Lyssophobia

:fear of dealing with insanity

Everyone's chakra system is inherently different; some complex, some simple, some weak, some strong. Any good ninja knows a strong chakra system is the primary base for truly powerful ninjutsu. The most complicated system he'd ever seen belonged to Uzumaki Naruto. It was the reason he'd missed that first tenketsu in the Chuunin Exams three years ago. There was a direct correlation. Naruto also had the most chakra of any person he'd ever seen. As a rule the more chakra you have, the more complicated your inner system.

Anatomically most Hyuuga have simple chakra systems, not for lack of chakra, but for efficiency. Byakugan is the one doujutsu which allows the user to manipulate their own chakra system. This ability to shape the coil-system is part of the reason Hyuuga ninja, despite having less chakra, can and do outlast their opponents. While others expend unnecessary amounts of energy routing their power through overly complex systems, a Hyuuga's inner chakra pathways are lazy, minimalist, taking the least amount of effort possible to summon up their power.

Therefore he was more than aware that something was glaringly wrong with him. (It seemed everything was glaringly wrong with him, lately.)

He'd tried to quicken the regeneration of some damaged chakra paths through his shoulder (hoping to catch his captors off guard. They'd never suspect he was almost well enough to break a wall down). This is when he discovered the wrong. His inner coil system, usually pristine and unassailable inside the warm, flesh and blood of his body, was suddenly all kinds of haywire. Like a series of firecrackers had gone off throughout his system, sudden random ricochets of chakra branched madly like weeds from between cracks in a well-worn road, strands of bluish ivy flung out into his skin.

Neji couldn't explain the sudden spiral of uncontrollable growth. Inner coil systems grow with chakra, a process that takes months, even years, of training and experience to achieve. One simply did not have a chakra 'growth spurt'. It just didn't happen. Raised Hyuuga, Neji grew up not liking surprises. This is probably why despite being friends with them, he doesn't like Naruto or Lee, however that works. This inexplicable chakra increase made no sense, therefore he didn't like it. It was just another freakish mutation that he didn't want or need to make this whole 'escape in one piece' thing work out like he wanted.

Kabuto would have a field day if he found out.

- - -

It was nearly four when Neji noticed they had company. It came to him as more of a feeling than anything – the shinobi 'someone's-gonna-stab-you-lots' sense again. Then he took it on himself to more closely inspect the forest around him and discovered a pair of fast moving blurs zipping and darting about in the underbrush. Jounin. A-class. He pretended, of course, that he hadn't noticed and was about snap and click 'enemy' to his team when Nishi began to whistle 'I'm Happy Go Lucky' to herself. A popular civilian pop-song of the month, and the random normalcy of it struck a funny chord in Neji's gut. Her genin peers immediately gaped at her and even Neji turned his head to stare.

Nishi continued to whistle – rather a bit too innocently – and rolled her eyes pointedly to her left before sneaking in a quick click-snap:

'Enemy.'

Well, she beat me to it. Instantly the two other students grew narrow-eyed and alert. Neji merely arched a brow at Nishi because somehow a rookie genin had just detected two dead-silent jounin class ninja running through the surrounding foliage.

"Sound-code?" Minami hissed urgently.

"They're coming at us. Don't bother."

Nishi gripped her sister's hand reflexively, eyes huge.

"Oh no."

Neji's Byakugan came violently active. "You three Body Flicker! Now!"

"What? Why –?" Tachi began, but it was too late.

The two jounin crashed through the canopy, hurling shuriken in a hundred whining swarms at the four Sound shinobi. Minami and Nishi caught spinning razor edges in the gut and throat, before popping into two stumpy looking logs. (Neji suspected strongly that Nishi was responsible for her sister's speedy getaway) This gave Neji time to lunge left and tackle Tachi off the branch he'd frozen on. He snatched the skinny genin up like a particularly annoying sack of rice and backhanded the incoming shuriken with messy Kaiten, pinning the boy against his chest while metal ricocheted and rocketed off his chakra like high-velocity silverware shot against a brick wall.

