Chapter 2- A New Lead

On the deck of his recently acquired ship, Naruto was sitting on a chair with his feet resting on the helm, in his right hand was a shuriken which was getting thrown in random directions and called back in his hand, in his left hand was his favorite book, 'The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi'. He was almost at the last page, it was the second time he'd be finishing the book in as many days.

Being all alone in a big ship on the open sea could get pretty boring, he realised. Of course, he wasn't completely alone, he had Kurama but the big guy liked to sleep for days at a time and he had nothing much to do on the ship. He had pretty much filled his bingo book, sealed some of the useful things he found on the ship (one of the scrolls filled with ten barrels of high quality sake was going to be a birthday gift for granny Tsunade), he even tried operating the ship the 'normal' way, it was fun for a couple of hours but it too lost it's excitement, after that he put a water clone on that particular task. Naruto even let out his inner prankster for a while, he dialled random numbers on the transponder snail and had a lot of fun making prank calls. After he ran out of fun things he could say to random people, he resorted to reading his favorite book to pass the time. For a pervert, Jiraiya had wrote a bloody brilliant story about the ninja world, it made him wonder if the rest of his books were worth reading as well, 'probably not, if the way Kakashi sensei giggles is any indication' he thought.

He was close to an island, that much he knew, being the greatest sensor in the world had it's perks. It would take him a couple of hours at most to reach dry land. Naruto closed the book after reading the last page and caught the shuriken he threw by putting his index finger through the hole. He put it away in the holster and stood up. After stretching his arms and letting out a yawn, Naruto jumped and stood on top of the demon-face figurehead. He could already see the island near the horizon.

"Full speed ahead! Let's get there as soon as possible," he ordered the water clone, who obliged and the speed of the ship was doubled. The huge rock structures became clearer with every passing moment as the ship neared the land. He still couldn't see the port so he took his ship to the other side of the island. There were ships docked at the other side, just as he hoped. Once docked, he hopped off of the figurehead and landed on the solid ground. There was barely anyone at the port and the rocks were blocking his view of the town. He started walking down the road to the town.

As he was walking, he heard sound of hooves coming from behind, Naruto looked over his shoulder to see a girl riding a chestnut horse towards him. Her face and clothes were hidden beneath a black hooded cape. Naruto stepped to the edge of the road to give her side. The horse trotted past him at relatively slow speed. A few meters ahead, the road split in two, Naruto followed the one that the girl took. After walking past a narrow stream and a lot of large rocks, he arrived near the edge of the town. Or what was left of it.

There wasn't a single building standing, instead he saw a lot of hastily erected tents. Some men were clearing the rubble with the help of carts pulled by horses while others were carrying timber for building new houses. He saw some nurses exit out of the tents. 'What happened here? The town looks like it was destroyed by a storm,' he said to himself. He made his way through the destroyed building to where the men were removing the debris.

Naruto approached a man that was struggling to move a particularly big piece of a building, "You need some help?" he asked smiling from ear to ear. Without even waiting for a response Naruto lifted the piece of building and carried it away.

"Thanks young man," the middle-aged man said once he got back.

"No problem! Say, what happened here? Did a storm hit this island?" Naruto asked as he loaded another rock on the cart. He had heard that storms can appear out of nowhere on grand line.

"I wish it was a storm!" the man gritted his teeth, "Two pirates had a pissing contest here!" he spat out angrily.

"Pirates? Do you know who they were?" he asked. Someone who can do this to a town was certainly worth taking note of. Not only did the debris look like the buildings were chewed up and spat out but there were signs of a fire as well.

"Don't think I'll ever forget the bastard's face, he looked like half a gorilla and he was huge, towered above town's folk. He made his base here, goes by the name of Blackbeard!" the man spat out the name like it was poison.

"Blackbeard?! Never heard of him before," he had a lot of pirates in his bingo book, even new rookies like Jewelry Bonney and Trafalgar Law had a seperate page for them, but this was the first time he heard the name Blackbeard. He knew a 'Whitebeard' but not a black one. 'I don't know as much as I thought I did,' he said to himself.

"Trust me, you'll hear more from him," the man said as he climbed in the cart and took the reigns. Naruto picked a big rock and started to walk side by side, continuing the conversation.

"What do you mean?"

"The man he fought was one of Whitebeard's commanders I hear, attacking Whitebeard's crew is suicide, anyone crazy enough to do it won't stay quite for long."

"You know quite a lot about pirates,"

The man chuckled, "When you live five decades on the grand line, you'll know things about pirates too."

Naruto chuckled as well, "I suppose thats true." He helped them all of afternoon, with the help of fifty more shadow clones they were able to clear all of the rubble before sunset. It was a bit of a surprise for the town's people to see the clones but they quickly got over it. 'It's a devil fruit ability,' was all he said when anyone asked, it was a lot easier than explaining shadow clones.

When evening fell, the people invited him for dinner. There was a big pot on the cook fire in the middle of tents that were set up, the pot was filled with sea king stew. The town's people sat in front of their respective tents with a bowl in their hands. Naruto sat with Scott, the man had introduced himself earlier. He took a spoonful of the thick stew and tasted it, it was good, not as good as ramen but still good. Scott was gulping down his food but Naruto sensed a lot of fear in the man, he had no clue what but the man was dreading something.

"What is it?" he asked abruptly.

"Huh? You say something?!" Scott asked back.

"I said, what has you worried so much? At this rate you'll go completely bald in a week, you know," he joked.

"I...uh...you've already helped us so much today. You don't have to worry about us," he forced a smile.

Naruto smiled at the man, "I know I don't have to, but let's say I'm nosy like that. If you don't tell me what is it that won't let you even enjoy dinner in peace after a day's hard work, I'll keep pestering you!"

Scott sighed, "Well it's that It's gonna cost a lot of money to rebuild the town, and I fear we will fall short with the heavenly tribute that's due in two months," he explained.

"Heavenly tribute? What's that?!" Naruto asked.

