Erm.. I thought i'd do this to rip the bandaid off instead of the story, in case it's a turnoff (I guess?) for you.
The final bit in the last chapter wasn't Naruto freaking out.
Also Major character death isn't only applied to Sasuke (cause he did die in that moment, Naruto is just bugging) it just means that I'm okay with killing establishing characters as long as it progresses my plot
Percy looks back, again, and the blonde guy is still following him.
His pupils have shrunk to pinpricks. He can feel the labored, unstructured breaths from here, rolling on his skin. The man is frowning, heavily, as he makes his way closer to him— past the hordes of people between them.
It feels like despite the crowd that walk between them their eyes always stay trained on each other's.
He's searching for something, Percy thinks, then shivers, the cold running from head to toe.
"But Percyyy," Grover grumbles, his feet trying to stick down on slippery tiles, whining as he fails.
"Drop it, Grover," Annabeth hisses with a forked tongue. He imagines she's still annoyed that an Athena kid like her, was so easily tricked by games and discos.
"I promise," he says as he tears his gaze from blue irises looking on intently, too intently, "That we'll go and hunt some rednecks after, eh?"
"Promise?"
"Promise." Percy is lying through his teeth. He can just imagine his mother's face if he makes good on that, and the way it'll twist when she learns that he forgot about her.
They drag Grover by the restaurants, trekking to the entrance that feels so far away next to True Bluefin Saute's, Consommé's, and Fugu Puffer Fishes.
Percy's stomach growls fiercely and the opportune business men try to usher him into their shops. A part, a sick twisted part, is tempted— but the guilt bubbling ferociously in his chest burns hotter than any hunger.
Their shoes squeak on the floors as they stop by the entrance. Percy doesn't know why, maybe a weird curiosity, he turns back for a quick look. He sees blue and immediately snaps back his attention to the guard and employees sipping on their mochas and espressos.
"Are you okay?" One asks as they notice them, a quirk rising to their eyebrow. "Did your game fall on someone?"
He says it lightly but Percy isn't too sure he's joking. "Um, no," he says hurriedly.
Through the opaque, frosted glass of the door he can feel the summer heat mixed in with scorching, bitter lightning that simmers in the air. He can already tell that the wind is anything but a zephyr, and that the tides on the beach are anything but calm.
"Can we leave here?"
The world seems to freeze over for them. The employees share a weird, unexpectant look at each other. The same one answers. "Yeah, but why wou—"
He's out of the Casino, with Annabeth and Grover connected to his hands before she can finish. The bells above the door ring as he opens it and the metal hinges creak softly as he spreads it open.
Percy distantly hears another person offer a premium card, but he's already closing the door shut.
The memories come in with the clasp. He finally, finally remembers his mother's name, her face, and her warm, sweet blue chocolate-chip cookies.
Annabeth sighs in relief next him, while Grover widens his eyes and gapes, seemingly getting his memories back and making the mental connections.
The heat feels as bad as he expected. Harsh winds blow unforgiving flashes of intense calidity to his skin. Dry air flows in his nose, giving no reprieve or pleasure, but an arid throat and more burn in his chest.
Above them, great clouds brew with lightning— huge streaks of white pulsing around, poised to strike.
His father also holds the domain of storms, he thinks. Perhaps that's why thunder bolts haven't yet struck him down.
"We're out," he says. There's no moment where he thinks; Dang, I missed how the air feels.
It's uncomfortable and regular.
Apollo makes a little space for himself between the clouds, by the horizon, just enough above the ground for it to register on the corner of his vision. He makes a grandeur about his setting, with a pink, purple sky as a small bubble around him.
It might be for looking at the chariot, or it might be relieved tears pooling in the back of his eyes, but his vision goes blurry.
He switches them on, and the world goes crisp.
"We were there for a few hours, at maximum." Annabeth says. He doesn't know how she already has a magazine, but rationalizes in his head that it's Annabeth. "How has it already been five days?"
"Five days?" Percy asks, alarmed. His mom, his mom. "That's… one day to the solstice," he mutters breathlessly, more from himself than benefit to the conversation.
"But it's the same time since we got out," Grover whines and Percy isn't surprised he's denying. Percy is just a bit too busy panicking.
The conversation gets cut through before Annabeth can give her reality checking speech.
The bell sings again. Percy isn't terribly surprised.
He's already facing the door so doesn't turn, but just looks up from the magazine. Tired annoyance bubbles in his chest.
The door shuts rather forcefully. Oh, he's angry, Percy realizes belatedly.
The blonde guy walks outside the Casino, his hands by his side curled into fists. "Where did you get those eyes?" He asks but, really, demands.
The guy's face has gone red. A mix of confusion and rage burns on his face. He's nearly frothing at the mouth.
"You're the guy that bumped into me," Annabeth interrupts. She's giving the guy a look, then turns to him with the same look.
