Even without his father, Zetsu's day to day life was the same. He scrounged up his own food, and he robbed from the local markets without getting caught thanks to his new techniques. When he went to meet his teammates the next day, not only were they disappointed he had found his way back, but their faces paled at his new appearance. Though they said nothing he could tell he was going to get it after the mission. A few days passed without occurrence and it was easy to keep the curious friends of his father away, and life was uneventful. But on one particular Saturday, his eye began to hurt. At first it was nothing, Aku assured him it wasn't infected and it was just the last end of their deal. But the pain just kept on getting worse each hour until he cried in pain. He sat huddled in the corner of his father's old bedroom holding his bleeding right eye and whimpering. It felt as if his eye socket was being ripped apart and sewn back together with a rusty nail.

"Zetsu, move your hand away." Aku said calmly. "The pain will go away if you do."

Reluctantly he moved his hand away and noticed that all the vision and feeling in his right eye was suddenly gone, but the socket still hurt.

"Now, I want you to allow me to use your left hand, it will be easier if I do it."

With control leaving his arm and numbness setting in he watched his arm lift up and move towards his right eye. He felt a small twinge of pain from his eye socket then relief from the pain. The arm brought itself down to rest in front of his face holding an eyeball that stared back at him. With control returning to his arm he gasped and dropped it onto the ground where dirt collected on its surface.

"Don't drop it!" he barked. "It's probably valuable and can be used for medicine. Keep it in a beaker full of water for now until we can get something better."

Before Zetsu could reply an even stronger pain invaded the spot where his eye once was, causing him to cry out. Trying to ignore the feeling of a liquid filling his eye socket, he picked up his old eye and walked over to the kitchen and placed it in a jar, filling it with water. Once that was done he asked,

"Aku, why does it feel like someone's pouring milk into my eye?"

"That's my eye filling the cavity, unlike yours it has a more enhanced nerve system so it can see better. But that also means that when it starts connecting to your brain you'll feel a lot more pain than before. But don't worry, after that you'll see the benefits."(no pun intended)

"Good, I don't want any more distractions. Say, do you think that if my teammates try to kill me, I'll be able to kill them in self defense and we'll be able to "dispose" of their bodies?"

He snorted, "I hope so, the food you've been sticking down our throat is horrible!"

"I know, after I had my first taste of human meat, nothing tastes as good as it used too."

Within an hour his eye had come in and was now just a circular yellow orb that looked like a giant egg yolk, completing his new look. Now even Atsumaru avoided him as much as he could, only talking to him to be polite. His teammates didn't give him cold looks anymore but fearful ones, wondering what he had become and what would change next. Now his fathers disappearance was becoming more apparent and he had to feign worry over a missing father to visitors, a search was sent out and his body was never found. (not surprisingly)

Months passed by and the chuunin exam arrived which was held in their village, and with help from Aku he passed with flying colors and became a chuunin. Luckily for he and his team Zetsu was good at stealth missions and usually went solo on C to A rank missions. A few peaceful months went by, training with his team and doing missions; but the peacefulness shattered one evening. Whether for better of worse his hope had happened, but not how he had planned. It was midnight and thanks to months of work he had finally gotten control over his sleep patterns, which means he could be woken up by the sound of a kunai flying through the air toward his head. Startled awake he rolled to the left and got in a battle crouch. With his new eye he could see his two teammates glowering at him in the darkness. Wasting no words he immediately went into action and his teammates imitated. Skipping the idle fist fights he formed a hand seal and many strong vines shot up from the floor towards the pair. Jumping out of the way they formed seals of their own, he recognized the formation, they had practiced it before the chuunin exams and it had been a defeating move against an enemy squad. Without him, there was an easily accessible hole in formation. He jumped behind Krish and knee'd him in the small of his back and pinched the vulnerable part of his neck, causing him to fall to the floor in pain. Natila turned to him and started to form another seal but he beat her to it. He grabbed her wrist in mid-seal forming and broke it with a loud 'snap.' She cried out and attempted to grab a kunai to stab him with but a hidden vine behind her shot out and stabbed many vital organs. Krish, still fully conscious, stared in horror. It had been known that they had been an item for a while and he was very fond of his girl.

"Y-you bastard! I'll make you pay for killing her!" He struggled to stand up and ran toward him, not even trying to hold back his tears. Years of torture and mistreatment flashed across his mind as he stabbed a well aimed vine through his skull, killing him instantly. For a few moments he stared at the dull, lifeless stare of his former partner. A wave of nostalgia washed over for a brief moment, but it passed quickly, he had killed off those types of emotion long ago.

"So, are you going to clean up this mess or what? If you're wondering how you won so easily it's because they were blinded by emotion."

"How could they be blinded by emotion while they were attacking me? I can understand when I killed off Natila but..." Aku stayed silent. And so did Zetsu. Neither were sure weather they were blinded by hate, or some small amount of affection.

In the process of 'disposing the bodies, Zetsu was interrupted by a knock on the door and the sound of Atsumaru's voice.

"Zetsu? Are you in there?" Yelled the booming voice of his teacher.

"Crap, if a jonin sees you we're screwed" Aku said in a pissed tone. They had both forgotten the early morning mission their team had been assigned. All three of them were supposed to be there an hour ago, and they were just in the middle of finishing off Krish's small intestine.

He opened the door and stepped inside. "Zetsu? Do you know where everyone is? You know you...were...sup.." His face widened in horror at the bloody sight of his students being eaten, guts being strewn haphazardly across the floor.

"What the..."

All he could do was stare up at the confused older man with a look as close to innocence as a person with a mouthful of human flesh could pull off.

Atsumaru paused then looked up at him with a hard to read expression. "Zetsu... I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to kill you now. I had thought you were different from what everyone else said, that 'demon' was furthest from your true self. Even when your appearance changed I tried to ignore it and still thought of you that way." as he stared at the ground a look of total defeat and sadness had appeared on his features, like he had just watched his wife die.

"But now I see you're just as they said, a demon, a monster." the sadness in his face was gone and replaced by anger.

It was unbelievable, the one person who he had believed in his entire live, was now going to try and take his life for defending himself. Shock, sadness, and rage filled his mind and a familiar phrase whispered in his head.

"He's just like everyone else..."

As his body moved forward consciousness slipped away from him slowly as his darker half took over all and the lighter self fell asleep.

"Hey, wake up! Jeez I can't believe you fell asleep on me. WAKE UP."

His eyes fluttered open revealing a forest canopy above them and the sound of birds chirping overhead. As he tried to sit up he was hit with a pain in his abdomen and immediately laid back down.

"What happened?" he asked still disoriented.

"Well, all the stress from the previous fight caused you to go 'night night' and I had 100 control over your body. I fought with Atsumaru, he was tough and almost killed us, but I won then fled. We're missing nin now kiddo. But we're badly injured, it'll be a while before we can move again."

He didn't reply and a small tear appeared at the corner of his eye, but he quickly wiped it away. Looking over he saw his ninja band folded neatly next to some ointment. He grabbed it and a kunai and silently crossed through the symbol of his village.

Sorry for lack of updates. I was uninspired and school had started on Tuesday. It really wasn't that bad! Sorry for lack of action but I suck at writing action sequences and can hardly understand them too. And if he seems too invincible or something I apologize for that too.

RnR please.

P.S. I finally learned how to edit the document here!