Hey hey, people. Issex here.
No Nut November is finally over and I am proud to say that for the first time in my life, I passed. It was difficult, but I partly have my school to thank. You can't think of busting a nut when you're walking hundreds of meters from one lecture hall to another. Now I'm ready to hookup with a person or two before I vacate for Christmas. Wish me luck, gentlemen.
Shout-out Doom Supreme and VeilSlide, the men with plans. If I had as easy a time coming up with ideas as them, I'd have a shit ton of fics to my name by now.
Join MADB's Overseers. It's a new server dedicated to fanfictions and consequently, isn't all that populated meaning that even though it's only active when the few members are online, you get to form close knit bonds. I joined not knowing what to expect and one month later, I'm in love with the owner's girlfriend. Weird, right?
The code to MADB's Overseers is: QH8F5FfTQh
Up next is AizenTheGoat's server. It's constantly active, it's filled with skilled writers and helpful peop and we do a little trolling so thick skin is advised. If you're interested in getting ideas, motivation or help with a story you're working on, need a beta reader or a co-author or just want to hang out with writers, readers and everything in between, hop right in. Beware the Bigtrunk.
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And lastly, I want YOU…to join HighKeyMars' server. It's pretty fitting since the guy used to be in the army. Since joining, I have learned how to do hand surgery, shoot a gun and buy condoms in bulk. I'm also a fan of HighKeyMars' story. Update when?
The code to HighKeyMars' server is: Ga4yzKKR92
..
I take comissions too. Check my bio to know more. Help me! This December gats detty!
"The black mercy, Naruto," Hal stated grimly. "He uses the black mercy."
Kara blinked. "That…sounds ominous. What is it?
"A parasitic plant that feeds on the psychic energy of its victims," Clark replied. "It traps it's victims in a dreamlike state where they live out their definition of a perfect world."
The ninjas shared a look. That sounded an uncomfortable lot like the mugen tsukiyomi.
"Not a dream." Hal shook his head. "It's a reality. The only ways to escape is for the plant to lose it's grip on you, if someone pulls it off of you or if you eventually figure out that it's all a hoax."
"I already told you about Madara's plan," Naruto said. "That one traps you in your dream until your chakra is completely absorbed, you wither away and your corpse becomes another one of the mindless zetsu."
"That's pretty bad but trust me, you still don't want to deal with the black mercy," Hal argued.
"You eventually become aware it's a scam by some hungry plant, Hal. I get if you're captured before that happens but by itself, it doesn't sound all that bad."
"It's one thing to realize you're living a false life and it's another to want to leave."
Everyone turned to look at Bruce who looked distant, as if stuck in a memory.
Bruce shook his head slowly. "To allow your perfect world to fall apart, to return to a reality where things almost never go your way and you rarely get the things you want…it's hard. I've been there. I had to choose. You'll never realize how hard it is until you have to make that decision for yourself."
The man stared at the blond intensely. "And I hope for your sake that you never have to."
Naruto was the first to look away. He'd already come to see Bruce as a man who was rarely ever fazed by anything—some of the moments that shocked everyone rarely got more than a raised eyebrow from him, which was why coming from him, those words hit hard. Whatever he'd seen there and had been forced to leave, it hadn't left him. He was still affected by it.
It made him wonder if the people who had been freed from the mugen tsukiyomi felt the same way. Sure, they would have died eventually but what difference did dying in a forced dream make from living in a world where a violent, untimely death was the inevitable fate that awaited most ninja anyway?
He hadn't fallen under its influence but Gaara and a few others who had, told him about their experience. For them, the world had been perfect with each of them living out their own dreams, uninfluenced by the thoughts or desires of others and he had no doubts it had been the same for everyone else.
He imagined some people had probably been happy with it, even if they weren't aware of anything else, only for it to be taken away from them, leaving them back in the real world, to deal with the losses and trauma and hardship that was the aftermath of the fourth war.
They must have cheered for Uzumaki Naruto, who ended the war after Ino's announcement. They must have praised the legendary Team Seven, even Sasuke, for facing off against the rabbit goddess for the sake of the world. But inwardly, some, maybe even many resented them. Resented him.
