"Everyone knows by now fairy tales are not found, they're written in the walls as we walk in a straight line." - Dustin Bates

"I'm telling you, this is the best for everyone."

"And I'm telling you I refuse. It's not happening."

"You think you're being a good person, but you're just leaving more to suffer!"

Percy stormed through the hallways of his headquarters, Shiro struggling to catch up as fast as he could with his cane.

"Then I'm leaving others to suffer. It wouldn't be the first time. I refuse to live a life of crime because others will do it a little more violently."

"A little more violently? Percy, by refusing to expand you're leaving thousands of people to be murdered and raped. To be killed by bad drugs or die in some altercation you could have stopped."

"So what if I am!?" Percy whirled on Shiro, who took a step back. Percy's eyes were glowing, and a storm rolled into the city. "I absolutely refuse to justify a whole life of crime by saying that someone else would be worse!"

Shiro narrowed his eyes. "You want to place your own morals- no, your perception of your own morals above the lives of thousands of people."

"I want to live my own life. If I can help people, great. But I won't spend my years perpetuating crime, facilitating the very reason this city is such a hell scape. I'll leave that to you."

Percy turned back and resumed his angry walk to his office.

"We both know the crime isn't the problem. The crime is a result of the problem. If there were actual jobs, people wouldn't so blatantly or so widely turn to crime. It's why you yourself joined. You had no other options. People won't suddenly not have to commit crimes to survive if you leave."

Percy slammed his door behind him, cutting off Shiro's voice.

For about a month now Shiro had been pressuring him to expand. He had more than enough money sitting around, but he didn't want to. He knew he was going to leave and collapse the whole thing as soon as Shiro was able to go become a huntsman again anyway. Why expand? So that more territory could be thrown into turmoil when he left?

That was Shiro's issue, he figured. Not that he wasn't expanding; though that was part of it. It was that he was leaving. He had come around to Percy's way of thinking, and then taken it another mile.

Percy sat himself down and poured himself a glass of whatever fancy drink was on his desk, taking a long drink until the glass was empty.

Refilling the glass, Percy inwardly ranted. He didn't want to be a criminal. Sure, maybe he could prevent a few deaths, but it felt like he was causing a lot of them, too. It was his life damn it, and it may be selfish, but then Percy wanted to be selfish for once in his life.

"Rough day?"

Percy groaned, looking over to a cushioned seat in the corner to find none other than the omnipotent being of this universe casually sitting there.

"Not today, Monty. Shiro's doing his spiel again." Percy stood up, making his way to sit across from Monty. Despite his protests, Monty gave Percy someone he could rant to. Someone he could talk to, complain to, and ask questions of that he knew nobody else would ever know the answers to.

"He's probably right, you know."

"Yeah probably. At least objectively speaking. But I'm gonna be honest, Monty, I can't bring myself to care. The Greek culture and everything really helps to make me care for everyone here, but not enough to throw my life away."

"Throw your life away? You wanted something interesting to do, right? Well, this is plenty interesting."

"Are you actually telling me to stay? I honestly figured that would be the opposite of what you'd want."

Oum had been visiting him more often than before recently. Usually about once a week he would share a drink with Monty. Or well, Percy would drink and they would talk. One thing that Percy had learned pretty quickly was that Monty didn't drink.

Monty shrugged. "As I said, Windpath doesn't matter. You're the only thing I care about around here."

Percy winced. "That's a bit cruel to put it that way, but alright."

Percy downed another glass before he spoke up again.

"You know, you still haven't told me what it is that actually matters here. It kinda sucks to be on a planet with a set purpose, and not be anywhere near that purpose, or know what it is."

Monty gave a considering look. "I suppose I can tell you a little bit. Not the point of this whole thing, but perhaps something significant enough to matter."

Percy remained silent, leaning forward slightly in anticipation.

Monty nodded, suddenly satisfied with what he was going to tell Percy. "A long time ago the two gods left. These are the gods you know, the gods of light and darkness. I won't bother you with the details, but they left behind four relics and two people, and a primitive human civilization. The relics were of choice, creation, destruction, and knowledge. I'll get to those later. The people ruled over humanity as king and queen for a generation until they started fighting. The queen was an immortal witch, the king a wizard who reincarnated into a new person every generation. The witch took a bath in the spawning pools of the grimm —long story— and is now their queen.

"The wizard went to live many lives in human civilization over the years and has been trying to protect it from the witch. They've been eternally warring for centuries, stuck in a stalemate."

