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Passage

Ryuu watched the door in silence, various gashes opening over his body from his use of the Chakra Scalpel technique, except from the chakra inside that part of the body. Then, those same gashes healed themselves as he used his Medical Ninjutsu to repair the damage. He had been there nearly a half year, now. In that time, he had helped with countless more experiments, been to the reward room too many times to count, and had saved Suigetsu's life, along with Kabuto and Karin, when one of the experiments on Suigetsu had made his Kekkei Genkai go haywire, nearly making him permanently turn into a puddle on the floor. He and Karin had managed to keep him together long enough for Kabuto to stabilize Suigetsu's chakra, but now his Kekkei Genkai, the ability to turn his body into water to avoid damage, was a permanent trait, rather than optional. As a side effect, he would also die of dehydration inside of a day unless he was able to either find a body of water to draw from or had a water bottle with him. To keep him alive, he was placed in a giant tank of water as his own personal cell.

The door opened and Ryuu stood, walking out of it and into the arena, finding a very large shinobi with messy, jet black hair standing before him, a sharp fin growing out of each forearm and a wicked grin set into his face. Ryuu formed a blade of compressed Wind Style chakra from his hand, a barely-visible green-tinted cyclone around the blade as Ryuu held onto it at the base. As he stepped forward, the man appeared in front of him, fin tearing through his abdomen before almost instantly tearing through his back as well. Ryuu activated his Sharingan, barely seeing a blur speeding away from him, moving along the arena's wall. Ryuu grunted, both wounds already sealed, and activated his Body Flicker Technique, the prisoner seeming to slow to a crawl, Ryuu running over to get beside him and easing up on the jutsu until he was running at the same speed as the man. The man's eyes widened in shock and he began to spin, slashing at Ryuu rapidly, Ryuu blocking and countering with his Wind Rapier, as he had decided to call it. He actually wielded it closer to a jian, but Wind Rapier sounded better to him.

The man flipped, kicking at Ryuu, only for Ryuu to duck under it, standing and stabbing at the man, only for the man's fins to block it, the man landing on the wall. "Second Gear!"

The man sped off again, Ryuu once again matching his speed. Again and again they clashed before the man took it up another gear. Again, Ryuu matched him. Finally, the man flipped, firing several Water Bullets out of his mouth at Ryuu, who avoided them, albeit barely, as the man switched to his "Top Gear" and vanished. He appeared behind Ryuu and Ryuu felt the fin bite into his left shoulder before appearing behind the man, driving his sword through the man's heart. The man blinked, staring at the blade sticking out of his chest before Ryuu ripped it out, allowing the man to collapse.

"But...how?" the man asked. "No one...should be...that fast!"

"You looked like you were moving slowly to me," Ryuu said, turning away and exposing his completely healed shoulder.

"What...are you?" the man asked, dying before he could receive his answer.

"I'm a monster," Ryuu said.

The door opened and Ryuu walked out, looking around. Then, he began to walk, Sharingan remaining active and adding to the map in his head. Right. Left. Right. Left. Straight. Right. Right. Right. Left. Right. Left. Left. Left. Straight. Staircase. Right. Right. Left. Backtrack. Right. Backtrack. Straight. Finally, he decided he had taken long enough and activated his Body Flicker Technique, reaching Kabuto's experimentation room just as Kabuto was about to step out of it to look for him. Kabuto stared at him a moment before turning and walking back into the room. After the experiment was done, Kabuto handed Ryuu another scroll for him to study and Ryuu headed to the reward room.

Ryuu raised a hand, a small glowing blue sphere forming beside it just in time for his opponent's massive blade to hit it. Then, the sphere flashed and the sword exploded. The opponent, a massive wall of muscle who had just arrived from places unknown and who Ryuu, frankly, didn't care about, staggered backward. A full year. Ryuu had been in that hellhole a full year. Every night he prayed to be taken from that place. Every night his prayers went unanswered. Every night he prayed for forgiveness for his sins, and every day he repeated those sins.

The man lunged at Ryuu, deciding that he could kill him barehanded, only for Ryuu to catch his hand, snapping his thumb backward before forming a Wind Rapier and splitting him in half the long way. Blood began to rain down after spraying out of the man's halves, coating Ryuu as the door opened yet again, a small boy, barely ten years old, walking in and staring at Ryuu emptily. Just as emptily as Ryuu stared back.

The boy extended a hand, a massive spectral creature with dark blue skin, four glowing red eyes, bright orange flames for eyebrows, pointed teeth, and four muscular arms appeared between the two and roared. Ryuu cocked his head to the side as the creature charged, a flaming sword appearing in each hand. It slashed with all four and Ryuu appeared off to the side, watching the blades impact the ground, the ground exploding instantly. Ryuu nodded slowly.

