A Deal with the Devil
Chapter 7,
"….."
Rendered speechless, Inojinchi mutely followed behind Kagami, not making a fuss as they fully entered the building.
True terror greeted them, and the blonde wondered if the scene in front of him was the worst, humanity was capable of.
No-
Somehow he knew that hidden somewhere in the most remote regions of the Elemental Nations, more cruel and disgusting events were transpiring.
"Hn," was all Kagami said.
In front of the two [Konoha Ninja] were cages crudely stacked, outlining the building's interior walls.
A thick veil of blood-absorbed mist gripped the air, but the skeletal silhouettes of several people crammed inside the cages didn't go unnoticed by the pair.
They huddled together, terrified, stealing each other's warmth.
Shivering in fright, many were stark naked, bringing attention to their starved and tortured forms. They all looked small from the confines of their cages, but the even smaller ones-
Children, hid further in the shadows, clutching onto whatever they could hug. Living or dead.
With decaying corpses littered about, many were hanging limply out of their prison bars, dangling half-free.
Almost, but not quite so close to freedom.
The rotten stench of decomposed flesh was strong, only outdone by the metallic odor of fresh and old blood. It was unbearable, but the captives didn't seem to mind, their eyes devoid of life as they continued their anguished moaning.
"Taicho…" Inojinchi's face was twisted into one of repulsion.
He held his hand protectively to his nose and continued. "Are we going to….?"
"Yes."
Kagami blew some mist out of his face as he spoke evenly.
Moving towards the cages, his Sharingan peered into the stacked cages for the woman who pleaded for his help
Meticulously slow, Kagami scanned over each of the tormented prisoners. His twin Sharingan beamed into their long-defeated eyes, and he pondered how long they've been subjected to such torture.
Making it to the end of the circular wall, the Uchiha really began doubting the woman's survival.
'Just keep looking,' he told himself as he felt a violent chill run up his spine and a not so foreign chakra embrace his own. Kagami immediately recognized it as the woman.
She was alive and calling for him.
Turning his head, Kagami glanced at a single oakwood door situated at the opposite end of the room. More mist blew out of it in streams of red richer than before, and he was certain she was beyond that door.
The smell of blood was stronger and the disgruntled groans resonating from its other side were louder….more conscious, even so.
Inojinchi stayed close to Kagami as they entered the next room, his traumatized eyes sending the morally-defeated prisoners a fleeting look of remorse.
Dark circles sagged beneath his eyes, having developed sometime between entering the village and Kagami's ruthless slaughtering.
He looked ready to fall over from lightheadedness but remained standing tall as Kagami had ordered him. The blonde however did falter in his step and throw up a little in his mouth when he saw the mountain of corpses-
But one, in particular, made him gasp in disbelief.
Pinned at the base was a man severely mutilated beyond recognition, but the serrated pure white bones splattering out of what remained of his torso was enough for Inojinchi to identify his clan origins.
"…They captured a damn Kaguya…a bone manipulating one at that."
Kagami's scarlet eyes widened before narrowing on the pressed white-haired carcass buried beneath the pile of deceased bodies.
'That thing,' he thought. 'Was one of the Devils he had to kill?'
Despite the Kaguya being obscured in guts and skeletons, Kagami could immediately understand why the notorious clan was viewed as devils in a world where murder was the norm.
The bones protruding out of the corpse was horrifying- seeing ribs twist in such a way… But the crazed glint in the Kaguya's bloated eyes was much more haunting.
Looking more closely at the litter of bodies, Kagami noticed that many of them were physically altered; some no longer even resembling humans.
Besides the point, standing out from the appalling norm was a stream of beautiful reddish-brown hair. It was long and draped over many other corpses, and following it from the ground up, Kagami saw that it connected to a woman sporting severe burns along her face.
She was pinned beneath a couple of corpses but was relatively high on the pile. What little parts of her stomach that weren't hidden, revealed charred flesh, melted away, showcasing her blackened and smoldered insides.
Her large intestine churned and throbbed violently inside, and Kagami sharpened his eyes.
A finger twitched.
It was sluggish, but Kagami's attentive eyes caught the movement as clear as day.
The leathery hand that the fingers belonged to linked back to the woman. Her finger twitched again, coating the remnants of her blue nail polish in blood.
Inojinchi finally taking notice of the woman's continued existence, took a cautious step forward.
More likely than not hearing the noisy splashing of blood beneath his shinobi sandals, her eyes opened.
