Timeskip Two weeks
(Machi's POV)
For two goddamn weeks, he was gone. Shin, that prick, just said he was undergoing "specialized training" to correct his "flaws." Bullshit. I knew exactly what kind of 'training' it was. More of Danzō's psycho-conditioning, probably with that creepy snake bastard Orochimaru and his freakshow of lab coats getting their hands on him. I was stuck running pointless drills, going on patrols that a monkey could handle, and sleeping in my sterile, lonely cell. The silence wasn't sad; it was fucking infuriating. A constant, screaming reminder that they had my one useful asset on a leash and I couldn't do a damn thing about it. Every day, the anger in my gut got colder, harder.
When they finally dragged him back, I almost didn't recognize him.
He walked into the training hall, flanked by two of Root's masked nobodies. Same rigid posture, same blank face. But his eyes... fuck, his eyes were wrong. Before, they were empty. Now, they were vacant. It was the look of a house where the family moved out, leaving nothing but dust and echoes. And the color—it was a sickly, dark yellow now. His blue hair had ugly brown streaks in it, like something had leached the life out of him. There was no flicker of the old idiot, no haunted ghost. There was nothing.
"Subject Fox has completed his remedial training," Shin announced, like he was presenting a newly sharpened sword he expected me to be impressed with. "His loyalty has been reinforced. He is ready for active duty."
We were sent out the very next day. A test drive for their new toy. The mission was a joke—exterminating some bandits preying on civilians. Genin-level crap.
We found the scumbags in a makeshift camp. A dozen of them, loud, filthy men with rusty swords and the combined IQ of a rock.
I gave the signal. I'll take the perimeter. You take the center. Don't fuck it up.
Judai gave his usual single, robotic nod.
I moved through the trees, a silent specter. My chakra threads are quicker and quieter than any blade. I dispatched the four sentries on the camp's edge without a sound, their lives ending in a whisper as my threads sliced through their necks. It was clean. Professional. The way a job's supposed to be done.
I turned my attention to the center, expecting to see Judai tangled up with the other eight.
But the fight was already over.
He stood in the middle of the camp, surrounded by bodies. But they weren't just dead. They were... withered. That's the only word for it. Their skin was gray and desiccated, their bodies twisted like dried-up roots, as if every drop of life had been violently sucked out of them. A faint, sickly green aura steamed off Judai's hands.
He looked at me, his vacant yellow eyes holding no triumph, no remorse. He just tilted his head, like a confused dog.
"Targets eliminated," he said. His voice was the same cold monotone, but there was something new underneath it. A deep, resonant hollowness, like the sound of wind blowing over an open grave. "Mission complete."
I stared at the horrifying mess, at the empty shell wearing my best friend's face, and at whatever monstrous power he now had. They didn't just re-condition him. They broke him open and stuffed something vile inside.
And as I stood there, my porcelain cat mask hiding the cold fury on my face, I knew one thing with absolute, chilling certainty. The boy I was trying to save was gone.
And the monster wearing his face was now the most dangerous goddamn thing in my world.
(1st Person - Judai's POV)
Darkness.
Not the familiar, comforting blackness of sleep. This is a cold, suffocating void. A pressure. I am floating, but also sinking. There is no up or down. No sense of self. It feels... calm. An absolute, terrifying calm.
Am I dead? The thought drifts by, detached, like a cloud in an empty sky. It holds no fear. No meaning. It is just a query. Data.
Query: Status - Alive/Dead?
Processing...
Conclusion: Irrelevant.
My name. What is my name? The question forms, but there is no answer. Names are an attachment. A weakness. They must be purged. I am... Subject 00236. No. That is not right. I am... Fox. Yes. That feels correct. A designation. A purpose.
Primary Directive: The mission is absolute.
Secondary Directive: Emotion is a flaw.
Tertiary Directive: The will of Root is the will of Konoha.
The directives are anchors in the void. They are solid. Real. Everything else is water.
