AN: Well, this sure took longer than I thought it would. I've been bouncing between WIPs so much lately that I had 6k in like four different things. This is just what happened to get finished first.
This chapter's song is "It's Raining Men (The Living Tombstone Remix)," originally by The Weather Girls.
"I have a godfather and a godmother," Naruto said, bouncing in place on the old man's leg. Aside from when he was asleep—which didn't seem to be often—he had enough energy that he was never entirely still. And no matter the hour, it always seemed to run rings around even the strongest pirates around. "And a grandpa, and a mom and a dad, and my sister has a godfather and a godmother, too. Thing is, my grandpa's about twenty years younger than you, so I think I have an open slot for a great-grandpa!"
Naruto, unlike most jinchūriki, had several living relatives and potential guardians to take up any slack in his life. I was one of them, twice over, and was a major reason why most of the rest were still alive. I didn't ever see fit to admit that aloud, because some of those incidents had been too close to call anything more than luck.
"So, does the Third Hokage still count, or…?" I prompted, while Naruto contemplated his family tree in front of Whitebeard.
"Yeah, but for Dad's side." Naruto shrugged, twisting a damp lock of hair between his fingers. The paint had mostly come out after one forced scrubbing, at least. He and Thatch hadn't had time to grab glitter from anywhere, and the rest of the crew thanked their lucky stars for it. "I dunno if Mom would want to be your granddaughter when she's on Shanks's crew, though."
Whitebeard chuckled, with only a brief hesitation as though he expected to cough. While every nurse hovered and Janey spared a frown for everyone who dared get the old man worked up, Whitebeard set his huge sake jug to one side of his chair and then patted Naruto's not-quite-spiky hair with a hand the size of a trash can lid. "I would be honored to add you to the family. Or do you plan on adding me to yours?"
"I dunno. You already have a ton of kids, so there's not really much harm in a few more, right?"
I supposed that when it came to father figures, redundancy was better than not. I had Sensei and Jiraiya—sort of—as well as my biological father, though he'd died when I was younger than Naruto currently was. Naruto also got to count Nagato and Yahiko in his corner, after a fashion, whereas I considered them more like cousins.
"I think it'd be interesting to be able to say you're my grandpa, even if Naruto can't," I said, while the other two puzzled over things. "Both of my sets of grandparents died before I was born."
Gaara tilted his head to one side, mimicking Yugito's thoughtful expression. "I think that may be the case with everyone here except for Naruto."
Given the global propensity toward armed conflict only large clans tended to have more than two generations alive at a given time. Or at least it seemed like it. I knew my maternal grandparents had been killed in a clan massacre and my paternal ones in a mountain accident, but I couldn't speak for most of my fellow shinobi because we also tended to categorically deny information to village outsiders. For all I knew, Han and Rōshi had thriving families to hide from Konoha's eyes. I was sure Utakata was an orphan, after a fashion, and I was certain both Fū and Killer B were adopted, but past that? After hitting a critical threshold of being stonewalled, I wasn't interested in prying.
"What is your policy on heroic poses?" Fū was asking Vista, flitting around the Moby Dick's deck upside-down as she spoke. "Do they look better with swords?"
"I've never had to think up a heroic pose," Vista replied, "but I've seen enough Marine recruitment posters to know they do, in fact, look much better with swords. Have you ever read some of the weekly comics? Like Sora the Hero?"
"No?" Fū made a face as she righted herself. "And you're about to tell me I lived under a rock."
Vista denied it immediately, though not too well.
"I've lived under a tree and on a Sky Island, but under a rock would be a new one for me!" Fū grinned, dismissing the problem entirely. She whirled around in the air, then settled into a pose with her arms held out in a V formation and one knee tucked up to her chest. "Hey, Gaara, how's this look?"
"You look like an antenna."
"I'd like to see you do better!"
Gaara looked around at the excitable kids, then said slowly and to no one in particular, "What have I gotten into?"
"Dunno, but I'm with ya!" said Naruto, as he climbed down from Whitebeard's knee. "Fū, I bet I can come up with better poses than you!"
"You're on!"
While the three youngest jinchūriki decided to see who could be a Hero of Justice (and not make every pirate within half a mile laugh themselves sick), Utakata drifted over to me without saying much in the face of all the noise. While some of the more excitable crew members (read: Thatch) cheered the kids on, Yugito also slowly slunk to my perch.
"Not joining in on the kiddie games?" I asked them, shifting until I was in a meditating pose on the railing. Utakata was the youngest of us adult jinchūriki.
"I think they'd prefer if they were able to be carefree," Utakata said, shaking his head slowly. "We aren't qualified."
He was also a bit of a stick in the mud.
I eyed Yugito's crown braid and made sure she saw me doing it. "Well, maybe if you let them do your hair…"
Utakata ducked out of my reach before I could act in any way on that suggestion. "No way in hell."
"Not even for a little while?" Yugito asked, teasing.
"No one touches the hair!"
I had a funny feeling that the lot of us were becoming an extended family by osmosis.
Just in time for events to finally catch up with us.
Eventually shit hit the fan, because of course it did. Or the manure hit the windmill, or whatever other old-timey variation anyone around me would have understood. The point is that, much like a world populated by ninja and samurai rather than everything under the sun (and a few that were not), peaceful days never lasted among an oceangoing world of pirates. Back in Konoha, managing to get three or more months' reprieve from the rigors of random S-class threats wasn't uncommon, because it was an established village and ANBU didn't need to yell "Constant vigilance!" in the Hokage's ear when he was at least as wary and watchful as they were. The village's reputation generally did the rest, which meant most Konoha shinobi could generally expect to still be able to go home at the end of a mission and have the apartment still there. I knew I did.
Now, Whitebeard was more widely feared than the Yellow Flash, even if he hadn't personally visited death upon many of the people who trembled at his name. Their world was just too big for that kind of personal touch, and shinobi were basically confined to one continent on ours. Harming a Whitebeard Pirate was verboten, and the authority people would answer to was the man himself. Given that we were sticking by his crew, this meant we were probably about as safe as we'd ever been during this entire pirating adventure.
This did not stop complete assholes from causing trouble. But it started with something that, for the most part, wasn't our responsibility until we stuck our noses into it. And then it ballooned from there.
