Heyo fellows. It's me here with another chapter. I am running on two hours of sleep and heartbreak and someone keeps calling my name from the bush behind my house but I remain focused. Witness me, Grumpywolf! My body is chrome! My blood is gasoline!!

Shout-out Krieger Techpriest. We are mood kindred now.

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Without much to say, nobody bothered to get up from their seats and the book flew into Dinah's hands. The heroine cleared her throat before flipping it open and the screen came down and lit up as she began to read.

Chapter 19 - A new bounty

Whether Orion noticed his disrespectful tone or not would remain a mystery because he answered Naruto's question without pause, right away. "I need you to kill my father."

From day-dreaming happily about the girl he was in love with to being told to assassinate someone's father it was too much of a jump.

"Your day went from zero to a hundred real fucking quick," Oliver remarked. "It's like chilling on a yatch with models and the next thing you know, you're coughing up saltwater on a remote island with the wreckage of the boat washing up next to you."

"That's…really specific," Naruto looked at the archer strangely.

"It happened to me."

"Oh."

"It happens to all of us. One moment, you're going through your regular life and the next, you're suiting up to stop an evil mutated scientist from wrecking a building or something else," Clark said.

Kara nodded. "Tell me about it. I was about calling it a day with patrols when I got sucked into here."

"I beg your pardon?"

Momentarily, he thought that he heard wrong.

"You want me to kill the Highfather? I don't kill everyone, bub. Look here and read what it says."

Taking out one of his business cards, he pointed with this index finger at the part where it said he took assassination bounties but for "scumbags only."

"How do you tell who's a scumbag and who's not?" Kara asked. "Do you just go on the customer's account and your gut feeling?"

"He probably does some research on the person before running off to kill them," Naruto suggested. "That's about all I can think of. Negative emotions don't really help here because you wouldn't try getting a person killed if you didn't hate them."

"Or you could simply be using their death as a means to an end." Kakashi offered. "I don't hate anyone I've killed."

"Point is, I either wouldn't sense anything or anything out of the usual you'd expect from someone trying to get a person killed," Naruto said.

Orion shook his head.

"Highfather is not my biological father. My real father is Darkseid. Previously, Apokolips and New Genesis had been locked in a war for tens of thousands of years. However, an uneasy truce was established when Darkseid and Highfather exchanged their newborn sons. Darkseid's son, me, was given to Highfather and vice versa."

"I don't get it. Why would they do that?" Barry asked. "That's just asking for trouble. What if Darkseid corrupts Highfather's son?"

"It could be a sort of hostage situation. One can't try something against the other without putting his son in danger," Bruce replied.

Hal snorted. "Good luck using Darkseid's kid against him. He doesn't care about anything other than himself."

"Wouldn't Highfather have considered that?" Tsunade asked. "He wouldn't use something as leverage if he didn't know it could be used against him."

Kakashi shrugged. "We can deliberate and debate but in the end, only they know the reason for doing what they did."

The terms of the non-aggression pact between the two societies of gods were not known to the general public. Naruto had not known about them until then either. The gods were generally shrouded in mystery and not much was known about them besides some of their feats. In the first place, the new gods lived in a different dimension altogether.

"Why ask me of all people? Better yet, why not do it yourself?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Destroying an entire planet in a day tends to give you a hell of a reputation, even if it's an inflated one."

Naruto raised a brow. "If Darkseid's so powerful, why would he think I'd be able to kill him just because I wiped out one race? Doesn't he destroy planets himself?"

"He probably thinks you've got a better chance than most. There aren't many mercenaries who've done what you did," Hal said. "Well, there's Lobo but you've seen how he is. Even if he was able to fight Darkseid, he's largely unreliable and could probably end up killing everyone except the man himself."

"And he said there's a truce between them so Highfather's 'son' getting caught personally trying to shuffle Darkseid off the mortal coil is about the same as declaring war," Tsunade pointed out.

"And a mercenary sent after him by Highfather's 'son' isn't the same?" Naruto asked confusedly. "What if I get caught and I end up spilling the beans about who sent me?"

