The sky above Flaxa was a deep, sickening red like a wound that had never closed. Polluted clouds swirled thick with ash and chemicals, casting a bloody pallor over a dying world. From orbit, the planet looked diseased. A twisted mockery of Earth, bloated with factories, strip-mines, and flame-choked cities. Rivers ran black with waste. The oceans boiled.
They knew who had come.
Floating above their capital, his silhouette cut through the smoke like a blade through flesh. The orange trim of his bodysuit glinted faintly beneath the heavy clouds. His blond hair fluttered in the windless air, unmoving and still like the eye of a storm.
And his eyes.. God, his eyes…
they glowed an electric blue so deep it made stars look dull. They pulsed, slow and methodical, like a heartbeat. Like something alive was waiting inside him, coiled and ancient.
Naruto looked down.
Beneath him, the Flaxan army had assembled. Rows of green-skinned soldiers in grey powered armor. Tanks shaped like insects. Floating artillery platforms. Orbitals blinking in the distance, ready to fire. And at their center, the same Flaxan Commander that had fought Mark Grayson moments earlier.
It didn't matter.
Naruto lowered himself to eye level.
"I don't think you understand," he said, voice calm, but not cold. Just tired. "Earth is under my protection. And not yours to conquer."
The Flaxan leader bellowed something in his native tongue and lunged.
But Naruto moved first.
One second the warlord was on the ground, the next, Naruto had him by the head. The bones in his massive skull cracked audibly. Naruto's grip tightened. He took off with a sonic boom, and vanished.
He dragged the Flaxan general through a tower, a wall, a carrier ship, and then through the ground itself. They emerged on the other side of the capital, moving so fast the compressed air around them superheated into a shockwave of blinding light.
And then still airborne Naruto drove the Flaxan into the side of a factory, pulled him back out by the spinal column, and crushed his head like fruit between his fingers.
He didn't even blink.
The war now began in earnest.
They fired on him. But it didn't matter. Missiles, lasers, plasma lances, all of it turned to light and smoke the moment they touched him.
He moved faster than their targeting systems could calculate, faster than the atoms in the air could react. But the air did react. Because when you move fast enough, you don't just break the sound barrier. You shatter the chemical bonds of the atmosphere.
And from Naruto's perspective, the world moved in slow motion.
Molecules stood still. Clouds were frozen snapshots. The world bent around his speed.
And then the world began to burn.
He didn't fire a single energy blast. He didn't need to. Just moving through the sky, Naruto created friction, compression, and atomic heat. At hypersonic speeds, the air around him became plasma. When he dropped altitude, he became a meteor, a living warhead, heating the air until it detonated. Buildings collapsed from the shockwaves. Flaxans melted inside their armor. Nuclear flashes lit the dark horizon.
He was finally allowed to let loose and go all out. If he had attempted this on Earth it would cause mass death and destruction. So he limited himself so much.
He whispered so quiet only the winds of ruin could carry it:
"You wanted conquest. You wanted Earth. But you forgot something."
His eyes dimmed to a soft, ethereal glow.
"Earth isn't yours to conquer."
And then he flew.
He flew laps around Flaxa. Literally.
Naruto blurred into the clouds, into the atmosphere itself, tracing glowing orange arcs across the sky. Each pass sent another shockwave through the cities.
Each time he passed overhead, a new district vanished in a ripple of shattered glass and liquefied stone. Orbitals tried to flee but he tore them from the sky and dropped them like weights, their burning wreckage carving scars across the surface.
The Flaxans didn't just lose. They were being erased.
He didn't destroy the planet. Not completely. He was too meticulous for that.
He left the crust intact. Let the volcanoes boil beneath the surface. Let the sky darken with ash and fallout. He didn't vaporize the oceans or split the core.
He left them something far worse.
He left them alive.
Cities reduced to radiation shadows. Infrastructure scorched to fused glass. Their satellites crashed into refugee zones. Generators failing one by one. Agriculture burning. The biosphere was strangled. The water turned acidic. Communications gone. Their history scrubbed clean by a single boy.
They were effectively sent back to the stone age. No medicine. No shelter. No food.
Just heat and the silence of death.
From orbit, the scars were visible. Long glowing trenches that cut across the world like veins of hellfire. Clouds coiled over blast sites, trailing massive dust plumes hundreds of kilometers long.
And at the center of it all, Naruto stood. His suit torn. His hair damp with sweat and the blood of his enemies. Smoke curled from his arms. The heat still shimmered off his back.
He didn't breathe heavy. He didn't gloat.
He just looked up.
Not at the sky. But past it.
Like he saw something else.
Centauria.
His home. His mother's voice. The lavender fields and the great crystal mountains. Gone. All of it.
And for a moment, Naruto's fingers trembled.
They don't get to have what we lost, he thought.
Then he turned, eyes dimming again. The wind howled past his ears, but he didn't move.
He wasn't done.
Flaxa wasn't either. Not yet.
But it would be.
And in the end, that was mercy. Or maybe it wasn't. He didn't care anymore.
_____
The backyard exploded.
No warning. No flash of light. Just a bone-shaking boom and a crater that swallowed half the lawn.
The Grayson house shuddered. Mark froze mid-step in the hallway. Debbie dropped her mug in the kitchen. It hit the tile and shattered.
But Nolan was already gone.
He'd moved the second it happened. A blur through the back door. Wind cracking around him like a whip. Mark was only seconds behind, shoving the screen door open and stumbling out into the smoke.