Because the Whitebeards were in a town under their protection, they tended to spread out and act like tourists as much as anyone else did, with the bonus that they were effectively pickpocket-proof by virtue of also being a bunch of scoundrels. With escorts from an older and more powerful crew, the Straw Hats and the Cobalt Lionesses had effective free reign if they were courteous. Some of Yugito's followers may have forgotten a few of their basic manners due to their time in prison (like remembering the buying power of beri as opposed to a grasping hand), but a few quick reminders from the locals and their pirating senpais smoothed the way. There weren't as many punches as one would expect.
The Straw Hats fanned out all over the place. While Zoro was busy challenging Vista to a fight—because of course he was—Nami, Sanji, Gaara, and Brook went shopping, and Robin took Fū, Usopp, Franky, and Chopper to find the Poneglyph, only Luffy stuck by the Moby Dick at all. Part of it was that Ace was introducing Luffy to all the Whitebeard Pirates. The other consideration was a very protracted (and distracted) discussion of crew strength relative to the challenges of the New World. As guests of the Ryugu Kingdom, we hadn't technically wandered back into the nastiest ocean on the planet just yet. Luffy, as the Straw Hats' captain, had to make the call for his crew in the end. I was still concerned that, aside from Gaara and perhaps Fū, none of them were ready for the nearly vertical difficulty curve that awaited them past the Red Line. Actually explaining that to Luffy, though, was going take all day.
Then Ace threw Luffy hard enough to put a crater in the seafloor, which I considered an issue between brothers and left alone.
Jinbe disappeared, taking Koala along with him to meet the Sun Pirates when they docked a few hours after "dawn" broke. Sabo followed, with a token reassurance to Ace and Luffy that he wouldn't get lost or kidnapped or set on fire again—or at least not without them to either act as backup or point and laugh. The rest of the Revolutionaries decided to spread out, with Ivankov at the head, and descended on the highest-end fashionable shops they could find. I wasn't sure if they expected a discount or not, but perhaps it was just as well that they explored.
Anyway, that was the gist of the situation after breakfast. It seemed peaceful enough. With the Tailed Beasts floating around, even after their second and then third Bubbly Coral purchases, Fishman Island was effectively our new field trip destination.
Thus, Yugito, Naruto, Utakata, and I all decided to travel together. With no pirates (other than our friends) to worry about, we could go as fast or slow as we wanted, with no concern for anyone else being able to keep up.
"What'll happen after this?" Naruto asked, after we'd stopped our meandering around Coral Hill for a little bit.
"After what?" Utakata didn't appear to be paying attention, more preoccupied by the fraying of his coat sleeves, but none of us were fooled. Naruto had a way of worming into people's hearts.
"After whatever we're doing here." Naruto lifted both his arms to effectively encompass the entirety of Fishman Island, or perhaps the world. "Like, Kei-sensei told me we're gonna help you with your revenge, and once we meet up with Mom and Octopops, it'll be a piece of cake. But no one's found the Four-Tails anywhere and we're still running with pirates and Revolutionaries and stuff." He let his arms drop. "And I think the Straw Hats are gonna need to take a training mission for like a year if they wanna keep up with the rest of us. That means Fū and Gaara aren't going to be doing much if we don't go home."
"And to be honest, it was only ever a theory that we would go home once our task was completed," Yugito remarked, in a tone that was rather grim.
Not that I blamed her. "Or a hope," I agreed, looking down at the tops of my shoes. I crossed my arms over my chest and sighed. "I still miss everyone back home too much to feel like Gaara and you do, Yugito, but…"
"It's not worth worrying about now," Utakata said firmly. When I looked at him, his level stare gave way to something deliberately cold. He broke eye contact first, saying, "We've left an imprint here, but until we progress further, there is no way to know what the result may be. And I refuse to panic until we have something real to fear."
Spoken like a textbook veteran shinobi.
I didn't believe him for a second.
"Kei-sensei," Naruto interrupted after a second, "isn't that the place?"
Thatch had said something about a Madame Shyarly and her famous prophecies while handing out fritters at breakfast, and I was enough of a nerd that I wanted to hear the second major oracle of my life in person. Gamamaru was accurate, but vague, and I wanted to know if the Mako shark mermaid was any different. Unfortunately, that meant we'd be visiting a hostess club during peak hours, so who knew if we'd ever get a chance to see her.
There was a line going around the block by the time we got there. Naruto craned his neck and stood on the balls of his feet, making a token attempt to see over a crowd that was mostly taller than him or floating in convenient bubble rings if they didn't have feet for locomotion. Utakata, despite having gotten his customized bubble wand from Usopp a few days ago, and being more than capable of outperforming the Bubbly Coral devices we'd seen, left our group's sole genin to struggle. Yugito looked like she wanted to at least ask how long the wait was going to be, but couldn't lower herself to actually asking anyone.
I hung back and was going to wait, and then things happened.
"I must lodge a complaint," Matatabi's voice said, ringing out across the entire city directly below her. She'd apparently followed us from the Moby Dick, accompanied by a miniscule clone of Shukaku as a passenger.
As everyone looked up, she lifted a rear leg past the bubble ring around her ribs and kicked behind one of her ears, dislodging something the size of a human torso. It crashed into the ground hard enough to imbed itself in the stone, and Yugito was the first to investigate after the crowd cleared out and the dust settled. No one wanted to be in the immediate area if the fire-cat got pissed off enough to put her size and strength to good use, after all.
Yugito, with her eyes flashing Matatabi's colors for just a second, tore the weapon out of the ground with all the effort she'd displayed when using Minotaurus's club. She hefted the oversized battle axe one-handed, testing its weight, before saying aloud, "She didn't see where it came from. Did any of you?"
That got a round of "no" from pretty much everyone in the immediate area, except the Shukaku clone. As Matatabi floated gently down toward Yugito, the clone hurled itself down from a great height and smashed itself into sand upon hitting the stone. I had to wonder how Shukaku had learned that tactic, which just spooked the locals more.
Almost instantly reforming itself, the clone opened its bear trap jaws and said, "I saw everything! It came from outside of the city."
Which was the ocean. It was probably safe to say the culprit was either a fishman or someone skirting the laws of physics with more bubble shenanigans. Possibly both—I hadn't gotten a chance to figure out how the hell sailing interacted with the whole "sealed into an airtight bubble to travel underwater" thing yet. It obviously did, and without Tailed Beast intervention for the most part, but I didn't know why.
"I didn't know your eyesight was that good," Naruto said, even as he gathered the Shukaku clone into his arms.
