Shinobi Amongst Godlings
Summary: I thought when I died that I could finally enjoy retirement. But it seems like Kami has other plans.
AN: This is going to be similar to my Sensors story due to the fact that I'll be transcribing a good chunk of this. That does not however mean that I own the book. Also, I should warn you all to the fact that Naruto will be pretty much untouchable in lightning thief due to his experience although I do plan on eventually doing the other books as well where the playing field is a little more even. However, don't expect the second book for a while. The only reason why I'm putting this up now is because I've had the first nine chapters done for three years and decided to finish the rest in order to help with some writer's block I've got on a few other stories.
1. My New Assignment/Math Teachers Are Evil
PROLOUGE
Just when you think you're done, they yank you right back into mission briefing. At least that's how it seems to be for me. I used to be a shinobi for the Village Hidden in the Leaves, or Konohagakure for all of you die hard Japanese fans. And, at the risk of sounding highly arrogant like a certain bastard I could name, I was a damn good one, maybe even the best. Sure I stumbled upon my victories through my early years due to my sheer unpredictably and being stubborn , but I learned how to really fight the best way a person in my profession could, through war.
Once our fourth equivalent of the World Wars finished I kept climbing the ranks as I was called on to handle missions that no one else would be expected to survive from if they went on them on their own. You know those kinds of missions right? They're the kind of mission where you're fighting a mini war and it's seems to be you against the world, or at least a whole minor country's worth of enemy nin. Good thing I'm pretty much a one man army myself. But while there were those kinds of missions, there were also missions where I had to be a little bit more discreet. Now those had been hard.
Eventually I had gotten so good at what I did that I actually managed to achieve my dream and become the Hokage. Of course when that happened, I went from simply killing my enemies to having to restrain myself from killing them whenever I had to deal with the council, but hey, that's life right? Still, you would think that they would have allowed me to have made it mandatory to have ramen for lunch at the academy at least once a week right? I mean compared to some other decrees made by myself and past Hokages they had to choose that one to veto?
But I'm getting off track here. I spent about twenty years on the job before I began training my replacement for the job. Five years later I gladly handed the hat over to the kid and began taking missions again. Everything seemed to go well for the next ten years, but then some idiot decided that allowing multiple villages to have access to giant creatures made out of chakra wasn't a good idea and should instead be kept somewhere more 'safe'. Apparently this guy hadn't read the recent history books because he obviously wasn't around for the Fourth Shinobi War. Any way, long story short, me and a team of Anbu beat this guy and his relatively large group of followers around a bit before I introduced him to my all time favorite jutsu the Rasenshuriken. Yeah, that guy's not making any more speeches any time soon.
After that the Elemental Nations grew relatively quiet with me simply taking on whatever missions I felt like. And then at the ripe old age of ninety eight I kicked the bucket while I was asleep on the night before I was to go take out a relatively large bandit camp. I know, anti-climatic right? Still, at least it wasn't some horrifying death like being decapitated or electrocuted, but come on, dieing in my sleep? Although it probably wouldn't have been so bad if Kurama would have stopped laughing about it for over an hour after the fact.
Now, I know most of you are scratching your heads and going "Wait, if he died, then how does he know this Kurama guy was laughing about how he died?" Well the answer is simple. Kurama happens to be one of those giant creatures of chakra that just so happened to be sealed inside of me. Also there is the fact that the two of us had an encounter with the divine being in charge of making sure the elemental nations and the rest of the universe as we know it isn't completely wiped out all at once with no hope of ever recovering. Said divine being went by the name of Kami, maybe you heard of her.
Any who, Kami sent Kurama on his merry little way after she had a nice chat with the big fur ball but held me back from 'going to a nice little retirement that I had saved up for during my life.' Apparently the world I lived in was part of only one realm and some people who were in the middle of the command ladder of another realm were going to royally screw things up in the future and the person who was in charge of everything there had called in a favor. Said favor was for Kami to supply the soul of a warrior that would be able to knock some sense into everybody that would be reincarnated. Guess who Kami decided to pick for her first choice? And no you don't get a cookie if you get it right.
Kami told me that I had a choice. I could pass on to the afterlife where my mother was waiting for me or I could go to this new realm and live another life. I have to say that I was tempted to just go to the after life but Kami pointed out a few things that really got my attention. The first was that this other realm that I was going to go to was almost completely different from our own so there would literally be a whole new world to discover. The second was that she was willing to allow me to have the same amount of chakra when I was born as when I died, as well as the fact that apparently I'd be gaining some new abilities while I was there. The chance to discover a new world cinched it for me, I was going.
