[Eclipsed] Chapter 10 - Starfire (I)

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The two years spent on Apokolips, brainwashed by the God of Evil, and then the three or four years that he had been stranded into deep space, imprisoned in complete darkness, and drifting into nothingness had been like one very long, bad dream.

But now, everything was going to end.

An enormous amount of crimson chakra exploded from his stomach. A titanic, nine-tailed fox came into being, and the ground quaked under his enormous weight.

As the last vestiges of bijuu chakra left his system, Naruto fell on his side and closed his eyes.

“At long last . . . the nightmare . . . is over. . . ”

⁂

The pain of Kyuubi’s chakra leaving his system persisted even after the fox was unsealed. Keeping his eyes closed, Naruto waited quietly for death’s cold embrace.

The ground shook with every step the titanic fox took as he walked closer to him. Then, he felt Kyuubi’s large hand turning him on his back with an unexpectedly gentle touch.

“A fool until the very end. . . ” Kyuubi talked to himself. 

Naruto didn’t respond. Unbeknownst to Kyuubi, he was still here. He was lethargic; he had stopped breathing, and even his heart was no longer beating. But he was still alive. His brain had yet to die.

“You could’ve lived. I didn’t mind waiting a few more decades inside the seal. You didn’t need to die.”

“Why are you always so stubborn? And why do you care so much about what others think of you?”

“So what if you were seen as a villain by all? Why care at all?”

“Even then, you could have proved them wrong with your actions. You could have redeemed yourself.”

“Just when we became friends, you decided to go and off yourself. . .”

The bijuu was holding a requiem for the only friend he had ever had.

Lost in his grief, Kurama didn’t notice the sound of Naruto’s heart starting to beat or the subtle rising and lowering of his chest, a sign that he began breathing again.

It was only when Naruto opened his eyes and sat up that Kurama was shaken from his trance.

“Oy, Kurama. Didn’t you say that unsealing you would kill me?”

Momentarily, Kurama was mute with surprise.

“. . . That’s how it’s supposed to be, yes. Nobody has ever survived. Mito, my first jinchuuriki, died minutes after the extraction. Other jinchuuriki from other villages also died every time the tailed beast was unsealed from their bodies.”

Naruto stood up with a groan and stretched. His fried nervous system no longer hurt. He moved around a bit and jumped on the spot a few times, checking his physical condition.

He felt. . . normal. 

Next, he checked the state of his chakra network. There seemed to be no damage over there either. A blue orb of chakra formed in the palm of his hand effortlessly. He clenched his hand into a fist, extinguishing the Rasengan.

Kyuubi was still in disbelief. He lowered his gigantic body and came close, sniffing Naruto with his big nose, as though he was trying to understand what had changed in his former jinchuuriki’s body.

“How am I still alive?” the blond asked quietly.

That was not supposed to happen.

“I don’t know, Naruto. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. You don’t smell any different, and my other senses can’t detect anything out of place.”

Most people would have let out a whooping sound of joy and pumped their fists in the air to have survived a seemingly impossible situation.

However, the young man went to a nearby piece of rock and sat down quietly.

“Go on, Kurama. You’ve been imprisoned for decades. You’re finally free now.”

“And leave you like this?” The fox scoffed. “Right.”

“It’s fine,” Naruto said in a subdued voice.

“You do remember that I can sense negative emotions, right?” Kurama said sarcastically.

Knowing he wouldn’t convince the fox that way, Naruto adopted a different tactic.

“Y’know, I heard the little requiem you held for me when you thought that I was dead.”

At the mention of that, Kyuubi let out a growl and turned his head away. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It was something about how I was your best friend and-”

“Fine, if you want to be alone, I’ll leave you alone! I don’t know why I even bother with you anymore! Hmph!”

Naruto snickered as he watched the grumpy fox stomp away, his titanic size making the earth tremble with every step he took. Over the years that he had spent in deep space together with Kyuubi, they had become extremely close, so he knew the fox’s personality. Unless it was a matter of life and death, Kyuubi would never admit his true feelings.

