Welcome, dear readers, to a new story!
I'm excited to show it to you all.
Like with Silent Night and Killing Off the Blue Uchiha it took me a while to pick out the next story upload.
I want to give a special shout out to Ishimaru Taiki. You've been a great friend and I've had fun bouncing ideas off you. Thank you!
Now, about this story and about this Naruto.
The story's going to be dark, featuring plenty of blood, gore, violence, and graphic depictions of death and suffering. But it won't be all dark and gloomy; there will be some brightness here and there, quite a bit of slice of life and all that fun stuff.
The Naruto in this story will be in Kakashi's generation, older than the Konoha Nine and Team Gai. He's smarter and more skilled than in canon. I won't say anything about his personality. I'll leave judging his character up to you.
I won't be following canon, not strictly. I've also played around with ages, timelines, events, jutsu and bloodlines, so I advise you not to use canon (or any of my former fics) as points of reference.
This chapter might be confusing at first; you'll probably even be wondering how the parts I showed in the preview (last update for Blue Uchiha) fits into the whole story.
Don't worry, it gets clearer the deeper you go down the rabbit hole.
I DO NOT OWN NARUTO
Without anything else to say, I present to you:
Whisper Group
CHAPTER 1
That night, he ran from the Chosen Hundred.
Winded from killing his brothers and sisters, he escaped as the survivors crowded around their Master.
The world was rushing beneath him, blurring green with the dense forest, black with the moonless sky and blinking white with the roaming searchlights doggedly chashing after him.
Speeding ahead of the beaming searchlights and racing behind him, soft footfalls landed swiftly on the earth, bounding over the ground so quietly it was like they were flying through the air.
He dared not look back, not sparing the effort to see if they were close.
A chill ran through him as the very tips of fingers swiped at his shirt, missing by a hair breadth.
His lungs burned.
His muscles wailed.
His bare, bandaged feet screamed, stepping on sharp rocks and snapping twigs.
A silent scream ripped from his lips as a shuriken embedded itself on his back, nailing a shoulder blade.
Then, despite the stark composure of the pursuers hot on bus tail and their tightly released breaths, they began yelling at him.
"Master loves you!"
"Master needs you!"
"Your home is with us!"
"Come back home, brother!"
"For Master's sake, return home!"
Tears leaked from the runaway's eyes, ignoring their pleading cries imploring him to stop.
These liars couldn't imitate his family, for the boy knew the differing tints and tones of brothers and sisters right down to the subtle tremor of their voices.
Master indeed sent them but they weren't CORE.
They were ROOT.
The pain from the ninja star digging into his back was replaced by an empty numbness; his body ran hard and stubborn, shaking his head to their calls.
No!
A short-lived burst of energy propelled him forward, tearing the earth he blazed on and zigzagging through the trees from a hail of kunai.
He didn't know he was running to an orange blip ahead of him in the dark until he burst out into a small camp, slamming face first into what could only be described as a massive cinder block.
Tumbling to the ground and craning his head back to look at the person he crashed into, his teary eyes were met with a deathly wide grin, a mouth of serrated teeth and cruel eyes that held his gaze in eternal petrification.
The boy's couldn't move.
Nothing moved.
This person's killer intent washed around him like an endless ocean, racking the pursuers to a faltering stop at the edge of the camp.
The man wasn't looking at them though, eyes directed solely on the person that collided with him while he was preparing for a well-deserved night's rest.
This boy's look and smell was unmistakable.
A Leaf brat.
A Hyuuga brat.
Completely covered in blood but uninjured himself.
Still, in spite all the red soaked into his clothes, on his skin, drying in his shaggy hair and even stuck under his nails, it was blaringly obvious where the and his pursuers were from, and the man delighted at his chance of an unrighteous slaughter.
"Look who's come to die."
Deserved exhaustion finally arrived.
The boy's Byakugan eyes rolled back into his head and his world turned black.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
His eyes flickered open to the muffled noise of grunting and the distinct sound of bones breaking.
Lying on his side, he witnessed a mountain of a man step on the neck of a black cloaked ninja, snapping it wetly and leaving the Shinobi briefly convulsing in the split second throes of a painful death.
The man lumbered to a tree, where another ROOT ninja was slumped against. Gripping that ninja by his neck, the man lifted the ninja right off the ground and slammed him into the tree, keeping his feet inches from the earth by his hold on the ninjas neck.
Five more bodies littered here and there, likely would have been more if not for the others being called to retreat.
The makeshift campfire crackled merrily, illuminating the camp in horrifying orange light.
The boy clenched his teeth and narrowed his eyes.
Veins crept out from his eyes and spiderwebbed to his ears, thrumming with chakra.
His Byakugan flared into activation and he used it to study the man ripping bone crushing blows to the gut of the ninja pinned to the tree.
About five foot and nine inches, the man easily towered over the ROOT ninjas strewn about the camp, broken in death. His hair was deep blue and spiked upwards, vaguely resembling a sharks fin. He was shirtless, wearing a pair of ninja pants and no shoes, showing his black painted toenails.
Water, fire, earth and wind chakra affinities.
Flicking his all-seeing eyes to the tent, there was an unassuming broad sword, sheathed in thick leather and having some straps meant to keep it firmly on the users back.
The boy's studies informed him exactly who this person was, recalling every piece of information and reciting them in his head like he was reading them straight off ROOTs classified Shinobi Intelligence Manual: Water country.
Kisame Hoshigaki of the Hoshigaki clan. Fifteen years old. Jounin Shinobi of Kirigakure no Sato. Protege of Fuguki Suikazan, Leader of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and holder of the Samehada. Kenjutsu master (as of when recorded). Exceptional Taijutsu but not at level of mastery. Holder of Shark Summoning Contract.
Total disregard for human life.
High functioning sociopath.
Sadistic tendencies.
Extremely violent.
Approach with caution.
Kisame's tremendous growth spurt made it look like he was a full fledged adult, meanwhile he was going to turn sixteen in four months; the restrained nine year old boy now knew otherwise.
The shark teen grunted, removing his blood soaked fist from deep inside his victims stomach and frowning with his teeth bared at the splinters on his knuckles.
"I'll get to you in a sec. Help yourself to some baked beans." He said, speaking over his shoulder to the runaway boy, chuckling darkly at the redundancy of his words.
The boy was hog-tied and gagged, restrained by tight, rough ropes around his ankles and wrists. His hands were bound at his back.
