By: Crystal Avatar
Disclaimer: All relevant character/place names etc. don't belong to me. They belong to a very powerful man named Kishimoto Masahi!
A/N: This should be in the disclaimer too, but oh well; the words are close enough, aren't they? Okay, listen up, children! This story is not for you who would be too easily influenced by such a morally disgusting story. This story is primal and violent, socially grotesque and would never survive in a civilization as err, civilized, as ours. You read on at your own risk- exposed to the ranting of an insane man! Good luck!
C.A
Punctuation Notes
"Talking" 'Thinking' SFX (Author comments)
Prologue – "The Best Gifts Come From Within"
"Ouch…"
A new decoration had been painted on my arm. It was a long, wet and narrow slit of crimson that ran down from my left shoulder bone, down the left side of my chest, missing my nipple by a centimeter, and ending just at the top where my stomach should be at the bottom of my ribs. It was a shallow flesh wound and it was still fresh, dripping blood and made my uniform red and sticky from the inside. It seared messages of pain into my eyes, because just looking at it already made me envision the horrible scar it would form into. If it had been any deeper it could have ripped into my vital organs inside- my heart, an artery or my liver- who knows?
But no- I was not granted the sweet escape of death by another sword.
No, "That bastard kept me alive," I cursed through my clenched teeth.
Why? Was it some sick thought he had that I'd bear this humiliation for the rest of my life? Would I be forever cursed to wear this horrendous dead slit of skin across my heart? He even smiled at what he had done- this bastard who never felt emotion now felt compelled to smile at this blemish he stitched into my chest…
"That bastard!"
The small clearing I sat in echoed around everywhere for miles the sound of my fury. My pure, unbridled rage. How I hated that stupid, dark-haired, arrogant fool. How I hated him so much. At least here, near the brook, I was alone except for the sound of wandering water. All my life I had been condemned to coming here- my private sanctuary: a small clearing of shallow grass, a shallow brook for washing my face in, trees to give me shade.
I had always come here for the same reason: I had always been afraid. I had always ran here after I just couldn't take the other students calling me names, playing mean pranks on me.
I had always escaped here after that fool, Sasuke, had injured my pride, as he had now.
And I had always found my way here, heart-broken and distraught, after that pink-haired lady, whom I was totally aware of was totally in love with Sasuke, had always rejected me.
I dipped my hands into the stream and let the ribbons of red wash off my fingers. Then, with fresh water, I rubbed again at my naked chest; trying to preserve what cleanliness my skin had left. I looked up at the trees and bit down at the pain I was inflicting on myself.
"I am so sick of this life."
Suicide? Maybe.
No.
I had a better idea.
Revenge.
' All my life I'd been feeling sorry for myself. I'd been putting myself down in front of that dog, Sasuke, and his little groupie, Sakura. I'll show them. Someone has to pick up that arrogant smirk of his and shove it up where the sun don't shine.'
Who's Sakura, you say? Well, to put it simply, Sakura has always, I mean, was once, the girl of my dreams. The young woman I desired and thought about all the damn time. A pink-haired girl whose age was roughly the same as Sasuke's and mine. A nice girl with a nice attitude, but she's always been lacking in one department: judgment. Why were all girls like that? Blind and… so… stupid? But her chance had passed. No more…
No more would I forgive her blindness and tell myself it wasn't there. No more denial.
All my life Sasuke has always been the favorite- the one student of our clan who had excelled in nearly every test of the ninja that our teachers had posed, while I had always been made out to be the loser, the contrast that lent Sasuke even more glory. Well, now I'm tired of all of it. All my life Sakura has always held Sasuke closer to her heart than any other boy who would have treated her a whole world better. Well I can't put up with that any more, either.
I stood up and grinded my teeth. The wound hurt more than I thought.
That was when a familiar feeling rushed over me…
And it was during those moments when I saw, deep inside, with eyes buried deep underneath my body, a golden animal, a demon with fiery eyes. It called to me, crying a strange song.
Then, as sudden as it had begun, it ended.
"What the…?"
But the vision was one I had had many times before in dreams and idle thought- it was something I was already used to anyway, frightful things that didn't scare me anymore. I had become numb to them. It was easier to feel that way because now, my rage burnt higher than ever.
It reached a new level, I could tell, as I went back to thinking in how many different ways I could strangle the life out of Sasuke and the tears out of his girlfriend, Sakura.
Then the vision, this time clearer and crisper than before, struck again. The golden animal, which seemed to resemble a fox, was calling to me, begging me to come close enough to touch it. To be lost in the infinite power it promised. Inside, I looked closer, deeper within myself, something I could not do before and saw what it was. A golden fox with many tails.
Somewhere at this point I felt that the vision would not have revealed itself to me until it chose the right time. Was I really experiencing all this? Was all this just some hallucination? No, I didn't think so. It felt incredibly profound… it felt like a hidden source of great power.