"It is not," Matatabi said, pitching her voice as low as she could manage. "As I understand, Saiken and Yang Kurama spotted the initial problem. Or at least that is what they tell me."
Saiken, because he could twist his eyes any direction he pleased. Yang Kurama…might've just been out to steal credit. He tended to believe he was the best at everything just because he had nine tails and the ability to effortlessly squelch the rest of his siblings' power. Combined.
"Regardless of who saw it first," Shukaku's clone piped up, apparently eager to skate past that issue, "someone just attacked you, Sister. What are we going to do about it? Can we kill someone?"
"How kind of you to ask first, Brother." Matatabi's tone dripped with sarcasm.
"The great Shukaku overflows with generous spirit!" said the clone, baring all his sandy fangs.
His goodwill extended almost solely to showing off to the tertiary benefit of others or in sharing kills. Whoever had thrown that axe was going to experience that truth first-hand if Shukaku got to them first.
"Well, he's a giver," I muttered, even as Naruto ran his fingertip along the edge of the axe. Since it was unlikely Naruto could hurt himself badly enough that he couldn't recover in seconds, I turned my attention to Yugito and said, "So, do we report this to the Neptune Army or to the Whitebeard Pirates?"
"We're guests of both," Yugito thought aloud, shooing Naruto away from the weapon with her free hand. "But the Neptune Army is closer. They may know why random weapons are flying through the air."
"Okay! Let's go, then!" Naruto said, and started off in the direction of the last underwater police station we'd passed. I was pretty sure there wasn't a separate local constabulary in this area, since Fishman Island wasn't much larger than Konoha, so it wasn't like we had better ideas. With Shukaku's clone in his arms, we adults let him run off ahead because the likelihood he'd actually be in danger was somewhat low.
Provided there were no more flying axes. Nonetheless, Matatabi floated on ahead, keeping an eye on the two fastest members of our group.
"Something's been bothering me," Utakata said while we walked.
Yugito and I both looked at him. But I spoke first. "What is?"
"I didn't notice last night, when everyone was drunk," Utakata began, clearly trying to remember the exact problem. "But this morning… If you cut about half of Thatch's pompadour off, and restyled it, do you think he looks a little too much like the Second Mizukage?"
Yugito frowned, probably trying to remember a history lesson or two. "I don't know what he looked like, so I'll take your word for it." Or not. And here I thought her observations would be profound. I supposed there wasn't much to work from. "But now that you bring him up, something else was bothering me about Thatch."
"Oh?" I prompted, as we passed a crowd of concerned-looking fishfolk, who were pointing at the axe Yugito carried.
"He has a Devil Fruit power."
Eh? "He does?"
Yugito nodded. "Marco specifically made me promise not to let him drown in a bathtub. Apparently, he's only had the power for two days and is still… 'learning the ropes?'" Yugito shrugged, bouncing the axe on her shoulder. "I imagine learning while nearly unconscious through alcohol consumption would be a difficult prospect."
"Not that we would know," Matatabi added, for the sake of accuracy.
Utakata asked, "Do you know which power he has?"
Yugito was about to answer, but at that point Naruto trooped back over to us, still carrying the Shukaku clone. He was also followed by two fully-armored mermen, their tails wrapped in more of the same bubble rings that Matatabi and her fellow Tailed Beasts were using. They also carried two tridents, and each one of them was about fifteen feet…tall. Or was it "long?"
"Yugi, can Seb here see the axe?" Naruto asked, as one of the guards kicked his way forward.
"Of course," Yugito said, and lowered the axe into the police-merman's waiting hand.
"Your cooperation is appreciated," said the other one.
"So, where'd it come from? Shukaku said it was tossed from outside the city, but it was flying end over end like an actual person did it," Naruto said, as Shukaku climbed onto his back like a sandy monkey. "Is there some jerk who just throws stuff at the bubble all the time? Is there?"
The two officers exchanged glances, which probably told me more than they wanted us to know. The idea of flying axes and maybe even other items hitting people were not new ideas to the Neptune Army. There was definitely someone launching periodic attacks on the Ryugu Kingdom. But why? And why were only single shots being fired? If I was going to attack an entire kingdom, I'd either level the place with massive AOE attacks…or plan an assassination. Well, that wasn't a reassuring thought.
Could someone be trying, however ineffectively, to kill King Neptune?
"There is," said the guard on the left. "But it's not your problem."
"I would argue that, in fact, it is my problem." Matatabi waved her tails irritably. "I was the one who was struck in the neck. It was not something I expected to happen down here."
"We'd like to know what's going on," I said, before Matatabi could get more worked up. "While we may have just been targets of opportunity, someone did take a shot at us. We're within our rights to ask for a chance to pay him back."
"It wouldn't be right to get outsiders involved in our kingdom's security…" said Seb.
Utakata rolled his eyes. "Then what is Captain Whitebeard doing here? And even if you did forbid us from pursuing the enemy, because vigilante justice isn't something the king condones, we don't have to obey your commands."
"We are pirates," Yugito said, in a more thoughtful tone than she had bothered with on other occasions.
"Anarchy!" said Shukaku, with a savage grin on his miniature face.
Naruto's was slightly less bloodthirsty, because he didn't have the ability to manually unhinge the top of his head. "We'll get 'im for you!"
"You don't even know who you're looking for," said Seb, looking baffled at the way the entire conversation had gotten out of hand.
I was probably supposed to be saying something against the plot hatching in front of my eyes. Either as a responsible adult, or as an irresponsible pirate-ish person with no obligation to attacking terrorists when I worked with real ones. Sabo had laughed aloud when I let that thought out while he was in the area, probably because it was true. Even if the World Government was a bunch of pricks.
We never were much interested in the concept of a moral high ground, were we?
I think we can still see it from here—
"His name is Vander Decken IX," said Seb's partner, clearly losing patience with his reticence. The lionfish-looking guard had an epic mustache that was probably too poisonous to casually trim, but twisted one end thoughtfully anyway. "He's a fishman, but he's been launching periodic attacks on the Ryugu Kingdom for almost a decade now."
Seb looked scandalized. "Leo!"
"I'm as sick of the cat-faced bastard as anyone," Leo snapped back at his fellow cop.
"King Neptune was already going to send Jinbe after him," said Seb, annoyed.
