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Chapter 3

One thing the altercation revealed to Jeninki - it had proved the scarred man was either not genuinely provoked, or not given to killing when provoked. His moves were defensive, suppressive. No eye-gouging neck-snapping efforts. Consistent, perhaps, with the schoolteacher persona. Almost too soft for a chunin. The anger raging in his eyes radiated truth at the same time. If he was a plant, he was an inexperienced one. Jeninki made a bid to lock their eyes again, and the chunin instinctively turned away.

"Turn your back on me again, sensei-boy, and I'll snap your neck before you can move." The taller man spat and Iruka dodged the spinning blob, coming up to his feet in attack stance. The disdain in Jeninki's voice hit a raw nerve, and hit it sharply. He clearly saw no threat in his cellmate.

Iruka was genuinely and thoroughly pissed now, on the edge of totally losing his temper. His skinned cheek burned, his lip was swelling, and Ibiki was probably laughing at him watching some monitor. Maybe he was the event of the week, amusing a whole room full of ANBU. They never made any bones about their opinion of him, his skills, and his station in life. He was beneath them, pure and simple, and they weren't likely to care if he could defend himself or not. It was no excuse to leave him here and just let this no-good criminal do whatever he wanted to with him.

The muscles in his shoulders bunched hard and tight, begging for one really good shot at the son-of-a-bitch, almost consciously in lieu of the people that truly deserved his anger. With a sneer, the other man turned away, and took to his cot, making a show of his position with his back to Iruka.

"Fuck you!" Iruka's voice was so loud and venomous he didn't recognize it himself. "What the fuck is that, you turn your back on me after you tell me that bullshit?" He started forward and the man flipped to face him.

"What do you teach with that mouth? " Jeninki smirked, not making any defensive move. "You're damned unprofessional for a teacher. Or a nin, for that matter. No wonder they didn't bother to behead you. You don't use it all that extensively when it's attached."

Iruka moved forward, anger still growing in intensity.

A lot of things had been making him angry for a very long time.

People assumed he vented constantly. Yelling at the kids was not a release, he never did that in any uncontrolled, cathartic sort of way; it was always with good intent and planned impact. Yelling at his friends or slackers at the mission desk when they annoyed him was likewise not effective. He had to hold back. He always let off just enough steam to keep from really letting off steam. Enough to be able to stop himself.

But this - this was an opportunity for a true release of venom. This almost felt good.

And here was some bastard who richly deserved it. A hand to hand no chakra matchup. No reason to hold back or be polite, worry about the guy's opinion of him, feel guilty or face the consequences. It was the perfect one-night-stand of anger. And suddenly he was hot for it.

An outlet for every cheat and slight that Kakashi made when his heart was laid bare. An outlet for every snide remark about his chunin status, every pantywaist put-down due to his job at the academy, every embarrassment at his exclusion from gatherings for not being a balls-out jackass like the other ninjas. Anger at the forced sex he's had with three of them at the promotion party he'd mysteriously been invited to attend, that they'd convinced him to shut up about since he was drunk and didn't fight back hard enough. Anger that when his supposed friends found out about it from the other men, they found it amusing and expressed regret at having missed taking part. Oh yeah, he had anger. He had buckets of it. These were just the fresh issues at the tip of his iceberg. Deeper issues from the past raged beneath in well-controlled suppression. But what was fresh at hand was plenty to spark his murderous rage.

The man on the bed saw it coming, saw it in his eyes. It took so little provocation to whip him up to this pitch that he had to check again to be sure. There was no question whether this was just a convincing act now, it was real. The hatred and internal conflict flamed in this man's soul. Again, Jeninki tried to lock eyes and make a connection; the brief brush with that contact only inflamed the other man all the more. At the moment, this guy was simply not all there. The hands that gripped him this time were shot with adrenaline and rage. In spite of the disparity in their size, he was hauled off the bed like a stuffed toy and flung into the bars. This time his cellmate was ready to kill him.

Jeninki dodged a blow that would have crushed his windpipe, slashing out with a kick that connected with the knee of a firmly planted leg. It was an error of passion on the other nin's part, so enraged that his body had lost flexibility. He felt the damage his expert kick inflicted on the delicate workings of the chunin's knee joint as it shattered and bent in a very wrong direction. It stunned him that the other man grabbed and bit him viciously with total disregard to the pain in his leg. The bite spurted blood as the teeth sank into his upper arm, the intensity was truly insane, and Jeninki began screaming for help. Shit, this man was going to tear him to bits right here if this wasn't halted; and using his carefully hidden wiles to kill him wasn't an option when he would be the only possible suspect.