Percy's brows furrowed. "And so what, it's a perpetual war between humanity and grimm? Why haven't the grimm won yet? It seems to me like they're more than capable of killing every human. Why haven't they?"

Monty shrugged. "A few reasons, mostly that the queen —Salem— doesn't have full control over every grimm. They are wild creatures after all, just mostly those she's near."

Percy nodded. "And I'm assuming the witch and wizard can use magic. What about these relics? Do Salem and the wizard have them themselves?"

"They're hidden, or at least protected. They have powerful magic, but they're kept separate. If they're ever all together, it'll summon the gods back to remnant. If Salem isn't gone, Remnant gets destroyed. If Salem is gone, the gods come back to rule over humanity again."

Percy leaned back. "So it's a lose lose situation. There isn't anyone on remnant who would want to summon the gods, even if they do kill Salem, right?"

Monty smiled. "Not all are as averse to the gods as you seem to be, but mostly, you're correct. The relics themselves have useful powers, some more so than others. The relic of creation, for instance, can create and sustain any one thing at a time, while the relic of destruction can wreak incredible destruction upon anything its user wills it to."

Percy's eyebrows furrowed. "So Salem and the wizard have these items, and they're what... Using them? Keeping them in storage?"

"They're split between the four kingdoms. Four maidens —magical women with great powers— protect them. They are the ones who can open the vaults to the relics. At least, hypothetically. The wizard —Ozma— created this system hundreds of years ago. As you can imagine, it doesn't work out the best."

"Why is that? If the maidens are the only ones who can open the vaults, it seems pretty safe to me. Do they just wander remnant, or stay at the vault constantly?. Are they immortal like Salem or Ozma?"

Monty smiled knowingly. "No, they're very mortal and die all the time. The powers simply pass on to a new successor."

Percy raised an eyebrow. "And how is that successor chosen?"

"The last eligible person —that being a younger than thirty year old female human— that they think of becomes the next maiden."

Percy stilled. "Seriously? And then they get a bunch of magical powers and access to one of the most powerful items on remnant?"

"..."

"Alright, fine. Whatever," Percy rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "That makes sense. Because why not?"

Percy poured himself another drink. His vision was beginning to get blurry now, but he honestly kind of needed that at the moment.

"So if anyone can get these artifacts- sorry, relics, then what happens if say, Salem gets the relic of destruction and uses it to destroy everyone? Or the relic of creation and uses it to make a super big bomb to just wipe out kingdoms?"

Monty shrugged, taking a sip of the water that appeared in his hand. "Then Ozma loses and humanity gets the reset button pressed."

Blood drained from Percy's face as he stared at Monty. The way he said that, so casually. It was… disturbing. Percy was reminded that to Oum, everyone might as well have been a construct of the imagination. He could think every one of them out of existence right this moment. What did it matter if all of humanity died?

Percy shivered, downing another drink and feeling the effects come over him.

That couldn't happen. If he had to go on another godsdamned quest to save the world he would, but the way Monty so casually talked about it… He wasn't sure that everything would be alright in the end, even with God sitting a table away from him.

If the relics were protected by such a stupid system, and by such a seemingly incompetent man, wizard, thing, then Percy would have to find a way to protect the relics himself without gathering them together. Or at the least, without gathering all of them together. After all, literally nobody wanted to gather the relics together. Yet, anyway. Not without Salem dead, at the least, so he wouldn't be fighting anyone over keeping the relics apart. The wizard, the witch, and Percy would all work their damndest to keep them from coming together.

Which brought him to his next question.

"Who… all knows about this? About the relics and maidens and Salem and Ozma?"

"It's a relatively well kept secret, I have to admit. Just Salem and Ozma, and their inner circles, as well as the maidens. The governments of the world don't, if that's what you're asking. At least the councils aren't aware."

Percy sank back into his chair. "So… Is there a way to kill Salem or Ozma? Or do I just have to wrap Salem in concrete and send her to the bottom of the ocean?" Percy snorted.

Monty smiled. "Now that would be telling. But throwing Salem in the ocean might not work out too well, with all the grimm who live there. I imagine it wouldn't be very hard at all for her to be dragged out sooner or later."

Percy shrugged. "Worth a try. So I have to find a way to keep Salem permanently contained —launch her into space or something?— all while gathering three of the four relics and hiding the last one. I don't mean to sound arrogant to want them all near me for protection, but is it wrong of me not to trust the fate of humanity to a roulette wheel of very human, very corruptible maidens?"

