Naruto remembers leaving Konoha. Wooden gates to his back, painted green with the kanji of the leaf, and in front of him; a stretch of land going farther than Naruto can see.

He's heading home now, so it only makes sense there is a vast amount of land between him and Hades' palace. Sandy dunes instead of forest growth. A quest to get back home instead of a quest to bring a friend back home.

Naruto can spy the front lawn of Hades' palace now. It's plant infested and those plants are covered in dozens upon dozens of the brightest, reddest fruit Naruto has ever seen. Pomegranates, maybe. Very well kept pomegranates, if so.

Naruto turns to Nico and Bianca, pretending not to notice the look they were sending to each other just before he spun on his feet. He especially ignores the way their looks are still concerned as he speaks.

"So, whose Cerberus?"

Bianca blinks, then turns to Nico. A glint comes onto his eyes as he answers casually, "A dog."

Bianca glares. "Nico. Not funny," she says.

Nico lifts his hands. "I promise!" he says, and he has this smile that isn't honest in the slightest, but isn't dishonest either.

"I swear Nico if you're lying—"

"I'm not!"

Naruto sighs. "We'll keep an eye out," he says, "Charon said it won't hurt us so it doesn't matter what it is, we'll be fine."

They steer clear of the cave Naruto had noticed earlier but even as they pass a distance away, Naruto still feels a lump come upon his throat.

The place seems to suck every bit of life from the air, and the air itself too. Nico's feet destabilize slightly and in synchronicity, Bianca and Naruto's hands come around his.

Then, too soon, yet not at all, they have arrived at the pearly gates of Hades' palace.

The building looks more and more off the closer he gets. It's not because it's upside completely stops being the case when he gets close. Maybe it's them, the building, or it was some sort of illusion but when they reach the gates, the building is facing up.

But it's because the building is too grand. The towers are too designed and intricate to fade into the same dark shade the rest of the building has. It feels like it should pop more; like it should look cool but is too gloomy to really sell it

Naruto swings open the gates, holds it for Bianca and Nico to go through, then closes it behind him.

He turns after he's shut it with a clasp and let go of the drop rod. For a second, before he's fully turned, Naruto is sure he sees something shift.

His head snaps back. His hands tuck into his shinobi pouch, almost instinctually. His eyes race.

Naruto doesn't see it at first glance but with a second he, well, does and his throat goes dry.

It feels like as he gets closer, the object he's looking at gets more defined. It's a creature— a dog– going nearly double of the length of the wooly mammoths of the snow.

He blinks then the creature has eyes. Six eyes, for three heads. Three sets of teeth dripping with saliva to rip him apart.

Bianca thwacks Nico behind the head. Naruto kind of feels like doing the same.

"But I didn't lie!" Nico says.

Bianca rubs at her sinuses. "You're not funny, Nico."

"Yeah," he agrees, "I'm hilarious."

Naruto looks at the bottom of Cerberus, still transparent and wispy, like smoke billowing about after a fire.

Cerberus is a ghost. Naruto takes a deep breath.

Cerberus is a fucki—

Naruto hates the Underworld.

"Should we knock?" Bianca asks.

Naruto shakes off chills. "It's your house. Who knocks when they're getting into their house?"

Bianca makes a laughing noise with her nose. Naruto doesn't expect how fond it and wistful packed in a dense little bag. "I'm gonna miss you," she says. "I'm gonna miss this."

His heart warms in his chest—

"I know you don't like the ghosts but… promise you'll visit?"

Then it drops.

Guilt ebbs in his throat, threatening on the verge of his tongue, of his next words. "Err… yeah," he says, he lies. Naruto won't be around, and he only realizes now— only when he's standing at the gates of what he hopes will take him away— that Bianca and Nico didn't know that.

Bianca smiles. Naruto tries to do the same, ignoring the holes forming in his gut.

He opens the door. The skeletons standing on the inside, as security guards, spook and jump.

Naruto steps in. It's dark in the palace. For a second Naruto thinks he's looking at a black sheet but sees little sparks of fire come out of a slightly ajar door by the end of the little hall he stands on, and disregards it.

By that same door, Naruto hears muffled, angry, chatter,

Bianca and Nico come in. The skeletons on sight, kneel to them, while one snaps his bony fingers. The room stops being so dark, as torches lining up around, combust into purple flames.

The chatter stops. Naruto can feel how everyone in the room looks in the direction of them even though he can't see it through the door.

Every ringing step comes with a shorter, and shorter breath. Naruto's fingers twitch on the door's handle. This is stupid. The anxiety pooling his chest is stupid.

The door swings open by itself. It creaks and whines as the hinges push it to the side. It's piercing against his ears. He puts his hands around them to stop at the scratch it brings to them.

