Chapter 68 - Mambo Cesura

Now, the thing to note about the art of mind-reading is that nearly anyone is capable of learning it, if they have the patience and, hopefully, some innate capacity for it. It is not an easy art, which is why so many prefer using psychology and physical pain to get their information.

The Yamanaka clan was not the first to use it, no, not by any means. But they were the first to prove themselves talented and almost born for its use, the first to expand it and evolve it and make it their own. None but a Yamanaka could switch minds as they did. Their telepathy was theirs alone, likewise.

This is why, within the Torture and Interrogation department of Konoha, there was a hierarchy.

A novice mind-reader, from any clan, was better than none.

Two novices were better than one. Three novices even moreso. The same to four, especially with a more experienced reader leading the effort.

(But never five, because four was already too much for one mind to handle, even when the intent was to confuse and obfuscate, and keep the attention off the lead reader.)

Any more-experienced reader was better than a novice, naturally, and further numbers better.

A single Yamanaka was better than all of this.

And two Yamanakas, especially those directly related to each other, well. Those were the best you could hope for.

(There was a strange, untested, yet universally-known truth that the more closely-related one Yamanaka was to the other, the more efficiently their minds seemed to work in a reading. Nobody knew why, exactly, this was. But it was exploited whenever possible.)

So to receive a half-Yamanaka-half-Uchiha boy and his grandfather, himself a known talent in his day, was better than Moegi had expected, though she knew nothing of the boy's skill level.

Inoichi, however, vouched for him. So he had to have been skilled in some way.

They were entirely silent when approaching Orochimaru, and put their palms on both sides of his head, over the temples. Orochimaru's eyes slid this way, that way, though they closed in time as chakra and foreign consciousnesses began to flow in.

This was an issue of concentration. They had to concentrate to get in. He had to concentrate to keep them as far out as possible.

It truly said something about the both of them that not only had Orochimaru managed to keep out three teams of readers of increasing skill, but that he managed to hold out on Inou and Inoichi for even a moment.

They got in, regardless.

The mental landscape slowly began to form out of the darkness in bleeding daubs of yellow, of red. This happened with every reading, a formation of, a collaboration of images between the reader and the one being read. It was a sort of allowance, a game of give and take. The target set the playing field, and the rules.

But sometimes rules, like minds, were made to be broken.

Orochimaru's world was a stage, brilliant and the color of old paper. The backdrop, painted with green-ancient trees and mountains, stretched up far higher than any real backdrop could. Behind them, there was no exit, nor no other audience. Just the theater of his mind.

"Certainly giving us a lot to work with," Inoichi said. He put his hands on his waist, looking up and around. The ceiling was limitless and wood-brown.

(Nothing was heard on the outside.)

"It's a front," Inou said. "He's trying to impress us. It's too simple. This theater's too roughly-formed around the edges, see?" He gestured with his hand. "If there was something hiding in this room then we'd at least be able to see the ceiling." He began forward. "We should try backstage."

"Well look who knows everything," Inoichi said.

(As he was supposed to.)

"Follow me, and don't get lost."

"Grandpa." Inou rolled his eyes. "I can't get lost."

"Sure." He climbed onto the stage. It was polished, made of warm, golden-yellow wood, and his feet thumped, rightly, softly, with each step. He put his hand on the backdrop. "Hm, paper. Shouldn't be that hard to get through."

With a fluid motion, he pulled his hand back and then forward, and pressed it through the paper, making a hole. And with both hands he began widening the hole, spreading it apart. The backdrop ripped and folded and crinkled otherwise, succumbing to his influence.

Behind the backdrop, however, there was nothing but another stage. Another invisible audience.

(The audience, of course, was Orochimaru.)

It was almost mocking in its simplicity. Nothing to hide.

"Well this is something," Inoichi said. He scratched his forehead. "This part of the set?"

"It's a double-stage. The audience watches from both sides," Inou said. "That, or it's for… plays about plays."

Inoichi raised a thick eyebrow, looking up and around again. "So which is it, then?"

"I think we're not supposed to know," Inou said. His face twisted into a fine, disappointed scowl. "Either way, it's a dead end."

"Don't give up so easily, Inou," Inoichi said. He clapped a hand on his back in perfectly-false reassurance. "We'll find it."

"Sure."

"We will. Come on, you take one side, I'll take the other. Divide and conquer, remember the basics?"

