Chapter 12: The Quiet Roar of Strength
The door shut behind him with a quiet click, yet it sounded louder in Naruto's mind than any cannon blast. It was the sort of silence that pressed against your ribs like a vice and whispered that something important had just begun. The training yard, the sweat, the pounding of feet on dirt—it all felt like a different world. One left behind the moment he crossed the threshold of Z's office.
A room that smelled of oiled metal and old paper. Dust motes danced in slanted light pouring through a high window, as if reluctant to settle in this place of judgment and consequence. Naruto's eyes were not on the desk, not on the teacher seated like a wolf pretending to be a man behind it, but on the pedestal. There, bathed in the glow of reverence and danger, sat her—Obelisk Mk II.
A shotgun of blackened steel and whispers, sleek as a dragon's fang. Its form promised brutality wrapped in elegance. Not just a weapon. A sentence.
Z leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking under his weight. His smirk was as thin as a blade, his eyes sharper still. "You can touch it," he said, the permission deliberate—almost cruel in its timing. Like letting a starving man know the bread was not poisoned just as he was about to bite.
Naruto didn't need to be told twice. He crossed the room in five measured steps, each one quieter than the last, like a priest approaching his altar. His fingers met the cold metal, and for a moment the world held its breath.
The grip fit his palm like it had been waiting for him. Perfect weight, balanced, built not for war but for dominance. He had dreamed of such a weapon—not the crude tools handed to fodder, but something real. Something that said, I am not prey. I am the one they run from.
His reflection stared back at him in the polished barrel. Not the boy from the street. Not the bastard child who smiled too much and bled too often. No, this one was different. This one belonged.
"It's enough to kill a Sea King in a single shot," Z said, voice flat, but his gaze never left Naruto. "But you won't get many chances. Three boxes of ammunition. That's all. The next ones, you earn. You bleed. You pay."
Naruto turned the weapon in his hand. His fingers caressed the ridges as though memorizing every edge, every promise it held. Then he looked up. Calm, focused, no smile.
"I understand," he said. "And I will remember."
Z grunted. "See that you do. Because that weapon—Obelisk—it's not forgiveness. It's not friendship. It's a test. You fail, and it'll bury you faster than any enemy."
Naruto nodded once, cradling the shotgun like an heirloom.
Z leaned forward slightly. His face was unreadable now—stone shaped by time and war. "You're changing," he said. "And that's good. But not fast enough."
A pause.
"I'm not giving this to you. I'm giving it to the version of you I need you to become."
And with that, Naruto knew the meeting was over. Not because Z said it, but because the silence returned—heavier this time, like the pause before a storm. He turned, Obelisk in hand, and left the room with his footsteps silent but his mind loud.
As the door shut behind him, he felt it—that invisible line drawn in the sand. The one between boys with dreams and men with purpose.
--------------------------------------
He came down the hall like a storm hiding in a skin—Naruto, the man who wore smiles like masks and death like a second skin. The weapon, boxed and locked, rested in his arms as if it were a sleeping child. His heartbeat didn't match the serenity on his face. Excitement, yes. But excitement fed by something far less innocent than anticipation. He felt it in his bones, coiling and twisting. Not the thrill of battle—no, that was too simple. This was the thrill of control.
He found them in the courtyard. Drake and Hina, dancing their little war in sweat and fury, blades clashing and skin bruising. The kind of spar that tasted like rivalry but stank of something older. Naruto watched, eyes like knives dulled by time, waiting for his turn.
Drake noticed. Of course he did. He always noticed Naruto. Like a moth notices the furnace. He turned, breathing heavy, a fire behind his eyes. "Let's fight," he said. "No holding back. I want to know the gap."
Ah, the gap. Men always wanted to measure themselves against the abyss—never realizing the abyss always won.
Naruto's gaze fell on him, cool and distant. Not the gaze of a comrade. Not even the gaze of an enemy. Just calculation. Cold, endless, mathematical cruelty dressed in flesh.