Monty let out a long yawn. Whether he was bored or just tired, Percy had no idea. "I suppose it's not wrong of you, necessarily. But you'd also be taking humanity's fate into your own hands, without a single vote casted in your favor. That's at the least pretty gray, right?"

Percy frowned. "I suppose so. I don't have much of a better option, though. Unless you're fine with me telling literally everyone about this, that is."

That seemed to grab Monty's attention, if only for a moment.

"Nah, don't do that."

And he left it at that.

It sounded casual, but it was the only time Monty had actually told him to do something, and that meant something. He could walk down the street and blow up an orphanage and the most Monty would do was look at him weirdly —after all, those people weren't anything to him— and continue whatever conversation they were last having. Here, Monty was actually telling him not to do something, so that was probably as close to a divine decree this world was going to get.

Percy mentally shrugged. Good enough for him. He figured there was some reason most of the stuff was hidden, and Percy could honestly see why. If the millions of people across Remnant heard about the maidens and the relics, thousands or even millions of people would fight over the power. Maidens would be inducted into militaries, kingdoms would scramble to acquire relics, creating a magical arms race. All the while, the populations of the cities would panic at the newfound threat in Salem, ironically strengthening her position and attracting grimm.

All in all, it was not a good idea to let the information become public.

Even Salem probably wouldn't want the information out considering there was a good chance that humanity, now armed with magical weapons, would unite against her in its entirety before destroying itself.

Like the relics coming together, the general populace learning of magic was something both sides —and Percy— wanted to avoid.

The only question was, which relic did he want to hide, and which ones did he want to use against Salem? The obvious relic to hide would be the relic of knowledge, assuming it did what Percy thought it did. Knowledge could be very useful in the right situation, but didn't Percy have an infinite wealth of it sitting across from him? Granted, there were some things that Oum didn't give him the answer to, but for the most part he was good enough.

But who knows, maybe the relic of choice would do something stupid enough to warrant it being useless. He would find out eventually, when he found the relics.

The sad thing was, there was only one way he could think about going about that right now; one group of people he had a foot in the door with.

This… as much as he hated to admit it, this was now an actual justification — excuse, whatever — to expand his power base. If he was going to protect the relics, he couldn't do it on his own. He could be the most powerful person on Remnant, surpassing every maiden and even Salem or Ozma, and it still wouldn't matter if Atlas decided to bring it's fleet for a surprise visit.

But if he could get enough money or manpower to stand up to something like that — even just a bit — then Percy was confident he could make the difference.

The only unfortunate thing was that he had zero frame of reference for how powerful these maidens were. Qrow seemed certain he would have no problems with anything on Remnant in a couple years, but he also wasn't aware of the maidens or the two immortals. Then again, Qrow wasn't aware of Percy's abilities, either, so in the end everything was arbitrary.

Percy was the son of a god. Obviously, that counted for something, but he had no idea how much. Sure the gods of light and dark were related to him, but they were primordials. They probably had enough juice to make the two immortals stronger than any god without breaking a sweat.

After all, Gaea, their sister, had had children which were just as powerful as the gods. Hell, Erebus had children that were gods.

That being said, it was probably safe to assume they wouldn't be as powerful as the children of the primordial, or they might be conceivably able to defeat them. They were cursed mortals, and as much as you could raise one to immortality and give them some seriously sick powers cough Heracles cough they still weren't exactly going to be elder titan level. So, less powerful than the gods, probably by some margin.

So it'd be a walk in the park, right?

One thing was for certain, Percy had definitely faced longer odds. He had fought with no holds barred against opponents dozens of times stronger when he was fifteen. Granted, he had lost handily in the two minutes he managed to stand up to Atlas, but Salem was no Atlas, and Percy was much, much stronger now, even if he didn't account for aura. Overall, things didn't look as bad as they could be, but they could definitely be better, too.

Percy let out a long, depressed sigh. He had a conversation with Shiro coming up that he really wasn't going to enjoy.

He could imagine it now.

'So you changed your mind overnight about something you'd been adamant was wrong for more than a month now.'

'Yeah.'

'Why…?'

'Because… I realized you were right?'

It's not like he could tell Shiro about magic. As much as he more or less trusted the guy, he trusted him with the criminal empire he'd built up and didn't much care about, not world ending secrets.

So, he would then have to admit that he had changed his mind, and that Shiro was right, despite having no such opinion.

Well, that settled it. He was getting drunk tonight. He barely noticed that Monty had disappeared during his deliberation, but he didn't pay it much mind. Monty tended to do that sort of thing.

It was an afterthought to his pouring and chugging down another drink.


