Chapter 16: Thunderblind
Jason Grace had faced monsters that breathed poison, Titans who cracked mountains like ice cubes, and spirits who whispered lies into his dreams. But none of that prepared him for this.
Because right now, as he hovered above the battlefield—lightning arching around his shoulders like a second skin—he wasn't looking at a beast or a Titan or even a demiImmortal. He was staring at a man.
A man who didn't flinch, even when Zeus himself whispered poison in Jason's mind.
Moments earlier, the calm had seemed almost peaceful. Piper and Leo stood by, still trying to piece together who Naruto really was. His chakra had quieted, but it still buzzed through the air like a thunderstorm held at bay—contained, not gone.
That's when Jason heard it.
He is a trickster, my son. A servant of Gaea. He's here to deceive, to poison your mind with lies and take what is ours.
The voice of Zeus was cold and authoritative, as if Olympus itself had just leaned over and whispered into his ear. Jason's fingers tightened into fists, sparks dancing across his knuckles.
And then—just like that—he snapped.
"You filthy beast, trying to trick me!"
The sky lit up as he hurled a full-force bolt of lightning toward Naruto. It screamed through the air like a divine missile, slicing the space where Naruto had stood just a half-second before.
BOOM!
The ground exploded behind the blond-haired ninja, showering molten dirt into the air. Piper and Leo ducked instinctively, but Naruto barely blinked, already standing several feet to the side, untouched.
He didn't counter. Didn't raise his fists. Didn't flinch.
He just looked at Jason with eyes full of something worse than rage—disappointment.
"Jason," Naruto said, voice calm even in the crackle of danger, "I know your father said something. But really think—has he ever told you the full truth? Or just the parts that keep you loyal?"
Jason's eyes narrowed. The storm around him intensified, and his boots lifted off the earth. The air shimmered with static as he rose into the sky.
"Shut up!" he shouted, his voice shaking with fury. "Your lies won't work! You just come out of nowhere and expect me to believe you? You think I'm an idiot?"
Lightning spiraled around him now, wrapping his form in a violent halo. His gladius glowed bright white, the air around him screaming from the pressure.
From the other side of the battlefield, Albion roared, his wings unfurling to defend his partner. Festus screeched and met him mid-air, the two titanic beasts crashing together with enough force to shatter trees for miles. Fire met sky-fire, and steel clanged against scale as dragon battled dragon.
But Naruto didn't move. He didn't blink. Even as Jason hurtled toward him in a streak of lightning and rage, he stood still.
Inside, Naruto's heart ached—not from fear, but from what he felt through the boy's energy. Not hatred. Not conviction.
But doubt.
He whispered a thought, casting it like a stone into the raging ocean that was Jason's soul.
You feel it, don't you? The pull… the recognition. That necklace is part of me. Of you. You don't even know what you're holding.
Jason screamed as he brought the blade down in a vertical arc of pure skyborn power. The ground shook.
And Naruto—he finally moved.
He caught the blade.
Not with a weapon.
With one hand.
Chakra flared up his arm, absorbing the lightning, taming it, returning it to the sky like an apology. The impact split the ground, sent shockwaves through the air—and yet, Naruto remained steady.
Jason stared in horror, breath heaving.
"W-What are you…?"
Naruto looked up, and in that moment, his eyes weren't angry. They were sad.
"I'm not your enemy."
-----------------------------
There are moments when the very sky seems to protest a lie. When thunder screams not as weather, but as judgment. The battlefield had been quiet—for a breath. Then the world cracked open.
A bolt of lightning fell from above, searing the air with Olympian fury. It struck like a Immortal's scream—straight at Jason Grace.
Naruto didn't flinch. He had released Jason the moment before, feeling the divine surge moments ahead of time. The demiImmortal's body arched as lightning enveloped him, a silhouette of divine rage flickering in the blinding light.
High above, clouds churned with anger. Zeus's presence was unmistakable.
Gaea's voice slid into Naruto's thoughts, silken and sharp as glass.
"He's gone. Lost to his father's madness. You promised me you'd be careful—careful, Naruto."
He hated how right she sounded.
Jason's eyes were white with power now, unseeing and primal. He hovered, wreathed in lightning like a storm-bound statue of vengeance. "You should've run when you had the chance," he spat, his voice layered with more than his own—Zeus echoing behind it.
Naruto narrowed his eyes. This wasn't Jason talking. Not entirely.
"Listen to yourself," Naruto called up to him. "Are you so desperate for your father's approval that you'll turn on anyone he tells you to?"
The only reply was a thunderous crack. Lightning rained down like divine fury. Trees exploded into splinters. Rocks split with deafening cracks. Naruto danced between bolts with inhuman speed—his cloak whipping like fire, his eyes steady.
