Chapter 57: "For the Sake of What Is Coming, Spin My Beloved Earth
Kaido:
Deep in the heart of Onigashima's dark, thunder-rumbled skies, the swirling clouds parted just enough to reveal the skull-shaped fortress that was home to one of the most fearsome creatures in the world—Kaido of the Beasts, Emperor of the Sea, hobbyist suicide-attempter, and world-renowned provider of emotional trauma via clubbing.
Within the fortress, the throne room was as imposing as ever. Skulls the size of carriages adorned the pillars. Massive chains hung like decorations from the ceiling. A single table had been smashed for no reason earlier that morning. Classic Kaido décor.
At the far end of the room, sitting on a jagged stone throne with a club in one hand and a sake jug in the other, Kaido was finally available to receive an audience.
Which was lucky, because King—his right-hand man, top calamity, and most professionally dressed lunarian in existence—had been waiting a week for this.
King entered without fanfare, footsteps heavy, presence colder than a moonless night.
"You're late," Kaido grunted, lifting the jug for a swig.
"You've been drunk for six days," King replied flatly. "That's not my lateness. That's your hangover."
Kaido belched, waved the insult away, and gestured vaguely. "Well? Speak."
King stood tall, the ever-present flicker of lunarian flames behind him casting dancing shadows on the stone.
"Doflamingo sent word," he said, voice like a blade unsheathing. "He's under attack. An unknown force has been dismantling his operations one piece at a time. The Smile pipeline is in jeopardy."
Kaido's only reaction was to raise an eyebrow and grunt.
"He's asking for our assistance," King added. "Specifically—me."
"Of course he is," Kaido muttered, swirling the sake in his jug like it held the answers. "Because Joker can't handle a street fight without crying for help."
"The intruder is efficient," King continued. "Systematic. Tactical. If they reach Doflamingo, we may lose access to Smile altogether."
That got Kaido's attention.
He leaned forward, eyes glowing faintly like brewing storms.
"Do we know who it is?"
"Not yet. But I suspect it's someone trained—possibly marine or revolutionary. No flashy power. Just… clean, brutal takedowns."
Kaido grunted again, then leaned back, more interested in his jug than the brewing crisis.
"Then go take care of it," he said simply. "Sweep the trash off the board before it starts to stink."
King's wings flared slightly—never a good sign. "You're underestimating this. We don't know if it's just trash."
"If it's not," Kaido said, lifting his jug, "then they'll come here. And when they do…" He tilted the jug toward his club. "I'll be sober enough."
King gave no visible reaction. But internally, he filed the comment under 'Kaido's Annual Plan for Not Dying #327'.
"I'll move out tonight."
"Good." Kaido finally stood, towering over even King, cracking his neck with the sound of a ship hull snapping in a storm. "And tell Joker if he dies before we finish our plans, I'll kill him again."
King didn't respond. He turned and left with the authority of a man whose outfit had fifteen pounds of spikes and not a single exposed square inch of skin.
Outside, the wind howled. King spread his black wings, fire trailing behind him like a comet's tail.
War was coming. And if Kaido wouldn't take it seriously yet, King would. Because someone—somewhere—had the guts to mess with the Smile supply.
And King was going to burn that someone to ash.
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Obito;
If one listened closely enough in the Hidden Leaf, they might've heard it—the stillness. Not the calm sort of stillness you'd find in a warm afternoon garden, but the eerie kind that clings to the air before a storm. And storms, as any ninja worth their headband knew, never arrived politely. They exploded.
The village had been different ever since Naruto disappeared.
Of course, people still smiled. The Ichiraku stand still served the best miso ramen this side of Fire Country, and the Academy still echoed with shuriken mishaps and genin bragging rights. But under it all, a quiet worry pulsed. A growing itch, like something monumental was being missed.
They weren't wrong.
In a place far removed from the warmth of the Leaf, buried beneath the shifting shadows of forgotten warzones and endless dusk, sat a man who wasn't quite a man anymore.
Obito Uchiha.
Or Madara, as he now preferred to be called. He was draped in his customary armor—old, iron, cracked with age—and surrounded by the soft hum of dying light. But the true center of his world was not the weapons or war plans sprawled around him.
It was a single eye.
A Sharingan, spinning slowly, ominously in a glassy pool of chakra. It hovered like a cursed star above a black pedestal of stone.
Obito stared into it.
Because, through it, he was watching Kakashi.
Ah, Kakashi—old friend, old traitor, old vessel. The eye he had once gifted his comrade now served as the very window through which he plotted that same comrade's downfall.
A poetic twist, if you liked your poetry bitter and coated in revenge.
Kakashi didn't know, of course. The eye to him was a symbol of friendship. But to Obito, it had become a tether. And through that tether, he had watched Naruto vanish. Watched as he and his strange new companions tore open a path through dimensions and leapt into another world.
One with… pirates.
Pirates, of all things.
Obito would've scoffed—if he hadn't already seen the bizarre powers that danced in that world. Rubber boys. Sword ghosts. Sea beasts that could swallow a tailed beast whole.
And yet, Naruto thrived in it. Of course he did.
