[Caterpillar] Chapter 3 - Meeting the Justice League (Patreon)

AN: To the guest reviewer who asked about the timeline: indeed, I modified the date of Kara's rescue and the date of the Preserver's capture of Superman. But, from now on, the story will roughly follow the timeline of the Justice League animated series. Nevertheless, I won't cover all the events in the series; some will be skipped and maybe others will be added from other DC animations. New adventures will surely pop up too at some point. After all, this is a fanfiction. I'm letting my imagination run free.

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Chapter 3 - Meeting the Justice League

A blonde girl in her mid-teens was lying on her back on a bed with several wires connecting her to various medical machines. A strange assortment of people was gathered around her bed, looking at her curiously. Superman in his red and blue costume, a green-skinned humanoid wearing a blue cape, another man in a bat-themed suit, a scantily-clad athletic woman, a masked woman with angel-like wings, a Green Lantern wearing his Corps' traditional uniform, and lastly, a man in a red suit and mask with a lightning motif on his chest.

"What's with those gaudy costumes? Void, it's so cringe! I'm getting goosebumps." Naruto muttered and raised the sleeve of his right arm to show the fox on his shoulder proof of his words. (1)

Kyuubi snickered when he saw Naruto's hair standing on his forearm and his skin looking like that of a chicken.

While Naruto and Kyuubi were talking among themselves in their native language, the green-skinned man spoke:

"Her vitals are stable. The condition of her body is remarkably good. She's brimming with vitality. If you had not told me that she had been in cryo-sleep for nearly 30 years I would not have believed it. Now, we just have to wait for her to wake up naturally."

"You don't need to thank me," Naruto said complacently. "I wouldn't mind a bonus to my paycheck tho."

The other seven people in the room all looked at him, their faces displaying various emotions. Some looked at him with curiosity, others with wariness while others with a helpless look on their faces.

When the Almeracian ship appeared on the Watchtower's radar and Superman contacted the Martian Manhunter to give them access, upon getting down from the ship, nobody questioned Superman in regards to who were the visitors at his side because they could see the unconscious girl in his arms and the urgent expression on his face. But now that things settled down, they naturally became curious.

Anticipating their questions, Superman said:

"We should let the girl rest in silence. We'll discuss more in the conference room."

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"Let me get this straight: you took the Javelin without telling anyone anything, went off chasing a crazy alien bounty hunter, got yourself captured and then ended up destroying the Javelin in a brawl and also with a debt of almost 4 million dollars?!" Green Lantern, a middle-aged black man shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice betraying his disbelief.

Given that Green Lanterns were the protectors of the Universe, John Stewart was naturally aware of what a unit mass represented for aliens. 1 mass unit was equal to 1 kg (2.2 pounds). Converting 70 mass units of gold into US dollars, the final result was that Superman had a debt of over 4 million dollars.

"Holy Molly...!" Flash gasped.

While Wonder Woman seemed not fully aware of just how huge that amount of money was - although she had left Paradise Island a bit more than 2 months ago she had yet to truly interact with the society of the 'world of men' - Batman was massaging both of his temples with his hands.

In contrast, a certain Thanagarian woman could not help herself.

"Puhu!"

She tried to mask it by coughing in her hand but when she took a look at the mixture of awkwardness and shame on Superman's face, all her restraint disappeared.

"Ahahah!" she laughed out loud, beating the conference table with her palm.

"Hawkgirl! This is no laughing matter!" Green Lantern barked.

But Green Lantern's outrage only made her laugh harder.

"Dude, over 4 million?! This is plain robbery!" Flash said while looking at Naruto wide-eyed.

"Is it now? Is the life of the last Kryptonian and the last Argonian not worth that much? Allow me to expand your horizons: if I captured the two of them and sold them to the Psions I reckon I'd have enough money to even buy a terraformed moon in the Vega System. A whole moon. That's how valuable the last survivors of these two races are. I'm actually suffering a huge loss by giving them away to you basically for free."

A chill went down everyone's spine at those words. Superman himself appeared to be very perturbed. But even more unsettled by the revelation was Green Lantern.

"You would sell 2 innocent people to those monsters?!" John Stewart shouted.

"Do you know who those guys are?" Flash asked.

"They're a race of maniacs from Vega System, a planetary system outside of the 3600 sectors of the Universe protected by the Green Lantern Corps. They have a hobby of dissecting and experimenting on people, trying to create new races and creatures. One of the worst tumours the world has ever seen." Green Lantern said with a dark expression on his face.

Naruto made a pause.

"Of course that I wouldn't sell people as if they were livestock. Luckily for the big guy and that little girl, I do have some morals too, ya know? But if you try to double-cross me..."

