Naruto + Justice League - Part 5

The atmosphere in the Watchtower meeting room was tense, very tense. It had been no more than an hour ago that Uzu had unequivocally kicked their asses, most of them without even throwing a single punch. Green Lantern, Hawkgirl and Flash felt particularly ashamed, having been beaten without even a fight in the case of Hawkgirl or walking into a trap for the other two.

But that was not the reason for the tenseness. Oh no, that was caused by the uncharacteristically murderous air around Superman.

Well, everyone except Xanna was tense, the horned goddess herself was trying not to look like she was amused by all this pointless mental agony. Especially when she considered that her husband was probably just about getting settled in some hyper luxurious hotel in a remote part of the world where he was going to pamper the hell out of the 'poor kidnapped rape victim'.

The kryptonian was glaring at the table in front of him and looked as if he was barely restraining himself from burning a hole through it. The injuries that Uzu had inflicted on him hadn't fully healed yet, but he refused to stay in the infirmary.

"Why is it taking me so long to heal?" He ground out through clenched teeth, frustrated that he couldn't be out there searching for his cousin yet.

"There is some residual kryptonite radiaton in the bite wound, it is slowing down your healing factor." J'onn said stoically.

"Are you telling me that Uzu has teeth made of kryptonite?" Flash asked incredulously.

"No, Clark would be dead in that case. More likely, Uzu was chewing on a piece of kryptonite before we fought him." Batman stated bluntly.

Flash didn't make any comments on that, despite the joke about dental floss that came to mind, seeing that Superman was not in the mood to listen to anything that didn't involve finding his cousin.

"Have you or J'onn found anything at all on where he might have taken Kara?" Clark demanded impatiently.

"Nothing, he's vanished the same as before and even if we did find him, we're in no shape to fight him right now." Batman answered.

"So you're saying that we should just let him have her?" Superman spat angrily, glaring at the other man.

"No, I'm saying that we can't let him pick the battlefield or this is just going to happen again. When we fight him next we need to be ready." Bruce said, glaring back at the kryptonian.

"And how long will that take? What's going to happen to-" Superman spat angrily but cut himself off before he finished the sentence, the thought of what his cousin might be going through at this very moment causing his guts to twist in anguish.

"Calm down, it's possible that nothing will happen to your cousin and that Uzu only took her to bait you." Batman said.

"What?" Superman asked, startled. The rest of the Justice League plus Xanna looked similarly startled.

"Uzu has been killing the worst criminals in Gotham for weeks but he's always been especially cruel to the rapists, so he might have just been pushing your buttons." Batman explained.

Everyone started looking more hopeful, Superman in particular looked remarkably like a puppy begging for a treat. Xanna was actually surprised that anyone picked up on that little detail considering how much effort Naruto had put into presenting himself as the scum of the earth.

"Are you sure?" Superman asked desperately, grasping at any reason to believe that Kara wouldn't be hurt.

"No," Batman bluntly shattered his hopes, not being one to sugarcoat a bad situation. "I said it was a possibility. It's equally possible that he was just doing that because he felt like it. Plenty of those he killed had no criminal record and his behaviour ever since his appearance has been pretty inconsistent. But what you say he said to you while he was beating you up indicates that there is at least a chance that he won't hurt her."

Superman went back to looking anguished and enraged, once again glaring at the table and willing himself to heal faster so that he could go search for his cousin. A 50/50 chance that his cousin wasn't helpless in the hands of a rapist wasn't very reassuring.

"I don't suppose you could offer any insight on this?" Green Lantern aimed his question at Xanna.

"Nothing new I'm afraid, Uzu was always unpredictable and no one has ever managed to fully understand his motivations." Xanna answered. That much was true even. Naruto always left people scratching their heads in confusion over his actions.

Though she did have to restrain herself from facepalming. Naruto's slip up about the importance of little sisters because he was pissed at Superman for not trying to kill him had nearly given up the game.

"What about the magic he used? Do you know of any way to counter it?" Diana questioned next.

"I do, but I must caution you that it isn't magic in the same way that you are used to." She answered.

"What do you mean?" Shayera asked curiously. "My mace disrupts magic and it worked just fine on those chains."

"We call it chakra, it is a combination of the energies of body and spirit."

"So if it isn't magic, then why did Hawkgirl's mace work on it and why was it able to hurt Superman?" Batman asked, hoping to find a way to counter it, especially if he could duplicate it.

"I can only guess that it was the spiritual part of chakra that explains both, the physical half of chakra gives substance and the spiritual half gives form. I would surmise that Shayera's mace disrupted the spiritual energies giving form to the chains, leaving the energy of body to dissipate into nothing without a form to give substance to. Similarly, Clark seems invulnerable to anything physical aside from kryptonite, but since the lightning and the shakujo that Uzu used are partly spiritual it got through that invulnerability." Xanna explained, getting understanding nods from everyone.

Of course, she didn't let them know that it was fully within Naruto's ability to prevent such a thing from repeating itself now that he'd experienced it once.

"And the counter?" Batman prodded.

"Me." She said shortly. "I am the only other chakra user present and my Yatta Mirror will allow me to block any ranged attacks, leaving only physical and indirect attacks for you to worry about. Though the Green Lantern ring may also be effective as a way to block him."

"So you're going to need to fight him with us?" John asked, cleching the fist with the ring on it, remembering the force behind Uzu's punches. He knew that he wouldn't be able to take a sustained attack like that, but it was reassuring to know that it would work.

"It seems I have little choice in the matter, but I will only be able to defend you as my skill with chakra manipulation is not as great as his and I have no martial arts training." It was greater in fact, but the second part was true at least.

"I thought you said that Uzu only gained these powers because he chose to walk the Outer Path?" Batman asked suspiciously, seeing some inconsistency in her story.

"What he has used against you so far were not the powers of the Outer Path, merely regular chakra powers available to any of my people with sufficient training...though as a Sage of Six Paths, Uzu is naturally more powerful in the art than most anyone else. The Outer Path deals in the manipulation of the border between life and death, such as resurrection and the calling of undead to fight for him...for a price."

"He can bring the dead back to life?" Diana asked, stunned just like everyone else.

"Yes, it was because of this that I had to flee, he had reincarnated a group of long dead heroes to fight for him and we had no means by which to stop them." Xanna confirmed, inwardly snorting at the creative bent to the truth.

"Why hasn't he used that against us yet then?" Batman asked, still suspicious.