There also weren't any baked beans cooking on the fire.
Kisame faced the wheezing Shinobi gently removing the mask and wondering aloud. "Why won't you scream?" He seemed disappointed, saying. "This isn't fun anymore."
...Who were these people again?
He honestly forgot.
Kiri wasn't exactly on favourable ties with Konoha, so all the better.
Pale lavender eyes pulsing, the boy rolled to his back and flipped onto his feet, deftly doing so without support of his hands. Squatting down as he softly landed on his feet and steadying his bound self for a second, the Byakugan boy exhaled quietly from his nose and forced his heart rate to a calm slow.
Ever so stealthily, he hopped up a little, swinging his tied hands under his feet and getting them from his back to his front.
The boy's emotionless face hardened with resolve, zeroing his eyes on the corpse closest to him that had its arms and legs torn off from their sockets.
Kisame groaned and dropped the now dead ninja. "Now your turn, brat."
He still needed to blow off some steam.
Turning to begin hacking into the bound boy, he just barely caught the boy sling on a dark, sleek backpack in one hand and lugging both a shuriken and kunai pouch with his other, ready to strap them to his thighs once the bag was on his back.
The boy's expressionless face made Kisame smile grow darker.
There was a taunt silent between them, occupied by the gentle crackle of the fire and the distant hooting of owls, where the nine year old slowly finished wearing his bag, eying Kisame as he did so.
It was the careful, methodical movements of a person standing before a wild animal, not wanting to spook that creature.
He tossed both pouches over his shoulders instead of fastening them where he originally wanted to, intending to tie them to his thighs later. The child stood up straight and signed to the teen, mouthing soundless words.
"There's no need for me to fight you. I'll be on my way. Thank you for your help. I'm in your debt."
Kisame raised a eyebrow, confused at the hand gestures, as well as the boys subsequent slight bow ebbing the purest appreciation.
The three minute nap was more than enough for the CORE Operative to feel somewhat refreshed.
His training ensured that he was grateful for any chance to shut his eyes and rest his mind for longer than thirty seconds.
It wasn't abnormal to think a Kiri Jounin would know standard sign language, seeing as they were a village notorious for their hunter ninja and the relative silence in which they performed their missions; military sign language and standard sign language were often mixed together during and between missions in a good half of the continent's military force.
The shark teen understood a little.
What astounded Kisame was that the blood drying on the child's body made it so that the boys face and hair were hardly distinguishable in all that redness, creating a haunting image of what the boy had been doing to have bathed in so much blood.
Human blood.
...It looked so much like him after Kiri's Academy Graduation Ceremony, Kisame reflected, lowering his knees into stance primed to dash forward.
Further inwards, his senses picked out the tiny ball of chakra control the young child resolutely held, preventing his chakra from leaking out and hiding how much of it was in his reserves; this wasn't something any ninja could do and for prolonged periods of time too.
This was getting exciting.
Kisame loved a good fight.
Maybe this boy could give him one, better than these dead ninjas.
The shark boy barrelled to the Byakugan kid, right fist honing for a decapitating right hook across the face. He ended up swiping air as the younger boy ducked, smashing a smoke bomb to the ground.
Coughing in surprise, his senses lost the fleeting chakra of the nine year old as the child took off into the forest.
"How in the hell…" Kisame snapped his teeth and cursed, yelling. "Oh, so you're running huh?!" His enraged voice travelled far and wide as he waved away the smoke. The fifteen year old leaped into the forest in the direction he last sensed the younger boy, grinning from ear to ear. "Trust me, brat, you can't escape me!"
Some yards away, the blood soaked boy leaped from branch to branch, seldom making a sound, neither daring to cushion his shoeless, bandaged feet with chakra or else Kisame would immediately detect him, nor put all of his weight on the branch else it make a creaking noise, essentially flying from tree to tree with the weightlessness of a sparrow.
He just finished strapping the two pouches to his mid-thighs and glanced up to the sky, huffing at the starless night though still glad for it.
A thick mist washed over and around him, spanning several yards.
The boy's Byakugan led him regardless.
Smoke bombs won't be any more use for him now; removing smoke bombs from the backpack required him perform a quick slight of hand and multi-layered misdirection for Kisame's attention to not go to his right hand.
Taking the dead ninjas ROOT Kit was important though, seeing as the bag contained the bare essentials for ROOT Operatives to survive in the outside world; food rations, one set of spare clothes, spare weapons, a limited first-aid set and a finger-sized clump of powerful clay explosives for chakra-less breaching of reinforced doors.
That last thing wasn't as used as much as it should.
Sealing those items on their person would basically make them a tracking beacon, and the whole point of ROOT was to go about their duties in the silence of the shadows.
Being a member of CORE, a ROOT Kit was another luxury.
He stashed the two other smoke bombs in his hands into each pouch.
The trunk of the next tree he landed on buckled under Kisame's kick, dropping the Byakugan boy to the ground. He tucked into a neat roll, dodging another kick to the back of his head in the process and digging his fingers to stop his roll when the shark boy used the momentum of his former punting kick to spin around, aiming a low hook kick at the nine year olds temple.
The scathing heel whistled before the CORE Operatives forehead, who busily flipped through twenty blindingly fast hand seals.
The boy didn't utter the jutsu verbally, rather slamming his hands to the ground and pronouncing it in his mind.
As if the ground was water, Kisame sank till the earth reached his chin, solidifying once again when the boy with the Byakugan got up, baring his pale eyes on the struggling teen and wearing an invisible frown.
He signed again, hoping his helper would now understand. "Please, I don't want to fight you."
After all, it was this person that got ROOT off his back, at least for the time being.
Noticing the rumbling of the earth, the nine year olds frustration began to show.
He bent down and poked the nape of Kisame's neck.
The shark boy's head wilted to the side, then shot back upright, eyes bugged wide and bloodshot, roaring back awake mere seconds after his forced unconsciousness.
"Mother fucking Leaf brat! Did you just knock me out?! I'll kill you!"
This time, the Byakugan holder whirled around the writhing head and jabbed the base of Kisame's with his pointer and middle finger, driving the Kiri jounin back to sleep against his will.
Kisame's head twitched, eyelids fluttering heavily and tongue slurring, battling the effects of slumber. He bared his teeth weakly, eyes shutting.
