Salt Storm

Bad jokes are only funny when you're not the butt of the joke.

Too bad Naruto was the center of one too many.

It all started when she died, because death was odd like that.

She can only compare it to blinking or sleep.

To closing your eyes one moment and when you opened them the next, everything is suddenly different.

It couldn't have been a dream, in her previous life she had experienced extremely realistic dreams, lucid dreams but never anything quite like this.

If she was exhausted enough she could even daydream standing up.

She though of that as a special little skill she had compared to a few others like her bottomless pit of a stomach.

With its power she could eat practically anything.

It reminded her of the food eating contests she joined in the past.

In particular a memory floating through the window of her soul.

It was in her highschool days, when during a contest between multiple students she scarfed down four full supreme pizzas all by herself.

Is it odd that she went on to eat even more pizza after her ride picked her up from school.

One things for sure, she could always put her trust in her iron stomach.

She got second place in the end.

In a competition between six others who were all guys- she was the only girl to join so she's pretty proud of her stomach.

The one that won almost vomited immediatly afterwords but then again from what she noticed out of her side eye he barely chewed anything. 

Just bit off definitely more then he could chew and swallowed continuously.

Kind of like a snake all determined to swallow whatever they have in their mouth whole.

To be a danger noodle lazing around fat, and smug for the week or two it takes during digestion.

Well... unless they're forced to regurgitate it in order to escape.

Speaking of something important- her death.

-She bleed out, half and half all over her kitchen floor and the hallway bathroom.

Kind of anticlimactic I know.

But let me give you the juicy details and you'll realize what kind of drama she got herself into.

Her boyfriend had stabbed her while absolutely enraged because she decided to finally break up with him.

He stabbed her because he got mad... boo ho.

Thats how he justifed himself anyway.

Things just weren't working out and she didnt want to date someone who was probably going to hit her eventually.

He had already escalated things in their fights before by throwing things at her and he's pushed her before too.

She hasn't counted the pushing because there were no bruises and he always apologized after every instance eventually but... she wasn't going to wait around until he finally did decide to hit her.

She may have put breaking it off literally off but eventually it had to end... just not how she expected it.

It was over and he should've just accepted that fact with grace, but maybe she shouldn't have broke it to him when he was holding the steak knife.

A crime of passion, thats what they would call it but no amounts of, 'Oh-my-god I am so fucking sorry!-' would ever help her.

She was dying and in her scramble away from him and to safety because he was in shock and she was too.

He fucking stabbed her- her life was over, his was now too.

She would make sure of it with her last breath.

Welcome to jail possible murderer, better hope you dont drop the soap.

Attempted murder is serious, there would be jail time and if she had survived she wouldve pressed fucking charges up the ass.

Too bad she didnt. 

Crab-walking backwards with the knife still lodged in her stomach, in the moment of the inital stab she screamed bloody murder and fell back.

She couldnt believe it, he really stabbed her.

This had to be some scripted dateline shit- but it wasn't-

She doesnt pull it out, all the crime tv and youtube video meta knowledge led to her believe that pulling it out would make her bleed out even more.

Plus that would hurt like a bitch.

That and she'd have to further acknowledge she has something foreign lodged in her body that isn't a real dick or even the damn dildo she bought to spice things up after it got boring.

In her shuffel backwards she suddenly realized that shes staining the carpet.

Its a long drag mark... a very long cherry fresh red stain... the point is it's bad.

Its too bad that if she were anyone else this would've been the prime time to give up into all those snazzy depressive thoughts.

Instead shes just going to bluster through it.

She has to get away if she wants to survive this psycho.

He seems to realize this in the same moment she does.

He has to grab and kill her before she gets away.

Thank god by that time she's already close enough to the bathroom.

He practically sprinted around the counter again with another knife from thr block in hand- much too close for comfort. 

She had just dumped herself on the bathroom tiles and kicked the door shut pressing her body against it to keep it shut and twisting the knobs locking it shut.

Installing a lock on the inside of the bathroom was clearly the best idea she ever had.

Maybe under different circumstances that eouldve saved her.

If the knife was lodged anywhere else maybe that decision wouldve saved her life, too bad she left her phone in her mad scramble for safety.

Drilling holes in the doors and walls was against the lease but she couldve spackled it if she wanted to fix it good enough as if new.

Jake of course by this point was kicking the door but he couldnt break it down.

Its too sturdy, and quite thick.

While he hollars at her and slams against the door she quickly starts rubbing her blood on things like the wall, draging her fingertips up and down in a morbid painting.

She writes his name as she blacks out from blood loss continuously.

When she opens her eyes again everythings blurry and terrifying.

Shes born, people speak but she doesnt understand what they are saying.

Then shes held in a blurry giants arms and consecutively passed around in a high speed hot potato like game, its horrible and the world sucks.

All she can do is cry and scream at the unfairness, what did dying have to do with dangerous roller coaster rides and gibberish monolaugeing.

Its too loud and its hurts so bad she swears her eardrums burst and she bleeds.

Everything is blood orange and shes screaming along with the chorus or something unimagineably bigger.

