AN: Surprise!
(Content warning for violence against children, since basically all the violence in this story thus far has been directed at adults or been in the backstory. Specific detail in the notes at the end.)
Marineford, the base of operations for the Marine Headquarters, was currently playing host to a division of twenty thousand Marines, who were awaiting their marching orders. Among them were Fleet Admiral Sengoku, most of the Vice Admirals who hadn't gone on the hunt for the nightmare rookies tearing up Paradise, the entire Giant Squad, and the defensive fleet. While the bulk of their forces were spread out in an attempt to quell the chaos brought about by the repeated assaults on the World Government, any sensible commander always kept some of their men in reserve for rapid response.
Three of the Seven Warlords of the Sea had also arrived, fashionably late to their summons. Doflamingo and Moria were lounging in the meeting hall as usual. Kuma had appeared that morning, spending his afternoon wandering the base. And Mihawk was expected sometime in the next hour. With Teach missing, Hancock treating a summons with zero respect, and Jinbe most likely dead thanks to the Impel Down attack, their roster was badly depleted.
Fleet Admiral Sengoku was, despite everything, a sensible commander. One of the better available men to lead the Marines, he had served with distinction for decades.
Perhaps due to that, his observation haki pinged off the incoming intruder long before his hearing. And as they were oriented on the Fleet Admiral as their true north, his fellow Marines slowly began to strain their senses toward the unseen horizon, following his line of sight. Moments later, the deep, uncanny sounds of some strange creature became audible as the fog bank rolled toward the island.
No, not rolling. It coalesced like a summer island storm at sea level, spiraling slowly inward toward Marineford, twisting and slithering like a tangle of ethereal snakes.
Unnatural.
"Good afternoon, dogs of the World Government!" said a pair of menacing voices that shook the entire island.
The background din got louder and more distinct—it sounded like howls, encircling and encroaching on Marineford with disembodied voices. Just under that layer of noise, a serpentine hiss formed an eerie undertone.
All of Marineford was on high alert before the shadows of huge beasts loomed through the fogbank, positioned exactly at opposite sides of the crescent-moon bay. Already, two giants noticed and started manipulating the largest available cannons. If they fired ships' cannons by hand, they might be able to get it within their range.
The two shadows paused, not growing any larger. Their shapes shifted, turning from a pair of vaguely humanoid silhouettes to many-spiked creatures in unison. At a glance, each of them was larger than any three members of the Giant Squad stacked on top of each other.
"Hold your fire until you confirm the targets!" hissed a vice-admiral down the line, to his rifle-wielding sniper squad.
And then the two monstrous shapes pushed through the clouds together.
They trundled in like men walking on all fours, only the length and breadth of the limbs were all wrong—too long, too gangly to belong to a human, yet too human to belong to a beast. An uncanny valley of proportions that sent the hairs on the back of Sengoku's neck tingling. The only difference between the two was that one had darker fur, but each of them had nine tails fanned out to several times the length of the largest ship at Sengoku's disposal. Two pairs of eyes set in squat faces glowed like red stars above rows of long white fangs, canid lips peeling back in a rictus snarl.
Level Six lifer and Crescent Moon Hunter Catarina Devon died with the other unaccounted-for inmates when Impel Down found itself erased. And even if she wasn't, no reported Zoan forms for the Inu Inu no Mi: Kyūbi no Kitsune looked like this. Her illusions were fairly small-scale and only allowed her to mimic people or multiply herself.
Were these what the Impel Down garrison thought were talking Sea Kings?
"What a quaint island," said the one with fur that skewed darker, almost like blood, steam hissing from its open mouth as it spoke. It shook its head as though to dislodge dust, sending the nearby fog whirling. "Almost charming."
"Shame about all the little pests crawling all over it," hissed the orange one, its voice equally deep and far more aggressive. The sea trembled with the force of its growl.
"FIRE, DAMMIT!" yelled Vice Admiral John Giant.
Cannons blasted across all of Marineford and its defensive fleet, splitting fire across each of the visible targets. Whole ships tilted sideways as they unleashed a full broadside in the direction of the monster closest to them. The cannons mounted in Marineford's walls shook their placements. Each of the beasts vanished under the smoke produced by explosive ammunition.
The fog crept forward, enveloping their targets like a swelling wave. A new problem for the cannons' visual range.
Sengoku's Observation haki screamed a warning just as the smoke and fog split apart.
Each of the twin foxes leapt from the choking smoke, landing hard in the middle of Marineford's defensive fleet. The rotund battleships' masts only just reached their waists and rocked from the impact. Some ships toppled in the waves, bashed over by eighteen lashing tails that didn't care that any ten of the ships could've reduced an island to rubble. White claws flashed and sent rigging flying across the fleet in wooden shards.
Then the Giant Squad finally reached the front lines.
"WHO THE HELL GAVE THEM THE ORDER TO CHARGE?!" a vice-admiral yelled down the line, voice almost entirely drowned out.
Both of the foxes turned on the approaching giants with teeth bared and claws outstretched. Twin roars split the air and the pressure alone blasted the giants back, giving the orange one the space to reach Marineford's walls and climb beyond the range of the cannons. It landed among the ranks of the Marines rallying to the defense with a very human-sounding chuckle, then started scattering the evacuated buildings at the compound's base like matchsticks.
The Giant Squad attacked in ones and twos, formation already broken. All too used to being the biggest thing they regularly encountered, there was no coordination.
And worst still, the creature barely reacted to spears and blades impacting its distended body. Intermittent pulses of the fear-inducing version of Conqueror's haki blasted outward with almost every impact, sending weaker Marines reeling—or worse, freezing.
Two of the Giant Squad tried to defend their comrades, only to be cut down in the chaos.
"Get out of my way, you worms," the orange fox hissed, raising one human-like claw to crash down onto the pier, throwing water and debris every which way while the smaller men scattered like mites.
The giants scrambled immediately, moving to counter—not for nothing were they all at least captain rank. They were all experienced fighters under a vice admiral's command, even if their configuration was in shambles at the moment.
Battleships joined in the background as the blood-red fox dashed out onto the open water, running along the surface just as effectively as on land and leading the cannonfire with a mischievous glee. Each pass of its sweeping tails sent a monstrous gale through the ranks of the Marines, which only the garrison's cannons could hope to ignore.
