A hollow boom, not unlike thunder, resounds through the air, making the earth tremble and the buildings shake. Kakashi darts to the window and Snake looks over her shoulder curiously, her hands continuing to tighten the wires that bound Otsu's hands and fingers tightly. He won't be escaping anytime soon, securely tied as he is to a chair.
"There's a huge cloud of dust," Kakashi mutters, squinting at the skyline through the rain-speckled glass.
The smoke bomb from their fight earlier has settled, leaving a fine layer of powder on every possible surface. The corpses are lined up in the far corner of the room, each covered with thin blankets taken from the bunk beds. In the en suite, a drenched pile of ash sits on the scorched shower tiles, the only evidence of the documents that Kakashi has already memorised sans overtaxed Sharingan.
"Are their pets fighting again?"
Kakashi snorts. "Maybe." Somehow, the Akatsuki has managed to summon a variety of humongous creatures to match Hanzou's salamander. From the ROOT outpost's elevated vantage point, they can often been seen clashing in the distance, just outside the confines of the city. The tremor this time is greater than any they've experienced before though, and Sakumo wonders what arcane jutsu the Akatsuki have utilised this time. With the Rinnegan in their possession, who knows what feats they are capable of?
Turning back to Snake, Kakashi gestures at their slumped prisoner with a jerk of his chin. "Are you sure you didn't kill him?"
She pats Otsu's stubbled cheek almost fondly, a crooked smile on her face. "Of course not." She had chosen another form again, this time with black-violet hair and round, hazel eyes. Having long since stopped questioning her choices, Kakashi merely passes her several senbon so she can twist her tresses up into a bun.
"Ready when you are," the white-haired jounin says, already pushing up hitai-ate to reveal his Sharingan.
Snake gives a curt nod back. "Take your time."
Kakashi flashes her an eye-smile before walking over to stand before Otsu, cupping his face with both hands and carefully lifting up Otsu's eyelids with his thumbs. He stares into the dark irises, Sharingan whirling, and goes completely still. He's under.
Ten minutes later, he pulls back, wincing as he closes his doujutsu eye again. "I need Inoichi. The Sharingan can only do so much."
"You got blocked again?" Snake asks in consternation. "So even his subconsciousness is shielded..."
"Unfortunately, mind-breaking is the province of Yamanakas. I can only manipulate his subconsciousness by genjutsu. He must willingly show me what he knows, but every time I get near to something suspicious, he realises even unconscious as he is." Pressing his fingers against Otsu's slack jaw to open his mouth, Kakashi peers into it. "It's that seal again. Right on his tongue."
Sighing, Snake cards her fingers through her hair. "So we'll need a Yamanaka and a fuinjutsu expert."
"Aren't you a fuinjutsu expert?"
"Ha! I'm flattered, but if that seal is anything like the one our last interviewee had, it'll take me at least a week."
"Hmm..." Hyaku says, her eyes bright and her fingers twitching.
Rin catches her wrist. "Don't mess with it," she warns. Hyaku subsides, not daring to contradict Rin when she has just come out of medical rant mode.
"I'll question him. He might be more amenable to talking to me since we have a history," Snake suggests, watching Otsu slowly resurface into consciousness. Kakashi raises an eyebrow but Snake just smirks. "Henge yourself."
When Otsu's eyes slit open, his dark irises fix upon Snake immediately. His face remains impassive and his posture slack, but the minute narrowing of his eyes betrays him. "Hinoto."
"Not anymore, now," she corrects with a sharp-toothed smile. Kakashi observes silently, filing away every piece of information behind attentive grey eyes.
"Ah, silly me. How could I forget how you betrayed all of us." Otsu's voice is flat.
At the dangerous look in his eye, Snake only steps closer, forcing him to crane his head to look at her. Her hands come to rest on on either side of the chair's back, bracketing him in with her arms. "No. It's Danzou who has betrayed us. After all these years, have you not realised?"
The lines bracketing his mouth deepen in a grimace. "You just want me to tell you what you need." His eyes flicker to Kakashi. "I felt your boy poking around in my mind, earlier." The corner of Otsu's mouth lifts slightly, but his eyes are dead. "You should have chosen a sweet dream instead of a nightmare, gaki. Nightmares only last for the night, but beautiful things can drive people mad."
