[Eclipsed] Chapter 9 - Warworld

AN: some people told me that there was a problem with the application of relativity in the previous chapter. I did some reading and it turns out that they were right.

My thought process was this:

Speed is relative. I mean, we think we are stationary now but our galaxy is moving at a crazy speed and we are moving together with it. It depends on the point of reference. So, who is to say that Naruto's speed in the deep space was higher than the speed at which Milky Way is moving towards Andromeda? (Our galaxy moves towards Andromeda at a speed of 2 million kilometres/hour)

Also, Naruto was far away from any galaxy or celestial body. In the absence of mass, time passes faster. For example, time passes a few milliseconds faster at the ISS than it does on Earth. True, the difference is very small within our solar system. However, our solar system is smaller than a spec of dust when compared to the scale of the Milky Way galaxy. And Milky Way is smaller than a spec of dust when compared to the rest of the universe.

It's a difference of a few milliseconds within our solar system, but we have no way of knowing what's even outside the solar system, let alone what is the passing of time outside of Milky Way Galaxy, in the deep, empty space, far away from the mass of the 400 billion stars and just as many or more planets ----> or at least that's what I thought.

Apparently, scientists believe that even outside the Milky Way galaxy the time difference shouldn't be that much - not enough to make time pass as fast as it did in the previous chapter. Therefore, you can just treat those events as an anomaly of the unknown, deep space. Unfortunately, it is too late to change it now.

Thank you for the constructive reviews and pms. I appreciate it.

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂

Previous chapter

“We’ve been stranded in the deep, unknown space, away from any planets or stars for many years, despite flying at a very high speed,” Kurama said, “But for the world at large, only two months passed.”

“I see. . . Well, it doesn't really matter in the end, does it? It’s good that we’re on solid ground again. Now, I can finally set you free. So tell me, what planet do you want to go to, Kurama?”

⁂

Kurama did not reply right away. Although Naruto had told him many times during the years they spent stranded into deep space that he wanted nothing more than to set him free, the fox still found it unreal that Naruto was so eager to throw his life away in order to unseal him. 

“Are you sure about it?” Kurama asked eventually. “Take a few weeks more to think about it.”

Naruto shook his head. “I’ve had years to think about it. I’ve made up my mind long ago.”

“Don’t be hasty, Naruto. Don’t. . . just don’t make a decision that you will regret. I. . . I don’t mind waiting a few decades more, you know? What’s another 50 years to someone like me? I’m immortal. I can wait until the end of your lifespan just fine. . . And it’s not like it’s as bad as it used to be when I was sealed in your mother. Especially now that I can feel what you feel, see what you see, and hear what you hear. . . it’s not that bad. . . I can wait. . . I just . . .I just don’t want you to die, Naruto. We’re comrades, aren’t we?”

It was the first time Naruto had heard the fox speak with such a vulnerable voice. He was taken off-guard so badly, he didn’t know how to react momentarily. 

“I didn’t know you felt that way about me. I. . . I don’t know what to say.”

Leaving the bathroom, Naruto went to the balcony of the hotel suite and watched the passers-by below. A poignant silence followed. 

“I appreciate it, Kurama. More than words could ever tell. Throughout my entire life, you’ve been my only constant. Through good and bad, you’ve always had my back, even when we hated each other.”

“Naruto . . .”

“You deserve to be free, Kurama. And I. . . I don’t deserve to live after all I’ve done.”

“Listen to me! That wasn’t you!” Kyuubi shouted vehemently. “Darkseid controlled your mind. He and that old woman wiped your memories and turned you into their tool! It wasn’t your fault!”

“Tell that to the thousands of people who lost their lives at my hand,” said Naruto. 

He wasn’t crying, nor was he raising his voice. During the years he had spent stranded in space, there was nothing else for Naruto to do other than to think about the past. Every single one of his deeds as the General of Apokolips, as the so-called “Liberator”, had come back to haunt him, filling him with guilt and condemning him. 

“But you’ve never attacked any good people!” the fox said empathetically. “Even when you were brainwashed, you only conquered the planets fraught with war and chaos! Look at the last planet you conquered, Rakta! The Psions deserved death 10 times over! You did good things too! You saved so many people from their cruel experiments and slavery!”

The fox sounded almost desperate as he was trying to convince Naruto that he did not deserve to die. 

“Innocent people always die in wars, regardless of whether the wars started for a just cause or not. And I started many wars. . .”