Sengoku's temper shortened with every miss, but it was Vice Admiral John Giant who shouted, "LEAD YOUR FUCKING SHOTS!"
The way the air twisted in its wake—
"The shots are missing because it controls wind," Sengoku yelled down to his subordinates, thoughts racing. "It's toying with us. Get the cannons out of the way—"
A column of fire rose all along Marineford's front, cutting him off mid-sentence, because apparently it was too much to ask that near-identical monsters could wield the same powers. Flames so hot they were nearly white bellowed out of the orange fox's throat like a dragon, cutting a fiery line through their defenses with one arcing sweep. The underlit beast looked like a scene from a nightmare as it loomed through the smoke and flames, demonic eyes burning like hellfire as black smog bisected the sky. Its horrible toothy grin unnaturally bright and glinting in the firelight.
An air blast from the running fox monster knocked the top off one of Marineford's cornerstone shrines, almost like an afterthought.
Sengoku's eyes narrowed. If these monsters were here then that meant their masters couldn't be too far off. He recalled the descriptions the babbling remnants of Impel Down's garrison had issued, the men practically shaking themselves apart as they were forced to recall the memory. Only two spotty descriptions came through during the interviews until the Kuja Pirates reported their passing encounter, but now Sengoku knew for certain that those three rookie bounties were set too low.
"The fox-shaped one talked, commodore. Everyone knows they were intelligent. Just look at the damage on the Gate of Justice!"
He understood that statement all the better with the beasts on their doorstep.
Dammit, and Vice Admiral Onigumo was here now. He should have listened. Onigumo was reliable, unlike some of the rest of his men, and he'd been the eyes and ears of the Marines during the Impel Down incident. A hundred intelligence reports couldn't make up for one good, solid Marine officer in the right place.
A ten-battleship garrison tasked with facing the Whitebeard Pirates in force lost without inflicting any casualties on the enemy. Impel Down was gone. And here was Marineford, missing half the Warlords and down all three Admirals and Garp, while under direct attack.
"Someone get Akainu on the line," Sengoku said with as much calm as he could manage. "There's no use chasing a strike force when everyone we need their power for is here."
"But—but sir, with how long they've been gone, there's no way they'd make it back here in time," a petty officer replied, quaking in his boots.
"Then we'll hold out until they do," Sengoku told him coldly, when the man hesitated he added, "That was an order." He let the petty officer scramble off, then said to the nearest vice admiral, "Get the Warlords out the door. They'll earn their keep front and center."
He didn't wait for the man to salute, shrugging off his jacket and tossing his hat to the side. If there was one thing he was familiar with after so many years leading the Marines, it was that sometimes if you wanted something to get done right, it was best to do it yourself. If there were no officers capable of dueling these creatures, then it fell to Sengoku.
Sengoku stepped fully out into a Marineford lit by a bare circle of unobscured sky, looking down at the chaos that had engulfed his command post.
Between the third and fourth step he took into the sun, golden light erupted from his body. The ground shrank away as his height doubled, tripled, quadrupled, and more, and the stone below his feet crumpled on impact as he kept striding evenly forward. He drew his arms up as his body expanded, taking on the remaining mass to match his Zoan fruit's namesake.
Hito Hito no Mi, Model: Daibutsu.
Not for nothing was Sengoku's title "the Buddha."
And unlike cannons, he didn't need to lead his shots to hit the fox on the water.
Shave.
In an instant, Sengoku crossed the breadth of Marineford, his open palm drawn even with his chest for the windup.
The fire-breathing fox's teeth bared, ears angling forward as it brought one clawed hand around to swing at his face. It was too wide. Unpolished—he'd go so far as to say inexperienced.
Sengoku's point-blank palm thrust caught it in the sternum, above the head of Vice Admiral Lacroix.
The fox's entire body bowed around the blow for a split second, tails waving as though caught in a current, and then its entire bulk was shunted across the sea's surface like any opponent Sengoku ever struck full-force. It skipped across the water once, then struck a glancing blow on its counterpart before smashing into the fog bank.
The other fox kept its footing after stumbling for a moment, but the red gaze that now turned Sengoku's way was more calculating than ever. All nine tails stood up alongside its hackles.
Sengoku lifted the same hand and called out to it, "PLANNING ON COMING CLOSER? EXPECT THE SAME RESULT!"
The darker fox let out the same rusty-sounding laugh as its counterpart had, like grist in a millstone. "Do you tire of our game, human?" It sounded like distant cannonfire, and didn't appear to raise its voice much at all to be heard across the island. "If you wish to escalate now, we shall respond in kind." It twisted its head around, ear cocked. "Look closer."
The gaping hole torn in the low storm's eyewall hadn't closed over since the lighter fox was launched through it. An orange light glowed in the gray, coiling and curling like flame through smoke, and the orange fox emerged again with a growl that rattled the very ocean. The arcing leap took it over the clouds and let it land next to its twin, apparently unharmed except for a worsening temper.
Not good.
Golden light, nowhere near as bright as Sengoku's own glare, spiraled out of the hole like slow lightning. The tips traced the edges of the storm and the sea before the light converged again, forming a massive, shimmering bubble that slowly emerged from the fog.
No, not a bubble—a cage, formed from chains that not even Black Cage Hina used.
As soon as he thought that, the overlapping layers of gold unwove themselves from around whatever sat at the center, like some ridiculous onion.
A white figurehead marked the front of the ship left bobbing in the middle of the now-bare ocean. Three tall sails unraveled to their full extent, sending the ship full speed toward Marineford. With the battleship blockade in shambles, there was very little organization left to directly oppose its journey.
Every Marine worth their captain's coat could recognize that ship.
Especially as almost thirty other vessels emerged from the fog in a huge arc spread around the ruined ranges of Marineford's defensive battery. The two nearest, passing just under the foxes' fanned-out tails, were unmistakably the Moby Two and Three. If Sengoku squinted, he could probably spot the gleam off Diamond Jozu's damned Paramecia powers.
Sengoku clenched his teeth so hard his jaw cracked, a prominent vein on his forehead beginning to throb as he realized they'd been duped. Played for fools. Of course , it'd been a ruse and he'd fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
It'd been too good to be true—the idea that the rookie pirates would be targeted by Whitebeard for their role in Portgas D. Ace's death was always a pipe dream. Independent rookies were snapped up by Emperors almost monthly, no matter how violent their debut. It made sense that they'd be allied, but they were supposed to be near Fishman Island. The threat posed by their corresponding proximity to Mariejois guaranteed a Marine response even if their actions hadn't on their own.
