Chapter 4: Blood in the Water
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As Harry had his clone working tirelessly into finding the perfect spot to hide the kids without being noticed by anyone, things started progressing in the training. Progressing in a way Harry didn't like in the least.
First the paired battles started. Usually no one was fighting their own partner, the only exceptions being his sisters because they, aside from himself, where the only ones in that age group. And because Harry was too powerful for them, their only option was fighting each other. But aside from that, they usually sparred kids from other partnerships. It was, after all, how Chiame had been 'broken' in the first place.
And perhaps things would have remained peaceful, but the Danzou ordered for them to start fighting 'live prey'. With that dehumanizing expression, he meant that the foundation would bring captured enemy shinobi of all classes for them to fight to the death. They started with captured genin which, apparently, was the lowest rank.
It wasn't anything they were too weak to fight. After all, as much as the man wanted the very best 'operatives', even he knew that he had to build them up to that point instead of immediately dumping them against a S-rank nin. He couldn't develop strong operatives if he gave them impossible challenges right away.
He started by only giving the 'living prey' to the oldest kids. Unfortunately, he started taking skill into account and, as much as Harry had tried to downplay his skills, he was still among the best despite still being 3 or 4 years old. He wasn't even sure how old he was. It was hard to keep track of dates in this hell hole. It was only because of Negai's ability that they even kept up with what month it was, but Harry didn't even know his birthday so all he could say was that he was either 3 or 4.
Be that as it may, he was still skilled and, when the first few kids got bloodied for the first time, proving that they were capable enough of it, soon Danzou turned towards all the most skilled kids regardless of age. He did like his 'prodigies'.
Harry barely had any time to help the newly-traumatized older kids with their nightmares and survivor's guilt when he was brought out to his own death battle.
And Harry couldn't help but see a terrified tween in front of him. Skilled, yes, but still terrified. He tried not to kill him, keeping to a defensive strategy, but Danzou, who had come to watch, was having none of it and declared loudly that if the kid killed Harry, they would let him go.
Now, that was definitely a lie. The kid in front of him probably suspected as much too. But it was still the only other option he had available. They both were quick to come to the conclusion that avoiding killing would probably bring worse things to them, especially since the 'big bad' was going out of his way to incentivize them into murder.
Harry could see the moment his opponent reached the same conclusion a he did and, while Harry still very much wanted to avoid killing, he could also see plain as day that the other was desperate enough to try killing a toddler over it, if just to make sure that route was still accessible.
After that, Harry had no choice. It was either stand there and let himself be killed, or do the killing himself.
He hastily pondered whether he could just maim the oponent bad enough so that he couldn't attack him anymore, but he knew Danzou's MO to an extent. The kid would either be left to slowly die in excruciating pain right where he fell or used as target practice for older operatives.
And if it were just him on the line, perhaps Harry wouldn't have minded dying. He'd done it before: dying for others. And he was mentally older than the kid in front of him so he couldn't help but feel responsible for him.
But it wasn't just him on the line. It was all the other kids stuck there who were counting on him to get free. For the first time Harry understood Dumbledore's dilemma. He'd had vague notions about it before, but this was the first time he'd actually have to weigh the life of one, one that wasn't himself, against the life of many. The greater good.
And between both options, Harry preferred saving the kids he already knew.
So, he swallowed all of his emotions and focused on the basic anatomic knowledge he had.
The slash was quick.
It was easier than he'd thought. No different than cutting meat for his Aunt Petunia's dinners.
The only thing he hadn't expected was for the blood to splash all over him like the goriest bath he'd have been in. He hadn't counted for some of it to fall into his open panting mouth.
And then, as the body fell, all the emotions he'd shut down just for the sake of this swift kill slammed into him as the horror of what he'd just done, along with the feeling of warm irony red and sticky liquid drying all over him and the taste of fresh blood in his mouth made him vomit right where he stood.
He was near catatonic for the rest of the day, still battling himself over what he'd done. He logically knew that he'd had no other choice available, he logically knew that what was done was done and nothing could change it, but the fact that he'd had to take a life still lit a raging inferno within him that consumed him completely.
It wasn't until the day was ending and the other 'bloodied' kids came to talk to him that he finally calmed down and his guilt eased. He hadn't blamed the other for surviving, why should he blame himself. Instead of dwelling on it he should be finding a solution so that it didn't happen again.
He looked back on the realization he'd had during the battle.
He could understand Dumbledore's choosing the wizarding world's wellbeing over that of a 15-month-old baby to an extent, now. It still didn't justify him abandoning him to Aunt Petunia's 'mercies'. Unlike Harry, who was powerless, Dumbledore had enough power, both in a literal sense as well as politically, that he could have ensured that his blood relatives never got as bad as they did.
Perhaps he still wouldn't have been loved, but at the very least he would have been truly protected.
So yeah, he could understand in part, but he still felt he had reasons to feel betrayed.
Harry took a good look at the kids in the dormitory.
These were the people he was responsible for. They were like him: powerless before Danzou's authority.
They had no money, they had no lands; they had no homes; they didn't have enough chakra; they didn't have enough knowledge; most didn't even have names. If they wanted to get out of this, they would have to be cunning.