Hearing his words and sensing his feelings, Kurama understood that Naruto had made up his mind. Nothing he said would change his decision now. 

⁂

“What’s with these clothes, Kurama?” 

“What? What’s wrong with them?” Kyuubi asked back in a defensive tone. 

“...”

Naruto didn’t reply as he looked at his reflection in the mirror. The clothes that Kurama chose for him while he was in control of Naruto’s body were. . . unusual, to say the least. 

He was wearing a crimson-red, high-collared coat, a crimson-red mantle, elegant crimson-red trousers, and crimson-red leather shoes. Everything was so red and bright that he felt the urge to squint while looking in the mirror. 

“What are you doing?!” the fox asked when he started unbuttoning his coat. 

“There’s no way I’m wearing this shit, are you crazy?!” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?! What's wrong with the clothes I chose?” 

“Am I going to the circus? Who the hell dresses like that?! Or you thought I was a vampire or what?”

“You, of all people, shouldn’t comment on others’ tastes in clothes!” the fox bristled at him. “Need I remind you what you’ve worn for the first 16 years of your life?”

“You take that back!” Naruto raised his voice at him. “There was absolutely nothing wrong with the tracksuit I wore!”

“Except that if it was a bright orange. What kind of ninja wears orange?” Kyubi said in ridicule. 

“I was in Konoha! And most roofs in Konoha were orange, brown, or auburn! Did it occur to you that orange was perfect for that environment?”

“Auburn? Environment? Since when did you learn such big words?”

“Fuck you too, Kurama!”

Seeing Naruto taking off the clothes he had chosen for him and then grabbing the bedsheet of the bed, the fox exploded:

“Are you freaking serious?! You’d rather wear a damned bedsheet for clothes instead of the robes I chose for you?! You have to be kidding me now!”

Naruto ignored his shouts as he wrapped the bedsheet around himself like a toga. He also grabbed the pillowcase and ripped it to shreds, fashioning himself a belt that he tied around his waist, fastening the toga-bedsheet on his body. 

“I’ll never forgive you for this, Naruto!”

“This humiliation, I’ll pay it back!”

“Asshole!”

[...]

⁂

It took a while for Kurama’s anger to subside and for him to finally shut up. He was almost tempted to use the sealing jutsu, the golden barrier that terminated their connection. But it was just a fleeting thought. He did not have the heart to do something like that to Kurama anymore, regardless of how obnoxious he was being. 

‘For a fox the size of a mountain, he sure has a fragile ego.’

He let out a sigh as he walked down the streets of Warbastion. Despite being the capital city of what was, essentially, a spaceship in the shape and size of a planet, the city did not look the part.

“If you didn’t tell me you booked one of the most expensive hotels in the city, I’d think we were in the slums of a city,” Naruto muttered as he walked through the puddles of rain and mud on the streets.

Still sulking, Kurama didn’t reply. 

Technologically advanced civilisations tended to have densely populated cities with towering sky-scrapers, but Warbastion had mostly low-rise buildings with round roofs and no advanced infrastructure to speak of: no lanes for flying cars, no subways, no aerial railways, not even regular buses or proper streets. There were remnants of such things having existed in the past, but they were in a state of ruin and disrepair.

The only impressive building in the entire capital city was the round arena of immense size that could be seen at the centre of the city, towering over the rest of the buildings around it. 

Nevertheless, no matter what society’s level of civilisation was, one thing never changed: there was always a red light district. In any big city, there would always be brothels, pubs, and casinos.

‘We’ll need some serious money if we want to buy a spaceship,’ Naruto thought as he glanced at a red neon sign depicting a handful of cards.

He walked into a side alley and, after making sure there was nobody close by, he Henged himself to look like an alien creature reminiscent of a humanoid lizard with blue skin. 

Twenty minutes after walking into the casino, the entire local was in an uproar. Some strange blue lizardman had come to the table and bet his entire money, and even his clothes, on a game similar to roulette. 

It was clear to everyone whose attention he had attracted that the lizardman did not know all the rules of the game but to everyone's befuddlement, he kept guessing the correct number every time. 

Every time, he would say a number and bet all in, with maximum confidence. And he would win every time!

“You’re such a scumbag, Naruto!” Kurama burst into laughter from inside the seal when he realised what was actually going on. 

