Story: Crawling from Darkness
Author: Night'z Kiss
Chapter One: And So it Begins…
Words: 3,077
Disclaimer: I do not own the series of Naruto. I am not so lucky. All I have are my thoughts and aspirations.
(Kyuubi): regular speech
(Kyuubi): Kyuubi speaking
(Kyuubi): Mental speech/thinking
It was always hard, looking back on the decisions I had made. It was hard to come to the realization that everything wasn't ok, that things did not turn out all right. I always thought that with enough will power and hope, that anything was possible, even the impossible. How cheesy now that I think back on that idiotic logic I had once held so dear.
What changed you ask. Let me tell you. Tell you the horrors that no one can survive unscathed. The agony and tragedy of misfortune that burn uncontrolled through our lives, consuming everything until only ash falls.
Our village and people were so many things, wonderful things at one point. But everything changed the day he came looking for me. That man came to our village looking to destroy us, and in many ways he did.
Our village was ripped apart, our moral crushed, and our friends and families stolen from us. Our village became a living place of ruins. With rubble and smoke filtering in the background as the blood of Konoha's villagers filled the streets.
Broken dolls lying in the streets; crimson stains painting their cold unfeeling flesh. Every time I glanced at one, something in me broke.
But it was seeing the bodies of the innocent children that body slammed the dam holding in check my emotions. Rational and logic had no place in the face of total annihilation of the people I loved. The rage drove away anything else that stood in its way.
Red became my eyes, sharp my teeth and long my nails. Human not quite so much. Demon they whispered when they thought I could not here them. But I did, and for once I agreed. What human man, woman, or child could survive safe and sound in this nightmare? Not I for sure.
And so I let go of the things that held me back. My humanity some would say was the first to go. Sanity? Who needs that anyway? My mind stopped, the thoughts disappeared. Rationality and intellectualization had no place within my rage.
A scream escaped my blooded lips. A wounded shriek that made even a banshee balk. Red, it was all I could see. And now that I think back, after the red then came the black. I don't remember what happened after I lost it.
When I awoke, I found myself here in this cell. The first thing that I noticed was the stench. It grabbed at me, demanding all of my attention. The putrid stench told me that I had been in this place for quite some time.
I tried to move, to concentrate on something other then the smell of dried blood, and the not quite so mysterious something under my nails. I could also feel the blood slowly crawling down my forehead and into my eyes.
I tried to lift my arms, to wipe the blood from my eyes. It was then that I realized I could not move them at all. My arms were held in place by something. At first I thought that it was me just being tired and/or weak. But when I glanced up I was two black bracelets circling my wrists. Connected to these bracelets were chains. I followed the chains' path and saw that it led to the ceiling above me.
My eyes narrowed as I realized that I was hanging from the ceiling. I looked down at the ground, trying to see how close to the floor I was. My feet could not touch the ground; I must have been a foot or more above the ground.
Looking around the room, I saw nothing but dark, wretched walls. Slime and other questionable substances stained the walls dark, almost black. The only reason I could discern this was because of the torches that lined the walls.
They were all alight. So that meant that either someone was just here or soon will be. Or that someone was watching me, maybe even now as I ponder this situation that looked bleaker every second.
I had the delayed realization that I was a prisoner. But of who I could only guess.
I glanced around the room again, this time looking for a place along the walls that seemed out of place. There would of course be no mirrors or something so obvious, we were ninjas after all.
A lot of good that seemed to do me at the moment though.
Finding no answers in the area surrounding me, I glanced up again. If I could only get out of these damn shackles. Even as I tried to reach my chakra, I knew that I would find it lacking. And as I reached into myself, I could not find my chakra. Something was stopping me. Glancing at the shackles, I would have bet my life that they were the ones responsible.
Whoever had me, was not stupid in the least. They knew that ninja were almost helpless without their chakra. Unless they were Lee, then they kicked ass. But unfortunately, I was not Lee.
I was Naruto Uzumaki, the king of chakra. A lot of good that did me. My title seemed pretty damn useless right about now.
Glaring at the shackles, I watched with a frown as blood dripped from my wrists and fell down my arms unto the ground, disappearing into the dark abysses that was the floor. Having a very bad feeling about the shackles, I decided to test my thought.
I struggled slightly against the shackles, pulling this way and that at them. Immediately pain bit into the tender flesh of my wrists. Even as I watched, more of my precious life blood dripped down my arms.
Shit…the shackles had something sharp embedded in them that easily cut flesh. That meant that I could not struggle against them without chancing bleeding out. I didn't know if Kyuubi could heal that kind of damage when my chakra was blocked. The signs of my bleeding wrists were pointing in the direction of a big fat no.
