Chapter 10: The Devil Wears Innocence
It was the grin that made them groan.
Naruto strode past the wreckage of pride and wagers, past the men he called friends and rivals in equal measure, his face split with a grin that didn't belong to a hero. Mischief radiated off him like heat from scorched steel.
He leaned in toward Adam, close enough for breath to be a threat.
"I won you guys," Naruto whispered, like a thief confessing to a priest. "Get ready to treat me to every last coin you've scraped from the gutters."
Adam's face twisted as if he'd been slapped with a wet boot.
"Damn," he muttered.
"Damn," echoed Drake, with all the weight of a man who knew this wasn't the first time nor the last.
It was tradition. Cruel and unkind and utterly fair. Their bets, their games, their little wars of pride. And the rule was written in humiliation and blood: no lies, no cheating. The last man who'd tried had been strung up naked on the gates of Marineford, mocked by every soul with eyes and a stone to throw.
They had all learned.
But Naruto didn't cheat.
He just won.
He always found the seam in the chaos, the little gap in their logic where he could squeeze in his blade and twist.
He moved toward Z with the confidence of a dog that's returned with a wolf's head in its jaws.
The old man stood like a statue carved from regret and iron, watching the recruits with eyes that had seen centuries die screaming. Z's approval was rare. Earned in fire. Naruto had earned it.
"Teacher," Naruto said, voice stripped of smugness. Here, he was a soldier again. "I've saved the slaves. Among them, I found this girl."
He motioned to the small form hanging off his back, like a parasite made of silk and smiles.
"She's a Logia user. She wants to join the Marines. She's strong enough."
Z's eyes cut toward her. And when Z looked at you, it wasn't just skin-deep. He peeled people open like fruit, saw the seed and the rot. Shiro blinked at him, unafraid, her legs still casually wrapped around Naruto's shoulders.
The old Marine studied her like she was a corpse that hadn't realized it yet.
"Ah…" Z murmured, voice heavy with ancient memory. "So that's what made this place different."
The truth fell from him like dust off old parchment.
"She's from one of the forgotten tribes. The kind that bury their immortals in caves and feed their chosen to the sea. That fruit of hers—it wasn't random. It was sacred. Meant for their protector. Their executioner. Their last hope."
Naruto nodded. He didn't need to say anything else.
Z sighed, rubbed his jaw like the weight of the past was something he could scratch off his chin.
"I'll test her when we return," he said at last. "But she'll do. Leave her to me."
With that, he reached out and plucked Shiro from Naruto's back like one might lift a kitten from a puddle. She didn't resist. She purred. Nestled into his grasp like a child in a cradle, as if she hadn't clawed at Naruto's face hours ago.
Z turned to the recruits. His voice cracked through the air like cannon fire.
"You've all done well. Eat. Rest. When we board, we sail. Home waits for no one."
And with that, he vanished into the ship's belly, carrying the girl like a ghost bride on her wedding night.
The tension broke, like a string pulled too tight and finally snapping.
Recruits dispersed, their bodies heavy with fatigue and quiet pride. Blood still stained their boots. Death clung to their cloaks. But for now, there was rest.
Hina watched Naruto.
Always watching.
She walked up to him, her boots silent against the deck, eyes sharp, voice cooler than her breath should allow.
"Who was that girl?" she asked. "And why did you let her do that?"
Naruto turned to her.
He removed his helmet slowly, like shedding a second skin. His gaze met hers—not burning, not cold. Just steady. Like a blade, resting on its edge.
"Her name is Shiro. I saved her from a cage."
He paused. Let the next words hang like rope over a gallows.
"She boarded me. I didn't mind. If you want, I can let you do that as well."
The calmness. The gall. The nerve of it.
Hina blinked. Her mind stuttered. The implication sank in, dragging heat to her cheeks and fury to her tongue. She turned away, fighting the flush that betrayed her discipline.
"No need," she snapped, too quickly. "Hina will be resting now."
