Edit: Expounding on seals, Ibiki talks to Kimimaro directly and feels that something is amiss, and most of the singing cut out.
Sarutobi Hiruzen, Sandaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato, was feeling slightly confused. Two shinobi had turned up at the gates, asking rather politely for asylum and an audience with him. He wasn't all that prepared for the young ages of the two. The first was only about nine years old, skin showing the paleness of a life underground, bone-white hair and what did appear to be red clan markings of the Kaguya on the brow and eyelids. The second was a stringy, broad-shouldered boy that, judging from the lines of the face, would be somewhere around thirteen years old. That one held a white puppy in his arms like it was a lifeline.
He would admit that he let his temper slip slightly when Kimimaro said that he had been Orochimaru's student. When he said that he had fled being used for one of Orochimaru's depraved jutsus, while saving an innocent, he reined in his anger.
After knocking the two out, he called for Ibiki. This matter would have to be handled delicately.
The last thing I ate was rabbit jerky, before we got within sight of the gates. I don't know how long I was out, and my sense of time isn't great, but I believe it's been at least four hours since then.
I'm hungry.
And I have a real craving for pasta right now.
I did give making it a go back in Otogakure; it's a very simple recipe, but I needed a few tries and a lot of guessing before I got close. Nonetheless, I curse the fact that this is a Fuedal-Japan based world, because several foods that I remember don't exist here and I don't remember how to make them.
...Tomatoes weren't native to Japan, were they? I'm pretty sure they came from America. Yet Sasuke's favourite food is tomatoes. Huh. Oh well; never look a gift horse in the mouth.
I think the soup they gave me was tomato and vegetable based as well. Oh yes, I'm being hosted by T&I. No, they're under orders not use physical implements. I'm in the 'nice' cells as well; the ones when they're bribing their guests or they're restraining high profile political prisoners. Since Juugo and I qualify as refugees, that's where we are. I wonder how they would react if I offered to make them pasta? They'd think it was poisoned, obviously, but their expressions would be a sight to see.
...okay, now I'm hungry and that soup feels like ages ago. Like, yeeeears.
Okay, just got to think about something and ignore the hungry feeling; I've gone without food for longer than this.
So, I examine the chakra-suppressant on my arm. The paper seal had been replaced with an actual drawn one while I was unconscious. Penmanship is decent, but I've seen better.
It's only a Smothering Earth Pentagon, instead of the Eleven-Point Choking River, which I'm thankful for. Eleven-Point chains chakra to the Gates which can lead to atrophy of the chakra paths in the long term, while the Pentagon just restrains chakra from leaving the skin layer and doesn't have any long-term side effects at all.
Yes, I have been under an Eleven-Point before and it was extremely alarming, though I am now aware of the fact that said seal does prevent me from growing my bones at all, though the Pentagon does too. Sort of. Without Yang chakra in my skin to numb the area and mend the exit, bones coming out through my skin would hurt like all hell and leave a gaping bloody hole. But the bones inside my body are fair game and the Yang chakra inside my brain is still there to stop me panicking and messing up my organs.
Both the Akimichi and the Kaguya use Yang chakra. However, the Akimichi only have an affinity for Yang chakra; therefore they have to use handseals for their Expansion techniques and the only refinement is expanding individual body parts at a time.
Myself, on the other hand, have a Kekkai Genkai for Yang chakra. I do not need handseals; I only need to direct my chakra. The downside is that I can manipulate only my bones.
I could try a bit of bone manipulation now, but I don't really feel like it and if they get a medic-nin to scan me they'll realise that I'm not entirely neutralised.
Well, nothing else to do but annoy the living daylights out the guards who are watching my every move. In my past life, I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. This body, however, has quite a nice voice.
"Are you, are you,
Coming to the tree?
They strung up a man
They say who murdered three.
Strange things have happened there
No stranger would it be,
If we met at midnight
In the Hanging Tree...'"
'I regret nothing...'
"So," Ibiki started conversationally, sliding into the unoccupied seat. "Tell me what loopholes you've spotted in the security."
The kid looked up from studying the shackles that bound him to the other chair. "Is it that obvious?"
"You were projecting smugness slightly and that's a telling sign that a breakout's about to be attempted."
"I can fix that for you," the kid smiled, and suddenly he was blank. The body language, the micro-expressions were suddenly all smoothed out and Ibiki's hindbrain was loudly protesting the sudden transition to the Uncanny Valley that this doll-like child currently occupied. "I can use my Kekkei Genkai to modify my emotional filters. Hence why I'm not completely traumatized by my experiences; I had it active while they were happening."