Before I left Kami told me that I'd have twelve years to get used to the new world before the 'people upstairs' would begin making trouble. She also said that I would have new abilities that were water based that I should learn how to use within those twelve years including breathing underwater. (She didn't flat out say I could breath underwater but she did say I wouldn't have any problems fighting in it for long periods of time.) Finally she told me to put my practice with dealing with the council to good use. I had asked her what she meant by that but she simply smiled and said that I would see before everything turned white.
Story Start: I Not So Accidentally Vaporize My Pr-Algebra Teacher
My name is Percy Jackson, although in my previous life I went by Naruto Uzumaki. In this life I'm currently twelve years old and am currently attending Yancy Academy while I wait for whatever mess the big boys upstairs drag me into. Yancy Academy is a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid?
Well now that depends on which realm's point of view you're asking from doesn't it? After all, most shinobi who reach Jounin rank or higher usually get some pretty weird quirks. Mine had just been sheer mischief and mayhem oriented. Granted, my pranks had toned down quite a bit since graduating from the ninja academy but that doesn't mean I gave them up completely. Still, at least I'm not running around in green spandex shouting about spring times of youth or walking around reading porn in public.
But I'm getting off topic. As you're reading this it is May and I'm currently on a yellow school bus with the rest of my sixth grade class on a field trip to Manhattan to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff. And I'm thinking I should really slap whoever okayed this trip. Twenty eight mental case kids and only two teachers in a building surrounded by very old, very fragile things? Yeah, that's going to turn out well. But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher, is leading this trip so hopefully we won't accidentally (or not so accidentally in some cases) burn down the place.
Mr. Brunner is this middle aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He has thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. Most people wouldn't think he'd be cool. But he tells stories and jokes and lets us play games in class. He also has this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, and to make it even cooler, he actually talks about how they were made and used. He is the only teacher that could keep me awake in class since lets face it, I had already learned most of the stuff that the other teachers are trying to teach me almost a century ago.
Anyways I was hoping the trip would be okay, or at the very least one where I wouldn't get in trouble for something that I might or might not have done. Too bad my bad luck of having things go FUBAR during missions at the most inconvenient times seems to have transferred over to this life as well.
You see, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, there was this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. One of the other kids decided it would be fun to mess with one. And then they just had to go blow up the school bus with it. The kid bolted but I was still in the area looking at a statue dedicated to the soldiers who had fought there. The idiot had scared the hell out of me but no one would believe me when I told them that I was nowhere near the cannon when it went off. And before that, at my fourth grade school. We had taken a behind the scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool. While we were on the catwalk the local class bully decided it would be fun to push me into the lever that tipped us all into the pool. But did that guy get any of the blame? Of course not, that would make sense. And that was just those two years. You'd never believe what happened in third grade, never mind second and first.
And for this year I had to put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, who was currently squirming in her seat after I had caught a chunk of a peanut butter and ketchup sandwich in my hand that she had thrown at the back of my best friend Grover's head before I turned around to give her one of those shinobi stares. You know the kind, the one where if you make a single mistake I'll kill you kind?
Grover's an easy target. He's scrawny. He cries when he gets frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he is the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he's crippled. He has a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he has some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walks funny, like every step hurts him, but don't let that fool you. You should see him run when it's enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit had began throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair since she knew that I couldn't do anything back to her since I'm already on thin ice with the headmaster who had threatened me with death by in school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip. Apparently my reputation of a trouble maker had preceded me. She threw two chunks before I had enough and caught the next piece and sent her a silent message that I was not amused.
I applied the smallest hints of killing intent just to be sure I got my message across before I turned back around in my seat to face forward again and wiped my sticky hand on the back of the seat in front of me as I said "One of these days I'm going to snap and kill that girl."
"It's okay. I like peanut butter." Grover said obviously trying to calm me down.
I snorted and said "People usually put peanut butter in their mouths Grover. Unless of course they have gum in their hair, which you don't. Seriously though, that girl is annoying."
"Just leave her alone. You know who would get blamed if you two fight." Grover said.
I snorted again and said "Fight? Grover, if she and I were to actually 'fight' as you put it, she wouldn't be able to still go to school since she'd be in a hospital. Of course I would get blamed."
Grover sent me an odd look but I ignored it in exchange for taking my first look at the museum as it came into view.
Since it was his area of expertise Mr. Brunner was leading the tour. He rode up front in his wheelchair. Guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black and orange pottery. Some of the stuff was in such good condition that if I wasn't absolutely sure I was the only chakra user on the face of the earth, I'd think the Romans and Greeks had used preservation seals on their stuff.
He gathered us around a thirteen foot tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I paid attention since it was pretty interesting while at the same time ignoring everybody around who was talking as if they were at an amusement park instead of a museum. Thankfully one of the skills you learn as a shinobi is how to tune out all of the unnecessary things in your surroundings when you need to focus on important tasks. Although ignoring Mrs. Dodds giving me the evil eye was a little bit harder to ignore.
Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.