A flicker. A memory that is not a memory. A girl with hair the color of cherry blossoms at dusk. A fist connecting with my head. A shared plate of dango. Laughter. The feeling is... warm. Unfamiliar.
Warning: Emotional contagion detected. Purging...
The warmth vanishes, replaced by the cold, calm pressure of the void. The image of the girl fades. She is... Cat. My partner. An asset. Her survival is tactically advantageous but secondary to the mission. Yes. That is correct. That is logical.
The darkness shifts. There is a new sensation. A pinprick of light. A sound. A voice, smooth and serpentine.
"His resilience is fascinating. Most subjects would be catatonic by now. The Uzumaki bloodline, perhaps? Such remarkable vitality."
Another voice, older, more guttural. "The serum is ready, Lord Orochimaru. The cellular integration rate is only projected at seventeen percent, but the subject's high chakra capacity should compensate for the instability."
My body. I can feel my body now. I am strapped to something cold and hard. Metal restraints dig into my wrists and ankles. My chest is bare. The air smells of chemicals and something else... something coppery and sweet. Blood.
I open my eyes.
The world is a blur of white tile and harsh, sterile light. Figures in white coats move around me, their faces obscured by surgical masks. One of them, a man with long black hair and golden eyes like a snake, leans over me. A predatory smile plays on his lips.
"Do not worry, little one," Orochimaru whispers, his voice a sibilant hiss. "We are simply... improving you. Unlocking your true potential."
Another figure, a squat man with wild, bushy hair and thick glasses—Tanuki Shigaraki—holds up a large syringe filled with a swirling, luminescent green fluid. It looks alive.
"The Hashirama cell culture is stable," he grunts. "Beginning the primary injection."
They press the needle into the hollow of my throat. I do not flinch. Pain is a stimulus. It is data. It is not to be feared.
But this... this is not just pain.
It is fire. It is ice. It is a universe of agony exploding in my veins. The green liquid sears through me, a living poison that rewrites my body on a cellular level. It feels like my very soul is being torn apart and stitched back together with burning wire.
My body arches against the restraints. A scream rips from my throat, a raw, animal sound that is not mine. It is the sound of the boy I used to be, the ghost trapped inside the machine, screaming for release.
System override! Critical failure! Emotional response exceeding parameters!
The directives, the cold logic, it all shatters. The void is gone, replaced by a raging, drowning ocean of pure sensation. I see her face again—Machi—not as an asset, but as my friend. Her angry, beautiful, tear-streaked face. I see the ANBU Captain, Viper, his pitying gaze. I see Shin's hand, crackling with dark energy.
Failure. I failed her.
The thought is a lightning strike in the storm of my mind. The pain is a consequence. I deserve this.
Then, the pain changes. It coalesces. The Gozu Tennō cells, the fragments of the First Hokage's life force, are fighting back against the poison of my own chakra. It is a war inside me. I am the battlefield.
My vision whites out. I am no longer in the lab. I am in the ocean. Naked, lost, drowning. The water is calm on the surface, but a monstrous current pulls me down into the crushing, silent deep. I don't fight it. I let it take me. Down, down, down into the cold, empty peace of the abyss.
It is better this way. Quieter.
*Flashback Two weeks*
(Machi's POV)
For two goddamn weeks, they had him. After Shin's little "punishment," they dragged Judai's limp body away and he just... vanished. Shin, that prick, fed me some bullshit line about "remedial conditioning." I knew what that meant. They were breaking him down and rebuilding him into a better puppet.
I'm not one to sit on my ass and wait. On the fourth day, I'd had enough of the pointless drills. I'm a scout. A tracker. Finding a trail is what I do, and Root, for all its secrecy, still leaves a trail for those who know how to look. I followed the faint, residual chakra of the guards who took him, deep into the warren of tunnels beneath our base, to a section I'd never seen before. A reinforced steel door, humming with power. A medical wing. Or, more likely, a torture chamber masquerading as one.