Now Marineford was shorthanded by three Admirals and the bulk of their worldwide fleet.
The Whitebeards could not have arrived at a worse time.
"THE WHITEBEARD PIRATES?!" screamed every living Marine on the island, with every bone in their bodies, just before the first impact of the Gura Gura no Mi landed from across the open sea.
The very air cracked and the ocean heaved, capsizing ships nearest its epicenter. Waves radiated outward like a rock landing in a puddle. Then the water rushed back, forming exactly the tsunami patterns Whitebeard was so well-known for.
Marineford trembled like a lilypad.
As if in response, the sea and sky split open like a hot knife through butter, beelining for the Moby Dick. The tsunami were severed on the way, the force behind them dispersed.
Mihawk had arrived.
Even without Hancock, they had a decent fighting force. Ten thousand Marines was a fraction of the army Sengoku wanted, but at the very least they outnumbered the bloated ranks of Whitebeard's fleet. As fearsome as the old man was, the power of his sixteen divisions was concentrated heavily in the commanders. He adopted more weaklings at the lowest survivable strength in the New World than any other Emperor, and they couldn't make up for that lack through fanaticism. Even his allied crews were only so powerful without their captains to anchor them.
A loud crack echoed as the attack—haki and air pressure alike—shattered before it even touched the grinning prow of the Moby Dick's hull. It wasn't the same flash that accompanied Whitebeard's quakes and subsequent cracks—even from so far away, Sengoku recognized swords clashing when he saw them.
It didn't feel like Whitebeard himself had made a move except for that first one.
Neither of the foxes had moved from their positions. Lurking with concentrated menace in the background as the ships took the fore. The one he'd hit shook its head like a dog, but seemed otherwise unaffected.
Doflamingo, Sengoku figured, was best-suited to tear them apart.
And like a demon he was summoned, the familiar gleeful cackle of the man in question strode out of the fire and smoke, like a wraith in the night, his sunglasses reflecting the light with an infernal gleam.
Just beyond him, Bartholomew Kuma dropped into a sprinter's stance before disappearing.
"Well, Fleet Admiral, it seems fate has come knocking on our door," Doflamingo drawled, glassed eyes drifting to the hulking creatures on a the horizon, the ever-present smirk on his face only seeming to widen at the sight. "Wonder who will answer history's curtain call?"
And like a shot, he was gone.
Fossa let out a low whistle as Yang Kurama careened overhead, bouncing off the semicircular barrier made of chains like a rubber ball. While all the pirates on board had winced in sympathetic pain when the old fox took the hit from Sengoku the Buddha—almost definitely because he assumed it wasn't going to bother him—Fossa was a shipwright and initially more concerned about the Moby Dick's hull integrity.
Which ended up not being a problem when Yang Kurama went boing.
Fossa knocked the lingering ash off his cigar, watching the last of the ripples dissipate with a thoughtful look on his face. "How many more times can you do that?"
"Pretty much until someone comes up with a better idea," Kushina quipped, watching the old crank's trajectory with a modicum of sympathy. That can't have been comfortable.
It was not, Yin Kurama supplied inside her mind, but pain is transient.
How very zen of you. Kushina took a second to raise her right hand like a painter, sighting her ranges to Marineford. It'd have been better if Gyūki had the time to set up proper marks in the smokescreen like they planned, but the Marines had started shooting and missing the Kuramas first. I bet it helps that none of you need to care about bones or organs.
Certainly, said Yin Kurama, still running around the inside of the circle and stirring the wind like a heat wave. The longer he went, the more he turned Marineford into a bootleg summer island. The smokescreen started to move like a true storm.
"Soon enough the differences will be plain to see," said Killer B, "once ol' Hawkeye's blades cross with Lord Eight-Tails: B!"
Kushina reached out with two glowing chain-tips and managed to mimic human applause for Killer B's latest composition by rattling them together. "Little long, but I liked that one."
"I like the congratulations, but we're here to decide the fate of nations," Killer B told her, but he bowed anyway.
Kushina kept up her shield even as they breached the fog, Yin Kurama's rumbling voice preceding their arrival. Marineford loomed before them under a sunlit sky, its white walls nearly luminous as it reflected the light. However, the worst part of looking at the place was actually the golden statue man sitting at the tip of one of the bays, who only increased the glare.
She envied Killer B's eyewear.
"Is that guy always that much of an eyesore?" Kushina asked, holding up a hand to shade her eyes. "I'd stick a lampshade on his head and use him for a decoration if my house was that tacky."
"Gurararara! Don't youngsters these days recognize the Buddha?" Whitebeard angled his mustachioed face toward what was basically his knee, since Kushina hadn't gotten miraculously taller upon arriving on the Grand Line. He went on, "I suppose you haven't been the type to bloody the World Government's nose directly, and even if you were, he doesn't get out much anymore."
"Hmm… I have to assume the last time he was, there was a religious schism." Kushina brought her hand to her chin as she thought. After a couple seconds, she started tapping her foot as agitation mounted. "Y'know, Whitebeard, I never really thought of myself as a big, bad outlaw until somebody slapped my face on a bounty poster with a nine-digit number. Never even thought of shoplifting before. Seems to me like they're a bit self-fulfilling."
Of the two of us, Yin Kurama pointed out, you achieved a criminal record within two days of waking on that beach. I, on the other hand, have restrained my activities to creatures that do not care for or know about the rule of law.
Sea Kings?
Sea Kings. Yin Kurama snorted. Though your rearrangement of history is amusing.
I'm a pirate now, so I think I can afford different standards.
"Actually," Kushina said finally, as the thought struck her, "I think I still might've tried giving them the benefit of the doubt if they hadn't stuck Gaara with a bounty, too. There's no point in having patience with people who demand the deaths of children."
"The World Government sees anything that it can't control as an affront to their 'divine' authority," Whitebeard rumbled, giving her an understanding look. One parent to another. "Why do you think they tie themselves by the ankle to the Celestial Dragons?"
