Second Verse, Same as the First

by Sierra.BN312

Gone was their world, now within another. The few that survived the trip found a second chance at life, in a world filled with people just as powerful as they were and more. Only now do they find themselves at a crossroads: To pick up where they left off from their previous lives? Or make something new for themselves, for good or ill? NarutoxKara Zor-El/Supergirl.

Hello everyone, it has been some time, and I can already tell what your first reaction to this is going to be, 'Holy Necropost, Batman! I thought this story was dead!'. And while that is a perfectly valid, topical and amusing Burt Ward impression, I am behooved to provide some level of explanation about my absence, both on this story as well as Fanfiction in general.

The first and foremost is quite obvious, life.

I've been busy with a great many things, with a full-time job that occupies much of my time and pays my bills, other various personal projects, ideas that I've been building up over the last couple of years, and in recent time several games.

Let's be real here, sometimes when you get swept up in the moment of a new game you suddenly realize an entire month has gone by without any significant progress and you feel so ashamed that you don't want to touch anything again til you're ready.

The second, more fickle mistress, being my muse, a muse that has returned.

Young Justice really is something else, and for all its pros and cons, season 4 really lit a fire under me in terms of inspiration and giving this story a proper revamp into something that doesn't make me want to cringe into the 5th Dimension. Sadly, due to the certified circus that is Warner Bros, DC and the comics falling in popularity we have no word on if we will ever get a Season 5, but I can still hope that this little spark of fanfic fun keeps the flames of fandom alight.

Onto a matter of housekeeping:

I'll be frank. When I first wrote the first incarnation of this fic, my skills were pitiful compared to now, and what I wrote up wasn't good; I kind of cringe at anything I have written more than a year old. Now after a LONG and detailed pre-production period, this story has been reborn with a hopefully much better executed endgame in mind. Many elements of the old 6 chapters will survive and shine with new life.

Housekeeping done:

To TLDR as a refresher for those returning or gazing upon this story for the first time, we begin a year before Season One begins with some alterations to the timeline for what I have in mind, especially with regards to the Superman family related stuff. Have no fear though, I do plan on having some original arcs made and modified for the universe of Young Justice, and some of which I think comic readers will enjoy.

And so, I bring you guys the revised and slightly rewritten prologue of Second Verse, Same as the First.

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Prologue – The Way the World Ends

-The Ruins of Lightning Country-

Everything was shaking.

The ground rumbled with an endless droning dogma of war, one unlike the world had ever seen, nor would see again.

The moon hung limply in the night sky, now waning from its prior full red lunar eclipse to a tired, sickly orange, the color of lamely smoldering coals brought low in a fire.

Lightning Country had once been known for its 'austere beauty', towering snow-capped mountains, rocky prairies and cloud-thick ravines for which its resident Hidden Village had drawn its name. Not a mote of that beauty remained, transformed by the cancerous culmination of a plan a century in the making. The mountains had been hammered down to pitiable craters that expanded in spiderwebbed cracks spanning across the Earth, the molten lifeblood of the planet glowing dilly from deep within as ruptured veins. The fluffy white clouds had been boiled away while the ground itself was little more than an endless patchwork of shattered stone fragments and superheated glass.

Even still, there were landmarks of a sort; a colossal forest seemed to move across the land, its main corpse kilometers across and its long fibrous roots ravenously digging into the planet's crust, reaching for the tectonic plates like a ravenous beast trying to suck the last dregs of marrow from an exhausted carcass.

Above it all, a lone figure floated in the air as a massive tree loomed over him, three dozen hideous flower blossoms open wide to build up energy for a singular purpose.

"Again, and again and again. You hide in the dirt, striking out when you have clearly lost." The Tailed Beast Bombs were huge, each one a rich wine red that lit the figure with an evil glow. The man clicked his teeth together, the scar covering the right side of his face seeming to ripple in the shadows. "NARUTO! I KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR ME! SO COME OUT AND LET'S END THIS!" The voice of the floating Obito Uchiha was amplified by the power of the Ten-Tails. Raising his Shakujo, Obito made a gesture to take aim as the bio-organic horror moaned in inhuman will, ready to launch another salvo of hellfire to flush out his enemy.

Obito was a far cry from the once bright-eyed Konoha Shinobi he had once been, his once healthy skin had faded to a bone white that seemed to emit a ghastly inner light, matched only by his chalky white hair that only served to make his mismatched Doujutsu shine out as pinpricks of red and purple light. A singular stubby horn poked from each temple to give him an almost demonic look, while his garb was positively divine. The 'second coming of Madara' wore a long white coat woven from his own overflowing chakra given physical form, his chest free to bear a series of black Magatama markings across his collar bone. His legs were clad in tight-fitting Hakama and boots while his gloved hands clutched a jet-black Shakujo forged from his last Truth Seeker Orb, one end bearing rings that jangled in the foul night air while the other held a half-moon (1).

Holding fire for a moment to scan the ruined battlefield for a spec of gold, Obito waited. Waited to see if Naruto would show himself to rebuke Obito's claim, yet the whiskered blonde did no such thing, "So be it." With nary a twitch, Obito's will sent the tree into action, and over thirty Tailed Beast bombs of varying shapes were spat from its blooms, streaking through the night sky until they were pinpricks of wine-colored light vanishing over the horizon. A brief and eerie moment of silence passed over the battlefield before the sky exploded with light, briefly turning night to day, yet with his Sharingan the Ten Tails Jinchuriki could see through the chaff a site that became apparent moments later.

Dozens of conical fireballs, conflagrations of pure concussive force split the sky, the light of their tens of kilometers wide and many more tall explosions poking above the horizon like arrows loosed from an angry god, their unifying corona of light warping the air till the sky itself appeared to be on fire.

Nearly a minute later the shockwaves arrived, a series of catastrophic BOOMS that jackhammered with the force to break ribs, but the horror lay not in the destruction but the sound. The sound of the screams. Obito's targets had not been random, they were aimed with the precision of a sociopath, and their target was clear.

The Land of Fire was gone, the dying screams of its citizens carried on superheated winds to torment the man who was meant to save them while the self-proclaimed savior damned them to hell.

Yet as the consecutive shockwaves began to die down and the flaming sky dim, a streak of blond hair peered out from the crags of rocks, blue eyes with black sclera looking sadly up at Obito silhouetted by his carnage.

"He won't stop until my son comes out to face him." Minato sighed, wracked with phantom pain, both emotional and physical.

Despite losing his right arm, the reanimated Minato could still provide aid in the battle, even if Obito had demonstrated the ability to make his next death a final one. If there was one silver lining from Obito's wanton abuse of power, it was that the ambient chakra of so many Tailed Beast Bombs detonations had left the battlefield caked in a thick layer of chakra, serving as camouflage from Obito's visual prowess.

Still, Minato knew better than to linger, pressing himself back through the sharp cracks of rock into the rough cave that served as their temporary haven. It was a spartan little abode, the remnants of one of the fissures that Obito's roots had carved into the earth and sectioned off by hastily erected Earth Style walls. The only light came from a flickering chemical lamp that threw its light weekly over the figures of Kakashi and Sakura, a plethora of medical equipment arrayed on a white linen cloth, now marred with dried blood.

The reanimated blonde saw that his only remaining student, Kakashi was utterly exhausted, slumped over against a wall in his bodysuit, having lost his flak jacket and forehead protector throughout the near non-stop battle. Sakura was equally haggard looking, her body covered in the crisscrossing black lines of the Strength of 100 Seal, pressing her palms to Kakashi's bloodshot and bleeding Sharingan, "How many more attempts at Kamui do you have in you, Kakashi?"

The scarecrow themed Jonin opened his mouth to respond, but a glare from Sakura stalled him. The maintained sense of professionalism was quite something, but Minato knew that while on the outside she appeared better, internally she was struggling after the battle that had dragged on.

"I only have about four more in me, sensei. After that, I'll hit chakra exhaustion," Kakashi breathed in deeply as Sakura continued to simultaneously heal the eye strain and replace her sensei's lost chakra, "…or Naruto will have to lend another chakra cloak."

Despite the dire situation, Minato could not stop the ghost of a smile from breaking on his cracked face. 'I'm glad he grew up to be so generous…' he thought wistfully.

The ground rumbled once more, causing dust to fall from the ceiling, with intervals having become a common occurrence since the battle took a turn for the worse. Finishing up with Kakashi's healing, Sakura reached into her side pouch before pulling out a gloss bottle that she uncorked, turning it upside down to see two black soldier pills land on her palm before handing one to her patient, "Last one. We'll move when Naruto's ready to hit him." Sakura said with an undertone of uncertainty as to their chances before swallowing it. Sakura and Kakashi both grimaced at the artificially returning stamina. She knew the toxicology, but it was worth the risk when all cards were on the table; the downside was that if their current gambit failed, they would be left totally vulnerable.

As the two living shinobi climbed to their feet, ready for action, the ground shook once more, far more violently in comparison to the last, having to use chakra to stick to the floor to avoid falling.

Minato closed his eyes, extending his senses deep below, "The way the Divine Tree's roots are moving again, they must have started lifting up our continental plate with how much worse the earthquakes have become." he surmised before leading the other two out of the cave.

Peeking up from the rubble from their position away from the enemy, Kakashi could only curse the empowered Obito, "Dammit, there's no going back for him anymore, is there?" The grey-haired shinobi asked himself rhetorically, knowing full well that there was no redemption for Obito after all he had done up to this point.

The events that led to this situation had been nothing short of a disaster.

Three days ago, Naruto had made his final desperate plea to Obito to call off this madness at the moment when the enemy had been split open by the blade of Naruto and Sasuke's Susanoo-clad Kurama avatar. In the subspace of thought where time passes at a crawl and feelings are laid bare, Naruto had offered his hand, a chance offered to abandon the path of the 'present' Obito and instead return to the 'past' Obito who had wished to be Hokage.

However, Naruto's offered hand was rejected, the path to the past Obito forever dismissed and closed.

Obito had used that inner strength to draw the Beasts back into him, undoing Naruto and Sasuke's progress.

The Allied Shinobi Forces had retreated, knowing full well that he was about to lay waste to them, the Kage called a retreat to regroup, plan and strike back to hopefully force Obito into a position to rip the Beast out of him. Unfortunately, the reanimated Hashirama and Tobirama were unable to keep Madara from joining the fray. Suffice to say, reanimated corpse or not, one of history's deadliest warriors alongside the Ten-Tails' Jinchuriki had proven to be a duo that did not relent in soaking the ground with the blood of innocents. In an effort to force Naruto and Minato out into the open to reclaim the two halves of Kurama alongside Bee for Gyuki, they ignored any military centers, instead aiming for civilian cities, hoping that the bleeding hearts of the main Jinchuriki would capitulate.

Obito had deployed his Divine: Deep Forest Emergence to spread the roots of the Shinju across the planet, telepathically manipulate the Mega-Flora to root out the capital cities and hidden villages and deliver unto them a bloody end, destroying the biosphere of the planet in the process. They had started to blow villages and settlements off the map while partaking in slaughtering the populace on the ground with whatever means they had at their disposal.

Many friends had fallen trying to offset this planetary genocide, but no time was given to mourn, for the battle never ended from day to night.

It continued on for three days before what scant remnants of the Allied Shinobi could mount a last desperate assault. Unfortunately, Obito had gotten a good grasp of his newfound abilities and decided to nullify their greatest fighters. Using the Truth Seeker Orbs, Obito obliterated Hashirama and Tobirama, cancelling the Edo Tensei that held them on the physical plane, obliterating their souls and giving Madara the opening to engage the Allied Shinobi Forces once more, only this time, he did not relent.

However, Obito had not foreseen the effect that the Senju brother's death would have on his co-conspirator.

His sense of fun and joy at the dance of battle, of the chance to make war with Hashirama and avenge himself on Tobirama had been robbed from him, leaving only a cold and calculated killer.

He did not toy. Methodically and precisely, Madara slaughtered them all, leaving only the handful that now stood against Obito, who shortly in the engagement obliterated Sarutobi, leaving Minato as the sole reanimated Hokage left to help them, despite the loss of his left arm.

Soon after, Madara engaged Killer Bee, who put up a long, valiant, yet ultimately futile fight. With the Wood Style at the undead Uchiha's disposal, subduing Bee was but a trifle for him, allowing Obito to rip the Beast out of the last Cloud Jinchuuriki, granting the Ten-Tails Jinchuriki another boost in power.

However, in those moments a rift developed between both Uchiha, one that strife quickly drove apart.

