The Modern Brotherhood
Amon could actually fight Shin'en to a borderline standstill.
But someone will want to debate that with me anyway, so I don't really see the point in saying that other than to put it on the table.
Anyway, next chapter!
Disclaimer: I don't own PJO or Assassin's Creed
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Inspired by historical events and an over-active imagination, this work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a single-cultural team of one religious faith and belief, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
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Dionysus knew that Percy had been found and brought to Olympus. He knew that whatever had happened in those missing three months had been so devastating in some way that the boy's mind had completely sealed itself off to defend from the trauma. He also knew that just hours ago, Percy had simply up and vanished from his sickbed, which was why he was monstrously curious when this blasted Camp's border system alerted him that something had just crossed the boundary line, and that disturbance just so happened to be Percy Jackson.
Instead of immediately teleporting to the demigod's location, or teleporting the demigod to his location, Dionysus sipped on his coke, content to monitor the situation. Percy was heading for Lou Ellen's cabin, most likely to greet her and assuage her of her worries. The past three months had been hard on Hecate's daughter, emotionally and physically.
It almost touched Dionysus' heart to see a girl so worried about a boy.
There was also a concerning factor here: to the Wine God's knowledge, Percy was not informed of where Lou's forest home was, but he was at her front door.
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After the ten-day mark of Percy's absence, Lou Ellen Williams had what could arguably be called a frantic breakdown. She had locked herself in her personal cabin had hadn't been seen in over two months. Rumors persisted that she had actually kidnapped Percy and was either sexing him up or cutting him up, and where no one truly knew Lou enough to refute such rumors, besides Beckendorf, Annabeth, and Grover, most everyone agreed that was a little outlandish, and there was no way Dionysus would allow that.
The truth was that Lou Ellen was running herself ragged, almost literally killing herself on a daily basis as she exercised more magic than what was usually possible for any child of Hecate. Not even her eldest siblings, like Circe, Lamia, Celyn in the Hunters, several Amazons, and the few that walked freely about the earth, could pull off this much magic in a day without serious preparation. The only child of Hecate that could've outstripped Lou was Lucy.
The witch girl used every location spell she could think of, every communication spell she could think of. She performed spells and rituals to boost her powers, and retried those spells. She summoned spirits of questionable morality, and spirits of strong virtue, and sent them to look for Percy. She called upon monsters and demons that roamed the earth, binding them to her service, and made them look. She reached out to her many siblings, either enlisting their aid, or forcing them into servitude.
Except for Lucy.
Lucy just snorted and shooed Lou Ellen's magic away like she was no more than a fly.
Circe tried to resist, citing that she had more important things to do than help a little bedwetter find the object of her puppy love, and she was promptly slammed into a wall by Lou astral projection, and then manhandled like a disobedient slave.
After a month of drinking potions and performing rituals to boost her strength so she could keep up the look for Percy, and nothing was found, she regrouped and tried something else. She released all the demons and spirits and monsters from her service, with the promise that she wouldn't call for any of them again in the next three years and five months and six days.
Oddly specific but whatever.
She contacted all of her siblings and told them to stop their own searches, not that she believed many of them were giving it their best effort in the first place. With the otherworldly help gone and her siblings no longer helping, Lou made a radical decision: she practiced the magic of other pantheons.
Now, one would think that a daughter of the Greek magic goddess would be unable to perform magic outside the Greek sphere, and you would be incorrect. Magic is not bound by religion or pantheon. Magic is magic, and it can be used in an unlimited number of ways according to its user, and Lou was a child of magic.
Hecate was just the Greek's magic deity, just as Isis was the Egyptian's, and Odin's the Norse's.
Now, there were laws to be observed, and limitations to be aware of. Only children of Hecate and exceptionally powerful demigods could use other pantheonic magics, and the tole for doing this was extreme. Which was why Lou spent a whole week preparing to use Egyptian spells to comb through the Duat, and a whole other week after preparing to comb through the Nine Realms.
To Lou's infinite fury, she could not find hide nor hair of the boy she felt so deeply attracted to.
When getting help didn't work, and when practicing other magic didn't work, Lou turned to her most desperate cards: invoking the presence of gods.
