I've had this idea in my mind for sometime now, so I wanted to see how it would turn out. If it's well-liked, I will publish more. And don't worry, I will actually update Ballad of a Demon soon. I promise!
THUMP
THUMP
THUMP
The rain sneaked down the cracked walls as lightning flashed overhead, and 3 figures stood over a pile of shadows in an alley, one-by-one dealing kicks into the object. Time passes, and the 3 men, no, boys leave and, finally, the pile stirs, cerulean orbs opening in a dull, almost bored looking way. This boy whipped the blood trickling from his mouth corners, face set in a grim frown, mind-gears grinding back from the cold-set darkness they had stopped to. He sat dabbing his bruises and gashes with a dirty cloth, ripped from his already derelict shirt, before his hands finally grasped the rusted pipe sticking halfway through his belly. His teeth grinded together, nearly making sparks, as he pulled the pipe out from his body in a fantastic rainbow of spurted blood, staining the already red-drenched asphalt.
The pipe cluttered to the ground as the boy stuffed his hand into the wound to keep it from bleeding out, before dragging himself with one arm into the remains of a wrecked crate, ignoring the splinters and slivers digging into his back. He propped himself up on a pile of piss-stained rags, before finally letting his eyes rest from the daily torment that his life contained. And thus ended another day for Uzumaki Naruto.
Uzumaki Naruto was somewhat of an enigma at Konoha Shinobi Academy. When he was younger, he was known as a loudmouth prankster, who somehow gained the hatred of the whole of the Konoha adults. Thus, the children picked up on the things they saw their parents due, and they treated Naruto like shit. At first, it was just timidly cursing at him or ignoring him, but by their second year in the Academy, it had already accelerated to beatings and vandalism of his property when he was followed home. It was at the end of the second year when his house was set fire to on October 10th by a couple boys in the class and their fathers. After that day, it was unknown where Naruto lived.
By the third year, Naruto had become dull and un-connected. He wouldn't talk in class, he would barely pass assignments and would mostly fail at tests, when he would take his taunting by the whole class with a bowed head and dry eyes. He never played at recess and never ate at lunch, but he could often be found behind the school being beaten by Uchiha Sasuke and his gang of misfits. When he wasn't there, than no one could find him, but he would be first in for class without anyone seeing him entering.
By the fourth year, he accepted his predicament. Everyday of his life, he would be told he was a monster, a demon that deserved to die horribly, and after being told that every day, he believed it. Unexplainable scars adorned his arms and legs, but no one seemed to notice and care, but when the now-angst filled Sasuke received a gash, everyone though he turned to suicide after his older brother's massacre of his clan. The light in Naruto's eyes had been extinguished, and he offered no resistance when he was beaten half-to-death. He stopped turning in homework, but the teachers didn't care. He would be told to stay inside when the class went outside to practice jutsu and weapon techniques, and would go out of the room when they were reading text books, so by the time he was nine, he couldn't tell a shuriken from a kunai. The kind people of Konoha saw this as passive resistance, and they claimed they encountered an aloof and hostile side of him when no one was around, so the beatings got even worse. It was not an uncommon sight for him to show up with a bloody hole in his spine, with a large gash visible.
Speaking of his clothes, he wore rags barely able to cover his body, and he slept in the shit-stained gutters and back alleys of the Red Light District. He would change his sleeping spot every night to prevent being assaulted while he slept. But eventually, the fathers of the boys at the Shinobi school assigned their sons to follow him and mark where he was located as part of 'survival training' so the men would attack him whenever he fell asleep.
This caused Naruto to become paranoid, constantly fearing for his life. The first time that he didn't sleep was when he was in the middle of his 5th year, on Febuary 23rd. It wasn't just that he was scared to sleep; it was that he physically couldn't sleep. It wasn't that he wasn't tired, either, because he had spent the entire evening running from a mob of angry men. After that day, he couldn't ever sleep again. His paranoia led to his insomnia. Not only that, but he would claim to hear voices, crying voices, and screaming every night.
All of this combined over the years caused him to enter a deep and horrible depression by the age of 10. He wouldn't show up for school, he would stare at his desk when he did go, and the only reason he wasn't kicked out was because the Hokage himself was paying for him to go to it. Due to this, by the time he was 12 and was ready for his exams to become a genin, he was much expected to fail. When he did, the school administration would vow to prevent him from entering again on accounts of 'lacking basic learning skills.'
All of the doubts of him succeeding were proved to be correct when he failed the exam miserably. That marked the day that he first tried to kill himself, and also the day when his rise to power began.
