It had been about a week since the Nemean Lion had attacked the blond duo, and things hadn't been going as well as they has liked. The trouble wasn't with places to sleep, mostly because both of them were able to just sleep on the ground. They didn't get to cold because Desma and Naruto both put off a lot of heat, even if Naruto took the heat he gave off to a higher level. They were able to make great distance, even thought they had gotten off track five times and had to go back.

No, the problem was food.

Catching and skinning the food was easy, but cooking it was the problem. They had no trouble making a fire with Naruto there, but what was the problem was that the Naruto had the ability to taste things and eat through his connection. As the meat cooked he was able to taste the food, and he started to burn it out of instinct. It was like how most gods could smell the food you burn for them, no matter where they are. Naruto was able to taste food through fire when it was being made for him.

Sometimes being mostly god was a bit troublesome, because while he had enough human in him right now that he didn't have to follow to many of the codes gods were restricted by, he also had attributes he shared with them. He could bless and curse people, even though he didn't know exactly how. People could seek his favor, and he could grant them gifts... also unable at the moment due to lack of knowledge. He couldn't truly be killed, and even if he was killed he would become a full god if that happened.

It actually made her slightly scared of pissing him off, because he would one day become a god. That much was promised to happen no matter what, because all he needed were the blessings of another few gods or to die and boom... instant god. His aura was so powerful that he was like monster repellant for weaker monsters, and every other monster wanted a piece of them... which was why they were in.

"Well aren't you an ugly fucker." Naruto commented in a cocky voice as he and Desma stared down the creature in front of them. Desma palmed her face when the giant creature, easily bigger than the Nemean Lion huffed at them. She could not believe their bad luck when it came to fighting monsters, and as if to prove her point another monster jumped out from behind the giant monster.

"That is the Colchis Bull, and a Hellhound." Desma commented with a twitching eye as she levelled her bow at the Hellhound. The first creature was a huge mechanical bull made of bronze with silver horns, and it was about the size of a fully grown elephant. She could feel the heat this thing was putting off from here, and new that she would be useless against it. The Colchis Bull had metal skin that was burning hot to the touch, and could breath fire. Not something she could deal with when she only had a very slight immunity to heat, and not full immunity like Naruto.

So she would gain glory by slaying the Hellhound, a black furred giant god with glowing red eyes. This creature took the size of a small rhino, and it was growling at them with a hungry look in it's eyes.

"I repeat and correct myself, you are BOTH ugly fuckers." Naruto said, before the bull rushed the two of them. The Hellhound stayed back for a moment, as if waiting for the bull to do all the work for it.

"You are an ass!" Desma shouted in annoyance as she jumped out of the way of the charging bull, and pulled a golden arrow out of her backpack and shot it at the Hellhound. The dog creature jumped out of the way, and growled at her but stayed put.

"I know what I am thank you very much." Naruto commented to the young demigod as he ducked under the raging bull. Channelling chakra through his arm he punched the bull in one of it's back legs, but winced when his fist hit metal. He was completely unaffected by the heat, but lets face it. Naruto had just punched metal, and that would hurt.

Desma just twitched and pulled three arrows out of her backpack and put them all on the bow, and took aim at the Hellhound. She was about to fire, before she saw the Hellhound vanish into the shadows.

"What?" Desma muttered in confusion, before he heard a sound behind her and twirled around with her bow pointed right into the mouth of the Hellhound about to take her head off. Letting the arrows loose she was happy when all three pierced into the brain off the creature, the hound was dead before it hit the ground. That was not her problem though, because as the creature started to fall it landed right on her and sent her skidding with it. "Get this thing off me!" She shouted in annoyance at the heavy weight on her legs.

"That's what she said!" Naruto yelled back at her in humor, before he was tackled by the Colchis Bull and sent high into the air. Correcting himself in mid-air he was able to use his chakra to stick to the neck of the bull, and he grabbed the bull by the horns as he jumped around to try and knock him off.