"You want to know what I think of you, Drake?" he said, voice soft as a guillotine's whisper. "One word: pathetic."
It wasn't a declaration. It was a fact.
Drake flinched, as if the word had teeth. "What's the meaning of this?"
Naruto smiled. It wasn't a kind smile. It wasn't even a cruel one. It was empty. Hollow. Like someone remembering how to smile by mimicking the dead.
"I enjoy watching worms crawl," Naruto said, stepping forward, the sun catching in his hair like gold polished by blood. "Especially worms that think themselves dragons. You've got power, yes. But no will. No killer instinct. You have a good fruit, Drake. A strong one. But the tree it came from? Rotting."
Drake's roar tore through the courtyard. Axe lifted, fury blazing, he lunged. And Naruto vanished.
Soru.
In the next breath, Drake folded inwards around a fist that shattered his ribcage like glass under boot. The air left his lungs in a gasp too shocked to scream.
"Try harder," Naruto said, stepping back as if this were a training drill, not a slaughter.
Dust rose like a funeral veil. Drake's axe cracked stone. Rage drove him forward. Rage, and the humiliation of being stripped raw before his crew. He struck again.
Naruto barely moved. His kick lifted Drake into the air like a toy thrown by a tantrum immortal. The crack of jaw against heel was satisfying in the way breaking things always is.
Drake transformed midair, tail slashing, claws glinting. A desperate animal clinging to its last dignity. He struck back, tail smashing Naruto into the wall. The stone trembled.
Naruto adjusted in midair. Let the Haki flow. Let the body bend but not break. He stepped out of the crater like he was rising from a bed.
"That's more like it," he said. "Still pointless. But more entertaining."
A breath. A shift.
Arachne.
Steel wires screamed from his gloves, a spider's wrath given form. They wrapped Drake in cold metal, slicing skin and biting deep. Drake's strength failed him. Naruto's fist didn't.
The blow broke more than bone. It broke pride.
Drake's body flew like discarded meat, bounced, bled, settled.
Naruto stalked forward, his shadow long and sharp. His eyes—no longer human. Not really. Not since the day the moon bled and the Raikage walked free.
Drake couldn't move. Could barely breathe. But he felt it—the killing intent. The suffocation of standing too close to something ancient and wrong. Naruto wasn't trying to kill him.
He was teaching.
That was worse.
"That's enough, Naruto." Smoker's voice cut through the moment like a bayonet through silence.
Naruto didn't stop.
"Stop acting already," Adam called, a grin in his voice. "I know you're not serious."
Just like that, the heat died.
Naruto blinked. The predator vanished behind the boy. He extended a hand to Drake, as if this had all been a game. "You wanted a test. Now you know. Sorry for being cruel—it's a teaching method."
Drake took the hand.
He didn't thank him.
He punched him.
The crack of knuckle on jaw was honest. Raw.
Naruto took it. Smiled, blood at the corner of his mouth. "Better."
Drake stood on shaking legs. "My fault," he muttered. "I pushed for this."
Naruto nodded. "Just remember next time. Not everyone stops when you break."
Drake limped away.
Naruto watched him go, and something flickered behind his eyes. Not guilt. Not pride.
Just memory.
The taste of moon dust in his throat. The screams of six ghosts still echoing in his head. The truth that a system built on lies only knows how to protect its favorites. He had seen justice fail. Had seen it break. Had buried too many friends in a world that worshipped collateral damage.
So now he played the game differently.
Drake had been lucky.
He'd only seen the curtain—hadn't looked behind it.
Not yet.
But one day, they all would.
And on that day, they'd either kneel—
Or break.
------------------------------------
The sun had dipped, bleeding its last light across the horizon like a slit throat, and the recruits—exhausted, sore, and half-broken—drifted away from the training grounds like leaves after a storm. Muscles ached. Bones threatened mutiny. Dreams were stitched in bruises.
Naruto remained standing in the fading gold. Still as death. Thinking. Calculating.
He was not like them.
They trained to grow strong.
He trained to never be weak again.