She didn't look back. Couldn't.
Naruto watched her walk away, a faint smile playing on his lips.
He hadn't meant the words to wound. But if they cut, so be it.
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The sun spat gold across the rust-stained sky as it sank behind the jagged horizon, a dying eye watching the last sins of the day. In the distance, smoke coiled from the ship's chimney like a whisper of old regrets—mute, grey, and persistent. They stood some paces off from the slow dance of tension playing out between Naruto and Hina, as if watching the prelude to a duel neither of them knew they'd already lost.
Adam was the first to speak, of course. He always was.
He leaned in, lips curled like a boy with a secret and fingers twitching as though they longed for strings to pull.
"How long do you think before Hina confesses?" he asked, his voice soaked in mischief and that unquenchable need to poke holes in peace.
Smoker didn't so much turn as he shifted—just enough to show the line of his jaw tightening like a blade unsheathed halfway. "I don't think she knows what she's feeling," he said, the words clipped and dull like he was filing them down before handing them over. "And why are we even talking about this?"
Adam shrugged with the ease of a man who had never learned to fear consequences. "I thought that's what friends do—talk about the things no one dares say out loud. Besides, blackmail's cheaper than a therapist." He laughed at his own joke, a light sound that didn't quite reach his eyes.
Drake, ever the reluctant poet beneath layers of disinterest, let out a sigh heavy enough to bend metal. "What has life come to?" he muttered. "I feel like I'm hanging with a bunch of noble girls, gossiping about boys with flowers in their hair."
There was a silence then—not the awkward sort, but the kind that hummed like a warning before the storm. The kind that let you know something was shifting beneath the surface.
And in that silence, Naruto and Hina moved.
They walked toward the ship, side by side but not together, their shadows dragging behind them like wounded ghosts. Neither said a word. They didn't need to. Every stolen glance, every heartbeat missed in the space between breaths, said more than lips ever could.
The crew watched them approach—not with mocking grins or juvenile jabs—but with the reverent stillness of men bearing witness to something old as war and just as dangerous. A slow-burning thing. A quiet reckoning.
Camaraderie returned like a dog to its master—loyal, tail-wagging, and laced with the stench of blood yet to be spilled. But underneath the laughter and easy words, the embers still glowed. Hidden. Waiting.
Not love. Not yet.
But something close enough to hurt.
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The ship cut through the sea like a blade through old scars, splitting waves that whispered of ancient things best forgotten. Salt hung thick in the air, and for the first time in what felt like eternity, the crew was silent—not from discipline, but from a rare and fragile peace. War had taken a step back, letting its breath settle before the next lunge.
Below deck, Naruto left behind the din of shallow laughter and hollow victories. He moved like a shadow cut loose from its master—quiet, urgent, drawn. The door to his shared quarters creaked open under his hand. Within, the gloom greeted him like an old friend.
His eyes found them immediately: the gloves, sprawled across the desk like dead things. But they weren't dead. No. Dead things didn't twitch.
And beside them, the card. Worth five million. Nothing to the World Government, but to Naruto, it was heavier than gold. Ken's last will, painted in numbers. A farewell written in blood-ink and greed. Naruto picked it up, rolling the corner between his fingers as he spoke to the empty room.
"Thank you, Ken," he murmured, voice soft like poison in a goblet. "I'll remember you… as a fool who fed the wolf at his own throat."
The grin that curled his lips was not kind. It was a knife's grin. Something crooked. Something wrong.
He turned to the gloves—black, coiled, hungry. They shifted slightly, the fingers curling inward like claws. Threads of wire glistened along the seams, whispering promises in a language no sane man would translate.
Naruto touched them.
They responded.
Like lovers starved of affection, the gloves lunged, threads snapping out, searching for skin, for pulse, for dominance. They wrapped around his wrists with a predator's tenderness, and Naruto, unflinching, merely chuckled.
"So feisty."
The threads tightened, testing him, perhaps tasting him.