"Impressive ability," Ryuu said, then appeared behind the boy. "Unfortunately, it's not enough."

The boy's eyes widened before his head rolled forward from his shoulders. Then, the body exploded, and Ryuu appeared on the ceiling, dusting himself off, staring up at the floor where the boy had reappeared in the center.

"I see," Ryuu nodded. "Your imagination is made reality. Fine then. We'll try this again."

He dropped to the floor, sprinting at the boy and slashing, splitting him in half, only to once again reappear somewhere else as the boy exploded. That shouldn't have been possible. He had felt his Genjutsu take effect. That boy shouldn't have been able to do anything. He had forced to imagine himself being a powerless, normal boy. Finally, it clicked. It wasn't the boy. The boy was the imagination.

Ryuu flipped into the air as four flaming swords crashed into the arena wall, exploding but not damaging it. Ryuu flipped, landing on his feet and rolling his eyes, forming hand seals.

"Wind Style, Air Bullets!" Ryuu shouted, exhaling the jutsu, the jutsu punching completely through the creature, which roared in pain, the newest recreation of the child screaming in pain.

As soon as the jutsu had ended, Ryuu jumped, forming a flame version of his Wind Rapier in his hand, noticing the distinct lack of a cyclone along this clearly cleaver-shaped blade. Once he was close enough to the creature, he flipped, splitting him vertically three times before landing, watching the creature fade. He turned back to the child, seeing the child had been split into fourths exactly the same way the creature had. Ryuu walked out of the room, following the map in his head. Within two minutes, he was staring at the light of the outside, breathing in the smell of fresh air. Then, he left, using the Body Flicker Technique to get to Kabuto. Once finished being tortured, he left to the reward room, walking to the shower and letting the blood run off of his body. As he did, he made sure to keep his eyes closed, ignoring the sound of the other showers running and the distinct lack of any male chakras in the room. One thing about being stuck there for a year, puberty had really hit its stride while he was there. The constant physical exertion managed to keep the acne away, as did Ryuu's skill at Medical Ninjutsu, but things like hormones, and the initial spontaneous and uncontrollable erections nothing could help. Same thing with the females around his age, who were also going through puberty, and had seemingly all decided that they wanted to sleep with as many other people as they could. Only Lena seemed to not care about getting laid three times a day or more.

Finally, Ryuu was clean and got dressed, curling up against the wall as always and falling asleep.

Ryuu tried to ignore it. He really did. He had been there a year and three months. He had been around most of them while they were growing up. Well, maybe not most. Lena for sure, which was probably why he was able to ignore her. But one of the newer additions, a blonde a couple years older than him, probably around Tayuya's age, who happened to be well endowed, was much harder to ignore. She knew it too, and used every opportunity to try and flirt or outright try to seduce him. That wasn't the problem, though. He wasn't interested in having sex with some random blonde that he'd probably end up killing himself inside of a week. The part he couldn't ignore, was the fact that whenever he saw her, somehow, she reminded him of Fu. He didn't know how, he didn't really even care how. It had been a year and three months to the day since he had last seen Fu. He didn't know what she looked like. The real problem with the blonde currently standing in front of him in the shower and slowly, and her best attempt at seductively, washing her breasts and inner thighs was that his brain imagined it being Fu. He couldn't help but wonder if she had developed as fully as this slut had, or if she had somehow become more like this slut in personality than he remembered when she hit puberty.

Of course, these types of thoughts always led to the ones that really troubled him. He shut the shower off, walking out into the main room and sitting against the wall, not even bothering to get dressed. He had been gone for over a year. It was completely reasonable for Fu to have moved on. She had no way of knowing if he had even survived. She had no proof, nor did she really have any reason to wait. It wasn't like he'd be able to escape ever. When Orochimaru had found out that Ryuu had mapped out the entire interior of his base, he had responded by having a lock of mint-green hair delivered to Ryuu, so fresh that he could still sense Fu's chakra from it. She wasn't hurt, he knew that much, but that meant that Orochimaru had someone close enough to get her hair without being caught.

Ryuu rested his forehead against his forearms again. Yes, it was perfectly reasonable, understandable, even that she move on. He couldn't actually expect her to wait for him with no proof that he was alive. She probably had a new boyfriend, a new team. it was entirely possible that she had even had sex with her new boyfriend.

Ryuu's arm snapped out, his fist slamming into the wall beside him, fracturing and cratering it. The others all stared at him, sitting there with his hand still partially embedded in a crater in the wall, teeth clenched, and tears streaming down his face. He had tried to ignore it. He really had. Tried so hard to ignore the possibility of having lost the one thing that he kept fighting for. But he couldn't ignore it. Not anymore. And he knew, that until he saw Fu again, until he found out definitively whether or not he had, that possibility, that fear, would haunt his every waking moment as much as the killing did.

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