As the bijuu disappeared from view, Naruto’s amusement slowly receded.

A gale made his clothes flutter as he cast his Soaring Wind Jutsu to take flight. His flying jutsu was not as fast as his sprint on the ground, but he was not interested in speed at that moment. He just needed to clear his mind.

Flying over the untouched, virgin forests of the giant planet, Naruto let his mind wander. 

He had decimated the army of Parademons and New Gods on Apokolips. He had also killed Darkseid with his own two hands. Moreover, he had given Kyuubi his freedom.

But he had not expected to survive the unsealing. He had prepared himself to die. It had been his resolve to not only free Kyuubi from his cage but also pay with his life for the atrocities he had committed in the name of peace when he was brainwashed by Darkseid.

On a rational level, he knew that it was not him. He had been brainwashed. But the memories of what he had done never left his mind. He had not forgotten the wars he had started and the number of people who died because of him.

Dying was supposed to be his atonement of sorts. . . but he was still here.

He felt cheated, as though he had been robbed of his perfect ending.

⁂

Two days after he unsealed Kurama from his body, Naruto got into his ship and left the planet.

The fox wanted nothing more than to chill and relax on a planet without humans or any other intelligent beings. The bijuu had had enough of humans to last him 10 lifetimes. He just wanted to be alone.

Naruto could tell how much the fox was worried about his mental state, so he decided not to stay behind and bother him any longer. On a day when Kyuubi went to soak in a volcano and fell asleep as though he were in a warm jacuzzi, Naruto left without saying goodbye.

‘He’s better off without me running the mood.’

But once he got off the planet, he stopped in its exosphere, not initiating the space warp.

‘What am I to do now?’

What was there left for him? His place of birth was annihilated, and everyone close to him died. He didn’t know how to get back to his homeworld even if he wanted to.

It was also impossible for him to get back to Apokolips and squeeze the information out of Desaad because Apokolips was in an entirely different dimension, in the Sphere of the Gods. Travelling there was possible only with a mother box. As far as he knew, only the New Gods possessed Mother Boxes.

‘And the whole Universe knows me as Darkseid’s son, a cruel conqueror.’

The Green Lanterns, the Thanagarians, New Genesis, the Daxmites, the Omega Men, Almerac, and even the Justice League of Earth—not a single intergalactic power in the Universe has not heard of the “Liberator” by now.

‘No matter where I go, I will be feared or attacked on sight unless I hide my identity.’

He was at a loss.

In the end, he decided to return to the last planet he had set foot on before unsealing Kurama: Warworld. He would think about his future after that.

⁂

The chairs and the floor shook from the roars of the bloodlusted crowd. Thousands of people were sitting in the stands of a large fan-shaped arena, watching the fight that was being live-streamed on an enormous, dozen-metre-long and tall screen. 

“Smash his head open!”

“Burn him alive! Yeah! Hell yeah!”

“Kill the bitch! Wahaha! Make her bleed!”

Seven alien beings were locked in a fierce, life-and-death battle. Six of them were dark-grey-skinned, four-armed, three-meter-tall men. Their extremely muscular body, sharp horns, and tusks made them look rather similar to four-armed, hairless gorillas. They were wielding gigantic clubs, one in each hand, and the only piece of clothing covering their body was a loincloth. They were Branx warriors. 

Their opponent could not be any more different. It was a woman, nearly two meters tall, but, unlike the Branx, who looked like the incarnation of brute strength and savagery, the woman’s athletic and well-proportioned body, orange skin, glowing green eyes, and flaming red hair, so long that it almost swept the floor, made her look like the perfect fusion between beauty, strength, and agility. The people of Warworld knew her as the Fire Princess from Tamaran. 

After an intense battle, five of the Branx warriors were killed rather savagely, their limbs severed, beheaded, or by having their entrails ripped out.

The last surviving Branx warrior was also covered in bleeding cuts and stab wounds all over his body, but he had managed to corner the Fire Princess inside the ruins of a building where she could not use her flight advantage.

