章節 52: Epilogue
'Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God.'
It was a verse from the Bible, a prophecy that spoke about the coming of the Antichrist, the one that would try to deceive the Christians in believing that he was their one and only God.
But the man that had just recited the verse with the Bible in his hands was not a kind-looking pastor, nor did he look as if he had ever received any sort of theological education.
It was a brute of a man, burly and over 6 feet tall. Instead of a suit or priestly robes, he was wearing camo trousers and a Kevlar vest covered his upper body. Several belts with bullets glowing with a green light were strapped over his chest and waist and a modified AK47 was hanging loosely on his back.
Closing the Bible with a snap, he started to shout in an obnoxious imitation of a man overwhelmed by devotion.
'My people! The rebellion had already occurred! The man of lawlessness was revealed!'
'It's Uzumaki Naruto! He is the Dragon that the Bible speaks of! He is the Beast! The Antichrist! The one that proclaimed himself as a god above God!'
The several tens of armed people in front of him all shouted in agreement, their weapons raised in the air.
'Like the loyal servants of God, we won't stand for this atrocity! We won't shut up! We won't accept his profane regime!'
Another chorus of roars followed his words.
'New York will know the wrath of God through our hands. We are His tools! And we will destroy the idol lording over this city of Sin!'
'Who is with me?'
He didn't get any reply from the others seeing as the very next moment, tree-sized blue bone spikes burst from the ground and massacred everyone - it was the same technique that Naruto had used on the Prison Island to slaughter the death-row metahumans that had tried to kill him.
Scene break
In the wake of the Sinestro Corps War, New York City had almost been completely razed off the map. The Statue of Liberty was destroyed and Brooklyn, Manhattan and a good part of the Bronx were literally pulverized by the Anti-Monitor's waves of anti-matter and Kyuubi's bijuudama.
After nearly 30 years from the incident, however, there was no sign of the previous destruction. New York City had been rebuilt to an even higher splendour than before. The most noticeable change, however, was that instead of the former Statue of Liberty, there was a different statue overseeing the Big Apple...it was an almost exact replica of the small, 7 feet tall statue that had been erected in Quebec City years before, after Naruto's deadly battle against Doomsday.
It depicted a one-armed man, with bone spikes protruding from all over his torso. An expression of pain and exhaustion marred the face of the statue and the clothes were all tattered and battered.
It spoke of the sacrifice that Naruto had made to kill the seemingly unstoppable creature; the length to which he had gone to in order to avenge the deaths of the several thousands of innocent people that Doomsday had killed in its savage rampage - at least that's how people were seeing things. They didn't know that Naruto had actually done it because the beast had almost killed Misaki too when it slammed Superman into the bridge of Metropolis, destroying it. It was this statue that the armed man was referring as of the 'idol lording over the city of Sin'.
However, New York City was not the only that changed in the past 30 years.
Several companies that were cutting down forests in Brazil and the centre of Africa suddenly announced that they were ceasing their activities and retracted their personnel and their machines. The more stubborn ones, however, had their vehicles destroyed and the workers that were foolish enough to react violently from losing their jobs were instantly killed.
Naruto started with relatively small things but, by the time 10 years passed, there were almost no civilian vehicles at all that still used petrol as combustible. Electric cars have become the majority.
Gradually, as years passed by, thermal and nuclear power plants and were replaced in favour of solar, wind and tidal power plants. Furthermore, new ways to exploit the sources of renewable energy were devised every year. Cities like Beijing in China where there used to be a permanent curtain of smoke and mist from all the pollution were now a far cry from how they were decades before. After two decades the Greenhouse effect was visibly reduced and the global warming's effects were drastically diminished.
However, the first big shock that the world had experienced was when Uzumaki Naruto, the self-proclaimed god of Retribution, gave the state of Israel 1 week to cease to exist.
After the war against the Yellow Lanterns, people started to believe in his claims about him being a god... and that's when his nights began to become sleepless. Just how in the first night after he proclaimed his domain, Nature asked for vengeance, in the following nights, he was assaulted with all kinds of visions. And the most pressing and intense visions were the ones that resulted from large numbers of people.
