A/N: OHHH Happy October.
xXx
The struggle for control was on.
'Look at you. So god damned content all the time. The goofy Uzamaki who can do know wrong, he's just sooo innocent. I should just…'
Hinata's hands found his neck and she contemplated how much she'd have to squeeze. Moments ago she basked in his innocence, beautiful, shared, memories made her heart swell, but now the very sight of him made her hungry for his blood.
Her aching canines said kill. The vulnerable breaths he squeaked out between the increasing grip around his neck felt right. But probably the most unavoidable feeling was this damned voice in her head and all it could seem to say was
"Kill."
'Come on Naruto, fight back! Push me!'
His body naturally began to shift in hopes of increasing his chance of survival. Brow furrowing under stress and his skin seemed to toughen under her grip. But still his body didn't reject her.
"Always so full of talk! Surely you have something… I can see your claws… your teeth. You have to have something."
"Last I checked, he had you."
Hinata's grip fell limp when she turned to see Kiba in the doorway.
"Look, I know the kids annoying and all but damn..."
Hinata wasn't quite sure what she wanted to say, so instead she only studied him closely from her position atop Naruto. Her clawed hand still lingering around his neck.
"Drop him, or I'll drop you yeah?" Kiba kept his cool. His arms folded as he leaned against the doorway.
"Are you threatening me?" Hinata felt much more in control with the presence of someone else who could intervene on her blood rage.
"You should know that I I don't make threats."
"Good." Hinata slipped off of the bed and followed Kiba out of the room. "I'm not sure I could have stopped."
The voices had stopped, but she remained on edge, choosing to keep her claws exposed.
Kiba have her once over as she cited the room and released a tired groan.
"You two are really going to make me babysit aren't you?"
xXx
Metal clanged like thunder but it did little to disturb me from my forced rest. Sleeping uncomfortably has become a reality I already accepted. It'd been two long weeks in that cage.
'I Think.'
The concept of time was contorted. But I'd seen that face twice a day for what Im sure was at least, fourteen days now. That, I was sure of.
"Wakey wakey children. There's much to do today."
Dr. Orchimaru sauntered so slimily past my cage, a metal baton beating mercilessly against rusted metal bars. A despicable swagger in his step.
"You need to finish your food Uzamaki. Otherwise, you'll never grow big and strong like Eve here.
"Eve" the twisted name he'd given to Hinata to denote her status as the new breed. This ultimate being he was striving to create. It made me sick, but looking at what she'd become was making me even sicker. Her enlarged canines we're stained red. The lavender pupils in her eyes that did everything to contrast the pink strands that caught themselves in between her bite. She wasn't Hinata anymore, no more than the chunks of rotting flesh he threw into her cage were Sakura.
He threw the same hunk at me for three days now. A decapitated chunk of flesh that ran from the wrist to all five flawless fingers.
'Or at least they used to be flawless.'
Now they were chipped flaps of rot. The nails fallen from decay, accompanied by the putrid smell of death.
I thought to myself as I picked the hand up in my own. I thought about how those were the same fingers that had caressed my face so many times. Dipped into my chilled coffee for the dollop of whip cream that I couldn't seem to stand but would get anyway. Just so I could see those fingers pull it to her mouth. Making for a beautiful smile on a pretty face.
Thoughts like that got me through days of torment and plagued my consciouness all at the same time.
"You'll pay for this."
My words felt empty. My mouth had produced something I wasn't at all sure my body could back up. Not many words ever seemed to halt Orochimaru from his task. But this did. This time.
"Oh I know my boy. But a smart man knows when it comes to karma. You can only pay in pain. And the good Dr. always pays his dues."
'What kind of cryptic shit is that?'
"Do you know of the saltine effect?"
I kept my mouth shut. I never felt the need to play into his lectures. He frowned at my lack of response but yammered on anyway.
"Well, I will educate you anyway. It's a project of mine that has been proven true time and time again. See you take a man, or I guess in your case a boy." Hey gestured his vile hands at my cage.
"You were right the first time." I bit out. It was only a minute into his monologging and I was already losing my patience.
"Right, right... see you take him and you offer him a saltine." Just so happens he'd been snacking on a few, he shook the box of simple crackers for emphasis.