"Then the war's back on, probably," Kakashi smiled with his eyes. "Oh, and you'll be dead."

"Joy."

Orion said bitterly:

"I've tried to kill Darkseid my entire life. But I couldn't. He is too powerful and is always surrounded by his nigh-unbeatable army and countless Parademons. And now with the truce between Apokolips and New Genesis, invading Apokolips by myself could spark the start of a new great war. I'll never do something like that. I won't spit on Highfather's efforts to maintain the peace."

Kara stood up. "This is Kara Zor-El here, reminding you that it's not cool to waste the sacrifices your people made just so you can gain the personal satisfaction of killing your evil father. Instead, hire someone to waste them for you."

"But, although a mortal, you have enough power to even destroy a planet, without the use of technology. That is a feat I could never replicate. You could destroy Apokolips and Darkseid together."

"It's not as simple as nuking the planet," Clark sighed. "Apokolips is already a dead world. Literally nothing but Darkseid and his subordinates inhabit the place and even if he did somehow destroy the planet, there's little chance he'll kill anything more than the parademons."

"I don't think Orion knows any of that," Hal pointed at the man on the screen.

"Or he must think my name's mister miracle," Naruto snorted. Clark and Hal shared a laugh, confusing him. "What?"

"There's a god named Mr. Miracle." Clark chuckled.

"Oh." Naruto nodded slowly.

Naruto sighed.

"I'm afraid I'll have to refuse this bounty."

"Know when to hold them, know when to fold them." Oliver nodded.

"He almost died taking out the Psions. There's no point in losing your life on a mission you know you can't accomplish," Diana said. "That's not a sacrifice, that's just a waste."

Orion immediately became angry.

"Why?" he shouted. "Billions of innocent people were massacred by Darkseid and his army in his crusades. You have the power to end it all! Why aren't you doing anything?!"

In contrast, Naruto was as calm as the water of a still lake. He could not just willy nilly destroy a planet. He nearly paid with his life for amassing that much power before. His power was restricted by the environment. He grew stronger the more power he siphoned from the world. But it could also work against him like it did on the Psions' planet.

"There are limits to my power. There are certain conditions to be fulfilled in order for me to obtain that kind of strength. If those conditions are fulfilled, then yes, killing Darkseid, or you, or anyone really, would be like killing chickens. Otherwise, I can't defeat a god like Darkseid, to say nothing of his army and those mutated beasts you call Parademons."

If he were to fight anyone on Myoboku, on his untainted and pristine planet, he could stomp even on gods like they were bugs. On a planet like Apokolips, however, a wasteland of fire and smoke, he would be nowhere near that level.

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that tainted stuff too." Clark rubbed his chin. "Apokolips really is the worst place to use sage mode."

"You don't say. I think even the great toad sage wouldn't be able to survive gathering senjutsu there…if he could even gather it at all."

"But even if I was strong enough to do it, I would still not accept your bounty."

"Know when to hold them, know when to fold them." Oliver nodded. "Respectable."

"No shit he's folding. If Highfather and new genesis couldn't do the job of wiping out Apokolips, what the hell makes you think he could?" Hal laughed.

"Yeah, the job sounds stupid." Tsunade agreed. "He's a mercenary, not a genie."

Though Orion's head was covered by the winged silver helmet he was wearing, Naruto could discern that his face was contorted in anger. The new god had some very pronounced anger management issues.

Clark frowned. "He might have been raised in New Genesis but he's still his father's son."

"At least he's on your side, even if you might not agree with his methods," Naruto said. "I wonder what Highfather's son is like now. You said him and Darkseid are basically opposites of each other, right?"

"They have similarities but yeah, they're different for the most part. They're brothers, they just don't like each other." Hal scratched his hair. "It doesn't help that Highfather's beaten Darkseid a handful of times and if there's one thing Darkseid hates-"

"It's being beaten." Clark finished for the lantern. "Even more so when it happens more than once and the person who does it is still alive."

