A/N: It's been 3 years since I posted Chapter 1. To be honest, I have no idea when the muse assigned to this story will strike. I also have no idea how long these chapters will be when they do but the goal for this story is to be consistent and concise when it comes to updates. No More remains the primary focus and then I plan to move to Nature of the Savage Beast as the next one. Daimyo and Pieces I'll try to update as the chapters are ready. Let me know what you think of the pacing of this story and feel free to drop reviews and comments; it really does help to move the writing process along.

For those of you reading, I hope the holidays are kind to you and that I see you in the new year.

~Siva'a-tasi

~III~

Review Corner:

Laurajustin, Graaz, LB Cat, Temperclast, BlackDragonShinigami, Masmher, Luminsecentserpent, Crestlockser777: Thank you and welcome to chapter 2.

EmetMehmet, johnstonrichard3: This is not a NaruHina or even a NaruIno. I have something special in mind for Naruto. Also, this is truly intended to be a solo pairing. Hinata and Kiba are listed in the summary as they are characters of interest in the story.

~III~

Standard Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Naruto and make no claims to the contrary. "The Count of Monte Cristo" is the creation of Alexandre Dumas and is available through open source.

Chapter 2: Kami Is In Everything

The gentle rocking of the boat did little to ease the worries of a young Uzumaki Naruto. Barely halfway to 8 years of age, he'd already been labeled an unredeemable villain and shuffled off in chakra-suppressing chains. Everything was spiraling out of control so quickly his head was still spinning after his groggy awakening in a tiny boat being rowed toward a massive fortress sitting atop a mountain-sized rock.

The hands planted firmly on his shoulders wouldn't let him turn around to see the faces of his captors. You'd almost think the fingerless shinobi gloves clamping down on his small frame feared his escape despite lacking access to his chakra and the extra twenty kilos of metal weighing him down.

Laughable really if the situation weren't soo miserable.

His orange tracksuit had seen better days having recently gained the odd dribble of blood from his once busted lip and the odd smudge or five from his brief stay in one of Konoha's jail cells. Sad to say it was a good thing he hadn't eaten since before he was arrested otherwise, he'd be adding the contents of his stomach to the abused garment given the badly rocking rowboat he was being shuttled in; the water was pretty choppy wherever he was and Naruto had to reflexively swallow down whatever was building up in the back of his throat.

Apparently, the rowers found the green tinge to his face funny as much as they cackled and joked about it. Ha-ha, he'd prank them back good one day, 'ttebayo.

All too soon before he was ready, the dinghy slipped into a large opening in the approaching rock face, an opening suited for a much larger boat than the one he currently sat in. As the water began to still, the tunnel split off with the larger opening continuing to the right while the small boat with four rowers dragged its way through the smaller tunnel to the left. What was once rough-hewn rock gave way to smoother hand-carved stone lit by torches every thirty or so meters.

The boat bumped gently against a stone wall and Naruto found himself hauled to his feet and forced roughly along a stone pier partially submerged beneath the water. Sloshing in ankle-deep liquid, the biting cold snapped his eyes open and his teeth tightly clenched as he followed two gentleman wearing leather aprons patiently awaiting his arrival, mean faces and cruel smiles promising nothing good in his near future.

The boatmen rowed off somewhere deeper into the underground caverns while his shinobi minders pushed him onwards. Upwards they climbed, everything carved from stone, however, metal railings funneled his upward journey.

Worn smooth by many feet, the cleanly-carved stairway led up and up as torches gave way to hanging candelabras and high arched ceilings. Naruto lost track of the twists and turns in his travels until, at last, one of his aproned escorts thumped loudly three times on a heavy wooden door reinforced with thick metal bands.

With a dim thought, Naruto noticed that every door he passed on the way here shared the same design.

A gravelly voice much deeper than his own called for them to enter and all five slipped into an office with barely more light than he'd seen in his recent prison tour. Nestled comfortably behind a large wooden desk sat a man he'd later come to know as his new warden and keeper.

