Before the Dawn
Disclaimer: I can't give you my name, but I can tell you it's not Masashi Kishimoto. Therefore, the only things belonging to me are the storyline and universe. The characters and locations' names were borrowed from the manga Naruto.
Warning: Language. This is one of the reasons why this story is rated T…
Author's Note: Thanks to sherbeth19, Midnight Mourner, moopad and NoNoWriter for their reviews, I really appreciate it! And to those who might review from now on, I always answer them all at the same time: when I update. So if you ever had troubles with the Alert system, like I did, no need to worry about it anymore. 8)
This chapter was beta-read by brumal. Deny it as much as you want dear, you're still awesome!
All human rights are now cancelled
You need to handle the dreams of the day (Sonata Arctica: Silver Tongue)
By Day
Today.
A sudden vibration woke the sleeping boy. After two seconds in open-eyed wonder, he remembered the source, seized it and switched it off hastily. His muscles tensed, he looked about, listening carefully.
The clothes he had stacked up the best he could on the windowsill the day before hardly let the morning light filter through, and the room was plunged into darkness. Neither the occupant of the next bed, nor those in the two other beds, lined up against the wall, had stirred. Nothing could be heard but the faint snoring of his farthest companion.
The boy relaxed and a wide grin slowly cut his face in two. Perfect…
Nibbling at his lower lip in intense concentration and anticipation, he pushed his blanket away and got out of bed as quietly as possible; he got dressed hastily, shoved his night-clothes and the alarm clock in his bag, then got on all fours and started groping in the dark. He remembered that it wasn't very far from his own bed… Somewhere around the left foot… There!
His grin got wider as he took a small, cold item out of his bag. To spot the first quickly was the main problem. Then, the light would guide him. Now everything depended on the speed…
He took the item in his right hand, holding firmly the one hidden under his neighbour's bed in his left hand. His thumb dived. A small flame shot up, lit the room dimly and woke a streak of sparks. Taking advantage of the faint glow, he rushed to the other two beds, found the two items under them, did likewise. Then he stood up, grabbed the bag on his way out, tripped, rushed to the door and…
BANG!
"URGH!"
He sniggered between his teeth as he sped up to the exit.
BANG! BANG!
"FUCK, NARUTO!"
He was now running in the already strongly lit corridor and giving vent to his hilarity under the panicked howls and swearing. He turned around in time to see one of his roommates' blackened head go through the door.
"If I catch you, you're dead, asshole!"
He just stuck his tongue out in reply before turning the corner at the same pace.
"NARUTO!"
"Whoa!"
Taken by surprise, he was going so fast he couldn't stop, ended up slipping and crashed nose first right before the slippers of the imposing mistress of the house. He let out a grunt in a fit of pain and pique. Yet again, something unexpected… So much for a dramatic exit…
"So you thought you could get off lightly this time?" asked the voice above his head in visibly hard-suppressed anger.
Leaning his hands on either side of his head, the boy stood up at once, his nose still bleeding some, before gracing the person opposite with a wide smile:
"Hey, old hag!"
As expected, the director started to swell with rage. It was a rather slow process, an opportunity one had to seize if they happened to be in the area when she got herself in such a state… Especially if they had caused it. However Naruto stood transfixed, mesmerized by what he was seeing.
The topic of "princess Tsunade"'s age was, in fact, taboo. Fifty years old since several months already, the venerable director made it her duty to look twenty and had provided herself accordingly at all the dermatologist's stores within her reach in order to undergo all manner of treatment, more or less appropriate. The boy had had the occasion to visit her "secret garden" before (and to alter its contents as his fancy took him), and that day had been…memorable. He shuddered in disgust at the thought to this very day:
About thirty depilatory creams, about twenty others supposed to harden the chest or soften the skin (or both…), plenty of nail polish, various hair dying cosmetics and many unidentifiable others… According to the legend, she had had a total of thirty four face lifts so far. Who knew?
Nevertheless, by day, it was undeniable that those products turned out to be rather effective. With her smooth skin, her slim waist and her two platinum blond ponytails, no third party would ever have suspected her real age if kept at arm's length. Or her personality, for that matter.
However, on waking up… Especially when she swelled with fury like right now…
Naruto gulped. It was a sheer nightmarish sight. Some hideous green matter covered her whole body, which her night clothes and the dressing gown she had hastily slipped into unfortunately couldn't hide completely. One of the cucumbers that must have been resting on her eyes was now stuck to her cheek and tracing a winding way alongside it, down to the chin, as sweat drops formed through the mask.
