[Caterpillar] Chapter 21 - A Perfect World (Patreon)

A yawn came from his mouth and he tried to raise his arms and stretch but he realized that he could not move one of them. Turning his head to see what was wrong, he realized why: a woman was sleeping with her head on his arm. He smiled as he brought a hand to her face and moved a lock of her black hair behind her ear. When he tenderly caressed her soft cheek with his thumb, her eyelids raised, revealing her baby-blue eyes.

"Morning," he said.

In response, the woman rolled on top of him and straddled his midsection.

"Morning," she said too and pressed her lips against his in a chaste kiss.

Then, she laid on top of him, with her head on his chest, right below his chin. He brought his arms around her back and hugged her dearly. They had been together for more than a decade but they had never gotten tired of each other. If anything, their love deepened with every passing day. Just cuddling like that in the morning brought them a feeling of fulfilment and peace.

"Little Thea woke up," Naruto said when his sensitive ears caught a particular sound coming from outside their bedroom.

"Watch: any moment now, she'll come bursting into our bedroom like a small hurricane," the woman in his arms laughed softly and said.

He too chuckled because, as on cue, their bedroom's door was abruptly opened and a young girl about 12 years old burst in full of energy.

"Mom! Dad! Wake up! Today is my graduation!" she yelled in excitement.

The little girl was a carbon copy of her mother. Long and straight black hair, fair skin and a pair of blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

"You little monkey, it's still too early for you to be so rowdy!" Naruto lightly admonished but the girl just grinned in reply. She suddenly took flight and plopped herself on top of her parents.

Delightful laughter came from her when her mother started play fighting against her for who was allowed to monopolize Naruto. He could only smile widely at the sight of his wife and daughter. Eventually, however, little Thea rolled to the side exhausted, glaring at her victorious-looking mother.

"You'll see, I'll definitely defeat you one day! I'll defeat you and take daddy all for myself!"

Diana pinched her daughter's nose and giggled.

"You're still a few centuries too young for that. Now shoo and go take a shower. I'll make breakfast for you."

The young girl winced.

"Hey! What's with that reaction!" Diana said, her face aggrieved.

"It's alright, I'll prepare breakfast today," Naruto offered.

"Yay!" Thea said and pumped her fist in the air before quickly flying away from the room.

"Thea! No flying in the house!" Diana yelled after her but the little girl was long gone.

She made a depressed face.

"Is my cooking really that bad?" she asked after Thea left.

Naruto chuckled and kissed her on the forehead.

"We all have things we're good at and things we can't do. It's proof that we're still human."

Then, he stood up from the bed and unexpectedly swept her off her feet, taking her in his arms in a princess carry. She let out a small shriek of delight and brought her arms around his neck. That morning, the couple needed a longer than usual time when they showered together.

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"I'm finally a full-fledged kunoichi! I got a great team too! I'm together with Uchiha Sarada and Sabaku Shinki! We're going to be the strongest team of genin ever! Even stronger than you and your team!" Thea proclaimed full of conviction.

"I'm sure you will," Naruto said and patted her on the head, ruffling her hair and making her swat his hand away in annoyance.

"Dad! I told you to not touch my hair! A woman's hair is her life!"

A young boy wearing red war paint on his face sneered from the side:

"A shinobi will never go far when they care that much about their appearance. Look at Sarada: she's a true Kunoichi. She doesn't care about her looks-"

But his survival instincts kicked in and he suddenly broke into a sprint, both Thea and Sarada hot on his tail, intent on beating him up.

"They're as full of energy as ever, aren't they?" a red-haired man in his late thirties said from the side.

It was Gaara. He had been the Kazekage of Sunagakure for almost 10 years before he finally decided to retire. Upon passing the mantle to his successor, he moved to Konoha to be closer to Naruto and to his sister, Temari, who had married and moved away to Konoha many years before. Only Kankuro remained behind, acting as the new Kazekage's right-hand man.

Naruto and Gaara clasped their hands in a strong handshake.