In his delirium, the visage of the boy transposed with that of the only other person to have bested him so thoroughly, cringing and wincing away from that man's calm smirk, shaded beneath the secrecy of his orange bandanna.
"Konoha scum…" He whispered, head turning to the other side and wheezing. "Hatake shit…"
The boy with the Byakugan hummed silently and prodded a nerve on Kisame's neck, doing so thrice just to make sure; this technique would wake the teen up to a banging headache but that was out of the younger boy's hands.
He warned him.
Still, thoughts on what Kisame last said lingered.
It wasn't the first time he was mistaken for a Hatake.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Two hours later
Somewhere in Wave country
Fresh from rinsing the blood off his body in a secluded rock pool, memory flashes hit him as he set fire to his old clothes and tied bandages around his scarred neck.
"You are not the Roots of the Great Tree! You reside further down, deeper in the depths of the planet and cloaked in nothingness." The man opened his arms wide and said in a louder voice, proclaiming his will to the scared orphans forced to bow their heads in subservience, keeping the speaker's face from being seen. "You are the pioneers of a greater foundation than ROOT. The glorious base from which a new world shall grow! Further down than you can ever imagine, deeper than any ROOT can possibly reach! The earth for which society will be rebuilt!"
His tone lowered, speaking with such malicious ambition that the children trembled harder.
"Weakness will not be tolerated."
Danzo named the training regiment after the sub-organization he intended to create.
CORE.
Functioned more extensively than finding and eliminating threats to Konoha, the ROOT sub-organization known as CORE would infiltrate other societies and rot them from the inside out.
Targeted assassinations, covert genocides, infiltration and impersonation, tracking and subduing, ideology suppression, steadily cripple governments, psychological manipulation, establishing puppet strings connected to points/people of power, raising dissent among the people, subtle growth and implantation of new leaders loyal to ROOT, and lastly the destruction of the last vestiges of the dying society.
Above this was to spread the Doctrines and Teachings of Danzo Shimura, earnestly worshipping the man's existence as that higher than a god.
All to rebuild the world in their master's image.
Whatever non-existent leeway Danzo gave ROOT, he gave CORE absolutely no room for weakness.
CORE was perfection.
Performing their duties with no margin for error, alongside their relentless, cruel training, the CORE aspirants lived as a family, one that completely devoted their entire existence to their master.
Taken from Orphanages around Fire and Wind country in a multitude that raised more than a few eyebrows, children aged three were separated from the crowd while the rest were cardoned off for ROOT training.
Six years of mind shattering, body destroying training followed, oftentimes leaving the Konoha base to train in other secret bases across the continent, gathering experience from supervised missions and association.
Surpassing their ROOT counterparts in every way, CORE was a subterranean force to be feared.
None had a name of their own, only a designated serial number tattooed on their tongue.
The concept of blood-related family became muddled, leaving behind familial love for themselves.
...Their graduation ceremony was an utter bloodbath.
The children were CORE, yes, but they weren't fully inducted as members of ROOTs sub-organization.
To get down to Danzo's One Hundred, the five hundred nine year olds that survived the training were locked in an underground arena. Clad in simple clothes and holding no weapons at all, Danzo ordered them to kill each other.
Brothers killed sisters.
Sisters murdered brothers.
Siblings sliced open each other's throats.
No child's hands weren't drenched in blood.
On coming out, the hundred only loved their reduced family more.
A sect of child soldiers far surpassing anything ROOT could perform, the hundred were closer than ever.
Though, somewhere in their midst, bleeding trauma woke Naruto up and he fled.
CORE watched him go.
They did not give chase.
Right at that very moment, they would be at the Temple, the sacred place where they solemnly worshipped an effigy in the likeness of Danzo Shimura in place of the actual man, wholeheartedly praying within their hearts for mercy and salvation on behalf of their lost brother.
Readying themselves.
It was only a matter of time for them to come and get him, bring him back to the Temple and atone for the grand sin of worrying their Master.
A mild twitch moved his brows.
He clenched his teeth.
His precious family.
Maybe killing their brothers and sisters with their own bare hands wasn't enough to snap them out of their brainwashing.
Wringing their siblings necks, gouging out their eyes and smashing open their skulls wasn't nearly enough to shake a CORE Operative.
Not even close.
It certainly wasn't for the Byakugan boy.
His hands and his resolve would attest to the loved lives he took that night.
And the lives he claimed before that night.
The one thing that woke him up was recognizing the simmering displeasure and disdain in Danzo's eye, pointedly directed down on the boy, when said boy marched out of the arena last, dripping red and panting raggedly from murdering his siblings.
This child wasn't supposed to come this far.
It wasn't worded aloud nor was the man's eye looking at anyone else.
Danzo's scowl spelt it out clear as day.
Why are you still alive?
Vile condescension and irritation secretively ebbed from the man he once worshipped, roaring and pouring over the Byakugan kid.
Explaining to his family what happened wouldn't change their minds; they needed to see for themselves what he saw.
The boy pulled out a kunai and the lethal newness of the sharp blade sounded with an abrupt shhhing!
He held the blade before his face and angled it so that the stray beams of light from the distant town hit the weapon, making it twinkle. He turned around to the detected light so that it fell on his face, standing there near that secluded rock pool.
The boy's Byakugan squinted at his reflection, at the pale orbs that beamed back at him, shining dull like a waning moon. He tilted the blade down and stuck out his tongue.
On the top read his assigned serial numbers, a short yet winding set of numbers their master didn't deem to explain and what his siblings referred to him as.
CRE-099-142177676619
099 for short.
Playfully called Nine-Nine.
He remembered the pain of when the seal was tattooed to his there on his tongue, done so a few seconds after the Master's speech to every carted off three year old.
He lifted his tongue and there also, drawn there by inked needles tracing level seven Fuinjutsu and injecting chakra that wasn't his own, were three letters.
NRT
This was ROOTs tracking seal.
It was a special combination applied to every CORE Operative; their chakra control made picking out their presence nearly impossible, so what was needed to find them was another chakra source that would activate for Danzo's sensors to find.
It wouldn't do for anyone else to stumble upon a runaway CORE Shinobi.
There was also a Cynide seal engraved into the serial numbers.
Danzo not activating it meant he didn't want him dead.
Yet.
He pressed the sharp blade down on his tongue, as far inside as he could, and tightly closed his eyes, bracing himself and gripping the weapon's handle with both hands.
He consoled himself.
'What's the point of a tongue when you don't have a voice?'
