Inevitable. NarutoxInvincible

Buckingham Palace shimmered beneath a soft London sun. The gates stood tall and gilded, wrapped in the kind of pomp that only centuries of empire could justify. 

Tourists swarmed the entrance, phones out, chattering in a dozen languages. The hum of modern curiosity surrounded it all like white noise.

Matt adjusted the lens on his camera and clicked the shutter.

"Shit," he muttered. "Look at that place."

"Language," Jack said beside him, gently but firm.

"Sorry," Matt mumbled, not really meaning it. "I mean… it's impressive. But seriously, who needs that many rooms?"

Jack stood with his good hand resting on the metal railing. 

His right arm was still locked in a thick brace with three fractured bones, courtesy of the Mauler Twins' failed assassination attempt on the president back in D.C. The Guardians had stopped them, but not before collateral damage got personal.

He'd taken this trip for a reason.

"It's not about rooms," Jack said, staring ahead. "It's about power."

Matt frowned. "What?"

"That building has one purpose," Jack went on. "To say, 'I'm the Queen. And you are my subjects.'"

Matt tilted his head. "You think so?"

"I know so. The Queen might look like a sweet old lady, but she comes from a long line of tyrants. People who thought they were better than everyone else."

Matt opened his mouth to reply but stopped.

His eyes locked on something above them.

Small.

Dark.

Tumbling fast.

"Dad!" he yelled.

He didn't think as his body moved with it's own will.

Matt threw his shoulder into Jack and shoved him hard. The older man stumbled sideways, nearly falling into the low stone barrier as something slammed into the pavement where they'd just been standing.

BOOM.

The sound cracked like thunder. A black trash bag soaked and steaming hit the concrete and exploded in a wet splash of red, white, and grease.

Burger Mart.

Half-melted cups. Smashed fries. Burger wrappers stained in soda and god-knows-what slid across the stone. A tomato bounced toward a nearby tourist's shoe.

Gasps erupted.

Phones rose.

Matt blinked at the mess, dazed.

"I didn't know they had Burger Marts here," he muttered, half to himself.

Jack wheezed beside him, winded, blinking at the mess. "You… you called me Dad."

Matt glanced away, trying to look casual about it.

"You gonna make me say it twice?"

Jack didn't answer. Not with words. Just gave him a look. Like maybe the pain in his arm didn't matter quite as much right now.

The steel doors of Guardians HQ bowed inward, then shattered open with a metallic groan.

A cold breeze swept out like breath from a tomb.

Camouflage shimmer dissolved into view as GDA Tech-Troopers surged forward in staggered formation, with rifles raised. Their boots splashed into pooled blood and organs that had begun to dry along cracks in the floor.

They were too late.

"Clear!" a trooper shouted, but it didn't matter.

The silence inside said everything.

"Move! Go, go, go!" came the cry behind them as paramedics poured in. Each team split like muscle memory, already scanning for signs of life. There weren't any.

The central platform was a cathedral of death.

Red Rush's body was mangled at the far edge of the room. His torso was crumpled like a soda can, legs twisted, spine caved in. One eye was still open. Still wide. Frozen in pain.

Green Ghost's remains lay in broken pieces across two different walls, partially phased through a support beam, her torso visibly snapped in half. Bits of green suit and pulped flesh clung to stone like paint thrown by a madman.

War Woman was near the far wall, crumpled and still, blood dried in a spatter behind her where she'd struck the stone after the jaw strike. Her mace lay a few feet away, cracked and split down the handle, runes dim and flickering.

Aquarius's upper half was still twitching faintly in a mess of water and viscera, one arm caught mid-curl like he'd been reaching out. The room stank of salt and open guts. His bottom half was nowhere to be found.

Darkwing was a heap beneath a cracked pillar, cape draped over a shattered ribcage. His limbs lay bent at impossible angles, neck folded like a snapped stick. The mask was still on. His eyes weren't.

And The Immortal…

His head had rolled halfway across the platform.

The body, torso cracked wide, was slumped in a puddle of its own misted blood. One arm lay yards away, fingers still curled like they were trying to rise again.

The paramedics halted, staring. Even the most hardened among them needed a moment.

"Jesus Christ…" a tech whispered. "They didn't just die. They were executed."

"Sealant. Now!" a medic barked, snapping the team back into action. She knelt by what was left of Aquarius. 

"We have movement. It could just be twitching, but stabilize it!"

A thick gel hissed from a pressurized tube, spreading across his shredded torso and boiling into the cuts.

"Is that.. is that her spinal cord?" another medic choked out, pointing toward Green Ghost.

"Grab all of it. Every piece."

War Woman's body was slid onto a stretcher by two techs. Her helmet had cracked straight down the middle. Her face was slack. The back of her head was visibly caved in.

"She's dead," one of them confirmed. "She hit the wall hard. Neck's broken."

"Get those on ice," someone shouted.

Darkwing's body was approached next. One of the younger medics stopped and stared.

"I used to worship this guy as a kid," he whispered. "He came to my school once. Gave me this grappling hook pen. Told me to always look for the shadows…"

He turned away, wiping his eyes behind his visor.

