Chapter 9: The Sound of Splintered Bones
Below deck, where sunlight never dared to tread, where the very air reeked of damp stone and despair, the island began to writhe like a beast stirred from its sleep. And not the kind that blinked lazily and stretched its limbs.
The kind that bit.
From jagged watchtowers nailed into cliff rock, half-blind lookouts squinted into the sea's glare. It was a warship—sleek, merciless, carrying blood in its bones and flags that smelled of law.
"That's a Marine ship…" one muttered, eyes trembling behind a cracked spyglass. His words sent a ripple through the nests of thieves, killers, and worse.
The island had dressed itself in lies. It wore hotels like fine coats and stank like rot beneath. Beneath the marble and silk, deeper than the tourists ever guessed, the underbelly seethed with chains. Men, women, children—skin torn, dreams shattered, eating rats and each other to stay alive. The Black Angels called them "products."
Their screams never touched the surface. But soon, something else would.
At the island's diseased heart, in a room choked with perfume and silence, Ken Masters sat like a prince of filth. Blond curls coiled against his brow, skin unmarred, a serpent who'd never tasted consequence.
Across from him, an old man—nameless by design, faceless by choice—nursed a glass of aged bourbon. Not a tremor in his hands, but the eyes betrayed him. The eyes knew fear.
"This is the last shipment," Ken said, fingers tapping over maps, ledgers, supply chains veined in blood. "We close this deal, and the South Blue belongs to us."
The old man offered a nod, slow and solemn, as if marking a grave.
And then—it rang.
The den den mushi shrieked like a throat freshly slit.
Ken snatched it up. "What?"
The reply came through static, raw and frantic. "Boss—the Marines. They're here. Headed straight for us."
The words landed like stones in Ken's gut. He stood up slowly, the receiver cracking in his grip. "Already?" he hissed. "How the fuck did they find us this soon?"
No answer. Only panic.
The old man leaned forward now, voice low enough to make shadows lean in. "If we've been exposed, then the plan is ash. We cut the bleeding before the infection spreads. You stall them. I'll purge the evidence."
"Stall them?" Ken laughed coldly, but there was no joy in it. "They didn't send rookies, old man. If it's a warship, Z could be on it."
The old man's face twitched at that name, just slightly. "Then don't stall. Kill. Quickly. If we clean this fast enough, the Master won't bury us next."
Ken's jaw clenched. There was too much at stake—bounties, territory, reputation. He was the blade, the hand, the face of the Black Angels. If he fell here, he'd fall alone. And there would be no second chances from the man above him—the one none of them dared name.
He stormed out, his coat whipping behind him like the shadow of a noose. "Sound the alarm. Prep the artillery. Anyone not ready to die is free to drown."
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Z stood at the prow like a blade unsheathed—silent, steady, and full of promise. The warship groaned beneath his feet, as though it too felt the weight of what was to come. Ahead, the island rose like a bruise on the sea, pretty at a distance, poisoned at the core.
The old soldier's gaze didn't blink. Not once. He had seen too many battles to be unnerved by shadows pretending to be threats. But this—this—wasn't just another pirate hunt. This was a trial by blood. A forge for the young. Some would come out shaped like swords. Others would shatter.
His voice, when it came, wasn't loud—but the silence around it gave it room to echo like thunder.
"This is the real deal. No drills. No nets to catch you if you fall. You're Marines—or you die like you're not."
The recruits flinched. Not from his words, but from what lay behind them. Truth didn't need to shout to leave a scar.
Naruto didn't flinch.
The warship kissed the shore like a predator nosing at prey, and from its belly came the elite camp—Naruto, Smoker, Hina, and the rest. They stepped onto the sand with the weight of eyes on them. Hundreds of pirates, in disguise no longer, peeled from the scenery like rot from painted walls. Eyes narrowed. Weapons rose.
The island had lied to the world, cloaked in trade routes and smiling merchants. But truth had a way of clawing up through the cracks.
And now it stood face to face with them.
"They sent... kids?" one pirate sneered, disbelief dripping from his lips like spoiled wine.
