{AU note below, Skip if you don't care or are not a returning reader of mine wondering where I have been}
Yikes. Ok. Where to start.. for those that have been awaiting an update from me for…close to two years now, allow me to say HI. I'm back. Slightly. Kind of. Maybe. Not too sure yet really. For those expecting a reason as to why I stopped writing, uh… Let us just say, Depression is one hell of a drug and one that is hard to kick. The lack of motivation to even begin writing again was something that has been holding me back any time I looked at my pc; Then I lost my password for , THEN my pc went and committed the hard sleep… it has been a time. For those who wonder if I will be continuing my other stories, well….. I doubt it. The loss of all my notes as well as time spent away has pretty much stuck all projects of mine in the mud. So, here I am. Trying once again to get started with a simpler project. The basic's for this story are set up on a new notebook. The pairing has already been decided, and I already have an idea of where this is going. With luck, I might actually finish this one… although with this new wireless keyboard that is smaller than this fandom's patience for Sakura, that is gonna be one hell of a challenge haha
ANYWAY
DISCLAIMER: I do not own naruto or any mentioned or referenced franchises in this fanfiction.
Throughout the night that hung over the tree tops of the Shodai's gift to his gracious village, silence draped itself over the shinobi village of Konoha, The hidden leaf village. Where moonlight glinted off of the freshly washed and dampened stone faces of its fallen Kage, starlight glinting in their eyes… and their stoney gaze locked on the world below, their village and their precious people, defended long after their passing… yet they too, were blind and unseeing to the blur of orange that fled the tower below, a scroll strapped to his back and panic clear in his eyes, curses no boy of this youth's age should know spilling from his lips as he fled across rooftops and tree tops towards the edge of konoha's eastern wall. This boy, As many who know the story would have guessed, Was Naruto Uzumaki. Having failed his shinobi exam that very morning, Naruto had acted out of desperation, out of fear and worry for his future as a ward for the village and out of need to continue to follow his dream… acting on an offer presented to him, by a trusted mentor.
That trust meant fuck all to the boy right now. Dumb as he was, naruto knew three things right now. One, he had caused harm to one of the only adults in the village who showed any care to him through the act of his embarrassing jutsu. Two, He had in doing so, accidentally caused a loud crash from the old man's comically large nosebleed sending said elder into a book case… and three…
The anbu that had rushed into the room at the sound had seen him fleeing with the scroll on his back and instead of calmly chasing after him as he thought they would as part of this extracurricular test… they had thrown all manner of weapons at him. Blood dripped down from a gash on his left arm, a shuriken embedded into the arm below the elbow as it dangled. And that word. That damned word. Traitor… said with such ease that all the boy could wonder is what he had done wrong. he had listened to his mentor, done as was asked; he was only performing a test was he not? Then why was he branded a traitor on sight and attacked with what he could recognize as near lethal force to incapacitate, if not kill outright for a failed academy student such as him?
The Boy's thoughts halted as he spotted them, those black robes and white masks… THERE! A glint of moonlight in the air as his warning, barely enough time to duck before the blade shot overhead; shaving a few of his blond hairs from his head. He barely registered the sting as the blade also slit skin, instead focusing as his panic caused him to blunder and fall from the rooftops above- a sickening crack coming from his shoulder upon the panicked and failed landing with the weight of the scroll throwing off his already atrocious balance. A quick glance at the awkwardly bent limb told him enough, his good hand reaching to yank the shuriken from its place in his flesh with the scroll's rope strap acting as the brace to muffle his cry of pain. The Anbu from before leapt to the rooftops above, looking down upon his hiding space as he slipped into an empty bin…his breath held, body still as two pairs of feet landed on the floor near him, eye gazing through a rusted hole in the side.
"….Did you see where he went" the blank mask- something he had not seen before with the old man's guards, turned to his partner, another mask as blank as snow shaking in silent negative. With a nod of the affirmative, the first leapt up to the rooftops once more; springing from windowsill to ledge in a silent act of shinobi acrobatics While the second stood as still as the wind, blank featureless mask scanning the surroundings… as he lowered his hand to the discarded shuriken, Naruto felt his breath hitch. "not an Inuzuka, Not an Inuzuka", he prayed… a prayer answered when the man wiped the blood off of the weapon and pocketed it, soon taking off into the nearby alleyways.
The breath the blonde held, released itself slowly, only to hitch at the smell surrounding him. Naruto could not have leapt from the bin fast enough, covering his mouth to hide his gags and his heaving, ignoring the steaming wound on his arm close up. His healing was nothing special to him anymore, and besides, there were more important things occurring to him. traitor… anbu… It was too much. The boy had to hide, to do anything, Mizuki could not be trusted anymore with this farce of a scheme exposed to the boy…but… they were obviously after the scroll. not him. so why not just leave it where he was? Simple.
