I own neither Naruto, nor Watchmen.
Here's the Christmas update! Because I've been riding hard and heavy on writing my Zelda fic, updates will come either once every month, or every time a new chapter is written, whichever comes first.
Enjoy!
All he wants to do is get to the store and come home, preferably unmolested. There are two or three local bullies in the neighborhood all maybe five or seven years older than him. He's learned to be faster than the other victims.
But the two men that melt out of the alley have not been boys in a long time.
"Hey you!" Walter does not make eye contact, just walks faster and hopes to get away.
"Yeah, I'm talking to you!" The two speed up, and a fat hand drags him to the mouth of the alley. "I'm not done talking to you boy. Even a whoreson needs to use his manners." He looks up, into sneering faces he saw two weeks ago, the worst memory in eight years of an unhappy life.
They push him around, the mocking insults lost to the pound of blood in his ears. Think they can take what they want, just like that afternoon when his mother handcuffed him to the bed and let them do whatever they wanted, just so she could make the rent.
He's not handcuffed now, he realizes, as they pull at his clothing.
The man has a cigarette burning in his mouth. A perfectly round burn scar on his forearm once taught Walter that cigarettes are for more than just smoking.
He will remember what happens next as mostly a blur, one man's scream, launching himself at the other, flesh under his teeth, and blood welling up, a second voice screaming.
Screams fill his ears until leather-clad hands wrestle him away
"Shit, man, lookit him--" A deep woman's voice exclaims.
"Like an animal, not some civilian kid!" Man's voice this time. He is drawn into arms dressed in mesh and pulled up against a canvas-armored chest.
"Good for him, Kosuke, you know what those pissants were doing."
Walter looks up and sees a Hidden Leaf insignia wrapped around the foreheads of the couple taking him away from Walter's would-be molesters.
He stills, wary.
Ninja.
Gloved hands set him down on the sidewalk, brush him off, turn his chin this way and that.
"God, he looks just like Charlie, Keiko." Kosuke says, squinting. "Hair, face – except for that nose – even his eyes."
"God, if this is true, Linda is going to be pissed. It's a good thing he's dead – if he did - can't believe he'd ever cheat."
"My dad's name is Charlie." Walter mumbles, and the ninja both swear in unison. "But he's not here."
"Charlie? Like Charlie DeWitt?" The woman asks sharply.
"I don't know!" He yells, angry suddenly, because he's not stupid, and all those fantasies he's grown up on are broken. "He's called Charlie, and he was a samurai who got killed in the war! Not a sneaky, lying ninja!" Pity hangs in their eyes, and Keiko shakes her head.
"Kid, Charlie DeWitt was the greatest ninja of his generation. Not a samurai."
"Kid, what's your name?"
"Walter."
"Walter, I want you to take me to your mother, please."
"But I have to go to the store-" The kunoichi presses a finger to his lips.
"You can go to the store later. Take us to your mother. Now."
He leads, reluctantly. The adults argue a little on the trip back, but Keiko silences Kosuke with a firm,
"I am not depriving Hidden Leaf of another DeWitt, however illegitimate. Not with the way things are going lately."
So he obeys, and when they get back, the way his mother's face goes white at the sight of the pair of ninja is more eloquent and damning than words could ever be.
He is sent to his room while the grownups talk, and he buries his face in his almost flattened pillow, curling up in the bed. He's scared, because those two want him for something, and for Walter Kovacs, someone desiring his presence never turns out for the better.
In the end, the decision is made.
Walter is going to Konoha to be a ninja.
He wishes his mother weren't coming too.
A review, please?