Another's face twisted in confusion. "That's the elite camp. Trainees. Those uniforms—look at them!"
"A trap," one muttered.
"A joke," said another.
"No," came the grim reply, "a message."
For a moment, the two sides stared each other down, the air thick with hesitation and the heavy stink of gunpowder sweat. Then a voice, coarse and barking, cut through the paralysis.
"Doesn't matter who they are—kill the Marine!"
Naruto didn't wait for a plan. Plans were cages for the hesitant. His blood surged. His hand itched. He moved.
The sword left its sheath like a shriek. The wind followed—tamed, razor-edged. A single sweep carved through the air and through the front line of pirates, as if paper dared to stand against steel.
Limbs flew.
Blood painted the sand like red ink over forgotten scripture.
Silence followed—not awe, not fear, but the stunned stillness that comes when Death walks the first step into the room and everyone forgets how to breathe.
Then he laughed.
"Aaah, much better!" Naruto roared. "Enough chatter—let's kill the trash!"
There was no mercy in him, not today. The ghosts that whispered in his ear—the dead he'd buried and the justice he'd been denied—they watched now, silent and waiting to be avenged.
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War tore across the sand like fire through dry brush—sudden, merciless, without apology.
The first wave of pirates fell like wheat beneath the scythe. They hadn't expected resistance. They hadn't expected discipline. They hadn't expected Smoker.
He moved through the gunfire like smoke—fittingly—with that same quiet violence. His weapon spoke for him in crackling bursts, and each bullet told a story in blood. There was no wasted motion, no hero's flourish. Just execution. Swift. Cold. Unavoidable.
Beside him danced Hina—elegant, deadly. She wore grace like armor, slicing through the battlefield in a rhythm all her own. Her hands trapped, crushed, destroyed. There was nothing hesitant in her gait, no room for doubt. Just the certainty of death dealt with precision.
They were the wall—the hammer. And behind them, the new blood learned what it meant to survive.
The fresh recruits crouched low, nerves tight as drawn wire, hearts caught between hammerbeats. The world screamed around them. Bullets snapped like angry insects. Smoke choked the sun. They'd trained for this, bled for this—but nothing in a sparring hall teaches you the sound a man makes when he's split open.
Z had told them: "If you're not ready to die, then you're not ready to win."
And now they understood.
But Naruto? Naruto thrived.
He was no soldier. No disciplined wall of order and execution.
He was chaos given shape.
Steel sang in his hand—his blade moving in jagged arcs, wild but beautiful in its own monstrous way. He didn't fight like a Marine. He fought like a force of nature that had grown tired of waiting.
One moment he was in the midst of ten, the next—only limbs and questions remained. Blood flew like mist around him. His laughter rang louder than the guns.
"More!" he roared, slamming his blade through a pirate's chest, kicking the corpse free like refuse. "More!"
His coat snapped behind him, fluttering like the wings of something that had once been human but forgot how to be. His grin split too wide, and his eyes didn't shine with duty, or pride, or Marine honor.
They shone with hunger.
Naruto didn't want the fight.
He needed it.
Smoker saw it—felt it, even. That raw, violent energy that radiated from the boy like heat from a forge. He was dangerous. Not because he lacked restraint—but because he didn't care for it.
Still... he was theirs. And if the world wanted monsters, then the Marines would give them monsters of their own.
Every Marine on that beach was fighting for something. Glory. Survival. Revenge.
But Naruto? He fought to feel alive.
The training Z had carved into their bones had taken root. Even the greenest recruit moved like a creature shaped for war. Pairs covered each other. Trios flanked. Quads defended and killed with synchronized brutality.
They weren't boys and girls anymore. They weren't rookies.
They were weapons.
Still, the battle was far from over.
Every pirate that fell seemed to birth two more. The beach was a womb of violence, birthing death after death. The enemy numbers poured from alleyways, from doors hidden in jungle-green shadows. Bullets rained. Explosions barked. The earth churned red beneath boot and blade.
But for all their numbers, they were untrained. Brutal, yes. Bloodthirsty, yes. But they weren't Z's.
They hadn't been forged in fire. They were the fire—wild and hungry, and easy to snuff.