Recognizing what they were up against, the two jounin split up instantly to flank him and Neji spun, yanking Tachi behind him and putting child and genius back-to-back. Neji could feel the genin shaking behind him, two handfuls of shuriken clattering in his unsteady grasp. With reason, Neji consented. The two ninja bore no mark, only pair of featureless porcelain masks, slashed through with abrupt jags of red and black…the masks of hunter-nin.

Damn.

Tachi was breathing a little fast, chakra coursing heavily through his skinny body. Neji squeezed his arm slightly, never looking away from his opponent.

"Calm down," he murmured to the boy. "You're with me."

Tachi's note quavered as he whistled and clicked messily 'They are Cloud-nin.'

"Trust me…I know."

"Well, we're finding all kind of prizes today," mused the Red Stripe shinobi.

"Yes," said the Black Stripe. "What's a Konoha hawk doing so far from of its cage?"

"Oh God, the bird metaphors," Neji said loudly then blinked because he surprised himself with his own voice.

The Red Stripe – who seemed to have the sense of humor between the two – chuckled a little at that. "Well, well, this bird's kind of chatty."

Black Stripe was thoughtful. "If he's unbranded..."

"Can't tell," replied Red Stripe.

"We'll find out soon enough," answered Black.

"What the heck do you jerks want?!" Tachi blurted, interrupting the annoying back and forth conversation.

"I think you probably know," said Red Stripe. "Seeing how it's your family who did it."

The Black Stripe hunter-nin nodded to Tachi. "That child is a member of the Aori Clan. A traitor to his country and his hidden village, as – I might add – you appear to be, Hyuuga." The man dropped a summoning scroll into his palm. "You we can stand to have alive, if you wish, and the little genin girls may go too, as the Hidden Cloud has no interest in them." Neji watched tensely as the man unclipped the slap of his scroll. "The boy dies, however. All of the Aori clan is to die."

"Hmm," remarked Neji, kicking a shuriken loose from the branch at his foot.

Red Stripe had unstrapped a vicious looking kusurigama from his back and begun to swing the sickle blade lazily from its chain. "You are a user of a secret bloodline; you understand very well, do you not, Hyuuga-san?"

"Very well," he agreed, nodding, Byakugan blazing white hot and fire in his brain. "…which is why I would never let you take this child's life."

"Aww," sneer Red. "That's so –,"

Black Stripe didn't let the banter get any farther because he noticed that about twenty words previous Neji had body flickered. (The split second when he kicked the shuriken loose, their eyes had followed its flashing fall.) And just as the Black stripe ripped his scroll open the real Neji hurdled out of the ether and slammed a bone-shattering round house into Red Stripe's strong arm. The scream of pain jarred with the feral roar of the cougar summon and Neji barely body-flickered before the giant tawny cat sank its fangs into the hapless piece of wood. He darted down through the canopy, his opponents searching the leaves blindly, he seeing through them and laying trigger wire like fishing line behind him. Tangent to him, Nishi and Minami were standing hand-in-hand and clicking softly through the radio.

'Ready...Go? Go?'

Neji broke cover and lunged into the open air, chakra blazing down the wire like fire on threads of gasoline.

"NOW!"

The trigger-wire trap exploded out of the leaves, shimmering gossamer razor wire yanking closed so fast mind boggled. Black Stripe threw himself clear and Red Stripe managed to scramble under the deadly webbing, but only just into time to catch the twins as they lunged out of the underbrush, Minami spinning her sister like a bolo and hurling her, flaming chakra, into the belly of the gob-smacked jounin. Nishi hit him with expert timing, Sakura Haruno expert timing, energy bursting on exact contact the hitting the man with force equated only to a speeding freight train. Neji saw his jaw shatter the same instant he landed on the branch parallel the Black Stripe ninja. He was flanked instantly by the cougar summon on his left and for a moment the combatants slowed.

Black Stripe spared no attention for his comrade; he'd heard the gruesome crackle of bone and enamel.

"It was a mistake," Neji said softly. "Bringing a rookie on a mission like this."