That was a tricky practice, because where gods were bound by the Ancient Laws to obey the summons of a powerful enough invocation spell, they did not have to do as commanded by the summoner, nor did they have to leave the summoner alive after they were called, which was why, when summoning gods, one had to make triply sure there were proper barriers and wards and protections and countermeasures in place, and that the god they were summoning was more or less friendly, or they were on friendly enough terms with, and the spell being used to summon the god in question was not a contract spell, or binding spell, or any kind of spell that went beyond simply summoning the god to your location.
Unless you wanted something from that god. Then you changed the spell to fit your needs.
Anyway, Lou summoned Hermes, Apollo, Demeter, Athena, Hypnos, Triton, Artemis, Hephaestus, and Morpheus, beseeching them all to help her. Some straight agreed, others said "sure" and probably didn't do a damn thing, and the rest flat refused.
Lou had wanted to summon her mother so badly that it had hurt, but part of being the magic goddess was that you could not be summoned by your children's spells, as the Ancient Laws forbade direct contact with your children, though gods could get away with direct contact in some ways, but directly being summoned was something that could not be overlooked, and so it did not happen.
Anyway, Lou was at her wit's end. None of her spells worked, nothing she tried worked, none of her helpers were helpful. The only thing she hadn't done yet was try some of the really big spells, the forbidden ones at the backs of her spell books. The kind of spells that people tried to prevent you from casting. She was going to do it, too. She was already gathering the ingredients for the proper potions, calculating the times of day, the dates, the phases of the moon, etc., when Kira suddenly perked up, when her wards alerted her of an approaching entity.
Lou Ellen was really proud of her wards. They let her know what was coming, how far it was, how big it was, if it was male or female, if it was monster, god, demigod, or something else, who was coming if she was familiar enough with the approachee, and her favorite part: if she didn't like what was coming, and what was coming wasn't so powerful, she could trigger her wards to zap the offender like a bug.
But in the case of who was coming, Lou did not zap the person. She ran out of her door, barefoot against the cool, moist ground, and bowled him over. Three months of emotions boiled over, and Lou Ellen sobbed into his chest.
"Wh-where w-were you…? I c-c-couldn't find…n-n-nothing was w-w-working…t-tried e-everything!"
"Shhhhh," Percy soothed. He ran a hand through Lou's hair, gently caressing her head. "It's alright now. I'm alright. You're alright."
"Arf! Arf!"
"And Kira's alright, too. Everything's alright. Now, please get off of me?"
Lou shakily got to her feet, and when Percy got to his own, she threw her arms around him and kissed him with everything she had. A bold move to be sure, one that had Percy stunned through his shoes, but he recovered fast, and kissed her back. There was hardly anything vulgar about the kiss, no tongue, no roaming hands, no biting or lip sucking, just two people being connected in one of the most intimate of ways.
Lou pulled back, cheeks ablaze. "S-So…um…are you my boyfriend now?"
"Yes, I believe I am."
The witch pumped a fist. "Yeah! Take that, Annabeth!"
Percy stared at her flatly, making her fidget. "R-Right, sorry…" Lou sobered up. "What happened to you? Three months…not a word…and then the news…your apartment…went missing…what happened?"
"The Trial of Job," Percy said grimly. He spent the next few minutes recounting his Trial.
After he was done, Lou was pale as a sheet of paper. She didn't know what to do. Saying "I'm sorry" wasn't going to do anything, and giving him another hug felt empty, but she wanted to do something to show that she cared, and that she felt for him. A look into his eyes, however, dissuaded her.
He had overcome this trial.
Beaten it.
Risen above it.
Endured it.
It was a defining trait now. One that made him different than how he used to be. It made him something more, something else.
"What…what are you going to do now?" Lou asked.
"I'm going to inform Chiron of what happened, then I'm going to say hi to Beckendorf, Annabeth, and Grover. Then I'm going to leave."
Lou was shocked. "Leave!? You just got back!"
"It is also late September."
"Oh, do not tell me you're about to go attend junior high!"
Percy almost punched Lou in the face for making such an insinuation, and the look on his own face made the witch squirm.
"Sorry, that was dumb."
"Agreed. What I was referring to was the fact that, back in June, I told some people that I would meet them at Central Park. That never happened, and now I need to find them."