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The scent of blood had a way of sticking to the inside of your throat. It clung, it clotted. It didn't ask permission.
The air was swollen with it.
Hot metal and wet screams stitched through the battlefield. Smoke curled upward, mingling with the early light, painting the sky in strokes of gunpowder gray. The pirates fired wildly—half-blind, full-panicked. Their fingers clung to triggers like drowning men to driftwood, but their bullets asked no permission from fate. They missed more often than not. And when they hit, it was luck, not aim, that dealt the pain.
But the elite camp didn't believe in luck.
They believed in death—delivered clean, fast, and without hesitation.
The veterans carved through the enemy like artists with a brush, though the canvas was living flesh. Smoker's coat swirled behind him, ash and smoke rising like a storm cloud. His gun barked judgment in rhythmic bursts, and where he passed, silence followed. No wasted bullets. No wasted breath.
Hina was less precise but no less fatal. She moved with the grace of someone who'd learned how to kill before they learned how to speak kindly. Each motion locked. Each limb broken with intention. Her hands were shackles. Her kicks were guillotines.
And then... the aftermath.
The rookies stood among the ruins, eyes wide and chests heaving. They hadn't fought. Not really. They had witnessed.
Blood puddled in the sand, bodies torn in ways the human body should not bend. Some of them had thrown up. One or two had started to cry and stopped only because there was no place safe enough for softness. The smell alone was an education.
It didn't smell like glory. It didn't smell like justice.
It smelled like shit and death and copper.
Hina's breath hitched, just once. She was strong, but even strength has a first kill. Her eyes moved from body to body, to pieces of people that still twitched, and finally, to Naruto.
He stood at the edge of the carnage like a statue carved from madness. Not touched by it—made from it.
He turned, smiling gently. And immortals, that smile…
"Sorry, Hina," he said, voice soft like the lull before a scream. "I won't be able to stay with you. It's going to get ugly."
Gentle words from a blood-drenched blade.
"I don't want you to see such things," he added. "Not yet."
He meant it as kindness. But it tasted like cruelty.
Hina's nostrils flared. Her fingers clenched.
"Listen here, Naruto! Hina's not some damsel in distress! Hina is a fighter! I will—"
But he was already gone.
Not walking. Gone.
Like the shadow of a hawk falling over a field full of mice.
"Damn you, Naruto!" she shouted, rage warming her cheeks to fever. "Don't let me catch you, or I swear I'll smack you!"
Behind her, Adam laughed—because boys do that when they don't know what else to say. "Looks like Naruto's got you riled up," he grinned. "Fine then. Challenge accepted. Let's see who paints the island red first."
Then he was gone too.
Ahead, Naruto moved like a plague. No hesitation. No mercy. Just motion and consequence.
His blade sang, but not in harmony. It shrieked.
He wasn't fighting for justice. He wasn't fighting for glory.
He was enjoying it.
Each pirate he killed was a note in his song. Each severed arm, each sprayed throat, a punctuation to a poem no one wanted written. He didn't fight like a Marine. He didn't even fight like a man.
He fought like war made flesh.
The senior trainees watched from the rooftop, arms folded, expressions carved from boredom.
"Too easy," one muttered, eyes half-lidded, voice flat.
"Rookies get all the fun," another said. "We had to fight real pirates. These are just meat."
They weren't wrong. The pirates had already broken. They just didn't know it yet. Their spirits were fractured. Their formation nonexistent.
They were prey. They just hadn't collapsed yet.
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The sun cowered behind a veil of cloud as Naruto approached the crumbling hotel, his steps slow and deliberate, like a immortal descending to pass judgment on the damned.
The building reeked of smoke, old sweat, and older sins. Cracked windows stared like broken eyes. The pirates who once ruled this stretch of island had fled to their last bastion, barricaded behind splintered doors and false bravado.
Naruto had not come to knock.
He came to break.
His blood still sang from the slaughter outside. His sword, still slick, hadn't cooled. The scent of death clung to him like perfume on a courtesan—thick and enticing.
Inside, power stirred.