"Tch."
He turned from the viewing pool, his own cloak billowing as he strode to the back of the chamber.
"Zetsu," he snapped.
From the shadows, like a puddle developing sarcasm, rose Black Zetsu—half-goo, half-mischief, and entirely annoying.
"Yes, yes, I'm here, O Great Plotting One," Zetsu purred, eyes gleaming like oil slicks. "I suppose you've seen the ramen-eater flying through the sky on some cloud motorcycle or other?"
Obito's jaw twitched. "I need a portal. One stable enough to retrieve Naruto and the Kyūbi. You said you were working on it."
"I am," Zetsu said, rolling his amorphous shoulders. "These things take time. Dimensional holes aren't like curtain rods—you can't just hammer them into place. Not without unraveling at least one reality."
Obito stepped forward, the air rippling around him with controlled fury.
"Then rip it. I don't care how many threads you have to pull."
Zetsu raised a blob-like hand. "Careful. Rage wrinkles your forehead. Not very Madara of you."
Obito's eye spun dangerously, the Mangekyō glinting.
Zetsu sighed, oozing back into the floor with dramatic flair. "Fine. Fine. I'll work faster. But you'll have to wait for the moment they're weakest. When they're exhausted. Distracted. Then, you strike."
Obito turned back to the suspended Sharingan.
"Soon," he whispered. "I'll take back what's mine."
And far away, through that same eye, Kakashi laughed at something Naruto said. None the wiser. None the closer to the truth.
But fate, as always, was watching.
And fate, much like Zetsu, had a particularly twisted sense of humor.
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Zetsu:
In the hushed corners of the world, far from the warmth of sunlight and the gossiping of birds, there existed a thought. A very old, very cunning thought. It slithered through the void like an ink-stained whisper, never quite seen, never quite silent.
This thought had a name.
Zetsu.
Black Zetsu, to be precise—though he much preferred "the will of Kaguya," if anyone had ever bothered to ask. They didn't, of course. No one asked shadows what they thought. Which was fortunate, really, because Zetsu had many thoughts. Dangerous ones.
He watched Obito pace, rant, and glare at a glassy Sharingan floating like a sinister chandelier, and if Zetsu had eyes in the conventional sense, he'd have rolled them so hard they'd do a full cartwheel.
"Oh yes, let's all obsess over Naruto," Zetsu muttered to himself, blending with the walls like a polite parasite. "The golden boy. The chosen rasengan-spammer. What could possibly go wrong if we just let him bounce around the universe like a pinball of destiny?"
He snorted. Or tried to, which came out more like a gloppy sigh.
The truth—one Zetsu had no intention of sharing with Obito or anyone else—was that Naruto terrified him.
Not in the loud, flashy way Madara once had. No, Naruto was the kind of terrifying that came with unpredictability. Like planting a seed and expecting daisies, but growing a tiger instead.
He was a wildcard.
And Zetsu hated wildcards.
After all, he had been cultivating this plan for a thousand years. One thousand years of nudging, whispering, poisoning thoughts and planting ideas like cursed daisies in the minds of fools. Kingdoms had fallen. Shinobi had risen. Entire bloodlines had been twisted, all to prepare for the moment when the world would kneel before one name:
Kaguya.
Mother. Immortal Queen. The true Otsutsuki.
The plan was simple—elegant, really. Gather the tailed beasts. Bring them together. Reform the Ten-Tails. Awaken his mother. Let her wrap the world in her divine cocoon of Infinite Tsukuyomi and turn all of existence into one long, blissful nap.
Easy.
Except now—now—Naruto had decided to gallivant off into some pirate-infested, devil-fruit-chewing dimension where reality bent like noodles in a boiling pot.
Zetsu was not pleased.
He wasn't just worried about Naruto's chaos. No. He was worried about who might be watching.
The Otsutsuki didn't just seed his world. They seeded all worlds. Planets with life weren't miracles; they were farms. Garden patches. Test beds for chakra-rich fruit.
The pirate world had power—devil fruit power. Something that might just interest his long-lost cousins floating in cosmic silence.
If another Otsutsuki appeared? If one sniffed out the Kyūbi—a piece of his mother—and decided to munch on it like a particularly juicy star-fruit?
No. Zetsu's ooze quivered with fury.
That would not do.
"That little yellow brat doesn't even know what he's walking into," he murmured, wrapping himself tighter in the stone. "And those idiots—Obito, Madara, the rest—they think this is about revenge or war. Children. This is about salvation. Enlightenment. Unity under a true immortal."
He looked up, imagining her—Kaguya—floating above the earth with eyes like galaxies and hair that danced with the will of stars.
"Their utopia is a lie," he whispered with reverence. "The only utopia is one ruled by her. These mortals should be honored to become part of her. To be… consumed by her."
His body melted into the shadows again, the whisper of a smile stretching across his amorphous face.
Let Obito rant. Let Naruto play hero.
In the end, all would kneel.
Because Zetsu was not just the shadow of a man.
He was the dream of an immortal.
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Sasuke:
It was raining.
