Chapter 13: The Black Bloom of Victory
The sea stretched ahead, black as spilled ink and just as unforgiving. Even in the light of day, the East Blue held the scent of rot and iron—old blood soaked into the waves from countless raids, pillages, and dreams turned to driftwood. On this tide, Naruto sailed.
A month had passed. A span of thirty days wrapped in sweat, steel, and the crack of bone against bone. His group had grown stronger, yes—but strength was a word often misunderstood. It was not measured in how many punches you could throw, but in how many times you could rise after being broken. And Naruto had been broken—reminded that death didn't send a warning, didn't knock politely. It could come from a blind spot, a flicker of hesitation. The taste of his mortality was still thick in his mouth, bitter and metallic.
He hadn't accepted any missions in that time. Caution, some called it. Cowardice, the foolish might whisper. But Naruto knew it for what it was—strategy. A dead man saves no one. And he wasn't ready to die. Not yet. Not until the world bled enough to know justice.
Now, in the belly of Marineford's cold metal halls, mission scrolls lay before him like choices at a butcher's block. Krieg or Arlong—pirate or beast. The warlord in rusted armor, who wore cruelty like a second skin, or the Fishman, who wrapped supremacy around his heart like chains. Both deserved death. One would get it today.
Naruto's eyes slid over the lines of parchment, blood seeping from his thoughts onto the paper in metaphor only. He chose Krieg. It was not hesitation. It was resolve. Krieg was a disease that needed excising. Arlong could wait a little longer. Monsters don't die from patience.
Beside him, Hina stood like a spear wrapped in silk. Her voice was low, but steady. "Then I'll take Arlong," she said, lips curving, not in amusement—but anticipation. War was her perfume, and she wore it well.
He said nothing at first. Just nodded. They understood each other now. Not in words, but in rhythms. The cadence of pain shared. Of strength rebuilt.
Shiro was absent. Off on her own mission—separate but tethered. Their relationship was strange, growing, like vines creeping toward the same sun, uncertain whether they'd entwine or strangle. That was fine. Bonds didn't need to be defined. They only needed to hold.
Naruto left the mission chamber. The halls echoed with the silence of a thousand steps taken in duty. At the docks, the ship awaited—black wood and sails white as the teeth of wolves.
Hina caught him before he boarded. Her hand, calloused and soft all at once, brushed against his. "Be careful, Naruto."
He turned. Kissed her—brief, brutal, honest. Like the man he'd become. "I will."
He boarded.
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It took two days to reach the island—two days of quiet waves and silent sky, as if the world itself was holding its breath. No ambushes, no threats. The sea was calm, unnaturally so, as if it feared to anger the boy cloaked in judgment. Naruto stood at the prow of the ship, unmoving, eyes fixed on the rising silhouette of Krieg's fortress-island, expression unreadable beneath the shadow of his hood.
These pirates… they weren't warriors. They were pests. He'd faced monsters, devils wrapped in skin and will. Compared to that, this was housekeeping.
As the island came into full view, Naruto didn't wait for docking procedures or greetings. He launched himself into the sky, wind howling in protest. The sea groaned beneath him. He sprinted across the air as if it were land, each step a thunderclap that echoed above the water. By the time he landed on the island's edge, the sky had grown overcast, as if the heavens themselves turned away.
The stench hit him first—sweat, piss, cheap liquor, and blood. Laughter echoed through the trees, followed by a scream cut short. A bonfire crackled near the center of the village square, surrounded by drunken pirates stuffing their faces, groping at frightened civilians as if the island was their private den of depravity.
They didn't notice him at first. Not until one stumbled toward the shoreline, bottle in hand.
"Oi... who the hell're you?" the pirate slurred, his speech soaked in rum and arrogance.
Naruto stepped forward, slow and deliberate. As he moved, metal clicked, shifted—his armor snapping into place like the teeth of a immortal forged in wrath. His voice was a rasp of inevitability.
"Death."
And then—
Steel danced.
A flash of blackened Haki. A scream sliced short. His sword cleaved through meat and bone as if it were nothing more than wet paper. Heads flew. Limbs dropped. Blood sprayed like broken fountains, staining sand and soul alike. The bonfire turned red, reflecting in the hollow eyes of the dead.
Naruto moved like a ghost of vengeance, untouchable and unrelenting. Each swing of his blade carved another chapter of agony into the air, his movement a symphony of destruction.