Tasting?
Taste what?
Knife in his mouth, he scoffed at the hilarity.
As the edge bit into his tongue, he stilled and held back; he neither had the appropriate first-aid set nor a regenerative ability to staunch the bleeding.
He had a good amount of pain tolerance, though that also came with rigorous training and the emotionless cruelty from his superiors. ROOTs first-aid set didn't contain painkillers, only antibiotics, shots of adrenaline, a one-time-use nerve deadening agent that would kill the user the very second their heart rate calms down, a one-time-use performance enhancing drug different and riskier than adrenaline that had the same grave aftereffect as the nerve deadening agent and was to be used as a suicidal last ditch resort against enemies, smelling salts, anti-venom against a few snakes, bandages, chakra pills and turniquets.
Painkillers elicited something akin to euphoria, and that in on itself was a dangerous distraction on the field.
With a grunt, he took the blade off his tongue and used it to shovel dirt and rocks into the red tinted rock pool, erasing his presence completely and tracking into town to hide.
His three options were finding a good medical facility where he could chop off his tongue without complications, finding a Chakra Absorption specialist or bloodline user to suck out the chakra from the tracking seal, or finding a seal master skilled enough to take the seal off him, no questions asked.
Danzo was likely expecting Naruto to return, either for his former Master's head or to lay his own down to be lopped off, disgracefully gutted before his brothers and sisters as an example of what would happened if they rebelled.
Naruto was half tempted to try his luck.
But he won't.
Not now, at least.
Common sense won in the end.
One CORE Operative verses nintey nine was the rough equivalent of an average jounin facing off against all of Fire country plus their allies.
An understatement was saying that it would be a tough fight.
Danzo was smart.
Pouring the entirety of ROOT on the boy would slow him down but not stop him.
Now that one of his own had fled, fully aware of the hateful look he gave the boy, he wouldn't spare more than a quarter CORE leaving his side and he wouldn't leave the base for anything other than a life altering emergency. This was also taking into account the quickness he could recall his CORE while ROOT served as low stumbling blocks, canon fodder if anything.
Then, of course, were the CORE sent to bring him back, dead or alive.
The man would want Naruto handled before CORE business as usual would fully resume, or else risk his planning and scheming be all for nothing.
That was how problematic one rogue CORE was.
If Naruto was to attack the ROOT headquarters, he would have to be absolutely sure Danzo was hiding there with no form of escape and that he, Naruto, also had capable support aiding him.
The issue was that Danzo was slippery, both in actual combat and in commanding his subordinates; there were about fifteen escape routes in the Konoha base that Naruto knew of, and plugging them up would alert the man immediately.
Ensure his presence and block off escape all at the same time was the plan.
Somehow.
It all boiled down to either getting a contact close to Danzo and arriving at the man's doorstep or luring the man out into plain sight, out in the open for whatever limited time was available.
The boy gnashed his teeth, calming his mind with scathing finality, allowing only a fleeting curse in his head.
One problem at a time.
First the seal, then his questions.
If Danzo's answers weren't good enough to ensure his life, Naruto had some red-coloured torture methods lined up before he could permit his Master an agonizing death.
The boy would have laughed if he had a voice.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Wave country was a nation that thrived on commerce.
Trading was their life blood, essentially being the building blocks of their economy, whether they moved their wares by land or by sea.
The odd thing was that the only resource that came from Wave were fish and manpower, specifically builders of many kinds of buildings. This is also taking into account Iron country, Waterfall, Kiri and Kumo's dominance in fishing and Iwa's specialty in quickly building many durable houses at a time.
To remedy this, Wave devised a way to become the continent's middleman, purchasing products in bulk and reselling them at an increased cost, establishing a bubbling market in the village.
Wave's military on the other hand might as well be nonexistent.
The few ninjas they had weren't more than mid-chunin and even that was over-embellishing their worth; Iwa brokered a deal with Wave to supply Shinobi to protect them while in return Iwa gets heavily dscouted products, this is also considering that Iwa could only produce iron ore and other precious metals.
Hidden Villages like the Major Five were getting frustrated by the tactics used by Wave to stay relevant in the economic scene; buying goods in mass, hoarding a large portion and selling little at a time at an obnoxiously overpriced value in order to force a dangerous shortage, meanwhile driving away competing businesses wherever their traders set foot. Iwa too grew tired of Wave's cockiness and so secretive ways to crumble the island nation were already underway, little did they all know that Danzo's CORE were orchestrating Wave's fall from grace.
Konoha wouldn't ascend higher if a place life Wave remained functional, was Danzo's deduction. He wanted global dependence for goods and services to face Konoha, making his home the most powerful and influential economic force on the planet.
...It had already started.
The once luminous lights of the market dimmed with near inactivity. The goods set out for sale were of questionable quality and merchants called out to the few customers still out at night in the market instead of the other way round, as it used to be.
The Byakugan boy crouched behind a half full trashcan, nestled in the seclusion of an backalley. He leaned back to till his ROOT bag met the discoloured brick wall, scanning the area and stiffening when a tabby cat yelped, scampering away for whatever reason.
He wasn't the one that set fire to Wave country's warehouses thereby destroying the products hoarded there, he had no hand in poisoning most of their waters so that fish would die and fishermen would have nothing to bring to shore, and he didn't take part in sowing discord among the Wave Council after those two tragedies.
No.
While this was happening, the boy was on a mission in Kiri, impersonating one of the Mizukage's guards to gather intel concerning the Three Tailed Beast.
That was probably the most harmless mission he had gone on, albeit the intelligence he gathered was important for its capture and sealing.
He blindly felt his neck and yanked off a small pouch tied there; this accessory was something every CORE was strictly prohibited from taking off or opening. It was to be on them at all times.
It was an unassuming drawstring pouch made from brown leather that was about as half his palm in size.
Holding it in his hands, he felt a strange...familiarity.
Glancing around once more, he retrieved a finger sized flashlight from his bag and held it between his lips, pointing it at the pouch. He loosened the drawstring and shook the contents into his right hand.
A pair of eyeballs fell out.
Stormy blue iris, glittering with intelligence and childish hope, still having short optic nerves trailing at their back.
The boy's expression shifted into a festering frown, looking down at those orbs.
Looking under both eyes, the same thing was written.
Naruto-099
The boy's disgust turned to horror.
He didn't sleep that night as thoughts clouded his head.
