(New 10/14/20) Warnings added in chapter one. Please review if you haven't seen them.
===Chapter 3===
Two years had passed. The majority had been spent in a very controlled isolation, but ever since the blond could stand under his own power, he was a powder keg of explorative energy. He had a temper, an intuition that put him at odds with professionalism, and left the authoritative person facing natural limits. That, and there were only so many reasons to keep a child barred up.
When spring came around, he was brought out under constant supervision. It was a scenario that plagued the minds of his circle of monitors, and anyone who saw fit to keep tabs on him. To the chagrin of his more accomplished guardians, the boy's secret was not as well guarded as they had hoped. Adults and older children everywhere were wary of him, and kept to themselves. His exposure to children his age saw detriment to this effect, and it became quickly apparent that the boy would face that judgement wherever he went.
It was an old story that coincided with fabled Jinchuriki. In the scant moments before a tailed beast would be transferred to a new host, there were plenty of cases where the beast would be unleashed. Like the Kyubi, these cases were rare and brief, but it cast a dark shadow over any who held that role. Prescribed to the life of a shinobi, It was a life sentence to be shunned.
Evidently a shadow was all it took to start the effect.
On the other hand, the freedom lent a fresh wholeness to the boy. While it was not uncommon to see him melancholy, it was often followed by a further devotion than behind those walls.
He found it strange. He was shunned, and if he had his way, he would be there among the crowds of children with as much sport as the whole lot could boast. The difference in the people who looked down on him was distressing. Unlike those that he'd known, they could take one look at him and respond like he'd poisoned the water supply.
The times he had with other children were rare and brief. Those he'd seen before, having met once would disappear. It could be quite some time before he saw a familiar face afterwards.
The loneliness never reached him though. He found it strange that he could feel their happiness from a distance. Could feel as though he were there speaking with them and being thrown by the same lines as though they were meant for him. But what felt strangest of all was that, those he couldn't see- those that were away, or kept away from places he would be, he could almost hear and see them. He found the sensation disturbing, and yet fulfilling in a way he needn't explain.
Every now and then, he would make a new best friend.
Water ran down his back. The itching had started again. He had thought of not telling, as it would always be a time when he couldn't see or hear anyone else, but the old man said it was because he was sick. His caretakers would spend a lot less time taking care of him and keep their distance, and he wouldn't be allowed to leave no matter what.
Some of them would be cryptic or especially quiet, and there were a few that had been meaner than normal. He really didn't want the people around town to catch 'angry' with him. Reluctantly, Naruto had agreed to warn them when it started.
Fortunately it didn't last long, or happen all that often, but it meant he had to keep himself busy until it went away. It got harder when they started going out. Stuck at home, he'd long for the company of his peers. It was only the second time he'd have to deal with that.
In the long run he settled for stacking books, scratching lines in the carpet, counting sheep until he vaguely recalled the names to go higher. He hated learning that way almost as much as the stupid itch that brought it on. It did inspire him to start keeping track of the itch itself.
Home was small. There was his room, the bathroom, kitchen and meeting area, that and a side room where the guard on duty would keep busy, but he wasn't allowed over there much. While he was sick, he was mostly supposed to stay in his room.
It was clean. One of the perks of having your every waking moment watched was that those on duty liked the space kept nice. His favorite of them brought toys a while back, and ever since started teasing him about learning to read.
Finally he was released. There was a visit with the old man, and it came up that his illness had come a long way. Someone joked that he might overcome the sickness at one point.
It struck Naruto like an arrow. Suddenly the prospect became of the utmost importance. The bigger world depended on it.
Supplementary notes
I'm gonna be frank. I don't like how this portion turned out. I feel that I was overly caught up in how Naruto is being raised, while my underlying intention was for how he's adapted to the overflow, as well as how it's integrating into his life. I think part of the problem was using this as a benchmark apart from my machinations, but in the end, it felt highly impersonal.
I have a serious problem when it comes to zoning in on a particular time frame. I hope someday soon I can get it sorted as to pan into the 'big picture' rather than snippets, but for now, I guess this will do. Personal feelings aside, it is a bit early to call a close.