"He likely considers you to be so beneath him as to make such extreme measures unneeded. From what I understand, those powers carry a heavy price and require considerable preparation." She explained, hoping that he would drop it already. This paranoid suspicion that Batman had going for him was starting to irritate her, even if he was right to be suspicious of her.

"What about the way he absorbed my heat vision and sent it back at me?" Superman asked, wanting as much of an advantage as possible for the next encounter.

Xanna faked a look of surprised interest when she spoke next. "Did he use any other special power except for elemental manipulation?"

"He created some kind of very strong spider webbing to trap us." Shayera said.

"That is likely a form of sub-element the same as his ability to manipulate plants, though not one I have ever heard of." Xanna said dismissively.

"He switched positions with me when I had him caught in my lasso." Diana said, recalling the moment when she suddenly found herself bound by her own rope.

"I see, that sounds like direct space-time manipulation, as I thought. A very dangerous ability and one that was long thought lost."

"He also said that he sealed away Kara's power." Superman informed.

"Fuinjutsu, a powerful art in the hands of a master. I truly have no choice but to help you fight him, he has grown much more powerful than he was when I fled from him. Had I known he was this strong already I would likely not have bothered coming here." Xanna said with a despondent sigh, seemingly losing hope in their chances.

"But this means that we can choose the battlefield." Bruce said contemplatively, setting his suspicions aside for now, though he intended to keep an eye out for treachery. "If Xanna is out in the open, then we can make him come to us and that's going to count for a lot. We can win."

"Then we'll do that as soon as I'm healed." Superman said firmly, not wanting to waste even a single moment. The things that his cousin might be going through right now didn't bear thinking of.

The rest of the League agreed whole-heartedly. They didn't want Kara to be held captive by that man for even a moment longer than necessary. His behavior during their battle left all of them with a deep unease about what he might do to the poor girl.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Kara In-Ze drifted sluggishly back into consciousness, feeling weak and somehow heavy.

The first thing she noticed was that the bed she was lying on was deliciously, sinfully comfortable. The sheets were made of some kind of incredibly high quality material that seemed to be designed specifically to feel good and the temperature of the room was at that exact point where it made you want to stay where you were. Additionally there was a gentle breeze blowing through the room that brought in an intoxicatingly relaxing scent of nature, of forest and ocean.

It was a struggle not to sluggishly drift back to sleep to say the least.

Only the resurfacing memory of seeing her cousin getting the tar beaten out of him by a huge horned man and trying to save him only to get captured with negligent ease snapped her out of the indolent daze.

Sitting up in the large bed, Kara rubbed at her face to shake off the last vestiges of sleepiness.

She was relieved to note that her clothes hadn't been changed even though there was another set laid out for her on the nearby table. She ignored those as she got out of the bed and looked around.

She was obviously not at home, which must mean that she'd been captured. But if that was so, then this was the nicest dungeon ever conceived of. She had expected that the bad guys would keep their prisoners in a gloomy, damp cave somewhere, not in the most decadently luxurious room she'd ever imagined.

Maybe they're hoping I won't want to leave? She thought to herself wryly.

A glance out of the open window had already revealed that it was a tropical island of some sort. Her first idea upon seeing that open window was to fly out of it and back home, but found much to her distress that her feet refused to leave the ground.

That sense of heavyness was brought back to the forefront of her mind and she realised that gravity wasn't just a suggestion that she could ignore at will anymore. Desperately trying her other powers, she found that heat vision and frost breath didn't work anymore either. A grab of the underside of the large and heavy bed revealed that her strength was no longer up to lifting something that should have been trivial.

She was relieved to note that X-ray vision at least seemed to be working, but that relief soon faded when she saw Uzu, along with Poison Ivy and two unknown blonde women sitting around a table one floor beneath her and apparently playing a card game. All three women were wearing light and airy white clothing and looked remarkably relaxed considering they were in the company of a man known for killing several hundred people.

Since X-ray vision had worked, she figured her super hearing would too and she focused on their conversation.

"...have to be cheating!" Poison Ivy was saying insistently.

"Sorry, but no." Uzu responded with an amused grin. "I've just always had ridiculous luck with games of chance."

"Whatever, I just wish sleeping beauty would wake up already so that we can go to the beach. This place is too neat to waste time playing card games." The younger of the two blonde's grumbled and Kara was startled to recognise the voice of Harley Quin. The woman looked so different that she hadn't been able to identify her at first, even her speech patterns were different.

Though Kara figured that with the Joker dead, it was only natural that some changes would happen to her.

"Don't worry about that, she just woke up and is eavesdropping on us as we speak." Uzu revealed casually, startling Kara and making her nervously look around for monitoring devices.

"There's no cameras in the room if that's what you're thinking Kara, I'm just able to sense you." Uzu said, seemingly to himself but Kara knew it was aimed at her.

"Are you sure she's awake?" Poison Ivy asked sceptically. "It just looks like you're talking to yourself."

Uzu sighed and aimed a disappointed look at the redhead. "Oh ye of little faith."

"Are you going to smite me for it?" She snarked back with a smirk.

"I'm not much into smiting." Uzu said back wryly. "I might spank you though."

Kara could see the redhead's pale cheeks go pink at the obvious insinuation even as she responded. "Pervert."

"You know it."

There was a moment of silence before Uzu spoke again. "So are you coming down here anytime today Kara? Nobody is going to hurt you and I'm sure you must be confused."

Seeing as she didn't really have any other choice, Kara cautiously made her way down.

When she finally made it to them, she did something between glaring defiantly and shifting nervously, feeling vulnerable without most of her powers.

"Good morning Kara." Naruto greeted pleasantly. "I'm sure you've already recognized Pammy and Harleen." He gestured to Poison Ivy and Harley as he said this.

Pamela gave him a dirty look at being called Pammy but didn't object, but Harley was less restrained. "You know I don't like my given name, don't I get a nickname?"

"Alright Peaches, I won't call you Harleen anymore." Naruto responded agreeably.

She rolled her eyes but didn't protest. As far as nicknames go, it could be worse.

She'd been rather terrified of him ever since he'd killed the Joker as if it was no big deal but Ivy had managed to talk her out of the worst of her anxiety by now. When he'd first approached them with this offer of a vacation in a tropical paradise she'd been silently begging her friend to refuse because of that fear and had then spent an hour just keeping her head down and hoping he would ignore her. The past two hours spent playing games with him had allowed her to see that he really was as nice as Red had been saying he was. He was still monstrously dangerous, but she could understand that he wasn't dangerous to her.