Harry tried to build up his chakra reserves to be able to make to multiple clones instead of one. Whenever he wasn't doing that, he was trying to come up with ways to save their 'live prey' without letting foundation know, or crafting spells that would be useful for building their first home base.
He didn't have much in the way of expansion charms. And his Fidelus Charm training was slow going.
Finally, he hit jackpot in a place that no one would have suspected. There was a natural small cave system not far from the village. There was even a tunnel that ended just inside the village walls on the back of what he assume was a forested training groud due to all of the kunai marks the trees had in them from what he could see. Harry was sure that the shinobi and the foundation already knew of it, but, because of the way the cave was set, they didn't feel it was useful for anything. Even trying to build on it was dangerous because the slightest vibration could make it fall apart. Truthfully too dangerous to build on. And the exit to the village was covered with seals to prevent anyone with unrecognized chakra from using it, further proving his point
But then again, they didn't have a wizard with them to make changing the walls safe. And there were kids like Niji that knew seals in his group. If everything else failed, Harry could just magic up something to keep the exit from collapsing.
Once Harry finally got the hang of the Fidelus and the few expansion charms he knew, along with spells to fortify the brittle walls and move the think roots of the enormous trees out of the way, they would have the perfect place to escape to.
So that became his new personal project.
He started by casting an anti-muggle ward on the whole cave. Notice-me-not wards might work with civilians, but not on shinobi. They were too observant. Harry had tested it before with the foundation's instructors using non-suspicious things. He was quick to realize they started upping their training after the first few times not noticing a workbook, or a calligraphy brush by their feet and almost tripping on it.
The training wouldn't work much on the warded object, but it could mean the difference between successfully escaping and ruining everything, so he stopped testing that ward.
The anti-muggle one, however… Anything he'd warded with it became practically intangible to them, if just because they were constantly distracted by something else they suddenly remembered they needed to do that was more important than the warded object was. The best part was that Harry was the only magical being in this whole world, meaning he was the only one that wouldn't be repelled by the wards.
So, the next available night, he dashed towards the cave using his invisibility and while leaving a clone in his place just to set that ward up. The fact that it was a place that, in itself, wasn't used much, meant that it would be a long time before anyone tried to see if it was unchanged and unused.
Harry wasn't surprised at that. The seals they used on the entrance leading inside the walls were pretty complex. He didn't need to know fuuinjustu to see that much. And they were old too, which meant that not only had they been placed a long time ago, they also had to be pretty strong to last this long without someone breaking them, meaning they were placed by a master of this craft.
Aside from placing the anti-muggle ward around the entrance, Harry decided to steer far away from it for now.
There was only one problem with this ward, as he came to find out. His clone had no magic so he couldn't find this place by himself, so Harry either had to work in this at night while his clone slept in his stead, or he had to very quickly Apparate inside the cave to leave him there before Apparating back into a preemptively warded area that muted the sound of it.
It was tiring, because a lot of what had to be done in the cave needed magic, which his clone couldn't do, so he had to pull a lot of all-nighters, leaving minimal work that could be accomplished with chakra for his clone.
As if that wasn't enough of a work load on him, things started going wrong with the kids.
Kutsuu was becoming more and more bloodthirsty, but that didn't surprise him. While he'd managed to verify that, despite her several resemblances, his partner wasn't, in fact, Bellatrix's reincarnation, she had enough of a fucked up past, even before being brought here, that she really wasn't what one would call well adjusted. And since she was one of the better fighters because of her bloodline limit, she was constantly being put to battle with 'live prey', which only exacerbated the issue.
While before her pokes of pain used to be more a fuck up sort of child play to her when she first got here, it slowly started becoming a sadistic sort of pleasure, culminating in what she'd done to Chiame.
For a while, after having broken the younger girls mind, Kutsuu had been broody and more hesitant in her attacks, having realized what she'd been turned into. But then the 'live prey' were brought in and whatever process she'd been going through to cope with all of this was torn to shreds, breaking the girl's mind almost as badly as her victim's.
Things were becoming worse in the dormitories. Chiame was developing some sort of Stockholm syndrome for one of the female instructors who she seemed to believe was her mother as a way to cope with everything that had happened to her. Kutsuu, on the other hand, was finding petty reasons on why she wanted to use her bloodline on the others.
Things came to a halt with her when she used it on the wrong person.
Shinku was a strange case for the whole group of children. They were a 9-year-old kid with tan, sort of yellowish, skin with thick brown hair cut in a bob and squinty eyes. Harry wasn't quite sure if they were male or female, but any attempt the other kids made on finding out was met with and annoyed look. The kids eventually found out they were a boy, but the mere fact that they seemed to dislike that designation influenced many of the kids to continue calling them by gender neutral pronouns.
But that wasn't the problem. The thing that truly set them apart was their defensive style of fighting. Usually, the instructors immediately started squashing out those fanciful ideals but they never did it with them, instead enforcing a more rigorous training on their partner.
It hadn't been until a full three months in that Harry realized that this mute and squinty eyed kid seemed to have some sort of precog ability. Somehow there were days where they seemed to know what was going to happen, almost as if they'd seen it happen before.
