Naruto concentrated. He was lucky that the associate, Haku, Gato had called him, was supposed to be in mourning. It made the fact he didn't have to talk much easier.
Henged into his form, he did talk with Haku's voice. It was difficult wearing someone else's voice though; the words still formed the same but sounded wrong. He was also glad for the mask, something he'd quickly stripped from the corpse when he'd realised the situation. The fact it was cracked from his shot seemed to add to the authenticity of his fight. He could add exhaustion to the list of reasons he wouldn't be talking much.
So he found himself sitting in one of the warehouses that had been turned into a dirty makeshift banqueting hall surrounded by lowlife thugs. Next to him was the suited Gato, hands clasped on a fine goblet which he drank heavily from.
The victory celebration was going on long into the night. Sake and other strange drinks had been produced by the barrel by Gato, to raucous cheers to his hired thugs. Then a great quantity of roasted meats had appeared.
As the drink flowed and food was consumed, the common thugs were entertained by a variety of ladies wearing a bare minimum of clothing. Naruto didn't fully understand what was going on, and waited.
He was improvising. Before he would have gone in quietly and killed the man off in his sleep, but he'd been forced to improvise. He'd never had to do that before.
He looked down at his plate; the food barely touched and tried to concentrate. A greasy hand took his in what he assumed was meant to be a comforting way.
"Haku, Zabuza was a fine man. It must have been hard losing him."
"He was my master, without him I feel purposeless."
The hand patted his own again. It was like being engulfed in grease. He felt somewhat sick. The man's breath was horrendous, and he dared not look to see the man's face.
"You're fully welcome to stay with my company until you know what to do. You're useful, a real killer like your master was. Come, I wish to discuss my proposals further away from my men. Needless to say they'd be jealous if they heard the offer I was going to make."
He allowed his hand to be taken as Gato led him from the room and out towards his quarters. A couple of brutes with huge weapons parted to let him through, sharing a dark chuckle.
Naruto found himself alone with the vile man. He could unhenge now and just be done with it, but timing was everything.
Gato lit a cigar and blew a huge cloud of smoke into the air. The lighting was dimmer than he expected for the gangsters quarters. Then he realised a potential reason. The thought sickened him as the man walked slowly round him, like a shark circling its prey.
"You know, Zabuza protected you more than you know. He treated you like a child, like a father might protect his daughter."
Naruto tried to hold himself together. He could feel his hand twitching, wanting to become himself again and kill the man before him. He felt hatred welling up. He had never felt anything like it before.
Sometimes he felt a mild annoyance when people were stupid and did stupid things. This felt entirely different. If the annoyance was like a buzzing that didn't go away, then this was an inferno that seared inside him.
"It must have been a lonely life for such a sweet young girl as yourself. Perhaps you would like me to comfort you on this dark night?"
His hands crept round his shoulders and tried to give a reassuring massage. It felt like being clamped by a pair of fat claws. He felt the hand descend down his chest. He knew he had to wait as long as possible before killing the man.
"Don't worry, I can be like a father to you, I'll take care of you...stay with me tonight and I can make it all feel...better."
The hand kept descending as the other tried to undo the clothing at the back. He felt the man's hideous breath on his neck.
That tore it.
In the space of half a second Naruto unhenged, drew the tanto from his back and slashed Gato's throat out.
Gato didn't even have time to look surprised before the blood loss and shock killed him and he fell to the floor. Naruto felt the edges of his cloak get slightly wet in the blood from the floor as he planned his next move. Simply killing Gato wouldn't be enough right now, security would still be tight. There was no way out other than the front door.
Ah well, more of this improvising stuff.
He shoved Gato's corpse under the bed and rolled the expensive but now ruined carpet around him as he did so. That hid most of the evidence. Then he henged again, taking on the form of Gato.
He thumped a table, and then overturned it into a filing cabinet, causing it to clatter to the ground before he cursed filthily.
The guards outside his quarters burst in, weapons drawn.
"What's wrong boss?"
"The girl! Did you stop the fucking girl?"
"What girl?"
Naruto fought the man's vocal chords into a roar.
"The one that just escaped me! She addled my head with a ninja trick then ran out! Did you two idiots not see her? What the hell do I pay you for? Find her and bring her to me!"
The guards were not paid to think, and headed off into the compound for the missing Haku.
He de-henged again, and pulled the carpet rolled corpse from under the bed and put it back roughly where it had been. Taking an ugly, brutish weapon that he kept in the room, he blooded it in Gato's neck then left it next to the body. He ghosted out of the room and henged again.
In the form of one of the guards, he ran as best he could towards the banquet hall. It was difficult to run in a form you were unused to, and the guard was nearly twice his height and at least 3 times his weight. He wondered how people this size coped with having no subtlety briefly as he prepared his shout.
He burst through the doors as loudly as he could and fell onto a table, sending it crashing to the ground, food and drink flying everywhere.
He rose; the commotion caused making him the centre of attention. He fought off the feeling he had been somehow discovered to use the fact he had everyone's attention.
"Someone's killed the boss! We went off chasing the stupid girl and someone killed him!"
There was commotion. Men who before had been dancing and singing as comrades eyed one another suspiciously. It didn't take long for accusations to start flying between the men.
It took not much longer after that for the first punch to be thrown, and then weapons were drawn. The entertaining girls screamed as a bloodthirsty melee began. Fuelled by tensions between the hired thugs, and the liberal amounts of alcohol they had imbibed, the fight escalated to contain the whole compound.
After all, some of them had realised that with the boss dead, the quickest way to make money would be to grab lots and run.
Of course, by that time, Naruto had unhenged again and was making his way out of the compound.
He kept to the shadows of the crates, watching the fighting spread throughout the compound. Some of the men were quietly looting buildings and trying to escape, whilst other men went around trying to restore order. Then there were the few who just wanted to see the world run red with blood.
Naruto slipped out under the fence surrounding the compound and made his way back up to the rise he had used to scope out the compound in the first place.
The angry shouts and commotion could be heard from the compound, and someone had started a fire in one of the warehouses. That was regrettable, but he had been improvising.
He took stock. He had made one direct kill in the heat of the moment, and crippled the strength of the thugs indirectly. Gato was dead. Overall, successful. He suspected Kakashi would be less pleased.
He regathered his thoughts as he moved through the trees. The anger had been new, except it felt more intense than that. Then there was another feeling,
The happiness...that was the word, he had used to describe completing a mission was there, but it felt...different. It was better; it was as if something about his earlier feelings had been sated.
It felt right. He relived the kill moment, working out if it could have been done better. He found himself getting a rough feeling, like the roar of a great beast when the blade turned the man's throat to paste and kept going.
A sense of...rightness when he saw the pathetic corpse his blow had left.
It felt...gah. He needed new words for this. Or someone to talk to about these emotions he was feeling.
A/N- I am not getting any views TT, Anyways I'll keep on writing.
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