Where did he come from?
Where did ROOT take him from?
Why did he have the Byakugan?
It was all an obscure, muddled memory locked in a dusty corner of his mind inside a solid iron chest made from level seven Fuinjutsu seals and tied tightly by several Yamanaka Memory Binds, harshly snapping shut and repelling him away when he stretched to open the locked jaws of the chest.
This level of security wasn't applied on his siblings.
Naruto knew.
They took real pains to make him forget any lingering recollection of his life before ROOT, leaving for him the very first time Danzo spoke to them and the years afterward.
Strange because he was taken when he was three years old; what was so damning Danzo never wanted him to remember?
He tried again.
And again.
And again.
Grinding his teeth he closed his eyes in deep meditation, returning to the chest and its blistering defence.
...Then an overhanging question bubbled up, an unfortunate consequence of the bound memories of his past lashing back at his stubborn prying.
Why did his Master hate him?
Naruto suffered for him.
Was subjected to torture for him.
Was mutilated in every possible way for him.
Was killed and brought back to life on numerous occasions for him.
Trained himself to a broken, bleeding, weeping mess for him.
Went through the truest, most impure, most inescapable hell for him.
All it took for Naruto to wake up from his worshipping trance was Danzo's baleful look.
He would get an answer one way or the other.
Before he left Wave, there was someone he had to meet and something he needed to collect.
A tiny smirk crawled up his face.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
01:33AM
Gato was a small time thug that operated in Wave country as a loan shark, first sailing over on an ancient, battered barge that looked to have come from before Hashirama Senju's era.
He was the person the Wave Council went to to borrow huge sums of money to compensate for the drastic losses they were getting from losing the goods in their warehouses.
CORE subtly directed the fisherman-turned-loan shark from a destitute village close to Kiri to where he currently was to aid Wave fall further into critical debt, discrediting the nation of traders before the world and unintentionally motioning to Konoha as a suitable replacement.
Gato once had nothing but a few rowboats, the clothes off his back and his blackhole of a wife, who constantly sucked in the little money he brought home, and Danzo's sub-organization manipulated the man's gambling odds in his favour, making it so that Gato won a Ten Hundred Million Ryu Lottery hosted by Kumo.
This one was Naruto's doing, devising a carefully cleared path to Wave for the jubilant fisherman and then leaving the rest for his CORE sister assigned to the degradation of Wave country.
Now the man had a sizeable fleet of ramshackle fishing boats rented out to Wave's fishermen and had dug his fingers deep into Wave's crumbling economy, as they were mostly dependant on his money.
Gato was a diminutive man with a thorny personality, who seemed to have a grudge on life and the whole world.
Standing barely over five feet and steadily growing a thick girth around his large beer belly, he had scruffy brown hair hastily fleeing his hairline despite being in his late twenties, thin whiskers above his fat lips, some stray strands of hair on his chin and small, circular glasses over his beady black eyes.
He was in an old three piece suit, pinstriped, and aging black formal shoes.
In his boathouse, he was sitting behind a shiny new desk, made taller than normal so those that came around would have to crane their heads up to look at him, and accounting for the debts owed to him.
He enjoyed judging them.
Watching them simper for some cash, willing to even lick the soles of his shoes in their broke desperation.
Some of his debtors signed off rights to their parts to pay him off- kidneys, half a lung, arms and legs, eyes, scalp, pints of blood and even chunks of flesh-and others promised their children to work off their debt, anyway and anyhow. In Wave country's case, the Council handed him plots of land in and around the western coast, which was currently now where he based his loan sharking operations and his boat rental station.
He snickered.
Business was booming.
One of his guards, a cheap mercenary from god-knows-where, stumbled to his high desk and clumsily dipped his head in a bow. "Mister Gato, sir."
The man grunted, counting how much he would get for a fresh kidney and organizing an advert to be announced in the international black market. "What is it? Speak up!"
"Someone wanna meet ya, boss!"
Raising a brow and checking his watch, he asked. "Did they give you a name?" He didn't normally get visitors at this time. The mercenary nervously wrung his hands, sweating and blubbering. The boss lost his patience. "Speak up, damn it!"
"That's tha thin' boss; 'is name's "One from Chill""
Gato stilled at the mere mention of that name.
The One from Chill.
One day in Mizushiki village, a poor hamlet in Water country thirty kilometers from Kiri, a man approached Gato by sunset and requested his help in getting to the other side of a massive lake, offering in payment only a wooden idol about ten inches in length.
The One from Chill was a tall man that wore a buttoned up black overcoat, black pants and black Shinobi sandals. Over his head was a wide straw hat that hid all his face in an overcast shadow, leaving only his chin while his face was essentially unseen.
He spoke in gestures, pointing to the other side of the lake and holding out the idol. The air around him was as frosty as his countenance and the trusty motor of Gato's boat struggled to start the moment he stepped on board.
Initially sceptic, as all should in that situation, Gato humoured the man and took him across the lake, but only because he was heading there in the first place, collecting the idol as payment.
Getting there, the One from Chill gave the poor fisherman a scroll.
Gato had that scroll on him even now.
I am the One from Chill.
This wooden idol will bring you immeasurable fortune for as long as no harm comes to it. It should not fall, should not be thrown, should not be toyed with and should not be eaten by insects.
Keep it somewhere clean and safe.
WARNING: You may only use the idols power for ONE lottery after TWO MONTHS.
No trial runs.
Choose wisely.
Defaulting from this would mean your current fortune will be taken back by me.
When I do come around and the idol is not broken, you will give me whatever I demand. If you do not want such untold levels of luck, break the idol now.
Looking up, the mysterious man was gone.
There was no Hidden Chill.
It was an inside joke among village leaders for the giant icy plains Kumo annexed long before the First Shinobi War, independent from the Lightning Daimyo. The place Kumo absorbed into itself was a frozen wasteland of glaciers and extremely low temperatures, occupied by animals that could survive the low temperature and some Kumo scientists constantly studying the environment.
The air of mystery pushed Gato to try it out, hiding the idol in a goose feather filled pillow.
The next day, his old boat capsized under the weight of the fish he caught.
Fast-forward to the present and Gato was doing much better for himself; he left his all-consuming wife in Mizushiki and moved to Wave on a whim, taking with him every single penny of his lottery winnings and trusting the good fortune of the idol take him where he could make more money.
Gato gulped.
His hands trembled.
