Disclaimer – I don't own PJO and Claymore, or any other franchise material/stuff related to them.

Also, a short foreword,

PLEASE review to this chapter and tell me what to do with Teresa: Acquaintance, brother-sister relationship (like in leviathan) or Pairing...

EDIT: I've made a poll, it's up on my profile (HOPEFULLY), so please just put your responses there.

Battle scars just remind us that we survived. ~ Shelly Crane

Time skip-

Third Person POV:

It was peak midday on the island of Claymore, with the sun beating down on everything that creeped, crawled, moved, and on everything that didn't.

In the desert-like lands of Sutafu, this would have been a real problem, but as of now, the sun was completely insignificant to the blonde woman as she walked through the rocky roads of Toulouse.

Here, the temperate climate, the good cloud cover, and her Yoki protected her from anything the peak of summer could throw at her.

As of right now, she was enjoying her peaceful walk along the cobbled path. The silence, only interrupted by the soft clinking of her breastplate against her leggings and the sounds of her boots striking the stone of the road, was a rare relief; a reminder of how nice and peaceful her life used to be. Used to be…. before Daddy turned into a Yoma and killed everyone else in the house; before she'd met the Claymores and the Organization.

A time before all the bloodshed. A happy time when she was a little 12-year-old girl with no real responsibilities. But the smiles that came with old memories didn't last long… they never did…

Everything around her was a reminder of how much things had changed since then: her armor, her long, blonde hair, the silver eyes, the massive Claymore strapped to her back, the stigma down her front, and even the faint reek of Yoma blood that surrounded her, from days of non-stop Yoma slaughter and Yoki usage.

Now, the only peace or happiness she could feel was during travel between two bouts of slow and gruesome Yoma-slaughter. She didn't have a say in what she wanted or could have anymore. She had to follow what the people at the Organization said. She was their entrusted warrior, their number ONE. She had to live up to that 'honored' title.

She closed her eyes as she continued walking, allowing a sigh to escape her lips at her own pathetic situation. There was nothing more she could do. There was nobody to blame, and nobody to share the burden with. She wasn't exactly sure how, but she knew it was her fault that her situation was like this. The man in black had explained to her…. He had told her so. Something about not being strong enough to save her father…

And then, they'd given her the power she had apparently needed. Through an extremely painful surgery that had left a permanent scar on her body, they had given her the powers to fight Yoma by becoming Yoma.

And, as her mind wandered off in a landscape shaped by such thoughts, she let another sigh out, and reached up to rub her eyes in frustration. And it was during that period of distraction, that she crashed into some smaller object in front of her, nearly tripping and falling in the process.

As she was regaining her balance, she heard the sound of crying. Up righting herself, she turned to look at the source of the noise and was shocked to see a little 7-year-old boy lying flat on his back and wailing mercilessly. It took her a while to connect the dots, but she realized in a few seconds that the child must have fallen over and unto his rear, when she had walked into him and knocked him over.

Cold-hearted Claymore or not, Licht was still part-human. And the human part of her leapt into action, apologizing profusely and offering a hand to the child. Seeing a child cry was a soft spot, even for professionally trained Claymores, such as herself.

A soft spot that was all that easy to exploit.

In the moment she lowered her guard, the boy let loose a burst of Yoki, focusing it into regenerating another limb. Before the Claymore could even figure out what was happening, a thick, axe-like blade was rushing at her head.

With it being too late to bring her Claymore out, she was forced to bring her hand up in front of her to block the strike. In the few milliseconds that she had, she reinforced it with as much Yoki as she could, but it still wasn't enough.

In exchange for her neck, she had to give up her left hand, starting at the wrist. It was a cold and calculated move on Percy's part.

While he definitely would have preferred her losing her head in one, swift blow, this had always been the most likely – and most favorable – outcome. Catch the girl in surprise, use her own human flaws against her, and then incapacitate her while she was otherwise busy due to her 'emotions.' Brutally effective.

