work, but on the weekends they came in fresh and ready to go, their "bullshit meters" at a relatively low levels.

For his part, up until the beginning of October, Shin'en had garnered the reputation of a silent watchdog. In the office where Asteria and Annabeth operated, where there was the money safe, the lottery tickets, money orders, and the security camera control center, there was an adjacent alcove where the employees could hang their coats and get a quick cup of water from a big Gatorade jug. On the floor, by the door, were two tote baskets in which the "put-backs" were placed, the items that customers either decided they didn't want for whatever reason or random things that were found left out throughout the store.

Shin'en hung out in that small room, either sitting on top of or leaning on the counter next to the small window adjacent to the office, which was barred by locked door, saying only authorized personnel beyond this point.

However, there was about four feet of space between the door frame and the ceiling, so if you wanted to climb over it, you could. It was designed such to allow for the carrying of sound, as the cashiers were expected to call out the number of their lane whenever a problem arose.

Anyway, Shin'en got his reputation by just quietly sitting in his spot, sometime making idle conversation with Asteria or Annabeth, but even though the telepath was basically god of the store, she still shouldered responsibility and helped Annabeth with whatever needed to be done, whether that was closing down the office at the applicable time, controlling the turmoil of the front end, or assisting with those that came to the office in need of…whatever.

There was an extensive list.

What Shin'en did was monitor the store. His divine powers might have been limited, in that he could no longer control the water inside of a person, but he could still sense that water, and all the water in the air. What he did was keep a mental track of all movements and conversations, his hearing acute enough to pick up the words spoken in hushed whispers all the way at the back of the store, and his brain able to cancel out all interference noise and focus solely on that conversation.

He could also use his hydro-sensing to follow lip and tongue movements to a letter.

His main focus was on shoplifters, for no other reason than because he could, and there was something of a bit of fun in quietly hovering behind someone as they fervently worked to steal something out of a box, and then listen to them squeal when they turned around to see him standing about three inches from their face.

It was not an uncommon sight to see Shin'en marching someone to the front of the store, their arm twisted painfully behind their back, and proceed to literally throw them out into the parking lot, regardless of age or gender. Shin'en had been seen escorting older children, younger teens, older teens, those in their twenties, and even an old man once, thought the levels of violence used did vary from person to person.

One rather pathetic person threatened to sue after she was thrown out, but Shin'en just glowered at her and she ran away to her car.

Annabeth thought his method was too cruel, as she was more favor of the idea of getting a picture of the shoplifters lifted from the camera feed, and then putting that face into a program that would cause a little light to start going off in the office, which would notify her that a shoplifter was present, and she could call the police and have the person arrested on charges of theft.

Asteria thought that, while it was certainly an amusing idea, it was much more amusing to watch Shin'en manhandle shoplifters like shoplifters were supposed to be manhandled.

A little known fact about retail places and shoplifters: they were untouchable.

Officially, if you ever saw someone stealing, you were to get a manager, but then what? If that person was gone, they were gone, and even if you caught them, what could happen next? They could pull a gun, or a knife, or they could simply engage in a battle of fisticuffs. It was the idea that if a person was dedicated enough to openly commit theft, then what else were they willing to do? To avoid any risk, managers were instructed to instruct their underlings to simply do nothing.

However, that's not an excuse to go load up a grocery cart of things and go strolling out to the parking lot.

Just because the employees are told not to do anything, that doesn't mean someone can't call the police.

As stated, that was what Shin'en did up until the beginning of October. When the month of Halloween arrived, it was a dreary Thursday with pouring rain and cold winds, making it a rather punishing outdoor environment. Now, one would think that in such conditions, a grocery store would become a ghost town due to people not wanting to get out in the weather, but as it turned out, it was the exact opposite.

Yorkshires was packed with people.

In Asteria's car, the telepath verbally lamented, "It never fucking fails."

Shin'en found himself questioning what he was seeing himself. "One would think that in weather like this, they would stay indoors."

"One would fucking think," Asteria said. One could tell how pissed off she was by how much she started cursing. When she was frivolously throwing around f-bombs, that meant she was coming unglued.

"These fucking lazy people are up here because they know that we'll take their groceries out for them. Walmart and Kroger would just tell them to have a nice day and leave them to the rain, but we've got to be the good fucking Samaritans and take these peoples' shit out to their car for them. That mean they can just hop in and get nice and cozy with the heater while my boys slave away in the rain and have to call in sick because they all got colds."

Asteria might not have seemed like it, but she was a very protective mother hen. Her "boys" consisted of all the employees that worked on the front end, be they courtesy clerks, the fancy name for the bag boys, or cashiers. Asteria's number one pet peeve in the grocery store was people that disrespected her boys, which is why she had made it so they could fire back as they pleased and not worry about being fired or disciplined.

You might be wondering if there was a head manager at Yorkshires, or if it was Amelia.

It wasn't. There was an active store director, but they were mostly a figurehead, with their sole reason for employment being to take care of the managerial duties that Amelia didn't want to do. As such, the store director was more or less powerless in the face of the telepath's control over the store.

But yes, in bad weather like this, people from all over the suburb would come to Yorkshires because they knew they didn't have to worry about the groceries themselves. Like Amelia said, they could just hop into the car and get it running while some poor sap labored in the rain to put the groceries in the vehicle.

To add insult to injury, the customers rarely even said thank you for the additional service, having become accustomed to it, effectively pampered. It was an expectation to be catered to in such a way, and frankly, Amelia hated it.

She really did hate Yorkshire's little bag boy service, because it created a sense of entitlement in the people.

Shin'en had seen it too. There had been instances where some person would just stand there expectantly, waiting for someone to come along and start pushing their grocery cart along for them. He had even seen people just start heading out the door, only to stop and throw their arms up at seeing their grocery cart just sitting where it was.

It was perhaps the purest scene of entitlement Shin'en had ever been witness to.

Annabeth patted Asteria's leg. "Come on, we'd better get inside before it gets any worse."

With a derogatory hum from the bottom of her throat, Asteria grabbed the umbrella that sat in the cubby of her door, and Annabeth grabbed hers. Opening their doors, they extended the umbrellas, and then were both immediately aware of a crime against nature: none of the water was actually hitting them.

