Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Genii Can Be Different ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

~ShikaNaruShino~ ~ShikaNaruShino~ ~ShikaNaruShino~ ~ShikaNaruShino~ ~ShikaNaruShino~

 

Naruto awoke slowly, his head throbbing something awful as he carefully lifted it, opening pain-hazed blue eyes only slightly to take in his surroundings. Honestly, it wasn't much to look at and truthfully it didn't surprise him. By the chill and dampness in the air, he was obviously underground and that alone made him somewhat uneasy. He was a child of nature and the sun. Only people with bad intentions and cruel hearts could survive living beneath the earth.

 

Snakes seemed to like it.

 

That thought alone brought anger swelling in his chest. Fucking Orochimaru. It had to be. Who else would've captured him and locked him in an underground dungeon? Certainly not the Akatsuki. If it had been them, the blond was positive he would've woken up surrounded by the missing nins, waiting for him to gain enough consciousness to feel the pain of Kyuubi being pulled from his body.

 

Here though…here he seemed to be all alone. There wasn't any light - so he assumed it was night time, whatever that meant for him - but thankfully Naruto had the night vision of a demon. He had the brief thought that he would've been better off being in the Akatsuki's hands because at least he could laugh at them as they tried - and failed - to remove his demon.

 

Too bad for them the Jinchuuriki and his Bijuu were merged.

 

As it was, a rough chuckle scraped up his throat at the thought of their faces staring thunderstruck as their techniques failed to produce results. It would've made for some genuine entertainment.

 

But no, he wasn't with the Akatsuki. Instead he was in some old stone walled dungeon with a heavy wooden door that featured a small window with solid iron bars. Heh. They couldn't hang a little curtain over it to make it a bit homier in here? Naruto thought to himself, amused.

 

The air was musky and stale and already Naruto could feel his lungs cringe away from it. He really wasn't meant to be underground. The fox spirit that had merged with his own only increased his love of - and need for - nature and being in such a place as this only served to make him feel slightly claustrophobic.

 

Suddenly his mind seemed to clear from the pain slightly and the blond remembered what had happened before he came to be in such a dreary place. He'd been on his way home from a mission. It was one that was supposed to have lasted four weeks at the least and Naruto had gotten it done in two because, on what would've been the fourth week, Iruka and Kakashi were getting married and the blond refused to miss it.

 

At the time it had made him unabashedly happy that he'd have enough time to help out with things before the wedding but now…well, he was supposed to be gone for at least another two weeks which meant that no one would miss him or think anything was wrong until a few days after his originally assumed return time. Regardless of the fact that his friends knew about the Kyuubi and accepted him, they also still seemed to see him as the outsider…as the scrawny little boy that was always picked last in games - if he was picked at all - and never had any family at events.

 

He knew part of their thinking was his own fault for not really letting them see him as anything more than what he showed. Although he'd long ago dropped the ever-annoying act, they didn't seem to notice and Naruto had decided that if they couldn't see right away how much different he acted then when they did get suspicious, he'd act how he was expected to and throw them off. It worked splendidly.

 

Far too splendidly, as that meant there would be no one who knew him well enough to know that he'd finish his mission in at least half the time just to be there for the kind-hearted chuunin who had always treated him like family. Iruka, of course, would know Naruto would try to make it back and normally - if Naruto wasn't back when he said he'd be - the dark-haired academy teacher could be found waiting at the gates of Konoha for him. That was if something like this had happened at any other time. As it stood, Naruto knew Iruka would be far too flustered with wedding preparations to keep track of time…and days…in relation to anything other than said event.

 

The hair at the back of his neck suddenly stood on end as his ears started to buzz, his muscles tensing automatically to the feeling creeping along his senses even though he was chained to a wall with chakra suppressers around his neck, wrists and ankles. He knew he couldn't do much, if anything, in the situation he was in and he could feel his teeth become longer and the itch across his cheeks let him know the lines on his face had deepened and spread. Now that he was a merged soul of human and demon, all those instincts of the fox were always at the surface and his changes according to his tails of chakra were no longer harmful to his body. Naruto was going to hope that somehow, Orochimaru didn't know of the merge. At least if the snake was as in the dark as everyone else - as the only one who knew about it was Jiraiya and even he didn't know it was complete - then Naruto had a chance because there would've been no way for the snake to account for his actual power level.

 

There was still a chance he could escape and maybe kill that pasty bastard while he was at it.

 

That thought alone brought a small smile to his lips that refused to leave even as the light, barely-there sound of footsteps rang in his sensitive ears. Someone was coming and by the scent drifting through the dank smell of wet stone, Naruto knew that Orochimaru - and Kabuto, the little fucker - was finally coming to greet him. He snorted at the thought of that silver-haired prick, following along at the snake's heels, just waiting to drop to his knees and show Orochimaru-sama how loyal he was.

 

Briefly, the thought that Sasuke had done the same thing - without the simpering the blond just knew was a part of the mednin's repertoire - slithered through his mind but he shoved it away. It didn't really matter anymore what the Uchiha had done at the snake's behest because the teme was back in Konoha and Naruto supposed that was all that mattered.

 

Well that was all the villagers cared about at any rate.

 

The jingle of metal heralded the presence of keys and Naruto felt his muscles tense even further, his quadriceps bunching in preparation of lunging though he knew it was a hopeless thought. He only had so much leeway in his chains after all.

 

Pity, that.

 

More sounds of metal on metal - a grinding screech that made his ears ring horribly - before the stench of the snake sannin crashed against him in a wave that almost made him dizzy. The rush to his senses served to disorient him just enough that by the time his head was clear and his ears no longer felt as though they were splitting, Orochimaru was standing right in front of him, a cold bony hand grasping his chin tightly.

 

“Mmm.” Orochimaru murmured gently as he tilted the blond head from side to side, a glint entering his eyes as Naruto glared at him. “Yes I think you'll work out nicely. You see Naruto-kun…you cost me the body I wanted so I intend to use you in making me a new one.”

 

Naruto tore his face from that spindly grasp, backing up until he was pressed against the wall. Glaring with the force of a thousand suns, Naruto growled. “That'll be the day. There ain't a damned thing you can offer me that would make me agree to help you.”

 

The snake chuckled then, the sound rasping and breathy and all around creepy-as-fuck. Naruto willed away the urge to shudder violently at the sound. “Oh I've no intention of trying to win your cooperation. It isn't as if there's anyone I can threaten or bring back for you. I am certain that by the time someone actually realizes your absence, I will have gotten all I'll need out of you.”

 

He turned then, walking back towards the door and his lackey that awaited him, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and smirking in a way that made Naruto want to rip his face off. Just as the sannin was out the door, he turned to look over his shoulder briefly, “I'd suggest you sleep. Tomorrow I plan to start finding out just how much damage that demon of yours can repair.”