For a man who had once led an entire village, Luke found that his most difficult mission was an interrogation where the subject was already broken.
Since he had seen the snake woman, he had tried every psychological tactic in the shinobi handbook to get a straight answer out of May. He'd tried the "Innocent Child" routine, wide eyes and soft questions about why he didn't have a dad like the other kids. He'd tried watching for micro-expressions when he mentioned the bronze dagger.
Each time, May would fracture. Her eyes would lose their focus, turning a milky, distant green, and she would begin a scripted litany of praise.
"He's wonderful, Luke," she would whisper, her hands fluttering like trapped birds. "He's the swiftest of them all. He's the wind in the trees and the cleverness in your heart. He loved us so much... he just has so many roads to walk."
Useless, Luke thought, leaning against his bedroom door. My 'father' just sounds like a vagabond with commitment issues.
The turning point came on a humid Tuesday night, just after his seventh birthday.
The air in the house was thick, smelling of ozone and the sandalwood incense May burned to "keep the shadows away." Luke wasn't sleeping; he was sitting cross-legged on his bed, practicing a finger-strengthening exercise with a heavy textbook.
A sound drifted through the thin walls, a low, rhythmic chanting from May's bedroom.
He moved instantly. He slipped out onto the narrow ledge, his fingers finding purchase on the siding with practiced ease and crept toward his mother's window.
He peered through the glass.
May was huddled on the floor in the center of a circle of unlit candles. She was rocking back and forth, her hair a silver mess, her eyes wide and glowing with that sickly, prophetic light.
"Hermes," she muttered, the name sounding like a plea and a curse all at once. "Hermes... Prince of Thieves... Messenger... come back. You promised. You said the boy would be a traveler. Hermes... please."
Luke froze on the ledge.
Hermes.
The name hit him with the force of a paper bomb. He recognized it from the book on Greek Mythology. The God of Travelers. The God of Thieves. The Messenger of Olympus.
Well, Luke mused, his internal voice dry and weary. According to my mother, my father isn't a random deadbeat; he's a Greek God."
But as he watched his mother, the humor died in his throat.
May wasn't just praying. She was unraveling. "You blessed me," she croaked, her voice cracking. "You gave me the gift. I see the roads, Hermes! I see the green! I see the fire and the tree! It hurts... it hurts to see so much!"
She collapsed into a fit of tremors, her forehead hitting the carpet.
Luke slipped back into his room, his heart a cold, heavy stone in his chest. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his small, calloused hands.
She calls it a 'blessing,' he thought, his cobalt eyes darkening. But all I see is a woman being hollowed out by a power she wasn't built to contain. If this is what 'divine love' looks like, then the gods are similar to Otsutsuki. And at least the Otsutsuki were honest about being parasites.
In his first life, Kakashi had seen what happened when a person was used as a vessel for power they couldn't control. He had seen the toll it took on Jinchūriki. He had seen the way the world chewed up the "special" and spat out husks.
He looked at the bronze dagger on his nightstand. It glowed with a faint, mocking warmth.
Hermes.
The god had left a weapon for the son, but he had left the mother to rot in a sea of fragmented visions. To Luke, this wasn't just a lack of responsibility; it was a failure of the highest order. A shinobi protected his team. A leader protected his people.
He lay back, staring at the ceiling. The episodes were getting worse.
I need a plan, he decided. I can't fix her mind, but I can't stay here and watch her drown. And if Hermes won't come to see her... then eventually, I'm going to have to go find him.
____________________________
At seven years old, Luke was studying his physiological limitations.
He spent his afternoons in the backyard of the Castellan house, ostensibly playing with a plastic hoop, but in reality, he was conducting a clinical audit of his own body. In his first life, his power had been a deliberate construction, years of grueling exercise to expand his chakra coils, thousands of repetitions to perfect a single seal.
In this life, the power seemed to be hardwired into his very marrow.
Shinobi training is one thing, Luke mused, hanging upside down from the low branch of an oak tree by his knees. But this... this is something else. It's as if my DNA has been scripted to have an affinity towards certain….proclivities.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver coin he had "acquired" from the kitchen counter. With a flick of his fingers, the coin danced across his knuckles, a blur of silver that even his younger self would have admired for its dexterity.
It was an urge. Pure instinct.
Since he could walk, Luke had felt a persistent, almost itchy instinct to pickpocket. Whenever someone walked past him, his hand would twitch, ghosting toward their pockets with a preternatural sense of timing. He understood the mechanics of a lock before he even knew what a key was. He could look at a window and instinctively know which hinge was the weakest and exactly how many seconds it would take to bypass the latch.
I am a seven-year-old child with the baseline instincts of a career criminal, he thought wryly, dropping silently from the branch and landing without a sound. Or, more accurately, the God of Thieves has very dominant genes.
He began to sprint across the lawn.
He didn't use chakra, there was still no familiar hum of energy to mold, he instead focused on that spark in his blood, the electric awareness that had settled behind his pupils. He pushed.
The world slowed. The blades of grass became distinct, the wind against his face turned into a solid resistance. He moved in a silver-blue blur, reaching the fence in a fraction of a second.
Hmph. Barely Chūnin speed, he critiqued himself, his internal monologue carrying a hint of a scoff. In my prime, I could have crossed this distance in an instant. But I guess for a body made of soft tissue and milk, it's... acceptable.
But he knew this wasn't normal. Without chakra, enhanced musculature, no regular child, no matter how much they practiced their shunshin form, could move that fast without the air tearing their lungs. This was something...other.
Is this how my supposed 'divine inheritance' expresses itself. He was a creature designed for the speed, for the thievery, and for combat.
The most jarring discovery, however, was his aptitude for traps.
In Konoha, Luke, then Kakashi, had been a master of the Anbu arts. He could rig a forest with enough tripwires and explosive tags to halt a battalion. But here, in this new body, the process was almost frighteningly intuitive.
He walked over to a small pile of "toys" near the porch, discarded fishing line, some old soda cans, and a few rubber bands he'd salvaged from the trash. Without a conscious plan, his hands began to move. He didn't have to calculate the tension of the wire or the weight of the trigger. He just knew.
Ten minutes later, the perimeter of the backyard was a lethal maze. If a squirrel so much as twitched near the fence, a series of balanced stones would drop, pulling a line that would rattle the cans and launch a sharpened stick directly at eye level.
It's seamless, he thought, looking over his work. Usually, a trap requires a mind for engineering, careful planning. Here, it feels like an art form I was born knowing.
He sat on the porch steps, his breathing barely elevated. He was a former Hokage, a man who had mastered over a thousand jutsus, now coming to terms with the fact that his new bloodline limit was essentially being the world's most talented delinquent.
I have the hands of a thief, and the mind of an assassin, Luke summarized, his cobalt eyes scanning the treeline as the sun began to set. And I live in a house with a mother who sees ghosts and a father who is apparently the patron saint of my worst impulses.
He pulled his bronze dagger from his pocket, the blade catching the orange light of the dusk.
I need to find out more about this world, Luke thought coldly. I've been ignorant for long enough.