"And how long will that last? Jinbe's a pirate, so for all we know he's got World Government soldiers on his tail and—"
We slipped away while the pair continued to argue. I wasn't sure how they managed to miss the giant cat made of fire disappearing, but they did.
Things stayed quiet for a bit. Saiken slipped off into the ocean to patrol after we met up with him to report about the whole axe-in-head situation, squishing his way out of the bubble ring we'd bought for him and leaving it with Yang Kurama. Isobu joined him, citing the urge to swim in real water, and that ring was handed off to a large shark who happened to be passing by at the time. The Tailed Beasts were more annoyed than surprised to find other life forms living perfectly normal lives while also being the size of buildings, and sort of spread across the city after that.
Because there was relatively little for us to do—humans weren't supposed to interfere in the national security issues of fishfolk and merpeople—we headed back to the Mermaid Cafe. The cops had things handled, supposedly, so we were supposed to be tourists. Move on, everyone, because there's nothing to see here. Mind the occasional metallic precipitation.
"I think I've reached a new low," Utakata said after we'd arrived and finally gotten a table. The crowd from earlier had mostly cleared out after the incident with the axe, out of fear of being the next target, which meant we had the outside dining area almost to ourselves.
"We're like ten thousand meters under the sea," Naruto pointed out. "It's hard to get lower without hitting magma."
Utakata frowned at him. "Not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?" Yugito asked, toying with a cup of coffee she'd been (somehow) persuaded to try.
"Realizing that that mermaid has triangular teeth," Utakata said, nodding his head toward the waitress who'd taken our orders, who had the tail and teeth of a lemon shark, "has made me homesick." He sighed. "I remember thinking once that it was the most bizarre thing the Seven Ninja Swordsmen did to join, but…"
I patted his shoulder lightly, drawing a Look that said quite clearly he was not in a mood for false sympathy. Fortunately for him, it was genuine. "I feel the same way about…a lot of things." If I thought too hard about all the things that reminded me of home, either by being too similar or jarringly different, I'd probably have had a breakdown by now.
Utakata grunted, proving that he was probably Uchiha if we went about fifty generations back.
"So," Naruto said, "do you think we're gonna need to find that guy and fight him?"
I eyed him. "Naruto, have you been bored?"
He squirmed. "A little?" When the rest of the table waited patiently for some elaboration, he eventually cracked, throwing himself down on the tabletop with little heed to everyone's orders taking up the rest of the space on it. Quite dramatic. "I pretty much only train, and sleep, and play with Gaara and Fū since none of you let us do anything unless you need our powers or our partners." He paused. "And we go fishing, but unless you're catching Sea Kings, that's boring too."
Were I an unkind soul, I would have probably told him to suck it up and enjoy his damn childhood already. After becoming shinobi, at whatever age graduation happened in our various villages, most of us lost our innocence almost instantly. Being bored was better than being horribly dead. And I was sure that Gaara and Fū were having fun being normal children for a while, since there were so many adults around with no preconceived notions of shoving them onto the front lines. Their Tailed Beast partners were also more able to intercept threats in this form than they otherwise could, further reducing the risk of "excitement."
Instead, Yugito said, "Well, we could organize a…"
"Finish that sentence with 'tournament' and I will throw this in your face," I told her, holding a balled-up napkin in one hand. Not the greatest threat in the world, but I had my reasons.
"Chūnin Exam?" Utakata suggested, smirking.
Jerk. Anyway, my reasons went thus: I thought tourneys and the like were pointless, especially when I wasn't around to see my students kick ass. In the same fashion as a suburban soccer mom, I had no interest in competitions where people I cared about weren't both in it to win it and actively doing so. Otherwise, I was just one minivan away from full domesticity.
And I wasn't about to let Naruto get too involved in any dangerous situation before I could protect him. What protective instincts I had were honed by years of my day job being "protect this family with your life, literally." I'd probably figure out how to turn them off sometime after he picked up the toad summon contract.
We passed the time with more idle chit-chat (and Naruto did his best to fling a napkin in Utakata's face using every underhanded trick he'd ever learned), until it was time to put the tea party supplies away and get down to brass tacks.
"Miss," Yugito said to one of the waitresses, "could we please see Madame Shyarly? At her convenience."
"Sure!"
The casual response deflated Yugito's formality faster than anything I'd seen so far. It also got us an audience with the preeminent precognitive person in this place, so we were all inclined to just go with the flow.
While every sage (besides Jiraiya) and mystic I'd ever heard of (besides Gamamaru, who forgot my name twice in a single conversation) had seemed to prefer pushing for a lot of pomp and ceremony, apparently Madame Shyarly wasn't really concerned with that. Instead, the Mako shark mermaid—complete with the teeth—awaited petitioners in a back room of her cafe, sort of like an office if ordinary managers' spaces were full of brightly colored pillows, ornaments, and coral sculptures. In the corner of the room, resting in the hollowed-out shell of a giant clam and exactly where a stereotypical pearl would be, was a crystal ball the size of a human head.
Madame Shyarly lowered her pipe from her mouth, blowing a ring of smoke that made her resemble Gandalf in my humble opinion. Her nails were painted blue to match her tail and deep, dark blue eyes, and her hair was so dark it was nearly black. Under her hood, she was paler than any human I'd met, except for Nagato, and was looking at us with an expression best summed up as "dawning realization."
As Naruto reached back to toss a throwing knife through the smoke ring, possibly as a personal challenge, Madame Shyarly looked down at the lot of us and said slowly, "So you're why my vision hasn't come to pass."
"Which vision was that?" Utakata asked, hand on one hip.
Next to him, Yugito was tilting her head to the left in obvious curiosity. I didn't know if Kumogakure had people running around who could see the future, but for all I knew they had several. I'd never been able to read as many of Obito's espionage reports as I might've, in hindsight, probably needed to.
Oh, come on. This was like meeting Gamamaru all over again. I knew perfectly well that we jinchūriki were foreign to this universe—because that little detail was rather hard to miss—but to be a psychic null for a second time in a single lifetime was pushing things. I wasn't immune to fate or anything, but I'd noticed that people who were renowned to be prescient tended to ignore or overlook my influence as a rule. I was predictable by normal means after the fact, though.
"I saw a great battle at Marineford," Madame Shyarly replied, her single visible eye seeming to bore into Utakata's stare with equal intensity, "where the Great Pirate Era would end with Whitebeard's death…and a new one would be born from it to shape the world."
"Dramatic," Utakata said, stone-faced.
