(Machi's POV)
The next few months were a fucking gray blur of brutal training and silent, efficient kills. They gave us a new unit name, "Kusari." The Chain. Fucking poetic. We weren't a chain; we were Danzō's janitors, a well-oiled machine for cleaning up his messes. We were dispatched to the darkest corners of the Land of Fire's shadow war. We killed rogue shinobi who knew too much, "reacquired" assets from stubborn feudal lords, and silenced anyone who spoke too loudly against Danzō's creeping influence. We became whispers, ghost stories told by the unlucky bastards who survived an encounter.
Judai was a terrifying, mindless storm. After that shit with the Gozu Tennō cells, they fast-tracked his training. They gave him access to the deepest parts of the Root archives, and he devoured the jutsu scrolls with an unnatural, obsessive focus. His fire-style techniques went from simple attacks to roaring calamities that could level a forest. His taijutsu became a fluid, unpredictable dance of death. He was a masterpiece of destruction, and with every mission, the vacant emptiness in his yellow eyes grew deeper. He was a sword being ground down to nothing on a whetstone, too broken to even notice.
While they were forging him in fire, they decided to hone me in ice.
One morning, after a grueling three-day patrol, Shin summoned me. Not to the usual debriefing room, but to a section of the warren I'd never seen before. It stank of antiseptic and weird, floral chemicals. The air was colder here, the silence heavier. This was the medical and research division. The place where nightmares like what happened to Judai were born.
Shin led me to a heavy steel door and opened it without a word. I tensed, my hand instinctively moving toward my kodachi.
Inside was a fully equipped medical lab. Vials of brightly colored liquids lined the shelves, anatomical charts covered the walls, and a single operating table sat under a harsh light. A woman stood with her back to us, meticulously arranging a tray of scalpels. She wore a simple nun's wimple over her hair, a bizarre sight in this godless place.
"This is Nonō Yakushi," Shin stated, his voice flat. "She is the head of our medical division. From this day forward, when you are not in the field, you will be her student."
My eyes narrowed. It was her. The woman from the lab. The one who'd stepped in front of that creepy snake bastard when he was about to turn me into a science project.
She turned, and her face was just as I remembered. Kind, gentle, with intelligent eyes that didn't belong here. But I could see the weariness behind her glasses, the look of someone who'd seen too much shit. The legendary "Wandering Miko."
"Student?" I scoffed, crossing my arms. "I'm not a fucking student. I'm a weapon. You need things dead, you send me. That's the deal."
Nonō just gave me a small, calm smile that was more unnerving than any threat. "Subject Cat," she said, her voice soft but firm, carrying an authority Shin's brute force could never match. "I've read your file. A high aptitude for fine chakra control, demonstrated by your Kekkei Genkai. Your combat reports show a ruthless efficiency."
"Yeah, I'm good at killing people. So what?" I shot back.
"A blade that can only kill is a limited tool," she replied, her gaze unwavering. "It's crude. I will teach you how to mend as well as break. A true master of the body must understand how to preserve life as well as how to take it."
I stared at her, the pieces clicking into place. This wasn't about making me a medic. This was about making me a better killer. A more precise one.
"So you're not going to teach me how to heal people," I said, a slow, cynical grin spreading across my face. "You're going to teach me how to take them apart, piece by piece."
Her smile didn't waver. "I am going to teach you the intimate and unforgiving mechanics of the human machine. What you choose to do with that knowledge, whether you sever a tendon or knit it back together, will be determined by your mission."
Shin stood by the door, silent. This was an order. My new life began, split between two distinct hells. In the field with Judai, I was a killer. In this sterile lab with Nonō-sensei, I was a student, a surgeon. She was a demanding and meticulous teacher.
"Again," she'd say, her voice calm as I struggled to use the Mystical Palm Technique to repair the leg muscle of a pig. "Your control is sloppy. You're flooding the tissue with chakra instead of coaxing it. Be precise."
"It's a fucking pig," I'd grumble, wiping sweat from my brow.
