Nezumi no Nindo

"Useless."

He had never hated a word more than that one. It exemplified all that was wrong with this village, and yet it suited him down to the ground as far as they were concerned.

"Get out of the way you useless brat! No good kid sucking up money from the council's coffers."

All they saw was the problem, and no one even bothered to think about what made him that way. If it didn't affect the food in their guts or the roofs they lay under they didn't think a damn thing half the time. But they sure as hell loved to judge, and like sheep they'd all taken up the bleating cry after a chance run in with a ninja had turned their heads. As one they had taken up his carelessly tossed insult and constantly hurled it his way like refuse. Harmless, but the stench of it clung to him wherever he went.

Damn that Uchiha and damn his eyes.

In the last year Naruto had moved up in the world, the Hokage finally manning up and moving him out of the district to a nice, if abandoned and just on this side of condemned apartment that had been around since the shodaime decided hiding something with an eighty foot perimeter wall inside a seventy foot high forest was just a dandy idea. It was historic, well built, and rotting apart at the seams, but it was safe and it was his. He'd even found the time to move his steadily growing rat colony out of the old place. The little bastards had hated him the first few weeks, but feeding them and not rolling too much on the mattress they'd ended up sharing for warmth won them over. With monthly dumps of old non perishables made by whatever nin the Hokage had suckered into the job that week he made out fine, so long as he kept out of sight so as to avoid any unfortunate accidents on his part. The hunts never really stopped, but he never expected them to, and it's not like they did any lasting damage. But when the Hokage had granted him his own place things were looking up, there was even a tiny little ramen joint down the block that would serve him, and the eats were so good no one could really afford to boycott the stand just because he was a customer. This, he thought, was the good life.

That is until his first run in with his new neighbours.

Too High and Civilised to do things the easy and cathartic way and simply beat their grievances out on him, the merchants, ninja, and clan families that made up the upper crust of Konoha were content to stockade him from every store, convince their children to mock him in their horrible childish voices, like screeching banshees playing at real human emotion, stalking him and dancing in circles while they pelted him with dirt and stones, their elders crowding around approvingly and blocking any means of escape. It was an entirely new form of torment, being simultaneously ignored and ridiculed. It cut deep into places he didn't know he had, places he thought he'd shut off forever in the orphanage.

And then someone called him useless, and with cold, cruel smiles they followed.

A drain on society, a burden, indigent, useless and will never amount to anything.


After only a few days of this he asked old man Hokage to enrol him in the academy. He was adamant, and begged, something he'd never believed he could bring himself to, just to have something to occupy himself away from the general populace. He begged and he threatened, promising to throw himself to the wolves that were his friends and neighbours and let them end it, knowing his wizened benefactor would never let this happen. The Hokage too, was adamant, that no child had ever immersed themselves into the ninja lifestyle so young and come out sane.

As he limped out, still nursing wounds from his detractors, he turned his beaming smile back to the slumped, tired old man that was the strongest ninja in their village. It fit his face so perfectly, and it sometimes seemed to the Fire Shadow that he had never learned any other way to smile, but he knew it for what it was. A perfect facade he threw up over his bitter agony, so mocking and cruel in its blinding glory to sit on one so tormented. But still, it was a smile only for him, a small favour the boy performed to make him feel better about the weight upon them both. That is why the little one's next words put a chill into his old bones that would not leave him for a very long time to come. It was simple, and yet the perfect parting shot and it showed him how much this child was forced to grow in his forced absence.

"Sane is a relative term Old Man, and there's more than one way to lose it all."

The next day, Inu told Naruto to show up at the academy for orientation. His apparent disgusted demeanour was matched by Naruto's undisguised glee.


It had been a year, and not much had changed for Naruto. He still revelled in the night, the dark passages that no one but him seemed to traverse, although he knew better. After all, good ninja left no footprints. On the whole he struggled with his studies, being completely ignored by his teachers, but it was a welcome distraction from being ignored by everyone else. He and the Hokage still met, still traded veiled messages in front of hidden Anbu that even a child could see were not for protection and more akin to tolerated spies.

