The weeks following my introduction to Orochimaru's chamber of horrors were a blur of compartmentalization. My mind became a fortress with high, thick walls. On one side was "Cat," the Root operative, the medical student. She was calm, efficient, and detached. She spent her days with Nonō-sensei, mastering the delicate art of cellular regeneration with her chakra threads, learning to stabilize a patient whose own chakra network was actively trying to kill them. She learned to identify and synthesize three new neurotoxins, her hands steady, her work flawless. Cat was a good soldier.
On the other side of the wall was Machi. And Machi was screaming.
At night, in the false privacy of my replicated bedroom, the walls would come down. I would lie on my thin mattress and stare into the darkness, the images from the lab playing on a loop behind my eyelids. The twisted bodies in the green tubes. The hungry, predatory gleam in Orochimaru's eyes. The knowledge of what they planned for Judai. It was a poison that seeped into my sleep, turning my dreams into a drowning, suffocating sea.
I had to do something. But what? Open defiance was suicide, not just for me, but for him. My only path was to become what they wanted me to be, to excel so completely that I became indispensable. Power was the only currency that mattered in this place, and I was determined to become wealthy.
My relationship with Nonō-sensei deepened. She was a puzzle, a paradox of gentle compassion and cold, clinical pragmatism. She would praise my delicate suture work in one breath and critique my nerve agent's delivery system in the next. There was a profound sadness in her, a weariness that seemed to radiate from her very bones, but she never spoke of her past, or of her true feelings about the work we were doing.
One afternoon, while we were cataloging tissue samples from a failed experiment—a poor soul who had, in Tanuki Shigaraki's blunt terms, "popped like a water balloon"—I decided to risk a question.
"Nonō-sensei," I began, my voice carefully neutral. "Lord Orochimaru's work... it is revolutionary. But the failure rate is... high. Is the goal worth such a cost?"
Nonō didn't look up from her microscope. She meticulously adjusted the focus, her hands steady. "That, my dear, is a question of perspective," she said softly. "A farmer might see a single blighted stalk of wheat as a failure. A general might see a thousand dead soldiers as an acceptable cost for victory. Lord Danzō sees a village on the brink of war, and he believes that any sacrifice is justified if it ensures Konoha's survival." She finally looked at me, her eyes unreadable behind her glasses. "The question is not whether the goal is worth the cost. The question is, who gets to decide?"
Her answer was a deflection, but a telling one. She hadn't defended the work. She had questioned the authority behind it. It was the first crack I had seen in her perfect, compassionate facade. A tiny glimmer of dissent.
I found another, unexpected glimmer in a different part of the warren.
Part of my "advanced training" involved cross-disciplinary exercises. I was assigned to spend time with some of Root's other specialists. One of them was a man named Inori Yamanaka. (He was the father of Fū), one of the other agents I sometimes saw in the mess hall. Inori was a master of interrogation, his clan's mind-walking jutsu a terrifyingly effective tool for extracting information. He was supposed to be teaching me how to mentally fortify myself against such techniques.
Our sessions took place in a small, soundproofed room, spartan save for two chairs. He was a kind-faced man, much like his son, with gentle eyes that seemed at odds with his grim profession.
"The key to resisting a mental probe isn't to build a wall," he explained during our first session, his voice calm and paternal. "A wall can be broken. No, the key is to create a maze. A labyrinth of false memories, confusing emotions, and dead ends. You give the intruder what they expect to find, while hiding what is truly important in a place they would never think to look."
"Like what?" I asked.
He smiled faintly. "Like a fond memory of a pet turtle you had as a child. Or the taste of your mother's rice balls. The things they would deem irrelevant. Sentiment, as Lord Danzō calls it, can be the strongest shield."
Over several weeks, he taught me the basics. But more than that, he talked. In the soundproofed sanctity of that small room, he let his own guard down.
"My Fū... he is a good boy," Inori said one day, his gaze distant. "He has his mother's talent. But this place... it is chipping away at him. I see it every day. They are teaching him to be a perfect shinobi, but they are forcing him to forget how to be a person." He looked at me, his eyes filled with a desperate, parental pain. "You and the Uzumaki boy... you have a bond. I see it, even if you try to hide it. Do not let them take that from you. It is the only thing that will keep you human in this darkness."
He was speaking treason. He was actively encouraging me to defy the core tenets of Root. He was trusting me. It was a terrifying and exhilarating responsibility. Inori Yamanaka was not just a tool. He was a man with a conscience, trapped in a system that had no use for one. He was an ally.
Meanwhile, Judai's "specialized training" continued. I would see him sometimes, being escorted by Orochimaru or Tanuki from one sealed lab to another. He looked... thinner. The vacant look in his eyes had been replaced by a deep, haunted emptiness. He moved like an automaton, but there was a tremor in his hands he couldn't quite control. They were breaking him down, cell by cell.
The day of the main procedure arrived without warning. I was summoned by Shin.
"Your presence is required in Lab Three," he said, his voice flat. "Subject Fox is beginning the final phase of the Gozu Tennō integration. Your role is medical support. You will monitor his vitals and ensure he remains stable. Do not fail."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. This was it. I walked into Lab Three, the sterile white room from my nightmares. Orochimaru, Tanuki, and Nonō were already there, prepping their equipment. And in the center of the room, strapped to the cold steel operating table, was Judai.
He was conscious. His empty eyes stared at the ceiling, unblinking. He didn't even register my presence as I took my place beside Nonō at the monitoring station.
"All systems are green, Lord Orochimaru," Tanuki grunted, his eyes gleaming with a manic excitement. "The Hashirama cell culture is at peak vitality. The subject's chakra levels are stable."