None of the people in the conference room was deaf to the undisguised threat in his words.

"That's enough. You will have your gold in 24 hours." Batman who had been silent until then spoke.

"What about fuel for my ship?"

"You can refuel here, at the Watchtower."

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"And I thought that Flash was a glutton..." Hawkgirl muttered while looking at the 9-tailed fox cub that was sitting on the table in the kitchen of the Watchtower, gorging himself with food. Half of their food supply had already disappeared into the tiny being's seemingly bottomless stomach.

"My metabolism is too fast compared to normal people so I need a lot of calories to sustain it. But I'm curious what this little fox' special power is." Flash said and raised his hand in an attempt to pet the fox.

But Flash cried out startled when one of the nine tails of Kyuubi suddenly enlarged and slapped his hand away.

"Hey, that's not fair! Why can Wonder Woman touch it and I can't?" Flash complained.

Wonder Woman was currently playing with one of Kyuubi's fluffy tails, showing a gentle expression that made a stark contrast with her normally stoic attitude as a warrior princess. Hawkgirl also tried to touch Kyuubi after Flash but her hand was slapped away too. Now, she was sulking at his side. In fact, Wonder Woman was the only one Kyuubi allowed to get close to him.

What the others did not think about and what Kyuubi did not know either was that, as someone carrying the name of the Goddess of the Hunt, Wilderness, and wild animals, Wonder Woman had been blessed with an increased degree of affinity with wild animals and nature in general. To Kyuubi, her presence did not feel threatening and he could also sense her emotions or, better said, the lack of her negative feelings. In addition, having the fur on his tails caressed so gently was a wonderful feeling too (something that Naruto never did).

"He doesn't like you. Plus, it's common sense you don't normally touch animals when they eat." Naruto said without looking up from the tablet in his hands.

"Who are you calling an animal you stupid pig?" Kyuubi suddenly growled and Flash, Hawkgirl and Wonder Woman backed away from the table startled.

"It talks?!" they unknowingly cried out at the same time.

However, Kyuubi did not seem to care enough to press the issue. He was currently busy chewing on an entire chicken, straight out of the freezer. With food in front of his face, it was like the outside world ceased to exist. Naruto was also busy tinkering with the device in his hand. He was checking on the job offers that his information brokers and business partners had sent him over the past week. He had to go through several dozens of them.

The three members of the Justice League looked at each other in dismay. The Martian Manhunter had tasked them with "babysitting" the mercenary and his 'pet' while he, Batman, Superman and Green Lantern were going to have a private conversation about how to deal with them until Batman managed to acquire the gold (~155 pounds of it).

"They're talking about us, Naruto," Kyuubi said after he finished the raw chicken and licked his whiskers.

"No surprise there." the blond replied. "What are they saying?"

"They wanna keep us here until we leave. According to that Green Lantern, it would be a disaster if they were to let us loose on Earth." Kyuubi said.

"Wait, how can you hear them? They're on several floors away." Hawkgirl asked.

Naruto grinned at Kyuubi's words and although his face could not be seen due to the mask he was wearing, his voice was filled with mirth.

"I didn't really care about visiting the Earth again but now that they want me to not go there, I will go. For the hell of it."

Kyuubi revealed a toothy grin and he left the rest of the food on the table. With a small bend of his lower limbs, the fox leapt up like a spring from the table back to his favourite place: Naruto's right shoulder. A moment later, without warning, several small marbles fell on the floor and a very intense light flashed, blinding the rest of the people in the room. A startled shout came from them at being temporarily blinded. They did not even know that Naruto and Kyuubi had already teleported away, straight back to their ship.

The blast doors of the Watchtower's dry dock were shut but Naruto was not worried about how to get out. At his age, after a lifetime of acting as an intergalactic mercenary, cautiousness had become his second nature. He was no longer like his teenager self who used to jump head-first into situations without thinking. That said, he had made a habit out of leaving markers outside of the planets or spatial stations that he was going to land on, to give himself a way out in case things went south. Better safe than sorry.

The warship that Naruto had stolen from Almerac was not large. Being designed mostly for scouting purposes, it was only 150 feet long and a bit less than 70 feet wide, having a sharp triangular shape. It had a highly advanced ion reactor, cloaking capabilities such as becoming invisible and it was focused on speed. While its camouflage, speed and mobility were excellent, the downsides of such a ship were its lack of firepower and the small capacity of its energy shield. But it fit his needs perfectly; his purpose had never been to go at war against fleets of warships, but to travel the Universe.