It was in times where he really sat down and thought about the past that he saw sense in what the likes of Madara and Nagato had said to him, even if he didn't agree with them.
"Naruto?" Diana gave him a concerned glance, noticing his abrupt silence. He gently waved her off.
"A plant that keeps you in a dream and another that sucks your life away. I guess we both have our fair share of nasty plant related stuff, huh?" Dinah smiled wryly.
Kakashi grunted. "In any case, I can see why it'd make a good means of capturing people."
Hal nodded. "It's not on that, Mogul has a few other mutated forms of the plant. There's one that traps you in a nightmare crafted out of your worst fears and another that keeps you in a state of berserker fury. He uses the second on the more…unwilling fighters."
"And the first to break minds." Kakashi nodded. "A man driven mad by fear will all but worship whoever it is that saves him, even if said saviour happens to be the inflictor as well."
"That's probably how he sees it," Hal sighed.
"I'm more concerned about why he does these gladiatorial events," Tsunade said. "There's got to be easier ways to make a lot money in outer space than force people to fight. Capturing, imprisoning and maintaining all those captives alone is costly in itself. He can't be making all that money back with profit."
"I don't know, money?" Hal sounded uncertain. "It's not like we've ever sat down to have an interview with him, the guy's a psycho.
"But why haven't you lanterns stopped him yet?" Kara asked. "Would getting rid of him too make some power vacuum like with the Psions?"
"I have no idea," Hal said. "And even if he's not in our top ten list of bad guys, he's still a huge enough danger that we don't confront him lightly. Warworld isn't so much of a planet as it's an armed satellite. He can wipe out a decent sized planet with it's weapons without having to send a single warrior down."
"Damn," Tsunade whistled. "Your universe never seems to run out of impossibly dangerous people, does it?"
"Tell me about it," Clark grumbled.
"If you think that's bad, you should see the Bucephelus," Kara smiled.
"It's not even real," Oliver said. "Thank God for that by the way."
"At this point, I'm afraid to ask." Clark glanced at the book that still hadn't left Dinah's hands. "So who's next up?"
Oliver grinned. He'd been waiting for an opportunity for so long. "SoFaygo."
Kara scowled. "He's been next up since the Trump administration. Give the book to someone else."
The book flew out of a grinning Dinah's hands to Tsunade who caught it with one hand. The blonde sighed and flipped open the book. "There better not be more than one wall of text here."
Everyone settled down and the screen came down before lighting up as she began to read.
Chapter 20 - Unrest
Tsunade squinted. "Huh. The story actually starts with a thanks to some guy named Allheaven Paragon for his…. constructive criticism of the previous chapters?"
Dian blinked. "There's someone writing about our lives?"
Dinah shook her head. "Not writing about them. Writing them."
"And there are people reviewing them?" Barry couldn't believe his ears.
"So," Oliver let out a short, nervous laugh. "There's like…a bunch of nerds holding book club meetings and shit to talk about us? Like 'give this guy a reason to become a superhero by killing his loved ones' and stuff?"
Naruto rubbed his head. "I'm not sure I'm ready to dip my finger in that existential can of worms yet."
Kara gave him a look. She hadn't told him he was a fictional character in their world too.
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. Another short space-warp later, they got close enough to the planet that they were about to enter the exosphere. The robotic voice of their ship's AI sounded:
"Operator, you have received a new transmission. Should I play it?"
"What are the chances that it's a bot trying to reach him about his car's extended warranty?" Kara smiled at Clark.
Clark rubbed his head. "Don't remind me of that nonsense. I got so many of them when I was a teenager. I didn't even have a car then."
Hal snorted. "If you think spam calls on Earth are bad, you'd tear your hair out in space. There's billions of bots and scammers out in space."
At Naruto's confirmation, a yellow-skinned man wearing a military uniform appeared on the screen of the computer on board.
"He should eat more ginger," Kara remarked.
"I don't think ginger cures yellow fever," Barey absently replied before blinking. "That was a reference to the stuff, right?"