With the power of the Ten-Tails having taken a tremendous rise, Obito believed that this was the best and earliest opportunity to redeploy the Ten-Tails itself, redeploying the flowering head of the Divine Tree Shinju. The Divine Tree's flower would bloom, and with it the war would end if Naruto and co didn't act soon. They needed to either destroy the tree itself, or rip the Ten-Tails from Obito, both options would leave them vulnerable to the enemy, yet they had no choice. The latter was out of the question with Madara on the prowl, leaving them with the far more bombastic reprisal.

Using the Yin and Yang halves of Kurama, Naruto and the Edo Minato used a Tailed Beast Bomb to obliterate the tree's flowering head as Sasuke unleashed a hail of Susano'o cast arrows coated in Amaterasu, the onyx-colored flames burning hot 'til nought but the remnants of the trunk and roots remained. The Jutsu left Sasuke weakened for a moment, but that moment's lapse in judgment had proved to be his doom.

Fed up with Obito's incompetence, Madara set his sights on ending Sasuke before he could do anything else, driving multiple black chakra receivers into his vital organs. It proved a pyrrhic victory for the reanimated warrior; Orochimaru and Taka, enraged at their leader's mortal blow, had laid low long enough to make a move to end Madara's threat. Orochimaru had sacrificed the lives of Taka to empower an Esoteric seal that had succeeded in sealing Madara away, something Naruto didn't think that the snake Sanin was capable of.

Self-Sacrifice.

Clenching his remaining fist, Minato closed his eyes in shame at how his choices of the past had come back to haunt them, "Obito, I'm sorry that my mistakes left you so lost." he mused to himself quietly, all the while hoping that in the end their hopes would be worth something. He quashed his sense of pity and mercy as his eyelids became enshrined in orange pigment before opening a pair of gold eyes with bar-shaped pupils.

Kakashi stepped forwards to stand beside him, the Tomoe of his Sharingan spinning before morphing into a familiar pinwheel. "An error, Sensei, one we correct for the both of us."

"NARUTO!" Obito shouted once more in frustration that his plans had gone so awry. It was supposed to have been simple. The Moon's Eye Plan. Start the war, let White Zetsu do his job in infiltrating the enemy opposition to leave them no choice but to deploy the Jinchuriki and extract their Beasts. Oh, it certainly worked, yet those brats had scuppered it in the moment of victory.

Naruto and Sasuke both had proven to be damnable thorns in his side to the end. Obito had thought he could still use Sasuke to some extent. He hadn't particularly cared what Sasuke did, not that it mattered anyway, with the end being inevitable for everyone in the Dream World. He didn't expect him to ally with Naruto when he had practically groomed his hatred of Konoha and the Shinobi system in general.

This act had robbed him of the means to deploy the Infinite Tsukuyomi, he could not draw out more of the Ten-Tails to replace it either as Naruto could just as easily destroy it again. He and Naruto had battled it out for days, leading to the destruction and wasting of the nations, destroyed in the crossfire of their fight, villages and cities turned to rubble, their civilization having practically vanished overnight.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, the part not currently being driven into a frenzy by a divine power trip, he was aware that even if he killed Naruto this very second, he could not deploy the Infinite Tsukuyomi; they were three days past the full moon necessary to use the jutsu at peak efficiency. Frankly, at this point, he didn't care. Why should he? He had the power of God, what mattered if his plan didn't succeed right now? He could always try again after getting his pound of flesh.

As for the populace, many were killed in the battles, however, instead, with Obito needing to replenish his chakra, he took control of the Divine Tree's roots to tunnel underneath the Earth to ensnare the rest of the people. Hundreds of thousands, if not perhaps millions of people, were having their chakra siphoned in an effort to drive Naruto into a corner.

The ground rumbled once more as Obito cut a swath through the battlefield, looking for Naruto to end things, "Whatever it is that you're planning Naruto, it's hopeless for you!" Even now, the world shook as he continued to fly, as the crust visibly pitching and yawing. He could feel the roots digging deeper and deeper, poking the core's inner mantle.

Suddenly, a pillar of golden light exploded into life before Obito, bringing him to a stop. "Finally fed up with stepping over your comrades' corpses?" Obito smirked.

The pillar of golden chakra solidified into the titanic form of Kurama's spectral battle avatar, twice as large as he remembered it. Focusing on the speck in the great fox's head, Obito realized why things had taken so long. "Minato-Sensei gave you the other half of the Nine Tails, too late as always."

"Stop this, Obito!" Naruto's voice echoed across the field, signaling the others to be ready, "Look around you! Nature is screaming in pain! Don't you see everything you've done, what you're still doing will destroy the planet!?" Naruto shouted at the warped Uchiha, the red pigment of his sage mode thrumming around his eyes, "There are hardly any people left at this point!"

Having siphoned off so much chakra from the populace, there were perhaps only a few thousand of their people left on the planet. All of them were in pain and afraid. All of them Naruto could feel as if they screamed in his ears for a salvation that he wished he could give.

Obito boredly gazed at Naruto with cold eyes, "If you care for the remnants of a world long since rotted to its core, then you're more pathetic than I thought," Obito waved his hand, commanding another Shinju growth to emerge behind him, the entire battlefield began to crack, molten rock frothing up from deep below, "I have the power of the Sage of Six Paths, if I can break this world, then I can just as well remake it." Charging up another series of Beast Bombs, Obito predicted Naruto's response, watching trails of positive and negative chakra bubble up around the golden titan.

Naruto shook his head as he closed his eyes, "How callous are you? A world is DYING, and you say you'll just remake it." Obito stopped, surprised when instead he saw a fountain of deep purple chakra surrounding Naruto before expanding out over Kurama.

"You little brat!" Obito raged, his Shakuju reforming into the double helical length of the Sword of Nunoboko, launching a crescent-shaped beam of white chakra at Kurama's neck.

Kurama extended his spectral arm and let the purple chakra form into his hand, solidifying into an Odachi of substantial size before swinging up to bifurcate Obito's chakra slash.

Opening his eyes, Naruto revealed Sasuke's final gift. Instead of the split pupils of Kurama Sage mode, Obito was greeted with the positively murderous straight Tomoe of Sasuke's freshly implanted Eternal Mangekyou Sharingan.

Sasuke's dying wish had not been something so altruistic as peace, but he had offered his eyes to Naruto in a singular moment of clarity to help end the war before he expired. Naruto had spent the last few hours adjusting to the transplant and the inscription-sealed Doujutsu to use Susano'o(2). Every cell in his body was already aflame with pain, but the mass of Senjutsu he had absorbed gave him the strength to muscle through.

Kurama's form soon became enveloped in the Majestic Attire Susano'o, purple Tengu-styled armor formed up over Kurama's body until Naruto stood enshrined in the gem on the helmet's front. The mouth of the giant fox opened as he charged up to prepare his own Senjutsu-infused Beast Bomb, driving the purple Odachi into it in an approximation of Madara's Chaos Dance that Kurama had long ago used against Hashirama. "Brat, am I? Fool, am I? You're the one claiming to be a god! Now it's time I brought you back to the real world!"

'Ready, Kurama?'

"More than ready. Time to end this before it goes any further."

Obito closed his mouth slowly, his teeth clicked together and began to grind. Veins bulged in his face and neck before morphing into a look of pure and unadulterated hate broke through. "How many times do I have to tell you, Naruto? This world-" he mustered as much chakra as possible, swelling his own Bomb thrice over.

Naruto never once broke his stare, "This world-"

"Shall end!/Shall not End!" they both exclaimed.

Minato looked on from the distance as he had already prepared the area where his son would engage Obito, "It's started," Turning back to Kakashi and Sakura, Minato gave the signal, "Naruto has Obito distracted and there's no sign of either Zetsu. This is our last chance to end the war, Kakashi. Sakura, you know what to do."

Both nodded in response in unison, "Understood."

Back on the battlefield, the Tailed Beast Bombs reached their apex, filling the air with ambient chakra from their respective wielders from the world itself and the life force that sustained the people, "Time to die, Naruto."

"Like hell, I'm going to die!"

The twin Beast Bombs took flight, launched towards one another with the air screeching from Naruto's bladed bomb while Obito's wine red coagulation of power thundered. As they drew closer, time seemed to slow to a crawl as each Bomb lightly rippled with super dense chakra, matching cones birthing before collapsing at their passage while the space between them began to ripple.

Even with the blistering pace, an instant to act, the Yellow Flash earned his name as the Fastest Shinobi in history.

Minato rushed into the field at his top speed, flashing between a series of floating debris that he had marked to approach at speeds beyond human ken, one last Tri-Bladed Kunai clutched in his one good arm.

Quickly taking aim, he used all his might to throw the kunai between the closing Beast Bombs, and to his satisfaction, the cyclonic phenomena caused by the attacks dragged his kunai right between them, precisely as they had planned.

'Perfect timing, Naruto!' Minato thought, his now free hand flashing into a one-handed sign. 'Let's go, Flying Raijin: Guiding Thunder!'

What happened next played out in scant fractions of a second.

The kunai spun through the air until it froze in the air, the flat of the blade and Fuinjutsu script facing Obito's oncoming attack. A circle of black script began to swirl around the stationary kunai before expanding into a great ring with eight prongs pointing out in all directions. It grew and grew until, finally, its eight prongs eclipsed the edges of the great red Beast Bomb.

Pushing against the ethereal black ring, the titanic chakra construct seemed to pause for a moment before it began to shrink. Alas, upon closer inspection, it was being quickly sucked into the Spacetime Barrier that the Fourth Hokage had created, leaving Naruto's attack unimpeded to smash into Obito, whose eyes began to slowly widen as his attack was sucked away.

It was not flawless, after all, Minato knew that Obito had the means to counter his Ninjutsu if given the chance to act. The plan wouldn't work unless Minato could keep Obito distracted for a moment.

Teleporting himself to Obito's blind spot, a basketball sized Rasengan infused with the last of his Senjutsu chambered and ready to ram into the back of his skull. Obito realized what had just happened and turned to half profile, the scarred half of his face visible to Minato's Toad-like eyes. However, it was not shock that twisted his lips but a cruel sneer. "Late as always, Sensei." Obito gave the mental command to his Shakujo to reform, pulling back into its Truth Seeker Orb in the palm of his hand and swinging his arm in a seeming backhand. A hole opened in Obito's hand, and the jet-black null material came surging through, morphing into a glaive that closed with Minato's face.

As the manifestation of oblivion crawled towards him, Minato felt his life flash before his eyes, but his face never once lost its determination. He had been meant as a distraction, and if his final act in this second life was to provide that? Then it was worth it. 'Looks like I won't be seeing you on the other side, Kushina…' he thought, the glaive breaching his neck. 'Watch over our boy for me, okay?'

In a final mutual exchange, Minato slammed his Senjutsu-infused Rasengan into Obito's hand as the Truth Seeker orb expanded, annihilating Minato's entire top half with a muted pop, shattering the last of the Hokage left to stand against him.

And yet, even in his final death did the Yellow Flash of the Leaf leave behind a gift. The white-haired Jinchuriki grimaced in pain as the Rasengan detonated against his hand, shattering the bones within and violently repelling the remnants of his last Truth Seeker Orb away from him, passing beyond his distance to control them before he could mentally recall it.

"Umph," he grunted in annoyance before noticing his front was lit by red light. That made no sense, after all, Minato had used his guiding thunder to send his Beast Bomb- "Ha!?" he exclaimed in realization, staring forward as the remnants of chakra and Minato's constituent dust blew away.

Emerging from a slowly expanding fuinjutsu ring was a familiar wine-red chakra bomb. Minato's final gambit had been a bold one, using his spacetime barrier to teleport his Ten-Tailed Beast Bomb behind him, pinning him between both his own attack and Naruto's from both sides.

The boiling hot air of two supernovas of chakra bore down on the Jinchuriki from both sides, making him rage. He could not absorb his own Bomb back into him as in the time it would take, he would be enveloped by Naruto's Senjutsu-infused one. But perhaps he could mitigate the damage?

He sent a pulse of chakra to his Sharingan, a vortex beginning to swirl around his eye to hopefully suck up and send away as much of the impending attacks as he could.

'KAMUI!'

Obito gasped, hearing the shout over the battlefield and the unpleasant shunting feeling of his Kamui being cancelled. As he was about to be enveloped by both attacks, he cast a glance in the direction of the shout and spotted Kakashi down on one knee, Sakura stood over him with the blue glow of a chakra transfer feeding into his old friend's back. Even masked and with a trail of blood rolling down from his Mangyakyo, grief rolled off Kakashi's face in waves.

"Damn you…"

Both attacks collide with Obito at the epicenter, taking the full brunt of two continent-annihilating attacks.

The two orbs seemed to merge, a sphere of mixed colors that warred against one another before hitting critical mass and detonating their payload, exploding into a conical tower of heat and force that exploded in all directions. It climbed, splitting the clouds and rocketing up through the mesosphere and all the way up into the start of the planet's magnetosphere. Equally, the explosion travelled downwards, punching through the hollowed-out crust like an anvil dropped on paper mache. The entire earth shook violently, echoing shockwaves smashing tectonic plates together, triggering endless subsequent natural disasters worldwide.

