[Caterpillar] Chapter 13 - Crisis (I) (Patreon)

"You can't be serious!" a tall and athletic woman said angrily and slapped the table with her palm. But, without meaning to, she put too much strength into it and the long and luxurious conference table was smashed to bits making everyone else back away startled.

"Your reaction just now proves my point," Superman said. "I don't know what happened but there is clearly something wrong with you. Over the past two weeks, you've been distracted, made mistakes you wouldn't make normally and you've become very quick to anger too. Today you broke the arm of that robber and then lassoed him and dragged him on the ground to the police station."

"Now that was funny. It was like a scene out of a Wild West movie!" Flash piped up and laughed but he was the only one laughing. Noticing the glares everyone was directed at him, he swiftly shut up.

"Until you get a grip of yourself, it's best you take a break. I don't want you hurting someone for real or worse." Superman said.

Green Lantern also added:

"You're not in control of your emotions, princess. Losing control in the field could spell disaster both for us and for other people. Superman is right. Take some time and rest. Besides, someone has to stay behind and keep an eye on the alien mercenary and his fox."

Martian Manhunter suddenly called them from the control room of the Watchtower:

"Everyone, Lex Luthor is on the move. He had stolen valuable pieces of technology from Star Labs. We have to move fast and intercept him."

At the Martian's call, everyone rushed out of the conference room except for Wonder Woman. She let herself drop on the chair and with her elbows on her knees, she buried her face in her palms. She let out a deep sigh. Out of habit, an exclamation came out of her mouth:

"Great Hera!"

But after realizing what she said she gnashed her teeth and, standing up, she kicked her chair into the opposite side of the room.

"Ah, I see. Anger management issues." a deep voice was heard from the entrance of the room and a chortle followed.

Turning around, she saw a small fox cub in the doorway with his fluffy nine tails wagging lazily behind him. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took in a deep breath before exhaling out loud, attempting to calm herself down.

Just then, a man in a wheelchair came from behind and picked the fox cub from the scruff of his neck as if he were a cat and put him in his lap.

"Don't tease the poor girl, Kurama."

It was Naruto. A bit over three weeks passed since the Psions' annihilation and by now, with Doctor Fate's help, all the infected natural energy had been expelled from his chakra pool and his body had reverted to normal. He was only left with a temporary feeling of weakness. In his books, he considered himself fine. It was nothing that a few dozen bowls of ramen could not fix. But the sorcerer insisted that he did not make any effort for a few more days, not even walking until he fully recovered.

"Is there something you need?" Wonder Woman said stiffly.

"I was on my way to grab some food from the kitchen for Kurama when I heard you guys arguing. Problems in Paradise?"

"They grounded her," Kyuubi said and snickered like a hyena. "Naughty girls get sent to their rooms."

Naruto involuntarily sniggered too but he quickly tried to mask it with a fake cough when he saw the woman's eyes almost spewing fire from how hard she was glaring.

"Why? What did you do?"

Seeing her refusing to answer, Naruto shrugged and turned his wheelchair around.

"Oh well. If you wanna talk, I can lend you an ear while Kurama eats."

Not waiting to hear her reply, he pushed his wheelchair out of the conference room and headed towards the elevator. He was halfway there when he felt someone push his wheelchair from behind.

He let his head back and looked up to see who it was...but it was not possible to see their face due to the large pair of breasts obscuring his view. Nonetheless, it became clear to him who that was.

'Wow. They're so much bigger up close.' was his first honest thought.

But his eyes did not linger for more than 2 seconds because he practically felt Kyuubi starting to grin under his whiskers. He did not want the fox to repeat what he had done after the incident with the Queen of Almerac, Maxima. He had laughed at him for months after that.

⁂

Ridiculously loud sounds of chewing and swallowing were coming from a tiny fox as he gorged himself on food. If in the Elemental Nations Kyuubi could be described with one of the 7 deadly sins it would have been the sin of wrath. In the present, however, nothing fit him better than the sin of gluttony. His stomach was like a bottomless pit.

"It is amazing how much he can eat no matter how many times I see it," Wonder Woman said as a means of getting the conversation started.

"That's not what you wanted to talk about, was it?"

At his question, the princess' shoulders slouched.

"It's a long story. I don't know where to start."

"Just start from the beginning. Not like I have anything else to do here," he said and he poured himself a glass of orange juice.

"Why am I even talking to a stranger about these things..." Wonder Woman muttered mostly to herself.

"You looked like you needed someone to talk to and I was bored. But it's up to you," he said easily and took a big gulp of juice from the glass.

Wonder Woman sighed.

"It started 3000 years ago when I was born."

Sounds of coughing came from Naruto as he choked on his juice and even the gluttonous fox stopped eating and looked at her instead with wide eyes.

"Did I hear well or is my translation device broken? Did she just say she's 3000 years old?!" Naruto asked Kyuubi in the native language of their homeworld.

Unlike Naruto, Kyuubi did not need a translating device. He could understand any language spoken by intelligent beings in the Universe naturally.

