The sun hadn't even fully cleared the horizon when the Hermes cabin erupted into its usual state of chaos. Luke had been awake for hours, leaning against the wall in a meditative trance that passed for sleep, his copy of The Nymph's Midday Squeeze – Volume 4, tucked securely under his pillow. He watched with a deadpan expression as kids scrambled for mismatched socks and argued over who had borrowed whose toothbrush.
"First day of the grind, newbie," Chris yawned as he kicked a stray sneaker out of his path. We've got a full schedule. Sword work, archery, and the lava wall."
After a short breakfast, Chris and Luke stepped out into the crisp morning air. They walked toward the climbing wall, a towering obsidian monstrosity that was currently burping small plumes of fire, Chris reached into a small leather pouch at his belt.
"Listen, since you're jumping into the deep end, you should know about the safety net. "If you fall off the wall or get a spear through the gut, don't panic. We've got the good stuff. Ambrosia and nectar."
Luke's ears perked up. The terms sounded familiar from the dusty mythology books his mother had kept, but the way Chris said it made it sound like more than just a story. "Food of the gods?" Luke asked, his voice flat but his eye tracking Chris's hand with intensity. "You keep divine rations in a fanny pack?"
"Hey, it's a utility pouch," Chris defended, pulling out a small, crumbly square of something that looked like lemon cake. "And yeah, it's the real deal. It heals almost any injury, cures diseases, and tastes like... well, whatever you love most. But don't get greedy. If a mortal or a demigod eats too much, they literally spontaneously combust. Your blood turns to fire and, poof, no more demigod."
Luke stared in shock the small stub. If we had this during the war. He'd seen medical ninjutsu perform miracles, and he'd abused high-grade soldier pills that could keep a man fighting for hours on end, but a substance that could heal through consumption alone was something he hadn't accounted for.
"Can I try it?" Luke asked, his interest aroused.
"Just a nibble," Chris warned, holding it out. "Seriously. If you start smoking, I'm throwing you in the lake."
Luke took the square. With a practiced, lightning-fast motion that Chris's eyes couldn't even begin to track, he slipped a hand under the edge of his mask. He took a tiny, cautious bite and pulled the mask back down.
His eye widened. By Tsunade's divine tits….
The world snapped into high-definition. The dull ache in his lower back from sleeping on a drafty floor vanished instantly. A surge of warmth, far more potent than any soldier pill, flooded his body.
But it was the taste that truly staggered him.
He hadn't tasted it in nine years. The rich, smoky, salty perfection of a high-end yakiniku stall in the heart of the Hidden Leaf. He could taste the charred edges of the beef, the sweet-and-savory glaze of the tare sauce, and the faint hint of charcoal smoke. For a split second, he wasn't Luke Castellan in a valley of Greek misfits; he was Kakashi Hatake, sitting at a wooden counter with a cold drink of sake and a mission well-done.
"Whoa," Luke whispered, his voice hitching just a fraction.
"Told ya," Chris smirked, tucking the rest away. "So, what was it for you? Brownies? Pizza? My first time, I swear I was eating my mom's homemade empanadas."
Luke blinked, shaking off the ghost of Konohagakure. He looked at his hands, feeling the hum of energy vibrating under his skin. "Barbecue," he said simply. "High-quality beef."
"Barbecue beef?" Chris laughed. "Man, your brain is wired differently. Most kids get something sweet. You get a protein fix."
Luke adjusted his mask, his eye-smile returning, though it was sharper now. The ambrosia was a game-changer. It was an S-class restorative. Note to self: Acquire a private stash.
"Maa, Chris," Luke said, looking up at the lava-dripping wall with a new, predatory focus. "I think I'm ready for that climb now."
"That's the spirit," Chris grinned. "Let's see how fireproof you are."
The climbing wall heaved and groaned like a living thing, the stone plates shifting with the grinding screech of tectonic plates. It was fifty feet of vertical obsidian, slick with molten sludge and punctuated by the occasional gout of fire from the vents.
Luke stood at the base, looking up. Around him, a few older Ares and Hephaestus kids were geared up, looking at the wall with a mix of grim determination and sweat.
"Alright, Castellan," Chris said, leaning against a nearby tree. "The record for someone your age is about four minutes. For an unclaimed kid? Just making it to the top without losing your eyebrows is a win."
Luke didn't bother with the safety harness. He didn't even take his hands out of his pockets immediately. He just tilted his head, watching the rhythm of the lava flow. The timing is predictable, he noted. It's basically an obstacle course for Benin.
"Maa, Chris," Luke said, finally pulling his hands out. "Four minutes seems like a lot of standing around. I have a book I'd like to get back to."
Before Chris could even ask what he meant, Luke moved.
