[Caterpillar] Chapter 9 - Demonic God (Patreon)

"What in the world...? Did I put in the wrong coordinates?" Naruto muttered to himself when he saw the desolate scenery outside, through the pilot cabin's window.

It was a scene extremely similar to the one that he had seen half a year ago when he went to the Rao System at the request of Superman and saved the young Argonian girl, Kara Zor-El: countless asteroids littered the space where the planet Tamaran should have been.

"Computer, confirm our location," Naruto ordered.

At his request, the large screen of the computer showed a very detailed map of the Milky Way Galaxy, a map that proceeded to be zoomed in rapidly. It took just a few seconds for the map to be zoomed in until only a planetary system was displayed on the screen: the Vega System. On it, an inverted green triangle was blinking above the planet Tamaran. But when looking through the windows of the ship, Tamaran was nowhere to be seen. Countless chunks of rocks and a large amount of debris were all that was left of the previously flourishing planet.

Although Koriand'r did not understand the Almeracian language that Naruto used to interact with the AI of the ship, it did not take a genius to understand what was going on when she saw their location on the map of the Vega System and the mass of asteroids outside. Tears welled up in her eyes and she started crying bitterly.

From someone who had had everything, Koriand'r had lost everything.

Initially, a princess of the royal family and the next in line to become the ruler of her planet, she was sold out by her own parents, at a very frail age, for the sake of the greater good, for 'peace'. She became a slave and she even lost her innocence when one of the Gordanian jailers raped her. She had murdered that Gordanian in revenge later on but the damage done to her was obviously not repaired. Instead, things only continued to spiral downwards from there. After killing her jailors and attempting to escape, the Gordanians thought of her as too dangerous and sold her to their allies, the Psion Monarchy. In the following years, she endured all kinds of torture and experiments at the hands of the Psions.

And now, even her homeworld had been destroyed. Koriand'r let herself down on her knees and sobbed in her hands.

Over the course of his long life, after witnessing the death of many worlds (including the apocalypse of his own) Naruto inadvertently became detached from the world around him. He would enjoy the moment and have fun but he always kept other people and places at arm's length, never letting anyone in his heart except for his lifelong friend, Kyuubi. However, at that moment, hearing the girl's anguished cries cracked his heart.

"Do you understand pain a little now? If you don't share someone's pain, you can never understand them."

Even to this day, almost a century after his fateful battle against the leader of the Akatsuki, Uzumaki Nagato, Naruto could vividly remember every single moment of it, every single word of his former enemy. Nagato was the one person who had marked him the most, even more than his mentor, the Toad Sage. The older he grew, the more he realized the naivete of Jiraiya's dream and the harsh truth in Pain's words.

Naruto lowered himself to Koriand'r's level and put his hand gently on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Her situation hit very close to home for Naruto. He may have not had it as bad as Koriand'r but, just like her, he had also been sacrificed by his own father for the sake of the village, for the greater good. Betrayed by their family for the sake of peace. And just like her, he had also lost his homeworld. He understood all too well her pain. And that was why his passive attitude cracked when faced with her cries.

It was just a small show of compassion on Naruto's side but for the crying Koriand'r, it was the drop that spilt the glass. She lunged at him and her arms wrapped around his back tightly as she started to cry out loud in his chest.

"I have nothing left... nothing..." Koriand'r said through her tears.

What could he say to comfort the young woman desperately crying in his arms? That "things have to get worse before they can get better"? Or that she's at the lowest point in her life and that "from now on, things can only go up"? In his mind, such cheap lip service was disgusting. He chose to stay silent, only offering her a shoulder to cry on.

Naruto let out a drawn-out sigh of despondency.

'In this dog-eat-dog world, being weak is almost like a sin. But even if you're powerful, you can only guarantee your own survival... For all my power, I could never protect everything. On the grand scale of the Universe, one man is nothing. In front of a reality-bender god, even I would be in danger... Against the all-powerful force of the Void, in front of the Universe's power, I am but a spec of dust.'

