Caterpillar

Demonic god

"What in the world...? Did I put in the wrong coordinates?" Naruto muttered to himself when he saw the desolate scenery outside, through the pilot cabin's window.

It was a scene extremely similar to the one that he had seen half a year ago when he went to the Rao System at the request of Superman and saved the young Argonian girl, Kara Zor-El: countless asteroids littered the space where the planet Tamaran should have been.

"Computer, confirm our location," Naruto ordered.

At his request, the large screen of the computer showed a very detailed map of the Milky Way Galaxy, a map that proceeded to be zoomed in rapidly. It took just a few seconds for the map to be zoomed in until only a planetary system was displayed on the screen: the Vega System. On it, an inverted green triangle was blinking above the planet Tamaran. But when looking through the windows of the ship, Tamaran was nowhere to be seen. Countless chunks of rocks and a large amount of debris was all that was left of the previously flourishing planet.

Although Koriand'r did not understand the Almeracian language that Naruto used to interact with the AI of the ship, it did not take a genius to understand what was going on when she saw their location on the map of the Vega System and the mass of asteroids outside. Tears welled up in her eyes and she started crying bitterly.

From someone who had had everything, Koriand'r had lost everything.

Initially, a princess of the royal family and the next in line to become the ruler of her planet, she was sold out by her own parents, at a very frail age, for the sake of the greater good - for 'peace'. She became a slave and she even lost her innocence when one of the Gordanian jailers raped her. She had murdered that Gordanian in revenge later on but the damage done to her was obviously not repaired. Instead, things only continued to spiral downwards from there. After killing her jailors and attempting to escape, the Gordanians thought of her as too dangerous and sold her to their allies, the Psion Monarchy. In the following years, she had endured all kinds of torture and experiments at the hands of the Psions.

And now, even her homeworld had been destroyed. Koriand'r let herself down on her knees and sobbed in her hands.

Over the course of his long life, after witnessing the death of many worlds (including the apocalypse of his own) Naruto inadvertently became detached from the world around him. He would enjoy the moment and have fun but he always kept other people and places at an arm-length, never letting anyone in his heart except for his life-long friend, Kyuubi. However, at that moment, hearing the girl's anguished cries cracked his heart.

"Do you understand pain a little now? If you don't share someone's pain, you can never understand them."

Even to this day, almost a century after his fateful battle against the leader of the Akatsuki, Uzumaki Nagato, Naruto could vividly remember every single moment of it, every single word of his former enemy. Nagato was the one person that had marked him the most, even more than his mentor, the Toad Sage. Because the older Naruto grew, the more he realized the naivete of Jiraiya's dream and the harsh truth in Pain's words.

Naruto lowered himself to Koriand'r's level and put his hand gently on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Her situation hit very close to home for Naruto. He may have not had it as bad as Koriand'r - to be enslaved and raped by his captors - but, just like her, he had also been sacrificed by his own father for the sake of the village, for the greater good. Betrayed by their family for the sake of peace. And just like her, he had also lost his homeworld. He understood all too well her pain. And that was why his passive attitude cracked when faced with her cries.