"Grandpa."

"Come on, now." Inoichi moved out and into the audience of the second (or was it first?) stage. Its features were just as vague, just as frustratingly undefined. "There's got to be some sort of… door to the back somewhere." He hopped off the stage, paced along its edge, toward the tall, red curtains framing it. "Maybe behind here…"

There was no door behind the curtain.

And when he looked back out onto the stage, its original (or was it staged?) audience behind it, Inou was gone.

Inoichi resisted in calling out to him. There was no need.

He continued searching the curtains, the walls, under the cushions. Making a very visual fuss of things.

That was the old-school method. Making a big show, forcing information from out of the projected space. Finding doors, and hidden hallways, wrenching the entrances to them off of their metaphorical hinges, if need be.

His grandson had a gift for the subtle, however, and it never ceased to amaze him. He was already impressed by the ease in which he slipped into his role as a belligerent sidekick, a novice, surely nobody to pay attention to.

(In other circumstances, however; in free-readings and practice, Inou was a much different boy. There had been a glimpse of it in his observation of the theater, before he caught himself and put the mask back on.)

(That confident boy, so full of energy. Inoichi wished he could see that side of him more.)

For now, he just hoped, telling himself he would soon be taking comfort in his decision.

Surely.

He began trying to pull the curtains down.

While Inou, under the stage, was getting himself oriented with the true space.

He'd figured out the trick as soon as he'd seen that it was a double-stage. With those things—or with theaters in the round—"backstage" was always one of two places: the sides, or the floor. And given that a quick glance had revealed that there was nothing to retreat to, on either side of that shared stage, there had to be something beneath.

And there was. A quick test with his feet revealed a trapdoor to him, and stomping hard enough—combined with his natural willpower, his insistence that he be let through—brought him where he needed to go, falling onto what he knew was a feather mattress to catch him.

(The only reason he knew any of this was because of No. Volume 24. The heroine had to lead in a play full of tricks and quick-changes on a stage that lacked a backdrop. Naturally, she triumphed, despite the wishes of her petty male rivals for her to fail. As usual.)

(…no, it wasn't going to make Inou any less ashamed of his love for the series, that it had helped him out here.)

(…but it did make him wonder if Orochimaru himself had an interest in traditional theater, or maybe even No itself, for having his projection manifest in this form.)

(He tried not to think about what this meant about Orochimaru.)

(Or himself.)

Regardless, he had made it.

The underneath of the theater was quite a bit different from its top. Barren, concrete hallways. It felt cold.

But, ah, the walls here were far more defined. He was getting close.

Close wasn't good enough. And he looked this way and that for any sign that he was being observed.

After all, a mind could only, naturally, observe one intruding consciousness at a time.

Except in the case of Two-Mind Syndrome, where it was a bit more complicated, but Inou would be very aware of if Orochimaru himself had the condition, since those individuals tended to manifest little, miniature versions of themselves with which to observe further things.

(Of course, he had never actually encountered someone with Two-Mind Syndrome, just read about it, but…)

No, there was no Orochimaru here.

But Inou wasn't going to take any chances.

There were many methods one could use in an effective mind-reading, a gentle and precise one. The trickiest part was mainly in convincing the host mind that you were simply supposed to be there in the first place, which you could attain through several methods.

Classically, the best way to do this was to sincerely declare that you were simply there to look around, not steal or anything. To be gentle and almost accidental in your explorations. Oh, goodness, did I mean to do that? Apologies. And such. Inou didn't much like that technique, it felt too false to him.

Misdirection—what he was using now—was also quite effective.

Inou liked to try new things, however. And one of his favorite methods—one he'd thrown together in a speculative bit of thought, while reading a book on interrogation techniques—was to impersonate the host entirely.

After all, who was more at home in a mind than its owner?

He almost had to laugh at how easy it would be, here. Other projections were far less elaborate, less fancy, less—well, there were words for it. Office buildings, mainly. Endless hallways and entrances. Traditional mansions, mazes full of sliding doors. Just mazes.

(That was the thing about most people. They always, always chose mazes when attempting to keep interrogators out. As if that would make information harder to find, perhaps.)

(Maze-cracking was one of the first things covered in mind-reading training. And Inou was very, very good at getting out of mazes.)

Other minds made things difficult in obtaining a disguise. He'd have to conjure utility closets, or else cover himself with a door. And beyond that, finding some sort of reflective surface, to make sure it looked convincing.