"Get this thing off me, this thing's weight is crushing me, this is all your fault!" Desma yelled as she spoke in a haiku like her dad did for fun sometimes. She sighed in relief when the giant god turned into golden dust, and all that was left was the creature's fangs. She watched as the teeth started to shrink down, and reform into a fang-tooth necklace. Picking it up she placed it around her neck, and made herself look even more like a surfer chick than before.

"Haha! Ride 'em cowboy!" Naruto shouted with an ever-present battle grin while he rode the top of the bull, enraging the demented bull further. The thing bucked as much as it could, but a chakra-enhanced person like Naruto was able to hang on easily. The bull even tried to jump and Naruto stayed strong, mostly from previous experience with giant toads actually.

"Stop playing around and kill it already!" Desma shouted up at him as she walked over to the bike with a very bad limp. Her legs were more bruised from having the beast fall on her than she had thought, and she would not be walking straight for days, before she heard a loud noise. Looking over to Naruto she saw that he had ripped the head of the mechanical bull off by using the horns.

Naruto jumped from the body to the ground, while holding the horns above his own head. The horns shrank down in size so that they were only a foot long each, and Naruto nodded to himself.

"How's that going to fit...?" Desma started ask, before she saw him toss one of the horns into the bike's basket. She was about to ask what he was going to do with the other one, before he tossed it to her.

"Hold onto that will you? You never know when we might have to bargain with somebody, and it would be good to have that to make an offer." Naruto commented as she put the horn in her backpack with a nod. One of the horns of the Colchis Bull would go for a lot of Drachma, and you never know when you would need more Drachma.

"Got it, so where are we now?" Desma asked when she saw Naruto take his map out of his pocket, and look at it with serious expression. Unlike other maps this one never really showed what states were in the country, just the compass and the dots that showed certain locations.

'The closest dots were silver, blue, and green dots clumped together. Artemis and her Hunters are maybe a dozen miles South of here.' Naruto thought before he saw the green dot fade away, and the silver and blue dots start to move towards his orange dot. Looking at the map he saw the closet dot not related to Artemis and her Second-in-Command was a yellow dot.

New Jersey - Garden Gnome Shop

Naruto folded the map up and started to pedal towards the location on the map, and while he would marry Artemis when he next saw her, he wanted to marry her on HIS terms. He would go to her when he was ready to join her, and not a moment sooner. He was only sixteen, and was not in a rush to get married right now.

"Where are we headed towards?" Desma asked as the two of them went at a slower rate than they normally did.

"Something called a Gnome shop...whatever a gnome is." Naruto said as he started to pedal a little faster, and Desma had to hold on tighter. From what the map said the shop was about 150 miles to the West, so he was in no real rush. He could run that distance in a few hours if he wanted to, but he was pretty sure that Desma wouldn't like to go to fast this time. He had seen her limp, and going fast would put stress on her body.

"Gnomes are like things you put on your yard." Desma commented dryly, and she could not really understand why he would want to go to a Gnome shop. It was kinda boring in her opinion, but she was just tagging along with him so it was his choice. Not to mention the bike was a gift from his mother, and it was his strength that was getting them around.

"... Change of course." Naruto commented as he started to go in the direction of the Junkyard they had been planning on going to in the first place. Finding some cool treasure in a junkyard was much cooler than buying something to put in your lawn. Maybe he could even find something his mother had thrown away at some point, and who knows, maybe they could even fight something cool because they touched something they weren't suppose to.

"Back to the Junkyard?" Desma asked with a small grin on her face. She blushed though when her stomach made it's hunger known, and nartuo slowed the bike to a stod.

"Hungry?" Naruto asked as he drew a normal kunai to prepare to go hunting in the woods nearby, and with a nod she got off the bike with him and sat on the ground. While Naruto hunted, she would use her bow to guard the bike, and there stuff. Naruto was about to leave the area to hunt, before a soothing voice echoed through his mind.

Use your power my Child. Use them, and you can summon food.

