SUMMARY

When Team 7 is confronted with a Road-Poneglyph and a little surprise left by a previous user of the Paw Paw Fruit, they are forced into an adventure that just doesn't compare to any mission they ever had to face. A story in which the Elemental Nations are just another humongous Island on the Grand Line, and isolation through surrounding water currents, is brought to a completely new level.

Disclaimer

I do not own Naruto and I do not own One Piece. That honor lies with their creators: Masashi Kishimoto and Eiichiro Oda

Author's Note

Hello everybody! Thanks for looking at the first chapter of my story: "Fish Cake". This is the very first fanfiction I have ever written, so please be kind. Actually, being kind is always a good way to go, and I'll happily listen to any constructive comments.

Thank you so much to Lapin de Lune for beta reading my very first own fanfiction!

Canon divergence:

Normally, I think the abilities of devil fruit users wouldn't leave any lasting effect on the world once the user died. In this story, I'll have to change that for my purposes into "An astonishingly strong and awakened Devil fruit user can leave a lasting remnant of their power, even beyond their death." (You'll understand this once you reach the end of my first chapter).

Summoning Jutsu: In Naruto, it seems that a summoner could easily use the toad summon to pretty much teleport around the elemental nations, through liberal use of summoning and reverse summoning (even though they never actually used it like that). For the sake of my story, I'll have to change that up a bit, so that there isn't an easy fix for Team 7 to communicate with Konoha, or even return there (my brain can't have that loophole be a thing). So, in this story, only a sage summons, like the sage toads Shima and Fukasaku are capable of reverse summoning a summoner. On top of that, they are only able to do that, once said summoner gained the necessary chakra capacity (no problem for Naruto on that front), and familiarity with how moulding your chakra in different ways, causes different summons to appear, that they manage to summon the sage toads themselves first. On top of that, even if a summoner was reverse summoned to a summoning realm like Mount Myōboku, they could only return exactly to the point from where they were reverse summoned in the first place. So, no using summoning to teleport back home, and reverse summoning while on a boat in the middle of the ocean, is a very bad idea (especially on the Grand Line), so no extensive sage training until, ou I don't know, a two year time skip maybe?

Out of Character: I think the only one in my Story that I plan to write OOC, would be Naruto, and only so far that here Naruto got over his crush on Sakura, and at least subconsciously realizes that friends don't treat you like garbage. Further, I wouldn't call my Sakura quite OOC. It's more that at the start of my story, Sakura is gonna be more negative and angrier towards Naruto than she was in canon at this point in the Naruto timeline. Her observable behaviour will be more like it was at the start of the show/manga, and only regarding how she treats Naruto.

Have you ever wondered how a bird would describe the world beneath them? They do not see countries or borders. If a bird were to look down on the land of fire, what they would see could only be described as an ocean. Not an ocean of blue, however, but of vibrant green trees, as far as its eyes could see. On this particular day, however, there was now a green ocean to be seen. Instead, a devastating storm had hit the country, the likes of which was about to change destiny itself, within the elemental nations.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

With great endeavour, Kakashi and his Genin squad were slowly making headway, through the thick forest at the northern border of the Land of Fire. It was about an hour ago that they passed through the Land of Hot Water when the storm hit. The strong winds of the storm didn't allow for quick travel through the branches, as Shinobi do.

On top of that, they had to circle a mountain cliff that towered some hundred meters above the thick forest. The former Anbu captain was used to even worse conditions, but Sakura obviously wouldn't make it much further, and Sasuke might actually soon start to throw fireballs at Naruto, who was jumping around as if he was playing in the surf at a beach.

Team 7 was trying to return home from their latest C Rank mission, which had turned into a total disaster. They were supposed to guard the actress Fujikaze Yukie and her film crew, while they shot her latest movie in the land of snow. Lo and behold, the actress had been the missing princess of the country. She managed to flee from a coup as a small girl with the help of none other than yours truly, Copy Ninja Hatake Kakashi of the Sharingan.

Now back in the single most hostile environment a fleeing princess could find herself in -which is the country she ran from in the first place- their group had quickly been found by the enemy and Team 7 had had to face the Shinobi of Snow Country under the paw of her Evil Uncle (of course it was her uncle) Kazahana Doto.

