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———
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Ten days had passed since Takuma returned home from Inahara. During that time, he led the team—and a number of water clones—to complete and organise the case material into a knowledge base that would serve as the foundation for the case. It was a lot of work, but they finally managed to complete it, allowing the people involved some well-deserved time to rest.
And that didn't bode well with him.
Takuma watched Amami interrogate one of the ROOT agents through a two-way mirror. There wasn't much to see or hear as the silence dominated the room with the agent tied to a bed while she sat behind it, holding his head in her hands as she used the Yamanaka clan hiden jutsu to scour his mind.
She had been spending all of her time, except for he bi-weekly meetings, at the Torture and Interrogation holding facility. However, the results of the interrogation had been lacklustre. The ROOT agents were trained to remain silent under torture. According to Amami, their resentment at having one of their arms removed fueled their spirit of non-cooperation as they kept their lips tightly sealed.
The Mind-Body Jutsu, too, hadn't borne promising results.
As powerful as the class of jutsu was, they had their limitations. Memories and other information got progressively harder to find and access the older they were. And that posed a problem in the current case because the agents had been undercover as a sleeper cell for three long years. They lived mundane, civilian lives, which made memories associated with ROOT older and thus harder to get to.
"Good work in there," Takuma said as he handed her a chilled soda can.
"With nothing to show for," Amami said with a rare irritated expression. "This isn't working, Thirteen. We need something to stimulate their brains and dredge up old memories."
"So, ROOT gear didn't work?" he asked.
"It only brings up memories of training, spars, maintenance, and in one case, burning the gear in an attempt to ditch it."
"Would recreating that burning bring up some memories?"
"That could work, but that's a desperate option."
"We are desperate. Let's set that up."
"Sure, but what we need right now is something targeted to bring up relevant memories," Amami said as she opened the can with a fizzy pop. "Any news from Inahara?"
Takuma shook his head. The local shinobi at Inahara were investigating the agent's three years in the city. There was still a lot to be found in the city by searching their homes and belongings, and talking to their neighbours and anyone they associated with. Unfortunately, the agents had managed to live a clean three years. If there was anything, it hadn't been found yet.
"I will keep trying to get something. Here, finish this for me."
"Thanks, I'll look for something that might help," he said, receiving the can.
"Thanks," she replied as she returned to the interrogation room.
Takuma shook the can before looking down.
It was empty.
"... Just say that you want me to throw it away."
———
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Not all avenues of leads had been exhausted. Another team handled a part of the case investigation because no one in the Campbell Squad had medical expertise.
"How rude for you to come empty-handed," Sango said as soon as Takuma entered her temporary office.
Takuma wordlessly put a kunai on her desk. "Here, you can have this," he said, sitting down.
She looked him dead in the eye as she shamelessly pocketed the kunai. They were essentially free for operatives like them, and the woman still took them.
"You don't look chipper. You usually don't either, so I guess it's no different. What happened?" Sango asked.
Sango a.k.a Copperhead was in charge of everything medical that was confiscated from the bunker. She and a team of iryō-nin were charged with finding out what the scientists were trying to accomplish. Technically, both teams had different goals, and the other team's success didn't help the other team, which was why Takuma had only visited them once after he took over the case.
"I want to meet the T&I interrogator working with you," said Takuma.
The medical team was given custody of the scientists arrested in the bunker because they needed their help understanding the research. But because the team was full of iryō-nin, they didn't have interrogation expertise, and because the scientists, as cooperative as they had been, were still associated with ROOT. So, an interrogator from Torture and Interrogation was assigned to the team.
"Sure, but why?"
"I want to dig into the scientists' background. Unlike the guards, there might be something there."
The two guards who survived Takuma had shared that they all hailed from different parts of the world and wanted to start a new life in the Land of Fire, and were promised that if they worked as guards in the bunker. Not only were they not ROOT agents, but they didn't even know that they were working for them. The scientists, on the other hand, were not only more numerous, but they also thought they were working for Hidden Leaf and were approached and interviewed to work at the bunker, which meant they could have valuable information regarding ROOT.
With the work on the knowledge base done for now, Takuma had the time to interrogate the scientists himself, but the interrogator had been working with them longer and would not only know more about them but also have a better chance of getting more information out of them.
"What were they researching?" Takuma asked. He recalled the child who died the moment he stepped out of the sterile environment and the captive chakra beasts who were in poor condition because of the research that had been done on them.
"What else? Trying to make better soldiers," Sango sighed as she tiredly leaned into her chair. She looked fine physically, but it was evident that going through all the research had taken a mental toll on her. "They were trying to see if they could chakra beasts to enhance humans through chakra-mutated cell therapy and implantation. So many people... failed test subjects," she clicked her tongue as anger flared.
"When I was there, I remember reading something about Orochimaru," he said.
"His research was the basis of their research. Not all humans are born the same. Genetics decides a lot from physical traits to predisposition to certain diseases. They also influence a person's chakra through physical energy—how much someone can have and how quickly they gain it. His research was trying to find out if he could increase the body's ability to handle chakras better. The bunker shitheads decided to add chakra beasts into the mix because animals without chakra and their enhanced beast counterparts are drastically different from a physical and a mental point of view when compared to how humans change when we start using chakra. They were trying to induce that level of change through their research."