Knowing that if he did not capitalise on that opportunity he would most certainly not get another one and die, the Branx let out an ape-like scream and lunged at her with wild abandon, smashing two of his four clubs down violently. The young woman dexterously dodged his first two swings by sidestepping them, but she was forced to raise her small round shield to block his other two clubs.

Already battered and cracked from the clashes against the other Branx, the shield was on its last legs. The force behind the two clubs was too much. It shattered her shield and sent her flying as though she had been hit by a truck.

The Fire Princess breathed heavily as she forced herself to stand by supporting her weight on her sword. Due to her unique physiology, the Fire Princess almost never sweated, but at that moment, her forehead, legs, chest, and abs were glistening with sweat.

She was not allowed a moment of respite because the Branx warrior rushed after her, laughing in glee. She dodged the first two strikes of his clubs once again, and this time around, she also swung her sword down at two of his arms.

The Branx howled in agonising pain as two of his four arms were sliced through and chopped off from the elbows.

However, the Fire Princess had let her guard down. Despite having two of his arms sliced off, due to an adrenaline rush, the Branx Warrior kept his composure and swung his other two clubs at her.

There was no shield to save her this time. His clubs stuck her in the face and shoulder, slamming her violently into the side of the ruined temple and breaking the wall with her.

Still riding that burst of adrenaline, the Branx warrior charged at the fallen woman and grabbed her by the neck, raising her limp body in front of the drones that were filming their fight. 

His speech was rough and interrupted by his laborious breathing as he shouted:

“Grangt . . . is victorious! Grangt. . . claims. . . his prize! Tamaranean woman. . . belongs to Grangt!”

Saying those words, he roared at the top of his lungs. But when he tried to put his other hand on the Fire Princess, the girl lived up to her moniker. Her entire body burst out with a blinding, greenish-white light, and her long red hair started burning.

Her green eyes glowed in a way that the spectators in the stands had never seen before, and two enormous beams of radiation burst forth.

The Branx warrior didn’t even have time to scream. The Fire Princess’ heat vision vaporised the entire upper half of his body, leaving only a pair of charred legs behind. He died before he even knew it.

The bloodlusted crowd, who had been cheering at her apparent defeat not even a minute ago, exploded into even greater screams of excitement when she unexpectedly turned the tables on her enemy and killed him.

⁂

A tall and muscular bald man with yellow skin and red eyes sat on a golden throne and drank an orange alcoholic beverage as he listened to a short and thin, blue-skinned man drone on about the socio-economic situation of his nation.

The man in question was pacing around in anxiety, his long, black and red robe sweeping the marble floor.

“Our nation’s food ration is being cut another 15%. And then there are the medical shortages, the power blackouts—”

His subordinate stopped talking when Mongul finished his drink and threw the golden cup away carelessly.

“Why do you persist in bothering me with these petty details?” the emperor said, displeased. 

“Petty?” the short and thin man said in disbelief. “But, Sire, if this continues, think of the consequences! Like, people are already starting to talk about another-”

“-Rebellion?” Mongul continued his words.

He stood up from his throne and walked to the large windows of the circular throne room, gazing outside at the massive arena below.

“There’s not gonna be any rebellion. Not if I can keep giving them fights. Good ones, enough to take their minds off their troubles. Fights like the ones we had today.”

As if on cue, two levitating robots walked inside the throne room, escorting a tall and athletic woman with very long red hair. 

“Ah, speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Mongul said as a greeting. “Brilliant show you put on today, Koriand’r. So you can do it after all. You can kill your opponents if push comes to shove. Are you finally starting to lose some of that stubbornness?”

“You scummy bastard! You did something to me! You drugged my food!” the Fire Princess shouted, and her hands glowed with her starbolts. 

But then, Mongul pressed the button of a remote control he always kept on hand, and Koriand’r collapsed on the ground screaming in pain, her body thrashing and spasming, rocked by powerful electric shocks.

Once he stopped torturing her, the robots picked her up from the floor and raised her so that she was at the same eye level as him.

“Such grave accusations at the address of your emperor!” Mongul said in a sardonic voice. “Whatever made you think that?”