"Oh, right, the Assassins."
"Potential Assassins, yes."
Lou's eyes crinkled as she tried to hold it in. "But…all of what happened…and you just got back…and-and we k-kissed…and you're just going to leave again…? I don't…I don't understand."
"I know you don't, Lou," Percy said quietly. "You are not me; you were not born into an order sworn to do their best to maintain what little peace there is in the world; you were not inducted into an order sworn to fight to their last breath against the Templar, and stop whatever schemes they are planning, and the schemes of other men who consider themselves masters of others. You are not charged with the duty that I am charged with, and therefore you do not understand."
"…then I'm going with you," Lou decided.
Percy almost lost his balance. "Excuse me?"
"I'm going with you. I spent the past three months working my butt off trying every spell I knew so I could find you, and then when you just show up at my door, and we kiss, we decide to call ourselves boyfriend/girlfriend, only for you to tell me you're leaving…uh-uh. Not happening." Lou put her hands on her hips. "I'm your girlfriend now, and you are not getting rid of me that easily."
"The last girlfriend I had was murdered."
Lou's confidence diminished when she remembered Emiliana Santi, Virgil Cavaliere's girlfriend from the Renaissance. "Uh, well…I'll do my best not to get killed, then."
Percy gave her a flat look. "Reassuring, thank you."
"You're still not getting rid of me."
"Arf!"
"Or Kira."
Percy looked down at the puppy. "I'm no dog expert, but shouldn't she be bigger after three months?"
"She's a magic puppy," Lou said like it explained everything.
"Oh, of course. My mistake." Percy then sighed. "Well, pack your things, then."
Lou grinned and spoke in that way of hers. "Ckap lla fo ym sgniht dna gnirb meht ot em."
Percy just stood there as the there was a bright light from within Lou's house, and there was a sound like clattering, and then a suitcase came zooming out of the house, right into Lou's hand.
"Ready!" She chirped. She wasn't in her pajamas, as it was approaching noon for the day, and was in her street clothes.
Percy remembered that odd quirk Lou had, and if she was ready and in her street clothes…
"Diaper?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't where those anymore."
Percy blinked. "Awesome," he said flatly, not entirely sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Lou didn't wear her diapers anymore.
"Yeah, when I got home after the quest, I had, like, an internal debate with myself, talking about how I had all these amazing powers with the only drawback being that I was bedwetter, and how it was kind of petty of me to be like that, and I eventually concluded that it was God's way of teaching me humility, you know? Anyway, after I came to that conclusion, I still prayed that I wouldn't wet my bed, and, well, that night, I decided to break routine and drink a lot of juice before I went to bed, in celebration of coming back alive, and, in the middle of the night, Kira woke me up just before I wet, and she's done so every night since then…and I don't wear diapers in the day anymore. I learned some new spells."
Percy blinked. Then his eyes darted from Lou to Kira and back to Lou, then back to Kira and back to Lou. Then he blinked again. "Awesome," he said.
Honestly, what else do you say after an explanation like that?
"I know, right?" Lou grinned.
"Indeed. Let's go see Chiron."
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They didn't draw any heads, but that was because Lou teleported them right to the Big House interior, right as Chiron was about to take a bite out of an entire roast turkey. The centaur reacted to the sudden intrusion with a grand display of throwing the turkey through the ceiling, knocking over the table, and he finished by brandishing a ladle and a plastic knife.
"You handled that with all the ability of a teacher that's several thousand years old," Percy said dryly.
"Well, excuse me, but being teleported upon while in the middle of a meal is something that has only ever happened once in my lifetime, young man, and-"
There was the distinct sound of a record scratch somewhere in the background, and Chiron's eyes widened. He surged forward, as he was in his centaur form, and he scooped Percy into a mighty hug. Lou watched that happen with a strange expression on her face.
'In all my years alive on this earth, not once did I ever want to see Chiron's junk…oh my gods it's flopping around!'
Lou quickly cast a spell that made Chiron put Percy down before his spine was accidentally crushed, and she cast another to make Chiron's dong invisible to her.
"M-My boy," the centaur said, all choked up. "Wh-Where…h-how…?"
