Disclaimer – I do not own Claymore or anything from the PJO universe!

That it will never come again makes life so sweet. ~ Emily Dickinson

16 years later-

Third Person POV:

Dae was excited – Practically anyone aboard the ship could tell you that with just one glance. But for once, his excitement was not misplaced. Not too long ago, they had, at long last, been given permission to use one of the offshore islands as a research facility, which meant that the mad 30 year old researcher would finally be able to test out his theory on the Yoki powers of the Asarakam.

The Main Organization from the mainland had assigned roughly 500 of its people to this island, to conduct the research, protect the quest leaders and to control the 5 captured Asarakam – 2 of which were Awakened – that Dae had taken along for his research purposes.

They had been sailing for an entire week, and Dae's excitement had simply grown with each passing day. Around three hours ago, they had spotted land, and that… well, it had caused him to jump around the ship like a child who had just overdosed on candy. Nothing would bring him down now.

The call for 'Land, ahoy!' went up at the same time as the ship's horn, as they tried to get the boat to dock somewhere. However, as they started getting closer to the shore, they noticed that some people from a nearby village had spotted their arrival and a commotion was starting to form. 'This is bad,' Dae thought, 'It can destroy all the plans I have for this island… We must silence these people quickly or risk losing the opportunity of conducting the experiment.'

He quickly voiced his thoughts to Rimuto, the leader of their expedition – or company, or quest, or whatever one could call it – and Rimuto responded with a nod. He followed it up by shouting an order out to his crew – an order to destroy the entire village upon arrival.

-Linebreak-

Dae wasn't a particularly hard-hearted man, but even so, as he watched the Organization's men kill off the remaining survivors, he didn't feel either pity or remorse. He didn't pity those people who had been killed quickly with swift, fatal blows, because he knew that there were fates much, much worse than death, and he couldn't bring himself to regret killing the very people who endangered his plans for this island – which the Organization was turning into a full-fledged research facility.

After all, on an isolated island that had experienced almost no technological advancement, stories of ships and a mainland beyond the vast seas would cause the entire population to grow curious and try to migrate to the mainland, and if Dae wanted to experiment on his 5 Asarakam test subjects and research his theory about their Yoki powers, he could not allow a mass exodus to happen.

Speaking of which, Dae hadn't checked on those beings since… two days ago! That, in his excited mind, was a long time. And, now, without the soldiers being there to interfere, he would really get a chance to observe and analyze the captured beings! So, he rushed down, into the massive vessel's hold, which was where the 5 beings had been stored away.

He stopped running when he saw the captives, and leaned against the wall for a minute, panting. Then, he decided to go to work. First, he decided to analyze the flesh of the original form of the hermaphroditic creatures. He had already seen plenty of this form, since he used to be a soldier back when he was younger, and had fought in the war that riddled the mainland.

However, nobody had ever been able to research about the flesh of these animals, since the bodies of this species decayed almost instantly after death, and corpses were generally the only things that the Organization's men were able to recover from the battlefield. And that was exactly why Dae was currently so excited. For him, this was practically once in a lifetime opportunity – and that really was something coming from a man who had a lifespan of 200* years…

However, his excitement had made him reckless, and this newfound recklessness led him to make rash, stupid decisions. I mean, who in their right minds would walk right up to the dragon's kin without wearing any protection? There was a reason they held that name after all…

-Linebreak-

(2-year time skip)

A young man wearing a long, black cloak was walking down a street in the western town of Ticelli. As he passed by, the people quickly distanced themselves from him, not liking the atmosphere that his presence created.

The boy was one of the most liked people in the town, but nobody was stupid enough to get in his way when he was in a bad mood… because they had all seen what that could lead to. Once, a group of bandits had attacked the town when he was angry…he had wiped them out in seconds before ripping off the limbs of the leader and throwing him into the sea.

Needless to say, that had changed their opinion of him. In a matter of seconds, he had grown in their minds from the cute 8-year-old boy they had thought him to be, to the 17-year-old man that he was.

As soon as he turned a corner and disappeared into a house, the people in the street all breathed a sigh of relief. The townspeople had been both afraid and grateful whenever they had seen him crush the hordes of bandits that invaded the city. After all, who wouldn't be afraid of such power, and who wouldn't be grateful towards their savior?

