4. I Channel My Inner Matador

We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the Camaro and rain lashed the wind-shield. I don't know how mom could see anything since I could barely see through the rain, but she kept her foot on the gas.

I heard the weird bellowing noise behind us and saw both Grover and mom flinch. Deciding that now would be a good idea to come completely clean, I said "Mom, I wasn't being completely honest with you about my skills when I told you I could manipulate water." Mom sent me a brief look of confusion but continued focusing on the road as I continued. "I'm pretty sure you won't believe me, but the truth is I'm actually a one hundred and ten year old shinobi that was brought here to be reincarnated by the person in charge of my realm."

Mom's eyes widened as she looked at me and said "W-what?"

I looked at her and she unconsciously flinched. My eyes had gone from the green eyes of her son to the sapphire blue eyes of a Hokage who would put everything on the line for his village. I rose my right hand palm up until it was level with the steering wheel and a rasengan spiraled into existence. My mom stared at the sphere and I took the wheel in my left hand to make sure we wouldn't go off the road. In the back seat, Grover's jaw dropped to the ground as I said "I'm a reincarnated ninja from a realm where we can use an energy called chakra with nearly a century's worth of fighting experience including being part of a war. When I died, Kami, the godess in charge of my realm chose me to come here as a favor to the person in charge of this realm. So don't worry, whatever is coming after us, I'll handle it."

My mom gave me another look. It was so full of confusion and fear that I felt like that time I had to lead a Genin team out of enemy territory when they had been cut off during a mission. My rasengan faded out of existence as I said "We are going to get out of this. I'll deal with whatever comes our way but I need you to be as levelheaded as possible. Okay? I promise I'll explain everything once this is over."

Mom nodded and focused back on the road and I let go of the steering wheel and looked back at Grover who was still staring at me. When he saw me looking at him, he said "You were reincarnated?"

I smiled and said "Yup. Explains a few things doesn't it?"

His stare turned incredulous as he said "How can you joke around at a time like this? We have that thing right on our tails and you're acting like we're just going for a pleasant ride to the beach!"

"Comes with experience. But speaking of what's after us. Do you know what it is? It sounds like it might be some kind of animal." I said in a calm voice.

Grover shook his head and said "I just smelled a strong monster that was following me. I didn't actually stay in one spot long enough to see what it was."

I nodded but before I could say anything else, there was a blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded. I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried, and hosed down all at the same time. I peeled my forehead off the dashboard and said "Anyone get the name of that Akimichi?"

"Percy!" my mom shouted causing me to instantly snap into focus. The car hadn't actually exploded. We'd swerved into a ditch. Our driver's side doors were wedged in the mud. The roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in. I looked at the front of the car where a large hole with charred edges was blown straight through the hood right in front of the windshield where the front right wheel should have been.

Lightning, that was the only explanation. We'd been blasted right off the road. It seems Zeus had some pretty good aim for a guy who was way up in the sky. That's what I thought anyway since there is no way normal lightning could do something like that and leave the rest of the car relatively intact. The hole looked like the result of Kakashi punching straight through the car with his Chidori.

I looked to the back seat and saw a big motionless lump. I cursed as I saw that Grover was slumped over with a lump the size of an egg on his head and blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I quickly reached over and checked his pulse before I breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive. Battered and bruised maybe, but alive.

"Percy," my mother said "we have to…" Her voice faltered as she caught sight of something behind us.

I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud spattered windshield, I saw a figure lumbering toward us on the shoulder of the road. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a football player. I saw something on his head and applied chakra to my eyes before I cursed as I saw horns. This was not good.

Turning to my mother who was now pushing against her car door trying to open it I said "Get as close to that door as you can."

She turned her head to ask me why but I was too busy to answer her as I slammed my elbow into my window and shattered it before I climbed out. Once I was out, I leaned into the hole and said "I need you to crouch down so I don't accidentally decapitate you."

Mom stared even as she crouched down and said "Decapitate? Percy what-"

She was cut off as I stood back up and formed a wind sword in my hand and sliced the top of the car off like a hot blade through butter turning the camaro into an insta-convertible before I kicked the roof away from the car with a chakra coated foot causing it to fly away spinning before it landed outside of the ditch about ten feet away from the car. Mom stared at me before I reached over and grabbed her arm causing her to snap back into focus and scramble out of the car. With her out, I reached over and grabbed Grover's unconscious form and hauled him out as well.

Taking a look back to the road showed that the figure was getting awfully close. Mom pulled on my arm and I saw her pointing to a hill in the distance as she shouted "We have to get to the property line! He won't be able to follow you once you're over it."