"Yes, I would like to know that as well," Dionysus said, entering without warning or indication. The turkey in the ceiling decided to suddenly obey gravity, and came down directly on the Wine God's head. "Ow," he frowned.
"This is the abridged version," Percy said, and he gave them the abridged version. After he was done, Chiron and Dionysus were both staring at him blankly. Then the centaur fainted and fell on his side. Dionysus looked at him. "Come now, old boy. That's hardly the worst thing you've ever heard."
He nudged the centaur with his foot, and rolled his eyes when there was no response. Deigning to let Chiron enjoy his impromptu nap, he turned his purple eyes towards Percy. "Well, I understand your mother is dead, as is your stepfather, and you don't strike me as the type of teenager to willingly go back to school, so it begs the question of just what are you going to do now? Stay at Camp? Try to move in with your father in Atlantis? Or something else?"
"Something else," Percy confirmed, but did not elaborate.
"Very well then, I will not stop you." Dionysus turned, nudged Chiron one more time with his foot, shrugged, and almost made it out the door before Percy said, "Dionysus."
"Hm?"
"If it isn't too much trouble, could you please tell me where Annabeth, Beckendorf, and Grover are?"
"Well, since you said please…Annabeth is attending a public school in California. She decided to give her father another shot at being a father, and sent him a letter. She got a letter back, and she left a week later. Beckendorf is currently attending high school in Texas, and Grover is out in the wild, looking for Pan. They're all still worried about you, but you know how it is…life moves on, and all that. Sorry if that crushes you."
The Wine God left, and Percy just stood there. Yes, it made sense that they all would've moved on after three months, but…ouch.
"I'm the only one that kept looking besides the gods," Lou said.
"Thank you," Percy said. "Well, since everyone I wanted to meet is gone now, there's no point in hanging around here."
"Do you know where to start looking?"
"I have a good idea." He tilted his head up in the classic indication of look over there. Lou obeyed, and saw a travel magazine for Rapid City, South Dakota sitting on a table.
"That is…" she started. "That is certainly…convenient."
"After Job's trial ended, God blessed him with thousands of animals and ten children, and most likely even more than that, as it says "twice as much than before," but then doesn't necessarily elaborate. I passed the Trial of Job, and now I'm being blessed."
Lou nodded. "I can see it. So, Rapid City? Never been there before, but I think I can get us there in mostly one piece."
"Wait, what? Lou, don't you dare-!"
The witch girl laughed hysterically, sucking both herself, Percy, and Kira in a space between spaces for all of a second.
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They all came out of Lou's spell in a blur of color and motion, luckily atop a building instead of in the middle of the road.
"My clothes feel weird," the witch noted.
Percy was frowning. Deeply. "So do mine. Would you mind switching our clothes back? Your underwear in uncomfortable."
Lou smirked deviously. "What? Can't handle a little wedgie?"
"I was referring to your training bra."
"My training bra!?" Lou practically screeched. "I'll have you know that I wear a large B!"
"Congratulations," Percy deadpanned. "Fix our clothes, please."
Grumbling about the blow to her chest, Lou Ellen muttered a quick spell and in a puff of smoke, the teens had their appropriate garments back in place.
"Thank you. Please refrain from sudden teleportations like that ever again, until you have the clothing problem fixed. Now, let's get going."
"Where are we going?"
"To the grocery store."
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Lou turned her suitcase into a handbag, and hid Kira inside it. Her best guess as to why they were going to Walmart was that Percy had the strongest suspicion that one of these Assassin guys was going to be there…for some reason. Getting some eggs, she supposed.
Percy walked with his hands behind his back, his steps powerful and measured. Lou didn't struggle to keep pace, but it was faster than a leisurely walk, and she wanted to protest their speed when they were going at it for no apparent reason, and then Percy slowed down to a pace more suited for the elderly.
Then he turned around.
Lou did as well, and she was startled to see a man in a white hoodie and a pair of blue jeans standing behind them from eight feet away. His clothes weren't what made Lou flinch slightly: it was the man's face. He looked exactly like Altaїr and Ezio.
In his hand was a basket filled cartons of eggs.
"Desmond," Percy greeted.
"Percy," Desmond nodded. "Where've you been?"
"Tied to a chair. Is it just you here, or are you with friends?"
