Chapter 3: Settling In
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It didn't take more than a week for Harry to realize that the tasks of gathering information wouldn't be easy, mainly because every single kid was swamped with the training regimen, himself included. That and also it turned out that neither of the kids remembered their original names. They did admit they met with a shinobi that had mind jutsu, so it seemed pretty obvious that their names had been erased. Strangely enough they still remembered some of their life before being brought to the root 'academy', but even those details were slowly disappearing.
It didn't take long to become clear to everyone with a functioning brain that they were being rushed into becoming child soldiers and not every kid was doing ok with it. This was most easily noticed in the kindest kids. This place was slowly killing away their kindness and though some persisted, most of them were becoming damaged.
It was also because of this added stress that soon they realized that one of the kids had a rather unstable power right off the bat.
When kids started getting sick, no one really paid much attention to it. They were such simple symptoms that no one thought something more serious was afoot, especially with the added stress of that first week. After all, nausea, vomiting and lack of appetite could easily be explained away with anxiety and stress and even some depression.
In a matter of days the affected kids were presenting signs of dehydration, unexplained confusion and infections, not to mention the odd bleeding. When examined, the kids showed signs of strange growths starting to form and some erratic DNA changes. Upon examining how they were grouped at night, the scientists realized they were all regulars that slept around a specific kid.
He codename was Gensui, she was 6 years-old and had a whitish hair with just a tint of green to it and deep burgundy eyes.
With time, as the scientist described the symptoms form the kids, Harry realized that what they were describing resembled the effects of radiation on people. He quickly concluded that Shinobi did not know what radiation was, which in a way was a relief… except that now they had no way to properly combat their effects.
Gensui, whose codename was oddly appropriate since her powers did cause decay, was contained in isolation for a while until they managed to find out what was setting them off. They realized they were set off by agitated feelings, so they rushed her into the mental conditioning program.
By the end of the ordeal, seven of the 63 kids were dead and the least sick of the bunch, a 5 year-old kid codenamed Shin, managed to survive barely.
While Gensui was away, the kids were slowly set in pairs. Though they would also be training with the others, they would spend most of their time with their partner.
Yon and Go got paired together. The Shin kid got paired with an artsy type codenamed Sai, another 5-year-old that was weirdly pale skinned with inky black eyes and hair. And it seemed that, when she returned, Gensui would be partnered with Kyoukan, a 8-year-old with silver eyes, pastel orange hair and a red birthmark right under his right eye who, like his code name indicated, was an empath which made him the best possible partner for Gensui until she got used to her powers since he would know when to get out of her way.
As for Harry himself, he had the worst luck of getting paired with Kutsuu.
Kutsuu was a 9-year-old girl with thick dark green hair and crimson hooded eyes whose bloodline limit was pain. Not on herself, no. She caused pain on others simply by channeling her chakra through their bodies. Sparring with her was like dueling Bellatrix Lestrange on a Cruciatus spree. Almost every time she touched him her felt as if he'd been hit by the curse. She could even use it defensively as he got a hit if she realized it soon enough.
At least she wasn't nearly as sadistic as Bellatrix. Well… not yet anyway. She was still loyal to Harry to a fault since she knew he was the only way out of there and did treat him like a little brother at times, though it was the sort of sibling relationship that existed in a very messed up family since she counted her power as pranks… and she thought herself quite the joker. But don't be mistaken, buzzers had nothing on her chakra pain.
Fortunately, Harry managed to keep his little sisters away from her. She paid it no mind since most kids avoided her after a while anyway.
At times Harry couldn't help but pity her, since she grew up in the environment where pain was the norm. Her parents probably did the same things to her that she did to him simply because it was normal for them. Harry was pretty sure that her kekkei genkai was one of the major reasons for the purge in Kirigakure where'd she hailed from.
On another note, Harry finally managed to piece out more about the world and where they were approximately.
With so many kids from so many places, Harry managed to write down an overview of each one. It was how he found out about Kiri's bloodline purges in the first place, after all. But the one who gave him the biggest clue as to where they were was Negai.
Negai was a 7-year-old girl was a brown haired, brown eyes girl with tan skin. She was the only one who best resisted the mind wiping justu because it turned out she was born out of wedlock from one Yamanaka parent, which was the clan where all the mind jutsu used on them came from. While she didn't get the same prowess in the mind arts, she did get some interesting powers from mixing the Yamanaka blood to an outcast and weaker branch of the Kurama clan.
She had the power to project an astral body for her. While that body seemed to be invisible to the others, Harry could see her and she looked only slightly more solid than a ghost, and far more colorful too. While in her astral form, her hair went from a limp brown to fluffy cotton-candy pink and her sad brown eyes turned to wide pink gems, far more cheerful than the ones in her body.
Her powers aside, she was the biggest clue because she saw Danzou before she was locked down there with them. She told him that he was part of the Konoha council, basically a big shot in the political scene.