Scott laughed a little, "You're young but I didn't think you were so young that you don't even know what heavenly tribute is!"

"Just humor me, will ya?!" Naruto had a tick mark on his forehead.

"It's yearly payment we pay to the celestial dragons, in exchange for navy's protection."

"Can't they wait a little bit? I'm sure they can understand your situation," Naruto knew who the celestial dragons were, surely they would be sympathetic if pirates destroyed one of the islands under the protection of world government?

"It's been like this since ancient times, son. If you don't pay the full tribute, you won't get protection for that year,"

"They sound like greedy bastards!" Naruto said as he ate another spoonful.

"Shhh!!!" Scott put a finger on his mouth and hurriedly looked from side to side, "Don't say things like that!! You have a death wish or something?!" he spoke in a hushed tone.

"What? They'll kill me for speaking the truth?! Besides it's not like they can hear me or anything," This was some new perspective he got on this world. If even speaking remotely bad about them had people scared like this, there must be some strict laws.

"They'll kill you for breathing in their presence!" Scott laughed dryly and continued eating his food.

"So uptight bastards huh?!" Naruto thought out loud.

"Did you even listen to what I just said?" Scott sounded a little annoyed.

"Alright, alright, I won't curse those assholes," Naruto said and Scott just looked at him blankly, "...anymore," Naruto added after a second.

Rest of the evening was spent in relative silence. The men were tired from the day's hard work and they went back to their tents. Naruto too went back on his ship.

Naruto took out the large case from a scroll, he put aside some of the money in another scroll and handed over the case to a clone.

"Give this to Scott," he said and the clone sprinted towards the town. Naruto laid down on the bed. Tomorrow morning he'd be on his way again.

A few days later, Naruto was on the deck in the night, steering the ship. A crescent moon was in the sky that night, and the sea was bathed in cool light of the moon as far as the eye could see. The light reflected on the waves looked like pearls dancing on the water, it was something out of a painting everywhere he looked. Except to his right, that area was covered in a fog so thick Naruto couldn't see beyond ten feet. The fog itself had a strange feel to it, it was hindering his sensing ability a little bit, it was enough to get his attention.

Naruto channeled sage mode and noticed hundreds of chakra signatures deep inside the fog. But the one that got his attention was about a hundred feet away from his ship. It was so weak, he wouldn't have even noticed it if not for his sage mode, it meant only one thing- someone was on the brink of death. Naruto jumped off the ship and headed to the position of that chakra. There were a couple of big dead fishes floating in the water, they looked domesticated since they had seats and armor on their backs and they even had weapons mounted on them.

On one these fish was an unconscious girl, she had flaming wild red hair with blonde streaks, a long blue coat with pictures of ocean and 'Sweet tooth' written on the back. Naruto crouched by her side and turned her over. There were bruises and wounds all over her body and she had very high fever. 'The poor girl must have been in this cold water for a long time,' Naruto thought and picked her up bridal style. He carried her to a bedroom on his ship. He unsealed some of his dry clothes, Naruto removed the wet light blue pants and the white bandages that covered her boobs and exchanged them with a pair of black pants and an orange shirt after drying her with a towel, blushing red like a tomato while doing it. She was a very pretty and he wasn't some saint to not have any dirty thoughts after seeing a beautiful naked girl.

Naruto put her on the bed and pulled some warm covers on her. Then he bit his thumb and went through the hand signs- boar, dog, bird, monkey, ram- and slammed his hand on the floor. In a puff of smoke a small toad appeared. It was a two feet tall pink toad with white underbelly and yellow eyes and a white kimono.

"Hello Peach," Naruto greeted the toad.

"Boss! It's been a long time," the small toad smiled and bowed.

"Listen, I need a favor." He gestured towards the redhead on the bed, "She's hurt and has a high fever. Can you take care of her?"

"Sure, leave it to me." Peach hopped on the bed and began to check her vitals.

Naruto created a shadow clone, "She'll most likely be in a bad state when she wakes up," he told the clone and got a nod in response. Naruto left the room and stood on the deck for a couple of seconds. He reactivated his sage mode, the chakra signatures he felt before were still there, but this time he noticed something he didn't notice before, two same chakra signatures were coming from two places at the same time. This particular observation surprised him, 'Do the people here know how to use clone jutsu?'. Now he really needed to check out what exactly was the situation in the thick fog. Naruto jumped in the water and started walking.

It wasn't long until he came across a huge gate shaped like a mouth, teeth and lips included. 'Creepy mouth gate in creepy fog,' Naruto jumped over the gate to land in the water on the other side of it. The visibility in the fog was so bad, he couldn't see past ten feet. He walked deeper and deeper until he came across a shore. It looked like a fortified island with a stone wall and a deep moat. He again jumped to cross the wall and moat in one go and landed on solid ground.

The fog here wasn't so dense and he could see things from afar relatively well. The island itself was covered in a thick forest but all the trees looked like they were dead, they didn't have a single fresh leaf on their branches. And there was a large mansion in the middle of the island with an even larger mansion behind it. Naruto could sense the presence of about a hundred people a mile away in the forest. He also felt these hundred chakra signatures coming from the other side of island as well. Naruto took to the tree branches and headed in the direction of those people. Jumping from tree to tree, making sure to not make any sound whatsoever, He stopped a safe distance away from them.

What he saw completely took him by surprise, they looked like walking corpses. They were walking corpses, with flesh rotten off to reveal the bones underneath. Most of them had bandages wrapped around their heads to somewhat hide the exposed skull and there were numbers tattooed on them.

"Hey Kurama, are you seeing this? they look like.." Naruto said in his mind.

"..Reanimations, yeah. Never thought I'd see that again," Kurama finished his sentence.

"I know that jutsu too, you know." he reminded his friend. "But yeah, I didn't think i'd see something like reanimation in this world."

"That's different. I know you'll never disturb the dead unless you have no other choice. But this.."

