Rise of the Dark Shinobi

Chapter Two: Stage Two of Three

Inu

I'm Inuzuka Inu. I have brick red hair, red eyes, and pointed ears (don't ask me why, though) and I wear a red T-shirt and black cargo pants. I'm from the Inuzuka clan, but I've never actually met any of them. Thing is, I'm what's called a "dark trainer." Or at least partly. I guess the whole "dark trainer" thing is done in three stages. The first was when I was just a few days old. My friends Hyuuga Taka and Uzumaki Naruto are dark trainers too. Oh yeah, and there's another Aburame girl. Her name's Aburame Shina. My friends and I were the first group it was ever done on.

Being a dark trainer means we got a shot that had legendary Pokémon DNA in it. The first one was when we were a few days to a few months. Naruto was almost seven months and Taka was about four and a half months. I was just a few days old.

Shina got it about a month after we did. There were four kids that got it at the same time I did, including me. Shina's group had just one other kid. But Shina was the only one to survive from her group and the other kid in our group (a girl from the Yamanaka clan) was one of the kids that didn't make it. Sometimes I wondered what she would be like if she were alive.

There was a group (or two) of three about that made it about every other year. In one of them was the Hokage's grandson, Sarutobi Konohamaru. His year was the one with two groups.

The Hokage had caught on to the guys who did this to us when I was about six months and Naruto about a year, and he wasn't very happy when he found out. But when they explained about Cipher and their shadow Pokémon and how they would do the same to humans if they could and use them to take over the world, so he relented, but said they could only use kids he picked, ones who didn't have any parents or kids clan heads gave up and they couldn't be more than about a year old and that was pushing it.

He chose his grandson Konohamaru and two other kids who were his advisors' grandchildren. I guess the Hokage picked him because he couldn't say that there was a threat to the village and this new very dangerous procedure would create kids that could fight against it, but then only use kids from other families, and not any from his own family. It would make it seem like he didn't care enough about the village to give up one of his family members.

He never actually told the village about the threat, and wouldn't tell anyone until Cipher was out in the open, but he was quietly picking orphaned babies from the orphanages and talking to clan heads about giving up kids for this, and giving them to the doctors here. I'd heard that most of the heirs to the major clans in Konoha were dark trainers/dark shinobi-in-training, but they didn't know it, and I didn't know for sure (although that's only 'cause I can't figure out a way to con it out of someone).

There's also a few other kids here, some of them Inuzukas. Of the Inuzukas, there's me, then two-year-old Kuroga, who's Virizion, and Fang, who's just a few months old; he's got Terakion DNA in him. There are a few from some of the other clans, like there's a Hyuuga girl, Hanabi, the same age as Konohamaru and another the same age as Kuroga, Hibana.

I guess I should explain where here actually is. There's a house in Konoha that looks perfectly ordinary. Or at least it does everywhere but the basement. The basement is actually a secret laboratory/hospital. That's where kids either start the process to be a dark trainer or they don't survive and die (Naruto, Taka, Shina, and I are the oldest here, so there aren't any full dark trainers). It's sad, but that's the way it was.

We kids never got to watch when they were giving new kids their first shot. I guess it was probably because it was so dangerous and they didn't want us to see them die almost every time. Like I said, only a few survived about every other year.

I was just hanging with Naruto (whose hair is so blonde it looks like sunshine and whose eyes could turn the sky green with envy) and Taka (he has black hair and pale pupil-less eyes that are typical in the Hyuuga clan) when one of the doctors, Yoshino, came to get the three of us and Shina. I guess it was time to get our second shot.

"Okay, today is the day of phase two for the four of you. You'll be entering the Academy soon and this has to be done before you start to develop your bodies or chakra coils very much. I'll give you fair warning: this will be extremely painful, and you might die. We can't give you anesthetic or anything to numb the pain because we don't know how it will react with the legendary Pokémon blood. The only thing we can do is restrain you and paralyze you. We have to paralyze you in case you are somehow able to escape the restraints. If you would all undress and follow me, we can begin. Or if you don't feel like you can go through with this, we'll undo everything and you can leave here to rejoin your clan. It's your choice."

Naruto, Taka, and I just turned one way and started to strip our clothes off as Shina turned the other, so we couldn't see her and she couldn't see us. I didn't care if Naruto or Taka saw me, and they didn't care if I saw them, since we all shared a room anyway (in other words they didn't have anything I hadn't seen, and I didn't have anything they hadn't seen). And of course we would go through with it, since we'd already survived the first stage. Shina felt the same way. I knew she did, because we'd talked about it a few times and she always said she'd show everyone why Aburame weren't weird just because of their insects.

Yoshino took Shina to one operating room and Thomas and Markus (the other two doctors in on this) took me, Naruto and Taka to another, where they met up with a man I didn't recognize. They put on surgical caps, robes, and masks, then put sterile rubber gloves on and gave us each a shot so that we couldn't move. They put us on metal tables and hooked us up the normal surgical stuff, like life support sort of stuff. I only knew because I snuck in one time when a new group of kids got their first shots (they were one of the groups that lived).

I was restrained heavily. First were ankles and wrists restraints. Then there was one across the hips and one across the middle of the stomach. After that was the shoulder. Well, really it like upper arm, practically in my arm pit. Then there was one above and below each elbow and knee. There was one over the neck, and finally one over the forehead.

Markus, Thomas, and another man (I couldn't tell who under the mask and cap, and I had never met him) cleaned the incision site on each of us, where they were going to cut us open. I learned the word incision from Thomas when I snuck in to watch but I wasn't supposed to and I didn't know what it meant, so I asked him. He wasn't very happy that I watched when I wasn't supposed to but he told me what it meant anyway.

They each took a scalpel out. I saw that Markus was the one operating on me. He put the scalpel against my chest and began to press down, cutting though skin, muscle, and bone. I wanted to scream or cry out, but I couldn't. Then finally when my chest was opened up and he could get to my heart easily, he grabbed a syringe of blood and stuck it into my heart, really fast. The pain got worse. I struggled to stay awake. I felt like I needed to fall asleep, but not asleep (it wasn't really asleep, but I didn't know what the word was for asleep but not asleep). If I could just stay awake, I would probably live. Trust me, I had don't have a death wish. Not even a bit.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, the pain stopped, and Markus sewed my chest back up. Now all that was left was to wait and see if I was going to live. I guess that the next couple of hours are the time to watch after you survive the power of the blood getting shot into you.

Markus freed my head and neck. I turned my head to the left and right and saw Naruto and Taka looking at me. I gave them each a weak grin and they each gave me one back.

A couple of minutes passed and the straps on my stomach and hips got taken off. A few more minutes and the arm pit straps got taken off. A half hour after the arm pit straps came the ones above the elbow. After an hour had passed, the ones below the elbow came off. At an hour and a half, both knee straps came off so only the ankle and wrist restraints were left.

Finally, after about three hours, Markus came over to me and took the stitches out of my chest. His glowing green palm hovered over my chest and there was no sign that he had just cut my chest open and given me a shot of blood in my heart three hours ago. He took the ankle and wrist restraints off.

"You're officially cleared to go to the Academy. Phase two was a success and you did very well," he said. I felt a rush of pride.

That's when I saw Yoshino come out of the other room with Shina in her arms. Shina hadn't survived. I nearly cried. She was one of my best friends, right after Naruto and Taka. It made me wonder: would we survive phase three? Or would we all wind up like Shina?

Only time would tell.