"Surrender to me," he whispered.
And they did.
Not with obedience, but with something worse—recognition. As though they had been waiting for someone like him. A host. A home.
He pulled them on, and the instant they closed over his skin, the world fractured.
Reality bled.
The wooden walls of the cabin dissolved into shadow, the desk swallowed by ink-thick fog. The ship, the sea, the crew—all gone. Naruto stood in a wasteland of bone and thread, where the sky was a lid of iron and the air tasted of rust and forgotten screams.
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The past is a blade, rusted and cracked, but still sharp enough to draw blood. Even when buried. Even when forgotten. And in Naruto's mind, the past bled freely.
It began with her.
Arachne.
The name was not spoken—it unfolded in his skull like silk unraveling from bone. A memory not his, but vivid enough to flay. Through her eyes he saw it—no, felt it: the sting of betrayal, the soft lies people told with honeyed tongues and sharpened smiles. The master she served had been born into the world like a lamb—tender, wide-eyed, believing in the good of things. And for that, the world crucified him.
Arachne had watched. Silent. Ever present. She had been his sword, his shield, his shadow. But she had not been enough. Not when it counted.
The world had stripped her master bare. His fiancée, all false eyes and poison promises, had carved his heart out with nothing but words and left him to drown in sorrow. When he tried to end himself, Arachne had held the blade back. When he wept, she stood unmoving, letting his tears stain her uniform.
But when the world came for him again, she didn't hold back.
They called it murder. Called her monster.
She didn't argue. Monsters don't beg.
When they killed her master anyway—dragged him from his home and choked the life from his lungs—Arachne broke. Something in her shattered loud enough to echo through centuries. Her final words had not been a plea or prayer. They had been a curse.
"I curse you all. Even as a ghost, I will take my revenge."
And she did.
Long after her name faded. Long after her purpose was lost to dust and rot. All that remained was wrath and love twisted together into something eldritch. Something not quite dead.
And now she remembered.
Because Naruto remembered her.
He stood in the ship's small room, hands wrapped in the gloves—no, her. The threads had quieted, the madness in them stilled, watching. Waiting.
Then her voice—silk and steel—whispered into his soul.
"Do you wish for me to serve you?"
The audacity. The question dripped with the same venom she'd once buried in her enemies' throats.
Naruto didn't hesitate. His grin split his face like a scar reopening.
"Can you handle my love?" she asked, with the soft cruelty of a lover who'd watched too many lovers die.
"I am Uzumaki Naruto," he said, his voice like the clash of steel. "There is nothing I can't handle."
Silence fell. Then:
"Then, master… I am yours to command."
The bond clicked into place like a blade sliding home.
It was intimate, the way her presence wrapped around him. Possessive. Not like Hinata—never like Hinata. Hinata's love had been pure, unburdened, filled with hope and calm mornings. Arachne's love was a noose—tight, warm, and choking.
Still, Naruto thought of Hinata.
He saw her smile, the way her eyes held a quiet pride even when he returned drenched in blood. He had promised her things. Promised everything. And given only pieces. Always pieces.
He pushed the memory away like a soldier closing a coffin. Not now. Now was for war.
As the vision faded, he came back to himself in the dim quiet of the room. The gloves had changed. No longer weapons… but symbols. Twin rings, black as forgotten sins, adorned his fingers. When he touched them, the metal pulsed with life—warm, obedient.
Arachne's voice hummed with quiet joy. A purr wrapped in silk and shadow.
"Thank you," Naruto whispered to the empty air.
The rings glowed faintly in reply. And somehow, he knew—she was smiling.
He had not just inherited a weapon. He had adopted a ghost, a curse, and a love that time had failed to bury.
And she had chosen him.
------------------------------------------
Pain is a teacher. A brutal one. A patient one. And for those willing to bleed, it teaches truths no book, no man, no immortal ever will.
Naruto bled for truth.
