Morning broke in ribbons of pink and gold, the ship's wake stitching foam into fleeting patterns that looked, for a moment, like seal-script trying to write the sea a new name.
Naruto woke before the deckhands, breath syncing with the swell as he tested his coil—shallower than home, but steady—and let a single clone form and disperse to gauge recovery lag.
The System's pane unfolded with the crispness of cool paper.
Daily Protocol: Orientation
- Sense survey: Map local "will" signatures within 50 meters. [Reward: 10 WP]
- Taxonomy task: Identify and define at least two local power systems; propose chakra integration pathways. [Reward: 20 WP, Sync Memory Shard]
- Bond weave: Advance existing ally bond via shared action or honest exchange. [Reward: 10 WP]
"Homework already," Naruto muttered, smiling despite himself as gulls heckled the dawn.
Kurama's ember-coil stirred. "Learn the names of their winds, kit, then decide which to ride and which to break."
He closed his eyes and listened, not with ears but with the old shinobi sense that felt footsteps through floorboards and danger through the spine, finding textures instead of power levels.
There was Luffy—a bonfire with no edges, joy burning so hot it refused to consider limits.
There was Coby—nervous flint struck again and again, trying to catch.
There were deckhands and knots and worries about provisions, each a little thread tugging at the fabric of life on a ship that hadn't decided where it wanted to belong.
System notice: Preliminary will-map complete (Radius: 40 m). Partial reward granted.
Naruto leaned on the rail as Luffy padded over, stretching like a cat who had never once lost a fight with the morning.
"Meat for breakfast," Luffy announced, as though declaring a national holiday.
"Deal," Naruto said, "but trade you: show me how you fight, and I'll show you something weird."
Luffy's grin widened, which Naruto wouldn't have believed possible. "Training!" he cheered, then blinked. "On a ship."
They cleared a patch of deck, Coby hovering with a broom like it might be a spear if he believed hard enough.
"Rules: don't break the ship," Naruto said. "Also, no falling overboard; water and I are…complicated today."
"Okay!" Luffy planted his feet, rubber limbs loose and ready.
Naruto moved first, an easy step-in feint and palm-check to test balance, and Luffy bent like a hinge, spine laughing at angles.
Gomu Gomu no… something—Luffy rocketed forward, fist stretching, and Naruto slid under, tapping the forearm with chakra like a tuning fork to feel how the force carried.
Not chakra, not ki—intent wrapped in body, a will that believed so fiercely in reach that the arm obeyed, then the world agreed.
Taxonomy note: "Haki" suspected—threefold will expression: sensing, hardening, imposing. Rubber physiology suggests Devil Fruit: body transmutation with intrinsic weaknesses (notably seawater). Integration sketch: Chakra as fine control and amplification; Haki as carrier for intent that resists external nullifiers.
Kurama hummed. "Make your chakra learn their stubbornness."
"Your turn," Naruto said, stepping back. "I'll show clones."
Two Narutos popped beside him with a smoke-hiss and set to mimic Luffy's footwork, not to copy, but to understand where intent sat in the body.
"Whoa!" Coby yelped, broom nearly becoming a sky-weapon. "Are those—"
"Helpers," Naruto said. "I built them to think with me."
The System chimed.
Taxonomy task: 50% complete. Draft integration: "Haki-primed Chakra Flow" prototype available at Basic Shop (cost: 25 WP).
Before they could test further, a shadow fell across the deck and a voice like rusted chain rattled down from a neighboring sloop angling close.
"Alvida the Iron Mace," Coby whispered, going pale enough to pass for seafoam. "She found us."
Luffy brightened as if danger were dessert. "Fight!"
"Bond weave opportunity," the System added, almost cheerfully, which Naruto decided was a little creepy.
The pirate brig drifted close on grapnels, wood grinding wood, and rough men and rougher fear spilled across the gap.
Naruto stepped forward, palms open, measuring the angles, the deck's give, the wind's shove, Luffy's wild line about to carve joy into a problem.