A blur split the morning breeze. If you've never moved like a ninja, you might have known a few sensations that rank nearby. Skydiving would be one contender, although that would be a continuous effect. For me, it's like swallowing a building. There's a wallop of a pace between one landing and the next, and the energy used to gather and stabilize at that speed is like a converging river plowing over your chest.
I'd had a busy few years. There's this thing between red tape and the exposed underbelly of a country. If you do away with one, you can have a dangerous amount of influence over the other. That said, no one man can tame the nature of such a beast. It's the kind of fight that even a biju would have to tap out of.
With that in mind, there are some extremely shrewd conductors out there. Some people are content with controlling their influence, as vast and profound as they can get it, at the cost of regard to what it accomplishes. In the face of such colossal beasts, they make barely a dent, and the quirks in the array can cover tracks for them.
That said, out in the boons, those dents pan out into scars that color the landscape. It'd be really beautiful, if there wasn't so much resentment about who got to run their lives.
Ironically, when you cross certain boundaries, the names of those piloting the scorn change. In the north and east regions of the land of snow, there were tyrants in the land of lightning, and missing nin who called great fear to mind. In the west, and especially in the south west, you had these people who could sort out certain ties to the leaf, and almost piece together the power struggle at its roots.
That barrier cut deep through the neighboring land, a disturbing swath of fire, above the land of iron, and split beneath the jaw of the earth nation.
How could I know that? I'd never been further north than the underside of the territories, and the land of iron was already further west than I'd gone. When you spend enough time trying to sort out the deceptions and dissent among the people, a divide that gross is like aiming a house sized cannon, and you could see the trail flying for ages.
The rumors had names, Not that I ever bothered to remember them. When someone goes from twisting your words to the left to the right… It pisses me off that it happens in the first place, but then - eventually - you start to put that kind of stuff into perspective.
Nations fight like any creature. They block, they weave, they misstep and withdraw to check it, and often enough an area of influence gets plagued.
The ninja villages were built on something that stood since before the warring states of import that shaped the landscape these rumors travel against. There is plenty of room for misconception, and great divisions that bloodties and the unsung beast protected. If you wanted a war, or a place to sow dissent, this one was a golden era, but also one of the last opportunities.
It takes a few solid rounds to temper a blade, and plenty of mistakes to get the rationale of it sorted. The Ninja world has come a long way since the era of the warring states. If the dark recesses didn't make peace somewhere, the setting pieces would lock them out.
My goal was to get as many of those in the dark a path to the surface before they would be cast out and written off. It has been my dream to see the temper all these people made flowing among them. To see a time when even the bitter truths could be admitted openly. I hate people who use disparity as an excuse to condone. It's the simple road out, and it costs a lot of good people their merits. That presence of mind looms within me, and it is a terror that haunts me. A weakness of cohesion.
Those fault lines were invaluable in tracking down the camps. Clandestine meetings where the con artists of the underworlds would put their kind's mettle to the test. People who would exploit temperament to the fullest degree.
It isn't one of my fortes. That said, there's a big difference between herding people into stepping up and eliminating the need to do so. These masters had interpreted a lot of success ploying the latter.
You may have heard of Konoha's black sheep. The tenuous bind in Kiri. The prowlers, like myself, pervading the territories. The diversion of sand's resources. Each dynamo in this world bears weight to this effect. The problem is that they are shamed for it. Pitted against the whole in the scheme over the masses.
You can't fix something that isn't broken. It's a dark side. The host doesn't care to admit it, and the rivals would sooner deem them both incorrigible.
Teach a man to fish then. And while I'm at it, pretend I'm not fudging it. On the other hand, I've always been better suited to improvising, and working out the odd man later.
I was looking for the Root corps recruitment exam, as well as the training corps. At the same time, I was trying to profile the background of the Leaf ninja corps' system. The two existed separately only as much as an academy and boot camp are distinguished.
Between 50 odd and a third success, I'm not sure who was in position to be boasting, especially when half of them wind up dead. Improvise, odds are this one guy wouldn't make the situation absolutely worse.
My current trail put me through a track of Konoha's forest. I had been running patrols this way for over a year now, getting lucky was about all I had going for me, and it ran the risk of an encounter with the other patrols. The land of fire was huge, and after a few months of deliberation and subtle leads, I had an inclination for how the shady groups timed their circles.