An ability like that was one that Danzou was sure to want to protect to the best of his abilities. After all, if he managed to get them to learn how to control their power, he could assure several situations where he'd get the very best outcome for his goals. And this was why he didn't mind that Shinku was strictly a defensive fighter. So long as he got good enough at defending himself, what did Danzou care?
Instead, Danzou had asked his instructors to be ruthless with the gentle child's partner.
Kyara hadn't been anything too special when they'd first gotten here. They were a pale kid with a terrible case of rosacea on their cheeks, reddish brown hair cut in a bob, and startlingly crimson eyes. They'd been one of the opportunistic catches the foundation had gotten, much like Shin was. Just a previously civilian kid that had no special powers, but that would still be used as canon fodder for this hell hole.
Like Shinku, Kyara had kept their gender quiet. Unlike them, Kyara was successful at it.
In the beginning Kyara had been a sweet child, as concerned with the others as Harry had been. But then the training began and the instructors had killed something inside them, something that made them a normal then 9-year-old.
While all of them were slowly being turned into weapons, Kyara was indoctrinated that mentality early on. They were now a 10-year-old fighting machine who only seemed to have two modes: Standby and Murder.
Standby was the most human they were allowed to be. This was visible whenever they sparred with Shinku, slowly going at it stronger so as to teach them how to better defend themselves. They also helped Harry with the younger kids in this mode, though they retained a blank facial expression all the time.
Murder was what happened whenever the instructors told them to attack the 'live prey' or, as Harry came to find out, when defending Shinku. In this mode they maintained a 'Joker-eske' smile on their face all the time as they ruthlessly and viciously murdered their target.
While scary, that had been fine for the most part. At least they weren't attacking the other kids like Kutsuu was.
But then Kutsuu messed up. She decided it would be a good idea to put the weakling in 'his' place by trying to force him to fight back and had attacked Shinku. Before Harry could intervene, Kyara had jumped her as fast as an offended hippogriff and viciously started slashing at her with a kunai, wicked smile in place as their red, red eyes almost seemed to glow maniacally. Even after she was already dead Kyara kept stabbing her for a few seconds more as if to ensure she was well and truly killed.
Then, smile still in place, they headed out of the dorms towards one of the guards.
"Greetings!" They said. "There is a messy situation needing a clean up in the dorms. Please inform the people it pertains to."
And with that they went into the bathroom to clean themselves up, no remorse or guilt in their face. Just pure unaltered glee at having preformed their task.
Things were tense after that. Even Harry was more cautious around Kyara after that.
He just didn't know how to feel about what happened. on one hand he understood that what she was doing was wrong, on the other all he could see was a kid younger than him that couldn't cope with what was happening to her and that perhaps might have gotten better if only she just got out of this toxic environment so that she could finally start the end he could only feel regret and a bit of grief. Despite how many time's she'd hurt him, he still cared a bit for her. He'd spent too much time getting to know her as his partner not to feel some kinship towards her. He was the only one who would grieve for her, though. And he didn't blame the others for not feeling the same.
The only exceptions to the general fear and caution were Shinku, who was Kyara's partner, and a guy codenamed Tori.
Tori was an oddball. Way too nice and easily taken advantage of if you talked to him nicely. He was a now 11-year-old with messy, constantly windswept black hair, dark vibrant blue eyes set in a pale, almost white, skined face, thick rectangular glasses and a bit of an overbite. He was taken because he showed some ability in controlling the wind, even when he wasn't paying attention to his own actions and he was the most cheerful fellow in the group and, sometimes, it seemed he was the only one keeping everyone's spirits up when even Harry started flagging.
He was also one of the people that Harry could count on to lead the others, or at least keep them emotionally stable, when Harry was busy coming up with plans to rescue them or researching something they would need. He didn't even seem to realize what he was doing, but fact was that it worked.
He was basically a smarter and more loyal golden retriever and, considering that breed was already pretty smart and loyal, that was saying something.
So, while Harry was still very much cautious of Kyara, he knew that so long as Tori or Kyoukan (yet another person that Harry trusted to keep things afloat in his absence) were around them, he knew things would be fine.
This still didn't change the facts: He needed to hurry up with the escape plan and he needed to do it soon.
Already he felt phantom sensations of drying sticky blood in his hands from the kills he was forced to make and if he could spare even just one child from this, from becoming mad from the bloodshed, he would.
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A/N:
Sorry for the long wait. Once again this chapter seems to me a bit rushed but hopefully the next one comes out better anyway, here's an updated list of the characters:
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. despite her resemblances she isn't, in fact, Bellatrix's reincarnation); Status: dead
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, has Stokolm syndrome with one of the instructors and calls her mom);
Shinku (based on Frisk from Undertale; mute; gender neutral but biologically male; seems to have precog abilities and doesn't like fighting);
Kyara (based on Chara from Undertale, still good with knives, still messed up from their death, even if this time is the methaforical death of their innocence rather than a literal one);
Tori (based on John Egbert from Homestuck);
Jyuu San (Harry's codename, paired up with Kutsuu).