Then Jason descended like judgment itself, spear of lightning in hand, wind screaming around him.
Naruto met him head-on. He spun, wind chakra whipping around his fist, and slammed into Jason's side. The impact rang like a gong—his hit was solid, but the armor absorbed most of the force. It was like punching a thundercloud wrapped in steel.
Jason growled and retaliated—his foot striking Naruto square in the chest.
Pain bloomed across Naruto's ribs as he stumbled back. Then—
"No." A girl's voice, clear as wind chimes in a storm.
Alice appeared between them, a shimmer of emerald armor catching Jason's next blow. Wind exploded outward, pushing them both apart. Naruto landed, sliding across the scorched earth. Jason flew back, hovering.
"You're stronger than I thought," Jason panted, electricity still crackling at his fingertips. His voice was more his own now—but only barely. "But that doesn't mean you're right."
Naruto's breathing slowed. His eyes locked on the storm-bound demiImmortal.
'The necklace,' he thought grimly. 'He's drawing more power from it. His father's influence… It's not just him anymore.'
Lightning twisted in Jason's eyes. Madness. Righteousness. Desperation.
Naruto felt a familiar weight settle on his shoulders. He had seen this before—friends devoured by power they didn't ask for. Students who couldn't let go of dreams twisted into chains. Villains convinced they were heroes.
He had made a promise: protect what must be protected. Stop what must be stopped.
His fists clenched. Wind screamed around him, gathering at his feet.
"I'm sorry," Naruto said softly. "But this has to end."
Jason screamed and shot forward again, a lance of living thunder in hand.
Naruto closed his eyes.
When they opened again, the world around him slowed—his focus narrowing to a single thread. Not of lightning. Not of wind.
But of will.
He moved.
One step. A turn. A twist. A strike—not to kill, but to break through.
He couldn't save Jason by words alone. And if the Immortals wouldn't listen… then he would force them to.
For the ones waiting for him. For the people who still needed him.
-----------------------------------
The sky had darkened beyond mortal reckoning, swirling with stormclouds as if Olympus itself held its breath. Beneath that blackened dome, two sons of power clashed—lightning against wind, storm against storm, fate against choice.
Naruto stood firm, robes tattered from battle, his golden hair plastered to his forehead by sweat and rain. His breath came in quiet bursts, each one controlled, calculated. Across from him, Jason was a figure carved from myth—his eyes lit with unnatural light, electricity crackling from every pore. But there was something wrong in the way he moved. Too rigid. Too driven.
Zeus's influence was no longer subtle.
And Naruto knew it.
He raised both hands with a fierce exhale. The winds answered his call—not gentle breezes but spears of howling force, laced with cutting edges. They tore through the air in a deadly volley, spinning like javelins hurled by skyborne titans. Jason's lightning met them halfway, colliding in sharp, thunderous bursts that lit the battlefield in flashes of white and blue.
Jason twisted mid-air, lightning crackling around his blade as he parried one wind spear, then another, then another. "You can't hide from me, Naruto!" he roared, his voice edged with something unnatural, something not entirely his own.
The wind danced, curling around Naruto like a living creature. He darted forward, axe glowing faintly with the storm-blooded energy he'd inherited. The weapon clashed with Jason's blade, the shockwave rippling outward, shaking trees and shattering stone.
Meanwhile, on the edge of the battlefield, Leo knelt behind a jagged pillar of rock, fingers pressed against the strange artifact clipped to his belt. It pulsed—again—faintly, in time with Naruto's surges of power.
"It's reacting to him," Leo murmured, eyes narrowed. "And that's not a good thing."
He turned to Piper, who stood watching the battle with both hands clenched. "Try something," Leo said quickly. "Charm-speak. Get through to him. I think Zeus… or someone worse... is trying to use him. Jason's not himself."
Piper didn't hesitate.
She stepped forward, her voice soft at first, barely audible over the storm. "Jason… listen to me. You're stronger than this. You've always been."
The air trembled. Jason's lightning flickered.
"You chose to be more than just a soldier. You chose to care. Remember that?"
Something shifted in Jason's expression. The unnatural rigidity faded for a heartbeat. His sword lowered, just an inch. His face contorted—not in rage but in pain.
"Piper…" he whispered. His voice sounded… small.
Then the clouds growled overhead. A bolt of divine lightning surged down, striking Jason's feet. His body jerked as the power flowed through him, forcibly righting his posture. The spark of doubt was swallowed by a tidal wave of obedience.
"I am the son of Zeus," he said coldly. "I must obey."
"No," Naruto said, stepping forward, eyes sharp with the clarity of wind and purpose. "You don't."