"Today it is a pig," she'd counter, tapping an anatomical chart on the wall. "Tomorrow, it could be your partner bleeding out in the field. Or it could be a target whose femoral artery you need to sever without damaging the surrounding nerves to prolong interrogation. Focus."
Weeks were spent on the most mind-numbing basics, learning to identify ailments not just by chakra, but by the color of the sclera, the texture of the skin, the rhythm of a pulse. Then came the cadavers.
"To stop a heart, you must understand the pathways that give it life," she explained one day, guiding my chakra-coated scalpel over the chest of a dead rogue ninja. "To sever a tendon, you must first know its purpose. Medicine and assassination are two sides of the same coin, my dear."
She was right. The bitch was a genius. And under her guidance, I was becoming a sharper, deadlier tool.
(Machi's POV)
The next few months were a fucking gray blur of brutal training and silent, efficient kills. They gave us a new unit name, "Kusari." The Chain. Fucking poetic. We weren't a chain; we were Danzō's janitors, a well-oiled machine for cleaning up his messes. We were dispatched to the darkest corners of the Land of Fire's shadow war. We killed rogue shinobi who knew too much, "reacquired" assets from stubborn feudal lords, and silenced anyone who spoke too loudly against Danzō's creeping influence. We became whispers, ghost stories told by the unlucky bastards who survived an encounter.
Judai was a terrifying, mindless storm. After that shit with the Gozu Tennō cells, they fast-tracked his training. They gave him access to the deepest parts of the Root archives, and he devoured the jutsu scrolls with an unnatural, obsessive focus. His fire-style techniques went from simple attacks to roaring calamities that could level a forest. His taijutsu became a fluid, unpredictable dance of death. He was a masterpiece of destruction, and with every mission, the vacant emptiness in his yellow eyes grew deeper. He was a sword being ground down to nothing on a whetstone, too broken to even notice.
While they were forging him in fire, they decided to hone me in ice.
One morning, after a grueling three-day patrol, Shin summoned me. Not to the usual debriefing room, but to a section of the warren I'd never seen before. It stank of antiseptic and weird, floral chemicals. The air was colder here, the silence heavier. This was the medical and research division. The place where nightmares like what happened to Judai were born.
Shin led me to a heavy steel door and opened it without a word. I tensed, my hand instinctively moving toward my kodachi.
Inside was a fully equipped medical lab. Vials of brightly colored liquids lined the shelves, anatomical charts covered the walls, and a single operating table sat under a harsh light. A woman stood with her back to us, meticulously arranging a tray of scalpels. She wore a simple nun's wimple over her hair, a bizarre sight in this godless place.
"This is Nonō Yakushi," Shin stated, his voice flat. "She is the head of our medical division. From this day forward, when you are not in the field, you will be her student."
My eyes narrowed. It was her. The woman from the lab. The one who'd stepped in front of that creepy snake bastard when he was about to turn me into a science project.
She turned, and her face was just as I remembered. Kind, gentle, with intelligent eyes that didn't belong here. But I could see the weariness behind her glasses, the look of someone who'd seen too much shit. The legendary "Wandering Miko."
"Student?" I scoffed, crossing my arms. "I'm not a fucking student. I'm a weapon. You need things dead, you send me. That's the deal."
Nonō just gave me a small, calm smile that was more unnerving than any threat. "Subject Cat," she said, her voice soft but firm, carrying an authority Shin's brute force could never match. "I've read your file. A high aptitude for fine chakra control, demonstrated by your Kekkei Genkai. Your combat reports show a ruthless efficiency."
"Yeah, I'm good at killing people. So what?" I shot back.
"A blade that can only kill is a limited tool," she replied, her gaze unwavering. "It's crude. I will teach you how to mend as well as break. A true master of the body must understand how to preserve life as well as how to take it."
I stared at her, the pieces clicking into place. This wasn't about making me a medic. This was about making me a better killer. A more precise one.