The most intense visions were the ones resulted from the suffering of the people in Palestine. Tens of thousands of innocents were killed when the USA's army forcefully occupied Palestine and created the Israel state in 1948. Many more people continued to die after that, in the following decades. In those visions, it was like he was right there when everything happened. He witnessed with his own eyes how mothers lost their children, how entire families died in explosions; how people lost their homes and everything that they had worked for in their entire life. And all that because of the rich Jews that had had pull with the leading figures of the most powerful countries in the world after the Second World War. They demanded that the land was theirs since their ancestors had been the ones to inhabit it first, thousands of years before.
In the beginning, Naruto had tried to ignore it. And it was not hard given that there were very few Palestinians that actually called for his help in their heart. Those visions were started only because of their thoughts of revenge, their anger and pain. They had not specifically called out for him.
But as Naruto started to enact vengeance for Nature and not only, word of his deeds was spread across the Globe. With every passing day, more and more people started to believe in him.
An international terrorist organisation's secret headquarters was suddenly transformed into a forest of gigantic blue bones. Although nobody knew about their location, nothing could be hidden from Naruto in his visions. In his visions, he was nearly omniscient.
Every day, half of the news reports all over the world were filled with various heinous international criminals that were found dead, all of them in the same manner: at the top of a tree-sized blue bone that appeared to have grown out of nowhere, impaled through their chest. A drug cartel's lord in Mexico, human traffickers in South America and Eastern Europe, local crime lords and their armed forces in Africa, several important heads of the Sicilian and Russian Mafia, hundreds of member of the Triads in China (and not only) and so on.
After a few years, Naruto's visions about Palestine became impossible to ignore. Millions of Muslims all over the world, despite believing that Allah was their only god, started to turn their eyes towards him. In their daily prayers, millions of people started to beg for vengeance against the ones that killed their families, against the ones that occupied their lands.
This time it was different. They were specifically calling out his name. They were directly begging for his help. The visions became unbearable. Like a headache that would not go away no matter what he did.
He realized at that moment that people's worship was a double-edged sword. On one hand, their faith empowered him to unprecedented levels but, on the other hand, their faith was binding him, forcing to act almost against his own will in accordance to what his domain stood for: vengeance.
When his announcement that Israel would cease to exist in 1 week and that every Jew in there was asked to leave the country unless they would be massacred was heard all over the world, people did not really take it seriously. In their minds, killing human traffickers and Mafia lords was completely different compared to him threatening to raze an entire country off the map. Although Naruto had said it many times that he was not a hero, most people saw him as being just that: a hero. That's why they didn't think he would be capable of killing non-criminals too.
But when the Parliament's buildings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv were suddenly impaled by hundreds of gigantic boned that killed every living being inside, his terror spread everywhere.
The President of the USA and most of the leaders of the European Union's countries were outraged and demanded an explanation.
In the Vatican, the Pope even went as far as to publicly declare Naruto the Antichrist, the devil's incarnation for killing the people of God. But the next day, in the middle of Rome, Vatican state disappeared; a forest of gigantic blue bones appeared in its stead. After forcing out all the visitors, Naruto killed the Pope with his own hands and remaining hundreds of priests that refused to leave with the forest of bones - Dance of the Seedling Fern.
The consequences of this act shook the planet. Several countries declared that he was not allowed to enter their territory and the USA's government wanted to even declare war. But things did not go as smooth as the government had thought they would go. The Justice League choose to no get itself involved and the people themselves were not united for the cause. The Americans were not as religious as they had been decades before when the state of Israel was founded, especially in the Northern and Western states. It went to the point where a division was created. Coincidentally or not, the most religious states were pretty much the same states that had once formed the Confederation during the Civil War in the 19th century.
On the other side, after destroying the Parliament's buildings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Naruto did not immediately start to indiscriminately kill the civilians left and right. Now that the world had realized that he was dead serious, he gave the Jew one more week to leave.
