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I stood with my back straight and my arms by my side, so tense that my muscles were shaking. I was sure that he could see the protruding form of my ribs through my plain grey shirt, my skeletal legs hidden only by a pair of old, black pants.

Kakuzu, the mysterious shinobi hidden from head to toe by a heavy black cloak, just stood silently in front of me, completely impassive. We had been in this position ever since he had motioned for me to follow him out of that hell hole and led me to the surface. It had been disconcerting, seeing the sunlight after having spent so much time underground. I had almost forgotten about him when I paused to just soak up its warmth.

I brought myself back into the moment with a sharp shake of my head and started paying attention again. The door from which we had exited was hidden by thick bushes. It opened like a flap and, now that it was closed, it was almost indistinguishable from the ground around it. Standing out in the open for the first time in years, I was left to look around and realise we were… in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but grass and blue skies in every direction for miles on end.

"Name." His gruff tone broke the silence and shot my already-frayed nerves. I mentally steeled myself and strained to keep my voice steady.

"I'm number forty-seven," I mumbled back, trying my best not to break eye contact.

His lip curled in irritation.

"Name," he repeated.

I swallowed harshly and wet my lips before replying.

"Chiasa." He just nodded and turned to walk away.

"Don't slow me down."

…...

The next few days were nothing short of pure agony as his form glided over the ground in front of me. I was lucky he even bothered to keep the pace sedated enough for me to keep up at all, but it was the only luxury he afforded me.

I had thought that nothing could be worse than the ache of unhealed wounds and the crushing pressure of having the life forcibly dragged out of me in desperate scuffles.

God, they burned.

I had thought that living and fighting in that arena had taught me to survive the worst that life could throw at me, both mentally and physically.

My legs, my throat, my lungs; they all burned.

I was wrong. Because no matter what, there was rest. The fights were bitter but short and the despair hung in the stale arena air like a cloud of poison gas, killing us steadily but gradually.

Determination kept my feet moving, one in front of the other, for the first few hours. I felt the crawl of bile coming up my throat and, for once, I was glad for the empty rumbling of my stomach. Time went on and each part of my body seemed to gain a voice of its own. My legs shouted for me to stop, doubling their own weight in protest. My lungs and throat were set aflame with every breath.

At that point in time I would have done absolutely anything to just stop, to take a break, and rest. Even death might have been more merciful, but I had to keep moving. I would like to say it was my strength of will that kept me going, but I had lost all semblance of reality about four hours ago. Now, my mind wandered, twisting itself into confused knots as my feet ran… left and then right, light and then reft… wait… that wasn't right...

I'm a fucking cockroach, I thought deliriously to myself. A goddamn cockroach running around and trying to survive with its head cut off.

I vaguely remembered an old joke I had been told in another life. It was something about a scientist with a pet spider. He was trying to test the spider's sight, or was it its hearing? Anyway, all I could remember was that every time he took data, he would pick off one of the spider's legs… one at a time, until the spider couldn't move anymore.

That worked out. Afterall, who would want to be a cockroach when you could be a spider? I mean, talk about cool—they have like eight fucking le-

My mental rambling was cut off when a metal rod slammed itself into my abdomen. I hoped this was not another test, I might just let them kill me if it was.

"Sit."

Still bent in half and shaking slightly, I looked at the owner of the voice, my guide that had, at some point, become 'that black blur I'm following' in my pain addled mind. I didn't understand.

"Sit," he near growled.

Without my consent, my legs slid out from under me and the world turned black.

…...

I awoke to the distant grumbles of a conversation.

"... straight into the ground, didn't you? How many breaks did you end up taking?"

"None." The gruff undertones of his voice and curt tone gave him away. Kakuzu. The man who was going to have total control of my life for an indefinite amount of time and who, on the first day, had pushed past every physical and mental limit I had. Great.

"N-none!?" the other voice stuttered. It sounded like a man.

"I expect her to be ready for training by tomorrow morning." With that ominous statement, I can only assume he had left. There was no sound of footsteps but I could hear a door closing. The other voice began to mumble incoherently. "Ridiculous….always me... broken vessels…" and so on. I took a deep breath only to have the scent of antiseptics assault my nose. A hospital then, which most likely made this other person a medic. It also meant that, contrary to what I'd thought, maybe the shinobi did want me alive and functioning. Go figure. Well, there wasn't much I could do about it now, especially in my current state. Deciding to take this gift for what it was, I yielded to the darkness I could already feel pulling at the edges of my consciousness, and slept.