“There’s no way I would struggle with a handful of Branx warriors! I’m doing what you’re asking! I’m fighting in your arena! What more do you want from me?” Starfire shouted at him.

Mongul sighed, pretending to be saddened by her plight. He tried to caress her cheek with his hand mockingly, but one look at her enraged visage was enough to make him reconsider his actions and stop. It would not be out of character for the brutal princess to tear his hand apart with her teeth alone.

“I didn’t want to do that either, but you’re defeating your opponents too quickly, too easily. Furthermore, you refuse to kill your opponent even when I’m torturing you. You gave me no choice.”

As he spoke, he turned his attention back to the arena below, where another two gladiators were brought onto the stage in the centre to be teleported to the battlefield.

“Fighting on Warworld isn’t just about winning or losing. It’s about putting on a show. People lose interest if you annihilate everyone in two minutes tops, and they get even more annoyed with your refusal to listen to their demands and finish off your opponent. But look at your fight today. Weakened by the drugs in your system, you fought a tooth-and-nail battle against those six, and you were forced to kill them in order to survive! Have you seen the spectators’ reaction? Have you heard their cheers?”

Koriand’r suddenly yanked her arms out of the robots’ grasp and lunged at Mongul again, but the two robots raised their plasma cannons and immediately shot her in the back. Still injured from her fight with the Branx Warriors and weakened by the drugs in her system, the girl could not put up a fight. She collapsed on the floor once more, two ugly bruises forming on her exposed back from the plasma bullets.

“Your antics never fail to amuse me. You keep charging at me and get beat down and tortured again and again, but you never give up. Please never change. I would miss this fine entertainment,” Mongul said and laughed heartily.

“Now, in spite of your repeated transgressions, let it be known that I am a generous man. For your fantastic performance in the arena, I’m granting you the opportunity to go out of my citadel and see the city. You can’t go too far, and you will be under constant surveillance, but I’m sure it beats spending your day in a cell like usual.”

Koriandr’s green eyes narrowed at him.

“What are you playing at?”

“It’s as I said, a reward. Go out, see the city, drink yourself stupid at a bar, start a brawl, or get laid. I’m sure there would be hundreds lining up in front of your door if only you said a word. Do whatever it is that you, Okaaran barbarians, like to do in your spare time.”

“I’m not from Okaara. I’m from Tamaran! You know nothing about me!”

Mongul scoffed.

“Oh, please! You may have been the princess of Tamaran, but you were raised by those savages from Okaara. I know exactly how things are run in the Vega system. That lawless shithole is famous in the entire galaxy. Not even the Green Lanterns are allowed to set foot in there.”

At the Fire Princess’ vitriol-filled glares, Mongul smiled.

“You may try to put on a virtuous front, but I know you. I know your kind. I can see it in your eyes. You love fighting. You revel in battle, in the slaughter. This is your nature. You can’t hide that no matter how much you try.”

“Now, off you go. Stop kicking up a fuss and enjoy your reward lest I change my mind and send you back to your cell. Or, perhaps you want another two hundred million volts shocking you for the next two minutes straight?”

As the robots took Koriand’r away, Mongul told her one last thing:

“You don’t have to live as a slave. Fight for me. Dedicate your strength to Warworld, and you could lead a better life than you’ve ever experienced before. I may be cruel at times, but I take great care of those loyal and useful to me. And I’m the ruler of an intergalactic empire. Prove yourself worthy, and anything you desire can be yours. Even going back to Tamaran and killing your treacherous sister for her deeds would not be off the table.”

⁂

After watching the Fire Princess’ battle against the six Branx, the three fights that followed were lacklustre at best. The next gladiators were nothing more than brawlers or monsters. There was little to no skill involved in their fights; they just charged at each other, hacking, slashing, smashing, and biting wildly, like a bunch of beasts. It was just a glorified bloodbath to satiate the crowd’s thirst for violence.

Losing interest in the rest of the fights, Naruto stood up from his seat and left the gigantic arena behind him. 

