קгєץ 🕷 [ⲛⲁⲅⳙⲏⳕⲛⲁ]

Pawn

Chapter Fifteen

Pawn

𝔸𝕜𝕒𝕥𝕤𝕦𝕜𝕚

March 24, 2012

Thick gray whirls of smoke wafted across fierce coffee-colored eyes, briefly obscuring his view of the mugshot pinned at the top of the evidence board. The pungent scent of menthol laced tobacco filled his nostrils, the hit of nicotine working overtime to decrease the high levels of stress the picture created. His gaze moved over the distinctive features of the grim, scar-faced man as he exhaled a second stream through frowning lips.

Bright blonde hair touched with the wildness of a lion's mane.

Gruesome, somewhat jagged lines, three on each side, carved into his cheeks.

Soulless blue eyes that gave even him the creeps if he stared too long.

Yahiko took another long drag of his cancer stick, exhaled a puffy cloud, then held the stunted stick between his lips as he sifted through the information file he'd read over and over about the most dangerous, most prolific target he'd ever had in his entire career.

Naruto Uzumaki.

Age: Twenty-seven.

Birthday: October 10, 1985.

Born to Kushina Uzumaki and Minato Namikaze, the former having spent much of her life in and out of mental institutions before birthing her son. Yahiko glanced down at the death certificate lying on his desk beneath an old photo of the sad, worn down redheaded woman, glancing over the sticky note he'd tacked on to the document: 'Suicide. One hour after giving birth.'

A tragic end to a very tragic woman.

He'd spent two weeks going through her psychiatric records, a history so extensive it took up two rows of his little filing cabinet even though he still didn't have all the records quite yet. There was no denying that woman had suffered greatly in her short lifetime.

His eyes swiveled to the father of his target.

Wild blonde hair, cold sapphire eyes, same unnerving dead-eyed stare at the camera, without a doubt Naruto Uzumaki was all his father. A former illustrious businessman, suspected human trafficker, and now MIA, along with his second wife. Shortly after losing custody of his son and finding himself staring down the barrel of the judicial system, Minato Namikaze had gone to ground and hadn't come up for air since. There was speculation he no longer resided in the country, but, no one had been able to confirm the information.

Exhaling nicotine, he turned and grabbed another file hanging off the pile on the top right corner of his messy desk.

At age five, Naruto was taken into foster care where he spent most of his childhood.

In and out of psychiatric facilities like his mother, trouble with the law like his father. Taxing the juvenile justice system to the max. His last court appearance, the judge on his case had been ready to put him away until he turned twenty-one, but his case worker, Jiraiya, managed to talk her down to probation, sighting his traumatic formative years and mental health conditions despite the long rap sheet the boy had wracked up in such a short period of time.

He was marked a runaway at the age of fifteen after hospitalizing his homeroom teacher, traumatizing the poor man into early retirement.

The next three years were a blank period.

No sign, no record, no information on his whereabouts.

Records would resurface after the three years with Naruto enlisting in the army on his eighteenth birthday, though, Yahiko found the documents a bit strange. There was missing pieces of information, and discrepancies that, on their own, weren't out of the ordinary for the time period, or a big deal in the long run, but considering the person in question spent most of his life on the wrong side of the law, Yahiko couldn't help the nagging sensation that something wasn't quite right about the enlistment.