"..Looks like someone wants an army of corpses! But they don't look so strong, their flesh and muscle are rotten, and their chakra is pretty weak as well. Not to mention I feel the same chakra coming from other side of island, are they clones of some kind?!" This time Naruto finished Kurama's sentence.

"There's only one way to know,"

"Alright," he said and pulled out a shuriken from his pocket. He coated it with wind chakra and threw it at the neck of a corpse. Before any of them realised what happened, one of them had his head severed, no one even saw how or why.

When they heard the sound of the head hitting the ground, they looked around to see the cause of sound. Naruto had his eyes fixed on them.

"Hey, you head fell off," one of them said.

"Didn't you fix it properly?" another one picked up the head and handed it back to the owner.

"Thanks, man," he accepted his head, "Those rotten pirates from the forest were running after me with salt! I didn't get much time to fix it,"

Naruto watched the scene in confused silence. "...There's no way they are alive," Kurama said finally.

"uh huh, Should I seal them away?"

"Didn't you notice?" Kurama asked.

"Notice what?", Naruto rested his chin on his first finger as he thought about what he missed.

"He didn't regenerate like a reanimation, he just put his head back on his shoulders. No need to seal them, I think some critical damage will get the job done," Kurama explained.

"Okay, let's try it," Naruto took out a kunai, and attached a explosive tag to it's handle. Still hiding in the branch, he threw the kunai at the corpse who was closest to him. The kunai hit it's mark and remained stuck. It took a second for the tag to burn and then it exploded with a loud bang. The explosion caused the corpse to catch fire and was soon engulfed completely in flames. As the corpse burnt away, Naruto noticed some black substance escape from the fire at high speeds.

"Hey, who did that?!"

"Was it that rotten long nosed punk from earlier?!"

"Hey, who is it attacking like a rotten coward?! You'll pay for messing with us soldier zombies!"

"Its rotten dangerous out here,"

"It's dangerous in there too you know," the corpses said one after another.

"...kurama?"

"Yeah, yeah. I saw that, they're being controlled somehow by that black thing. And fire is their weakness. Burn them, Naruto," Naruto nodded in his head.

He jumped down from his hiding spot and landed on the ground without a sound. He went through the hand signs- Ram, horse, snake, dragon, rat, ox, tiger- he inhaled as much air as his lungs could handle, "Fire style: dragon flame bullet", he shot large flames from his mouth and manipulated them in the shape of a dragon which was then further divided into three seperate dragons. One attacked the right, one left and the third hit the middle of the target, turning everything they touched into ash. A moment later, a lot of black shadows escaped out of the fire.

"That wasn't so hard, let's go take care of the others," Kurama didn't reply, instead he went back to sleep.

Naruto ran inside the castle, there were chakra signature coming from almost every room. He entered the first room, there were definitely a dozen of those corpse clones here but he didn't see anything outside of mounted heads of dead animals, some pelt on the floor and bunch of weird paintings. He stopped at each one to take a good look, as he was examining a painting of a half lady half bear, creatures of the other paintings, those mounted on walls, used as carpets, everyone leaped out at him, fangs and claws stretched. Even the half lady bear in the painting jumped out of the painting. Naruto just calmly stepped out the way at the last moment, the freaky painting animals hit the wall instead of him.

"Got you," Naruto grinned at them, and went through the hand signs again.

Ram, horse, snake, dragon, rat, ox, tiger- "Fire style: dragon flame bullet"

Naruto followed this routine for every room, he would go into one room, wait for the corpses to attack and burn them. Very soon, almost the whole castle was set on fire. 'There are a lot of them, and many are scattered throughout the island,' Naruto made a cross ram sign and created twenty shadow clones, each went in a different direction. They already knew their job.

Just as he was busy burning the corpses, he heard a loud voice that came from the direction of the larger mansion, and the sound of something hugh crashing in a building.

"STRAW HAT PIRATES!! COME OUT HERE!" the voice sounded like it came from someone huge, most likely a giant.

Naruto quickly finished burning every room that had the weird corpses in it and ran towards the ruckus. He climbed the stairs to find himself on a bridge that connected the two mansions. It was completely covered in trees, and unlike the rest of the island they were green, the bridge itself was further decorated with various types of plants and flowers.

Now that he was outside the mansion and had a clear view, he saw what exactly was causing the destruction, or rather, who was causing the destruction. Right below the bridge he was standing on, there was a huge giant, over two hundred feet tall at least with red skin, long blond hair that reached his lower back, very large lower canines and huge curved horns. Naruto had heard that there were giants in this world but this one was gigantic. Naruto found the size of him to be a bit misleading, since compared to the size, his chakra reserves were downright puny. Then he looked closer; like the corpses he saw in that mansion, this giant also had patched up, sewn together skin and a number on his arm, Naruto assumed that he was another corpse puppet.

The mansion in front of him appeared to be heavily damaged very recently and Naruto was pretty sure what was the cause of that. As the giant was still climbing on and punching holes through the walls of the building, evidently looking for the Straw Hats as he had their wanted posters on his hand and was looking at them every couple of seconds and then looking inside the mansion, tearing it in the process.

Sure enough, Naruto saw the Straw Hats on the ground below, apparently getting ready to fight the giant. He had some business with them but first he had to incinerate the giant corpse. To destroy someone that big without a trace, Naruto had to use a wide scale jutsu and he didn't want anyone else to get caught in crossfire.

With that in mind, Naruto put his fingers once again in a cross sign and a dozen clones appeared, "Burn the remaining corpses and take people somewhere safe,"

The clones saluted him, "Yes, boss," they yelled in unison and vanished in body flickers.

When he was sure there was no one left nearby, Naruto channeled chakra in his legs and ran to the ground below, faster than a naked eye could follow.

The Straw Hats were lined up to attack their captain's zombie, Zoro had his fingers near the swords, "I have an idea. How about this time, we throw him around for a change?"

Usopp had his special attack ready, but was still shaking at the prospect of fighting a giant with Luffy's fighting abilities, "What? Throw him? He's so huge!"