He frowns at her. This wasn't his fault.
The guy just asks again, dead focused on Percy. "Where did you get those eyes?" There is something in his voice, something mixed in with the emotions before, sadness maybe— grief, he decides— and Percy can just see that the dude just got back some gut-wrenching memories.
Percy is annoyed though, so he slips out a biting: "Want me to point you to the WallMart?"
The scratch marks, they're too organized to be scratches… tattoos?, on the man's cheeks come together as he frowns.
"You're avoiding what I'm asking."
"You're pressing me about my regular eyes!"
Percy is huffing now, his hands unconsciously threading through his hair. This conversation is pointless, he thinks. The solstice is tomorrow, and he can't waste away another second on this.
"Not these," the blonde says heatedly, tired of his shit. "I'm talking about the Sharingan."
"Sharingan?" He gets a little flicker of curiosity in his throat, but pushes it aside. "Never heard of it."
"The red ones you were flashing about."
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he says, scrunched up eyebrows and all.
Annabeth pinches the bridge on her nose, runs the finger up till she can press at her temples and push back the blonde hairs falling on her scalp. "He knows, Percy," she says.
Percy makes a noise in the back of his throat, something annoyed. "He was just looking like he was questioning himself. Grover, you saw it right?"
"The fact you were trying to convince a mortal that he was crazy is kind of concerning."
He rolls his eyes. "You guys said we were supposed to keep the mortal and godly worlds apart," he says, though his mind chirps to remind him that it wasn't, it was Chiron.
"Whatever you have is definitely not 'godly' or Greek in fact."
Gosh, such a smart ass. "You know what I'm talking about, Annabeth."
"You need to get more specific," she replies and the blonde guy interrupts before he can get a hot reply out of his mouth.
He's gone paler than when he was in the casino, green like he's sick too. "Where did you get the eyes?" He repeats through gritted teeth. "Did you pluck them from someone? Sasuke?"
"Gross," Grover says.
"No, I didn't 'pluck' these from a 'Sasuke'. I got them last week, out of the blue, when I was fighting a cow-man." The guy doesn't flinch. He wonders if he thinks Percy is joking. "Is the interrogation over?"
"No," the guy says defiantly, then pauses, looking over to the magazine Percy had been draped over a second ago. "What… date is it?"
Percy grimaces. He'd probably been there awhile. This is going to be rough.
He picks the magazine from Annabeth and pushes it onto the guy's awaiting hands before he can overthink. He looks down, rushing past the flashy headline, did Annabeth pick up freaking Vogue!?, and racing to the edges.
He reads it, once, twice, a couple dozen times, then; "Fuck."
He rubs at his eyebrow and bites at his lip, looking genuinely lost. "Can I ask if you've heard of Konoha?"
The guy, Percy, and Grover turn to Annabeth. She's already furrowing her eyebrows, the way she does when she's thinking very hard.
It's weird to see her stumped. "No," she says shortly, as she shakes her head.
"Fuck," he whispers again.
The guy idly folds and unfolds the magazine in his hand and bites at his lip at the same time. He closes his eyes then while pinching at the skin on his forehead. He's trying to concentrate, but Percy interrupts because he's just too curious.
"You know something about these?" He flashes them on for a second, the man freezes over like he's seen a ghost, and he turns them off.
"Yeah." he says shortly. He sighs, long and loud, shoulders slumping then rising back, and like that there is a new fire in his eyes. "You guys look like you need to be somewhere, but I have a few more questions, and I think you have some too."
He can see a debate happen in the man's eyes. When he's come to an agreement with himself, he continues. "I can't leave some people here, so we'll catch up later?"
"The two you were with earlier?"
A far-away look passes over his face. "Yeah."
Annabeth nudges his knee to remind him that yes the guy was right and they do have places to be.
The guy snaps out of his reverie and looks back up at them. "Where are you guys going?" He asks, "Maybe we can meet up later and just talk?"
Annabeth looks hesitant next to him, but Percy rattles everything off before his brain can begin to ponder. "We're going to Los Angeles, right now. But in case you don't find us there. We— I spend summers on Long Island."
Annabeth thwacks him on the arm, and he sends her a confused and heavily annoyed look. His nose pulses with where she elbowed him earlier, and he mentally tallies two for when he gets back at her.
"Cool." With that underwhelming response the guy is off back to the Casino.
He enters, sending one last look at Percy's irises, then closing it shut. Percy knows the way everything just seems to fade there, so he can't help but wonder if the guy is ever going to come out.
He turns back, suddenly very tired, and meets Annabeth's look. "What?" He asks.
"You're so stupid," she groans, and starts walking off.
He follows her movements, especially her shaking her head. Annabeth is talented at making him feel like he's missing something. "What?"
Grover, teasingly, smiles over at him. "She's talking about the locations you gave him."