The boy was too scared to even consider that an option. So instead… he ran. Wasting no time in using his good arm to lift up a manhole cover nearby to his hiding spot, he tore a off what remained of his ruined sleeve and tied it around his face before diving in. the darkness mattered little to him, eyes adjusting quickly as the smell of waste and sewage surrounded him, thoughts too aswim with the events of that day to consider the smell. The ambient sound of alarms awakening the village above could be heard, pulling his heart deeper into the depths of dread as the crime, HIS crime, officially began the manhunt for him and the scroll in his possession…
Naruto Uzumaki was now a wanted man.
And like any wanted man in Konoha, his thoughts went to the simplest and also the most difficult solution. Escape. All sewage in Konoha went to a nearby lake, that was then washed to either the treatment plants or the outer areas of the land of fire. So he ran, Ran as fast as he could through the stone tunnels of the sewers beneath his home; now his hunting grounds, with escape on the mind. To follow the water was to find an exit, to follow the waste was to find his freedom and even then, that seemingly would be blocked off as he heard them. Heard it. Barking.
Inuzuka ninhounds were on the hunt, and even through the pungent and potent smell of shit, piss and god knows what else; the smell of blood was ever stronger. As he ran, he heard them; paw upon stone and claws scratching up the path he had come down. Stealth thrown to the shit scented wind, the blonde continued to run. Why couldn't he just stop, why couldn't he explain what had happened? The thoughts swam around in his mind and yet, he couldn't. they were getting closer, his heart racing, tears of panic pouring down his cheeks as the world fell apart around him, HIS world fell apart around him. One, stupid decision had taken it all from him.. as lights passed and the sound of manhole covers being kicked in filled the tunnels around him, hope seemingly dwindled off… only to be cut off as a woman in Konoha jounin clothing, one he had seen come to pick up Kiba once or twice in the past, came dashing around the corner.
He barely managed to slide, using his smaller stature to do so, as her claws lacerated the area beneath his left eye in a bid to grab the boy. The snap of jaws against his leg from her companion halted his escape, causing him to cry out in pain as he felt the sharpened chakra-reinforced ivories crunch down on flesh and bone. The pain that came from his healing trying to close up around the ninhound's fangs, was quickly dwarfed by the feeling of a clawed hand smashing his face down onto the damp concrete. "Hah… hah.. got you, you little shit…". The woman's voice dripped with satisfaction as he felt her knee press down on his broken shoulder, crying out in pain that echoed through the tunnels. The barking got louder and cries of 'over there' soon followed as the other trackers began to converge on his location, The crackle of a radio coming from above him.
"this is tokubetsu jounin Tsume Inuzuka, I have the Traitor in custody- ". Anything the woman could have said after that was drowned out by the ringing in the boy's ears… the pain of her knee against his arm was blinding to him, the sting of the jaws still clamped around his healing leg only adding to the feeling. Naruto's eyes widened in pain as she took his broken arm and yanked it behind him; cold metal clamping down on it's wrist and his other arm was soon to follow as he was dragged up to his knees on the hard, damp and cold concrete. He could see naught but shadows as other groups soon caught up, lights shining in his eyes from their flashlights…
That was when the screaming started.
Unkown's POV
The creature did not know it's name. It did not know it's face, it's age, it did not know "it" at all anymore. No, it had been years since it had been allowed to think on what "it" was, Failure was what it knew what it was, yes, failure, name was failure as far as the creature as concerned, it was what the pale face yellow gaze had called it with what hurt so much on it's shoulder. Long had it been since the man had come to see it, the man which held the keys to it's cell. Yes..cell.. the bars that had long since bent and rusted to it's banging on them, snappy snap they did; clanging on stone floor. The bottles and flames the man had used had long since been taken with him when the weird man in white came to see, came to see where the creature had stayed silent and hid to prevent it's death.
Ratties had been its nourishment since that day, creature was calm and happy in the dark of the tunnels around it, ever since it was taken from mama and papa in the above ground. No, no think of the above, man said it could not return, failure would be killed for what it was… so ratties and ratty blood was it's nourishment down here in the dark, and it liked it that way. no more sharp owchies and no more burning needles in its skin… calm..happy… calm… Screaming.