It was true that Naruto had the Devil’s luck when it came to gambling; nobody knew that better than Kurama. But what was going on currently was ridiculous even for his standards. And that was because that game of roulette was not a game of luck for Naruto. . . unbeknownst to everyone present at the table, he was cheating. He was controlling the ball perfectly with a minor, unnoticeable Wind Release technique, making it stop exactly on the number he had bet on.

In the end, the owners of the casino came to him and asked him nicely and politely to leave their establishment. They may have or may have not had their hands on their plasma rifles. 

Not feeling like wanting to cause a scene, Naruto just cashed out his winnings and left. He headed towards the next casino, where he proceeded to do the same things he did at the first one. And then he went on to the next one. 

That day, he was kicked out of six casinos. He had robbed them blind. 

⁂

Currently owning a sum of money big enough to buy five spaceships, not just one, Naruto felt the need to create a makeshift “Sealing Scroll” out of a notebook he had bought from a store. Considering that, before leaving Apokolips, he had been in the midst of creating his own Hiraishin formula, Naruto’s fuinjutsu expertise was more than sufficient to draw Storage Seals. 

Once he sealed the money-filled duffle bags into the ‘Storage Notebook’, he went to a shop and bought himself a change of regular clothes so that he would not need a Henge to walk around anymore. Some grey cargo pants, a brown hoodie with an orange shirt underneath, and a pair of black boots. He also bought a set of daggers and a flask of nutritional capsules that should last him for several weeks. 

Finally done with his preparations, he returned to the red light district of the city and walked into a random pub. Thanks to the translation device that Kyuubi had extorted from the captain of the slave-trading ship, Naruto could communicate with the people living on Warworld. 

He tried asking around for information, but even after being given a bunch of coins, the bartender wasn’t forthcoming with his answers. 

“Look, pal, it’s best not to ask too many questions around here. . .”

“Why?”

“There’s a lot of stuff going on. Smuggling, bootlegging, organ trafficking, slave trading, you name it. From the smallest guy to the biggest cartels, everyone is involved in these kinds of activities. If you poke your nose in where it doesn’t belong, well, you may end up getting your own organs trafficked or worse.”

“I didn’t ask you for that sort of information. All I want to know is where I could buy a spaceship from.”

The bartender, a humanoid being with grey skin and tentacles for arms, let out a groan. 

“And who do you think owns those ships, bub? We’re all as poor as dirt here; nobody has spaceships for sale. Those who own spaceships are dangerous people, and they use them for their operations.”

Naruto wanted to continue probing for information a bit longer, but, at that moment, a loud siren rang in the city. Normally, hearing such a loud siren would induce anxiety and worry in most people, but, instead, a look of excitement appeared on the bartender’s face. 

“What’s going on?” asked Naruto when he saw the bartender and the barmaids rushing to collect the glasses and the plates from the customers’ tables and the customers themselves standing up and running out of the pub. 

“It’s Warworld!”

A look of confusion appeared on the blond’s face. Wasn’t the planet they were on named Warworld?

“What do you mean?”

“The fights in the arena are about to start!” the bartender said over his shoulder. “Sorry, pal, we’re in a rush. If you want to order drinks, come back tomorrow. We’re closed for today.

Walking outside, Naruto was surprised to see that it was not only the bartender and the customers of the pub who acted weirdly but the entire city was like that. Thousands of people started running towards the immense arena in the centre of Warbastion city. 

‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.’

He had seen panicked people running away in such great numbers, but he had never seen an entire city of people having such an exaggerated reaction to something as trivial as a gladiatorial fight. 

His curiosity getting the better of him, he followed the thousands of people who were rushing towards the arena. 

Everyone’s pace slowed down when they arrived at the large gates, and he used that chance to ask one of the people around him:

“Who is fighting? What’s gotten everyone so excited?”

Most of them ignored him, but a yellow-skinned fishman replied:

“What sort of question is that? You’ve never heard about the Fire Princess?”

“Sorry, I’m not from around here.”

Now those words made the fishman even more surprised than before. 

“What in the world had possessed you to come here of all places!? People want to escape from Warworld, nobody comes here of their own volition!”

“My ship’s engines failed. I had no choice but to land,” Naruto lied. “Could be worse. They could’ve broken while I was in space. Even Warworld beats dying of asphyxiation or starving to death in the deep space.”

“. . . You’re not wrong; I’ll give you that. However, you might get to die of starvation here too,” the fishman said and let out a hollow laugh. 

“Is it that bad?”

“It’s worse. I haven’t had a job or a stable income in four years. And I’m not the only one. Most of us on Warworld are barely scrounging up anything to survive from one day to another.”