Sanji had lit up a brand new cigarette, "Sounds like fun!"

"Keep in mind, he may be big, but he can still move like Luffy. It won't be easy," Zoro warned his crew mates.

"I don't want to see someone like that become Pirate King," Robin was ready to sprout hundreds of arms at the drop of a hat.

"There are plenty of ways we can take him down," Franky cracked his knuckles and picked up his pillar nunchucks.

"He has to have some kind of weak point," Chopper said.

Sanji took another puff of his cigarette, "Standard strategy against a big fish is, you have to weaken it little by little."

Just then, they were stopped in their tracks by sudden appearance of a blond man in red cape between them and Oars. He was looking up at oars and had his back to them.

"Sorry for interrupting, but can you get back please. I don't want my attack to catch you by accident," Naruto said, still looking at Oars who was ready to attack any moment now.

"Who the hell are you?!" Zoro pointed at him with one of his swords. Naruto looked over his shoulder towards the swordsman, but before he could answer he was interrupted by the corpse giant.

"HA HA HA GET CRUSHED!!! GUM GUM..." the giant jumped in the air, "...BUTT STOMP!!"

"Luffy doesn't do that!! RUN!" Usopp yelled. The Straw Hats backed away to avoid getting crushed.

Naruto didn't budge from his spot. He extended his right arm and formed a big ball rasenshuriken. He gave the rasengan the chakra nature of lava and held it straight above his head- "Lava style: Rasenshuriken" Naruto thew it at the air born corpse. The rasenshuriken met Oars in midair, the giant was struck right in the stomach and the attack carried him high in the air and above the mansion. After three full seconds of ascend, the lava expanded and completely swallowed it's target, turning it into ash in an instant.

"Whooaa!!" Usopp looked at the attack in awe.

"He beat that zombie in one shot!" Sanji said as he exhaled a small cloud of smoke. "And now that this matter is taken care of..." He grit his teeth and his eyes looked like they were on fire, "NAMI-SAN!! I'M COMING TO SAVE YOU!" He ran at full speed. Others just watched him go like a man possessed.

"He didn't just beat it, he erased it, super!"

"What the hell was that?!" Zoro sheathed his Shusui.

"That has to be some kind of devil fruit power. An admiral of the navy can also use lava," Robin said in her usual calm voice, image of that evacuation ship from twenty years ago was still fresh in her memory.

With Luffy-

Through the circular hallways of the mast mansion, Moria was leading Luffy on a wild goose chase; through this room and that stairway Moria was running and running while taunting Luffy.

"Wait!! Moria! I'm going to pulverize you!!"

"Ki shi shi why are you chasing after me Straw Hat?! While you waste your time here, your friends are getting killed by a zombie of your own shadow hahaha," Moria laughed like a maniac and vanished behind another corner.

"Dammit! I promised I'll get their shadows, I can't fail! It'll be really bad if the sun rises before I can beat Moria, COME BACK HERE GIANT ONION!!" Luffy ran even faster to catch up to Moria.

Both of them were running around all over the place. Luffy was so focused on catching Moria, he didn't even realise that he was outside the mansion and was running through the dead forest. For Luffy, nothing else mattered, other than beating Moria. Slowly but surely Luffy was closing the distance between them, it was only a matter of time.

"Just a little bit more," Luffy compressed his legs like a spring and jumped. He barely got his hands on Moria but as soon as he did, he didn't let go and tackled him to the ground, "I caught you Moria!!" Luffy huffed and tried to catch his breath. 'Moria' turned around and showed completely dark face to Luffy, only white holes where his eyes and mouth were supposed to be. "A shadow?" Luffy was confused at first, then it hit him. "Aw man!!! I got tricked!!"

With Moria-

After tricking Straw Hat into chasing a shadow, Moria made a beeline for Oars's zombie. He would stay in the cockpit in Oars' stomach and make him a lot more deadlier.

"Kishishshi serves you right stupid straw hat!!" Moria arrived on the stairs that led down from Perona's room. There he got his first unexpected surprise of the night. He saw his most powerful zombie, 'the beast' Oars hurled into the sky with a ball of lava.

"WHAAAAT!!!! YOU IDIOT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE??!!!" Moria screamed in rage. "YOU'LL PAY FOR DESTROYING MY PRECIOUS ZOMBIE!! I'LL KILL YOU!!"

With Naruto-

Naruto was about to turn around and address the pirates behind him when he heard a man scream and yell at him from atop the stairs by the side of mansion. If he were to describe the man, he would have said that the man was shaped like a water drop, he was easily over twenty feet tall with long and thick neck that had multiple stitches on it and two horns on his forehead, he wore black coat and had pale blue skin and red hair. The overall appearance made that guy look scary, yet comical at the same time.

"So he's responsible for the corpses I saw earlier," Naruto turned around to face the people behind him, "Nico Robin, Do you know who that is?" Naruto asked the only lady present there. He knew who they were from the wanted posters. They were kind of famous on Jaya. And he wanted to meet Nico Robin ever since he learnt that she could read the writings from Skypiea for him. She was wearing a lace embroidered short maroon dress, net stockings and high heels, she had shoulder length dark hair and deep blue-green eyes.

"That's Gecko Moria, one of the seven warlords of the sea," Robin replied plainly.

"Seven warlords?" Naruto knew they were a group of pirates with license to plunder from government but he'd only known the name of one- Donquixote Doflamingo. He hoped that after beating up one of them they'd still let him join the navy. If not, he had other ways to infiltrate.

"He steals people's shadows and uses them to make zombies out of corpses," the blue haired speedo guy, Franky said.

"I have something I wanna I ask you..." Naruto said to Nico Robin but got interrupted by the green haired guy with three swords.

"We don't have time to talk. Right now we have some unfinished business with Moria! That bastard is gonna pay for stealing our shadows," he held a sword between his teeth and one in each hand. Zoro brushed past him and got ready to attack Moria.