He hit the obsidian with the silent, adhesive grace of a cat, his small fingers finding holds that shouldn't have existed. When a sheet of lava cascaded toward him, he pushed off the wall in a backflip, his sneakers catching a momentary ridge, and propelled himself higher.
He was a silver blur against the black stone. He moved with fluidly, with precise economy of motion, no wasted breath, no frantic reaching. He reached the top in exactly thirty-two seconds.
The silence at the base of the wall was absolute. The rest of the campers who were preparing to scale the wall stared in shock. Chris Rodriguez just stood there, his jaw physically hanging open.
Luke stood on the top ledge, looking down with a deadpan expression. He hopped back down, falling the fifty feet and catching a series of small outcroppings to break his momentum before landing softly in the dust, not even kicking up a cloud.
"Was that the record?" Luke asked, patting a stray speck of soot off his overalls.
"You... you just..." Chris stammered, pointing at the wall. "That was thirty-two seconds! You didn't even use the ropes! Are you part mountain goat?"
"I've had practice," Luke said vaguely. He looked at the wall again, feeling a pang of genuine nostalgia. If Guy were here, he'd be weeping tears of 'Youth' and trying to scale the thing on his pinkies while doing a handstand. Lee would be trying to do it with five-ton weights strapped to his ankles.
Compared to their competitions this was practically a stroll through a park.
"Is there a harder level?" Luke asked. "This was a bit... underwhelming. I didn't even break a sweat."
One of the Hephaestus campers stepped forward. He looked at the small, silver-haired kid with a new level of respect. "You want hard? I can dial it up to 'Insane.' The plates move faster, the lava vents are randomized, and we trigger the earthquake tremors."
"Do it," Luke said.
"Gimme a couple of minutes. Gotta set this up".
By now, a small crowd had gathered. Word had spread through the Hermes cabin grapevine, that the new kid was doing something impossible. Even a few Athena campers had shown up.
The Hephaestus camper pulled a heavy bronze lever. The obsidian plates began to slam back and forth like a giant, vertical sliding puzzle. Lava sprayed out in unpredictable jets, and the entire structure began to vibrate with bone-shaking force.
Luke didn't wait.
He moved before the first tremor had even finished. He used the shifting plates as springboards, his body twisting mid-air to dodge a gout of fire by a fraction of an inch. He was moving so fast that he was leaving faint afterimages of a silver-haired boy in the air.
He reached the top in twenty five seconds.
He stood at the peak, the lava glowing behind him, silhouetting his small frame. Below a small sea of demigods stared with their mouths agape.
He hopped down, landing next to a speechless Chris.
"Maa, Chris," Luke said, reaching into his pouch and pulling out his literature. He flipped to Chapter Seven as if nothing had happened. "That was a bit better. Though I think the lava is a bit mild. Maybe increase the temperature?"
Chris just stared at him. "You're a freak. A cute, silver-haired, terrifying freak."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Luke murmured, his nose already buried in his book. "Now, where is the archery range?"
It was afternoon when they went to the archery range. A couple of Hephaestus campers had accosted him. The camper who had spoken to him earlier was called Tim Shaw, and he turned out to be the Senior Counselor for the Hephaestus Cabin. Luke had promised to come later to discuss creative ways to enhance the difficulty of the climbing wall.
The archery range was a wide, sun-drenched field on the edge of the woods.
Impressive accuracy, he thought, watching a group of Apollo camper, release a volley, another was doing a trickshot which involved hitting a launched arrow with a second to hit bullseye. They had fantastic form, certainly.
But they're slow. Well relatively speaking.
To the average human, the children of Apollo would have been a blur. Their draw and release happening within two-seconds. But to Luke's eyes, they were slow. They were taking too long to breathe and release. In a real skirmish, that two-second draw was too long, the difference between life and death was microseconds.
"Okay, look," Chris said, handing Luke a recurve bow that felt entirely too light and a quiver of cedar arrows. "The Apollo kids basically own this place. Don't feel bad if you can't hit the target. It takes years to master the arc and the wind—"
Luke weighed the bow in his hand. Archery had never been a staple of the shinobi arts. It was too slow, too cumbersome, and difficult to conceal. Why carry a bulky bow and a quiver when you could flick a senbon or a kunai with enough force to pierce a skull at fifty paces?
Still, the principles of ballistics didn't change just because the weaponry changed.
"Maa, Chris," Luke said, pulling a worn, slightly damp paperback from his pouch. He propped it open on a nearby fence post, his eye immediately finding the scene where the protagonist was being cornered in a hot spring. "It seems simple enough. Pull the string, release the stick."
"It's not just, wait, are you reading and shooting?" Chris asked, his voice rising in disbelief.
Luke didn't answer. He didn't even look at the target. He grabbed an arrow, nocked it with a flick of his wrist and drew the string.
Thwip.