Asteria looked into the backseat, only to not see Shin'en there, so she turned around and saw him just standing a few feet away, every single drop of rain curving around him. Asteria hesitantly lowered her umbrella, and was subject to the same phenomena. Annabeth did the same soon after.

"God's angel, remember?" Shin'en said with something that was almost a smirk. "Long list of powers."

"Uh-huh. Let's get inside before God decides to test our faith by suddenly letting us all get drenched."

"If that happens, then God will have effectively made you wet."

Asteria's cheeks turned faintly red. "A-Asshole."

Shin'en just made a sound that could've been considered a chuckle, before turning around with a dramatic flourish of his cloak.

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One inside, Asteria and Annabeth went to the water room next to the office, while Shin'en went straight to the back room, ignoring the massive throng of people eager to have someone take care of their groceries for them so they didn't have to worry about the rain.

Why Shin'en was about to do what he was about to do he didn't truly know himself. Considering his reaction to the twins' plight was barely a twitch of his brow, why he was going to such lengths for a bunch of mortal teens working in a grocery store was indeed a question of great pondering.

The Yorkshires backroom was hardly anything grand. There was the washing station for the market tools built into an alcove with the floor-cleaning equipment, and another alcove next to that for the market to use their computer to take care of their business, along with a metal closet used to store aprons and towels. In front of that alcove was a long row of assorted beverages.

There were two bays built into the far left wall for the delivery trucks to come in, and on the wall directly adjacent to the bay doors was the cardboard bailer, and right next to the bailer was the door to the dairy cooler. There was a break in the wall past the cooler, where chips and bread were stored en mass for the corresponding companies to put on the shelves themselves as per their contracts with Yorkshires. Also down in that break was all the levers and knobs used to control every utility in the store.

On the other side of that break in the wall was all the backstock racks. A small fleet of metal shelves and wheels, each whole shelf not even fifteen feet high. Further past the backstock wall was the deep freeze for ice creams, and there was an adjacent wall with another backstock rack, and on the other side of that wall was the breakroom. Across from the breakroom were the bathrooms, and further past those places were the doors to the produce department and their own cold storage.

None of the staff was back here at the moment, since the madhouse up front required all hands on deck.

Shin'en walked up to the backstock racks pulled one out of the line-up, and promptly pushed it over, causing a massive cascade of merchandise to tumble to the unyielding concrete ground. He repeated this process four more times, creating a lot of damaged goods. His actions also created a rather loud noise, which brought the nearby produce and market personnel running in through their doors, and they gaped at what they saw.

Shin'en ignored their looks and went up to the telephone hooked into the wall, and dialed 7-0 to take over the intercom.

He said, "I need all courtesy clerks to the backroom, please. All courtesy clerks to the backroom. Immediately."

Annabeth and Asteria had watched the whole thing unfold from the office security monitors, and they were both as wide-eyed as the market and produce people.

Asteria recovered first. "That absolute chad."

And so, all the courtesy clerks spent the next three hours, or going home when applicable, cleaning up the horrendous mess Shin'en had made, which created a lot of very angry people that actually had to do some work for themselves, and a lot of really smug cashiers who, while slightly vexed at having to bag all the groceries themselves, were completely smug over their friends no longer having to work in the freezing cold rain.

The managers were a little livid, but there wasn't much they could do in the face of the combined might of Shin'en and Asteria.

To make something of amends for the damage he caused, Shin'en opened up a register, having watched long enough to know how they operate.

Yorkshires only had eight checkout lanes, with one and two being furthest from the front doors, and they were only ever active in emergencies, high traffic, or another lane had broken down. Lane three was commonly used, and lanes four and five were self-checkout lanes, which frequently broke down because A) the system was old, and B) people were idiots and couldn't figure out to use them. Lane six was commonly used, and lane seven was primarily reserved for a manager or office cashier to use when things were busy, or a refund or trade needed to be completed, or just any general reason that a manager or office cashier could think to use.

Lane eight was supposed to be the express lane, meaning twelve items or less, but that big hanging sign above the lane was frequently unheeded, either because people didn't read it, they didn't care, or they watched as cashiers called people down with large grocery carts on orders of the managers, because even the managers didn't heed the express lane sign.

Shin'en took up lane seven, and that was the official start of his technical groceryman career.

And many, many people were not treated with a happy smile that day.

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That was not at all what Shin'en did every time he was in the store. He only got on lane seven when it got busy to spare Annabeth and Asteria the hassle of them coming out here themselves and leaving the office exposed.

Yes, it was a vexing thing for the office personnel to have to come onto the floor to help check people out, only for some yahoo to go up to the office and just stand there expectantly for someone to magically pop up and give them the time of day.

Something Asteria hated was that exact situation.

Clearly, there was no one in the office, but people would go stand up there anyway, and then give attitude when someone in the office finally found enough of a break in the onslaught of people to get back in there to do their office duties.

So, Shin'en did what he could to keep Asteria from ruining Annabeth's mood with negativity.

That wasn't an every day thing, though, and sometimes he rather enjoyed trolling the two.

No, there was another thing Shin'en could to entertain himself while not helping out with Yorkshires' front end, and that was go bother Hunter back in the market. Yes, Hunter and Gabe from the previous chapter both worked at Yorkshires, having both been hired on the spot by Amelia almost a year ago.

The reason Shin'en couldn't bother Gabe as much was because Gabe was a cashier, the head cashier, in fact, and was always typically too busy with the front end to stop down and chat, and Shin'en wasn't rude enough to get in the young man's way when he was on a mission to get done whatever he needed to get done.

Hunter on the other hand was much easier to interact with because, in his own words, this is what he did whenever he was working in the market:

"I get in here 'bout the same time 'steria and Annabeth do, grab some chicken from the deli, go to the breakroom and eat it, and then when three rolls around, I clock in, grab and apron, and for about the next hour I keep busy by facing all the lunchmeats and cold stuff we got. When that four o'clock hour comes 'round, a start getting the sinks back in the back filled up with soapy water, and I gather up all the trash and take it all out back to the dumpster. That shit stinks.

"After I get done with that, the sinks are filled up so I shut 'em off and get to work on taking apart the meat grinder. If Cole or John or Jim are still here, I gotta hold off on the power saw in case they need to cut something up real quick, so usually I go set all the grinder pieces in the water and let 'em soak while I take the water hose and hand-wash main body of the grinder. It's a pain in the ass.