"Um..Zoro," the long nose guy said, "You have your shadow back," he pointed out.

Zoro looked at his feet in surprise, "So Luffy found my zombie at last," he grinned.

Just then Naruto got the memories from all of his clones, all the zombies were taken care of, a girl with pink hair and eyes like bushy brows was trying to get off the island, the cat burglar Nami was running around in a wedding dress for some reason and there were some people in the jungle who had about a hundred shadows with them, the clone had set those shadows free and dispelled.

A loud thump brought his attention back, Moria had jumped from the stairs and landed in front of him.

"I don't care about your shadows anymore, you are all gonna die here," he looked really angry. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to find Oars' body?! Years of hard work, my dream, YOU RUINED IT!!" Moria screamed.

Naruto and the others waited for him to make a move, but none came. Naruto was a little confused, he thought Moria was going to do something for sure, all his intent and body movement said so. But Moria just stood there.

"What is going on??! Where are my shadows!!?" Moria screamed in rage and confusion.

"So that's what you were trying to do! Sorry, I already burnt all the corpses. The dead don't belong in this world, you know," Naruto said plainly.

"Why you!! You are the one that destroyed Oars too, aren't you?! I know none of these weaklings have the power to do something like that,"

Naruto was starting to get annoyed with the guy's whining, using corpses for an army already rubbed him the wrong way, he took a step towards Moria. Then another, and another until he stood right in front of Moria, "You know, you talk a lot of shit for someone why can't even tie his own shoes!"

"DUCK!" someone yelled.

Naruto ducked and narrowly avoided a punch from shadow-Moria.

Moria grit his teeth, "You insolent fool! DIE!!"

In an instant, Moria's shadow turned into hundreds of small bats. The bats tried to swarm him but Naruto jumped away to gain some distance. He was about to charge Moria but Zoro ran past him before he could, he didn't want to accidentally kill the guy so Naruto stayed put.

"Three sword style: 108 pound phoenix," Zoro sword slash got many of the bats but they just merged with the original shadow once again.

"Seis fleur: twist" Naruto heard the lady say and watched with wide eyes as six arms sprouted from Moria's body, two arms held his legs in place, two bound his arms, two grabbed his neck and twisted him backwards in a really uncomfortable position.

"That's a handy ability you have there," Naruto said and chuckled at his own joke. Rest of them just looked at him weirdly, Naruto cleared his throat and got ready to attack.

Zoro, Franky, Usopp and Robin were attacking Moria with little to no results, most of the attacks were being blocked by the shadow-Moria or he was avoiding being hit by switching with his shadow.

Naruto subtly created a lava clone and switched places with it. Naruto clone charged towards Moria while the real one hid in plane sight transformed as a stone, the shadow moved to intercept just like he thought it would. Hundreds of bats swarmed who Moria thought was Naruto and brought it down to the ground. More than a few tried to bite off chunks of flesh from his body and 'Naruto' screamed in agony.

"Ki shi shi once my bats sink their teeth into someone they never let go, serves you right!" Moria laughed seeing Naruto scream. But that laugh stopped at once when he noticed Naruto's grin just before he turned into lava. The shadow remained unaffected, the lava didn't actually damage it but it managed to create an opening. Naruto knew he couldn't hurt the shadow, he was familiar with most of the tricks and abilities of a shadow thanks spending so much time with Shikamaru. Although Moria used his shadow masterfully it moved somewhat independently, thus it could be taken by surprise, Naruto realised. The lava clone was the surprise.

Naruto undid his transformation and created a rasengan in his right hand and added wind chakra to it.

"Hey, green guy! I'll take care of the shadow, go after the original," he said.

"You got it," Zoro readied his three swords.

"Wind style: Rasengan Flash" Naruto opened a small hole in the shell of his rasengan and fired it as a drilling beam. The beam hit the target in the chest and the wind around it dispersed the shadow in hundreds of fragments.

By now Zoro had prepared his own attack, he held his two swords at a cross angle with each other and began to rotate them in front of him at very high speeds, "Three sword style: ultimate technique- 3000 worlds!" In a blink of an eye Zoro charged and ran past Moria. The warlord had no time to get out of the way, nor did he have his shadow ready in time to switch places. The three blades struck him at once in the chest and Moria collapsed on the ground.

Straw Hats waited for Moria to get up, a second passed, then two, three, four...it looked like Moria was down for good and they breathed a sigh of relief.

"We beat Moria! Suuuper!" Franky posed with his hands in the air.

Usopp sat down on the rubble of mansion, "Whew, it's finally over. I defeated a warlord of the sea!"

"Where are Luffy and the others?" Robin asked.

Zoro removed the sword from his mouth, "Speak of the devil," he gestured towards the partially collapsed building. Sure enough Luffy was running towards them with Nami and Sanji and a horde of other people.

"Hey Zoro, everyone!! You got our shadows back!!" Luffy was running towards his crew mates at full speed with a big smile on his face.

"Robin-chan! Thank god you're alright!" Sanji ran towards Robin with hearts in his eyes.

Naruto watched from the sidelines as they greeted each other. They looked like a lively bunch. Their captain seemed to care a lot about his crew, although Sanji and Zoro insulted each other right in front of him, he doubted they hated each other. 'Even criminals care about their own,' He thought, not for the first time. As they were busy talking about what they had been doing so far, Naruto's attention was drawn to the top of the building behind him.

There, a big man was standing, watching them all. A small cap with two small ears on his long curly hair, his black shirt had a white target like design. He was staring right at the people on the ground. And a moment later, he vanished from eyesight. 'Who the hell was that?!' Naruto thought to himself. He brushed the thought from his mind for now but remained alert.

He approached Nico Robin who was standing with her friends, "Hey, do you have a moment?"

"Hm?? What is it?" It was Nami who replied so turned his head towards her.