"So you're not going to teach me how to heal people," I said, a slow, cynical grin spreading across my face. "You're going to teach me how to take them apart, piece by piece."
Her smile didn't waver. "I am going to teach you the intimate and unforgiving mechanics of the human machine. What you choose to do with that knowledge, whether you sever a tendon or knit it back together, will be determined by your mission."
Shin stood by the door, silent. This was an order. My new life began, split between two distinct hells. In the field with Judai, I was a killer. In this sterile lab with Nonō-sensei, I was a student, a surgeon. She was a demanding and meticulous teacher.
"Again," she'd say, her voice calm as I struggled to use the Mystical Palm Technique to repair the leg muscle of a pig. "Your control is sloppy. You're flooding the tissue with chakra instead of coaxing it. Be precise."
"It's a fucking pig," I'd grumble, wiping sweat from my brow.
"Today it is a pig," she'd counter, tapping an anatomical chart on the wall. "Tomorrow, it could be your partner bleeding out in the field. Or it could be a target whose femoral artery you need to sever without damaging the surrounding nerves to prolong interrogation. Focus."
Weeks were spent on the most mind-numbing basics, learning to identify ailments not just by chakra, but by the color of the sclera, the texture of the skin, the rhythm of a pulse. Then came the cadavers.
"To stop a heart, you must understand the pathways that give it life," she explained one day, guiding my chakra-coated scalpel over the chest of a dead rogue ninja. "To sever a tendon, you must first know its purpose. Medicine and assassination are two sides of the same coin, my dear."
She was right. The bitch was a genius. And under her guidance, I was becoming a sharper, deadlier tool.
(Machi's POV)
The weeks in the lab bled together. I got good. Frighteningly good. I could diagnose a man's internal injuries from the way he limped and tell you the best place to slip a blade between his ribs to collapse a lung without killing him instantly. A grudging respect formed between me and Nonō-sensei. She never treated me like a child, and I never gave her the satisfaction of seeing me break a sweat. It was a cold, professional partnership.
One day, she moved on from anatomy. She led me to a locked cabinet filled with vials of dark, swirling liquids and carefully sealed jars of roots and fungi.
"We move now to toxicology," she announced, placing a small, innocuous-looking purple flower on the metal tray between us. "The study of poisons and their antidotes."
"So now I'm a goddamn poisoner?" I sneered, leaning against the counter. "Isn't that a little... unsubtle?"
"A kunai in the back announces its presence," Nonō said, not looking up from the flower. "A properly administered poison is a whisper. A ghost. It can mimic a heart attack, a stroke, a simple sickness. It can induce paranoia, hallucinations. It can break a mind just as effectively as it can break a body. It is the most precise tool in an assassin's kit. You, with your chakra threads, can deliver a dose so minuscule it would be undetectable to anyone but a master."
She looked at me then, her gaze intense. "And to create the cure, you must first understand the disease. To save an ally from a Kiri hunter-nin's poison, you must be able to identify its signature, understand its composition, and synthesize its counter-agent in minutes. This is not about being a poisoner, Machi. This is about total mastery over life and death."
It was the first time she'd used my real name. It felt strange, like a key turning in a lock I'd forgotten existed.
I pushed off the counter. "Fine. Whatever. Show me what the stupid flower does."
I had a gift for it. The complex chemistry, the precise measurements, the delicate balance of components—it all made sense to my mind. It was just another system to be mastered, another machine to be taken apart and understood. I learned to create poisons that killed in seconds, and others that killed in weeks. I learned to make truth serums from scorpion venom and paralytic agents from pufferfish liver.
One afternoon, after I successfully synthesized an antidote to a particularly nasty nerve agent from the Land of Wind, Nonō-sensei began cleaning the lab with a decisive finality.
"That's enough for today," she said, surprising me. We usually worked until I was dismissed. "Get cleaned up. We're going out."
"Out where?" I asked, suspicious. "Another 'field trip' to the morgue?"
"No," she said, a rare, small smile touching her lips. "We are going to Konoha. A real field trip."