But the public's thoughts, in this man's eyes were useless and irrelevant. He had just returned from the beach, but, even when he had time to relax, he found that he just couldn't… for some reason, he really wanted to get away from this life, from this world, even from his friends and family – for some unexplained reason, he wanted to leave it all behind just to fight someone?… but he didn't remember who, and there was always this nagging voice in his mind that told him to 'collect more power' and till now, he just couldn't figure out how or, more importantly, WHY.

You see, he had been a normal boy until he was 12 years of age, and then, the visions had started. At first, he had dismissed them as the 'tricks played by his mind', but as he got older, they just kept getting more and more frequent. He had told his mother about it when he was 14, and she had passed it off as 'some sort of a childish joke'. 'AS IF I WOULD EVER LIE! MY FATAL FLAW WAS LOYALTY!' he had thought, and then, 'WHOA! Where did that come from?'

After that, he decided not to tell anyone else, and to pretend as if it really had been a joke. He had stopped talking to other people and had become introverted. For a few months, he had even considered that he had gone mad… but something had told him that his visions weren't random hallucinations, and he had no choice but to believe his instincts.

Trusting his instincts made him develop a theory – These visions, although meaningless at first, had start to piece themselves together in his mind… almost like a timeline. That would mean that they were less like visions and more like flashbacks… they would be part of his memory…

When he had come to that conclusion, he had decided to change his attitude towards the visions. Instead, he focused on his current life to try to find any abnormalities in his timeline. Finding the abnormality was quite easy. Since he was 12, he had felt like a warrior and his skills with a sword had been extremely good, even though nobody had trained him. It was, after all, due to that, that he had become the town's best warrior, but Percy – for that was the male's name – just considered that to be boring… especially when the title gave him no opportunities but those to defeat bandits.

There was also that other thing that happened whenever he went for a swim in the ocean. Every time he touched the water, he felt rejuvenated, and energetic – as if he could easily run from here to the southernmost tip of Mucha, then to the Northernmost parts of Alfons and then return to Ticelli, in the Western lands of Lautrec, without breaking a sweat – and he could hear voices, almost as of the fish were talking to him.

And then, today, while he was on the beach, sitting right by the water, he had been attacked by bandits, and he had felt a… familiar tug in his gut just before something crazy happened – The ocean had exploded and swallowed the bandits up. And then that had sent him reeling into a whole new set of memories.

He had finally 'remembered' – if that's what you could call it – being a demigod, and he was not at all sure on how to react to it. However, his 'memories' were still incomplete, and it had instantly put him in a bad mood. And none of these memories fit into his present life… since he remembered things from back when he was 4 years old in this present life – things that did not match at all with the other memories.

From his memories, he remembered various kinds of 'technology', such as planes and helicopters – which were huge machines that could fly – and phones – which were tiny little devices that allowed you to 'call' a person who was half-way across the world – along with so many others. In this world, he had learned that the only things that could fly were gods and goddesses, like the winged twins – Clare and Teresa, and the only way to communicate with people was through letters and speech.

Even the gods and goddesses that Percy had worshipped throughout his 'memories' were different. Apart from all these things, he even found that his entire lifestyle, along with the things and people close to him, had changed.

For example, his mother was different, the house they stayed in and the food they ate was different. Even the language they spoke was different. From whatever he had recovered of his 'memories', he had been able to identify that the language he'd been speaking for the last 18 years was a dialect of Japanese.

Could it be, then… was this his second life? But, how had he been reborn? And with memories? 'Perhaps,' he thought, 'I reached Elysium and chose rebirth… and the Lethe hasn't been fully effective on me even in the past… but how did I die?'

'And what happened to Annabeth, Thalia, Nico, Grover and the rest of the Seven?' he wondered. The last thing he remembered was being a part of the celebration on Olympus for Apollo's re-ascent to godhood, and then his thoughts were just blacked out after that. And his lack of knowledge annoyed him to a huge extent. Which, in itself, was a whole new experience for him. From his memories, at this point, he should be USED to not knowing things. And, although he wasn't proud to admit it, he had been known for being rather… slow on the uptake. So why did he feel so much… smarter now? Why did he have a sudden thirst for knowledge?

