CW: Brief description of someone after graphic violence or specifically blunt force trauma.

Also posted the wrong chapter, sorry ya'll. Thanks to the guys who told me.

It's the first time in a while he's talked to the Kyuubi.

The water flows emptily across his feet, and touches, without feeling, on his toes. It's a weird little feeling that he can't help but shiver to.

The remnants of the Kyuubi's chakra linger in the air, filled intensely with malice.

He resists the urge to shuffle on his feet. The Kyuubi had called him here. That hadn't happened before. Naruto is always the one to initiate.

Through the metallic bars that thankfully keep them separated, he sees movement. The floor rumbles as the Kyuubi rises to his paws.

The Kyuubi, as per usual, doesn't come close enough for Naruto to see his fur, but lingers just a step before— where Naruto can't see anything of him but the glowing red eyes.

"What did you do!?" he growls, loud enough it echoes on the walls around.

Naruto furrows his eyebrows. "What?"

The Kyuubi reaches out his fingers to try and claw at him through the cage's slits. It doesn't reach anywhere close, and Naruto frowns at the orange fur he finally gets a look at.

"What're you talking about?" he hisses, eyes narrowed.

The Kyuubi appraises him with the same look he gives a glare. His red eye dances across his frame, and his form seems to shake with something when he finds answers.

"Of course your incompetent and stupid self couldn't sense it."

Impatience is an easy emotion for him to feel coursing in his chest and brash words come even easier. "Spit it out, asshole!"

The Kyuubi comes closer to the cages. Naruto can focus on the black snout or the warm and fuzzy fur, but his attention is drawn like a magnet to the piercing red eyes so filled with hot, spilling rage that Naruto actually bristles.

"There is no chakra in a single specimen here. Nothing," he says. His hot breaths feel like gale-force winds, brinking on a tornado in power, and they pass over him like a heat-wave summer sun. "Whereas even the walls emanate chakra in your pathetic village."

He blinks at the Kyuubi. Then; "What? How?"

"I don't know, but I know it has something to do with you and your clash with that stupid Uchiha."

And hence it's his fault?

You would make a horrible detective, he wants to say but bites his tongue.

"And why do you care?" He asks and maybe a bit of him is mad at his addressment of his dead friend. "You're a demon whose only purpose is to hurt. What does it matter to you?"

The Kyuubi explodes with anger. His chakra swims about around him, like a red dangerous cloak, poised to strike and hurt.

"You are a naive child," he shouts and his feet stomp on the ground harshly, sending tidal waves about.

Naruto takes a step back. He's always known the Kyuubi is menacing, but this… this is different.

His mind is just starting to prickle with doubts at the seal—

Then, a pause.

–and the Kyuubi slumps back into the darkness.

Not even his red eyes look on furiously as he grunts. "One that has cost me my family, and your own."

Before he can process that, the world blinks and he's looking at the hotel ceiling.

The alpine wood that makes the dining room tables is polished to insanity. It's warm, like it's still being embraced by the hearth and with no bump, bruise or imperfection where he presses.

Green bushes, cut to look almost wild, peek out on certain areas of the room. Plants hang from the ceilings. Leaves reflect golden glows.

Naruto can't see the rising, coloured sun past buildings ahead, but he can feel it in the air. He can feel himself being caressed by gentle winds.

He slides onto the chair, across from Bianca and Nico, and puts his plate down unceremoniously.

It's a plate of nearly every breakfast item they have except for the things that won't go together or are in any shape or form healthy.

He puts down the hot cocoa in his other hand a smidgen more carefully. He'd debated coffee but once he was feeling more awake Naruto wouldn't want to be annoying to Bianca with another hyperactive kid to take care of.

She looks up from the advertisement she's not really reading. He thinks, as Bianca puts it down, that she's just using it to avoid conversation with Nico at this impossible time in the morning.

"Watch Nico while I get my food," she says, and doesn't wait for the nod to start getting up.

Nico stops in his sips of orange juice. With a frown, he says; "I'm not a child to babysit." ("You are a naive child,")

"Yes you are." She turns to him. "Please keep him from playing his mythomagic things until I come back."

He nods numbly. Bianca pauses on his face.

As he picks at his bacon, she frowns at his eyebags.