The explosion reverberated across the battlefield, Kakashi quickly used Kamui on himself and Sakura, sending them to the adjacent dimension to avoid the explosion while Naruto bore the brunt of the shockwave. Kurama's gold and purple-clad form rippled before the overflow of chakra and sheer pressure slowly stripped the Majestic Attire from its body. Five minutes later, the explosion's fireball began to die down, by which point Naruto had expended almost all of Kurama's chakra, clattering to the ground in burnt scraps of cloth. As the bombs' aftershocks ceased to throw debris across the field, Naruto looked up from his prone position to the lethargically swirling tempest of debris that split the sky before him and, thanks to his transplanted Doujutsu, saw a single burning figure falling from on high to crash unceremoniously a few hundred feet away from him.

Every cell of Naruto's body hurt, he was reasonably sure his ears were bleeding, and his sternum was cracked from the fall, but he still had something to do. Mustering what was left of his chakra, he levered himself to his feet with a moan of pain and began trudging forward.

Naruto made his way over to Obito slowly, knowing full well that it would take Obito a while to regenerate from that attack, thanks to infusing the bomb with Senjutsu. Reaching behind him, Naruto unsheathed a kunai. As he walked, his eyes picked up many oddities of the explosion, remnants of his father's guiding thunder remained tethered to the ground all around them, sustained by the ambient chakra that filled the air.

Space began to swirl quickly some distance away before Kakashi and Sakura were unceremoniously spat out of the Kamui dimension, feeling that enough time had passed to be safe. They both looked around them, slack-jawed at the destruction rendered by the last attack. There was something else there: a foulness in the air, a sense of carrion stench that permeated the ground and air. "Something's wrong…" Sakura concluded, drawing a wary nod from Kakashi.

Sakura looked up to see the debris cloud settling down and could make out the figure of Naruto slowly making his way out to the edge of the crater where Obito's body had slammed into the dirt, "Naruto, hold on!" The kunoichi ran out to meet her last-standing friend, willing the Hundred Healings to persist a little longer.

Kakashi was quick to follow, not bothering to hide the limp he now sported from a cracked femur, "Wait, Sakura, we might not be alone."

"We can't leave him!" Sakura responded as she continued on without looking back.

Back with Naruto, he reached the edge of the crater where Obito's smoking form lay.

It was not a pretty sight, he was missing an arm and a leg and what remained of his torso was awash with deep lacerations and burns, his ribs poking through the mottled alabaster skin. His face seemed relatively unharmed save for his horn having been snapped. He smoked lightly; his healing agonizingly slow without his Truth Seeker Orbs to expedite the process.

Naruto jumped down into the crater, rolling down the hill haphazardly until he was level with Obito before getting back to his feet, meeting the evil glare that Obito fixed on him.

"After all that's happened," Naruto began, "a hundred years of pain, plans and misery," he gestured with the Kunai at Obito who looked up in the same callous, cold stare as before, "If you knew how you were going to die, wouldn't you do everything, all over again?"

Obito grunted in discomfort but did not bend, "If you're expecting some kind of deathbed repentance for a life poorly lived, you aren't going to get it. This isn't some children's story with a happy ending, Naruto." Raising his free hand to clench where his Sharingan was, Obito continued on, "In this story, the second verse would just repeat itself, the same as the first."

Sakura and Kakashi had finally arrived to see the confrontation between the two Jinchuriki, watching the surroundings like a hawk.

Kakashi's Sharingan picked up a mote of color on the ground and quickly pointed at it, alerting Sakura to what was about to happen. Out of the land, two figures emerged. The first was a monochromatic being of planetoid inclination, the dual-minded and dual-voiced Zetsu, while the other had a white swirling body in a black cloak.

"Oh, hi everyone!" 'Tobi Zetsu' waved, his voice chipper despite the dire circumstances, "We hope we didn't miss all the fun."

The faceless mutant clapped his hands into a snake seal, ready to make use of his Wood Style to prevent them from helping Naruto, but Sakura was having none of it, "Get the hell out of my way!" Leaping right at the head of an emerging wooden statue, Sakura raised a fist to deliver a punch right at Tobi Zetsu's face, sending the off-puttingly upbeat creation skidding back. They were launched through the partially formed wooden statue into the crater with Naruto and Obito.

Simultaneously, Kakashi looked on at Black & White, more specifically, the object slung over its shoulders, a seeming man-shaped white bundle made of white snake scales and covered in hundreds of mandalas. Kakashi's eyes widened briefly before narrowing at the plant based Akatsuki member, "You actually went back for that, of all things?"

He knew that within that bundle of snakeskin was Madara Uchiha, the Snake Sanin and Taka's final sacrificial move to take the ancient warrior off the board.

Kakashi readied his Lightning Blade, blue lightning crackling into life in his right hand amidst the sound of flapping wings. He didn't know if his opponent could undo the seal, but the prospect of dealing with Madara again was not one they could risk.

The double-sided being shrugged in response, "Whether or not the snake managed to make a seal that we can't undo," Black retorted in its rasping voice, "we're not just going to leave a valuable asset lying around."

"Ah, come on, he's more than just an asset; he's to be a fine vessel." White reasoned in a dark, yet scatterbrained tone.

Tree limbs soon erupted from in front of Zetsu, barreling straight at Kakashi as he swung his Lightning Blade, splintering the tree roots on contact. "I don't have enough time for this!" Looking back over at Naruto briefly, he could make out the downed form of Obito, his free hand covering his face, and a fluctuation in the air that he could feel from prior.

The familiar sensation for when their shared Dojutsu activated, "Not again…" Kakashi activated his Mangekyo to counter the incoming Jutsu, 'KAMUI!'

Moments before the Zetsu's emergence, Naruto continued to stare down Obito, "The old Obito really is gone, isn't he." Grabbing one of the few jutting appendages left on Obito's chest, Naruto twirled the kunai in a reverse grip, preparing to end the nightmare that had plagued their lives for so long.

"Well," Obito said, "It seems I succeeded in teaching you despair." A small smirk adorned Obito's visage as he opened his eye to show his last card to play, 'KAMUI!'

Amid myriad factors, an anomaly occurred.

As the lingering chakra in the air combined with the double Kamui, the remnants of Minato's Guiding Thunder were drawn inwards, touching to a singular point between Naruto and Obito. A warp took form, distorting time and space within the spacetime barrier that remained, a singularity that began to expand, drawing in all those that stood around it as it grew.

It began to expand violently, sucking in Sakura and Kakashi as well as the two Zetsu. Naruto and Obito passed beyond the event horizon and ceased to be recognized by the current play of existence, simply sent somewhere else.

Still, it grew, expanding to feed on the chakra-saturated battlefield and other ambient energies of the planet. The crust was torn from the molten underlayer and sucked into the building black abyss until, seemingly full, the anomaly in spacetime detonated, taking the rest of the continent with it.

Over the next day, the damage to the planet had reached the point of no return; gravitational irregularities and a destabilized core quickly worsened until, with an almighty heave, the tidal forces of the spinning celestial body tore itself to pieces.

Yet as a planet of millions let out its death throes to an uncaring cosmos, those that had been the vanguards of its end and survivors of the war that it had sent it there were set adrift someplace else within the cosmos…

---

-Another Time, Another Place-

January 3rd, 2009

UTC: 18:30

Metropolis, DE

The Daily Planet.

The Metropolis-based news company was one of the world's leading news outlets and one of the few remaining successful newspaper sellers in North America since the dawn of the digital age. It sat as a shining example of what the Fourth Estate should be, an unbiased rendering of the world that interrogated, outlined and told the truth for those willing to hear. Yet despite the quixotic belief, they had not failed to adapt to the times. The cream-colored skyscraper, topped as it was by a huge bronze globe that bore the paper's name, was alight with radio relays, cell towers and enough fiber optics to provide high-speed internet to a small country. There were even rumors that the Planet would soon expand out into television, a woefully kept secret by the name of Galaxy Broadcasting.

At its core, though, it remained a place where news was broken.

It was where politicians, celebrities, personalities, etc., all came for their interviews. Stories that shook the nation, exposing crime syndicates, corruption in politics and business, and in one case, peace.

So it was that Clark Kent read through his current piece, the peace talks between North and South Kaznia, a nation that had been divided since the late 1970s, constantly in a cold war that eventually reached the point of all-out war between the north and the south five years ago.

The fast-paced keystrokes finalized the story for Wednesday's morning edition, although he had long ago learned to keep that speed of his in check lest he invite curiosity where it was unneeded. He actually had to stop himself from hitting the final key too much, it would not be the first time that he had broken a keyboard while lost in the fervor of a passionate piece. "Heh, I shouldn't get too ecstatic for this piece." Clark mused quietly to himself, pushing his wide-lensed glasses up his nose.

Sure, the peace talks weren't award-worthy, but it was solid journalism that he took pride in, but it always filled him with joy to see that the world was making strides to become a more peaceful and better place. Proofreading it four times in a microsecond, Clark saved and sent it to the printer before taking it straight to the editor's office, "Got the peace talks in Kaznia finished, Perry."

Opening the door, Clark handed off his work to the editor-in-chief, "About time, let me see it real quick." the man replied with good-natured bluster. Perry White was an older gentleman of average height in his mid-fifties with a kind but deeply lined face, his brown hair had gone grey at the sides from the long years of fast-paced journalistic work that had seen him to the position of editor-in-chief at the Planet. He wore slightly baggy black slacks and a lime green short-sleeved shirt that he accented with an open waistcoat and simple black tie to match his slightly scuffed black oxford shoes. His intelligent blue eyes stared at his monitor with detached focus, reviewing the placement of this week's headline on the front page, nursing a black coffee in one hand and a biro with a chewed cap clamped at the corner of his mouth.

Poor Perry, he'd given up smoking in the workplace shortly after Clark had joined but was still sometimes seized with the urge to fiddle with something cigar shaped as he worked from time to time. Taking the news piece from Clark, Perry quickly glanced over his work to see that he had put quite a bit of work into it, "Not bad, Kent. Most other people would've taken a few days on something like this."

"True, but I'm the fastest typist you've got on the payroll." Clark reasoned.

Perry could only nod, "And that's why you always make the deadlines. Better than most of the other investigative reporters we've got." And that was true. Clark had always delivered on the stories he either found or was given. Giving the article one last look over, Perry set it aside on his desk, knowing he would end up rereading it later in the night, "Well, since you're finished, Kent, take the rest of the evening off, scratch that, take a few days."

Clark arched a brow at Perry's words, "You sure about that, Perry?"

Perry spread his arms out in slight exasperation, "Kent, we've got every story covered, you just finished days' worth of work in a matter of hours. Lane and Olsen have got the smuggling story covered. Cops are already down at the docks making the arrests, which, thankfully, Superman wasn't needed this one time. Just a bunch of amateurs trying to make a stake in things."

Clark had to admit that it was good to know that his alter ego wasn't needed, although he really wished that Lois would've called him before things went down.

Perry looked outside his office to see the rest of the Planet's staff hard at work, quickly pointing out the lead of each department with his pen, "Lombard's covering the Spartan's football game coming up in the Super Bowl and you don't write worth a damn about sports," Perry said as he gestured to each of them.

First over by the coffee station chatting it up with one of the younger female interns was the 'Office Pig', as Lois and some of the other women around the Planet referred to, real name, Steve Lombard. He was a striking man a few years older than Clark, standing at the grand height of six-foot-six with a well-muscled and broad-shouldered build that more than one of the office's bachelorette-minded workers had caught themselves glancing at with hunger. He had an affable face with blue eyes and the odd crease at his forehead but looks were drawn to his vibrant ginger hair and thick walrus moustache that grew thickly from his top lip. He wore a short-sleeved yellow muscle shirt that showed off his toned torso and arms combined with a pair of tight-fitting grey jeans and brown desert boots, the former of which he accented with a black belt with a silver belt buckle.

Perry then drifted over towards the Planet's entertainment and gossip columnist and soon-to-be news anchor, currently on call with her son, "Cat's got a scandal on some 'teen-celebrity' kid or whatever the hell they get called nowadays," Cat Grant was a pretty young woman between her late twenties and early thirties with straight blonde hair that fell to her mid-back and bright blue eyes, her full lips painted with a clear lip gloss to accentuate their appeal. She wore a pink blouse and red pencil skirt combo with tights tucked into a pair of sensible flat-soled women's shoes in dark red. The blouse had a red detailing along its buttons, and she accessorized with a thin silver watch around her left wrist that matched the small silver earrings that dangled from each earlobe.