"It was supposed to be a B-class mission," said Black Stripe bitterly. Neji could see him smiling through the mask, a sad and furious darkness. "Guess you never expect A-class clan members to be working the other side."

"You can turn and leave now," Neji offered. "Your partner is dead and Tachi just caught your summon in his hypnosis."

Black Stripe glanced almost casually over. Tachi was inching along the branch toward the monstrous animal, hands out, yellow eyes wide and glowing radio-active yellow in the dim shadows of the trees. The cougar was growling low and anxiously, but suffering from erratic muscle twitches indicative of having been mentally paralyzed. Neji was familiar with the feeling and sympathized. Black Stripe sighed and tilted his head back, inspecting the trees in a resigned kind of way.

"What's your name?" he asked the trees overhead.

"Why?" Neji inquired.

"It's not like a rogue Hyuuga stays secret among hunters."

"Nevertheless, you'll have to find out on your own."

"Your girls killed my brother," he remarked.

"I killed your brother," Neji corrected. "If you want vengeance it's with me. I'm their sensei. You quarrel's with me, not children."

He laughed. "You are a child."

"Not since I was four. Are you going?"

He paused, studying Neji thoughtfully. "I've seen you," he said thoughtfully. "I'm sure of it."

"Then finding me again will be easy," Neji shot back coldly. "Go."

The man looked him and and down once more, then dismissed his summon. Tachi dashed to Neji's side as the Cloud-nin leapt down from the branch. "Orochimaru will devour you and everything you are," he warned Neji, lifting the body of his younger brother in his arms, broken and twisted. Nishi and Minami melted out of the shadows at Neji's back, chakra pooling in them like one girl in two skins. "All of you. He's destroyed the Aori Clan. He destroys everything he touches and you'll know that soon enough."

Then he was gone.

Neji watched him go, the tone of his last syllables resonating through his brain: 'you'll know that.' He deactivated his Bykugan and left himself wonder when he'd see the Cloud-nin again. Finally, he spared a glance for his team, standing trembling and exultant around him. They seemed to have been shell-shocked into dead quiet; each of them staring blankly into the leaves like lightening had struck.

Minami broke the quiet first. "Oh my God! We just beat a pair of jounin! We rock so hard!"

Tachi doubled over and puked.

Nishi didn't say anything. Just stood there, staring at her hands with a kind of cool calculation. Neji wondered if that was the first time she'd killed someone. He wondered if he should say something. But she merely shook her hands loose and smiled at him, green eyes brimming quietly. Brimming with what exactly, his Byakugan didn't say, but he suspected it was the precise color of beetle wings and gasoline.

"Good job. You're not dead," Neji congratulated them. "You're the luckiest genin alive."

They took off again in silence.

- - -

They placed restrictions on him, obviously, because branded or not an enemy-nin is an enemy-nin. The door to his room was crosshatched and patch-worked with enough chakra seals and barrier jutsu to stop a charging bull summon, to say nothing of a recovering Hyuuga teenager. Though, Kabuto had to place more of them in the surrounding walls after Neji blasted a hole through the stone (because there weren't any barrier seals in the walls) and made a break for it a few days after his incarceration. The resulting chase scene had brought three of the new Sound Four and Kabuto himself down on the young Hyuuga who beat the living daylights out of Ban, broke Takon's flawless nose and launched Juri through another wall. In the end Kabuto stepped in and floored him with a combination barrier jutsu and a seriously unpleasant paralysis toxin, compliments of Juri (he figured out just then that she specialized in airborne poisons) who'd recovered from the wall launching a few minutes prior.

Juri: poison expert

While Kabuto set up the new holding jutsus and repaired the gaping hole in the wall, she took the opportunity to lick her tongue up the back of his neck.

…and a nymphomaniac.

- - -

"Hey…"

Neji shifted his weight a little, thinking.

"Psst!"

'Three of them…could I take them all on my own?'

"Oi!"

'Probably but I'd expend all my chakra…'

"Hyuuga-sensei."

He glowered.

"Yes, Minami-san?"

"I'm boooooored."