'What the fuck?' Naruto thought in shock, because usually the only voice in his head was the Kyuubi. The fact this voice was warm and loving meant it wasn't the angry fuzzy in his head. Desma looked at Naruto with a worried look as he cupped his hands together, and in his palms rested a flame. The flame blazed for a few seconds, before it faded away to show a bowl filled his... ramen?

'He really is the child of Hestia.' Desma thought as she watched Naruto use one of the many fabled powers of Hestia, and honestly it was one of the more useful ones in her opinion. The ability to create delicious homemade food out of nothing was one of the many powers of Hestia that Naruto seemed to have gotten from her.

Naruto on the other hand sipped at the ramen broth, and his eyes widened in joy. It was the most delicious ramen he had ever tasted in his LIFE! Not even Ichiraku Ramen was as good as this! He greedily drank up the ramen, noodles and all before he sat across from Desma and looked at the empty bowl. Concentrating again Naruto turned the bowl into fire, before he tried to think of another food.

"Do you have a favorite food?" Naruto asked with a small smile in place. His flame colored eyes beaming at the new power he was able to use, and one that would make life so much easier!

He was going to have to thank his Mom a LOT more than he had planned!

-With Hestia -

"Your welcome Naruto, glad to know you enoy having one of my powers." Hestia commented to herself as she used a stick to poke at the fire she was watching Naruto through. Unlike her other children who had never awakened her powers, Naruto was unlike Demi-gods in another way. Most children to the gods only got a few of their parents powers, while Naruto would be able to use ALL her powers eventually.

She was the Goddess that didn't just deal with the Hearst. She dealt with nearly everything that dealt with family and home as well. Things that were apart of home were part of her power. Like summoning home cooked meals, or even showing people the past or present of family members. She could control everything to do with fire. A lot of her powers were not based around battle, but her battle powers were extremely strong as well.

Fire was one of the most destructive forces of nature, and could destroy whole forests in minutes.

The power to summon food though was one of her favorite ones, because nothing brought a family together like a home cooked meal... a meal she one day hoped to share with her most beloved person. Her lovely son. She didn't even mind the fact that Hera was able to summon food like she could.

"One day I will make you some ramen by hand. Just you wait and see, and then we can finally speak face to face my child." Hestia said, and if anyone was around to see her they would think she was weird. Like most of the time she was in the form of a beautiful twelve year old girl with short brown hair and flaming red eyes. Her clothes were a brown dress with a rope around her stomach, and she wore a cloak around her shoulder with the hood over her head.

She looked at the flame again and the image of her son vanished, out of the flame her own bowl of ramen appeared with some chopsticks. She looked at her reflection in the broth, and saw her pupiless flame eyes looking back at her. It truly made her happy that when she had claimed Naruto he had gotten her flame colored eyes. Their eyes were proof of the bond the two of them shared, and nothing could break it.

'I rather like ramen myself.' Hestia thought as she ate her ramen quietly, and she made Naruto's image of him eating with Desma appear in the fire. This gave her some form of comfort, because she could pretend she was eating with him. Ramen was something Kushina Uzumaki had actually gotten Hestia into in the small amount of time the two knew each other. Kushina was kind of like a... friend to Hestia. The relationship was rather strange between them, but that was mostly because Kushina had been carrying Hestia's child inside her for ten of the months they knew each other.

The girl had a red hot hair, and a personality to match. The fact she valued family above all else made Hestia like the girl even more. Somebody that treasured family was Hestia's kind of person, and like she had said before. Kushina had hair that was the same color as the embers of a fire.

Hestia liked fire.

"I wonder what you will do next, my child?" Hestia asked herself with a small smile on her face, with some ramen noodles hanging from the side of her mouth. She used a stick to poke at the flames some more, and the image shifted to show what she was thinking about. what she wanted more than anything else in the world. The image she had been using and changing as Naruto aged.

It was the image of the two of them coated in flames, and sharing their first hug as mother and son.