The Uzumaki Family (Naruto X Justice League)

Chapter 11: Where Foxes Thread the Wind

The sun wore its brightest mask that day, as if mocking the burdens it could never feel. Shadows crawled long and silent beneath the trees, and the park's laughter—high, fleeting—bounced between the leaves like ghosts with nowhere better to be. Amid the illusion of peace, on a bench meant for simpler conversations, sat the monster made man and the girl who softened his edges.

Naruto's ice cream dripped slow, forgotten in his fingers. Not because he didn't like the flavor—he didn't even taste it—but because his daughter's eyes carried questions with barbs. Himawari, the only chain he wore willingly.

"Daddy," she said, voice wrapped in curiosity and concern, "why didn't you go save Mia?"

She didn't shout. Children didn't need to. Truths always hit harder when whispered.

He chewed the cold bite like it mattered and answered like it didn't. "It wasn't necessary. She was never in any real danger."

The hurt bloomed in her face—not dramatic, not loud, just real. It made her look older than she should have. "Does that mean... Daddy won't come for me either?"

The ice cream hit the bench wood with a dull splat. Naruto turned. The monster, the king, the storm that wore a man's name—he vanished. In his place, a father. His hand brushed her hair, feather-light. "Of course not. You're special, Hima. For you, everything changes."

And like morning after rain, she smiled again. Bright enough to blind the dark things that stalked the world. "Oh, Daddy is so sly," she thought, and kissed his cheek, a small act with the force of redemption.

Naruto didn't move. But his eyes—they strayed.

She sat at the edge of the park like something drawn from the earth itself. A dress of woven sunlight, hair that whispered with the wind, eyes like ancient stones made soft by time. Gaea. The world's beating heart, now wrapped in the skin of a woman and looking at him.

His mind reached hers like a knife pressed to silk.

'What do you want?'

The response came like summer rain—soft, gentle, dangerous if you weren't paying attention.

'It's nice to finally meet you in person, Naruto. I came to warn you: Trigon is more than a name to fear. He's a reckoning.'

He narrowed his eyes. 'You assume much. We're connected, yes. But don't mistake that for understanding.'

'I don't presume. I caution. I offer friendship. You're among the few left who stir the old roots. I don't want to see you fall. But this world is wider than you think. And not all threats announce themselves with thunder.'

Friendship. The word felt odd in his head. Like trying to hold fire and not get burned.

'If anything threatens my little star,' he said, eyes flicking to Himawari, now chasing a butterfly with gleeful abandon, 'it will cease. I'll erase it. Ethics be damned.'

She frowned, ever so slightly. 'That joke is unbecoming of you. The world doesn't need cleansing. It needs caution. And maybe... a bit of trust. Even you, Naruto, cannot hold up the sky alone.'

And then, like wind off a cliff, she was gone. No farewell. No footprint. Only the weight of what she didn't say.

He sat still. Long enough for the sun to shift. For the ice cream to melt into a pink puddle on the dirt. For his heart to remind him—it was not made of stone, only scar tissue.

Trigon. A threat too large for even his shadow. He would plan. He would burn kingdoms to ash if needed. And if the immortals wept at his methods? Let them.

But for now, Himawari tugged his hand, her voice bright. "Let's go to the water park, Daddy!"

And the monster stood, smiling like a man.

"Let's go, my little star."

He walked beside her, calm and tall and laughing—and beneath it all, the cold steel of war forming behind his eyes.

Because for her, he would break the skies.

And if the world objected, it could join the ruins.

-----------------------------------

Raven:

They say immortals don't knock. They don't enter politely. They simply are—and the world adjusts, scrambling like ants under a falling boot, hoping it doesn't crush them entirely.

Raven stood at the edge of an empire built in silence and sealed in gold.

The study—if one could call such a cathedral of intellect by that quaint word—rose high above her, shelves like ribs holding tomes older than her nightmares. Each relic whispered threats and secrets, relics of ages where men bartered with stars and carved promises into the bones of dead immortals.

And in the center of it all stood Wasp—Mea—with her voice laced in childish reverence, her eyes bright with a joy Raven had never seen in war-bred women.

"Father, I have brought her with me!"

The words tasted wrong.

Mea—this girl carved in precision and wrath—spoke with a softness that unstitched Raven's composure. Father. The word tumbled through Raven's thoughts like an avalanche. Her heart beat once. Then once more. Slower. Louder.

'What is with that tone? Who is her father?'

The world answered—not with sound, but with absence.

Reality split. Not like paper torn, but like the idea of limits had politely stepped aside. He stepped through, not like a conqueror, but like a man who knew he'd already won.

He wore no crown, needed no sword. Just a calm that broke stronger men than Trigon.

"Good job," Naruto said, as if complimenting her for folding laundry. "But next time, don't engage opponents that the armor designates as threats beyond your level."

Mea straightened. "Yes, Father. I won't do it again."

Love, pure and childlike. But not weak. Not here.