"No, you heard right. I can feel that she isn't lying either." Kyuubi also said in amazement.

"By the void, she's even older than you!" Naruto said in disbelief. "And I thought Tsunade was a granny posing as a young woman when she was only in her 50s but this girl, no, this woman is a grand-grand-many times-grandmother-"

He did not finish his words because Wonder Woman suddenly grabbed him from the collar of his sweatshirt.

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life in that wheelchair?"

"I'm in danger." Naruto chuckled awkwardly. "Kurama, a little help? I'm still a patient."

"Relax, she doesn't have any ill intent," Kyuubi said and went back to eating.

Wonder Woman did feel like wanting to smack him once but when she sensed the killing intent lying dormant inside the fox she wisely decided to let go of Naruto and sat back on her chair.

"Are you always that short-tempered? Sheesh..." Naruto complained as he smoothened the wrinkles on his shirt after she let go of him.

Wonder Woman appeared to be distracted by his words. In truth, she was usually nowhere near as impulsive as she had become as of late.

"Anyway, I was at fault too," he continued. "Looks like no matter the planet or race, all women are sensitive about their age. Should've kept my mouth shut... hold up, how did you even know what I was saying?"

"Goddess Athena's blessing allows me to communicate with people regardless of their language," Wonder Woman said and he made an impressed sound.

"Heeh. That's so convenient. But 3000 years is even more than the entire recorded history of my homeworld... it's crazy when I think about it. As someone who's lived for so long, what exactly managed to rattle you that badly?"

Understanding what Naruto was implying, Wonder Woman shook her head.

"Although I've lived for so long, I'm not as experienced in life as you think. Until about a year ago, I lived on the Island of Paradise, with my Amazon sisters, away from the evils of the world. I didn't go through any problems or difficulties until I came to the Man's World. On Themyscira it was different. Just like me, my mother and my fellow Amazon sisters, everyone else was immortal. There were no crimes and any conflicts that we might have had we solved them in a fair fight on the training grounds. It was Paradise. I didn't notice the passing of time the way I do now when I live among regular people. We would spend most of our days training, singing, praying to the gods and..."

She trailed off seemingly at a loss.

"And? What else?" Naruto asked.

"...that's all we did..." she said uncomfortably, suddenly becoming aware of how wrong that sounded.

"That's all you did for 3000 years?!"

Naruto looked at her as if she had grown two heads. He had lived for only around 110 years but he had had so many adventures back in his homeworld and then during his travels as an intergalactic mercenary that he could fill tens of books with them.

'I could probably earn a living just from writing novels about my adventures and selling them,' he mused.

Numerous life-and-death battles, hilarious moments, embarrassing incidents, the thousands of different places he had seen, the different creatures and races he had encountered and so on. All that, in less than 120 years. Yet someone like Wonder Woman who had lived for over 3000 years resumed her life experiences in one sentence: training, singing and praying?

'How can someone live such a dull life and not get sick of it?! It's freaking 3000 years!'

A look of helplessness flashed on Wonder Woman's face. With her intelligence, once she became aware of it, it was not difficult to deduce that the Amazons not noticing the passing of time and never getting sick and tired of doing the same thing all over again for thousands of years was not natural. It was because of the Gods. A spell must have been cast on Themyscira to make them mindlessly chase just one goal: that of protecting the gates of Tartarus and nothing else. They were like attack dogs trained and locked up to protect a courtyard, never to leave or even think of escaping.

"I don't know what to think anymore... I don't know what I should do!" she said in exhaustion.

She had never been as confused and mentally exhausted as that before and that led to moments like the previous scene when her bottled-up emotions blew up and she smashed the table in the conference room with a slap. Wonder Woman did not have any real close friends to confide in either. Hawkgirl, the only other woman in the Justice League, was not exactly her biggest fan and the others were men; she was not particularly close to anyone. She could not talk to others about what was tormenting her.

Naruto did not have Kyuubi's Negative Emotion Sensing but he did not need a special skill to understand what she was going through at that moment. Although he had given up on trying to change people and the world a long time ago, his innate gift of connecting with people had never disappeared. Neji Hyuuga, Gaara of the Sand, Nagato Uzumaki and even Obito Uchiha were people who used to hate him and even tried to maim or kill him but they were all changed by him in the end. Mortal enemies became his best friends and even sacrificed their lives to right their wrongs. Kyuubi often laughed at him when they reminisced about their past, saying that his most powerful technique when he was young was not his Rasenshuriken but his "Talk no Jutsu".

He had always had the talent to make people open up to him with but a few words. The same thing was happening with Diana in the present too. Despite that he was a stranger, she felt a strong urge to confide her circumstances to him, something that she had not done with even with the rest of the Justice League. The fact that she did not have any close friends did not do her situation any favours either.

"All my life I believed that I had been sculpted from clay and given life by the gods. For thousands of years, my faith in them has never wavered. But now-"

Wonder Woman stopped as though she was afraid to continue talking because if she did, her words would be blasphemy against the gods. Her lower lip trembled but her teeth sunk into it.