And last but not least was Lois' cousin, Chloe, and one of the few people to know his identity as Superman, "And Sullivan's got the new Wayne Enterprises stock exchange story down. That Stagg stunt is gonna be a doozy."

Chloe Sullivan was a young woman of particular features that made her stand out amongst the bustling hubbub of the Daily Planet's floor. Most notable was her height; she was on the short side at five-foot-four and had a clean 'girl next door' prettiness to her that more than one unlucky sap had attempted to hit on. Her platinum blonde pageboy haircut sat above her intelligent blue eyes and creamy white skin that held the barest hints of a tan on the parts of her body not covered by her ensemble. A collared cheesecloth shirt worn over a pale-yellow top covered her upper body while she donned a dark green A-line skirt to just above the knees, leaving her legs bare and feet tucked into low-heeled green Mary Janes. Around each wrist was worn a wide bangle but otherwise forgoing jewelry for today. All in all, Chloe was a good-looking woman who cut a professional figure, befitting her position as the Planet's Business Editor.

Looking up from her computer, Chloe gave a thumbs up, letting Perry know she was finishing the story. Turning back towards his desk, Perry sank back into the chair as he continued on with his own job.

"A spectacularly failed stunt at that." Clark reminded Perry. It wasn't too long ago that Bane was hired by the crooked industrialist Simon Stagg to make a hit on the stock exchange in an attempt to maneuver to a hostile takeover of the Wayne Foundation. Luckily Bruce and Dick were able to stop Bane before it went too far, with the masked venom user pointing the finger and giving up Stagg. Odds were the defense lawyers would drag things out for as long as they could before getting things down to a simple slap on the wrist, in the form of a multi-million dollar fine.

"Stagg'll get out of it, I'm sure of that much." Perry said before looking back up to Clark, "But he'll get the public stink eye for years." Leaning back in the chair, Perry clasped his hands together as he looked up to Clark, "Either way, Kent, everything's covered, so take a few days off and relax."

Seeing how his boss was giving him a rare opportunity, Clark conceded to Perry's advice, "Alright then, I guess I'll head out before hitting rush hour."

Heading back to his workstation, Clark closed up his desktop before swinging by Chloe's desk to have a brief chat with his old friend, "Not that I'm particularly curious, as I'm sure you've already got it covered," Clark began as Chloe looked up from her monitor, "but how much litigation is Stagg in after this?"

Chloe hummed, smirking at her high school friend's question, "Oh, I'd say Stagg's in for about seven years' worth of legal hell." Looking back at the monitor to review her work, Chloe typed up the last sections of the report, "Although, I get the feeling that what you're actually asking," Chloe lowered her voice just enough that no one but Clark could hear her, "is why Lois or Jimmy didn't ask for your big blue overwatch?"

Not too long after Clark had become Superman and made some friends around the city, Jimmy Olsen had become one his most trusted, and best friends. Although he had never revealed his true identity to the young man as he did with Lois for a range of different reasons, Clark knew that it was best to make sure that if there was any real trouble in the city while he was somewhere else in the world helping people out, that he had a means of contacting him. He had asked Bruce to help out in that regard, despite the trust he had in STAR Labs, and the result was a signal watch that emitted a high-frequency alarm that only he could hear.

Swiveling around to look up at Clark, Chloe pulled up some photos on her phone of what happened at the docks earlier in the night, "Look, see? Amateurs couldn't even get their hands on firearms." The photos clearly taken by Jimmy had captured images of several men armed with simple blunt objects ranging from lead pipes to metal chains. Armed Police Officers had arrived within minutes, and subsequently tazed the roughly armed thugs into the dirt. "By the by, Lois could have kicked the snot out of them if things had turned ugly, her dad drummed it into her."

Clark conceded to his old friend's words, "Point taken, Chloe." Striding towards the elevator, Clark looked over his shoulder to give Chloe a heads up on his new time off, "Perry went ahead and gave me the next few days off, so I'll probably be on my 'other' job in the meantime."

Chloe gave a small wave before the elevator door opened up for Clark, "Don't let me keep 'the Blur' from doing his job then."

As the door shut with the elevator rising up to the top floor, Clark stepped out into the evening air and into the camera blind spot he frequented. Popping the top button of his shirt, he revealed the blue of his uniform and its striking S shield.

He fully donned his uniform before flying up and out to the Metropolis skyline, "Man, I haven't heard that name in a long time." Years before Clark had come out into the public as Superman eleven years ago, he had been pegged as the 'Red & Blue Blur', sometimes just the 'Blur' by local tabloids when he was younger.

Flying up high into the sky, Clark looked down into Metropolis, taking in the sight and quiet sounds of life, content that the City of Tomorrow was at peace.

Violent Crime had taken a dive down to an all-time low, only having to contend with simple robberies and thefts, along with the occasional fire to be put out, a civilian to be flown to the hospital, or even helping get a cat out from a tall tree for a little girl in the park. All in all, it was a calm evening in Metropolis, something that he had always taken solace in, despite the recent bust down at the docks by Lois and Jimmy.

Although Metropolis was a shining example of the world's ingenuity and progress, it wasn't without its corruption. Gazing down into the Wonderland District, Clark zoomed in to the district where many of the world's leading scientific companies were situated, among them being Stagg Industries and Cale Pharmaceuticals. Bruce and Diana's own corporate enemies, well, Bruce had more than just Stagg given how much Wayne Enterprises was worth in what it dealt with. His corporation's tower however was situated out of the district opposite of the one man that Clark had always been in conflict with: Lex Luthor.

LexCorp Tower was the tallest building in Metropolis, situated opposite Wayne Enterprises, where it stood tall above even the Planet. Having been designed by Lex himself, it was originally meant to be a testament to the company's ability to move forward with progress, and while it did so, it simultaneously displayed Luthor's arrogance and pride, believing that he was owed everything as he made dirty deals with the worst kind of people to get things done. Even resorting to murder and blackmail to do so, but once Clark had become Superman, Lex soon began manufacturing villains to bring him down, many of which were all victims of 'accidents' that befell them. But Clark knew better that Lex had made sure they became villains, blaming their situations and circumstances on the Man of Steel to fuel their drive to try and kill him. In the end, though, they were victims as much as they were villains.

Metallo, Parasite, Atomic Skull, Toyman and Ghost Soldier had become the most prominent, with four of them having become more active in recent times oddly enough.

It felt like they were coordinating more behind the scenes, and Clark knew that Luthor was behind it, yet he couldn't find concrete evidence to pin it on the corrupt businessman. There were a few close calls, but when Clark got close, the link between the crimes and Luthor slipped away, almost like magic at times.

Looping around the city as the sun slowly dipped to meet with the western horizon, Superman's red cape rustled in the wind behind him. It was strangely lonely up here, but it was a solitude he had grown used to. Still, sometimes, it was necessary to remember how, despite his strength, he was still a small cog in this big wide world he called home.

On a whim, Clark flew upwards, soaring through the clouds until he was far enough away from the city to break the sound barrier without a sonic boom. Accelerating, he flew to the mesosphere in half a minute, gazing out into space, recalling all the times he looked up in wonder. He remembered when he was ten, he and his parents sat outside with drinks and hotdogs to watch the flurry of meteors pass by with the stars, nebulae, and constellations in the backdrop of the night sky. It was a beautiful sight to see, that made him wonder what else lay in that cosmic cradle.

Now, looking up at that sea of stars from which he had journeyed as a babe, caught between the infinite above and the world below, Clark Kent, the last son of Krypton was wistful. He was strong, stronger than almost anyone, a breaker of worlds, yet his human side, raised at the hands of the good and just, told him the truth. 'I'm here to help.' he thought, gazing back at home.

The reminiscence of his youth was cut short as his ear communicator pinged, "Superman here, what's the situation?" Clark asked, schooling his features. Usually, whenever he was contacted directly, it was a League alert that needed to be handled immediately.

His answer came instantly.

"Manhunter here," J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, said over the comm in his calm deep voice. Another alien who had come to call Earth his home from the neighboring planet of Mars, or M'arzz in his language. The green-skinned alien was currently on monitor duty onboard the Watchtower, "Sorry to bother you, Superman, but the Watchtower's long-distance weather sensors have picked up an anomaly that needs checking out. A meteorological event appeared seemingly out of nowhere at the edge of Metropolis' rural area, up above within the mesosphere. You're the closest, so you can get a visual confirmation."

"Copy that, J'onn," Superman looked up. Using his telescopic vision, Clark peered towards the indicated area. It did not take him long to find it. A curvature in space dominated his vision, distorting the view of the stars above while sheathed in a dim corona created by the sun's refracted light. "I see the anomaly, about 85.3 Kilometers above the surface. I'm going to see if I can get closer to it without disturbing it too much."

Flying closer to the distortion, Clark could see more clearly; it was a marble of swirling endlessly refracting matter that slowly grew as time passed, 'winking' at him as it expanded and contracted at random. "Anomaly confirmed, it looks to be some kind of distortion in space, I'd say about twenty meters across and slowly growing."

Over on the Watchtower, Martian Manhunter quickly noted down what the chairman of the Justice League communicated about the oddity. His console pinged and his pupilless red eyes read a notice from the long-range sensors. "Superman, I'm reading a rising gravity disturbance, it's growing stronger yet… irregular."

After focusing his vision through the electromagnetic spectrum, Superman saw a series of myriad colors leaking from the growing anomaly, unseen to the naked eye, "J'onn, the distortion is throwing out various types of radiation, some of which I can't identify, wait." Focusing further on that which he wasn't familiar with, Clark could see it rising slowly, before rapidly expanding outwards, "I think something's coming through—"

All of a sudden, the anomaly exploded in a brilliant flash of prismatic light that momentarily blinded Clark, a concussive blast of dissipated atmosphere caught him square in the chest, sending the Kryptonian spiraling back towards the earth. When the stars cleared from his vision, he stopped his fall and hung in the air before looking back at the spacetime-event. He realized by the thickness of the air that he must have fallen fifty kilometers before regaining control over himself. The anomaly was different now, open, it appeared to be some kind of dark singularity surrounded by a swirling prismatic distortion that looked to wave lethargically through the night sky.

He spotted a shadow 'detach' from the inky heart of the anomaly before being expelled from the portal with monumental force and a deep BOOM, breaking the sound barrier ten times over in the space of a second. Clark gasped, seeing the shadow resolve into a figure that limply flailed through the air, aimed squarely at the Metropolis.

Superman did not hesitate, he shot up to meet the falling person at top speed, wanting to catch them before they were rendered a bloody smear crashing into Metropolis. Catching them before they broke past the cloud bank, Clark gave the person a quick look over and asked him, "Are you alright? Where did—"

His words died in his throat as his mind registered what it was he was holding. Clark took in the sight of a blonde in his late teens, probably no older than Speedy or Aqualad for that matter. What disturbed him was the state that the boy was in. His clothes, those that had not been incinerated, were little more than blood-soaked rags. He was covered head to toe in injuries, cuts, scuffs, and contusions littered his body and his face was swollen with enormous black and blue bruises, as if some awful beast had failed to smash his face in. Of his 206 bones, 103 of them bore some kind of fracture or break, including what was very clearly a cracked skull. Were it not for Clark being able to hear the young man's weak heartbeat and erratic breathing, he would have been sure that he just caught a corpse.

"Good lord almighty… who did this to you?" Superman asked in a mix of compassion and shock.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

Head snapping back up above, he could make out multiple figures emerging from distortion blasting in various directions around the world at high speed over the horizon along with rocky debris shooting out like an asteroid shower.

Too many questions ran through Clark's mind about what happened to this young man who had been pushed to the brink of death? Who was he? Who were these others that came with him? Gazing back up to the anomaly, he watched as it began to slowly dissipate before finally blinking out from his vision. Too many questions that would need answers at a later time, but he had a greater priority. A young man lay dying in his arms, and he had the responsibility to save him.

"Martian Manhunter, come in!" Clark immediately sped down to the city to save the teen's life as he called into J'onn.

"Manhunter here," J'onn replied, hearing his teammate's urgency, "are you alright Superman? The anomaly vanished off our scope. What's going on?" Worry filled his tone as Clark began to give a quick rundown of what occurred.

"Found the distortion and multiple figures came through with debris, most likely from wherever they originated." Making his way through the maze of skyscrapers, Clark flew with dogged single-mindedness to Metro General Hospital, "I found one of them, a young man in his late teens. He's wounded badly, and I'm taking him to the hospital in Metropolis."

J'onn absorbed the information and gave a quick answer, realizing the tenuous position the interloper must have been in, "Understood, I'll inform Batman once we have time to fill in the details later."

"Copy that; I'll stay at Metro General for a while to make sure the doctors stabilize him." Floating down to street level, Clark finally made it to the hospital. He rushed into the ER entry, causing several emergency personnel to jump out of their skin in surprise, "This young man needs a doctor immediately!"