Screams erupted like wildfire, pirates scrambling to draw their weapons, some too drunk to even understand they were already dead.
Within the fortress, Krieg stood from his gilded seat, fury blossoming on his face.
"What the hell is going on!?"
Beside him, Kuro, a man more shadow than flesh, narrowed his eyes. "It's him. The kid. He's here."
Krieg snarled, hand already reaching for one of his many weapons. "Then I'll gut him myself!"
Kuro shook his head. "You don't get it. He's not here to fight. He's here to erase." And with those final words, he turned his back and began running toward the docks.
Gin stepped forward, trembling with indecision. "Captain, we can't just leave our men behind!"
"They're already dead," Kuro whispered as he disappeared into the fog.
Krieg's boots stomped across the wood, rage pounding in his chest as he approached the slaughter. But what he saw rooted him in place. Naruto stood alone amidst the ruin. Bodies hung from trees, others twitched on the ground, their final breaths leaving them in choked, gurgling curses. His blade dripped.
"You damned bastard!" Krieg roared. "I'll murder you!"
He fired. Rockets. Bombs. Spears. The air whistled with deadly intent—and met only silence. Each weapon glanced off Naruto's armored hide as though they were pebbles thrown at a mountain.
"Is that it?" Naruto's voice didn't rise. It sank—like lead into the hearts of those still alive.
Pearl, trembling behind a broken pillar, hurled his firebombs. Flames danced, licking across Naruto's armor, trying to bite. They died.
In desperation, Krieg pulled out his last resort—a poison bomb. The one weapon meant to turn the tide, even at the cost of his own men.
He threw it.
Smoke swallowed the battlefield, thick and choking. The ground trembled from the force.
And then—schlik.
Naruto sliced the smoke apart with a single arc of his blade, parting it like water. The shockwave blew the poison back into the ranks of Krieg's crew. Flesh bubbled. Screams erupted. The only one left standing was Naruto, eyes burning behind his helm, blood and steam clinging to him like a second skin.
Krieg fell to his knees.
Naruto approached, unhurried.
"You called yourself a captain," he muttered, almost to himself. "You called this power."
He raised his hand. Threads of silver unwound from his gauntlets—sharp as razors, hungry as beasts. His cursed gloves Arachne twitched, hungering. They whispered for blood.
And they fed.
The strings lanced forward, turning Krieg's remaining men into ribbons. Their life force was drained, siphoned through the cursed metal, offered to the immortaldess of vengeance that dwelled in Naruto's armor.
Blood soaked the earth. Bones cracked. The steel drank.
Naruto shivered, not in horror—but in euphoria.
"Not good enough," he whispered. "Need more."
His gaze snapped toward the retreating ship at the docks—Kuro and his crew. Cowards. Rats.
Naruto smiled.
"A lucky day," he said, stepping forward, vanishing in a blur of motion.
By the time Kuro turned, it was too late.
Metallic threads shredded sails and throats alike. Bodies collapsed in piles. Kuro tried to scream, but his voice was stolen as his chest split open. His final thought was one of why—why he had ever thought he could run.
When the wind finally died and the screams fell silent, Naruto stood alone atop the ruin of Kuro's ship. Blood dripped from his gloves. Smoke curled around him. Bodies floated like broken dolls in the tide.
He took a breath.
A deep, satisfied breath.
"Hah... that was so much fun," he muttered, his voice giddy and hoarse. "Filth… cleansed again. At the hands of justice."
The cursed gloves pulsed against his fingers, Arachne whispering in a voice only he could hear. A voice like silk on skin. A lover's whisper and a demon's caress.
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Pain teaches. Fire brands its lessons. Blood writes the truth in crimson ink.
Naruto hadn't even taken a step off the pier when the world decided it had no patience left for the living. One moment, the ship swayed lazily under the gull's cry, salt air brushing his skin like a mother's touch. The next—hell erupted.
A whisper of danger. A hair's width between being and not-being.
His instincts howled.
He leapt—muscles coiled like steel springs—just as the air shattered with the thunderclap of wood, iron, and fire. The ship exploded beneath him in a bloom of ruin, a spear of glowing white cleaving sky and deck alike. The harbor screamed. People ran. But Naruto hung in the air like the promise of vengeance.
Smoke curled below him, painting fire's funeral onto the sea. And above—like some devil's herald—floated a man with wings of paper, ivory feathers flickering in the wind like prayers set to burn.
The man grinned, all yellow teeth and madness.