After some struggle, the group managed to help the local revolutionaries defeat Doto's forces, who himself got a Rasengan to his gut by one Uzumaki Naruto. The very same ball of hyperactive, blond-haired, orange-clad energy, that managed to jump around in a ridiculous storm like this. After an epic battle, the princess was able to activate a machine left by her late father, the former King, which had melted the snow, and turned the land of snow into the land of eternal spring (because why not).

Of course, the very second Team 7 was given the mission, one should have just labelled it as "ridiculous stuff waiting to happen". Instead, it was labelled as C rank, which was bound to become a B or even A rank. Lucky for them, none of their missions so far deserved an upgrade to S rank. Even this one might only get a B, considering the utter lack of competence found within the snow ninjas. Kakashi was sure that not even Team 7's cursed luck would help them survive one of those S Rank suicide traps. If there was anybody who understood that fact, it was Kakashi. After all, he threw himself into one S rank mission after another, before he became a Jonin Sensei, hoping for one of them to free him from his misery.

"Look Kakashi-sensei! I think I can see a cave!" the pinkette's shout drew the grey-haired man from his musings. True enough there was a big cave entrance, about 16 feet up the mountainside they were circling. Also, there was a whole lot of muddy rubble covering the earth beneath the entrance. It seemed that the storm caused a small mudslide that opened up a cave.

"OK everybody, get behind me. I'm gonna make sure we don't get buried alive in there. Then we can wait out the storm inside!". Kakashi went through a series of hand signs before slapping his hands on the cliff in front of them.

The Genin heard a small rumble from within the cave. The scared squad stood at attention while expecting a wave of soil to come down on them any time now, but instead, their Jonin-sensei took a relaxed stance.

"That should do it. Now get inside everybody and be careful! The cliff is quite slippery, and you might need to use a little more chakra than usual to make your feet stick properly!"

Soon after, all members were appreciating their more or less dry hiding hole.

"Naruto, send a few Shadow Clones outside to collect wood. Don't even try to find anything dry out there, just bring it back here and I'll take care of the rest. Sakura, Sasuke, start preparing a small pit a little bit further in. It's better for you to keep moving on until we get a fire going."

One could be excused from thinking that his teammates were freshly risen from their graves. That didn't stop the energetic prankster from shouting at the top of his lungs as his hands formed the familiar cross sign: "WILL DO SENSEI, DATTEBAYO! Kage bunshin no jutsu!"

Ten Narutos appeared in a puff of smoke and jumped back into the forest. Three didn't even make it to the ground, because they were smashed back into the cliff by the strong winds.

"S….S…..Sen...sei…." Sakura managed to get out through chattering teeth. "wha…. what are…..what are you going to do?"

"Ou me? I have the toughest job of us all, of course." It wasn't often that you got the three Genin to agree on something. Their half-lidded eyes made it unmistakable that such a moment had occurred. 'Ou, they just know me too well' Kakashi thought as he took out a little book and started giggling with a perverted glint in his eyes as he flipped it open with one hand.

"I'm keeping watch."

"YOU ARE BEING A PERVERT!" "P….P…..PERVERT!" Naruto and Sakura shouted while Sasuke only gave a patented "tse…" that would have filled his ancestors with pride.

About an hour later, after liberal use of small-scale water and fire jutsu, Team 7 had a small campfire going while eating some of the last ration bars they had with them. With the storm still going strong, it didn't seem as if they were leaving any time soon.

"Kakashi-senseeeeei…. I'm boooooored…."

"Would you shut up, you moron!"

Sakura's shout was accompanied by a fist aimed at the chatterbox's skull. Without losing his bored look, Naruto easily leans his head just enough to the side, for the fist of doom to miss completely. The pinkette just stared perplexed at her fist, as if her brain couldn't quite compute what just happened. Sasuke ignored the spectacle, while clearly also trying to fight off his own boredom, but Kakashi realized that a touch of situational awareness seemed to finally spark in that abused blond-haired's skull. To not give Sakura another opportunity, Naruto stood up and walked further into the winding cave.

"I'll explore a little bit, Kakashi-sensei."