Her words made Takuma think about the summoning animals he recalled from the series. Naruto's frogs were larger than most buildings; that kind of size deviation from the norm was indeed too drastic.
"Did he succeed?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Orochimaru. In his research."
"He ran into a roadblock."
"How old was his research?"
"A little over a decade."
"Is that so..."
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing. Just wondering if he worked on it afterwards," Takuma said, looking up at the ceiling. If he did, he probably got farther than the team of scientists—but he didn't say any of that aloud.
After all, getting misunderstood as an "Orochimaru-sympathiser" wasn't a good look.
———
.
The next day, Takuma was in a room with two people and two dogs.
He was dressed in light gear and had his mask on because he was meeting with the interrogator from Torture and Interrogation and couldn't show his face to an outsider. To ensure that outsiders weren't deceived by someone claiming to be an ANBU-nin, liaisons were often used to bridge the gap. They were part of the staff and operated without masks, and helped ANBU communicate with other departments without the need for operatives to reveal their identities.
"This is Chunin Inuzuka Yubi from Torture and Interrogation," said the liaison handling the T&I department. "This is Operative Ratel."
The young woman before didn't have a hair or thread out of place and was dressed in the grey T&I uniform. She had medium black hair with asymmetrical bangs and triangular glasses that gave her a sharp and alert look. And like every Inuzuka shinobi, she had nin-ken accompanying her.
One of them was a ferocious medium-sized "Kai Ken" dog with a black brindle medium-length coat and red eyes that stared straight at Takuma as though ready to pounce on him if he made a bad move. The other one was from the Japanese Chin breed, the size of a lap dog, with a black and white coat, that looked as cute as the other dog looked fierce.
"Copperhead mentioned you wanted to know about the scientists themselves," said Yubi.
"Yes. Who they are and how they got recruited," Takuma asked while modulating his voice. "I apologise. I know that your focus was on aiding the other team, so I understand if you don't know much about their backgrounds. If you wish for more time, I can give you the questions I need answered, and we can return to it later."
"I will take those questions. For now, we can look at what I've already gathered about them," Yubi said, taking out a thick binder of information and placing it on the table. "When I heard that you wanted to meet, I had a short chat with the prisoners I had the best rapport with to ask them additional questions."
"Impressive," Takuma nodded, pleased by her preparedness. "What can you tell me about the scientists?"
"As you would expect, most of them are Leaf shinobi—"
"Are or were?"
"They are still officially registered as Leaf Shinobi and believe they were working for Hidden Leaf. Interestingly, all of them are stationed in remote locations around the Land of Fire, but none ever made it to their new posts. I believe someone went to great lengths to hide their existence."
It made sense that most of the scientists were Leaf shinobi because the Hidden Leaf was the country's greatest chakra training institution by far, dwarfing everyone else combined. As for shifting the scientists around, it was ROOT's work to make sure no one would notice them missing.
"What do you think about their claim? That they are working for Hidden Leaf. Do you believe it?" he asked.
"They are telling the truth," nodded Yubi.
"That's troublesome," Takuma sighed, feeling a headache coming. The scientists' claims were technically true because when they were recruited, ROOT was still part of the Hidden Leaf. Though what they were doing was highly illegal.
"In all cases, they were approached by someone."
"What made this group of people special?"
"...Their lack of ethics."
A silence permeated the room. It made complete sense that people willing to do the vile research would have no problems with breaking the ethics involved with using humans in experimentation, as they had a high chance of killing them.
"These recruiters. What do we know about them?" he asked with a sigh.
According to Yubi, the scientists were assembled from major cities with a strong shinobi presence around the country. A shinobi, with the rank of chunin, approached them and claimed to be from Hidden Leaf Village and said that their talent and merit had been noticed and that they were needed for a confidential research project for the Hidden Leaf, aiming to strengthen Leaf shinobi. They weren't told specifics about the research, only that it would be a long-term assignment in a secret facility and would be generously compensated.
"From how they described the person who approached them, there were at least four different men," said Yubi. "I checked the identity those men used. None of them exist."
"They used fakes," said Takuma, expecting that.
Yubi nodded. "Because these recruiters claimed to be from the Hidden Leaf, and these scientists were recruited from other cities, there were limited ways to verify their identity. It's to be mentioned that all the documentation they had was, for all intents and purposes, legit, which dissolved any scrutiny."
"They specifically recruited people from outside because they knew the chances of getting caught would be lower," Takuma said.
Most Leaf shinobi were never stationed at the Hidden Leaf Village and only ever saw it if they were visiting, but it had a high reputation as the hub of Leaf shinobi, which was only strengthened by the fact that only the best academy graduates from academies around the country were invited to the village to test for jōnin teams. So to hear that someone from the Hidden Leaf Village had noticed their talent must've felt incredible to them.
"That is for all scientists except for three. Three of them were recruited from here."
"Another fake?"
While it was riskier, it wasn't difficult to convince people of bizarre things if the right cards were played. There were countless people, irrespective of their education, who had fallen for bigger or stupider things.
"Actually, I just got confirmation today... This one's real."
.
———
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The link is in the synopsis!