From the shadows of collapsing day, Adam approached. A grin split his face—the sort that men wear before doing something they know damn well they shouldn't.
He leaned close, his breath hot with mischief.
"Bro, wanna come?"
Naruto didn't even blink. His eyes stayed forward, cutting through dusk. "No."
Just that. A single syllable carved from a mountain of indifference.
Adam laughed like it didn't sting. "Your loss," he said, turning, boots crunching dry dirt as he vanished into freedom or folly—whatever came first.
A pause.
A presence.
Hina. The shadow always behind. Watching.
"What did he ask?" she said, quiet as a ghost, soft as dust on a coffin.
Naruto began walking. "Nothing important."
And like that, it was settled. She followed him like she always did. The loyal, uncertain kind. The kind who wanted to ask more, but knew better.
The path back to Naruto's place was silent, save for the echo of steps and the rustle of wind-stirred weeds. There was no need for words. Not until she broke the silence with something heavy, something cracked at the edges with hope.
"Do you mind if I moved to your place?"
It came out awkward. Soft. Almost like she regretted it halfway through.
Naruto turned his head, his expression unreadable in the dying light.
"Okay. It will be better if you are there."
She smiled. Relief twisted with something warmer. Without thinking, she hooked her arm into his. Two armored warriors, walking like children pretending everything was fine.
Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't.
But for a moment, they pretended.
—
Home wasn't empty.
It never was anymore.
Shiro stood in front of the door, a sunbeam in girl's skin. Too loud. Too eager. Too everything.
"Big brother!" she chirped like a bell. "What took you so long?"
"Practice."
One word. Flat.
But it was enough for her. "Can I join next time?"
"Yes."
Another one-word decree. Naruto didn't ponder, didn't consider. Shiro asked. He said yes. That was the rhythm of it.
The door opened. Hina stepped in behind him. Her eyes lingered on Shiro—judging, measuring, tolerating.
She saw her for what she was: not a rival, not a threat, not really. Just noise. Noise in the house of a man who never slept.
Inside, the walls were cold steel and shadow. The kind of place where warmth had been evicted long ago, replaced with routine and ghosts.
Shiro followed Naruto like a shadow follows fire. "Big brother, show me around? Play with me? Shiro's bored."
As if her boredom was some national crisis. As if the world would crack if she wasn't entertained for ten damn minutes.
Hina frowned. Not because of the request—but because it was working.
Before the sourness could bloom into storm, Naruto's voice cracked through it like thunder.
"You two get ready. We'll go to the market. All of us."
It was not a suggestion. Not a compromise.
It was a law passed down from a throne of silence.
They looked at him—Shiro, wide-eyed and delighted; Hina, caught between confusion and reluctant relief. He was already walking away. Already done with the conversation.
The market.
A public space.
Three of them. Together.
It felt like a joke he didn't get.
But he was already changing, already preparing.
Because in a world that had already burned his soul, he had learned one lesson the hard way:
You don't wait for peace. You make it.
Even if the pieces don't fit.
Even if the ghosts walk beside you.
---------------------------------------
Shops lined the cracked stone alleys like crooked teeth, gnawed and worn by time and the salt-stained wind blowing in from the harbor. Marineford's market district wasn't built for charm—it was built by men who understood war and wanted a peaceful place to rot in. Old Marines with hollow eyes and prosthetic limbs manned the stalls, selling goods with the indifference of those who'd seen too much and lived too long. Discipline clung to the place like smoke—regulations etched into the air, even in the clatter of shoppers and the rustle of uniforms.
And yet, in the midst of it all, he walked.
Naruto, the storm behind the sunlit smile. The fox with too many hearts in his hands and too little time for any of them. He strolled like a man without burdens, flanked by two shadows who bore theirs openly. One in silent steel, the other in chaotic white.
Shiro clung to his arm like a ribbon of snow, pale and radiant, her joy wrapped in childlike wonder—and something darker. Hina walked on the other side, every step measured, her jaw clenched like she was chewing through glass. The wind caught her hair, but not her thoughts.