"And this one you just need to sign to approve a local enforcer." Shiro shoved another paper in front of him, which Percy quickly signed, not even bothering to read the bold text at the top. If Shiro wanted to trick him for some reason, he'd have more than enough opportunities to, whether or not Percy actually read what he was signing.

Percy was in his daily meeting with Shiro at the moment, early in the morning. Or at least, early for him, being nearly eleven by now.

It sucked having to wake up at any time before noon, but he wanted to get this stuff sorted as early as possible in the day. Most days he met with Shiro for about five minutes to sign stuff before fucking off to the wilderness to train, or into the city to entertain himself one way or another. He had very, very little reason to actually intervene in the day to day of the gang, so he didn't, and now Shiro ran the thing for him. It was not lost on him that he was essentially doing what Aspro had done, but he couldn't bring himself to care all that much.

Especially considering that was about to change.

He had been skirting around the topic for the entire meeting, for once thankful that there was a surplus amount of paperwork to sign today, considering it allowed him to avoid the elephant in the room — at least for him — for just that much longer.

It was only once Shiro had collected the various forms he had gotten Percy to sign and began walking out of his office that Percy finally spoke up.

"Shiro, wait," Percy called after the hunter who was halfway done hobbling out of the room, "You were right. I'm willing to… expand," he said, the words coming out of his mouth tasting as sour as if he'd bitten into a lemon, "On one condition!" he added hastily, suddenly thinking of a way he could make this not so horrifying. "If you stay, I'll stay, and I'll expand. I'll do it, but I refuse to without someone I trust helping me."

It was a bluff, probably the largest bluff Percy had given since he claimed to be a tourist to Tartarus. Of course, that had been more of a lie than a bluff, but he figured it counted.

Shiro just stared at him for a second, blinked, and… "Okay."

Percy blinked back. "Just… Okay? Not even gonna… Nevermind."

Shiro shrugged as if Percy was the one being weird. "I find that if you give people a hard time after they change their mind, they tend to do so less. I'll admit to being curious, but I don't imagine you feel the need to explain yourself, and if you don't, then I don't need it explained to me. Besides, you are my boss after all." Shiro winked at him.

Percy felt some of the tension leaking out of him. That was a hard conversation that had… not been so bad. It still felt bitter, telling Shiro that he had come around to his way of seeing things where he had most certainly not, but he couldn't tell him the truth, either.

Not that Percy thought Shiro was wrong. In a country like Mistral, where crime was so rampant that you'd have to visit Argus — A port city more or less run by Atlas, by the way — to find a corner of the continent that wasn't owned by a criminal overlord one way or another, Percy wouldn't be doing any good by hanging up his sword and retiring. All he'd be doing was inviting a gang warfare to take his territory, and then someone who was very likely less concerned about the safety of the people they more or less owned would take his place.

It's just that objectively correct or not, Percy didn't want to be a criminal. If he was being selfish by leaving then fine, but if the difference was a few rapes and murders… well, that was horrible, but Percy could help more people by being a huntsman and killing grimm, right? And on top of that, he wouldn't even have to murder anyone in the process. Percy liked to think he preferred a career with zero murders necessary.

Of course, not everyone got what they wanted in life.

Percy learned this very valuable lesson as Shiro hobbled back to his desk, likely to talk about evil expansion plans. Though was it really an evil plan if it was about killing crime lords? Probably.

Waving him off, Percy walked over to the couches he and Monty had sat on just yesterday. He hated his desk for the most part, at least for conversation. He used it every morning when Shiro had paperwork for him to sign, but otherwise avoided the thing as much as possible. It made him feel old, and formal, and stuffy. Its only purpose was to talk to someone while he was writing something, otherwise the couches fit the occasion just fine.

That's how Percy spent the rest of the day, planning the murder of dozens of crime lords across windpath. It looked like it was time for another meeting of the major bosses.


"And how can I help you this time, dear? We have an arrangement, but I don't run a charity case."

Percy didn't let the small amount of annoyance he felt show on his face. "This isn't a favor if you don't want to make it one, though I'm willing to throw in some incentives down the line, if you're interested. I'm calling because I require your services. I'm a paying customer, don't worry."

Miss Malachite smiled a toothy smile through the scroll call. "I'm glad to hear it. How can I help you, dear?"

"I just need some whispers placed in some ears, and the guarantee of anonymity. I'm making a move and making sure the ground doesn't collapse under my feet when I do."