"Just me. The rest are on the farm."
Lou's ADHD kicked in. "If you're on a farm, why are you buying eggs?"
"Dairy farm," Desmond answered.
"Ah. Carry on then."
"Who's she?"
"My girlfriend. Lou Ellen, this is Desmond."
"Hi."
Desmond inclined his head, then looked at Percy. "You're late. By a lot."
"Like I said: I was tied to a chair."
Desmond looked skeptical, but as he had no way to refute Percy's claim, he just hummed. "Well, this is all I came to get. I take it you want me to bring you guys back to the house?"
"That would be appreciated, yes. Thank you, Desmond."
"No problem."
Lou blinked at the exchange between the boys. It was like they were old friends or something.
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Outskirts of Rapid City
"The Farm"
Percy nodded. "Not bad. Secluded. Out of the way, and plenty of space to practice technique."
Desmond just nodded, and Percy began to feel a foreboding feeling. The older teen put the truck in park, pulled the key out of the ignition, and went for the house's front door, Percy and Lou following. Before they reached said door, the son of Poseidon gently grabbed the daughter of Hecate's arm.
"Please, be serious now."
Lou Ellen nodded seriously. "I'll be nice, though I will defend myself if necessary."
"I would expect nothing less."
Inside the house, there were not as many Assassins as Percy previously thought, but he was told that most of them were out in the city on errands.
"Welcome," a man in his forties declared. By his resemblance to Desmond, Percy correctly guessed that this man was Desmond's father, and that, by his voice, this was William Miles, the man on the walkie talkie from three months ago. "You must be Percy Jackson. A pleasure to finally meet in person."
"Likewise. I trust that we have answers to each other's questions?"
"I believe so. How about we take this somewhere more private?"
"Agreed. Lou, play nice with the other kids."
William looked to his son. "Desmond, keep everything under control."
Desmond nodded. When Percy and William disappeared up the stairs, Lou spun around and brandished a Ouija board at the present Assassins. "So, who wants to summon the dead!?"
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"So, do you want to go first?" Percy asked after getting comfortable on a couch, William opposite of him.
"Since you're offering…who are you, really?"
Percy smiled, internally wondering how much the man before him could handle. "Well, Mr. William, that depends on how much faith you have in the truth." Percy leaned forward, serious as the plague. "Can you trust me enough to believe that everything I divulge is the truth?"
William stared long and hard at the boy before him. He looked into those eyes, he regarded that posture, he saw the seriousness in that face. He recognized that he wasn't dealing with a child, but something that looked like a child, and he knew, from the deepest part of his being, that everything he was about to be told, no matter how outlandish it sounded, was going to be the truth.
He leaned forward. "I will trust you, and I will believe you."
Percy just grinned. "No you won't," he observed, and it was an observation born from years of experience, but he forged on. He recounted his past lives as Faris Ibn-La'Ahad and Vergil Cavaliere, and he provided terrifying detail of each. Mission reports, feats, accomplishments, even personal records that were but briefly mentioned in Altaїr's, Ezio's, and Vergil's codex's. He left out most of the mythological aspects of himself, being the son of Poseidon, the existence of the gods, and other gods, and the potential rising of Titan king, Kronos, but he did leave Lupa in the story, as the account of Lupa was backed up by Ezio, Claudia, La Volpe, Bartolomeo, and Niccolò Machiavelli.
At the end, William was mystified. "I'm sitting before a legend in the body of a child…"
"If that's how you wish to view it. Now, answer one of my questions: are you truly Assassins?"
"Yes, we are."
"Then the Templars yet exist?"
William hesitated, and Percy saw pain, regret, anger, and disappointment in his eyes. "…yes."
"The way you say "yes" does not fill me confidence, William." And Percy asked the question he feared the answer to, "What is the state of the Brotherhood today?"
William laughed nervously. "Well…you see…"
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"How the fuck!?" Percy thundered. And then he backtracked. "I'm sorry. Usually I'm far more composed. I'm just a little bit—" his eyes became bloodshot— "absolutely livid.
"You mean to tell me…that the Assassin Brotherhood allowed the Templars to become the most powerful corporate conglomerate on the planet…? And you mean to tell me that…a single sleeper agent—a single sleeper agent—killed the Mentor of the day, and that was enough to completely cripple a world-wide organization of professional killers…?"