And the feeling only grew and increased with every draw of my breath, with every new thought of hate, pain and suffering- of what I would do to the villagers when I returned.
The fox asked me to some very naughty things.
The fox asked me to slaughter everyone who had ever said mean things to me. To make them beg for forgiveness, then to rob them of their lives- a mercy I would be willing to grant after they had turned my life into a complete hell of misery, which was something infinitely worse.
And at that moment, I felt my back hit something hard. I realized I had fallen over backwards on to the floor after the violent shivers the demon fox had begun sending through my system. The pain became unbearable but I could not hear myself screaming with human ears- I tried desperately to open my eyes and run from the moaning animal, whose cries were becoming sharper and angrier, but it felt as if they had been frozen shut.
And at that moment, which I could imagine as only having been felt as a few seconds in the real world, the fox pumped knowledge, years of ninja training into my mind. I had always been second, at best, to Sasuke, but now the fox showed me why- every little mistake I had made and what I should have thought to do. Techniques the masters were yet to teach us and yet never will. Dangerous techniques and ones that seemed impossible to perform. Philosophies and doctrines of ancient ninja were fused into my soul, my very core of existence.
It felt to me that to summon fire from my ki would be as simple as breathing. But just when I thought the fox was done with my body, it taught me more and newer methods for releasing and expressing my energy. My mind couldn't take much longer of this and I could feel it starting to jar, like a balloon that had been overfilled with water and was about to burst.
I clenched invisible fists and bit down harder than ever before. I cried for it to stop.
"Stop! Leave me alone! What the hell are you? Leave me alone! Leave me- ahhhh!"
And then it stopped.
It must've been sometime before I awoke because the moon was already in the sky high above me, staring down at me with what felt like pity. The long cut that Sasuke's blade had given me that morning was still there, hardening into some awful scab that would hurt in the morning. But what surprised me when I looked down was not the thousands of new scratches all over my body when I woke up, but the tone and size of several of my muscles. Things I had not noticed before. I brushed my hair aside to see that my chest had seemingly risen off its bones! All of it was incredible- the physical transformations I had undergone.
Then I realized that I was brushing my hair aside.
My new hair was long, and, what more; it had changed color to jet-black: a color not much different from that of my most hated rival, Sasuke. The tips of my new long mane reached down towards my collarbone, a fury of spikes and tresses at random places. It seemed even more chaotic than my last hairstyle as I looked into the surface of the nearby water to mirror my face in the moonlight.
But none of this could have even come close to shocking me after I noticed what was behind me, lying innocently on the ground.
A slender, golden katana, half hidden behind a black sheath that seemed to be made out of snake scales. Its hilt was decorated immensely, almost superfluously, with several sculpted tails like that of a fox jumping out of the end of it. It was beautiful. And it was calling me.
I wandered over, noticing that my feet could no longer make a sound against the tough grass and swooped up the sword into my new, longer fingers. I held it then and there for the first time, but at that same moment, it felt that I had trained with the same weapon ever since I was born. I felt at one with it, like it was my metallic brother.
I drew it fully from its sheath and it smiled at me. I smiled back, and slid it back into it's covering.
Then I realized I had no idea what was going on.
Panic seemed to crawl over my heart for a second, before I leapt up into the branches of a nearby tree and froze there, standing atop the highest section, staring at all the forest coated in night. I was taken back by the awe of my new allowances, of what my new body could do.
Panic no longer had any room in my thoughts. There was only excitement and anxiety to discover new capabilities and realize my new potentials.
'The fox had done all this to me,' I thought sweetly.
But had it granted me all these powers for free? The only request I could hear coming from it, for now I hear it's voice clear and crisp, distinct and belonging to another being besides myself, even with my eyes closed, was that I satisfy my urge to strike fear in all those that had put me down back at the village. Sakura and Sasuke would pay most of all, and not even by death, initially, anyway. I'd have to play with them with my new powers.
And I'd have to enjoy every moment of it.
It was at that moment that I realized I had done something very liberating.
I promised to free the fox inside me. To lend my body to it: not just as a prison, but also as a home. A center through which it could express it's own energies and thoughts.
I promised it a hundred times in gratitude.
Then, I looked towards where the village burned, sending small plumes of smoke into the sky, buried within the trees a couple of miles away. I remembered faintly that it had taken me a day to hike up to here, but my powerful, new legs told me that at the new pace I was guaranteed to be running at, I would reach the village within an hour of endless sprinting.
I felt a warm lump of excitement sear a hole through my stomach.
I would make that boy regret covering my heart behind a scar.
And I would make that pink-haired bimbo regret choosing him over me.
I shed the jacked that covered my upper body- no longer will I hide my chest in shame, for I would want all my victims to see the scar that Sasuke had put on me, a mark of the beginning of their apocalypse. I laughed a laugh that made me feel powerful and alone.
Then I began running back home.
A/N: Please RNR if you'd like to see more. Thanks!