"Finally, you brat," he spat, voice like broken glass. "Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you to crawl out of your coward's hole? Do you know how deep in shit I am because of you?" His voice cracked with venom. "Kill yourself now. Save me the trouble."
Naruto hovered mid-fall, the fire painting his armor in gold and shadow. His gaze didn't flinch. Didn't narrow. Didn't blink.
"No," he said. Just that. No threat. No boast. Just denial—carved cold into the moment.
Simon—the paper-winged reaper—howled.
"Then I'll make you bleed for it!"
The sky tore apart.
Paper—white, blessed, blasphemous—rippled outward, folding into spears, knives, and cruel shapes from a child's nightmares. They came like rain, too fast, too many, too precise. The air screamed as they fell.
But Naruto… he moved like the old immortals remembered how to dance.
He twisted midair, narrowly missing a dozen deathblades. Steel tore through where he'd been an instant before, leaving behind nothing but broken air and splintered harbor. He hit the ground running, sandals cracking stone, cloak flaring like war itself had come alive.
He didn't stop. Didn't slow. Daggers flew from his hands—silver promises that arced straight toward Simon.
But the paper-winged monster was already gone, flitting between the blades like a ghost, launching another barrage from the sky. The spears came again—like the immortals had decided mercy was a sin.
Naruto cursed under his breath, flipping backward over shattered crates, his heart pounding in his ears.
"Logia bastards. It's like fighting smoke with fists."
He couldn't reach him. Not without being turned into a pincushion of flesh and regret.
And so, like all things in his life, when strength failed—he did the one thing his enemies never expected. He ran.
Not away. Down.
Water met him like an old friend. Cold, deep, dark. A whispering silence swallowed him, and the world above became a blur of light and hate.
Simon hovered in the sky above the sea, wings fluttering, waiting.
"A coward's death, then?" he sneered, circling above like a vulture made of scripture. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"
Beneath the waves, Naruto's mind raced. The silence didn't calm him—it honed him. Thoughts sharpened to knives. Time was bleeding out. His lungs itched with fire.
Think. Move. Kill.
He angled his body, kicked upward, and broke the surface in an explosion of foam and fury. Using Air Walk, chakra solidifying beneath his feet, he sprinted across the ocean—running toward Simon like death itself.
Simon's grin vanished.
The sky became a graveyard of blades. Paper rained from above, sheets folding into spears that glowed with chakra and bloodlust. There was no room to dodge. No clever path.
So Naruto didn't dodge.
He burned.
Armament Haki coated his armor like black fire. The first spear struck his shoulder, exploded. The second shattered on his ribs. A third dug deep into his thigh—but still he ran.
He was a meteor—falling upward.
Simon panicked, paper forming into walls, into a chrysalis of defense—but Naruto had already summoned Arachne, the cursed wires erupting from his gauntlets like steel serpents. They sang through the air and wrapped Simon in a net of pain.
The paper man screamed. The wires constricted, biting through muscle, snapping bones like twigs.
"GAHHHHH!" he cried, voice cracking, blood splattering his robes like ink on a scroll.
Naruto surged forward, hand raised to strike.
One blow.
One death.
But Simon wasn't done.
He detonated.
A wave of explosive paper surrounded him, the force a screaming sun that obliterated the sky. Naruto vanished in the blast—a ragdoll flung from Olympus. The sea opened its arms again—and he fell like Icarus, smoke trailing from his back, his limbs limp and broken.
BOOM.
Silence.
Bubbles.
Blood in the water.
Simon hovered above the churning sea, his own body smoking, skin torn, breath labored. He clutched his neck, where Arachne's wires had dug deep.
He laughed.
"Shit. That brat—he almost had me. Almost."
But his wings trembled.
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Pain was a color. Naruto had learned that. It painted his vision red first—then black. And now, like a curtain of old velvet, it veiled the world in a dull, throbbing gray. His ears rang with the echo of destruction, a hollow tune that pulsed in time with his heartbeat. Each beat a drum of survival, each throb a fragile promise he had not yet died.
Floating. Sinking. Drowning.
He couldn't tell anymore. Water clutched at him like a cold lover, and every breath he didn't take scraped at the edges of death. The explosion had been biblical. Flesh torn. Bone cracked. And chakra—oh, the chakra—drained as if the immortals had dipped their hands into his soul and scooped it out like water from a leaky bucket.
Then—her voice. Arachne.