"And there's the fact that Templars have access to better technology, better weapons and equipment, better personnel, and better trainers," William coughed.
"Yes, and there's that fact," Percy said with utter contempt. "William, I distinctly recall two times in which the Templars were vastly more outfitted than the Assassins, and they were brought to heal both times. I recall the Third Crusade, in which the Templars—the Nine, as they're called—were all in positions of great power and influence, all in possession of great wealth, and were all killed by my brother, hardly without a fight. The second instance I recall is the Renaissance, when Ezio hunted down every single member of Rodrigo's Order, including, but not limited to, the Pazzi, the Doge of Venice, and the Pope himself, nevermind after that little dance through history the fact that Ezio and I cleaved through the Borgia, who had literal total control over Italy."
Percy took a breath. "William, words cannot describe how severely disappointed I am, especially after I took great care to spread the Brotherhood across the world at the onset of the Sack of Rome. It seems my efforts were in vain, and that is very, very frustrating."
William just rapidly nodded his head.
"Something happened," Percy said. "Even if the Templars became as powerful as they are, and the Mentor was killed, that's not enough to bring down our organization. It had to have already been on the decline beforehand…so what happened, William?"
As it turned out, Percy was right. There had been an event, just two hundred years ago, in fact, and that event was the start of the end for the Assassins.
"December 24, 1800," William began. "Napoleon was going to the opera, and the Royalists didn't want that to happen, so they set up the Infernal Machine. They were going to shoot it when Napoleon got close enough, and blow him up. Naturally, the Assassins intervened. Cheyenne Cormac was paired with Arno Dorian, and that's where everything known, ends. What is next known, is that Arno returned to the Bureau, and he proceeded to slaughter everyone there."
Percy's eyes twitched, and he fought off the urge to grab his head as something like a migraine came over him. He felt like he should know this story.
"Some records say that there was an assailant with Arno, other records say that he was by himself. Regardless, whether singlehandedly or with a small army, Arno laid waste to the French Brotherhood, and he moved on to Cairo, where a Piece of Eden was located, but he was captured, interrogated, and then executed. Despite the methods used, nothing was gleaned from Arno as to what his motives were, but he kept screaming that the Assassins were all liars, and no better than the Templars. He went mad."
"Mad with grief," Percy whispered, trancelike.
"Sorry?" William said.
But Percy remained silent, his mind in a blank place. He rose, and a hand went to his forehead, as if nursing pain. He staggered, details coming to him through the fog.
"He was in love with her…and rejected her over something petty…and they separated…then they reunited…one last time…the Infernal Machine…she died…someone else was there…silver…a circlet…I've seen her…Arno learned something…something devastating; it broke him, changed him, and they—both of them—they…they…they…"
Percy slammed his head into the nearest wall, breaking it. William bolted to his feet, striding over to check for facial damage. To his surprise, the only thing that marred the boy's face was dust. His eyes were unfocused, and so William immediately began patting his cheek, trying to get him back in the game.
After the fifth tap, light returned to Percy's eyes, and he snagged William's hand in a grip far too tight for a child. "Stop that."
"Sorry, I just get a little concerned when people start banging their heads into walls."
Percy looked at the dent, then back to William. "Apologies."
He removed himself from the man's grasp, and clasped his hands behind his back. "So, the Brotherhood is shambles, the Templars are steadfastly ruling the whole world, and are monstrously superior in everything. Just like old times." A very dangerous smile pulled at Percy's lips, and his eyes, unseen by William, briefly turned pure yellow.
He looked back at the acting Mentor, green eyes serious.
"William, gather the Assassins. There's work to be done."
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I suspect that was less modern brotherhood than you thought, but that was all I intended. Percy to meet William, a brief little discussion, and the resolution to whip the kids into shape.
The mystery thickens around the Fourth Life, or have you pretty much figured out what happened? I'm curious as to what your theories are.
Anyway, I regret to announce that this story, as well as Ghoul and Sea Devil, are now on hiatus as I begin work on a different project, a bloody one. I will return, but I don't know when, so be on the lookout.
This is DelayedInspiration, signing off for now.