Nishi sniggered somewhere through the slightly fuzzy radio waves. The mic in his ear brought Minami's whining into such clarity, however, it seemed as though the pink-haired genin were sitting on his toes and not, in fact, hiding up a tree somewhere in the forest. The young jounin lifted two fingers to the receiver at his throat, whispering very clearly, very tersely in reply the very same thing he'd been saying all night to Minami's whining:

"Just wait."

"Phffft!"

"Do you guys ever shut up?" Tachi griped somewhere in the bushes to the east. "And how damn long are we just going to sit around waiting for? This is boring as hell."

"You'd rather rush in and die a horrible death?" Neji retorted evenly. "We've only been sitting here five minutes. It took you guys twenty to get in position."

"Only because Tachi doesn't speak field-code properly."

"Bite me!"

Minami whistled something that included the words 'you', 'eat' and a 'shoe'…or 'exploding tag'. The two words were inexplicably similar. Neji jerked himself out of field-code musing and refocused on the chuunin patrolling the perimeter. Two of them were smoking not more than fifty meters off from him, chatting about the cold and what parts of their anatomy were falling off as a result. The other scout seemed to be taking his job seriously, but he was the weakest of the three guards – most likely his insecurity kept him from relaxing. He'd claimed to have heard something no less than five times in the last twenty minutes, but the smokers ignored him like this was a commonly heard complaint.

"Hey, Tachi?"

"Yeah, Hyuuga?"

Neji ignored the sarcasm. "Can you see the three guards?"

A pause. "Yeeeeah…"

"I'm gonna take out the smokers together, but you have to keep their jumpy friend quiet. There's still two other guys inside." Neji swung silently from the lowest branch, landing on the mossy forest floor without a sound. "No telling how strong he just looking at him, but he's holding hostages. There are other bodies in there. Civilians from what I can tell. Staff maybe." He crept forward, sidling up behind the two men as they breathed fire into the tip of their cigarettes. "We do this silently. Alright…"

Then there came a resounding crash from the other side of the forest. Neji froze. The two ninja spun around, startled to alertness and only by suppressing his chakra signature completely did he avoid setting off that shinobi 'someone-is-behind-me' radar most assassins have. Every particle of his brain honed on not moving any molecule of his body, the young Hyuuga could do nothing but stare stupidly at the back of his targets, swear oaths to kill the little brats for being so damn loud and mentally will his prey to somehow just not look behind them. From the other side of the clearing came yet another crack of snapping wood and a split second later Minami came barreling out of the tree line, dead silent, but careening and slammed her fist into face of the shocked third scout.

It was like someone socked him with a cannon ball. He went down hard, plowing a forty-foot groove of ugly dirt in the grass.

The downed man's teammates were so flabbergasted – Minami was looking exceptionally scrawny and pink for a dangerous shinobi assailant – they both let their cigarettes drop from their opened mouths and gaped in perfect tandem.

"That looked…painful," Neji remarked, having snuck up on them during the disturbance.

They spun around, but not fast enough to stop him and he clocked them both viciously in the back of the neck. Chakra slammed between their third and forth cervical vertebra and rendered the men incapable of speech, dropping them like rag dolls to the grass. Not even a whimper. Neji judged the blows to be critical, but not fatal and moved silently over the fallen shinobi, checking them over to see if they were conscious. The paralyzed men made vague gargling sounds of protest, but nothing more. In one blow, the Hyuuga had effectively blockaded all possible chakra control. Neji frowned. Neither of the men bore the familiar Cloud insignia of their Hidden Village. This seemed too minor an outpost to play politically neutral.

Filing his sudden suspicions away for later he turned his attention back to his 'students'. A few hundred meters off, Minami had trussed her victim like turkey and was dragging him by the back of his flak jacket to join him. He eyed her coolly; face a familiar mask of irritated disdain he usually reserved for Lee and… and Lee. She didn't miss the aura of annoyance radiating from her young sensei and made a grotesque face.

"Whaaat?"

"I asked Tachi to take care of it," he told her.

"So? I took care of it, big deal."

