Characters/Pairings: Utakata
A/N: This is the first drabble in Starving. Just so you know, I don't watch the anime, so I don't know about Utakata's past or characterization from there.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Utakata knows he's starving. It doesn't take a genius to see it, even if he's always been bright for his age—at least that's what the schoolteachers tell him, just as begrudging with their praise as they ever are. He's starving, he's hungry, and he's starving even more fifteen minutes from now.
Actually, this isn't such an unusual position for a nine-year-old boy in Kiri to find himself in. Kiri has a higher number of orphans (whose parents were more likely to take fatal missions) than other shinobi villages and no orphanages—because hidden village children are supposed to be every bit as tough as the adults—to house them in. If they're not taken in by relatives or friends (and they rarely are), they have to fend for themselves.
The streets and alleys are haunted with fey children. All of them are bags of skin over bone like Utakata. The thing that's so unusual about Utakata is that, no matter how thin he gets, no matter how his skin stretches and pulls over his ribs, he is still possessed of a monstrous strength.
He is strong. He is strong with a noxious chakra that devours all when its roused but never sates him.
He is the strongest.
A hunk of beef flies through the rain from a butcher's shop and lands squarely in the middle of the muddy street (the streets in Kiri aren't paved). A dozen wraith-like children, their hollowed eyes dark with hunger dive for the meat but it is Utakata, grubby little hands more vicious than the rest, who claims the prize and spirits it away.
Sharp teeth tear into the beef and ravages it, barely tasting the mud or the rot.
For now, Utakata is sated.
In fifteen minutes, he'll be starving again.