"Welcome. I am Warden Ogawa Keiji, and you and I will be spending a great deal of quality time together."

Somehow Naruto doubted that. He'd learned to read people fairly well living in Konoha and nothing he saw in the immaculately groomed face of the lean fellow sitting before him indicated warmth or compassion. Dark eyes buried in a lean, hawk-like face promised cruelty. The small smile curling the edges of his wide, thin mouth hinted at some hidden joke only this man knew. Even the way he spoke, the slow drawl to his words, only sounded more menacing given his surprisingly deep voice coming from such an average looking man.

His was thin but not too thin, which implied that he stayed active. His hair hung straight about his shoulders but it was clean and shiny, like ink. Even his pale skin gave off a chilling appearance, like he shunned the light of day and preferred the dank, dark atmosphere of the prison having been working in it for some time.

Warden Ogawa did not give off the aura of a man that overly cared for his charges.

One of his shinobi guards stepped forward and handed a scroll to the still grinning – as he would never call what the man was doing a smile – warden, and Naruto saw his ANBU attendant clearly for the first time. He knew something was off immediately as their mask lacked any of the colorful markings that identified Ji-the Hokage's ANBU. When the figure turned to return to its post behind him, the clean porcelain mask was bereft of any markings save the Kanji for "Ne."

Something in the back of his mind thought this was a detail to remember when he was finally released from this place. That same presence found it odd that the boy didn't consider his former Jiji as the source of his pending rescue.

Unfortunately, it was the voice of his warden that snapped him out of his momentary pondering.

"Well Mr…. Uzumaki, is it?" The warden paused to glance up from the scroll he'd been given and register Naruto's hesitant nod of confirmation. "Anything you wish to say before continue with your processing?"

The shivering boy didn't like the implications of that word.

Naruto open then closed his mouth as the words fought to be first in his mind. He didn't think his normal brand of cheeky behavior would help him here even if he had the energy for it. Everything about this room and the people in it made his skin itch and crawl with apprehension. Even as his mouth opened again to speak, the cold gleam in Warden Ogawa's eyes told him that the man had little appreciation for his normal attitude and would take any opportunity to punish him for it.

"I-I know you probably hear this all the time, but," he paused to swallow not realizing how dry his mouth had become. "I swear," he paused again to keep from saying 'on my Jiji's honor' and did not think he'd ever be using that phrase again. "I promise that I didn't do whatever people were saying I did." The panic was beginning to rise up in his chest again and he could feel the corners of his eyes prickling against his will.

For the Warden's part, he simply sat and watched as Naruto babbled uncontrollably, a rather unpleasant experience that reminded the boy of a hawk watching a particularly juicy mouse. When Naruto was beginning to think he'd wasted everyone's time, the Warden rose, strode to a small table in the corner that held a silver platter filled with glass and porcelain bottles of various shapes and sizes (each filled with a different color liquid), then poured a clear one into a small metal cup that smelled, even at that distance, of plums.

"Oh, trust me, Mr. Uzumaki. I know full well that you're innocent." The Warden turned in time to catch Naruto's very confused blinking to accompany his very shocked appearance.

"Trust me," he spoke softly in that menacing tone that sent shivers down the young boy's spine, "I believe you and even I know what you're thinking now."

Naruto shivered once again at the dark gleam in the man's eyes but his features clearly showed his disbelief.

"You're thinking, 'If you believe me why not let me go?' aren't you?"

Naruto nodded once in building hope as that had been exactly what he'd been thinking.

"Unfortunately, things are seldom as easy was we would like them to be and I do believe your innocence, Mr. Uzumaki, as Chosu Prison is where they send the ones they're truly embarrassed and ashamed of for me to watch over."

The questions wouldn't stop bouncing around in his head. 'Who is ashamed of me? What are they embarrassed of?' And despite his fight to disagree with himself, Naruto couldn't help but see the Sandaime's face flash behind his eyes. The Sandaime who'd once promised to look after him. The same Sandaime that lied to him about knowing who his father was. The same Sandaime he once trusted unconditionally.