He stood in silence, the low drone of the ship a constant murmur in the bones of the steel floor. The air was stale with oil and salt and the memory of blood. His room—bare, small, almost monk-like—offered no comfort. He didn't seek comfort. He never had. What he sought, tonight, was breaking.
The gloves waited for him on the desk. Polished black metal, but not quite metal. They pulsed faintly like a thing still breathing. Still remembering. He could feel Arachne watching from the shadows of his soul.
He didn't speak to her. Not yet.
The gloves slid over his hands like lovers returning home. Not cold, not warm. Possessive. The moment they latched on, something inside them stirred—a tension, a whisper of thread pulled taut. Arachne's spirit moved within, half-horrified, half-hungry. She knew what came next.
Naruto didn't flinch. He drove his fist straight into his gut.
A sound like meat striking meat, blunt and deep. His body folded forward, muscles clenching, breath stolen. The pain came in waves—familiar, raw, addictive.
But the second punch never landed.
Threads shot out from the gloves, binding his limbs mid-swing. Not violently. Not to dominate. They pleaded.
"Master, I implore you—do not harm yourself."
Arachne's voice. Fractured porcelain stitched with sorrow. It crept through his mind like ivy through ruins.
He didn't answer at first. Just breathed. Let the ache spread like ink through his blood.
She was broken, this spirit in his gloves. Born of a world that demanded her love, then punished her for it. Her previous master—a soft-hearted fool—had died while she screamed vengeance through teeth cracked from smiling too long.
Naruto wasn't soft. He was fire made flesh. And yet, he heard her. The tremble. The begging.
"Don't worry, Arachne," he muttered, wiping a line of spit from his lips. "I'm just practicing."
The thread loosened, reluctantly. Like a ghost letting go of the living.
"I'll drink this medicine… just so you feel better."
That earned him silence.
From his bag, he retrieved the vial—glass kissed with runes, filled with a liquid that shimmered like dusk. It was the taste of old hospitals and magic too weak to lie. He drank. It burned down his throat like molten iron, but he didn't grimace.
He rubbed the rest across the bruises rising beneath his skin—each one earned, each one a letter in a language only his body understood.
"Thank you," Arachne whispered. "But please… be careful."
Naruto laughed. Not mockingly. Almost kindly.
"Careful's what people are when they plan on dying old and harmless."
Then came the Haki.
His fists shimmered, the invisible energy wrapping around his arms like armor forged from will itself. It was a violence held in check, the way a knife sheathes itself until it's time to spill red.
Then—he struck.
Fist into chest. Into ribs. Into gut.
Again.
And again.
Each impact louder than the last. Flesh resisted, bone absorbed. Sweat soaked his shirt. His breaths came short and fast, every exhale a snarl, every inhale a dare.
Pain clawed at him. Welcomed him like an old friend.
The gloves didn't stop him this time.
Arachne watched, silent now. Perhaps even proud. Or perhaps simply resigned. What love could a dead thing give, after all?
Time lost meaning. Only the rhythm remained. Like a war drum echoing through the hollow of his ribs.
He hit himself until his knuckles throbbed, until black stars danced across his vision, until he was sure the next strike would either break something vital or forge something greater.
But Naruto didn't stop.
Because strength, for him, had never come from ease. It had come from wounds. From doubt. From crawling through fire with a grin full of blood.
And tonight, the fire burned inside.
--------------------------------
A punchline hides the knife best. Adam knew this well. He lived like laughter was armor, and every jest a shield—thin, cracked, and desperate.
The door creaked open like it had secrets to spill, and Adam stepped into a storm.
Naruto was hunched forward in the middle of the room, shirt stuck to his skin with sweat, his fists hammering into his own stomach with a rhythm that bordered on masochism. It wasn't training. Not anymore. It was ritual. Pain made manifest. A prayer made with bruises and broken breath.
Adam's eyebrow climbed like a mountain goat defying gravity.
"Bro," he said, folding his arms, a smirk twitching at his lips. "You're really obsessed with training."