She's worried, he thinks and guilt creeps up his stomach. "Are you feeling alright? You look like a zombie."

He feels like it. "Nightmares," he says.

Bianca gives him an empathetic look before she walks off to the serving line.

She's lucky they all woke up early. With the amount of floors he expects that in thirty minutes or so, there'll be a queue of hungry, irritable people with kids who screamed in their ears till they woke up.

He looks back and Nico is puckering his lips at him between bites of food. Naruto tiredly raises his eyebrows to him. "Ask away," he says.

Nico just started on a tough piece of meat so Naruto waits a couple seconds before the response comes. "What was it about?"

As Nico says that, few people start flitting from the marbled floored main area to the carpet covered dining.

He lowers his voice. "I don't know if I could explain it well," he says as his hand raises to scratch at his hair. "Um… I think my family is in danger—and I- I don't understand how or why? Or just anything at all, really."

Naruto had spent the entire night trying to understand what time-traveling a couple thousand years back could hurt his friends (or the Kyuubi's. The Kyuubi had friends?) It didn't make a lick of sense, he'd thought, maybe a couple thousand times.

What a weird dream, he expects from Nico or: How did you get that from a nightmare?

"I have dreams like that too sometimes," he says. Naruto raises his eyebrows slightly. "Of stuff that doesn't make sense or of things I shouldn't know of. Like— you know the guy from the casino? The guy we're going to meet?"

"Percy?"

"Yeah. Last night I dreamt of him. He was standing by a lake with lots of people around him." Nico rummages through his card selection and brings out a god. He's standing in a forced pose, to show the benevolence of his beard and the might of the massive three-pronged fork in his hands.

"On top of his head was this trident but green and smaller. Suuuuper Poseidon-y, I tell you."

Naruto feels his skin stretch to a smile without his permission. He ruffles Nico's hair, who protests, and asks; "Have you told Bianca of these dreams?"

"She gets them too," he says.

Naruto leans back into the bench. He looks at Bianca serving herself a healthy amount of salad, but he doesn't really look at her. "It was something like that," he says.

"It'll all be good once I get home." The once feels unnatural, now. He feels, distantly, like he should say if.

And it's all the Kyuubi's fault.

The cab to Los Angeles is quiet. The driver is so fascinated by the infinity symbol on his cash register that he's not questioning why a couple of kids need to be in Los Angeles at the fastest he can go.

Nico sleeps through all of it, only waking when the speeding taxi goes over a bump too fast or they take a sharp turn and Nico's head hits him or Bianca.

She leans on the door, her head pressed to where the fresh air hits the most. She keeps her eyes closed and her face relaxed but he knows she isn't sleeping. Her breaths come out occasionally as sighs and even rarer; her eyes flutter open and look off the distance.

Naruto— He just exists for the duration of the ride. He keeps his eyes open, only closing as he blinks, and stares dead straight to where they are going.

He doesn't try to sleep despite himself because all the closure of his eyes will bring are questions. Questions lead to worried anxiety. Worried anxiety leads to hesitation. Mistakes.

It takes way too long, and Naruto is boiling with excess energy— sitting sand's width away from deep tiredness and restlessness— when his feet touch the concrete.

It's been a mere second of breathing fresh air when the engine revs again.

Brum!

He's not even started looking around before the guy is driving off— probably before Naruto can snatch back the Lotus card.

He glares at the back of the taxi till it disappears around a nearby corner, clicks his teeth, then turns back to Bianca and Nico. "I know it's been eighty years but do you possibly know where DOA is?"

The silence is telling.

Around them there is a lack of casinos and high hotels. There is a lack of strip clubs on the side, and neon lights adorning the sky.

Instead they are museums and movie studios around them. Convenience stores and mini markets take over the sides and the buildings that attract the crowds are just bigger versions of those.

The air is fresher. More humid with a salty-sea touch to it.

It's different from Vegas. Boring, really, but less… inappropriate.

He taps the shoulder of someone passing by. They don't turn at first, then on the second nudge they turn their bothered look onto him.

"Can you point me to DOA records?"

The guy shrugs, doesn't really even mull it over, then responds; "Never heard of it."

Naruto nods, biting at his lip, and moves onto the next passerby. Similar, annoying, response.

He realizes, maybe after the tenth guy, that no one knows where DOA is.

