Chapter 23: The Sun Burns Black
Naruto did not deliberate. A man who hesitates is a man already dead. He gathered what mattered—steel, paper, a handful of tools that could be called his life reduced to weight in a pack. Then he leapt.
The sky caught him like a fist might catch a bird. Cold, merciless. His feet tapped air as if the invisible had been hammered into a stairway only he could see. He drove himself forward, away from the ship, away from the lives that tied him down, away from all the things he dared not lose.
Wind screamed in his ears, but it was not enough to drown the voice inside—remorseless, accusing. His plans had cracked like brittle glass. Everything he had built in silence and shadow, undone in the instant the World Government turned its gaze upon him. He had wanted to creep, not stride. To whisper his fangs into the world's throat, not bare them.
Now the hunters knew the scent. Godknights. The name alone was enough to chill marrow. Men who did not hesitate, who did not weigh consequence—only obedience to the fire in their creed.
If he so much as cast a shadow near Hina, near Smoker, Adam, Drake—if he so much as whispered their names aloud—then islands would burn for it. Bellmere. Nami. Nojiko. Z. Shiro. All ash in the tide, guilty by proximity to him.
So he cut them away. Not because he wanted to, but because the alternative was worse.
Pain sat on his chest, heavy as armor. But pain is not loss. Not yet. The world takes what you let it, and Naruto was not ready to let it take everything. Not ready to let his story end in flame and silence.
Nothing is truly lost. Not while patience remains. Patience, and teeth kept sharp in the dark.
The sky swallowed him whole, and he did not look back.
The sky tore away beneath him, a blur of cloud and wind, but Naruto's eyes were elsewhere. He saw what lurked beneath, a shadow stitched in steel, three warships crouched on the seafloor like predators waiting for blood. Their silence was loud, their patience more dangerous than cannonfire.
"Three monsters waiting in the deep," he thought. "Not blockade. Not patrol. This is a spear pointed upward. At Mary Geoise, no less. Who dares such a strike?"
He might have flown past. He might have kept to shadows, as his situation now demanded. But curiosity is a stronger chain than fear. Allies are found in the teeth of audacity.
Naruto folded into a dive, the air screaming as it surrendered him to the sea. Water swallowed him whole, heavy and cold, but his eyes adjusted, his senses alive. Shapes swam where men had no business being—broad shoulders, tails like whips, eyes sharp with old hatred. And on their flesh, seared in ink, the mark of the sun.
"The Sun Pirates," he whispered into the tide, and a rare thing stirred in him—respect. "Fisher Tiger."
He breached their deck in a single surge, landing light as an echo. Spears leveled at him, barbed steel glistening with salt and mistrust. A dozen Fishmen, scars marking them as survivors of chains and cruelty.
"Who are you?" one spat, suspicion sharp enough to cut.
Naruto raised his hands, palms open, a wolf showing teeth but not yet biting. "A friend. My name is Uzumaki Naruto. I seek your captain."
The sea itself seemed to answer, a voice carrying the weight of a tidal wave.
"I'll decide that, human."
Naruto turned, and the deck bent beneath the presence that strode upon it. Fisher Tiger. Reddish skin pulled taut over a body honed in battle, eyes like embers caught in a storm. A man who had climbed the holy land with his bare hands and left it painted in noble blood.
Naruto bowed his head—not from weakness, but from recognition. "Fisher Tiger. To meet you is an honor. Judge me as you will."
Tiger crossed his arms, his gaze like an anchor sinking into Naruto's chest. His haki brushed against the boy's spirit, testing, probing. He found no cowardice, but neither did he find clarity. A flame, yes—but was it wildfire or guiding torch?
"What do you want from us?" Tiger asked, his voice flat, neither hostile nor welcoming.
Naruto met his stare, his smile small but unyielding. "I want to join you. I've heard of your war for freedom. That is my war too. I'll fight beside you."
A low murmur ran among the Fishmen, disbelief and anger mingled in their voices. A human daring to ask such a thing.
Tiger's eyes narrowed to slits. "And why should I risk poison in my crew? A human among my people, after what your kind has done? Tell me why I should not cut you down here and feed the sea with your blood."
Naruto did not flinch. His hand moved slow, deliberate, to his pouch. From it, he drew a necklace that shimmered like ocean light, delicate yet potent in meaning. He raised it so Tiger could see.
The air stilled.
"Queen Otohime," Naruto said, his tone solemn. "She entrusted this to me."