An hour later, we were walking through the sun-drenched streets of the village. We were in civilian clothes, no masks, no uniforms. I felt naked, exposed. The noise of the village was a dull roar in my ears—merchants hawking their wares, the chatter of civilians, the laughter. It all felt fake, like a genjutsu designed to hide the rot underneath.
Nonō led me to a small park where children were playing. A group of boys were throwing a ball, their shouts echoing in the warm air. Two girls sat under a tree, weaving crowns of clover. The smell of dango and something sweet drifted from a nearby stall. It was a perfect, peaceful scene. It made me want to vomit.
We sat on a bench, watching them.
"Look at them, Machi," Nonō said softly, her voice almost getting lost in the breeze. "This is the 'why.' This is the reason Root exists."
I snorted. "Here we go. The company speech."
She ignored my cynicism. "The Land of Fire is a great tree, and Konoha is its most beautiful flower. But for a tree to grow tall and strong, it must have roots that run deep into the darkness, into the dirt. The roots must fight off rot and parasites, anchor the tree in the storm, and draw nutrients from the ugliest of places. We... are those roots."
Her eyes were fixed on the laughing children. "We do the dirty work. We lie, we kill, we manipulate, we sacrifice our names and our hearts, all so that they don't have to. We bear the darkness so they can live in the light. Our sin is their innocence. Our pain is their peace."
She turned to me, her expression earnest, trying to make me understand, trying to give my miserable existence some kind of noble purpose. "Every kill you make, every secret you keep, it protects this. It allows those children to worry about scraped knees and games of tag, instead of assassins in the night or the threat of war. Don't you see? Your life has a profound, vital purpose."
I was quiet for a long time, watching a little boy with dark hair trip and fall. His mother ran over, scooped him up, and kissed his knee. He was crying, but then he was laughing a second later.
"That's a nice story, sensei," I said finally, my voice flat and cold. "But it's bullshit."
Nonō's expression faltered. "Machi..."
"If that were true," I said, turning to look her dead in the eye, the rage in my heart a cold, hard stone. "If all this dirt and blood and pain was really to protect that... then why aren't we out there playing?"
I jerked my chin toward the park. "Why isn't it me and Judai throwing that ball? We were kids once, too. Or did you forget that part when you were strapping him to a table?"
Her face went pale. The philosophical justification shattered against the simple, brutal truth of my words.
"You're not protecting them from us," I whispered, the words tasting like poison in my mouth. "You're just using them as an excuse for what you do to us. We're not the roots of the tree. We're just the broken branches you snapped off to build your damn fence."
She had no answer. She just stared at me, and for the first time, I saw the weariness in her eyes overwhelm everything else. The lesson was over. She had wanted me to see the light.
All I saw was the shadow I was trapped in, and the bars of the cage they called Konoha. We walked back to the base in total silence.
Another Month went by
I excelled. My Kekkei Genkai gave me an unprecedented advantage. My chakra threads were finer than any scalpel, more precise than any needle. I learned to use them to stitch wounds from the inside out, to set bones without breaking the skin, to clear blood clots from arteries too small for a normal medic-nin's chakra to navigate. Nonō praised my progress, her gentle encouragement a stark, unnerving contrast to Shin's brutal indifference.
But there was a darker side to my education. Nonō also taught me the art of poisons, toxins, and necrobiology. I learned how to create paralytic agents from ground-up pufferfish spines, fast-acting neurotoxins from the venom of giant centipedes, and slow, undetectable poisons that could mimic the symptoms of a natural illness.
One evening, Nonō led me to a locked section of the lab. "There is another aspect of your training you must understand," she said, her voice heavy. "Root is not just about control. It is about innovation. We seek to push the boundaries of what a shinobi can be."
She opened the door. The room beyond was a scene from a nightmare.