But here, this wonderful place, was a theater.

And theaters always had dressing rooms, didn't they?

Inou thought about that, for a while. Yes, where would the dressing rooms be, in this under-stage?

The pull of his own experience, the focus on his grandfather, the sheer, natural force of his mind soon gave him the answer in the form of a sign on the next wall he laid eyes upon.

Ah. That way.

(He did not dare speak, for fear of being noticed. But that meant little, truly.)

His feet made no sound on the hard floor as he went along. Good.

He noticed, as he went along, rust-red-colored doors every few feet, with shining aluminum handles, the sort of thing one saw in hospitals. For later. Doubtless there were wonderful, horrible things hiding behind them.

Though he had an objective, first, didn't he?

He pulled his hand through the air in front of him, manifesting three images.

A red-haired, regal-looking girl, Taki Kiine. Yakata the scared. And a sickly skin-over-bones boy with white hair, Asaoto.

The rest he had already memorized, but it would be a help to recall the faces, should he encounter them again.

He tucked them away, curling them into his fist. Right.

Dressing room first. He'd surely find more information on them later, once he looked the part.

It was when he saw a variation in the endless red doors that he knew he'd made it.

There was a portrait hanging on it, one of Orochimaru. He looked far healthier, far handsomer than he did in the cell, with a thin, arrogant mouth, and bright yellow eyes. His hair was longer. Silver earrings hung from his ears.

His dressing room. Inou tried the door, but the handle refused to give. He rolled his eyes and observed a keyhole there, and from his pocket, he took the key.

(Half the skill in subtle reading was in acting like impossibilities had always existed. It worked especially well when no one was watching.)

He opened the door and found himself in a room that was far larger than it should have been, given the proximity of the other doors in the hallway. But that was the nature of minds.

It was shaped like a dressing room, truly, with mirrors on either wall and lights above, and surfaces and stools for absent actors. Makeup and discarded props and wigs were littered in replacement.

But between the two walls of mirrors, spaced so-widely apart, were bookshelves, tall bookshelves, and many of them, and a film projector.

Naturally, Inou approached them first. Irregularities were always wonderfully telling. Bookshelves in a dressing room, after all? What a thing.

They were filled to capacity, floor to ceiling, packed with paper folders, and notebooks. Inou looked, but did not dare touch. Not yet.

He had to make his face, first. And he was, indeed, familiar with Orochimaru's face. Anyone that knew anything was.

Mind-spaces made such disguises far too easy. It almost scared Inou when he turned around to look in a mirror and saw a more proper face sneering back. He was taller. Inou took care to toss that long hair over his shoulder and, almost preening, ran a finger from his temple to his chin.

But what scared him more was the sudden, gut-clenching, overwhelming feeling of rejection, disgust, HATRED, SICK AWFUL DIGUSTING UN—

That he lost control of himself and once again became Inou, and he had to put the face on again.

(Where in the world had that come from…?)

It took him a while to clear, to sharpen the features, that second time.

He just told himself that it would help. It would. It would.

And he reached out and into the bookshelves after another moment of self-observation, making sure it looked right, and flipped randomly through the pages with white hands.

Yet, what he found disappointed him. It was all so… generic, so self-centered. Scientific reports that were little more than diaries, written in a beautiful hand, charting personal progress. Inou took care to put them all back where they belonged. Messes brought unneeded attention.

He tried a few other areas of the bookshelves. Similar, selfish results.

The film reel, perhaps? He hesitated in even approaching it. It ran the risk of triggering a memory. Which meant that Inou would experience it, but Orochimaru would, as well, and that might bring attention to him and keep him from further information.

But. His grandfather was still above, wasn't he? Undisguised and making a ruckus.

And here he was, wearing a too-pale face, and being very careful, very careful.

He touched the projector and the room darkened, and filled with the sound of chattering reels and old audio as an image was projected on the far wall.

…self-centered. It was a film of a surgery, a sterile white room, with some anonymous female form draped in sheets on a central table. Orochimaru wore a lilac-colored apron and flesh-colored rubber gloves that went to his elbows, leaving the rest of his white skin exposed.

"Kabuto, dear, is the anesthesia ready?"

A white-haired young man with glasses came into the frame. "Should be."

"Then fetch my scalpel, if you would."