"After I'm done with that, I go back and hose down the pieces, put 'em back on the cart, and then let them air dry for the rest of the night. Then I get to the saw, because that's usually when the other guy leaves, and then things get real fuckin' shitty. See, when the other guy's here, he takes care of the front and I can work in peace, when he's gone, I gotta stop whatever the fuck I'm in the middle of doing and go help Larry-head out. It's the single most annoying thing I ever gotta deal with back in here.

"But anyway. I take the saw apart and put the pieces in the water, hose down the machine and hand-dry it. When I'm done with that, I go hose down the saw parts and then let them airdry for the whole night, and then I go back and get all the cutting boards and knives and the tenderizer and let them soak, and then some cleaning shit and a rag and wipe down the tables, and when I'm done with that, I go back and wash the boards n' shit, and put them all back in place. All while being interrupted every thirty fuckin' seconds by some shitbag. Though sometimes I ignore that fuckin' service bell, and other times I actually don't hear it go off 'cause that water hittin' them metal parts is real loud.

"Usually by around the time I finish the cuttin' boards, it's six o'clock. Used to, I'd get all the closin' up done in one fell swoop, washin' the fuckin' dishes, putting up all the seafood, wrappin' up the display shit, wipin' down everything, and then finish up by moppin' the whole fuckin' floor which usually give me about an hour, a little more, to just sit back there in the chairs with my cookies and a coke and relax my ass off until eight come 'round and I can go home, but 'steria don' want me doin' that, so I wait until seven to get started with the displays."

Shin'en listened with rapt attention, as this was crucial information with messing with Hunter down the line. He noticed verbal tics in the Texan's speech, like how when he got to talking too fast his words got slurred, leaving off "G" sound in "ing," and how he always left off the first syllable in Asteria's name, moving straight to just "'steria.'"

Shin'en also noted how Hunter had one hell of a stutter, mixing up syllables in phrases and stumbling over his words. The above dialogue didn't show it, because that would've been a pain in the ass to write accurately.

"What do you when someone asks for seafood after you've put it all away for the night?" Shin'en asked.

Hunter grinned, his going a little wild, and that's when the shinobi became 100% sure that the Texas teen had a screw or two loose in his head.

"What I do? I feed 'em some bullshit about how we leave them on ice all day, and the mister we use to keep them fresh has got chemicals in it, and by the end of the day, after getting' sprayed with all them chemicals, they get kinda icky and we throw it out. I tell 'em we got some frozen in the deep freeze in the back, but I gotta warm it up in the boiler to kill the bacteria in the ice, but it'll take the boiler a few minutes to get going 'cause I done turned the muddafucker off. They buy it up and leave. It's awesome. 'Course, there's some dedicated muddafuckers that want it anyway, and if after all that you still want the shit, then I go get it for ya'."

Shin'en enjoyed many a conversation with the outspoken conservative Texan native, mostly because Asteria told him to go ask Hunter about what he thought on the world's most sensitive subjects today.

Hunter never disappointed in any of his responses.

"Abortion?" the Texan asked with a raised brow as he was busy with his cleaning duties. "You sure you can handle that one?"

Shin'en recalled how he blew up a few abortion clinics in his Yūrei days, and performed a few himself with less than…clean…means.

"I'm sure I'll be fine."

Hunter shrugged. "Abortion is an excuse not to take responsibility for your fuck ups."

Shin'en's brow rose. "Explain."

"Babies are made by fucking, duh, but what everyone wants to deny is how much responsibility there is in fucking. Like God said, sex is between a man that is married to his wife, and that's it, and common sense says that sex is for when you and your spouse are financially able to deal with raising a baby. It's a system that's supposed to work; no sex until you're not only married, but you've got enough money to where it's not an issue if you get pregnant, but mankind being mankind decided that wasn't enough, so we made these things called contraceptives to prevent pregnancies, and it's already widely known that they're not 100% effective. Don't fuck, you don't have that problem.

"Back to the responsibility of fucking, there's a lot to it. You gotta make sure your girl don't gotta STD, and you gotta make sure you don't gotta STD, that way you or whoever you fuck down the line don't get sick, and also like I said, the ultimate goal of fucking is a baby, and that's a whole lot of responsibility right there, with all them diapers and food and clothes and all that other shit. If you aren't able to handle all that, either financially or mentally, don't fuck. Simple as that.

"But, who cares, right? Who cares if you get pregnant on accident, like there's a hole in the condom or your pill didn't work? You can just go to the clinic and kill the baby and no besides a few hundred million people in the world will care."

"But what if the baby is harmful to the mother during development?"

"Like I said: there's a lot of responsibility to fucking. Before you and your wife go and fuck, you need to make sure there isn't any kind of natal problems, among whatever else there might be."

"But what if the parents aren't financially able to raise the child? Isn't it the good thing on their part to abort the child before it can enter a world of struggle and unwant?"

"No, because if the parents weren't able to afford the kid in the first place, they shouldn't have fucked, and the argument of the unwanted child is absolute bullshit because there are thousands of families in the adoption program waiting for kids to adopt because they can't have their own for whatever reason."

"But what if-"

Hunter overrode whatever Shin'en was about to ask with very clear, very emphasized words.

"If. You. Can't. Support. The baby. Don't. Fuck. This is not a hard concept. Abortion is nothing but sweeping your fuck up under the rug and killing an innocent bystander, and I've already listed the major fuck ups: fucking when not married, fucking when you don't have the money, and fucking when you've got some disease. If people would stop fucking up and fucking when they ain't ready for a baby, there wouldn't be an abortion issue. If they did what God said, there'd be a lot less issues in the world. It's almost like…it's almost like God had this idea on how to make the world a better place, but mankind repeatedly gives God the finger, and the world seemingly becomes a worse and worse place. Funny stuff, right?"

"Right," Shin'en said dully. "Funny. What about raped women?"

"Ah, that might've been a good counter argument, except for the fact that it's reported that less than one percent for accounted abortions are due to rape."

"Reported."

Hunter spread his hands, conceding that point. "Yep, reported. All the facts and stats come from reports, so if those reports are inaccurate, then everything gets all fucked up, and we're screwed anyway. Any other questions?"