From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. But that's okay, since I considered the feeling mutual. I always felt this really bad vibe off of her, like I could still use Kurama's chakra and just feel evil oozing out of her pores. Especially when she would point her crooked finger at me and say "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after school detention for a month.
Apparently I wasn't the only one to think that our math teacher wasn't exactly homo sapient. One time, after she'd made me erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said "You're absolutely right." He had said it in such a way that it made me feel like Grover knew Mrs. Dodds was something much worse than a math teacher with a bad temper. Like Zabuza, Demon of the Mist worst.
Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art and I kept listening even as I raked my eyes over the symbols on the column doing my best to translate them. Then Nancy Bobofit had to snicker out something about the naked guy on the stele and I finally lost all patience with the girl.
Turning around, I said in my best Iruka-sensei voice (Which is almost one hundred percent spot on if I do say so myself.) "Miss Bobofit, maybe you'd like to teach the class?"
The whole group laughed except for Mrs. Dodds whose evil eye began to resemble the look Tobi had given me before I finally sent the murdering bastard to the Shinigami.
Mr. Brunner stopped his story as he said "Mr. Jackson, did you have a comment?"
Turning back around, I shook my head and said "No sir."
Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"
I looked at the carving and said "That's Kronos eating his kids. Kronos was the Titan god. He didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, Kronos ate them, but his wife hid Zeus and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. Which makes absolutely no sense to me how you could mistake the two, but anyway, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his old man into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"
"Eew!" said one of the girls behind me even as Mr. Brunner motioned me to finish.
I shot an annoyed look at the girl before I said "The gods and Titans ended up fighting with the gods winning. Zeus and his fellow gods then cut Kronos into thousands of pieces and threw him into Tartarus."
"Excellent answer Percy. Short, yet descriptive." Mr. Brunner said.
I nodded my thanks before I heard Nancy Bobofit behind me mumble to a friend "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids."
"And why, Mr. Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"
"Busted." Grover muttered with a smirk.
"Shut up." Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
At least Nancy got packed. That was another reason why Mr. Brunner is my favorite, he's the only one who ever catches her saying anything wrong. The guy has radar ears.
I thought about his question, and shrugged as I said "As far as Kronos eating his kids, I'm not sure. About all of Greek and Roman mythology in general? There's a lot of reasons why it matters. For instance, I could say that our society is founded heavily on the Greeks and Romans, particularly architecture wise. I mean look at our national symbol, the eagle. That's the symbol of Zeus isn't it?"
"Exactly Mr. Jackson." Mr. Brunner said with a hint of pride in his voice before he said "Now, to expand on what you said about Kronos and his children. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"
As the class drifted off with the girls holding their stomachs and the guys pushing each other around and acting like do-fuses, I paused at the entrance to the exhibit to see Mr. Brunner taking a long sad look at the stele like he'd been at this girl's funeral.
Frowning, I said "Mr. Brunner, are you coming?"
His head jerked towards me in the same way that Kakashi-sensei's did whenever he had been caught in his memories and suddenly jerked out of them by someone. Smiling sadly, he made a dismissive motion with his hand and told me to go outside and eat my lunch.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.
Overhead, a huge storm began to brew, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I frowned as I looked up at the unnatural clouds knowing that things were coming to a head on some level higher than what most people could comprehend and my mission would soon start. The signs were obvious since the weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if those clouds were part of a hurricane that was blowing in. It'd just be one more abnormal weather occurrence to add to the list.
One other glaring thing that pointed the storm clouds to something that couldn't be mortal related was the fact that nobody else seemed to notice that we had clouds that might as well have been taken from a pitch black night sky with how dark they were. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse. And it was a pathetic attempt let me tell you, even a civilian back home could have done better. And of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.
Grover and I decided to sit on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. Our line of thinking was that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from THAT school-the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.
Grover and I ate in silence for a while as I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about the apartment the mortal who was my mother in this realm lived, which was just a little ways uptown from where we sat. It was weird having a mom after living a whole lifetime with only a total of twenty minutes with a chakra imprint of my dead mother to get to know her. And it was more than just that weird I have two moms thing. I kept having to keep myself from calling her Kaa-san since that would raise some questions that I would really like to not have to answer.
I saw Mr. Brunner wheel out and park his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He began to eat celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.
I was about to unwrap the second sandwich I had brought when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends-I guess she had gotten tired of stealing from the tourists- and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap. It seems someone had forgotten what had happened on the bus.
"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.
Now it is important to pause here and say that while I have made amazing progress when it comes to using the new water based skills that this life can use, I've still not totally mastered it yet. That said, when Nancy grinned at me with those hideous teeth two things happened. One, I cocked my eyebrow before I blasted her and her friends with an isolated five second ten percent powered blast of Killer Intent that left them stumbling and their hearts struggling to maintain proper rhythms after temporarily stopping for those five seconds. Two, the water from the fountain reacted to my Killing Intent and about a gallon of it surged out of the fountain soaking Nancy and sending her on her butt.