Their gazes locked—Naruto's filled with unshakable resolve, Jason's torn between rage and regret.
Jason attacked first, lightning curling around his blade like a viper. Naruto countered, deflecting the strike with his axe and pushing back with a blast of focused gale-force wind. It knocked Jason off balance, forcing him into the air where the wind coiled around him like a net.
Naruto lifted his hand—and the storm bent to his will. The winds sang with fury, slamming into Jason with relentless pressure. It wasn't meant to kill. Not yet. It was a warning. A desperate, final plea.
---------------------------------------
The sky cracked open above them, a jagged wound across the heavens, bleeding lightning and rage. Rain had long since ceased to fall—replaced now by raw, uncontrolled power. It pulsed, it screamed, it lived. And at the eye of the storm stood Jason Grace, the once-proud son of Jupiter, now little more than a vessel for something far greater and far more dangerous.
"I can't lose this," Jason hissed through gritted teeth, his voice rough with exhaustion and raw with purpose. His eyes burned a fierce electric blue, every muscle in his body shaking from overuse, but still—he pressed on. "My friends… depend on me. I have to protect them."
He raised his hand toward the sky, the necklace clenched tight in his grip. The response was immediate. Thunder rumbled. Then—light.
A blinding bolt surged downward, not through his hand, but from his throat. Jason threw his head back and screamed, releasing a torrent of electricity directly from his mouth. It lanced forward like a dragon's breath, hungry and without mercy.
Naruto barely had time to register the change before the blast hit him full force.
The world tilted.
His body was flung backward, thrown like a ragdoll into the air before slamming hard into the broken earth below. Smoke hissed off his skin. The world danced with sparks. Pain screamed through every inch of his nerves. His muscles locked up—burned and betrayed him. And yet, in that agonizing moment, even as his skin blistered and his chest heaved in protest, Naruto remained conscious.
More than that—he remained aware.
He reached out—not with his hands, which trembled too violently—but with his will. With his bond to the elements. The very lightning that tried to consume him was coaxed away, peeled off like layers of fire. Bit by bit, he drew it into the earth beneath him, neutralizing what he could, willing the storm to leave him be.
How can he hold this much power? Naruto thought, eyes wide with disbelief as he staggered back to his feet, smoke curling from his body. Jason's body… it should have given out by now. He's not just channeling power—he's becoming it.
The battlefield itself seemed to reel in horror.
Wind screamed through the shattered woods. Trees bowed low or cracked entirely under the strain of the magical tempest. The sky boiled.
And at the center of it all, Jason stood, glowing with divine madness. His grip on the necklace tightened so hard, blood ran between his fingers.
"Jason!" Naruto shouted, his voice hoarse but desperate, cutting through the storm like an arrow loosed from a bow. "Can you hear me?! This isn't the way! That necklace—it's twisting you! Please, let it go! I just want it back!"
For one fleeting instant, Jason hesitated.
Then the madness screamed louder.
"Never!" he bellowed, voice cracking like thunder. "It's my father's gift! No one's taking it from me! Not even you!"
He raised his sword—lightning-slick and trembling with wrath—and swung.
The air itself screamed.
Bolts carved across the battlefield in streaks of living power, chasing Naruto, tearing through trees, smashing into earth, fire, and stone. Every swing of Jason's blade tore the world wider, like he was ripping holes in reality itself.
Naruto dodged, barely, leaping from crater to crater. "He's not even aiming anymore," Naruto thought, breath coming fast. "He's just—destroying."
He slammed his hands into the ground, channeling chakra, summoning pillars of rock to rise and shield him. They cracked under the lightning but bought him seconds. That was all he needed.
With a sharp inhale, he spun through the rain, wind gathering around him like a cloak. With a shout, he released a flurry of spears made from compressed air, each one aimed to disarm—not kill.
Jason snarled, spinning like a storm given form, swatting them aside with arcs of electricity. One grazed his shoulder, another tore a strip of his cloak—but none pierced deep.
------------------------------
It had begun like the clash of titans, but it would end like the unraveling of old magic—slow, painful, and irreversible.
The battlefield was no longer a place; it was a storm. Trees bent like trembling subjects, and the very air trembled under the wrath of wind and lightning. Naruto could feel it shifting—the pulse of war quickening, the thread between victory and tragedy pulled taut. Jason's fury had outgrown reason, and the shadows clinging to his soul had begun to speak in voices no friend could reach.
'He's slipping… I can feel it. That necklace—no, that thing—it's feeding on him.'
Naruto's breath turned to mist in the wind-churned air as he steadied himself. Around his limbs, spirals of wind armor coiled with quiet purpose, whispering with the power of the Sage. He drew his axe again—a weapon forged of storms and intent—and dashed forward with deadly grace. The wind roared behind him, a wild serpent in flight.
