Chapter 12
In this world
the living grow fewer,
the dead increase-
how much longer must I
carry this body of grief?
After half a day's sleep and a full night of it, Ino was rejuvenated and more than ready for today's interrogation.
She wore her same Konoha vest and black ensemble with a low braid, still avoiding any lingering headaches from before, her mind needed to be pristine clear.
When she entered the Raikage's office earlier than asked, she was mildly surprised to see Cee and Darui already there and the raikage missing. Did they ever leave?
"Good morning," Ino announced.
"You look in much better spirits today." Darui pointed out, yawning.
"So do you both." Ino teased, the three of them all looked worlds better with some sleep in them.
"Lord Raikage will be in shortly, he had a message to attend to from the 6th hokage." Cee announced formally.
Ino nodded and waited, curious to know if it was intel on Sasaki.
A few minutes later Ae marched in. "Good to see you here early, Daughter of Inoichi."
"Ready to get started," she smiled.
"I received intel from Konoha on Sasaki. He is a former shinobi but has been rogue for quite some time. Apparently he spent some time with Danzo, but seemingly not very long. That's the jist of it."
"That would explain the seal we found on the other guy that mirrored Danzo's mark. But I'm surprised Danzo let him go alive… Unless.." Ino thought about it.
"You mirrored my own thoughts. But we'll figure it out today." Ae replied.
"Darui, you stay here while the rest of us will go to the interrogation unit. Jinsui is waiting there." Ae announced, already marching that way. He technically didn't need to attend this interrogation but he was not one to delegate.
Darui gave a 'yes Boss' and the three left the office.
When they arrived, Jinsui and Jae were already waiting there with the prisoner trapped in a sealing barrier in the middle of the room. Even with the barrier around him, he was still restrained physically with his hands behind his back and his feet tied. They weren't taking any chances with a trained shinobi.
He looked more disheveled than before, his eyes seemed on alert and his hair a mess. Being held hostage would do that to anybody.
Sasaki lifted his head when they entered, looking at everybody then settling on Ino.
"Has he said anything?" Ino asked, already shifting into gear.
"Nothing so far," Jae replied. "We've been at it since we brought him back."
The rule of thumb with interrogation, even with a Yamanaka was to first try and talk things out. Jumping straight into a mind reading technique could potentially be wasteful. The more you drug out of them vocally, the less chakra you'd have to waste searching for every little answer. And also, getting them to talk first gave the mind technique user a good idea where to get started.
"Sasaki, Kojiro is it?" Ino asked, stepping forward. "That's your full name?"
"Only my mother can call me Kojiro, just Sasaki." He replied, seeming physically tired but mentally ready to be a nuisance. They always were like this in the beginning.
"Of course. But that's your name. You worked with Danzo before going rogue."
"If you think you're connecting some dots between me and that guy, don't waste your time and don't waste your chakra looking for it, either."
Ino squatted to the floor, getting more on his level. "Why did you leave Danzo? The village?"
"We had philosophical differences." Sasaki would have shrugged if he could.
"And Konoha?"
"Have I ever lied to you yet, Yamanaka? I told you I left because that ninja life wasn't for me."
"But here you are now, getting caught up in shinobi affairs." Ino pointed out, tilting her head.
"And here you are, too far away from home. Get back to Konoha before they keep you here, too." Sasaki looked at the Kumo nin with pure animosity.
"I can't until you talk and we settle this bombing business. Why did you instruct that street thug to do it?" Ino was working her magic so far. She may have to do little to no mind technique at this rate if he kept going.
The Kumo nin were still as statues, not daring to interfere while the expert was working.
"Do you know what these people do to other villages? You seem so young, you may have not even heard the stories, but I saw it and lived it."
Ino said nothing but watched him with resolve.
"When I was a kid it wasn't uncommon for Kumo nin to kidnap women from clans, with bloodlines, and take them. Like a wolf picking off sheep in a herd. What do you think happened to those women?"
"Tell me," Ino said, delicately. So long as he was talking, there was a chance something would slip.
"They raped them, of course. Taking them, studying their justu, forcing babies on them."
The energy in the room was tense, but the Kumo nin said nothing, not allowing themselves to get baited into confrontation.
Cee knew there was truth to it, but it wasn't any more horrendous than any other method villages used before. At least he rationalized with himself. Like the Bloody Mist was guilty of child-killing, Kumo had its own dark secrets. Despite his own arguments, it still felt uneasy to hear.