It figures that, even in a new world, Harry would have to deal with political berks. Fudge and Scrimgeour hadn't been enough already.
The odd think about this information, however, was that Konoha was know for it's less violent philosophies so either this was an underground movement approved by the Hokage, the biggest big shot in the political arena when it came to Konoha, and they were being kept as a secret weapon that the public was completely unaware of… or Danzou was planning something without the Hokage's knowledge, maybe even overthrowing him when he gathered enough men for his army.
This left them all with a big decision to make: where would they relocate to once they escaped.
Experience told Harry that it was practically impossible to move a group as large as theirs undetected all at once. Their best bet was finding a place nearby that neither Danzou or anyone else could ever hope to come across. Part of that would involve Harry attempting to cast a spell that he only read about before out of curiosity.
While traveling in search of Horcruxes, especially after Ron had abandoned them, Harry did spend a lot of time reading and, out of curiosity, he'd searched for the Fidelus charm. After having so much of his life tied to that charm in one way or another, he felt he had to know more about it. He had to know how it worked, the way it could be broken, the specifics of how to transfer the secret from a keeper to several other's after the initial one's death and trying to understand why they couldn't have recast the Fidelus on Grimmauld Place after Dumbledore's death.
He now knew how it worked and the basics of casting one, but that was still a long way off from actually being able to preform it. Besides, knowing how to hide it didn't help them find the new place any easier. And Harry wasn't too sure on casting a Fidelus to hide a place that could very much be merely temporary. After all, not only would the charm need great amounts of energy, but unless Harry deliberately told the secret to all of Konoha, that lot would forever remain undiscovered and there was still the chance that the place could have far reaching consequences if it remained so. unknown to him like a deposit of underground water that was infected and ended up leaking to the village's water supply or something of the sort.
But after that temporary place, where would they go?
Most of the girls, especially Shirayuki and Kutsuu who came from renown Kiri clans, refused to go anywhere near Kumo because of its breeding program for bloodline renewal and Harry couldn't blame them. He looked at his own sisters and knew for a fact that he wouldn't let them endure what their mothers had endured.
Kiri was also out of question. Not only was there a civil war breaking out, but with the whole bloodline purge going on and many of the kids came from bloodline clans. Kusa and Ame were victims of plenty of invasions and even if there was peace right now, it was the matter of one if the big shots getting to frisky with another country for something to break out.
There were several other smaller countries they didn't have enough information on, so they were counted out for now. Of the bigger ones, there wasn't any kid from Iwa, so they weren't too sure about how things worked around there, and for Suna, Harry didn't think a desert would be too good an idea but he didn't take it out as of yet.
There was Wave Country, too. They were small, but they didn't have a shinobi village of their own and their group wasn't so large that they couldn't hide there.
Niji, a 8-year-old boy with red hair and heterochromia that could create chains of chakra, did tell them of hearing about a former shinobi village from who he thought might have been his mother, but wasn't too sure. Harry pieced out that it might have been Uzushio, but he didn't think it was a good idea to go to a ghost town since they would only have themselves to turn it into a working village and they didn't have enough know-how to make it work completely independent of anyone else. Just setting trading routes to that specific place would ring too many alarms from the very people they wanted to avoid.
There was also the fact that they didn't know enough about Konoha itself to know for sure how they would react to their existence. If the Hokage was in on the plan, they would just be recaptured and returned to the root lab/academy and Harry didn't like what he'd heard about reconditioning.
For now, due to the lack of knowledge of the geography in the area, as well as the politics, the plan would be put on hold.
Things slowly started settling down after a while and, after three months of absence, Gensui returned, but… Harry didn't know that her powers could ever work on herself the way they had…
The previously intact little girl now looked like her whole left side had shriveled up to her skeleton. Her left eyes, previously with a perfectly white sclera and bright burgundy iris, was now highly bloodshot and had a opaque white film on the iris and pupil. The left side of her face looked like it had been burned off and the skin it did had stuck close to her bone structure. A bit of her hair had also fallen on that side, and though most of her body was covered, Harry could see by her left hand that it also looked similar to her face, her tendons standing out, clearly visible through her now translucent skin. Of the shy girl there wasn't much left and her eyes looked like those of a dead fish.
Now, more than ever, Harry feared conditioning.
Thankfully, Kyoukan seemed to know how to handle her somewhat. It seemed that, despite their 'training' having muted her emotions, Kyoukan could still read them clearly enough to help her through this new change. At least it was safe to stay near Gensui now, and it ever became unsafe, Kyoukan would warn them.
Or so it was supposed to be.
Since Kyoukan couldn't stay near her twenty-four/seven, especially when he had to take care of his hygiene, there was bound to be an accident. Unfortunately, Sai managed to accidentally say the wrong thing and it must have awakened a memory from the conditioning in Gensui as her power was momentarily out of control and the girl nearest to her, a 9-year-old codenamed Datenshi with coal black hair and eyes, and yellowish parchment like skin, ended up with half of her face looking like it melted and a few extra perks in for of ink related powers.