Surprisingly, she'd only felt a brief sense of resentment against him for killing the Joker and even that was completely overshadowed by relief. Granted, she'd have probably gone completely crazy if Red hadn't been there for her, but with the mad clown dead she felt more free than she had felt in years.

"And this over here is Priscilla, though you probably know her better as Cheetah." He finished, gesturing to the somewhat older blonde woman that looked to be in her early thirties.

Kara aimed a disbelieving look at the woman, unable to reconcile her with the animal hybrid villainess.

"I think you broke her." Priscilla quipped, rather enjoying the shocked look on the young superheroine.

"But how can this be Cheetah, she's not...well, a cheetah!"

"I turned her back." Naruto explained with a shrug.

Kara took a deep breath and got control of herself, not wanting to let Uzu dictate the flow of events. "I won't cooperate you know, no matter how nice you make my prison look Uzu."

Naruto scratched at his face and thought of the best way to approach this. He'd figured that she would be the stubborn type but it really would be preferable if she didn't sulk for the entire vacation. "My name is Naruto actually, Uzumaki Naruto. Uzu is just something I made up to make myself seem more alien and mysterious to you hero types."

Kara continued glaring with her arms crossed, looking quite mulish.

"Girls, I think you might as well head to the beach without us. This looks like it might take a while." He said wryly to the other three women.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have us stay and help? It might be easier that way." Priscilla asked with an arched eyebrow, easily seeing how stubborn Supergirl was intending to be.

"Nah, I've got this. Besides, I'm the one that kidnapped her, so it's only fair that I handle this." Naruto waved off.

"Don't take too long now, I'm going to want a massage soon." Pamela said teasingly as they left, surprising Kara quite a bit, as she could clearly recall the redhead being far less cheerful from their limited interaction in the past.

Pamela had been a bit dubious about his offer of a vacation at first, especially given his rather insane plan of kidnapping Supergirl to go along with them, but since she had nothing better to do she had figured what the hell. She hadn't been expecting something this luxurious and was glad that she accepted. It might even help her clear her head enough to figure out what she wanted to do with her life from now on. Sticking around in Gotham and getting into fights with Batman seemed kind of stupid and counterproductive.

"Have a seat." Naruto offered once they were alone.

"I'll stand." Kara snarked, mostly just to be contrary.

"I know you said you won't cooperate," Naruto began, sounding amused. "but there really is nothing for you to cooperate with, which means that there is also nothing for you to be rebellious about."

"What do you mean?" She asked in wary confusion.

"I mean, that my purpose for your cousin is achieved just by your presence here. I just figured that I might as well make it as pleasant as possible for you." He explained.

"And what 'purpose' do you have for my cousin?" Kara asked tersely.

"When I picked that fight with the League earlier I just wanted to let them know that they needed to step their game up if they wanted to beat me and I did everything I could to provoke them into trying to kill me. While I was fighting your cousin however, something came up that made me really angry and then you came flying in and I decided to kidnap you on impulse because of that anger."

Seeing that the girl was listening intently despite her intention to be difficult, Naruto continued explaining.

"I could see that he was holding back a lot of his strength subconsciously, which I will admit is probably a good thing considering how much stronger he is than the average human, but I wanted to see just how strong he really was. To that end I started threatening that I was going to rape you if he didn't entertain me."

Seeing her start to look alarmed and fearful at hearing this Naruto quickly moved to reassure her. "Don't worry, I'd never do something like that, I just said it to provoke him."

Kara calmed down somewhat, but still looked a lot more tense than before.

"What got me really angry was that he could already see that I was stronger than him, that I was playing with him and he had a perfect chance to kill me, but he didn't take it." Naruto explained before continuing wryly. "Not that it would have actually killed me, but he didn't know that."

"Clark isn't a killer and he won't become one just because you were provoking him." Kara said fiercely.

"His silly morals are his own business, if he wants to play kiddie games with the bad guys that's his problem. What made me angry was that I was threatening to rape you and he was losing the fight so that must have been a real concern to him, but he still couldn't muster the will to attempt killing me for it when he had the chance." Naruto retorted with a scowl.

"He thinks that you kidnapped me and that you're raping me right now?" She asked, going pale as she realised the situation.

"That's the idea." The horned blond confirmed.

"I have to get back to him, tell him that I'm alright." She said desperately, looking around as if a way home would reveal itself. She knew that Clark had to be going crazy considering how overprotective he was at the best of times.

"I'm afraid that's not going to be happening. I'm going to make your cousin worry himself sick for at least a few days before I let you go back to him."

"But why? Why would you do this to him?" She demanded, both angry and desperate.

"I don't think you understand the situation sweetie." Naruto said mildly, ignoring her scowl at the endearment. "If I had actually been as much of a bastard as I was pretending to be, then you would be chained naked to a bed right now instead of having this conversation with me. Super Panties couldn't have known that I wouldn't actually do anything to you, but the threat didn't seem real to him until it was too late. I have no doubt that he would have tried to kill me now if the same situation repeated itself, but you don't get second chances to protect your loved ones. He hesitated to destroy a threat against his family because he was afraid of getting his hands dirty. For the kind of crap I was telling him, I expected him to rip my heart out, set me on fire and piss on the ashes, instead of that he hesitated, hesitated to protect you. That's why I'm making him suffer through the next few days in the belief that I'm doing exactly what I told him I'd do."

Kara's defiance left her bit by bit as he continued speaking. She loved Clark and admired his determination not to kill, but hearing what she could have been going through because he'd hesitated to use lethal force made her feel sick. The threat of rape had never really registered as a concern to her because she was so powerful, but all of that power was gone now, leaving her weak and vulnerable.

Peripherally she was aware that Naruto had probably done that on purpose to drive the point home as much as it was to keep her from escaping, but it hardly mattered in the end.

"Don't worry too much, I'll take you back to your cousin in a few days and the worst that will come of this will be that he's probably going to be a bit overzealous about your protection for a while, but hopefully it'll teach him that some convenient third option that lets him both protect what he wants to protect and keep his hands clean in the process won't always exist." Naruto said soothingly, her lost puppy expression making him want to comfort her.

Kara sank into one of the previously offered chairs, abandoning any effort at being difficult since it wouldn't make any difference.