I looked towards the hill before I looked back at the figure that was coming ever closer. Then I rose my hands in to a cross hand sign and said "Shadow Clone Jutsu!" A clone appeared in a poof of smoke shocking my mom, but I ignored her look of shock as I told the clone to grab Grover. I then grabbed mom bridal style ignoring her confused questions and the two of us shot towards the hill in a blur of speed that no human in this world could properly keep up with as we pumped chakra into our legs to reach the top of the hill faster.

Me and my clone reached the top of the hill in thirty seconds. Over three hundred yards, one hundred and fifty of those uphill in less than a minute. I set mom down on her feet and turned to my clone as I said "Keep them safe." The clone nodded and I turned around and blazed back down the hill before mom could say anything.

As I shot down the hill I was able to get my first clear look of our chaser as he stared into the wreckage of our car. He was seven feet, easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine - bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other 'ceps, all stuffed like baseballs under vein webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear-I'm talking bright white Fruit of the Looms- which, if I wasn't running towards him to kill the guy would've looked funny. Except for the fact that the top half of his body was so weird. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button and got thicker as it reached his shoulders.

His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head, which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring, cruel black eyes, and let's not forget the horns I saw earlier- enormous black and white horns with points you just couldn't get from an electric sharpener.

I recognized this monster. Kind of hard not to considering how 'famous' he is. And Mr. Brunner had told us about him as one of his first stories. I was currently rocketing towards the Minotaur. One of the top ten famous monsters in Greek mythology. I suddenly heard Kiba's voice whining about how I always got the good fights and I smiled at the memory even as I shot my hand out to the side and drew on all of the rain around me to form a katana. I was now twenty feet from the guy who was sniffing at the car obviously trying to see if we were still in it. He stood up and looked about to bellow before I covered the last ten feet in less than a second and jumped up slamming my right foot into the side of his head sending him flying about fifteen feet away from the car in the same direction he came from.

I landed and shook out my foot trying to get the sting out of it. 'Note to self: bull skull is harder than human skull.' I thought before I heard my opponent growl as he got up and stood to his full height again. I smirked as I said "I believe you were looking for me. Well here I am big guy."

The bull-man hybrid snorted at me before he lowered his head pointing those sharp horns at me. The guy let out a loud bellow before he charged towards me. With every step he took he gained speed until he was moving as fast as a freight train by the time he was five feet from me. A small part of me was impressed with how fast he could get so quickly but that part wisely stayed in the back of my head as I prepared myself to counter that speed.

The Minotaur's horns were just one foot away from piercing me when I somersaulted forward and to the left rolling past his right leg even as I swung my katana which went halfway through the guy's lower leg before my momentum ripped it out of the leg. The minotaur roared in pain and turned around to glare at me. Meanwhile I looked at the damage I caused and thought 'Maybe I should have gone with wind instead. Oh well, nothing for it now I guess.'

The minotaur roared again, this time in anger, and charged at me again but at a considerably slower speed this time. As he got closer he raised his arms slightly in order to catch me if I tried that stunt again. So instead once he got closer I jumped up onto his head and pushed off using it for a springboard to shoot up about thirty feet in the air. The Minotaur stumbled but somehow managed to regain his balance. He turned around to roar at me, but I had already turned in midair and dismissed my water blade as I blazed through hand signs before I shouted out "Wind Style: Wind Dragon Jutsu!"

A wind dragon quickly formed in the air above me which roared it's might to the heavens and launched itself at the minotaur who didn't have a chance to move out of the way before the Wind construct slammed into him. The minotaur roared in pain as the dragon punched straight through him leaving a very big hole in his chest. I landed on the ground as the minotaur fell to his knees surprisingly still alive somehow although I was pretty sure he was in no condition to fight anymore.

The rain continued to pour from the heavens as I slowly walked towards the beast. When I got close it tried to weakly swat at me with its hands but I merely swatted them away with my own before I formed a wind blade and said "You made a really big mistake coming after me and my family." I slashed the sword in front of me and the hybrid's head fell off its shoulders as the body crumpled to the floor before both parts burst apart into black particles as if the minotaur was never there but for a single horn that I bent down and picked up. I glanced at it curiously before I turned and began running back to where my mom and the unconscious Grover were.

When I was close to the top, mom ran down the last ten feet and gave me a crushing hug. Pushing me away to arm's length she stared into my eyes and said "Don't ever scare me like that again Percy." She then drew me into a second hug and said "I honestly don't know what I'd do if I lost you."

I frowned and said "You wouldn't have lost me, mom. This wasn't my first fight. Hell, it wasn't even my second. I've been fighting as a shinobi for nearly a century, heck, I've even fought in a war before. I know what I'm doing."