Kara frowned. "You weren't even sure what I was talking about?"
"You talked about eating ginger while there was a yellow man on the screen. Sue me."
"This planet is a restricted area. Aliens are not welcome. Return at once or we'll open fire."
Right after that, the transmission ended. It was a very blunt and short message. But only moments later, the radar detected 5 warships.
"They don't waste any time, do they?" Naruto chuckled.
"They wouldn't make good defenders if all they did was respond," Diana said. "You have to take preemptive measures. It's safer to destroy an intruder in orbit than to shoot them out of the stratosphere."
"You can't issue a warning like that if you aren't already in a position to make good on your threat." Kakashi shrugged.
"See? That's why our previous ship was better. Scenes like this wouldn't have happened if our ship could become invisible."
The fox closed his eyes and seemingly fell asleep, ignoring him. Naruto blew out a sigh and sat up from the pilot's seat.
"I guess we'll just have to do it the hard way."
"I see you're no mood for this... Well, just stay here and protect the ship then. I'll head down alone."
Kyuubi was not exactly the biggest fan of missions that involved subtlety. He would much rather stay in the ship and have a nap than sneak around without doing anything, with no action. He was kind of hoping Naruto would run into some kind of trouble for him to have an excuse to let loose. Nevertheless, he did not take any actions to ruin his bounty on purpose. Taking control of the ship, the fox drove it away from the planet to avoid an altercation with the small fleet of patrol ships.
As for Naruto, his white ANBU fox mask covered his face and a layer of yellow-red chakra enveloped his body, turning his previously black cloak and dark combat suit into a brightly glowing golden color. With his nine tails chakra mode, he could survive in the vacuum of space. Then, his hands went through a short sequence of hand seals and his silhouette all of a sudden disappeared. A vague distortion in the air was the only sign left of his body. It was not perfect invisibility but it was more than enough for him to infiltrate the planet undetected. It was a technique that his old mentor, Jiraiya, had created primarily to peep on women in bathhouses. Over the years, it had become a technique that Naruto relied on heavily when it came to missions that required secrecy. With his preparations ready, he exited the ship, into the Outerspace, and started flying towards the planet below.
"I'm not sure you know the paradoxical nature of what you just did," Hal remarked with a smile.
Naruto raised a brow. "What?"
Oliver pointed at the screen. "Dude, you just turned to an invisible flare. That's like a silent flash grenade or…a landmine that isn't sensitive to pressure."
"I mean, it works doesn't it?" Naruto shrugged. "I've got to survive somehow and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing that if I went through hostile territory while looking like a beacon."
"So we're just going to ignore that his teacher invented an invisibility technique just so he could invade women's privacy undetected?" Dinah asked.
Everyone ignored it.
⁂
Unsurprisingly, Naruto managed to sneak past the network of satellites surrounding the planet without being detected. He took notice though of how heavily guarded and monitored the planet was.
Come to think of it, Earth was the same too. Besides the Justice League's Watchtower, they had thousands of other minor satellites that one would ignore at the first glance but they were in fact all part of a bigger network. Whoever is controlling that network of satellites is a powerful man. I haven't had the chance to talk to Diana and ask her what she knows about it. I should warn her of it in case that system of satellites doesn't belong to the Justice League.'
"The shadow government does," Oliver said.
Barry frowned. "Come on, man. That conspiracy again? They're not real."
"Yeah, that's what they want you to think." Kara tapped the side of her head. "It's easier to operate when people already believe you don't exist. They run everything. It's a cabal, Barry. Consisting of the richest, most powerful people in the world. Shit, some of the heroes in the league could come from the deep sta-"
"I run background checks on every aspiring league member and conduct clandestine surveillance on them for a month. Everyone's clean," Bruce said.
"But the money-"
"Kara, that's enough." Clark stopped her before she could continue. She huffed, but went quiet.
Bruce have him a grateful nod, but made a mental note to dissuade Kara from acting on her suspicions.
Conspiracy theorists were bad enough to deal with, a conspiracy theorist with x-ray vision and the ability to be anywhere in the world within seconds to minutes trying to dig up secrets best left unknown, would be a nightmare.