Kakashi stares back, seemingly apathetic. "Very philosophical of you," he drawls.
The twitch under Otsu's eye makes Snake chuckle. "This is the end of the road, Otsu dear. I can't have you running back to Danzou anymore."
"You wish to protect your protégé," Otsu concludes stonily, his assessing gaze still trained on Kakashi. "Are you prepared to go so far?"
"I don't do things by halves. Now, you should know what that means..." Snake stabs a senbon into a pressure point at Otsu's thigh and the man's jerks, his face tensing in mute agony. After the first sharp inhale, he exhales a shaky but measured breath, his chest falling slowly.
"It won't work," he murmurs, glaring at Snake. "The seal... It only breaks upon Danzou-sama's death. If I say anything incriminating, it'll paralyse me. I'm sure you've tried all you can with the other ROOT agents you've captured." They don't deny it. Snake pulls the bloodied senbon out and Otsu's eyes slide half-shut, his brows drawn tight. "It's your fault, you know," he chuckles breathlessly, peering at Snake with a look of faint amusement. "Danzou-sama came up with this seal because you spilled everything to your dear Hatake-taichou."
Both Sakumo and Kakashi stiffen at the mention of their surname. 'Yoriko!'
"Maa, it couldn't be helped," Snake says blithely. "She was such a good listener." She smiles widely as she plucks a kunai from her thigh holster. "I'm afraid I'm not as patient as she was. There are other ways for you to answer other than verbally. C'mon, for old time's sake?"
Otsu just looks at her, his face a mask of impassivity. "You speak as if we were friends."
"Even I know that you're too emotionally constipated for that." Twirling her kunai by it's ring-pommel, Snake straightens once more. "So here's how it goes. I'll beat you to pulp, you'll threaten to run to Danzou and tell on me, I'll break another finger or two, and you'll give in. How nostalgic, yes?"
To Sakumo's surprise, Otsu actually smiles at that. It's barely a twitch of his lips, but there's a glint in his eyes that speaks of genuine mirth. "That's hardly accurate, Hinoto." His smile grows into a grin, a strange grin that sits on his face like a foreign, uncomfortable thing. "But I'll let you win this time. Three questions."
"This whole thing is their odd way of saying goodbye," Sakumo muses with an odd feeling of melacholy. "From the very start, he hadn't been antagonistic." They had both been in ROOT. One had gotten away; one hadn't. And now the circumstances had brought them back together in the worst, but only, way.
Snake starts to question him in a vague, fanciful way, hoping that that will avoid triggering the seal.
"Do you think snakes can adopt children?" A nod.
"That hat — do you think it clashes with yellow hair?" Another nod.
"What about red hair?" A pause, then a slow nod.
"One more," Kakashi pipes up saying. Sighing, Otsu grunts "fine". "Are leaves part of a salamander's diet?" A shake of the head.
"No more questions, now." Otsu narrows his eyes at both Snake and Kakashi. "Hinoto, I don't want to see your ugly mug anytime soon."
Snake's expression softens into something genuine and sad. "As if I'd want to see you either."
She forms the handseals for a Raiton.
A/N: Hey everyone! :) As the Ame arc draws to a close, I have an important question to ask you all!
Should Naruto be able to see ghosts? Theory wise, it'll be possible because of the bit of Minato's chakra left in Naruto. This will have implications on Ghost's plot, e.g. Naruto will get a bit more screen-time and there'll be moments of kid-fic style fluff. But overall, Ghost will remain an angsty Kakashi-centric story and Kakashi won't realise Naruto's ability until he's like, 20.
Tell me what you think! If you don't have an account here, you can still leave a guest review. And if you have an ff net account, you can also vote at the poll I've set up on my profile!
I'd love to hear from you all :D
Random unimportant stuff:
Remember what I said in Ch46 about 甲乙丙丁...etc being the way Danzou names his ROOT agents? So apparently he uses the kunyomi reading for the characters, but I messed up with google translate and used onyomi for 乙 (Otsu's name) instead. If I had followed the kunyomi reading, he should have been Kinoto instead. Haha. Anyway, not changing anything.
For Snake, Otsu refers to her as 丁 (Hinoto).
And after doing more research, I realised that 甲乙丙丁...etc are also used in the "sexagenary cycle" which is a traditional Chinese method of recording days and years.