"Hmpf, I'm coming with you," the curmudgeon mutters as he walks up beside Naruto. This agreement showed the severity of their boredom better than anything else.

Kakashi was acutely aware of the deterioration in his team's cohesion, ever since the chunin exams had taken place. Both Naruto and Sasuke made great strides in their development. Especially Naruto who had started as the dead-last of his generation. This however sparked a streak of jealousy in the prodigious rookie of the year that only grew stronger as he slowly caught up to him.

At the same time, Sakura somehow managed to snatch a place as the new Hokage's apprentice and quite successfully started to focus her studious mind on various tomes about chakra control and medical jutsu and theory. Just like one would often see Kakashi reading Jiraya's art (aka porn), it wasn't a surprise to find Sakura with a book in her hands containing medical knowledge that might give some girls her age issues just in terms of pure physical weight. Nonetheless, the only non-orphan member of Team 7 was fighting with tremendous insecurities regarding her skills in comparison to her teammates.

On top of that, Naruto slowly but surely started to tamper his exuberant affection towards her, and sometimes even seemed annoyed by her when she tried to scold him. Even though that wouldn't seem like a surprising development to most, considering the often-unjustified abuse he suffered from her, it was still quite the development to somebody who knew about the utter lack of affection that Naruto had to deal with most of his life. The last thought caused a glimmer of painful guilt to surface under the endless layers of gloom and depression hidden behind Kakashi's cheerful and often relaxed exterior.

The view of a blue-clad Uchiha with both hands in his pockets, walking beside an orange-clad Uzumaki with his hands folded behind his head, caused the gears in the violent pinkette's head to spin again. "Wait! I'm coming too!" she shouts and follows them quickly.

A deep sigh escapes the one-eyed Sensei as if all the weight of the world found its place on his shoulders at once.

'Knowing those three, I better stay with them. They didn't even think about bringing a torch.'

"WOOOOAAAAA, SO BIIIIIG!"

Naruto's shout filled the surprisingly large cavern they entered about ten minutes later. Kakashi was quite perplexed by their discovery as he lit up the room with the only torch in the group. This cavern wasn't a natural occurrence. Smooth stone slabs covered everything from top to bottom and thick stone pillars seemed to support the ceiling, forming a sort of path to the other end of the chamber or hall.

Certain that any attempt to make the children turn around would only result in them trying something reckless while they waited out the storm, Kakashi immediately put away his little porn novel to fulfil the duty of a Jonin Sensei of keeping the kids alive.

"Listen up everybody! Sasuke, I want you to activate your Sharingan to make sure we don't miss any traps. Sakura, please take the torch, so that I can keep my hands free in case of an emergency. And stay close to me."

"Yes Sensei."

"Will do, dattebayo!"

"hmpf…"

The Squad slowly followed the columned path, but luckily, they didn't encounter any traps. While the Genin slowly relaxed, the seasoned Jonin only grew more alert. Everything in this chamber was in pristine condition as if it was built only a few years ago. Yet, it didn't resemble any architecture Kakashi was familiar with. On top of that, the entrance was hidden behind enough soil that they were most likely the first people to see this in decades, or maybe even centuries.

When the torch's light finally reached the other side of the hall, they were greeted by the strange view of a perfectly carved stone cube, about double the height of Kakashi himself. Other than the strangeness of the perfectly smooth edges and the almost reflective quality of the monument's surface, the cube was covered in writings that he couldn't recognize. Even though every symbol seemed to be a unique combination of lines, every character formed a square shape. If it wasn't for this, one could even mistake it for a sealing script, which rang all sorts of alarm bells in Kakashi's head.

"Wooaaaaah, this is sooo cool!", Naruto shouted as he took off in a sprint. Too distracted by the strange cube, Kakashi wasn't fast enough to stop the orange ball of concentrated energy as the boy seemed to multiply without the use of his favourite jutsu while inspecting the cube. Again, no traps were activated, which caused a sigh of relief to escape the oldest.

"NARUTO, YOU MORON! DO YOU WANT TO KILL US ALL OR WHAT!?", Sakura shouted while swinging her fist like an old man admonishing children because they were playing on his lawn. Naruto, more accepting of his mistake than one might expect, let his head hang a little while even muttering a quick apology: "Yeah yeah, sorry Sakura-chan. But isn't this really cool?"