Bianca comes over to him with a defeated frown. Nico next to her isn't really paying attention to anything but the fight between the Perseus and Ares figurines in his hands. Naruto's pretty sure Perseus is winning.

"Maybe we're in the wrong part of town," Bianca suggests. "This place is massive."

"Maybe," he says, "Today is the deadline to get you to your dad, so we can't cover everywhere," he reminds.

Bianca squints down how one might look at a puzzle. "Why today? That's so specific. It feels like there should be a reason," she says.

Nico is the one who says it; what they're all thinking of. "There probably is one. We just don't know it."

A pause. "I don't know," he says and sighs because he doesn't know if he cares. Hades wants his kids today. Naruto wants to go back home today.

He's fine with the pressure. He was already putting it on himself.

They enter a street.

The roadwork changes slightly from the previous street to this one. The road is sunk in by steps. The concrete is littered with skid marks, braking marks and other similar car footprints.

The buildings by the sides are deteriorated, nearly unrecognizable pieces of what they might have once been; a kindergarten, an animal shelter and what he thinks is a nursing home.

There is another one, by the end, that he just can't quite see.

Naruto stops, then looks back.

Behind him the plaza is condensed with people too many to count, yet when he looks back in front—

There is no soul on the street.

He hears bustling, taxi calls and general chatting a street down, however no peep or decibel of sound here.

"Ghost street," Nico says. Naruto feels the chills run around his spine.

He turns. "No point in crossing this one," he says.

Bianca raises an eyebrow. "You're not superstitious are you?"

"Your dad is the god of the underworld. That has stuff to do with ghosts. It's not superstition if it's true… right?"

Naruto bumps into someone. He staggers back.

"Watch where you're going," He says. Naruto rubs at his head, which stings with a faint buzz… from walking into the guy.

Huh.

Naruto's form goes a bit more taut. His eyes sharpen.

"That's not fair," the person says, "You walked into me!"

"Liar."

The guy laughs. Naruto kind of imagined he'd fight him more but the dude drops the topic easily. "You're a brash one, Uzumaki," he says, "The type my boss hates."

The guy fiddles with the fedora on his head and straightens his suit. It's similar in style to the type Bianca wears. The ones she says she had before she entered the casino.

Naruto frowns at the guy, distantly aware his hand is tucking Bianca and Nico behind him. "We've done this a couple of times," he says, "What Greek monster are you?"

"And Naruto didn't give you his name. How do you know it?" Bianca asks. His eyes widen. Naruto hadn't caught that.

The guy laughs again. Instead of responding, he points at a worker badge pinned to his chest in small, fancy fine print.

Nico blinks a couple of times, then asks; "Chiron?"

'Chiron' scowls. "Twice? In one day?" He looks down at himself. "He's a horse; I'm not! It's not that hard. Maybe it's the suits or something?"

Naruto turns to Nico, eyebrows in his hair. "This Chiron is a… horse?" Naruto asks.

He isn't deigned with an answer by either of them, and only a confused shrug from Bianca.

Nico snaps his fingers."Ah, sorry. Charon, right?"

Charon brightens. "Thank you, Nico. That's exactly right!"

Nico rummages through his backpack, and brings out a handful of cards. He scans a few of them before he finds Charon's card and presents it to him.

"I don't really use your card a lot," Ouch. "But your dexterity is pretty good and you've got one of the best movement stats in the game. You can move practically half of the arena."

"'Guy who carries the souls of the dead across the Styx' so I can see it," he says, "But I'm assuming Hermes got me beat on that."

"And dexterity. But he's the best in those two stats."

Charon clicks his teeth. "I'm just bootleg Hermes ain't I?"

Nico shrugs. "Sorry," he says.

Before Charon can continue (something about his design), it clicks and Naruto interrupts. "'The souls of the dead'. You're from the Underworld." Charon turns to him. "That's where we're going. Take us there."

Charon smiles. "That's why I'm here, stupid. Otherwise, I wouldn't leave my post. Can't have the boss cut my pay even more."

Naruto shrivels up his nose. Okay. Rude.

Charon hefts Nico on top of him like a backpack. Naruro kind of expects them to just appear in the underworld but Charon starts walking, whistling to himself.

