THE WILL OF FIRE: 3. The Crow (A Naruto Fanfic)

The Crow, Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Luckily, I made some copies of the birth certificate, anticipating situations where people might try to take it away from me. Though the next day felt very lonesome and I didn't even feel like going to the hospital. Man, I only wished anybody could tell me anything. My best source of material had disowned me and I had nowhere else to turn to. My cousin wouldn't have a clue-he wouldn't much care when it came down to it. All he wanted was for me to be safe. And that I was. And nobody else I knew could give me the answers. So I decided to beat whatever it was that was still keeping me at home and headed for the hospital.

"Why is this birth certificate not properly filled out?" I asked bluntly.

"I don't know," was the answer I got.

"Do you know who the nurse was that helped with the delivery and filled this out?"

"You are, how old?"

"13."

"Date of birth?"

"October 10th. There were two of us."

She disappeared after that, leaving me in the lobby. There were a lot of cries coming from left and right and it made my ears ache. A lot of Shinobi seemed to come home wounded after their missions, a bigger tally than I would've expected. And it was even more serious since the Village didn't have a Hokage. And the hospital was still pretty much packed with injured people from Uncle Orochimaru's attempt at destroying Konoha.

The woman finally returned, with the same blank expression on her face. She didn't seem at all fazed about this situation.

"We have no information."

"What?"

"We have no information."

"I heard you the first time! How can you not have any information?"

"We have no information."

I saw that arguing that was pointless so I left the hospital, feeling defeated (it was a feeling I seemed to have been feeling a lot these days. Did this Village actually make me weaker?)

I was aimlessly walking down the streets, clutching Naruto's birth certificate in my hand. I had no leads on anything and I knew what the next logical step would be. But I was too afraid to do it. It required me to learn everything that happened on the day I was born, the day that the Demon Fox attacked this Village. But I was too afraid exactly what I was the cage to. I knew it was a horrible monster but I didn't want to find out what this horrible monster did. Not yet. I knew just how much power I could release just by getting angry and I didn't want to know how this thing killed my parents.

So I decided to return home and proceed with my other research. I knew that at this point there was only one person who held most of the answers and I knew I couldn't ask him. It was around late in the evening when I realized that I haven't eaten much so I decided to go out shopping. And I really felt like I had to apologize to Naruto at least, so I bought some food and went over to his place. He wasn't home yet so I let myself in and started cooking dinner. I wasn't a brilliant cook and my meals were mostly composed of take-out or eating out but there were two or three things I knew how to make and one of those was stringing random things on sticks and calling them dumplings. Only this time, I made some effort into what actually goes into the dumplings. I was nearly done when I heard the lock in the key and Naruto came home.

"Welcome home," I said when I heard him poke around the corner. "I'm fixing dinner."

When he didn't answer for a while, I turned around to see if he was still alive. What I saw was this wide-eyed look he was giving me and I couldn't help but sigh. "You saw me yesterday, dude. You couldn't have missed me that much."