Thanks to his Henge, he looked like a rather big and scary blue-skinned alien with red eyes and a scaly face. Although Warworld was a melting pot of all sorts of species and cultures, seeing a human walking about was still quite eye-catching. He preferred not to attract anyone’s attention.

As he walked down the main street, despite his scary appearance, several female aliens tried to tempt him. Some of them wanted to invite him for a fun time, while others were oozing deception and other malevolent emotions.

‘Looks like Kurama’s sensory ability stayed with me after unsealing too, huh?’

If his senses were to be believed, those with negative emotions were trying to lure him so that their friends would rob him.

He walked ahead without paying them any mind, looking around for a tavern. Seeing as he has no information about the local taverns and whatnot, he just went inside the first local he found.

Considering how close it was to the arena, even in a dung hole like Warworld’s capital city, the tavern he entered looked rather nice and clean.

‘How is a place this nice without bouncers or any sort of bodyguards at the entrance?’ he asked himself.

He wasn’t being dramatic. It would not be wrong to call that entire city one big slum where most of the people were involved in illegal activities one way or another to make ends meet.

An alien waitress, an unexpectedly cute girl (for humans’ standards) with red skin and three eyes, smiled as she greeted him and led him to the only free table left in the tavern, a table for two.

Sitting down, he flipped through a menu’s pages as he looked for something that appeared to be edible. Nutritional capsules could satiate his hunger just fine, but he wished to eat some normal food. He had spent around three years stranded in the deep space with no food and no beverages of any sort, surviving off chakra alone. Now that he was alive and had even survived the unsealing, he was looking forward to having some good food and drinks.

The most edible-looking thing he had found on the menu was just a big, roasted haunch of meat. Everything else looked suspicious as hell or had downright disgusting ingredients such as eyeballs, noses, humanoid feet, and so on.

When that simple roasted haunch of meat arrived, he started salivating at the smell of it, and his stomach rumbled loudly.

Ripping a big chunk of meat with his teeth, Naruto closed his eyes as he savoured his food. As the saying goes, everything is tasty when you’re hungry, all the more so when he had not had proper food in years.

Taking a sip out of his alcoholic drink too, he recoiled a bit at its unexpectedly sour taste. But it wasn’t bad. It went along greatly with the food.

For the first time in years, a small measure of joy bloomed in his heart. Sometimes, all that a man needed was a good meal, some alcohol, and some peace and quiet in order to be happy. Sure, his problems weren’t of the sort that he could forget about just so easily, but it did help push away some of the gloom and depression muddying his heart.

That little bit of peace and quiet did not last long. Seeing as he had Kurama’s sensory ability even after the unsealing, Naruto felt the abrupt change in everyone’s emotions when five burly, green-skinned humanoid lizards entered the tavern with various weapons in their hands. Some of the customers stopped eating from anxiety, while others put some money on their tables, stood up, and left the local in a hurry. 

The one who appeared to be in charge of the lizard-like aliens took out his plasma handgun and put it on the counter in front of the terrified owner of the tavern.

“We gave you another two weeks. Do you have our money? Where is our protection fee? Do you think we're a charity? Huh?”

The owner, a thin, red-skinned man with three eyes, involuntarily backed away in fear.

“I’m sorry, sir, we need just a little more time! I swear, you’ll have them all by the end of the week! As you know, the sales are-”

“Hey, you think I’m playing?” the lizard cut off his words. 

He grabbed his gun from the counter and fired two shots into the ceiling.

The customers started screaming as they ran out of the tavern in a panic. 

“Do you think you can hoodwink the Verdant Skulls? Huh?” the lizardman screamed.

“No, sir, but what can I do if people don’t come to dine anymore? Everyone on Warworld is too poor to afford it! I-”

“Like hell, if I care!” the lizardman leader barked at him. “It’s your job to think of a solution, not mine!”

One of his subordinates let out a laugh as he had a sudden idea.

“Hey, boss, how about we waive off the protection fees for this month. . . in exchange for this.”