They were three bodies walking in tandem, but beneath that calm: tension. A quiet war, without swords or smoke, just glances sharp enough to wound and silence deep enough to drown in.
Naruto noticed. Of course he noticed.
He just pretended not to.
"I had forgotten the burden of having girls fight over you. What a tragedy."
The thought slithered through his mind with the smirk of a man who'd once been worshipped, hunted, and crowned all in the same breath. He didn't want the attention—but he didn't hate it either. That was the cruel truth of it.
He knew how to smile. He didn't always know how to feel.
They passed shops selling swords dulled by time, boots that had marched through blood, and ration packs that could outlast most friendships. Hina's hand brushed his. Intentional. Measured. Shiro's grip tightened in response. A game, played in the shadows of smiles.
Then Hina struck first.
"Naruto, let's go to that shop to get some clothes," she said, her voice carefully light, but the way her fingers dug into his sleeve spoke of a need deeper than fabric.
Before he could answer, Shiro pounced, all mischief and music.
"No! Let's go to that shop. It has games. Shiro wants to play."
The words were sweet. The edge beneath them, sharper than most knives.
Naruto raised a brow. Then sighed.
Shiro threw the first punch. Hina the second. He was the battlefield.
"Let's buy the games first. Buying clothes takes time," he said. Reason, logic—his eternal armor.
Shiro grinned like a cat who'd stolen cream and a crown. "Thank you, Big Brother! You're the best!" She didn't just win. She performed it, throwing a victorious glance at Hina, who accepted the loss with the grim patience of a woman used to swallowing the pain.
Inside the shop, things shifted.
The air was warmer. The shelves lined with cardboard boxes, little worlds waiting to be opened. Bright colors. Soft lights. Nostalgia.
Shiro moved through it all like someone trying to remember what joy was supposed to feel like.
Naruto watched her, his eyes distant.
'She didn't get this. Not the warmth. Not the games. She was made for darker things.'
"Shiro," he said, "buy anything you want. I'll play with you when I have time."
She froze.
Then turned.
The smile was instant—but the flicker behind it was not. A quake in her eyes, a shudder in her soul. She flew into his arms like a gust of wind that didn't know where else to go.
"Really, Big Brother?" she whispered. Her voice barely a breath.
He held her. Not too tightly. But not weakly either. The way you hold someone who's broken before, and you're not sure which piece will cut you next.
Behind them, Hina stood still.
She didn't speak. Didn't move.
Just watched.
She had seen many things. Died for causes. Killed for orders. But nothing wounded quite like seeing someone else receive the kindness you'd dreamed of. She masked the ache well—but pain has its own language, and Naruto had long since learned to read it.
'I should've expected this,' she thought. 'Naruto doesn't choose what feels good. He chooses what makes sense.'
And still... she stayed. Because in that cold little store, surrounded by boxes of joy and ghosts of childhoods never lived, even Hina couldn't deny—
Naruto had a way of making the broken believe they were whole. If only for a moment.
-----------------------------------------
It was beneath the flickering glass of a dying sun, Marineford's sharp towers bleeding gold, that Naruto found himself in a den of fabric and vanity.
The shop was far too clean. Sterile in the way rich men liked their madness to be measured. White-tiled floors. Gleaming chrome racks holding clothes designed for those who wore names instead of armor. Yet here he was. The fox in silk.
They had come for games, for a light reprieve from heavier days. But war hounds rarely sleep long, and Naruto's mind was always wandering elsewhere—into blood, into tides, into fire. Still, even blades need polish.
The trio broke apart like wolves let loose in a garden. Shiro's laughter bounced from aisle to aisle, and Hina disappeared behind curtains with armfuls of indecency. Naruto—he walked to the counter as if storming a fortress.
"I'd like to place a custom order," he said. His voice was steady, low. It was the kind of voice that didn't ask. It claimed.
The receptionist blinked. A woman with eyes like daggers dulled by bureaucracy. She examined him as though uncertain whether to take offense or interest. "Will you provide the design, or would you like some assistance?"