The ER staff quickly mastered themselves, laying the errant blonde on a gurney that was quickly wheeled into the ICU. Clark remained in the lobby, watching the doors that the blonde survivor had vanished through, worried for his sake. He barely acknowledged the ping from his communicator that told him that Batman had been informed of the situation and was en route.

Unknown to Superman, his act of kindness and altruistic desire to save someone at their lowest had irrevocably tied him to Naruto Uzumaki, just how remained to be seen.

All the while, none noticed another, different spatial distortion manifesting elsewhere on the planet.

---

-Later-

Superman stood alone in the waiting room, quietly watching through the window into the room where the brutalized blonde was now sleeping soundly, a small flock of doctors and nurses milling around him to ensure he was on the path to recovery.

As Clark continued to watch the doctors stabilize their new patient, the Kryptonian wondered how the young man had gotten into such a near-death situation. Anything was possible, and the variables in the situation were, at best, vague, but he had enough common sense to know that one did not break nearly half of their bones before falling tens of kilometers without a significant external force. Someone had attempted to kill this young man with malicious purpose and barbaric execution. But who? Who would've done this? Clark knew that there was no shortage of violent individuals who wouldn't have blinked at killing, but there was something about this, a bad feeling. 'Pa once told me that a bad feeling means you've noticed something your mind hasn't caught up to yet, so I should watch this one closely.' he thought quietly, running over potential suspects. Most of the truly unhinged were locked up over the bay in Arkham or down in Belle Reve; he discarded the idea. The fantastical method of the blonde's arrival struck many 'street level' thugs off the list, but he still needed to pay attention.

The simple fact was this boy had fallen into his arms, needing someone to save him. 'You can't save 'em all', even if you tried your hardest. But if you had the power to save just one, it was his responsibility to do it no matter the damage.

Besides, there were sharper minds than his that could work on the particulars.

Speaking into the room's silence, the reporter wasn't at all surprised by Bruce's arrival, "Still trying to sneak up on me, Batman?"

Turning around to see one of his oldest and closest friends, Bruce Wayne, the Batman, emerge from the shadows of the room with nary a sound, eliciting a small smirk from Superman, "You remember I'd memorized your heartbeat a long time ago, right?"

Bruce deadpanned at the comment, maintaining the air of seriousness, but Clark could tell that his friend had raised an eyebrow in amused annoyance. He slowly made his way to stand beside the Man of Tomorrow and look at the doctors as they worked, the white of the room starkly contrasting with his black and grey bat suit. "How is he?"

Superman's smirk wilted, returning to his vigil.

"He's stabilized now, but the doctors want to keep him overnight, they're worried about the cracked skull, but they say he's recovering." Clark had been listening in on their progress to save the young man's life, their work having kept him from reaching death's door. When they were sure he was not going to deteriorate, they'd decided to move him to a room for the night to make things more comfortable until he woke up.

"And the anomaly?" Bruce asked.

Clark's lips thinned at how Bruce seemed to disregard the young man's condition, "Dissipated, though I thought you'd be more concerned over him." He knew that Bruce meant well, but at times, he had come to prioritize certain things over others, but that pragmatism over empathy had often caused strain between the friends.

Taking a moment to put his thoughts together, Bruce quietly admitted that he was perhaps a little abrasive in regard to the status of the teen, though he couldn't simply turn off his detective's curiosity. "I am, and I hope he makes a full recovery. But what concerns me also is how he came to be here." Tapping his wrist twice to bring up the transcript of J'onn's report on his wrist computer, Bruce looked down at the holographic readout to see the details, he'd been running over the facts since he had first been called in on the matter, "Fifty kilometers fallen in the space of fifteen seconds at a speed in excess of 7400 miles per hour. The velocity that he was travelling through the atmosphere alone should have set him on fire before disintegrating entirely, but beyond the pre-existing injuries-"

"Grievous injuries." Clark corrected, reflexively brushing his S shield where some of the young man's blood had spattered.

Bruce continued on with his analysis and deductions, "Any normal human would've died from that, but this young man didn't. Ergo, he's either a meta or an alien, both of which mean that whatever or whoever inflicted those wounds did so before his arrival through the anomaly."

Clark nodded grimly, recalling the other figures he saw briefly emerge alongside the teen. Was his attacker amongst them, now loose on their world? Or were they simply other victims? "Either way, I made a call to Hamilton over at STARS to prep a room to continue treating him." Bruce continued on, "They're better equipped for treating metas and aliens than Metro General, they can help us understand his biology better to help him recover."

The Dark Knight paused, the white lenses of his cowl hiding his eyes, but Superman could read the unsaid statement in his body language. Batman realized that Clark felt responsible for the young man's well-being and was asking for his blessing.

Superman nodded, "Let's do it."

---

-STAR Labs-

Within an hour of Bruce's arrival in Metropolis, STAR Labs had sent personnel to help move the teenager to their facility by the harbor situated near the Science Police division of the MPD, where some of their officers would often moonlight as security for the lab. Several of them were already on duty guarding the various labs within the facility. One such figure greeted Superman and Batman once they arrived, one that Clark knew by the name of Burton Thompson.

The tall gentleman lent against the corridor wall, his appearance in sharp juxtaposition to the range of scholarly scientists that called this place home. He was nearly as tall as Superman, with a muscular physique of tightly corded muscle honed from what must have been years of hard work. He had short, straight, dark brown hair with thick sideburns that connected with his well-maintained but full beard and moustache. His face was hard and unyielding, small hazel-colored eyes were set into his head and his lips were pressed into a thin line, displeasure all but palpable. He wore a short-sleeved blue t-shirt and baggy black cargo pants with a taser holstered prominently at his right hip. He also wore a close-fitting bulletproof vest over his shirt with the STAR Labs logo and the word SECURITY printed in white letters across its entire lower section. Lastly, he wore a pair of steel-capped army boots that were tightly laced to mid-calf.

Superman knew the man was one of their best officers, if perhaps too quick to pull the trigger if a situation seemed about to go south. He wordlessly buzzed them into the medical wing, where Clark and Bruce watched from above as several medical personnel and scientists ran tests and drew blood from the mysterious lad to help them understand the blonde teen's physiology. Nothing invasive given his recent ordeal, all the while looking over the documents that the ER at Metro General had sent them, updating their findings in real-time, which judging by some of their reactions, it seemed they had found something interesting.

Clark could have told them that without the legwork, because even as they had waited for the transport to arrive, he had seen the whisker-faced young man's body slowly heal from its grievous injuries. Cracked bones knitting back together and bruises losing their potency.

A pair of scientists made their way to the heroes with their findings, Clark recognized the older man as Professor Emil Hamilton.

Holding out his hand, Clark greeted the head of STAR Labs with a firm handshake, "Good to see you again, professor, though I wish it were under slightly better circumstances." It was around the time that he emerged as Superman that Emil had helped Clark understand the limits and potential capabilities of his powers and proved to be a good friend to the Man of Steel.

"I understand. It's not often we use our medical facilities for anything beyond first aid, but we do our best to help." He was a man in his late thirties with close-cropped light brown hair and dark brown eyes framed behind a pair of rectangular-rimmed glasses. Emil had a thick handlebar moustache that turned upwards at its ends and connected to a goatee of the same color as his close-cropped brown hair. Despite the serious demeanor that his buttoned collar and perfectly tied tie put off, there was a note of jovial familiarity to the man's face as he went about his business, a sign that he truly enjoyed the work he was doing here.

Looking down at the young man through the window, the staff had finished up their analysis with what they were able to do as they prepared to move him to another room in the building to recuperate, "Given the paperwork that Metro General had sent us, I'm not sure what would have happened had you not been there to catch him." Looking over the datapad with their findings, Hamilton allowed the woman next to him to take over, "This is Jenet Klyburn, she's far more specialized when it comes to genetic research than I am."

Clark wasn't familiar with her; it was possible she had only recently joined up with STARS. The female scientist was above average height at 5'8" with a youthful face caught in the prime of her 20s, her attractive face set with intelligent green eyes and a soft pair of lips. She had bright red hair worn in a short ponytail with messy bangs hanging at each temple but otherwise out of her face. Unlike many of the other scientists, she wore her lab coat open over a black blouse and red skirt combo, her legs covered in tan nylon tights tucked into block-heeled black heels that pushed her height to above six feet. A simple gold chain necklace was worn around her neck with its circular coin charm resting atop her small bust.

Nodding her head in appreciation from her senior scientists, Jenet took the reins for explanations, "From what our initial studies into our John Doe teenager show, is that he's definitely meta, not alien, but definitely not a baseline one." While aliens weren't very common to arrive on Earth, some, like Clark, were very similar to humans when it came to their physiology, save for one or two additional things, such as how his body enabled him to absorb solar radiation to fuel his powers. "As for how he differs from normal humans," pulling up the results from her datapad, Jenet displayed a hologram of the teen's body, "he has some kind of bioelectric field not too dissimilar from Homo Mermanus and Home Magi, the difference however is its complexity running throughout his entire body, linking to major organs, muscles, his nervous system, etc." Showcasing the wounds that the teen previously had were now nearly nonexistent, "As you can already see, it expedited the rate of healing by at least a factor of 150, much like a similar case we have seen in Speed Force conduits like The Flash."

Barry once had taken a serious blow to his leg while on a League mission against Vandal Savage, thinking it would allow the ancient caveman to get an edge in the fight, he had grappled with Barry and nearly snapped his leg in two, only for a few minutes later for Barry to get back into the mission as if he had never even taken the blow.

"A Speedster then?" Batman queried.

Janet shook her head, "No, it's more accurate to call it a more specialized version of Superman's Bio-Matrix, subconsciously diverting the energy to heal in addition to general enhancement."

"Well, that's good to hear." At the very least, Clark could take solace in that the young man's recovery would be a fast one.

As for Bruce, the Dark Knight nodded in affirmation at the news, although he still had more questions, "What else did the initial results show of him?"

Janet's face briefly creased, eyes flicking to her senior and Superman before answering.

Pulling up another set of data on her pad, Jenet displayed two DNA strands opposite one another. "When we looked at his blood work, we were able to get a closer look at his DNA, which…" Jenet chuckled slightly before continuing on. "I have to say, is one of the more advanced strands I've seen. His genetics showcase a remarkable ability to adapt hidden in the Junk DNA and evolve over time, though it seems like it would need some kind of catalyst we can't define." Enlarging the secondary strand, Jenet's demeanor shifted, "This one, on the other hand, we discovered from initial scans of his eyes. And while being similar enough to be from the same strain of meta, does not match the rest of his body." The display of the genetic strand was now accompanied by pictures they had snapped of the pair of strange eyes the teen had. "We could perform more invasive tests, but…"

"We deduced that his eyes belong to someone else entirely." Hamilton finished. He was as surprised and disturbed as the others clearly were by this little discovery. Superman and Batman looked intrigued. While organ transplant wasn't uncommon in the world, transplanting entire eyes was thought to be impossible with the current medical science they had access to. "Whoever had done this transplant," Hamilton said with unease in his tone, "they knew well enough what they were doing, and how to do so without complications to our John Doe or signs of rejection."

Clark and Bruce looked at one another in a silent conversation. The two had often shared these over the years in certain situations, coming to an agreement or disagreement on the subject at hand with nary a word. "Well then, I can wait while your people run their tests, but I need to know what was done to him," Superman said, gesturing with emphasis.

Bruce looked to Clark, knowing his dedication to being Superman could be so all-consuming that he neglected his personal life, "You don't have to stay, Superman." Sometimes, Bruce had to remind him that he had a life outside of being a hero.

Clark gave Bruce a disbelieving look, wondering if the Dark Knight was hearing himself, "Vanish into the night and leave him to wake up confused? You might be used to doing that in Gotham, Batman. But I'm not about to let a young man wake up in a strange situation without someone to help him feel at ease." While most would assume that heroes were there for nothing but altruism, that wasn't always the case. Some viewed heroes as simple vigilantes, those who didn't operate within the confines of the law, overstepping it, with Batman being the poster child for 'vanishing without another word.'

On the other hand, Superman wanted the world to become a better place, and if that meant he had to sacrifice a night to watch over a hurt young man? He'd do it in a heartbeat.

It also didn't help matters that Bruce dressed up as a giant bat and got his head punched in multiple times in the dead of night of Gotham either. Suffice to say, having Batman be the person to wake up and see, was not something that was needed.

Sighing at Clark's decision to stay longer, Bruce conceded to his point, "Alright, I suppose then I'm staying as well."

"Don't have anything back in Gotham that needs your attention?"

"Nothing that Robin and the GPD can't handle."