"Cutting the neck now, watch out. Sometimes the spinal.."

"Beginning nano-resuscitation," a woman interrupted, already hooking The Immortal's head into a portable neural stabilizer. "Locking in."

The device blinked. A slow, rhythmic beep started.

A tech nearby turned and vomited.

Cecil Stedman entered like a storm.

The moment the doors opened, he stopped mid-step.

Blood and silence reigned.

Donald trailed behind him, tablet in hand, but even he faltered at the threshold.

Cecil lit a cigarette with fingers that didn't shake. Not yet. He walked slowly into the room. His eyes swept from corpse to corpse. Red Rush. War Woman. Darkwing. Aquarius. Green Ghost. The Immortal.

Slaughtered.

No resistance. No distress signal.

No sign of the killer.

Just wreckage.

He stared at the platform. The circle. The symbol on the wall. Now dimmed.

He took a long drag.

Then spit the cigarette out and crushed it underfoot.

"God… dammit," he muttered.

Not loud. Not explosive. But his voice cracked at the end.

Donald's voice was quiet. "Still no trace of Omni-Man. We're checking the last eight hours of comm logs and GPS pings."

"They didn't even get to fight back," Cecil said, almost to himself. "Whoever did this.. They took them apart like… like they knew them. Knew their moves. Their tells. Their timing."

Donald didn't respond.

Cecil turned. His face had changed. No grief now. Just calculation. Rage behind the eyes.

"We don't release this," he said. "Not yet."

"Sir?"

"Until we know who did this, until we have something to say, this doesn't leave the building. If the world finds out the Guardians are dead, we lose control."

Donald nodded. "Understood."

"Start pulling records. Any threats they've dealt with. Enemies. Blacksite prisoners. Rogue tech. Hell, go back twenty years."

Donald tapped it in. "And Omni-Man?"

Cecil stared at the blood still wet on the floor.

"Find him. Watch him. I want his goddamn heartbeat logged every five seconds."

He turned and walked out.

Behind him, the dead stayed quiet.

And the stabilizer on The Immortal's severed head kept beeping.

It started with a buzz.

One phone. Then another. Like a pulse spreading through the room.

Naruto lifted his head slightly from his folded arms, eyes half-lidded, the dull cadence of the teacher's lecture fading beneath a rising hum. Across the rows of desks, students were reaching into their bags, pockets, sleeves.

Eyes lit up with screen glow. Mouths fell open.

And then,

"What the hell…?"

"They're dead."

"No way. That's fake."

"It's everywhere. Look."

The teacher stopped mid-sentence. "What's going on?"

Nobody answered. Nobody needed to.

Dozens of screens showed the same thing.

BREAKING: Guardians of the Globe Found Dead

Government denies involvement. Investigation ongoing.

No known suspects. No known survivors.

A picture accompanied the headline, an overhead shot of the Guardians' headquarters. Blurred, shaky, taken through a long-range lens. Emergency lights still flickering. The front doors caved in like paper.

The classroom buzzed like a disturbed hive.

Naruto sat up fully, eyes narrowing.

He didn't move, didn't speak. Just watched. Listening.

Gasps. Murmurs. Some kids laughed nervously, like they weren't sure if it was a joke or marketing for some new movie. Others went quiet. Too quiet.

"What the hell happened to them?" someone whispered near the back. "Weren't they, like… the strongest team on the planet?"

"Red Rush is on the list," another kid said. "So is War Woman. The Immortal. That fish guy. All of them."

"Didn't Omni-Man work with them?"

"Yeah, sometimes. But he wasn't officially part of the team."

"Good thing he's still around, then."

Naruto turned his head slowly.

Across the room, Mark sat frozen. Elbows on his desk. Phone in his hand.

Unreadable expression.

He hadn't said a word.

Naruto tilted his head slightly, watching him.

He didn't know.

Mark didn't know.

And it hit him harder than anyone else in the room.

The grief hadn't landed yet

That hollow space between disbelief and realization.

Naruto turned back to the front and let the chatter wash over him. The teacher tried to regain control, voice too soft, and too late. The news had detonated inside the classroom like a silent bomb.

He exhaled through his nose. Leaned back in his seat and glanced once more at Mark.

Still not moving.

Still staring.

And outside the window, the sky was too clear for what had just cracked beneath it.

The wind on the rooftop was colder than usual. It scraped across the concrete like it was trying to clean the air of what had just happened.

Naruto stood near the railing, hood up, hands buried deep in his pockets. He watched the sky as if it might offer an answer. Mark sat hunched on a rusted ventilation unit, eyes on nothing, the kind of stare that didn't see the present, only ghosts.

"They're really gone," Mark said quietly.

Naruto said nothing.

Mark looked up, face pale. "The Guardians. All of them."

Naruto nodded once. "Yeah."

There was silence. The kind that pressed in and around the bones.

Mark's fingers clenched the edge of the unit. "Red Rush… War Woman… I grew up watching them. My mom used to leave the news on every time they saved something. It made her feel safe. Made me feel safe."