With that, choice is wrenched from his grasp so he puts his foot in the room and drags the remainder of him through the doorway.

This room is clearly the most designed part of the entire Palace—Naruto doesn't even need to see the rest of it to know.

There are world class paintings practically every other centimeter. The walls are encrusted with hematite and fire obsidian. Hades' chair is made of every coloured crystal Naruto can imagine; sapphire, ruby, diamond, and any shade of gold that has existed.

There is a circle of torches around. To the left, there are the same violet flames he'd seen by the hall, but to the right there is a sudden switch to a light, blazing green ball of flames in each torch.

Naruto wonders where the rest of this interesting decor and ideas were when making any other part of the castle– let alone the Underworld.

He gets a look at Hades, sitting on his throne and looking down on those he addresses. Those being a trio of kids Naruto's age, if not a bit younger than him.

One has pants with nearly-unrecognizable-from-the-real-thing fur attached to them. Another has a nicely pulled and ponytailed sheet of hair coloured a blonde shade between his and Tsunade's.

And the last of them has red, piercing eyes, dotted with tomoes. Two in each eye now, and by the way the holder blinks, it's new.

"Percy?" He whispers. His mind registers for him that one is Annabeth, and the last, the only one he hadn't caught the name of, is the goat-guy.

Hades' eyes flicker onto him for the briefest of seconds. His eyes are coal-black like Bianca and Nico's, just as soulless and terrifying, yet there is this hum to them; a haziness maybe, that takes over the rims of his irises. Something entirely too ethereal.

Naruto never felt he could be killed so easily.

Hades looks to his children, disregarding him entirely, and his eyes go from threatening to soft in a mere instance. His shoulders slump the tiniest amount and worry lines ease on his face. "Bianca and Nico. How good it is to see you."

Annabeth and the goat-guy stop looking at Hades out of respect to look at who he addresses so fondly. Percy had kept his eyes on them, jaw slack and Sharingan fading, since they'd entered.

He turns to Annabeth. "Didn't Chiron say that most people don't try to enter the underworld, and never pass Cerberus if they do."

"Charon," Annabeth corrects, her sharp gaze on the Di-Angelos breaking for a second. "He won't like you getting his name wrong again."

("Twice? In one day?")

Percy rolls his eyes.

Hades gets up. He's at least triple Naruto's size, and maybe more when it comes to power and authority in his steps. His garb swishes and Naruto feels the winds it pushes about as Hades approaches.

It's enchanting to watch a god walk, but Naruto's eyes catch a movement from the goat-guy, tapping Annabeth's shoulder then not so discreetly tilting his head towards Bianca and Nico, and his interest is piqued enough to strain his ears and hear the "Forbidden children" Annabeth whispers.

Forbidden? Naruto wonders. Why would Bianca and Nico be—

He looks up and Hades is looking right back, close enough that Naruto can feel the icy, cold air around him pierce the back of his nose.

Bianca looks up at her father. Naruto can feel the hesitation rolling off her skin. She turns to him for support.

Naruto doesn't look back.

Bianca probably gets hurt— definitely gets hurt by that, but it won't compare to the hurt when in two years from now, she realizes that he lied. That when she said "As long as we are together," and he said "Yeah," he was a fucking liar.

She'd be betrayed. Who wouldn't?

Shame pushes his head aside from hers, and keeps their gazes never-meeting.

She, eventually, and very gingerly gives out her hand. "Hi?" She says to her father.

Hades, who has a look on his face, Naruto can't quite figure out, snaps his fingers. "Melione," he calls softly. So softly in fact it feels like he's addressing one of them.

But no it's not. Melinoe is the teenaged, blonde, popping gum between her teeth, girl that just appears, like she's been there the entire time, in front of them.

"Take these two to their chambers," Hades says. "Then get them something to eat."

Melinoe rolls her eyes, muttering "When mother comes back," but links the Di-Angelos hands between her own.

Before Naruto can say his goodbyes, they blip out of existence. No flash, just gone.

Abruptly they're gone and abruptly Naruto remembers he will never see them again.

Something bitter comes up his throat. Regret lingers in his chest. There's so much he still wants to say to them, and yet he doesn't know if Bianca and Nico were still here, if he'd be able to look them in the eyes, let alone speak.

He turns to Hades, whose attention is solely on him now.

His ebony eyes are cruel, haunting, and his cape billows with the souls of the undead, trying to come out and drag him into the shadows of the cloak.

"You have been pardoned. You may leave now, mortal." Hades starts walking back to Percy and his friends. "Never return," he says.

When Hades is met with silence he turns.

"Mortal?" He asks. His voice is confused, shocked he dare to exist here any longer. " Is this a plea for a guide or a transport? How presumptuous. Fine —"

"I don't want your gift."