Looking back at the scientists, Clark and Bruce agreed then, "We'll continue to stay until he wakes up while you run more tests to see what was done to him exactly."

Hamilton looked back to Klyburn, "Let's get started; I forwarded my first ten hypotheses to your PDA."

"Right."

Not long after Hamilton and Klyburn returned to the labs to continue running their tests, Bruce and Clark had begun discussing what to do with the blonde, "Once he's awake and we have our answers, what do you suggest?"

For once, Bruce wasn't sure exactly, "Beyond helping him recover and providing a temporary residence, it's hard to say until we know more." It was all the man could say at the moment as the two heroes settled in brief silence before they decided to remain on standby. A quote from an old book surfaced from the murky depths of his memory, "Wait and hope."

---

-Hours Later-

Over the next several hours, the STARS personnel worked around the clock to figure out what exactly happened to their mysterious patient, with Clark and Bruce speaking privately about where to have him housed for the time being, unaware of his honed abilities slowly awakening.

All the while, Naruto's body healed; he subconsciously began to draw in the natural energies around him with his mind and body still in the state of battle against Obito. It started as a distinct feeling of 'otherness', the hallmarks of nature were there on the outside but uncomfortably different, causing him to frown in his sleep. As more of his mind was dragged up from the depths of a short but deep coma, he began to subconsciously address the feelings whispering at the edge of his senses.

Big mistake.

Despite being the same size as his Earth, this world had far, far, far more people in it. Konoha had been the most populous place he had ever known, and even then, it had only consisted of less than 100,000 people. There could not have been more than 50,000,000 people on the whole planet… compared to the roughly 7 billion people on this Earth. Metropolis alone had a population north of 8.5 million. And in his current state, still hurting physically, mentally and emotionally from the ordeal less than a day ago… he saw too much.

He felt them, life, so much life. Snapshots of millions of sleeping people lost amidst their dreams and nightmares, grumbles of should have ben's and could have ben's whispered as a susurrus of sound in his ears, only as Naruto's senses expanded did more and more of them add their voices to the curious until he was deafened by an endless roar. He began to twist and turn in his bed, trying in vain to drown out the noise, but it just kept coming, more and more life and emotions and all of it screaming. He was an empty vessel that the city of metropolis screamed its obscenities into, and slowly but surely, he began to break, letting memories swim into blurry vision.

A lowly night guard by the docks eyed his empty warehouse, his livelihood gone, the pistol in his back pocket suddenly becoming a very appealing prospect.

Two lovers locked in the afterglow of post-coital bliss, the birds chirping outside their window in the early morning air.

The eyeless face of Sasuke's slowly cooling corpse, each orbit a yawning chasm of darkness that loomed up at him, burned indelibly into his memory before swimming away to be replaced by a mix of Sharingan and Rinnegan.

A scarred face bore its fangs, a burnt hand locked around his throat as the world let out its sepulchral death knell.

'No, no more. Stop it, I don't want to see anymore!' he thought, bawling his fists in his sheets, his heart rate spiking.

There was just too much noise, he could not tell memory from dream nor reality from nightmare amidst the tempest of life that he did not have the wherewithal to tune out. 'NO MORE, MAKE IT STOP! TOO MUCH NOISE! I'M SORRY!'

At last, the tumult was too much, and he was violently ejected into wakefulness, his reaction to the real world anything but quiet.

"AAAAHHHHHH!" Naruto shot up out of his bed with a snap, sitting straight up. All the while, he cried to the ceiling, fearing the foreign sensation filling him. Millions upon millions of people's natural energies cascaded as they rushed to Naruto, with their joy, anger, happiness, sadness, serenity and rage all pouring into him as if he had been dropped into the icy waters that bordered the Land of Snow with no warning or protection.

The moment Naruto awakened screaming, one of the nurses dropped her paperwork to alert the rest of the staff. She ran inside the room to try and calm down the panicking blonde, only to find him totally incoherent, "Doctors, he's having a panic attack!" she shouted over her shoulder, trying in vain to wrestle him back into the pillow, even with her full weight she found no purchase against Naruto's mania induced spasms.

Hamilton and Klyburn rushed in while Clark and Bruce stood by the entrance to see if they could do anything to help the situation, assuring curious scientists that the situation was in hand. However, that did not deter Thompson and the rest of the security from staying at the ready if they were needed; Thompson readied a tranquillizer while another guard had straps prepared to hold the blonde down if need be.

"Hold him down before he hurts himself!" Hamilton ordered in concern as he and Jenet took hold of their patient. The nurses tried to wrestle with Naruto as Hamilton and Jenet tried to hold his upper body down to keep himself from throwing his back out from overexertion of his muscles reacting too violently, "Please! We're only trying to help you, son!"

Bloodshot Sharingan locked onto the older man's face. Barely any rational thought was present in their red depths, just unbridled emotion and instinct. Naruto looked through him more than truly seeing him.

Without warning, the blonde grabbed Hamilton by the front of his labcoat and easily threw him into Jenet before kicking the two nurses away, one going straight through the corridor into one of the guards. Thompson managed to dodge the incoming staff member by throwing himself against the floor. The other guard dropped the straps as he had readied himself to catch the nurse before setting them down to check over her injuries. Clark and Bruce quickly entered to try and talk him down, "Woah, this is all just a big misunderstanding, we're here to help you." Clark held his hands out in a placating manner in the hopes that the blonde would calm down before the situation escalated any further.

However, Bruce remained silent, observing if their John Doe would need something to help calm him down or neutralize him in a worst-case scenario, but he was unsure if the riot foam pellets in his utility belt could do the job. At the same time, his thoughts went over another possibility, 'Trying to neutralize him would make things worse. He's running on pure instinct and might construe it as an attack. Not to mention his strength capability.' He recalled the 190lb Hamilton being tossed away as if he weighed nothing, 'Clark is better suited to de-escalating this situation.'

Any hopes of a swift and peaceful solution seemed to get further away when Naruto began shouting at them, "Who the hell are you people, and where am I?!" (3)

Clark wasn't sure what had just been said, asking Bruce, "I don't understand him, what's he saying?"

"It's contemporary Japanese, Saitama prefecture, going by the accent," Bruce identified as he inched closer to the blonde, "he's asking where he is and who we are." For a moment, he thought the young man was perhaps out of touch with modern society, as the world had known just who Superman and Batman looked like in their capes, but Bruce quickly scratched that theory off the list with how Clark had found him emerging from the odd distortion in-atmosphere. Curious, but it was not the time.

With Clark's knowledge of the language very limited, Bruce took the initiative and began to mediate, "It's alright, we found you heavily injured and brought you to a hospital here in Metropolis. I'm Batman," Bruce gestured to himself before pointing at Clark, "and this is Superman. He caught you before you almost died from the fall that brought you here."

Hearing his native tongue, Naruto's focus sharpened to a knife's edge and, momentarily, gained a brief hold on his faculties. Adrenaline still thundered through his body, and the incessant ringing of his sage's senses still had him in the firm grasp of fight or flight, but at least one person he could understand.

The blonde seemed to calm down somewhat, his posture still coiled like a viper but at least willing to take in his surroundings better. Loosening up ever so slightly, Naruto's gaze turned confused at the words, "Metropolis?" The name did not flow off his tongue as the names of other cities would have, "Where the hell is that?" Was this all some big trick?

As the STARS personnel slowly got their bearings, Hamilton gingerly made his way over to Jenet and helped her up while rubbing her arm. As for the nurses, especially the one that Naruto had thrown through the window, the security guards helped them up before they tried to clean her up, "Is our John Doe alright?"

Superman gave a wan smile to the doctor, hoping that Bruce had this in hand. "Let's just keep things calm, Professor."

Hamilton nodded, but sadly not everyone cared for the sage words of the Man of Steel.

Outside the room, in the shadow of the broken window, Thompson had been slowly and quietly readying the tranquilizer gun with Batman talking to the young man, though he did look over to see that the nurse and his fellow guard were surprisingly unscathed despite receiving some bruises from the glass, "He looks kinda alright to me, but what about you?" the head of security said in a low voice.

The nurse shook her head in response as the other nurse helped get her up, "I'm fine, actually."

"You've got some serious dedication to that oath, ma'am." Stepping closer to the shattered window, Thompson quietly raised his tranquilizer gun with the sedative loaded aimed at the vein in Naruto's neck, 'Just keep talking to the heroes, kiddo.' he thought. As far as he was concerned, it would be better to just knock the kid out rather than talk him down, after all it was much easier to ask for forgiveness than it was permission. With his aim on point and the blonde still distracted, Thompson saw an opportunity and took it.

As Hamilton helped Jenet out of the room, the doctor looked over to see Thompson about to possibly escalate the situation with the patient in her care, "Wait, don't!" Janet tried to reach out and stop the security from acting, but she was too late.

For Clark, blessed as he was with superhuman levels of perception, was able to witness things that would be over in the blink of an eye for others. The slowing down of time happened the instant Jenet shouted out to Thompson as Clark saw the man fire off his tranq gun. The dart travelled slowly to the intended target, turning in the air, its needle full of potent sedatives that would put an elephant down in a few seconds. Clark had to act; had to stop the burgeoning trust from being severed. However, it seemed that he wasn't the only person that could see things as he did…

In Naruto's peripherals, the ninja could see the slowly encroaching dart in stop motion with the Sharingan's gifted ocular prowess. Time seemed to slow down as everyone around him moved so slowly that he felt as if he could run loops around them without notice. His hand sprang up in a blur of motion and snatched the dart from the air, drawing confused noises from the rest of the staff and a groan of discontent, instantly realizing what Thompson had foolishly done.

Naruto yelled in anger, glaring daggers at them all, mostly at Thompson, who was attempting to load another shot in before Jenet jerked the dart gun down, fight or flight winning out, boiling conscious thought from the surface of his mind in favor of a single directive.

Escape, survive.

Naruto whipped off to his left, peeping a window displaying the city beyond, 'Move. Find the others.' Bolting to his feet, he created a Rasengan, the familiar sight and sound adding a solitary note of normality to this nightmare.

"No! We mean you no harm, he made a mistake!" Bruce exclaimed as he kept his hands in the blonde's full view, now seeing that any possible trust was just eroded by the actions of Thompson. Typically, he would've had at least one hand digging into his belt for a Batarang, but this wasn't a normal situation, once again, this young man was an innocent who was rightfully reacting to what he perceived as a threat.

Clark saw that the blonde now held his left hand up with a blue swirling orb in his possession, no doubt linked to whatever Meta ability he possessed. Inspecting the sphere through his supervision, Clark could see an energy similar to the magic that Zatara often used, which meant that it could be dangerous, especially for him. There were two surefire methods of being able to hurt him, Magic and Kryptonite, yet that didn't deter him from acting as a shield if the young man felt the need to use the orb, which, judging by how coiled his posture had become, would be soon.

Despite Batman's best efforts, Naruto felt that he was being cornered and needed to get out while he still could before anyone else showed up, "To hell with this!" He shouted as he pivoted around to the nearby wall before driving the Rasengan into it, the concrete and brick buckling under the assault and exploding in a flair of dust and debris.

Seeing that he had to act before the young man hurt anyone or himself, Clark quickly sped over to try and calm him down one last time, "Please, this doesn't need to get any further out of hand!" He pleaded before the blonde swung the orb in his direction to strike his chest. Not sure how the attack would affect the others, Clark kept his person close to it should it explode.

Naruto shoved the Rasengan right into the man in blue's chest, grinding against the S shield before he launched him right into the wall where he embedded, much to everyone's shock, stupefied at what happened. Seeing that he had the opportunity to flee, Naruto covered his face as he leapt through the hole in the wall, sailing out into the streets of Metropolis.

---

"I actually felt that," Clark mused quietly as he pulled himself from the wall, accepting Bruce's offered hand to stand back to his full height while brushing fragments of debris from his cape.

"Are you alright?" Bruce asked in mild concern, "I've seen you take a train dead on without a grunt, but did that hurt you?"

"Just my sense of pride I guess." Clark joked briefly while gently rubbing the place where he was struck, the uniform lightly scuffed, he could feel that whatever that orb was packing was no joke. It felt like he had been shoulder-checked by Diana (4). "I don't think he intended to do any harm with that move of his." Clark theorized aloud, "I think he was just looking to make a quick getaway."

Bruce concurred, having seen the look of terrified need in the blonde's strange red eyes, leading him to agree with his friend, "I'll contact anyone else if they're able to come help. Flash and Manhunter should both be able to make it here on short notice. In the meantime, we should get things here settled." Bruce turned to the ensuing argument that was occurring between Thompson and the group of STARS staff.

"What made you think it was a good idea to try and fire a tranquilizer at an unknown meta?!" Jenet raised her voice angrily and protested the guard's actions with their patient. Despite how the young man's awakening was anything but peaceful, they wanted to assuage his feelings of confusion and fear, not confirm them.