There were some groups and organisations like the Green Lantern Corps that tried to uphold peace and justice in the Universe but they were only minimally successful and their death toll was very high. Despite their efforts, intergalactic wars still raged on, greedy dictators took over planets and enslaved their inhabitants and mad conquerors destroyed everything in their path. And that was only on a large scale, to say nothing about the countless conflicts that took place every day on every planet: armed conflicts, killings, kidnappings, physical and sexual abuse, torturing, human trafficking etc.

'I've fought against evil for decades, even after coming into this new world. But no matter what I did, it always came back. No matter how much I stepped on it, the darkness crawled back, like a cockroach.'

'Yin and Yang, evil and good, darkness and light. Supposedly, for life to exist, there has to be a balance between these two opposing sides. But where is the light when I can see only darkness? Who is the light and what does it do to stop the ever-growing darkness? Where are all the benevolent gods that so many people worship and pray to?'

Naruto had no wild thoughts about him bearing the role of the light. He was but a tired old man...a lone man. He had been the so-called child of the prophecy but he had still failed at protecting his own homeworld. If he could not protect his loved ones and his home, he had no illusions about being able to protect the Universe at large. His power may have grown by a lot but just like his powers, the strength of the enemy had increased just as much if not more.

'Fighting against the darkness is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. Darkness is ever-evolving, ever-spreading and indestructible.'

That was the conclusion that he had reached after more than 100 years of life. That the laws of the Universe made it so there would always be darkness. Darkness would never be destroyed for as long as sentient living beings existed. And this thought filled him with helplessness. Over the years, it made him lose much of the drive that he used to have in his early teen years when he wanted to protect every innocent being, regardless of whether they were friends or strangers. The despair of knowing that no matter what he did, darkness would never be extinguished... it slowly made him detached from the world around him.

But there were moments like the present one when he came in contact with people whose pain he could relate to. People like Superman, people like Koriand'r. Those moments always shook his cold heart and perturbed his inner peace and calm.

⁂

"What are you going to do now, Naruto?" Kyuubi asked quietly.

After taking the sleeping Tamaranean princess to one of the rooms in the ship's living quarters, man and fox were now back in the control room, alone.

"I'm going to turn in Vandal Savage to the Psions first."

"You do realize that this bounty was most likely a highly elaborated trap from the beginning, right?" Kyuubi asked again.

"Oh, I am betting on that," Naruto said darkly.

From the moment that he saw that Tamaran was destroyed, he realized that Kyuubi's hunch about Rui Nak betraying them was right all along. As one of the top information brokers in the Milky Way galaxy, there was no way that Rui Nak did not know that Koriand's parents were dead or that Tamaran had been destroyed.

"That rat betrayed us," Kyuubi said. "Most likely, he was paid by the Psions to deliver us to him. I can totally see those crazed scientists wanting to dissect you and me to see what makes us tick and what gives us our power. And that scum of a rat even sold his wife and kids for money, to say nothing of his willingness to sell you."

Naruto nodded his head and added:

"The bounty to save the princess of Tamaran was probably just to distract us and give more of a reason and make sure we entered one of the Psions' bases." Cold laughter came from him as he said: "But I will play their game. Hehe."

At his different-than-usual demeanour, Kyuubi jumped off Naruto's shoulder and then stood in front of him. He looked him in the eye and said meaningfully:

"Are we going all out?"

Naruto chuckled softly.

"You know me so well, Kurama."

As they were speaking, over a dozen space-warp tunnels appeared within 200 miles of their ship. The radar of the ship went crazy and alarms started blaring as multiple hostile targets appeared within its scope. From those space-warp tunnels, almost 40 frigate-class and even 8 galleon-class warships came out.

"I hope whatever the Psions had bribed the rat with was worth trading his life for. Because I'll rip him to shreds after I am done here." Naruto growled.

It was not his normal voice, it was deeper and it sounded demonic. The nails of his fingers had turned into claws and if it had not been for his masking jutsu that made his hair look golden-yellow, it could have been seen that his hair had become blood red, compared to the regular strawberry-blonde from before. Under his mask, his canines grew into fangs as well and his already thick whisker-like marks became darker and deeper.