He nodded, then turned—eyes sharp enough to cut arrogance from the bone—and looked at Raven.

"Now, Raven, I'm sure you're confused…"

Confused? She was adrift in someone else's legend, a passenger on a immortal's patience. His voice carried the weight of decisions that shattered nations.

"…you'll be living under my surveillance until I can deal with the thing that is your father."

The thing. Not the demon. Not the destroyer of worlds. Not Trigon the Terrible.

Just a thing. A bump in the road.

Raven's blood boiled, her fists clenched before her courage could reason.

"Why should I follow you? Do you even know who my father is?"

The silence was surgical. Clean. Sharp.

"Trigon is your father, and yes, I know exactly who he is. Trust me when I say I can beat him."

No thunder. No shout. Just certainty. Like gravity. Like time.

The room pulsed, and from his gaze spilled gold—not garish, not divine—but honest, impossible. Controlled apocalypse bled behind his eyes, kept at bay by nothing more than his will.

And it was then that Raven felt it.

The way children feel the sea before seeing it—the weight of something vaster than comprehension. Her breath hitched. Her knees bent slightly. She imagined—no, saw—the universe melting before that light, the same way wax yields to flame.

"This is not a punishment," he added, with a smile that promised both mercy and annihilation. "This is peace. Enjoy it."

Peace. A word she never owned.

And for the first time in years, Raven lowered her eyes—not in defeat, but in thought.

'Such energy… but can he really help me?'

Naruto didn't push. He gestured around the room, like a king opening his halls to a vagabond and asking no thanks.

"Wasp brought you here because she trusts you, and I trust her."

The words stirred something ugly and warm in her chest. A kind of homesickness for a home that had never existed.

Wasp smiled at her—not the soldier, not the hunter—but the daughter. Raven saw it now: the girl behind the steel, the child who had once believed in love.

And she had brought Raven here, not as a prisoner… but as a sister.

Raven nodded. Not a surrender. A postponement.

She would watch. She would learn. And if this man—this calm tempest wrapped in skin—truly could defeat Trigon…

Then maybe, just maybe, there was room in this world for hope that didn't rot.

Even for someone like her.

--------------------------------

Kurama:

The sky had bled grey long before the battle began, as if the world itself foresaw the clash and went blind to it.

Kurama, a storm made flesh and fire, was more rage than beast now—his tails thrashing arcs of devastation through the ruinous battleground. Against him stood the Enchantress, wrapped in sorcery so ancient it seemed the ground itself flinched when her fingers moved. Their war was not of fists or fire alone—it was will against will, madness against method. Each blow warped the world in echoes, twisting space, unraveling reason.

From a rooftop above the storm, four figures stared into the eye of immortal like violence.

Batman stood first among them—not by height or strength, but by force of presence. His cowl was soaked by wind-smeared ash, his armor dirtied with truth: he was out of his league. And still, he watched.

Beside him: Diana, with eyes like sharpened steel; Zatanna, veiled in spells that fluttered like dying moths; and Hal Jordan, whose silence cut deeper than his ring's emerald shine.

"That energy," Batman said, the words grudging, pulled from somewhere dark and honest. "It's not just power. It's... familiar. Like a memory that isn't mine."

Zatanna narrowed her gaze. Words failed her. She spoke instead in sigils—finger-danced glyphs that shimmered and cracked, casting reflections no mirror could hold.

She reached, not for answers, but for understanding. The kind that scars.

The rooftop pulsed beneath them. A heartbeat. No—his heartbeat. Kurama's. Not just a beast. A being. An echo of some cosmic grief woven into chakra and fury.

Zatanna staggered, her breath a whisper of frost.

"I tried to trace it," she said, her voice broken on the edges. "But it's everywhere. The Guardian's energy doesn't end. It stretches through the crust, through the clouds, into the damn stars. It's like I dipped my hand into the ocean and asked it to explain rain."

Hal frowned. "So what? He's an immortal now?"

"No," Zatanna said. "He's worse."

Batman's jaw clenched. Beneath the cowl, Bruce Wayne—dead son, broken boy, lifelong skeptic—tried to weigh this truth. The scales cracked under it.

"This is progress," he lied like only a man accustomed to losing could lie. "We have a trail. A sign. He's not invisible anymore. That means he can be caught."

Diana watched the firestorm below—Kurama and Enchantress locked in a dance that could grind mountains to powder. She touched Zatanna's shoulder, a warrior's comfort. The kind forged in war, tempered in silence.

"Then what's the next step?" she asked.

Batman's fingers flew over his communicator. He called the lightning without needing to shout.

"Flash. Find Wasp," he said. "Wasp leads us to Raven. Raven knows something—she always does. And if there's a mind that can fathom this Guardian, it's hers."

Far below, Kurama screamed—not with voice, but through rupture. The ground buckled as chakra detonated into raw, tearing sound. The Enchantress wept blood from her eyes and answered in tongues that hadn't been spoken since mankind first crawled.