The crater was deep. Ten, maybe fifteen feet down. The dirt had been blasted out in every direction. Still hot and smoldering. And at the center, on his knees, was Naruto.
His black and orange suit was torn nearly to shreds. The fabric clung to him in burnt strips, melted in places. His boots were gone. His hands were filthy. His body was intact, but he wasn't moving.
His hair was long now. Much longer than it had been. Down past his shoulders and to his butt.
Nolan whispered, "Naruto?"
No response.
Nolan landed beside the crater, knelt down, and grabbed Naruto by the arm. He didn't resist. Just let himself be pulled up without a word.
They carried him inside.
He sat on the couch, shoulders hunched and a blanket around him. The house was quiet, except for the occasional clink of glass or the hum of the heater.
Mark stood nearby, unsure of what to say or do. Debbie moved carefully, checking him over for burns, injuries, anything, but there was nothing. His body hadn't changed.
"You've been gone three days," Debbie said gently. "We thought… we weren't sure what happened."
Naruto blinked slowly. "Three?"
"Yeah," Mark added, stepping closer. "Since the Flaxan's retreated back into their portal. You jumped in, and it collapsed right after. Robot said it was a total failure on their side with no way to reopen it."
Naruto leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He stared at the floor.
"That's not right," he said.
Nolan narrowed his eyes. "How long do you think you were there?"
Naruto shook his head slightly. "Hard to tell. A long time."
Mark sat down on the arm of a chair. "Robot had a theory I overhead... he said time might move differently in the Flaxan Dimension. Like… way differently. A day here could be ten years there. Maybe more."
Naruto didn't say anything. But his jaw tightened just a little.
"Could be wrong," Mark added quickly. "We're not even sure how stable their dimension is. But, if you're saying it's been longer…"
"Maybe.. I'm not sure.. Everything just seemed to blur together.," Naruto said, quiet.
They let that sit. The only sound was the low hum of the heater and the muffled tick of the wall clock.
Naruto finally looked up. "The planet was massive and their civilization was spread out. Much bigger than Earth.. I couldn't let them regroup and launch another attack on Earth..."
His voice wasn't bitter. Just tired.
Debbie crouched next to him, gently placing a hand on his arm. "You're back now. That's what matters."
"I didn't know if I would be," he said. "I was in the upper atmosphere when the portal opened again. Maybe I was lucky. Maybe it was just timing."
Mark watched him for a second, then nodded slowly. "You made it. That's enough."
Naruto didn't respond. His hands rested on his knees, still, but tight. His breathing had leveled out, but the tension hadn't left his shoulders.
"I can't stay long, I don't want to be a bother." he muttered.
Mark frowned. "You don't have to go anywhere."
Naruto didn't argue. He just looked at the floor again. That same blank stare, like he was still seeing something else. Somewhere else.
He looked like someone who'd spent too long fighting, too long alone, and now didn't know how to come back to stillness.
Debbie stood up, her voice soft. "You don't need to explain anything right now. Just rest, okay?"
Naruto nodded, barely.
Mark stayed nearby, keeping watch as Naruto's eyes slowly drifted shut. Not sleep. Not really. But something close to it.
Nolan stood at the end of the hallway, leaning against the wall, arms folded. His gaze never left Naruto.
He hasn't aged.
Not a wrinkle. Not a shift in posture. No slowdown in strength. His suit was half-burned off his body, but his skin was untouched. His eyes..
Those cold, tired eyes held weight in them. The kind of wear that only came from fighting too long. From living too long.
Decades, Mark had said.
And Nolan believed it.
Only a Viltrumite could've survived something like that. The atmosphere friction. The endless pressure. The prolonged combat across a hostile world with no reinforcements, no rest. The way Naruto had torn through the Flaxan army in the last invasion had already raised questions in Nolan's mind.
Now?
Now it wasn't a question anymore.
He's one of us.
Part Viltrumite. Has to be. There was no other explanation.
And that made things… difficult.
If Naruto truly carried Viltrumite blood, if he was born of their long legacy, then he was more than just a powerful anomaly. He was a threat. A potential asset, or a future enemy.
If he sides with us, Nolan thought, if his loyalty can be secured…
But what if it couldn't?
What if Naruto turned against them?
What if he stood in the way?
The directive was clear. Viltrumite law allowed no threats. No rivals. No hesitation.
If he can't be swayed to loyalty... he'll have to be removed.
Nolan exhaled slowly through his nose.
But that, too, had complications.
Because Naruto wasn't just powerful. He wasn't a stranger anymore. Not to this Earth. Not to this house. Not to Mark.
They've grown close.
He'd seen the way Mark talked to him. The inside jokes. The easy banter. The way Naruto looked out for him without ever calling attention to it. Mark didn't have a brother, but Naruto had come dangerously close to filling that space.
Killing him would mean losing Mark.
Maybe not overnight. But over time, it would happen. The boy would pull away. And Nolan needed his son more than ever. Especially now.
This was supposed to be simple, Nolan thought. Preparation. Domination. A new era of a Earth controlled by Viltrum.
But it was never simple.
Not with Earth. Not with Mark.
And now, not with Naruto.
He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing at the sound of Naruto shifting on the couch. The blonde stirred, adjusting slightly under the blanket. His fingers twitched. Still half-alert even in rest.
A warrior's instinct.
Nolan watched him a moment longer.
Then sighed, deep and low, barely audible.
This had become even more complicated.
___
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