They were sea green and beautifully glistening with life, and Kagami immediately knew that she was someone of importance, taking into account the look of humiliation she sent his junior ninja.
No run of the mill person would make that expression.
Rather, they'd beg and plead to be saved.
Incapable of speech, more than likely because of her corroded and melted insides; she moved her fingers in a manner too deliberate to be a coincidence.
Kagami couldn't decipher her signing, so looked up and down the pile for his primary reason for being there.
Her index finger curved as she made another sign, and Inojinchi solemnly nodded. She paused before forming one last sign, all the while her shame-filled eyes drifted downwards, refusing to meet Inojinchi's gaze.
She finally stopped signing and when Kagami turned to face the blonde Yamanaka, he hardly recognized the resolute-faced teen.
He looked less like the goofy if not pervy kid he had met shortly after meeting Shisu, and more like the emotionless ninja Hotaro insisted he become.
"Yeas," Inojinchi said leisurely. "You're… going to die."
Kagami had always respected brains over brawn.
But his respect for the human soul was on the rise, with each passing day he spent in this ninja world.
Kagami silently watched as the woman's eyes widened in sorrow before closing, only to tighten shut further as she forced down the tears brewing inside.
She succeeded and opened her reddened eyes; she then locked gazes with the blonde and Kagami was proud when Inojinchi didn't look away.
Inojinchi moved forward some, dropping into a crouch next to her shaking hand.
"I'm from the Yamanaka clan in Konoha," he began softly. "If you please, I can go through your memories to pass on the fate of your fate to your family."
She looked unsurely at his Konoha headband fastened to his head and lowered her gaze in thought. After a moment of silence that felt like an eternity to Kagami, she nodded- although hesitantly.
Not wasting time, Inojinchi arose to his full height and gently rested his hands underneath her head, making sure not to bother her burn wounds.
Surprisingly, she leaned into his touch and allowed the dam of tears she's been holding back to fall.
Inojinchi's expression hardened and he activated his jutsu without announcing its name.
To Kagami Inojinchi had his eyes closed for a little over a minute's time, but when his teal eyes opened and gazed at the auburn woman with various different emotions, Kagami wondered how much time really passed inside her head.
"I never thought that I'd ever meet with the head of the Terumi clan," Inojinchi said, cracking a small smile at the apparent Terumi woman.
Her eyes beamed a smile back and Kagami rolled his eyes as he finished looking the blood-drenched room over for his target.
She wasn't here, but in the furthest corner of the room was another door leading down a dark and ominous hallway. At its end was a transparent sheet of plastic, illuminating a dim white light.
"Lady Terumi, should I run into any of your clansmen while in the Mist, I'll tell them about what happened to you here… Damn the Hidden Mist."
He swore as his face darkened considerably.
"And I'll warn them that Kiri is not to be trusted."
She gave him an appreciative look as she-
Using the last of her strength, lifted and dropped her hand on top of his head. She patted his platinum blonde hair and just as Inojinchi closed his eyes and released a content sigh, Kagami stepped forward, looming darkly over the two.
"It's time to go," Kagami told the blonde. "There's still more rooms we need to check before rejoining Shisu and Hotaro."
"Wait Kagami-Taicho, what about her?" Inojinchi spoke in a slow whisper, panic growing in his voice.
He was desperate to save her, but the dull spark in his expressive eyes let Kagami know that he already knew his answer.
"It's time to go, we've already wasted enough time here," Kagami said. "I'll be waiting over there for you to finish."
As Kagami walked towards the hallway, he felt the Terumi's menacing glare linger on his retreating back, reinforcing his thoughts of her being someone of importance.
What a shame too, considering how much of a beauty she had to be before her capture.
Fumbling with his kunai, Inojinchi produced it towards the Terumi clan head. The sharp ninja tool glinted in the dank room and right before he could plunge it into her throat, he choked back a sob and stared teary-eyed into her sad but otherwise resolved eyes.
It was a heartwarming spectacle, but Kagami ruined it with a glare, lamenting over allowing Inojinchi to bond with the woman using his clan jutsu.
"D-Do i-iit. P-Pleease."
For what the woman's struggled words were worth, Inojinchi listened, singing the kunai into her neck- killing her instantly.
It took several seconds before he removed the kunai, dropping it to the ground as he closed her eyes. He stood still, and just when Kagami figured that something in the blonde had broken, Inojinchi walked past him, stepping into the hallway.