He knew the latter part from experience. Of the possible thousands of strategies that he'd tried out against Claymores, this one had been the only one that always worked. An ambush could be sensed by some of the Claymores who were better at Yoki-sensing; a direct confrontation with the Claymores was a waste of time, energy and power, and quite often left him very hungry; and turning into his Yoma form, while effective in the sense that he could squish the Claymores like bugs, was the best method of screaming at the Organization and waving a bright-red colored banner saying, "I'm HERE, come and GET ME!"

The helpless child trick almost always worked, though.

Hell, sometimes, when Percy let the charade stretch out, the Claymores even tried to become mother-like figures towards him. Then, he would get to kill a Claymore – and thus, get free Yoki, eat a town's worth of people AND get a temporary travel companion. All by hiding his Yoki for a small period of time.

And considering how he had to do that every day of life anyway, it was a non-existent price to pay for such good rewards. Through the Claymores, he could even occasionally get some information on how the Organization was doing. Some of the higher-ranked Claymores – who had desperately needed friends and socialization, by the way – had occasionally let somethings slip. It was tricky to get the information out in the form of a seven-year-old child, but it had worked out a few times, and he'd realized that the Organization had never even exposed their higher technology to their warriors.

They knew as little about the past of the Organization as the citizens of 'Claymore' did. * Yup, the island had now got a name. Instead of any official name, or a proper term, they had named the entire island 'Claymore' as a reference to the test subjects they were manufacturing there. Even then, though, the term 'Claymore' itself had come from the massive Scottish-type swords that the warriors/experiments wielded, which in itself, was a weapon choice based solely off of his initial choice all those years ago… That sort of made him feel special…. To have a whole island – and the locals referred to the island as the 'Continent' or the 'World' – named after him (or something that he'd done, anyway) …. It made him feel as if he were living up to his title – it made him feel like a God.

These were his thoughts as he caught the blonde's Claymore with his tail. It was, no doubt, a very weak strike, thanks to his elegant planning.

Without the planning, he doubted he would have been able to finish this fight before next week, literally. According to the Organization's online files log – from which, they still hadn't removed his access, like the idiots they were – the blonde had a special sort of 'title.' She was called 'Three-Armed Licht.'

Percy had learned from personal experience with the Claymores that titles meant a lot. Oracles could literally sense every move you were about to make, 'Devious' literally meant tricky, 'Phantom' stood perfectly for its title, 'Heavy-Bladed' could actually crack skulls, and thus, 'Three-Armed' had to mean something.

In theorizing, he'd never been able to catch onto the real meaning though, because there had just been too many options. It could have meant literally anything. It could have been a metaphor for really good Claymore-wielding ability – using the sword as an extension of your own body; as a third arm, or some form of imagery for saying that she could move fast enough to look like she had three arms, or it could even have been a factual statement. Maybe she would actually grow a third arm and fight! You could never really know with Yoki.

But that was exactly why he was still wasting his time here. You really couldn't know EVERYTHING about Yoki for sure. There were way too many possibilities. Which was why it was just better to let someone ELSE invent newer, more creative ways of using Yoki. Then you could copy them and master them as time went by. After all, even after 30 or so years of having Yoki, his Athenian mind hadn't been able to figure out all the ways of using Yoki. No, he'd probably found around half… and he would probably never learn ALL the different styles of using it, but he'd take as much as he could before he fought his final battle.

And that was the reason behind all the goading he was pulling off here. A loud snicker here, a low taunt there, and obviously, the cutting off a hand thing at the start, and he could see that his opponent was steadily growing more and more frustrated – and desperate, too. Soon enough, she'd start using everything she had at hand.

Of course, that wasn't to say that he hadn't considered the possibility that he'd completely robbed his opponent of her ability by removing her arm. That could still have been a thing…. In which case, this whole fight was a needless waste of time.

But the only way to know for sure was to continue it till the girl was dead.

-Line break-

As he looked at a calendar, for the first time in – what felt like – a million years, Percy was starting to realize how old he was at this point. He was now 55 years old – older than anyone else he knew, except Dae and Rimuto and some of the other older recruits in the Organization – and this was without counting his 18 years of life on a foreign planet. Well, more of home planet than foreign planet… but since he didn't live there anymore, it was more of a foreign planet to him, now, wasn't it?