"Are you free today?" Diana asked. "We decided to have a little party together with Sakura and Sasuke. You're more than welcome to join us."

Gaara looked pleasantly surprised.

"Definitely!"

"Erm, initially it was supposed to be a small party but somehow my mother found out about it. Now, besides us, the parents of the 3 genins, there are many more. There's also mom, dad, Sandaime, Tsunade-baa-chan and Ero-sennin too. My mother-in-law will certainly not miss the opportunity either. Also, Kurama will be there too, of course." Naruto said apologetically but Gaara only smiled. Naruto was his first friend, the person who had saved him from his darkness. Not just that, he even came after him to save his life when he got captured by the Akatsuki. Gaara cared about him just as much as he cared about his two siblings and his adopted son, Shinki.

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It was late in the evening. The moon was already shining brightly in the sky but that did not diminish the excitement and joy of the party taking place in the courtyard of the manor owned by the former Fourth Hokage and his wife.

"Jiraiya-sensei still hasn't given up on wooing Tsunade-sama even after all these years." a 50-something years old Namikaze Minato said and chuckled as he watched the Toad Sage making doe eyes at a cold-looking Slug Princess.

At his side, a 90-year-old Sarutobi Hiruzen poured himself a cup of sake and let out a warm smile.

"Youth comes from the heart. Jiraiya will always be a young man in that regard. I have to say, though, Minato, I'm quite surprised by your son. I never thought he would turn down the position of Hokage."

Minato shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"I know, right? As he grew up he drove everyone crazy with his 'I'm going to be the Hokage one day' lines."

Naruto suddenly came from behind them and wrapped his arms around their shoulders.

"You two old men wouldn't happen to be gossiping about me like a pair of old women, right?"

The three of them shared a laugh together. Naruto also poured himself some sake and drank it all in a gulp.

"After I grew up, I realized that being the Hokage is far less exciting than I thought at first. You spend 99% of your time buried under paperwork. I chose to focus more on my family rather than on a boring career."

"See? Your son is smarter than you, Minato." a red-haired woman in her 50s said half-seriously, half-jokingly from the side. Despite her age, her hair was still very long and crimson-red and, although time had left some marks on her face, it could be seen that she had been a very beautiful woman in the past. She was Naruto's mother, Kushina Uzumaki.

"You're absolutely right, Kushina," Minato said meekly, making both Naruto and Sarutobi laugh out loud.

"The leadership of the village is in good hands. Kakashi-sensei is a dependable man. He's a much better fit as a Hokage than I am." Naruto said. "Besides, there are no more wars among the 5 great nations. Ever since we sealed Kaguya, we've been living in an era of peace."

His heart was filled with content and with happiness whenever he looked at his wife and daughter. Furthermore, he could live his days in peace together with his parents, his grandfather-figure, Sarutobi Hiruzen, his auntie Tsunade, his perverted mentor, Jiraiya, and his best friends, Gaara and Sasuke. Diana was happier too, no longer stressed and tormented by responsibilities and she could live together with her mother too, away from the oppression of the Olympian gods. What more could he ask from life?

'This is paradise.' he thought as he watched everyone around him having a good time.

Sasuke and Gaara were playing a game of shogi, Jiraiya was trying to flirt with Tsunade, Sakura and Diana were chatting together with Hippolyta and the three genin were having a mock fight against a bear-sized nine-tailed fox while Naruto, his parents, and Sandaime were having a drink.

But at that moment, he suddenly winced in pain as a strong migraine assaulted his brain. He dropped his cup of sake, spilling it all over his clothes.

"Naru-chan, are you okay?" Kushina asked suddenly worried.

Naruto did not reply. In his mind, a rush of memories invaded his thoughts. It was exactly what happened when his shadow clones dispelled and he received their memories. But he could not remember ever making a shadow clone that day, let alone so many shadow clones that they would cause him a migraine by dispelling all at once.

In his mind, he could now see a dying planet with a race of yellow-skinned humanoids, all dead. Ruined cities, a destroyed nature and a sky covered by a thick curtain of dark purple clouds.