"Another counter argument for abortion is that the fetus isn't alive until a certain point, so it's technically not murdering a child."

Hunter barked a short laugh.

"HA! That's a scientific sentiment that's undermined by the simple fact that the combined size of an egg cell and a sperm cell makes them big enough to be seen without a microscope. Fuck, a human egg cell by itself can actually be seen without a microscope, because it's roughly a tenth of a millimeter. You'll strain your damn eyes, but you can see it if you look hard enough. In comparison, there are species of bacteria only a little over a hundred nanometers in size, and if science is going to consider something that fucking small to be alive, then science can't simultaneously declare the union of two gametes which make a zygote, also considered a living thing, to not be alive. Put it this way: is scientists found bacterium on a space rock, they'd all go nuts declaring they found extraterrestrial life. Anymore questions?"

"None for today. Thank you for your time."

Shin'en left Hunter to finish his cleaning routine, his curiosity satisfied.

Personally, the Abyss had always thought of abortion as a sign responsibility, for it was the parents, or at least the mother, recognizing that she was unable the properly care for the child in her, and so she gave it a quick end before it was forced to endure a life of torment, but as Hunter had brought up: there were thousands of families world wide looking to adopt a baby.

So, Shin'en was left asking himself, if the justification for abortion was sparing the infant a hard life, did that justification still hold up against the ready-to-adopt families?

Further, a factor that Shin'en noted was always left out in these arguments, was the mother's attitude to what she had just done. Was she heartbroken over the fact that she had just killed her own child, or did she even care? Did she even see the fetus as her child, or just a parasite inside her, just a bug to be squashed?

Such thoughts led Shin'en to think of his own mother.

Sally Jackson had been scraping above the poverty line when she had become pregnant with him and his sister, having dropped out of high school for the sake of her Uncle Rich who had contracted cancer, leaving her to work jobs that paid very little due to her academic standing, or lack thereof. Even so, in the face of such little funds, she had chosen to keep him and his sister, and where she had managed Persephone just fine, could the same have been said if he had also been there?

Shin'en suddenly felt like a great weight was on him as he considered the possibility of what could have been should his mother have aborted either him, Persephone, or both of them. It was a great weight that came with the revelation that his life could have ended before he was born all because his mother could've decided she wasn't able to raise him alongside his sister.

That weight got even heavier when Shin'en realized that the situation he just described applied to Persephone as well, and he didn't know what to think about the world in which he lived and his sister died all because of Sally's decision.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Yorkshires hit a lull one day and so Shin'en went to go bother Hunter again.

"Gun control," was the simple two-word prompt.

Hunter looked up with an askew expression. "You're going to ask a conservative Texas man what he thinks about gun control?"

"Yes."

"It won't work. Control, by nature, doesn't work. We tried to control the consumption and distribution of alcohol back in the 20's, literally making alcohol illegal, and it was the greatest flop of all time. It also created a thriving criminal market. There's also the fact that there are several laws that make several things illegal, such as murder, theft, and crossing the border, but guess what happens in spite of those laws being there? People still do it.

"Gun control is by far the easiest argument ever, because there's a gigantic landslide of supporting evidence against it, and it's undermined by the simple fact that criminals, by nature, don't follow the fuckin' law. If they want guns to go kill people, they're going to get guns to go people, and if they can't get guns, they'll get something else. Golf clubs, baseball bats, chains, knives, etcetera-cetera. When that happens, what then? We go tell Tiger Woods he needs to turn in his clubs? Tell the whole of the MLB and NCAA and every select and little league and high school and everything thing that has to do with baseball that they need to give up their bats? Fuck no.

"It's the same old, same old, though. It's people not wanting to accept facts and responsibility. It's not just some crazy person that needed therapy, it's not the human being's fault, it's not the other human being's fault; it's the gun's fault. Yeah, there's not some grand societal flaw that needs to be addressed and fixed, like divorce creating stress on the kids, or work creating stress on the parents who then vent it on the kids. No, human beings are completely blameless in the case of gun control. Unless you're a human being in the NRA, then it's your fault. Anything else?"

"No. Enjoy your cleaning."

"I'll do my best."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The next topic of conversation was an explosive one:

"What do you think of Islam?"

Hunter snorted.

"You mean the religion based off one schizophrenic guy who couldn't decide how his god created mankind so he made different stories about blood, clay, dust, nothing and sperm, and how the active enemies of Islam need to be beheaded, and how he's supposedly the first follower of Islam but he also talks about Moses, Abraham and Jacob, men thousands of years beforehand, also being the first believers of Islam, and that in one verse the world was created in six days and another verse says it took eight days, and how the guy who wrote it did so in just thirty years, and that the supreme, perfect being behaves like a human by hating those that hate him, as opposed to the other god that the entire religion is based on, who loves everyone regardless of whatever and wants them all to repent for their sins and love one another? Yeah, I think it has some problems.

"Like the very opening passages of the Quran detailing how Muhammad was pressed or squeezed by the angel Gabriel, because Gabriel basically brought a letter from Heaven and told Muhammad to read it, only Muhammad couldn't read because he was illiterate. So, Gabriel was like 'Read this,' and Muhammed was like, 'I can't read,' so Gabriel pressed Muhammad three times so hard that the prophet felt like he was going to die. It turns that was all a dream sequence, and when Muhammed woke up he was so fucked up that he wanted to go jump off a mountain. Weird how Allah's chosen wanted to commit suicide in the face of being chosen, no? There's also the next passages where Muhammad says he feels like he's been possessed by a demon, and then there's his own biographer who literally says 'I fear he's been possessed by a demon.' There's also the tiny fact that despite talking about peace, Muhammad spread Islam by raising an army and conquering the Arabian Peninsula. All in thirty years."

Shin'en hummed. "You say very dangerous things."

Hunter looked at the demigod, very serious like. "What's dangerous to say is dependent on who you're with and where you're at. Right now, I'm with you at the back of a grocery store. Unless you're going to hurt me for something I say, what do I have to worry about? Conversationally, if we were at a liberal convention, then there'd be cause for concern."

Shin'en hummed again, and he turned to leave.