"Master, get up. It will be too dangerous if you stay down."
Like silk webbing along the jagged lines of his thoughts, her voice stitched him together, enough to think, enough to breathe. Barely.
He spat blood into the dark water.
Thanks, Arachne, he thought, too weak to move his lips, his words carried on the thread that bound their minds.
Her presence steadied him. Without her, he'd be part of the sea by now—drifting flesh, forgotten. But death wasn't what angered him. No. What twisted his guts into boiling knots was frustration. He'd nearly died. Again.
And the bastard wasn't even tired.
Simon. The bastard with wings.
The enemy had Observation Haki—a cheat, a gift, a divine sixth sense that turned every ambush into a farce. Naruto had no speed advantage, no ground control, and certainly no flight. What he had was anger. And a very old memory of what it meant to fight dirty.
He grinned beneath his cracked helmet, teeth pink with blood.
Time to fight like a ninja again.
With the strength of a man pushed to the edge, he tore his armor off and hurled it toward the shore. It sailed through the air like a fallen star—crashing into the beach with a mighty splash. Arachne, still embedded within the suit, animated it just enough to move—bait, perfect bait.
Simon saw. Simon believed. Simon fell for it.
The air exploded in blasts as Simon bombarded the fleeing figure, laughing, growling, savoring the kill. But Naruto… Naruto was already behind him. A blur rising from the water like a ghost with blades in both hands.
His swords, kissed with Haki, whispered death.
But bloodlust is a cruel mistress. She narrows your world. She blinds.
The first strike should have ended it. Instead, it missed by an inch. A precious inch. The blade kissed Simon's neck, not cut it. Flesh split, yes—but not deep enough. Simon stumbled back, howling.
"Damn you!" the man roared, wings flaring.
Naruto didn't answer. He didn't need to. Words were for the living, and he was already halfway to a grave. He let loose. Swords flashing, muscles screaming, will grinding against exhaustion like flint on steel. He became a blur of fury, his strikes wild, yet precise—cutting through Simon's defenses like parchment.
Blood sprayed. Not his. Simon's.
The enemy faltered.
That's when Naruto screamed—raw, primal, the howl of a dying wolf determined to take one more soul with him—and rammed both swords into Simon's gut.
The impact was monstrous. Earth shattered. Water fled. They fell from the sky like meteors, a divine punishment, carving a crater into the island's spine. Dust erupted. Rock crumbled.
And silence followed.
Naruto crawled from the wreckage, bones singing with agony. His arms trembled. His lungs begged. His heart? His heart fought.
Simon's body was little more than torn meat. Almost cleaved in two, face twisted in shock, rage—and death.
Naruto stood above him, victorious. Barely.
And then, like a crawling nightmare, Arachne returned. Her wires dragging the broken armor behind her, twitching, frayed, burned. She looked like death. She looked like him.
"Master, are you okay?"
He couldn't answer. Even thinking was a chore. Instead, he raised a trembling hand, pointing at Simon's corpse.
Arachne understood.
The cursed wires slithered toward the body like worms drawn to rot. They pierced the flesh, drank the blood, feasted on the negativity, the hatred, the lifetimes of malice now unchained from their master.
Naruto felt her grow stronger. And in turn, he grew weaker.
Victory was never free.
His chest burned. Blood bubbled from his lips. He laughed. Then coughed. Then choked. "Hah… agh… hhh..."
Am I going to die again?
It was a strange thought. There was no fear in it. Just weariness. The warship was gone. He was broken. Arachne could barely move.
He had nothing left.
Not chakra.
Not strength.
Not even hope.
Only luck. And a prayer to whatever immortal might pity him enough to send Hina before the vultures came.
"Master, please don't move. You need to rest."
He didn't argue. His vision faded—first red, then black. A color he'd come to know well. He let go, falling into unconsciousness like a man slipping beneath waves.
And the last thing he heard was not a voice.
It was wings.
Or maybe it was just the wind.
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Naruto lay like wreckage on the sand, twisted and red, a thing barely shaped like a man. The tide licked at his heels, as if trying to drag the corpse back into the sea. His breath came shallow, ribs rising like broken teeth through torn flesh. Around him, the water was stained the color of rusted iron—his blood, soaking into the shore like ink into parchment.
The sky had forgotten the sun. It was all ash-grey and weeping clouds, as though the heavens themselves pitied him.
But fate—fickle, laughing, ever cruel—wasn't done playing with him yet.