"Perhaps this man lived in luxury, or at the very least, comfortably. The simple luring of a saltine may seem... beneath him."
He tossed the remainder of the box into my cage and without hesitation I devoured its scraps.
My pride, I surmised, isn't all that important to me when it came to survival. Food is food. The two whole saltines only made my stomach growl and my thirst worse. But it did something to begin to fill that aching whole of hunger inside of me.
"But let's say the man isn't living so comfortably. He's down on his luck and now you find the man on the streets, looking for work, money, perhaps some spare food. And you offer him this simple saltine again. He may decline still, but the hunger inside tells him he can't be picky. So maybe he takes it, maybe not."
The man walked calmly to his lab table a few feet away, reaching for a pitcher of ice water he would use to splash Hinata or I if we dozed off in his presence. He poured himself a glass and made his way back to me.
"But where the true colors shine from are desperation, because even with all their will power, humans can't resist their instincts." He took a large gulp and splashed the rest of it on Hinata's sleeping form.
Her feral hiss echoed in the empty spaces of the dreary lab.
He pushed on with his words, ignoring her outrage. But I knew this rant was strictly for me considering her mind couldn't possibly comprehend anything human at the moment.
"Perhaps you come across the man a third time, but this time, he's starving. The excess bile in his stomach has started turning rigid as the body tries it's damndest not to eat itself and instead they threaten to climb up and out of his mouth, the muscles are fatigued as they lose every last bit of nutrients they had and the can't support the very foundation of survival. See, this time you offer him a cracker. It'll still be the same, plain, cracker. But I guarantee he'll take it. No questions. It doesn't matter where it came from. He'll take it, and he'll want more."
Orochimaru repeated a task he'd done multiple times in the past few days. Opening a wooden trunk that smelled of decay.
"He'll quite literally choke himself on food that will make him thirst. Just as long as there is some kind of gratification now."
Orichimaru waved at me, only not with his own hand. But with hers. One of the finger tips breaking off from the lively action of the corpse. He tossed the hand at me again, and suddenly the hand wasn't so perfect anymore. It was suddenly a lot less Sakura and the smell a lot more bearable.
I tore digit by digit until her flesh had turned from the last shred of my humanity, into my survival.
xXx
Naruto awoke with a start, and no one was to be found. He was in a bed. No orochimaru, no Hinata. No monster, no cage, or fucking saltines, just a lot of resentment and an interrupted sleep cycle.
"What the fuck just happened?" Naruto questioned.
And for the first time in a long time he was truly speaking to himself. No voice rumbled from the corners of his mind. No other presence seemed to be lurking in the shadows of the room.
He was completely alone.
And then he heard it. The rustling commotion of bodies racing downstairs. Naruto crept out of bed to find himself only in his black boxers. Snagging a pair of borrowed black jeans, he slipped out the door as quietly as possible and stalked his way down the stairs on the balls of his feet.
The scene he saw when he peaked into the dining room however was not what he expected. The collective of the house was clamoring about, quickly tossing supplies into black tot bags and raggedy book bags alike. Food, knives from the kitchen and any such survival gear from tape to lighters.
Ino approached him and without explanation brought a cool hand to his forehead.
"Good. You're not a feverish crazy mess anymore by the looks of you." Ino's boundaries were as unapologetic as ever. She was close enough for Naruto to feel her breath tickle his neck and his body only heated as she leaned closer to inspect his face as she took it into her hands, turning it left and right to inspect for damage.
"Oh wait." The boy had grown vastly more red in the quick encounter. Her chest was touching hers now as she completely invaded his space as well as his ears with a barrage of questions.
"Are you ok? Do you feel sick? You're so re-"
"Ino!" Shikamaru phased into view behind her, grumpily picking the girl up by the waist and moving her out of the way. "Leave the boy alone already."
"Thanks." Naruto let out a breath he didn't know he was holding and Shikamaru nodded as he ushered a ranting Ino in the other direction. Simultaneously Tenten rushed by, Lee waved, and he could see Haku and Gaara through the kitchen door preparing a considerable amount of meat.