"Supposedly you're a god. Don't you know how the universe works? Do you need me, a mortal, to spell it for you?"

Seeing Orion not replying, Naruto continued:

"Light and darkness, good and evil, life and death, creation and destruction. The universe cannot exist without a balance of both. No matter how much you fight against evil, you can never eradicate it. I annihilated the Psion race almost 2 months ago. Do you think that my deed was all that great?"

Bitter laughter came from him.

"What do you mean by that?" Orion asked, this time calmer than before. Naruto's obscure words had sobered him up.

"I liberated the Vega System from the Psions' tyranny. That is indeed a great deed if you look at it alone. But less than 2 months passed since the Psions were killed. Wait a few more months or years and you will see: a new power of darkness will rise to take their place. Obviously, it won't be in the same place. But mark my words, in the following months or years, a new intergalactic power will appear, an intergalactic power hell-bent on conquering and destruction."

"It's true," Hal agreed. "The Psions' destruction would have left a power vacuum that…pretty much everyone would be scrambling to fill. Their successors would be either like them or worse."

"And if you kept killing them as they came, they'd come to understand that death comes with the position," Kakashi said.

"Meaning only the worst of the worst would be vying for it," Bruce argued. "Half the reason why I don't kill my enemies is because I don't want them getting replaced by worse people."

"Well…we all have different methods of doing things." The silver haired man smiled.

"That's not an effective way of doing things though," Clark said. "Even you'd get tired after a while."

"Nonsense. I killed the leader of a family owned crime syndicate in Fang Country back when I was twelve. When his wife tried getting revenge, I killed her also and when their twin children who took over tried to avenge their parents, I killed them both. The group is in shambles and Fang Country is doing better now. It works…eventually."

"You wiped out an entire family." Clark couldn't believe his ears.

Kakashi merely gave him a thumbs up with a proud look on his face.

He raised his head and looked at the sky. The first signs of the morning started to appear at the horizon as pale orange rays of light shooed away the darkness of the night.

"It's almost poetic. I was like the daybreak when I brought light upon the Vega System. But while morning comes here, on the other side of the planet, evening falls. Just like that, while the Vega System was liberated, in another part of the universe, darkness will rise. This is the law of the Universe. There is always a balance between light and darkness. Once the balance tips in favour of either of the two, it will be destroyed."

Looking back at his device, he told Orion:

"Do you understand now? Even if you somehow managed to kill Darkseid, it would amount to nothing. Another one will rise to take his place. This is the truth of this world. This is the truth that I've come to know. No matter how powerful you are, no matter if you are a god or an all-powerful being: you could never extinguish evil."

"Evil finds a way." Kara muttered.

"That at least is true," Clark nodded. "Most of Darkseid's subordinates hate him as much as they envy him but they serve him anyway. If he somehow died today, I'm sure most if not all of them would try taking his place as ruler of Apokolips."

"Then why did you annihilate the Psions if you knew another force would take their place? Why do all that if it's meaningless?" Orion countered.

"Either I spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder and eventually end up on an operating table or kill them now," Naruto shrugged. "It's kind of a no brainer, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I'd have done the same thing too." Kara nodded.

"But it wasn't meaningless for me. The Psions wanted to capture me and make me their toy. For the universe at large, the Psions' destruction is nothing but for me it was crucial. I don't have to live my life looking over my shoulder in fear of their plots. The Psions were a powerful race, one of the most technologically-advanced races in the Universe. Having such a threat looming over my head at all times would undoubtedly spell my death eventually if I didn't do something about it."

"But Darkseid and I have no friction. He never acted against me, why should I take on such a dangerous job for no reason? As I said, even if Darkseid died, another God of Evil will rise in his place. There must always be a God of Evil... and don't tell me I should do it for the reward. What reward could be worth it for me to go fight against the God of Evil and his intergalactic army, by myself? That's suicide. You want me to do what you, Highfather, and your army of gods could not do even after dozens of thousands of years. Do you hear yourself?"