Hades blinks. The spirits around him vibrate. Maybe with excitement. Or rage.

Naruto isn't too sure

"I can agree to that," Hades says, "Alecto and the rest of the furies shall hunt you immediately you leave the castle. Now, please do so with haste."

"I still want a gift," Naruto says. His voice cracks; his mind still wrapped up on the distasteful touch he left with Bianca and Nico. "I want out of this future. I want to go back home."

Hades turns now. He has this cruel sort of tilt to his head. Who do you think you are? It says.

"I refuse. Leave."

"Nah, I'm good."

Hades actually stuns for a second. His mouth agape and his form stilled. Then he scrunches his eyebrows tight, somehow he makes that terrifying, and he saunters back to Naruto. "Mind your words, Uzumaki."

At some point, a two-pronged fork— a bident it's probably called— appears in Hades' hands. The sharp endings about to be run through him are gold and bronze plated. The rest of the bident is a soul-sucking navy blue, dark like the River Styx and chilling to the touch— and Naruto hasn't even felt it yet.

"Lord Hades," Annabeth calls from where she kneels by his throne, and probably saves his life. "I apologize for interrupting your conversation but sir, the lightning bolt needs to be returned immediately. Please, sir, see reason and give it to us."

Annabeth is formal in her words. Imploring but not unkind. And with an undertone that is willing to appease but never ridicules herself or her intelligence.

"And my mom," Percy adds.

Percy is just plain rude.

Hades turns his anger onto them. "I do not have the bolt!" Hades storms closer, "How possibly, Wisdom's daughter, would I have it, when it's in the possession of Sea Spawn over here?!"

Percy laughs. "I don't have it. Why would I come all the way here if I had it?"

"To bargain. Threaten me for your mother."

Percy stops his next words just before they leave his lips. He seems to realize that yeah, that does sound like what he'd do and he clamps his mouth shut, frowning.

"Sir, we don't have the bolt," Annabeth says, "I have no such ties to Percy's mother. I would not take this quest other than to retrieve it."

"Then perhaps you just don't know. Jackson may be lying to you."

Annabeth never breaks stride in her speech. "I would need proof sir to believe such a cl—"

Hades interrupts with his finger. He points, and Annabeth shuts up, to Percy's back, where a black, red-zipped backpack, fresh, new and… bulging sits.

"Your proof," he says, "Open the bag, Perseus."

Percy's face loses color rapidly, turning pale like the ghosts sewn into Hades' cloak and holy shit, did he actually steal a fucking lightning bolt?

Percy pulls out a metal stick, embroidered with vibrating bronze, smelling thickly of thunder storms and fresh lightning. It's not what Naruto thinks a bolt looks like but yeah, he actually did.

"Percy?" Annabeth asks, voice small,.

Hades allows his reveal to simmer in the air by turning to him. Naruto's eyes turn from them, to meet Hades' gaze.

"Even if I wanted to, which I couldn't care less, I can't help you."

Something cold ripples under his skin and flows through his veins, like he just got an injection of ice directly into his blood vessels

"What?"

"Time is not under my jurisdiction," Hades says, like obviously.

Naruto sputters. "You're a god, though."

Hades crinkles his eyebrows. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Naruto's breaths are short. His lungs hurt. It felt bad enough knowing he'd essentially betrayed his friends, but knowing it was for naught stabs him hard in the chest.

"Let me explain this simply for you mortal. There is no going back 'home.'"Hades mocks his voice, but heavily increases the pitch and the gratingness, "No one alive can send you back. Especially, since you've been displaced so much."

"No," Naruto decides, then he remembers and his voice gains a backbone; a confidence behind it. "Kronos," he whispers and he'd almost forgotten about fighting in front of the casino, blood flowing, and Luke.

If the Underworld can get any darker and gloomier; it does. The candles flicker by the side, while a slight thrum runs through the ground. Everything around goes dull and anything dead goes more dead.

Hades' face is pale, whiter than a sheet. His eyes are looking at him but so far away at the same time. He looks… haunted.

"Time guy, right?"

Silence, then a whisper: "Kronos is all but dead."

Denial? Naruto thinks. "I met one of his followers. He's very much alive and plotting to kill me for some reason." (Said he—" Luke pauses, "—nevermind actually. All you need to know is that I'm here under orders to kill you). "His name was Luke—"

It's the hitch of breath that interrupts him. It's not Hades, too soft, high-pitched… vulnerable, but from the three questers switching their gazes from the lightning bolt to the drama in front of their eyes.

It's from Annabeth.

Hades' eyes focus. He snarls in his throat, like Naruto expects Cerberus to. "Nonetheless," he says, "Not even my father can send you back."

"Right." Naruto knows Hades has been proven wrong and is just collecting his pride. It has to be.

