Abandoning Hope

Abandoning Hope
By Mieren

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Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto and sadly enough I don’t make any money writing this.

Author's Warning: I never put these here, but... This story is dark, violent and unnecessarily graphic. I'm not responsible for nightmares or bouts of nausea. So there.

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I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

– W.H. Auden

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Another day, another incredibly, impossibly stupid mission that only someone with a severe concussion could think up. Well, it was more disgusting than stupid. Team Seven was to sponge bathe the elderly who were so wrinkled and liver-spotted that they resembled a crossbreed between a Dalmatian and a walrus. It was no wonder that Sasuke and Sakura were so hesitant to show up in the morning. An hour later, Naruto still had yet to arrive and they were beginning to think that he was hiding to protect his eyes. Kakashi appeared in a puff of smoke, amazingly early considering it was him. The two sixteen-year-old chuunin suspected that he just wanted to watch them suffer.

“Sorry I’m late. I stepped on a piece of gum and got stuck,” Kakashi greeted cheerfully. Sakura twitched. His excuses were getting stupider by the day.

“Liar!” the pink-haired girl roared.

Kakashi blinked his one visible eye open, stunned that the yelled accusation hadn’t been in stereo.

“Where’s Naruto?” he asked.

“He never showed up,” Sasuke said flatly.

“If I thought I could get away with it, I wouldn’t have come today either,” Sakura muttered.

Kakashi sighed. “He probably just slept in. Let’s go get him. On the way there, try to think of some cruel method to wake him up.” Sometimes the man was just evil. This time, he had a good reason for it though. Earlier in the week, the brat had introduced him to a chakra air horn at three in the morning.

On the way to the blonde’s apartment, discussion of torture methods came up to use on the lazy boy. They passed the ideas of cold water, ice down the boxers, hands being placed in warm water, and the usage of a huge metal pot over the head being thumped with a massive wooden spoon. The teasing went silent when they reached their destination. The front door to Naruto’s apartment was off the hinges and the frame broken, splintered inward by a vicious kick. Kakashi stopped his two students with an upraised hand.

“Sasuke, get the Hokage. Sakura, find Iruka and bring him here,” Kakashi ordered tersely.

When his students were out of sight, he pushed the damaged door aside, sucking in a harsh breath when he caught sight of the room inside. The furniture was completely destroyed, debris scattered across the floor from a distinctly one-sided battle. Kunai and shuriken littered every open surface from the floor to the cracked walls to the ceiling. What had the jounin panicking though was the fact that the entire apartment seemed to be coated with blood, puddles of the crimson liquid forming in various indentures in the floor. He kneeled beside one puddle and dipped his fingers in the liquid, noting that it was still warm. Whatever happened had happened recently.

That was when he noticed something odd about that crimson pool. A piece of debris in it caught his eye and he picked it up, trying to divine why it bothered him so badly. He turned it over and dropped it in shock. It had a nail. Naruto had lost a toe.

Mouth set in a grim line, Kakashi scoured the apartment, not sure whether or not he wanted to find the boy. He was afraid of what he would come across. Every room came up empty, still, and coated in blood.

“What the hell?” Iruka’s voice sounded from the front door. Kakashi turned and walked out of the small, destroyed bedroom to inform the brunette of what he knew.

“He’s not here,” Kakashi said by way of greeting. “And he’s hurt.”

“Obviously,” Iruka snapped irately, waving one hand towards the splattered blood.

Kakashi sighed. “He’s lost at least one toe.” Iruka went pale and cursed under his breath. “Where’s Sakura?”

“Outside,” Iruka said. “I saw the mess when I approached and told her not to come in. She doesn’t need to see this.” Rather, she was too emotional and would probably faint.

Tsunade pushed past him, eyes narrowed as she scanned the trashed apartment. “I’ll arrange a search party. You four start looking,” she called to the two instructors and two students as she left, already understanding the situation.

“Send up a flare if you find him,” Kakashi instructed, vanishing in a puff of smoke.

“Check every alley and dumpster,” Iruka added, trying to stress the seriousness of the situation. Sakura looked sick to her stomach. Even Sasuke, who never showed any emotions, looked grim, having glimpsed into the ruined dwelling.

The three chuunin split up, looking for the missing teenager. Two hours later, Sakura’s ear-piercing shriek echoed through Kohana. Though not the requested flare, the scream served just as well to alert every jounin on the search party. Even the most seasoned ninja was horrified by what they found.

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Sakura was alerted to the oddity of a particular alley when she saw an old mangy dog sniffing interestedly at something he had found. Uneasy, she edged into the dark walkway, glimpsing a pale hand sticking out from beneath a rusting dumpster. She touched the lax fingers delicately.

“Naruto?” she asked softly. Getting no response, she jostled the hand, trying to get the blonde’s attention. “Naruto? Are you okay?”

When silence still pursued her inquiries, she wrapped both her hands around the pale wrist, pulling to drag the boy out from the shadows. She fell back with absolutely no effort, staggering backwards and tripping over something she hadn’t noticed previously in the dark corridor. Bile rose in her throat when she found herself holding a severed hand, arm ending a few inches above the wrist. That was when she recognized what she had tripped over, or rather who. Mortified, she managed a few squeaking noises before her diaphragm snapped out of shock and contracted in a full-fledged shriek.

Keeping an eye on his two remaining students, Kakashi hadn’t been far away when he heard the girl cry out. He circled a few blocks to the side to see what had upset her so badly, finding the pink-haired teenager curled up in a corner in tears, staring unblinking at a pile of something. Even he, the famous copycat ninja, took a reflexive step back when he recognized what he was looking at.