Some of the unidentified product hung to the rollers keeping her greyish hair at bay and mingled with what was left of the dye into a peculiar shade of vomit, which was also starting to drip. Underneath, the director's already naturally red eyes were bloodshot ('Got plastered yesterday night…' the boy thought.) and veins were starting to beat on her forehead and temples, cracking the mask in places…
Noticing this brought Naruto out of his torpor and he was reminded that it was about time to take flight. That he did, right before his tutor exploded. He kept going to the exit at top speed, pursued by several blunt items thrown his way and by the furious woman's cries of rage.
Thirty minutes later Naruto stopped to get his breath back and check where he had ended up. He found himself in the middle of a street consisting of some houses, a baker's, and the butcher's shop he was standing near. As usual, there was hardly anyone outside.
He turned to the dark shop window and took a moment to look at his reflexion with a hint of bitterness. One thing he disliked about his physical appearance was being small. He knew tons of boys who were younger than him and half a head taller. And quite a lot of girls…
He sighed. 1m43 at thirteen… That took some beating! Though come to think of it, it did tend to make his activities easier. Many places were accessible to no one but him, which was indeed useful when you needed to hide. On the other hand, when it came to garnering respect, there was nothing worse… Except maybe an unchanged voice; and he had one as well…
He pulled a face. That aside, he couldn't find any particular reason to complain about his appearance: blond hair that were permanently standing up all around his head, big blue eyes, a natural tan and, the unusual detail everyone had to get used to, three horizontal scars drawing whiskers of sorts on his cheeks.
That's when he noticed the two cuts beside his right eye and recalled a faint pain there when a bowl that Tsunade had thrown his way broke against a wall. A piece of glass must have hurt him…
"That prune…" he grunted, wiping the blood with the back of his hand.
He was pulled out of his thoughts by the rumbling of his stomach. Resigned to satisfy it, he rummaged through his bag and took out a frog-shaped wallet before checking its contents. Empty.
Grumbling in pique, he took out a sky blue rectangle wallet this time and opened it. With the same result.
"Just-great!" He sighed as he dropped to the floor wearily.
That was the one he had stolen from a student on recess who had been dumb enough to leave his bag in the classroom while Naruto had detention. He had escaped, gone by his classroom and pinched the item along with its contents before taking his leave through the window. But now he was broke…
"That means no ramen this morning..." he mumbled with fatalism. "I should have swiped something from the kitchen yesterday evening..."
He wasn't positive he meant what he just said. Most of the time the food at the orphanage was so revolting it wasn't even worth stealing. And when it was, there was a lot of competition. It's true that, whenever an orphan was determined to get edible food, going to the cafeteria was out of the question. Unless you were excessively abstemious and could feel content with the leftovers. No. You had to attack the kitchens late at night, at the exact time when the tutors went to sleep and right before potential rivals made their entrance. Most of the time, you were not lucky enough to be alone and the struggle was inevitable. The desired food went to the strongest.
To prepare for these kinds of drawbacks, some orphans teamed up: two or three of them joined forces to bring down their opponents and shared the booty afterwards. Unfortunately for Naruto, he had no one to trust in the orphanage, let alone anyone who trusted him.
Moreover, yesterday evening he had been all to the laying of the firecrackers' trick. He smirked at the memory. That had been something! A complete success! Except of course for that little element of surprise at the exit…
Since he had come back late after detention, he had been fortunate enough to find his three roommates asleep at his return and was therefore able to put into practice the plan he had had in mind for a week already, ever since he had stolen the firecrackers. First he had laid each of the three firecrackers under the beds, and then he had collected the three boys' clothes, which he had piled up on the window and kept in place thanks to the broken shutters so the sunlight would not wake them too early. Tsunade's stolen vibrator alarm clock lodged under his pillow allowed him to wake up on time, and his lighter (ex-property of the caretaker from the apartment building across the street) to light the firecrackers. All in all, nothing too complicated, but putting it into practice had been fun indeed. He sniggered as he recalled the face the person in the bed next to his had made…
Yet another protest from his digestive system brought him back to his current problem. He pulled a face, resigned, and went through his possibilities.
Maybe he could go to the market and shoplift… But it wasn't market day yet. The option of stealing a rice cake to the baker's remained, but he was a little too well-known there and his attempts were less and less successful… That left Konohamaru.
He nodded to himself and set off, abandoning the stolen wallet to its sad fate.