"My father is strong, believe me I know, but he is no primordial. The amount of power one would need to send a person thousands of years—" Naruto opens his mouth to interrupt but; "— back in time is beyond him or anyone. He did not do it and he cannot do the opposite."

The world freezes over for a second. "Back in time?"

Hades quirks an eyebrow.

"You're wrong," Naruto says. "I'm from the future. The first trip was to send me back in time. This one would be to take me home, three thousand years from now." He snorts with his nose. "Fumbling on your words, Hade–"

"You genuinely believe that?" The same snort he made. "You're from millennia ago, Uzumaki. Hundreds upon hundreds of them."

"But the dates. You guys are of the twentieth century we—I'm from the fiftieth. You're out of your fucking mind."

Even Percy bristles at his disrespect. Hades flashes his bident, murder in his eyes, but a glint, the same one as Nico's— one just brimming to make him feel pain in a discreeter way than just punching him— takes over his eyes.

"Each generation of deity creates their own version of mortals," he starts, "That coincidentally wipes out the last to make room. We obviously start from year one once we do so."

It makes sense. A frightening amount of sense.

The elevators and escalators too useful to have just stopped being used. Modern housing, neon lights touching the sky lines. The cars roaming the streets and on every pedestrian, a phone.

The pollution in the air.

Every rebuttal clamps up in his throat as the implications start prodding at the sides of his head.

It shouldn't change anything. Naruto was trying to time travel anyways but his heart crumbles to dust in his chest.

He wipes prematurely on his tears. He will not cry.

His friends aren't just not-yet born.

They're dead.

Hades probably notices the wetness on his cheeks, and awkwardly shifts topic to discuss something about the lightning bolt.

Naruto zones back in, he'd zoned out?, when Percy snaps his fingers and says "Ares."

Naruto blinks. There is a woman now in the room. She's trapped in transparent yellow crystal, eyes clenched in anticipation, and form bracing to be crushed.

It looks like someone took a photo of her, they way she stays so still.

Hades looks over to him once again. "You have three pearls. Even if you do sacrifice your mother, will you sacrifice an innocent?"

Percy looks at him. "You won't kill him," Percy decides, "You're a fair god, right? From what I understand you gave him a task. He has completed it. You repay him by killing him?"

Hades just looks tired of Percy's shit, so he agrees. "Fine."

Percy rogueshily grins then smashes a pearl below him. Annabeth and the goat-guy follow suit.

Hades glares. "My helm."

"Will be returned in a bit." Then all three flash away, the scent of beach breezes and sea water is all that remains.

Hades turns to him now. It's only them now. Well except the woman at the heart of yellow crystal.

"Leave now. I grow tired of conversation with so many of you pesky and rude children"

Hades doesn't give him the option of refusing because he is snapping his fingers.

Naruto lights up purple. Before he leaves, his voice, quiet; whispered. "How was I sent here then?"

Hades kind-of shrugs but in a Hades way. "Father has something to do with it but not entirely. Perhaps he had help with a primordial. I cannot tell you which one, or— before you ask— why he would do so."

"How can I get back?"

Hades mulls, feeling generous apparently. "Find out the primordial that helped him, then make them and father bow to you and comply with your wishes."

Hades says it like it's impossible. It is probably so. Hades had practically said primordials were so much stronger than gods, than he himself, and Naruto couldn't imagine himself even scratching Hades' cloak.

Yet, he latches onto it. It's enough, he decides.

It's hope.

Naruto glows like the torches around are under his skin. His stomach goes light and floaty. His skin feels warm like a campfire with friends around.

Hades looks on at him, eyes revealing nothing and posture unimpressed.

Naruto blinks then:

Pop!

His environment bursts and reforms in seconds. In one moment he's staring right at Hades and the next he's rubbing at his eyes that just got exposed to hordes of sunlight.

He blinks away the sting.

Instead of dark walls around, there is an expanse of sea to his front and a sandy beach under him.

The sun sits higher in the sky than he expected. It's still early morning. A point between seven and eight maybe but Naruto expected it be night time, with the moon rising and the crickets chirping.

It's the constant black around probably, but that knowledge doesn't help Naruto readjust.

The beach he stands on is completely abandoned except for Percy, Annabeth, goat-guy and a middle-aged punk.

He's got sunglasses on his head, a heavy black trenchcoat on his shoulders and the kind of smirk that just makes you want to punch his face in.

"You're the mortal making rounds on Olympus. Naruto Uzumami or something, right? From the Primordial ruling era?"

He's met with silence. "Ares," the biker introduces anyway, "You walked into the wrong conversation. Now, I have to kill you too."

It makes sense the sea to his side stretches far. Because Naruto is going home.

Fucking believe it.

The Ares fight happens next and I can bet you're not as hype as me.