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When Nagato was a small boy, he was very unassuming. He had long, dark hair that fell in his eyes, and pale skin, and skinny arms and legs that were stronger than they looked. Nagato was never an unintelligent boy, but he was an unsure boy. He cried a lot.

When he was a child, he knew certain things. He knew that the sky was supposed to be blue, you were supposed to have three meals a day, and mothers were supposed to love their children. But here, skies were grey. Food was always scarce in his house, and his mother had never loved him a day in her life.

Nagato was not a happy child.

Growing up, he did not have many friends. He was weak, and pathetic, and people did not like boys who were not strong and assertive. A gimpy lad; nobody thought that Nagato was worth much, not even his own mother. There were only two people who ever cared about him, and their names were Yahiko, and Konan. From them, Nagato drew his strength.

He lived in a run-down house in a tired town where crime was high and cleanliness was a dream most did not have. Rats, insects, vermin of all sorts cluttered streets, buildings, and anywhere else they could inhabit. Waterlines were old and rusty, and the markets provided food that was less than sanitary. Anything Nagato ever ate came out of a box or a can, and he always had to make it for himself. His mother would never dream of doing anything to help the little hindrance she called her son.

Nagato had never had a high immune system. Their house had no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the summer—he constantly fell ill with coughs, colds, and the flu. Any cleaning that was done was done by Nagato himself, because his mother would not, and if their pathetic living quarters became too filthy for her tolerance, she would stop coming home for weeks at a time. It wasn’t any different from when she was there, but Nagato had never liked being alone. They had a mice and cockroach infestation, and his mother did nothing to try to keep them out, leaving Nagato, yet again, to deal with the pestilence himself. The first time he became seriously sick was when he was bitten by a mouse that he was trying to carry out of the house.

Despite the terror they caused, Nagato could never stand to use traps—even if he had had the funds necessary to purchase the proper equipment, he would have never been able to see the poor animals killed. Instead he would catch the rodents himself and take them down the block to release them, hoping valiantly that they would not return. It was in an escapade like this that Nagato caught a particularly anxious mouse—and a particularly sick mouse. Panicking, it had bitten him twice, and then proceeded to have a heart attack, right in his hand.

He was so upset about the death that he neglected to clean the wound. Three days later, he was in bed with fever and severe nausea. They never found out what it was that he had contracted—his mother hadn’t bothered to take him to the hospital. Eventually, he got better. It was not for long, though.

The second time Nagato got sick was much, much worse. This time, he wouldn’t get better. This time, it was the water.

It was no secret that the water was contaminated—everyone knew, in fact. Every mouthful, every shower, every time the not-quite-clear liquid poured from a faucet, they knew. The water was bad. Bad, as in, was not good. Only time would go to show how bad it would be.

The cause couldn’t have been determined, and if it ever was—if they ever tried, that is—Nagato never found out about it. All he knew was that in the summer of his ninth year, the water became polluted with a heavy stream of lead. Unnoticed, it festered, slowly poisoning the bodies of every citizen who lived in the run-down excuse of a city. By fall, most of the population was sick. By fall Nagato had contracted a severe case of lead poisoning.

At first, he stayed in bed. His mother was absent, moreso than usual, and could not be expected to take him to the hospital. Nagato cared for himself as best he could, but they were running out of food, and he was progressively getting more and more ill.

He didn’t know how many days passed, but on one of them Yahiko came to his house, wondering why Nagato was not at school. He found the boy drained and lying in bed, a cold bowl of half-eaten soup lying on a chair next to him. There was vomit on the floor, dishes piled in a corner, and a sense of filth that pervaded every inch of the air. From his position on the bed, Nagato could barely lift a hand to greet his friend.

If anything made Yahiko angry, it was seeing Nagato act like a weakling.

Between the two of them there were very different beliefs, admittedly. Nagato was gentler—he didn’t like conflict or hurting others. He was a child of peace, someone who always strived for the least common denominator. He accepted what life gave him without complaint. Yahiko was a clean opposite for his friend. Strong, aggressive. Yahiko had his heart in the right place, and his mind on getting what he wanted no matter what. He often told Nagato of his childish opinions and ideals. He was two years older than Nagato, and whenever the boy tried to argue, he would tell him that he didn’t understand. Nagato looked up to Yahiko, wished he could be like him at times. Yahiko was unbreakable—he had a vengeful heart and a capable mind and would do anything in his young body to protect those that he cared about. This is why, when he saw his friend sick and barely able to move, he demanded with all the indignance of a child that he call the hospital immediately.

Nagato, as per usual, refused. He did not do things that would cause trouble, or anger his mother. Going to the doctor’s would cause trouble for, and anger his mother. Yahiko left his house angry.

This verdict lasted for two days, until when one afternoon Nagato was feebly trying to get himself food, and halfway up to his bedroom—which was in the upper level of the house—he slipped, falling backwards down the stairs. As soon as he could move again, he dragged himself to the phone and called for an ambulance.

His mother was not pleased.