Soon, it was their turn to enter through the gates. There was no security, and there was no entrance fee either. Anyone could come inside the arena as they pleased. 

“So who are the fighters?” he asked after they took a seat in the stands. 

“People and creatures that Mongul’s slavers capture from all over the galaxy. Rumour has it that Drega, the fighter who’s going to face off against the Fire Princess, is blackmailed to fight or else Mongul will destroy his homeworld, his entire planet. But who knows what the truth is? Maybe it’s just rumours; I don’t know. Drega seems to love fighting. He’s a rising star. He won 10 fights in a row and with minimal damage at that.”

Ten minutes later, hundreds of people were still clambering to enter the arena, but the stands were full: 30 thousand seats were occupied, and many other spectators were standing on the stairs and corridors, brimming with anticipation. 

“Who is this Fire Princess you keep talking about?” he asked. 

The fishman couldn’t reply because Drega was brought up by a platform from below the stage, and the entire arena exploded into thunderous cheers, drowning his voice. 

“Drega! Drega!”

“Drega!”

It was a tall, grey-skinned humanoid being with an extremely muscular body. He was wearing only a pair of shorts, a pauldron on his right shoulder, and a winged helmet. The numerous scars littering his face and torso spoke volumes of the battles he had been through. 

“Save your cheers!” the warrior shouted as he raised his hatchet in the air. Thanks to the microphones installed on the stage, his voice was carried to every corner of the arena. “That’s not what Drega fights for! Drega fights for honour! And for our leader, the Great Mongul!”

The people in the stands started cheering even harder at his words. At that moment, the person Drega was talking about also made his appearance on the VIP stand of the arena. 

Mongul was a tall, yellow-skinned man with crimson-red eyes and a body just as large and muscular as that of Drega. Wearing a purple suit and a metallic piece of headgear, he came forth while sitting on a levitating throne. 

A servant trailed behind the throne, holding a grey, circular parasol above his head, and a thin, bald man with pale blue skin walked next to him. The thin man’s elegant black and red clothes made Naruto think that he was holding an important position in Mongul’s regime, unlike the slave with the parasol walking behind them. 

“Well said, Drega,” Mongul said as he stood up from the throne. “But I wonder what your opponent thinks.”

At Mongul’s words, the spectator’s cheers once again burst in intensity. 

“She hails from the lawless Vega System of the Milky Way Galaxy, a princess of Tamaran born and bred to be a warrior by none other than the Warlords of Okaara! At a weight of 220 mass units and holding a record of 28 fights and no losses, let us greet the Champion of Warworld, the Fire Princess!”

With Mongul’s announcement, a female alien wielding a sword and a round shield was raised on the stage by a circular platform. 

“Whoa!” Naruto let out an involuntary sound of amazement at the sight of her. His seat was quite far from the stage at the centre of the arena, but the massive screen behind the stage showed the woman’s appearance perfectly. 

With fit arms, long, muscular legs, and toned abdominal muscles, weighing 100 kilograms and standing at almost 2 meters tall, the Fire Princess was an athletic and powerful-looking woman. But that wouldn’t be enough to elicit such amazement from Naruto. After all, it was not the first time he had seen a tall and athletic woman: Big Barda, the former captain of the Furies on Apokolips, was even taller than her, and the rest of the Furies were no less athletic either.

What made him exclaim in awe were her other physical traits. The Fire Princess’ eyes were glowing with a bright green light, her skin was of an exotic orange colour, and her flaming-red hair was unlike anything he had ever seen before: it was so long that it almost swept the floor, and half of it looked as though it was made of fire. The lower half of the hair floated like flames, almost as though it was alive. 

“Is this what they call love at first sight?” came Kyuubi’s mocking voice from the seal. 

After how Naruto made a mockery out of his taste in clothes, the fox was more than happy to get one over him now. 

“Wasn’t orange your favourite colour? Look, an orange-skinned girl!”

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

“Don’t even try to deny it. Did you forget I share your senses now? I felt your heart racing when you saw her! And I saw your eyes zeroing in on her—"

“Shut up already, damn it!” Naruto barked at him. 

Unfortunately, he couldn’t even come up with a retort. 

Kyuubi snickered like a hyena at his outburst and proceeded to make all sorts of insinuating remarks. 

“You also like her legs, don’t you? I see you keep staring at her thighs.”