In only 2 weeks, the centre of Catholic Christianity was destroyed and an entire country disappeared off the map. All that because of one man.
The consequences of that act were more severe than they looked at first sight. In the following years, Uzumaki Naruto was portrayed by Christianity as the Antichrist.
After taking Misaki, Tsume and her family into hiding to prevent any assassination attempts, Naruto threw himself into his task whole-heartedly. He was determined to make all of his enemies kneel in fear in front of him as soon as possible. In the following years, another country appeared after being freed from the oppression of the Turkish and Syrian governments - Kurdistan.
North Korea's communist regime was abolished and Naruto had killed the dictator with his own two hands before skewering the parliament's building just like he had done in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. North Korea and South Korea became one big state: Korea.
In India, one of Naruto's Bones Clones kept murdering rapists and child abusers on a daily basis for several months. There were almost no cities without a few dozen corpses hanging from bone spikes.
As time passed by and word of the cruel vengeance he enacted was spread across the world, nobody on the entire planet still thought of Naruto as of a hero. He had killed enough people to make a river from their blood.
The governments of various countries all over the world have tried to assassinate him dozens of times but all the attempts ended up in failure. Furthermore, it wasn't only the assassins that got killed, the ones that hired them were murdered too. That's how among his victims, the very president of the USA and the leading figures of CIA also found themselves at the top of a bone spike, impaled through the chest. After that, the USA was split as a Civil War took place. Nowadays, the USA was divided into 2 smaller federations of states.
After 30 years, everyone recognized his status as a god. They realized that he was untouchable. That he was unlikable. And that he could kill everyone like stepping on ants.
Nowadays, organised crime all over the world became almost non-existent. Naruto had several hundred Bone Clones spread across the planet. They were all telepathically connected to him so he knew what that was happening everywhere at any time. Furthermore, he had made it so the visions regarding any particular matter to be transmitted directly to the closest clone.
In 3 decades, the Earth became almost like a utopia. The armed conflicts disappeared altogether. There was no more terrorism. Mafia became so low key and so subdued that people thought it ceased to exist altogether. Human traffickers and hitmen disappeared as well. Prostitution was no longer forced on women that were taken as little more than slaves from their countries and sold in brothels. Nowadays, it was practised only by those who wanted it. The corrupt politicians gradually disappeared as well.
All of that happened because of a very simple reason: whenever someone harmed multiple people, resentment was born in their heart. And when that happened, the god of Retribution would learn of it too. That always ended in the gruesome death of the offenders.
There was no escape from his wrath. No lawyers could save them because the god of Retribution was above the Law. They couldn't run away nor could they hide anywhere because, in his visions, the god of Retribution was omniscient.
It was said that centuries ago in Walachia, Vlad the Impaler's cruel punishments - impaling the criminals for every little crime - have made the country so safe that one could leave a heap of gold in the middle of the street and nobody would dare to even touch it. Due to his exceedingly cruel and unforgiving nature, the Voivode Vlad got the moniker 'Dracul' which meant in the native language 'the Devil'. It's where the stories about Dracula have been started.
In 30 years, Naruto made the legend of Vlad the Impaler nearly become reality. Out of fear, there were no more wars. Out of fear, there was no more corruption - not on a large scale. Out of fear, there were no more crimes. Besides the mentally unstable people or the ones that acted in the heat of the moment, nobody dared to commit crimes anymore. Because once resentment was born, the god of Retribution would appear. And there was no way to escape from him or to trick him into thinking they were innocent. Due to his visions, Naruto was omniscient.
As decades passed by and the human society became fully accustomed to having a merciless god of Retribution overseeing the planet, the people started to give Naruto other attributes too, just like how people had done thousands of years ago with the Olympian gods. For example, initially a goddess of Wisdom and strategic War, Athena became known in time also as the goddess of Heroes, Crafts, Snakes and a quite a few other attributes.