…Now that I thought of it, it seemed like I knew too many people who wore their hair the same way.
"Hey, did you see the Great Pirate Era coming too?" Naruto asked, while I stayed silent.
Madame Shyarly nodded. "Yes. You might say it cemented my fame." She cast a thoughtful look at her crystal ball. "But my visions take place anywhere from the next day to within the next year. There is still time."
I winced. Time for a bunch of pirates to get killed at Marineford, or time for Whitebeard to die?
Knowing the art of making such predictions? Both.
Gamamaru told Kakashi he'd make friends with a tree.
Which, fortunately, you already had enough context to understand.
"Can you predict if we're gonna find someone?" Naruto asked. He adopted his dad's thinking pose, with his hands clasped behind his back as he paced the length of the room. The adults (including me) were too amused to stop him from putting on a show. "See, we're trying to find a guy named Rōshi, and his partner Son Gokū. But as far as we know, nobody's seen any of them, and there's this loud jerk who keeps yelling at us whenever we meet someone new or something." Naruto sighed loudly. "So, can we know if we're gonna see him at all? Or if someone else will? Or do you need a description or something?" A thought occurred to him. "Or can you tell us if this is the way we go home?"
Utakata, Yugito, and I all winced, probably for different reasons.
"The future is often a terrible thing." Madame Shyarly took a long draw from her pipe, watching Naruto give his little presentation. "But perhaps…"
When someone who was about fifteen feet long decides to move in a relatively small space, everyone else tended to get out of the way. Madame Shyarly didn't, but the waitress mermaid who'd been floating around the edges of the room sure did. She scooped up the crystal ball with tremendous care, using a bubble ring as a cushion, and sent it bobbing through the air toward our only available seer.
Once the crystal ball was safe on her lap, Madame Shyarly dismissed the waitress and coiled around the apparent focus for her powers. Gamamaru had owned a crystal ball, too. Only it had been about…three meters across? More? I couldn't remember.
"Think this will work?" Naruto whispered to Yugito.
"Hush," Yugito whispered back. "Be patient."
If this fails, there is always the possibility of employing one or more of my siblings to find them.
We don't even know if those two get along well enough to stay in the same place. I tried to keep my expression mild and inoffensive, because I didn't want anyone to ask what was on my mind. It said nothing good about this entire adventure that we'd finally gotten to the point of asking an actual psychic for help, discounting the Tailed Beast bond as the already-present cognitive chicanery that just came with the territory.
Madame Shyarly opened her cat-slit eyes—which neither Yugito or Matatabi had, though that was beside the point—for just a moment, meeting our gazes one at a time, before her eyes rolled up in her head and she flopped backwards in a dead faint.
And lo, cutting through the air like a goddamn air horn, all of us staggered as a very familiar voice made itself known.
YOU HAVE BEEN CALLED.
THE FOURTH DRAWS NEAR.
GATHER THE NINE.
"All right," Utakata's voice said into the ringing silence, while we picked ourselves up off the floor. He had both hands pressed to the sides of his head, in what looked like a failed attempt to preserve his eardrums from the disembodied god-wannabe. "When I see whoever keeps doing that, I'll kill it."
Naruto sprang to his feet, assisted by either youth or a hilarious regeneration rate. He caught the crystal ball before it could overturn its bubble and hit the floor, then set it on the couch next to our prophetess. Then he patted the mermaid's equivalent of a knee, saying, "Madame Shyarly? Hey, are you okay?"
"I'll get help." Yugito was already gone before I could turn to respond, so I let her do what she wanted.
As for me? While I was fishing around in one of my many pockets for a hand fan I'd borrowed from Izo, I happened to hear a noise that sounded like crick.
And I looked around for the noise at the exact moment the crystal ball cracked into two neat halves, as though split along an invisible seam.
"Oh, that's not good," I said, even as I passed the fan up to Naruto so he could wave it in Madam Shyarly's face. While there were few records of ominous warning signs in Konoha history, I still remembered the Third Hokage's oversized face back in the original timeline and the crack that had formed the day Orochimaru killed him.
Even if I didn't believe in omens, the timing was a little too perfect.
Utakata, for his part, had already made a water-filled bubble not unlike the Water Prison technique, and was converting bits of it into mist for Naruto's fanning efforts. While Madame Shyarly hadn't fainted due to heat exhaustion, it was apparently the assumption we were going to operate under until Yugito got back with help.
Which, thankfully, she did in record time.
In the end, we four jinchūriki ended up not getting a prediction from Madame Shyarly, because she was a little too unconscious to tell us what she'd seen before the disembodied asshat slapped us all silly. It was perhaps premature to say that it was responsible for her condition, and for the crystal ball breaking, but there was a saying back home that was unfortunately accurate.
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and thrice is enemy action." However, this is more of a...fifty-seventh occasion. We have known for months that there is a consciousness hiding at the end of our adventure in this world.
And now it's inflicting collateral damage, I thought grimly as we headed back to the Moby Dick to consult with Whitebeard. Even if none of us really answered to him, formally, he was the closest thing to a Kage around. He was also the oldest native to this planet we could really speak to, which we assumed meant he'd know a thing or two about…everything. Silly, I know.
Possibly not as silly as Tailed Beasts floating around like balloon animals.
Yugito spotted the problem first. "…Why is Matatabi sitting next to the ship?"
Naruto didn't even pause. Instead, he leapt thirty feet straight into the air, missing a passing merman by inches. When he landed in a froglike crouch, he said, "Matatabi caught a bird."
Aw, crap, was my first thought. My second was, Body Flicker.
"A little help?" Ace called to me as I arrived in a blur of chakra-assisted speed and smoke residue, one hand caught in the chain-like ornamental feathers of Marco's phoenix form.
And the phoenix himself was pinned under one of Matatabi's paws, with just enough space to wiggle his head and shoulders free to glare at all of us. His half-lidded, frustrated expression would have been a little easier to interpret if his face didn't end in a beak today, but I'd spent enough time around Tsuruya to understand. At least Marco hadn't caught on to my relative familiarity with and tolerance of being whacked in the head by an irritable bird as a sign of affection.
Firebird caught under a fiery cat, with ineffective assistance being offered by a fire-man.
I probably could have sorted out all three of them with seawater and a spray bottle. Instead, I leaned back until I could look Matatabi in the eye and stuck out an arm, stopping Yugito as she arrived under the strength of her own Body Flicker and ran into me.