It was as his forgotten anger began to bubble up in his eyes, bitter betrayal beginning to weakly flash his deep blue eyes to a dull-burning red, that the Warden's all to cheery voice broke his anger loose along with his current train of thought sprinting haphazardly down a particularly nasty rabbit hole on conspiracy and betrayal.

"There are any number of other prisons where they could send you, places easier to reach and much cheaper to house you in, if you were truly guilty of some heinous crime. Much darker places are available to either break or rehabilitate you so, why then, would they send you to me unless there was something shameful to hide, hmm?"

A long moment passed as the Warden allowed the thought to slowly sink in, but, as with all moments, it to passed.

"Well, let's see to getting you settled in, shall we?"

The Warden handed him the metal cup filled with the sharp smelling liquid, and then, with a surprisingly gentle hand on his shoulder, turned to shuffle him out of his office and back down most of the stairs Naruto just finished climbing. All the while, his mind kept asking the question over and over again.

'Who?'

~III~

Konohagakure no Sato

"But Hokage-sama, all I am asking for is-!"

Hiruzen's snarl of frustration cut off the clearly agitated ANBU agent mid-sentence. It was not that he was uncaring to her request, the fourth one in just as many days since he'd sentenced the Yondaime's Son to the Blood Prison, it was that he simply couldn't entertain a fruitless-hopeless-request that would do nothing but frustrate both his best agent and himself.

"Enough, Neko!" The old man's eyes flashed in time with his pulse of chakra despite the increased desperation he could hear in her voice. He hoped it would mask the sound of his elderly heart breaking.

"What's done cannot be undone short of overwhelming evidence proving Naru-," the old man nearly choked on his natural tendency at familial name calling, "barring hard proof of Uzumaki's innocence, I see no path forward to get you what you are asking me."

The "Old Man," as Naruto used to refer to him was feeling his age yet he stiffened his spine and stood tall while dressing down one of his better agents, which would normally seem impossible given that she towered a full quarter meter above the short leader. The parchment brown skin of his wrinkled face tightened around the eyes and the corners of his mouth.

For several rather awkward moments, the heavy silence seemed to simmer the very air as the female operative stood ramrod straight on the far side of the Hokage's desk. Hiruzen's eyes flickered briefly to the sound of leather crinkling, the brief movement acknowledging the clenching fists near her hips and, for just a heartbeat, he felt the mask woman truly wanted to throttle him within an inch of his life.

Before he could succinctly end the discussion, the moment was interrupted by the gravelly voice of a man he least wanted to see especially in light of recent events.

"Touching though this moment may be, we have more important things to discuss, Hiruzen."

Refusing to salute, Neko bowed stiffly at the waist before vanishing from his office in a perfect [Body Flicker]. During the tense standoff, he'd nearly missed her whispered, "then I shall find the proof you need" before the heavy weight to the room left with her.

Her shift later that afternoon would be an interesting one but not one Sarutobi would enjoy.

With a real mental effort, he turned to rake still angry eyes over his advisors, the wrinkled forms of Shimura Danzo, Mitokado Homura, and Utatane Koharu.

"What do you want?"

If Danzo was surprised by the extremely rude query of his former Team Tobirama member and now rival for the office of Hokage, it did not register on his heavily bandaged face, barring the slight tightening of skin around the x-shaped scar of his chin. No, the wizened shinobi's heavily lidded eye – as the right one was kept wrapped in bandages – did little more than blink once.

Shuffling slowly forward with his right arm hanging heavily in a sling crafted by his brown outer robe and more bandages seemed to drag out the short trip from the ajar office door to the chair on the far side of the desk. Normally a silent cripple, the enhanced THUMP of his cane on the wooden floor only seemed to annoy the Sandaime even further.

