I'll be getting to work on other stuff as soon as I recover from this latest harddrive crash. : (

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Title: Numbers Game
Word count: 551
Rating: Pg-17
Challenge: Turn
Characters: Kabuto, Kabuto's nameless father
Bonuses: Blank, Non-genin (Kabuto)

XXX

It was his father's thirty-seventh birthday, and Kabuto has nothing to give him outside of trying to budget his salary more and working another shift at the morgue in the man's stead.

“Are we lost? I think we’re lost.”

He doesn't want to either, of course, but at this point it's too late to do anything else. They had fifty ryou between them, and Kabuto has to make the extra money to help keep the two of them off the streets, so the extra work might as well go towards getting the man a gift for this birthday, since they're celebrating it two months early.

“Turn here, father. I think if we take this short-cut we’ll end up at the bakery.”

The candles will cost two ryou each, and the cake itself would be twenty if they got to the bakery early. If they had budgeted right this week – which, sadly, Kabuto doubted greatly – then they could afford the ice-cream that went along with the cake, which was five ryou less than what the cake would actually cost normally.

"We have enough for the rest of the month. Don't worry."

Kabuto followed his father into the alleyway, and thought, sullenly, that if this is all they got when he and his father were already working double-shifts, how much could they really afford to spend?

"Are you sure?"

His father nodded, once.

"Of course."

Kabuto hated counting every cent he had; hated having to budget so tightly during this time of economic crisis in the Leaf. His father felt much the same, but, he assured him as they walked, it was a special occasion, so why should they skimp on it?

“You shouldn't look so glum, Kabuto-kun! Kami! You should be happy that we can even do this because of our schedules!"

“Yeah,” Kabuto murmured, trying to mentally find a way to fit an extra four-hour shift into his schedule; failing. "I guess I should."

His father made a slightly put-off noise. "Thatta boy! I knew you'd see it my way!"

Kabuto rolled his eyes.

“But, then again: I guess it's only natural that you're a bit apprehensive about all this, yeah?” his father went on to ask him, turning around at the last moment so that he could put his arm around Kabuto. "We never get to really see each other nowad--"

"--Yeah, you're right." Kabuto nodded, pressing his hand against his father's Adam's-apple and shattering it with a small pulse of chakra. "You're always right."

He let him fall to the ground, following him as the last of his life drained out of his body like a marionette who's wires had suddenly been cut; Kabuto's eyes locked on the floor as the man's eyes went wide one last time.

"Yeah, I am happy," he whispered, channeling dozens of small threads of chakra out of his fingertips and into his father's corpse, the pale emerald chakra sliding into and over the man's body like a second layer of skin. "Without you, I don't think I would have made it for another year in this place."

The light faded after he finished speaking, and the alleyway was suddenly very dark. "...But then again, I still won't be alone now, will I?"

His father smiled back up at him and then nodded, once.

XXX

- Fin

XXX

The hardest thing about deciding that you wanted to kill someone close to you, Kabuto realized, was not coming to terms with the deed – it was the method.