For a heartbeat, something shifted in Tiger's expression—shock, restrained and fleeting. His fists tightened, his jaw worked. Memories of Otohime's voice, her impossible dream of peace, collided with the reality of chains and scars.
"She gave him that? While I roamed? What roads has the world twisted since I left?"
At last, Tiger exhaled, slow and heavy. "Otohime's voice carries far. If she calls you friend, then I'll not call you foe. But words and trinkets are not enough. You'll earn your place in action, human. We move against the World Government. Fail me, and I'll sink you myself."
Naruto grinned, the fire in him sparking hotter. "Then let's see where this tide carries us. I'll not fail. I'll prove my worth."
Tiger gave a single nod, eyes hard as stone. "Then the sun will watch you. Burn with it, or burn by it."
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Tiger's voice cut the sea's silence, iron laced with command.
"Jinbe. Show him around. Make sure he doesn't break anything he doesn't understand."
The whale-shark man turned, heavy eyes raking across Naruto as though weighing his worth in rusted scales. Curiosity gleamed there, yes—but suspicion pressed heavier, a tide that could drown.
"I didn't expect to work with a human again. Not so soon."
The words carried no warmth. They were stones cast into dark water.
Naruto's lips curved—humor worn like armor, a smile meant to hide the scars beneath. "I didn't expect it either."
The faintest twitch at Jinbe's brow, half a frown, half a question. He leaned closer, voice as deep and deliberate as the sea floor. "Listen well. This mission is no game. Our second strike on the same ground. The enemy will be waiting, eyes sharpened, nerves raw. Stealth isn't just preferred—it's survival. How good are you at silence, human?"
Naruto almost laughed. Almost. A memory of careless boyhood might have betrayed him once, but not now. He smothered it, let only the echo escape as confidence. "Stealth," he said, tone measured, dangerous, "is one of my best skills. You'll find me more shadow than flame."
The ocean wind tugged at his words, scattering them like ash. Jinbe studied him, gaze unreadable, then dipped his head. A nod as heavy as a verdict. "Good. Follow."
The deck thrummed beneath their feet, the Sun Pirates watching from the edges of their world, scales glinting, tattoos shifting like storm-clouds in twilight. Trust was not given here—it was stolen, or carved out with blood.
Naruto walked behind Jinbe, each step pulled between promise and peril. He could feel it: this wasn't a test of muscle or trickery alone. This was judgment. The sea had its own kings, and they wore the faces of pirates.
A flicker stirred in him, sharp as lightning across a dark horizon. Hope, fragile and dangerous. If he could stand among these outlaws of the deep, if he could bind their cause to his… then the tides of his journey might shift in his favor.
But he knew the truth, bitter as salt. The ocean devours as easily as it carries.
Tonight, he would learn which it intended for him.
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Jinbe's words settled over the cabin like the last stones of a grave. The plan was simple, in the way that death is simple—strike fast, strike clean, vanish before the sea decides to close its jaws.
"Do you understand?" Jinbe asked, his tone heavy with command, though a glimmer of curiosity pricked through the mask.
Naruto nodded, voice calm, stripped of anything but iron. "Yes."
It was too neat an answer. Too polished. Jinbe's eyes narrowed, suspicion sharpening. He had spent his life swimming through the dark currents of men's lies, and this one tasted unfinished.
"Now that I've done my part," Jinbe said slowly, leaning closer, his presence pressing like the sea's weight, "I want to know how a marine child from the elite class ends up here. You reek of secrets, boy. Not the sort that wash clean in salt water either."
Naruto let the silence breathe. He weighed his words as if each one might tip a scale that could crush him.
"Some problems with the world nobles ended my career," he said at last, his face carved from stone.
Jinbe's stare didn't waver. He knew half-truths when he heard them. This wasn't a lie—but it was a shadow pretending to be the man. "What kind of problems?" he pressed, his voice a deep current pulling answers to the surface.
Naruto's eyes hardened. No tremor, no retreat. "I killed a world noble who tried to kill your Queen. For that, my name is carved into their blacklist. I needed a crew who knew what it meant to bleed for their cause. A crew with the guts to keep fighting."
The air seemed to shift, charged with the weight of the words. Jinbe's expression darkened, not with anger but with a recognition that cut deeper. The human had spat on the throne of kings. Bold. Suicidal. Honest enough to respect.
"That's one way to make your exit," Jinbe said at last, lips curving into something almost like a smile. It wasn't soft—it was sharp, edged with approval. He placed a heavy hand on Naruto's shoulder, the gesture less comfort than an oath. "I like you. So don't die. The sea doesn't need more corpses who believed in the right things."