Thompson, on the other hand, wasn't a fan of someone jumping on his tail, "The fact that he was able to throw four fully grown adults around like nothing and wasn't backing down was all the reason I needed to do my job and protect anyone else from possibly getting hurt!"

"We wouldn't have needed that had you simply let Superman and Batman talk him down!" Jenet countered, "A young man, most likely a meta like them, no name, no background of any kind, needed help. Help from us," Gesturing to herself, "Help they are giving!" she gestured to the heroes, "And now he's out there in the city with possibly no idea how the world is, only that those here attacked him! Who knows what kind of damage he could do to others or himself!" Call her perhaps a tad too worried, but Jenet wouldn't let anyone in her care slip through the cracks. It was her former profession as a nurse talking.

"And what if he didn't back down?" Thompson countered, "What if he had some power that the heroes couldn't deal with? Just like how he smashed Superman into the wall over there." Seeing it as a possible point to capitalize on, Thompson continued on, "Like you said, he's practically an unknown, and we followed protocol to protect you, the rest of the personnel and the work you all do here!"

"That's enough! Both of you!" Hamilton barked, getting between the two, "What's done is done, now we need to get out there and find our patient before he gets into any more trouble."

Clark agreed with his old friend, "He's right. Right now, we have a young man who's scared and has no idea what he's about to get into out there. I'm heading out now to try and find him." Looking over to Bruce, Clark asked, "Did anyone respond?"

Bruce nodded in affirmation, "Flash should be here within a few minutes along with Kid Flash, and Martian Manhunter is coming in from the Watchtower to help bridge the language gap." Heading quickly over to the opening that the blonde had made, Bruce continued, "Hopefully we can talk him down, and if not, then incapacitate him gently before he hurts himself."

Well, that was good news in Clark's mind, at least, "Need any help on your end, professor?" Clark asked Hamilton, the older man waving it off.

"We'll handle things here." He began ushering the current staff to leave the area for maintenance and janitorial to come in and clean things up, "Just let us know once you've managed to talk him down or…" Hamilton hated to say the latter option that Batman had proposed, but sometimes it was unavoidable. It didn't change the fact that he thought violence should only be the last resort, never the first.

"I understand." Turning back to the broken window, Clark flew out as Bruce followed with his grappleshot to help search for their runaway patient. "Let's hope things go better the second time around."

"We can only hope," Bruce replied.

---

-Naruto-

Wanting to get as far as he could from the people he had just escaped, Naruto ran through the foreign streets barefoot, dressed in little more than a pair of grey hospital pajama pants. All the while, his senses continued to scream, Naruto felt millions of people all clustered within this massive city of concrete, steel and glass as he had quickly, but briefly noted as he continued onwards through the city as the sky began to lose its inky darkness.

His mind was in overload; the sights, sounds and smells were all so foreign, but his recent memories of the final battle melded with them, phantoms of death and destruction tearing away all he had known in favour of this concrete nightmare. The Sharingan, he couldn't turn it off, the red orbs pushed his visual acuity to an insane degree, so much so that his subconscious efforts to interpret the squall of data rendered a 'seeing double' effect that made him feel off balance, stumbling past a lamp post with enough force to crumple the steel.

Eventually, his mind was able to scrape together enough sense to choke out a single, pittius mental plea.

'Kurama! Are you there?' His thoughts were now occupied with contacting his partner-slash-tenant, who had gone strangely silent, which wasn't like him in the last couple of days. 'Come on! Answer me, partner!'

The silence amidst the sensory thunderstorm was deafening, and the one voice he desperately wished to hear was mute.

Instinct filled the silence with a directive: Survive.

Naruto's mind was firing on all pistons to act on his natural instincts to make sense of his surroundings and find somewhere safe. The mixing of the various sounds, smells, and the harsh electric lights and shadows they cast around them was now playing havoc on his mental state, he'd never seen anything like the city back home. "All these people, all these buildings, so much noise!" Staggering into the street, he gripped onto the strongest thought he could, a lifeline of sanity. "I-I need to find them…!" Finding Sakura and Kakashi was now his highest priority. What came after was something he wasn't worried about; everything that had happened up 'til now could be dealt with later.

Slowing down to try and gather his breath and become sound of mind, Naruto was finally able to consciously tone down the metaphorical screeching in his head. But Naruto had unknowingly staggered out into oncoming traffic, the ninja became aware of the loud and blaring horn of a semi-truck barreling down the street, catching Naruto in its headlights, "Oh crap!" Without knowing that the natural energy he took in was still supercharging him, Naruto reflexively jumped with so much force that he created a crater in the ground, bounding across the street without much control to stop himself from crashing into the shop adjacent to him, "Dammit!" Naruto crashed through the window after wrecking the metal divider into the shop as he tried to reorient himself to land, only to slip and fall face-first into a cooler filled with drinks.

Getting up from his poorly executed landing, Naruto rubbed his head in some vein attempt to ease the pain that had taken hold of him.

Hearing the commotion, the shop owner came down the stairs and poked his head in through the door, "What in the hell is going—?" As the middle-aged man came out from the back, he saw the debris that had been created from the blonde's attempt to dodge the incoming semi-truck, "Shit!"

The blonde groggily got to his feet, his bare feet crunching on broken glass.

Turning to see the store's new occupant, the man pointed an accusatory finger at him, "You goddamned thief! You know what the hell you just did, trying to break in here?!" The shop owner quickly got behind the counter, not wanting to take a chance with the blonde. All the while Naruto soon found his physical bearings.

Shakily leaning against the broken cooler, Naruto rubbed his eyes as his vision adjusted to see what he had just caused, "This isn't good, and looks really bad." Deciding that it was best to leave before anyone caught up to him, Naruto made his way to the hole he had put in the window, brought up short when he heard a 'cha-chunk' behind him, making him whip around 'Oh, this doesn't look good at all.'

Naruto stared down the barrel of a pump-action shotgun held tightly in the hands of the shopkeeper, who scowled angrily at the apparent thief.

Hopefully, he could try and talk to the shop owner that this was all just a big mistake, Naruto hoped he could understand him. "Look, I'm sorry for what happened, but I'm sure that—" He didn't get the chance to finish as the older man, face full of red and rage, levelled his gun at Naruto's own and pulled the trigger.

"AGGH!" Naruto shouted as a 50-gram beanbag caught him in the face at very nearly 280 MP/H, sending him falling backwards out of the smashed storefront window. He'd been more scared by the flash and sound of the thing than the shot itself.

The shop owner came outside, keeping the gun levelled at Naruto as he wracked another beanbag, "No way in hell am I going to let a damned fool break into my store again. Not after Superman cleaned up the streets around this part of the city! Go back to Hob's Bay, we don't need your kind of people messing with the rest of the city!

Rubbing his face to ease the pain, Naruto felt as if he got slapped across the cheek, "What the hell did I do to deserve getting shot at again?!" Having had enough of the weapons that were fired into him twice in one night, just under half an hour no less, Naruto decided against trying to talk things out, but not wanting to harm the older man, the blonde continued on with running away from his current situation instead. Survival reasserted for the ninja and needed to get somewhere he felt safe enough to think properly. He staggered away, taking another beanbag in the back before breaking out into a run, sprinting up the front of a nearby building and hopping over rooftops.

As Naruto blurred away, the shop owner racked a third shell, "Just when I hoped that I'd get a quiet night, I got to deal wi—" A pair of red and yellow blurs streaked past him, and suddenly his gun felt much lighter. It took him a few moments to register that he wasn't even holding his shotgun anymore, replaced instead by a stick with a yellow sticky note taped to the end. Bringing it up for closer inspection, the man unfolded the letter to see the message quickly written down on it:

'Don't point guns at confused people, please!'

-Flash & Kid Flash

The man looked between the note and the vanishing red and yellow blurs, turning the corner at the end of the street before letting out a shout of annoyance. "What in the hell is happening tonight?!"

Having scaled the surrounding buildings, Naruto's continued escape had brought him to a wide and grassy area of the city, 'At last, something green.' Naruto thought to himself. Taking in the sight of the area, it mainly appeared to be like that of a park that he would often see kids play in, only on a far larger scale.

Concrete paths laid about, twisting and turning throughout the area, with a small river and a bridge arcing over it to a central plaza with a large fountain. It was the largest source of natural energy in this massive city of steel, stone and glass and yet, "but it's nothing like home." Naruto said to himself.

Reaching out further to try and find Sakura and Kakashi, he felt nothing from their signatures, that which he would know better than anyone else. Which could only lead him to a conclusion he refused to accept, "They can't be dead! There's no way! They… they have to be…!" He refused to believe that they were dead until he saw it for himself.

As the natural energy flushed out what he had taken in previously, he felt two signatures closing on him. Fast, abnormally fast.

"Oh, great. What now?" Naruto mumbled.

---

-Flash & Kid Flash-

Not long after the blonde had run out of STAR Labs and into the city, Barry had received the call from Bruce about a runaway meta that got a little too much of a wake-up call. He had been close enough to make the journey and help out, and since today was meant to be partner time with Wally, the senior Flash had brought him along with, "I think we found our wayward meta."

As Barry and Wally were running towards the park, where they saw the blonde meta slow down, the younger speedster had put his binocular goggles on to see where exactly he was, "He's got a good set of legs. No wonder he was able to outpace early morning traffic." When they had arrived in Metropolis, Superman had filled them in that it was likely the blonde unknown had the potential for an incredible bout of speed.

At first they'd both considered the possibility that he was a Speed Force Conduit like them, however after seeing the blonde in action in their pursuit, Barry could see things a bit more clearly after years of experience with other meta-abilities, "I'm not so sure he's a speedster. If anything, he's just naturally fast like Superman or Shazam are." he said, remembering when he and Superman had once participated in a road race.

Barry's comm pinged in his ear, knowing that it was likely either Bruce or Clark calling to see their status, "Flash here."

"Were you able to get a bead on our runaway meta?" Bruce's voice came over the comms.

"We found him, he's in Centennial Park right now. He's probably taking a breather after what happened a minute ago."

"What happened, exactly?"

"He accidentally ran into a shop and the owner tagged him in the face with a beanbag slug. He ran off after the shopkeeper put a second in his back, but Kid and I stopped him before he could get off a third."

"This isn't good. Twice in a single night, someone trigger-happy has shot at him. He's already in a fragile state of mind." Barry could practically hear Bruce sigh ever so slightly at how the situation was going downhill, "Right now, what we need to do is ease him down without violence and talk him down."

Getting a good grasp of the situation, Barry understood that perhaps it might help if someone at the same age did the talking. Turning towards Wally, the senior speedster gave him the basics, "Ok, teenage meta in a frantic state, and we need to talk him down non-violently."

"Leave it to me." Giving a small salute, Wally went straight into the park towards the blonde, leaving Barry to call out a plea to wait as Batman relayed new info.

"He only speaks Japanese. Wait until J'onn arrives to help with the language barrier." Bruce stated just as Barry had given Wally the go-ahead.

Eyes widening at the accelerating redhead pulling away from him, Barry called out, "Wait, Kid! He only speaks Japanese!" Unfortunately, Wally was out of earshot of the warning, "This won't be good."

Unaware of the dilemma that his eagerness had created, Wally raced on to circle around their would-be meta and judging from what he was wearing, it was a miracle that it was holding together, but from what he remembered about STARS, was that the patients they took in had sturdy wear when they were hospitalized, "Ok, so, just need to talk this guy down. Can't say that'll be a big problem with the Wall-man's words of wisdom to a fellow teen."

---

-Naruto-

The two signatures approached with great speed, Naruto spun around to see that one of them, garbed in some weird yellow and red outfit, was making a beeline for him, "Another one…" Not wanting to deal with any more of these costumed weirdos, Naruto readied himself as he came closer, running in circles around him before he stopped, standing just a few feet from him.

"Whoa, hold on there, Kid Flash is here to help!" The now-identified teenager held his hands up in front of Naruto, his words little more than gibberish to the blonde, but the quickly approaching red one did nothing to alleviate Naruto's paranoia. "You made a pretty big mess back at STARS, and well, running the way you did, didn't help things out, so—"

Too much talk. Needed to act. Naruto took the initiative before he was boxed in and outnumbered against his pursuers. The ninja quickly swung at the teenager before him, his eyes widening as the Speedster dodged, "Woah, wait a minute!"

Naruto advanced, throwing a series of wild blows at his pursuer, who did his best to get out of the way as he was given towards the large fountain in the middle of the park.

Letting out a haymaker, Naruto was surprised when his fist smashed clean through the concrete as if it were tissue paper. 'I didn't know I was that strong.' Naruto thought to himself. Naruto continued trying to take down his supposed opponent, although he wouldn't take his senses off the incoming others.