"Okay so he knows where we're going for our quest, but you said it; he's mortal— we're not."
Grover laughs at him. "Annabeth thinks you're stupid for that, sure," Percy levels a look at him, "- but L.A? Long Island? Do you know how big of a range you gave him? Those are huge places, dude."
"Oh." That's all he can really say, stunned. For a fraction of a second, he's tempted to go in and fix his mistake but on the chrome door all he can see is himself going in and being sucked right back into the allure of the games, leaving his mother to rot in the underworld.
Guilt is something he decides he's felt too much of today. His gut twists in his body and he hopes the guy, who of course he'd forgotten to get the name of, can hear his transmitted apologies.
Grover laughs at him as he walks away, his furry little goat legs shivering. Percy glares.
He turns for the final time from the Lotus Casino, giving it a little mental wave goodbye.
He walks up to Annabeth— who is already standing by a yellow cab with her Lotus Casino card brandished like a knife.
The explosion, the crack, then the grief. That's the first memory he gets back.
Naruto takes in a breath, as his fingers run on the Casino's entrance. The door is cool, comforting against his sweaty skin, and yet chills him to the bone with scary foreboding. He could go in there, and once again forget everything.
He releases the breath, twirls his shaky fingers around the handle, and once again the bell chimes.
The music in the Casino is nostalgic when it hits his ears. Loud chatter fills him with an almost wistful emotion. The sardonic heat fades off as a wave of cool, humid air, just the right temperature, passes over his bones.
Naruto ignores the sound of expectant eye-rolls next to him, and glares at the offered premium card. He brushes past them, his feet stepping harshly on tiled floor, and walks, at a brisk pace, towards the Mythomagic competition box.
He reaches, sooner than he expected to, and with a thankfully still focused mind.
The competition box is coloured in the same blue heroic lighting. It's expansive, with two dozen people in the main area alone, watching, while booths aligning the sides are filled with competitors. There is a screen in the dead center of the room, broadcasting two players eagerly playing, then flashing to the next two without pause.
He looks around, pacing from booth to booth. The first, second and third don't house Nico or Bianca, but annoyed players that grumble about 'intruders messing up their focus'.
The fourth brings him a dose of relief.
"You're back," Bianca says, turning her bored expression off the ceiling. "Go to the toilet or something? That was quick."
He only thinks then to have an idea on how to convince her. "No, I was outside the Casino, talking to the guy who was asking about the date."
Bianca hums while Nico besides her stops giving his cards a discerning look, to give him a curious one.
"You were freaking out about that before," he says, "So, what year is it, then?"
Bianca tilts her head up when he looks down. "See?" she says.
"It's not 1942," he says, and she deflates while the opponent, very confused, turns to him too. "It's… like much later."
Bianca furrows her eyebrows, probably wondering why he won't just come out and say it. It'll be too much of a shock, he decides, and they wouldn't believe him.
He taps his feet. "Like we're in the twenty-first century, and we need to get out of here before any more years pass." Naruto hasn't done the math, because of course he hasn't, so he doesn't know how long even a second in here is out there.
"Bullshit," the opponent replies, shaking his head and messing his pristine, cared for, hair around.
Naruto growls in the back of his throat. He doesn't need someone making this harder, he thinks while debating flipping him off and his stupid figurines.
"Shut up," He hisses instead.
The man, Nico too, blanches at his disrespect, while Bianca gives him the same discerning look she did when picking the mystery card.
This time she doesn't find something that convinces her. "Bullshit," she repeats.
The same annoyance the guy with the Sharingan, Percy, had on his face throughout the conversation sparks up in him. "Why would I lie about this?" He asks.
Bianca levels him something unimpressed. "You could be luring us into a trap. Stranger danger, ever heard of it?"
"I wouldn't do that!"
"How am I supposed to believe you? I've known you for– like an hour, and then you're telling me that I've time traveled?"
"Not you!" He drops the magazine he took from Annabeth on the table, and lifts his hands to his head to convey his annoyance. "I'm saying time outside works differently from inside here. It's been a month here but outside it's been seventy- eighty years!"
Bianca shakes her head. "That happens in stories. Magic like that doesn't exist. Magic doesn't exist, period."
He rubs at his sinuses, his head aches with the multiple arguments he's had today.
He brings his hand down, his palm twitching, then abruptly, and without warning, he forms a Rasengan on it, blue and whirring with speed.
For a second, there is stunned silence. The noise piques the interest of people walking outside the booth and they gape openly.
Then all of their minds process.
"Holy shit," the opponent says, pushing himself against the wall.
He moves his hands around to convince them that it's not an illusion, and only stops when his hand gets too close to Bianca and she flinches harshly.
"Does this change your mind?" He asks, like a smartass would.