"Yes and it was very nicely done, for a freight train. You'll make a fine battering ram one day." He fingered the radio at his throat. "Nishi? You in position?"

She whistled her affirmative.

"Tachi? Come out and help Minami guard our friends. I'm going in to see about the last ninja." Minami kicked the grass petulantly while Tachi materialized from the foliage, looking cheated and ready to holler about it, but he shot the boy a readily understandable 'shut-up-or-I'll-kill-you' look. Once the other genin was reasonably terrified, he broke eye-contact and moved toward the main entrance, tugging a kunai from his belt. Nishi was laying down a clever network of concealment jutsu while she strung the back door with tripwire. Neji didn't think they'd be necessary, but it was a sound idea. The gas bomb was a nice touch.

Neji didn't waste time tip-toeing around the door – you only did that in suspenseful horror-movies – but simply strolled up and shoved it open, the scouts having left it unlocked after leaving last time. The last chuunin looked just as startled as the last three, mouth popping open in flabbergasted surprise that just didn't feel right for a mid-ranking Cloud-nin. Neji snapping his wrist forward and hurled his kunai in the man's thigh. There was a thunk of meat and metal, effectively stopping any retreat and wrenching an awful roar of pain from the man. He dropped to the floor, taking papers and documents with him, then – having gained the floor – he spent some time howling and rolling around there, getting blood on things. Neji decided this wasn't proper behavior for a mid-rank Cloud-nin and put his other kunai away.

Minami's voice crackled over the radio. "Yo, sensei? What's going on?"

"Nothing," he responded, eyeing the man wearily. "Civilian. Not a shinobi, but stay outside until I secure everything."

"Neji-sensei…" Nishi began uncertainly.

"Just stay outside, Nishi. I'll handle it." He approached the fallen man carefully, keeping just out of reach. "Okay. Nice and easy. Why are you here?"

"I didn't mean to make them like this. It was just…it was the chemicals and their blood-line-limit."

Neji let that sink in for a minute. "Uh-huh. What else?"

"I couldn't keep them going."

"What are you talking about?"

"Stupid sluts!"

"Yes. That's nice. Where are they?"

"I just…" those watery eyes were rolling away, looking into something else, "…just need more time." He hovered there a moment, staring off into nothing…then his eyes snapped back to Neji. A weird light igniting behind his eyes, an irrepressible madness. He staggered up, his mouth a gaping snarl in his sagging face, bared teeth slimy with spit. "I couldn't stop the reactions! I had to – I had to – fix them... I never meant for things to go this far, but when they don't give you what you need you just have to make due. I meant to refuse, but I had to keep working. I had to and those stupid little sluts, just couldn't process the chemicals. I tried, but they're all negatives. And now, and now they send effeminate children to kill me! Me! "

"You are two syllables away from a castration," Neji informed him.

"What are you? Twelve?"

"Sixteen, thanks. How about this: tell me where the test subjects are or I'll kill you?"

The man just devolved into a dithering mess of angry muttering and didn't get around to answering. Neji sighed, punched him smartly across the back of the head and watched the scientist topple over. Now. Where was that research notebook he'd seen?

"Hyuuga! What the hell is that?" Tachi snarled through the radio.

Neji flipped the man off the fallen papers with his foot. "Stay outside and guard the perimeter. I'll deal with this."

"Define 'this'."

"None of your genin-rank business."

There was snickering over the airwaves and Neji resumed searching.

Rifling through the paper on the desk, Neji would have been more successful reading brail than the dysfunctional dithering scribbled here. The nature of the experiments was an invasive kind, not nice by any means – unfriendly looking chemical names kept popping up under dosage measurements – or much for the health of their patients. Neji had been in the reconnaissance field a very long time (by short-lived shinobi standards anyway) and he'd seen enough of war crimes to develop a definite sixth sense to an abomination in the making.

There were…diagrams. Bisections and cross-hatch anatomical sketches of dissected eyeballs and flay cornea peeled back off irises and emotionless little arrows labeling each abnormal piece. If Konoha had been at odds with the Lightening Country this might actually be a gold mine. As it was – that creeping nauseous feeling that meant trouble had steadily inched up inside his stomach, tying it in knots.