As the angry pinkette continued to argue with a humanised bouncy ball, Kakashi used the opportunity to take a proper look himself, with his own uncovered Sharingan. This action only accumulated even greater astonishment at the craftsmanship before him. Even his legendary dojutsu couldn't spot any imperfections in the smooth surface of the cube, and what he first suspected to merely be a reflection of the torchlight, turned out to be a reddish tint inside of the stone. As his single eye perfectly memorized each one of those strange writings individually, they caught a glimpse of something right behind the cube. There was another carving, but this time in the wall behind, and with slight imperfections to it that revealed it to be the work of a normal person with a chisel.

"Ou, cool, what's that? Those small symbols look just like those on the cube, and that big one above is like a huge paw print in the stone, datebayo."

As Naruto voiced his observations, Kakashi recognized something strange in his voice. He looked down at his cute little Genin and recognised the intrigue on his face as he stared at the unidentifiable writing with unprecedented intensity.

"…. short cut….to….the start….. one-time use…...have fun" he murmured while his eyes took in the line of different square shapes.

"Naruto…. did you just…" but the baffled Jonin's question was interrupted by an angry little ogre ploughing into Naruto who obviously grew tired of their argument and left her standing where she was.

"Hey, stop ignoring me Naruto!" was her battle cry as insecurities started to cause a truly nasty reaction in Sakura.

We might never know what caused the following words to tumble out of Naruto's mouth. Was it the exhaustion from the mission and their time in the storm that caused it? Was it the years and years of whispers between the villagers of Konoha? Or maybe it was just a short circuit, caused by two wires touching inside Naruto's head that shouldn't but, nonetheless, a sentence was about to be uttered that would completely change the fate of the elemental nations. A sentence of such grave causal effect, that a creature hellbent on releasing the literal goddess of chakra would be forced to completely abandon its plans for decades at the very least. Words so monumental that they might set the reincarnated spirit of two sons, fated to be prisoners in an eternal loop of bloody rivalry, on a path of reconciliation:

As one would expect from one Sarutobi Konohamaru instead, Naruto responded: "Why don't you shut up already you flat-chested harpy!"

Silence permeated the atmosphere, and a surprising chill went through both Kakashi and Sasuke. Worlds seemed to die and be reborn in what could only have been seconds. Without even a sliver of killing intent, Sakura appeared in front of Naruto and punched him right into the big paw print on the wall.

Normally Kakashi tries to stay out of such squabbles. As Anbu Captain, his leadership was exemplary, and he tried to use the same methods in his role as a Sensei. What nobody told the emotionally crippled copy Ninja was, that when dealing with kids, normal kids, not prodigious geniuses that join the Anbu forces at an age that most people would still be Genin at best, there was a certain level of general education involved, in areas such as social, motivational, and emotional development.

Because of this he never expected one of his students to go overboard like that because of a simple insult, no matter how severe. He never expected Sakura to be able to move Naruto from the spot he was standing on. Of course, he also didn't know that even though she was still a complete novice and was still quite lacking in terms of pure chakra capacity to keep such a level of strength up for any significant amount of time, Sakura was taking to Tsunade's teachings in the field of chakra control like a fish to water.

To summarise, there is a lot that Kakashi doesn't know.

The moment that Naruto's face slammed into the print, it started to glow in a pale white light.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch ouch ouch! Damn, that really hurt, Sakura!" Naruto complained while pressing his hand to a big bump on his head.

Of course, anyone except for Naruto would most likely have a severe concussion from a hit like that. Still, luckily for both Sakura and Naruto, the person she hit wasn't only one of the last living Uzumaki, which basically encoded physical resilience and longevity in their gene code, but also the jinjuriki of the fearsome Kyubi no Kitsune and as such blessed with astonishing healing powers. Most likely it would take the boy about an hour to completely leave his injury behind him.