Naruto didn't blink. He placed a weathered booklet on the counter. The pages were thick with ink and purpose. Every line drawn not with art, but with intent. A modified ANBU uniform. Death's embrace in silk and kevlar. Shadows stitched into seams.
The receptionist gave it the silence of admiration. "This is manageable. It will take a month. 300,000. But I can offer a slight discount due to the complexity."
He paid without a flinch.
Coin meant nothing. Not when weighed against survival. Not when power was the currency he traded in now.
With the transaction sealed in ink and credit, he moved through the store like a specter, collecting a few casual outfits—loose enough for comfort, firm enough for combat. He didn't dress to impress. He dressed to endure.
The sky was bleeding fire when he emerged, bags in hand. The wind of the district whipped up dust and the scent of food, laughter, life. But in Naruto's chest, the rhythm was slower. Weighted. His thoughts drifted toward the Calm Belt—toward monsters beneath the waves whose screams would never reach the sky.
Sea Kings.
He needed the kill. The test. The hunger was back.
"Naruto, can you come here?"
The voice was silk on steel. It belonged to Hina. She rarely called him like that unless something dangerous or delightful awaited.
He followed the sound.
The changing room door hung slightly ajar. He pushed it open without pause, as if he'd been summoned by fate itself.
There she stood—dressed in recklessness. A shirt designed to flirt with the line of decency. Hot pants that clung like they'd been painted on. She wore herself like a weapon, and Naruto… he felt it pierce.
For a moment, time gave way. He didn't see Hina. He saw a temptation carved by fire and sweat. A whisper of the night they had melted into each other.
"How does Hina look?" she asked. Her tone was soft, but it dared him. Dared him to look. Dared him to want.
"You look beautiful enough that I wish to eat you right now," he murmured, stepping forward, the shadows stretching around him like wolves scenting blood. His voice was thick, husky, laced with hunger no food could sate.
He swept her into his arms, the gesture sharp but reverent. His lips brushed her ear—a ghost's kiss.
"You tempt me so, my beautiful seductress."
Her breath hitched. The heat spread, slow and deadly. Her body remembered his touch—how his hands carved fire into her skin, how his voice became her storm.
"Not here," she whispered, drowning in the nearness of him.
He chuckled, dark and low, like a predator teasing its prey.
"Let's wait until we get back. Then, I'll thoroughly ravish you."
He left her trembling and wanting. A queen unclaimed.
But the world hadn't finished with him yet.
As he stepped into the light, a smaller storm awaited.
"No fair, Big Brother! Shiro also wants you to look at her."
She was sunshine wrapped in ambition. Shiro twirled in her new outfit—a white skintight spandex that shimmered like frost under moonlight. Gloves hugged her fingers, and the innocence of her expression clashed deliciously with the boldness of her attire.
Naruto's gaze lingered. Not with lust—but with something warmer. Protective. Proud. Dangerous, in a different way.
"You look good," he said, his hand ruffling her hair.
She giggled, basking in the attention like a flower reaching for the sun.
--------------------------------------
There are prices that burn slower than fire. Some paid in coin. Others in bone. And sometimes—if you're lucky—in bullets made of debt and delusion.
Naruto walked with the weight of purpose slung across his back and coin slipping through his fingers like blood in water. The markets hissed around him with voices half-muffled by the humid breath of the sea, and the scent of brine and spice curled into his nostrils like a warning. A hunter's calm veiled his expression, but beneath it coiled something more primal—restlessness, ambition, the need to taste danger and master it.
He had what he needed: the tinctures and metals, gauze and salts, syringes like glass daggers. A self-made medic, not by choice, but because corpses don't patch themselves. Still, his steps never faltered, even as the shadow of his next errand loomed over him like a storm front.
A low building with barred windows and a reinforced door caught his eye. The sign read Tennin's Arsenal, stenciled in flaking red. Inside, the air was thick with oil and powder. The kind of place where men whispered prices with the reverence of clergy counting sins.
