(3rd Person - A Nameless Interrogation Room)
Shimura Danzō observed the boy through a one-way viewing slit. Uzumaki Judai sat strapped to a steel chair in the center of a bare, gray room. Wires connected to his temples led to a bulky, experimental device created by Orochimaru before his defection—a machine designed to stimulate and catalogue pain responses. It was a crude but effective tool for psychological deconstruction.
"Begin the protocol," Danzō ordered.
A Root operative in the observation room flipped a series of switches. Inside the cell, Judai's body convulsed as a low-voltage current surged through him. It wasn't enough to cause permanent damage, but it was enough to shatter his concentration, to keep him perpetually off-balance.
"Subject's vital signs are elevated but stable," another operative reported, his voice a monotone drone.
"Display the genjutsu sequence," Danzō commanded.
The walls of the interrogation room seemed to dissolve, replaced by a swirling, chaotic illusion. One moment, Judai was back on the battlefield, watching Machi's body get torn apart by the Iwa jonin's explosion. The next, he was in the Academy classroom, being mocked by a faceless instructor as Machi turned her back on him in disgust. Then, he was alone, a child huddled in his empty apartment as the whispers of the villagers outside his window grew into a deafening roar—Die!
They cycled through his failures, his fears, his deepest insecurities, over and over again. Each traumatic memory was punctuated by another jolt of electricity, linking the psychological pain to a physical stimulus. It was a classic conditioning technique, designed to break down his existing emotional framework.
"He is resisting," the operative noted. "His chakra levels are fluctuating wildly. He's attempting to disrupt the genjutsu."
"Increase the voltage," Danzō ordered without hesitation. "And introduce the primary directive."
A new image flooded the genjutsu. It was Machi, bound and helpless, a kunai at her throat held by a masked Root operative. A cold, synthesized voice echoed through the illusion.
Directive One: The mission is absolute. The life of a comrade is secondary to the successful completion of the mission.
Judai screamed, a raw, animal sound of defiance, and thrashed against his restraints. His chakra flared violently, a chaotic blue aura erupting around him, causing the lights in the observation room to flicker.
Directive Two: Emotion is a flaw. Attachment is a weakness. They must be purged.
The image of Machi dissolved, replaced by one of Bekkō-sensei, his chest a caved-in, bloody ruin. Then Aoba, impaled and lifeless.
Directive Three: The will of the individual is irrelevant. The will of Root, for the good of Konoha, is all that matters.
"His resistance is weakening, Lord Danzō," the operative reported. "His chakra output is becoming erratic. He cannot maintain this level of opposition for long."
Danzō watched, his single eye cold and analytical. The boy had immense spirit, an almost idiotic level of stubborn loyalty. It was the same quality that had made Jiraiya so useful to Sarutobi, and the same quality that made him so dangerous. It had to be broken, hammered out, and re-forged into something new. Something useful. He would not be a compass. He would be a leash. A leash to hold their far more valuable weapon in check.
"Continue the protocol," Danzō said, turning away from the viewing slit. "Do not stop until he breaks. I want him hollowed out, ready to be filled. His re-education has just begun."
(1st Person - Machi's POV)
My world shrank to the size of the stone workshop. My life became a monotonous cycle of pain, exhaustion, and relentless practice. Shin was a cruel, efficient master. He never raised his voice, never showed an ounce of emotion. His instruction was delivered in a flat, clinical monotone, but his training methods were brutal.
He taught me the true nature of my Kekkei Genkai. It wasn't just about threads. It was about absolute control over every fiber of my being. I learned to harden the threads into sharp, piercing needles—Stone Needles was just the primitive, instinctual version. I learned to make them strong enough to stop a thrown kunai, yet fine enough to slip between the vertebrae of a spine.
My days were spent practicing on dummies, then on live animals—rats, then rabbits, then wild dogs captured from the forests above. The first time he ordered me to kill a rabbit, I hesitated. He didn't punish me. He simply brought in another one and repeated the order. He made me do it over and over until the act became mechanical, until the life draining out of the small creature was just a data point, a measure of my efficiency. I drained the blood out of so many rabbits my head went numb from counting them all.
"Hesitation is death," he would say, his voice echoing in the sterile room. "Your death, or the death of your comrades. When you are given an order to eliminate a target, you do it without question. Emotion is a liability."
My nights were spent studying anatomical charts and medical texts. I learned every nerve, every artery, every pressure point. Shin would quiz me, pointing to a spot on a chart. "Sever the brachial artery here. What is the result?"