"Two weeks ago I found out everything was a lie. I was born like a normal baby but not in normal circumstances. My mother was raped by the king of the gods I used to worship. And now, his wife, one of the patron goddesses of the Amazons, will try to kill me the moment she finds out her husband cheated on her again."

"Where is the justice in that?! These are the gods I worshipped for thousands of years? I'm fighting to protect justice in the name of a rapist and a lawless and murderous jealous wife that wants to kill me?"

She let her back fall on the backrest of her chair. She was not crying but the defeat and powerlessness in her voice spoke volumes of her feelings. She was exhausted by her inner conflict between the faith she had been raised with and the cruel reality. Three thousand years of blind faith in the gods could not be so easily erased from her heart despite her rationality speaking up against it.

"You said you left your Paradise Island about a year ago, right? Why did you leave it? What drove you to come out after 3000 years?" Naruto asked.

Wonder Woman replied:

"A race of alien conquerors invaded the Earth and almost conquered it. I came out to help everyone, to prevent that from happening."

Naruto made a humming sound.

"Did your gods send you to do that?" he asked.

She shook her head in negative.

"No. Actually, Amazons are forbidden to leave Themyscira. We are bound to guard that place for eternity."

He almost smiled at her words.

"So you left your home against the will of the gods?"

It was a rhetorical question so he did not expect her to answer. He continued:

"You came out, against the will of your gods, to fight against the invaders. You didn't do it for the gods or in their name. You did it to protect the innocent."

At those words, she raised her head and looked him in the eyes. Despite his rather scary appearance with his beast-like red slit eyes and thick black whisker-like marks on his face, at that moment, Wonder Woman did not feel any apprehension or trepidation when she looked at him.

"I can't put myself in your shoes. I can't imagine how it is to blindly believe in a god for thousands of years only to find out that he raped your mother... But what I can say is that the most important thing is to stay true to your values. It's not your origins that define you. It's not the gods who decide who you are. Your values and your actions are what define you as a person."

He made a small pause before saying one last thing:

"Look at your past deeds and ask yourself again: 'Who am I?'. I trust the answer will be much easier for you to find now."

⁂

"Put me on trials, lock me up but I'll beat it. Watch: I'll be out in days!" a bald man said but a green construct of light took the shape of cuffs around his wrists and he was thrown roughly to the ground. Even with the strength of his power suit, he could not break free.

"Sorry, I messed up back there." Flash apologised after Lex Luthor was taken by the police and arrested.

"Apology accepted," Superman said with a smile. After all, although Flash did make a mistake, it was still he who dismantled Lex Luthor's weapon and beat him down in the end. "As soon as the damage is fixed-"

"Got a second?" Flash said with a smirk and a red blur putting everything in the room in order in the blink of an eye.

Just then, a yellow portal was opened in the wall of the room a green-skinned humanoid wearing a black suit and a dark blue cloak stepped out of it.

"Who-, Who are you?" Martian Manhunter asked.

"I'm you," the newcomer replied.

He was identical in looks to Martian Manhunter. He proceeded to explain that he was from another dimension and that both of their worlds were facing a crisis.

"And the dimensions appear to be collapsing on each other. Our Batman built this portal to try to find help."

"But what can we do?" Green Lantern asked.

"We're not sure yet," the other dimension Martian replied. "But my dimension seems to be at the centre of it and that would be the best place to start looking for an answer."

While the other Martian was explaining his plan to the rest of the Justice League, Batman secretly asked Martian Manhunter:

"Have you read his mind yet?"

"Martians don't do that to one another." J'onn J'onzz answered.

"Can't? Or won't?" Batman asked.

"Both," he replied.

At that moment, Superman asked everyone:

"So it's agreed then: we go?"

"Sure, ok." Flash agreed.

"Right," Hawkgirl said too.

"What about your dimension's Wonder Woman?" the other Martian asked.

"Wonder Woman is indisposed at the moment. She is temporarily not taking part in the Justice League's activities." Martian Manhunter answered to his counterpart.

With everyone's approval, the Justice League followed the other dimension Martian into the portal. As the last two to enter, Batman and Martian Manhunter stopped before stepping through the portal.

"It might be for the best that Wonder Woman is not together with us," Batman said. "Can you send her a telepathic message and inform her of the situation?"

"Why? Do you think they are planning something?" Martian Manhunter asked.

"I don't know. But it's always better to have insurance."

Martian Manhunter looked at him blankly. Although he thought that Batman was just being his usual self, never fully trusting anyone, and despite that he did not have any reason to not trust his other self from the other dimension, he still did as Batman asked him and contacted Wonder Woman telepathically.

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

AN: The title refers to not only Wonder Woman's internal crisis but also to the crisis that the League is about to face. I think you probably recognized it but just in case you didn't, this chapter and the following one are based on the events of the episode "A Better World", with a little twist.