"Why do you care anyway? You don't even know me, why is it so important to you if he's willing to kill to protect me or not?" She asked with a lot less fire in her voice than before.

"I had three little sisters once, not blood related to me, but they were still my little sisters..."Naruto said nostalgically.

"Had?" Kara asked hesitantly, getting the feeling that this story didn't have a happy ending.

"All three of them were soldiers, but they were important assets to the organization they belonged to, so the chance of them dying in the line of duty was low. I used to be part of the same ogranization and I was an even more indispensable asset, which is also the reason why I had people after my head."

Kara leaned in closer, obviously interested and it made Naruto grin slightly to see her intent face.

"They were some of the most dangerous men alive, but I was stronger than them and I didn't really take them seriously because of that. I was born into that life and never had any real choice about being a soldier or not, but I had much bigger ambitions in mind and no loyalty for anyone other than the woman that later became my wife. Because of this I mostly did my own thing, fighting and killing my pursuers only when they came to me instead of hunting them down and killing them the way I should have."

Naruto half expected her to object somehow to the last part but she was apparently too interested in the story to argue.

"Eventually something happened that made me abandon that organization, after which my wife and I went on our honeymoon and more or less forgot about the group of idiots that were killing themselves in their attempts to capture me. That was a mistake, because they eventually found a way to steal my wife away and nearly killed her. I managed to save her by the skin of my teeth but with their last gasp they brought back to life a man that was stronger than me, forcing me to hide."

"My three little sisters and one big sister had their own lives and didn't want to go into hiding with me and I didn't want to force them. Not long after that, Madara-that was the guy they resurrected by the way-attacked them. By the time I got there it was too late, my big sister and a friend were already dead and my little sisters were being used as hostages to force me into surrender."

"He had me trapped, because if I surrendered to him, it would kill my wife and if I didn't I would lose my sisters. But those stupidly brave girls saw it and they wouldn't let him win. They knew that if I gave in that Madara would enslave the world with no chance of escape so I had to watch as they killed themselves right in front of me to spare me the choice, because they loved me."

At this point Kara was starting to get a little misty eyed and unthinkingly grabbed his hand in a show of support, much to Naruto's surprise. She was a much nicer girl than he'd expected, which only confirmed his decision to give her cousin some mental torture for his failure to protect her.

"Don't worry, that was over ten years ago and I've made my peace with it. I always knew that I would outlive them and I know that they're alright where they are." He reassured her. "But there you have it, I was screwing around instead of taking a threat seriously and I lost them because of it. Now it really rubs me the wrong way if I see someone else doing the same thing. I should have been the one protecting them but in the end they chose to die to protect me, because I didn't take a threat seriously."

"What happened to Madara?" She asked, even though she was fairly sure that Naruto had killed him.

"I trapped his soul into a crystal and made him suffer absolute sensory deprivation for about nine years or so. By the time I let him out he was so insane that it took him six months just to blunder into the afterlife and I still think he only managed that by accident." Naruto admitted.

"How could you know that?" Kara asked with her nose scrunched cutely in confusion. Naruto manfully pushed down the urge to hug her.

"I keep telling people that I'm a god but nobody seems to believe me." He told her mildly.

"Barbara told me about that, we both thought you were just on a power trip." Kara admitted, remembering to let go of his hand. "But she also said that you're a huge pervert and you're not acting much like it."

"Oh I am a huge pervert, but I was only perving on Barbara to wind her up for the most part. If I had seriously wanted to seduce her I wouldn't have been so heavy handed about it, not to mention that she's a bit young for my tastes." Naruto said with an amused grin.

"Does that mean that I'm too young for you too?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, knowing that Barbara was a bit older than her.

"Definitely." He grinned. "How about you forget about your uptight cousin and be my little sister instead?"

"I think I'll pass but thanks for the offer." She said dryly.

Kara could hardly believe how much different he was in comparison to what she'd heard. His methods might be very harsh but he actually meant well. She still wasn't okay with his rampant killing but after hearing that heart wrenching story about the way he lost his little sisters she couldn't bring herself to give him grief over it. She still wasn't sure what to make of the fact that he had a trio of villainesses keeping him company but figured she would find out soon enough.

"Would you like to go to the beach now? I did bring you here to give you a vacation after all. Just because I've brought you here against your will is no reason not to enjoy yourself." He reasoned.

"It feels wrong to have fun here while Clark is worrying himself sick over me." Kara admitted. "Couldn't I just call him to tell him that I'm alright?"

"Let me just point out that Clark will worry himself sick whether you have fun or not, as he should, and calling him would defeat the point, not to mention that it would give the game away." Naruto said dryly.

"What game?" She asked in confusion.

"Oh right, I haven't told you about that yet. Well, let me tell you about what kind of ideas two bored gods might get if they had an outsider's perspective on this world..."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Naruto grinned at the scowling, angry teenager that was reclining on a beach chair next to his with her arms crossed. It was cute.

Kara hadn't been too impressed with his tale of how the Justice League was being fucked with and he had subsequently lost most of the sympathy points that their earlier conversation had engendered.

He'd managed to convince her that she should change her clothing, so she was no wearing the same type of airy clothing that the other three women were, along with a two piece bathing suit under it, but she had categorically refused to stop sulking ever since he'd finished revealing everything. The fact that he had made sure that she knew that he was blocking any and all ways of contacting the League hadn't helped her disposition.

"Nothing has changed you know. The only difference is that you know about it." Naruto pointed out.

"Exactly, now I know what an ass you are to play with people's lives like this." She snarked back.

"It's not as if it's going to be hurting anybody." He reasoned bemusedly.

"Yeah, except the hundreds of people you've killed so far." Kara snipped, focusing on another sore point.

"Trust me when I tell you that the world is better off without them." He said with calm certainty.

"And what gives you the right to decide that?" She demanded.

Naruto raised an eyebrow, sensing that another philosophical discussion was looming, but he grinned and replied in a way that he knew would provoke her. "Might makes right."

Kara gaped at him incredulously and spluttered out a response. "What kind of stone age reasoning is that?!"

"It's the same reasoning that the world has always worked on, the same reasoning that it still works on." He countered.

"No it doesn't! Society is based on a code of morals not on the fact that whoever is the strongest gets to decide what's right and what isn't." She insisted.

"Really?" Naruto drawled sarcastically.

"Yes, really!"

"Alright then, let me argue that point."

She impatiently gestured for him to do so, certain that she would win this argument.

