Chapter Three: Lauds
Dawn
When the Boy first comes to, he finds himself held down securely by metal straps on a cold table. He is in a large, dimly-lit windowless room. His eyes immediately snap to the sole door on the far side of the room. But between him and the exit, there is a line of masked ANBU guards. And besides the guards, a man with blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail looks impassively down at him.
He resists the temptation to ask the Voice on the situation. The Voice has told him that to escape detection, it has to return to the mental cage inside the Boy, and from there, it cannot talk to him. For now, it is up to the Boy to pull them through.
"What's going on?" he asks, making his voice quiver just slightly at the last syllable. But nobody answers him. The Boy focuses on making himself look as harmless and helpless as possible – an easy feat, considering how small he is. He notices a silver-haired ANBU, standing just behind the blonde man, shift uneasily.
Several minutes later, the old man arrives with an entourage of even more ANBU soldiers. His face is grim, and as he looks down at the Boy, none of the usual lenience is there. The blonde man bows his head in greeting.
"Report," the old man commands the blonde man.
"The boy was assaulted by Sato in a narrow alley, and seems to have reacted in self-defense," the man says curtly. "Then, realizing that he was being chased, he fled the village."
"The Kyūbi...?" murmurs the old man.
"I have found no memories of him interacting with the Kyūbi," the man reports. The old man's shoulders slump almost imperceptibly. "However..."
"However?"
"There are multiple inexplicable blanks in his memory that would be concurrent with a possible body takeover situation. If there are any weaknesses in the seal that was used to bind the Kyūbi within the boy..."
"None," the old man says, shaking his head. "I have checked the seal over myself, multiple times. It was done flawlessly. The seal is set to weaken naturally over time, but without the key, the Kyūbi cannot leave its cage."
"While it was out of self-defense, the memory shows that the boy was aware of his actions and derived pleasure from the incident. That kind of bloodlust is not necessarily uncommon amongst shinobi of course, but for a boy his age..." The blonde man turns to look at the Boy. "The Kyūbi's presence could be causing some mental instability."
"Naruto," the old man says quietly. With a weary expression on his face, he looks straight into the Boy's eyes. "Do you understand what you have done?"
Although the Boy may have once felt a certain debt to the old man for taking care of him, the Boy only cares about himself and the Voice now, so the lies surge to his tongue with ease.
"Was what I did wrong?" the Boy asks, his eyes widened slightly in a show of surprise. The Voice has long since taught the Boy the methods of deception. "He was hurting me. I didn't think I would k-kill him. I...I'm sorry."
The Boy is not sure if they believe him, but they stop probing his memories after that.
For a long while, the Boy is locked away from the rest of the village. During the time he is detained, he is held in an secret underground facility. He is released from his bindings but is kept in a sparsely decorated cell, with at least five ANBU on standing duty at all times. Several times a day, some white-coated doctors come to visit him and ask him questions about silly things.
"What does this shape look like, Naruto?" they ask him, holding up a white card with an inkblot on it.
A mask.
"A butterfly," the Boy says.
"And this?"
Two people with their head and legs torn off.
"Two people holding hands," he says.
"Very good, Naruto."
The entire time, the Boy cannot talk to the Voice, and against his will, he grows restless. He misses the Voice's company.
"How did you escape the village, Naruto?" a bespectacled doctor asks him, holding his hand gently as if comforting him. He thinks the Boy does not know that his finger is positioned directly over the Boy's wrist's pulse.
"I don't know. I was scared, and my body filled up with ad...adren...adrenuh..."
"Adrenaline," the doctor supplies helpfully. He then makes a slight gesture towards the nurse standing next to him, who scribbles something down furiously on her notepad.
"Yeah that," says the Boy, nodding.
By the time the Boy is released, all the tree leaves in the village have fallen, gathering in clumps of orange and red along the streets. He is escorted to his new home, which is located at the far reaches of the village – far away from the cluster of apartment complexes where most of the civilians live. And now, there are always ANBU watching him from a distance. Initially, they do not even try to hide themselves; they lie in wait on top of his roof, their pale white masks glinting sinisterly. Gradually, as if to induce him into a false sense of lull, they begin disappearing. But the Boy knows they are always there, watching.
