Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Small Gods ❯ Hanging the Man ( Chapter 6 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Author's Note: This fic may seem to take things slowly for a while. I would like to get under Naruto's surface as much as possible to portray him properly. I feel the only way to do that is to pay more attention to his day to day life than is usually done. Training is a unique way to hone your skills, but also your personality. I'd like to see how he grows from this, in more ways than one.
ps. I recently noticed that my settings were on unacceptance mode for non-member reviews. This has been changed, so please feel free to do so.

There was a time when Naruto would have gleefully enjoyed working his way out of a mess, just thinking of it as training. Now he would gleefully wrap his ecstatic fingers around the throat of the person who had tied him, once again upside down to the ledge. Come morning he had found that the earth was no longer in the place it should be, and neither was his body. Resembling a flapping burlap scarecrow, Naruto flailed about with such colorful language that a rainbow would blush.
“God dammit I SWEAR! When I catch you bastard - I AM GOING TO RIP YOUR LUNGS OUT THROUGH YOUR NOSE!”
Naruto had found, much to his alarm, that this time not only were his hands bound but a weight had been tied into the knot as well. It was very, very heavy. He couldn’t undo this knot as easily as that last, if you could have called it ease. It was far more elaborate. He tried lifting it to his mouth to tug at the knot. The weight prevented this for any length of time. Naruto needed something to support the heavy knot while he worked on it. Using his feet as a platform would be the obvious solution but the weight was superbly difficult to lift. Naruto estimated its overall load at twenty kilos. Damn…
There was no other way, he would have to bend his body upwards as before. Only how was he going to hold on for God’s sake? Oh well, he’d cross that road when he came to it. The only thing to do now was to try, and so he did. It was a circus rendition of a sit-up, in mid air with a ridiculous mass binding his hands and wrists Naruto began the attempt to just get his body bent up to the ends of his feet.

Two hours it took him. Two hours of perspiring torture as the ligaments in his arms screamed. Naruto had finally done it. The weighted knot was perched on the flats of his suspended feet. His head felt like it was exploding with tiny white pops on his glazed pupils. What a morning. He had attempted to reach his feet so many times that his vision swam and his stomach was lacerated with fiery pain. What - a - morning.
Now what had he done this for again?
Oh right, loosen that knot. Half-heartedly he lifted his head with strain and chewed at the stubborn rope. Another hour passed before he made any notable progress. Finally when the loops of the tie fell slack they slipped away as if they had never been there at all. Save for the redness on his arms, Naruto’s skin was mostly undamaged. His head however was another matter. The swimming of his vision was doing the equivalent of a sidestroke in an Olympic marathon. He could barely see straight. Now what to do with that weight. He looked up.
Oh joy, the person who did this to him had a twisted sense of humor.
The weight that had been roped into the knot was a well carved statuette of a crouching fox. It was made of the same stone as the kind that made up the plateaus. Naruto scowled up at it and jiggled a little. The statue fell with a satisfying crack and broke in two halves. He lowered himself from his feet carefully and hung, arms free in the air for a moment. Lazily he formed the seals for a shadow clone and this time three appeared on the ledge.
“You know what to do…” He told them hoarsely.
“Got it.”
They nodded gravely. The shadow clones were essentially part of himself, an extension of his being. They knew what he knew and when they disappeared Naruto gained their experiences. It was a great tool he had found for his training due to the guidance of Kakashi, but for now he was tired, not exhausted, just tired.
The clones quickly set about their work and freed his feet as fast as they could. Taking into consideration that he was too tired to even move much more, Naruto’s clones carried him down the Fissure cliff. When they reached the bottom the clones laid out the limp bodied shinobi with as much care as they could. Naruto’s head lolled from side to side with woozy carelessness. The effect of hanging in the wrong direction for so long was beginning to take its toll on him. The clones exchanged worried glances. One of them rummaged around in the pack and drew out the water skin Gaara had given Naruto before he left Suna.
Naruto’s eyes sparked and hungrily watched the sloshing of the skin as it swayed in the grasp of the clone.
“Here.” The two other clones supported Naruto into a sitting position while the third granted him the mouth of the bag. When he tried to lift his arms to grasp the leathery surface a sheen of pained perspiration broke out on his skin. He couldn’t do it. His arms, strong as they were, had been stretched for far too long. All of his muscles felt as if biting ants were marching over them. Prickling pins and needles soared throughout Naruto’s body and paralyzed his ability to move.
“Sorry,” he said with a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. “I guess my arms decided to go on a holiday ‘cause they ain’t movin.”
The clone holding the water laughed and the other two smiled.
“Well hell boss,” it said. “That’s what we’re here for right? To help you?”
Naruto just laid back into the steady support of the clones behind him and nodded gratefully. He was very thankful that he’d learned this jutsu when he was younger, despite the circumstances that had lead to it.
Tipping the bag so that the opening was in direct contact with Naruto’s parched lips the clone with the skin allowed water to spill into his original’s mouth. The water was warm and a bit funny tasting from the leather of the bag. Naruto had never drunk something so sweet, he thought, in all of his forsaken life. The liquid trickled out of the corners of his mouth and cleaned a path through the dust on his cheeks. When he had had enough he signaled by a crinkling of his forehead.
As the bag was pulled away he gasped for the air, Gods, the air. It felt so good to breath freely. No crucifying pressure on his lungs. No damnable weights pulling his endurance to the limit. High endurance, yeah he was known for that. Funny how a few hours of struggling against your own body can change everything you knew about it. He grinned up at the sky, eyes closed in languid stupor. The sky was a beautiful blue. He never remembered falling asleep.