They crashed into the bars again, hands in each others faces, the man with the sweet face and whimsical ponytail clawing for his eyes, moving to bite down hard again on his shoulder, ripping like a dog shaking a rabbit. He was fortunate indeed that those teeth weren't in range of his throat or face. Jeninki kicked again, while he punched upward into the close space between them trying like hell to snap that punishing jaw, feet slipping in the blood spattering on the floor.

ANBU guards reached though the bars and restrained then apart. It took two to secure the teacher, only one to hold Jeninki. He wanted protection at this point, not a fight. The chunin fought the ANBU briefly, a bad decision on his part, and they none-too-gently hammered his head into the bars with their unsuppressed chakra and greater strength until he fell limp to the floor.

Only when they both were still did the door open and an attempt to patch them together was made. One look at the sensei's knee bent in the anatomically incorrect manner had them calling for a stretcher.

Jeninki had sincerely tried not to kill him, he really did. It hadn't been easy, he had at least three clear openings where his skills would have made the kill instantaneous. But seeing that amount of unresolved inner turmoil and rage made him resolute in preserving his cellmate's life, no matter how he seemed to be begging him to end it. A man that disturbed was a perfect target for more important things.

o0o0o0o0o

Damn, Ibiki thought, lit by the monitor's glow as he sat watching the chunin wail on the prisoner, did I not explain this well enough? The earlier fight was obviously the other man's bid for cell dominance. This other altercation - it seemed that Iruka had started it. It was not entirely possible to tell from observing - there could have been some aggression, some signs telegraphed between them that the video/audio equipment didn't pick up.

But even if the other actually started it, Ibiki was shocked at how animalistic the attack had been, how vicious, and how the teacher had disregarded the destruction of his knee and then became even more aggressive. This was a level of assault more common with a criminal. Of course, it was in the vacuum of a chakra-less environment - unlikely that the chunin would have survived such a battle without the artificially evened odds.

But still, it spoke of a maniacally dangerous edge, and no one had been aware that the sensei possessed it prior to today. Ibiki was intrigued. He decided to stay the course and see what happened.

Healed passably, Jeninki was returned to his cell. The complex work for Iruka's knee took longer, and he wasn't reintroduced until later that evening. It was like putting new cats together , the jailers standing over them at first for signs of a fight.

Iruka was calm but he couldn't shake the mindset that this was his punching bag, his outlet, and before all this was over, he would have his release. It was a murderer after all, with two men held captive or dead…there was a self-righteousness that allowed him to relish this normally forbidden cruelty.

He curbed his glare, his hatred. He had a mission. Ibiki had yelled at him while his knee was being healed and it washed over him like dove feathers. He hadn't felt this powerful before, ever.

Part of his mind told him he was being very foolish. He wasn't powerful, his opponent was disarmed. Only their artificially enforced equality gave him the ability to harm the other man.

He had to be calm, to engage this criminal again and get the information needed to complete the mission. The eyes that could have belonged to his twin glared at him in annoyed acknowledgement. Their little sparring session had not earned them time in solitary confinement; in fact they were still being housed together.

The guy's got some loose screws, Jeninki concluded. Perhaps a true mental health issue. So they won't dirty their conscience executing him; instead they'll lock him up with someone who will do the deed for them. He briefly considered changing his mind and taking up the cause, if only to maintain a little more peace and quiet.

But, no. His instability might serve his purpose. The Konoha ninja might have information that would help Jeninki get away sooner. And a broken mind had cracks; cracks a clever man like himself could exploit to penetrate, use, and perhaps convert an unhappy citizen. Once he could get the chunin to hold still and face him calmly, he was sure his skills would prevail.

They moved together to the showers, and he stole looks at his naked cellmate, taking in the collection of scars. The vertical one on his back was truly alarming, the man was lucky he hadn't been paralyzed. He sized up the physical threat. He was a decent specimen physically, a little on the lean side but well muscled and hard-bellied, and remarkably attractive with his perfect ass, toned back and straight shoulders. Desirable, that was the right term. Anyone with eyes could see that the chunin was unusually desirable. Jeninki considered how that likely influenced the life of a middle-ranked man, subjected to following orders and keeping his superior's secrets at their whim.

When they moved back to the cell, he decided to try a different tactic.

-tbc