The first one to arrive wore a red version of his current foe's uniform, calling out to his fellow with a frown, "Kid! You ran off before I could tell you about the language issue!" Naruto sent a kick at the older man and caused him to blur out of the way, leaving a trail of yellow lightning in his wake.

Despite this, the older man tried to keep talking, "I know you can't understand either of us," The red-clad man continued on speaking the foreign language, "but we mean you no harm! I promise you, we—" Molding chakra in his arms and legs, Naruto's limbs blurred with speed, moving to catch up with the duo.

There was no rational thought at play here. No witty words or jests. He had to get away, and these two were in his way.

Seeing that the blond was not in the mood to talk, Wally decided that he needed to take action, "I don't think he's willing to talk, Flash! He—" he was cut off, seeing the blonde's strange red eyes begin to glow and spin, "—He's about to use something! Don't worry though, I'll knock him out with a vortex!" Seeing how Barry would often use a vortex to suck out oxygen enough times to knock someone out or put out a fire, Wally had already done the math on how to do it without hurting someone.

Cranking his speed up to start the vortex up, Wally began to run circles around the whiskered blonde, the yellow blur kicked up a twister of dust, leaving afterimages as he went. He picked up the speed, exacerbating the vortex until it rose high above their heads, slowly siphoning the oxygen from the center. He ventured a chance look, wanting to see the progress on how much more he had to maintain the vortex before the meta teen passed out, but what he saw froze him to the very core. Despite his speed, time came to a contemptuously slow crawl, seeing those two red eyes slowly slide in their sockets, following Wally's every move with the ease of reading a book.

Kid Flash's eyes widened in surprise, "Oh, crap!" Wally's voice had gone up an octave in amazement as the blonde moved, accelerating out of the perceived 'cage of slowness' speedsters sometimes saw their opponents within. Growing closer to his speed, the blonde began to throw punches and kicks towards him, Wally dodging only by mere inches as his blows were getting too close for comfort, "How are you so fast?!"

Naruto knew well enough what a greenhorn looked like, and judging from how clumsily this guy was dodging, he had very little hand-to-hand combat experience, using his speed as a crutch. 'You won't be dodging for much longer.' Channeling chakra to his eyes as the stinging sensation returned in the back of them, the Tomoe span in a blur until they transformed into a black three-sided shape within a black and red star. As chakra was channeled into his eyes, he felt every cell of his body burn, unconsciously tapping into the Transcription Seal: Susano'o. Translucent purple chakra boiled from his form, covering him in a fiery haze that began to gather into solid bones.

As the skeleton of the Susano'o emerged around Naruto's body, he quickly formed the arm and hand to quickly backhand the teenager into the older man. Not hard enough to maim, but sufficient to send him flying into the red-clad man with force enough to knock the wind out of them for a while. Naruto wasn't looking to kill them, merely neutralize them long enough so he could escape. Looking back at the two oddly colored people, Naruto saw that neither was able to get up to try and pursue him.

Taking a moment to catch his breath properly, Naruto maintained the Susano'o's ribcage despite the screaming from his cells. He was still exhausted from the final battle against Obito, and Susanoo was a hell of a drain on chakra.

"Please, there is no need for further violence."

Frantically looking around, Naruto tried to pinpoint the source of the voice, only to see no one speaking, "Who the hell and where are you?!" And just how was he able to talk to him in his head?

"My name is J'onn, but I am not where you can see me." Naruto doubted the latter was true, otherwise, he wouldn't know where he was, "But you must calm yourself. My colleagues and I only wish to help you." Naruto knew the Yamanaka clan was capable of things like this, but they had to be in close proximity to pull this off. "Whatever it is that you need, we will help you, but you must help us to understand the situation." A Yamanaka would at least need to be within a line of sight and a certain distance to do this independently, unless he had a machine helping him out like what they had constructed for the war.

He tried to listen to the voice's tone, and wished that it was genuine, but so far, after he had been shot at and attacked tonight, not even counting all of the fighting he had done before he wound up in this strange city, Naruto couldn't believe what he was saying.

"Why should I believe anything you're telling me?!" Naruto exclaimed aloud, "After everyone that tried to attack me, why should I 'calm down'?"

"All of those incidents were misunderstandings." The voice of J'onn tried to explain, "I implore you, please, calm yourself before others are hurt by your actions."

Shaking his head, Naruto refused to talk any further. Right now, he didn't know who he could trust, "To hell with this, we're done talking."

Preparing to dispel this technique as if it were a Genjutsu, Naruto forcefully drew upon Kurama's chakra to disrupt the connection and sever it, "Wait, don't—!" Flooding his body with Kurama's chakra, he temporarily forced the voice from his mind.

With that taken care of, Naruto tried to think of what to do next, as he was now cut off from any form of help that he knew he could trust, nor did he know where he was exactly in the world… or even if this was the same world at all. "I'm really screwed right now, aren't I?" Looking up at the skyline to see that the sun was slowly rising, Naruto breathed in deeply before he turned away to find someplace to hold up before he could move again.

Although he wouldn't be leaving the park yet, not with the new arrival of a familiar voice echoing in the early morning air.

"Don't. think. your situation. hopeless." Naruto turned to see the same man in blue and red cape floating down from the sky as the sun rose slowly. He fixed Naruto with a sympathetic look, "I. sorry. if. my. Japanese. bad. I. still. adjusting. to. language." he said with slightly stilted purpose, the words of Naruto's native tongue coming un-naturally to him. "I'm. sorry. for how bad. this whole situation may look. I'm Superman." Holding a hand over his heart in dedication, the man now calling himself Superman continued on.

"I. promise. that I'll help. make things right with you." Naruto still wasn't sure if the so-called Superman's words could still be trusted, though he seemed genuine, "All. we're. asking. is to calm down. so that no one else. gets hurt." Holding his hand out in a gesture of kindness, Naruto could at least see that Superman was trying to make an effort to appear trustworthy, "Trust me. I give you. my word."

Thinking over all of what had happened before this moment, it felt as if maybe Naruto had an opportunity to get somewhere now with trying to find his friends and figure out where they were at, yet the tension within him still remained like a rubber band stretched beyond belief, "Think of it this way," Superman started, "this. will all seem. like. bad dream. when you wake up."

Dream.

Dream?

DREAM!?

Superman had not known nor meant to cause what occurred next, but nearly a week of a madman constantly claiming that he would render the real world into a dream was the wrong thing to say to the wrong person at the wrong time.

The trauma that he had endured over the last week… the loss of so many friends, his village, his country, everything that he and they had all bleed and died for… the mere mentioning of dreams all but made Naruto blow up in anger. His eyes widened in anger as spinal cord and skull began to manifest around the Susano'o, Naruto raged and yelled out, "SHUT UP WITH ALL THIS CRAP ABOUT DREAMS GODDAMMIT!"

Throwing his arms up to shield himself, Clark saw that the young teenager had now fully produced an ethereal, purple humanoid construct, one lacking skin and showing only the skeleton and building musculature. Not sure what it was that he said that was so wrong, Clark telepathically contacted J'onn who had been temporarily shut out of the blonde's mind, "J'onn what's going on? I thought I was getting through to him, but now he's angrier than before!" Clark exclaimed, unsure if the thing that was before him could become very dangerous.

"I don't know Clark," J'onn said groggily from his location, still recovering from the mental backlash he received from the whiskered teenager, "but all I could feel from his burst of emotions were confusion and pain. Some kind of manic trigger word."

Looking through the ethereal being, Clark could see the power rolling off of the teen as his eyes began to bleed, no doubt the effect of summoning such a being was now overtaxing his body that had so recently been beaten to a pulp. Not only that, but the emotions also he could see in those eyes, misplaced fear. Clark could only pity him for his situation, yet he also understood it well enough to have seen it in many others. "I'm sorry for how things have gotten bad for you, but I promise to help you somehow, some way," as the blonde launched himself at Clark, he quickly dodged an attack that the ethereal being's hand would have clubbed him as it nearly did with the Flashes, "even if all I can do now is stop you before you hurt yourself." Flying up and around, Clark saw that the ethereal being was taking a toll on the blonde's body, part of the bones melting and crumbling away. It was most likely that he was simply exhausted and running on fumes. An opportunity that Clark knew he needed to take to end this quickly. Flying right behind the teenager, Clark dove in through a chink in the purple armour and thrust his arm forward, flicking the back of the blonde's skull that was most vulnerable to being knocked out.

Stars popping before his eyes, the whiskered teenager stumbled forward before falling to the ground as unconsciousness took him.

"I'm sorry; I just wish there was a better way." Seeing that both Barry and Wally were getting their bearings, Clark scooped up the teen as he turned towards them to see how they were doing, "Are you both alright? He didn't do any permanent damage, did he?"

Barry helped Wally up as he shook his head, "We're both alright, Supes, no need to worry about us."

"Did anyone get the license plate of that truck that hit us?" Wally asked as he rubbed the back of his head.

"Kid, you got thrown into me by a giant purple skeleton arm," Barry replied in a dry tone. He wasn't any happier about what happened either and would've preferred it if they never spoke about it again.

Wally thought about what had happened, and he was just as embarrassed as Barry was, "Oh, that's even worse."

---

And that would be the prologue of the new version to this story. I apologize that it's been a long time since I last updated this story, much less any story I have right now, but I've been busy with my life, both social and personal. Not to mention college work, full time work with my job, games, comics and shows that I've been watching have been plaguing me with plot bunnies that I needed to jot down otherwise I'd never get them off my mind.

Anyways, the next chapter will be a far more refined and better version of the previous iteration of Naruto's intro to the heroes and the new world he now resides in.

Continuity Housekeeping:

As may be obvious from the start of this chapter, there is a very heavy diversion from the canon events of the manga but for the sake of ease of understanding, we have this little Appendix here to explain where the story diverted from canon, how and its ramifications for the war. The events of the manga occurred as canon up until chapter 654 ("It was Obito Uchiha). When Naruto attempted to make his moral pleat to Obito in his subconscious, Obitio maintained the strength of character and belief in his cause to resist the 'Talk no Jutsu' and thus was able to pull the tailed beasts back within himself, staying as the Ten Tails Jinchuriki. The next diversion comes with regards to the length of the war, instead of the Fourth Shinobi World War lasting two days and ending at dawn on the 10th of October, it drags on for three additional days to the 13th, in which time Obito and Edo Madara hunted the remaining Jinchuriki and succeeded in absorbing Gyuuki from Bee and destabilizing the core of the planet via Obito's abuse of the Shinju's roots which would eventually result in the death of humanity and violent fragmentation of the Earth. As a result of this, several things are different:

While Naruto has the chakra of Tailed Beasts 2-7 as well as all of Kurama, he was never given Shukaku's or Gyuuki's.

As a result of Sasuke's death and Naruto never being pushed to the brink of death, Naruto never met Hagoromo's spirit to gain Six Paths Sage Mode.

Over three days of divine power gave Obito a god complex that warped his sense of self and desires.

(1) Given that the amount of the total tailed beast's power you absorb dictates how 'evolved' and 'controlled' your Ten Tails Jinchuriki state is, Obito's outfit has changed. Instead of being a Haori made from his own flesh as it was with 7.1 Tailed Beasts absorbed, Obito now wears a coat similar to that of Isshiki Otsutsuki now that he has 8.1 Beast absorbed.

(2) An Inscription Seal is a method by which a Doujutsu can be pre-programmed to carry out a certain action remotely if certain actions are met. In the series we first saw this displayed where Itachi rigged Sasuke's Mangekyo to cast Amaterasu on Obito if ever their eyes met and later we saw a similar event with Shisui's Mangekyou in the crow that he placed in Naruto's stomach. Sasuke set each eye to have one 'free use' of Susanoo without the prerequisite development, explaining how Naruto could manifest it despite only having it for a few hours.

(3) Naruto arrived speaking Japanese. While 'some' level of the English language exists in the Naruto world, his native tongue is Japanese.

(4) Okay, immediate question. Is Naruto stronger than Superman? God no. The kid is powerful, but this was simply a case of a bad matchup for Supes. Energies like Magic and Chi (which is one of the components in chakra) have been shown to disrupt the Bio-Matrix that surrounds a Kryptonian's body, blunting if not outright voiding their invulnerability.

Be sure to check out my other stories as well, and as always, read, review, favorite and follow this work as well as the others on my profile, and please be sure to leave proper reviews. Comments like, "Good chapter", or "Update please" don't help me become a better writer, nor does it help generate good conversation with explanations and possible avenues of what to do with the some future parts of the story, as I do respond to reviews as much as I can. Flames and overly negative comments will be flat out ignored and not seen as worth my time.

So, see you guys next time!