It was surprising really, that the ‘vessel’ had managed to get out of his predicament as quickly as he did, someone mused from the top of the cliff. This was indeed an interesting youth. A little dense, but interesting nonetheless. Perhaps worth more than just the effort to train. Perhaps this one could endure the rigors of the path that was to come. Perhaps…
No one had done it, not in two hundred years.
Whatever the result, it would be most entertaining.

It was late in the afternoon when Naruto awoke again. His limbs were cardboard stiff and sore. Rolling his neck and shoulders Naruto groaned. He’d done some pretty difficult things in his life, but nothing so strenuous as what he’d gone through that morning. He stared malevolently at the broken statue of the stone fox.
“Serves it right”, he thought bitterly. What a pain.
Naruto still had a very bad headache from the time he spent upside-down. No matter; he could ignore the throbbing, and the burning, and the aching, and so many other things that seemed to be malfunctioning in his body. More than pain right now he felt angry. How was it that twice in a row he had awoken to find himself hovering over the ground in that unreasonable position? He couldn’t figure it out. He knew he slept like the dead but, even someone in a deep sleep would awaken to being hoisted up like a sack of potatoes. It just made no sense! No sense at all. And beyond that what kind of nut would do something like this anyway? They obviously knew what he was, but beyond that point all they seemed interested in doing was stringing him up as if he were some freakish tree ornament. It defied logic of any kind, even Naruto’s. So, Naruto did the logical thing that Naruto does, he screamed at the top of his lungs. Which proved quite difficult --- when no sound came out.
“Ha - a - he - e. Ak!” He tried to voice his frustration but it was no use. Violent shouting earlier coupled with the fact that his throat was as dry as the Suna aqueducts had left Naruto barely able to utter a peep.
Naruto began a list in his head, Reasons to Kill Unknown Tormentor of Doom;
Reason 1 - Loss of voice.
Reason 2 - Because he could.
Naruto ripped the remaining sleeve on his robes from its seam and stuffed it into his bag. There was no use in keeping it around anymore. It only got in his way when he was trying to untie the knots. Somehow, Naruto had a funny feeling he would be trying to get out of a lot more of those in the near future. He glared at the fox statue once more and jogged off to his daily run.
Oh the perilous ways of understatement. He had no idea how right he was.