Malachite hummed. "Making sure that when a boss goes down their men come to you. It's a fairly common tactic, if not decentralized. Most prefer to build things from the ground up if they can so as to prevent anything they don't know is going on from happening, though I suppose it does have the advantage of earning you an extra bank account every now and then. I thought you would have been large enough to handle an expansion by now?"

Percy shrugged. "This one's a bit bigger than I'm comfortable fighting in all out gang warfare."

Malachite raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Very well then, I can arrange some whispers. Be careful, however. If you cut off the head of the snake often enough, those who feel threatened by you will begin to make themselves very difficult to kill indeed. Now, who are you planning to usurp?"

"All of them. Everyone in Windpath."

Percy's statement was met by silence. Shiro was also in the room with him — they hadn't actually left the room since they began planning things the previous night — and was remaining silent, but Miss Malachite had also clammed up.

"Are you serious? Honey, you don't know what you're getting into. Many have tried, you can't take on every family at once."

"You approached me because I was able to defend myself, right? Well, you'll find I have a bit of a nasty bite as well. Can you do it, or not?"

"No, no, I can do it, I'd just hate to lose an ally is all. I'll need payment up front for this one, though, and a couple months."

"You have one month, the date is already set. And send the invoice, I don't care if you charge me extra, just get it done."

Percy clicked his scroll shut and tossed it onto the couch next to him.

"Alright, so that's that taken care of. We should have enough to clinch out the payment she demands, if just barely. What's our ammo looking like?"

Shiro looked up from his scroll, where he was sending and receiving messages at a pace rivalled only by teenage girls.

He winced. "Not great. Assuming that half the gangs we contact won't agree to our little deal to be safe, we don't have nearly enough dust ammo to pull out ahead. We usually keep just enough on hand for each squad to survive a firefight with a rival gang, if that. Of course, personnel would be an issue in that case as well, but hopefully you and I would mitigate that. As soon as we get the invoice I'll use the remainder to buy dust ammo and hire more personnel. We'd be going into a bit of debt, but with your old boss's contacts in the banking system and our new profit margins… we'll be more than fine. The only problem is that we'll have basically none left for bribes, both our regular payments and to anyone needing a bit more incentive to ditch their old bosses after they're dead."

Percy nodded. "We'll just have to go for the extortion route then. Not my favorite, but bribes are hardly morally sound either. As for our contacts in the city government, make sure they're made aware one by one we'll be delaying their payments over the next month. They'll get their regular dues a couple weeks after everything goes down and then regularly after that. They won't like it and they'll probably think we're going down for some reason, but they won't do anything until the deadline hits, either."

Shiro grunted. "Good enough for me. Now for the meeting itself. We're the ones that called it, the other bosses will expect us to have a reason for doing so other than 'I'm in charge of the Blue Wolves and the Alpikos now'. As much as it affects the underground here, those on the other side of the city won't bother showing up in person if it's something like that."

"Tell em' whatever they need to hear to be there. Something about changing drug prices or whatever. That doesn't work so well because the drugs are ferried in through the docks, but you get the picture. We own the gate, which affects all of them, so make it negotiations which affect all of them. We could limit everyone's access to certain goods by an incredibly significant margin so take advantage of the fact that we could at least threaten to do something like that."

"Got it. I am curious though, why so soon? I get wanting to take over Windpath, hell I encourage it, but you could have years to plan. As confident as you seem to be, things could go very wrong a month from now without proper preparation. I'm a huntsman and you're training to be one, but we're only two people and I'm injured, and I still will be in a month, not to mention that you're still learning. This is more risky than we need to be."

"Things won't be as difficult as you think, just trust me. If things go bad, my ass is in the fire as much as yours. And I don't really have the patience to sit around. I've been in Windpath for more than three months now and haven't really even done anything. Patience is a virtue and all that but I'm an ADHD teenager, I'd like to get the show on the road."

"Haven't done anything? Percy, you are aware you are the leader of the largest gang in one of the largest cities in Mistral at seventeen, right? Most kids your age are trying to get by on the streets or worrying about homework. Under what definition have you 'not done anything'?"

Percy stared back blankly. "My definition."

Mortals were considered incredibly mundane and unimportant in the divine world, mostly because they were. Sure, part of it was that the mist gave every demigod a form of pseudo mind control over every mortal on earth, but also partly because Percy could call up his dad and, providing he was convincing enough, erase humankind from the face of the planet.

