Chapter 258 is now up for your reading pleasure! I actually finished it last week, so I had to think a little about it. This one takes a break from the fighting to get down to a little explanation on why Simonides is so important to Athene. I feel that it was a good development chapter for the two of them, even though it is Yori's fight. It is an answer that was sort of needed after how crazy Athene became and explain a lot of their interaction.

I really like how it played out. I only touched loosely on Athene's history, when Yori when mind walking through her memories. So all you really saw of her from her childhood before the academy. You know that she was alive during the rebellion and her lift was ruined as a result. While I don't expressly state it, things were at their worse in the post-rebellion period. So Athene suffered more than many of the younger MPs that you've met earlier.

I do try to keep it a little less directly stated why Athene cares about Simonides. The scene and their conversation makes it very clear, but I don't just sleep it out in all of the words. And I feel scenes like that are best. Where just reading the scene and letting it speak for itself makes it better. It is certainly a fairly cliche scene to have, but Simonides personality is already fairly well set. He's more practical these days, but you can still see that goal and vision that he had when he was younger coming out in how he interacts with the MPs. He cares about them, which is clear by how deeply loyal his men are to him. However, he is working within a system that is unwilling to change and he wants to be different. So I think it's going to be good to see his growth in the future. I've got plans for him.

Enjoy!