"Nothing to worry about," Naruto replied eventually. "I'll go to the bathroom to get myself cleaned up."

He almost ran to the bathroom and splashed with cold water over his face. But when he looked in the mirror, he was startled. His hands involuntarily rose to touch his own face, tracing his whisker-like marks with his fingers.

"This isn't right. What is going on?"

The image he could see in the mirror was different from what he remembered. His reflection had bright golden hair, blue eyes and very thin whisker-like birthmarks.

'I used to look like that. But that was before I unsealed Kurama from my body.'

He remembered that after unsealing Kyuubi, the part of the bijuu that had been left inside of his body had fused with him which resulted in his eyes becoming red and slit, like that of a fox, his golden hair darkened to the point where it became a strawberry blond and the marks on his face had become much thicker and darker.

At that moment, he suddenly heard a chorus of cries coming from the courtyard. He got outside the house just in time to see the bright moon in the sky suddenly crack and shatter!

"No! This can't be happening!" he shouted, his face livid.

A massive rip in the space appeared above the courtyard.

A pale-white woman with horns on her head and long white hair stepped out of the rift. Her pupilless white eyes stared at the people below with hatred. She raised her hands and said:

"All-Killing Ash Bones."

Time seemed to slow down to a crawl but despite his heightened senses and superhuman powers, Naruto found himself unable to react. Under his horrified eyes, he watched how bone spikes shot from the Rabbit Goddess' arms, impaling everyone below.

To this day, it was still the deadliest technique that Naruto had ever witnessed in his long life. The moment that the bone spikes touched someone, their body crumbled into ash. They did not have time to even scream. He could only watch in terror how his daughter perished, turned into ash and scattered in the wind by the first wave of attacks.

His body immediately burst with a brilliance of golden light and 10 Truth Seeking Orbs appeared at his back. Enraged, he lunged at Kaguya screaming like possessed but a rift appeared in the space, right in front of him, and teleported him to several miles away.

He teleported back right away but he fell on his knees in despair at the sight that greeted his eyes: all that remained of his loved ones were just a few mounds of ash. His wife, his daughter, his parents, his best friends, his sensei, his auntie - everyone was dead.

The moment that the rush of memories from his Shadow Clones had invaded his brain, Naruto realized that what he was experiencing at that moment was only an illusion. His parents had died a very long time ago, the day he was born. Sandaime Hokage was assassinated by Orochimaru when he was a genin and his sensei, Jiraiya, was killed by Pain when he was 16. There was no way for them to be alive then.

However, even despite knowing that in the depths of his heart, the pain he felt at that moment was not an illusion. Watching everyone he had ever loved die once more messed him up. In particular, his daughter's death hit him so hard that he felt physically ill.

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A powerful hand suddenly clenched on a mass of vine-like tentacles. Something like a shriek of pain came from the plant when it was abruptly yanked from the host that it had preyed upon. Its tentacles struggled to wrap around the arm that had grabbed it, trying to get back and possess his body but with a squeeze of his fingers, the tentacle plant was squashed into a paste of green blood.

Naruto was still on his knees, his body shivering all over. His face was livid and his eyes were haunted. Everything had been just an illusion. But what he had felt in that illusion had been real. His love for Diana and his daughter, Thea, his feelings for his parents and the despair at watching everyone else die - they were like a molten hot rod piercing through his heart.

As he stood on all fours, on his knees, the nails on his fingers started to grow and turned into claws, digging into the soil beneath. His strawberry-blond hair turned blood red and a haze of red and yellow chakra started seeping out of his body. But he reigned his chakra back in. He was silent. There were no explosions of chakra, no crazy displays of power. But under his cold fury, all living beings in the vicinity became mute. Even the wind came to a standstill.

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AN: As some of you have already guessed in the reviews, what had taken advantage of Naruto's carelessness was a Black Mercy. You can read more about it on wiki. Yes, it is canon. Looking forward to your reviews.

PS: Thea is short for Athena.