'The only way I could've possibly changed this way, would be if I got blessed by Athena'… 'But she would never bless a child of Poseidon… so how then?' he thought. Lost in his thoughts and memories, he couldn't stop himself from subconsciously muttering, "You have to know the past to understand the present…" Then, the relevance of Carl Sagan's quote to his current situation hit him. 'Huh… so I gotta focus on my past to understand my situation. Wow… I never thought I'd ever be inspired by a quote.'

Now, knowing that trying to remember more of his old life would prove futile, he decided to think back on his other past… which was his past from the life he was currently living in. Now that he was really focusing back on this life, he realized that he had been acting very differently from how Percy Jackson would act. For starters, unlike the 17-year-old demigod, this Percy had no problems with killing people – especially those who threatened him and his people.

Moreover, unlike the other guy, this Percy sometimes even enjoyed it. Percy distinctly remembered a few times in his life, when he had even tortured some of the bandits that attacked him – with a smile on face – before finishing them off. Yet, those were actions he would associate with the people he considered the worst amongst the worst. People – or rather gods – like Ares… or… or Tartarus.

And even now, this Percy couldn't bring himself to regret it. 'Why should I feel regret, even though I know that they deserved all of what I did to them, and possibly more? After all, if I hadn't dealt with them, they would have gone and done worse things to the people of the next town…' Those were his thoughts about those times. He decided to move on and keep on comparing his pasts, which made him come to an important realization. His entire fighting style had been changed.

In his old life, a lot of his strategies against powerful enemies used to be related to his control of water, but now, he only used his sword, his strength, and his speed. After all, he hadn't even known about his powers until that morning… so he couldn't possibly have used them. Along with his fighting style, his entire personality had been altered.

While personal loyalty had been his fatal flaw in the past, he was no longer especially loyal to anyone – although that could be a simple problem of not knowing too many people – and he generally found that he couldn't care less if someone around him fell dead – unless he particularly cared for that person… which was rare. Gone was his dyslexia, and his fidgetiness. He had become a proper warrior, down to every last part.

Upon looking through his life, he realized that he was no longer Perseus Jackson, Hero of Olympus, and that he had almost nothing in common with that guy.

The Perseus he was in his old life was a young, inexperienced boy, who was loyal to a fault and relied on the support of his friends and allies, whereas the Perseus this world knew was the antithesis of peace, who, although liked by everyone around him, couldn't care less about people in general. He realized that, from birth, he had never really liked or loved anyone, not even his own parents. The only people he cared about were the ones from his previous life – Annabeth, his mom – that is, Sally Jackson, his first mom – his dad, the rest of the seven, Nico, Thalia, Grover and the rest of his mortal family.

However, as each and every name passed through his mind, he felt a deep sadness growing within him. 'Why am I sad?' he wondered. Then he reckoned that it was probably because he didn't know how they all were, or how they would react to meeting the 'Slayer' that he had become. 'But that's not the reason, is it…' a new, feminine voice said in his mind, causing him to jerk back in shock, and end up on the floor after tripping over a chair.

Somehow, he knew that that voice was right, and whatever the real reason was, it made him feel an abominable amount of despair and hatred. Then, he broke down into tears, for no apparent reason. Luckily for him, nobody was home to question his silly behavior. 'But it's not silly, you idiotic child!' A rough voice spoke out in his head, causing a bombardment of memories to take its toll on Percy. There, in that new world, on his (second) 18th birthday, Perseus became the first person to remember everything from a previous life.

-Linebreak-

A few days ago, Rimuto had declared, at a council meeting, that it was time to begin the experiments. The Organization had been extra-careful in these last two years, but they had not dared to start their research until now because of the heavy losses they had suffered two years ago.

However, the situation had changed. By then, they had been able to restore quite a lot of their original manpower, and they had rebuilt their ship and their headquarters in the lands widely known as Sutafu. They now had 400 men – and although it was lesser than the original, it was more than the 200 men left behind after one of the Asarakam had gone on a rampage – and Rimuto had decided that 400 was enough.