After a twenty minutes long walk, Naruto stopped before a hedge surrounding a rather large house, which he gazed at with a hint of nostalgia. It had been a while since he last came here…
The house itself looked unchanged: high stone walls half covered in ivy, a rust-coloured tiled roof and the small stairs leading to the raised wood terrace all along the wall. Outside, a rather neglected garden gave the whole a slight air of wilderness.
Naruto was quick to spot the "hole" inside the hedge (which actually consisted in a part devoid of branches that the leaves still covered) and his head went cautiously through. Upon noticing a boy throwing rocks at the grass, he smiled and sank deeper into the passage:
"Hey! Psst!"
The boy stood up at once, pointing a stick in what he apparently hoped to be a threatening stance. Then he recognized him.
"Chief!" he gave a cry of delight as he rushed to him.
"Hi Konohamaru!" Naruto answered with a toothy grin. "You made sure to train while I was away, didn't you?"
The boy threw out his chest in pride, oblivious to the teasing tone:
"'course I did, chief! In no time I'll be able to beat any vampire!" he answered with confidence.
Naruto gave a scoffing smile at that, but didn't comment. All the children said the same thing, in Konoha… Referring, of course, to all those nocturnal murders, aggressions and disappearances taking place in the village. All thanks to the fact that, almost every time a victim was found, the first thing you noticed would be that they had been drained of their blood. No clue had ever been found concerning the perpetrator but two bites at the root of the neck that kept coming back and that people had ended up noticing. It hadn't taken long for the superstitious to shout "vampires", and the many testimonies about the departed sighted at night hadn't helped.
As a consequence, the current fashion amongst children (and some adults) was self-defence training, the wear of crucifixes and, less frequently, of garlic.
No one even knew for how long this had been going on. In any case, several persons had ended up fleeing the village, fearing for their lives. Those that had stayed were mostly patriots, hot heads, merchants taking advantage of the situation to exhaust their stock of garlic, crucifixes and other charms, or simply those who didn't have the means to leave, or nowhere else to go.
All those cases except the crooks applied to Naruto. Konohamaru, on the other hand, was the grandson of Sarutobi, an old man so excessively attached to the almost abandoned village that Konoha was, that most called him crazy. But if you asked Naruto, he was one of the very few people deserving respect.
The young orphan wasn't sure what to think of all those vampire stories. Sometimes he liked to think he had evil and fantastic creatures for neighbours, a little like those daredevil tourists that came to settle in Konoha for the sole purpose of meeting one of the legendary creatures one day, but most of the time it was the last thing on his mind. He usually had much more pressing matters at hand. And right now, his urgent need of food came at the top of the list.
"You know…" he told his companion. "I'd love to stay with you but I'm kinda in a hurry right now… On the other hand, how about finding me something to eat? I'm starving…"
The boy looked hard at him before crossing his arms with a sullen expression.
"Yeah right…" he muttered, grouchy. "It's always when you come over that you have to go to school! How are you supposed to supervise my training like that?"
"Konohamaruuuu…" Naruto implored, unable to hold back his stomach's complaints any longer. "I swear, if you ever tasted the grub at the orphanage you'd know why I need normal food so much! Now would you please give me something before I really kick the bucket…"
Said boy looked him up and down, which was quite something as he was all of eight years old, as if he was giving a lot of thought to the question while his "sensei" was lamentably contorting himself in the hedge. At last he flashed him an ominous smile:
"Okay… But on one condition!"
That tone alone told Naruto that he'd better be careful but his state would not allow it…
"Yeah, yeah… What?"
Konohamaru gave a triumphant grin: "Take me with you on your next expedition!"
Naruto didn't bother thinking this through. His brain wouldn't work properly until his stomach was full anyway.
"Whatever, just give me something already…" he articulated in a pathetic voice.
Satisfied, his self-proclaimed apprentice nodded and ran to his house. Two minutes later he was back with three rice cakes.
"If you go to school today, you're gonna need all your energy, chief." he elaborated, handing over the cakes.
Naruto grabbed them and managed to make them all disappear in less than two seconds. He gave a sigh of relief:
"Now you can pride yourself on having saved a guy near death, Konohamaru…"
Said boy stared at him suspiciously: "You'd better not forget your promise, chief!"
'Oh right, drat…' Naruto thought bitterly. Taking advantage of another's weakened state was absolutely low…
"Hey, you know I never go back on my word." He said for lack of anything better, giving Konohamaru a half-hearted smile. That seemed to suffice the schoolboy.