"Summoning is a rare art, and one highly prized by all the Hidden Villages." Droned the teacher, a gaunt man who was chronically ill, "And today we have a special treat for you brats, your first look at one of Konoha's summoning scrolls. The Rat contract is our oldest held scroll, dating back to the times of the Sannin, and was once signed by Orochimaru himself. After he obtained the Snake scroll though, he set his new summons upon the old, and as such this scroll is contracted with nothing, and largely useless."

The chuunin hid a smile as one of his charges in the back corner bit back a flinch at the word. He decided to bait the fox further, prolonging his fun, "Something wrong Uzumaki?"

Naruto whipped his head up in shock as a few heads turned to his darkened hallow, "Sensei... where will the scroll go when you finish with it?" He asked, determined not to squander this opportunity, a scroll for rats, and no matter where they hid it from him it would be his.

This elicited a frown, but he knew the man had to keep up appearances. It was inspection day, and everyone had to be on guard to keep their subversive attitudes in check. So he merely coughed and smiled, like it was nothing to him to answer the demon's insipid, presumptuous question.

"It will be taken back to the shinobi archives, where it will be stored with our other relics. To keep enemy nin from stealing our techniques and artifacts, only anbu..."

The man rambled on, fitting the question seamlessly into his lecture, but Naruto had all he needed. He would penetrate these archives, becoming anbu if that's what it took. The scroll would be his.


A year passed, and soon everything would change for the worse.

"You know Hokage-sama, Naruto-kun has quite the infestation in his apartments. I wonder if it would be alright to allocate some of the surplus to bring him up to a higher standard of living?"

"Your attentiveness is admirable Inu. See that it's done while the boy is away at school, let it be a surprise."

"Of course Hokage-sama, of course."

He came back to silence, and the smell of death.

It was actually fumigants and cheap rubber, but from that day onward it was the only scent he would associate with that most final of ends. Not blood, rot or sulphur, but this.

He wasn't at all surprised to see the brood mother, still heavy with young, nailed to his apartment door. It only served as grim foreshadowing to the horrors that lay inside.

As soon as he touched the door it swung open and he was overpowered by the smells of burnt hair and flesh. The floor was strewn with debris from his smashed furniture, and his entire hatch of rats were thrown into a massive pile, smouldering from the fires that caught across their backs.

At the sight of it his detached apathy fled, and so did he, pouring all his anguish into one act. He had to get there, he needed help and there was only ever one man who would help him.

"Jiji!" his cry seemed to shake the tower as he threw open the door only to stand in shock at the sight before him. The old man sat, smiling benignly, knowingly, and as Naruto began to realise, nefariously.

He Knew, he probably gave the order himself, and then Naruto's last solace, the few creatures who ever shared space with him without malice, were gone.

"Isn't it wonderful to have a clean house Naruto? I know you had probably grown used to living with those vermin, but soon you'll find that having everything cleaned up will make you so much happier. So long as you keep things tidy you'll have no problem keeping those pest's out of your life."

He stood, dumbstruck by revalation, and barely managed to verbally acknowledge what the old man had said before turning and slinking down the steps.

He knew. Knew everything. About the rats, his treatment, his failings. Pests, he called them, vermin. Something that only lived at his pleasure. At that Naruto stumbled, his mind making the connection that would take him down the darkened paths that stretched out before him over the horizon of destiny. He only lived at the old man's pleasure, like a bug in a box. The thought chilled him, the fact that underneath that kind mask could beat the heart of indifferent disdain that layed bare on everyone else. He didn't want to die, not just yet, not before everything he'd hoped for had come to fruition. For now though, he must be cautious. He would play the old man's games, keep his nose clean like what he implied, and when the time came and he had his hands on that scroll, he would drown konoha in a sea of rats.


Well there you have it, more ignored ramblings of forgotten crazies, misheard by orderlies and recorded by psychiatrists, then stolen, burnt a bit, dropped in a puddle and interpretted by a blind monkey who knows the useless half of the braille alphabet, then flown to tibet to be translated by a frenchman who was waylaid on his way to thailand, then typed by my hands, straight into your occular cavities.

Be sure to tune in next time for more paranoia, and maybe some claustrophobic tunneling.