No answer, just panting. The kind of panting that came from dragging yourself into hell and begging for another lap.
Adam chuckled, stepping further inside, cracking open a beer like it was sacred. "I like it, don't get me wrong. But maybe you should, I dunno... try something that isn't beating yourself half to death."
Naruto finally looked up, one hand still curled into a trembling fist, the other resting against his bruised side. "Like what?" he asked, jaw clenched, voice raw.
Adam flopped onto his bed with theatrical ease, as if the ship wasn't full of ghosts and weaponized trauma. He raised the can in salute and took a lazy swig.
"Tasting some girls, bro."
The words dropped like a sword in a temple.
Naruto blinked, confused. "That's… it? That's your solution?"
"Hell yeah," Adam said, eyes gleaming. "Between the four of us, you're the only one who hasn't dipped the wick. Smoker's too lazy—remember that girl who dumped him mid-thrust? Poor bastard, too tired to finish the job. Everyone laughed until they remembered he could snap them in half."
Naruto squinted. "And that makes you an expert?"
Adam wagged his beer like a priest with a relic. "I've lived, my friend. And now, I challenge you."
Naruto tilted his head, brows drawing together in disbelief.
"A contest," Adam continued, grinning like a wolf. "Once we hit port—whoever scores the most in a week, wins."
"You're drunk."
"I'm brilliant."
Naruto shook his head, eyes narrowing. "This is boredom talking."
"Maybe," Adam allowed. "But boredom's the mother of invention. Or was that desperation?"
Naruto's face soured. "Thanks, but no thanks. I don't do brothels."
Adam wasn't done.
"Well then," he said, his grin now edged like a dagger, "what about Hina?"
Naruto stiffened. There it was.
"We could make it a real contest. You take your girl, I take mine. See how many times you can get her to—"
"Stop," Naruto said, voice sharp enough to cut flesh. His cheeks flared with heat, though whether it was rage or shame, even he didn't know. "Are you trying to goad me?"
Adam only laughed, hands up in surrender. "Is it working?"
Naruto exhaled slowly. "It's not like that. I don't even know if I love her yet. That's her decision too."
"Yet," Adam echoed, pointing at him with mock triumph. "That means you're thinking about it. Admit it. The cherry's ripening."
Naruto groaned. "You're impossible."
"Thank you."
Adam pushed off the bed and gave Naruto a light jab to the gut—playful, but it still winded him.
"Damn, that hurt," Naruto muttered, clutching his stomach.
"That's for calling me a cherry. You've still got a long way to go if that winded you," Adam said with a smirk. His eyes flicked to Naruto's hand. "Nice ring, by the way. Cursed weapon?"
Naruto nodded, rubbing his side. "Picked it up from the island. A reward for killing the boss."
"Neat."
Adam exhaled long and loud, dragging himself to his feet with exaggerated exhaustion. "Okay, okay, I'm going. You're a buzzkill."
Naruto was already halfway to the door when Adam called out behind him. "Go get her, tiger," he said with a mock whistle.
The door clicked shut.
And the mask dropped.
Adam sat still for a long time, the beer now warm in his hand. The laughter, the swagger—it drained from him like blood from an open wound.
His gaze dropped to the gloves on Naruto's desk. His fingers trembled as they brushed across the impression they'd left in the wood.
"Grand Aunt," he whispered.
No smile now. No mischief. Just silence.
"I hope you feel better now."
A pause.
A breath.
Then, quieter: "We've been looking for you. All this time."
The gloves didn't respond.
But in the stillness of the room, something cold stirred in the air—something listening.
Something that remembered Adam's blood.
His family had searched for Arachne's cursed legacy for decades. They thought it lost. Forgotten. But fate had a twisted sense of humor. And now it clung to his closest friend like a spider in his chest.
Adam finished the beer in one swig. He didn't smile again that night.
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There are wounds that don't bleed but still scream.
Naruto had long since learned to recognize their sound.