Then for a moment everything seems okay when shes finally set in the yellows arms. 

Then they set her on the cold hard dirt floor and start talking... assholes. 

Its pretty dramatic and even as a baby she can tell yellow and tomato red had a dissagrement over something. 

Yellow even crys a little bit with a tear rolling down his cheek before he whiped it away from what her blurry vision can see.

"Shiki Fuin!" 

For a moment tomatos gold things seem to slack and a loud hiss rings out.

Then for whatever odd reason a weird energy starts finger painting on her belly roughly as if its a rush under the blanket shes swaddled in.

Its all so... weird.

It almost feels like death warmed over

A loud growl screams out behind them.

The candles are barely just lit and in her blindness shes set on a cushion sort of alter.

She doesnt notice the giant fox until the yellow guy and pretty tomato woman get speared through by a single gigantic claw, their blood dripping down onto her navel. 

The gold chains once again are pulled taught around the fox thing.

A floating frog appears and then its gone in smoke again.

They start talking again and she feels like its important to let them talk so she stays quiet.

Then like magic beyond her blind understanding the huge fox dissapears and she feels a weird pain like no other.

She just screams and the couple fall slack to the floor mumbling to her for a few seconds longer one by one until they too fall still and silent.

They seemed pretty loving but at the same time whatever they did hurt her really really bad.

She cries and cries into the night alone... but for a long while no one answers.

Its like that for a long time until the wrinkled short man picks her up and brings her somewhere.

To the place which becomes her new home for the next seven years. 

An Orphanage.

At first shes treated like any other babe, washed, fed, cared for along the clock aswell as the understaffed matron can anyway when things go bad.

They finally noticed the wiskers on her face.

They are long and black thin line tattoos reminiscent of the fox's in the attack.

Then all the shallow 'love' and care dissapeared like smoke in the wind.

Suddenly she's hated for the tragedy that happend to occur on the same day of her birth.

Its all Because she has features smack dab on her face that look like the foxes deity that smited the villiage.

It got worse because now she's being neglected- even mostly blind she can see that clearly.

Eventually when the blurryness went away and finally she can see - she can also see how her caregivers sneer at her.

How they leave her in soiled diapers for hours.

How their neglect got to the point that they leave her for days of stewing in her own shit- so long that she gets sick with painful rashes.

Theres only so long a baby with her kind of awareness can live in denial of her situation.

Denial is a river in Egypt; its very obvious she lives nowhere near the river no matter how she dreams of submerging;of wishing she could drown in it.

They even begin to hit her.

It started with slaps... little things until it eventually escalated.

Abuse is usally a build up first...then it became bruises and her body healed fast enought that if carefully placed it would fade away like nothing happened.

It made it easier for them to justify it when physically hurting her wouldn't leave a trace behind.

With nothing to show for her suffering it goes on like that for awhile.

Then one day, one of the matrons picked her up and raised her high above thier head before she dropped her.

The fall broke her little arms; and even with her healing it healed all wrong... now that the abuse was unignoreable it was obvious and they finally had to do something.

To make an example of that bitch.

It took Weeks and weeks of the neglect going by at that point, and finally they wisk her away to the hospital where the medics on staff begrudingly put the baby back together again.

Rebreaking her bones and with precisely placed medical ninjutsu unlike humpty dumpty she was all together again.

Its takes the intervention of the people in masks to drop by again a couple more times for her caregivers to actaully care for her beyond the rancid bottle of milk once a day and a diaper change once in awhile.

Its really fucked up and sometimes she doesn't understand how she hasn't died already.

She doesn't speak.

she doesn't understand the language and they dont try to teach her so she wails for a long while instead.

its the only way she can call for help... their frustration eventually drags them into helping her.

She actually talks to another being withought being sneered at for the first time at three years old with another toddler who was accidentily put in the same play pen.

By that age she had already reached every other milestone early, walking, crawling, babbling up a storm by herself.

But it was just that... babbling.

Shes called 'demon' spawn and 'fox' brat until finally one day one of the old matrons begrudingly calls her 'Naruto'.

By that point she had been calling herself privately kyubbi since a couple days after she was born.

She named herself after the vengeful deity the namikaze hero slayed because she's already compared to it anyway.

Naruto would hate to make them liars.

Before that she was presumed to be a nameless baby the hokage dropped off.

When she asks what her actual name means because everyones name meant something... shes still sneered at but she finds out.

She had to bribe another lonely brat with a stolen cookie from the matrons private stash for it... her name means malestorm or even a topping for ramen.

Narutomaki a type of fish cake with the iconic pink swirl on it like the swirl of dead ushio and the uzumakis.

She learns her surname is uzumaki later too.

Its weird but according the the secondhand stories one or both of her parents must've been survivors of the devistated sister villages crush.

She likes her private name better.

Afterall its a nine tailed fox.

both like the pokemon or even godlike creatures in the form of foxes symbolizing good and evil.

The grey area of the supernatural.

Kind of like Inari the patron goddess of Rice and Foxes.

Naruto feels grey...

Growing up is hard- but its a hard knock life like what Doctor Evil sang.