Orion became silent for a few moments. When put that way, he realized how ridiculous it sounded for him to ask of one man and a demon fox to do what he and an army of gods could not do even after thousands and thousands of years. He let out a deep sigh. He understood why would that be seen as a suicidal mission. Though they could not close the deal, he did not end the call right away and, instead, he asked a question regarding the words that the blond had told him before.

"If what you say about evil being indestructible is true, what is the point of fighting? What is the point of it all? With such a bleak look on life, how does one muster the will and strength to continue on living?"

"Fight," Diana said. "Evil overwhelms. If everyone in the past just rolled over and let what was going to happen, happen, we wouldn't be here."

"And stop looking in the grand scheme. Just focus on making a difference in the place where you do matter." Naruto joined in.

Somehow, from offering an assassination bounty, they ended up discussing the meaning of life.

"It's like that sometimes," Bruce nodded. "It happens more often with Deathstroke and I than anyone else."

"You and the world's deadliest mercenary have a chat mid battle?" Oliver asked skeptically.

"Sometimes you hit a stalemate so bad, the only victory you can try to get is with words," Naruto said.

"Is that why you talk people into killing themselves?" Kara snickered.

"I don't- nevermind." Naruto sighed.

"You fight to achieve your goals. You may never be able to eradicate the darkness but that doesn't mean you cannot live in the light. You may never be able to protect every single being in the universe, but you could always devote yourself to protecting the ones you love and care about. You may never achieve peace in the universe at large, but you could make peace in your house, in your city, in your country, in your homeworld." Naruto said. "Life in itself has no meaning. You give your own life meaning when you find something and devote yourself to it. And that could be anything: it could be your family, it could be your job, or it could even be a hobby or a passion like music or fishing."

"Or gaming." Kara looked at Clark.

"I'm not getting you a console, Kara."

"Oh don't worry about it, Clark." She looked at Bruce who pretended not to notice her. "Don't worry about it at all."

Not long after that, their conversation ended and Naruto went back to watching the sky, also thinking about the words that he had told Orion. A sudden voice came from his shoulder, startling him. Not knowing when, Kyuubi had returned to his side.

"So you found a new purpose in life?"

Previously, Naruto's reason to live, his goal, had been to find a way back to the Elemental Nations. He had devoted nearly a century of his life to it, completing over 3000 bounties and traveling through the Universe unceasingly for it. It had been more than just a goal, it had been an obsession. But, when Kyuubi gave him a wake-up call and he finally realized the futility of it all, he was broken. He had been lost.

"But now, he was found." Kara sing-songed.

"Was blind, but now he sees." Oliver took to humming the tune.

"I don't even know why you two know the song. Neither of you even go to church," Bruce said

"Neither do you." Oliver accused him.

"And I used to," Kara replied. "Matter of fact, I still do whenever I can't use the superhero excuse to escape Sunday service."

"Let me guess, it has to do with a certain warrior princess, doesn't it?" Kyuubi pressed on and chuckled.

"He's going to be spending his life trying to get some amazussy." Only Clark heard Kara speak under her breath.

"Jesus Christ, Kara." Clark wanted to scream.

Diana blinked. "While I appreciate being that important to someone, I wouldn't want them making me their purpose."

"But without you, he'd serve no purpose in life." Oliver grinned. "His purpose in life would be to be in my streams, sucking on my dick daily. His purpose in life would be to be in that chat blowing a dick daily."

"Excuse me?" Naruto glared at the archer.

"His life would be worth nothing, he'd serve zero purpose. He would have to kill himself. Now!" Kara laughed.

Naruto looked at Diana who shrugged.

Naruto flicked his snout, making the fox let out a yelp.

"So what if it does?" he grumbled. "Yeah, yeah, you're gonna say it's 'too early' but that's how I feel now. I can't help it, ok? I like her a lot and I'm happy. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing is wrong per se but the higher the expectations, the bigger the disappointment if things fall down. So I'll say it again, it's too early."

"Yeah, she could still leave you for another alien mercenary who decides to stay on Earth instead." Barry shrunk under the duo's glare.