Naruto made his way back to his camp site in the cleft just as sunset came crawling over the horizon. It was cool in there. Blessedly cooler than the baked plains he trained on. He drifted to the spot beside his unmoved pack where he had slept for the last two nights. Drained and a tad sunburnt, Naruto flopped down and picked his way through the pack’s contents. There was his sleeping bag, which had once again forgotten to roll out. Why not? This place was as good as any to bunk down in. It was shielded from the sun - mostly, and the sand storms couldn’t reach him.
Naruto untied the sleeping bag and flung it over into a corner. It unrolled obediently and slapped the ground softly as it did. He smiled at that. Somehow the sight of the simple fabric on the ground made it more like a home. He was alone again, but at least this time it was by his own choosing.
Huffing calmly he rifled through the pack’s contents again and withdrew the med-kit from Sakura. He brushed the surface gently, as if trying to speak to the person he’d left behind. It wasn’t much, but it was his. The few presents that Naruto received in life he treasured with his life. The necklace from Tsunade; his forehead protector from Iruka which currently resided on his arm to bind a pulled muscle; even the spyglass he had obtained from Jiraiya, his former sensei, was a treasured thing (although Naruto had never used the thing for the reasons Jiraiya had intended it to be.) These material things were from moments in Naruto’s life when someone had recognized his worth, and for that reason if only one he cherished them deeply. It was a physical representation of acceptance.
He leaned back against the rough stone of the cleft wall and opened the med-kit to pluck out a jar of Hinata’s ointment. It was a dry textured mixture that went on without much effort. Tilting his head back as he treated his day’s burns Naruto wondered at the sky. A desert hawk circled overhead; a black silhouette against a splendor of flying orange and yellow clouds in the light of the setting sun. Despite all the surprises and toils of the day, tension slipped away from him in a quiet wave. The silence was welcome for a change.
With the endless plains outside and the sky above he listened for nothing and thought; right now - more than any other time in his life - he felt truly alive - and at peace - with himself.

There was another reason to kill his silent stalker, Naruto thought as he blandly watched a train of ants on the ground below. A headache was pounding into his skull. Each throbbing stab Naruto counted in his temple he swore to carve into the stinking hide of whoever kept doing this to him. Swinging slowly like a clock pendulum a bemused expression crossed his face. The rope was just as heavy as it was yesterday, another weight must be in the knot. With the repetitive nature of the person who did this, it was likely another fox statue. Almond shaped eyes closed in bored acceptance. This ‘hanging from the feet until he felt like an abused piñata’ trick was getting old, quickly. If he had to, Naruto would untie this damned knot every, single, day, until he caught the bastard who kept doing this to him.
Until then there was a twenty kilo piece of crap pulling his arms out of their sockets. He sighed and once again began the attempt to make his body do the near impossible.
Only, near impossible.

From that day forward Naruto woke up to the same routine. Untie knot, eat, run, train, eat, sleep. As the weeks passed and the time stretched out farther onto the horizon the weights inside the knots proved to be as he had expected. There were carved statuettes of stone foxes every time, and each week they got a bit heavier. After a while he began receiving notes from his mysterious tor-Mentor. They contained basic advice, how to aim a thrown weapon properly, survive in the desert, find water, tactics and the like. The notes were not straight forward either; each was written in a cryptic riddle like the first. After a while the Mentor, as Naruto liked to call the unknown person in his life, began to tie him upright with the weighted knot at his feet instead. At this point Naruto had started leaving his own notes in retaliation, making them as crude and as crass as possible. It became a game between the two. The words of wisdom would be countered with retorts of rudeness. It came to a time when their conversation, although distant, turned to the likeness of friendly enemies.
Until the day that Naruto was too tired to drink any water before he fell asleep.