"It's close, then?" Bianca asks.

"Right there, actually." Charon points down Ghost Street, to the building Naruto could just barely not see.

"Oh," Naruto says, a pause to his step, then he slaps his forehead.

Charon laughs. He leads them to the building whilst he bemoans to Nico about something mythomagic.

Naruto takes another pause when he's reached the door. Chilling air too cold to be air conditioned emanates, even through the metallic handle.

Naruto can see the dead, the ghosts, roaming around in the lobby. They're as pale as he thought, almost white sheet colored, and the feel of death drips heavy on them like honey.

There is no usual blanket-over-person look though. The ghosts have human shapes, human faces, and dead-cold, human eyes.

On each of their forms, however it appears, are marks. Marks of how they died.

One by the front of the queue turns. His head is bashed in, deformed by something blunt, with the blood and all. Bile churns in his liver.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Charon says.

Naruto grits his teeth, despite the chills running up his arm and the hairs on those arms rising. He expected this. He expected this, so he twists it open, ignoring the concern on Bianca's face, and enters DOA.

Charon pulls them by the hordes of ghosts, who scream in protest when there is no wait time for them, and brings them to the elevator by the end. Naruto only goes more green when he sees it.

"Move along, people— or former people," Charon says, swatting the hands that try to encroach on Nico.

Naruto tries to do that for himself, but after the first ghost, after he feels his hands touch something that is too icy to be human, he keeps his hands to his sides. He instead does it like Bianca and dodges the hands.

Charon pushes the ghosts that try to freeload out of the elevator. Then it closes, and Naruto sighs between his teeth.

Charon presses a button, then the elevator disappears under his feet.

He blinks. His stomach sinks to his heels.

Then they're on a boat, an empty, rickety boat centuries old, stained black by the coal coloured water below it.

It's inky water too. Naruto doesn't even think about touching it, yet knows it's thick and smelly.

He can't see anything of Charon's face now. His fedora has gotten bigger. It pulls on the shadows of the room and covers his face near perfectly. Naruto can barely see wisps of a hazy purple eye.

"You good there, Uzumaki?"

"...yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

Charon smirks. He can hear it.

Naruto sneers back.

"There's no one else here," Bianca says, "Can I ask why?"

"I took the last guys an hour ago." Charon looks at him as he says that. Naruto tilts his head. "Haven't allowed access for this one. Maybe in a year or so."

"That's… cool," Bianca says.

Charon turns to her. "Gods don't do morals. You'll learn that soon enough, Bianca."

The trip is over quickly. Charon remains silent as he paddles the boat forward, only speaking once to give a name to the waters and remark on its horrible state.

Nico looks half about ready to jump into it, but never twitches to do so because Bianca can see the look too and she glares him meekly and resigned.

Charon stops by a shore, pulling the boat to the side and beckoning them to jump off.

Naruto does so then helps Bianca and Nico up.

The Underworld is a lot bigger than he'd imagined. Maybe it's because claustrophobia and phasmophobia kind of fit together but he'd imagined a red little box with densely packed ghosts.

The Underworld, though, is massive.

In front there are terminals and gates for going to three different lines. Further back there is a stretch of sandy dunes, a cave he spies by the corner of his eye that gives him super bad vibes, then near the horizon there is a castle.

Tall, dark, tenebrific, and… upside down?

Charon grabs onto his arm. It feels a lot like touching a ghost.

"Cerberus won't hurt you," he says. "So don't worry when you see him."

"Who?"

Charon is about to say something menacing he's sure, but Nico interrupts, the most crazed excited smile he's seen except in the mirror.

"Cerberus?!" Nico shouts and it echoes. "I should have expected. That is so cool!"

The dead filter away from him.

"Okay?" Naruto says.

Charon's voice gets lower. He can hear, feel, the chills in his voice. "Your quest has been easy so far," he says. Naruto squints his eyes. "That stops once you get into that castle. This will be the most challenging part now."

Charon lets go of him. Naruto only then feels how tight the grip was.

He feels numb, like he's dead already.

"Stay strong, Uzumaki."

Then Charon is gone. His boat is ferrying away in the distance, farther away from them then Hades' castle,

When did it get that far?

How long has he been standing there? Hoping Charon will come back. Explain, maybe, or take him back.