Food for thought at a later date.

For now, he had to dig up the next few files on the Claymores. He had a sort of system regarding this, and he was quite particular about it.

Once a month – with the specific date being varied to both: fit his schedule AND allow a form of inconspicuousness with the Organization, he would log back into their online resource platform to access their latest file logs. He would dig up information on the 3 highest ranked Claymores, and then decide if they were worth his time.

At first, his criteria for quality had been low: He would've fought anyone with even three 'A' ranks on their profile. The grading system was what the Organization judged its Claymores on, and he had chosen to adopt their style of ranking warriors. It made things pretty damn simple. Each statistic was measured and ranked from 'F' to 'S', graded in comparison to some stats base that they'd made up. He distantly remembered Dae referencing how each letter had a meaning, and how rank 'A' was meant to be for 'Asarakam-level,' while 'F' was meant for 'failure,' 'D' for 'disappointing,' and so on.

And back when he'd been in the Organization, and for the first one or two decades after he'd left, he'd found such a power scale extremely easy to comprehend. A Claymore with a rank 'A' in strength had the same amount of Yoki strength in her as a proper Asarakam beast would.

That, however, was back then. Nowadays, the data was getting sparse, and the platform was often mismanaged. Moreover, the letters had become incomprehensible to him as time had passed, forcing him to conduct more and more research about the Claymores each and every time. Back in the past, he could take a single glance at the sheet and know how strong his opponent was.

Now, though? A Claymore ranked 'S' would die if punched once. A Claymore ranked 'A' would also die when punched once. It made no difference anymore. The other problem was the lack of higher-power ranging letters. For example, Sistina and Licht had been marked an 'S' in four categories each, but that put them at an equal level to some of the extremely weak ones. There had been this one girl who had died when Percy had flicked her on the forehead ONCE. She'd had four grades ranked 'S' too…

It went to show the problem. Even right now, he was looking at a sheet of information, but he had no idea what to do with it. It said that the current number 1 Claymore – who had no title specified either – was on offensive-type warrior with a lot of 'S's and 'A's. Overall though, it meant nothing. 'S' just stood for 'surpasses,' as in surpasses the limit for an average Asarakam. Which, in comparison to himself, was like saying, 'this person is stronger than a bug.'

The problem was, "How much stronger?" Or at least, it had been. As time went by, Percy had come to realize that there WAS only one reasonable response to give to that question – "Not strong enough to be a problem."

-Line break-

Percy was in a great mood.

He'd had a large-sized serving of fresh meat – innards, to be precise – torn straight out of men and women, with the lovely drink called blood to water it down. Now, he was enjoying a brief moment of after-meal peace as he waited for his next target to come to him.

The fires he'd caused in his Awakened form should have told every Claymore, Yoma and human around that something was going on, so now, all he had to do was wait. The territory that he was in was part of the First Western Province, meaning that the Claymore assigned to this region was the Organization's number one.

The territories kept changing of course, based on number of Yoma sightings per town, and Yoma concentration per square mile, and other such statistics, which meant that the Claymores kept shifting around, making it ever so slightly harder for Percy to track down the top-ranked ones. Quite a few times, he'd wrecked a town in what used to be the top priority area, only to end up wasting lots of important time and energy because the area had been re-entrusted to another Claymore, usually one between 20 and 40.

A complete waste of time. Which was why he'd decided to check and recheck all the maps and all the data at least 5 times before embarking on this journey. Now, all he could do is wait, recall the facts, and hope the Organization's maps weren't wrong or outdated.

If they were, then…. Then there wasn't much that he could do about it. He'd kill whatever insignificant thing came at him… and walk home angry and disappointed. He'd have to, anyway. There was no other choice offered to him. But for now, there was no need to already assume that his luck would be bad.

After all, he HAD been blessed by Tyche – or Fortuna, or whatever – even if the blessing was a minor one, and didn't allow him to use any skills.