All that Naruto could see in front of his eyes was an unending mass of grey and dark purple clouds. The entire planet was covered by this blanket of clouds, he could not see anything below. When he reached the upper limit of the troposphere (~9 miles above the ground) he instinctively reached out to make a connection with the nature of the planet to see its state.
A deep frown creased his forehead behind the mask.
'This planet is dying.'
"It's Dabstam," Hal said with a noncommittal shrug. "I'm surprised it's not dead already."
He sighed in sorrow. Another planet was going to be destroyed soon. Looking at the mass of dark purple clouds enveloping the planet, he wondered:
'What did the inhabitants do to cause this apocalypse? Are they still alive?'
It did not take him long to fly past the blanket of clouds and finally, he could see the real appearance of the planet. Coincidentally, he happened to fly above an urban settlement. Or better said, what was left of it. Going by the architecture of the buildings, the infrastructure he could see at a superficial glance and the vehicles sprawled on the ground he deduced that it was a fairly advanced civilisation, above Earth. At least it used to be. Now, the great city was in ruins. When he got closer to the ground he could also see more corpses than he could count.
Oliver grimaced. "Jesus Christ, it's worse than Krypton."
Even Clark and Kara had to agree. At least their people's corpses had been entombed in several feet of ice, not left laying out in the open until they rotted away.
"Is this a common thing with dying or dead planets?" A disturbed Naruto asked Hal.
The lantern nodded grimly. "Not always, but yeah. You can tell when your world's nearing its doom but you can't always tell when it'll happen. Sometimes the inhabitants make themselves scarce before it even happens. Sometimes, they never realize they're in trouble until it's too late."
The other heroes shared a concerned look. They loved Earth but they weren't so deluded as to think the actions humanity took weren't harming it. Pollution was the norm, people dug holes everywhere looking for oil, minerals and pretty much everything that ought to remain underground and global warming no longer raised as many alarms as it ought to anymore.
Krypton had fallen without the people actively destroying it's structure and something told them it was the same with Dabstam.
"We really have to start doing things differently on Earth, man." Barry smiled nervously.
"Not while the people who profit off those harmful practices have a say," Diana said sourly.
'The hell happened here?'
Landing next to a dead body, he put his hand on it and closed his eyes as he cast a Diagnosis Jutsu, one of the most used techniques by the medic-nins in his homeworld. To cast the technique itself was not difficult - even a genin could do it - but to interpret the results correctly was another matter. One had to possess knowledge of the human body to accurately diagnose an illness if there was one at all. That is to say, Naruto did not possess in-depth knowledge about the human body and its inner workings. He was not a medic, he had not received any education in that direction. However, even someone like him could understand what happened.
'Poison? Void, some madman must've released a virus and massacred the entire city. Reminds me of that intergalactic war in the Quasar Galaxy 70 years ago.'
"What happened back then?" Kara looked at Hal whose ring glowed bright for a few seconds as it fed it's wearer information.
"Nasty stuff," came his vague reply. "Really nasty stuff."
"Even in other worlds, chemical weapons are still in use." Clark shook his head disappointedly.
"They are a coward's weapon," Diana said. "But they are effective."
"War is war, Clark." Tsunade shrugged. "An advantage is an advantage and poison is one of the greatest advantages you can ever get. With the right application, you can end a fight before it even begins."
"It's true," Bruce nodded. "I nearly lost my life to one of Talia's personal guards after she put contact poison on my gloves. The moment I took them off with my hands, it got to work on me. If Dick hadn't been there, I would have died."
"Way to go, Bruce." Oliver sighed. "I'll be sure never to touch anything with my bare hands again."
The dead inhabitants of the city did not look like they were a warmongering type - they looked like tall but thin humanoids with yellow skin and red eyes - but Naruto had learned a long time ago to not judge a book by its cover.
"I'm a bit confused," Diana said, rubbing her chin. "If they have supposedly died out, who sent Naruto that transmission."
"Survivors, probably?" Naruto guessed. "They were killed by poison, not an apocalypse. Chances are whatever was used to transmit the poison didn't get to some."