The arrow buried itself in the exact center of the bullseye.
"Beginner's luck," a passing Apollo camper snorted.
Luke didn't look up from his book. He reached into the quiver, grabbed three arrows at once, and nocked them in a single, fluid motion. He didn't use his sight. He used his ears, tracking the whistle of the wind against the trees and the rhythmic breathing of the other campers.
He released.
Thwack-thwack-thwack.
Three arrows sprouted from the center of the bullseye, so close together they were practically touching.
"How troublesome," Luke murmured, turning a page. "The tension on this string is a bit uneven. I might have to adjust the limbs if I want to hit anything smaller than a human chest at a hundred meters."
A crowd was starting to form again. The news from the climbing wall had clearly reached the archery range.
"Do it blindfolded!" someone yelled from the back, Ares kid looking for a laugh.
Luke paused. He looked at the speaker, then at Chris, who was looking like he was having a minor existential crisis. Then, he reached up and pulled his headband down over his cobalt eye. He was now effectively blind, his face covered by the mask and the fabric.
He reached for the final five arrows in the quiver.
He moved like a blur. He released the arrows in a rapid-fire sequence that sounded like a single, elongated note.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
Five arrows. Five bullseyes. One of them had even split the first arrow he'd fired down the middle.
Luke pushed his headband back up, his eye returning to his book as if he'd just finished a boring chore. "What's next?"
Chris didn't move. He just looked at the target, then at the nine-year-old kid reading smut, then back at the target. "What in the actual fuck am I watching." Chris whispered
"I'll take that as a compliment," Luke chirped, a perverted little giggle escaping his mask as he read a particularly spicy line.
_______________________
The training yard was a sprawling expanse of packed dirt and dust, already ringing with the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of dulled metal practice blades. By the time Luke and Chris arrived, the small following had grown into a noticeable crowd. A group of Aphrodite girls were whispering behind their hands, Ares campers were leaning on their spears with predatory interest, and a few of the senior counselors had drifted over to see the new camper who had broken the climbing wall record and shot a bow and arrow better than some children of Apollo.
"Okay," Chris said, a little nervous in the face of the audience. He walked over to a rack of bronze xiphos and practice swords. "This is the meat and potatoes of camp. You can be a crack shot or a mountain goat, but if you can't handle a blade, a Dracaena will have you for lunch.
Chris picked up a standard-issue bronze practice sword and gave it a few experimental swings. "Most people try to overpower their opponent. It's all about the wrist and the—"
Luke didn't hear the rest. His hand had closed around the hilt of a weighted training sword, and the world simply... shifted.
The scent of the strawberry fields was replaced by the smell of forest. The bright Long Island sun became the dim, filtered light of a forest in the Land of Fire. He wasn't nine-year-old Luke Castellan; he was a boy even younger, standing in a small courtyard, his small hands wrapped around a white-chakra blade that felt like an extension of his own soul.
"A blade isn't a tool, Kakashi," a voice echoed in the back of his mind, deep, calm, and laced with a sadness he hadn't understood until it was too late. "It's an extension of your will."
He remembered his father's silhouette against the moonlight. The White Fang of the Leaf. He remembered the weight of that legacy, and how, after the tragedy, he had slowly let the sword go in favor of the lightning in his palm and the sharingan in his eye socket. He had abandoned the blade because the bitter memories associated with it.
But in this life, both his eyes were his own. The chakra that had once fueled his legendary jutsu was gone. All he had was the memory of a man who had survived two world wars.
Maybe this time, he thought, his fingers curling around the leather-wrapped hilt with a natural familiarity. In memory of the man who started it all.
"Luke? Earth to silver-hair?" Chris's voice broke through the haze. He was holding his practice sword at the ready, looking a bit concerned. "You've been staring at that hunk of bronze for a full minute. If you're worried about the weight, we can find you a—"
Luke let out a soft, rhythmic breath. The tension in his shoulders redistributed itself, settling into a low, predatory center of gravity.
"I think I've got it, Chris," Luke said.
His voice was different, flatter, more focused. He didn't take his book out this time. He simply stepped into the center of the ring, the blunted bronze practice sword held loosely at his side.
The crowd went silent. There was something about the way he stood, the utter lack of wasted energy, that made the hair on the back of the senior campers' necks stand up.
"Maa, Chris," Luke murmured, his cobalt eyes locking onto his friend's. "Don't hold back. It would be... troublesome if I got bored."
Chris blinked, a cold sweat suddenly breaking out on his forehead. He hadn't even started the spar, but he already felt like he was being hunted. "Right," Chris swallowed hard, shifting into a defensive stance. "Just... don't hurt yourself, Castellan."
Luke just shifted his lead foot an inch to the left, and the air in the training yard seemed to grow very, very cold.
"Come". He said softly.
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