Nancy blinked once before she yelled "Percy pushed me!" I rolled my eyes wondering at just how oblivious people could be when the girl's shirt was soaked and she thought I had pushed her.
Those thoughts were put on hold as Mrs. Dodds seemed to materialize right next to us and I had to force my body not to react from nearly a century's worth of fighting skills and break her body in half right then and there. Meanwhile some of the kids were whispering about how one of the fountain's pipes seemed to have ruptured and pushed Nancy down.
As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-"
My eyebrow shot right back up and I said "You can't honestly be blaming me for a ruptured water pipe?"
Mrs. Dodds smiled that sickly sweet smile that all females seem to be able to do, only a hundred times worse as she said "Come with me."
Grover started to say something but I shot him a look that told him to stay quiet for his own safety. He looked down with this look like he had just failed to save the world causing my eyebrow to shoot back up.
"Honey, NOW." Mrs. Dodds said before she turned and began walking towards the museum's entrance.
Nancy Bobofit smirked at me. I gave her a class five shinobi I'll-kill-you-later stare and blasted her with my killing intent again causing her to stumble once again. Then I turned to follow Mrs. Dodds who had somehow already made it to the entrance and was waiting impatiently for me.
My shinobi instincts began going from green levels to yellow as I thought 'How'd she get there so fast?'
When I was halfway up the stairs, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel. I'm not entirely sure why, but that pushed the needle on my gauge from borderline yellow to middle yellow.
I looked back up and Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall and I at first thought that she wanted me to buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop. A thought which had me snorting at the improbabilities of THAT happening. But apparently that wasn't the plan.
I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section, which except for us was empty. Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling. She was looking at it as if she wanted to pulverize it. As I entered the room and heard the sound I unconsciously slipped into a battle stance that allowed me to move wherever I needed to while still seeming like I didn't plan to fight or flee right at that moment. (And personally I was leaning towards fight. This math teacher was really starting to get on my nerves with always turning a blind eye to obvious things.)
Mrs. Dodds apparently had good senses since as soon as I came in she said "You've been giving us problems honey."
Deciding to play it safe while I still could I said "Yes, ma'am."
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?" Mrs. Dodds asked as she turned around. My instincts went past borderline red into "Warning: Fight Approaching!" The look in her eyes was beyond mad, it was evil. And all of a sudden that vibe I always felt around her wasn't a vibe anymore, it was a visible aura. My eyes narrowed the slightest bit as I began circulating my chakra through my body faster in preparation for a fight.
Thunder suddenly shook the building as Mrs. Dodds said "We are not fools, Percy Jackson. It was only a matter of time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."
My eyes narrowed even further as I slipped just a fraction more into my stance and allowed my chakra to flow just that little bit more freely. All I could think of was that this woman was definitely not what she appeared to be and knew that I wasn't either.
"Well?" She demanded.
"I don't know what you're talking about." I said.
"Your time is up." She hissed.
Then the weirdest thing that has happened since I got to this realm happened. It was as if Mrs. Dodds had one of Orochimaru's Curse Seals and she had just activated it straight to level two. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She definitely wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she looked like she was going to enjoy slicing me to ribbons.
I snapped fully into my stance as I flared my chakra causing it to become visible as a thin shell shocking the creature that I now recognized as a Fury and said "Well, I always knew math teachers were evil but this takes the cake." The Fury hissed at me but grew silent as I threw my right arm out and a wind sword formed in the air before I grasped it. The Fury seemed shocked again before she recovered her wits and shot at me.
Now to normal people, a winged hag shooting at them with razor sharp claws would probably terrify them. Me, I was suddenly bored. Here I was expecting some epic fight and for some reason the Fury was only coming at me at Chunin speeds when for some inexplicable reason I expected at least Jounin level and as she got closer I almost lazily ducked under her claw swipe before I sent my wind blade right into where the thing's heart should be.
Mrs. Dodds had exactly half a second for her eyes to widen before she was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.
I suddenly felt a presence behind me and spun around wind sword in guard position only to catch a glimpse of Mr. Brunner's red umbrella as his chair left the area. I frowned but put thoughts of whether or not my Greek teacher was a monster as well behind me and took a look at where our other teacher had been and said "So it begins huh?" Then I left the gallery and headed back outside.
It had started to rain during my little fight with the Fury disguised as a mean old Math teacher. Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."
I blinked, but didn't say anything since if there were things that could fool the mind back in the Elemental Nations like Genjutsu was it much of a stretch that there might be something similar here that covered up what just happened inside? Thunder suddenly boomed up in the skies above us and I looked up wondering what was going to happen next now that I had essentially vaporized our Math teacher.