"Not that you'd get dumped, but emotions are fickle," Kakashi said. "And if you'd spent your entire time looking forward to coming back to her only to find that she's lost interest in you, it'd leave you a wreck."

"What about me?" Diana frowned. "What if it's the other way round?"

"Unlike him, you have millions of men who'd be happy to repair your heart," Clark pointed out. "I'm not saying it wouldn't affect you but come on…he's a space exploring misanthrope. One heartbreak and that's the end of relationships for him."

"I wouldn't call other me a misanthrope but yeah, my heart's a fragile thing." Naruto clutched his chest. "If you left me, I'd never like anyone again."

Diana snorted amusedly. "I'm sure you wouldn't."

Silence instilled between the two of them for a while. Eventually, Kyuubi said:

"Oy, how about you wipe that disgusting smile off your face and do some work?"

Naruto threw the fox off his shoulder in annoyance.

"What's wrong with my smile?" he retorted. "What's so disgusting about it?"

The fox snorted.

"Hng. That love-struck face you're making is gross. I threw up a little in my mouth."

"Nothing makes my teeth rot like romance," Kara nodded. "That's why I like DnD. No romance, just mental simulations of gratuitous violence."

Naruto stood up and started rubbing his fists.

"Looks like you got a lot of courage after getting a win over me on Earth while I was weakened. Come, "Kurama-sama", let's have another go at it now that I've fully recovered."

"That's true, it's been a month already." Naruto smiled widely. "I'm free."

"God, please let him lose again because it'd be so funny." Oliver put his hands together in prayer.

Kyuubi revealed a scared face and he jumped from his place as if he had springs in his legs.

"You won't get away!" Naruto hollered after him and threw himself into his pursuit.

Man and fox started shinobi-jumping at breakneck speeds through the virgin jungle, greatly startling the creatures in their way. Using his four limbs and his nine tails, Kyuubi was unsurprisingly extremely agile while in the trees, even more than Naruto.

Four limbs beat opposable thumbs, son.

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"You talked the talk but you can't walk the walk, eh? Haha!" Kyuubi yelled at his back and laughed, confident that Naruto was not going to catch up to him anytime soon.

But the fox's laughter died in its throat when a particular dagger with an inscription written on its handle whirred by his ear, nearly nicking him. Kyuubi did not get scared by the dagger almost stabbing him but he got scared about what he knew it was going to come next: and true to his predictions, a dark-blond haired man appeared with his hand on the handle of the dagger, in mid-air, in a yellow flash of light.

"Ah, I'll never get used to seeing that," Kakashi commented.

Naruto looked sour. "And I'll never get how he learned it. The closest I've ever come is what those three guys showed me."

Kakashi bit back a snort. The Fourth Hokage's personal guards back when he was alive as well as the only three men he'd divulged the secret of the hiraishin too, relegated to 'those three guys.'

"Cheater!" was the only thing Kyuubi had the time to yell before Naruto kicked him down from the tree like a football.

"With a shot like that, he could have been a German in the world cup nine years ago." Oliver snickered.

Barry shook his head. "Jesus, man."

⁂

"You're in an awfully good mood today," Naruto remarked.

"It's been quite some time since we went on a proper job, hasn't it? More than half a year. I kinda missed it." Kyuubi replied, his tails wagging happily behind him. "I wonder who we're going to kill now."

Naruto looked weary. Of course killing came next. It wouldn't be Kurama if he didn't wantto kill someone.

At his words, Naruto was surprised to realize that, indeed, they had not taken jobs like they used to ever since they rescued Superman from the Preserver's ship. He had been depressed for months after realizing that it was impossible to find a way back home. He had not taken any bounties in the meantime, just staying on his lush planet, Myoboku, doing nothing but fishing and lazying around all day long. Then, when they finally accepted a bounty, it turned out to be bogus, a trap from the Psions and Rui Nak. It was only now that they were finally going again on a proper job.

Naruto bonked him on the head and chuckled.

