AN: The first chapter wasn't the first draft of Yuuto's story, that was this one. The Jashin reveal would've been in chapter three, with chapter one and two building up the childsnatcher (which turns out to be Yuuto). But in the end, this draft didn't make it. Hope you enjoy it anyway.

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It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets, rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of my lamp that struggled against the darkness. In all, it was just another night in Amegakure.

I was sitting above a heated air vent, wrapped in mismatched patchwork blankets that kept me safe from the wind, and listening to two teenagers talking about a conspiracy.

"They call him the child snatcher, they do." The blonde boy on the left said, his voice was high, still in the early stages of puberty. His accent betrayed he was from the slumps, his words tinted with a poor mans' diction. "Heard he got Biggie last night."

The listening ear was provided by a girl, whose hair was a long as her arms. And her face was as gaunt as the weather ground was wet. She was a wee little thing, no older than twelve, no younger than nine. She, like me, was wrapped in patchwork blankets. But they hardly seemed to keep her warm, she shivered, and not just because of the fear for the Child Snatcher.

"They say he snatches the children of the street, they do." The boy got closer to the girl. "Children like us, the street rats."

"Like us?" The girl shivered, he voice soft as silk. I could barely hear her whispered words over the howls of the wind as it battled the rain for supremacy of the sky.

He nodded seriously, his wet hair stuck to his face. With the grace of an elephant in a room full of porcelain he used his hands to brush the wet strands of hair back. "But you're safe. Long as you're with me that is. They say he only snatches the ones stupid enough to be alone, they do."

The girl smiled, revealing she used to have a beautiful face. She took to his words like a puppy to a treat. She was hungry to be seen. Desperate to be noticed. I guessed she must've been one of the abandoned ones. Parents probably kicked her out, or maybe they died? But she'd known love before, and craved it like a drug addict wanted his shot. She nodded "I'd like that."

I turned my head, averting my eyes. Staying together wouldn't be what would keep them safe from the Child Snatcher. I would know. I was with Biggie when the Child Snatcher took him. I pulled the blanket tighter around me, hiding my face.

I remembered meeting Biggie almost as vividly as when the Child Snatcher took him from me. It was a few weeks ago. Biggie and I became fast friends when we both stood in line for soup at the homeless shelter.

It was easy to make friends with other children. I just said my name, reached out with a hand and asked their name. And then just stick together. There wasn't much too it. Everyone needed someone, and I had always been good at making new friends. Even better at losing them.

That is why I am sitting alone. Nine years old, keeping people at arm's length. Staying around me for too long, it could get people killed. My mom died when I was two, I remember what happened there too. Shinobi killed her, when our part of the city was raided.

I saw everything, every minute detail. See, I was born with memories of a life before. Born with the kind of mind that would remember, everything. The harsh lines that carved out my mothers' throat. The bones in my body aching as my father fell next to her on the ground. Holding the body that used to be his wife.

I remember it all too well.

Biggie was just the latest person in my collection of people that died around me. A part of me whispered of how I was guilty, nasty whispering that tried to cut through the sounds of the wind and rain.

But after the death of my father I had learned how to silence those whispers quickly enough. I hadn't survived- no thrived in this place to be brought down by my own inner demons.

My fathers' death was a slow one. He drowned his sorrow in alcohol and in the span of three years he drowned too. I remember the night he left; one just like tonight. It was raining and the wind was howling. And my father went out into the rain, to get more beer. He never came back.

I chose to believe that he died. It was easier than to remember the muttered words of how he couldn't take care of me…

"Hey you." The words drag me out of the gutter of my memories. The boy is standing over me, his hair once again in his face. I look at him through squinted eyes. I realize I was about to fall asleep. I turn my head a little, a question on my lips. "Mind scooping over?"

I nod slowly. I didn't mind moving, the heated air vent under me was wide enough for the three of us. I got up and moved to edge of the roster, so that the two teenagers could sit on the roster too.

"So, you a loner?" The boy asked, sitting down next to me.

I shake my head. I wasn't a loner… "Lost my friend last week." My voice is flat, why was I telling him this?