Large, cylindrical glass tubes lined the walls, filled with a swirling, luminescent green fluid. And floating inside them were... people. Or what was left of them. Failed Root candidates, captured enemy shinobi, and some who were just... unrecognizable. Their bodies were twisted, their flesh warped and scarred. Tubes and wires snaked from their bodies, feeding them nutrients and siphoning away waste. They were alive, but not living. They were raw materials.
My stomach churned, and I had to fight the urge to vomit.
"What... what is this?" I managed to choke out.
"This," a new voice said, smooth and sibilant, "is progress."
Orochimaru emerged from the shadows between two of the tubes. He moved with a fluid, unnatural grace, his golden, snake-like eyes fixing on me with an unnerving, predatory intensity. Beside him was the squat, manic figure of Tanuki Shigaraki, the head of Root's bio-weapons division, clutching a clipboard to his chest.
"Ah, Nonō's prized pupil," Orochimaru hissed, his tongue flicking out to taste the air. "You have such potential. A rare and fascinating Kekkei Genkai."
"Lord Orochimaru," I said, forcing myself to bow. This was the Sannin, the genius, the man whose name was whispered with both awe and fear throughout the warren.
"We are on the verge of a breakthrough," Tanuki grunted, his eyes gleaming with a mad fervor. "The work of the First Hokage, his mastery over Wood Release, his incredible life force... it is the key to creating the ultimate soldier. A shinobi who can regenerate from any wound, who possesses limitless stamina."
Orochimaru gestured to a large, empty tube in the center of the room. "We have acquired a sample of Hashirama Senju's living cells. A priceless artifact. But the integration process is... volatile. We require a host with a powerful life force and immense chakra reserves to survive the initial bonding. Most subjects simply dissolve." His gaze was hungry. "We have been searching for the perfect vessel."
A cold, sickening dread washed over me. I knew, with absolute certainty, who they were talking about.
"Subject 00236 has been selected for the next phase of the Gozu Tennō project," Orochimaru continued, confirming my worst fears. "His Uzumaki heritage, however distant, grants him the vitality necessary to potentially survive the procedure. He is Danzō's favorite new toy."
Suddenly, my mission in this lab became terrifyingly clear. They weren't just training me to be a medic. They were training me to be a mechanic for their broken experiments. They needed someone who could keep their test subjects alive on the operating table. My purpose here was to hold Judai together while they tore him apart.
Orochimaru and the scientist-Tanu or whatever he called himself left to other subjects.
(1st Person - Judai's POV)
The void. It is my home now.
A calm, drowning deep where thoughts are data and feelings are errors to be purged. I am Fox. I follow orders. The mission is absolute.
But sometimes... there are glitches.
I am standing in a white room. A man with snake eyes smiles at me. He speaks of potential, of power. His words are data, but they carry a strange resonance. Another man, stout and smelling of ozone, approaches with a needle. It is filled with a swirling green light.
Stimulus: Sharp pressure in the cervical region.
Analysis: Injection protocol initiated.
Emotional Response Detected: Fear. Anomaly.
Purging... Purging...
The fire starts in my neck. It is not the clean heat of my own jutsu. It is a wild, alien fire, burning through my veins, rewriting my very essence. It feels like millions of tiny insects are devouring me from the inside out, replacing my flesh with... something else. Something ancient and powerful and green.
The pain is absolute. It shatters the calm of the void. It rips through the layers of my conditioning.
CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE. UNABLE TO PURGE EMOTIONAL RESPONSE.
A scream tears from my throat, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony. The white room dissolves.
I am drowning.
The ocean is vast and endless. I am naked, alone, suspended in the crushing, silent deep. Above me, a million miles away, is a shimmering surface—the light, the world, a memory of warmth. But a monstrous current has me in its grip, pulling me down, down into the abyss.
I don't fight it. The struggle is too much. The pain is too great. The cold, empty peace of the deep is a release. It is an escape.
But as I sink, a single image flashes in the darkness of my mind. A girl with hair the color of stormy sunsets, her face streaked with tears, her fist raised in defiance. A name bubbles up from the depths, a word I thought I had forgotten.
Machi.