Well, that did explain a few things, but also opened up several more questions. "Thank you for the demonstration, but I'd appreciate it if we could talk without it active Would you mind relaying a few of those experiences, for the benefit of the record?" Ibiki would not normally ask that at all, but if the kid had the ability to block his own trauma then they could make some significant headway into establishing what exactly Orochimaru was up to. Thankfully, the unsettling effect was promptly dropped.
"The Kaguya Clan kept me sealed in a cage underground and essentially used me as an attack animal, until I fled during their attack on Kiri. Then I ran into Orochimaru and he offered me protection and work.
Well, you could probably tell from the scars that I was vivisected, more times than I remember and a few I most likely don't. There were also assorted non-invasive physical tests, some of which did cause minor injuries as either the process or the result. So I have a very high pain tolerance and a certain amount of apathy towards body manipulation and other such oddities via repeated exposure."
That was...incredibly succinct, despite there being a lot glossed over and a couple of tells that gave away that the psychological damage wasn't quite as non-existent as had been implied.
"So what changed?" Ibiki prompted gently. "What changed your mind about serving Orochimaru?"
A wince, a slight raising of the hackles. "My growth and health was stunted thanks to my early childhood; I was never going to be as strong as he wanted, though I was strong enough and learned fuuinjutsu. I already knew that the experiments, what he was doing, was wrong, but he wanted Juugo's ability and my sealing to create a Curse Seal to warp minds and loyalties. He would use it on me, take what little free will I had left and make me Breeding stock once I was old enough. If he didn't have Juugo at all, his control over his subordinates would never be complete. He thought I was loyal, dependent, enough to let me go out alone and I saw the opportunity so I...'" he trailed it off with an aversion of his gaze and a slight shrug.
It was transparently truthful, though again, there were details omitted; what wasn't said was just as glaring though. Medical reasons, as well as human concern, urged Ibiki's next question. "Were you sexually assaulted or harassed at any point?"
The nine-year-old shot him an offended look, before that was quickly packed away in favour of polite concern. "No. Well. I...we, the Kekkei Genkai users, were too valuable to be damaged like that. Sort of. If you were Breeding stock, it wasn't...they put them under genjutsu and drugs, for that; not that that made it much better. But nobody went after any of the children, Orochimaru was very strict about that. Not that there weren't a few outliers who got under the radar. One got...suggestive...with me while out on missions. Persistently. I made sure it took him days to die."
The last sentence was accompanied by a self-satisfied smirk and lidded eyes, posture languid and cautiously imperious.
That sort of response was what Ibiki would expect from an experienced Jonin, not a child acting in self-defense. That sort of cool, measured, painful and ignominious revenge was markedly mature and self-aware. There were mental scars, yes, but that did not detract from the whole.
This self-assurance was the real Kimimaro then, the core decision-making part anyway, for all the slightly manic cheerful and easygoing demeanour was no less real. Not a split personality, just careful judgement on how people will respond most favourably and acting accordingly, just as how shinobi will act differently on and off missions. Again, compartmentalization more common in older and experienced shinobi than, say, Academy students and Genin.
"Thank you for answering my questions, Kaguya-kun. You will be escorted back to your holding cell now. Oh, and while your singing is very nice, would you like anything else to entertain yourself?"
"Can I get some paper and ink?"
What am I drawing, you ask? Well, I'm not drawing, per-say, but I am practicing my Fuuinjutsu matrices.
It kind of started when, because of the extra medical data obtained thanks to yours truly, Kabuto and the other scientist minions under Orochimaru's command found out about my illness way before canon. Good news, I get medication which actually helps. Bad news, I'm no longer a suitable vessel for His Snakiness. Which means that I get relegated to the breeding labs; they muck about with my blood and tissue samples until I'm sexually active then *ahem* put me out to stud.
Not only is that all kinds of NOPE, I needed to be in Orochimaru's right hand posse if I'm going to get sent after Juugo. Answer: become a Fuuinjutsu specialist. Karin is too young to have discovered any seals-related talent she might have yet and all the Balaclava mooks are...well, mooks. Also, seals are AWESOME.