"Oh, and one more thing about what I think on Islam…"

The Abyss turned around, and he saw that wild look in Hunter's eyes.

"The Bible says that the Devil takes the form of an angel of light, and it's really funny how the Quran, a book written by a man who said he was visited and attacked by Gabriel in a dream, denounces Jesus Christ as the messiah. A coincidence, no?"

Shin'en realized very well the implications of what Hunter had just said, and he couldn't help but feel that he wasn't alone back here with the young man.

"…you say dangerous things."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The next thing Shin'en asked Hunter was a loaded question.

It was also the last question, the last major question, anyway, that he would ever get to ask the Texan.

"What do you think of gay marriage and gays in general?"

Hunter gave him an even more incredulous look than when he was asked about guns. "Dude, I'm Christian and conservative. What in the fuck do you think I think about the gays?"

Shin'en shrugged. "I would like more detail."

"Okay then…well, for one, the three major religious texts in the world today, the Jewish Torah, Muslim Quran, and the Christian Bible all make it very clear that homosexuality is a no-no, so if you've got three major books telling you something is bad, then you should probably listen to them. Two, Freddy Mercury was gay, and he's a shining example of not just how all gay people should behave, but how all couples should behave; who you love is your business, and what you do behind closed doors is also your business. It is not your business, however, to go up and down the street announcing to the world what your sex life is like. When Freddy was out and about with whoever his boyfriend was at the time, he wasn't hugging all over him, sucking his face off, or even touching. He kept himself professional and acted like a man, unlike the gays of today who expect something from you when they tell you they fuck each other's assholes.

"Three, being gay is nasty, based purely on anatomy. When fucking, it's one dude putting his pisser up inside another dude's shithole, and I think that if that's what you want out of sex, a dick in your nasty ass or to put your dick in someone's nasty ass, then you might want to seek help. Four, being gay is unnatural, and it's even backed by science."

Shin'en rose a brow. "Explain."

"Okay, so, bear with me and follow along: human beings are classified as animals, right? And all animals come with natural instincts, like the need to feed, fight or flight, sleep, waste expulsion, and reproduction. If you were born without the glands necessary to stimulate hunger, would you agree that there's something wrong with you?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Would you agree that is you were born without the adrenaline gland, and your body didn't react to stressful situations to set up the flight or flight response, would you agree that there's something wrong with you?"

"Yes."

"Alright, now: you agree that there's something wrong with your body when it doesn't stimulate hunger or flight or fight, now what about if your body didn't tell you it was tired, but it was exhausted and worn out anyway, like, you could've just ran five miles and you're completely dehydrated and your muscles drowning in lactic acid, but you don't feel a thing."

"I'd say you have nerve damage."

"Agreed. So, you agree in that there's something wrong with you if your body doesn't tell you that you're hungry, sleepy, or in danger. Now, really pay attention to this one: when reaching sexual maturity, or puberty, you start noticing things about people. Muscle mass, cellulite content, aesthetics. All of that based on the primal instincts of seeking a good mate for strong offspring to carry on the species. Now, if you're in puberty, or at any stage of your life, and you're looking at the same sex in a reproductive way, even though you know you can't reproduce with them, therefore denying your body's natural desire to reproduce effectively, would you also agree that there's something wrong with you?"

Shin'en broke everything down and summarized it. "If your body does not produce hunger stimulates, there's a problem. If your body does not react to stress appropriately, such as increased heartrate and breathing, adrenaline, there's something wrong. If your body doesn't register fatigue, even when you're on your last legs and on the verge of death, your body is screwy. And now you're asking if I think that if your body isn't seeking viable reproductive means, and is instead actively gravitating towards something you cannot reproduce with, there's an error somewhere?"

"Yes."

It was simple to Shin'en: instincts were meant to keep you alive. Reproductive instincts were no different, as they were designed to further the species. If you were actively not doing that on your own volition, beyond stupid societal excuses like "I just can't find the right girl," then there was fundamentally something wrong with your brain chemistry.

But Shin'en wasn't done. He wanted to test something.

With a blazingly fast motion, he reached out and grabbed the front of Hunter's shirt, and yanked him forward. Instead of being terrified, Hunter instead gained that same psychotic look in his eyes.

"Did I touch a nerve?"

Shin'en, not even a foot away from the young man's face, said coldly, "My sister is gay and is currently enjoying a homosexual relationship with someone that she loves very much. They are happy, they compliment each other, and they keep their relationship private and don't bother anyone as much as they can. No kissing in public, no hugging, no holding hands, nothing at all to suggest they're anymore than a pair of friends. They both lead good lives and are two of the nicest people I know, and they never, ever bother anyone with their relationship, and you're trying to tell me that there's something wrong with them?"

Hunter's lips curled upward. "Damn straight, motherfucker. They say don't be surprised to find trouble if you go lookin' for it, well don't get pissed when you come to me for answers to your questions and then exactly what you asked for. Now get the fuck off me before I cut your fuckin' dick off."

As it so happened, he had grabbed a nearby steak-cutting knife when Shin'en had grabbed him, and he was holding the blade to the demigod's crotch.

Shin'en let Hunter go and immediately schooled himself. "Well done. I expected you to beg for mercy."

"Hn, and for a second there I thought you were actually serious." Hunter put the knife back in its place.

"If I was being serious, you would not be alive."

With that Shin'en took his leave, and because he turned around, he missed Hunter's eyes going completely black, little lights like stars erupting in the voids.

"Don't be so sure of that, Dragon Ghost of the Abyss…"

Hunter's eyes went back to normal and he got back to work on finishing his cleaning duties.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

That was the last major question Shin'en asked Hunter, because the Christmas break came around by that point, and Hunter, Gabe, their friends Kiran and Ethan, all went out to celebrate Christmas themselves with a trip to Wing Stop followed by a trip to the nearest ice cream place for some shakes, and then they went around the suburbs to look at the Christmas lights.

They were going through a back road in the countryside, going around a corner with a big house and a big thick fence on the inside curve when an intoxicated and high drive in a big heavy duty Ford came flying around that corner, having crossed the double yellow line, and smashed right into Gabe's SUV, killing him, Hunter, Kiran, and Ethan in a head-on collision.

Asteria and Annabeth were both devastated at the loss of their two friends, and Shin'en himself felt a degree of anger rise in him at this turn of events.