But being accustomed to having ADHD wasn't easy, especially if you had nothing to do except lie down and wait. He was already fully rested, well-fed and absolutely damn bored. Even the crackling sound of the fires was getting annoying, especially now that the screams of the last remaining humans had died out. There was no more blood to drink – and, if he were being honest with himself, there was no way he could drink anymore.

Growling in frustration, he stood up and started pacing around the wreckage that was the village. He'd had so many great plans for this girl… her title was 'Universal'… Lutecia the 'Universal'… universal – that meant omnipresence – he needed that, gods damn it!

He'd been laying there for TWO hours after he'd killed everyone! Where the fuck on the planet was this bitch! HE had important council meeting to get to! He was a political leader in the biggest village in the Eastern Province! He couldn't be wasting so much time here!

-Line break—

Another hour had passed by, and now, Percy was starting to get seriously frustrated. Bored out of his damn mind, he kicked the charred remains of a felled tree's trunk, causing it to crumble into dust, ash and soot that spread out everywhere, and got all over his face and in his mouth and nose.

Considering that he didn't exactly need to breathe, that wasn't a real problem, but it extremely annoying and did leave a horrible taste in his mouth. Which, after having had such a delicious meal, tasted ten times worse.

Seriously, whenever this girl got here, he was going to MAKE. HER. PAY.

-Line break-

By the time the Claymore arrived at the periphery of Percy's sixth sense, it was daybreak. Actually, no… that would be incorrect to say. The sun was high in the sky when 'Lutecia' finally got within TEN MILES of his location. And she was moving like an ant. At the rate she was going, it would've easily been midday by the time she got to the outskirts of the stupid village.

And he was NOT going to wait that fucking long. NO way in hell. He'd already waited in the town for SIXTEEN HOURS. Sixteen. Goddamn. Hours. Sixteen. That was basically an entire day for a human. How the hell had this girl taken so long?

On an off note, his mind was wandering, as usual, and wondering what the people of his city would be thinking. Their mayor was gone and nowhere to be found… would they be panicking? Humans tended to do that a lot… Once, while he'd still been with the Organization, he'd watched them all panic, shout and scream at a cockroach… a cockroach… grown men screaming like monkeys at a cockroach…

At some point in time, he knew he'd have done the same as they had, but it felt so ancient now. That part of his life – the older, human part…. It felt unreal. No, it felt nonexistent. He couldn't actually think back and remember any moments throughout his entire second life where he'd even remotely behaved like a human. He could barely even remember BEING a human.

The only real memories he had of being the same as one of these people… was from his previous life. And that was literally a lifetime ago.

Even as he moved closer to the Lutecia girl to spring a trap, he idly wondered if he could ever be human again. Considering that he still lived as a human, he reckoned he could. He would still have to give up on mass murder, eating raw flesh, guts, and drinking blood… and those were, sure as hell, not worth giving up on.

Ended that thought chain right there, Percy slowly peeked out from his hiding spot behind the big, tall oak, and saw a young blonde girl – probably in her late teens – walking through the woods. Then, as he watched, she git distracted by the sound of a bird's song, and then turned around to admire a lizard crawling up a tree.

Wonderful. This is what she'd been doing for the past forever. Sometimes, he really wondered what the hell was wrong with those fools back at his old workplace. Who in their right minds would put someone THIS irresponsible in charge of the MOST YOMA-POPULATED region in the entire continent? Well, not that the people there actually cared about saving lives…

That wasn't the point, though. The point was that this girl was annoying as hell, and he'd succeeded now, in wasting countless priceless hours of time in waiting for her, and she still wasn't taking the damn situation seriously. At first, he'd been seriously pissed off at the girl for wasting so much of his time, but now, he was more inclined to just give up. She wasn't omnipresent or anything like that…. She was just called universal 'cause she was all over the place.

The fact that she never even noticed his Claymore coming down on her neck proved that statement right.