He recognized the bloodline limit from the BINGO Book in Konoha. Small Lightening Country secret clan that everyone gossiped about but never spoke of – the hypnotic stare. More potent than Sharingan hypnosis, less dangerous than the pin-wheel eyes despite. Much like Byakugan it was considered less dangerous than Sharingan. Neji reflected dourly that Sharingan had a monopoly on powerful eyes and was inclined to be bitter on instinct…then he remembered all but two of them were dead. Well…three if you got technical, but he didn't have time to think about this.

The Hyugga wandered over to a promising looking side-door and after an obligatory check up – booby-traps and erasers balanced on the lintel you know – wrenched it open.

The knots in his stomach came violently undone and he retched, clapping a hand over his nose and mouth before either the smell or the – Oh fuck! Fuck! – sight could empty bile all over the floor. Neji pivoted away from the room and slammed his back against the wall by the door jam, gagging and choking, both hands clamped over his mouth to hold back the vomit and the monster of acid evil trying to claw its way out of his throat.

The young jounin slid to the floor, shaking, a weird shivering tingle jittering through his entire body like horrible electricity. Like Orochimaru had caught him in that awful venom induced limbo again, he could do nothing but stand there wide-eyed and shuddering. He was breathing too fast, his diagram clenching and trying to jolt his insides loose. His eyes rushed hot with chakra and tears and he couldn't tell if he was crying because they were dead – horribly, hideously, cruelly dead – or because he was the one to see them or because every one of them looked like Hinata and Hanabi.

"Neji-sensei? What's going on in there?" Nishi's sugary, kitten-loving voice inquired through the wavelengths.

He made a funny retching sound.

"What the hell was that?" Tachi sounded grossed out.

"I'm switching frequencies," Neji rasped.

"Hey! Whoa! What the freaking heck is going on in there?" Minami demanded.

"Why?" Nishi inquired.

"What is it? Something secret?" Tachi eagerly blurted.

"Neji-sensei?"

"Hyuuga?"

"Hyuuga-san?"

"Just do as I say," he hissed, choking back the ugly, clawing thing on the back of his tongue. "This is not a fucking democracy. That's an order, shinobi. Stay put and hold your positions. And I can see you understand?"

Radio silence.

He switched frequencies.

"Fuck," he whispered and the curse was more of a sob.

He lurched to his feet and found the radio phone in the desk, dialing the number given to him at his briefing this morning. It was still hours before the deadline and he hated being too early for any deadline (made you look too eager to please) but he couldn't hold off on this one. As always, as usual he couldn't move without understanding. He hated that his whole body shook, his hands shuddering as they held the earpiece to the side of his head, his teeth literally chattering with the force of his physical reaction. Neji listened to the ringing, three times ringing, four times, five times six – Click!

"Neji-kun." Kabuto's voice was warm as a brother's. "How goes the mission?"

"You're a sick piece of shit, Kabuto."

"Well then! You found the old labs right?"

"Fuck you."

"Good. Excellent. I need you to collect the research notes and a couple of the DNA samples, then. They're probably in a cooler somewhere. If not, I'll have to ask you to collect a couple yourself. Blood and epidurals please. And optical fluids of course. Then burn the lab and those men won't you. We're setting up a new base elsewhere."

"There are children in here."

"Yes?" He sounded puzzled, the monsterous bastard. "Bato-san wanted to prove his usefulness. He failed. It was all wasted work."

The room was spinning. The earth was tilting on its axis and reeling like a crazed and suicidal meteorite into the sun. The air in the room felt sarcophagus tight and he struggling to stand upright while everything around him ceased to logically follow…again. "Orochimaru," he said at last, raking his fingers through his hair so hard he might have broken skin. "That Cloud-nin was right."

"What about a Cloud-nin?"

"I won't do this."

"You won't?"

"No."

"You won't?"

"I said no."