One day, a few weeks after he has been released, the Voice returns. Unable to sleep, the Boy is listlessly looking out the window at the dawn sky when the unsettling silence is finally broken.
"We did it," whispers the Voice. At the sudden sound, the Boy's heart jumps to his throat, but without changing his expression, the Boy allows his body only an excited twitch of his fingers.
"How did I do?" he asks eagerly.
"You did as best as could be expected. Well done."
The Boy looks away from the window as his face flushes in pleasure. Suddenly, he remembers something he has been wondering for a while now.
"Did you do something when that man was probing my memories?"
"I took all memories pertaining to myself with me while I retreated to the seal," the Voice explains. "Not even that jutsu can get past the seal without the key. They also tried to erase your memory of what they did to you. I blocked the jutsu, but you will have to pretend you don't recall anything."
"I didn't like that man. I didn't like any of them," the Boy decides, narrowing his eyes. His fingers twitch again. "I want to kill them. Can we kill them?"
"Patience," growls the Voice. The Boy's face falls, and in response, the Voice's tone softens. "We'll get there eventually. But as you can see, we're not strong enough yet."
"How can we get strong?"
"Training. I can train you to an extent, but you'll have to go to the Ninja Academy soon."
"Will they let me go?" The Boy sighs.
"We'll have to be on our best behavior for a while," the Voice states simply.
But as it turns out, there is no need. The old man eventually visits the Boy again, and tells him that he will be enrolled in the Academy in the newest class.
So, the Boy begins to attend the Ninja Academy. And for the first time in his life, the Boy is no longer bored. For the first time in his life, there is always something new to learn, or something to work on.
Initially, the Academy lessons consist of learning how to read and write, basic math, and history. The Boy already knew how to read and write, and the math bores him – but he is intrigued by the history lessons. More specifically, the brief unit on past torture methods captures his attention. Whereas his classmates are all cringing in their seats, he is at perfect attention, his ears perked to memorize every last detail. The practice of prolonging pain to extract what you want from your victim seems a most rational idea to him.
After several months, the Academy curriculum finally turn to more practical lessons. To all of these, the Boy begins to apply what he has learned.
During a field trip outside the village walls in which they learn about setting traps and covering one's tracks, the Boy makes modifications to the basic snare trap that they are required to build. On top of the first noose, he adds a secondary noose that is released when the first noose is triggered; it will lash onto the victim's wrist. Theoretically, the momentum of the caught victim flying up will counter the secondary noose holding the victim down, and if the tree and wire are strong enough, the force should be enough to rip the victim in two. Even better, if he can somehow control the length of the wire while the victim is caught in the air, he can slowly rip the victim in two. The Boy unfortunately is not able to test it out on a human being, so he makes do with the entrails of several unfortunate wild rabbits.
The weapon-handling unit, he takes to with relish. After all, kunai and shuriken are much more practical tools than a plastic sand shovel for gouging out someone's eyes. After a lesson on human anatomy, the Boy begins to keep a mental list ordering which body parts will cause the most amount of pain but the least amount of blood loss.
The taijutsu unit on the other hand – at least at first, the Boy does not like it very much. Many of the children in his class are clan children, and have been trained by their families before enrolling in the Academy. They can go smoothly through a sequence of stances in the blink of an eye; compared to them, he is an awkward duck trying to learn how to fly.
The Boy does not like to lose.
When a brown-haired girl crows in victory after a bout, as the Boy lies face down in the dust, he makes up his mind to train harder.
But before that, he 'accidentally' fumbles a kunai throw, sending it slashing straight through two vital nerves in the girl's leg. The girl is carted away to the Hospital, a crying and bleeding mess, and doesn't return to the Academy until two weeks later, by the time which she has fallen behind the rest of the class.
The Boy does not spare girls.