Similarly, besides being known as the god of Retribution, the people started to think of him as a god of Cruel Justice - due to the omniscience of his visions, he had never punished someone unjustly - and a god of Nature as well.
He had never asked for people to worship him. He had never ask anyone to pray to him and he had never tried to take any other god's position in people's hearts. But nonetheless, it happened.
Scene Break
'I've brought peace to an entire planet. I accomplished something that I could not do in my past life, something that nobody, not even the Sage of the Six Paths himself had been able to do.'
'But at what cost...?'
'I have completely ruined my sister's life.'
Because of the uproar, he had caused in the first few years of Naruto's godhood, Misaki had had to stay in hiding for a very long time in order for her not become a target of an assassination attempt. By the time things finally settled and people became too terrified in order to ever try anything again, Misaki was already in her mid-thirties.
Her youth was over. The most beautiful part of a human's life was spent in hiding, away from her friends, away from society. When she finally came back, there was nobody waiting for her anymore.
Barbara Gordon had moved on. She found a husband in Dick Grayson, a man who used to act as the superhero Nightwing. They had 2 children together.
Supergirl, with whom she had initiated a friendship just a short while before the Sinestro Corps War, barely even remembered her anymore. She was now the leader of the Justice League after Superman left the planet to marry an alien queen named Maxima.
Tsume Inuzuka and her family gradually distanced themselves from the Uzumaki siblings to the point where they were little more than strangers now.
Even Kyuubi himself left the planet a few years after the war, exploring the boundless Universe with his Power Ring. Although he didn't tell Naruto the real reason, he wanted to find the Elemental Nations. He wanted to believe that his old world was still somewhere out there.
Naruto was distracted from his thoughts when someone's arms wrapped around his neck and a sweet smell entered his nose as a curtain of blonde hair fell over his shoulder, on his chest.
'Are you brooding again?'
It was Galatea. Although 3 decades passed, she still looked not even a day over 20. If there was any difference to how she looked now compared to before, it was that she had grown her hair until it reached her waist - something Naruto enjoyed immensely given how there wasn't a day that passed without him expressing his love for it.
'Just thinking,' he said but smiled when he felt her place a tender kiss on his cheek.
It was night and the two of them were flying very high up in the air, silently watching the city lights below.
'I used to think that becoming powerful was the most important thing. I thought that once I become a god, life will become perfect.'
Galatea rubbed her cheek against his as she said:
'Our life is still good. We are both healthy, young and powerful. And we have each other. Forever.'
Naruto was silent for a few moments.
'I just wish things were different... I wish I didn't become a god. Not a god of Retribution at the very least.'
'I wish I could go back and reject Nature's plea when I fought against the Anti-Monitor. I wish I didn't choose a domain... That way, I wouldn't have become a proper god.'
'I would not have become bound to serve the people that put their faith in me. I wouldn't have become something akin to a slave that obeys their prayers. I would not have taken so many lives.'
'I would have not ruined my sister's life...'
'Look at her - she is over 50 now. She started to become old... and she has no husband, she's never had a lover, she has no children and no real friends...no other family besides us. She's lonely. She is unhappy.'
'I failed her. And it's all because of this damned godhood.'
Galatea sighed.
'I know what you mean. I also wish I could have had a different life. A life where my father was still alive...a life where I could bear your kids. But there's nothing we can do. Life cannot be perfect. You can't have everything.'
Galatea was a clone. Even after 3 decades of living together, Naruto and Galatea still loved each other, their feelings only becoming stronger with each passing day. They often made love and tried to have children but they soon realized that because she was just a clone, she could not give birth to a new life.
Naruto suddenly turned around and took her hands in his own.
'What if I told you that there might be another chance for us?'
'What do you mean?' Galatea asked doubtfully.
'I know of a seal. A way to summon the God of Death himself - the Shinigami.'
She looked at him as though he had suddenly grown two heads:
'You want us to kills ourselves?!'
'Not really. Yes. I mean not that way!'
'Souls are immortal - they never die. According to the Kyuubi, after humans die, their souls enter the cycle of reincarnation. The Samsara.'