A girl screamed as she was roughly yanked out from under the table she had been hiding. But the lizardman was more than twice as big and at least four times as strong. She couldn’t put up any fight as he effortlessly hoisted her up in the air by her wrist with only one hand.

“I’d gladly have a taste of her instead of money.”

“Not my daughter!” the tavern owner cried out, and he momentarily forgot about his position as he grabbed the leader by the hem of his clothes, shouting in a pleading voice: “Please, I’ll give you even more! Next week, I swear on my life, you will have your money! No, you’ll have double! Just leave my daughter out of this!”

A heavy slap sent the tavern owner flying into the wall behind the counter. 

“Get your hands off me, pathetic bastard.”

Turning towards his subordinate, who was holding the terrified girl in the air by her arm, nasty laughter came from the lizardman’s ugly, fanged mouth.

“You may be onto something, Rull,”  the leader laughed. “She’s quite the looker. I wonder what sounds she’ll make.”

A perverse smirk appeared on his face as he licked his lips.

However, at that moment, one of the two customers who did not leave the tavern even after the gang leader fired his gun snapped his fingers. The sound itself was barely heard over the desperate cries of the girl and the mean laughter of the gangsters, but the three-eyed waitress suddenly fell on the floor with a thud.

The lizardman had not let go of her. . . his hand was still clenched around the girl’s wrist.

“Aaargh!”

A scream of agony came from the thug when his brain finally registered what had just happened: his arm had been chopped off at the elbow! He stumbled back, shrieking in unbearable pain as his vile, green blood splashed all over the place from his severed arm.

“Who was that?!” the rest of the lizardmen screamed in a mixture of rage and terror as they brandished their weapons.

It had been Naruto. Putting his hands in a cross seal, three shadow clones popped up next to his table and walked towards the gangsters. They didn’t even have time to pull the triggers of their guns because the clones disappeared with a Body Flicker Jutsu, reappearing at their back an instant later.

It took less than two seconds for all lizardmen to be incapacitated. Sickening sounds of arms and kneecaps getting shattered were heard as the clones attacked them viciously. However, they did not kill them. Not all of them. 

Throwing the gangsters’ bodies outside the local, two of Naruto’s clones made a bird handseal with their hands, and, in the next moment, a blade of wind beheaded the two lizardmen who had been talking about raping the waitress.

Leaving the other three lizardmen’s broken but still breathing bodies on the ground, Naruto’s clones went back inside the tavern without a care in the world. Nobody would say anything, for there was no public order or any official law enforcement entities other than Mongul’s army of robots, but Mongul cared about the population less than an old farmer cared about the dirt under his nails.

Despite saving them, the owner of the tavern and his daughter huddled together in terror when the clones walked back inside their local. Not only did they not understand how their existence was possible, but their actions had been swift and brutal, and Naruto’s Henged appearance with his burly build and scaly face was scary to look at.

“Hey, old man? Bring me a mop and a bucket. I want to clean the mess I made.”

“N-no, it’s alright. We’ll do it ourselves,” the man stammered.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” said Naruto calmly.

Understanding that the clones had saved him and his daughter from a fate that could have been worse than death, the owner gathered his courage and thanked him. The daughter did the same, bowing to him.

At that moment, the only other customer who had remained in the tavern after the gunshots fired by the gang members stood up from their table and walked to Naruto.

“It was a nice thing you did there. But things are not over. The Verdant Skulls won’t let this matter go that easily.”

It was a warm, slightly deep voice, and, going by the sound of it, it belonged to a young woman.

“She is right," said the owner of the tavern. “They are the main gang that operates in this district. And most of their members are Gordanians.”

Naruto stood up from his table.

“Well, if I started something, I might as well see it through until the end.”

He cast a longing look at the haunch of roasted meat and sighed, but he wasn’t the sort of person who would sit back and eat while watching innocents getting killed in front of his eyes.

When he came out of the tavern, the mob of Verdant Skulls was already starting to gather above the street on their flying, spiky motorbikes.

The tavern owner and his daughter turned pale, almost losing strength in their legs at the sight of them.