"Take your average criminal, he performs a crime that according to this moral code that society is supposedly based on is immoral and then he hides the fact that he committed a crime. Why does he hide?" He asked her and continued before she could say anything. "And yes, I know that laws and morals are a different thing, but they coincide on most points."

Kara frowned in thought as she answered. "Because if he doesn't, the police will arrest him."

"So the police enforce the law, which is based on a moral code? Basically, the police enforce what is deemed 'right' by society?"

"Yes." She nodded in agreement.

"Alright, now take your average supervillain, which the police are unable to stop. Someone like the recently deceased Livewire for example. Her lightning powers would make almost certain that the police wouldn't be able to stop her. What happens in that case?"

"Well...a superhero like my cousin would stop her."

"So, Superman would enforce the law in place of the police who have suddenly found themselves powerless?"

"Yes..." Kara said with some uncertain confusion, getting the feeling that this was all leading up to something.

"And what happens when someone like me comes along, someone that no superhero currently making Earth their home can bring down?"

"They'd find a way." Kara asserted.

"You're dodging the question sweetie." Naruto pointed out, grinning as she once again scowled at the endearment.

"Don't call me that." She grumbled. "I guess you'd win and be able to do whatever you want."

"So...the police are stronger than the average criminal, supervillains are generally stronger than the police and superheroes are generally stronger than supervillains, which means that the system works...sort of. But when someone comes along that's too powerful to be beaten, he can ignore that flimsy moral code and do as he pleases, because nobody can force him to respect it."

"I guess, but that doesn't make what you're doing right, it just makes you strong." She grumbled again.

"If I wanted to, I could bring the world to its knees and make a new moral code that says all rapists should be burned alive, or I could say that all women are forbidden to wear clothes and either way nobody would be able to say I'm wrong because they don't have the strength to contest it. Eventually, no matter what kind of screwed up system I put in place, it would become normal and nobody would even wonder anymore whether it's right or wrong. That's the way that society gets established, the strongest person or group of people lay down a set of laws and force everyone else to obey them and if they don't they send their enforcers to make them."

Kara looked like she really wanted to argue, but couldn't come up with anything convincing to say against his words. "It still doesn't make it right, power isn't the only thing that's important."

"Yeah, wouldn't it be wonderful if you could rely on everyone to have some basic decency so that you didn't need to have a stick constantly hanging over them to keep them in line?" Naruto asked with dry sarcasm. "There wouldn't even be any need for police or armies in that case!"

The teenaged superheroine glared at the horizon in lieu of having an argument for that.

"Did you know that Xanna and I briefly visited other parts of this world before deciding to play our game with the Justice League?" He asked suddenly, getting a curious look from the teenaged superheroine. "I have no idea what country it was because I wasn't really paying attention but there was a criminal trial going on and I was curious enough to look in on it. Apparently some guy threw acid on a woman because she refused to sleep with him."

"Please don't tell me you threw acid on him for it?" Kara said almost desperately, despite cringing in sympathy for the woman. She thought that she remembered hearing something about an incident like this on the news several weeks ago and she really hoped that Naruto hadn't been the one to do it.

"No, he was already going to be convicted for it so I left him alone despite my knee jerk reaction to do exactly that." Naruto said with a frown and continued. "No, what really pissed me off was the fact that there were plenty of other people in the courtroom and I was able to sense that several of the older men actually seemed to think that the guy did nothing wrong."

Kara's brief reassurance evaporated, as this was starting to match up to that news report.

"Those guys I threw acid on, lots of it. They didn't seem to think it was all that great when it was happening to them." He finished cynically and continued with a slightly bitter tone of voice. "Of course, I later heard that the guy's rich father got him out of jail within a week, so I went back to melt both of them and the people that the father bribed too."

Kara said nothing to that, just hugged herself and turned away. These kind of displays of cruelty were way beyond what she had ever faced and it made her stomach turn. She couldn't in all honesty say that they didn't deserve it on some level, but she really believed that there had to be a better way.

Naruto grimaced when he looked at the slightly shaking girl. He honestly hadn't meant for the conversation to drift into this kind of direction.

"Basically I'm just trying to point out that people with power of any kind, either physical, financial or political can get away with a lot that the regular person can't. The only difference between them is that people with physical power are honest about it." He said and then continued on lighter tone, trying to steer things away from the dark topic. "I did manage to heal that woman, so she isn't going to have any scarring at least, but Xanna more or less dragged me out of there before I ended up getting too acid happy since we hadn't come to this world to try annihilating all evil."

"Do these things really make you so angry that you have to respond with even more cruelty? You can't fight evil by doing evil you know." She said quietly.

"Maybe not." He admitted with a sigh. "But it's a problem for me when I can sense people's suffering and I'm not a huge believer in forgiveness. I don't see the use in trying to imprison people or bothering with the slow and sometimes ineffective justice system when I can smell the rot on their bones."

"What do you mean you can sense people's suffering?" She asked curiously.

"I can feel the emotions of every sentient being around me." He explained and gestured to the three women in the water. "Peaches is feeling a bit bored and mischievous right now and is probably going to throw water on Pammy soon. Pammy and Kitten are feeling relaxed and content, almost sleeping in fact."

Kara looked at the three when he gestured, seeing that Ivy and Priscilla were sunbathing on inflatable rafts as they drifted about in the water, while Harley was doing an imitation of a shark as she swam towards Ivy and did indeed splash the plant manipulator, startling her out of her light doze and making her fall off the raft.

She had to stifle a giggle at the sight. It was hard to imagine the three women as criminals when they were like this.

"Do you have any idea what Gotham feels like to me? It's like a septic tank that starts leaking as soon as the sun goes down, or it used to at least. People started keeping their heads down once it became known that I was on the warpath. Everywhere I went I could feel people with evil intentions going around, or I could feel someone suffering because they were targeted by those people and many of them aren't too intimidated by Batman anymore because they know he doesn't kill. The world that I was raised in emphasized decisive action and I was pretty extreme even by those standards, so my first reaction when I come across these things is always going to be violence."

"You mean you can actually feel it when people suffer." Kara asked in disbelief.

"I get a vague sense of what is happening and I can judge how bad it is by the intensity of the emotions that people give off." He explained.

Kara couldn't help a shudder at that. She couldn't say with all honesty that she would have been able to stop herself from reacting more viciously than normal if she was literally able to feel the way that people suffered. She was glad that she didn't have an ability like that, because she wasn't sure if she could have handled it.