Recognizable only by his blood-matted blond hair, Naruto resembled nothing more than mistreated hamburger meat. Completely nude, it was easy to catalogue his extensive and malicious torture. Both his arms and legs had been twisted to strange angles, broken and dislocated. His left arm was the least wrenched of the set, but was still damaged the worst, severed halfway down the forearm. Bone-deep lacerations covered every visible inch of his skin, crisscrossing to form jagged lattices on the unnaturally pale skin. His face was largely untouched by the blades excepting two prominent wounds, the first being deep cuts tracing his whisker marks, bone showing beneath separated flesh. The second injury to his head was just as deliberate and even more malicious. A kunai had been inserted into each eye to the hilt. Even if he could ignore the mounting injuries, that alone would have told the ill jounin that his student was no longer alive. He desperately wanted to believe that the blond was okay, but a quick glance at his body screamed otherwise. Multiple kunai and shuriken decorated his chest and sides, but even more disturbing was the X-shaped slash across his abdomen, fully disemboweling the slender teenager. Whoever had attacked the boy had enjoyed the carnage, delighting in tormenting him long after he was unable to defend himself.

Swallowing thickly, he knelt beside the mutilated form, only vaguely registering the presence of arriving jounin and ANBU. They were just as speechless as himself. Almost as though he was afraid he would hurt the still boy, Kakashi reached out trembling fingers to press against the blood-slicked, twisted throat. He found only clammy, cooling skin covering lax muscles, no telltale fluttering of a pulse to betray the presence of life, not that he had expected to find one.

“Oh God,” a pained voice whispered, alerting Kakashi to Iruka’s arrival. “Is he…”

He couldn’t finish the question. Kakashi didn’t blame him, too ill at what he faced to speak either. He could only imagine what the brunette felt. Kakashi had been Naruto’s mentor and friend. Iruka had treated the blond almost as his son, or at least a beloved baby brother. Closing his eyes wearily, Kakashi just shook his head, drawing his bloody hand away.

Sasuke knelt beside Kakashi, expression unreadable. For years, he had competed against the blond, challenging him over the most inconsequential matters. They had fought constantly and undermined each other’s efforts, making rude comments and calling names. The constant bickering and rivalry had drawn them together as best friends after awhile, though neither would admit it on their deathbeds. Kakashi silently cursed himself for using that term at such a time. He got up and moved over to Sakura in an effort to soothe the girl, who appeared to be in shock.

“Dobe,” Sasuke muttered, his voice slightly unsteady. “I still wanted to fight you.”

Eyes softening for one of the few times when regarding his teammate, Sasuke trailed his fingertips across a kunai handle protruding from Naruto’s throat. The blow had been intended to mute the noisy ninja, preventing him from crying out or calling for help. The very thought of silencing the talkative boy infuriated Sasuke for some reason, even though Naruto’s incessant rambling used to drive him insane. He suddenly hated himself for every time he had told the cheerful blond to shut up, for every time he had threatened his friend bodily injury if he continued to make noise. Angry at whoever had done this, at Naruto for losing to him and at the entire village for making him such an outcast that he was an automatic target, he yanked the offending blade free.

The results of his rash move were instantaneous. The supposedly dead Naruto suddenly came to life, scrambling like mad to get away, to escape to anywhere but where he was. Stupefied by the impossibility of the scene, neither Sasuke nor Kakashi was fast enough to intercept the panicking, mostly-dead blond. A member of the ANBU squad made a grab for him, causing the boy to lunge to the side to escape. Iruka snapped out his shock and wrapped his arms around the badly injured teenager, earning himself a gurgling noise that would have been a shriek had his throat been intact. The brunette chuunin was almost in tears as he fought to restrain the teenager without harming him further.

“Naruto! You’re safe!” Iruka called pleadingly, trying to calm down his former student before he hurt himself. At the sound of his voice, Naruto stilled, chest heaving as he drew in unsteady, gurgling breaths. Too tired and injured to fight back any longer, he simply gave up and let the older man do whatever he wanted. “I’m taking you to the hospital,” he murmured by way of explanation to the eviscerated blond so he wouldn’t startle at the movement.

Standing up, Iruka lifted his charge effortlessly, doing his best to keep from jostling him. He was greatly disturbed by the blood already soaking through his clothes and the loose flesh shifting under his hands. The chill in his body could be attributed to shock and blood loss, but even then, Iruka didn’t like it.

The medical staff at the hospital was mortified at the ruined horror of a body presented to them. There might have been objections to treating the fox boy, but with the number of ninja following him in, no one dared to say anything. There was a feeling in the emergency room that if they so much as looked at him funny, one of his friends would start a small war right there in the hospital.

Surgeons were called in from every wing, many summoned to work from their shifts off. Iruka was left standing in the emergency room, dripping with blood and emotionally traumatized. Though pleased that the hospital was so organized, even if under the threat of death, he was still upset that the blond had been removed from his view, staring blankly after the mutilated form. He would have stood there indefinitely had Kakashi not arrived behind him, waving his students towards the waiting room and all but carrying Iruka out. The chuunin tried to object.

“But… Naruto…”

“Will be in surgery,” Kakashi said grimly. “This way, you’ll be ready to see him when he gets out.”

Going silent, Iruka allowed himself to be led. Enough ninja, from genin to jounin, were in the waiting room that the staff would still be bullied into helping Naruto whether they liked it or not.

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To Be Continued…
Itachi and Orochimaru have teamed up and they’re after Naruto. Can we say ‘not good’? Review!

And to avoid confusion, I used to be Mieren, but the site changed my password without informing me. Now I can neither log on with my old nor my new passwords and I had to start a new account. New name, same psychotic author.
--Mieren—