Empathy
At a young age Naruto is captured and tortured by a villager. As he lay close to death, the demon within him grants him a terrible and powerful gift, the ability to transfer his every experience with a single touch. He is left to grow up without knowing the touch of another, to forget the feel of skin against skin, and to know, that for him, any hope of a family, has been destroyed. In this environment, Naruto must grow, in this environment, he will become anathema to his felow students. And in this environment, he must make his dream of becoming Hokage, come true.
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"Uhh" His head hung limply as he waited for what he knew would come. His eyes teared up. The man had seemed so nice, then, once they were in the store, he'd knocked him out.
The door opened into the small room in the slums of Konoha. He could smell it, the liquor on the man's breath, even if he didn't know the word for it, he knew it meant trouble.
His captor pulled a sword off a shelf too high for the child to reach.
Naruto's head rose with the scream ripping from his throat as he felt the sword rip through the ligaments that held his skin to his muscles. The man was slowly skinning him alive.
The man laughed at the child's screams. "Nobody's coming for you ya damned demon, nobody cares." The man took a can off the shelf and proceeded to pour a generous helping of salt into the wound that was already starting to heal.
Naruto screamed louder and louder until his vocal cords gave out.
The man nodded in satisfaction as he watched the skin continue to grow over the wound and the salt within it.
Naruto's silent jerks of pain brought him a few minutes of enjoyment before he started slicing into the other side of his back.
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The fox demon pushed his chakra out in large quantities, He panted with the effort of loading the boy with enough chakra to enhance his healing to the point needed, but he could feel it as his own legs went numb along with the boy's. He wasn't regenerating the blood fast enough.
The boy was dying.
"How, how do I get him to stop, the seal's too strong, I can't get out. If only he could feel..." The fox spirit smiled, a frightening sight to behold.
"If only he could feel what Naruto feels."
The demon smiled again as he slowly split his chakra, and his concentration into the task of keeping the boy alive, and making sure the man would feel each cut.
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Naruto continued to whimper as the man cut into him. He struggled against the chains that held him still in the middle of the floor.
The man smacked him in the face as he tried to get away.
The boy barely noticed the pain, but the man started to scream in pain as each instance of pain and the few pleasurable moments overloaded his mind in an instant that seemed to last an eternity. Then he fell to the floor.
Naruto lay unconscious for a day while the man beside him blubbered, his mind, had someone with the ability to see it as such, would resemble old oatmeal, a soggy mass that could not possibly be a living being.
Then the Anbu made their way into his home to look for clues to the disappearance of the man. It was there that the man dressed in black, the man wearing an animal mask over his eyes, one of which came from his best friend, found the child and took him to the village leader, the Hokage.
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The young boy had a blanket covering his upper body, he remained quiet though the Kyuubi had long since repaired the damage to his vocal cords.
The old man sat down on his haunches and placed his hand on the blanket covering the boy's shoulders. "Naruto?"
The small child flinched away form the contact, unwilling to look into the man's face. Sarutobi smiled sadly. "It's okay Naruto. It's over, he's never going to hurt you again."
Tears started to leak down his face. "And what about the next one?"
Sarutobi grimaced. Though he could not stop it, he knew of the overwhelming hatred toward the boy. He started to wrap his arms around the child in an attempt to comfort him. And his wrist brushed the boy's bared chest, and the pain began.