"To be honest, I needed this vacation too. I've spent too much time lately in that kind of depressing environment. Xanna tells me that I'll learn not to care eventually and that's a pretty scary thought all by itself, though I'm not sure if she's right. She was never mortal and doesn't have much in the way of empathy for mortals as a result."

The much smaller of the two blond's bit her lip and tentatively decided to try and stop judging him. She still didn't agree with his extermination policy and never would, but it was obvious that he wasn't evil, he just had a more extreme opinion on proper punishment for crime to go along with his more acute sense for how bad some people really were.

"Is that why you picked this isolated spot?" Kara asked, having wondered about the reason for the private stretch of beach reserved exclusively for their use.

"Yeah." Naruto admitted. "I wanted to get away from people for a little while. I'm actually wotking on finding a way to limit or block off my sensing, which it turns out is a lot harder to do than learning how get it started."

Kara gnawed on her bottom lip for a while as she considered the moral conundrum of deliberately blinding one self to the suffering of others or allowing yourself to see it and feeling the urge to react with lethal violence. She'd thought that things were simple, that the horned blond was a bad person for killing so many, but the truth was anything but simple. She knew that Naruto didn't feel any guilt for the people he killed, that much was obvious, but did it make him a bad person if he killed those that would go on to cause suffering to others later? It was all just too confusing.

"Why did you help them by the way?" She asked abruptly, looking towards the other three women again.

"They're not bad people and I wanted to see what they would do with a second chance. So far, it seems to be paying off. I doubt any of those three will go back to crime. Pammy might and Peaches will probably go along with her if that happens because she doesn't have anyone else, but Kitten definitely won't."

That made Kara smile. It was an undisputably good thing if he managed to get them to turn away from life as criminals and she was glad that the conversation had drifted away from the previously dark subject matter.

"Well, if you won't let me go home then I might as well go splash them too." She said lightly and took off her outer clothing to reveal the bathing suit.

"Splash them huh? Watch this." He said with a conspiratory grin and looked towards the ocean.

Kara looked and couldn't help grinning along as three water pillars rose, each carrying one of the women upwards until they were at least ten feet above the water level and being held upright by their feet.

"Naruto let us down!" Pamela demanded

Her demand went ignored as the water pillars surged across the ocean, carrying their shrieking captives around by the feet for a minute until they were brought back with a splash.

"That actually looked kinda fun." Kara admitted.

"I'm so glad you agree." Naruto stated ominously and grabbed her.

"What are you doiIIIING?!" She trailed off in a scream as he tossed her towards the ocean and made the water form a cushion to catch her just before she would have crashed into it.

"You bastard, that was really scary!" She shouted at him indignantly. She'd never realised how frightening it was to be falling and unable to fly.

Naruto just grinned at her as he made his way towards the water. All four of them would be doing their level best to drown him now so that might be fun.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The same day, late afternoon.

"So, how are we going to do this?" Kara asked once she and Naruto arrived in a clearing that the taller blond had created by making the trees move around them.

Naruto had offered to teach her some martial arts and had eventually convinced her to accept the offer. She hadn't seen the point of it at first, but had come around when he'd pointed out that one of the main reasons that Superman had been so easy to defeat was because he barely even knew how to throw a punch properly. If he hadn't been a kryptonian he probably would have broken his wrists every other time that he hit something.

She'd seen the value of it after that. Aside from not looking like a street brawler when she fought, she was also secretly hoping that it would let her get one over her much stronger cousin.

"Well first of all, I need to ask you if you're sure you want to be wearing that?" Naruto asked, pointedly looking over her attire.

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" She asked, looking down at herself. It was her usual Supergirl outfit; white T-shirt with a stylised 'S' and a small red cape, blue skirt and red boots.

"Oh nothing." Naruto responded with a smirk, giving the distinct impression that there was indeed a problem with what she was wearing.

Without warning, Kara felt her strength returning, along with her ability to fly, shoot lasers from her eyes and freeze things with her breath.

"You're not going to keep my powers blocked anymore?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "What if I decide to fly away?"

"The seal does more than just block your powers you know. It also leaves a beacon on you that will let me summon you back to me no matter how far you are. Even if you try to fly away, I'll know instantly and bring you right back." Naruto explained smugly.

Kara huffed irritably but didn't bother disbelieving him. She'd figured out by now that Naruto liked to tell the truth as much as possible, if for no other reason than the fact that it hit harder than a lie.

"Now, I need to get a feel for your physical abilities. I know that strength and endurance aren't going to be an issue thanks to your kryptonian heritage-"

"Argoan." Kara corrected.

"What?" Naruto asked, not understanding why she'd interrupted him.

"I'm argoan, not kryptonian." She elaborated.

"And the difference is...?"

"Argo was Krypton's sister planet."

"So you're part of the same weirldy overpowered species, just from a different planet?" Naruto asked dryly.

"We aren't weirdly overpowered!" Kara insisted.

"Suuure you aren't, I guess that means that I'm not weirdly overpowered either." The horned blond drawled sarcastically.

"I don't even know how someone like you got to be this powerful, but there's no way that it's natural. I on the other hand am simply a product of evolution." She retorted playfully.

"Well if you must know, I became this powerful by climbing over the corpses of my enemies, helping my wife eat a Primordial God to take its place and then eating a divine fruit that she gifted me with." Naruto explained blandly.

"So...mortal combat, divine cannibalism and healthy living? I don't think you've got grounds to call anyone else weird." Kara snipped back.

"Ouch, that tongue of yours is getting awfully sharp sweetie. Maybe we should train it instead of teaching you martial arts, you'll be driving people into despair with your cutting retorts in no time." He teased back with a grin, rather enjoying the banter.

She gave him a dirty look for that, though Naruto wasn't sure if it was for calling her sweetie again or for the rest of it.

"Anyway, to get back on track, I need to test how flexible you are, so I want you to kick me in the face."

"Kick you in the face?" She echoed in deadpan.

"Yes, and no flying."

Kara immediately noted a few problems with that plan. Firstly, he was huge and she...was not. Secondly, she was wearing a skirt.

"I can't." She admitted, realising now what the problem with her clothes was.

"Try it anyway." He commanded. "I need to see how high you can kick."

"But..." She protested awkwardly, a blush spreading over her cheeks. She didn't want to flash her panties at him.