"Of course, sir."

Inou watched for only a few minutes more. He could handle blood, he could, but he didn't find anything relevant from the footage for further observation. The lights came back on.

He left the dressing room, making up his face with his frustration. Three faces, he needed information on them and their…

It unsettled him how he couldn't find the word.

There were more of them, at any rate. And he needed to know who they were.

And in closing the door to the dressing room, silver jingling below his ears with the motion of his head, he noticed very suddenly that the doors down the hallway had changed. Little lights, triangle-soft and pale yellow, colored the doors, illuminating the floor in front of them like pieces of artwork. The rest of the gently-curving hallway had darkened.

More portraits had appeared, on more doors. Inou couldn't remember if they had been there before, couldn't decide if they'd always been there, or if they had just appeared from his unconscious will spilling out into the space. Either suited him.

There didn't seem to be any particular meaning or order to the portraits. Next to Orochimaru's dressing room was a portrait of another Sannin, Jiraiya, though the third, Tsunade, was nowhere near them, as far as Inou could see.

Beside him was a man Inou did not recognize, with a fierce glare and bandages covering his face. His forehead was bare, eyebrowless.

He continued down the hallway, slowly.

There was a red-haired woman, vaguely familiar, with a challenging smile full of fire.

A girl—no, a boy, perhaps…? A person, young, with melted-brown eyes and black hair tied high atop their head, and a beautiful mouth.

The next he recognized.

His uncle.

He paused for a while, tilting his head, eyebrows curling with concerned curiosity. He looked… angry, yet sad.

(It was also the clearest image Inou had ever seen of him, everything else from scarce family photos, from assumed likenesses to his father.)

The resemblance to Yakata was almost undeniable.

…Yakata...!

And it was then that Inou stumbled upon the frightening, unsettling notion that perhaps.

He'd gotten what he was looking for.

He began down the hallway much more quickly, taking careful, careful, careful note of the faces going onward.

Following his uncle, there was:

A young man with white hair and very green eyes, and strange red marks around his eyes, above his eyebrows, under his lashes.

Another face he recognized, the First—oh, no—the First Hokage, Senju Hashirama.

A very pale, very thin man with red hair, and strange eyes, like ripples in a pool of water.

…and there the portraits ended.

…what?

…there had to have been more. There were only eight, minus the one of Orochimaru, the one that had caused the manifestation in this manner.

Inou went further, further, further down the hallway, mind radiating need, that couldn't have been all.

But.

Orochimaru, he was skilled. Ancient. He must have had ways of hiding information.

Inou was certain—even then, even walking down the hallway initially, having gotten below the stage—that he was only seeing a little bit.

This, this, this was just a start. He could find the rest later.

He returned to the earlier part of the hallway, and the portraits had not moved. This was a start.

He would begin with what he knew, and move onto the others.

Hello, Uncle. What did Orochimaru have to do with you?

Inou opened the door much like he had opened the previous one, with a conjured key and a sense of purpose. The room beyond, however, was no dressing room, but a bare, gray chamber, without windows, without any source of light. But it was lit all the same.

Its emptiness was unacceptable.

There had to be more. Inou traced his hands on the walls, feeling their similar coldness. Feeling for hidden compartments.

Nothing.

Come on, come on, come on.

He pushed harder and.

Found his hands sinking into the wall. It was the same consistency of cold mud, and he pulled his arms out almost immediately and found it sticking there, dripping off of him and making thick, wet noises where it hit the ground.

Disgusting! Inou's impatience increased with each shake of his arms.

Impatience, and also fear, furthered his frustration. Could he really do this? Of course he couldn't, he couldn't do anything right.

(Anything his father wanted him to do, anyways.)

Even though his grandfather trusted him. But what did his grandfather know, anyways?

(That Inou was good at things like this.)

…yeah, like hell he was good enough, he was just an amateur, he knew nothing, he had to work harder.

He couldn't fail here.

"Give me something!" he pressed through his teeth, with his voice.

He was given something, the grey ooze on his arms gaining an alarming weight, shifting to his hands, forming, molding into.

A baby, naked and male, with black hair and uncomfortably familiar black eyes squirmed there for just a moment, and Inou would have dropped it had it not returned to gray mass in some trick of perspective. It began dripping through his fingers again.

He backed out of the room, shaking muck off his hands as he went. The door closed without his touching it. His skin was clean in the hallway.