-Line break-

Percy was sitting at his desk and drinking wine. That was basically his job description; had been for 20 or so years now. Now that he'd managed to teach these fools what a 'court of law' was, nobody would come to him to solve their problems anymore, and it had allowed him a long-lasting era of peace. Well, considering his track record, not peace per se; more of a silence.

Yes, a nice, lovely period of silence. The city he ran was flourishing; he'd managed to introduce several reforms into their old law systems, and now the city functioned under laws similar to those in the modern world! Or, older world… if he were to view it that way… but, multiple timeline dysfunctionalities notwithstanding, revolutionizing a full city and making it modern was some sort of great achievement.

Before, it had been a mayor rules all, does all, decides all kind of thing. He had been the sole de facto and de jure in the city. There had been nobody who could question him, and nobody who could change whatever he did. And honestly speaking, that was boring. And taxing. Extremely taxing.

Every single citizen seemed to have some sort of stupid home-level problems that they couldn't sort out on their own. Back when he'd first purchased the house, he'd even been forced to buy permission from the mayor specifically to buy the house. So, all in all, it had cost him twice as much as it should have, and the previous mayor had died a rich man. Percy had seen around that, of course.

He'd gone straight ahead and claimed all the old man's properties by right of passage. He was the next mayor, since he was the oldest man in town, and so, he got to keep whatever the previous idiot had stolen from his people. Which had actually managed to sum up to a number more than everything he'd stolen from dead bandits and merchants… If he hadn't been the richest man before, then he had surely become the richest upon laying claim to nearly two hundred thousand bera.

Well-deserved, though, even if he had to say it himself. Well-deserved, for sure.

Especially considering all the pain he'd gone through afterwards to introduce the concepts of a judiciary, legislature and an executive. Making a government was surprisingly quite hard! According to Athena, making the Olympian government hadn't been hard at all, and yet, here, he'd been forced to slave for 10 or more years to establish one. Then again, the Olympian council wasn't so much a government as a monarchy.

What Zeus said went, and what everyone else said was irrelevant. And somehow, that rhymed.

Still though, now that he'd done everything, this post of mayor was just being a form of baggage. All the work he would get now was signing off on major land deals, new laws, bills and such. The boring part of being a leader, if put in simpler terms. The part that he'd wanted to avoid from the start.

He'd taken up the post as a challenge. He'd wanted to challenge himself; he'd wanted to see whether he could manage being a mayor of a central town and a target for the biggest organization out there, at the same time. And he'd succeeded in doing those things too! Along the way, he'd also manage to gather enough Yoki to become basically invincible, and completely revolutionize a city with a constitution.

But he wasn't sure whether that was something to actually be happy about… he had succeeded. Didn't that mean it was time to move on? He surely couldn't continue staying here forever. As much as he loved the free signal, the beautiful house and the rich lifestyle, he couldn't live here for too long. The maximum a human man grew till was around 55 to 60.

He was turning 65 next month.

The fact that he hadn't died yet had probably already caught the eyes of multiple people out there. Everyone who was hoping to get his seat was surely wishing and waiting for it to happen…. They'd definitely have noticed that it hadn't. That meant this was it…. The time had come; he needed to leave.

He couldn't afford to look suspicious. All it took was ONE rumor going to the wrong people; and then, the Organization would be after him with all they had. And they definitely had a lot. Maybe not enough to kill him, but definitely enough to make him consider his chances and decide that he didn't want the unnecessary risk… Yet.

He'd be returning there… eventually, of course. He needed to pay his distant relatives a visit. A friendly, war-winning, mass-murdering, species-eradicating visit. Also called genocide, but Percy refused to use that word; it didn't sound nearly as kind.

-Line break-

(Somewhere else)

The twins were sitting out in their balcony, looking down on the planet's surface, as one ant-sized creature wrecked an ant-sized town. The comparison was not meant, of course, to call the creatures insignificant, but merely to show how far down they were.

From all the way up here, in this floating castle, of sorts, everything looked miniscule. Even the fifty-foot tall monster spreading flames all over the landscape.

"That's a lot of smoke, you know…. Lot of pollution."