"I know you guys went to the sky island, people there told me Nico Robin can read the writings of the ruins, can you read some for me?" he asked them directly. He didn't have time to beat around the bush, neither did he want to linger there for long. His thoughts went to the girl on his ship, his clone hadn't dispelled yet so nothing noteworthy should have happened there.

"Oh...Robin, he wants to talk to you about boring stuff," Nami said to her friend who came forward and stood in front of him. Everyone else just resumed their victory celebrations and by the sounds of it, they were planning to throw a party.

"Why are you interested in ruins of sky island?" she asked.

"It's... uh..a bit hard to explain," he scratched the back of his head, "let's say it's very important that I know if there's a legend of a goddess that came to earth from the stars or a tree of godly powers,"

Robin stared at him for a good few seconds, like she was looking directly in his soul. It made him blush a little, "No." she answered finally, "There's no mention of a goddess on Skypiea. Neither is there a legend of something like that anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. But there are two trees in the world, that are spoken of like legends,"

"Really?!" Naruto asked.

"There's the jewel tree Adam and sunlight tree Eve, these two trees are given an almost mythical status by people because of their properties, and there's also the Sabaody archipelago made completely out of trees," Robin was surprised to see someone interested in the history and mythology of the world, so far she had never met anyone else who cared about the past, she couldn't gauge his motive though, the things he wanted to know were so specific but at the same time, so random.

"Adam tree and Eve tree, huh? There's one more favor I need," He took out a scroll that had ink prints of some of the writings from the sky island, he'd kept a couple of them with him instead sending all of them back home, just in case. He unfurled a long scroll, "Can you tell me what it says?"

Robin looked at the scroll, but before she could say anything, he was interrupted by her captain.

"HEY!! BLONDE GUY," Naruto looked over at the pirates, it was Straw Hat Luffy who had called him.

Luffy stopped in front of him, "Zoro says you got my shadow back, thanks! Stay a bit longer, we're throwing a party!" he grinned like a child.

Luffy wasn't finished yet, "You can take some of our treasure as a thank you, we found lots and lots on this ship!"

Before Naruto could answer though, Nami punched Luffy so hard, he fell face first on the ground and got a splendid bump on his head, "Don't give away my treasure to random people!" she yelled at him. "I'm sorry he didn't mean that! Thank you for helping us though," she smiled nervously at him and offered her hand.

Naruto shook it, smiling at her all the time.

"Relax, I don't want your treasure anyway." Nami looked relieved, she was about to go back to where Zoro and Sanji were when Naruto stopped her. "I said I don't want your treasure but can you at least give me back my Gama-chan please?!" he smiled sweetly at her.

Nami let out a 'Eep' and blushed red at being caught red-handed like that, "I..uh..well..." she couldn't find anything to say in self defence and gave back the frog shaped wallet, avoiding eye contact all the time.

Naruto chuckled, "You're good but not good enough to steal from me! Besides there's nothing worth stealing in there."

"What?! Really? It looked full of money!" Nami exclaimed in surprise, forgetting her embarrassed from a moment ago.

"HEY BROOK!! OVER HERE!" Luffy yelled, interrupting their conversation.

Naruto turned his head to see who Luffy was talking to. There was that skeleton one of his clones found in the kitchen a while ago. It was getting attacked by other zombies of the mansion so Naruto doubted he was with them, which turned out to be true when the skeleton explained his situation.

Robin turned to face Naruto, "What do you want me to read?" she asked.

"Not so fast Robin!" It was Nami again, "It sounds like you need help of our brilliant archeologist," she said with a grin.

"Um yeah, kind of," Naruto said.

"Then it's gonna cost you ten million berries!" Nami put a hand around Robin shoulders. "Take it or leave it!"

"You're never gonna change, are you?" Usopp asked from the sides.

"Fine, I'll give you ten million berries, will you help me now?"

"Hey guys! Put up a table here, quick!" Nami ordered some of the pirates that came with Luffy and her.

Nearby, some of the pirates ran to get food, some prepared a makeshift kitchen, some carried barrels of booze to the clearing, the skeleton had brought a piano from somewhere and the party began. Delicious smell enriched the atmosphere and everyone was dancing to the tune of 'Bink's brew'. For a skeleton, Brook could sing, Naruto had to admit. Food was delicious too, borderline Ichiraku ramen good.

"Let me see the scroll," Robin extended her hand once they some food in their belly. Naruto gave her the scroll, Robin opened it, her eyes traced the strange letters for a couple of seconds until she finally spoke, "Harvest this year has been plentiful. Aside from a small flu, Shandora didn't face any troubles, We pray next year will be even better."

Robin and her crew mates looked at him to see his reaction, Naruto was just looking blankly at her.

After a tense couple of seconds that felt like minutes he spoke, "Look, I know you don't owe me anything but at least don't lie to my face like that! If you don't want to help me, say so!" Naruto huffed.

This caught Robin by surprise, she didn't show any sign on her face that she was lying, she was that good at it. But still the guy could tell that she was lying. Of course she wasn't telling him the truth, the ink print was of the second last line of the poneglyph of Shandora, it specifically talked about location of poseidon. She would never give away information about an ancient weapon to anyone, she didn't give it to Crocodile in Alabasta, despite knowing that he would have probably killed her for it, and she wouldn't give it away now. "It's not easy to tell the truth to a complete stranger, you know, why do you even want to know about this anyway?" she said instead.

'What's written there that she won't talk about it?!' he wondered. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto," he introduced himself. "There, now I'm not a complete stranger, you know my name. Now can you tell me what the writings say?"

"You left out the 'why'?" It was Nami who pointed it out.

Naruto let out a sigh, he needed their help, she was only one who could read as far as he knew, he couldn't just pass up an opportunity like this so he obliged, "I heard this legend about a clan of godlike beings that go from planet to planet to absorb the life from every living creature there, 'killing' the planet in the process. I want to know if it's true." He explained without giving away too much.

Nami and Usopp shivered after hearing what he said, Zoro went back to drinking but Robin just looked at him passively. She now realised why he asked about a 'goddess that came from sky' earlier.

