[...Rasenshuriken!]
Huge gusts of gale-like wind followed the trio of projectiles, sending hundreds of men and women below them flying. Their power and force was so maddeningly unstoppable, even the fighters from hundreds of meters away felt goosebumps on the back of their necks.
So imagine how it'd feel to be the target of such a terrifyingly potent attack: the three admirals didn't need to because they felt it in real-time.
"!?" All three of them felt alarm bells start ringing in their head, and almost on instinct: they activated their devil fruit abilities to contest against the spinning vortex of wind and energy.
One turned to light and tried teleporting away, the other turned to ice in hopes of withstanding the blow while the final one turned to magma to destroy the attack.
Each used different methods, and as such, each had different levels of success:
Kizaru escaped, though not without notable injury. His devil fruit played a central part in allowing him to escape the black-hole like pressure from sucking him in. However, that did nothing to stop the senjutsu enhanced licks of remnant wind from injuring his body.
Aokiji and Akainu, on the other hand, were less than fortunate…
For one, both admirals were bloodied and near-death, if alive. For another, they were barely conscious in the middle of a battlefield, where one wrong move could potentially mean death.
It was poetic, in a way: both men were the polar opposites of one another. One was too strict, while the other too cruel, and yet, both were felled by their over-reliance on their devil fruits…
"..."
Everyone was speechless, from the pirates to the marines, from Whitebeard to Sengoku, from Luffy to Ace, they could only stare at the craters formed from Naruto's attack and the individuals lying inside them.
Still, that isn't to say Naruto was fine himself. In fact, one can even say he was in a worse position! After all, at least the admirals had an army of marines to protect them. Naruto had nothing, and he just about ran out of chakra:
"Huff, huff... shit, I miscalculated… no more… chakra… left..." Naruto gasped for air as he struggled to stay awake, his eyes turning back to normal and the makeup on his face disappearing.
'Hopefully… that old guy remembers me...' He sneakily eyed the titanic figure of Whitebeard, breathing a small sigh of relief when he saw the man pointing at him while talking with what was probably an underling.
'Or maybe that rubber guy will be the one to save me...' He chuckled to himself when in the corner of his eyes, he saw Luffy barely holding it in not to scream 'COOOOL!' at the top of his lungs.
As he was staring though, a strange sixth sense resounded in his head to—
"Weird guy, duuuck!" Yeah… that.
He was on the ground in milliseconds, his blue eyes met the black, beady eyes of his attacker, his toothy grin practically screaming: 'Danger!'
That wasn't the end of it, as the man's outstretched fist transformed into a black slug-like gas before he brought it down on Naruto.
With quick reactions, and even quicker movements, he rolled sideways, escaping the mysterious man's strike. But he wasn't done just yet, and with a smirk, the darkness that used to stay stuck on his hand suddenly spread out, hitting Naruto in the shoulder.
"Grkk?!" Naruto breathlessly screamed in pain as he felt his bones crumpling in on himself. It felt like he was being pressed together by five-hundred hydraulic presses simultaneously…
"Zehahahaha! I've got you! I can't wait to take your devil fruit!" He announced his intentions like an idiot, but considering how Naruto couldn't escape his clutches, the man had some right to be complacent.
"You— Gaaah?!" Naruto wanted to curse— he wanted to scream and shout, but the pain... The excruciating pain! It was too much! And it kept getting worse the more the darkness spread across his body. By the time it finished consuming his left chest, Naruto was already wading in and out of consciousness…
And just before he completely fell into the clutches of sleep, he heard a cry of pain and a shout of anger, and then he lost it…
Naruto awoke to the sound of… laughing?
Well, he didn't really wake up: he was still in a state of semi-sleep. But you can't absolutely blame that on him! It was the bed… it was getting too comfy…
"Guys! He— awak—! Aw—ke!"
He squirmed against the soft linen mattress under him in protest to the shouts. Why can't a man get a good night's rest! Hmph!
"Wake up! Wake uuuup, weird guy!"
"Grr..." Again with the shouting! Jeez, nobody has manners these days…
-Slap!-
Oh, now that does it! No one slaps me and gets away with it!