“Seriously, Kurama, if you don’t stop yapping, I’ll make you. Don’t make me tighten the seal!”

“Now you’re looking at her hair. Hmm, should I say, like father, like son? Yondaime was also enamoured with your mother’s long red hair.”

“For the love of God, SHUT YOUR TRAP! I’m really going to lock you up!”

Alas, Kyuubi knew those were just empty threats. He could sense that the blond did not have the heart to lock him in complete silence and darkness like he used to do while they were on Apokolips. So he continued having fun at his expense with no care in the world. 

Thankfully, the warriors’ introductions came to an end soon, and one of Mongul’s subordinates activated a special raygun, which he shot at the two fighters, one after another. 

Considering that it was going to be a fight to the death between two deadly, superpowered warriors, the arena could not tank such destruction. The green beams of light shot by the raygun teleported Drega and the Fire Princess away, sending them into the middle of a ruined city. Their battle would be filmed by drones and streamed on the enormous screen above the stage for all the spectators to see. 

⁂

The fishman had hyped Drega as a powerful, undefeated warrior, a rising star of Warworld, but the fight between him and the Fire Princess was hardly an even match-up. 

‘Their physical stats seemed quite even,’ Naruto thought when he recalled how Drega lifted a boulder that had to have weighed at least 100 tons and threw it at the Fire Princess who had charged at the enormous projectile and smashed it to bits with a shield bash. 

‘But the difference in skill between them was too much.’

After disarming him, the female warrior put a one-sided beating on him, leaving Drega a bloodied, slumped mess on the ground.

‘She didn’t kill him. . .’

He had expected the woman to kill the other warrior mercilessly. She certainly looked the part of a savage warrior, but the Fire Princess refused to take the life of her opponent after defeating him. 

“I won’t kill anyone for your amusement, Mongul,” was what she said. 

Even after Mongul pressed the button of a remote control and she collapsed on the floor, screaming in pain and convulsing as though she was being electrocuted, the Fire Princess still refused to obey his command. In the end, she was tortured until she lost consciousness, and Mongul’s robots dragged her away. 

The tens of thousands of spectators in the arena started yelling and booing at Mongul loudly. . . but that was all that they could do. Nobody dared to try anything.

The citizens of Warworld had tried to rebel half a dozen times in the past, but none of their revolts met a good end. Mongul himself was an extremely powerful individual, and he also had an enormous army of robots armed with plasma rifles at his command. Furthermore, the very planet was under his control. He could raze a city off the surface of the map with but a thought. 

The fight between Drega and the Fire Princess was not the only fight planned for that day, but Naruto did not stay to watch the rest of the show. Instead, he left the massive arena behind, and, after making 200 Shadow Clones, they scattered in all directions and started searching for a spaceship. 

⁂

Acquiring a ship through legal means, by buying one, proved to be impossible, just as the bartender had told him earlier that day. Left with no choice, Naruto had to resort to robbing a drug cartel of the best ship he found in their hangar. Although the cartel’s men were equipped with laser weapons and even battle droids, they were simply punching above their weight class. The blond was far too powerful for them. The drug cartel’s goons were incapacitated, and their battle droids were destroyed in less than five minutes. 

Not just that, he even had the gall to use the drug cartel’s reserves of fuel to fill the ship’s tank before leaving. Most of the criminals had been knocked out cold, but some of them were still conscious. . . yet none dared to say a peep at his actions after the beating he had put on them.

They could only watch how the strange man started talking seemingly to nobody in a foreign language and even gesticulating wildly like a lunatic while busying himself with preparing the spaceship and making the final checks before taking off. 

“I still think you’re rushing into it. Give it a few more days.”

“I told you before, I made up my mind long ago.”

“Don’t be like this, Naruto. You aren’t like me; you aren’t a bijuu. You won’t revive after being killed. You only have one life. Don’t throw it away.”

“You should know me by now, Kurama. Once I’ve set my mind on something-”

“What about the Fire Princess?”

“Who?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know who I’m talking about! The woman you saw fighting today in the arena!”

Naruto scoffed. 

“You’re saying that some pretty girl that I know nothing about is more important to me than your freedom? Is that what you think of me?”

Seeing that his words were not getting through Naruto’s stubbornness, the fox resorted to a low blow:

“You aren’t doing this for me, Naruto. Admit it! It's not just a desire to set me free.”

“What you’re actually doing is running away from what you’ve done! You’re taking the easy way out to relieve yourself of your guilt! That’s what you’re doing!”