Jason did not flinch.
His body shimmered with a corona of electricity—pure, unfiltered wrath—and with a small, unsettling smile, he raised no weapon. Instead, the lightning around him breathed, folding inward, weaving into a dome of divine rage. A barrier.
And Naruto collided with it.
The impact was cataclysmic. A crack of thunder louder than any dragon's roar tore through the sky, flinging Naruto backwards like a broken arrow. Trees snapped. Stones burst. But even before the dust could settle, the boy who bore the wind moved again.
Mid-air, spinning, he hurled his axe—a crescent of gale-forged steel—and followed with a flurry of wind spears. One. Two. Three—
—and the third struck true.
Jason's scream tore the heavens.
Blood arced through the air, rich and red, and with it, a severed arm dropped to the scorched earth below. The lightning around him stuttered, sputtered—grieved—as if even the storm itself had not been ready to lose part of its master.
"You—BASTARD!" Jason shrieked, staggering back, eyes wild with betrayal and madness. His voice cracked like lightning splintering an oak, fury rising with every heartbeat. "I'll KILL YOU! I'LL—!"
But Naruto was already moving. There was no time for words. No time for mercy. He surged forward, dodging arcs of wild lightning, diving through the ruined storm. His hand shot out—
—and closed around the necklace.
The instant his fingers touched it, the world shifted.
Naruto yanked it free and leapt back. Jason collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, blood soaking the earth as his body writhed with invisible pain.
"No—NO!" he rasped. "Give it back…! I need it—you MONSTER! I won't let you—"
But his words faded into choking gasps. The lightning was gone now, flickering uselessly at his fingertips. He was not a Immortal. Not a son of thunder. Not anything but a boy who had been used.
Naruto knelt beside him, panting. The necklace burned in his hand. It felt familiar—like home. Like pain. Like power twisted into something unnatural.
His eyes widened.
'This isn't just a cursed relic… it's made from my chakra… my Six Paths powers… But how?'
Jason convulsed.
Naruto immediately pressed his hands to the torn stump, green healing chakra blooming to life. The wind howled in mourning, swirling around the two like a mourning cloak. The storm had passed, but the wounds remained.
Jason's breathing steadied—barely—but something in his spirit had been shattered. The necklace had not merely granted power. It had fed on him, drawn from him, become part of him… merged with him. And now that it was torn away—
"He was never just fighting me," Naruto whispered. "He was fighting it."
------------------------------
A scream split the heavens like a thunderclap.
"JASON!"
The voice—high, sharp, unmistakably feminine—slashed through the noise of clashing magic and metal.
Naruto didn't have time to turn. The sound of something slicing through air reached his ears just as a searing pain exploded through his chest. An arrow—silver-tipped and screaming with divine malice—slammed into him with punishing force. It struck his side, just below his ribs, and though his wind armor flared, the shaft still buried itself deep enough to pierce his lung.
He stumbled. Air turned to fire in his throat. Blood welled up, coppery and hot, spilling down his chin. His legs buckled, but he didn't fall. He couldn't afford to. Gritting his teeth, he tapped into the currents of the wind around him—his ever-loyal ally. The air thickened and coiled, wrapping protectively around his frame, sealing pressure around the wound.
His eyes swept the battlefield through the haze of pain.
What he saw chilled him far more than the arrow.
Albion—the great dragon of sky and storm—was grounded. His scarlet wings were torn, feathers scorched, and scales dulled by soot. The battlefield was littered with fragments of Festus—broken copper limbs, a cracked furnace-heart still hissing steam. But Leo… Leo still stood.
And Leo was not himself.
The boy was cloaked in flames so violent they melted the earth where he stepped. Black rock bubbled beneath his boots. Eyes that once held mischief now burned with hatred and madness. The artifact—glinting like a sun fragment on his chest—fed off him like a leech, drawing power from his soul and twisting it into a monstrous inferno.
On the far side of the clearing, Ella fought. Her movements were slower now, staggered, her armor singed and cracked. She parried blow after blow, but her strength was waning. Her blade, usually a streak of silver brilliance, now trembled each time it met Leo's flaming fists.
And then—
More movement.
From the forest shadows emerged silver figures. Agile. Silent. Precise. The Hunters of Artemis. Eyes cold and bows drawn, they spread out like frost across the battlefield.
'Reinforcements,' Naruto thought grimly, chest rising with effort. 'And not for us.'
He gritted his teeth. They were outmatched. Every moment they lingered, the scales tipped further against them.
"Ella!" he shouted, wind carrying his voice. "Retreat!"
But she didn't look at him. She was too focused, too locked in, too deep in the rhythm of battle.