…..…

His wide eyes were a pale shade of purple as he blinked at me. His light green hair hung down to his shoulders, framing his face (I had seen weirder but it was still kind of throwing me off, damn this world and its unnatural hair colors). If I had to guess his age, I would have said he looked about fifteen, but a small fifteen. He was overly feminine, skinny, off putting with his too-large, glassy gaze, and he had just kicked my ass. Again.

"How do you ever expect to serve Master Kakuzu if you are so weak?" He almost whispered, his voice soft. His expression had not changed since we started; it was permanently arranged in a serene mask, sickeningly sweet smile pasted on.

"I don't expect to serve anyone…" I snarled quietly, but not quietly enough. The sharp narrowing of his eyes was the only warning I received before a punishing force slammed into my chest. I was thrown backwards, landing in a heap as I struggled to breathe. Finally, I managed a hacking cough that brought up as much blood as it did air.

"Master Kakuzu has presented you with an honor by picking up trash like you," he spoke evenly, his voice unchanging. "Do not give him a reason to reconsider."

I felt honest fear flare up in my chest and my pupils dilate. He moved closer to me, killing intent cloaking him in his anger. The shaking started in my hands and spread further throughout my body with every step he took. I was completely and utterly terrified.

He crouched beside me and ran a hand lightly through my hair.

"Do not forget your place."

The next few years were a flash of pain and glory. I spent the first couple of months doing nothing but training constantly, overusing muscles I hadn't even known existed. The boy with the green hair beat the shit out of me so many times that I spent more time on the floor than I did standing up. Around my ninth birthday, I was finally introduced to chakra, something that should have been equal parts amazing and eye-opening. Instead, there was more pain, only this time I felt like I was being shredded slowly from the inside. On the bright side, I learned to never underestimate chakra exhaustion. It was nothing like physical exhaustion, where the rules seemed to be "suck it up and keep going," no, chakra exhaustion meant you had reached your limit. End of story. Pushing too hard resulted in certain death. That doesn't mean that my "trainers" (torturers) didn't find creative ways to push me until I felt ready to bleed out my eyes but they were certainly more careful.

In all that time, I only saw Kakuzu four or five times and never actually interacted with him. He would stand in the corner of the training room, a looming shadow in my peripheral vision. Occasionally, he would speak with one of the older trainees before disappearing again, but never to me. Speaking of the other trainees, I realized quickly enough that I wasn't the only one being beaten into shape. The eldest, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, came and went sporadically while the rest of us were confined to the base. And it was a base, an entire system of rooms and tunnels, all underground. I was starting to get really sick of being underground.

Although I was surrounded by other children, I was the youngest of the bunch. Most looked to be about thirteen yet had the maturity of a damn three-year old. By that, I mean that they were jealous little bitches. They spent their time preening and boasting their skills amongst each other and kissing the ground on which our trainers walked. The little bastards took my presence as a personal insult and went out of their way to make my life as irritating as possible.

To be perfectly honest, their behavior confused me for a long time. How could anyone who had been through the rink, fighting long enough to be considered for a sponsor, have the energy to be so irritating? So obnoxious? That place tended to drain the personality out of saints and bastards alike.

Then, one night, after having been through a particularly rough session of "endurance training" (AKA a sprint around the track until you pass out while the trainers throw knives at you), I overheard two of them talking in the hall.

"...bring honor to our clan." A boy was speaking, fourteen, short, and ugly as hell.

"Like hell! The Hoshinos will always be superior. After all, we got three candidates accepted into this program while your family only managed one," sneered the girl. She looked every bit like the clan princess with her silky hair and pale skin.

For a moment, I just stood there, shocked. The information slowly made its way to my brain, my fists clenching in a white knuckled grip. The damn bastards! I thought furiously to myself. Of course they hadn't been affected by the stifling despair of the rink, they had probably never been in a real fight where everything was on the line. They chose this. Those damn bastards chose to be here. I felt the rage bubble up inside of me, its teeth sharpening and claws flexing, ready and waiting to sink into flesh. These poor idiots had no idea what they were signing up for. To them, it was a game. That was the moment I began to see the differences between us and them.