Kushina sighed. Behind her, her long hair twisted in the wind and tossed against the chains trailing from her back, keeping the shield going strong. At least they never tangled, being entirely made of chakra made solid and Kushina's willpower. "Then I hope they appreciate the literally splitting headache we've made up nice and special for them." She elbowed Whitebeard in the side of his knee, with absolutely no power behind it. She'd heard the guy's knee pop earlier. "Eh? Get it? Since we're splitting them up."
A little ways away, Haruta groaned. "You can't get into a dad joke contest with Pops, Habanero, or we'll be here until even the Sea Kings get bored and go home."
"But we're…aren't we in the Calm Belt?"
"Not the point!"
Killer B patted Kushina's shoulder as she was forced to surrender to protests. He didn't outwardly react, but she could feel his amusement though through his chakra. So, ha!
And then, it was as though they had crossed a second, invisible threshold in the sea between smokescreen and landfall. A serious vibe stole over the entire emerging Whitebeard-led pirate alliance.
Kushina withdrew her chains, deconstructing the bubble around the Moby Dick like a ball of thread. She instead brought her hands together in preparation to launch in a hand seal sequence. "Look alive, boys!"
Grunting with the effort to stand fully upright, Whitebeard took her words to heart, moving like a human mountain into position at the ship's prow. Even if she didn't know him well, Kushina could still see the stiffness in his gait despite the surety and power of his steps, the years of seafaring and battle having done a number on old bones.
None of that seemed to matter when he grabbed the air, his muscles bulging and straining as he stood suspended for the moment.
Then like something had been knocked loose, his momentum surged in a downward throw, like he was ripping a curtain off its hooks—
And the world itself shook.
Waves twice the size of the Hokage Monument rolled into existence from the epicenter of the quake, the entire island tilting dramatically in a way Kushina had never seen in all her years. At least, before meeting the Red Hair Pirates. It was still a surprise to see that effect being produced by a person.
Very cool, she decided. Shanks might not have recruited any Devil Fruit users, but the power they passed up was still quite something.
And then the air split going the other way.
Killer B didn't need to be told twice to meet the shockwave head on, his V1 chakra cloak flowing around him like liquid flame as he, and several of Gyuki's tentacle-like chakra tails, slapped aside the attack. The source had been someone on the shore, and if Kushina squinted she could just see the black speck of a man waiting for them, a giant cross-like blade in hand.
Interesting.
"Guess that's our cue," she said, calling upon Yin Kurama's power for the first time in almost half a year. The orange-red chakra coiled around her body, spreading from her stomach outward until it was settled firmly around her like Killer B's. Three of Yin Kurama's thinner tails whipped about behind her like a banner.
Killer B gave her a thumbs-up on his way down toward the water's surface, hardly bothering to even look like he was taking things seriously. As soon as Kushina returned it, they were off like a shot, sprinting across the surface with such force that they left two rooster tails of water in their wakes.
And then: Marineford.
Going into this, Kushina spent about two hours going over everything she and her allies had managed to work out about the Marines' defenses. It wasn't a lot of time relative to the amount the Marines spent actually preparing their defenses, because that wasn't how sieges worked, but Kushina didn't have much else to do during the trip other than cook and monopolize the transponder snails if Naruto called. Killer B liked to listen to Naruto's stories and hear from Yugito (rare as those occasions were), so he was about as informed as Kushina. Of course, no one with sense published the nature of their powers, which gave people like Kushina time to work out how to defeat them.
Just as well that the World Government couldn't control how much pirates liked to talk.
Which was why, when Killer B drew all seven of his swords at once, Kushina let him head straight for Mihawk with no regrets.
"So eager to die?" she heard the Warlord murmur.
"You can sure try!" Killer B cheerfully replied, because he was nothing if not prepared to rhyme.
Her target was...a seven-meter vampire goth clown, who kinda looked like Shanks's old buddy Buggy if Kushinta turned her head to the side and crossed her eyes. The polka dots and what looked like white makeup, cravat, and tailcoat kinda made a confusing picture when put all together like that, because at least two of those details he shared with Mihawk.
"Kishishishi," the not-a-clown chortled, a jagged maw of abject glee on his face. "You'll be the perfect subject for my army!"
The fact that the guy was surrounded by knee-high walking corpses—relative to his size—gave away certain details of his recruitment terms. Sure, about half of them were summarily squashed by one of Killer B's detached tentacles when Mihawk swung that ridiculous sword in his direction, but that didn't seem to deter anyone. There was really something to be said about respecting one's troops, and Kushina doubted this guy had even heard the opening argument.
Kushina cracked her knuckles. "Guess it's just you and me, then. Gotta say, I'm a lot less impressed by my same-bounty buddy than I am by my birthday one." She jabbed a finger in the guy's direction. "That's you, by the way."
Was that a vein standing out on his horned forehead? That had to be a new record. "Fine then! Face the wrath of the great Gecko Moria!"
Oh, that was this guy's name. She just had the number memorized before. "Hm… I'm gonna have to say no."
"Kishish—wait what?" Moria froze in place under the weight of his own outrage. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN 'NO'?!"
Kushina looked up at him, craning her neck a little as she felt her Yin Kurama-derived claws reach their full length and sharpness. "Nothing personal, really, but you don't get to defile my little sister's name."
Mihawk and Killer B clashed again, smashing into an armory as Marines scrambled out of the immediate blast radius.
And in the vacuum created by eight swords hitting each other with so much force behind them the air cracked, Kushina tapped her foot on the white stone just once.
Adamantine chakra chains surged out of the ground like writhing golden serpents, shredding a fan-shaped segment of the courtyard in front of her until they reached Moria and his undead minions. Intact tiles went flying a dozen meters in the air like deadly hail, raining down on all of Marineford. The pointed anchors of each line punched through the stitched-up corpses with ease, but the lines that latched onto Moria's short legs and started crawling up his body were a touch less aggressive.
And all around him, wisps of darkness seeped from the throats of his punctured hoard. Their bodies flopped over like dead fish afterward, as the chains cancelled out whatever power his Devil Fruit possessed.
The Red Hair Pirates didn't have Devil Fruit users on their crew, but they had plenty of ways to neutralize them.
"No! My zombies!" Moria cried, struggling ineffectually against his bindings, their effect as potent as water or seastone, making him wilt slightly. "What the hell is this?!"
Kushina put her hands on her hips as the chains tightened, secured themselves, and smashed Gecko Moria face-first into the shattered plaza. The ground cratered on impact, sending bits of stone and steel structure flying upward as though Oars Jr. had punched the ground until it liquified.