Pleased that his pawn-like soldier wasn't sobbing uncontrollably, without a word, Kagami fell in step behind him.
The hallway was empty sans for a single mural of the village painted some years ago when it was still alive and vibrant. Anticipation bubbled in Kagami's stomach as he and Inojinchi pushed past the thin plastic sheets and entered the final room.
Entering revealed a proper medical facility.
There were plenty of beds situated along the white walls, each a few feet apart from one another with metal trays of blood-stained surgical equipment sprawled about.
Rows of blood vials rimmed the counters, with various names neatly inscribed on each. Terumi, Yuki, and Kaguya being the only names he could identify.
Although clean and in pristine condition for the most part there was an evil aura of chakra originating from the room- telling them to leave and never come back.
It was death.
The abnormal feeling Kagami was all too familiar with ever since his reincarnation crept in waves of chakra from the back of the room where two beds adjacent to one another were obscured by red-soddened sheets and an office located behind.
The office was equipped with a wide window that oversaw the medical room and a dim yellow light shone from within, revealing one hunched over figure in a white coat and two others.
The man in clear view was seated behind a desk, scribbling his pen to his paper while simultaneously juggling a vial of blood in his other hand.
With a burst of energy, ready to end their merry side adventure, Kagami and Inojinchi stealthily strode forward. They passed the two covered beds, and Kagami was pleased to feel the woman's familiar chakra emitting from the bed to his left.
The bed to his right, however, was the source of the sinister chakra. Although deadly; it was also suppressed, bordering along the thin line of life and death.
Kagami wanted to just grab the woman and flee, but in a not so ninja move, Inojinchi kicked the metal door with a chakra enhanced leg. As a result, the door caved in under the pressure of his attack, flying off its hinges then slamming into the back wall of the office.
Consequently, sheets of paper were hurled in the air from the door's abrupt impact, and before any of the papers touched the ground, Inojinchi positioned his kunai below the neck of a Hidden Mist shinobi.
The frail scientist seated behind the oakwood desk dropped the vial of blood he was holding and fell out of his chair while another man in a white coat jolted up from the couch he was resting on.
Inojinchi tugged on his kunai, drawing a thin line of blood along the surprised Kiri nin's throat. "You have one second to explain to me why I shouldn't kill you all right now."
Ignoring Inojinchi's more-than-generous warning, the Kiri ninja snarled and attempted to reach for the tanto strapped to the back of his dark grey flak jacket.
That action cost him his life-
Inojinchi's eyes did not soften when the ninja's body fell lifelessly to the ground.
Kagami took notice of the surrounding mist's sudden disappearance and figured it must've had something to do with the Kiri ninja's death.
Interrupting him from further thought, the first scientist shifted his devasted eyes away from the shattered blood vial towards Inojinchi. As he picked his frail body up from the floor, his despair soon turned into fury.
"You…! Look what you have done to my precious serum!"
He marched up to the tall blonde. What is the meaning of this intrusion?! This is a private island under the direct jurisdiction of the Hidden Mist Village, leave now or risk execution!"
The glint in Inojinchi's eyes grew darker and Kagami shook his head, doubting that the man understood the dire position he was in. His partner, the other coat-wearing man seemed to understand if his shaking eyes meant anything.
They were noncombatants, Kagami determined not seeing a Kiri headband on either of them.
"Are your ears stuffed, idiot?" The enraged scientist raised his pointed finger and pushed it into Inojinchi's chest. "Leave now or you'll regret-"
"Get your filthy hands off me."
As Kagami had expected, Inojinchi ripped his kunai through the man's neck, spraying his lifeblood all over the office. In a sickening way, it was satisfying when the impish scientist fell over the Kiri nin, clutching his neck till he bled out.
"Saizo-sama."
The other scientist whispered, unfortunately becoming the target of the angered blonde's rage. He shook uncontrollably when Inojinchi took slow steps towards him, kunai in hand.
His scared eyes widened more-so in fear and flickered over to the window, before landing back on Inojinchi.
"W-What have you idiots done? The seal…"
With his Sharingan, Kagami saw the man's eyes lock onto the bed opposite of where the woman laid but said nothing as Inojinchi dragged the scientist up by his collar.
"P-Please d-don't hurt me! I'm not a ninja, I'm a genomic researcher enlisted in the Hidden Mist Village's science department." He pleaded.