"I'm sorry I lied earlier, the scroll actually gives the location of Fishman Island. But it doesn't mention any beings like that. There's not even a myth like that in any of the cultures around the world that I know of." She left out the part about Poseidon but rest was true, she didn't know if Naruto could tell though.

Naruto sighed in relief, at last she was telling the truth, partially but truth nonetheless. He got his next lead, he'd have to pay a visit to fishman island next and see what secret it had hidden, "Thanks a lot!" He was relieved to hear that there was no mention of the Otsutsuki but he still had long way to go to complete his mission. "You know, if I find another city like Shandora, I might need your help again, is there any way I can contact you?" Nami did call her an archeologist earlier, so it was a safe bet she'd be able to help him if he found something like this again.

"We don't have a transponder snail on our ship," Robin answered. "And I can't think of any other way."

Naruto thought about it for a second, he could get one of his tracker toads to memorise her chakra but sometimes they could take a while to track the target, that wouldn't be any help if he wanted to reach her quickly, it would have been a lot easier if he knew flying thunder god, he realised. Then it hit him, "Give me a second!" he vanished in a body flicker and ran full speed out of the mansion, through the dead forest, past the graveyard and straight to the captain's cabin on his ship. He picked up the transponder snail that was sleeping on the table and ran back the way he came.

When he got back, Naruto put an orange transponder snail on the table, "There, I'll call you if I need your help, alright?!" Robin nodded.

"Great!" Naruto smiled. Today he felt like he took a step towards completing his mission. There was no mention of something like the Otsutsuki, which was good. He had four places to check out next, Sabaody Archipelago, Sunlight tree Eve, Jewel tree Adam and Fishman Island.

"I'll see you soon!" Naruto smiled at Robin and barely took a step to be on his way when out of nowhere, Nami stood infront of him. 'Did she use a body flicker?!'

Hands on her hips, Nami stood in front of him and narrowed her eyes, "Aren't you forgetting something?!" she asked.

"...What? Oh yeah, the money!! I completely forgot about that!" Naruto laughed a little. Nami didn't join him in that though so he quickly pulled out another scroll. He unrolled it and channeled some chakra in the storage matrix, in a puff of smoke about thirty million berries appeared in front of him. He sealed away two third of the amount again and offered his hand for a handshake, "It's a pleasure doing business with you!" he smiled at the cat burglar.

Nami took his hand in her own for a brief second, she noticed the bandages wrapped around his hand, "You know, if you have an injury Chopper can fix you up in no time!" she said as she smiled at him. "For a fee of course!"

"It's... uh..," he had a ghost of a smile on his lips now, "nevermind that, I'll see you soon!" he said but before he could activate his body flicker, rest of the straw hats, Zoro, Chopper, Usopp, Franky, Robin and Luffy surrounded him, Luffy was grinning so much his eyes were upside down 'U's.

"Did you.."

".. just take.."

"..the money.."

"..out of.."

"..a scroll?!" Zoro, Chopper, Usopp, Franky and Luffy said one after another, smiling weirdly at him.

Naruto took half a step backwards, "..yeah?" he said.

"THEN YOU MUST BE A NINJA!!" Luffy, Usopp and Franky yelled in unison.

"Yes, I am," Naruto replied, and immediately wondered if he did the right thing or not. Of course it wasn't a undercover mission or anything like that and revealing his status as ninja wouldn't be a problem for his mission, besides, not like he knew that these people knew about ninjas. So far he's been spamming, 'It's a devil fruit ability,' as an explanation for everything he did, if anyone asked.

"Woohoo!!!" Luffy jumped in the air as soon as Naruto confirmed that he was a ninja. "Hey everyone!! Come here, this guy's a ninja!!" The remaining people who were drinking and eating nearby hurried towards them, including Brook and Sanji.

"Throw some shuriken for us!"

"Meditate under a waterfall!"

"Show us a earth jutsu!"

"Show me a water jutsu!"

"A clone jutsu for me!!" Usopp, Zoro, Chopper, Franky and Luffy practically demanded one after another.

Naruto had a sweat drop on his head, eagerness practically oozed out of everyone there. This wasn't his first time receiving requests like this, from time to time, someone who had never met a real ninja before would come to hire them and they'd then make all sorts of requests, do this and do that, by the time you were chunin, you would get used to meeting people like that. On top of that, for the last two years he'd been teaching at the ninja academy from time to time, so he had plenty of experience with situations like this, where a bunch of people would demand to see a particular skill, the rasengan was particularly famous among the academy students.

"I'd love to show you some jutsu but I really have to get going," Naruto said but immediately regretted. Everyone there looked like a bunch of children who were denied ice cream or younger him when Teuchi or Ayame would get sick and Ichiraku ramen would be closed. Naruto let out a sigh, "Alright fine, make some space," he said and everyone's frowns turned into smiles and they hurried to make space for him to perform his jutsu. They stood on either side of him, waiting eagerly for him to start.

Naruto cracked his knuckles and went through the hand signs-

Tiger, hare, boar, dog, ox, snake-

"Earth style: Mud Wall"

he slammed his right hand on the ground and a ten feet tall and two feet thick wall of earth rose out of the ground about ten meters away from him, complete with a small Uzumaki swirl in the middle of it.

"AWESOME!!!" Naruto heard someone yell, their cheers were deafening.

Next, Naruto took out a shuriken from the holster and tagged it with decent amount of chakra. Everyone got so silent to see what he would do next, he could hear rustling of leaves. He threw the shuriken at the mud wall-

Ox, dog, dragon, rat, dog, boar, snake, tiger-

"Ninja art: shuriken shadow clone jutsu"

The one shuriken became a hundred and hit the wall to form a rough likeness of his own face.

"THAT'S SO COOL!!" he heard Luffy's voice above everyone else's cheers as the pirates applauded him again, Naruto too smiled a little.