"IT'S THE RED HAIR PIRATES!" some unlucky marine screamed in the din, apparently finally catching a glimpse of her long trail of crimson hair.
Took them long enough.
"Oh, no. You're not that lucky." Kushina completed the hand seal sequence for a proper summoning, feeling Yin Kurama's spreading grin like it was her own. All she had to do for the blood sacrifice was bite down on the chapped corner of her lip. "How about, oh, I don't know..."
There was a gigantic plume of smoke as Yin Kurama bent time and space, rising from under Kushina's feet and lifting her into the air. As the smoke cleared, the world glowed red, and laughter like cruel, ominous thunder rolled through the waves. Yang Kurama's voice in the distance was a distorted echo to Yin's, which rumbled below Kushina's feet.
"Just. ONE."
Kushina waved from atop Yin Kurama's head as his hands crashed down on Gecko Moria and the pink flamingo-looking guy who'd been laughing so damn hard at his fellow warlord's misfortune, smashing them flat. Yin Kurama did half the work of his weight, with killing intent radiating off him and sending Marines all around them scattering like roaches.
And then the flamingo guy exploded into a tower of shrieking string that blew Yin Kurama's hand right off him. No, not a tower—a fountain.
While Yin Kurama crushed Gecko Moria even farther into the island—or turned him into paste—he leaned away from the sound of the string with his ears flat against his head. The string kept rushing upward as the body of the other man in the crater spooled into nothing worse than an unraveling scarf, spreading across the sky like some strange spiderweb.
Or a cage.
The curve of the structure blocked out the bulk of the Whitebeard fleet, except for the Moby Dick and its two attendant ships. Kushina frowned as she calculated the expanse of the trap, and silently asked Yin Kurama to aim an attack upward. Almost every threat in the New World needed some testing before it could be set aside.
Yin Kurama slapped the source of the string aside with a dismissive backhand, then opened his jaw and aimed for the empty sky.
The blast dispersed on impact. The expected chakra shockwave spread across the distant lines without making anything shudder.
"What's happening?" Kushina demanded, a feeling akin to unease coiling in her stomach. That wasn't supposed to happen. Tailed Beasts could and had cut through everything else the World Government's forces had to offer, including the Marines' away fleet.
"Damn that Doflamingo."
Hanging off Yin Kurama's neck by her chains, Kushina spotted the speaker on an overlooking wall—a Marine easily in her seventies, staring up at the cage in with her expression grim.
"It's the Birdcage," she told her fellow Marines as Kushina listened in, using her chakra to enhance her hearing. "Find Doflamingo! The only way to end it is if he calls it off or is too beaten to maintain it. If you don't, anything that touches those bars gets sliced to ribbons."
Was the wall somehow… closer?
Yin Kurama withdrew his hand, sitting back on his haunches as the Marines screamed around them. In the distance, the conflict between Killer B and Mihawk slammed to a comical halt as a storehouse exploded, bouncing Killer B into Yin Kurama's ankle. And even farther away, right at the border of the cage, a pirate ship drifted into the cage wall and immediately saw its bow sliced into wood chips.
"B," Kushina said, channeling half of the communication through Yin Kurama, "get over here. It's a trap."
"Cross the map, everything's a trap," Killer B told her, using the same half-audible connection between jinchūriki.
And then a sensation that made the dread explode seven-fold, an echo that ripped across her connection from Yin Kurama and beyond to—
"Yin, what's wrong with Yang Kurama?!"
I… am not sure. Yin Kurama's ears swept up and pointed forward, huge red eyes narrowed in suspicion. He is farther and further than— What is this?
Kushina's thoughts stuttered to a halt as that familiar sensation washed over her. The soundless voice, the impetus that brought them to this world was… stirring.
And it felt victorious.
If Naruto thought he'd get to see any more of the fight while traveling with his mother instead of Kei-sensei, the first few minutes of the Marineford raid taught him otherwise.
Ever since he first joined up with Kei-sensei, almost every battle started off with a thick marine layer of cloud cover courtesy of whatever Tailed Beast among them knew how to use Water Release. Kei-sensei preferred ambushes almost exclusively and never let him do anything until everyone was already beaten into submission, even when he'd made enough explosives to turn a battleship into a field of splinters. Old Man Yang handled the idea of Naruto's involvement by laughing and ignoring him, which was almost worse than the coddling.
When he complained to Kei-sensei about it, though, the conversation went something like this:
"But Gaara—" Naruto had started to protest.
"—Is a member of the Straw Hat Pirates and from Sunagakure, and I'm not responsible for him." Kei-sensei's stone-faced look didn't quite hold, betraying her worry, but she hadn't been in a mood to listen to any other arguments.
It was a replay of their discussion before Impel Down, but Naruto couldn't get her to change her mind.
Now Naruto sat among his mother's crewmates on the Red Force, well back from the the outer edge of the giant fog donut arranged around Marineford. He'd barely even seen the place under all the genjutsu before the clouds rolled in. It was enough to give him an idea of the white stone the place was made of, particularly how it caught the light, but there were whole divisions of people there, and Naruto couldn't tell what any of them were doing.
To make matters worse, Gyūki won the Tailed Beast lot-drawing to do something sneaky, so he totally made the fog super opaque with his ink powers. Old Man Yang and Old Man Yin didn't even have to work on their neglected genjutsu skills to make everything super hard to see. Even someone with eyes like Benn Beckman couldn't see all that much until it emerged from the killzone.
"Incoming!" yelled someone from the crow's nest of the catfish ship.
"Got it!" shouted another pirate from the ship's bow.
Sometimes a big smoke column rose in the distance, or the top of the dark storm was blown apart by cannonfire, but no one had gotten closer to see what was happening. Instead, every ship had someone on cannonball-deflecting duty. Just because the Marines couldn't see their fleet didn't mean they couldn't land accidental bullseyes. Most of the point defenders were Whitebeard commanders or the captains of their own crews, protecting their ships with swords, guns, or anything else they had on hand. One of the Whitebeards' allies even managed to hit a cannonball with one of their own shots, causing a midair explosion that rocked three ships at once.
Naruto closed his eyes against the blowback of a near-miss, pulling his goggles down over them after a second or two.