The only thing that saved the offending driver from the two-fold wrath of the telepath and the demigod was that he had also died in the crash. He hadn't been wearing his seatbelt and had gone flying through the windshield into a tree head-on, and effectively crushed his skull and crumpled his spine.

During the Christmas break, Shin'en met Gabe's and Hunter's parents at their respective funerals, and was there to help bury the two Texans.

It was a few days after this, up in Asteria's room, on Christmas day, that Shin'en celebrated the first Christmas since the Blood War.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It was a subdued atmosphere. Annabeth and Asteria were still reeling from the sudden deaths of Hunter and Gabe, just days prior, but they were covering it up with a pair of false smiles and fabricated happiness in the wake of exchanging the gifts they had bought for one another.

Asteria had gotten Annabeth a solid gold chain made of heart-shaped links with a solid gold heart-shaped locket with a picture inside of the two of them with their faces mashed together, taking a selfie with silly looks on their faces.

Annabeth had gotten Asteria a simple picture frame with a photo of Poseidon, a Navy captain in this world, standing erect and serious in uniform.

They were sitting in front of Asteria sofa, leaning against it with bottles of Frostie Root Beer in their hands, taking idle sips now and then, making little small comments about things.

See, during the funeral, they had both absolutely refused to cry. To accomplish this, their brains completely shut down their emotional centers, and they had yet to be rebooted. And it annoyed the ever-loving piss out of Shin'en.

Their friends died, whoopty doo. He had lost everyone he ever loved and cared for, not once, but three fucking times, the first being all the orphans he grew up with, the second being Yūrei, and the third being his Cloud family, consisting of Yugito, Bee, Darui, Cee, Ei, the now-Fourth Raikage, and Ay, the late Third Raikage. They were considered the third family because Shin'en hadn't recognized them as such until after he recognized Yūrei as his second family.

"Fuck this," the shinobi said.

He rose to his feet and took three measured steps forward and then yanked the lovers off the ground by the fronts of their t-shirts. They were both startled to their cores.

"Both of you sicken me right now. Instead of mourning for your friends, you've locked away your tears and have dishonored their memory with your behavior in the past days. It ends now." Shin'en's lids folded up, exposing the maximum amount of eye, completing the image of how severe he was in this matter.

Even without the power of his Sharingan—useless in this world without chakra or Mist—his eyes still held a deep power to them, and that power shot straight into Annabeth's and Amelia's souls. Annabeth's face turned red, and then the tears started to fall. Asteria managed to last but a mere microsecond later before her barriers also fell apart.

Shin'en moved his arms around them, and they both buried their faces into the crooks of his neck as they let over three days of pent-up emotion regarding over three years of memories come spilling out. Shin'en remained completely stoic, having not become as attached as the two crying on him were.

If anything, he was annoyed because there were still some things he had wanted to ask Hunter.

Eventually, Amelia and Annabeth's tears ran dry, and they both went back to their spots on the floor, looking exhausted with how much water they just expelled, but they were looking better, like a weight was gone from them.

"Good, now that you're both back, I can give you my presents."

"Wait, what?" Asteria hiccupped. "Presents? You told us not to get you anything, but you got us stuff?"

"Yes."

Annabeth crossed her arms and suffered through a quick sniffle before she said. "You asshole."

"Yes."

"What'd you get me for Christmas?" Ryuk asked.

Shin'en ignored the Shinigami, like he had been for the past several months. Besides, the Death God more or less just did his own thing nowadays.

The demigod went around his recliner and came back around with two packages, one just a little red and green handbag, the other a medium-sized box wrapped entirely in Christmas-themed paper. Shin'en handed the box to Annabeth, and the handbag to Asteria.

They both stared at the presents, then at each other, then at Shin'en.

"Go on. Open them."

They did so, and they both quickly realized they had been punked.

"Testosterone pills?" Asteria asked incredulously.

"You think that's bad? Look what he got me."

Annabeth beheld a big box of 34-count Goodnites.

Under the collar of his cloak, Shin'en's smirk was grand.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

On this mid-February Saturday, Shin'en was nearly besides himself with internal glee. After so many weeks of nothing but the standard retail stories of people thinking they could get their way because reasons, only for Shin'en and the rest of the front end to completely shut them down, things were getting stale.

Not this day, however, because apparently there were some enterprising individuals who thought they could pull off a smash and grab robbery of a grocery store. Lots of problems with that idea, considering a grocery store had a lot of traffic in and out, was a big place with a lot of people about, and lot of opportunities for Murphy's Law to present itself.

In this case, Murphy's Law was embodied by Shin'en, praise be unto him.

A group of no less than eight armed men wearing the traditional ski masks came running in, Kevlar over their chests, and Shin'en met them at the door.

"So, boys, how's the health plan?"

There wasn't a chance to finish the quote introduced to him by Asteria the other day from some web series regarding an anime, because Shin'en immediately went to town with his five-foot long black staff.

Minutes later, after the police had arrived, the officer was finishing his report with Shin'en.

"So, you saw them coming in on the video feed?"

"Yep."

"And instead of calling us immediately, you instead met them at the door here?"

"Mm-hm."

"And you proceeded to beat them into pain-induced comas with your walking stick."

"Correct."

The officer, a dishonorably discharged Marine, just like the majority of the police in this area, as all were personally recruited by Marian Janssen to be her own private military, just nodded. "Sounds good to me. Have a nice day."

"Today has been a good day," Asteria commented.

"Agreed."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

A few weeks later, in the middle of April, it was not a good day.

That reason entirely from Annabeth.

More specifically, her work ethic.

Where it came from, Asteria and Shin'en did not know. Her biological mother had given her up at birth, and her biological father had yet, over the course of the past eighteen years, to ever say he loved her. That sounded like an exaggeration, but it wasn't. At all. Sure, he changed her diapers and fed her and bathed her and did all the basic parenting things, but that was it. Annabeth's stepmother had certainly not instilled in her this work ethic.

Near as Asteria could tell, Nurse Goodwin, the woman that had counseled Annabeth years back when she had her first period in the middle of class, had been the source for Annabeth's work ethic, but the woman hadn't really taught the blonde about working, more about ethics and philosophy than anything else.