"Weird—"
"What?!" He opened his eyes in a rage and wanted to scream all the ninja swears he knew at the other party. However, it died in his throat when he realized all the unfamiliar people standing next to him.
First things first was the guy holding him by the shoulders: he was the rubber kid if Naruto recalled correctly. Next was the guy who he saw chained up next to the fleet admiral, third was the old man Whitebeard... and then there was a buncha other faces he didn't know.
Whitebeard was the first to speak in response to his outburst, chuckling, "Gurararara… Y'alright, kid?"
Naruto nodded numbly, still reeling from the shock of waking up in an unfamiliar place, but the smell of medicine was ripe enough in the air to at least tell him it was a hospital ward of some kind…
He made to get up, but the constantly aching throb on his left shoulder stopped any thought of doing that dead in its tracks.
"What… happened?" He looked at the crowd before gesturing at his wounds with his chin.
Immediately, it seemed he struck a sore spot, as everyone frowned when he mentioned it, and a few even gnashed their teeth together.
"That was… Blackbeard," The guy who was previously chained up answered him. It hadn't gone past Naruto that he was one of the few that looked especially angry at the mention of that Blackbeard person, "Your injuries were a mixture of his devil fruit and haki,"
""What's haki?"" Naruto and Luffy asked simultaneously, both of their heads tilted to the side in curiosity. Everybody smiled at the coincidence in amusement.
"Hum… Come, let's talk outside, the medic ward is hardly a place to converse, no?" One of the men beside him suggested. To Naruto, he looked… weird.
Green shirt and pants, puffy neckpiece, puffy shoulder pads and those weird shoes that went up at the end. He was a dead-ringer for a few jesters Naruto's seen on his missions. To his relief, he was at least on the same height scale as Naruto… man, talking to people is going to be such a pain...
Nevertheless, they agreed with the man, and the group headed out on deck to speak:
Oh…
They were out at sea…
He looked on at the seemingly infinite volume of the ocean in wonderment. They could never have anything like this back home…
"First time seeing the sea?" The man who was previously chained up(he learned his name soon enough, his brother was never shy about shouting it out) asked, a good-natured grin on his face.
Naruto nodded lightly, still too awed by the sheer enormity of the body of water in front of him to fully listen.
Ace didn't seem to care though, and just let out a laugh, "—
Hah! You'll get used to it quick; probably faster than all of us because of your devil fruit,"
"What… is a devil fruit anyways?" At the mention of devil fruits, he tore his focus away to look inquisitively at Ace.
"It's a fruit that looks weird and gives you even weirder powers," Came the answer, but it wasn't from Ace. Turning to look, it was Luffy, or 'rubber guy' as he liked to call him.
"How so?"
"Well..." Luffy picked his nose as he thought about it, "Ace is made out of fire, and I'm made out of rubber. Ooh! There's this one lady who turned her cannon into a dog!"
Naruto sweatdropped, 'I see… it's that weird...'
"To be more specific, there are three types of devil fruits. Like my brother said, I'm a logia type, which normally means the user can turn themselves into the element of the fruit. Next is the zoan, which lets you transform into different animals, however, there are two subcategories that are much rarer than the ordinary zoan fruit: Mythical and Ancient zoan," He took a deep breath before continuing.
"These two allow you to transform into animals from myth like dragons, or ancient species like dinosaurs. Finally, we have paramecia, which is a catch-all term that can include the wackiest abilities to the most powerful. An example of that is Pops: his devil fruit is the most powerful in the paramecia type there is," He finished, looking satisfied with his explanation.
By the time he finished, they had reached their destination and sat down opposite to Whitebeard.
A soft quiet filled the deck, everyone paying rapt attention at the giant figure of Whitebeard:
"..." He slowly moved his head side to side, scanning his entire crew before finally…
"Let us get to the topic at hand..."
"Naruto." He said, "You were a deciding factor in the rescue of my son, and for that I thank you,"
Mutters and whispers between his crew populated the deck, slightly surprised that their captain would personally thank the boy sitting in front of them.
"But!"
This silenced them once again, "A mere thank you would be spitting on the life of Ace. So I have decided..."
…
…
"Naruto Uzumaki, you will be allowed one favour of me and my crew. No matter what you want, we will achieve it!"
"!"