Almost immediately, the subtle feeling of pressure eased off his head. He hadn't realized the glare off the ocean was giving him a bit of a headache until it was gone.
"Whoa, that was a close one!"
"Not on your life, Yasopp!"
If they'd agreed to it, Mom would be the one defending the Red Force. Instead, she and Killer B headed to the Moby Dick because the old Emperor wanted to be the first one through the fog, even if it meant his crew would also be on the only targets the Marines would have for at least a couple minutes.
"Kid, head belowdecks," Yasopp suggested, because Naruto refused to take anything as an order. "The last thing we want is someone getting a lucky shot in because you're busy staring over the railing."
"I don't think they even know any of us are here. Old Man Yin and Old Man Yang are busy wrecking shop while the rest of us just sit around and don't really do anything." As he spoke, another misfired cannonball crashed into the water just behind where the three Whitebeard ships had vanished into the hurricane-like artificial storm. Watching the plume of water dissipate, Naruto added, "I'll be fine up here."
"That wasn't actually a suggestion," Yasopp told him, refuting his previous thought. "Rockstar, get him down there, will you? I distinctly remember Kushina putting you on babysitting duty before she left."
Naruto scowled at the sole rookie of the Red Hair Pirates' crew, what with his star-shaped hairstyle and general bad attitude. Speaking as a barely-not-a-teenager, Naruto could spot another punk a kilometer away. He could probably get away from Rockstar without a problem if he tried, but that was a lot of work when he just had to be patient.
Besides, he wasn't a baby.
"Come on, kid. Leave the fighting to the grown-ups this time," Rockstar said grudgingly, taking Naruto by the arm. When Naruto almost immediately shrugged the guy off for being annoying, he scowled harder and said, "Seriously? Get going."
"Fine, whatever. It's not like I can even see anything out here!" Naruto grumbled, heading belowdecks and slamming the door on the way down the stairs.
Rockstar didn't even try to follow him. Instead, he just cussed out the door and went back to being as useless as he was before.
Naruto sighed, leaning against the wall as the Red Force rolled with the next shot. He pretty much had his sea legs now—to the point where land felt a bit strange—but what use was that when no one was letting him use them?
It wasn't his fault he was so restless!
No one noticed when Naruto slipped out of the ship through a porthole, using a Shadow Clone to cover his departure. None of the Red Hairs were small enough to make that kind of escape, so maybe they didn't think it was possible. Whether it was negligence or good luck, Naruto got out of the ship, slid down the hull, and reached the waves with the faintest splash.
Upon landing, Naruto pinwheeled his arms to keep his balance on the water's surface. The waves below his feet rolled more than the lakes he'd practiced water-walking on at home—like thirty times more—but he caught himself on his hands before he could fully hit the water.
The ocean stung a little, mostly because of the cold. The sound of bubbles hissing up from Gyuki's scheme sounded kinda like whispering, and the whirling high seas wind made it hard to pin down exactly where he'd gone.
His pulse throbbed in his temples, just once.
Naruto shook off the sensation, then eased to his feet again and hurried toward the next ship. Most of them were kinda close together, but not too close. There was something about eddies driving ships together over time in at least one of his lessons from the Revolutionaries, but it was probably fine.
The pirates were all so busy focusing their attention inward, at the storm that occasionally spat cannonballs, that they didn't have time to look for him. If they even realized he was missing. The next crew—something to do with bulls—didn't even see him climb the aft of the ship.
While it wasn't the best vantage point, being about fifty meters away from the Red Force let Naruto see different parts of the fleet. He leaned over the railing to catch the sea breeze, watching the ships bob nearby. The Whitebeard-allied crews gave the Red Force a wide berth, but they were a little less shy around each other. Heck, the nearest ship was bobbing next to a pair of horns that looked like they could put Gyūki's three intact ones to shame.
Actually… Oh! That was the giant he'd seen earlier!
Naruto heaved himself up on the rail to get a better look.
The giant's head and shoulders were the only parts above the waves, which might've been because he was busy swimming—or walking—just ahead of a ship that had his face on its big skull emblem. His huge face was kinda green—sort of like Hack, actually—with tons and tons of red-orange hair in a huge mane that was twice as big as he was. He could kinda see a sword strapped to his back, maybe, but people that big might be better off with a huge cleaver.
He was so cool! Maybe after all this was over, Naruto could talk to him? Actually, meeting most of these people was bound to be interesting. It'd be like talking to someone from another village, but more so, and Naruto was even more curious about lives that went on without any input from his family now that he knew there were so many.
Are you staying out of trouble, Naruto? Old Man Yang's mental voice interrupted, while something beyond the big smokescreen exploded. Don't go thinking I can't just swallow you if you're going to be like that.
It's not like there's anywhere to get into trouble back here! Naruto mentally stuck his tongue out at Old Man Yang, even while in the middle of scaling the catfish-faced ship. You're taking the entire fight for yourself, so don't complain if I get bored!
Testing an enemy's defenses is more important than momentary amusement, Old Man Yang scolded, even as a battleship's mast briefly appeared above the fake clouds. Followed by the rest of the battleship, about two seconds later. Get back to your mother's friends.
Naruto rolled his eyes, slipping over the next ship's railing. I'll be fine.
That's not remotely what I asked, brat.
Well, finish what you're doing and then we'll argue about it for real.
Unlike you humans, I can think and fight at the same time.
Naruto huffed. It didn't count if Old Man Yang and Old Man Yin were just thinking in concert. He'd seen Isobu split his attention ten different ways at once, even while every other Tailed Beast was busy around them. The difference between that was like, um, the difference between fighting a guy with one Shadow Clone or a hundred. Kinda?
It absolutely does count, Old Man Yang told him in a grumble.
Does not.
I am not doing this with you right now. I am busy.
Naruto stretched out along the railing like a cat, then slung his legs over the side. And so am I.
Old Man Yang's disapproving growl filled his mind, bringing back Naruto's headache with that much extra force. Scowling against the sensation, he channeled a bit of chakra toward his face to take the edge off it. He'd only been on the bull ship for like a minute and he was already antsy to keep moving.
He scrubbed at his ears, a faint ringing noise starting in them that had him sitting up in annoyance.
Well, whatever. If this ship wasn't being interesting, he didn't need to stay.