A beeping sound was being made by the computer, showing an incoming transmission but a clawed finger pressed on a key to reject it. He did not need to hear what the incoming fleet of warships had to say to know their intentions; on the large screen of his computer, he could see the footage recorded by the AI: the ships that had appeared on their radar carried the emblems of the Psion Monarchy and the Gordanian Empire.

"They think they can trap and capture us like a beast? Come, Kurama. It's time we reminded the world what happens after provoking a slumbering beast."

The fox met the man's fist in a fist-bump and, as the two of them looked at each other, blood-thirsty grins crept on their faces. In the next moment, their silhouettes teleported out of the ship.

⁂

Hundreds of ships were firing laser beams at an enormous monstrosity. A fission-type missile exploded against the torso of the beast and an enormous mushroom-like cloud of fire rose for tens of miles into the sky, even puncturing the stratosphere of the planet. A roar of pain came from the beast as a patch of its chest was burnt off.

"This isn't right! This wasn't in our calculations! Our data was wrong!" a frail-looking green lizard man yelled hysterically.

They had not known that the tiny "pet" of the mercenary they wanted to capture would transform into a world-destroying behemoth.

That fission-type missile was the strongest weapon of mass destruction they could use without endangering the very core of the planet their race was living on. But that weapon that could lay waste to an entire nation had only scraped some skin off the beast's chest.

The one that looked like the commander of the lizard men screamed:

"Everyone, evacuate the planet! Prepare the star-destroyers and blow up everything to dust! Blow them all up along with the planet!"

His adjutants could not help yelling out in disbelief:

"But sir! Our home and everything we've worked so hard for will-"

The adjutant, however, did not finish speaking when the sky suddenly seemed to turn black. His words died out in his throat when an enormous sphere of purple-black energy cast a shadow over the capital city of the planet.

*BOOM*

A cataclysmic explosion boomed. A white light blinded every living being in range and the shockwave it generated deafened everyone a second later. The energy shield that should have been capable of defending even against a shot from a star-destroying particle cannon was obliterated.

Twenty galleon-type warships equipped with star-destroying cannons flew in front of the enormous beast. But despite the destructive might of their warships, everyone on board trembled at the sight of the colossal beast standing ahead of them. They have never seen anything as monstrous as that before.

Blood-red fur, over 1500 feet in height and over 2500 feet in length. At its back, 9 enormous tails created tornados just with simple twitches. It was a gargantuan 9-tailed demon fox.

"Kurama! Sea of Fire!" Naruto shouted.

He was on top of the enormous fox's head but he was so small that he could not be seen from outside. The fur of the beast's head was even taller than him. He was no bigger than a fly was on a regular fox. He sat on his knees, with both hands pressed down on the head of Kyuubi. A massive amount of chakra was being passed on from him to the demon below through his hands.

The titanic demon roared. A conic breath of fire covered the entire sky. Like the furious waves of an ocean, the stream of fire obliterated everything in its path. The several miles-long star-destroying warships were reduced to liquid metal in mere seconds. Flames hotter than the sun melted everything.

It was hell. And in the middle of that hell, demonic laughter shook the skies.

"Wahaha! Die! Die!"

Kyuubi revelled in the feeling of power, in the slaughter. Power like he had never wielded back in the Elemental Nations. A power not any lower than that of the Ten Tailed Beast, a God.

He did not have many opportunities to let loose like that. When Naruto had unsealed him from his body, he was in his 40s. It took Naruto nearly 3 decades of studying the art of Fuinjutsu before he became proficient and confident enough to undo the seal without killing himself in the process.

But after 40 years spent locked by the Shinigami's seal, much of Kyuubi's chakra had seeped into Naruto, fusing with him. That's why Naruto's whisker marks were so thick and dark now by default and that was also why his golden blonde hair had become a strawberry-blond, almost red. Before unsealing Kyuubi, man and bijuu had been very close to the point where they would completely fuse into one single entity.

When Naruto finally unsealed him, the bijuu lost a part of himself in the process. In the present, Kyuubi could not regenerate his chakra like before, simply by drawing it in from the outside world. That's why he had become a glutton that would eat 24/7. He converted the physical energy from anything he ate into chakra. That was also why he took on the appearance of a tiny fox cub most of the time: to preserve his energy.