Hal hummed. "That's a more optimistic way of looking at it."
Clark blinked. "Are you kidding? What's the pessimistic way?"
"He could have received an automated message to unregistered intruders entering the planet's orbit and have been surrounded by unmanned interceptor ships that wer either programmed to attack him if he progressed further or wouldn't have done anything since the personnel giving the commands were dead," Hal said. "It happens."
"...I guess that's true," Clark murmured.
Putting his hands in a cross-shaped seal, 100 Shadow Clones appeared next to him in a rather large plume of smoke.
"Spread across the planet and investigate. If you find something worth reporting, you can start dispelling 1 hour from now. Otherwise, keep investigating. Scatter!"
With a yelled 'Yes Boss!' and a body flicker movement, the 100 clones vanished at the same time. As for the original body, he took flight and left the city, going towards a random direction too.
"At least they know when not to be insubordinate," Diana commented.
Naruto smirked. "Well I can make them stop fooling around whenever I want, I usually just don't bother since they work pretty well together when they have to."
Kakashi raised a brow at him. "Didn't they mutiny against you once?"
"Holy shit, what?" Kara laughed.
Naruto gave his teacher the middle finger with both hands.
He flew for almost one thousand miles and he encountered more than 50 cities, big and small, in his path...but they were all in the same condition as the first city that he had stumbled upon. They were in ruins, with the entire population dead.
'Was everyone on the planet murdered with a biological weapon? Someone must've created this pandemic.'
"There aren't many chemicals strong enough to kill a lantern, at least not natural ones," Hal said.
"I don't get it, are you guys immune to poisons or something?" Oliver asked.
"Not naturally, but this isn't just a suit, Oliver." Hal gestured at his outfit. "It's a passive construct, made by the ring itself. It protects us from lot in space, even the microorganisms. The only way to poison us would be to make us ingest it-"
"Or use gas," Bruce finished for him. "Poisoning food or a water body wouldn't cause such a large scale of death. It would have to be not just something airborne, but gaseous too."
"And I just walked into it." Naruto looked at his counterpart on the screen. "I don't have a good feeling about this."
Still, he could not be sure of it until he received the intel from the shadow clones that he had sent across the planet. Furthermore, he had to find the remains of the Green Lanterns as well or at least find what had caused their deaths. Although he could make hundreds of Shadow Clones, it was not exactly an easy task to finish this mission in a short time. It was similar to looking for a needle in a haystack.
After flying for a few hours, Naruto and his shadow clones had covered the bigger part of 3 out of the 5 continents of the planet. Not the wilderness or the villages/small towns but the large urban agglomerations. Now, he was at the outskirts of a small forest, sitting with his back leaning against the trunk of a tree. He was resting. Taking out his lightwave communication device, he decided to take advantage of the resting period and call his girlfriend.
"Hello?" a sleepy voice answered.
Kara couldn't help herself. "It's me. I was wondering if after all these-"
"Kara please." Clark felt a headache approaching.
"My bad, I called you at the wrong time." Naruto said quickly and was about to terminate the call.
"Nng, don't worry. It's not night yet. I just fell asleep too early today. It's just 7 o'clock in the evening." Diana said and rubbed at her tired eyes.
"Must have been a lot of stress if it made someone like you fall asleep that early," Dinah remarked.
"Mm." Diana nodded. "
Taking a second look at her, Naruto realized that she was not in her sleeping clothes but still in her white and gold armour.
"Rough day?" he asked.
"You don't know half of it." she said.
"That doesn't sound good." Clark frowned.
Kara snorted. "Coming from her? It's probably something terrible."
"Did a natural disaster happen or something like that? I thought with the Justice League having almost 100 members by now it would become easier for you to handle any situation that might arise."
"Ah, no, at a first glance, things are great. Much better than ever actually. But something is worrying me about the general population. I've-" she hesitated a bit "-taken a page out of your book and started spending some time on the internet as well."
Dinah's lips curved into a grin. "Oh, have you?"
Diana flushed and looked away. "It's not what you're thinking. I wouldn't go searching for those…things he showed me."