The last line of the scroll given to him played back in his head.
When I do come around and the idol is not broken, you will give me whatever I demand.
That could mean anything; his life, his fleet of boats, a crippling chunk of his money, and anything else that came to mind.
"Mister Gato?" The mercenary prodded, wary of the boss's silence. "Sir?"
"Tell him I'm not-"
The lights of his boathouse flickered and the brightness lowered.
"-Here…" he finished. Goosebumps rippled over the shorter man's arms and he exhaled, seeing his breath in the drastically fallen temperature.
On his side of the desk, a large hand came down on Gato's shoulder and he shuddered at the cold that rolled over him.
The mercenary pulled out his katana. "Sir!"
The ominous One from Chill turned his head down to the mercenary, most of his head shaded by his straw hat, and slowly shook his head.
Flinching in his resolve, the man wavered, looking to his boss for instruction.
"Stand down, you buffoon!" The boss squealed, frozen stiff in his seat. Speaking to the man that contributed to his wealth, he stammered. "M-M-Mister One, old friend, i-it's been so long! H-How are you? How's it been?"
The One from Chill creepily brought his attention down to the quaking loam shark, quieter than death.
He didn't seem to appreciate the little nickname Gato made for him.
It haunted the man that even though he was sitting under the tall man, looking right under the straw hat, all he saw was black nothing except for a pale chin and the vague silhouette of a nose.
No mouth.
No eyes.
The mysterious man's hand came around from his back and he gingerly dropped Gato's wooden idol on the desk, tightening his grip on the short man's shoulder when the man made to lunge to snag it.
"H-How did you get this?" He whispered, shaking like a leaf in a blizzard; he was sure he had hidden his lucky idol in an airtight safe on his houseboat. "Mister One?"
Next, the One from Chill reached over with a rectangular piece of paper with clean cursive curling into clipped, legible words.
Don't be stupid, fisherman
Gato swallowed, reading further.
You will give me fifty million ryu. All new bills. Unmarked and untraceable.
Now.
No tricks.
No excuses.
The loan shark blubbered. "F-F-Fifty million?! Mister One, please reconsider!" He had the money, of course, and even if he didn't he could quickly recover the loss by cashing in on his many debtors. He hoped the tall man didn't know, saying. "Maybe...one hundred thousand…? As a good friend of mine, I won't mind if you repay only half."
His reply was a deep, eyeless stare from the faceless man.
"I-I...I can't gather this much tonight!" His shoulder became numb from the cold and he cried. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! You'll get your money!"
Gato didn't hope for the money to be paid back, not to talk of with interest.
The note wasn't finished.
You will also tell me your route into Hidden Star Village.
No questions.
No objections.
Thirty minutes later, Naruto was darting to Hidden Star, gripping a new black leather briefcase filled with his demanded fifty million ryu notes.
The One from Chill was a persona he often donned when he needed to openly influence events; it was a mythical, almost extraterrestrial, person that was benevolent to some, shady to some and vengeful to others.
In reality, any luck Gato experienced was due to Naruto's involvement, and the subsequent fortune while in Wave was because of his CORE sister's intervention.
Whether or not she was still alive after that nights Graduation Ceremony was unknown.
He didn't have time to check.
Alive or not, the person assigned to Wave would continue where the mission was left off.
Concerning the last line of the scroll that he gave Gato back when he was still a poor fisherman, it wasn't ever supposed to be cashed in, only included to make the supposed lucky charm more authentic.
Who would gamble their trust on such an item without such a questionable condition?
Yet still miles from Hidden Star, someone blocked his path.
One person completely by himself.
Dog drew his ninjato from its sheath on his back with his right hand, flicking it down and pointing it to the ground. Removing his Dog ANBU mask, he let it fall from his hand, clattering to the grassy earth.
He didn't take a stance.
Neither did Naruto.
"...Do you have a weapon?" The Hatake asked in a hollow, empty tone.
Naruto didn't move to reply, his blank expression shifting somewhat into a sad smile.
His silence broke something in Dog and he hissed. "Answer me."
Instead of answering, Naruto dropped the case of money and signed a question. "Did Master send you to kill me?" He paused, gauging the other boy's body language. "No? Lord Sandaime then." He noticed the boy's jaw clench underneath his dark half-mask and the sharp tense of his shoulders at being found out. "...Is that so…?" A grim frown came to his face. "I thought I saved you, Dog."
It was because of Naruto- or Nine-Nine at that time-that Kakashi was no longer no longer in ROOT.
Out of habit, Naruto still called the former ROOT by his designated mask, which just so happened to be the mask he wore in ANBU, even while knowing the silver haired boy's real name.
This annoyed Kakashi.
"I heard that you were picked to be in Minato Namikaze's genin team." His lips lifted into a small, honest smile. "Congratulations. I hoped you would leave Konoha though. That place isn't so…clean…"
"What gives you the right to meddle in my life?" Kakashi spat, eyes welling up with traitorous tears and Naruto's pale eyes quirked down, showing some semblance of sadness. "I was happy in ROOT. I was happy, Nine-Nine."
"Happiness doesn't exist in ROOT. I see that clearer now."
"It exists!" The boy screamed, losing his cool and shuffling back at the tentative steps Naruto made in his direction, raising his guard higher at the careful walk ahead to him. "I-It does. I swear it does."
He didn't show much of it but Kakashi was scared of the other nine year old.
Absolutely terrified of him.
It was less of what Naruto did to Kakashi and more like the the Byakugan boy's recognized prowess among their comrades underground.
Naruto was nothing but nice to him.
Outside his family in CORE, the Hatake orphan was someone the blonde watched out for.
Naruto's sorrowful smile returned, gradually closing the distance.
Tears freely fell down Kakashi's eyes, struggling to maintain his resolve, unable to keep the hesitant twitch of his fingers, subtly battling to grip his ninjato and backtracking once more. "You said you had my back. You...you swore…"
Stopping short of the Hatake, he brought Kakashi in for a hug and the will to hold his ninjato left him.
The weapon fell to the ground, useless at that point.
Kakashi always had the mental fortitude to not forget; it was a trait common to pureblood Hatake.
Maybe that was why Danzo's brainwashing didn't work on him, making it easier for Naruto to push for him to be kicked out of ROOT.
Even as he couldn't recall his infancy years very well, he had seen some baby pictures of him and Naruto in the same crib.
There were also a few with Kakashi's father, wearing matching onesies.