A man with a stained apron and burned hands waited behind the counter, eyes sharp as broken flint. The gleam of profit danced behind them when Naruto placed a calloused hand on the counter and asked his question.
"How much for Obelisk rounds?"
The man didn't blink. Didn't smirk. Only gave a number like he was naming the years of a death sentence. "Hundred thousand. Each."
Naruto's hand paused mid-reach, his fingers curling into a fist. "That's more than most earn in a year."
The vendor shrugged. "Bullets kill Sea Kings. Not dreams. That's the going rate. You want charity, try the temples."
He could've argued. He didn't. The world didn't run on fairness. It ran on force. On leverage. On blood spilled for bullets spent.
"One box," Naruto said, his voice ironed flat.
Coins clinked on the table with the sound of finality. The vendor gave a respectful bow, but Naruto had already turned, box in hand, the weight of it heavier than it should be—because he knew what he'd just purchased: permission to kill monsters, and the burden of ensuring each shot meant something.
Night found him restless.
The day had been a cage, the city too loud, the streets too full. He didn't ask permission when he slipped away. He never did. The water whispered to him like an old lover. Come, break something. Hunt.
He obeyed.
Naruto ran beneath the sea.
Air Walk was a lie of physics. It was chakra made stubborn, shaped into defiance. He moved like a shadow cast over moonlit waves, footsteps never quite touching water, never quite part of the sky. Below him, the Calm Belt slumbered, still and secretive—a graveyard for ships, a nursery for leviathans.
And he was trespassing.
Haki flared like fire beneath his skin, stretching outward in concentric pulses. The sea didn't stir. Not yet. But he felt them. Giants slumbering in the deep, thick with age and violence. They moved slowly, their minds not shaped for thoughts but for hunger and fury.
He grinned.
Here was the truth no one wanted to admit: he loved this. Not war, but the edge—that place where the water could rise up and swallow him whole, where strength meant nothing without intent. Where the next breath was not guaranteed. Where he was not guaranteed.
Naruto moved faster.
His presence in the water was a ripple, a scent on the tide, a dare whispered to the abyss. His mind began to shape tactics, battle plans, escape routes. But his heart beat to one rhythm only: come find me.
-------------------------------
The Calm Belt was a graveyard waiting to happen.
Naruto had dived into it like a man burdened with peace, aching for the scream of a predator to break the silence, aching for violence to remind him he was alive. The kind of peace that gnaws on the bones and rusts the joints. Water closed above him like the sky falling shut, and below lay nothing but blackness and the flicker of moonlight cast by his passing.
He had waited. Patient. Cold. Like death dressed in boy's skin.
His Haki stretched through the water like tendrils of instinct made flesh—feeling for something with bite, something that could pull his blood to the surface, boil the stillness from his veins. He didn't want a fight. He wanted the fight—and the ocean, vast as it was, offered only silence and slow death.
Until it didn't.
It came gliding like a lie. Forty meters of hunger disguised as serenity. An eel-shaped Sea King with moonlight dancing on its oiled skin, smooth and gleaming like sin polished for sale. It was beneath him in size—less a monster, more a snack—but Naruto wasn't here to measure trophies. He was here to judge death by its reflexes.
So he kicked it.
A blur. A ripple. A challenge.
The beast turned. Its head swiveled like a door opening on rusted hinges, slow and deliberate. Black eyes as large as shields stared at him, empty of thought but heavy with instinct. It didn't see him as a man, not even a threat—just a twitching morsel wrapped in noise.
Then it moved.
Water exploded around its serpentine body as it lunged, teeth like daggers parting the tide with lethal purpose. Naruto ran. Not because he was afraid, but because he wanted the chase. There was something holy about being hunted. It clarified the soul. Stripped away doubt and distraction. He ran beneath the waves, faster than thought, his Haki flashing like lightning in the dark. Every stroke, every motion, a whisper between death and mockery.