The ethic Annabeth had was nothing short of godlike. No matter what obstacles there were, or what the situation was, she completed whatever was expected of her. There had been many a night that the delivery truck came in, and she would insist on operating the pallet jack against Shin'en or Asteria's offering to do so. There had been nights in which the three of them stayed well past the closing time, performing the operation of facing the store, in that they went up and down every aisle and made everything look pretty, not leaving until Annabeth was satisfied with the sum total of all the work.

Today in particular was yet another example of Annabeth's startling drive to finish.

Simply put, she was on her period, and hers, as every girl could attest, was different than anyone else's. She didn't get cramps, or experience mood swings, or become incredibly horny, or undergo just about anything else a normal period entailed, but, as it so happened, in exchange for not having any of the described above, it all got translated into her flow.

After her first period, in which she had been wearing her Goodnite, which had saved her from the public humiliation of bleeding through her pants in front of a bunch of ornery preteens, that had become the secondary use of the bedwetting pull-ups. While she never used them for bodily functions, she did use them during her cycle as they were effectively a pad, only bigger, and it also served to cut down on the collection she had built over the years as per her psychological problems.

Or used to, anyway.

With the coming of the end of the year came the coming of the initiation of the plan. The plan was to leave New York behind forever, leave behind Sally and Marian, and take enough money to live comfortably in a quiet, remote home in the borderline wilderness. The plan was to leave every facet of this life behind and start a new life.

Part of the old life was the Goodnites, and Annabeth had been taking strides to break her fixation on them. Her biggest stride was forgoing their use during her period and instead switching to a pad-and-tampon combo.

It effectively did not work.

Annabeth had already overflowed both and blood was steadily making its way down the insides of her pants, staining the khaki material, but she dared not stop in her duties in attending to the people who were coming up to the office, even though she was pale and shaking from how much blood she had already lost.

Asteria was tightly clenching her fist at her girlfriend's stupidity, but she dared not interfere because she knew Annabeth would reem her ass for it later, and Shin'en was watching on a hair trigger.

"H-Have a n-nice d-day," Annabeth managed a smile at the person she just helped, and the next person came up in a line four deep. "Hello, how can I…" Annabeth had to take a breath at the sudden wave of fatigue that came over her, "how can I help…oh no…"

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and Shin'en caught her before she fell.

"The office is now closed," he said in a dark voice.

The person nodded and speed-walked away in terror.

Not bothering to tell Amelia anything, not even caring about who saw, Shin'en deconstructed his and Annabeth's body into water vapor and crossed the several-mile distance between Yorkshires and his own bought-and-paid-for house in the undesirable section of the neighborhood. Once there, he immediately set to work on making sure Annabeth didn't die of blood loss with all the effectiveness and seriousness of a trained doctor.

It was minutes later that Asteria came peeling into the driveway and ran in through front door, and happened across…a sight.

Annabeth's ruined pants and underwear, the hygiene products still inside, lay discarded on the floor, and the teen herself was sleeping on Shin'en's couch, on top of a towel, completely naked from the waist down, her vagina packed with something Asteria had never seen before, and a little squiggly tattoo over the skin of her vulva. Her color had returned, but Asteria wasn't seeing that right now.

She was seeing her girlfriend halfway naked in someone else's home, with that someone sitting in the nearby recliner reading a newspaper. The panic of the previous situation combined with the absurdity and perception of the present situation, and Asteria blew up.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE!? WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO TO MY GIRLFRIEND!? YOU FUCKING BASTARD!"

Emotion was the natural enemy of logic, and Shin'en wasn't about to tolerate being yelled at by someone so far inferior to him that a strong enough sneeze would send them flying away.

Shin'en pinned Asteria to the wall in the blink of an eye, careful not crush her. He said very clearly and very coldly into her ear, "Do not speak to me ever again like that. All I've done is packed her vagina to keep anymore blood from leaking, and applied a Redirection Seal to her genital area to redistribute the blood back into her body."

Shin'en removed his hand from Asteria's throat and backed. The telepath nodded. "Sorry. I-"

"Was panicking? Yes, I realize."

"…we cool?"

"Yes."

"Is she alright?"

"She'll be fine. She needs food and fluids, though."

Asteria nodded, quite subdued now, and went over to the sleeping beauty, planting a kiss to her forehead. When she turned around, she squeaked and very stiff as Shin'en's sword, tip pointed to the ground, suddenly fell from above and glided through her shirt and skirt, just narrowly missing her breasts and the last remnant of her male nature.

This time, Shin'en's eyes were glowing a soft red.

"If you ever yell at me again, I will correct your confused anatomy."

Asteria could only nod.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

For the first time in his life, at the beginning of May, Shin'en entered a church.

A Christian one, anyway.

Asteria was standing outside the doors to the worship center, clad in the finest dress that she owned, her face adorned with most expensive makeup on the planet, all of it perfectly applied to highlight and bring out the very best of her face.

From inside, the chiming of the classic wedding theme could be heard. Why the church played such a melancholy tune for an event like this, Shin'en did not know. He approached his dimensional counterpart, and when she heard him coming, she looked up and her jaw dropped.

For this event, Shin'en had forgone his usual blue pants and sandals, his white leg warmers with the stirrups, and his favored Akatsuki cloak. In its place were a pair of polished Oxford dress shoes, so maintained that a girl could do her makeup in the reflection. Neatly pressed black slacks covered his legs, a black button down was tucked in, and all of it was wrapped up with a leather belt. Over the shirt was a simple black jacket with buttons just as black.

The color to the midnight ensemble was the crimson tie around neck and trailing under the jacket.

Shin'en had pulled his hair into a regal, low-hanging ponytail, pulling it all from his face.

All in all, he looked like the don of a mafia.

Asteria being Asteria, said this when Shin'en was in earshot, "If I was a real girl, I'd totally be wet for you right now."

"We are in a church," Shin'en said lowly, unimpressed and unfazed. "Show the proper respect."

With the occasion in question, and the sheer command in his voice, Asteria just nodded instead of coming up with a snarky response.

Inside the worship center, the congregation sat down, and that was their cue. Shin'en opened the door and offered his arm. With so many years of ladylike etiquette training under her belt, Asteria took the offered arm, gracefully sliding her hand into place, and allowed Shin'en to lead her inside down the aisle, to where their designated seats were for this event.