But when Kyuubi actually let loose and put to use all the chakra that he had accumulated over many years, this was the result: a might far surpassing the original level of power given to him by his creator, Rikudo Sennin. Unlike before, there was no real limit to how much chakra he could store. Theoretically, with enough time and chakra, he could become invincible. He was no longer just a demonic fox. In the present, Kyuubi was like a god, a demonic fox god.

"Prepare one final attack: destroy their planet," Naruto said.

His ruthless words would have shocked his younger self back in the Elemental Nations. But Naruto was no stranger to the atrocities that this race of degenerates had committed over their millions of years of existence. There was not a single innocent among them. When one wants to cut the weeds, they have to pull them from their roots. Complete annihilation.

Kyuubi's booming evil laughter subsided. He had never fully lost himself in his lust for carnage and slaughter. He had not forgotten even for a second that his current power was possible only because of the chakra that Naruto was pouring into him, a chakra that Naruto absorbed from Nature, on a planet even more polluted and infected than the Earth.

"Are you sure, Naruto?" Kyuubi asked worriedly.

"Just do it!" Naruto said grimly. "I'm only acting as a conductor, not as the engine; I'm just pouring chakra into you instead of using it myself. The damage this infected natural energy does to me is not as bad as if I was the one to use it and cast jutsus."

Despite his words of reassurance, right at that moment, his mask cracked and dispersed into particles of light. His perfect chakra control was starting to slip up. His red hair came into view now that the mask no longer disguised it and the appearance of his face too. He was horrible to look at.

Had Kyuubi been able to see how Naruto looked at that moment, he would have stopped his rampage in a heartbeat: purple-black blood was flowing from a corner of his mouth, most of the skin on his face was a mixture of dark violet and black, and he lost the sight in one of his eyes after half of his face had been petrified. It was a clear sign of nature-energy poisoning. If he did not stop drawing on nature's energy very soon, at this rate, his entire body would turn into stone, becoming a statue just like the many other people before him who had lost control of their senjutsu.

Kyuubi did not have a wishy-washy nature. He was aware of the dangers Naruto faced the longer he kept using this infected natural energy. So he did not hesitate. Cupping his fists together, he slammed them against the ground with all the strength that his gigantic body was capable of. A huge crack appeared in the ground, splitting the crust of the planet open for dozens of miles. Then, opening his enormous mouth wide open, the largest bijuudama Kyuubi had ever cast slowly took form in front of him. It was even larger than his half-a-mile-long body. At last, he fired it into the huge crack that he had made in the crust of the planet.

Despite how violent and powerful the following explosion was, it was not enough to destroy an entire planet by itself...but the chain of reactions that it produced made up for it. The aftershocks and the rest of the berserk chakra resulted from the tailed beast bomb's explosion reached the very core of the planet. Only a few seconds later, terrible earthquakes shook the entire surface of the planet and volcanos started showing signs of erupting very soon, from everywhere. It was the end of the world. After a few hours, the planet was going to explode from within.

"Make yourself tiny, Kurama. Quickly." Naruto said with difficulty because the petrifying process was advancing further than before and even started to turn to stone his mouth too.

The over 1500 feet tall and over 2500 feet long demonic fox god decreased in size at a very fast speed until it became no larger than a horse. Kyuubi had realized that Naruto was in a critical condition. He made himself small enough for Naruto to be able to teleport them both but also big enough for him to carry his wounded friend.

In a flash of yellow and red light, the two of them appeared 4 thousand miles away, in the exosphere of the planet, aboard their invisible ship.

"Naruto, you-"

The fox could not continue speaking. Except for his right eye, all of Naruto's face had turned into stone along with his left hand and leg. He was petrified in a kneeling position, the position he had had while pouring his chakra into Kyuubi.

Naruto weakly raised his still-working hand and put it on Kyuubi's chest. His index finger drew invisible lines on his chest like he was writing.

"Don't worry... I'll be ok...?" Kyuubi read by imagining what the lines Naruto drew with his finger would be in kanji.

Naruto made a weak thumbs-up gesture and then proceeded to write again on the fox's chest.