"That's an awfully defensive answer to a question she didn't ask." Oliver ribbed her.
"You know, Naruto," Kara looked thoughtful. "Normally I'd cuss you out for tricking Wonder Woman into becoming a porn addict-"
"I am not!" Diana glared at her.
"-bur that just means she'll be open to freakier stuff in the future." Kara finished excitedly. "Hey, Diana. When we get home, why don't you look up two girls-mmph!"
"No!" Barry vanished from his seat and reappeared with a hand firmly on Kara's mouth.
"That's foul, girl." Oliver wagged his finger disapprovingly.
Kara glared at the archer before her eyes went down to the hand covering her mouth. A few seconds later, spittle bubbled from between Barry's fingers and the speedster withdrew his hand with a cry.
"That's disgusting!" the man waved his hand around frantically.
Seeing a smirk appearing on his face, she added quickly:
"Don't grin at me like that, I didn't do it for nasty reasons like you!"
Naruto laughed at her reaction.
"No, I'm serious. I wanted to get more in touch with normal people and see what they think and how they look at things. To understand them better. On the internet, under the protection of anonymity, people are much more sincere than in reality. I've noticed a trend over the past 2 months. Something, or someone, is inciting the general opinion against metahumans."
"Yeah, people find it easier to speak their mind when they know they'd be able to get away with it." Oliver nodded.
"Can they though?" Naruto asked.
"Not exactly," Bruce replied. "But save for people who say things that out them as potentially dangerous individuals, it's almost never really worth the effort you go through just to identify an online troll."
"Unless you mean to dox them to prove a point," Kara pointed out. "I mean, it's a crime, yeah, but nothing shuts a person up like having their personal details, social security number and home address being recited to them by the same person they were talking smack to a few minutes ago."
"How would you know that?" Clark narrowed his eyes.
Kara went quiet.
"Kara?" He called again.
"Come on, Clark. You're delaying us." Oliver said impatiently. "Let the lady read."
"I can't say I'm surprised, to be honest." Naruto replied. "Imagine you're a weak and helpless person, just trying to go to work and provide for your family, for your kids, and then one day your entire workplace disappears because Superman fought against someone and demolished 3 buildings in the process. Or imagine you made a loan to buy yourself an expensive car and paid for it with your sweat and blood and, the next day, some crazy metahuman blows it up in a fit of anger. How would you feel? To see the result of years of work and effort disappear in the blink of an eye, just like that?"
Clark frowned. "I don't-"
"You threw a Ferrari at Ultra Humanite once and missed." Oliver reminded him. "Imagine how the owner must have felt."
"And if I didn't fight with what I had, the owner wouldn't have been alive to feel bad about the car," Clark said. "Half the reason I use cars and stuff is because if I decided to brute force my fights, it wouldn't be a few cars and lamp poles wrecked, it would be the whole city."
As if as an afterthought, he added, "And we pay reimbursement."
"To the city," Dinah said. "Meaning unless the mayor decides to compensate the people who lost property too, they're left with nothing. Things like that get to a person. I mean, they're happy to be alive but still…they have nothing."
Clark went quiet, not really having a response to that.
Kara shrugged. "We all mess up, we can't help it. I once took a guy out of a car accident office building and dropped him twelve miles away from his destination. I didn't even know I'd taken him the wrong way till he started complaining about taking the bus and stuff."
"Did you take him back?" Naruto asked.
"No, he only started talking after I'd gone. He should have said something before." She folded her hands and looked away from Clark's weary gaze.
"You're one moral compromise away from becoming a villain." Oliver shook his head.
Wonder Woman was momentarily silent.
"I understand your point. I saw many other people saying similar things on the forums. But look at the alternative: if we didn't stand up to stop the criminals, who would do it? What would happen? What's more important, some material possessions or people's lives?"
She took off the golden wing ornaments framing the sides of her face and buried her face in her palms tiredly.
"There's no real solution to this situation. As long as conflict exists, material damages are inevitable. It feels like every day, people appreciate less and less what we do to keep them safe. No matter what we do, it's never good enough. Others say that we should just kill the criminals and put them down like rabid dogs, for good, while-"
"Are you opposed to that?" Naruto suddenly asked.