"Church family," the pastor said from the baptismal chamber up past the pulpit, his voice magnified by microphone. "Annabeth has been a member of our church for several years now and has gone above and beyond what any of us could have expected, and is an exemplary follower of Christ."

The blonde, clad in a white gown, had to smile in embarrassment at the praise.

The pastor gently gripped Annabeth's hands before her, and raised his right hand.

"Annabeth, I baptize you, my sister in Christ, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…"

The pastor put Annabeth's hands over her nose, his other hand on her back, dunked her under and brought her back up in very experienced motion.

"…raised to walk in newness of life," the pastor finished to the unanimous standing, clapping, whistling, and cheering of the packed worship hall.

Even Asteria, the emotionally charged atheist, was going absolutely apeshit.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The observing Greeks were all just so confused at this point. To them, it seemed as if Shin'en was going to forgo everything and live out the rest of his days with Asteria and Annabeth, and to be honest, that was just perfectly okay with most of them. Some were of the mind that Shin'en had been through enough, their opinions of him having changed during this little movie, and that he deserved this presented happiness. Others thought it was going to be fantastic that he was going to be out of their hair forever.

Obviously, both cases and the few others that existed, did not come to pass, and the great question was: why not? Just what happened to where this shining trio of friends seemingly fell apart?

They quickly got their answer when they saw…it.

When they saw Annabeth get kicked out of her house in the middle of a hurricane. When they saw her make her way, on foot, to Asteria's mansion. When they saw Marian Janssen the Director effecitvley finger-rape Asteria's asshole and blackmail her into not just breaking up with Annabeth, but condemn her. When they saw Annabeth completely shatter and throw herself, and the baby inside her, off the side of a bridge in a succeful suicide attempt. When they saw Asteria and Shin'en go on a warpath, slaughtering indiscriminately the stepmother and father and stepsiblings of Annabeth, and then everyone inside the mansion as well.

And then the Greeks saw Asteria die, and they saw…it.

They saw the Dragon Ghost of the Abyss spread his wings and take flight, his thirteen heads and thirteen tails unleashing destruction across one billion dimensions, effortlessly destroying massive swaths of alternate Earths.

And then it was all over.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The throne room of Olympus was completely silent as the whole populace, including the twelve gods plus Hades and Hestia, the hundred-plus campers, the thirty-plus Hunters, the two hundred-plus wayward demigods, and Paula and Sally, all sat in rigid positions with their backs arched and their head tilted back, their eyes lulled inward with their lids halfway closed.

And then they all snapped back to reality as all the memories they just saw came crashing down into their brains, which had varying effects.

Zeus had a complete meltdown with the freshest of his memories being of his nephew releasing so much power that he broke the dimensional plane of destroyed a billion different worlds. That power terrified the sky king to no end—he just couldn't comprehend anyone having that much power that wasn't him!—and he acted on sheer instinct.

His instincts screaming at him to kill this gigantic threat to him and his sovereign throne before it could wake up and devour him.

With dilated, bloodshot, horrified eyes, Zeus let out a piercing shriek and stabbed forward with his Master Bolt. Chaos was unleashed as other gods came to their senses and moved to stop Zeus, but they were too slow. Persephone threw herself over her brother's body with a scream.

Erebus and Susano'o stood where they were, the former as stoic as ever, the latter grim and serious.

Show time.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sorry about that long, long wait, but 11k is a lot of words.

Fun fact: this is the second chapter I've written that's over 11k, the first one being Chapter 36 of Backup Plan.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I did say previously this was going to be primarily about Shin'en handling customers in retail, but that got boring as I was thinking about it in my head, and I made this gem instead. Besides, this chapter felt closer to home, more serious, more emotion-invoking.

Also, an off-topic question that's been bugging me: if a team consisting of Star Lord, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Spiderman, Mantis, Nebula, and Drax could beat Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet (they did have him beat, and would've got the Gauntlet off if Quill didn't get stupid), then would a team consisting of Shin'en, Asteria, Leviathan, Kraken, Tobi, and Assassin definitely beat Thanos with the Gauntlet?

Next chapter is the fallout chapter, not entirely sure how it's going to go myself, but I'll figure it out. After that chapter, the last one sets up the third and final segment of the Backup Plan saga, then it's a long hiatus while I work on my novel, and then I'll mop up what's left of Green-Eyed Ghoul, and flip a coin as to whether I turn my attention to Sea Devil or Transcendence.

Fav, Follow, and Review please!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

A hand came out of nowhere and stopped Zeus' Bolt cold, in the hands of its powerful master no less. A blinding light engulfed the throne room, accompanied by the loudest, most horrible screeching sound of all time. Amid the luminescence and the noise, Zeus tracked the offending hand to an arm, and went up that arm to look into a pair of very, very, very, very, very angry red eyes.

Zeus barely had time to realize how fucked he was before the unthinkable happened: his Master Bolt, the most powerful weapon of this universe, as established by Uncle Rick himself, was snapped in half.

Susano'o's Rinnegan instantly teleported the resulting blastwave released by such a mighty weapon being broken to the edge of the Observable Universe before it could travel so far as inch and literally destroy the whole planet.

Right after this, Zeus took a fist to the face blasted him clear out of not only the throne room, but right off the side of Olympus and beyond.

The room was silent as Shin'en stood there in all his terrifying glory, his hand smoking from taking on the Master Bolt. Funnily enough, the meat of his palm had melted away, and the underlying bone had blackened, an injury that should've killed him from the shock alone, but he was far too…off…to be affected by pain right now.

"Percy…" Persephone said, very tentatively.

The demigod's eyes were overshadowed by his bangs, a clear indicator of the danger about him right now, how volatile he was.

"None of you…" his voice reverberated about the entirety of the throne room, ringing clearly and coldly.

"None of you…should have seen…any of that…"

"Percy-" Persephone started to say, but he unceremoniously up and vanished in a swirl of water.

"Is he…is he going to be okay?" Sally asked.

Persephone looked at her mother, and she honestly had no idea. So, she vanished in her own swirl of water, shocking everyone that saw.

Percy's big sister coalesced on a certain cliff, one with a familiar oak tree.