"Call Lobo... return favour... rat bastard... warp ship... Earth."

Naruto once again made a thumbs-up gesture to show that Kyuubi got it right. After that, his only remaining eye closed. He lost his consciousness.

⁂

While Naruto was unconscious, on the brink of death, and Kyuubi was fumbling with the computer of the ship to activate the space-warp, the rest of the Universe was in an uproar.

The two of them had no idea about how far-reaching were the consequences of their outrageous display of power and ruthless violence. They were in every discussion of the upper echelons of all the powerful forces of the Galaxy and not only. The well-informed and powerful organisations in the entire known Universe were shocked because the Psions were one of the oldest races of the Universe, almost as old as the Guardians of the Green Lantern Corps who had created them. No self-respecting interstellar power could claim that they had not heard of the Psions and their cruel dominion over the lawless Vega System. However, such an old, powerful, and technologically advanced race had been massacred to the last individual in the span of a day.

In the Vega System, the Gordanian Empire's ruling body was in a panic. Their allies and masters, the Psions, possessed far superior technology and means of destruction and/or defence. But they had been eradicated in only one day! Hundreds of thousands of Gordanians evacuated Karna planet in the following weeks, running for their lives.

In contrast to the Gordanians, billions of other people in the Vega System were celebrating the day of liberation. The Psions who had taken over the entire system were no more. Countless people came out in the streets and celebrated together, regardless of race or nationality when the news of Psions' massacre came out.

On Thanagar, the members of the Ruling Council of the Thanagrians were having difficult-to-contain smiles on their faces. For generations, they had been at war against the Gordanians and, as of late, they were even starting to get pushed back by the flying lizard men. Although the Gordanians had not been destroyed along with the Psions, the Thanagrians were very happy with the outcome. Without the Psions' technology to support them from the back, the Gordanian Empire's defeat was only a matter of time.

On Earth, John Stewart had a look of disbelief on his face when Salaak, the administrator of the Green Lantern Corps sent him (and the rest of the Green Lanterns too) a shocking report:

"The Psions of the Vega System have been massacred. An intergalactic mercenary, Uzumaki Naruto, also known as 'Caterpillar' and his companion, Kyuubi, a demon, have destroyed the Psions' planet and the 6 moons that they had colonized. The Guardians have classified the two of them as Universal-level threats. All Green Lanterns in possession of more information about these two subjects are to report to Oa immediately."

On New Genesis and Apokolips, Highfather and Darkseid, the rulers of the two factions of the New Gods were both frowning, though for different reasons.

The Vega System was a place that even Darkseid had not attempted to conquer until then because he recognized the threat that the Psions' technology posed. Darkseid did not like the sudden apparition of such a wild and violent dark horse - one that annihilated an entire race in one day. New Genesis and the Justice League were annoying enough as it was; he did not like the thought of such a dangerous variable popping up in his plans of world domination.

As for Highfather, he went into a deep meditation, trying to make contact with the Source. He was worried about such a powerful character being evil. His adopted son, Orion, the most valiant warrior of the gods from New Genesis was getting ready to leave their world and make contact with the dangerous mercenary and his beast, to ascertain their intentions and thoughts.

On the planet Almerac, a beautiful red-haired woman shot up from her throne, her face betraying the shock she was feeling. She was Maxima, the Queen of Almerac. A series of contrasting emotions flashed in her eyes: at first anger, then infatuation, and then anger again. She had met the mercenary and his fox a few years before. Infatuated with how powerful he was, she had tried to kidnap him and make him her husband by force. But not only that he had rejected her, he even stole one of their most advanced stealth-oriented warships before escaping from the planet. She had not heard anything about him for years but when she finally heard some news about him again, it was about him annihilating a race as powerful as the Psions... Her infatuation levels skyrocketed. Flushed with excitement and desire and with her previous anger nearly forgotten, she immediately ordered her subordinates to search for more information about his whereabouts. She was definitely going to hunt him down and make him her husband.

Lastly, a Yellow Power Ring took flight from Qward, in the Anti-Matter universe. Its destination was precise: the Earth, in the Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy. Target: Kyuubi, the Nine-Tailed Demonic Fox God.