The easiest way to tell was by looking at our eyes; the vacant, dead look was an obvious giveaway. Our eyes spoke of pain, a hatred so strong and so repressed that it turned into a shimmering veil that cloaked our every action. We would catch each other's gazes from across the hall, stare for a moment, and decidedly look away.

Then there were the bruises, the cuts, and hardened muscles; remnants of a training regime so demanding that it was ripping us apart at the seams only to put us back together as something different, something inhuman.

Their eyes were filled with stupid, useless emotions. Anger, jealousy, and pride flashed by constantly. Weakness, I growled mentally, grinding my teeth together.

Their soft bodies and clumsy mannerisms were proof of much gentler training methods. After listening around, I found that they were here for a sort of glorified ninja training camp. The second shinobi war had left many small towns ravaged by the fighting, and the hidden villages were in no state to help. Many missing nin had taken advantage of the hole in the power balance and had begun pillaging the towns, one by one. In response, the wealthier inhabitants of those villages lost faith in their country's ninja and began sending their children here. To put it simply, these vermin were the spawn of rich nobles that had never and probably would never even see blood.

We were being trained to fight for our lives and win; they were being coddled into decent enough shape to satisfy their parents. We lived in a world of death and shadows; they liked to pretend to understand suffering and strength. They would get to 'graduate' and go home. We had nowhere to go but back into the rink. The utter hypocrisy of it all left a bitter aftertaste on my tongue.

If nothing else, during that time, I realized that Kakuzu was, above all else, a smart businessman.

…...

I sat, my back rigid and my face carefully neutral, staring at my own reflection. It had been many years since I had last seen myself and I had certainly changed. Icy blue eyes stared back at me, a long red triangle extending from my bottom eye-lid to halfway down my cheek like a bloody tear on each side.

Not long after my tenth birthday, I had been deemed ready enough to be thrown back into the rink. That morning I had woken up to a sharp knock on my bedroom door. I had opened it to find myself face to face (well face to chest actually because I was still damn short) with my first trainer. His placid purple eyes staring back at me and serene smile fixed into place, he had motioned for me to follow him. He had brought me to this room and sat me at a large vanity.

Currently, he was working through my hair with a set of scissors, cutting it mechanically to chin length. The messy white tufts floated slowly to the ground and a small part of me, one that had been raised in another world, felt a pang at the loss. I snorted sarcastically to myself. Who would have thought that, out of all my past personality traits, my vanity would be the one to stick around?

Finally, he set the scissors down and I took one last look at the girl in the mirror. She was small, her face and shoulders all sharp angles. Her now short, white hair stood up slightly, rebelling against gravity. Her light eyes and the red marks under them stood out acutely against her cheekbones and pale skin. She might have been pretty. I felt my lips lift into a cruel smirk, revealing sharp canines. Or maybe she was a killer.

…...

Four years ago...

A gentle breeze swept across the pond, setting off a series of ripples that lapped against the ends of the small, wooden bridge. I stared into the water absently, following the floating rose petals with my eyes. They often fell in from the garden lining the fence in front of me. The garden itself was perfectly proportioned with just the right number of vibrant red and yellow blooms to set off the soft purples and blues of the stepping stones woven through the grass. The flowers fluttered as the wind passed by, caressing them.

I turned my face slowly towards the bright blue sky and...

"Oh! Right there! Ooooooh!"

My eyebrow twitched.

... and watched the lazy clouds pass above me as th-

"Eeeeeeeh so strong! Oh yesssss!"

"DAMNIT, I GIVE UP." I shouted irritably, throwing my hands up in exasperation. I continued to grumble as I marched further from the elegant wooden building with the beautiful pond and gardens. I continued to grumble as I marched further from the whore house.

That woman's shrill voice followed me everywhere I went, with her whiny moans and high-pitch squeals. Those, at least, were better than her cruel snarls and cold criticism. I don't think there was a single likeable thing about her. Oh wait, she was pretty. And that's how I happened.