Not the dramatic, thunder-and-lightning kind of storm that storytellers liked to place over epic deaths—but the quiet, bone-soaking kind. The kind that didn't roar but whispered. Like the sky was weeping, not screaming.
Sasuke Uchiha stood amidst it all, breathing heavily, the taste of blood and metal thick on his tongue. Mud sloshed under his feet, puddling beneath the unmoving body of the man who had once held the title of "big brother" in his heart. That title had long since rusted, warped under the weight of murder and betrayal, but now…
Now it was just Itachi.
Silent. Cold. Gone.
There was no victory in his breath. No satisfaction in the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Just emptiness. A yawning silence that echoed louder than all the years of fury.
The rain pressed down on him as if to say: You did it. You won. So why do you still feel like you've lost?
Somewhere, in the gentle hum of the falling water, a song stirred in his thoughts—one he'd heard from Naruto. That idiot always found a way to tuck songs into people's hearts like they were kunai in a belt pouch.
"Spin… Oh our sweet earth, spin…"
Sasuke whispered the words in his mind, not aloud—he didn't trust his voice right now. His throat was too tight, his heart too bitter.
"For the kids to always meet… and for the dream to always bloom…"
He crouched beside Itachi, staring at the blood that pooled like ink around his brother's fingers. For all his cruelty, Itachi had never wavered in power. His Mangekyō Sharingan had burned like twin comets. That power would have torn Sasuke to pieces if it weren't for—
"Naruto…" Sasuke muttered.
He could still see him, that knuckleheaded fool, grinning with those sun-drenched eyes and that idiotic Sage Mode aura flaring around him like a wild animal's heartbeat. Naruto had pushed him—again and again—until Sasuke had been forced to look inward instead of outward. To look at why he fought, not just who.
"I didn't kill you," Sasuke said softly, not to Naruto but to himself. "You were right. I didn't have to. I got here without breaking the last bond I had."
The Mangekyō burned behind his eyelids even now, echoing its activation in a pain that was almost spiritual. Itachi had wanted him to awaken it through blood, through fratricide. But Sasuke had found a different path.
Naruto's path.
"Stupid idiot," Sasuke whispered, the corner of his mouth twitching. "You had to show me there was another way."
He turned slightly, hand brushing the seal of his summoning scroll as he gently stored Itachi's body inside it. The pain was there—but distant. Not because the hate had ended. But because the road ahead was no longer only built on revenge.
He wobbled as he stood—chakra gone, muscles trembling, legs soaked and half-dead from exhaustion.
Then he saw it.
A hand.
Reaching out to him.
Warm. Steady. Calloused from training. So infuriatingly familiar that Sasuke actually laughed, a bitter chuckle tearing from his throat.
"You're not even here," he said to the phantom Naruto in front of him. "Of course you're not. Just my imagination being clingy."
He reached out anyway, fingers brushing through mist. Rain ran down his face like tears he refused to admit were there.
He blinked. That stupid song was stuck in his head again. It always played when Naruto was nearby—or maybe just when his presence was needed.
A song. A silly, haunting, beautiful song. One he had no memory of learning, and yet knew by heart.
Spin
Oh our sweet earth spin
For the kids to always meet
And for the dream to always bloom
With what is coming, spin
Sasuke blinked. Was he... singing? Internally?
That was new.
It must be the chakra exhaustion talking.
But he didn't stop the words. The song spilled through his thoughts like a whispered lullaby, one that soothed the restless ghosts clawing at his ribs.
In the moment of sadness, I cry
I need my friends to tell
The matters have become worse
And the earth isn't spinning
His lips curled—not in a smile, but something close. Something gentler. He remembered the rooftop. He remembered Naruto's punch. Sakura's voice. Kakashi's eye. Team 7, messy and broken and perfect in their own disastrous way.
Maybe that was what Itachi never understood.
Sasuke didn't need to kill Naruto to awaken power.
Because power wasn't in hate.
Power was in love. In bonds.
In Naruto's utterly idiotic, infuriating, selfless stubbornness that refused to let go.
There must be a wind
That will scatter the clouds away
And the sun with its rising will wash the worries away
He could see it now. A wind rising in the distance. The storm would break. The sun would return. He would stand again.
He had friends. Bonds.
He had a future. One worth spinning the world for.
Don't worry
Give us your hand
Because your friends have come back to you
"Che," Sasuke muttered aloud, pushing himself upright with a groan. "Get out of my head, Naruto..."
But even as he said it, the words didn't hold any venom.
He stored Itachi's body carefully, the last proof of a war that had spanned lifetimes. And then he looked up—toward the sky, toward whatever came next.
Spin
Oh our sweet earth spin
For the kids to always meet
And for the dream to always bloom
For the sake of what is coming, spin.
His team—Suigetsu, Karin, Jugo—they stood at the treeline, silent, watching.
Sasuke looked toward the horizon.
"Let's go," he said.
"Where to?" Karin asked, voice softer than usual.
Sasuke didn't answer at first. Then, with a smile that was small but real, he said:
"Wherever the earth spins."
Because for the sake of what was coming, he had to be ready.
And he had a promise to keep.