Much more important was this glowing paw that acquired a clearly three-dimensional quality. It kept its size long enough for Kakashi to shout "RUN!" before it expanded around Team 7 and made them lose all sense of gravity. Together they flew through the top of the mountain and accelerated into the air at breakneck speeds. It was only thanks to Kakashi's Sharingan, that he saw that said mountain was still perfectly intact and neither he nor his students were hurt by passing through the stone. While still accelerating through the air, they broke through the storm clouds and still gained altitude at an angle, clearly being "pushed" into a specific direction.

Soon Kakashi saw the deserts that could only mean they were passing the land of wind, but they still only accelerated further, until the land was replaced by the wild see, surrounding the elemental nations. With his Sharingan trained on the ground, he spotted breaking waves as high as the Hokage Monument, and whirlpools wider than any hidden village.

While having a clear direction, the four Ninjas were still accelerating upwards until Kakashi spotted land in the distance that was growing fast. Land might not be the correct word, as it was more like a cliff, higher than Kakashi's imagination could compute and spanning the entire horizon. Now that he had a spot to focus his eye on, they were clearly shooting for the highest point of this titanic slab of rock. They rose high above it, before changing direction into a straight dive towards the peek. Down below Kakashi spotted something that further insulted his brain's capacity for reason and logic, in the form of four rivers, flowing up the mountain in opposite directions, before becoming a single stream going down.

As every single regret, every single mistake, and every single broken promise flashed through the Jonin's mind, he saw a ship going up one of the rivers with quite a lot more speed than one might expect from such a wind-powered vessel. The Sharingan allowed Kakashi to calculate their own collision with the ground in relation to the sailing ship, and he was sure that they would all end up as bloody paste on its wooden planks, but something awakened inside of him.

Was it the large optimistic grin of the boy whose eye he received on that horrible day, was it the demure smile of the girl he considered a sister as he pierced her heart with his lightning-covered hand or was it the panicked screams of his students as they also realised, if only subconsciously, that they were about to die a gruesome death.

Everything that happened next, took place in mere seconds:

One second: Kakashi channelled chakra through his entire body, strengthening his muscles to the brink of rapture. Next, he pulled out three shuriken and further pushed his chakra network by channelling lightning chakra into them. The Shuriken were pre-prepared with ninja wire connected to a small mechanism that would allow them to spin freely while being fixed to the wire. The tool was meant to bind an opponent, but hopefully today, Kakashi would use it to finally succeed in rescuing his comrades from an absolutely unsalvageable situation.

Two seconds: As he threw them, the lightning-empowered shuriken managed to cut through the air with minimal resistance, before each looped around one of his students and bound them enough for him to pull them close until they clung to his back.

Three seconds: right before they splashed on the ground, Kakashi rushed through a series of hand signs. All of this was happening while he was still using his Sharingan, so at this point, he could be excused for thinking that somebody ripped out his chakra network and substituted it for metal wire, so hot that it was about to melt.

"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough"

The strong winds blowing out of Kakashi's mouth were meant to slow them down enough for his chakra-enforced body to catch them without dying. What he didn't consider in his calculations was the white light surrounding them in the mocking form of a paw print, actually pushing them towards the ground at greater force than gravity itself. Right now, Kakashi's Sharingan was perfectly memorizing every single detail in its view. From the imperfections in the wood, they were about to lose their lives due, to the straw hat-wearing skull on the flag, and the sheep head used as

a figurehead, that he would have found funny under different, less severe circumstances.

At the very last moment, even Kakashi couldn't help but close his eye while his crying students clung to him like a lifeline. Another second passed, that they shouldn't have….and so did the next. Kakashi was still breathing. His breath was fast and laboured as if he had been underwater for an hour, but he was still breathing.

He slowly opened his eye and realised that he and his tangled ball of two sobbing genin and one panicking emo were floating about three fingers' worth of air above the ship's deck while a small crew of five people were looking at them with their mouths wide open, chins almost on the wooden floor. No wait, the boy with the straw hat's chin was LITERALLY going all the way down to the floor. Was this actually happening, or were they faced with the strangely stretchy denizens of the Afterlife?

It took another moment for the paw-shaped bubble around them to pop, letting them fall on the gloriously non-threatening planks. The two groups' eyes met before the blond Jinjuriki and a raven-haired boy screamed at the top of their lungs:

"THAT WAS SOOOOO COOOOOOOOL!"

***chapter end***