The icebreaker came from Clare as she put down the empty teacup in her hands and looked to her sister for a response. At one point she would have just rolled her eyes and ignored the comment, but after the acid rain from yesterday, she couldn't help but agree.

"The sad part is… you're actually right for a change." She replied, hiding the smirk on her face with the teacup, as she watched her twin splutter and cough at the accusation. "Excuse me, WHAT did you just say!? I was right the first time TOO, you know! I told you we should've got rid of the kid BEFORE he became a problem!"

"That still doesn't sound like a smart idea, sis…"

However, Clare didn't get the chance to argue. Before she could speak, a creepy, unified voice spoke from behind the duo, "A very bad idea, indeed."

The sudden intrusion on their previously private conversation had quite the effect on the goddesses. They leapt out of their seats, and with a practiced sort of ease, simultaneously pulled out identical great swords from thin air, whirling around to meet their opponents…. Which were three cloaked women.

Seeing their…. Visitors, the twins relaxed, surprisingly, and made their swords disappear with the flick of a finger. Calming down, they both took a seat at the café-like table. With a loud sigh, Teresa exclaimed, "Oh, its just you three…. Come on, sit on down; have some tea." The last part was added on with a clap that made three chairs appear out of thin air.

"So…" Clare began, only to be cut off by the Moirai in the middle. (**) "We do not have the time for small talk, I'm afraid. The longer we stay away from our home, the more likely it is that our uncle will rip… our family members… to shreds. And of course, the longer we stray from our universe, the more likely it is that Chaos will notice our absence from the timelines…"

She stopped to take a breath, and her sister – the one to the left, continued on, without waiting for them to take even so little as a breath, "Indeed, we are short on time – far too short, and we cannot stay here for long. We came to ask a favor of you… or perhaps, to give you a warning."

The middle Moirai continued again, "As we all know, time flows… differently between our universes ***. A month here could be as short as a second back in Tartarus, or as long as a whole millennia. As such, we cannot keep a tab on Olympus' hero anymore. We gave him advice just last month, but now it appears that we haven't talked to him for 50 whole years."

"And, without having a reliable way to inform ourselves about his location and progress, I sincerely doubt we'd be able to help him any further… which means, he is… stranded, in a way… in your universe. For correcting that mistake of ours, we ask for a favor. If you should refuse, then very well. It is up to you to make that choice. I doubt you would like how it ends, though." There was an underlying threat there, Teresa realized. She narrowed her eyes but nodded to let them know to keep speaking.

Right here, right now, Clare and she were the superior force. They could easily kill the Fates, even if their domain was supposed to be love. Everyone here knew that. And yet, the Fates were threatening them – and quite openly too – with utter confidence. That was a bad sign.

"The favor is quite a simple one," The left-most Moirai continued, "All we're asking you to do, is help the kid out once or twice. And of course, return him to the right universe when the time comes. Although I do doubt you can refuse it… Percy isn't stupid… when he does end up finding you two sitting up here, you're going to be facing some serious hell from him itself… we wouldn't even need to interfere. It might take a little more time, but he'll get back to Earth alright. What he does then… is a factor completely unknown to even us. Let's just hope his heart's in the right place…"

And with those… cryptic words, the two speakers left the place by warping out in a brilliant flash of light. Maintaining a straight face, Teresa turned to the only other impostor left in the building. "Forgive me for noticing, Atropos, but your sisters were unusually… formal. And you were unusually silent."

Sighing, the third woman pushed back her hood, allowing the rays of the sun to hit her face for the first time in 30-ish years. With that nearly blonde hair, the pale skin, and the distant expression on her face, the "Inflexible" looked frail. Almost as if she could be blown away with the wind. There she was, the ender of countless lives, shaper of infinite destinies, ex-master of Fate, and the greatest daughter of Ananke, and yet, she looked like her string was ready to be cut.