In the middle of the crowded room sat Kiba. Arms crossed at the dinner table, he spared Naruto a glance and went back to the center of his attention.
Hinata
Hinata sat still at the dinning room table, her eyes wide open and activated with the power of the lioness within. Her eyes were completely pupiless and bulging with strain, but seemed to be focused on nothing in particular as she simply stared through Kiba, the gentle heave of her chest the only thing to indicate she was actually alive.
"Well good morning sunshine. Nice of you to join us." Kiba spoke to Naruto, but didn't bother looking at him. "Grab a bag and get enough shit to get you through a couple days."
Of course he heard him. But Naruto's mouth ran dry at the sight of her. He approached the table at Kiba's side with a slow caution.
"What happened?" His hand found hers and he could feel just how cold she was. Her eye twitched just a bit at the contact and he could feel her hand tighten around his own.
'So she is awake.'
"I was hoping you could tell me." Kiba raised a genuinely curious eyebrow at the boy. "You both threw a fucking fit yesterday. You slept it off, and I thought she was fine too… until we found her like this in the morning."
"Looking like she wants to kill you?"
"With her hands around your throat and her fangs ready to sink into your face. And that stupid look on her face…" Kiba's seemed conflicted, he was annoyed with the entirety of his situation but Naruto could still see the concern beneath the surface.
"You two have been a real fucking handful since you got here, and I can honestly say you both haven't been particularly sane at the same time. What's going on with you two? "
The two looked at each other and only Naruto responded with a nervous shrug as he scratched the instinctively at the nape of his neck. He felt in turn another squeeze of his hand and decided to pursue the issue later. Where's everyone going?
"We" Kiba gave a quick circle around the room with his finger. " We all got a job to do. But on second thought." Kiba swatted Naruto's hand away as he reached for an empty bag.
"What? You told me to-"
"I decided this can't wait. First you, me and kitten there are all taking a trip first."
"I do have a name...Where to?" A bit peeved at the nickname, Hinata had sat patiently in Kiba's silence for hours now. Him not once mentioning what they'd be up too.
"Shino's body hasn't come home yet. Like hell if I'm letting the forest have at him." Kiba stood and headed towards the door. "Come on, you're leading the way." He said as he turned to face Naruto.
Naruto gulped. Heading towards the door anyway, he noticed the absence of warmth next to him. He looked over his shoulder to see Hinata trailing a considerable distance behind him.
"Something wrong?" He asked.
"Very." Was her curt response, but when he fixed his mouth to ask another question she waved him off. "I just think a little space is good for the both of us, I don't want to smother you."
'Literally.' She thought.
"Umm... okay-"
"Let's get a move on kid! This is a perfect chance for you to track. Get us back to the scene."
"Right!" Naruto steadily focused on the task at hand, exiting the front door and closing his eyes as he took in the smell of the world around him. With two deep breaths he was able to pinpoint the direction of his last meal. "Let's go."
xXx
"Are sure you trust him to lead us there?" Hinata asked Kiba absentmindedly, the two of them having followed Naruto for at least two hours. She hadn't bothered whispering as the blonde could easily hear them from at least 30 feet anyway.
His head was busy sniffing along the ground as he prowled through the forest and noticeably tensed at the criticism.
"It takes a while to get used to. But I'm confident he can track a scent that personal."
"Personal?" Hinata asked.
'But they'd only ever met once?' She thought.
"Yeah. A predator can always track the scent of their prey... It'll mean more if I let him do this."
"Prey? What do you mean? You never really gave us much detail about what happened out-"
"We're here. " Naruto not so subtly interrupted.
The clearing looked a lot different in the waning moonlight without the mounds of snow covering the grounds. The melted fluff had turned the clearing swamp like and mosquito infested. Perhaps the biggest difference however was the lack of carnage.
A headless body layed propped up against a lone tree at the end of the clearing, as its makeshift grave marker. Its pale chest cavity was ripped open at the center, a viciously empty show. Noticeably absent were it's heart and lungs. The lower torso was evident of Naruto's handiwork, mangled legs crossed each other in an unnatural flop. Pathetic was it to see the two limbs barely yield enough flesh to make up the mass of one leg.