They had spent these last two years, not only in restoring their former power, but also in learning about the land they had arrived upon. The island was decently big, and shaped like a plus sign. The people living here spoke the common language that was spoken on the mainland – which was a dialect of Japanese – and they had divided the island into five main sectors – Sutafu (Eastern Lands), Lautrec (Western Lands), Alfons (Northern Lands), Mucha (Southern Lands) and Toulouse (Central Lands).

From their spot in the East, the Organization had learned about the lifestyles of these people, which seemed to be quite simple, and they had found out that the people lived basic, peaceful lives and faced no threats except for bandits. They had also realized that these men lived only for about 70* years – while the average lifespan was only around 40-50 years due to frequent bandit raids – which was quite small when compared to the lifespans of the creatures that inhabited the mainland.*

However, Rimuto was not currently concerned by these thoughts, because he had more important matters to deal with. For example, he had to control Dae – because he didn't want to take any more chances, and, as was evident from the last time, Dae could be more than a handful if left alone. Even though he had got half his face eaten away by fire and acid from a chemical explosion due to his idiocy, Rimuto knew that he hadn't learned his lesson. He was simply too careless at times… he was even ready to sacrifice his own life in the name of his research… and a man like that would never change.

He also had to find suitable human test subjects for Dae to experiment on, because you couldn't take anything or anyone and expect Asarakam flesh to bond with it. Intending to ask Dae about it, he turned a corner and walked up a staircase, which led him into a large laboratory. "DAE!" He called out the name to get its owner's attention. Dae, however, was too engrossed in his work. He was bent over a table, peering into a microscope with his right eye, and apparently, whatever he was seeing had interested him to a point where he couldn't hear Rimuto's voice.

So, the latter walked up to Dae, and placed his hand on the man's shoulder. Dae jerked back in surprise, nearly causing the microscope, along with the slide placed under its lens, to slide off the table. "What! Can't you see that I'm working?" He exclaimed to Rimuto.

"Yes, I can see! But you clearly didn't hear me… so I had to force you out of your work… Anyway, I have a question for you," He explained. "What is it?" "For your test subjects, what do you need?" "What kind of a stupid question is that? I need humans, obviously… after all, you can't make raccoons listen to commands!"

"Yes, yes, I figured as much… but what kind of people do you need? We have already seen that the humans from this land are an entirely different species from us… and evidently, they are weaker." "Now, you may be wrong with that last part… you should never make conclusions without having concrete proof." Dae's response would have appeared perfect to any person working in his field, but, to Rimuto, who was not a researcher, it seemed downright stupid.

So, he voiced his opinion, "These people… they live for a maximum of seventy years… which is even less than half our lifespan. Their technologies are comparable to DIRT! They haven't even invented WELDING yet! On top of that, from what we've seen, these men have no superior abilities at all… They're just mediocre in fighting! How can you say that they are NOT weaker than us?" "Oh, it's quite simple, Rimuto-san. In all the research I've been able to conduct so far, I have learned a few things. First off, the Asarakam's flesh is rather particular with who it can merge with. Our people – from the mainland, that is – cannot merge with the flesh of these creatures. Yet, the closest I have come to success is with one of the men from this island."**

Before Rimuto could shoot back a response, the door was thrown open, as a new figure dressed in black rushed in, nearly tripping over a syringe that was rolling on the floor. The sight nearly gave Dae a heart attack and he started to shout at the intruder, "Slow down, will you! This is a laboratory! Not a racetrack!"

As Dae was busy screaming blue murder at the intruder, Rimuto was as calm and collected as ever, allowing him to notice that the man – whom he identified as Raga, one of the Organization's men, based on the clothing – was looking extremely distressed and rather tired. Noticing this, he spoke up, "Dae, I think he understood your point. Please quiet down now. You're looking awfully tired, Raga… what happened?"

The man took a minute to catch his breath, then pulled down his hood, and spoke, in a rather hurried fashion, "Rimuto-san, I have urgent news. Three days ago, a party of our men and I were travelling in the Western region of this island to search for possible test subjects." "Yes, I remember that I was the one who gave you that mission. What of it?" "We found a lonely well-built teen who was sitting on the beach. We had been able to silently watch him fight, and he had single-handedly destroyed the local bandits on his way to the beach."