So for all intentions and purposes, I was helpless. Something that I was not used to at all. I didn't like it one damn bit.
"Are you finally awake boy?" The voice growled softly in my mind.
The voice was a whisper, but it might as well have been a shout. My head suddenly burst into pain. A headache of the likes I had never before. It honestly felt like the kyuubi was ripping my brain to shreds. My vision darkened under the sudden flare of agony.
"Ky…uu…bi? Hur…ts…" My teeth ground together with the pressure I was applying to them.
"I know kit. Just hold on. I'm working…" I stopped listening. None of it made sense to me anyway.
Finally I couldn't take it anymore; the pain had blossomed into a god forbidden ugly flower. Only this flower seemed to fest off of my blood. I would have laughed along side the Kyuubi if I had been able. As it was, I was already falling into that place I was beginning to think that I would never leave.
"Naruto…wake up!"
"Uzumaki…" Huh?
"Naruto!" Wha? My mind wasn't working right yet.
"…wake him up since he won't do it himself." A strange new voice added into the madness that was my mind.
I was sleeping, or trying to at least. The darkest corners of my mind were so peaceful and calming. I never wanted to leave this abyss of nothingness. I couldn't feel anything here. Words like pain, love, and hate, fear were only abstracts that only held the meaning given to them. I didn't want to awaken, but something or someone had other ideas.
Fire ignited within my body. The neural connects over stimulation with white hot agony. My brain felt like it was being crushed, again. My body was ripped from its pain induced slumber into reality.
I came into consciousness in much the same way I left it. In pain.
"Wake up Uzumaki," another jolt of pain. This time centered around my cheek.
A slap. Some bastard slapped me.
"Naruto!" Kyuubi sounded strange, at least for him. He almost sounded…worried.
Things had to be bad if the Kyuubi sounded that desperate. What in the hell was going on?
'Kyuubi? What?' All the words weren't forming easily within my mind, so I tried to shove a picture of my confusion towards him. That probably just confused him more, or at least it would have confused me more. Now I'm just confusing myself.
"Naruto, you need to listen closely. You have been captured. You have also been badly injured," I listened closely to the other soul whom resided within me. Just because I don't know what is going on, doesn't mean that Kyuubi doesn't know either.
"Naruto! Pay attention!" Joy, my first internal scolding my something other than myself.
"Naruto! Now I want you to concentrate! The moment you open your eyes, they are going to hurt you. You have to be ready for that." It amazed me how much the Kyuubi could care so much for his prison guard at times.
"Dammit Naruto! If you die, I die along side you. I will not be destroyed by these pitiful humans! Now you are going to listen very…Naruto…Naru…"
I was already started to drift away. It took to much energy to listen so closely. Besides, most of what Kyuubi was saying was going right over my head anyway. His voice was becoming a soft growl in the recesses of my mind. He was getting quieter and quieter, or maybe I was just drifting far and far away.
"Demon brat! Wake up!" This scream was a thousand times as loud as the Kyuubi.
My eyes opened of their own accord. Someone had screamed right in my ear. It was a natural reflect to open the eyes to see what the hell was right beside me.
At first my eyes could not focus. Everything in front of me was a mass of blurs. Moving blurs that I knew could not be beneficial to my health. I tried to focus on the blur closest to me, assuming that this one owned the horrible voice that had been torturing me these last few minutes.
The features slowly agonizing bit by bit became more clear. Clear enough that the first feature I could make out was the white…hat? the man wore on his head. And abnormally small head at that.
But I quickly realized that it wasn't a hat the man wore. As the man's facial features became sharply focused in my gaze, I realized that the white cloth I had thought a hat were really bandages.
The one eye I could see was glaring at me. The man studied me closely. His mouth twitching as if trying to suppress a snarl. A scar beneath his pale lips that contorted with each movement of the muscles underlying his aging flesh.
Just looking into this man's face, I knew. I knew without a doubt whose prisoner I was. I did not know what would become of me. But the chill that crawled along my spine knew it wasn't anything good.
"Danzo…" My lips cracked, specks op blood seeping from them.
"Ah…Naruto. You don't know how long I have waited for this moment." His voice was almost as unseemly as his scarred face.
"I hope you are ready to…hang around for a bit," he laughed at his own joke. He was the only one laughing.
"I'm afraid things are going to be a bit different around here now." The laughter was gone from his voice now, each following word slower and colder than the last.
Then that god ugly face light up as that thing that could never be mistaken for a smile spread across his face, transforming it into something that made the demon in me howl. But I downed out the cried of Kyuubi, I had more pressing matters to attend to.