Galatea understood what he wanted to say.
'Baby, do you realize what you're saying? What are the chances for us to be reincarnated at the same time? What are the chances for us to even be reincarnated on the same planet? The Universe is unlimited, and the planets are countless.'
Naruto cupped her cheeks and pecked her lips.
'The Shinigami will not just take our lives. It has to be fair trade - that's how it was when my father and the third Hokage in my past life used it. And trust me, the life of a god is no small matter. Especially when it's a god as powerful as I am.'
Naruto's power was unrivalled even before he became a proper god. But now that billions of people on Earth and even the planet itself were worshipping him, he was even more powerful than Zeus himself had even dreamt of ever being. It was to the point where he could effortlessly destroy planets. In the later years, he began to even access the powers of a reality wrapper. And his power only continued to steeply increase with every passing year.
'I will make a deal: my life, in exchange for you, my sister and I to be given a second chance at a life together. In a world where I wouldn't repeat the mistakes of my past two lives.'
'A life where we could make a family...a life where we'll be happy.'
Galatea fell silent at his heartfelt words. Her voice was trembling when she spoke eventually:
'Won't our memories be wiped? I don't want to forget you, Naruto.'
Tears started to fall from her baby blue eyes and Naruto felt his own eyes becoming wet too when she said:
'What if we won't ever remember each other anymore? I love you too much! I don't want to lose you! I don't want our love to end!'
By now, tears were also flowing freely from his eyes, her emotions deeply touching him too. His lips pressed against her as he kept caressing her cheeks with his thumbs. When they parted, he rested his forehead against hers and said:
'Even in another life, I will never be able to fall for anyone else. I love you, Galatea. In my heart, there is space only for you. Nothing, not even death, will be able to change that. For I am a god. And so mote it be.'
It was a god's Oath. It was the second Oath that Naruto had made - the first being when they married and he swore to love Galatea eternally. It was the same Oath, just renewed. And strengthened. It was an Oath that could not be broken.
He smiled at her and kissed her one more time. Then, his hands went through a series of hand-seals. When he was done, a hazy grey silhouette simmered in the air above him.
Scene break
A tall woman with a very generous bust and blonde hair styled in two pigtails ran after a young girl about 7 years old who was sprinting ahead as fast as her small legs could carry her. However, considering that she was a kunoichi and a terribly gifted one for her age, the little girl was moving much faster than most civilians could run.
'Young lady, stop right there! How many times have I told you to stop running ahead?! You don't want to get lost in the crowd, do you?'
The girl stopped and looked at down with a guilty expression in her baby blue eyes.
'Ma, ma... give her a break, Tsunade-hime. It's a festival today after all. Relax!' a man said from her right in a laid back manner.
Unlike Tsunade who appeared to be a beautiful woman in her thirties, the man looked like he was past his prime. However, those who knew him knew that he was not be underestimated. His name was Jiraiya, the Toad Sage, and he was one of the most famous shinobi in the world.
Tsunade glared at him:
'Relax? How am I supposed to relax?! It's your fault in the first place that I got a kid at this age!'
'You're still young, princess. Still young and beautiful.' Jiraiya said sincerely and kissed her on top of her head.
The scowl on her face melted into a soft blush and she sighed. If someone told her years before that she would marry Jiraiya of all people, she would have punched them to the moon and back. But life worked in mysterious ways. One drunken accident led to her becoming pregnant with his child; their child - the girl that was looking at her feet now like a kicked puppy.
Tsunade couldn't bear with seeing her like that.
'I'm sorry for shouting at you, honey, but you have to be careful, ok? What if you got lost and some stranger tried to hurt you?'
The girl looked up to her mother, clenched her tiny hand into a fist and shook it while saying with conviction:
'I'd punch them through a wall! Un!'
Several passers-by that happened to overhear their conversation stopped and cooed at how adorable the little girl looked while she was trying to sound threatening.