"Excellent," Orochimaru hissed, picking up a large, wicked-looking syringe filled with a swirling, luminescent green fluid. It seemed to pulse with a malevolent life of its own. "Let us see if Danzō's prized possession can survive a sip of divinity."
He leaned over Judai, the needle poised over the hollow of his throat. For a second, his snake-like eyes met mine over Judai's prone form. He smiled, a cold, knowing smile that chilled me to my core. He knew what this was doing to me. He was enjoying it.
"Beginning the primary injection," he announced.
He plunged the needle into Judai's neck.
What happened next will haunt me until the day I die. It was not just a scream. It was a sound that should not be possible for a human throat to make. It was a raw, primal shriek of pure, unadulterated agony that tore through the sterile silence of the lab. It was the sound of a soul being ripped apart.
Judai's body arched violently against the metal restraints, the steel groaning under the strain. His eyes, once empty, were now wide with a terror so profound it was almost beautiful. Veins bulged on his neck and forehead, glowing with that same sickly green light from the serum.
"Vitals are crashing!" Nonō's voice cracked like a whip through the lab, sharp and panicked—no longer the clinical calm I'd grown used to. "His chakra network is in fibrillation!"
"He's rejecting it?" I asked, already reaching for my chakra, but the monitor screens were a blur.
"No," she said, eyes wide behind her glasses. "He's not rejecting the cells—he's consuming them."
"Fascinating!" Orochimaru cooed, stepping closer to the table, watching with the gleam of a man admiring a beautiful wildfire. "The Uzumaki resilience is trying to assimilate the Hashirama cells. A hybridization attempt... How divine."
Judai arched off the table again, his restraints groaning under the strain, and this time something changed. His arms—his arms—began to split open, bark-like ridges sprouting from under his skin with sickening pops. His fingers cracked and elongated, twisting into blackened, sharp branches.
"Oh god," I whispered.
"Get back!" Nonō barked.
But I didn't. I took a step forward—
—and Nonō's hand snapped onto my shoulder with surprising force. "Don't you dare, Machi. He'll kill you if you touch him like this."
"I have to help him!"
"You'll help by staying alive!" she snapped, dragging me back a step.
The bark spread quickly, snaking up Judai's shoulders and neck like veins of rot. His skin pulsed with chakra too dense and wild to make sense of.
"Machi," Nonō said quietly now, her voice tight, trembling—but resolute. "If you're going to save him, do it now. Before he's not him anymore."
I shoved her hand off my shoulder. "Cover me."
Without waiting for permission, I darted in. The branches had already twisted too far—too long. I bit my lip, drew a kunai from my belt, and hesitated for just one breath. Then I cut.
The blade sang as it tore through the brittle, half-formed wood. Judai's body twitched, but he didn't scream this time. Just a low, awful groan—like something ancient cracking open beneath the earth. Blood and bark scattered in thick clumps across the floor.
"Orochimaru-sama, should we intervene?" Tanuki asked, somewhere behind me, but Orochimaru only smiled.
"Let the girl try," he whispered, eyes locked on us. "This is far more educational than I hoped."
I dropped the kunai, my hands already glowing green with chakra. I slammed them into Judai's chest, pulse syncing with his wild, chaotic storm. I pushed everything I had into him.
For a moment, I thought I was going to black out. His chakra surged up my arms like live wire, burning cold and hot all at once.
Then it hit me. A flash—not sight, not sound, not even memory, just... presence. And then—
—I was inside him.
No room, no walls. Just water. An endless, inky sea of it. Freezing cold and still, and in the far depths I saw him.
Judai.
Naked. Small. Curled in on himself. Sinking.
"No, no, no," I murmured, pushing forward, flailing like a drowning swimmer. My chakra lashed outward, searching for his.
"Judai!" I screamed, not aloud, but into the water, the dark, into him. "Don't you dare go under!"
He didn't answer. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted. He looked... at peace. Like he'd finally given up.
"You bastard," I said through gritted teeth. "You promised, remember? You promised we'd make it out. You're not allowed to break that promise, you idiot."
Still no reaction. I clenched my fists and pushed harder.
"You remember the dango, right?" My voice cracked. "That dumb little food stall near the canal. You were so smug when I couldn't handle the spicy one. And you laughed—like actually laughed, not the fake Root version."
The water rippled. His fingers twitched.
I grabbed that twitch like a lifeline and poured in more.
"Remember when you said you'd protect me? That day at the Academy, when Nobuki shoved me down the stairs and you clocked him so hard you got detention for a week?"
I showed him. Pushed the memory into his chest like a firestarter. Judai, standing in front of me, blood on his knuckles and that rare, furious snarl on his face.
"You don't get to forget that," I whispered. "You don't get to forget me."
I gave him more. Every moment I could pull from my heart like shuriken from a pouch: our first mission. The awful, cold ramen at Outpost Delta. The moment we sat under that cracked roof waiting out the thunderstorm, not saying a word because it was the first time either of us felt safe.
"Fight, Judai!"
The water surged.
Then—
His hand moved. The smallest, slowest motion. Reaching. Toward me.
I grabbed it.
Back in the lab, his body convulsed once—twice—and then went still. The branches crumbled to ash, the bark sloughing off his skin in dark flakes. His breathing was shallow, but steady. His eyes were closed, but... relaxed.
"Machi," Nonō said softly behind me, "you did it."
I pressed both hands against Judai's chest, not even caring that I was sobbing. "Don't make me do that again, dumbass."
Orochimaru let out a slow, almost content sigh. "Remarkable," he said, his voice barely more than a murmur. "It seems we've stumbled upon something far more potent than any serum. A bond... curious."
I didn't look at him. Didn't answer. I stayed by Judai's side, refusing to move. Because if he slipped again, I wasn't sure I'd be able to follow him a second time.