None of the characters in this fic belongs to me....

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Prologue

by: c7bi_kyuubi

Uzumaki Naruto huddled in his small cell. He cursed his luck at being distracted until he got caught by surprise. Literally. Now he can only try and make himself as small as possible and hope that no one even notices him. He doesn’t know where he is, and he had no desire at all to be here. And he wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t let his guard down and got caught. He cursed his stupidity again. He was just too trusting of everyone…

He stared around his cell; it was more of a cage of sorts. He winced as he heard more giggling and squealing accompanied by a male’s raucous laughter then the slamming of a door. He sniffed around, and tried gnawing on the bars of his cage out of frustration. He should have fun away when he heard them trumping across the forest. Should have known people with cages and dead animals hanging over their shoulders were up to no good. Or maybe he should have transformed into his human form. But its no use thinking of all the ‘what ifs’ now was it? He is stuck in a cage after all.

He had found out that the leader of the pack was called Akatsuki or something. They were all afraid of him. Naruto had not seen his face when he was taken to meet that man in his office. His office was shrouded in shadows. That man had talked in a quiet voice and he recalled eyes gleaming at him out from the dark. They had said that he was a special catch. He shivered at the memory. He didn’t really care if he was special or not. He just hoped that being ‘special’ around here means that he wouldn’t have to be chopped up for food or worse. His nine tails curled around him, he settled down to sleep. It was no use pacing around and wasting his energy after all.

Flashback

Naruto, in his human form was enjoying his bath. His furry little ears flickered on the top of his head as he pranced around under the waterfall, doing belly flops on the calm pool of water. After having his fun, he climbed ashore and shook the water from his nine tails and combed out the burrs. Then he changed back into a little fox no bigger than a human arm (minus the tails of course) and with a flicker of his tails, he pranced off into the woods, sniffing around the trees, playing to his heart’s content.

He like the smell of the forest. It smelt like home to him, and of nature herself. He leaped into a pile of leaves and snuffled around until he felt comfortable then he dozed off and then he finally fell asleep. He didn’t hear the soft crunch of footsteps getting closer and closer until he felt something fall over him. Startled and yipping loudly, he thrashed around. It was a net and soon he got himself entangled and a pair of human hands grabbed his body.

Snarling at them, he thrashed around biting the arm of the one who held him. The man didn’t shout in pain. In fact he gave no reaction that he felt the bite. Naruto then whipped his nine tails around and slapped them into the face of the man. Surprised, the man loosened his hold just a tiny bit and Naruto managed to wriggle free. The moment he dropped onto the forest floor, he tried to take off only to find himself surrounded by about six people. They were all around him and they were carrying nets.

He backed warily away, snarling in warning and he spotted a few of them with dead animals strung over their shoulders with strings. One of them lunged at him with his net, Naruto ducked under his feet, one of his tails tangling the feet of another who ran at him and tripped him. Then slipping through the confusion of legs and swinging nets, he managed to run away from the chaos behind him. He ducked into his den under a huge tree and waited until his breath steadied. They must be the ones from the neighboring villages.

Maybe he should have made the illusions more realistic… There were more and more people coming into the forest, burning and chopping down his trees. He had to do something to stop them, they were destroying his home, his family and the only friends he had. Being a demon fox, scaring people away was easy. A few well placed illusions here and there was enough. The people didn’t actually see what they thought was spirits or demons, that he left to their own imaginations.

After a few weeks of casting illusions, no one had dared to venture a foot into his home. That is until now. He had never seen people this far in before. Shaking the disturbing thoughts from his head, he settled in to sleep. They would never find him here as the thicket blocking the entrance was too thick and the roots of the tree he was nesting under twisted and turned that even if there was no thicket blocking the entrance, no one would be able to see the entrance anyway.

The next day, he carefully sniffed the air for any foreign smells. It doesn’t hurt to be a little too careful though. Detecting no weird human smells, he ventured out from his den. Those people must have been long gone he guessed. However, after roaming quite some distance away from his den, he smelled a different kind of smell. A more appealing sort of smell. Heading towards that direction, he found a man sitting in the middle of a clearing with a sleeping bag on the ground beside him.

The nice smell was coming from the thing he was holding in his hands. A tiny curious whimper escaped from his throat as his stomach growled, stating that he should find food. The man looked over at him and smiled. “Well, what have we got here? A hungry kit huh? Want some ramen?” He asked, holding out the thing he was holding that had all the nice smell coming from it. Naruto inched forward a little, eyeing the man warily. The man had shoulder length gray hair and round spectacles. He looked nice enough and he didn’t seem to be with the others that had tried to catch him yesterday. He didn’t smell like he was with them too. The man chuckled and took out a plate and poured some of the nice smelling thing onto it and put it down on the ground. “Here, have some. I’ve got more.”

Naruto eyed the man and waited until the man wasn’t looking at him anymore before sneaking up and nibbled at the nice smelling thing the man called ramen. It was absolutely delicious. [Yes, Naruto and his ramen… (sigh)] He scuffled it all down and whined, turning begging eyes up towards the man for more. If nothing, tasting that made him hungrier. The man looked down at him in surprise then laughed. “Oh, hungry are we? Here, you want some more?”

So it went on and on until Naruto was full. He decided that he could trust this human as he didn’t seem dangerous or any desire to want to capture him after all. He was also quite nice giving him so many ramen… ‘Mmmm… Nice…’ he thought. He then felt himself start to doze off. ‘Maybe I should head back… Sleepy…’ he thought and started to stand up to leave. He faintly heard the man chuckled and saying, “Oh no, I don’t think you’re going anywhere soon my little fox.”

End flashback

That was what he heard before everything went black and he collapsed after only walking a few feet away. That was the day he found out that there are drugs that can make one unconscious. And when he woke up, it was already night he was in a cage being transported away. He couldn’t smell his forest anymore and he could see that through his cage bars, he was in a human city. Then he collapsed again. The next time he woke up, he was in this place, a dark room in a cage smaller than the one he had been in before where there was only silence.

He just wanted to go back home. Then the door to the dark room he was in opened and a man walked in. “Hey wakey wakey little foxy. Seems like you have a loaded buyer waiting for you ya lucky fox.” The man called loudly, knocking on the door to his cage before he felt the cage lift and he was carried out of the room. ‘Buyer? What is going on? Where am I?’

The first chappy! Whoohoo! Read and review.