Arriving in the control room of his ship, Naruto firmly placed one hand on the board and his other hand made a ram seal. A fantastic scene happened: in the next moment, the entire ship disappeared! A blink of an eye later, the ship appeared several hundred miles away from the Watchtower, next to another one of Earth's numerous artificial satellites.

An invisible spaceship entered the Earth's atmosphere, heading towards the dark side of the planet where it was night. Generally, the more advanced a civilisation was, the more fantastic its night sky was too. It was a rough but not necessarily inaccurate way to gauge the progress of a backwater planet such as the Earth. And, naturally, he went towards the brightest agglomeration of man-made lights: the Northeastern Coast of the United States since, at that moment, it was night on the American continent.

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One hour later, Naruto and Kyuubi were in a late-night restaurant on the outskirts of Boston. They were the sole customers. At first, the clerk tried to stop him from entering with his 'fox pet' but a low-level illusion technique later he stopped all the ruckus.

Now, Naruto was wolfing down one burger after another with an expression of contentment on his face. He was not as big a glutton as Kyuubi but he did love food too. It was one of the finest pleasures in life.

"Can't believe how good this is. This also looks like a cheap restaurant. Who would've thought that Earth had such good food." Naruto said.

Kyuubi made a hum of approval. Then, he lifted a bottle of Coca-Cola even larger than his own body and gulped it all down in one breath. After that, a sonorous burping sound rang from his throat for almost 20 seconds. Man and fox burst into obnoxious laughter. Fortunately, they were the only customers in the restaurant at that late-night hour.

"Wish they had ramen. Come to think of it, very few planets I've been to had it. On some planets, they don't even eat food. Imagine a life where ramen doesn't exist. Why even live?"

Even after 97 years of being away from his homeworld, Naruto's obsession with his favourite food had not disappeared. Though he had eaten many other dishes that were admittedly much tastier and richer in flavour than ramen, eating ramen always hit him differently than any other food. It was because ramen also had a sentimental value to him in addition to its good taste. It reminded him of the first 2 people who had ever shown him kindness while almost everyone else in his village hated him: Ichiraku and his daughter, Ayame. It reminded him of home.

"Oy, waiter, bring me some more roasted chicken! And do it fast!" Kyuubi yelled at the clerk but then yelped when Naruto grabbed one of his large ears.

"Don't be an asshole, you could've at least said 'please'." Naruto rebuked.

Kyuubi tried to bite him but Naruto let go before he had the chance.

"You cocky little shit, one of these days, I'll have to teach you to respect your elders," Kyuubi growled.

"Pipe down, twerp. Did you forget what happened the last time we brawled?" Naruto said with a smirk, making the fox wince at the memory.

Just then, none other than Batman and Wonder Woman appeared next to their table.

"Why did you run away from the Watchtower?" Batman said.

But when they saw the food disappearing into Naruto's mouth despite wearing a mask that covered his entire face, Wonder Woman asked in curiosity:

"How are you doing that?"

"Would you believe me if I told you it's magic?" Naruto said jokingly but Batman did not seem to appreciate his sense of humour if the narrowing of his eyes was anything to go by. "Anyway, how did you find us so fast? I thought you'd take a bit longer. I mean I fried all the tracking devices you've planted on my ship."

It was Kyuubi that anwered:

"That woman planted a tiny tracking device on one of my tails. She thought I wouldn't notice."

"If you knew what she was doing why did you let her?" Batman asked suspiciously.

"Wait, you knew?" Naruto also asked.

"Well, someone had to pay the bill after our late-night dinner." the fox said with a shrewd look in his eyes.

It was not only Naruto that burst into laughter but even Wonder Woman let out a soft giggle too.

While no outward sign of anger could be seen at Batman, Kyuubi knew how annoyed he was thanks to his Negative Emotions Sensing. But Batman's ire became apparent when he had to pay a bill of several thousand dollars.

It was not having to pay a few thousand dollars that triggered him but the audacity of Naruto and Kyuubi to take advantage of the Justice League like that; first, by extorting Superman of a huge sum of money knowing that he could not refuse his services and now making him pay for their food after they left the Watchtower without their accord.

Regardless, he calmed himself down. As irritating as the two of them were, according to Superman, they were not interested in living on Earth. So Batman consoled himself with the thought that this headache-inducing duo of aliens would disappear the next day after they got their gold.

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AN: Kyuubi's gluttony will be explained in the future. It's not only for the comedic effect, there is also an important reason behind it. Thanks for reading. If you find any typos/mistakes, you can tell me.

(1) "Void" is an expression that Naruto will use in this fic instead of something like "oh god". He has a deep fear/respect for the unknown and boundless void of the Universe due to something that had happened in the past. More will be revealed as the story progresses.