"Kiba..." Naruto stopped as the trio inched closer to the corpse. He felt shame as his mouth began to salivate, the ghost of his last meal still seemed to sit between his teeth. Though that's not what truly troubled him. Small flashes of his rage began to bullet through his mind as he recalled tearing meat from femur. But absent were the memory's of barreling through this mans chest to reach the heartbeat inside.
"You don't have to apologize, we've already been over this. Just get the-"
"You mean Naruto, did this?" Hinata inched closer as she examined the carnage. The blood was dried, but you could so clearly see the trail his entrails took as they were pulled from him. Up until now Sakura had been the only real dead body she'd seen. She expected her heart to seep with empathy for the boy.
Instead she struggled to keep her hand from reaching for a piece of his exposed flesh.
"No, Kiba. I don't think you understand." Naruto began to back up, looking sharply in ever direction. "I didn't leave his body like that."
"Nonsense, then who the Hell did?" Kiba stood his ground. Doing his own search of the area, sniffing with his nose high to the air.
"Do you guys hear that?" Hinata held a finger to both of them.
xXx
"The damndest thing isn't it. When you're own children seek to defy your wishes."
Naruto knew that voice all to well. The mysterious beast that had tried to uproot his self control was banging at the front door of his mind once more and suddenly he was in that damp cave once more, standing before a huge cage with a beast just beyond its bars.
"You try to give them the world, comfort them, build them in your own worldly image and somehow..." The rambling thing stopped his ramblings and took a breath. "Somehow they always turn out so disappointing."
Naruto hadn't really ever felt fear when confronted with the beast delusions, and he wasn't going to pick today to start. What had him for a loss was when he turned to Hinata to see the same look of conflict on her face.
"You... you hear him too, don't you." He said, more painful realization than question.
"Yes." Hinata gripped at her scalp, frustrated with the mental intrusion of the voice. But gritted out an answer regardless. "Pretty sure he's the reason I wanted to rip a whole in you yesterday."
Realizations collided together upon Naruto's conscious as he pieced together the events of the last few days. The pestering voice in his head, Hinata's sudden aggression after it had left, that feeling of never truly feeling alone...
"What did that fucking doctor do to us?" The question was for nobody really. But anyone who might know the answer.
"What are you two on about? Do you know where that voice is coming from?" Kiba questioned.
To both Naruto and Hinata's terror, Kiba was also busy looking for the source of the intrusion. The predisposed, joint mental anguish was'nt entirely true either.
Kiba could hear him too. They all could.
"Well hello children. It's been far too long."
The devil himself sounded oh so much more devious wrapped in the embrace of the shadows.
xXx
"You!" I could feel my breathing labor at the thought of him. His very presence was enough to make my fangs ache and my claws bleed, my hands Now covered in a runny red. "You can't be here."
I looked frantically in every direction for signs of him, but I found nothing.
"And why's that my boy?" I felt my body tense as he moved forward in his cage and it felt impossible to raise a hand against him. Like his very presence made me sluggish. My anger to heavy to bear.
And when I bothered to raise my hands to strike anyway, I realized there was nothing there for my physical form to hit. He'd invaded my space with three slick paces, he was on the other side of the cage in place of the Kyuubi. Slithering through the large open space of the bars. Had he been the one trying to weasel his way into my mind the whole time? Or had he somehow taken over the beast.
"You've carried me with you for so long. Why is it you looked surprised, me? Perhaps that I'm alive?"
'It's like he's in my head... I'm not sure if he's somewhere near or if the voice is coming from inside.'
The figure exiting the cage was somehow still shrouded in darkness, only presenting as the silhouette of a man.
I could feel my real eyes shift in attempt to take in more of the dark landscape, but it still could not reveal his position amongst the still trees and slushed ground. The entire situation left me feeling vulnerable. My real body couldn't raise its fist, but I could still swing my words at him.
"You CAN'T be here." Naruto looked to his left and right to see Kiba and and Hinata in a similar frozen state. The voice was growing in presence. More clearly could you hear a slither in it's voice as it's sound shifted from the gruff of the Kyuubi to something more sinister.
"Why? Because you killed me?"