Jiraiya, however, became pale in the face. Only Tsunade and he knew that their little girl had inherited her mother's monstrous brute strength. The young girl was dressed in a cute purple kimono and her baby blue eyes and bob-cut blonde hair made her look positively adorable but Jiraiya had witnessed with his own eyes how she actually managed to punch a hole into a wall in her last training session with her mother.
In contrast to Jiraiya who was feeling cold shudders down his back, Tsunade smiled proudly at her and patted her gently on the head:
'That's my baby girl!'
Said girl's eyes half-closed in satisfaction at her mother's gesture of affection and leaned into her touch, an action which generated another wave of 'Awww' from the people around them.
However, the girl's pale-white face suddenly became as red as an apple and excitement started to burn in her eyes.
'Oh, she has 'that' look on her face,' Jiraiya said and chuckled before turning around having guessed the reason behind his daughter's sudden change in mood.
Coming towards them was a family of 4 - a blonde man and a red-haired woman in their late twenties were walking towards them holding their children by the hand - a red-haired girl that looked like a miniaturized carbon copy of her mother and a blonde boy that looked just as much as his father as his sister did with their mother.
'Minato, I just knew it was you!' Jiraiya exclaimed.
'Hey, sensei. Let me guess, you saw it on little Tea's face, didn't you?'
The adults shared a laugh together but Minato's son and Tsunade's daughter were too absorbed by each other to care about anything else.
'Hey, Naruto, don't be rude, say hello to your godfather!' his mother admonished lightly.
The red-haired girl, Naruto's older sister, giggled softly and said:
'You know these two: when they see each other it's like the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore. Look at him, only 7 and he's already found a girlfriend! I'm older than him and I still have no-one!'
Minato's eyes instantly fell on her.
'You're only 9. No boyfriend until you're at least 15, you hear me? If I as much as I smell any boys around you before that, daddy will break their legs!'
Misaki stomped her foot and yelled in embarrassment:
'Dad!'
It was because just when her father was speaking, a boy that she fancied - Shisui Uchiha - just happened to pass by. It was the summer festival in Konoha and everyone was in the streets, celebrating.
Ignoring the adults who began to tease poor Misaki, young Naruto and Galatea drank each other with their eyes.
'I missed you!' Naruto whispered, his eyes never leaving hers.
'I missed you too!' Galatea whispered too in return.
To the adults' great surprise, the two young children closed the distance and embraced each other. They did not know how to react to it.
For some reason, Naruto and Galatea have always been the best friends from the moment they saw each other for the first time. They were of the same age and, as years passed, their friendship seemed to only become stronger. They could be seen playing ninja or training and even studying together every day. They were inseparable.
Their respective parents were even saying jokes like 'these two kids fell in love with each other before they even learned what love is'. However, they never saw them embracing each other before. Now it was the first time.
As they tightly hugged each other, Naruto whispered in her ear:
'I remember everything, Tea. I love you!'
The girl nodded repeatedly as she struggled to hold her tears in.
'Me too. Me too, I love you, Naruto.'
They broke the hug and Galatea quickly wiped her face with the sleeve of her purple kimono.
'Why are you crying, Tea?' Tsunade asked worriedly as she bent down to her level to check her out.
'Unn, I'm not crying. I'm just very happy.' the little girl said, her wide smile revealing a gap in her front teeth.
'Kawaii...' Naruto whispered to himself, amazed at seeing how adorable Galatea could be as a young child.
The two families spend a great time together at the festival. Soon, evening came and the atmosphere got even merrier. Throughout the entire day, Naruto and Galatea never left each other's side, their small hands always linked together.
As they watched the brilliant fireworks in the sky, Naruto squeezed Galatea's hand warmly.
'It worked!' he said and she nodded in agreement, her face filled with happiness.
'It really did!'
They were given another chance at life. A life where they would both have the opportunity to experience a happy childhood, surrounded by the love of their living parents. A life where they could grow up together and fall in love over and over again with each other. A life where they would make a family. A life where they would live happily ever after.
— 結束 — 寫檢討
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