Naruto made his way to the next ship across the waves, moving behind the battle lines and nearly at top speed. He didn't even need to try using bad genjutsu to get past them. Mostly because he didn't have good genjutsu skills anyway. It didn't take much to sneak around a lot.
While Naruto made his way onto five more pirate ships over the next stretch of time, poking around a bit, none of them held his attention longer than the first. Instead of introducing himself to the various crews and getting distracted that way, the restlessness clung to him like cobwebs. He didn't stay on any one of them for very long, always returning to the waves and abandoning that exploration in short order.
Ship number six was when his stealth finally failed a little.
"Who the hell are you?"
Naruto turned, startled, and spotted the guy who'd been deflecting cannonballs earlier. Kinda old or hard-bitten, with a super-long tongue and teeth serrated like a spider's face. He had a big sword slung over one shoulder amid mostly-balding gray hair, and wore really weird black pants with like a zillion ornaments.
"Namikaze Naruto," he said, with a grin he didn't quite feel. He made it wider to compensate. "You're the captain, right?"
"It's Maelstrom Spider Squard to you, brat. You shouldn't be here," the man replied, his eyebrow-less forehead wrinkling in what might have been concern, but he was already too wrinkly to tell. "Kids don't belong on the battlefield."
Oh for the love of— "I'm fine. It's not like anything's even happening back here!"
"Well, we'll have to change that, now won't we?" a new unfamiliar voice drawled from above, tone tinged in malicious amusement. As one, Naruto and the crew looked up in alarm to see a man crouched like a particularly pink vulture on the yardarm. Red sunglasses glinted down at them over a grin that nearly split his face in half, a ruffled coat of pink feathers cloaked his hunched figure, his long, gangly legs seemingly disproportionate to his torso.
Naruto wasn't sure why, but even with the shades on he felt like the man was looking at him directly.
The hair on the nape of his neck stood on end.
"DOFLAMINGO?!" Squard's crew shouted all at once.
"I see I need no introduction! Well, how about we cut to the chase, boys!" the warlord known as the Heavenly Yaksha gloated, arms stretching out wide as he bent an odd number of fingers into crooks.
"Greetings, I'm here to eliminate this sector." The grin stretching across that face reminded Naruto viscerally of the worst of his childhood stories—a grinning skull straight from Kei-sensei's description of the shinigami. "You just sit still and enjoy the show."
Something glinted in the light. It was faint, but Naruto's gaze darted to the location just in time to see the mast severed at the base. The wood groaned as the wind caught the sail above and the entire structure swayed. The look of abject glee in the pink guy's face—and the matching horror on the old pirate's mug—burned into Naruto's brain.
And then they were running.
Naruto went backwards while the old pirate went to the right, yelling for his crew to rally.
Doflamingo swept an arm out contemptuously.
Another flash of something, uncoiling toward Naruto's throat as fast as a striking viper. Faster. Every instinct warning him against being touched, he completed the seal sequence he needed faster than he'd ever done before.
Replacement!
Naruto rolled to a stop with his foot braced on railing five meters away. The barrel he'd swapped places with exploded into salt beef and wooden scraps, spilling across the deck as the sound of pirates screaming echoed across the back ranks of Whitebeard's fleet of allied crews.
"Fuffuffuffuffu!"
What the hell was that laugh?! Naruto had gotten to the foredeck, scrambling to his feet out of that creepy guy's immediate field of view. He already had his fingers up in the cross seal in preparation for his next move.
Maybe burying the guy in clones wouldn't work, but he wasn't going to get caught off-guard again!
"Oh, that's a handy little trick," he heard Doflamingo simper, his heeled shoes tapping along as he crept along at a sedate pace. Thoughtful.
The sound of rasping string was the only warning Naruto received before the deck split diagonally into five chunks, with Naruto being fortunate that his placement had been right in between the severing lines. Several pirates weren't as lucky, losing limbs or plummeting into the unforgiving sea below, screaming. Others were thrown into the air by the bucking pieces, shrieking, and couldn't control their descents in time to avoid smashing into nearby ships.
Crap, crap, crap, Naruto thought as he stuck himself to the floor for balance, and slammed his chakra into the most helpful ninjutsu he knew. Mass Shadow Clone!
In a burst of chakra smoke, hundreds of clones flooded the area and cut off all line of sight. Some of them acted as human-shaped crash mats for the pirates, blunting the impacts against solid objects at the cost of a destroyed clone. Others formed human chains, locating any pirates who couldn't swim and hauling them back to the surface. Still more were Naruto's camouflage as he frantically tried to shift backward through the crowd and launch a second wave of clones.
What is happening back there? I told you to stay out of trouble, Old Man Yang's mental voice growled as his attention swung back in Naruto's direction.
Naruto shouted back, Could use a little help back here! He accompanied this thought with a mental photo of the situation at large. Clones everywhere, Warlord pretty much in Naruto's face, and—
How did he—?
Behind Naruto, there was a earthshaking CRACK as the storm was blasted apart and none of the air got out of the way fast enough. He barely caught himself on his hands when he was knocked forward onto what remained of the deck, a flicker of shadow passing overhead on its way across the sky. Nearby ships were tossed like toys, and most of the clones around Naruto exploded from the air pressure knocking them around.
Naruto almost didn't notice when the captain of this particular almost-wreck landed right next to him, only to snap out of his shock and grab the guy before he could slide into the sea.
It was a little easier with both of Naruto's feet glued to the deck with chakra. A second later, he noticed the long trail of blood that stretched across the deck to the stump of the guy's left calf. It was almost enough to distract him from the rapid disappearance of Old Man Yang's chakra from the battlefield.
Damn this world! The old fox clearly wasn't dead yet, though. If ever.
Silvery wisps of string danced in Naruto's field of view, way too close for comfort.
"Fuffuffuffuffu! That Kuma still has it in him after all!" How was he the only one still standing?! Doflamingo loomed over them both like a cackling, pink nightmare. "After they tore everything else out of him to make PX-0, you'd think he'd lose a step, but nope! Talk about the shortest victory lap in history!"
Naruto's grip tightened on the guy's fancy pirate jacket. There were still enough clones to get him and the other pirates to safety if he threw him right.
The old pirate guy grabbed Naruto's wrist. "Kid, run."
Naruto squinted at him and the way his hands spasmed in pain. The cold sweat running down the guy's face didn't give him any confidence that there was gonna be any walking away from— Naruto couldn't even finish that sentence in his head. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize, you little—!"