Even her words, as they came out, were especially soft, so soft that Teresa had to strain to hear them. "The years have not been good, Teresa. It's only been a month since we last talked to him, but it surely didn't feel like it. Things have changed, and unlike we'd all hoped, it's not been for the better."****

There was an edge to that tone, a delicate edge, one that spoke of long-time suffering and pain. And something about it was so off, coming from the once-proud goddess of Fate, that it made Teresa wince outwardly. Her sister, on the other hand, was not one to do much reading between the lines. Her response came as quick and blatant as ever, "That bad, huh?"

The way she'd sounded so stupid while saying made Teresa wince again, but at least Atropos didn't seem to mind.

"We all thought the fighting would stop once Chaos had got his daughter back. But that didn't happen. Ever since he woke up 30 years ago, things have been changing. In just two years, he killed all the demigods, and drove every immortal to Hades. Then, he started changing the surface of the planet. Where flourishing cities once stood, swamps and forests now thrive. With nothing except for trees, though. He'd killed every human, animal and bird that he'd been able to find."

"Gaia came back, stronger than ever, and we were forced to refuge in Tartarus, since Hades' underworld was a part of Gaia's domain, and with every day that he fought her off, the man was inching closer to a permanent death. We've stayed there ever since. It was absolutely horrible. I do not wish to insult my uncle, but the living conditions in his pit are the worst I have ever seen."

"That was all okay with us, though, because we still had a hope. Ten years after he died, Perseus Achilles Jackson was reborn here. Imbued with magical powers, and surrounded by magical spirits, that boy was going to be our hero. We were so sure. If he wouldn't do it for the dead, then he'd do it for family. His father, his mother, anyone. Personal loyalty… that was his fatal flaw."

"And then, Chaos struck again. His vengeance wasn't done yet, apparently. Gaia was still angry at Poseidon's son. Something about how he shaped her loss in the final battle. Of course, she didn't know he was still alive, so she did the only thing she could think of doing: she destroyed everything else that reminded her of him. Including the oceans. With his two children – Pontus and Thalassa, having faded millennia ago, Chaos saw no reason to stop her."

"Sally Jackson died some two days after her son did, and Poseidon faded into oblivion three years ago. Without the Big Three in place, Olympus' policies and methods of rule have fallen apart like a sandcastle made of loose sand, and hundreds of minor gods have moved on to the Void. Now, we have absolutely no leverage to make the boy work for us."

"When I came here today, it wasn't to ask you for a favor. That, my sisters could have handled on their own. I came here to see how the boy was doing. It was supposed to be a cheer-up motion; some good news to bring home after facing 28 years in Tartaric oblivion. Even that's failed now. The boy is too strong for any council to hold, and he could easily match strides with Tartarus in that beastly form. Although he would die as soon as his new powers – Yoki – run out."

"Now we can't force him back to Earth in any way… because if he reaches there, he'll gain his immortality and his domains, and then, he'd be completely unstoppable for even Tartarus to handle. On top of all that, the boy has forgotten why he was reborn. He knows why he's here, but he's not angry at Chaos anymore…. He's gotten smarter and stronger, and now, I doubt he'd fight Chaos for the sake of it. Personal loyalty isn't even his fatal flaw anymore. We're doomed to die."

She finished that with glistening eyes and a sad smile, as if saying, 'It's been a long run, and it's been real good.' She had given up.

"But would you look at that. I was supposed to be home 15 minutes ago." She said, with a soft chuckle. "I guess I just wanted to see the sun for a little longer. It's been forever since I saw it."

And then, she was gone. Warped away like her sisters did, leaving a heavy amount of guilt and pain in Teresa's heart. She'd known the Moirai for billions, if not trillions of years. It felt pathetic to have to see them like this. Especially because it was Atropos. She'd forever been the level-headed, and yet proud woman. Countless times, Teresa had hitched a ride to Chaos' creation to take advice from her, and now, to not even be able to help her in return…. That was burning a guilt-heavy hole in her heart.

-Line break-

Percy was lying down on the ground, like he often did. He was staring up at the evening sky, as the sun was just starting to dip below the horizon. He was waiting for something to happen; something to change.

