Current mood:	tired
Current music:	"Turkish Song of the Damned," The Pogues
Entry tags:	30 evil deeds, kabuto

Naruto - 1. kittens
Kabuto, why you really shouldn't leave bright children to themselves.
For 30_evil_deeds. Warning for carnivorous kittens (isn't that so much fun to say? try it!).


1. kittens


It began from a series of coincidences--he'd heard that old rumor of the civilian who died alone and was partially eaten by his cats before being found several days before his adopted mother found the nest of kittens in one of the back alleys of the hospital. They were too young to be moved, so she started putting food out for them with the permission of the head nurse.

The idea came from boredom. Kabuto had graduated from the Academy over a year ago, and he'd already been told not to allow himself to stand out on any missions. There was nothing to be done about the fact that he'd displayed a talent for medical work, because that had occurred before Orochimaru spoke to him face-to-face, so Kabuto had been informed to make it look like he was struggling with the more difficult things--bone repairs, muscle regeneration, complex surgeries. His adopted father took him to the hospital on the days that Kabuto didn't have training or missions, but he wasn't allowed to participate in anything more difficult than sutures. He was mostly regulated to rote vitals-checking work.

He was sitting in the alley with a scroll he had stolen from one of the doctors' offices, reading a collection of common poisons and their antidotes, when he wondered suddenly if cats had an affinity for human flesh or if the ones in the rumor had just been desperate.

For a few minutes, Kabuto watched the kittens playing with each other as their mother eyed him warily; then he went back to reading the scroll.

The next time someone was brought to the morgue with sufficient external damage, he tested it.

He removed only a small piece from the ragged wound around the man's lung, wrapped it in a glove and then carried it in his pocket until he was able to sneak away and return to the alley. The kittens sniffed at the meat, but after a few seconds they ignored it in favor of playing. After a few minutes, Kabuto checked that none of the powder from inside the glove had spilled and gotten on the meat, before wrapping it back up and going inside.

He carried it in his pocket until he reached a bathroom, and then he wrapped it again in a couple of paper towels and stuffed the whole thing into the middle of the trash can. Then he washed his hands and forearms and went to find his adopted father again.

The next time a body came in, Kabuto was carrying a small bottle of fish oil.

He watched with interest as the kittens licked all the oil off of the bit of thigh, and then wandered away. Only the smallest, the runt of the litter who probably didn't get enough to eat anyway, lingered by it for a few minutes and made an attempt to chew it. Kabuto daubed a little more oil on, but the kitten was scared away in the process, and wouldn't come back even when he sat down on the steps up to the door on the other side of the alley. In the meantime, one of the bigger kittens came back, sniffed the meat again, then ate it.

Kabuto tucked the fish oil into one pocket, crumpled up the stained glove and tucked it into the other, and went back inside.

His mother found him with the kittens a few weeks later, when they were finally growing out of their potbellies and had started to expect food at the sight of him. Kabuto knew that the glove and the new bottle were both tucked in the bottom of his pockets, and didn't betray himself by making a motion to check.

"Your father's looking for you," she said, trying to sound disapproving, but the corners of her mouth were tilted up. ". . . They're cute, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Kabuto answered, smiling.

"Ito-san is trying to find homes for them," she added, and though Kabuto hadn't mastered reading people yet, it was easy to recognize the potential promise under her tone. "Now, come on, you're supposed to be working."

"Right, sorry. . . ."

Within the next month the kittens had grown a lot, and they ran and hid whenever anyone tried to catch them. So far, only the one with the stripe along its nose had been taken home by somebody. They still came out for Kabuto's mother, and for the other nurse and doctor who put out food for them, and they still came out for Kabuto, but those were all.

Kabuto had begun feeding them bigger pieces as the month went on, and he'd also started cutting down on the fish oil, keeping track of how little he could put on before they turned their noses up at it. It was down to one drop before he was sent out on another D-class mission, and when he returned, one of the doctors was out with a cold. Kabuto's father let him work as an assistant in two surgeries, so he didn't bother with the kittens. Then he was sent on a new mission, this one lasting three days.

The day he came back, after a late breakfast, his mother took him aside and told him that all the kittens and their mother were going to be put down, including the one that had already been adopted. While Kabuto had been gone, two of the bigger kittens had been found in the morgue. She stopped short of explaining exactly what they had been doing, even when he pushed her for an explanation.

Kabuto pleaded with her for several minutes to adopt the runt of the litter, but finally she said that it was impossible, still skirting around the reasons why. After that, Kabuto locked himself in his room under the pretense of grief and spent the rest of the day studying a few advanced medical books he had taken from his father's study.

"He was the kind of boy who said 'please' and 'thank you' and then went home and tortured the cat."