Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did...let's say there would be more grit, more NaruSasuNaru, and more creepiness.

A/N: Because sometimes, anime is just so stupid.

I was reorganizing all my documents ( -- gah, what a feat) and came across this. I rewrote it and welp, here 'tis.

His hands and feet were tied, separately; careless, he thought. If I can just get my hands free then I can reach a weapon and –

Kunai. Kunai were in his leg pouch with shuriken and also in his sleeve and also in his jacket and also down his back and in his belt and in his wiry, curling hair and in countless other places that he couldn't reach.

But from his sleeve, he shook a kunai, which his teammates had teased him for ("Sometime you'll shake hands with someone and that thing will slide out and stab their fingers to death, you know, and it'll be a real pretty girl and then you'll never get laid ever again"). It was sharp, of course. When it fell, he wasn't worried, because he was curled on his side on a hard patch of dirt barely six inches from the blade. He reached out and touched it.

Someone approached. Without a doubt it was the A-ranked missing-nin who had appeared on the road, ambushing his team and him on the way back from an easy mission that had paid a lot. The missing-nin had tied them all up and killed everyone else.

His tightly tied fingers scrabbled against the handle. The missing-nin wielded a strange spear, and he could hear it dragging on the ground. He grabbed the kunai, his fingers not moving quite right because they were getting no blood.

Chancing a look up, he saw the missing-nin, whose face was painted in red and white candy-stripes to match the spear. That spear came closer and closer, bobbing as the nin walked. He tried maneuvering the kunai a different way to cut the ropes. He would get it. He was just a Chuunin but he was good with his kunai, even if this rope was wrapped so tightly around his wrists that his hands were dying.

The missing-nin watched him, clearly with amusement. There. He knew that was the position it had to be in. He would cut the ropes in one slash then throw a kunai and free his feet. Then run like hell. It probably wouldn't work.

He swiped at the ropes. The angle was wrong. Only half were cut. It would take precious seconds to readjust with his bloodless fingers and he couldn't afford that – he heard the spear whistling down. He rolled from his right side to his left, but the missing-nin had accounted for that; instead of hitting him in the left lung through his side it sliced into his spine.

The pain in his extremities disappeared and he couldn't make his arm move, or his leg, or his body, or anything. His vision fuzzed over with shock but the candy-striped spear crunched into his skull and he died.