It wasn't the kind of power that came with titles or bounty posters. This was old, ugly power. Scar-tissue strength. A man named Jin Kazama waited for him—right-hand to the pirate captain Ken Masters. A killer of men. Called "The Devil" by those who still had tongues to speak.
Naruto smiled.
"I'm happy to see you," he said, voice low, eyes bright like embers in the dark. His fingers twitched at his side, hungry.
Jin didn't smile. He didn't need to. His aura was all blade, no sheath.
"It's your death, kid," Jin muttered, stepping into the dying light. "You're lucky we don't have time to play."
Naruto's grin widened, cracked wide like a man about to laugh—or scream.
"Yes," he said. "Unfortunate. But justice doesn't need time. Only targets."
The world shifted.
Wind screamed as Naruto vanished in a flash, his foot lashing out with speed and force no eye could follow. The air snapped as the blow connected—Jin's torso caved in like rotted wood, and then there was only ruin.
A mess of red. Meat and memory.
Naruto stood over what had been a man, expression unreadable.
"So disappointing," he muttered. "Should've held back. But filth's got a shelf life. And his just expired."
He didn't look back. He never did.
The hotel groaned beneath its own weight as he stepped inside. The floorboards creaked. The walls whispered. Below, in the basement, he felt them. Three strong ones. Others too—pirates trying to fold themselves into shadows.
He moved like falling ash, silent and steady.
The stairs welcomed him with rot and dust. But halfway down, motion. A blur from above.
Someone launched through the floorboards, a fist aimed at his chin—fast, heavy, filled with panic and pride. The kind of punch that might shatter a lesser man.
But Naruto wasn't lesser.
He didn't flinch. Didn't block.
He endured.
The fist struck his jaw with a sound like thunder kissing stone. Naruto didn't move. The attacker—Ken Masters, flesh and fury—staggered back, pain spiking up his arm like fire through wire.
"Was that all, you scum?" Naruto asked, voice thick with contempt.
He reached out—not quickly, not urgently—just certainly. Fingers like iron gripped Ken's throat, lifted him like a disobedient child, and slammed his face into the floor.
Then again.
Then again.
Again until the wood cracked. Again until the blood pooled. Again until the rage in Ken's eyes gave way to desperation.
Ken reached into his own mouth, cracked a molar. Swallowed the pill hidden within.
Desperation is a hell of a drug.
The change was monstrous.
Ken's body tore itself apart just to be born again—muscle swelling, veins darkening, skin stretching. He grew, three meters tall, rage twisting his features into something primal. A beast more than man.
He roared, loud enough to make walls weep.
Naruto blinked.
Then smiled.
The monster charged, slow but thunderous. His first kick could've shattered a tree. Naruto sidestepped, catching the leg with one arm. With a grunt, he threw the beast through a wall, out into the street. Stone shattered beneath the impact.
Naruto followed.
He dropped from the air like a comet, both feet slamming into the beast's ribs. The earth howled at the collision. Ken vomited blood, his bones crumpling under the force.
"Pitiful," Naruto whispered, voice cold and sharp. "Reminds me of Mizuki. Loud. Dumb. Easy."
He drew his spear. Not a grand thing—simple steel, stained from use. No ornaments. No honor.
Just death.
And with one clean thrust, he buried it in Ken's skull.
The rage ended with a crack.
Naruto stood alone, the wind tugging at his coat. The corpses didn't whisper thanks. The world didn't offer applause.
But his smile remained.
Not joy. Not victory.
Just satisfaction.
The kind you find when justice wears a butcher's apron.
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Blood dries quick if you don't look at it. Quicker still when it's not your own.
Naruto dragged the edge of his spear along the broken wall, flicking off gore like crumbs from a blade too familiar with ending lives. The basement loomed, choked with dust and ruin. Part of the ceiling had collapsed—crushed timbers and fallen stone sealing in the fate of those too slow, too weak, or simply unlucky.
He paused at the edge, eyes flicking over the mess. Dead slaves. Crushed beneath the weight of someone else's justice.
"It's sad," he thought, not without sincerity—but with the cold finality of someone who had long since learned where sentiment ended and survival began.