Bianca's breath is sucked away by the spinning. Before she can get her wit back, and begin the essence of a rebuttal, Nico's voice cuts through, through Bianca's fight, through the opponent's wheezing, and through the screech of the Rasengan.
"Bianca?" He says. She, along with all of them, turn to him.
"What?" She asks hurriedly and impatiently.
He's poured over the magazine, eyes faraway, breaths stunned and fingers pointing to the location Naruto knows the date is imprinted on.
Why hadn't he thought of that, he whines as Bianca slowly makes her way to Nico, looking at him and his Rasengan like wild animals, then traces her eyes to the magazine.
She gasps. Her eyes go wide, panic and shock mix weirdly on her face. She moves back, and the competitor takes that opportunity to look over at it too. He breathes in harshly and sits back down, eyes far away.
"Okay" Bianca says, her voice shaking. "I believe you."
"Nice," he says dumbly. "So.. we can go?"
Bianca just nods and starts moving for the entrance.
Nico gets up suddenly, his chair creaking on the ground, earsplitting and attention drawing. He's frowning heavily, hands so tightly wrapped around the Hades figurine he'd gotten earlier; his fingers have gone pale.
"We can't just leave now," he says, "What about the contest?" he whines.
"Nico," Bianca says harshly. "Your tournament isn't anywhere near as important as this."
He looks hurt, genuinely hurt, but the voice of complaint once again rises in his throat.
Bianca shuts him down. "Nico, we are leaving now, and that's the end of the story!"
He shuts up, glowering at the ground.
Fuck, Naruto thinks as Bianca gathers some things of possession, hissing to Nico that they aren't going all the way to the room to get his 'stupid figurines.' Now he feels bad.
They're out of the Hotel in thirty seconds. The guy Nico was card-dueling breaks off of them before the entrance. He walks off, and under his breath Naruto can hear him say something about 'revolutions' and while a part of him shakes in interest on how a Mythomagic competitor can make a Casino burn, he turns away to the streetlight behind him.
The warm, sweat-inducing night air passes over his back. Air wafts in his nose, putrid and burnt. He can almost smell the smoke, the gas, in the air as it sticks in his lungs like molasses.
He intentionally keeps the door open. Bianca next to him doesn't notice. She's looking at the sky, a frown on her face, and she's nervously tapping her feet on the ground in an unstructured rhythm.
"I can't see the stars,"
Nico is looking at him, though, so he sees his fingers cross, and gets to see a puff of smoke and another of him appear.
Bianca walks forward, still frowning, but she's now looking at the cars passing, and the phones in people's hands. Naruto would be there, staring with her, if it wasn't for the debriefing he was giving his clone.
"I don't know where their room is," the clone replies.
Naruto rubs his sinuses. "Check every single one if you have to."
"And how am I supposed to get in?"
"You're a shinobi, figure it out."
The clone whines. Naruto mocks the noise in his throat, pitching it higher, and only stops when he realizes he's making fun of himself.
Nico silently marches over, stunned as he looks over at his clone, and hands him a keycard that has the room number and the floor printed on the side in Comic Sans and fine print.
"Thanks," the clone says, and ruffles Nico's hair. "Someone here isn't a slave driver," he bites.
Naruto rolls his eyes. "Just get the damn figurines."
The clone grumbles under his breath, but goes back into the casino, startling the employees by the entrance. Then he shuts the door behind him with a loud clack.
Naruto winks at Nico, and Nico attempts a wink back, miserably fails, then settles for a smile.
Naruto has taken about two steps, Bianca turning around; asking where they're going, Naruto frowning because he hadn't thought about that at all , when his day goes from stressful to down right hell.
He hears a whoosh, a rush of sound hitting his ears, and then just all of a sudden, he feels cold, sharp, really sharp, hard metal slide to the front of his neck, teasing it with a little dig into his skin.
"Hi," the perpetrator says, who hadn't been there a beat ago. His blonde air flies about in the wind his quick speed brought about. His smile, a nice smile that doesn't fit at all with the sword by his throat, is spread across a damaged, scarred face with a particular long scar stretching from his forehead to the bottom of his chin, passing haphazardly where his blue eye glares.
"Kronos told me about you," the guy says. Nico whispers 'Kronos' and of course he knows who that is, and of course it has something to do with stupid mythomagic cards.
"Said he—" he pauses, "—nevermind actually. All you need to know is that I'm here under orders to kill you. I wouldn't do this if I didn't need to, especially in front of a kid"
Naruto wonders what he might've done to get this attention, as the blade sinks in just that bit more. He gulps, which doesn't really help, as he feels a little trickle of warmth make it's way down his throat.
"My name is Luke," the guy, Luke, introduces and pointedly doesn't add his last name, "and I'm so sorry for this."
The blade moves. He's not sure who shrieks, maybe it's Nico, Bianca or maybe both, but the world collapsing into black doesn't make it easier.