"I've already seen you in a bathing suit." He pointed out dryly. "I have no idea why the people in this world seem to think that's any different than panty flashing or walking around in underwear. Now kick me already."

"Fine." She huffed, still blushing and kicked as high as she could.

She managed to hit him somewhere just slightly below his solar plexus. Predictably, her skirt rode up her legs and she flashed her panties at him.

"Not bad, better than I thought it would be actually." He complimented, making no comment on the panty flash.

The next few hours, Naruto had Kara doing flexibility stretches that made her muscles ache in ways that she couldn't ever recall them aching. Though she was very glad when the taller blond pointed out that if it hadn't been for her powerful physiology, the ache would have stayed with her for days at a time instead of minutes and it would have taken weeks or even months to make the same amount of progress in limbering her up.

Once that was done they moved up to repeating attack movements to build some muscle memory and then some light sparring while Naruto demonstrated new moves every now and then. Eventually, Kara stopped feeling embarrassed about the constant panty flashing because he never mentioned it and started enjoying the instruction. Even with this short time, she could already see that the changes in stance, positioning and execution of her attacks was letting her put a lot more strength behind her blows, not to mention that the instruction on how to fall properly let her reduce downtime if not injury since she had that invulnerability going for her.

She definitely needed to invest in some shorts though. In retrospect, a skirt had been a really bad idea as part of her outfit.

For Naruto's part he was quite amazed at how quickly she learned. It counted for a lot that there was no need for any physical conditioning except for some stretching exercise to get her more flexible and even that was done quickly. But still, she learned anything physical at truly impressive speed. He figured that kryptonians or argonians or whatever-onians must build muscle memory faster than humans. A lot faster.

"You're picking this up really fast, my first sensei would have loved to have you as a student." He complimented dryly as he blocked her punches and kicks.

"Thanks." She said sincerely, smiling while she did so. Once they had gained some traction, this had turned out to be lots of fun. "What was this sensei of yours like?"

"Hatake Kakashi, A lazy porn addict with a hobby of being late to everything and making terrible excuses for it. Your ability to learn so fast would have been exactly what he likes in a student; someone that he barely needs to lift a finger to teach."

"Doesn't sound like a very good teacher." She commented.

"That's because he wasn't." Naruto agreed.

"I think you might need a different teacher than me though." He concluded with a sigh.

"What do you mean?" she asked with a frown, stopping her attack.

"I'm too big." Naruto responded dryly. "It would be better if you were taught by someone that knows a martial art more suited to your size. It works well enough because of your natural strength, but there are a lot of techniques that you can't use because you're too small. You should ask Batgirl to pick up your teaching and you can come to me for a spar if I'm still around by then."

"Oh, that makes sense." Kara said with a nod and relaxed her stance, not feeling tired in the slightest. "Are we done for today?"

"Just one more thing." Naruto said, getting curious look from the argoan.

A sudden wind picked up and lifted her skirt up, making her squeal in surprise and instinctively push the front of it down with her hands.

Meanwhile, Naruto had appeared behind her with a burst of speed and shamelessly ogled her panty clad bottom.

"WHY?! You've seen them so many times already!" She demanded with her face burning indignantly.

"There's always room...for more panty shots." Naruto said sagely with a serene smile, forcibly bursting the blood vessels in his nose to cause an explosive nosebleed.

He didn't bother dodging when she rammed his face with a flying knee strike. It was well executed and she had hadn't held back much in her leap.

Naruto was proud.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Late that night.

Kara felt almost ready to make her escape, even though she'd had fun on her first day of this forced vacation, she didn't want Clark driving himself half mad with worry.

She was certain by now that Naruto was not a bad guy. Oh, she knew that he wasn't exactly a good guy, but he wasn't a bad guy either. He was just a guy...with effectively infinite power, a knee jerk reaction to people that cause pointless suffering and no regard for anyone's rules other than his own and that of his wife.

Though from what she heard of this wife of his, she wasn't the type to impose any rules on him...or at least, none that would concern anyone other than the two of them.

She knew that with Naruto's ability to summon her, she didn't realistically stand a chance of staying away, but even if she could contact anyone for just long enough to tell them that she wasn't in any danger and was being treated well(practically pampered even), it would do the job.

With this in mind, she had waited until it was the dead of night so that everyone else would be sleeping and she could fly off without Naruto's notice. It made her strangely uncomfortable to be so duplicitious to her kidnapper since he hadn't blocked off her powers again in a clear show of trust, but she couldn't in good conscience leave her cousin to suffer, even if it was all in his head.

Now it was time to go, so she used her X-ray vision to spy on the rest of the absurdly luxurious private mansion that Naruto had somehow secured for their use.

Her first targets were Pamela and Harley, or Peaches as Naruto kept calling her.

She found both of them to be sleeping soundly, with Harley hugging Pamela like a teddy bear.

Their time together on the beach had been stilted and awkward at first, colored as it was by their hostile past interaction, but things had smoothed out eventually, in no small part due to their combined efforts at drowning Naruto.

She wasn't completely certain, but if she had to guess, then Pamela had been the one keeping Harley sane since the Joker's death and it was obvious that they cared for each other a great deal as evidenced by how grabby Harley was being in her sleep and the fact that Ivy was letting her do it.

It was nice to see and it made her hopeful that the two women wouldn't go back to being criminals. She actually found herself sort of liking them now that they weren't enemies and honestly hoped that they could be friends, though things with Barbara might be a bit awkward at first.

Turning away from the cute scene, she looked towards Priscilla's room, only to blink in confusion upon finding it empty. The bed was unmade and someone had clearly slept in it, or tried to at least but then abandoned it.

Somewhat nervously, she turned her eyes towards Naruto's room and immediately started blushing furiously.

At least she had found the former Cheetah.

She was kneeling in between Naruto's legs and doing her level best to swallow as much of his rod as possible, using her hands to stroke the length of it that she couldn't fit in her mouth. Kara really wanted to look away, but found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the sight.

That was a circumstance that she came to regret mere moments later when Priscilla's cheeks bulged and a thick white fluid escaped from the sides of her mouth, which she then proceeded to swallow and lick up rapturously.

It must taste really good. Kara thought with a sort of horrified fascination, before immediately shaking her head in denial. She was not a pervert! Or a peeper!