"But I'm no miracle worker."
And with that, he stepped into the dark.
The basement breathed like a dying beast—wet walls, thick with mold and the stink of pain. A lantern burned weakly near the far end, casting shadows that twisted like phantoms. In the dim glow, two figures moved.
One—slim, desperate. A girl with hair like winter snow and eyes stained in red rebellion. A shackle gleamed at her ankle, sea stone biting into her skin. Her movements were slow, strained, as if fighting gravity itself.
The other—a cloaked figure. Tall. Still. Smiling the way executioners smile before the drop.
She lunged.
He kicked.
The girl hit the ground hard, a gasp torn from her lips.
Naruto's steps echoed loud into the hush, drawing both their eyes.
The girl's crimson gaze narrowed with distrust, but behind it—hope, barely held.
"Don't worry, girl," Naruto said, voice as smooth as the devil's lie. "We're here to save you."
Then he turned to the cloaked figure. His expression flipped like a coin in freefall.
"And you…" His voice curled like smoke, mockery and menace in equal measure. "I'm getting bored already. Could you just fall dead?"
The cloaked figure shifted only to sneer, a sneer worth dying for.
"Government dog," he spat, venom thick in his throat. "Know your place. Interfere, and you'll regret this very day."
Naruto smiled wider.
"Regret?" he echoed. "I've never tasted it. Doubt I'd like the flavor."
Then the grin warped, stretched, filled with something older than hatred. A hunger. A love of the game.
"I told you to die. So no more chit-chat, scum."
The figure scoffed. "Another insane bastard like Akainu…"
But the words hadn't finished their death march before Naruto moved.
One blink. One blur. Soru tore the ground beneath him as Naruto vanished from sight.
And then—impact.
A crack like a thunderclap.
The cloaked man flew.
He didn't stagger. He sailed, crashing through stone and seawall, his body tumbling across the edge of the island like a ragdoll flung by immortal's backhand.
Naruto stood where he'd struck, laughing with a sound that didn't belong to sanity.
"Hahaha! Thought being a Logia was a shield? Pathetic."
His joy was not cruel. It was worse. It was pure. The pleasure of ending a life that never mattered.
He walked toward the crater his foe had carved into the island, unaware that the fight wasn't quite done.
Far off—hidden in smoke and salt—the cloaked man clawed his way out of the rubble. One arm hung useless. His mouth bled words he didn't have the strength to spit.
"Damn… damn…" he wheezed, bile rising with every breath. "How does that brat know Haki already?"
He staggered to his feet. Not with pride. With necessity. Death had licked his neck once already.
"This wasn't part of the job. I wasn't paid enough for this…"
Retreat was no longer cowardice. It was survival. And the cloaked figure limped into shadow, each step echoing the fury in his chest.
"Next time… I'll kill you for this insult."
Above them all, distant and still, Z watched.
From a rooftop, half-shrouded in shadow, his coat snapped in the wind. Papers fluttered past him—torn bounties, maps, scraps of lives now ended.
His eyes narrowed.
"More special than I thought," he muttered, voice low. "To have a Logia user involved… Interesting."
His gaze followed the trail of destruction—Naruto's path carved through the world like a blade through silk.
What he saw wasn't just talent. It was a storm in the making. A force the world wasn't ready to name.
Z's face remained unreadable. But in the hollow between his brows, something stirred.
"He's not just another soldier," he whispered to the wind.
"He's the beginning of something else."
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A man learns the taste of fury best in silence.
Naruto stood still, the wind clawing at his coat, hair drifting like ash above the ruins. The air reeked of burnt wood and blood, and yet he smelled only his own anger—sharp, metallic, breathing beneath his skin like a second heart.
The cloaked figure's presence had slipped away. Too fast. Too far.
Out of reach.
And that—that—was a crime all its own.
Naruto didn't roar. He didn't curse. He simply reached to his belt, fingers curling around a dagger whose name had been written in blood more times than words. He let it fly.
The blade whispered through the air like a promise, like vengeance distilled into steel. It found the neck of a fleeing pirate, splitting bone from breath in an instant. The man dropped, limbs twitching once before surrendering to stillness.
