Apologies

Sorry if you got your hopes up. This is not a chapter, but just a fair warning, and also the stating of the plan.

As you can clearly see, I did not meet my goal of finishing this story prior to the release of the Nico book. Now, the simple reason I set that deadline is that there might be some Piper stuff in the Nico book, like at the end of Tower of Nero when Apollo was doing his rounds, and maybe the end of the book will feature Nico shadow traveling around to see how everyone's doing, and he'll go see Piper. I wanted my version of the missing time between Maze and Tower completed and published simply so I could be like, 'Hah! Mine was done first!' because let's face it:

Whatever kind of effort Rick puts into developing Shelper won't be anything like I did.

I like to think I brought forth a fresh and original perspective to things with having Shel be openly opposed to the LGBT and firmly against publicizing her sexuality. She doesn't do parades, flags, shirts, badges, pins, etc. Anything we get from Rick will be the complete opposite of everything I did. Considering Shel's very first line of dialogue is "Who's this? Does your dad have a boyfriend?" when Apollo flashes in, this does not bode well for my version.

Canon Shel sees a blonde, muscular guy in a toga, and her literal first thought is that Piper's dad has a boyfriend. My guess is that Rick's idea of Shel will be some alt-left nutjob who's all about screaming to the world that she's gay and screaming at anyone who wants to tell her to pipe down.

Basically just the lesbian stereotype.

I hope not. I hope Rick will put forth more effort into it, but considering all the effort he put into Trials (none at all), I'm not betting on it. This means to me that Piper is about to become nothing more than the Riordanverse-equivalent of the Netflix token lesbian character. Which would be a darn shame considering all the previous, actual effort he put into her in Heroes.

Anyway, rant over.

I threw this together to let you guys know that this story is more or less on-hold for a week or two. I haven't even started the next chapter yet because I've hit the final two weeks of my junior semester. I've got projects this week, 05/01/2023 through 05/05/2023, and then final exams all next week. I've got studying to do.

After all of that is done, however, it's back to the grind here.

To be fair, though, it's not hard to figure out what's going to happen. Piper will fight Incognito, win, and eventually end up on the roof with Shel per canon. The only blanks are the owl, the actual fight, and a surprise twist that plays on a favorite headcanon among the fandom.

Then, once I finally finish this story after working on it since September of last year, I will be…

Taking a damn break.

When that's done, I need to work on Voidwalker since it's been over a year since I last updated it, and then I really need to finish Roanapur's Sea Devil, though I am going to be brutally honest here, and say I really don't want to. I really don't have much of a plan for that story, so I'm really thinking hard on whether or not to just slap something together and call it finished. I'd rather not be hypocrite and go that lazy route, but I've been struggling to actually think that one through for months. I'm drawing a blank.

After I figure out RSD, then I really need to get back to AC: T. There's still so much left to do for that story, and I still don't really know what I'm going to do for the Sixth Life, the one where Percy's a Templar in WWI.

Then, after I finally finish RSD and AC:T, I can finally redo the Chaos War with everything completed.

Then there's also the Shin'en/RWBY crossover that I've been promising since 2015, and also the Elden Ring crossover I've talked about for over a year now as well, and also a Cyberpunk crossover I want to do, and then there's still the sequels to my old stories on the table, such as the sequel to Son of Jashin and the sequel to Green-Eyed Ghoul.

Oh, man.

So much to do.

I worry that I'm going to hit that point in life where I simply won't ever have enough time to get to it all, and I'm going to have to call it quits while leaving so many things unfinished.

But hopefully that point is very far off in the future.

For now, I've got college exams to prefer for, a Piper story to finish, and then I need to go back and remind myself where I was even going with Voidwalker in the first place, XD.

Thanks for your patience and support,

DelayedInspiration