Of course he would never do that, — and neither would his dad, for that matter — but the point still stood that Percy had caused one of the worst volcano eruptions in American history on accident, or that the worst storm to ever touch the United States had been an afterthought of one of Percy's cousins walking across the continent. When you were dealing with threats like that, guns that go pew pew and mortals that thought their problems were much more important than they really were didn't do much to phase you.

So rising to the top of Windpath in a few months? Honestly, if Percy had been trying he'd be embarrassed that he wasn't running the entire show by now. He had been raised as the praetor of the twelfth legion in less time, which was far more prestigious and powerful than a gang on the outskirts of a dying nation.

Luckily for his ego, he hadn't been trying. But that had recently changed, and so he didn't plan to sit back and wait. Honestly, a month seemed far too long. If he was capable of calling a meeting on such short notice he'd gather up every crime lord in the city and butcher them tomorrow. Even then, if he didn't need Lil' Miss Malachite to help him, he was more than capable of running around the city on a headhunt until there was nobody left.

And on top of his impatience, there was also the matter of the upcoming apocalypse. Considering Salem was immortal and hadn't won yet, he could assume he probably had some time, statistically speaking. And yet, the apocalypse could happen any day. At any time the powers of the maiden could fall into the wrong hands, and Salem would get her hands on a relic that could erase civilization.

Alas, things like this required things like 'preparation' and 'careful planning', which mostly sounded like procrastination and bullshit to Percy, but he didn't know much about the criminal underworld so eh, what can you do.

"There… is the matter of what you're actually going to do once you take over. The city won't dare get involved, but families in Mistral will take notice. They don't oft care for the smaller power plays, but something so large, right next to their seat of power… It will draw attention."

Percy frowned. "Then I'll deal with them as well. After all, if we can help people by expanding, why stop at Windpath."

Shiro raised an eyebrow. "It's… possible. The lesser families will be about as well off as you, all things considered. But Mistral is not Windpath. Mistral as a nation may be very… criminally oriented, but that may take many different forms. Here in Windpath, in a settlement which was raised a hundred years ago and may fall in a hundred more, heritage means nothing and the one with the biggest stick holds the cards. Mistral is much more organized. The families have coalitions, regular meetings, agreements, literal arranged marriages, and their lineage dates hundreds of years. Most of them will have a prospective huntsman or two in their employ, and their men will be far more loyal. Loyalty means everything in Mistral. Strength is important as well… but, most men will choose to die with the family they serve."

Percy hummed, considering for a moment. "I can make a name for myself, that I'm not too worried about. Perhaps we could work with the families, instead of against them? Wait for a family to overstep its bounds before sweeping in to take their territory, saving us most of the ire of the other families. From there it'll be possible to weasel our way to the top and start to exert our influence…"

"It could work, but it would take years, at least, if it's even possible. These families are the ones who have survived for thousands of years, they won't slip up anytime soon. You were the one that seemed to want to move quickly.

"I don't doubt your abilities, you've at least proven that you're more than ruthless enough to get the job done. And yet, you're talking about usurping the entire ruling class of a nation, by yourself. It's not wrong to be ambitious, but… don't get ahead of yourself, Percy. I'm a huntsman, but I can only take you so far."

"I'm not asking you to carry me on your back while I reap the rewards, Shiro. It's understandable that you'd have doubts, but give me a chance. I get it, you're hesitant to go through with it. If it was this simple, everyone — someone — would have done it years ago. All I'm asking is that you wait until I lose. Wait until I take someone on that I can't beat. Then leave whenever you want. If you do that, then I think we'll be spending a long time together."

Shiro scoffed. "Damn teenage arrogance. Alright. I'll stick with you, you know I will, I'm just… cautioning you. Most will think that luck has gotten you this far this quickly… I think I know you well enough to think differently. Prove you can do it, and you'll never have a problem with me."

Percy nodded, letting a small smile cross his lips. "I'm glad to hear it, Shiro."

So we finally get motivation for Percy and get an inkling as to where he's taking us in this story. I know it's been a long time coming but I hope I conveyed well that the frustration you've been feeling at Percy not having a direction to go is a frustration he's having as well, multiplied tenfold.

Honestly if anything Percy wanting to go after the relics is partly him just wanting another adventure, something else to do with his life, because despite his claims Percy doesn't just want to settle down and go to school. He's known a life of adventure since he was twelve, and he's not giving it up now.

He could let Ozma protect the relics as he's been doing for hundreds of years, he doesn't really care about anyone in this universe yet, but he wants to help anyway, because he's never been able to shy away from a situation he sees himself as being able to help with.

As always, thanks for the plethora of reviews guys!

Next chapter October 3rd.