I was beginning to wonder whether things at the village were faring much better, when I felt my knees give out below me. A moment to break from that train of thought, and I found my bearings. Maybe it was the urge to break the monotony that got pushed over the edge, but about a pace ahead of me the treeline broke, and beneath the coverage, in the middle distance, two men in uniforms carried a box just out of view.
Practically leeching the silence for death, I considered myself lucky if the lapse and brisk pace hadn't just thrown me to the proverbial wolves.
'There's always a last man.' I waited. I waited until I could hear the recess from the breeze, and taste the musk in the air. I relinquished the concentration of both onto the next and felt my focus sharpen. Six senses later, I bled my station toward the ground and slid down the tree with a whisper. Time to get ready for class, and to introduce myself.
I called on the feeling I needed. The leg of history I would rise against, and the person I needed to bring about change. My muscles flooded with anticipation and trepidation I needn't fake. What I wanted, what I expected to do here, and what I didn't and wouldn't care to know.
Blackness crept in over blue irises, and the fringes regained enough of an indigo hue to garner a bit of attention. I felt a tugging about my hairline and my throat filled with worry. My outfit shifted to black a black tee more reminiscent of their uniforms, a pair of slacks and darker pads of similar make and a cloth belt. I adjusted the pouch at my hip and felt for the medallion that I kept astride my ribs. The latter was misplaced without my cloak, but It manifested in the brace retaining a ninjato behind me. My height fell by a fair amount, and I stood lower than most, albeit with a wide stance.
I made a mental note to find a decent coach for that. Familiar coaches or none, I needed to figure out how I scaled here, and there was no better time to act like a novice.
An odd thought crossed my mind. The eye patch, the animal skin, the crutch, the leverage. I would find all of these things. I would do it a hundred fold. In my blind spot, a hole was burned. A leaf catching fire where the light passed through.
It was as though the whole world had conspired against him that summer. The spring showers built late into the worst storm season Konoha had ever seen. Torrential rains struck about every week. The people tasked with overseeing him were stretched thin and otherwise busy, and on those rare days when fate had deemed the stars aligned, his illness struck.
Pent up determination and unrest collided into a never ending cycle of fervor. The resolve to make the most of his time with his peers and friends would be struck back in a heartbeat, sent crashing down on a wave of anguish that he turned against his other opponent.
Twelve weeks of indeterminate isolation, haggard schedules and not the least amount of faux hopes. At one point, the aura that surrounded the boy became downright oppressive, and he spent the day completely alone.
Ironically, the change stirred something in him. He could have blamed an episode of neglect, or that his input regarding the itch was so invalidating, but he chose to focus instead on the change and the people he was waiting for.
The ones who would guide him into the outside world. The children he aspired to connect with. The people who viewed him as a plague or a curse. He began to question what it meant to feel that inside of him. What it meant to be around with all of that, and what they thought of him.
It was in challenging his self worth that he felt the first sense of connecting with it. The itch, usually a tugging at his mind, began to envelop him. Moving down and along his limbs like liquid warmth. He worried about what he would do, what he could do, if it was better, if he could change, or if this was something he would be up against forever.
It boiled down a lot of nasty ideals, and hurtful truths. At length, he mourned the absence of his caretakers, and recounted each one of them as far back as he could remember. Sometimes, it felt like some of them were taken away too soon as well, before he knew them as well as he should.
He wondered whether that would extend to the children he'd met on the street, to the onset of a hallowed remorse, and a silent vow. He would do better. Somehow, he would have to, or those people might take themselves away as well. He was afraid if the things he could do wouldn't be enough.
It was a long summer, so he had a lot of time to work through these things. At one point he looked out the window and watched the seemingly endless storm. He would wait it out, and in the end, he would be ready. No matter how long it took, he would be ready.
Supplementary notes
I am really glad to be making as much progress as I am with this story. It's certainly not what I imagined at times, but I can't deny that I'm really satisfied with what I can do here. Of course, my mood and resources are bringing their two cents… hoping this carries on.
Am looking forward to the first review. Not sure what to expect on that front, but I'm really glad to have the outlets that I do. Leisure is turning out a brisk pace thus far.