"Oh," said Yugito, as she took in the scene.
"Yeah, 'oh,'" I grumbled.
"The commentary is appreciated and all," Ace said, "but Marco's going to peck our eyes out if we keep him here anymore." He let go of the phoenix's feathers and then patted Matatabi's paw without getting burned. "So, Matatabi, do you mind letting him up?"
Matatabi lowered her head, ears flicking. "Am I to understand that this is someone we know?"
"Yeah," said Ace. Still crouched next to an increasingly irritated Marco, who was clearly wondering why no one was just lifting Matatabi's paw, Ace went on, "I was just telling you about some of the titles our crew has, remember? Maybe I should've broken out everyone's wanted posters…"
"Oh. My, that's different." Matatabi withdrew her claws and let Marco up, lowering her face still further until she was nearly in a hunting crouch of her own.
Fwoosh! And then Marco was human again, brushing likely-imaginary dirt from his jacket. "You," he said, pointing an accusatory finger in Ace's face, "were enjoying that too much."
Ace stuck out his tongue at his crewmate, which Marco didn't get a chance to call him on, because that was also the exact moment that Matatabi leaned her muzzle forward and licked the back of Marco's head with a tongue the size of an SUV, sending him crashing face-first to the ground.
"What was that, sandpaper?!"
Ace was too busy laughing to bother answering.
Yugito shoved Matatabi's nose away, helping Marco up with her other hand. "It seems that our friends do resemble animals in ways other than just looks."
"I'll say," Marco muttered, even as pale blue flame repaired all the damage Matatabi unintentionally caused.
I do not.
Says the one who gave me a persistent fear of lying on my back.
That is just common sense.
For a turtle.
Though that was the kind of conversation that made me wonder what ill-fitting instincts my fellow jinchūriki carried, I shoved the idea aside. Instead of continuing to argue with Isobu, I said in a more formal tone, "Commander Marco, is there any chance I could speak to Captain Whitebeard?"
"You know you're allowed to call him 'Pops' like the rest of us, right?" Ace asked, probably ignoring the way Marco spared a second to glare daggers at the back of his head for the total lack of assistance from earlier.
I rubbed the back of my neck. "That's not the real concern here. I have a few things to report, and some of this is…awkward."
We knocked out a seer by accidentally telling her to look at something that could look back. This is the same seer, by the by, who predicted that you'd have a Great Pirate Era after the death of Gol D. Roger. She also happens to be currently banking on Whitebeard's death in battle at Marineford, which we shinobi probably had something to do with averting. And now her crystal ball is broken and hell if anyone knows if she can still predict anything. On top of all that, the godlike thing that keeps us here on your planet? It's about as useful as fish find bicycles, so fat chance of getting anything helpful there.
How was your morning?
If you reduced the sarcasm by half, you could— Isobu fell silent abruptly.
Not a great sign. Iso—
Then his chakra flared hard enough to draw everyone's attention for the better part of three or four miles. For normal people, it was probably akin to a sudden wave of mortal terror. For jinchūriki, it was more akin to a warning klaxon.
In front of my eyes, Ace and Marco both staggered as though a sudden cold wind had blasted right through them, driving each man to one knee with the sheer force of undirected murderous intent. A full dozen crewmen on the ground around us, previously laughing at Marco's misfortune, collapsed into heaps with their eyes rolled up in their heads. And that was only the men I could see. From the sounds of screaming across the city and the sudden, sympathetic flares of alien chakra from each of the Tailed Beasts from their positions all around Fishman Island, it became clear that the situation was about to cascade. The air inside Fishman Island's borders warped under the weight of their rage, sending my eardrums popping.
And with his own chakra cutting through the noise like a knife, Utakata's voice bellowed, "SAIKEN!"
Yugito's strength—sharper, brighter—hauled on Matatabi's, even as the giant cat bared her needle teeth for everyone to see, her fiery fur climbing higher along her spine and both of her tails. Across the Ryugu Kingdom, the others were trying to haul their Tailed Beast partners back from the edge of feral rage just like I was attempting to do with Isobu, with two exceptions. And they were important ones.
Fū was trying to calm Chōmei, who was still above the ocean's surface and buzzing the waves like an angry, impossibly huge helicopter.
And Saiken was broadcasting more surprise than anger, while Utakata made up the difference all on his own.
Of the pirates, Marco recovered a little before Ace did. He was on his feet, placing one already-burning hand against Matatabi's quivering foreleg while his other went straight to his temples to fight a pounding headache. "What the hell was—"
Whitebeard was striding out onto the deck, followed by his attendant nurses, but he was one of the only people tall enough for me to see from this low angle. Jozu was another, and he was already leaning somewhat unsteadily over the edge of the railing to shout down, "What happened?"
I heard Yugito try to explain, but I'd already turned my attention to the actual problem. While I doubted anyone else could feel the specifics after that blast wave of angry chakra, I was still sensitive enough to fluctuations regardless of that brief sensory overload. As such, my hand darted out almost without my knowledge, tugging on Utakata's jacket collar with enough force that I might've throttled him if he wore an actual shirt.
"Summon him," I snarled, even as Utakata struggled to shake off the influence of so much Tailed Beast chakra.
It was worse than genjutsu—at least that would've meant we could have snapped ourselves out of the mental feedback loop with pain.
Even if I could feel everyone, Isobu most of all, I could also notice a distinct lack of one of our strongest team members. Saiken, despite hurtling toward the center of Ryugu Kingdom as though Chōmei had pasted a pair of wings to his slimy back, wasn't angry. At most, he felt baffled at both his circumstances and the vicious backlash his siblings were directing at the world for them.
Saiken had always been a little slow off the mark.
A barrage of images from Isobu let me know the gist of things long before Saiken figured out how to right himself in midair—and by then, we could already see him hurtling toward the palace in the distance.
Small ship found. Attacking with Saiken. Bubble-fishman taps Saiken. Saiken flies backward. Reverse direction, determine destination—
Utakata shoved his long sleeve back, already drawing a knife along his skin before he even asked, "Why?"
Good. "Because," I said in a harsh voice that hardly sounded like me, even as Isobu shoved as much imagery as he could into my mind to explain his reasoning before it was too late, "Saiken met our axe-thrower. We need to kill his momentum, now."