He stayed in the hospital for nearly two weeks before being discharged. Nagato knew, even as he was being wheeled to his mother’s car, that he was not healthy. As he climbed in the back seat, he knew that the only reason he was going home was because the hospital bill was already staggering and his mother had no intention of paying it. He knew traces of the poisonous metal were still lingering in his body, and that he should not be out of the hospital yet.

When he vomited all over the car seat on the way home, Nagato realized just how not well he was.

One eighth of the city’s inhabitants died that year.

Thankfully, Nagato was not among them. He would live to face much more suffering in his life. Sometimes he thought death would have been more merciful.

Two years went by. Two years of miserable sickness that refused to improve—of crying, of dehydration, of headaches and diarrhea and vomiting and spasms. Nagato survived, barely edged his way past bereavement by the sheer skin of his teeth. There were times when he couldn’t even get up in the morning. The only thing that really kept him alive was the presence of the only people in the world who ever cared about him, the only ones who ever stood there when he could not.

The third time Nagato got sick would be the last. In the winter before his twelfth birthday, Nagato came down with pneumonia. Collapsing outside in the snowy ground was not good for those in bad health, as Nagato found. He was lucky—if you could call it that—to have passed out in the open, because when someone found him lying in a snowdrift meters from his front door, they took him immediately to the hospital. When Nagato woke up all he could think about was his mother, who he had not seen for three days beforehand.

Nearly five days passed, and despite being repeatedly contacted by the hospital, his mother did not make any appearance. An investigation started up. Nagato met his new social worker.

By the end of the several-month long process—during all of which, Nagato had been recovering in the hospital—it was decided that Nagato would be taken away from his mother and sent to a home. This, at least, solved one problem in his life. Unfortunately, being sick for so long, Nagato’s body was severely damaged. For a long time, there was a high question whether he would survive or not.

During his care in the home, Yahiko came to visit him often. Nagato had stopped going to school long ago, and the establishment was located a few cities away, so he rarely saw his friends anymore. The highlights of his days were when Yahiko bundled up and took the three hour bus ride over to visit him. On these visits they would talk, and Yahiko would speak vengeful words of theories sprouted by his growing adolescent mind. They were unlike anything Nagato had ever heard before—they inspired him.

Yahiko told of pain, and of hatred. He showed Nagato pictures and books of history, recounted stories of past wars and holocausts and bombings of countries. World War II had been a particular horror for Nagato. Yahiko said that people always caused each other pain, and would keep hurting each other unless they understood what it was like to feel pain themselves. He believed in peace by violence—aggression, in order to teach the aggressors how it felt to be victimized, how it felt to suffer every day of their lives. At first, Nagato had disagreed with him. He had protested strongly—tried to counter Yahiko’s anger, tried to curb the fevered words with logic and support for humankind. In all their arguments, Yahiko won every time.

And, despite trying desperately to hold onto his ideals, it started to make sense.

The thought that he was beginning to identify with Yahiko’s violent theories frightened him, and Nagato tried not to think of it. When Yahiko visited him next, he asked about other things to try to guide the conversation away from the subject.

After many years of pain, things were looking up. Nagato’s health was improving, and he was well enough to finally begin making up his schoolwork. He studied with the fervency of a man starved, and Yahiko helped him. After so long of lying idle, Nagato had forgotten how much he liked to learn. He was timid, but also brilliant, and his caretakers were impressed by his progress.

His progress would come to a screeching halt one day when Yahiko did not come one day when he promised he would. What was originally thought to be a few hour delay was turned into a several hour delay, turned into several day’s absence. A full week later Yahiko’s body was found, beaten and long-dead, in an alley twenty meters away from his bus stop. Nagato would never be the same.

After learning about the death of his best friend, Nagato suffered a major relapse. Barely fifteen, he fell into a near comatose depression that left him barely able to function for nearly eight months. He didn’t know quite how he managed to pull out from it, but when he did, he emerged changed.

The first thing Nagato did after getting out of intensive care was cut his hair—grown long in previous years, he had it shorn to only a few inches, spiking it in a fashion that was suspiciously reminiscent of Yahiko’s. Three weeks later, he dyed it red.

As the months passed it became somewhat of an obsession, the draining need in Nagato’s body for change. He slowly began molding his previous self into a copy of what Yahiko had once been, and when he could get no closer to his fallen friend, he changed himself more. On his sixteenth birthday, Nagato got his first piercings: two studs, one in each ear. This was only the beginning of a somewhat drastic chain reaction that followed him through the years—more modification, more warping, more of anything and everything that could distract him from what he used to be.

After festering in suffering for so many years, Nagato came to an understanding about human suffering. It began to encompass him, turning into his motivation and his philosophy, his deep, deep obsession. Life was pain. He lived for pain. Pain was the end result of every human being. It all made sense. Yahiko had been right all along.

Finally, Nagato understood this.

When he turned eighteen, Nagato legally had his name changed to Pein. This was a new era for him: a new name, a new face, a new life. And this one would be far more glorious than the last.

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Full Application.

Pein is played by judo_creature for the Naruto RP community last_stretch

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