"Your precious Tsunade isn't able to help or protect you anymore."
My eyes widened. What had happened to Tsunade? Was he lying? Was she looking for me even right now at this moment? I wanted to believe that Tsunade was on her way to rescue me, but something in Danzo's face crushed that hope.
"Oh yes, Naruto, I'm afraid Tsunade did not survive the battle with Pein. While her efforts were valorous, they were not quite good enough."
Each word out of his mouth was another shock to my system. I felt my breaths stop, my heart pounding wildly in my ears. And yet I could do no more then wait and hear of my precious person's fate.
"She put up a good fight, enough to drive Pein out of the village. Of course, he was already weakened thanks to your…attack. She asked about you. Didn't even care that she was dying. All she cared about was you." He stopped here, and leaned closer to my face.
With his breath ghosting my cheek, he whispered in my ear, "But you should have seen the look on her face when I told her that you were still alive and that I had already arranged for some…special treatment for your recuperation." He started to laugh then. The puffs on my cheek getting moist with spittle.
"I told her not to worry, that I would take good care of Konoha's number one ninja. She died knowing exactly what that meant. What a beautiful day, wasn't it Naruto?"
Hatred. A living hatred spread like poison in my veins. Spread until every inch of me was shaking. I wanted to kill this man, much more than I had ever wanted to kill another. I could feel the Kyuubi's chakra within me, trying to get out. It pushed against the cage that was trapped in my body in an almost painful way.
"Ah, I see you are trying to access your charka. Well, I'm afraid that we had to put special manacles on you for your own safety. Those bands make it so you can not access your chakra. We wouldn't want the demon chakra inside of you to become unstable now would we?" His voice was sickly sweet, as if he were truly worried about me.
A lie. It was all lies! But regardless, I could not manipulate my chakra. It was trapped within my body with no way out. I was trapped, and we both knew it. Even Kyuubi knew it, and he was about as happy with this arrangement as I was.
"So Naruto…how about we start on your training now? If we want you to be the best weapon of all the ninja villages, we need to shape you up." I could perfectly imagine what shape he wanted me in. Any as long as it was broken and he could mend the pieces.
He wanted to destroy me, and then rebuild me. And I was powerless to stop him.
"And don't worry about your pesky teammates and friends. They are at your funeral right now as we speak. You should be happy, you and Tsunade are being laid to rest on the same day." Oh god…please let it all be a dream, a lie, anything but this!
"You and I are going to be spending a lot of time together, Naruto." The horror I felt in that moment, I cannot even begin to describe.
"It's too bad that bitch couldn't be alive to see the things I'm going to do to you. But at least she died knowing what's going to happen to you. And knowing that she could do nothing to stop it."
Something in me snapped. Maybe my will to live. At that moment, I didn't care if he ripped my throat out. I wanted him to die. I wanted to bath in his blood. I didn't even care that the Kyuubi's thoughts were merging with my own.
"Fuck you!" I spat at him, my voice echoing through the small room.
And again he slapped me. Hard enough that this time I nicked my lip on my teeth. More blood was freely falling, dribbling down my chin. And so I looked him in the eye, my lips spreading in a bloody parody of a smile.
And then I spat at him. There was plenty of excess blood to make my aim worthwhile. I watched with glee as the glob of spit landed on his face. Good, now it was even more ugly, just like his insides.
I started to laugh at the look on his face. Pure surprise, his eye as wide as I've ever seen it. His lips frozen in shock. It was beautiful. Even the clenched fist I saw being raised didn't mare the beauty.
I was still laughing when his fist broke into my face. My cheek quickly crumbled under the pressure. The force of the pouch threw my head back. As I brought my head back to the front, my face was still locked into a bloody grim smile.
He would have to physically remove it from my face. 'Cause I wasn't about to scream, no matter what he did to me. Besides, there was nothing to say anyway. He was saying it all with his fists.
I lost count after the first few punches that rained all over my body of how many times he hit me. It didn't matter, I never opened my mouth. And even after my lips lost their ability to smile, the bastard could still see it in my eyes. And even when he blacked both of those, my body was still shook with the silent laughter that I could not express in any other way.
I could feel myself slipping into unconsciousness, but I didn't care. I stared to laugh again, even though no sound came out. I could hear it in my head, and it was bouncing off of every wall and counter in existence. And even though my laugh began to sound desperate, I couldn't stop. I wouldn't stop. Not until I was dead. I was still laughing when the final blow to my noggin spelled the end of my resistance. And then, lights out.