I throw myself into sealing, which Orochimaru has quite a few texts and notebooks on actually. He definitely messed around with body-altering seals in canon to make the Curse Seals, which would explain it. Also, it's a massive 'flip the birdy' to all those fanfiction OCs, that just so happen to have inherited sealing talent by being born into the Uzumaki clan. Fuuinjutsu isn't Uzumaki-only, you know?! Other people are talented at it as well; cases in point, Minato Namikaze and Jiraiya. The only reason it isn't as prevalent in the shinobi business as you might think is that the math needed isn't really highlighted in the academies, and you need imagination and a bit of sideways thinking as well. Uzumaki with specialisation in Fuuinjutsu don't even have to think about it, they just process it all subconsciously and draw it out 'because it just looks right.' Non-Uzumaki have to slave over learning all those intricate little squiggles.
Myself, on the other hand, has a whole lifetime of geometry, trigonometry, algebra, equations and rearranging formulas to help me out. Yes, I can do math. Yes, it really, really helps. Actually, I wasn't too good at math before. I could do it and didn't have a problem with it, I was just one of those people who have to sit down with a pencil and scribble through the whole method to get an answer.
What really really helps is that seals are also ideograms. And pictures and symbolism I can definitely do. It's just a matter of construction and layering.
Say I wanted a typical, generic, hold-all storage seal. I would need all the appropriate ideograms for space folding, time folding, stability and so on, arrange them in a formula and then layer them in such a way that the formulas combine to create a stable polygon without stressing the molecular integrity of the material they're written on. Oh, and while passively layering Intent(there are more than Killing Intent) into the medium while writing.
It's a lot like setting up stage scenery. But with math. And it lets you casually twist the arms of physics until they cry.
It really makes up for being beyond useless at genjutsu.
But because of me being that dedicated at sealing, Orochimaru thought I was a Fuuinjutsu prodigy of the level of Minato; the guy who beat him to becoming Hokage. So I got back into his personal posse by dint of being his own Minato rip-off. And I did get sent after Juugo, so yay!
Sarutobi Hiruzen quickly flicked through the sheaves of paper that Ibiki had set in front of him, doing his best to hide his surprise.
"He did these himself, you said? These are most impressive. On a par with Jiraiya and maybe Minato, I can say that much. I'm not surprised my former student kept the boy around."
The old man leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe with a snap of his fingers. "Ibiki, what can you tell me about this Kimimaro's personality?"
"Sir. He's incredibly self-aware and compartmentalized; his Kekkei Genkai has an internal passive use for diminishing emotional trauma. He can be either incredibly effusive and genial, or cool and calculating. Also, that emotion-filtering trick doesn't seem to be infallible; there's trauma there, for certain. However, I don't think even he knows what his sore spots are or how he'll respond when they're prodded, but I sincerely doubt he'll be actively malicious.
All in all, he's a very self-contained, energetic, polite and subversively dangerous little boy and the plea for refuge is entirely genuine."
"Thank you, Ibiki; apologies for the short notice, but we didn't expect the usual Yamanaka Interrogations to fail abysmally. Any suggestions for our next step?"
"It was no great trouble, Hokage-sama. My thoughts? He needs socialisation of his own age-group. Despite his little emotion trick, I'm still not sure how he hasn't had a Snap Event yet and is as amenable as he is. He's been both physically and socially isolated his entire life and, despite wanting to, has no idea how to make friends. Manipulate others, sure, but not be befriended. In addition, it will cultivate ties and loyalty to Konoha, which is a lucrative prospect in itself.
I suggest a few benevolent adult authority figures as well; he's too dependent to accept an outright parental guardian, but having a channel for support would only result in a healthier mental state as well as reassuring the rest of the Village that our newest resident isn't being left to his own devices."
The Hokage folded his hands as he leaned forward on the desk.
"What are his intentions in this Village?"
"Sir, to quote; 'Join this Village's shinobi force, get a house, get Juugo's problem either cured or manageable, get Juugo a job, make some progress on my own illness, learn more about seals, make some friends, get both Juugo and I to age thirty and stay the hell away from Orochimaru unless it's to piss on his grave. Not necessarily in that order.' Unquote."
Sarutobi exhaled a small puff of smoke. "That's...strangely realistic and proactive. If I recall, there are several apartments available in the block downtown. Set them both up there and I'll set two ANBU to watch them."
Ibiki nodded in acquiescence, deposited the two files on the desk and left.
The Hokage sat silent for a moment, then spoke aloud to his - seemingly - empty office; "Get Hound and Bear. They have a mission."