Because it was accidental, Gensui wasn't taken to the conditioning room again, but Datenshi gained and unhealthy hatred to Sai that remained even after he apologized. Instead she gained another personality that named herself Arison that was somehow able to control ink into making her look like she was never injured in the first place. The irony was that the Datenshi personality was the one that was vain and she couldn't control ink well enough for that. She was also mean and manipulative while Arison was nicer and a hard worker with a good instinct for taijustu and weapon handling, especially when it came to maces and hammers.
Harry tried his hardest on keeping everyone calm and turning them into a cohesive unit if just to get them out as early as possible, but the interpersonal relationships in the group were messing it all up. Datenshi's and Sai's relationship of onesided hatred was just one of many.
By the end of the first year, Kutsuu had tortured another girl so much that she'd done a one-eighty personality wise.
The girl, a then 9-year-old codenamed Chiame with long black hair, dark gray doe-eyes and pale skin, when from a sweet and caring girl to an outright sadistic one that became an expert in torturing and manipulating and Harry couldn't have done anything because the root instructors were there and not only had allowed it, but they also had encouraged it.
On another more positive note, Harry had managed to amass enough chakra to safely be able of making a single Kage Bunshin, not that any of the root instructors even knew that he'd sneak out the indications on how to do it during chakra theory studies.
It wasn't much, and the Kage Bunshin couldn't use magic himself because Harry's magic was linked to his soul and the chakra construct didn't have one, despite having a copy of his creator's personality, so he had to borrow the invisibility cloak and wait for Harry to place Notice-Me-Not and Soundless charms. Despite the disadvantages, a Kage Bunshin would be a great addition in their quest to find a suitable place for them to stay after escaping. He could also map out the facilities and find plants for other ones that Danzou might have and, with a clever disguise, might even infiltrate the village to find out more information. It was still a long way before they could escape, but at least now they could start planning some things that they didn't have enough information to do before.
Soon…
Soon they would be free.
Harry would make sure of it.
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A/N:
So, I had to re-write this chapter several times, and I'm still not completely happy with it. The problem I had with this chapter was that I had to introduce several new characters all at once (warning: not all of the ones I introduced will live), and there are still several others that will contribute in some way to the plot perhaps I shouldn't have tried to rush this first year in 'root academy' so much to give time for friendships to blossom and that's on me, but I wanted to set down some of the more relevant things to happen, mainly the ones regarding Gensui's powers and how they affected those around her, as well as Kutsuu's (because she is Harry's partner).
So, to keep everyone of them in line, here are the ones introduced to us thus far:
Gensui (final look inspired in Hela from Norse Mythology, has power of Nuclear Radiation and controls it with her feelings, gets paired up with an empath for obvious reasons);
Shin (you know him, he's Sai's first and best friend,, this time his sickness correlates to radiation sickness that wasn't properly healed both due to lack of knowledge and, more importantly, lack of care for what repercussions he might have, gets paired up with Sai);
Yon (One of Harry's sisters, mother unknown, definitely has a bloodline but... could she have two!? who knows! Gets paired up with her sister;)
Go (One of Harry's sisters, mother unknown, definitely has a bloodline but... could she have two!? who knows! Gets paired up with her sister;)
Sai (You defenitely know him, he joins team seven in shippuden, he isn't yet as socially retarded as he is in shippuden, but he still has a bit of it, gets paired with Shin);
Kyoukan (I didn't inspire his looks on anyone in particular, I just wanted and empath on the team for reasons and after I developed Gensui I had even more reasons to have him here, gets paired up with Radiation girl);
Kutsuu (well, I think it's pretty obvious in whom I was inspired by for this one, and her power is definitely the shinobi equivalent of the cruciatus curse, fortunatly it's still just a fraction of a real cruciatus or Harry wouldn't handle any sort of sparring with her);
Negai (someone once told me it would be a good idea to inspire my OCs inalready existing characters, well, here you have one inspired by Dreaming Mary, both in looks as well as powers, her back story isn't the same, though; she's partnered with unintroduced character with a canon kekkei genkai);
Shirayuki (Mentioned only, but she is the girl that screamed back at Harry last chapter, she has a canon kekkei genkai and gets paired up Niji);
Niji (has chakra chains, his looks and some of his powers were inspired in a free online platform game named Rainbow, gets paired up with Shirayuki);
Datenshi (Inspired in Twisted Angel/Allison Angel from Bendy's ink machine, Sai sort of becomes her 'Bendy' in a way, gets paired up with Chiame);
Chiame (inspired by Sachiko from Corpse Party, gets paired up with Datenshi);
Jyuu San (Harry's codename, paired up with Kutsuu).