Sound, Sound in it's home, lot's of sounds in it's home, the creature did not like that, It did not like that at all; it's black lifeless eyes staring from the corner it was in to the darkness beyond it's corner of home… screams… Then that smell. Blood… tasty blood, yummy blood, Much better than ratty blood, It smelt so rich, so potent, so.. so…Pain, PAIN flaring up on its shoulder as the black markings came back again. It's voice filled the air, a screech of something unknown to the world reverberating from the soundproofed walls it's home had laid in as it's clawed fists reared up and slammed against brick wall… and again… and again… And again, it slammed as it's pain flared up with hunger in kind, cracks forming in the wall between it and it's PREY…
When the wall gave through, The creature was free to see what the smell was… a young boy. Surrounded by men and women in green clothing as they turned to him, glinty sharpies drawn and ligh-it…burned… the light, it burned, it burned It burned IT BURNED IT BURNED! The creature's scream filled the tunnel as they all saw it for what it was… and Poor Naruto's eyes saw it for Who it was.
A young boy he had known at the orphanage so long ago, gone missing when a strange fire had broken out in the orphanage file room. At least that's what he recognized… what had once been, if he remembered, a kind boy named kenji who loved nothing more then to play with the birds in the orphanage flower garden… was now a monster of his worst nightmares. Skin as ashen grey as stone, untouched by sunlight, eyes beady and black with dimming fiery marks across his skin resembling that of flower petals, and claws… fingernails as long as knives, glinting with the flashlights shined on them, and those teeth… needles, rows and rows of them. He felt the hand on his shoulder tighten before he was thrown back behind the woman that had caught him.
"SHIT! It's one of the snake's freaks! Kill it!". The cry for death was matched by the barking of dogs and the cries of rage from the men, running forward to the beast- SCHLICK…
Blood sprayed the blonde's face as his sunkissed hair was marred red by the splatter of entrails; this creature's one hand having gutted one of the nin hounds that attacked it. His partner crying out in rage as it drove a kunai into the creature, only for what was once kenji to turn and crush his skull with little care of the knife embedded into it… knife-lie fingers shredding neck from shoulders in the grasp, bringing it to those jagged teeth to crunch down upon it, grey matter and skin splattering the ground… all in the space of a few seconds.
Naruto, Felt true fear. The woman cursed, turning to him and glaring as she picked him up… and ran. "I swear kid if you're in league with that snake I will gut you myself!". He knew she was saving the scroll attached to him and not the boy himself, but in the moment he was all the more ready to forgive the bite of her partner and the near destruction of his eye. But he dared to look back; As the creature was lit up in flame and stabbed, bit into and more and yet it Gouged a path through them, it's eyes locked on…him…
Fear
Sheer unrivaled terror filled the boy as it BOUNDED down the tunnels towards him, "kenji's" eyes locked on him with a hunger that no creature on two legs should possess, the chill filling his spine doubling as it came into view of the moonlight under a vacant manhole cover… entrails hanging from claws, and knives sticking out of it in all directions.
It leapt
He cried out
….She did not listen.
Tsume's conviction in him as a traitor cost her dearly as the creature slammed down on her back with an unearthly speed and an inhume weight… she rolled, he rolled out of her grip, and it did not waste the moment granted. Like a beast more than a human, it rolled off of her and gripped her skull with its claws; smashing it into the concrete until blood poured from the wound it had made…
Tsume would later come to wish it had finished her off, for perhaps she would not have to live with what came next.
Naruto's broken and weak body began to crawl away, drawing the creature's ire as it's prey began to escape… oh it could not have that. As it crawled away from the Clan matriarch, dragging its claws against concrete, it's eyes locked on the wound that was slowly starting to heal…bite marks. Bite… marks. Jagged fingerblades shot through the boy's ankle, pinning him to the ground as tearful screams of pain filled the air, only for that scream to break even further into pained…noise.. wails of sobbing as he felt those needlelike fangs bite into his shoulder, inches from his neck, blood and the sickly ichor of this thing's saliva mixing in a blazing agony that rushed through him…
Blood…so sweet… the crunch of the boy's bones and the splattering of blood was all that this creature could focus on, even as it pulled the blade that pinned naruto to the ground out of his ankle. Unaware as veins turned black, and the remnants of what it had left behind followed it; it savored it's meal…only for a sharp pain to send it into darkness. In the distraction it's meal had cost, the creature did not see the man in white; or the white cloaked white mask by his side… nor the blade that shot for its head.
As it's body fell on naruto's, bloods mixing together and soaking the scroll that the boy still had slung over his back, The blonde's last thoughts laid upon the man before him… the man he looked up to, the man he betrayed, the man he… "ji..ji..".
…Hiruzen sarutobi, third fire shadow of his village, stared in horror as one of his wayward student's creations lay a corpse on top of the boy he had come to collect. In disgust and rage at the bodies this thing had left behind, and the wounds it had caused… in worry, at the Clan head with a cracked skull and heavily bleeding wounds. His voice carried far… worry for his grandson, and allies filling the air.
"MEDIC!"