"Okay! Good luck with the old folks at school, then!" Konohamaru added as word of encouragement.
"No worries, I've had worse."
As soon as he was far enough from the hedge though, Naruto let a grimace distort his face. He had had worse indeed. That still didn't mean he would be able to escape his punishment for being late. Because, of course, there was no way he would make it on time.
On the off chance, he took a glimpse at Tsunade's alarm clock left inside his bag: 8:43am. He sighed. He had been lucky to find Konohamaru before the boy had to go to school. That didn't help the fact that he was almost three quarters of an hour late for his school already…
He put the clock back in the bag indifferently. He had never made it there on time anyway. So he took his leave at a leisurely pace. He was running just fast enough to prevent himself from thinking too hard.
Once he'd reached his destination, he studied the high walls of his school closely. Which window was his class's again?
He made a face, frowning. He couldn't even remember which lesson he was supposed to attend to. In fact, he didn't care. He would eventually find his class. All he had to do was look for Sakura.
He brightened up a little at the thought. With her strong temper, her intelligence (top of her class!) and above all her pretty face, Sakura Haruno was one of the rare reasons he went to school at all.
Well… It's not like he was anywhere near winning her affections so far… She spent most of her time calling him an idiot and hitting his head yelling at him to leave her alone. But, anxious to keep up his reputation, Naruto Uzumaki never gave up.
So he enthusiastically ran to the depot for garbage cans, made sure there were no supervisors around, and started to climb. If you asked him, the best way to start a day was to make a dramatic entrance. And since there was nothing spectacular about being late, especially for a master like him, he added the option of taking the way of the roofs.
Once on the depot's roof, he went on to the slightly taller building holding the technology, computer and plastic art rooms standing beside the depot, and jumped from one to the other, clinging on to the edges of the roof before heaving himself up onto it by leaning on the top of the window. On his way he winked at the students attending class inside, most looking at him with exasperation, the rest bursting out laughing.
Passed the covered playground linking this building to the main, he reached the leaning part of the roof and heaved himself up on it. He kept going with the same confidence using his hands and feet, sometimes ending up on all fours. At last he reached a window made in the roof and pressed himself against the pane. Biology class, he recognized. Teacher Asuma's class. Not his, then.
His disappointment was soothed by the few students who started pointing him out, some laughing openly, others crying out for their teacher. Said man raised up his eyes from the book he was reading and gave a long sigh before sending a student on who-knew-what kind of an errand. Then he went back on his lesson.
Naruto allowed himself to stay some more to make faces against the glass at the few students who kept glancing at him, some irritated, others amused. Someone made an obscene gesture at him, he answered with two, sticking his tongue out for good measure. In the end he might have kept himself busy for the rest of the morning if the student Asuma had sent earlier hadn't come back, a young dark-skinned teacher with a ponytail, a scar across his nose and a furious look following close behind…
"Oh shit…" Naruto gulped as he started to assess the little safety the separation of a pane assured.
"Anyone would think you're simply incapable of going to school in a civilized manner!" his favourite teacher repeated without tiring as he dragged him by the ear through the corridor. "Are you ever going to stop? We have little time left before the school year ends, you know! Do I really have to remind you of your latest results? If you would at least try to spend a little less time in detention and a little more in class…"
"I know, I know, I knoooow!" The tortured boy kept smiling mischievously in spite of all. "'guess I'm just, well… a very busy man! OUCH!"
"Busy?" his torturer cried out in exasperation when they stopped before a door. "What's keeping you so busy? Drawing graffiti on the school? Blowing up the toilets?"
"Iruka-senseiii! That was three months ago!"
"I would say that you have not made very notable resolutions after those times." the man answered as he gave the door a sharp knock to open it. "I apologize for this interruption, as it happens I had to bring back your busy classmate here."
He turned back to Naruto, whom he had finally let go and who was rubbing his bruised ear: "I'll see you after class." Then he slammed the door shut and went back to his lesson.
So the boy went back to his chair grumbling, his right ear still hurting. As generous as Iruka-sensei could be when it came to free ramen, letting him off the hook for being late was another matter entirely. He would get one hour worth of detention at the very least… But it wasn't like he could ever hope for less. It had almost settled into a routine for him.
On his way to his chair, all alone in the last row, he flashed Sakura a wide grin and she answered with a glare. After that he sat, crossed his arms on his desk and nested his head in between, ready for another long day of class he'd sleep away for the most part.
'One thing must be cool about being a vampire,' he thought sarcastically, 'at least you don't have to put up with this…'