It only made him want to cancel this recurring meeting more. He had so many other things that needed his attention. He needed to arrange for Naruto-ku-Uzumaki's transfer from the holding cells to the prison in two days. He needed to deal with the angry families complicating the entire process and baying for the boy's death since the obvious orphan had little in the way of possessions they could rip from him-at least little that they knew of. They would need to make expensive arrangements to retrieve the last true blooded Uzumaki from Kusa, another painful failure he'd been convinced to endorse at his teammate's haranguing to keep them apart – a particularly painful decision that could have helped Naruto in his village-enforced isolation.

Another of many, many failed decisions.

He needed to-.

"Hiruzen."

The Sandaime couldn't uphold his normal stoicism and the sigh forced itself out into the room.

"Hiruzen, you cannot avoid or put this off as part of your normal process." Danzo, without preamble or permission, thumped lightly into the chair across from his former teammate.

"Arrangements must be made to transfer the weapon-."

The one-eyed warhawk paused at the baleful glare shot his way by the current Hokage.

"Oh, very well. Arrangements must be made to transfer the Uzumaki boy to the Blood Prison." Danzo would allow this small victory. He had plenty of time to savor his vistory in private.

Hiruzen took one last look into the stubborn set of Danzo's good eye and found the strength to sit down once again, his roiling chakra settling into the even flow heralding the return of the Third Hokage, even as Hokage-jiji silently wept at the loss of the boy he'd failed in more ways than one.

Danzo began with, "Let's first start by filling the hole left by Uzumaki's crimes. I can offer one from my clan to replace him in class. You need not worry about him passing the final exam as he's been properly trained and should do well as Uzumaki's replacement, better than the boy's apparent lack of educational success anyway."

Hiruzen found he disliked Danzo's self-satisfied grin far too much for his personal liking, especially after that jab about the child's struggles in class. It was another painful reminder of his personal foibles to protect the Yondaime's legacy and it burned as much as all of his other recent reminders.

"You were planning to put him with Hatake, were you not?"

This time the crinkling of the old cripple's eye had little to do with concern for his former teammate and more to do with the anticipation of finally getting what he'd always wanted.

A monitor on the "last loyal Uchiha" and a super weapon of his own to set the shinobi nations straight once and for all.

~III~

Chosu Prison

The journey back down into the bowels of Chosu Prison didn't take nearly as long. He still could not access all of his chakra though there was a little. Definitely not enough to escape and none of the people with him (the faceless ANBU left once they left the office) didn't seem to use chakra. He could not sense much of any of it anywhere near him.

At some point, Naruto took a sip from the metal cup and nearly coughed his lungs out as the liquid burned his throat and stomach. The Warden even paused their trip to his new home long enough to gently pat his back in understanding. When Naruto choked out a question to ask what was in the cup, the Warden responded with a chuckling, "One of that last kindnesses I can offer you."

Not wanting to be rude, Naruto eventually polished off the rest of the drink and, by the fifth sip, it did not burn quite so much. Instead, it left behind a warn sensation in his empty stomach that fought the growing chill of the dungeon's leeching stone walls.

The passages were different this time. They were narrower, darker, colder if that were possible. While he didn't go down as far as the water tunnels beneath the prison, he could smell the salty water.

Too bad it wasn't near enough to cover up the rancid smell of excrement and filth that hung in the air.

Naruto could hear the muffled cries and wailing of other inhabitants. Some sounded on the brink of madness, a sound he'd heard among the homeless of the Red Light District back home – no, it wasn't his home anymore. It was no longer since they'd lied about him and sent him here. Didn't matter as he recognized the sounds of the people he'd seen muttering to themselves as they dug through trash and refuse for food or whatever leftovers they could scrounge up.

The smells were the same also. Human filth and hopelessness.

The heavy CLANK of a door being pried open broke his gaze from the bottom of the banged metal cup he'd been staring into as if searching for answers, answers Naruto did not possess. What greeted his new focus was a square room almost three times the size of the small cell he'd briefly occupied back in the Leaf.