Naruto's eyes then were a distinct cerulean shade, resembling a serene and peaceful sky, and his hair shimmered yellow like an unending sun.
Now Nine-Nine had a pair of Byakugan, dim and waning from witnessing and participating in bloodshed, as well as dull blonde hair that stood up in messy spikes.
Tearing through the birth records of the nearly extinct clan, he couldn't find any of Naruto's pictures there. Only Kakashi.
In place of explaining this to who he dreaded and hoped was his brother, he cried.
Naruto was a traitor of ROOT.
Making him a traitor of Konoha.
Already among those few in the know, cover stories were made in relation to why exactly an unknown nine year old with no known affiliation with Konoha was a high risk target, telling those not in the know to keep their eyes open.
Kakashi was even sent by himself to bring the Byakugan boy to return to base, knowing well that though the Hatake was a meteoric prodigy, he wouldn't stand a chance against Naruto.
The Byakugan kid was kind to Sakumo Hatake's son.
It wasn't a secret.
Hiruzen Sarutobi didn't provide Kakashi any reason for him being the only one in the retrieval mission.
He opened his eyes to suggest that he follow Naruto, watch his back and whatnot, but his eyes saw red at the log he was so dearly embracing substituted in place of the Byakugan boy.
His childish bellow traveled filled that part of the forest.
But Naruto and the briefcase of money were long gone, one-fourth of a way to ROOTs second blindspot, Hidden Star.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
04:12AM
In every sense, Hidden Star was close to impenetrable, comparable even to the defenses around the vacant island formerly occupied by the Uzumaki clan.
Hundreds of years ago, a meteor crash landed in Bear country and the subsequent shockwave raised a mighty wall of treacherous, impassable poison. So powerful and so potent that a tiny whiff would induce a violent heart attack and sear flesh from bone.
There was no known way to ward off this poison, for it was not from the earth, and the people that survived the initial shockwave made their homes within the large wall of poison, giving outsiders no room to get samples from the meteor to create a cure.
Unlike Wave, Star had some reasonable Shinobi.
The village in all its entirety was inaccessible to ROOT because of this poison, not at all because of Star's ninja defenses; the poison wall went beneath the ground several thousand miles, likely to the Earth's core, and whatever tunnels there were to and from were maintained by Star ninjas donning hazmat suits and masks; these hazmat gear provided protection from the poison and good mobility, adapted from hundreds of years worth of research.
Any threat was flushed out without trouble by opening special valves, letting poison leak into that guarded tunnel.
Jutsu were ineffective.
These tunnels were the only route into Star.
Chakra Detection seals drawn on the walls of the tunnel made it impossible to Henge and Star had an established method of discerning imposters that weren't cloaked beneath illusions.
Needless to say that the ninjas of Star had adapted the space-originated poison for themselves.
Still, a sizeable chunk of their defences depended on Bear country and the Bear Daimyo, who were in charge of issuing passports and permits for visitors of Star.
The Bear Daimyo was widely known to be a very paranoid woman.
A hulking beast of a woman but an overly suspicious lady nonetheless.
It bothered Danzo more than he let on.
Information on the meteor was less than nothing; kidnapping and interrogating Star officials while they were vacationing outside their village yielded no results, for they were either too heavily guarded for extraction or preferred suicide before they could be grabbed.
What was for certain was that the meteor contained a pinkish rock inside and a heavily guarded, extremely private, state-of-the-art research facility was built around it.
This knowledge was gathered from the charred documents of Star Officials that set themselves ablaze.
Hidden Star was ROOTs second blindspot.
The first and only other blindspot was where Naruto intended to run to when he was done in Bear country's precious ninja village. Staying for longer than some days would make Danzo more desperate and create more inventive ways to enter the village in order to retrieve the rogue CORE ninja.
Naruto knew intimate secrets Konoha didn't want exposed.
Secrets more than half of the Konoha Council or the upper crust of ANBU were painfully oblivious of, not to talk of Konoha as a whole.
It was one of the reasons why Danzo whittled them down to the worthy five hundred and cut their numbers down further by ordering the final Graduation Ceremony, leaving his Chosen Hundred to stand tall over the mangled bodies of their beloved siblings.
COREs best of the best.
They already weren't too keen on killing him outright, as Naruto would sense the seal activating and cut off his tongue immediately, throwing caution to the wind.
Reapplying and strengthening the seals on Naruto could also reorient his loyalties once again, at least until his use had expired.
To enter Star, Naruto left his ROOT kit in a safe area in the Bear country capital, disarming himself of anything and everything that could even remotely be perceived as a weapon. The Storage seals tattooed to his body were emptied before the Ceremony, so there wasn't a problem there. He also dropped forty nine million, five hundred thousand ryu with the backpack, stored inside the briefcase and carrying the five hundred thousand on his person.
The place he stored his things was in the attic of a one storey residential home, the family of eight none the wiser of his coming and going.
He felt so naked not having some sharp object on him.
Next, he met with Gato's connection into Star, an Official working directly under the Bear Daimyo that owed Gato a lot of money.
This man worked in the Bear-Star Migration Office as an Office Assistant.
The loan shark hadn't ever been inside the village but he had been saving that route into Star for when he was ready.
On another day, that Official would have ended his life if approached aggressively, regardless of whether his family were threatened or not; there wasn't much of a point murdering his wife and kids after he was gone, especially since that wouldn't get the attackers anywhere, but Gato was all the more willing to sell his wife and two daughters off as sex slaves and barter his young son's organs to the highest bidder, just to make up for the money the Official borrowed.
Bear country Officials were ever ready to take their lives when information was being forced out of them concerning Hidden Star, that much was true, though the angle of protecting the family left behind from a greedy loan shark was unexplored precautions.
...It wouldn't take long for Danzo's CORE to find a way into Star.
The man Naruto met was a tall, lanky man. He had a full head of deep orange hair, a thin moustache and a beak-like nose. His brown eyes flitted left and right, twitchy and nervous as he processed a Permission Card for Naruto, equipped with a clean passport photograph, false information on an alias, documented into Bear's citizen archives as a frequent traveller around their region of the continent and stamped into authenticity by the Bear Daimyo's Imperial Seal.
His Byakugan was written off as an odd mutation from birth. The boy's young face were chalked up to his genes, stating that he was about to turn eighteen in a week and wanted to go clubbing in Star to celebrate.