For the first time in days, Naruto let a true smile touch his face. Not forced. Not a mask. "Thanks. I like your approach too."
The spark in his eyes returned—faint, but dangerous. He gathered his equipment, each strap pulled taut, each weapon set with ritual precision. Whatever storm awaited, he would walk into it with the Sun Pirates at his side, shadow and tide alike.
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Night draped the sea in silence, broken only by the creak of wood and the sigh of waves. The nobles slept beneath its shroud, dreaming of cruelty and corruption. But not him. Not Naruto. His eyes, too sharp for sleep, fixed only on the work ahead.
The city in the clouds loomed like a lie made stone, glittering purity stretched across foundations of rot. He climbed into it as shadow climbs into cracks—quiet, unseen, patient. His hands carried bombs, his heart carried fire. Both would find their marks.
Every step was method, every breath calculation. His purpose tonight was not killing, not in its rawest form, but the kind of killing that echoed long after the flesh was ash. Targets were marked, chosen for their weight, for the ruin their loss would carve into the world's perfect face.
The last of them stood before him now—a warehouse that squatted on the city's edge like a wound covered in gauze. A place where chains outnumbered beds, where breath was currency and souls bled slowly into silence. Too filthy to show, too useful to close.
Naruto stopped. Rage walked its nails down his spine. How disgusting this place is. I underestimated it. The stink is crawling into my skull. The thoughts came sharp, ragged, almost not his own. His chest tightened with the pressure of what had been done within those walls. The urge to burn everything, to raze it to rubble with his own hands, licked at him like flame.
But he stood. He had stood against worse. Rage was a tide; he was the rock it broke upon. Tonight required clarity. His war would not be won by giving the beast in him full rein—not yet.
At the entrance two guards lingered, human refuse dressed as men. Their eyes were dull, their souls already sold.
He whispered. "Arachne."
She came to life at his call—the maid of hatred and affection, her wires uncoiling in silence, drawn to blood like moths to flame. The guards had half a heartbeat to widen their eyes before the wires wrapped them. Pierced them. Drank them. Life ran out of them in red silence, their bodies dropping like broken tools.
Arachne's voice poured into his skull, velvet and venom both. "More…"
Her hunger brushed against his own. The rage that had simmered now roared, hungry as she was. It whispered of tearing down every stone, of making rivers out of men.
Naruto clenched his jaw, controlling his breath, his hands steady as the corpses cooled at his feet. "You'll get more," he muttered. His voice had iron in it, but his veins felt fire. "Relax."
He turned his eyes on the warehouse, on the hell within, on the chains that still rattled in the dark. Tonight, the city of lords would learn how fragile it was. And the scream that started here would carry far, carried on blood and smoke.
For now, he waited. He had freed no one yet. But freedom was coming, on wires sharp enough to carve the world's lies open.
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The warehouse stank of iron and sweat, of despair fermented into something so thick it clung to the tongue. Naruto stepped inside like a thief into a tomb, and the dead watched him from their chains. They weren't corpses, not yet, but the light had gone out of most of them long before his arrival. His shadow carried a promise they scarcely dared to believe in, and still—it made them lift their heads. Hope is the cruellest weapon.
He moved deeper. His hand brushed damp stone, as though he could feel the centuries of cruelty embedded there. His mission was bombs, fire, the collapse of this edifice of rot. But it was also more. A personal thing, sharpened in the marrow of him. This wasn't war. This was vengeance.
The chamber's air thickened as he entered, his senses brushing against something different, something foul. And there she was.
A girl strung to a contraption that made art of agony. Seventeen, perhaps. Blood pooled beneath her feet like a shadow that wouldn't let go. She should have been broken, should have been an empty vessel, but her eyes—God, her eyes—burned hotter than the flames he carried in his chest. Messy hair framed a face both beautiful and defiant.
Naruto approached, deliberate. The wires of Arachne stirred on his skin, eager, tasting the blood already spilled. The girl turned her head to him, those eyes spilling hate like venom.
"Who are you, girl?" His voice was softer than he felt, the empathy in it at odds with the cold calculation of his purpose. He brushed her cheek with his hand.
Her words spat like poison. "Don't try to play with me, you scum!"
He didn't flinch. He had been cursed by better, hated by worse. His hand withdrew, steady, unoffended. "I'm not one of them. I'm here to free you. But you need to trust me." His words came like balm, though his heart still boiled. He turned Arachne's hunger toward healing, wires stitching gently where they longed to cut.