He stepped out of his cabin like a fugitive from his own mind, the air cooler than it should've been, corridors narrower than they were designed. The ship groaned softly under its own weight, its steel bones creaking as if it too was sick of carrying so many broken souls.
Adam's voice still clung to him like a smirk he couldn't wipe off. The teasing, the challenge, the weightless bravado masking something else—something older, hungrier. Naruto had laughed at it. Masked his shame. But the echo hadn't left.
Not when Hina was just ahead, and every step toward her felt like stepping through judgment.
She sat with her back to him, wrapped in the quiet storm of her own presence. The ocean stretched out before her, merciless in its vastness. It reflected nothing.
"Look who decided to honor Hina with his time," she said, still facing away, her voice the sound of a blade being slowly drawn.
The words hit harder than a punch. No curse. No yell. Just the cold precision of a woman who'd expected nothing and was disappointed anyway.
Naruto halted. Guilt coiled in his gut like something alive, biting, venomous.
"I…" He struggled. Words were a weak currency in moments like this. "Hina, sorry for ignoring you."
Too soft. Too easy. He knew how to play the strings of apology like a seasoned liar. It wasn't hard—say the right thing, wear the right face, sound just wounded enough and people would bend. But this wasn't that moment. She wasn't a mark.
"I'll do anything for you to be happy," he added, voice low. "So please… calm down."
Arachne whispered in his mind, disapproving. Manipulator. Soft words from a man who once broke mountains with fists. But the gloves were silent. Watching.
Hina turned.
Naruto wished she hadn't.
There were tears still clinging to her lashes, trembling like they didn't want to fall unless he said something cruel. Her eyes—usually so sharp—had dulled with something softer, something wounded. It made him ache.
His hand moved before thought could catch it, brushing gently across her cheek.
She didn't pull away. She leaned in. Just slightly. Like a kitten mistaking his hand for home.
His thumb lingered there, trembling slightly.
"I am really sorry," he whispered, not because he wanted to win, but because for once, losing her felt like death in slow motion.
She stared at him, studying his face like it was a language she hadn't learned to trust. But then—
"Hina believes you," she said, and even her voice seemed unsure, like it hated its own hope. "So please… do not leave Hina again."
The words weren't dramatic. They weren't grand. But they broke something in him.
She still believed. Even after everything.
He kissed her.
Not like a soldier. Not like a lover either. Just a boy trying to hold together something fragile before it shattered again. And she didn't move. She let him. She chose him in that moment.
But silence isn't something a soldier gets to keep.
"OOOOH!"
The shout cut through the stillness like a missile through silk.
"ENCORE! ENCORE!"
"COME ON, YOU STUPID COUPLE, GIVE US A GOOD SHOW!"
Hina snapped upright, face crimson, hands trembling—not with romance, but rage.
Naruto stepped back, chuckling awkwardly. The mood had been butchered, laid open, left to rot beneath the howls of immature wolves.
"You bastards!" Hina screamed.
Gunfire answered her.
Bullets danced across the deck as the boys scrambled, tripping over each other, laughter twisting into panic. Each shot missed by a whisper, but the message landed hard.
Naruto watched it unfold with a grin he couldn't help. Violence had a way of saying what words couldn't. And Hina? She was a poet in carnage.
"You're amazing," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. There was comfort in that touch now, mutual, earned.
Hina glanced up at him, flustered, lips pressed in a tight line trying to hide a smile. "You better watch yourself," she said, voice like cracked glass wrapped in velvet. "Or I'll make sure no one gets the show they're asking for."
He laughed.
Genuine this time. Soft.
"I'll be careful," he replied. "Promise."
The crew kept laughing. The teasing didn't stop. But something had shifted. Beneath the noise and mockery, something had mended. Maybe not healed. But mended.
And that was enough for now.
The war would come again. The knives would return. The curse in his veins still whispered.
But tonight, on the edge of the world, with her beside him and bullets still smoking in the air—
Naruto was almost at peace.