"Ah, tough, that. Shinobi raid?" The ease with which he says it makes me think he hasn't lost anyone yet. The girl slowly sits next to him, careful not to let her hair get into the space between the metal rosters.

"His name was Biggie." I feel my hand traveling to my necklace. The one thing I treasure above all else, my connection to my faith. The lord had his soul now. "Child snatcher took him away."

The girl let out a gasp. And the boy was quick to wrap his arm around her shoulders. But he was looking at me, really looking, as if he saw me in a new light. Which wasn't the case, my trusted lamp burned the same as it did earlier. "Were you there? Did you see him?"

The questions were earnest, tinted with sensation and a touch of fear. I hadn't seen the child snatcher. But I had seen Biggie die. "No. but Biggie died painfully." The words are rolling off my tongue as if I was following a well-practiced script. "He screamed. Like a pig in a slaughter house."

"A monster he is, I tell you." The boy said gravely. "Worst of the worst, they say." The arm he had wrapped around the girl ended in a fist. "The shinobi should hunt him down, they should."

I pulled a blanket over my head and mumbled I was going to sleep. I didn't feel like talking about it any longer. I let myself slump down, one hand holding my necklace tightly the other one turning off the fire in my lamp. My eyes closed and I fell asleep quickly.

ᕕ(ᗒ益ᗕ)ᕗ

Waking up, I noticed quickly both teenagers had already left. I was alone.

And I felt sick.

It had been two weeks since Biggie had died. And while I'd been feeding myself, and trying to keep warm. My body just wasn't made to live on the streets. Not that my body was weak, on the contrary, I could easily subdue kids double my size, I had strength. But my health was, lacking.

Back when I was little mom and dad used to worry about my health a lot. I remember spending weeks in the hospital bed, and mom and dad sitting by my side holding hands. I wasn't quite sure about what was going on then, but it had been those very first few weeks I had realized this was a world very different from my old one.

Doctors didn't use scalpels or needles, they used hands with glowing light.

I was four days old when I saw my first headband. And realized exactly where I was. All the pieces falling together to complete the puzzle. The shinobi world, Naruto's world.

The doctors seemed interested in me because no matter how they tried, they couldn't use chakra on me. I'm not sure if it was me doing it consciously, or my body doing it on its own. But the very first time the doctor had put a glowing hand on my chest I had been scared. And for one reason or another the light on his hand had sputtered out.

Many more had tried, but chakra never seemed to last around me.

And sadly, I never developed any chakra of my own… Which in a world where chakra means life, pretty much meant I was a dead man walking. How long would my body be able to survive without chakra?

Nine years so far.

Despite feeling like shit; I got up and packed my belongings. They all fit in my backpack. I was annoyed though, because the teenagers I had spent the night with, had stolen my lamp. My one source of light and warmth. But I couldn't be angry, I had stolen the lamp from Biggie… I wasn't proud of it. But in Ame, every death meant another one would gain something. And I would never deny, no matter how shameful it might be, that I had gained a lot from Biggie's death. It hadn't just been his lamp, but other stuff too. In a sense you could say I inherited it.

I smiled. I had really liked Biggie. But maybe it was time to look for a new friend. I said a quick prayer. Biggie was in a better place now, surely.

With my backpack tightly secured on my back I made my way down to the street. The homeless-shelter was on the other side of town. All the way in Ganjün-district. Not a place I liked to visit often, it was a seedy place. Where only the most desperate of people lived.

There lived the children lost to lust, some of them wearing the bodies of adults. There lived the rapers, those who took what was not willingly given. There lived the lowest of the low, the people who murdered drunk in rage. And in the bleeding heart, the place called Hoõh, stood the castle of Ganjüns king.

Simochu Gana. The King of all that was rotten.

Simochu was the spill around which Ganjün turned. And he was the one to keep all the rot inside his kingdom. And from what I could gather from the shinobi, Hanzo let him. He was a crime lord on first glance. But he was so much more than that if you looked closer. If you listened to the whispers of those he payed, blackmailed and ruled with an ironclad fist.

I walked the streets, crossed three bridges and passed two archways. It took me four hours to reach Ganjün, and once I did I knew so immediately. For where Ame's districts all had its noticeable signs, Ganjün smelled like burning roast. And even the ever falling rain could cleanse the air of that smell.