His uncle's face burned with derision.

Inou's chest heaved.

(Outside, his breaths likewise increased.)

Maybe he was in over his head. Maybe he should take a break.

…like hell he could, like hell, like hell. He couldn't take a break because taking a break would mean having to dive in all over again and have to explain and having to face that shame and admitting that he was giving up it was giving up.

He couldn't.

Give up.

Not here.

Not HERE.

NOT HERE.

The door beside his uncle's had a picture of a white-haired boy and Inou glared at it.

He would get information.

With both hands he grabbed the handle of the door and he pulled, not even bothering with a key.

It would open and it would tell him WHAT HE WANTED TO KNOW.

IT WOULD TELL HIM.

WHAT.

HE.

WAS.

HIDING.

NOW!

And when he pulled open the door, thick, red strings of some liquid substance fell away from it.

The room inside was covered in it. The floors, likewise.

It smelled like death.

And in the middle of the room there was a woman on the floor, on her side, with one of her arms on her stomach. Her face was pressed on the ground, red hair spread around her and soaked an even darker red. She looked bloated, and her skin was very pale.

And bones were coming out of her stomach, like hard, white fingers; like a ribcage turned inside-out. They were smeared with her blood.

Inou almost couldn't breathe.

And then she moved.

She lifted her hand off of her stomach and it shook, badly, as she reached out to him. Her palm was caked in blood. She was barely able to lift her head, but he could still see one red eye looking back at him out of that bloody face, and it was desperate and terrified.

"Help me…!"

Her voice was little more than a whisper but it cut into Inou's stomach like a thick dagger.

The whole room began to shake, and a low, loudly-growing rumble began overwhelming his ears.

And as he covered his ears and felt his body once more becoming his own felt the wind-rush of his consciousness being whisked through hallways and back to the rapidly-dissolving stage back into the interrogation room he heard a noise, even louder, even louder, yelling.

"STOP! Stop, please, please, stop, let me out of here, please, let me, I have to go, let me out!"

Inoichi caught him as he stumbled back, gasping for breath, his mouth watering from shock. His knees had turned to cartilage.

Orochimaru was struggling in his chair, and hard.

He was not yelling, but screaming, he was begging.

"PLEASE! Please, listen to me, listen, listen, you have to let me go, you have to let me go, please, please, let me out of here, please!"

His breaths were becoming panicked, heavy and fast. He struggled harder.

"She's, she's in trouble, she's, something's wrong with her, please, you have to let me out or else, or else she'll… damn it, just let me go, please!"

Orochimaru was sobbing.

"Inou," Inoichi said, in a fearful, awed whisper, "what did you do to him…?"

"If you don't let me go she'll die, she'll die, I can't—Mom! Mom, please, Mom, please be okay! MOM! Let me GO, I can't let her DIE! MOM!"

Inoichi moved forward to calm him, forgetting his question.

And all Inou could say, falling to his knees, was, "I just wanted to see what he was hiding."

Inoichi put his palm on his forehead, and a rush of chakra flooded Orochimaru's brain. His eyes, wet with tears, fluttered from the strain and the overwhelming, artificial peace.

"Please, my, my mother, she'll… please, just let me go… I'm sorry, I'm not… just let me… please, my mom…"

His head slumped forward and his sobs began to slow. But the tears weren't stopping.

"Now, Orochimaru," Inoichi said, softly, firmly, "we can either do that again, or you can talk to us about what we want to know. Which is easier?"

He shook his head, many, many times. "I'm not Orochimaru, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not Orochimaru…"

Inoichi's eyebrows lowered. "You're… not?"

"No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm sorry, I just… I just…"

And he looked up at Inoichi, and his face wore an expression that the old man had seen so many times before.

On broken people. The ones that had given up. It was a look of pure pain and desperation and anguish.

"Please don't hurt my mom…!"

It was all he could manage before he started sobbing again, his head falling, chin to collarbone. His naked, ink-polluted shoulders convulsed with his hollow chest.

Inou remained on the floor, watching in disbelief.

(Not only for this strange identity confession, but the fact that he had caused it.)

(Had he really broken Orochimaru that easily?)

(Just by losing his temper?)

"I think," Inoichi said, to the staff behind the glass, "that we all ought to take a break."

They needed to give the man in the chair time to calm down.

Among other things.

So they took a break.