A/N- Hello all! Short chapter, I know, I'm sorry. It's midterms and I'm dying inside just a little. If I miss an update during the upcoming stress/hellstorm/doom-fated downfall of my poor, terrified grades, I'll make it up to you. As always, please review and I love you all.
i. Weak
He regrets renting the apartment, even as he does it. Matarou Takehiko gets a very good price on it- it had remained unoccupied for years and she couldn't evict the reason for it. This Takehiko person was the first to both approach Kita Miyu and the only one to stay after learning of her unfortunate resident. He wasn't surprised.
The agreement itself is very simple. He makes sure his landlady gets her money once a month and the apartment remains undamaged, and she doesn't kick him out and toss up a fuss in the legal system. He'd almost forgotten how lax the certain parts of Konoha were- he'd grown used to official business, paperwork. The slums were simple: you have cash, you get what you need.
He was settling. Attaching himself to a place, attaching himself to people. It was a risky business. It was a stupid business. He had better things to do, he had people to kill to save this village, this country, this world, from ruin. And here he was, making a nice little nest for himself with money he'd pulled from someone who was barely a player.
Weak.
He inspects his new apartment- it's, in a word, dingy. Saleable, but barely. It's grimy in the way that even if you washed it top to bottom and repainted it and refurbished it, it would still feel like a dump. He won't try. He's not here to settle, he's here for a base. He's here for privacy, for a place to leave his working clones and maybe for a place to run into Naruto.
He has two clones in the corner running through blank tags like air, making neat little stack of various sorts of explosives. Flashbangs, firebombs, smoke tags, higher powered, so on and so forth. Around four he'd have one run down to Ryouta with a delivery. He adds a clock to the small mental list of possible conveniences. It includes a bed and a decent lamp. The bare necessities comprise of food, weapons, ink, paper, and clothes.
He deliberates on who to take out next. Deidara, while an opportune target, was both the most likely to draw attention and to deal out obscene amounts of collateral damage, so he decides to wait on him. Kakuzu was generally too tough for Kaito to take out in this sorry state- he needed someone who could go down fast. No one would believe his twelve year old self if he said one day stealth would be his greatest advantage, he mused. Not even young Naruto. Sasori too couldn't be counted on to drop. Kisame though, was more human, even if he was also more shark. Flesh and blood he could do- strange teleporting plants? Less so.
He hates to think of the limitations he bears, how behind he's fallen even now that he's so far ahead of everyone else that it makes his head spin.
ii. Silence
He trains night and day, sealing lesser used training grounds to hell until not a wisp of chakra signature leaves and no one comes within two miles without him knowing. It's not uncommon for him to be interrupted and he shuts everything down and flees the scene, deploying a few clones to remove the seals as he either relocates or takes it as his cue to return to the apartment and feed himself, maybe catch some sleep.
He gets stronger.
It's slow a slow business, especially at first, when basic drills leave him panting and if he's not careful he winds up lying on the ground, too exhausted to move. Even so, he has never been short on determination. A routine like his, even carried out more by sheer willpower than strength, pushes his body beyond its limits and then further. He begins to put on weight again. Pure muscle, of course, though he has to very consciously stuff himself to do so. Food is an ambivalent presence in his life, too large of one at that, and frankly it irritates him. The necessity to feed his body, and so frequently, combined with his ridiculous phobia of the scent of meat and the lingering discomfort in his stomach ails him. It all tastes like cardboard anyway. He does not try to cook, relying on fresh produce, bread, and a lot of nuts. Nuts, he's found, are very good. Dense, rich in protein, and very clearly not meat- they're something. They're good. They're portable, which is important.
Still, despite everything, he's frustrated by his achingly slow chakra regeneration. The pool within him quavers and makes as if it will finally refill properly, but never does. There's a distinct lack of the Kyuubi's chakra circulating through his coils, only the occasional whisper of it to prove that Kurama's still there. He makes a habit of meditating, drawing in nature chakra to supplement his reserves, and hopefully help heal whatever it is that's fucking it up. It does help, some, and the extra chakra in his coils helps set him at ease.
As if he was ever at ease.
Sakura's voice echoes in the back of his head, explaining the psychology behind shellshock and trauma. Hypervigilance is an almost paranoid state of increased awareness and perceptive behaviors to avoid threats, frequently found in veteran shinobi. It is frequently accompanied by a litany of symptoms including flashbacks, hallucinations, insomnia, depre-
He ground his teeth, and punched the tree in front of him so hard he heard a crack. What he'd once dubbed inane Yamanaka babble silenced.
He punches the tree again, same hand. Blood stains the bark black.
It's silent.