Seeing that the two of them were about to continue and that Naruto was apparently unaware of her accidental voyeurism, Kara turned to her private balcony and prepared to fly away. She doubted that Naruto would notice her escape since he was...otherwise engaged.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Naruto pulled his tongue out of the screaming Priscilla with a sigh when the proximity seal on Kara informed him that she had gone out of range.

Paying the dazed and now confused woman no mind, he slapped his hand on the floor and instantly summoned the errant Supergirl into the room.

Kara thudded lightly on the floor, her powers once more locked up and directed a sheepish look towards her kidnapper/sensei/sort-of friend and immediately scrambled backwards with a yelp.

He was naked and his...thing...was all but staring her right in the face...throbbing .

"You've got some pretty bad timing there sweetie, don't you know that women hate it when you interrupt their turn at oral sex?" Naruto asked casually, making no move to cover himself.

Priscilla had noticed the new arrival by this point and was clutching a sheet over herself in embarrassment and staring at Kara with a mixture of irritation at being interrupted and shame at her exposure.

Kara was far too embarrassed to muster any reply, so she just kept trying to look anywhere aside from the still throbbing member pointed in her general direction.

"One thing I apparently should have mentioned about that seal I've got on you is the fact that it would wake me up even if I'm dead asleep. You can't sneak past it." The horned blond explained calmly, as if he wasn't the only person in the room not suffering from critical levels of awkwardness.

"Now, I'm going to finish what I started, so unless you want to watch you should probably go back to your room and get some sleep." He finished and turned back towards the older of the two blonde females, his tongue already lenghtening.

"Naruto wai-!" Priscilla tried to say, most definitely not wanting to have an audience, not to mention that the mood was thoroughly ruined for her, but was interrupted when chains yanked her legs apart, causing her to yelp and start breathing heavily in an intoxicating mixture of apprehension and excitement at his forcefulness.

Kara fled the room at top speed through the fortunately open window, barely even registering her powers once again becoming available. Priscilla's pleasured scream followed her and nearly made her crash into a wall in her haste to escape.

Once back in her room, she hid under the covers with a nuclear full body blush and hugged a pillow hard enough to destroy it. That was her first close encounter with sex and it was most definitely a less than stellar introduction. She couldn't even be sure if Naruto had done that deliberately to embarrass her or if he was seriously that shameless.

She didn't get any sleep that night, unable to force what she'd seen from her mind and occasionally even needing to restrain herself from using her X-ray vision to peek on them again, much to her horror.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

The next morning.

Kara tiptoed into the living room of the mansion, nervously looking around to make sure that she was alone. Though she knew she would be considering how early in the morning it was, which was the way she wanted it. She was worried that Naruto was going to stop being so nice now that she'd tried to escape.

Thanks to her sunlight powered physiology, she wasn't suffering any side effects from mising a single night of sleep. Not physical ones anyway.

It had taken hours for her mind to stop being a confused jumble of embarrassment and morbid curiousity to see more, as well as her subsequent shame over that desire. Despite not being human, she was still a teenager and teenaged hormones at least were something that her species had in common with humans.

Not that she had any interest in Naruto exactly, it was just that the whole incident had kickstarted her already budding interest in things like that. The horned blond was a bit too old for her the same way that she was too young for him, not to mention that large parts of his personality rubbed her the wrong way...and he was spoken for, can't forget that even though his relationship with Xanna didn't exclude flings with other women for reasons unknown to her.

She groaned quietly and shook her head, trying to banish the distracting thoughts going through her head. It was unbelieveable just how much chaos that annoying man had introduced into her thoughts by summoning her right into the middle of his sexual encounter with Priscilla.

Looking around the room she caught sight of Naruto's sword, standing oh so casually in a corner of the room. It took her mind away from the dirty thoughts at least.

Biting her lip, she made her way over and took it, looking over the unadorned black sheath and long hilt curiusly. Soon she found herself drawing the blade slowly from its sheath, trying to keep the rasp of steel as quiet as possible.

She blinked incredulously when she just kept on drawing when she knew that the whole blade should have been out already. Once the entire blade was drawn, she held it easily in one hand and set it next to the sheath, confirming that yes, the actual blade was somehow longer than its sheath.

She put that aside as another quirk of Naruto's and focused on the sword itself, a blade this long would have been pretty awkward to carry around at full length anyway so some kind of trick to make it more convenient made sense. The long blade glinted dangerously in the first light of dawn, holding an intoxicating shimmer along its deadly edge. It was an instrument of death and did nothing to hide it, but it was still beautiful, its majestic curvature and the surpassing quality of the blade having an almost hypnotic effect on Kara even though she had only a passing interest in swords before this.

Experimentally, she gave it a few swings, being careful not to accidentally hit anything with it. Kara wasn't sure, but she thought that the blade actually felt as if it...disapproved of her somehow, which reminded her about stories of swords that had a spirit of their own.

"Having fun?"

Hearing Naruto's amused voice from behind her so suddenly and without warning startled her badly for several reasons. Firstly, he'd snuck up on her. Secondly, she was still terribly embarrassed about what she had been summoned into some hours ago. Thirdly, she'd been playing around with his sword without permission.

Due to this, she yelped and nearly threw the sword in her instinctive haste to let go of it, as if the speed of that action would somehow undo the fact that she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

The Kusanagi sailed a short distance through the air and landed blade first on the back of the couch, cleaving through it as if it was made of air, along with a corner of the coffee table in front of it.

"Well, that's probably going to upset whoever is going to have to pay for it." Naruto commented amusedly.

Kara started stammering out an apology, inwardly wondering just how much deeper of a hole she could dig for herself in regards to her embarrassment around the horned blond. Maybe she would accidentally insult his wife next?

"Would you like to learn how to use a sword?" Naruto asked curiously, finding her embarrassment quite endearing.

"I tried to run away, interrupted your, uh...private time, played around with your sword without permission and you're offering to teach me more?" She blurted out incredulously.

"Well of course you tried to run away, I did kidnap you after all and you're a nice girl that wants to help her cousin even if I don't think he deserves it. It's not like you intended to interrupt me and Kitten and you were just curious about the Kusanagi, not trying to steal it." Naruto explained patiently, grinning at her.

"I guess that might be nice...though I'd need a smaller sword." She muttered, feeling embarrassed by the fact that he was being so persistently nice even now. How the hell does someone admit to kidnapping and make it sound nice anyway?

"Aw, you're so cute!" Naruto exclaimed and hugged her. She was just too damn cute.

"Hey! Let me go!"