Superman hovered above it all, his cape torn, eyes narrowed. The Martian floated beside him, unshaken. Two titans watching the storm with the grim patience of executioners.

Batman watched too.

Only he didn't blink.

Not for the fire. Not for the magic. Not even when the sky tore like parchment and something older than time peeked through.

A piece had moved. The Guardian had stepped onto the board.

 ----------------------------------

The wind screamed, a guttural dirge stitched with old magic and the threat of newer sins. Clouds churned like a battlefield above the battlefield, and there—hovering with the arrogance only the long-suffering possess—was Kurama.

Not the beast of legend. Not the snarling myth whispered to terrify children. No, this was the man beneath the fur, the storm cloaked in flesh, and he bore the elegance of kings and the wrath of monsters.

He drifted above it all—above the broken buildings and the immortals in capes playing chess with lives they'd never understand. His silhouette flickered, like a flame uncertain if it wanted to live or consume.

Naruto's voice. Smooth. Quiet. A blade laid flat against the skin.

"Kurama, end it quickly. The heroes are already watching, and you know how troublesome they can be if they start connecting dots."

Kurama's lip curled into something between disdain and fondness. "Affirmative," he muttered. His tone held the bitterness of wine left to rot in the sun. "One of these days, you'll fight your own wars, shadow prince."

Below, the world waited to burn. Above, Kurama commanded the sky to breathe.

With a motion that was less gesture and more divine decree, the wind obeyed. It didn't blow—it devoured. A hurricane sculpted by precision, his will wrapped around it like wire around a blade. The Justice League—Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the children playing immortal with noble faces—were ripped from their perches. Lifted and flung far, but not harmed. No, Kurama was too old for petty slaughter.

A demonstration, not a declaration.

He hovered, gold eyes drinking in the Enchantress below, who still pulsed with the arrogance of forgotten things. She sneered upward, drenched in her own sense of inevitability.

"Another charlatan pretending at immortalhood," she said. "The air stinks of fox fur and fading relevance."

Kurama did not reply. He unmade instead.

Space twisted. The air cracked like bone. His fingers, slow and measured, danced through the threads of reality, tugging, weaving, knotting. The world responded like a beaten dog—obedient and silent.

The seal he formed was not born of chakra alone, nor magic, but of something older. A truth spoken before language learned to lie. Enchantress screamed. Her power fought—vile green tendrils slithering and slashing through the air—but she was an artist in a burning gallery, and Kurama had already swallowed the fire.

The sigil closed. Compressing her. Unmaking her, kindly.

When it was over, she was reduced to a glimmering orb. A pretty thing. Like a pearl rolled from the mouth of a corpse. Kurama inspected it only briefly—no pride, no triumph. Just another day lost to necessity.

He turned away, the air shuddering in his absence.

"Done," he said, as though the word could carry the weight of his exhaustion.

Then the wind reclaimed him.

And the storm... died.

 -------------------------------

The field was quiet now.

Once it had raged with arcane screams and the brittle cry of fractured reality. Now, it stank only of ash and disappointment. Blackened earth stretched beneath the Justice League's boots like a charred tongue, dry and silent. A battlefield without bodies. A war without war.

Superman's eyes narrowed, vision peeling back layers of debris, dirt, and stone like a surgeon peeling skin from muscle. Nothing. No signature, no heat, no echo. The wind mocked him—cold, dry, indifferent.

"Nothing," Batman said, voice clipped, like he was trying to strangle it before it turned into rage. He adjusted the cowl as though it could sharpen his vision. It couldn't. His scanners blinked dumbly, as blind as men staring at stars and calling it understanding.

Zatanna crouched low, her fingers stroking a patch of earth scorched into a crater's kiss. The magic was gone, but something worse lingered. Power. Not arcane. Not divine. Older. Like a immortal who forgot he was supposed to die.

"This isn't magic," she whispered, her voice a conjuration of fear dressed in calm. "It's older than that. Older than anything I've tasted."

Batman didn't reply. He didn't like things that didn't fit into his boxes. He built boxes for everything—death, resurrection, alien demiimmortals, madmen in clown paint. But this? This was smoke given form. No fingerprints. No scent. Just the imprint of something impossible.

"Whoever they are," Wonder Woman said, her voice as steady as a blade left in fire too long, "they didn't want us involved. That wind was a warning… and a courtesy. I've felt what it's like to be struck by immortals. This was restraint."

Superman folded his arms, cape whispering against scorched air. His eyes never stopped scanning, as though hope could be X-rayed.

"Then we find them," he said. Not a suggestion. A vow. "We find out what they wanted with the Enchantress. What they're planning. Because if it's power they're after, they already have too much."

The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was waiting.

Behind his cowl, Batman's mind ticked like a watch counting down. Someone had danced in and out of the world—on his watch. That kind of ghost leaves no footprints. But even ghosts can bleed, eventually.