Rain pelts down furiously from the iron sky, searing the skin and souls and minds of the myriad of existences lost and alone writhing throughout the oily black city-scape. The life found within this soul-less mass of concrete and battered steel is not life as such, as a growth from the dead like maggots or mold dragging themselves to existence out of a fetid corpse; fetid being a frighteningly apt word to describe Amegakure.

A city hidden in torrential rain and screaming with the sheer force of human misery distilled within.

It was all a cycle-the simplicity of it the only remotely harmonious feature of the entire putrid excuse for a society – take a hit; kill; fuck; sell (sell your heirlooms wedding-ring body soul children eggs); degrade; hate; rip; devour; roar and roar and scream your defiance- in the throes of a high which burns like the sun courses through your veins and rips through crosshatching blackened needle scars.


A dank basement (one of many although certainly not one of the worst) filled with bitter blue smoke and bleeding yellow light. 'Dante' owns it, so called because he has become something of a hell's narrator, totally aware and skilfully guiding.

His name was once Zabuza but he likes Dante. It was a gift, one of few he has ever been given, as well as conveniently disconnecting him from the massacre of 49 children and countless adults (Ah, youth.). But Dante is dying. He isn't surprised, having made it past thirty makes him something of an antique in the drenched (in sin and rape and stolen children) city.

So choking on his own fluids because of a fucked-up dose of E is an unpleasant but not shocking way to go. Gurgling through the syrupy liquid crowding inflamed red airways Dante attempts to make just the tiniest bit of safety wing its way like a dirty dove to the two frail forms clutching at his rank shirt.

"Konoha… Ka..ka...sh…whi..fang…"

Dante is rather pleased by his abstract machinations, the usual thoughts of ripping flesh and young screams momentarily abandoned for the nauseously amused thought that he of all people was releasing them from his hell, with a good intention (because after all wasn't that what brought people to hell to start with?).

As the blue smoke curls and caresses the crumpled forms, and the filthy water continues to be ripped from the so-called heavens Dante becomes Zabuza again and dies frothing at the mouth and ripping into the spinal cord of a long dead eleven year old.


After much searching two figures eventually emerge out into the rain clutching within their shirts thousands of dollars' worth of drugs and enough hard cash to get them to Konoha.

There was no point doing anything with the body apart from closing the eyes. The Harvesters would probably sniff him out soon enough anyway, the body snatchers working as free-lance body collectors for the organ dealers and labs.

The blurred figures disappear into the night.