Not too long ago, he'd seen a massive blast of white light up the sky, and he was waiting to see if it would happen again. He was curious, and you couldn't really blame him for that curiosity. After all, white flashes couldn't be considered a common occurrence or be passed off as normal on a planet where flash bangs were probably still a million years in the future.

Meanwhile, he was also waiting for a Claymore to pass by. A certain Claymore. Although he'd left the old town he used to stay at, he would still go back to the East and collect some information from the cloud, because it just made his life a whole lot easier. Unlike before, it wasn't strictly necessary, but it did simplify a whole bucket load of things, and so, it couldn't be called a bad thing.

The number one Claymore he'd be against this time had a special title, and an entire documentary written on her. Apparently, her fighting style was SO unusual to the Organization, that they'd decided to write a full ten-page document about it and put it up on the cloud. She apparently moved "disgracefully, swinging her torso and upper body like a pendulum," to give herself easier access into her opponent's guard. The movement apparently, "allowed for lower angles of attack, increased speed and higher Force on each strike."

This was going to be interesting.

And just as he was recalling the name, "Dust-Eater," the flashbang effect lit up the whole sky again, leaving him with nothing but a small message in his mind – "Goodbye, hero, and live well. Your battle with Chaos awaits. ~ Atropos."

AN – AH, yes, finally. Got all that out of the way. To be completely honest here, I didn't have it in me to stretch all that into a single, continuous story, I really didn't. So, the broken-up-ness of this chapter was intended. Every line break is… kinda like the end of a small sub-story/mini-arc, except for the little part with Lutecia in it and the overlapping sub-parts at the end.

ALSO, Teresa is coming up next chapter! (IKR it took FIFTEEN chapters to get to the BIRTH of a MAIN CHARACTER) So, Ima be needing suggestions. Should she be just a friend, or a pseudo-sister (like in Leviathan) or a pairing? Because if shes a pairing then shes gonna be dragged into a whole new level of extra shit… starting with introduction, and then, shell be dragged into the war, too, and then into Remnant, and then into the Chaos fight thing… coz it doesn't seem realistic that Percy would just leave her on Claymore and go fighting everything and everyone for years on end, if he cared abt her…. Yea, that just doesn't make sense.

So PLEASE put the opinions on this in a review. Man, I hate that I cant make text a different colour…. Would've done well to highlight this part…

Asterisks:

*Yup, I have done it. I named the island. No need to thank me.

Seriously though, I couldn't come up with anything, and I got srsly tired of trying to find new synonyms for isle and continent, so I just named it. It is now called Claymore. Like the sword, like the warrior-experiment people. Now its as confusing as saying 'Ruby' when referencing Monty's (RIP) show.

**(You try saying that five times over)

***And time flow… so, we all know that there's some kind of time disparity between Calypso's island and the rest of the world, yea? And that this time disparity concept also applies to Tartarus and Earth (at the surface)/? So, use the same concept. Think of it like this. Each universe is a tree, that keeps growing taller and branching out forever. Within the same universe, there are many timelines (each branch) and across universes, timelines cannot be compared…. Because each tree grows at a different speed. So, from Percy's original timeline, when he jumped out of there onto another tree, he was kinda OUT OF TIME for a minute there…. Cool, huh?

****Just for clarification's sake, this is the first time Atropos is talking to Teresa OR Clare in THIRTY years (Tartarus-Earth time). Which is why she's explaining the whole situation to them. Of course, when a war breaks out in your neighborhood (of universes, in this case), you'd hear about it, but you wouldn't catch all the details, so Atropos is filling in the blanks for everyone: readers, characters and whatever other categories of people are there.

Edit: Two things I forgot to add:

1) Ive made a poll abt the Teresa thing so pls answer there,

2) The updates to this story will be RANDOM... extremely so, because i have term exams coming up end of this month, alongside a lot of bdays INCLUDING MINE! I was trying to follow a biweekly timetable, but now, with the poll and stuff, it might get a bit strained, and I might not be able to update regularly so just adding this on here... srsly tho, my school's gone mad after covid struck..

Anyways, follow, fav, review!