The name is an anchor. But is it pulling me up toward the light, or dragging me down into the suffocating dark? I don't know. I can no longer tell the difference.
Conclusion: Irrelevant.
I let the current take me. I let myself drown.
Nonō's footsteps echoed softly as she led me deeper into the lab. I followed, my stomach twisted in knots. Every instinct screamed to run, but I forced my legs to move.
We stepped into another chamber, dimly lit with a cold, humming green glow. Large, vertical tubes lined the walls—glass coffins, each filled with a translucent nutrient fluid. Limbs floated. Faces twitched in sleep or agony. A low mechanical pulse beat in the background, too regular to be anything but manufactured life.
I scanned the tubes—and froze.
"Judai?" I whispered.
There he was. Suspended in the fluid, limbs slack, veins dark with something unnatural, skin paler than death. His body was scorched, torn, barely held together. A breathing mask covered his mouth, and wires disappeared into his arms, spine, chest.
I didn't even notice I'd dropped to my knees until the pain in them made me aware.
"Fuck…" The word slipped out before I could stop it, raw and shaking. "Fuck, no—no no no…"
I covered my mouth with one trembling hand. Tears blurred my vision, spilling down my cheeks, hot and unwanted. My chakra threads twitched at my fingertips, reacting to my panic.
"What the hell did you do to him?"
Nonō didn't answer.
I turned to her, not even pretending to hide the venom in my voice. "This wasn't training. This was never about training. You used me. You used him."
Her face remained passive, but her eyes flickered.
"Compose yourself," she said quietly, though her voice trembled ever so slightly. "You'll hurt more than help if you lose control now."
"Easy for you to say," I snapped. "You're not the one being told to stitch up the only person left who gives a damn if I live or die like he's some fucking science fair project."
Nonō inhaled through her nose, glasses glinting. "You think this is easy for me?" she said, so soft it barely registered. "You think I want to see you here?"
That stopped me. I looked up at her, eyes puffy with tears, throat raw.
Nonō's gaze drifted to Judai's tube. Her voice barely rose above a whisper. "I had a brother. He was supposed to be my tether in this hell. They killed him. I stayed… because I thought someone had to. Someone had to keep the monsters from going too far. I failed."
Her hands clenched at her sides, trembling.
"But then you showed up," she said, looking at me. "Mouthy, angry, reckless—so much like him it made me sick. You still feel things. You care. That's supposed to get people killed in Root. But somehow… you survived. And so did he."
"I'm sorry," I said, choking on the words. "I didn't know."
"You're not the only one trapped," she said, then turned away, hiding something in her expression.
Tanuki came bustling in, clipboard in hand, oblivious to the emotional wreckage in the room.
"The host body's collapsing again," he barked. "Liver's shutting down. Skin's necrotic. Regrowth needed or the whole graft fails. Cat—get to it."
I stood. My legs felt like lead. My chakra threads flickered to life, coiling at my fingertips.
"What do you mean 'get to it'?" I asked.
Tanuki clicked his tongue. "Use your threads. Rebuild the tissue. That's why you're here. That's what she trained you for."
Nonō wouldn't meet my eyes.
My fingers hovered in the air, the threads quivering like nerves. I looked at Judai—at his body, shredded and blistered. His hands, which had once pulled me out of a collapsed tunnel. His voice, now silenced behind a mask. My best friend.
'Forgive me,' I thought. 'Please. Just—don't hate me when you wake up.'
My chakra threads moved. They sank into him, threading through ruptured veins and scorched skin, knitting muscle fiber, forcing life back into a body half-claimed by death.
I wept as I worked.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, again and again, like a prayer. "Judai, I'm so fucking sorry. If we ever get out of here… if there's anything left of us... please, forgive me."
He didn't answer. But somewhere beneath the layers of pain and silence, I prayed he heard me.
And Nonō, standing beside me with eyes filled with quiet misery, whispered in her mind what she would never say aloud:
I hope you both escape. But if only one of you can… it better be her.