"Nothing lasts forever," Naruto murmured.

Mark exhaled hard. "Yeah, but they were supposed to be.."

TITLE CARD: INVINCIBLE

A pulse of light flared suddenly behind them.

The rooftop shimmered.

Cecil Stedman stepped out of nothing, like a man pushed through a veil. 

A short flicker of energy snapped behind him as the teleportation rig shut off. He looked tired. Paler than usual. His black coat flapped once in the wind before settling around him.

"Afternoon, boys," he said. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything philosophical."

Mark shot to his feet. "What? how?"

"Teleport tech," Cecil replied, tapping the small rig on his wrist. "Early GDA model. I get motion sickness every time I use it, but it beats TSA."

Naruto didn't move. He was already watching him.

Cecil's eyes flicked to him. "You've been on my radar since the day you landed. That little entrance in the mountains? Not as subtle as you think."

Mark blinked. "You… you've been tracking Naruto?"

Cecil ignored the question. "I'm not here to accuse. Relax. You're not in any trouble. At least, not from me."

"Then why are you here?" Naruto asked defensively.

Cecil stepped closer. "Because the world just lost its shield. The Guardians of the Globe are dead. And we don't know who killed them."

Mark's jaw tightened. "You don't have any leads?"

Cecil shook his head once. "Not a damn thing. Whoever did it knew what they were doing. No alarms. No security footage. No survivors. Whoever it was… it was someone strong. Experienced. And close."

Mark looked down at the roof, like it might give him something solid to stand on.

"I don't understand," Mark muttered. "They were the best. How do you kill all of them and just vanish?"

"Kid, there isn't a super-villain alive who didn't want the Guardians six-feet-under." Cecil said.

Naruto's brow twitched.

Strong. Experienced. Close.

He said nothing.

But his mind did what it always did and assumed the worst.

And the thread led back to Nolan Grayson.

The man's power wasn't theoretical. Naruto had felt it in the air, in the way Nolan moved, spoke, stood in a room like he already owned the ground beneath everyone's feet. He was Viltrumite. Just like Naruto. The same strength. The same instincts.

And he was the only one not dead.

It could have been him.

Physically, it lined up. Nolan had the power, the speed, the brutality. A trained Viltrumite could dissect a team like the Guardians in minutes if they knew what they were doing.

But then… there was the contradiction.

Nolan had been here for years. Built a family. Played the part of protector, even seemed to believe in it. He hadn't pushed Earth toward conquest. He hadn't shown signs of dissent.

Not publicly.

Not yet.

But Naruto didn't trust easily. Not after what happened to Centauria. But Nolan hadn't given him reason to act. Not yet. There was no proof.

Just… unease.

And a gut feeling that something in the orbit of truth was off-balance.

He didn't say any of it aloud. Not to Mark. Not to Cecil.

Because suspicion without proof was just noise.

But still

The thought settled deep in his chest.

And it didn't let go.

The wind tugged at their clothes again.

Cecil turned to both of them now.

"I didn't come here just to share the bad news. I came with an offer."

Naruto's posture tensed.

"People are scared," Cecil continued. "They've lost the faces they trusted. The ones who showed up when the sky split open or the sea boiled over. They need someone to look up to."

Mark stared. "You want us to replace them?"

"I want you to be something new," Cecil said. "Not copies. Not legacy acts. But symbols. Real ones."

Mark hesitated. His voice was low, but steady. "I want to honor them. If there's anything I can do… anything that helps stop this from happening again…"

"No," Naruto said quietly.

Both turned to look at him.

"I'm not interested," he said, voice flat.

Cecil raised an eyebrow. "You didn't even let me finish, kid."

"You don't need to," Naruto said. "I didn't come here to be anyone's savior. I'm not a symbol. I'm not a hero. I'm a guy who wants to be left alone."

Mark looked hurt. "But… they need people like us."

"No," Naruto said. "They need peace. And all we ever do is punch holes and break things."

Cecil studied him for a long second. Then gave a single nod. "Fair enough."

He turned to Mark.

"Think about it," he said. "The world's going to need help long before it understands how much. You don't have to say yes now. But when the next fire starts burning… I'll be calling."

He tapped the rig on his wrist.

The air shimmered again. With a flicker of light and a hiss of pressure, he vanished.

The rooftop was quiet again.

Only the wind remained.

Mark stayed standing, fists clenched. Naruto leaned back against the railing, staring at the clouds.

"…You really don't want to do it?" Mark asked.

Naruto didn't answer at first.

He kept his eyes on the horizon, mind drifting again to that kitchen, to Nolan's voice, calm and measured like a scalpel.

Then, quietly

"I want my own peace."

Mark looked down.

Naruto didn't.

__

Author's Note: If you enjoy this story, come check out my P atreon at banmido. I've got many more like this, early access chapters, giveaways, and other fire content.

Chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 are currently available to patreons at banmido.

Authors Notes: Naruto's people on Centauria experience an average human life-span, and he assumes the case for Viltrumites also, not knowing Nolan is 2000+ years old. He just knows Viltrumites are galactic conquerors with terrifying strength and abilities.