"We're not going to kill anyone this time. It's an espionage mission, you brute."

After typing a few commands to the AI of the ship to adjust their course, Naruto said:

"Man, I miss our old ship."

After Kyuubi destroyed their previous ship while trying to get rid of the Yellow Power Ring that had attempted to kidnap him, Naruto bought a new spaceship from the black market.

"Why? This one is capable of space-warping too and it's pretty much the same size as the other one." the fox said.

"It's never the same. You'd have made memories with the old one," Naruto complained. "Think of it. Our first time rescuing a kryptonian male,

"Your first time nearly eating a kryptonian male." Diana smiled. Clark sighed.

"Our first time rescuing a kryptonian female."

"Your first time extortiong me!" Clark glared at him.

Naruto waved him away. "It's been over a dozen chapters ago now, Clark. Move on."

Kurama shook his head. "It's a bit slower and it doesn't have cloaking abilities so we can't go incognito anymore. This mission would've been so much easier if we could go invisible like before."

They were currently in the Milky Way Galaxy, Cygnus System. The objective of their new mission was to infiltrate the habitable planets in that planetary system and gather intelligence.

"I say, screw the 'infiltrate' thing and just smash your way through. Who's gonna stop us?" Kyuubi said arrogantly.

Naruto chuckled at his words.

"That's what our employer wants, secrecy, that's what we have to do," he said to placate the fox. "Besides, not all things can be solved with force. Not all the time."

The fox sniffed but did not retort.

"But who would've thought the Green Lantern Corps would send us a job offer? That Green Lantern from Earth said that they named you and I *Universal-level threats*. You'd think they'd want nothing to do with the likes of us." Naruto said in wonder.

"Better to have you as allies than enemies," Hal said. "I'm pretty sure the guardians could have sent anyone else, they just wanted to establish a good rapport with you."

"They could have just sent me cash. I always appreciate free money," Naruto shrugged.

"Nice try, sneak thief."

A few days ago, Diana called him on his lightwave device and told him that John Stewart had something very important to discuss with him. It turned out to be a job offer from the Guardians of the Universe.

The two members of the Green Lantern Corps assigned to watch over the Universe Sector that included the Cygnus System of the Milky Way Galaxy were suddenly killed a few weeks before. Two new Green Lanterns were assigned to that sector but they were killed shortly after that too. In total, 4 Green Lanterns died, without the Guardians even knowing the reason for their deaths. Before doing something drastic like invading the sector with a punitive force, the Guardians decided to take on a more subtle approach and use other means of obtaining some information first. The mercenary Caterpillar was, not surprisingly, their first choice. That way, not only would they protect their corps from further damage, but they would also create the opportunity to start a relationship with the powerful mercenary. Two birds, one stone.

Hal smirked. He liked being right.

Through the cockpit's window, a dark-purplish marble could be seen in the distance. It was one of the very few habitable planets in the Cygnus System, Debstam.

"Wait…I know that place." Hal's eyes glowed green before they widened. "oh shit.."

Clark frowned. "What is it?"

"Mongul uses that place as a home." Hal said and looked at Naruto. "Kurama's right. You'd have been better off taking the scorched earth approach because if you get found out, you'll have to fight your way out."

Naruto raised a brow. "I'm guessing this Mongul doesn't take well to unwelcome visitors?"

"Quite the opposite," Clark said sourly. "He takes to them too well. He's the ruler of Ranx, a moving planet where he holds gladiatorial fights with all races that he captures. If he finds you, he'll try keeping you prisoner."

"And the same guy who wiped out the Psions would make a valuable jewel in his collection." Naruto caught on fast. "Well shit. Can't any job be simple?"

"That's not life, I'm afraid," Dinah said as she shut the book. "I'm also afraid the chapter's over."

Naruto looked at Hal. "You seem really worried about that guy. Is he really that dangerous?"

"It's not Mongul himself I'm worried about," Hal said gravely. "It's how he captures people."

I'd have updated this story much sooner but I've been having problems with electricity. I haven't had power since Thursday smh.