"Never?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, I'll just have to incapacitate you and come out there and do it myself." Neji could hear him arranging things on a table somewhere miles away, calm and utterly unaffected. "But if I do. It will take me all day to get there. Your genin team will have to come in and see what's going on eventually, which would be unfortunate so early on in the game. You saw your father dead when you were six and. You barely side-stepped sororicide. Sasuke saw his clan dead at eight and has been involved in active fratricide for the last seven years. I'm sure it won't take a stretch of the imagination to see what something like this would do to your team."

There was something sweet in the air…like sugar…or formaldehyde. "I don't follow."

"Did you read much of the research?"

"..."

"No? Tsk, Neji-kun. And I thought you were a former R&R. Well, if you care to take a look you'd recognize the Kingan. The Golden Eye of the Aori Clan is a rare bloodline. Luckily, it's the males that carry the gene mutation. You've got a very special little boy on your team, Neji-kun. I think he's got a cousin or two in there. And a niece. I'm pretty sure his niece is in that lab too. How recognizable are the corpses? Neji?"

He didn't say anything. He'd swallowed his tongue.

"Sundown Neji. I'll talk with you for the de-briefing." He paused. "Sometimes…ignorance is the best thing for a child." Then he hung up.

He put the phone back in its drawer and picked up the fallen papers, sliding them in a neat manila folder. Then he searched the rest of the room for paperwork and stacked the documents together. The fridge was full of little vials and micro-tubes in holding racks. Neji tried like hell not to see the labels, the chemical content, the cruel cocktail of intravenous muck they'd pumped in. He kicked cupboards and closets open until he found an insulated satchel under the sink, a purple lunch-box looking carrying case that made him sick again.

The neatly packed the tubes inside, the final remains and testament to a horrible, horrible thing. Then he emptied his hip catch of blast notes and set them all over the room. In the lab the world blinked into his brain in snapshots: white stretches of naked, prepubescent flesh stiffened and molded by rigor mortis and time. Ragged, brittle, shoot-me-now orange hair, weakened by malnutrition and poison. Gaping, blackened holes where they should have been staring back at him. One had hemorrhaged and the blood pooled in a black puddle inside her skin, like a syrup filled sack. One sulfur-colored eye, jelly rupturing from around the iris, wept glistening fluids still.

Nishi was standing at the door waiting for him went he got out, wide green eyes blinking alive and worried up at him.

"Neji-sensei. Are you alright?" she whispered.

A mad part of him wanted to grab her by the throat and strangle her. A madder part wanted to pick her up and kiss her still breathing mouth.

"I'm fine Nishi-chan. You three go on ahead." He handed her the DNA carrier. "Take this."

Tachi was crouched in the grass by the two men Neji had hit, poking them with the blunt end of his kunai. "These guys are dead," he pronounced, his toxic yellow eyes narrowed and annoyed. Neji could see that didn't bother him much and part of him feverishly fantasized throwing the genin in with his dead family and slamming the door shut on him. Give it a couple days. What was the '-cide' word for killing cousins? He dismissed the phantom thought.

"Throw them inside then. The other guy too. We're done here."

Minami hefted the men over her tiny shoulders like over-long pillows and shot Tachi a superior 'beat-that-if-you-can' look. The boy glowered, dragging the other chunnin (the one whose skull Minami had fractured) after. "Show off."

"Pussy," she retorted loudly.

"Bitch."

"Bastard!"

"Pink!"

"You take that back!"

Neji blew up the lab from a distance and they watched the building burn for a while. Then he led his team back to the Sound.

Author's Note:

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. This story just ran dry. Seriously. I was dead and out of ideas forever.

I don't know if this chapter is any good after all this time, but I've got it up anyhow and I apologize to all you brilliant readers who are putting up with me.

Dedications go to Psychotic Midnight for being impatient enough to yell at me and Beboot for world's longest and nicest review. Seriously That this was massive.

Dayadhvamfor catching my typos as usual. Thanks. Finally, Katterree Fengari: I don't know if I'm trying to get serious.

This fic is just so absurd it's hard to get a bead on how Neji should be reacting at all. If not, chock it up to his going crazy.

I dunno.