"So, that's why you did it?" Ino asked. She was good at sounding empathetic and being a woman helped her in this instance.
"Tsch," Sasaki replied. "Not exactly. I didn't set out on this with revenge in mind, but it was an opportunity presented to me and I didn't mind since I already hated these bastards."
"Are you a Konoha nationalist or not? You say you left Konoha because you weren't interested in shinobi life but now here you are, wrapped up in a scandal with a village you claim to hate in the name of Konoha. I'm not understanding it." Ino rested her elbow on her knees and her head in her hand. The more relaxed she looked, the more her subject would relax as well.
"I'm a complicated man, I guess." He smirked. "But that's not all. I'm more complicated than you think. You won't be probing my mind today."
Ino raised an eyebrow.
"I'll tell you this: Kumo won't be able to stop this without triggering international conflict, and if they ignore it, they'll see pieces of their territory gone."
"The agenda of your group is a land grab. And then what? How could you maintain that?"
"Not my problem." He replied flatly.
"So you're not high up like I thought." Ino rolled her eyes.
"Nice try, that may work on a lesser man." Sasaki laughed.
"Who are the other swordsmen?" Ino asked, never letting her calm exterior waver.
Cee raised an eyebrow wondering what she was talking about. He had been with her this entire mission and not once was there a mention of other swordsmen.
Sasaki fell silent and watched her closely.
Ino knew she hit a spot. Until this point, he felt like he was keeping up, but they never could for long.
"Guys that are tougher than me, I'll admit." He replied. "That's why I told you to stay out of it. Don't put your village's life on the line for these guys. Let them work it out."
"I'm doing the job that is asked of me, and that's what I'm doing now." Ino rubbed her chin.
"You're going to do what you're going to do. I can see your Will on your face."
If Ino weren't so focused on the task at hand, she'd almost wish in another timeline she could have sat him down and plucked his brain on statements like that.
"Just don't act surprised if they try to find ways to keep you here. Their Sensor Unit is almost nonexistent after that Akatsuki War and they'd love nothing more than keep a girl like you around. It's in their DNA to pluck at women like you."
Ino couldn't help but think back to the Hyuga Incident, where they tried that very thing. Ae was Raikage then as well. She entertained the idea that had they succeeded, they would have raised Hinata as a Kumo nin and studied her jutsu.
Sasaki could try his best to plant seeds of doubt in her head but it wouldn't work. That was in the past. If Cee could move on from their incident, she could forget about distant history that didn't involve her.
The whole charade was getting tiresome as Ino continuously tried after that to pull out info and he danced around it. It had been hours now. She found it coming to the point she needed to just probe his mind and get it over with. Ae and Jinsui had already walked out of the room by this point to attend to other matters, leaving Ino, Cee and Jae.
"You've been at this a long time, why don't you take a break for a few minutes? Then you can continue?" Jae whispered in Ino's ear.
Ino stretched her arms and nodded, feeling relieved everybody in the room was competent enough to follow her cues.
She turned to Cee, he nodded at her and opened the door. They would leave for a break and come back to begin her [mind technique].
A spike of chakra filled the room but as soon as Ino turned to react, she felt herself flung out of the room and hit the adjacent wall with a loud CRACK.
Her head spun in circles so much that she couldn't focus her vision. She was trying to make sense of what just happened. Her senses were dulled until she felt someone pull her up and practically carry her away from the scene.
She was already in another wing of the raikage tower when she came to her senses of what just happened.
Cee applauded her for her effort and energy spent on talking to this man for hours on end. He took mild interest in interrogation himself but decided against it after observing interrogations in the past. He had a hard time making people feel at ease to begin with but Ino seemed in her element there. No matter what he said to rile her up, she always had a response that cooled things down or went back on topic.
Finally, she seemed to have her limit of talking, when Jae suggested they take a break before she began the next step. She would need something to fuel herself and rest to prepare her chakra for such a task. Cee knew that much.
He opened the door for Ino, being the perfect support when he felt a chakra signature flare up. He saw it coming shortly before Ino did. Not even a millisecond and he could determine the spike in chakra was a lightning style coming from the hostage.
Cee reacted on instinct and flung Ino out of the room, in the rush to keep her safe, he heard her body slam against the wall too harshly. Oh well, she's alive and Kumo won't have anything to explain.
In an instant Jae had his Earth Style out and defused the explosion. He wrapped the perpetrator in a ball of Earth Style and kept it contained.
