The Tailed... Human? [Tail 1 - Naruto Fan-Fiction]

Prologue: Your name is... ⦅Edited⦆

The child walked down the hallway holding her tail close to her body, the prisoners inside the cages she passed reaching out towards the bundle of white fur. Her snow white hair barely reached her shoulders, bouncing with each step as she followed Kabuto down the hallway.

"... Understand?" Kabuto turned, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and crossing his arms.

"I, uh... can you repeat that?" She asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and watching Kabuto scowl. He flipped the pages of his clipboard up and stared intently at a single page.

"You'd think with your ears I wouldn't have to repeat myself." Kabuto glared at the fox-child, her tail flicking nervously from side to side, brushing up against her filthy white gown and spreading the dirt to her tail.

"I-I'm sorry," she replied quickly, kicking her bare feet against the cement floor.

"You are to accompany me to the Hidden Leaf Village and participate in the Chunin exams." Kabuto ignored her apology altogether, flipping through a few more papers attached to his clipboard.

"When?" She asked, tail twitching impatiently, the thought of sunny skies and a vast green landscape making her skin tingle with excitement.

"Soon," he snapped, his fingers loosening their grip on the pages and letting them slip back down against the clipboard. "You'll be wearing this," Kabuto held out his hand, showing the girl a dog collar that looked a little unusual.

"What is it?" She asked, reaching her hand outward to take it from Kabuto and having her hand slapped away with the clipboard.

"It's a shock collar, made big enough to fit around a human's neck. If you leave my sight for any reason, I will activate it," he adjusted the collar in his hand, the black box in the center of the collar now in the center of his palm. "It will electrocute you, and you will die, rest assured." He added, placing the collar onto the clipboard and pressing it against his chest.

"U-understood," she tried to keep her voice calm, but her whole body was shaking with fear and her tail fur was bristling involuntarily.

"For this mission, you will respond to the name 'Kitsune'." Kabuto allowed himself a small chuckle, the literal translation to 'fox' was fitting for this abomination. "Don't think anything of the brief leniency Lord Orochimaru has granted you. If you do not follow orders to the dot, you will be killed."

Kitsune simply nodded, her ears instinctively pressing themselves against her head, images of her mangled body flashing through her mind. My life... it means nothing, she reminded herself, her hands closing on her tail and squeezing lightly, feeling the dirt from her clothing forming layers in her fur.

"You are dismissed," Kabuto stated, giving her a slight hand wave and turning away from Kitsune, murmuring to himself about how easy it would be to just kill Kitsune now.

"Understood," she sighed inwardly, beginning the trek back to her cell, once again pulling her tail close to her body as the prisoners noticed it. Ignoring the profanities and questions they screamed, she licked her palm and began rubbing her saliva against her tail in an attempt to get the grime off of it.

Rounding the corner, she walked into her cell and pulled the door closed, knowing Kabuto would be making rounds to insure that the prisoners allowed to walk around during the day had returned to their cells.

Sure enough, Kabuto rounded the corner, peering into Kitsune's cell and pulling on the door to make sure it was locked, jotting something down on his clipboard before continuing his walk towards the Experimentation room.

She pressed her fox ear up against the stone wall, shivering as her ear touched the icy cold cement, hearing Orochimaru and Kabuto talking quietly about something. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on what the two were saying.

"The Kyuubi DNA will eventually take over her body, making her our very own nine-tailed fox demon." Orochimaru cackled manically for a brief moment, his throat seizing up and giving way to a series of coughs.

"I still think we should kill her now and get it over with, she has no combat abilities." Kabuto hissed, slamming the clipboard against the metal table. "She's going to die during the exams anyway; it gives us little to no time to even make a move!" Orochimaru gave a small laugh, trying to avoid another coughing fit.

"Careful, Kabuto, she's the key to taking down the Leaf, regardless of how much time she gives us to make our move."

Kitsune let a sad smile slip onto her face, feeling in the dark for the knife that had... gone missing from the Experimentation room, feeling the cold metal against her fingertips. I... I could end it all now... I could stop anyone from getting hurt.

The knife pressed up against her wrist, the crimson liquid seeping out of the wound as the knife pierced the first layer of skin. It stayed pressed up against Kitsune's wrist, the blood pushing up against the knife in an attempt to free itself from her wrist.

Metal clinked against the cement floor, Kitsune finding herself unable to finish the job, the blood on the edge of the knife splashing against the walls and dripping down slowly.

No.

Your ambitions have become my burden... I will find my own liberation.