From the deep came a shadow, rising like a immortal from an old tale. Muscles sculpted by pressure and battle, eyes black as obsidian. Hatchan, a Fishman of the deep, surfaced with the slow grace of something ancient and patient. His kind had known war with humans since before stories were written down. Yet here, washed upon the bleeding shore of Cocoyashi, was one of them—half-dead, drowning in red silence.
"Tragic," Hatchan muttered, voice low as ocean groans in a sunken ship. The word barely passed his lips before he saw it—her.
Arachne.
She moved like a nightmare stitched from thread and teeth. Strings lashed out from Naruto's limp body, dancing through the air like the limbs of a marionette jerked by rage. They shimmered in the sea-wet sun, edges gleaming with the threat of death. A thousand wires snarled, ready to flay the intruder.
Hatchan stopped mid-step, arms rising in a gesture of peace.
"I'm not your enemy," he said, voice calm like a tide before the storm. "I just want to help him."
The wires twitched. Tension crackled. And then—
Stillness.
Arachne, her senses forged in battle and grief, tasted no threat in Hatchan's soul. There was no predator in his scent, only salt, old blood, and regret. Slowly, cautiously, the threads receded. Not forgiveness—but permission.
"Thank you," Hatchan whispered, though he knew the thread-thing had no need for gratitude. He knelt beside Naruto, and what he saw made his gut twist like eel in oil.
Broken bones. Deep gashes. A punctured lung, maybe two. If it wasn't for the unnatural vitality that clung to the boy like a curse, he would've been dead already.
Eight hours. That's all.
"Stay with me, human," Hatchan muttered, more prayer than promise. "Don't die now—not here, not yet."
He buried Naruto's weapons and shattered armor beneath the sand—useless weights now. Then he cradled the ruined boy in his arms, Arachne trailing behind like a haunted veil, and dove into the sea.
Four hours later, Cocoyashi greeted him not with kindness, but with knives hidden in words.
The village was alive with celebration. Drums thumped. Laughter rang. The people, freshly unchained from Arlong's reign, drank in their freedom like honeyed wine. But joy is a narrow thing, and hate is wide.
A drunkard saw him first. "Fishman!" the man roared, staggering forward with bottle in hand and fire in his eyes. "What're you doing here, monster?"
Hatchan stood tall beneath their venom. He did not flinch, nor raise his voice.
"I come with no violence. This man—this human—is dying. I ask only for a doctor."
No one moved. Hatred made statues of them all.
Until a voice like cracked stone broke through the crowd.
"Let him through," Genzo said. His word held weight. Enough to part the sea of mistrust for a moment.
They walked side by side, a strange pair—Fishman and lawkeeper. Naruto lay silent in Hatchan's arms, a boy wrapped in death's shadow.
"Who is he?" Genzo asked as they walked.
"I don't know," Hatchan replied. "But he wore the mark of the Marines."
Genzo's brow furrowed. "So he's one of them. Hina's friends, maybe."
They reached the doctor's house—a crooked old place smelling of herbs and despair. Inside, time blurred into stitches and steam.
The doctor worked like a man possessed. Bones were set. Lungs drained. Skin sewn tight. Naruto's breath rattled, shallow and reluctant.
"If you'd come later…" the doctor began, but the sentence never finished. The meaning bled into silence.
Bell-mere arrived soon after, all iron spine and sharp eyes. A mother, a soldier, and something else—something that hadn't quite died with the war.
"This kid," she said, "he's Marineford elite. Same batch as Hina."
"Hina didn't get hurt," Genzo muttered, looking at the mess Naruto had become. "He looks like he walked through hell barefoot."
"Then maybe he did," Bell-mere said. "We'll ask when he wakes up."
The doctor straightened, exhausted. "He'll live. But he won't walk far for a while."
"And the Fishman?" the doctor asked, finally noticing the absence of webbed feet and ocean scent.
"Gone," Genzo said. "Said his part was done."
Bell-mere nodded. "Good. The villagers aren't ready to forgive. Not yet."
She walked to Naruto's cot, now clean, now bandaged. He looked young. Too young to bleed this much.
"I'll take him," she said. "He'll recover better in my care."
And so the boy who would not die was carried off again, this time by hands that smelled of smoke and motherhood.
Outside, the village danced. Unaware. Unbothered. Unchanged.
And somewhere beneath the sea, Hatchan swam back into the depths, dragging silence behind him like an anchor.