Inojinchi loosened his grip some, probably due to not finding the terrified man as a threat.
Interpreting Inojinchi's loosened grip as an invitation to continue speaking the Kiri scientist cleared his throat.
"What are Leaf shinobi doing all the way south of the war? This is supposed to be a safe place, Lord Mizukage said so himself." He said pausing with his eyes widening. "It can't be…have we lost the war?"
He recoiled, collapsing to the ground when Inojinchi delivered a heavy blow to his jaw.
Hearing bones crack, Kagami instinctively winced. Under normal circumstances, he'd be alarmed by the hatred in Inojinchi's eyes, but he knew that the kid needed this.
"W-Wait, wait please," the scientist begged as he backed himself into the office room's corner. "I was joking, you're here for the bloodline enhancement drug, aren't you? When it's complete, the Hidden Mist Village's victory in this war is all but assured, but I'm willing to sell it to the Leaf if you guarantee my safety. Deal, my continued safety in exchange for the bloodline drug?"
He proposed, gaining some confidence.
"I'm really risking my neck out here for you two, just to let you know…..is it a deal?"
"I don't know what drug you're talking about, so can it," Inojinchi said dismissively. "Did you negotiate with your prisoners when they begged and pleaded for their lives?"
He stood over the cowering man who was refusing to meet his eyes, instead, gazing fearfully out of the window. Inojinchi's fist tightened at this and turned pure white in fury.
"Now you'll know the pain of losing your life."
Just as the Yamanaka was about to plunge his kunai into the quivering man, Kagami yanked him back just in time to avoid a javelin made completely out of bone.
It was long and had sharp splinters sticking out dangerously in various different angles like thorns. The window which it had launched through was shattered, exposing a man who looked stripped of all vitamins.
He was freakishly tall and pale, with skin that stuck to his bones. His prodded and diced open chest had kanji written in blood and his demonic pupilless eyes were pointed at the cowering scientist who had just barely avoided death.
Through the broken window, his demented laughter reached their ears. It sounded forced as the strange man's dislocated jaw hung lopsidedly, punctuating his laughs even more.
"Is he what I think he is?" Kagami asked unsurely as the man's sinister chakra began gathering in mass quantity.
Inojinchi gulped and simply nodded; his teal eyes narrowed on the trademark oval-shaped eyebrows of the Kaguya clan.
"Two members capable of utilizing Bone release in a single day? It's supposed to be rare, inherited by only a select few every generation." He mumbled in awed fear.
The insane Kaguya stepped out of his bed and climbed on the destroyed window seal; shards of glass impaled his skeletal feet, but he didn't seem to noticed as he grinned ear to ear at the scared scientist.
The scientist in question scooted further into the wall and sent Inojinchi a pleading look as the crazed Kaguya entered the office, stepping towards him.
"Inojinchi," Kagami whispered before the scientist could start his futile begging. "See that other bed? Beneath those sheets should be a woman, can you go and confirm that for me?"
Although he heeded Kagami's demands, Inojinchi asked, "How would you even know that? What the hell-" he trailed off as he pulled back the sheets, just enough to see a gutted woman with scarlet red hair and sunken cheeks.
She looked dead, but her slightly open red eyes that squinted gleefully at Kagami informed them that she wasn't.
Kagami glared questionably into her eyes but wasn't given enough time to speculate any further about who she or how she was still alive due to the Kaguya who picked up the scientist by his neck.
"I'll finish the drug for you! All I need is that annoying Uzumaki! I'll even share Saizo-sama's manuscripts with Konoha, just don't let me die!"
Within seconds of the man's frantic outburst, the Kaguya's hand tightened and a surge of blood erupted out of him along with a torrent of bone spikes protruding from his neck. The Kaguya's unnerving smile broadened as he released an animalistic yawn.
The outlying intensity in the air increased as the Kaguya clansman's wild eyes met Kagami's Sharingan. Kagami looked uncomfortable but didn't back down when the insane man took a step towards him.
Cautiously, Kagami said, "Inojinchi, take her to safety. I need her alive."
To Kagami, his primary task was his own survival and the woman's knowledge of the demon who gifted him with a new life.
Inojinchi, not knowing about this of course wasn't too inclined on leaving him here, but whether it was his unbiased chivalry or trust in Kagami's skills; he nodded once and lifted the smirking woman into his arms just as the Kaguya member slammed into Kagami.
End