"Yes." Bruce and Clark said at the same time.
"Yes." Diana said resolutely before deflating slightly. "At least not as a first option. I don't kill, not until I've exhausted every other option. Not until I've seen that the person's beyond redemption. Life's too precious to waste so quickly."
"And that's what makes you a good person, Diana." Naruto smiled at her a tad wryly. Sadly, in his world, there were few other options than to kill.
Diana shook her head slowly.
"No. I understand that some people can't be redeemed. But nobody will ever be willing to cross that line among the Justice League. In the first place, who gives us the right to decide who gets to live and who gets to die? Once we do something like this, the government and the United Nations will finally have a pretext to openly move against us. Once that happened, it could even escalate into a civil war if worse came to worst."
"Civil war?" Naruto scoffed. "What could they do against the Justice League? You're so much more powerful than them that you can't call that a war. It would be a one-sided beatdown."
"Not when the government's trying their hardest to clone every leaguer with powers and sneak in plants everyday," Clark said. "And if we overthrew the government, we wouldn't be much different from the Justice Lords."
"I don't know about that. Batman discovered signs of a secret organisation affiliated with the government of the USA recruiting metahumans for a 'suicide squad', presumably preparing to move against us if the opportunity appeared. As I said, things are becoming more hectic and complicated with every passing day. And this anti-metahuman movement gets new supporters at an alarming pace. Superman and I are having it the worst. Many people blame him for what he did a few years ago while being mind-controlled by Darkseid. As for me," (1)
"Note the word suicide," Kakashi smiled. "They're preparing people who might not survive a fight against you, to fight you."
Hal raised a shoulder. "Let's be real, the only reason they can even do that is because they know we don't kill."
"Most of our enemies would either be dead or afraid to face us if we did," Bruce admitted. "But it's easy to lose yourself when you kill. The next time's easier and the time after that and one day, you'll look at yourself and realize you've become what you hated."
Tsunade nodded slowly before continuing to read.
"Did you do something too?"
"Not long after I left Themyscira, one of my Amazon sisters, Arisia, started an epidemy. She used a virus that only affected men, trying to annihilate the male population. While we managed to defeat her quickly, before the epidemy could become a pandemic, there were still many men that died, especially among the elderly. People are afraid that I'm a lunatic bound to snap one day as she did." (2)
"If only they knew," Diana smiled bitterly. If they saw what the rest of her sisters were like, they'd consider her a saint.
"Sorry for complaining like that. I just... I just have no-one else I could talk to about these things. And I-, I work so hard! 15-20 hours a day, every day, fighting crime, saving people from burning houses, preventing accidents, arresting terrorists and patrolling the cities. It's not just me. The entire Justice League is like that. We work so hard to keep everyone safe. And at the end of the day, we get home just to hear people throw curses at us and tv show anchors mocking our names or costumes and criticizing everything we do."
"It will never be enough."
Everyone stiffened when Kurama's voice, clear and deep, came from Naruto's mouth.
"What?" Diana asked.
Kurama let out a rumbling hum. "I have lived longer than everyone here, save for the Amazon and even in her case, I have seen more of life in a century than she has in her lifetime. I know what I speak of. It is my truth I care little whether you accept it. What you will do is listen."
"Humans, the masses, are little more than bitter, miserable beings who will hold you up to standards even they know are impossible to meet and will still will lash out against you for not meeting up to them anyway. They will cheer for you and they will envy you. They will hate you for your power but they will wish to use you. They will banish you, but they will not leave you be."
The tailed beast's chuckle was mocking and resentful and it grated at the ears of everyone in the room.
"Your acts of heroism, noble as they may be, ultimately an exercise in futility. They may be awed, they may whoop but in the end, it means nothing to them. Not in the long run. You will save them ninety nine times but they will hate you for the one time you failed. The woman you saved from a burning building will curse you for not saving her daughter, uncaring of how horribly the fire has ravaged you."
