Rats scurried from one place to another, killing each other to get a piece of moldy bread someone carelessly tossed out.
The cold seeped through the holes of the abandoned supply warehouse that vagrants had turned into a sort of shelter, enduring the intense storm raging outside in a desperate and smelly hodgepodge of filthy bodies, pressed close together, sharing their body heat.
Putrid breath, raspy and contaminated breathing, greasy rags.
Takeshi found it unbearable, clinging as best as he could to the bag where he kept his few belongings, including a scroll his father left behind as his only valuable inheritance.
Tossed aside, a young Kimiko was dozing with a grimace of revulsion, twisting as best she could to avoid the shameless touch of the toothless old men.
Takeshi could not understand how such a bad idea could have occurred to the stupid teenager he had for a mother. Wasn't she a damned Kunoichi? Couldn't she sneak into the house of some minor noble and find a decent place to spend the night?
If only he could speak the language better, he would never have allowed Kimiko to get them both into this can of sweaty, dirty sardines.
—EEEK!— Takeshi suddenly shrieked, feeling a sharp pain in his foot and kicking the giant leg next to him as hard as he could.
—Huh? What do you want, brat?— asked a man with a beard and liquor-stinking breath, looking at the two-and-a-half-year-old Takeshi, whose foot he was currently putting his weight on.
—Move, dammit!— Takeshi hissed in his native language since he didn't know the local words very well, confusing the drunken man crushing his foot.
—Takeshi!— Kimiko suddenly jumped up, her maternal instincts, undamaged in this era, reacting to her son's pained tone.
She lashed out at the man harshly, despite the difference in mass between the two, which ended with the man stumbling and falling onto some other guys.
Due to how crowded everything was, a commotion quickly broke out among the vagrants.
—Are you okay, Takeshi, does it hurt, did that man hurt you?— Kimiko cooed, indifferent to the sharp looks directed at them.
In the end, the social pressure was too much, and Kimiko, who was a damned Kunoichi with superior combat skills but a too-childish mindset and lack of life experience, was expelled from that area of the warehouse along with Takeshi.
Takeshi's eyelid twitched, wishing he could learn to speak right now to tell the idiot he called mother a few things.
After wandering around for a while and shivering from the cold, they found a hole in a wall that both of them could fit into, wrapping themselves around each other to preserve body heat.
Being alone, Kimiko's brain seemed to recover some composure and mobilized her chakra to create a slight flame at the tip of her finger. It wasn't much, but it helped Takeshi's small body.
Unfortunately, Kimiko's chakra was limited, and Takeshi hadn't learned to use the technique his father left him in that scroll. He didn't even know he was a bearer of the non-canonical Dark Release at this stage of his life.
The exhausted Kimiko fell into a deep sleep after thirty minutes, leaving a bored and annoyed Takeshi with nothing to do, enduring the strong body odor of the girl who hadn't taken a shower in days.
With effort, he managed to undo his restraints and placed the bag between Kimiko's arms, so the absence of mass pressed against her wouldn't wake her up.
He got up, stretching his limbs and deciding to walk around, forcing his body to generate heat through movement. He could get milk from Kimiko's breasts later to replenish some energy.
He wasn't proud of that statement, but it was what it was.
The warehouse wasn't very big, luxurious, or full of modern machinery. High wooden walls, abandoned carts where a couple of enthusiastic youths were ensuring the next generation, a large central area where the vagrants protected each other from the cold, and some holes here and there that seemed to lead to a lower level.
That was strange. If there was a basement or something, it made no sense for everyone to endure the storm outside.
Takeshi shrugged and jumped through the hole, awkwardly sliding in a mediocre demonstration of parkour and face-planting on the ground.
Cursing in his native language, the Yuki looked around in the darkness. The atmosphere was gloomy, enough to imagine the presence of a paranormal entity or something similar.
But the temperature was slightly higher than upstairs. Takeshi nodded, pleased with himself, and moved to find a way to climb up and inform his foolish mother.
However, something made him trip in the dark, getting tangled in loose cloths and falling face-first onto the ground again.
—It better not be a monster or an interdimensional horror— he muttered to himself, turning to the silhouette that remained motionless beside him, leaning against a column with his legs stretched out in front, legs that Takeshi had just tripped over.
He cautiously got up, keeping his eyes on the silhouette. It could be a drunk, or truly a horrible monster that would give him the fright of his life if he continued what he was doing.
Takeshi approached, mobilizing a bit of chakra into his palm with the intention of expelling it in its raw form, thus creating a light source.
Smart? Hell no, but it didn't hurt to follow a cliché once in a while.
To his displeasure and shock, he was not met by a horrible monster, nor a terrifying skeleton.
The chakra hissed softly, illuminating Takeshi's frozen and sickly face, as well as the cold and unmoving face of a child barely a couple of years older than him.
There was no bad smell, beyond the one already present in the environment. There were no flies on his body, not even a trace of rats on him.
It wasn't hard to guess what was happening. This child had died recently, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from hunger. Maybe both.
A bitter feeling flooded Takeshi, his usual enthusiasm for everything completely vanished.
Before his eyes, the face of that stranger, the first corpse he saw in both his old life and this one, was superimposed on the present, where another child lay equally still and cold on his bed.
The wood creaked with Takeshi's movement, the Akatsuki cloak shaking slightly and a visible cloud coming out of his mouth.
Takeshi left the room, leaving an explosive tag next to the infant he had just frozen in his sleep, making sure not to wake him up at any point.
Chakra swirled around him, quite a bit wasted in the process of releasing and forcing the environment to stop, to cool and freeze.
He didn't care. He didn't enjoy this situation, or this mission.
Through the window, he noticed several shadowy figures emerging from some homes, kunai and shuriken in hand, short swords and ninja wire preparing for Kakuzu's assault, who didn't bother to be stealthy.
The man had given Takeshi a time limit to infiltrate the village while he drew the attention of the patrols, allowing him to plant tags beforehand. Takeshi took the opportunity to give the houses' occupants a peaceful death.
That time was over, and now the Yuki would be forced to chase and murder every villager as soon as the battle erupted.
An intense blaze slammed into a wooden house, igniting it and burning the innocent people sleeping there alive.
The roar alerted both shinobi and civilians, and Takeshi sighed again, a cold look flashing in his eyes and the chakra churning more wildly in his body.
Two seconds later, he ran toward the window and jumped out, tackling a masked Konoha shinobi and stabbing a kunai into his eye, sinking it up to the hilt.
A few more masked figures noticed him and turned in his direction, while others jumped onto the rooftops, positioning themselves above Takeshi. Right in the indicated spot.
The Yuki gestured, and the planted tags ignited, detonating in quick succession.