A small blonde boy ran desperately, avoiding the mayor avenues and bigger, more transited streets. As he got into an alley an iron pipe smashing in his temple and almost cracking his skull remembered him that less transited didn't meant empty.
Ragged breath and a horrible stench of booze was the only thing that got past his daze. Naruto could only try to regain his senses while his heart hammered in his chest, threatening to jump out of his chest.
A pair of strong, big hands grabbed his frail neck, starting to squeeze the breath out of him while simultaneously slamming his back into the greasy wall of the alley. Naruto could only think of how much he didn't wanted to die. As the life was sapped from him from the drunken brute of a villager, the only thing he could think of was how much he wanted him to be away, to be pushed.
Something broke within him, and the man was pushed violently back to the other side of the alley with a loud crack coming from the back of his skull. As Naruto coughed and regained his bearings, he stared with wide, incredulous eyes at the broken carcass in front of him. He puked, due to the sheer shock and stress of the situation and the splitting headache that suddenly overcame him, causing him a nasal hemorrhage and blurring everything.
"I… I did this?" he asked himself after a minute of deep breathing. It seemed that he had killed a man the quadruple of his weight and twice his height. It looked like a bad joke, but there it lay, broken and unmoving.
He fell into a fit of giggles, that quickly became a mixture of pained sobs and maddened laughter as a paired streams of tears fell to the floor.
He didn't even recall attacking him; he just wished that he wasn't near him.
The more he thought about it, the more intense the headache became, and he eagerly stopped. His body tried to empty the contents of his stomach once more, but the only thing that came out was almost gastric juices and droplets of blood. Ignoring the state he found himself on, he started to try and sneak around the festival as quickly and silently as he could, this time paying mind to the alleys before rushing inside them. As the sounds of joy and laughter became more and more dull, falling to the background quietly, Naruto found an alley with a pair of boxes that could make a fine house for the night if combined with a piece of tattered cloth he found on the floor.
Giving thanks for living in the land of fire, where the nights where warm, he fell asleep.
God, how he hated October.
Psystorm.
The moment Naruto poked his head out in the streets of the village he instantly regretted it. The stares of hate and malicious whispers were the worse until this day, making his eyes teary and his expression one filled with fury and bitterness at his situation. One time, long ago, he dreamed of becoming the Kage of the village. To be respected, to be treated with at least a sliver of human decency, not like a particularly annoying beggar or bug that won't go away.
It pained him, but the desire was still there, a desire to be needed, to be loved and praised for his achievements, supported through his failings and mistakes, to have someone, that at least cared.
A small thing, no bigger than his closed fist approached him from behind, and Naruto, somehow, knew it. Sidestepping a rock that was thrown at him, he just stared at it, dumfounded. The same question of the last night assaulted him, how?
He didn't had time to think, as a barrage of items of all sizes and types came flying towards his frame, accompanied of shouts and bloody cries of "murderer!" and desires to flay him alive. Naruto started running, and as he fled he thought, murderer? Did they find the corpse of that villager, or did they just blamed him senselessly as they did with everything that went wrong with their perfect, precious lives?
He cracked a smile unconsciously. Well, in this case at least they were right, not that they knew it. Ironic.
He put away all the thoughts of how this time they had reasons to crucify him as he pumped more and more strength to his legs, hoping to get away as quickly as possible from the quickly forming mob behind him. He just thanked whatever deity looked after him after confirming that there were no shinobi out for his blood this time. That didn't stopped the mob from throwing at him discarded kunai and shuriken that were dull or rusty, with the accuracy of a three year old, but en masse nonetheless.
Ducking, weaving and hiding a couple of times, Naruto lost the mob, founding himself in a particular gloomy and dreary forest. He got there after jumping a fence with some warnings that he couldn't read and passing a chunin that looked suspiciously smug while doing nothing to stop him.
'Fucking idiot,' Naruto mused with annoyance.
Dark, full of wild creatures and possessing of an aura almost made miasma that made your hair stand on end, making you believe that you were constantly being watched by an apex predator.
That forest was definitely better than the village.
At least the things that wanted to kill you wanted to do it for food, rather than senseless hate.
There was animals to hunt, branches to make fires, rivers to get water from, and even some fish, along with the delightful discovery of a tree that was hollow at its base, large enough to eventually create a new home right there with the right tools and enough time and practice.
It was perfect. If we add to all this that most animals, at least the smallest, left him alone for some reason unknown, it seemed that he had found a place to live somewhat peacefully and undisturbed.
No more invaded and graffiti-filled or downright burnt apartments, no more constant hateful sneers and eyes filled of disdain, no more secluding himself at the sewers until night, no more burning bags full of dog shit smashing thought your window in the middle of the night.
Just no more.
He going to put up with any more shit from the village, if they wanted to vent they could go and flay themselves for all that he cared. He did nothing wrong, and the stunt of the last night was fully in self defense.
Last night… That made him recap what had happened, deliberately avoiding the fact that he had killed someone, unknown methods of such murder aside. Now, he asked himself, could he repeat something like that?
As terrified as he was, he needed to defend himself. There was no way he would ever be in a similar situation again if he had something to say about it. Never.
From what was said and done, Naruto began to make use of his basic survival skills, one of the lot that he did taught himself out of sheer need.
After a few hours, the sun was already halfway its course, and was approaching the horizon. He still had enough hours of light, but better to take advantage of them than to do nothing and die.
In that time he had formed a makeshift bed, made of dry leaves and fiber threads, creating a kind of primitive mattress. He also managed to craft a few fairly rudimentary traps to hunt small prey, mostly holes filled with pointy sticks sharpened with one of the kunais that he encountered littering the floor. Luckly for him, they weren't too corroded or nicked.
Today he would have fish for dinner, since Naruto managed to catch a few with a makeshift net made of fiber and ninja wiring, also found on the floor.
It were as if that forest were a battlefield long ago. The thought of corpses under his very feet made him shudder and dismiss the thought as quicly as it came.
Apart of creepy skeletons that may or not may be just waiting to grab his ankles and drag him all the way to hell kicking and screaming, something told him that it was a horrible idea to get to the bottom of one of those rivers, hungry for more food or not.
So he did the only thing he could; wait. And while he was sitting on his bed, he was looking at a river stone as if he had committed the worst crime imaginable to mankind. If looks could set things on fire...
During the incredible hour-long time he glanced at it with raw, unadulterated hatred, mentally screaming at her to do something, to move, to walk away or fly and go fuck itself all the way to the bottom of the sea.
After that last thought, all his frustration went down the drain the moment the little bastard moved. It hadn't flown out with terrible force, or been pulverized by some mysterious and arcane force, but it was something. And that was more than enough to start.
Smiling like a complete psychopath drunk with euphoria and glee, he confirmed that it was not his imagination when he discovered how the rock moved again when he focused on it enough time.
Today was a great day for Uzumaki Naruto.
So, here we are! Another FFic, another attempt at creating something at least resembling a readable piece of fiction.
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