Sighing, I stopped. I had ended up halfway through the woods surrounding the brothel and considered just wandering off, choosing a direction at random and going until I found somewhere better than this. I should have known I wasn't that lucky. I trudged back to the house of "whorrors."

This time, I went around the back entrance, slipping off my shoes and shuffling into a hallway that reeked of cheap perfume. I followed the hall around the corner to a set of stairs and began to climb. At the top, there was a fairly large room that served as our living room decorated with plain couches and an old, worn coffee table. This floor was noticeably different from the one below. The ground floor was for entertaining customers. It was a flurry of velvet sheets and rich wood surrounded by picturesque scenery. This floor? This was where the ladies lived. It reminded me of a cheap hotel.

I passed through the living room into the attached kitchen where Mikan was doing the dishes. She glanced up at the sound of my steps.

"Get tired of being outside?"

"It's hard to enjoy the birds when all I can hear is," I clasped my hands together in front of my chest and bat my eyes mockingly, "Oh baby, haaaaarder!"

She snorted, rolling her eyes. "You should be nicer to her. After all, she did have to carry you around for nine months."

My eyebrows went up. She stared solemnly. There was silence.

A twitch of her lips was all we needed to burst into laughter, leaning against each other and holding our sides.

"'Be nice...' pfff, good one." Mikan just threw me a wink, her eyes sparkling with mirth before going back to the dishes.

I had always liked Mikan, with her easy going personality and frequent jokes. She was just another one of the women that worked at the brothel and barely twenty, but she had always looked after me far more than that woman ever did. Even with her plain features and slightly crooked nose that made her less popular with the customers, I would have rather been Mikan's mistake.

While I had been wallowing in my self pity session, Mikan has finished drying the last plate and was now brushing her hands on the front of her dress as she walked towards me.

"I'm heading into the village to restock the pantry — want anything?" She asked.

"Nah, I'm good."

She hummed her acknowledgement and slipped past, grabbing her bag and heading downstairs. I vaguely heard the sound of the back door opening and shutting behind her. Had I known what would happen while she was out, I would have run after her, screaming and begging for her to take me with her.

That was the night I met my first shinobi. It was also the night my bitch of a mother traded me to the scouts for some extra change.

I remember her calling me downstairs into the reception hall for guests. I had thought it odd because I generally wasn't allowed down there. According to the owner, "Nothing turns away a man looking for a good time faster than brats hanging around where they don't belong. They come here specifically to avoid that kind of crap." I had gone down anyway. She would be the one getting in trouble if we were caught, not me. There she had been, standing in the entryway in all her glory with her kimono and silky golden hair draped over one shoulder. Next to her, there had been a man with a square face and a greedy, calculating gaze. I had felt a drop of cold sweat run down my back as he had raked his gaze from my toes to the top of my head. He had reached his hand out and grabbed my chin with it, running his thumb none to gently against the faint red mark under my eye that had been, at the time, no longer than a centimeter. His smile had been predatory. He had passed her a bag that jingled with coins; she had nodded. He had taken a step towards me and then there was nothing.

What I remember the most clearly is waking up in a freezing cell, alone and cold. Rough hands reaching in and dragging me out, kicking and screaming, down a hall shrouded in shadows and dropping me in front of a heavy metal door. Shaking, I could do nothing but wait as the door creaked open with a menacing hiss and I was suddenly bathed in the hungry roaring of a crowd thirsting for blood. I was shoved forward through the gap into the blinding light and-

-I blinked my eyes so they would adjust more quickly. Now, wasn't this familiar? I flashed my canines at the crowd. Just like before, the dirty masses surrounded me with their taunting jeers. Off to the side in their little velvet box, the same disgusting, spineless men sat in their finery. Some things don't ever change, I thought darkly to myself. They would always be filthy swine and I would always want to rip their heads from their shoulders. Unfortunately, they were also always going to be sitting in their plush little carriages while I got to be the entertainment because the world's just that fucked up.

They had come for violence and so violence they would receive. It was time to test out that hell called "training" that Kakuzu had been putting me through for two years now. Turning to face my opponent, I gripped my blade and waited for them to sound the starting horn.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Unfortunately things aren't going to be getting much better for Chiasa for a while... Oh well, let me know what you think!

I appreciate any criticism or comments you have so please R&R!