The floor, walls, and ceiling appeared to be all carved from the same stone all smoothed over again from time and the frantic scrabbling of those that stayed here before him. The ceiling itself rose twice again as high as his old apartment; the walls unbroken except for a single circular window just shy of the stone roof that would now be his home.

Heavy bars on a window he might be able to shimmy through shredded any hope of an early reprieve but at least there would be some air. Perhaps a little sunlight? Not now though as the sky beyond appeared to be growing dimmer the more he stood their gazing about.

No, as he took in all four walls, it was the innumerable scribblings in the walls themselves that garnered his interest. Everything from sloppily scrabbled hatch marks someone used to count days in one corner to long ramblings of shattered minds written at odd angles along another. Most of it was unintelligible to him even as one short verse dug deep into the stone, as if the author were trying to carve the words into their unraveling mind.

The Warden appeared to notice his interest.

"Kami shall grant me justice," he somberly intoned as he read aloud the short phrase noting the boy's struggles with the written word. 'A shame really given the boy's lineage.'

Naruto for his part turned to the man with a questioning glance.

"Some prisons feel the need to focus on something to help stave off the inevitable insanity that loneliness and abandonment seem to bring on." The man chuckled briefly and Naruto felt no humor in the sound even as one of the two helpers relieved him of his drinking cup and the other hooked his manacles to a chain he realized was hanging from the dark shadows of the ceiling.

"Personally, I find Kami never comes to this remote area of the Elemental Nations, especially at this time of the year."

For some odd reason, Naruto – though never really a religious person – took offense at that. "Kami is everywhere," he countered weakly. "They are in all things, even the bad."

This time the Warden's snort sounded of a vindictive nature. "Oh really?"

The man turned and hung his lantern from a peg on the wall. The other apron-wearing helper began cranking on a lever near the door that slowly raised his arms above his head while the other lifted his jacket and shirt up over the back of his head baring his skin to the cool air of the room.

"Well then Mr. Uzumaki, let's make a wager shall we?"

Naruto was too confused and worried to answer, his skin prickling with the dangerous intent oozing off this man now unraveling a thin leather strap that hung at his waist just beneath the knee-length jacket he'd been wearing, the same jacket held by the helper holding the cup he was suddenly missing the comfort of. Naruto's eyes also notice that the man's white shirt sleeves, once long and neatly cuffed at his wrists were now folded up to reveal sinewy forearms.

"I like to do something special upon the anniversary of my charge's incarceration, something to mark the moment, as it were."

The now very threatening man snapped with the leather strap with a sharp CRACK between his fisted hands. "You ask Kami to intervene on your behalf and I will stop the moment he does so. Shall we?"

Without preamble, the unnamed helper cranked the wheel until Naruto's feet left the floor, his body slowly pivoting until he was facing the far wall with the sole window to the outside.

"Don't forget to ask Kami for his benevolence, will you?"

Then the first biting snap of the leather strap sliced fire across his shoulder blades drawing out the first unbidden scream from his lungs only to be followed by many, many more before the Warden grew tired, they dropped him unceremoniously to the cold floor, and bid Uzumaki Naruto and fond good night, his back shredded and bleeding as blessed darkness took his consciousness.

~III~

A/N: Another small peek into the new life of our protagonist. Naruto settles into his new home and the people in his former life are trying to deal with the fallout of it all.

It would seem that Danzo Shimura (my favorite villain as those of you who follow my work know) is at it again but to what extent is he involved and just how far will he go? We'll find out in later chapters. Oddly enough, Keiji - as it is intended in this story - means He Who Governs with Discretion.

Poor Neko is having a tough time with it though. I hope she gets things sorted out as it appears the overworked Hokage seems less likely to lend a hand.

This seemed like a good place to break off the story but I hope to get the next chapter out before next summer. I will try to be more faithful to those of you interested in this one.

Until then, be safe and be kind to each other.

~Siva'a

~III~