Because there wasn't any convenient flaming cat between Saiken and civilians, not like with the axe. Saiken and Isobu had back-traced the trajectory and the distance that the axe had originally traveled in order to find who'd thrown it, and I had a theory that it worked in a straight line. More or less. Matatabi's position, earlier, must have been directly between the thrower and Princess Shirahoshi, only Vander Decken IX couldn't hope to out-mass Yugito's fiery partner. Thus, the axe had stopped moving.
Saiken would not.
Utakata's scowl deepened as he made his hand seals, fingers blurring. I had no doubt he was getting his own explanation from Saiken even as he half-listened to me and my Isobu-voice bossing him around, and stepped back as far as I could before Utakata's Summoning Technique went through.
BOMPH.
First, Utakata disappeared into a cloud of chakra smoke that made everything near it look like a toy, ship included. Then the Moby Dick's slot at the dock became a little more crowded, because Saiken emerged from a cloud of chakra-based smoke with his googly eyes waving as though to indicate disorientation. I could just barely see the edge of Utakata's coat, because he was on top of Saiken's head, but I could definitely hear him make very clear that whatever had happened out there in the deep blue sea was not to be repeated. At length.
"It didn't hurt, Uta," said Saiken, interrupting in his boyish voice. "It was a little confusing, maybe. I mean, I heard the little fishbowl talk about a princess or something, but what does that have to do with not being able to swim any direction but backwards?"
I left Utakata to figure out how to explain the problem.
"No, Uta. I won't do it again," Saiken replied to something I didn't hear.
"Still waiting on that explanation," Marco said, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
"Which part do you want to hear about first?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. To be honest—which was not necessarily something I'd be with Marco—I still hadn't had time to fully absorb what had happened. There was a good chance I wouldn't at all until things calmed down. Especially not with more Whitebeards crowding around for story time.
"The Conqueror's haki might be a good place," Jozu suggested.
"I believe I can explain that," Matatabi said. "You are referring to the explosion of anger that can almost kill on its own, yes? It is a form of chakra focus that we know as either 'killing intent' or 'murderous will.' Many humans of sufficient strength are capable of pale imitations of our power, but ours, I am told, remains in a class all its own." She idly licked one of her paws, smoothing her fiery fur as she thought her way through the next part of the story. "There are cases of Tailed Beasts being linked to deaths of weak-hearted humans, or so Yin Kurama once said. I imagine he found the information more amusing than not."
"Sensei can make anybody sit up and pay attention," I put in. "And I have my own version. There are some people who can paralyze others with a look…"
"Uta," said Saiken, before any of the pirates could ask things. "The funny fishman said 'Death or marriage.' Am I supposed to marry him since I'm not dead?"
"No, Saiken," Matatabi said, while I heard Utakata swear aloud before she could drown him out. "He was likely talking to himself." Matatabi paused. "Come to think of it, I am no more sure than you are if we can die."
"But he said—"
Shukaku's sand clone had a meaningful contribution, of course.
"BWAHAHAHAHA!"
Like I said.
"I…don't think we're even talking about the same thing anymore," said Naruto, neatly summing things up in a few words. He scratched the side of his face. "Uh, anyway, yeah! Killing intent is a thing a lot of shinobi can do if they're strong or scary enough. Tailed Beasts just get all of that, plus this creepy feeling that you and all your friends are bugs under a magnifying glass."
Yugito cocked her head to one side. "Not…inaccurate."
"We may be a bit too used to this," I admitted, while the pirates looked at all of us like we'd dropped in from another planet.
Which we had.
"HEY!" said Shukaku, having recovered from his laughing fit. "Some jerk tossed Saiken halfway across town. We're going to kill him! Unless the rest of you have some idea that's better than the one devised by the great Shukaku!"
Ace squatted next to the sand clone and said, "Letting the Neptune Army turn the guy into paste seems like a better one." When the little demon clearly made a Face, possibly even one that corresponded to his default physical features, Ace added, "I've heard of this guy before. Captain of the Flying Dutchman. He was harassing Fishman Island the last time I was through here, too. But seriously, it's not our problem. Humans aren't supposed to interfere."
Matatabi paused with her paw next to her face. "In what reality are we human? Because it is certainly not the one we currently occupy."
Saiken lowered his bulbous head and said, while Utakata continued to mutter a string of curses under his breath, "…So does that mean I should tell Chōmei to tell Fū to not beat up the fishy person who tried to kill her, or…?"
I hate my life.
Isobu chose that moment to respond before the situation got too out of control. Get an appropriate amphibious biped out here, and I will make sure the perpetrator of the attack on Saiken hates the remainder of his pathetic life more.
I considered my options. Then, to fight off the rising headache, I explained everything that had happened over the last half-hour to Ace, Marco, Jozu, and Whitebeard, and washed my hands of nearly everything to do with Fishman Island.
Namur got loaned out to Jinbe for about four hours as they chased down Vander Decken IX and made him regret being a terrible person. More terrible than most pirates, anyway.
And then it turned out Fū had uncovered a conspiracy within the Neptune Army involving some group called the New Fishman Pirates, who had pissed off the three younger jinchūriki all in one go and therefore gotten a beatdown from Shukaku. There was probably more to it than that, but really, the main diversion of the afternoon turned out to be the near-mythical stealth grandpa. As opposed to the giant grandpa named Whitebeard that we were all more used to.
Though the man in question would probably have given a decent go at breaking my jaw if I'd said as much to his face.
See, while the rest of us had been off having adventures (such as they were), Luffy had been embroiled in an ongoing argument about whether his crew needed training. Which they did. And five minutes to the second after Luffy finally relented and agreed to maybe take a break from pirating to train up, an old man appeared on the gangplank.
The first hint I had of his presence, since I wasn't paying much attention, was a somewhat scratchy voice saying, "What does it take for an old man to get a towel around here?"
I looked over the railing I'd been sitting on, with Naruto sitting in my shadow and chafing under my "don't leave my sight" order. He at least took the time to feed all the snails while essentially trapped under my thumb. Figuratively. With the fact that Whitebeard had taken his customary seat on the deck, meaning shockwaves were basically on tap even if jinchūriki weren't, I wasn't as worried as I might've been otherwise.
I heard the whispers among the crew almost before anyone jumped to accommodate the old man who was, in all likelihood, younger than Whitebeard. The Dark King. Gol D. Roger's right-hand man. Quite possibly the third or fourth strongest senior citizen in the world, behind Whitebeard and Sengoku and Monkey D. Garp. People denied him his discounts at their peril, and anyone with a survival instinct stayed the hell off his lawn.