Amegakure was known for its skyscrapers. From Bukou, the northern district, to the southern district Yun, buildings tickled the clouds. And the clouds parted with tears, raining in laughter. Ganjün, being the most western district was no exception. Around me buildings reached higher than my eyes could see.

I made my way to the homeless-shelter. Despite its less than stellar reputation, it was maybe the most caring of districts. Nowhere else in Ame could you count on the charity of others, but here street rats like me were welcomed with open arms.

And every time I came here, those open arms tried to keep me from leaving. For charity was not without its cost.

"Ah Yuuto." I turned around to see the woman the voice belonged to. It was Miss Yuyu, an elephant of a woman, with memory to match. She was round and tall, and her hair was gray and spindly, like a big tuff of candy cotton framing her fat face. She had a scar on her neck the shape of a smile, which went from right to left with jagged lines. She wore a dress that seemed to struggle to hold her flesh, the seams showing the thread with which it was sewn.

I gave a polite bow. "Hello Miss Yuyu." Miss Yuyu owned a brothel. Though its name suggested it was an Inn.

She smiled at me, and beckoned for me to come. And one doesn't deny Miss Yuyu. I've heard it said she got so fat by eating children like myself. Tall tales, I was sure. "You look like a cat coughed you up Yuuto."

She had a drawl to her voice, like she had seen the bottom of one or two bottles of sake. "Then I should fit right in here." I said looking around.

She coughed up a laugh. "Boy don't shit where you eat. Now come inside, and tell me some interesting things." She turned around and wobbled to the door of her brothel. With a mighty push she opened it for me to walk through. I gasped for air as I entered. The air was thick with smoke and perfume, masking the poignant smell of sex.

Miss Yuyu's brothel looked like a bar with too many doors. The floor was tiled with white stone, there were couches, tables and loveseats that filled the room. Most of them empty except for the one in the back, where a man with an impressive moustache was being straddled by a girl not even half his age. Her hands went through his hair while his were glued on her thighs. "Like the look of her? Boys' go through the change earlier and earlier these days."

Her voice was suggestive, and I felt heat rising to my cheeks. I shook my head profusely. "He could be her father." I said, trying to sound as disgusted as I would've been a lifetime ago. But those kind of morals hadn't been worth anything for a long time now. And I wasn't that great an actor.

She walked me to the bar and poured me a glass full from a carton box. For a moment I thought it was white wine, but there was an image of a pear on the box, and wine was made from grapes… "Now tell Miss Yuyu something interesting." She said pushing the glass of pear juice towards me.

With greedy hands I put the glass to my mouth and drank 'till I had to take a breath. I licked the wetness off my lips, and savored the taste of the pear juice. I had heard many a thing while I was in the city the last week and a half. I had heard drunk words of shinobi talking about their war. How Hanzo had send a hundred shinobi to the border in hope to keep Konoha and Iwa from using Ame as a battleground, and how less than forty had returned. I had heard some whispering of complaints when I walked the Main Market, of how the crops this season had been good yet prices had been upped. But Miss Yuyu was not interested in things like that.

Miss Yuyu wanted to know about how the bigger fish moved in the pond, and while I didn't know what she did with that information, and it was probably better that I didn't. But the payment was just too good a lure for me not to bite and share everything I knew. "People are saying The Hijk brothers have been buying out Soutska Tower residents." I took another gulp from the almost empty glass of pear juice, I wasn't sure if I was afraid she'd take it away from me if I didn't drink it fast enough, but better be safe than sorry.

She nodded, so she had already heard that. But did she know why? "They say that the brothers had cut a deal with the old man."

Miss Yuyu arched one of her painted-on eyebrows, the strong sharp line managed to go even higher than it already was. "What kind of deal?"

I raised my shoulders. I could only tell what I had heard. And a street rat like me didn't get to hear the details. I took a last gulp from the pear-juice and pushed the glass back. Would she re-fill it? "But they say that the old man is scared of someone." I eyed the glass and carton juice-box. "And Soutska Tower is nigh impenetrable since last year's renovations."

My information was awarded with a refill of the glass.