Her gaze softened by degrees, uncertainty prying open the cracks in her fury. The fire was still there, but tempered now by pain. At last, her voice came, hoarse and raw. "Boa Hancock."
Naruto's eyes narrowed at the name, at the aura that clung to her like a second skin. "Are you related to snakes?" he asked, sensing the serpent that curled beneath her flesh, coiled and waiting.
Her silence was her answer, her throat too ragged to speak, her suspicion too thick to allow confession. He didn't press. Some truths bloom only when the world forces them to.
The signal came in fire and thunder—an explosion tearing the night open. Without hesitation he ripped through her bindings, iron shrieking as it yielded. She fell free, breath ragged but spirit unbowed. Naruto moved like a blade through the room, cage after cage, the slaves spilling out in frightened, desperate waves.
"Run!" His voice cut across their fear, sharp as command, deep as promise. "Straight ahead—don't scatter if you want freedom!"
And they obeyed. Because what else was left but obedience to the only man who had broken their chains?
Boa lingered at the edge of the tide, her sisters flanking her, both giants marked by the same venomous beauty. She looked back once. Gratitude flickered in her eyes, warring with confusion, with the ruin of everything she thought she knew of men.
"Thank you!" she cried, her voice torn raw but still carrying.
And then she was gone, swallowed by the night, leaving Naruto standing in the ruin, Arachne's wires whispering for more blood even as freedom thundered in the streets.
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Naruto rose above the city on the warehouse roof, his figure framed in smoke and flame. From that vantage he was both shadow and executioner, a silent scythe harvesting lives. Obelisk rested in his grip, and with each pull of the trigger another body fell, ragdoll-limbs sprawled against stone. He used only lead, no trick, no flourish. The nobility deserved no art, only the simplicity of death.
A bullet found a noble leaning from a balcony, shrieking orders like a king in a collapsing play. His head burst crimson against marble, and the slaves below found their feet again. No tower was high enough, no wall thick enough. Not against him.
"A beautiful sight," Naruto muttered, voice low, almost reverent. Fire crowned the city in orange halos, the night alive with ruin. To others it would be hell. To him, it was justice given form, fire reshaping stone and bone alike.
But beauty had no permanence. He moved, gathering scraps of food and flesh, feeding Arachne as he went. Her whispers curled in his skull, sweet and venomous. More. More. He obliged in silence, picking his path through chaos, his mind a taut wire. The helmet cloaked his face, but his eyes—those red pits—glowed with rage that could not be hidden.
Then he saw it.
The world slowed. His killer's instinct tightened like a vice around his ribs. There, in the open, a World Noble stood fat with arrogance, a trembling girl at his side. She was blonde, ragged, a child carved hollow by cruelty. He held her like property, fingers digging into her thin arm, his sneer dripping the rot of the system Naruto had sworn to unmake.
Memory tore at him. A mirror of what he had been, chained to despair. Rage burst cold and clean, clearing every thought.
He vanished. One heartbeat he stood above them, the next his fist tore the noble into red mist. A death so absolute there wasn't even a scream left behind. Only blood in the air and the silence of disbelief.
The girl stared up, her eyes dead glass. She did not move, did not weep. Hope had been smothered too long for tears.
Naruto lingered, staring down at her, the act heavy in his chest. What now? he thought. She was another piece of the wreckage. Another burden. And yet his arms moved without hesitation, gathering her up. The fury still burned, but his hands were gentle as they cradled her.
"Jinbe," his voice crackled through the comms, flat as steel. "Take the girl."
He ran the sky like stepping stones, the child clutched tight. Below, the coast churned with fleeing slaves, and Jinbe's hulking figure loomed among them, guiding, protecting.
"What?!" Jinbe roared as Naruto dropped the girl toward him. Reflex caught her, massive hands suddenly soft with care. His surprise was a weight on the air, the plan unraveling in ways he hadn't been warned of.
But Naruto was already gone, his shape swallowed by shadow and smoke. "Take care of her," came the quiet order, almost lost to the wind.
Jinbe held the child, his eyes tracking the vanishing silhouette. A cold unease coiled in his chest. He had seen men walk the edge before, but this… this was something else.
Is he killing them all? The thought struck like lead in his gut. The slaughter, the fire, the crimson gleam in Naruto's eyes—it was more than vengeance. It was a descent.
And Jinbe feared what would emerge when that descent reached its bottom.