Cee sighed relief and lowered his own hand about to cast a jutsu.
"Get Ino-san out of here in case anything else happens, I'll take care of this." Jae ordered, already restraining the prisoner Sasaki perfectly by himself.
Cee rushed out of the room to Ino. She was conscious but seemed disoriented. He pulled her up by the arm and tried to get her to walk. She was moving but not nearly fast enough, so he opted to carry her the rest of the way until she was of mind again.
He sat her in an empty room in the west wing that was not heavily occupied, there were mostly documents and paperwork stored here.
Cee placed her sitting up in a chair, still keeping her propped up. He held her shoulders, in case she was still dizzy.
She was holding her head and trying to quiet the ringing in her ears.
Her eyes fluttered open and her blue eyes looked to Cee in confusion.
"Are you okay now?" Cee asked, still holding onto her.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She choked, feeling the wind that left her chest coming back. "What's going on?"
"He was trying to self detonate or something."
Ino tried to shoot up but Cee kept her in place. "Everything is fine, don't worry. Jae defused it with his earth style."
Ino relaxed and sighed, she was an earth nature herself and that's exactly what she would have done. "Did Sasaki survive?"
"No idea," Cee admitted, eager to get back to the scene himself. "It was my job to see to your safety."
"What am I, a princess?" Ino scoffed.
"Sort of. It'd be irksome if you got hurt." He almost smirked.
Cee let go of his hold on her, realizing it was still there.
Ino rubbed the back of her head, feeling the impact from a minute before.
Cee stood to attention and looked at her head.
"You really threw me there. Literally." Ino shot daggers at him.
"Better that than potentially dead." Cee defended.
"Sure that wasn't on purpose?" Ino teased.
Cee let out a 'pft' as he gingerly touched her head.
"There's a knot, but you're fine."
"Yeah," Ino replied, deciding against sarcasm this time. She could have figured that out herself.
She grabbed his hand and removed it from her head, trying to stand again. "We should go back."
"Go to raikage's office, I'll go check things out."
"As if," Ino replied, following him anyway.
When they returned, they were cut off by a wall of Kumo nin, securing the area.
"What's the situation with the prisoner?" Cee asked an older Kumo nin standing guard.
"Suicide explosion." The ninja replied.
"How's Jae-san?" Ino asked.
"He's fine." The ninja replied, nodding. "He defused the explosion from going anywhere else but to its user."
Ino and Cee both seemed relieved.
"Cee and Ino-san, you're okay." A ninja approached the two, Ino recalled he was named Omoi or something from the war.
Cee nodded in acknowledgement to him.
"Raikage wants you in his office." Omoi spoke.
The two nodded and walked through the scene. Ino stole a glance and the stench hit her before the somewhat graphic scene.
She tried not to let it get to her but something about that guy and his words were still trapped within her. Stories played through her head of Kumo's not so distant past. She wondered if that guy had personal experiences that made him so fixated on the issue or if it was just a scare tactic. Despite him being a missing nin, he seemed to have some rapport with Ino and his home village still. Or maybe that was a tactic as well. She'd never know now. Sometimes cases like this stuck with her for a while until the next one hit.
Ae was pacing the office when the two arrived, clearly in a mood. Which was pretty common with the raikage if you asked Ino.
"Glad you two are okay, but that bastard would have rather killed himself than face the consequences." Ae was seething. He hated this guy escaping justice just as much as Ino. A captor managing to commit suicide was considered an utter failure in the ninja world.
"We didn't get to look inside his mind, but I still recorded hours worth of conversations before that happened." Cee reported.
Ino remained silent, feeling like she somehow failed.
"Good job on getting him to speak, Daughter of Inoichi." Ae sighed, finally sitting down. "That was more than the interrogation squad could get out of him."
Ino nodded, her frustration evident on her face regardless. "He somehow was slowly building up his chakra despite the barrier. So low, none of us could detect it."
"Things are becoming tricky around here with these guys," Darui pointed out. "His chakra should not have been able to build up."
"They are, and I have the logs of your interrogation to go over before we decide our next move." Ae looked to Ino and Cee who were standing before him.
Ino could tell he was trying to decide whether it was the right time to send her home or not. The look on his face was stern but uncertain.
A\N: sorry for late update, I'm on a trip and forgot the keyboard to the tablet I use to write and post. Regular updating will resume next Monday when I'm home!