"It is human nature to be insatiable. To be ungrateful. You help them enough times and they become entitled and when you stop, they will vilify you. You will deny it, you will refuse it. You will believe that they may change, but in time, you will see. It may take years. You may be fortunate enough to perish before you are forced to face the truth but if not, there will be a day where you will realize that it does not matter how much you bled for them, how much you sacrificed for them, or how much you lost for them. In the end, in their eyes, it all amounts to nothing. Parlor tricks performed to hungry dogs."
No one raised their voice to argue with the tailed beast. He spoke with a bitterness that only bad experience could give a person and a clarity of someone who wholeheartedly believed what they said and wouldn't change their mind for anyone.
After a minute of quietness, Kurama yawned. "This silence is boring. Wake me up when there is death to watch."
With that, his presence receded and the red bled out of Naruto's eyes. He cleared his throat a few times and grimaced. "I hate when he does that. My throat hurts."
"He really hates us humans, doesn't he?" Dinah asked quietly.
Naruto thought for a moment. "He respects you. He wouldn't bother saying anything otherwise. I…I helped get the worse parts of him away, but even though he's mellowed out a lot now, he can't like us as a race. It's not who he is. Not anymore. He respects you. For someone like him, that's probably he closest to a friendship with him you'll ever get."
He spoke to Dinah but everyone knew he was talking to them all. Kara let out a sharp breath. "Bet it feels good though, knowing you're the only exception to that."
Naruto just smiled proudly.
She quickly wiped a tear that was about to fall from the corner of her eye.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm here for you not just when we're joking and flirting around, but when you're sad and need to talk about your problems too." Naruto said kindly. "After I'm done with this job I promise I'll come to visit you, ok? It will do you good to have a break from all that hero-related stuff and just relax for a day or two."
She perked up at his words and her eyes brightened.
"Where are you now, by the way? What's your current mission?" she asked.
"Didn't Green Lantern tell you?"
"You should know by now how he is. It's 'Green Lantern Corps business, therefore, it's classified'." Diana said, mimicking John Stewart's voice.
Hal snorted. "It's funny because guys like him are usually the life of the party when they're off duty."
"I don't know," Barry said quietly, still affected by the tailed beast's words. "He seems pretty determined to be as uptight as possible. He even tried yelling at Hawkgirl a while back."
"I'll probably see to getting him to hang out with us when we get back home. You'll see."
The two of them chuckled together.
"I'm investigating the death of 4 members of the Green Lantern corps. They appear to have died in the Cygnus System, Milky Way galaxy. They want me to-"
"Naruto, WHAT IS THAT?! BEHIND YOU!" Wonder Woman suddenly yelled, greatly startling him.
Diana's panicked shout didn't make Naruto jump. Not at all. Kara would have laughed at him if she hadn't been as shocked as him but her surprise was less from Diana's cry and more from what emerged from behind the blond on the screen.
Hurriedly, he jumped up and flipped his body in the air. It was just in time to slip past a very thick vine-like tentacle that had tried to sneakily wrap around his neck. He had been so focused on his conversation with Wonder Woman that he had completely forgotten about his surroundings.
"Fuck that's gross." Naruto cursed. "Gotta hang up, Diana, talk to you later. Promise." he said and tried to end the call but a mass of vine-like tentacles soundlessly fell from the crown of the tree above, right onto the back of his head.
He fell on his knees and became immobile, the lightwave communication device falling from his hands. Only Wonder Woman's horrified voice could be heard as she called out to him desperately.
"Naruto! Wake up! NARUTO!"
A disgusting mass of tentacles covered Naruto's face and torso completely, only leaving him some space to breathe and nothing else.
A shocked Tsunade mutely closed the book, signifying to the others that the chapter was over. Nobody reacted much, they were all still reeling from what they'd just seen. Even the ones who were uncomfortably familiar with it hadn't been prepared for its appearance. Naruto was the first to speak.
"What the hell was that?" He croaked out. "I got caught in seconds!"
"That," Hal looked at him, "was the black mercy."
They think I'm suicidal the way I'm hanging off this cliff.
I take comissions, check my bio to know more.
See y'all in the next chapter.