For a minute—no more, no less—Naruto led the beast on, teasing it, luring it. He was bait and executioner both, letting adrenaline carve poetry into his blood.
Then he rose.
The surface shattered around him, a thousand shards of ocean cast into the air. He vaulted upward, feet skimming the last of the sea. The Sea King, drunk on rage, followed—its body arcing through the moonlight like a blade.
And that was the moment Naruto ended it.
The Obelisk gleamed like a promise in his hands. He fired.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
No thunder. No recoil. Just silence and consequence. The bullets didn't travel. They arrived. Three points of annihilation stitched through time and skull, and then—detonation. A roar of wet ruin as the head of the Sea King exploded mid-leap, its corpse cartwheeling through the air, dead before it understood the pain.
Blood misted the sky like a immortal's sneeze.
Naruto caught the falling mass with his Haki, dragging it through the air with the ease of a man pulling secrets from shadows. The body twitched once, then stilled—offering no more threats, no more riddles.
As he flew toward Marineford, salt drying on his skin, he muttered to the silence, "Damn, that was stronger than I expected."
He hadn't seen the bullets—just the holes they left behind. Only his Haki had traced the whisper of their path, like catching the footsteps of ghosts in a battlefield littered with bones.
The Calm Belt returned to silence.
But now it remembered him.
--------------------------------
Marineford didn't blink when he returned. That was the sort of place it was. Men made of harder things than steel and stone—who had seen immortals bleed and monsters weep—barely looked up when Naruto descended from the skies, dragging a corpse larger than most ships behind him like a fisherman might carry a net of sardines. Blood dripped in crimson threads onto the polished stone, and no one flinched. No awe. No questions.
They were used to him.
He landed with the grace of a falling star, muscles rippling beneath a black sleeveless shirt, boots splashing into a shallow puddle of moonlit sea water left clinging to the creature's side. The Sea King's body hit the ground with a thud that vibrated through the foundations of the base. It had once ruled the deep—now it was dinner.
Naruto didn't smile. That took effort he reserved for things that mattered.
Hina and Shiro were in the middle of a war—dice rolling, ladders climbed, snakes slid. A board game painted in childhood, played by those who had shed innocence long ago.
The moment the door creaked open and the scent of the ocean's grave spilled into the room, the dice froze mid-roll. Shiro's eyes grew wide like twin moons caught in a world of monsters and men.
Hina blinked. "What is this?"
Naruto's voice came like gravel dragged across stone—casual, calm, as if speaking of the weather.
"Our dinner. And ingredients for other things."
The corpse lay behind him like a felled immortal, jaw slack and eyes empty, leaking faint glimmers of its former majesty in death. A beast of the abyss, turned sacrifice on the altar of strength.
He reached for his sword without fanfare. Not for drama. Just purpose.
Steel kissed flesh. Not a clean sound—wet, thick, real. Naruto's blade moved with clinical precision, slicing through the creature's hide like parchment, flesh parting under his hands as if it were obeying some ancient law of submission. The kitchen became a butcher's temple—blood, heat, and the soft hum of fire.
He mixed powders with care, poured a thick, pungent tincture into the meat—his own concoction, something that tasted of ash and steel but promised transformation. It wasn't food. It was fuel.
He served the dish in silence. Laid it before the two like an offering. Hina looked at it with wary eyes.
She took a bite, chewed, and scowled.
"Should've expected it wouldn't taste exceptional."
Naruto didn't answer. He wasn't cooking for taste. He was building weapons.
Shiro, always the storm beneath the surface, beamed.
"Big Brother, don't worry! Shiro thinks your cooking is delicious!" she said, mouth full, words muffled with joy only the simple could carry. Her innocence was a blade—sharp in its own way, capable of piercing through the veil of all Naruto had become.
He nodded.
"The taste is only secondary. This dish will strengthen your bodies. Monsters like this—beings forged in pressure, darkness, and time—they carry in their flesh the secrets to power."
They felt it.
The shift. The quiet roar beneath their skin.