"If I killed you, you'd stay dead." Naruto knew for sure now that every word he said to the Beast in front of him, he said aloud.
"Oh?"
The crack that swept through the air echoed like a wishbone being split. The air had noticeably calmed. Every owl only watching, the wolves silent in face of the moon. Long gone were the hungry bottom feeders that chewed at Shino's decay. What replaced them was the yellow, slit gaze of a viper's pitted eyes. Crawling up and through the rummaged insides of his diaphragm's scraps, slithering out and onto the ground. The black snake grew as it continued to makes its exit, the accompanying voice seeming to come from both the cage and the reptile before me.
"You expunged me that day Naruto." It spoke.
As he grew, I noticed it's hue begin to pale. Greasy black hair sprouted from its crown. The once garden sized viper grew first to anaconda and then to man as tail turned into legs and crown into skull. A cracklings mess of popping joints as beast stood into man.
"I-I... I killed you already." He was right, I had.
More flashes came back to me. Beyond that of gnawing on Shino's legs. I'd caved in his chest, hadn't I? Plunged both hands in past his spine and spread him apart with all my strength, my greedy fangs snapped at his lungs to make a meal of them, and when I reached in the middle to bite through his heart, I'd froze. Choking on his blood. Choking on the primal instinct itself as I coughed up a black glob of vile slime and left it in place of lungs.
It seeping into his entrails was the last thing I remember before Kiba had woken me up.
Kiba had told me... taught me the painful truth that every group of beast that came out of that lab came in three's, and that they never left that way. That... that each one of them killed another person to earn the right to their freedom from Orochimaru's twisted experiment.
My feet rooted to the ground as I watched the morphing monstrosity before me, I could tell who had been sacrificed to give me my freedom. Those sickly yellow eyes looked all to familiar. They'd almost laughed at me as I'd torn him to pieces. The restored neck looked nothing like the one I'd ripped out with my teeth. His pale, snake like skin was perfectly attached to his body, unlike the moment that I peeled it fleshy scale by scale from him so greedily with my claws, all the while my love next to me, chewing at his body.
Orochimaru had given me my freedom when Hinata and I devoured him alive all the while he'd laughed like the madman he was. When his pulse was gone, his face gone, and his heart so satisfyingly in my stomach, that is when we'd made our escape from his Eden.
'I killed another man.' I knew that now.
"Immortality was the goal my boy, and it would seem we're close to seeing results."
Kiba rushed at the "man" with a wordless roar.
xXx
Kiba's screams of pain aren't what any of the trio had expected.
A winged body had barreled down from the sky like a falling ton and slashed at the mans face with a black clawed hand covered in long dark feathers.
Hinata reacted first as she rushed to his aid and Orichimaru's cackling could be heard from the behind the mysterious humanoids broad form. It's massive. Human lengthen wings forming a shield in front of him, only exposing paled skin and and bare feet.
"You thought I'd reveal myself to you while I'm still so vulnerable? Please!" Orochimaru jumped onto the back of the thing and Naruto watched with no small amount of horror as the monster spread its wings.
It's span was intimidating, as the creature was strong. The exaggerated muscle of man made the thing look like that of a fallen angel. But it wasn't the mythical contrast of science and miracle that scared Naruto.
It was familiarization.
Yes, he was sure he'd seen that same winged devil while exploring the woods with Shikamaru. But that wasn't the only place.
The winged devil gave a mighty flap of its wings, sending the loose contents of the forest floor in every wich direction. I shielded my eyes with my arms, peeking past to see the two slowly begin to ascend.
"You're both fools for rejecting me, but results will still come with time. Me and my trusty raven here will find you once more, and when I do you'll wish you never left that lab."
Naruto fell to his knees at what he heard next.
The odd duo had by now ascended past the tallest tree but Naruto was sure of what he heard. Orochimaru had tapped on the things head and pointed east. Simple directions spilling from his mouth.
"Take us back to the lab, Sasuke."
xXx
A/N: Yeah I know, I know. I was to upload EVER ago. But here's this in light of it being my favorite month ever.
I've known I wanted this introduction from the start, but it has been a complete pain writing it. But I'm satisfied. Let me know what you think!!