"Uncontrolled bleeding from the upper arm," I would recite, my voice as dead as his. "Loss of consciousness in sixty seconds. Death in three minutes."
"Correct. Paralyze the target without killing them."
"A non-lethal strike to the celiac plexus to induce momentary paralysis, or sever the peroneal nerve to disable the leg."
"Adequate."
He also forced me to fight. Every few days, he would bring other trainees into the room. They were like him—silent, gray-clad figures with dead eyes. They never spoke. We just fought. I learned to read their movements, to anticipate their attacks. My brawling style was sanded down, all the wasted motion and angry flailing replaced with a cold, brutal efficiency. I learned to break bones, to dislocate joints, to win as quickly and decisively as possible.
I never saw Judai.
I asked about him once, in the first week. "Where is he? Is he okay?"
Shin had looked at me, his head tilted slightly. "Subject 00236 is undergoing his own conditioning. His progress is irrelevant to your training. Do not ask again."
I never did. But he was always there, a phantom presence in the back of my mind. The thought of him, of what they were doing to him, was the fuel that kept me going. I had to get stronger. I had to get better. I had to become so good, so valuable, that they would have to put us back together. I clung to that desperate hope like a drowning woman clinging to a piece of driftwood.
One day, after a particularly grueling session where I had successfully disabled two trainees at once, Shin stopped me as I was tending to my bruised knuckles.
"Your taijutsu has improved," he stated. "But it is still crude. You rely too much on overwhelming force."
He led me to a different part of the training complex, a large dojo with polished wooden floors. An old man was waiting for us. He was ancient, his back bent, his skin like wrinkled parchment. But his eyes were sharp and clear, and he moved with a grace that defied his age.
"This is Master Kosuke," Shin said. "He will be your new taijutsu instructor. He will teach you to be more than a brawler. He will teach you to be an artist of destruction."
The old man, Kosuke, looked me over, his gaze analytical. "She has power," he rasped, his voice thin and dry. "But no grace. Her movements are angry. Inefficient. We will correct this."
For the next month, my life was a new kind of hell. Kosuke-sensei dismantled my fighting style piece by piece. He made me practice basic stances for hours on end, my muscles screaming in protest. He made me perform katas until my body moved on its own, a blur of motion. He didn't care about my strength; he cared about my balance, my footwork, my ability to flow like water around an opponent's attack and strike with the force of a tidal wave.
"Anger is a clumsy weapon," he would tell me, tapping my shoulder with a thin bamboo stick whenever I lost my form. "It makes you predictable. A true master does not fight with anger. They fight with an empty heart. They are the calm center of the storm."
Slowly, painstakingly, I began to learn. My movements became smoother, more fluid. I learned to use an opponent's momentum against them, to turn their strength into their own undoing. The rage was still there, a hot coal buried deep inside me, but now, it was focused. It was a tool, not a master.
One evening, after I had finally managed to perform a complex kata to his satisfaction, Shin appeared at the dojo door.
"Your progress is acceptable," he said. "It is time for the next phase. Follow me."
He led me not back to my workshop, but to a different section of the warren. He stopped in front of a heavy steel door, identical to the one on my workshop and the cell where I had first been held. He opened it.
The room inside was a perfect replica of my tiny, rundown apartment bedroom at my parents' house. The bed, the desk, the cheap poster of a popular musician on the wall—it was all there. It was so jarring, so out of place in this cold, sterile dungeon, that I could only stare.
"This will be your new quarters," Shin said. "A reward for your progress. Familiarity can be a comfort."
It didn't feel like a comfort. It felt like a violation. They had been in my home. They had catalogued my life, my personal space, and recreated it here to remind me that they controlled every aspect of my existence.
"There is one final test before your primary training is complete," Shin continued, his voice pulling me from my horrified trance. "Tomorrow, you will have a final sparring match. To gauge the full extent of your progress."
"Who am I fighting?" I asked, my voice flat.
Shin's lips quirked in what might have been the ghost of a smile. "You will be fighting Subject 00236."
My heart stopped. Judai. After all this time. A flicker of hope ignited in my chest, a desperate, foolish warmth. Maybe... maybe he was okay. Maybe we could finally—
"The objective of the spar is simple," Shin said, extinguishing that hope with his next words. "You will fight until one of you is unconscious or dead. The mission is to prove your loyalty to Root. Prove that you will eliminate a comrade if ordered. Prove that your attachment to him has been purged." He paused, letting the full weight of the command settle on me.
"Do not fail, Machi."