Naruto: Prince of the Underworld

Chapter 21 Fun in Olympus!

The Mist that Chiron talked about really did screw up a normal human's perception of all the 'mythical' things that go on in the world. Seriously, Percy beat himself up about the whole way back to New York. But before that, they had a little fun with the reporters, who told them what they thought had happened.

According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake.

This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted Percy, Naruto, and two other adolescents in New York and brought them across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.

Poor little Percy Jackson and Naruto Uzuamki weren't international criminals after all. Percyhad caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away from their captor (and afterward, witnesses would even swear they had seen the leather-clad man on the bus). The crazy man had caused the explosion in the St. Louis Arch. After all, no kid could've done that.

That had cleared Naruto's name because they blamed Ares for the underwater explosion as well, taking that a distraction for their escape, but they could explain how Naruto survived, but the explosion had kicked up so much water that it broke Naruto's fall, and it splashed out the fire on Naruto's back, which they saw as normal fire. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police.

Finally, brave Percy Jackson , thanks to the supposed encouragement from Naruto Uzuamki, had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Naruto had stolen the man's knives to defend himself against man, helping Percy fight off their captor. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. Percy Jackson and his three friends were safely in police custody.

The reporters fed them this whole story and they just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted, which wasn't hard, and played victimized kids for the cameras.

"All I want," Percy said, choking back my tears, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew ... somehow ... we would be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number." The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for three tickets on the next plane to New York.

Naruto had to hold in his laughter at that. Percy was starting to learn things from him and he was proud. However, he kept on that sad look while on the inside, he was dieing.

After that, Percy said they needed to get back to New York and all the TV reporters, much to Naruto's annoyance, provided them with the money to get airplane tickets. Seriously, was Naruto ever going to use his money for this quest? Probably not.

They knew they had to other choice but to go on an air plane since they did not have the time to travel back by car or train for that matter. However, knowing that Zeus was watching them, Percy had a hard time deciding whether to board the plane or not. Naruto, however, did not care and just boarded the plane like it was no big deal.

While the blond demi god was watching the inflight movie, heard Percy, who was seated behind him, silently freaking out. He sighed and looked to either side of him where Annabeth and Grover were in the same row as him but they were separated by two other people that were looking at him and only him.

"uh, can I help you two?"

"Oh sis, he finally noticed we were looking at him," said the male, who wore a white business suit.