"And now to finish it," he put a half ram sign near his chest, "Shadow clone jutsu!" In puffs of white smoke, ten more exact copies of him appeared.

Luffy ran directly towards him at full speed and touched every clone if they were real, "GUYS!! THEY ARE SOLID CLONES!!" he yelled to his friends. The remaining straw hats ran at the clones and did the same, even Nami and Robin were looking at the clone from every angle.

"Amazing!" Nami said as she took the red coat in her hands, "It looks and feels like real silk!"

"That's because it is real silk! I'm not a clone," Naruto said to her. Nami let the cape go at once like it was made of fire.

Just a moment ago, she was touching his face and checking his abs, thinking it was a clone and how real it felt. Thinking about it made her blush red, then it made her angry that he let her do all those things without even telling her that he was the real one, "Why didn't you tell me before! I look like a fool now!!" she yelled at him.

It just made him and everyone around him laugh out.

"Nami was totally checking out the ninja!" Usopp and Franky were laughing so hard, they had tears in his eyes. Which of course earned them a punch each from Nami.

"Hey Ninja! Join my crew!" Luffy said to the clone he had his arms wrapped around.

Naruto mentally dispelled the clones, "Thanks for the offer but I have to go home as soon as possible."

"But I want you to come with us!" Luffy said.

"You idiot Luffy, don't be like that, he says he has to go home!" Zoro had his one hand on his captain's shoulder.

"But I-"

"No buts Luffy!" Nami told her captain. "By the way, where are you from?" she asked.

"I'm from the hidden leaf village!" Naruto smiled and pointed at his headband with his thumb.

"That's so cooool!!!" Luffy, Usopp and Chopper had stars in their eyes at the mention of a 'hidden village'.

"I never heard of a place like that before," Robin rested her chin on her index finger.

"Of course you didn't! It's really well hidden," Naruto chuckled. "Now I have to get going! But before I go- hey miss cat burglar," Naruto walked over to her and picked up a small rock that was at her feet.

"What is it?" Nami said with a little edge to her voice. She wasn't completely over the incident from earlier.

Naruto stretched him hand, "Watch this-" he channeled chakra into the stone, there was a small puff of white smoke. When it cleared, instead of a stone, Naruto had a bundle of berries in his hand, "Pretty cool right?" he grinned at her.

"Awesome! Thats my kinda jutsu!" Nami said in amazement, then she realised something, "Wait! Don't tell me the money you gave me earlier were stones!!"

"No, that was real money!" Naruto dropped the transformation jutsu of the stone.

"Oh, thank god!" Nami said in relief.

"Well, it's been fun but now I gotta go. I'll need your help again, Robin. I'll call you guys," Naruto said and vanished in a body flicker.

"You were really friendly with those pirates," Kurama said once they were away from the crowd and in the dead forest.

"I need their help, Kurama. Didn't you hear what that guy in the Sky island told us?"

"That woman is the only person that can read that accursed language!"

"Besides, they didn't seem like the pirates we met so far. They seemed like decent people in bad profession, even you didn't warn me or anything when I was with them," truth was Naruto's gut told him that they weren't bad people, over the years he'd learnt to trust his gut instincts more and more. World wasn't so black and white, he and Kurama knew that better than anyone.

"That's because I trust you, but yeah they had no ill intent towards you," he replied, if they did, then they wouldn't be alive, if Kurama had any say in it.

"Aww I'm flattered that you believe in me, Kurama!" Naruto laughed.

"Shut up!" Kurama glared at him, "Don't wake me up for at least a week!" he said and closed his eyes.

"Okay, I'm sorry! I won't talk like that again!" Naruto tried to apologise but Kurama didn't reply.

By now Naruto was near his ship, he jumped on the deck and went inside past the captain's cabin and directly in the room where Peach was treating that girl.

He knocked and opened the door. In the bedroom, there were a lot of herbs on the table by the side of bed. Peach was busy making medicine and the girl was sound asleep

"Hey Peach!" he announced himself.

The toad stopped working for a moment and turned to look at her summoner,"Boss!"

"How's she?" he asked as he made his way towards the girl. There were fresh bandages wrapped around her head and a wet cloth on her forehead. Naruto touched her cheek with the back of his hand, she still had fever and it had gone down a bit while he was away.

"She's recovering quite fast but It'll take some time for her to regain consciousness. She was in really bad condition when I got here, If you had summoned me a few hours late, she wouldn't have made it," Peach resumed making more medicine.

"If you need anything, tell me okay?"

"You got it boss,"

He sat in the chair at the far side of the room and opened a scroll that had the maps of all the seas. He picked one for the East Blue and stretched it in his hands. He was looking for the trees, Adam and Eve. He looked for them in the East blue, then in West Blue and searched in South and North as well but didn't find any mention of those trees, then finally he read the map of grand line. There he found what he was looking for, sunlight tree Eve was on top of the red line, in the middle of holy land of Marijoa, and just a little distance away from it was the Sabaody archipelago, Adam tree he found in the New World.

"Archipelago is the closest, guess I have to make a final stop before marineford," Naruto stored away the maps.

"Call for me if she wakes up," Naruto told Peach as he got up from his chair.

"You got it, boss," Peach said without even looking at him. Naruto created two shadow clones, one was left it in the room, the other went to get the ship moving while the original went to get some sleep.

Thank you for reading!

I have more than 50 likes on the story at the time of posting this chapter, which is way more than I expected LOL. Thank you for that! Just to clarify, Peach is mentioned as residents of Mt. Myoboku so I took the liberty of making it a medic toad. There are other toads like Gamaspeed that are mentioned but not used in cannon that I'll be using in future chapters. I know Naruto showing his jutsu to other people is a no-no for a ninja but I'm writing this fanfiction because I want to see my favourite ninja interact with my favourite pirates, what will their reaction be if they meet each other? Also, hats off to Oda for that chapter where the Straw Hats meet Raizo, I laugh everytime I read it!

I hope you liked this chapter a little bit!

Have a nice day!!