"Two rules," he told his clones. "Keep everyone breathing. Don't let fear decide."
They moved, and it felt like catching a song half-remembered—redirect, off-balance, tap the wrist, borrow the shove, return it kinder than it arrived.
Luffy became a slingshot poem, laughter punching holes in dread big enough for sunlight, and men who had only ever learned to take found themselves returned to the floor by a boy who refused to turn fists into funerals.
Alvida herself leapt, mace whistling, and Naruto met her with a palm hardening on instinct—chakra sheathed in something new, a grit that wasn't muscle and wasn't chakra but the choice not to yield.
The impact cracked the air but not his bones, force shunted into the deck which groaned but held as clones slid wedges to spare the planks.
Haki-primed Chakra Flow: Prototype confirmed viable (Tier 0). Temporary buff applied: 30 seconds of enhanced guard vs. concussive force.
Alvida's eyes widened, then narrowed, then found Luffy's grin and decided the day had betrayed her.
She swung again; Naruto stepped inside the arc and set the mace down on the deck with the gentleness of a funeral at sea, then held her gaze until the fight in it wavered.
"Your crew can leave," he said, voice even. "No one needs to bleed to learn a better way to be."
Silence quivered, then snapped; men began to back away, shame and relief tripping over each other.
Luffy scratched his cheek. "Can we still eat after?"
"Absolutely," Naruto said, breath easing as the rope between two ships loosened.
System notice: Bond weave complete (Luffy, Rank C → C+). Orientation complete. Rewards granted: 40 WP, Sync Memory Shard (1). Shop update: "Haki-primed Chakra Flow" unlocked permanently (25 WP). New quest: Chart the Will.
Coby's broom clattered to the deck as he straightened, jaw set in a way that would one day bruise and harden into something unbreakable.
"I'm going to join the Marines," he said, voice shaking and steady at once. "I want to be the kind of Marine that stops people like her without becoming like her."
Naruto's heart did the soft, dangerous thing it always did when someone chose a harder path on purpose. "Then we'll help you reach a dock where that choice sticks."
Kurama snorted, but it sounded almost like approval. "You're collecting storms again."
"Better than letting them blow towns apart," Naruto said, and the sea seemed to nod, or maybe that was just the swell.
He opened the Shop, WP ticking like distant footfalls, and bought the Haki primer fully this time, letting the knowledge slot in cleaner, edges sanded by practice and intention.
A memory shard flickered—Jiraiya's hand on his head, Tsunade's smirk, Kakashi's quiet praise behind a book—and settled into the new physics with a click, the Rasengan's spiral learning to grab not just chakra but will.
"Try it," Kurama murmured. "Small. Gentle."
Naruto formed a palm-sized sphere, blue and bright and rimmed with a thin, stubborn glow, then let it die with a laugh like surf, because not every power was for every moment.
Luffy leaned over his shoulder, eyes wide. "Round spinny!"
"Later," Naruto said, pocketing the trick. "First: breakfast for heroes and people who decided not to be villains anymore."
They ate on the sun-warmed deck, meat and rice and the taste of almost-disaster turned into a story worth telling, while the horizon drew a line like a promise and the System pulsed a soft dot in Naruto's peripheral vision.
Quest: Chart the Will
- Learn names and forms of Haki from a practitioner beyond Luffy.
- Map Devil Fruit weaknesses to shinobi tactics.
- Identify a swordsman whose edge can teach "cut what you choose to cut."
Naruto licked grease from his thumb and looked out where the world stacked islands like stepping stones into a sky too big to hold.
"Okay," he said to the wind, to Kurama, to the unseen Observer who liked to leave tidy notes on messy lives. "Teach me your oceans, and I'll teach you my storms."
The ship leaned into the day, threads humming underfoot, and somewhere in that vast blue, a red-haired emperor laughed, a hawk measured edges, and a surgeon traced the shape of fate with a scalpel-smile.
On deck, a broom became a practice sword, a captain became a friend, and a shinobi learned to make will into a sail.