Much to Kyuubi’s growing anger and frustration, Naruto did not answer. He remained silent, pretending as though he could not hear the fox.

Done with the final preparations, the blond got inside the spaceship together with 10 Shadow Clones. Seeing as it was a rather large spaceship, he could not man it alone. 

Thanks to the spaceship’s artificial intelligence, he was able to use the same route that the drug cartel members used to evade Warworld’s sensors and sneak away from the planet undetected. Soon, the planet became little more than a grey, glittering marble in the distance. 

“So, which planet do you want to live on from now on, Kurama?”

“Kurama?”

“Hey, say something.”

A heavy sigh came from the seal. 

⁂

The majority of people in the universe did not own technology that would allow them to teleport as precisely as Apokolips’ Boom Tubes, but, fortunately, Warworld’s technology wasn’t that far behind. 

After several space-warps, and travelling for a distance of over 200 million light years, Naruto arrived at a distant galaxy known in Apokolips’ database as the Frius Galaxy. 

Although it was one of the largest galaxies in the known Universe (it was five times larger than the Milky Way), the Frius Galaxy was largely uninhabited. Moreover, due to the absence of a notable interstellar power coming from it, the Frius Galaxy was not an important location on the map of the universe. 

At last, a very large green and blue planet could be seen in the distance. It was enormous, one of the largest terrestrial planets they had ever seen (and the main reason it had stuck in their memory). Kyuubi had chosen this planet because, due to its sheer size, the giant planet’s gravity was too powerful for most living beings in the universe to live on it. Regular humans would be crushed under their own weight and die on the spot if they were to set foot on the planet. 

⁂

Having made thousands of clones, Naruto spent the next two weeks scouring the planet, running at supersonic speeds and making sure to focus on his Negative Emotions Sensing ability at all times. Where there were living beings, there would also be negative emotions. And the more intelligent the creature, the stronger and more complex the negative emotions. 

On the day that his search was complete, Naruto sent his consciousness inside the seal. 

Ironically, after regaining his memories, the inner world of his seal had become even more terrible than before, when he was under Darkseid’s control. It was as if a sewer pipe had been broken and flooded the entire basement. Naruto’s mental state was clearly reflected in the horrible environment of the seal. 

“It looks like Apokolips’ data on this planet was right. As far as I can tell, there are no intelligent beings anywhere around. Our Negative Emotions Sensing didn’t pick anything special,” Naruto said as he stepped into the cage, walking closer to Kyuubi. 

The fox did not say anything for a while. Uncomfortable with the poignant silence, Naruto spoke again:

“I couldn’t find any traces of civilisation anywhere along the coast either. No towns, no villages, nothing. So, at worst, only the giant lizards and snakes would bother you here. But I doubt any of them would pose a real threat to you,” he said, letting out a soft chuckle. 

But his laughter sounded hollow even to his ears. 

“I won’t say many words. I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. All things considered, my life wasn’t so bad. It could’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t been by my side.”

He walked closer and pressed his forehead on Kurama’s snout. He stood like that for a while, unable to say anything, overwhelmed with emotion. 

“Thank you, Kuarma,” he said and then turned around to leave. 

Kyuubi had been silent all this time, but when Naruto stepped outside the cage, the bijuu stood up and walked close to the bars as well. 

“Naruto.”

Hearing the fox call his name, he turned his attention back to him. Kurama’s large red eyes were glistening. 

“I will never forget you. For as long as I live, I will always remember you. I promise.”

Naruto raised his hand, smiling, and he waved at him one last time. Then, he turned around, and his body vanished from his inner world. 

Back in the outside world, Naruto opened his eyes and lifted his shirt, exposing his belly. 

The five fingers on his right hand started glowing with a bright blue light. 

He did not know what came after death. He did not even know if there was an afterlife either. But he did not hesitate because he knew one thing: his death was not meaningless. With his death, Kurama would walk free. 

He groaned as he slammed his palm into his stomach. Then, with a twist of his hand, the Eight Trigram Seal started glowing with a red light. 

A cloak of crimson chakra engulfed his body, and cracks started appearing in his skin, spreading from the Eight Trigram Seal outwards. 

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. . . ”

⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂
AN: To be continued. The story isn't even close to ending don't worry.

I tried making some Starfire pics with AI. This is the best I've gotten. I didn't have time to grind for other, better pics.

PS: Starfire won't always wear such skimpy outfits. Things will change in the future.