I was about to use my threads to bypass the lock when the door slid open. And there he was. That creepy snake bastard, Orochimaru, slithered out, followed by that woman with the glasses, Nonō, and some squat, four-eyed freak I didn't recognize.
The sight of him, his golden eyes gleaming with sick fascination, made my blood run cold with rage.
"What the hell are you doing to him?" I snarled, stepping out of the shadows, my hand already on my kodachi.
Orochimaru's lips curled into that predatory smile. He looked me up and down like I was an interesting bug he was considering pulling the wings off of. "Ah, the little 'Cat.' Such a feisty kitten. You should not be here."
"I'm not asking again, you creepy snake bastard," I spat, my voice low and shaking with fury. "Where is he?"
His smile widened, but his eyes went cold. Killing intent, thick and suffocating, rolled off him in waves. It felt like being coiled by a giant serpent. "You have a viper's tongue for such a small thing. Perhaps a demonstration of what happens to vermin that wander into my laboratory is in order. Your Kekkei Genkai would make for a fascinating dissection..."
He took a step toward me, his chakra flaring. I braced myself, knowing I was dead, but I'd be damned if I didn't take a chunk out of him first.
"Lord Orochimaru, stop!" Nonō stepped between us, her hands up placatingly. She looked at me, then back at him. "Danzō-sama needs her. She's Subject Fox's handler. Her emotional attachment, while a flaw, is the key to controlling him for now. Killing her would be... inefficient."
"He's strapped to a table in there, isn't he?!" I yelled past her. "You're cutting him up like a lab rat!"
A tinny voice crackled from a speaker on the wall. Danzō's. "Enough. Orochimaru, she is correct. The girl is a necessary tool. Take her to the observation room. Let her watch. Let her understand the consequences of failure and the necessity of our work."
Before I could react, two Root guards grabbed my arms. They dragged me, kicking and cursing, to a small, dark room with a thick, reinforced window looking directly into the operating theater. And through that glass, the world went silent as I was forced to witness what they were doing to him.
(3rd Person - The Laboratory)
"He's flatlining!" Nonō Yakushi shouted, her professional calm finally breaking. She pushed past Orochimaru, her hands glowing with the green light of medical ninjutsu. "Lord Danzō, his chakra network is collapsing! The serum is killing him!"
Danzo Shimura watched from the observation chamber, his expression unreadable. Beside him, Orochimaru licked his lips, his golden eyes gleaming with scientific fascination.
"Incredible," Orochimaru hissed. "His body isn't just rejecting the cells—it's actively cannibalizing them, converting them into a volatile, new form of chakra. He's not dying; he's... evolving."
On the operating table, Judai's convulsions stopped. His body went limp. A strange, dark pattern, like the roots of a dead tree, spread out from the injection site on his neck, glowing with a faint, sickly green light before fading beneath his skin. His breathing was shallow, his heartbeat faint.
Nonō placed a hand on his chest, her brow furrowed in concentration. "His chakra... it's changed. It's denser, heavier. And there's something else... something parasitic. It's dormant, for now."
"A partial success, then," Tanuki Shigaraki grumbled, making notes on a clipboard. "The subject has survived the integration, but the Gozu Tennō cells have not stabilized. They have become a part of him, a dormant power source. Unpredictable. Uncontrollable."
"Unpredictable can be useful," Danzō said from the speaker, his voice cutting through the room. "His re-conditioning was also compromised by the trauma. He will need to be rebuilt, from the ground up."
He turned to Orochimaru. "Can he still function as a weapon?"
Orochimaru smiled his serpentine smile. "Oh, yes. He is more of a weapon than ever before. A ticking time bomb, waiting for the right emotional trigger to detonate. He will be perfectly obedient... until he is not. Isn't it wonderfully poetic?"
Danzo did not appreciate poetry. He only appreciated results. "Wipe his short-term memory of this procedure. Reinforce his core conditioning. Return him to his unit. I want him in the field as soon as he is ambulatory. I want to see what this new 'potential' can do."