Naruto hurled the guy overboard, toward a patch of clones he could still feel. At the exact same instant, a near-invisible string looped around his wrist and pulled taut enough to draw blood. His left arm was jerked out to full extension.
"You really think that'll help, don't you? Lemme tell you, kid, Squard wasn't winning any prizes in the power department. Or brains. Or life, by now." Doflamingo's grin widened as he leaned down to look Naruto in the eye. "Can't imagine what seawater does for wounds like that."
"What the hell do you want?!" Naruto snarled back. Old Man Yang's chakra always made his teeth ache and his face itch, but he hardly felt it in the face of their combined anger as it burned hotter and hotter. Without both hands for seals, he couldn't summon Old Man Yang back—
"Me? Kid, you're on one side of a war. I'm just bringing what you asked for by showing up today!" Doflamingo drew back a foot. "Speaking of, here's your ticket to the show!"
Naruto snapped the string on his arm with a burst of Kurama's chakra just in time to block the kick with both arms.
And then his back hit the deck, hit the hull, and launched him into the mast of the next ship.
Naruto dug himself out of the hole with a haze of reddish chakra settling around his body, feeling his forearms stitch the bones back together.
"There we go, you brat!" the pink bastard crowed. He moved midair with one arm extended, swinging closer. Naruto could almost see the string he used to get around, linking his hand to the mast of each of the ship. It was like trying to spot spiderwebs. "You're all full of piss and vinegar!"
"And you're full of shit!" Naruto roared back, deliberately using Old Man Yang's chakra to lower his voice for the first time in this world.
Five strings—at least —wrapped around the ship in rapid succession and split it into cordwood in the next heartbeat. One line even tried to wrap around Naruto's fiery aura, only to splinter on contact. He swatted the next string away with a snarl, not taking his eyes off Doflamingo.
It was so hard to think when there was an enemy right in front of him. His heart pounded in his ears in time with the chakra flowing through his body, setting every nerve alight. His new claws cut easier through the shattered wood. Even though his arms were barely gonna bruise, the pain made him want to leap forward and claw Doflamingo's face right off.
And then Naruto was midair and mid-swing before he realized what was going on.
His initial swing missed, to Doflamingo's clear amusement.
The chakra following his hand didn't.
He'd learned a couple tricks over the last few months.
Doflamingo slammed back onto a web of strings, catching himself mere meters from the water as they flexed under his weight. He spat blood from the impact, his brows twisting into something between surprise or irritation. The glasses made it hard to tell. Curiously, he seemed to reach for the bloodied side of his face, inspecting his palm when it came away with a healthy pool of blood.
The world froze for a second.
"You little fuck! " Doflamingo snapped, expression molding into a snarl as a wave of… something emitted from his body. Its push was negligible against the chakra cloak, though the purpose became apparent the moment it touched the men around him.
They started dropping like flies.
Naruto's chakra flared brighter in response. He couldn't redirect his clones right now if he wanted to, but they'd figure how to look after more people.
He hoped they'd figure it out.
Naruto landed on the ocean's rocking surface, blasting water everywhere from impact. Getting back to his feet was harder, like his whole body thrummed under the weight of power and bloodlust.
Doflamingo sneered down at him from his perch, despite the blood. "Wasting time saving people? You really think that'll change anything?" He wiped blood from his lip arrogantly, his face stitching back together like a macabre doll. "It's like you want me to stop giving you breathing room!"
"Shut u—hrk!" And suddenly, a vice closed around Naruto's throat. Around his wrists and ankles, snatching him from the water's surface and dragging him upward.
The look on Doflamingo's face could only be described as "victorious," his disgusted sneer evolving into a diabolical smirk. "Gotcha. Almost didn't think you'd fall for it."
The sky darkened with hundreds—thousands—of black threads littering the air around him. There were dozens clamped tight around Naruto's body, spiraling off to anchor in clouds, ships, and even in his clones as they tried to drag pirates free of the danger zone. They cut through his borrowed chakra, drawing deep lines of blood wherever they touched.
Brat! Kid! Summon me back, right now!
"I-I can't!" Naruto shouted aloud, forgetting in his panic that Old Man Yang's voice was only in his head. He saw the way Doflamingo tilted his head curiously even as he was forcing his limbs to comply with a twitch of his fingers. His heart rate spiked as he fought harder, his muscles shaking in exertion. "I can't move!"
"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that's your big, fluffy friend you're talking to," Doflamingo simpered. "Too bad about that shot over the horizon, hm? Guess luck wasn't on your side."
Then Doflamingo drew one foot back, tinged black, and kicked Naruto square in the stomach.
When Naruto came back to himself, breathing raggedly, Old Man Yang's chakra was long gone. Doflamingo's fingers performed an intricate dance as he made Naruto reach for his waist, grabbing the knife he'd obtained from Sabo, and turning him about to face the crew that were tied up with the huge web of strings.
Naruto choked out a wordless protest.
"Sorry, kid. But no one's gonna save you. That's what it means to kill or be killed." Doflamingo's fingers shifted a little, hauling Naruto that much farther into the air and spinning him around. "So, let's play a game in the meantime with everyone you saved."
"Come on, you can do it, kid!" several of the pirates cheered, trying to motivate him even as they fought their own bonds, "Fight it!"
Naruto's breath came in shallow gasps, his arm rising against his will, the knife clenched tightly in hand. It pointed at the men. Even at Squard, hauled out of the water by the three full limbs he still had.
His breath hitched in his throat in realization.
Old Man Yang! he mentally shrieked.
But the fox's response was merely a wordless roar of frustration.
"Just how many heads can you send flying with that flimsy little dagger," Doflamingo sneered, leaning in to loom over him like a specter, his breath fluttering the fine hairs on the top of his head, "Go."
No!
Naruto felt the abrupt surge of Yang's chakra filling his system, more than he'd ever experienced before. His entire body burned, even as the strings around him tightened painfully, and then—
YOU ARE THE—
GATHER THE—
THERE YOU ARE.
AN: Been trying to find the proper place to put that exchange with "Oh no it's the Red Hair Pirates!" since before the Great Hiatus. Here it is!
(Re: The content warning: Donquixote Doflamingo locates and attacks Naruto, including kicking him in the stomach where Yang Kurama's seal is.)