"Crap," said Ace, ducking behind a railing as soon as he realized who'd arrived on deck.
"You're being weird," Naruto told him, crouching slightly behind him in nearly the exact same pose he used whenever he was perched on something he oughtn't. His brows were scrunched together as he peered past Ace's knees, frowning. "Who's that, anyway?"
"OLD MAN RAYLEIGH!" Fū and Luffy shouted at the same time, barreling into the old man only to, respectively, miss when he ducked past her and get flattened into the deck like a rubbery pancake.
"Hey, Ace?" Naruto tugged on Ace's belt loop to get his attention. Once Ace was looking down at him, he asked, "Why're you afraid of him?"
Because humans are strange.
You interact with how many people, again?
I do not see your point.
"'M not," Ace said, though he sounded more sullen than argumentative.
Naruto scrunched up his face to convey skepticism. "Then I don't see why you're hiding."
I hadn't told a soul who Ace's biological father was, so it wasn't like Naruto had been given a bunch of hints. The kid was just empathetic enough to read people like a champ. Neither of us would push too much.
And Ace's response to Naruto was to ruffle his hair hard enough that it almost qualified as a noogie, so clearly Naruto had played his cards just right. While Naruto got his hair turned into something messier than mine had ever aspired to be through the power of static electricity, I turned my attention back to the main deck, where Janey had dumped a pair of beach towels over Rayleigh's head without any ceremony.
"What are you doing here, Rayleigh?" Janey asked, while Rayleigh grumbled and grumped. "Last we'd heard, you'd just come back to Sabaody after a six-month disappearance."
Fū alighted on Jozu's shoulder and stuck a finger in the air to make her point. "And he fought Kizaru to help us escape that place!"
"The sand squirrel did most of the work," was the somewhat muffled reply from Rayleigh. Then he emerged and I finally noted that he certainly wasn't sporting gills. Did he swim all the way here?
I must tell Shukaku that one.
Do me a favor and don't until we're outside the blast radius.
Rayleigh shook his tangled and salt-encumbered hair out, splattering Janey by accident though she didn't seem to mind. He set the towels in her arms, then cracked his knuckles as he looked down at Luffy, who'd gotten back into a sitting position and was grinning up at him. "So, tell me, did someone mention training?"
Oh god. This was what Gai would be like if he was fifty years older, wasn't it? Fifty years and a beard and—
Gai is more enthusiastic than anything. This man is…something else.
I sighed inwardly and closed my eyes. For good measure, I pinched the bridge of my nose. Are you just blatantly watching and listening to my thought processes right now?
Yes. Also, you should know that Kokuō has finally decided to spare us the timidity and self-deprecation and instead travel in our direction.
Eh? I blinked, while Rayleigh, Ace, and Luffy all started to talk at once in the world outside of my head. I thought Han wasn't interested in leaving that island. And Kokuō was safe enough there, wasn't she?
Isobu scoffed. This may surprise you, but when human parents leave their offspring in the hands of strangers, they are generally expected to retrieve them.
Cut the crap, I snapped. What happened?
As I said, the parents returned. The child no longer required a guardian.
I might've responded more harshly than was deserved, but Isobu sent me a brief flash—hoofs striking sand, waves beneath one's body like a soft and longed-for bed, gut-churning homesick ache for a familiar face—and…I almost got it. The sea wasn't precisely Kokuō's home, given the equine components to her physical structure and the little detail that we were on another planet, but she missed the other Tailed Beasts.
They were her family. A man who spent months on end caring for a child who just needed a friend…someone like that could never turn down a heartfelt plea for home, could he?
Isobu sent me the impression of a nod. Or at least the sea in his mind's eye bobbed up and down. He'd picked up a ton of human gestures over the years, though this one was less-used. There you go.
The three-way argument between Luffy, Rayleigh, and Ace was getting louder, so I focused harder on Isobu's presence to blot it out. I needed status updates from people who, unfortunately, I couldn't always keep track of via normal means. The god-thing in Madame Shyarly's cafe mentioned Son Gokū and maybe Rōshi getting closer— maybe to Fishman Island or to us, but that distinction is so close it doesn't matter. Do you have any idea where they might be?
No. Kokuō didn't know either. I would assume they have been traipsing around the ocean like the feckless Fire-natured duo they are, or else they are trying their luck separately. Isobu blew a brief stream of bubbles in a sigh. They never gave the impression of being close.
Great.
"And you," Rayleigh said, pointing squarely at me and drawing me back into the conversation. "You and your friends have kicked the hornet's nest, haven't you?"
"Which one?" I asked, resting my hands on my knees. "Impel Down, Marineford, or something new?"
"Try Mariejois," he grumbled. "Which, in case you're as bad at geography as this knucklehead is," he added, as he stretched Luffy's cheek about a foot out from his head, "is directly above us. I don't know what you were thinking, but Conqueror's haki like that doesn't go unnoticed."
"What's that mean?" Luffy asked, though his voice was a little muffled.
"It means," said Whitebeard as he got up from his chair, "that we are about to be attacked by every Marine they can bring to fight us."
Everything they'd tried to deploy at Marineford. Every admiral, every petty officer…
Well, we can't say we didn't ask for it, I thought dryly. The Impel Down incident and the posters had been nothing less than a pair of well-placed thumbs in the World Government's eye, for what likely seemed like utterly trivial gains. We were wanted, now, and not in a sense that spoke of emotional fulfillment.
Though Utakata could look at it that way if he chose to.
I can see their ships before they see me. So can Chōmei. If they think they can avoid being spotted, they are wrong, Isobu remarked in a low tone, a whisper even by psychic standards.
I don't think their goal is to go unnoticed, Isobu. Pretty much the exact opposite. Governments liked the idea of shock and awe even if they didn't know the specific words I used for those tactics. A show of overwhelming force was just what the Marines needed when facing off against the power players, now.
I took a deep breath and patted the group's snail-wrangler on his shoulder. The one without a snail on it. "Naruto, it's time to call your mom again."
AN: You know, I'm not sure the words of Kei's last line have been said with quite so little dread ever before.
Also, an announcement: Ocean Stars Falling will be coming to an end sometime in the next few chapters. It's almost time to put the pirates behind us again. For a while. Or until I get the bug again. :p