Not instant, not violent. A gradual awakening, like the first breath after drowning. Their muscles tingled. Bones hummed. Shiro's eyes flickered golden for a moment, just a heartbeat, just a whisper. Hina's grip on her spoon tightened as energy whispered along her spine.
Naruto watched with the detachment of a surgeon and the affection of a father.
"This world doesn't have nature energy users," he thought, slicing another slab of flesh for storage. "But it doesn't matter. There are still monsters here. And monsters… are good enough."
They drank tea to settle their stomachs. Bitter, herbal, and thick with healing roots. Shiro curled up on the couch, humming to herself, drunk on protein and chakra. She eventually drifted off, content and glowing faintly from within. Hina lingered—sipping slower, eyes never quite meeting Naruto's.
When the quiet took the room, Naruto cleaned the blade and stored the leftovers. Not in fridges. In war chests—each labeled, organized, catalogued. Food, for him, had become another battlefield.
Night settled over Marineford like a blanket soaked in ink. The stars were veiled. The moon watched, silent.
Naruto's thoughts turned inward, where the wild things waited.
Hina didn't have to ask. Neither did he.
Some hungers didn't need names. They didn't need permission. They were simply there, like fire, like the need to breathe.
Walls shuddered. Sheets tore. Gasps danced through the dark like ghosts. The beast he had slain was not the only one to roar that day.
Fortunately, Marineford slept with thicker skin than most.
---------------------------------
Simon:
They say fear is a sharp-edged thing. But they lie.
Fear is dull, slow, suffocating.
It creeps. It claws.
It waits.
The sea gnawed at the cliffs of the island like a starving beast, fangs of jagged rock bared to the gray sky. Mist clung to the coastline like a shroud, blanketing the crumbling fortress that crouched above the surf—more tomb than stronghold, more secret than shelter. Inside its belly, in a room where no light dared flicker and no warmth survived, Simon waited.
He sat crooked in an iron chair that had long since forgotten comfort. A single candle fought back the dark, casting malformed shadows on the stone walls. His hands trembled, one resting against the shell of the Den Den Mushi that twitched and blinked, its eyes vacant yet knowing.
And then it spoke.
A voice as thin as wire and twice as cruel.
"You have failed to bring me what I asked, Simon."
No raised voice. No fury. That would've been a kindness. The voice didn't need to rage—it was the kind of voice that assumed the whole world would burn if it merely asked.
Simon swallowed. A sound like a dry leaf crumbling.
His voice cracked before it found footing. "I—It wasn't my fault. I had her, I did, but Z was there—he appeared like death, like he always does. I would've brought the package, I swear it!"
Desperation made him ugly. Made him human. The candlelight didn't flatter his pallid skin, his sunken eyes. He looked like a man whose fate had already been written in the back of a butcher's ledger.
Silence followed. And it was far more terrifying than speech.
Then—
"Two months."
Two words, colder than iron on flesh. The Den Den Mushi clicked, its eyes blinking with the mimicry of distant judgment. No anger. No forgiveness.
"Get me the girl. Kill the filth who delayed it. I do not enjoy setbacks."
The words didn't come like threats. They came like facts. As if they'd already happened.
Simon clenched his jaw. He wanted to beg again, to grovel—but he knew it wouldn't help. That voice didn't respect weakness. It crushed it. Studied the pieces. Made examples.
His voice, when it came, was a whisper. "Understood. I won't fail again."
He didn't believe it. Not really. But he said it the way men say prayers before the rope tightens.
A click. Then silence. Final and full of meaning.
Simon stared at the Den Den Mushi like it might sprout teeth and finish what the voice had started. His knuckles were white around the chair. Sweat crawled down his spine, his breath coming fast now that he was alone with his panic.
He had two months.
To find the girl.
To kill a man most wouldn't even name out loud.
Two months before the voice sent someone who wouldn't call first.
And so, on a jagged island in the middle of nowhere, a man began to die—very slowly.
From the inside out.
Because fear doesn't cut. It sinks.
And once it gets inside, there's no pulling it free.