Mom frowned at me and said "So you've said before. Care to explain what exactly you mean by that?"

I took a deep breath and said "It's better if I show you." I went through a chain of hand signs that Ino had taught me before I focused on what I wanted my mother to see and put my pointer finger against her forehead. As soon as my finger touched her forehead, my mom's eyes dilated to the point she almost didn't seem to have irises. Once I saw that I knew that the jutsu had taken hold and that my mother was now seeing some of the key points in my life including my so called 'graduation exam,' the Chunin exams, fighting Nagato, and the war as well as others.

Five minutes later, mom's eyes returned to normal and she blinked before she stared at me and said "I can't believe you painted a national monument in broad daylight without getting caught before you finished."

Me and my clone couldn't help ourselves, we burst out laughing harder than I had ever laughed in this lifetime. Out of all of the events I had shown her, the first thing she talks about was my painting the Hokage monument. My mom smiled before she frowned and said "It must have been hard growing up without parents. I at least knew mine for a short while before they died."

My face went serious as I nodded. I was about to say something when mom's form suddenly went transparent like a hologram causing both of our eyes to widen before she exploded in a shower of yellow light.

I just stood there for about five seconds trying to figure out what happened before my shinobi side quickly made itself known and I went into sage mode in an instant. Not usually the best of ideas, but I had mastered the skill and this was important. The extremely rapid absorption of natural energy caused my eyes to go bar like and the red pigment to surround my eyes but it also gave me slightly webbed feet and a bulge to my nose for a few seconds since I had to balance out the energies properly once I achieved sage mode.

That was done subconsciously though as I expanded my senses out to their furthest extent trying to find mom. After a minute of trying to find her in range and failing, I desperately took on more of the world's natural chakra, taking on so much, one slip of focus would turn me into a toad statue faster than I could even think of expelling the energy. My senses expanded to cover the entire planet and if I wasn't trying to lock onto just one presence I'm sure all of the life signatures I was feeling would have overwhelmed me and I'd have been a nice lawn ornament right then.

Finally, after ten minutes of searching, I sighed with relief when I finally locked onto her presence. It was faint, far fainter than I wanted, but it was still there. Once my relief had finished cementing itself in my mind, I frowned at where I could sense the presence. West from here, on the other side of the continent in fact, and underneath the earth so deep I'd probably need professional deep sea mining equipment just to get anywhere near that deep. Which really only left one place she could be if this had anything to do with Greek mythology.

I expelled the natural chakra from my body and looked at my clone who was tending to Grover's head wound like he had been ever since I left him with orders to watch after him and mom. He looked at me with a panicked look and said "Did you find her?"

"Yeah, but she's apparently in the underworld." I said.

The clone frowned and said "But if you could sense her life presence, then she's not dead. What's she doing there?"

"I don't know, but I plan to find out. First though, we should get Grover some help. We were never medics. There should be some people on the other side of this hill if mom is right. I'll go there. You should probably dispel though since it'd be hard to explain there being two of me."

The clone nodded and dispersed in a cloud of smoke. I walked over to Grover's form and put him on my back piggyback style. I walked to the top of the hill and stood next to the White House sized Christmas tree that stood on the top and looked down into the valley as the rain finally stopped pouring down. There were a number of buildings in the valley with lights on in the biggest house that was about a quarter mile away, which appeared to be four stories tall. With a destination in mind, I pumped chakra into my legs and blazed down the hill leaving a trail through the waist high grass as I rushed towards the lit building.

It only took me about a minute to reach the porch of the house. I jumped the stairs and landed right in front of the front door. I freed my right arm from holding Grover's leg up and knocked on the door twice before I returned the hand back to supporting his legs. Footsteps rushed over to the door and I was suddenly looking at a blond haired girl whose hair was curled like a princess. Behind her, I saw Mr. Brunner's form, which I hate to say didn't surprise me considering the talk I had overheard between him and Grover.

The girl frowned at me before she saw Grover on my back and I was suddenly pulled into the house with the girl slamming the door as soon as I was through the entryway. She pointed to a doorway and began walking to it and I got the unspoken message and followed her. Mr. Brunner meanwhile watched me walk past with an unidentifiable emotion on his face before he turned and followed us.

The room I was led into was a bedroom. I walked over to the bed and placed Grover on it while the girl walked over to the desk and opened a drawer before she pulled out what looked like a first aid kit but one that was a lot more different than the usual kits. As she walked over to where Grover was now laying, I turned around and saw Mr. Brunner in the doorway. I walked over towards him and said "Sir, I need answers and I plan on getting them. Let's start with why I have Greek monsters after me."