It wasn't unusual.
Normally it would take a non-citizen of Bear country about five to ten years to get a pass into Hidden Star, and still then it wasn't completely certain it would be given; the smallest suspicion raised and the Officials at the Capital would scrap the process, rendering all the time and money spent by the applicant wasted.
This boy was getting certified passes in one night.
Naruto observed the Permission Card and standard issue Travellers Passport in his hands, listening to the strained whisper of the frightened man.
"This'll get you two weeks inside, tops. That's the best I can do. I swear."
The boy shrugged and nodded his head.
The rubbed his sweaty palms together. "Does this mean I'm off the hook? I don't owe that pig squat anymore. If anyone finds out I did this, I'm-I'm fucked."
Naruto tucked the card into the front right pocket of his pants and provided the Official a letter to prove he was free of debt from Gato. It was accepted with quivering breaths.
Whether or not Gato would uphold this letter wasn't exactly a mystery.
Honestly?
Naruto didn't care.
After that, the Byakugan boy bought secondhand clothes, wearable shoes and a suitcase to keep them, only to reinforce his image as a harmless tourist from a harmless town in Bear country. New items would raise red flags.
He wore a neck pillow while inside the horse drawn carriage, getting into character while relaxing somewhat during the longish journey to Star's checkpoint.
With only a routine background check, a strict pat down for hidden weapons and a careful search through his suitcase for contraband, the ninjas of Star waved him into their village.
Naruto smiled bobbed his head to the friendly man wearing the hazmat suit who had passed him a flier to a rock concert featuring a new band.
"My sister's on drums and she's really, really good. She's the only one in the family that's got real talent." The boy gave the man a lopsided frown, reading the concert flier and mentally noting the address, and the ninja snorted. "Don't give me that look. It's true! I'm the Stage Manager, so that's cool, I guess…" Naruto lifted his pale eyes and raised a dull eyebrow. The Chunin scratched the back of his head; the headpiece of his hazmat suit was sealed away for the time being, exposing his deep brown locks and rough facial features. He chuckled. "Really though, I hope you can make it. She'll be glad if you come; it's her first actual concert."
Nine-Nine nodded, making a show of folding and pocketing the flier, patting it reassuringly.
"Awesome. I appreciate it."
"Let him go, Ran, can't you see he's tired?" Another hazmat wearing Shinobi came round, slapping Ran upside his head. The newcomer, a girl with laughing yellow eyes, looked apologetically at the deceptively young Bear citizen and took off her hazmat headpiece, letting her short, black hair free. She was young for her rank, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. Half a head taller than Naruto and instantly at ease around him. "Don't mind him; he's the doting brother kind of guy. He a siscon. A weirdo, if you will."
Naruto snorted and her eyes lit up at the pale eyed boy's amusement.
"His mom works with Lord Akahoshi," Leader of Hidden Star, Nine-Nine filled in. "And one of his cousin's is a Jounin." She stressed that last part but it was the first part the blonde really heard, raising his brows high into bus hairline and looking at Ran, who was pouting and muttering a feeble defence for why he was so dedicated to his drummer sister. The teen Chunin didn't notice, exclaiming. "I know! A freakin' Jounin!"
Filing that tidbit about Ran's mother for later, Naruto pulled himself back to the present and gestured flippantly, soundlessly telling them he didn't mind overlooking Ran's siscon status and cracking an easy smile as he teasingly poked a suddenly embarrassed Ran.
"Need any help with you bag?" She asked, shooting a look to the impatient carriage driver Naruto had come on, waiting for the last boarder to take his seat so they could finally ride into Hidden Star. The rogue CORE Operative shook his head, lifting it up with his left hand and briefly pretending that it was too heavy. The girl chuckled, looking at Ran and jutting her chin at Naruto. "Funny and a nice guy. If you didn't look so young and your eyes weren't so freaky, I would have definitely gone for you." Here she winced, both at the harsh elbow to her side and in realization of herself. "I'm sorry-"
The blonde rolled his Byakugan eyes, motioning carelessly that he was used to it.
"Here." She handed him a brochure of the best spots in Star, tourist attractions, hotspots, restaurants, hotels and the like, pulling the brochure from her headpiece like a magician would with a rabbit. It had something like a map, except it didn't look complete; this was so that if the brochure ever got into enemy hands, they still won't know the layout of Hidden Star. Nine-Nine didn't mind; he would fill in the craftily blacked out spaces soon, masterfully hiding the glint in his eyes and collecting the brochure hesitantly as he fished into his pockets for cash. The girl rapidly motioned for him to not worry. "It's fine. Since this is your first time in Star, I want you make sure you know the best places, y'know."
He could have gotten the same brochure from a Travellers Help Desk in the village but this was good too.
"Enjoy your stay, Kakashi." She bowed politely, thumping Ran at the back of his head to do so as well, and he did in gratitude of "Kakashi" coming for his sister's debut concert.
The Bear visitor they had been talking to was so easy to chat with, like even though "Kakashi" couldn't speak, he carried the conversation through them by listening and making some gestures here and there.
It wasn't difficult talking to the young looking teen, as if they were old friends that earnestly wanted to catch up.
The two Chunin truly hoped to bump into their new friend when they were off-duty, only to pick up where they left off, introducing the voiceless boy to their other friends.
Without a doubt, they would hit it off immediately.
Unknown to them, Naruto had them wrapped around his finger, and his charm would draw many more to follow him.
Now though, they acknowledged that "Kakashi" needed to find a place for the night.
The coach finally yelled. "Oi Kakashi! Get in or we're leaving without you!" Those in the carriage weren't so irked at the delay, dozing off in their seats.
"Take it easy, man!" Ran shouted back, snapping back in his new friend's defence. " Yeesh, what's the rush?!"
Naruto rolled his eyes and the two Chunin snickered. Giving them parting fist bumps, he lugged his bag into the carriage, getting himself comfortable with his neck pillow and the brochure.
With a crack of the horse's reins, the carriage proceeded forward on the last stretch into Hidden Star.
Luckily for them, Naruto wasn't there for their pink meteor secrets.
All he wanted was to get the seals off his tongue.
Naruto never expected to leave Hidden Star with his first follower.
His hellish Angel of Love and Wrath.
Authors note
What do you think?
Anyone want another chapter?
Leave a review, would you so kindly. Please and please, stay safe wherever you are in the world, and I will see you when I see you.
Foy.