Dae, who was obviously intrigued by the topic, said, "Hmm… a strong warrior…. He should make the ideal test subject… where is he now?" Raga's complexion went a bit pale, and he replied, in a slow, cautious tone, "Yeah… about that… we decided to surprise him when he was resting unarmed on the beach… but the mission failed anyway."

"WHAT!? HOW!?" This kind of response, although unusual for Rimuto – who was generally calm – was to be expected. After all, they had sent out a party of at least 20 of their best soldiers… and a failed mission could only mean that they were all dead. Dae, however, was more intrigued than shocked or enraged, and he decided to pop the big question, "So…. you're saying that a young male teenager destroyed 20 of our finest warriors…. And without any weapons and armor?"

The response proved to be a shocking revelation to Rimuto. "He didn't even have to get up… while he was sitting near the water… the ocean itself rose up and swallowed our men." At this, Dae started laughing like a madman – which he technically was – and jumping around. "SOOOO, we have a perfect test subject! And you were saying that the people of this land were weak, eh, Rimuto-san?"

-Linebreak-

It had been three hours since Percy's mental breakdown started, and it had been just enough for him to recover from the shock. Now, the sadness and desperation had settled. It may have been 18 years to the outside world, but to Percy, it still felt like everything had happened yesterday.

Now that he had remembered that he had lost Annabeth, everything felt cold. But, as he sat there, mourning over his lost friends, something broke inside of him. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that something broke. Maybe it was the last remains of his heart, or maybe it was his mind, but he did know that it was because he had experienced too much sadness. That thought filled him with rage – the only reason he was like this was because a really old and really powerful asshole had decided that he was bored. In that instant, the cold that he was feeling was replaced by the heat of his anger and hatred.

Filled with a raging fire, and equipped with a new purpose, Percy got up from his seat at the table, and marched to his room. He was determined now. Determined to get his revenge – to succeed in doing what he had failed to achieve in his previous life. Giving up did not come naturally to Perseus, and so, he had no plans on giving up the fight just because his enemy was supposedly indestructible. He would fight the guy anyway, and he would either defeat Chaos and prove that he was destructible, or he would die trying.

However, at the end of the day, these were just bold statements. As of now, Percy knew that he was nothing more than a bug to Chaos, and he knew that it would take a LOT of time, effort and energy just to increase his power to a level where he could be noticed by the Creator. Defeating that man would take more power than he could get in a lifetime.

Then three voices chimed together in his head, 'Luckily for you, Perseus, you will get tons of help along the way. You have already been blessed by Olympus and by a Primordial. That should give you enough power to match up against any regular Primordial.' In such a situation, the old Perseus would have tried his hardest to reject the power. But this man was not the old Perseus, and although the statement came as a shock to him, he readily accepted it. He was slowly turning into a power-hungry, blood-thirsty monster, and if becoming one allowed him to defeat Chaos, he had no qualms with it.

'All you have to do now is head East until you find the Organization. The people there, Dae and Rimuto, will give you just what you need to avenge your friends.'

AN – *About the age difference thing… I just made the whole thing up…

But, if you really think about it… Isley's generation was the first, and Clare's generation was the 150th. Assuming that each generation lasted at least around half a year on average… there is a seventy-five year gap there… plus the seven year time skip from the manga… and Rimuto was apparently the head of the Organization from the start… so they gotta have some sort of longer lifespan or something…

Aaaaand…. Generations are supposed to last for like 20 years…

Call it food for thought…

Although… if there is some info that I didn't read, or if the length of each generation is defined somewhere and I missed it… put it as a review

And WOW… the number of reviews after I posted chapter 4 was…. High!

Anywho, follow, fav and review!

EDIT: **Ok, I want to give special thanks to AkaYnY for informing me about the lifespan and technology thing… So, I changed that part up a bit. Also, about the flesh not merging with the mainland ppl… yeah, I did take that from the eldian/rest-of the world thing in AoT… where only Eldians can become titans…