As the years pass by and his class nears graduation, they begin to learn jutsu, and a whole new world is opened to the Boy. The basic jutsu they learn – Bunshin no Jutsu (Clone technique) and Henge no Jutsu (Transformation technique) – are interesting as possible escape methods, but the Boy is already salivating at the thought of the more advanced jutsu that await him. The Voice tells him there is a jutsu that lets you gather up chakra into a tight ball in your hand, which you can then use to slam into people's bodies and rupture their organs from the outside. There is a jutsu that lets you rip off people's skins and wear them over your own, a jutsu that you can use to summon a mist of acid that lets you melt a victim's flesh off their bones...the possibilities are endless.
Despite his fantasies, the Boy keeps his word and does not kill anybody. After all, it is unlikely that he even could have. The number of ANBU watching him have dwindled over the years, but there is still always at least one within a reachable distance.
By the time the final exam and graduation time finally arrive, it has been nine years since he met the Voice. He performs excellently in the exam, but because he has not always performed to expectation in separate units ("The test was to make a standard snare trap. This is not a standard snare trap"), he fully expects to graduate somewhere in the middle-rank of the class and get put on an obscure team with a pair of talentless nobodies. This is fine with him, as the Boy has little interest in being outshone by his own teammates.
To the Boy's shock, he is told that as a special ward of the old man, his graduation is to be put on-hold until the old man gives his permission.
The old man does not given permission.
"But I didn't kill anybody!" the Boy howls to the Voice, furiously stabbing a fat pigeon he found roosting outside his window that morning. Tufts of red and grey feathers fly everywhere.
"It's not you. He's up to something," the Voice grumbles sympathetically.
Sure enough, one of the other instructors of the Academy later approaches the Boy and tells him that if he is able to steal a special scroll of forbidden ninjutsu from the old man, he will be given permission to graduate.
The Boy does not believe this for a second, but the idea of a scroll of forbidden ninjutsu intrigues him enough to go after it. Entering the Hokage Residence, he skulks along the sides of the walls. Oddly enough, the premises are largely vacated and none of the watching ANBU stop him, telling the Boy that they are testing him in some way.
With a shrug, he snatches the big scroll from the storage and heads to the forest outside the village. Once he finds a suitable clearing, he settles down comfortably and begins to read.
The first jutsu is one called the Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu (Multiple Shadow Clone technique) which sounds interesting, but does not quite achieve the dramatic flesh-melting-off-face effect he is going for. It also seems to consume an ungodly amount of chakra.
Nevertheless, he reads over its theory and its practical application. He is about to move on to the next jutsu when he notices the instructor approaching him.
"Naruto, congratulations," the man says, with a congenial look on his face. "You can graduate now. Just hand over the scroll."
"Sure thing," says the Boy, rolling the scroll up. He tosses the scroll casually to the ground.
His face twisting into an overeager smile, the man steps forward to pick up the scroll.
With a snapping sound and a rustle of a bent sapling, the man flies up into the air, dangling from the noose secured tightly around his leg.
"What the – ?!"
"Oh sorry," says the Boy, looking up in faint surprise. "I forgot I left one of my practice snares here."
"Very funny Naruto...now let me down!" The man tries to sound amused.
"Sure thing," says the Boy, pulling down on a length of wire that is hanging down from the tree. Just as the man notices the other noose secured around his wrist, he lets out a yelp of pain as the strain on his body grows. His yelps turn to howls and soon, with a loud cracking sound, the man's hand breaks.
The man bursts into tears, but fortunately for him, the noose around his wrist slips loose and falls to the ground. The tension on his body relieved, the man's body swings slackly in the air. The Boy makes a disappointed sound, mentally noting that the snare does not work as well on grown humans as it does on animals. Or at least, the wrist is not optimal. He wonders what other body parts he could attach the noose to that will hold better – or alternatively, perhaps he should switch to a barbed wire? That would make the skin tear apart more satisfyingly. But which body part would rip off the easiest?
His eyes begin to trail down the man's torso.
But before he can let his thoughts run for long, he is interrupted as ANBU land silently around him. Several of them cut down the grateful, sobbing man from the tree and take him away. Several others escort the Boy back to his apartment.
The next day, he is told that he has graduated the Academy at the bottom-most rank of his class.
A/N: yeap.
Edit: Please note that the "watching ANBU" are easily visible to Naruto, but that is because he has the Kyubi helping him. They would not suspect that he could see them (while they're barely trying).