Naruto exhaled.
"Huu. Calm down," he muttered, voice tight. "We'll get him another time. Nothing escapes the fangs of justice."
Justice. The word still made him flinch.
He turned from the corpse without looking twice. Back to the hotel. Back into the slaughterhouse of broken bodies and quieter hells.
The hotel had become a tomb.
He moved through its halls with quiet steps, like a mourner at a wake. The doors creaked open beneath his hands, and inside—more victims. Shackled. Shattered. Silent.
Some couldn't move. Others wouldn't. A few still begged.
Naruto didn't speak often. When he did, his voice was low, reverent—like prayer.
He freed those he could. Killed those he couldn't.
"It is better for you," he said to one whose lungs no longer remembered how to draw air. "The Marines can't help you. I'm sorry for this choice."
He said the same words to every corpse he made. To every mercy he carved with steel instead of hope.
They haunted him less that way.
He'd done this before. Too many times. For strangers. For comrades. For anyone who asked with their eyes because their mouths were too broken to move.
The last room waited at the end of the hall. Behind its door—her.
She was crouched like a cornered animal, bloodied hands curled into claws. Her white hair shimmered in the dim light, a silver halo around eyes that burned with rage.
She was alive. That made her dangerous.
Naruto stepped inside. Her eyes snapped toward him.
"Don't come any closer!" she hissed.
Her voice cracked like thin glass.
Naruto tilted his head.
"Then how will I help you?" he asked, as if it were a reasonable thing to say to a girl who looked like she'd just killed a immortal and hadn't liked the taste.
"I don't need anyone's help."
He smiled without warmth.
"You'll never get out of here with that attitude."
She pulled against her chains, raw wrists bleeding again for nothing. Naruto crouched beside her, inspecting the lock. It took a moment. Metal snapped, and she was free.
Too fast.
Her hands shifted—twisted into claws, red as war, sharp as spite—and she lunged.
They scraped across his dark armor, metal screaming as if in protest.
Naruto didn't flinch.
He raised a hand. Slapped her.
Hard.
She flew into the wall like a ragdoll thrown by a immortal who'd run out of patience.
Naruto straightened, exhaling as if shaking dust from his soul.
"That should shut her up until I deliver her to Z," he muttered. "Ungrateful brat."
She reminded him of the others. The ones who bit the hand that bled for them. The ones who'd mocked him before they screamed for his help.
He stepped forward to pick her up—
And stopped.
Her eyes opened.
She smiled.
The switch was instant, like flipping a coin from murder to sunshine.
"Big brother!" she chirped, teeth gleaming. "You're a hero, aren't you? You saved Shiro!"
Naruto blinked. Once.
Her gaze was clear. Her voice, pure. A child's joy painted over a corpse's rage.
'A split personality,' Naruto thought, his mind already adapting. Useful, if irritating.
"Big brother," she giggled, clinging to his arm, "can I get armor like this? Shiro wants to be cool too!"
Naruto stiffened like she'd touched a wound.
"No," he replied, too quickly. "If you want armor, join the Marines."
Her eyes lit up like stars before war.
"Then how do I join?!"
He sighed.
"I'll handle it," he said. And then, seeing the thread unraveling into opportunity, added, "But in return… serve me. I'll treat you well."
"Of course!" she beamed. "Big brother saved Shiro. Shiro will help!"
She clung to him like a scarf of innocence, her smile too big, her loyalty too bright.
And Naruto—he let her.
They walked back to the ship through the remains of battle. Blood stained the streets. Smoke whispered past the buildings like old regrets.
The others watched. The veterans. The rookies. All stared at the strange sight of Naruto—the silent storm—returning with a girl draped over his neck, babbling joyfully like she'd just won a prize at a festival.
Hina's eyes narrowed. Her lips pressed thin. She looked at the girl, then at Naruto, and some wordless bitterness curled in her stomach like old jealousy, too stubborn to die.
But Naruto didn't notice. Or didn't care.
His mind was already somewhere else. On future battles. On bigger storms.
On Shiro—who might be monster or miracle or both.
And in this world, he needed both.