[Caterpillar] Chapter 20 - Unrest (Patreon)

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?"

At Naruto's confirmation, a yellow-skinned man wearing a military uniform appeared on the screen of the computer on board.

"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.

"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 in 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 action 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 colour. 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 outer space and started flying towards the planet below.

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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 first glance but they were 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.'

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.'

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.

'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.'

The dead inhabitants of the city did not look like they were 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.

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 in one 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.

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.'

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 on 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.

"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.

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.

"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 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."

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 the metahumans."

"I can't say I'm surprised," 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?"

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 damage is 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.

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."

"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)

"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 epidemic could become a pandemic, there were still many men who died, especially among the elderly. People are afraid that I'm a lunatic bound to snap one day as she did." (2)

"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 criticising everything we do."

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.

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.

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.

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AN: 

(1)(2) Superman being brainwashed by Darkseid, and one of the Amazons trying to start a pandemic and murder all men on the planet are canon, in the animated series.