The final memory of his first life was the constant beep of a heart monitor and the dull scent of disinfectant. Hospitals had a way of condensing time—days, weeks, and months all meshed into numbness. He was young, much too young to die—but death had no pity for him; it just didn't care about his issues.
And so the world faded, not with violence, but with a profound silence.
Then he woke up, screaming, blood-curdling sound that tore through the air.
It wasn't due to pain, or fear—but because the air itself seemed to be aflame.
Feeling as if it seared through the very air he breathed.
He'd figured it out maybe far too fast for a person in his condition. He'd been reborn, under a sky that appeared to be torn apart by a red fox. A demon, his infant mind understood. Its tails—all nine of them—lashed through the air, turning whole city blocks of the village into nothing more than debris with each pass. The earth shook. Men yelled. Women wept. Shinobi perished.
And somewhere, amongst this chaotic scene a lone child wailed.
"So this is how I start," he thought, buried beneath unfamiliar sensations. His body was small—so small—and his mind weary. Memories intact. Everything from his old world, his old self, his *humanity*, still present. A curse disguised as a miracle.
This is Konoha not only that but during the Nine-Tails Attack of all times.
"To be reborn here is nothing more than a death sentence" he further thought realising"
He wouldn't be the hero. The main character of the story. The, would be, saviour of the world. Especially as he was now.
He was just another infant screaming as hell opened above the Hidden Leaf.
Suddenly before he could even think about panicking more, the shadows came.
---
Yuta never saw the faces of the ones who took him. Though, he remembered the feeling of those cold gloved hands as they cradled him and rushed across rooftops. They didn't bother speaking. They moved through the flames like phantoms, bypassing the chaos like it was only background noise. Shinobi who should've been protecting civilians were too busy dying to notice one child vanishing in the night.
He was wrapped in silence and vanished underground.
Years went by. He did not see sunlight again until he was nine.
---
The laboratory reeked of antiseptic and blood. It always did.
His first memories in this new world weren't about lullabies or laughter—they were more like surgical steel and chakra suppressors. They were all about inked seals on pale skin. And glass tubes filled with screaming.
He wasn't alone.
There were other children initially. Each with various eyes, various lineages—Uchiha, Kaguya, Yuki, Aburame. All of them were *useful*. All of them were cut open or thrown away. *He* wasn't special—not initially.
Yet he was the one who continued to survive.
Each failed transplant, each rejected gene, each jutsu-infused serum—it *should* have killed him. Others broke. Some exploded. Some rotted from the inside.
Kuro adapted.
Subject 13 has remarkable cellular plasticity," one of the voices had stated at one time, distorted by a glass partition. "Suggest combining Senju and Kaguya next. Let's see how far we can go.
Another voice—one that made Kuro shudder—replied with something colder: "And if he dies?"
Then we begin anew.
The second voice chuckled. It sounded like a snake learning to laugh.
---
He didn't know their names then. Not really.
Only later, much later, would he realize that the men involved were *Danzo Shimura* and *Orochimaru*.
Together, they were attempting to form a *singular shinobi*, one that would be able to contain the Kekkei Genkai of *every* clan. Not through training. Not via alliances.
By *force*. By blood.
Kuro was merely one of dozens of experiments—the one that didn't die.
He despised them. And he despised how *grateful* some part of him was for what they provided him: power.
---
The transformation occurred gradually at the beginning.
He was eight when he felt it.
The first time, he killed a mouse. Not unusual—it was a test, part of chakra alignment training. But when he touched the corpse, something happened.
He *saw* it.
A flash. A memory, not a vision. The mouse scurrying through tunnels, gnawing on wires, avoiding the snake-eyed scientist. He felt its heartbeat, its instincts. Its *soul*.
And then it was *inside* him.
That evening, when he sat to meditate as a part of his daily routine, he could hear more. Smell more. He blinked in the darkness and saw more clearly than he ought to.
Something within him had *changed*.
The following day, they threw him back into the pit. But this time, it wasn't a mouse. It was a failed subject. Completely half-dead. Screaming.
They were like, "It's a test."
The boy attacked him with fists soaked in fire. Kuro responded—because if he didn't, he would be killed. His hand made contact with the boy's neck, chakra bursting.
He did not intend to kill him.
However, the instant his fingers touched, *it happened again*.
A flurry of images. A burst of techniques. Fire-Release. Pain. The face of a mother. A gentle lullaby sung in a dialect Kuro wasn't familiar with—but now *remembered*.
He gasped.
"Hey, Subject 13," the voice crackled over the comms, "You've done something. His chakra. it's gone."
Kuro's eyes throbbed. A voice within him whispered:
> "Devour complete."
---
He attempted to conceal it.
He pretended not to notice when new skills came easier. When he moved like the boy he'd killed. When he remembered things he never lived.
But Orochimaru knew. He watched with amusement. Danzo watched with hunger.
They pushed harder. Threw stronger test subjects at him. Kuro fought. Won. Consumed.
Every kill nourished him—but also *fractured* him.
He began having dreams that weren't his. One night, he called out the name of a girl he'd never even met. Another night, he was speaking in some strange dialect that nobody understood. The guards started avoiding him. He didn't blame them, to be honest.
Occasionally, he gazed into the mirror and did not know his face.
---
When he was nine years old, they named him: "Yuta."
It was not his actual name. A codename only—"Black," for the emptiness his chakra signature had become.
He accepted it nonetheless. If they would not allow him to be human, he would be something *else*.
That evening, as they attempted to infuse another lineage into his marrow, he shattered the seal of his restraints.
And for the first time, he didn't merely Devour a person—he Devoured a *jutsu*.
The sealing technique holding him unraveled the moment he touched it. He *understood* it—felt the flow of the chakra script, the anchors, the limitations.
And he *ate* it.
---
The alarms screamed.
Guards flooded the lab.
Kuro moved among them like a shadow. They hit him with blades, fire, lightning—he *absorbed* them all. Not the chakra, no. But the *knowledge*. The *memory* of the way each element flowed, the way each strike was taught, trained, honed.
One of the Root agents attempted to escape. Kuro caught him by the throat.
What have you done to me?" he demanded.
The man attempted to talk. A name—Danzo.
Kuro crushed his windpipe and took everything that he knew.
By the time he exited the facility, the whole sub-level of the Root laboratory was smoldering. His hands were shaking. Not with fatigue.
From too many voices.
Too many selves.
---
He wandered the borders of the Land of Fire for days. Munching on roots. Sleeping in trees. Whispering names that weren't even his.
He didn't know what he was anymore. Not a child. Not a shinobi.
Nothing but a broken container filled with borrowed memories and stolen energy.
And then he saw it—Konoha.
The village in the distance. Whole. Rebuilt.
He covered himself with some stolen fabric and headed over to it.
They'd never discover what he had become.
But before long, the world would.