Prologue -
Naruto slowly opened his eyes, which was hard, considering they were swollen. He looked at his captors. They were asleep at the moment, which he preferred since they enjoyed torturing him when they were awake. The purple haired loudmouth; the red-headed firecracker, that reminded him of his mother at times; the dark, duck haired bastard that he had once been his friend; and the pink haired kunoichi that had been the one to capture him.
FLASHBACK:
Naruto had left his injured teammates with a shadow clone due to his desire to rescue his teammate Sakura, whom had been captured by Sasuke and his new team. He had reached the hideout and entered. Keeping his guard up and eyes peeled for traps, he went deeper into the cave.
There, near the back of the cave she lay, dirty with torn clothes. He ran up to her then, after lifting her head up gently he called out her name softly. She opened her eyes. When she saw him, she hugged him. Naruto held her, stroking the back of her head while whispering comforting words to her. Then he felt something prick his neck where her hand had been. A needle. His cerulean orbs met her sea-green ones and he realized what had happened. Gone was the fearful and grateful Sakura, instead she was grinning. Then darkness over took him as he muttered "Sakura-chan, why?"
Naruto had awakened in the same position he was in now: Kneeling and covered in only many powerful suppression seals to hold back the bijuu sealed within. He learned later that Sasuke himself had placed them on him. Naruto hadn't said anything, but if he'd wanted to, he could have developed a single seal that would have done the job even better. Then he looked at the two logs standing upright on either side of him. They had been secured to the floor and from each, a chain was attached to each of his wrists with a chakra-suppressing shackle. The shackles were for suppressing his own chakra.
Juugo, the brunette with a multiple personality disorder had left the team after Naruto had secretly taught him how to balance his natural chakra with his own making him a threat no longer. Sakura and Karen had both had a child since his capture (which was how Naruto had been able to estimate how long he'd been captured). Both children had been dumped at the Konoha orphanage after birth. When Naruto learned that, he'd felt ill even if neither of them were his. He knew this because he'd only been allowed to penetrate assholes, both figuratively and literally.
Naruto had no real idea how long he'd been here, probably ten months to a year. He remembered, though, that about a month before he had gone on the mission that had caused the last two members of cell number 7 to vanish, he had learned from his wife, Hinata that he was going to be a father. It had been a wonderful twenty-fourth birthday present. Hoping to get to see his child was the only thing keeping him going.
Tao also helped. The ten-tailed beast was a wonderful conversationalist. While the additional suppression seals held back the chakra, it wasn't enough to keep the two of them from talking. Tao seamed to be very good at cracking jokes, causing Naruto to chuckle every now and then. At the moment, however, Tao was also asleep.
Naruto was brought out of his thoughts when suddenly, a small round ball rolled into the room where they all were, purple smoke issuing out of it. Naruto wanted to shout, alert them of the attack. But he lacked the strength to do so. He also lacked the strength to hold his breath. The last thing he thought before the darkness encompassed him was that he might never get to see his wife and child again.
Four men came into the room as the poison gas started to clear. They just needed the boy's corpse, so they figured that, in order to avoid a battle they would just kill everyone in there while they slept. They looked at the bodies of the four captors, checking to confirm their kill.
Then they went to where their target was supposed to be. But the blond war hero was gone! The shackles that were supposed to be restraining him lay limply between the support logs. Had he escaped while the others slept? No, they thought. He would have been too weak. So where was his body?
"The boss ain't gonna be happy when he learns that the million ryo bounty ain't here." One of the men said, cringing.