Much thanks to Nazebaka for her fanart! I'm deeply honored by this first piece of fanart I've ever had. The link is on my profile page. Go check it out; it's a scene from the very first chapter. :) And thank you also to everyone who has reviewed.

So my update was a little slow this time, but maybe not too slow. I'm still working on getting back into the whole "torture writing" thing. I'm not quite there yet, although considering my own phobia of needles (seriously, I'd rather face a spider while armed with only a flip flop or even *gaaahhhhh* a cockroach, assuming I can be armed with a can of RAID)...considering that, I think maybe I'm getting there. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but it moves us toward the next one. :) After all, we can't be too harsh on civilians, especially when they cooperate of their own accord.

Discalimer reminders: I own nothing and I do not condone human rights violations.

Warning: Needles.

A couple of hours later, Shikamaru stood staring down at the two captives he had yet to "interview." Kakashi had helped him bring them to the river, then had disappeared after announcing he was heading back to camp as the genius had planned. In reality, Shikamaru knew he was in the trees behind him, watching the scene unfold.

The chuunin and the scientist were seated on opposite ends of the same driftwood log the receptionist had been sitting on earlier. Like her, they were tied to it, though not too uncomfortably apart from the fact that it was still, after all, a log.

The young ninja had glanced a couple of times at the scientist, probably torn between feeling nervous for her and hoping she wouldn't reveal anything about their operation. The scientist was ignoring him, pouting irritably in no particular direction.

"We'll start with you," Shikamaru announced in his trademark lazy drawl. He nodded to the woman sitting before him and noted that the chuunin tensed slightly. He took it as a sign that he'd chosen his first strategy well.

She focused her eyes on him with a bored expression that mirrored his own, and he tried not to be amused at the irony of it. She remained silent, and Shikamaru took a seat on the large rock he'd had the foresight to ask Chouji to move earlier. This one is going to be a battle of wills and wits, I think. I could break her will easy enough, but I'll probably get better information out of her by tricking her or convincing her that cooperating is in her best interest.

Once he was comfortable, he allowed the silence to stretch just a bit. When he was satisfied that he'd made his own patience clear, he spoke. "What was supposed to happen back at that base?" he asked, directing the question to the scientist with his gaze.

"Hell if I know," she answered.

Shikamaru raised an eyebrow. "It seems you were to be involved somehow, though, doesn't it?" It wasn't really a question, the way he said it.

"Later. We were supposed to stay out of the way and then receive orders when it was time for us to do our part."

Another clueless minion? Plausible, but not likely…damn, I hope it's not the case. This will be a wasted effort if none of them know anything.

"And how long were you expecting to wait in the underground tunnel?"

She shrugged. "Half an hour."

Shikamaru sighed. Underestimated again. Oh well; it's what gave him his edge more often than not when he actually had to fight.

"Why don't you start from the beginning? How did you end up involved in this operation?"

She considered him for a minute, and her apparent willingness (or at least, her consideration) to cooperate apparently rubbed the young chuunin the wrong way.

"Tomori-san..." he started, but before he could finish, there was…something…holding his jaw shut and squeezing his throat. His eyes darted to Shikamaru, and the shadow user saw the young man's eyes trace their way from him to the ground to his own feet, where Shikamaru's shadow had wrapped its way up his leg. Shikamaru thanked his luck for a clear sunny day.

"Let the lady make her own decision," he scolded lazily. "You'll get your turn." He felt the chuunin swallow under his shadow, and when he tried to nod, Shikamaru released the shadows. "No talking from you until I say so."

The chuunin nodded again, and Shikamaru returned his attention to the "lady" in question. He watched her, motioning with a casual wave of his hand for her to begin whenever she was ready.

For a moment, she didn't say anything. She studied Shikamaru, then when she seemed to start feeling awkward about staring at him so long while he stared back, she shifted her eyes to their surroundings. When she couldn't find anything particularly interesting to look at there, she huffed and looked back at him. He noted with a blend of curiosity and satisfaction that she seemed to deliberately avoid looking at her appointed guard, the chuunin.

"Can you repeat the question?" she asked with a sneer.

"How did you get involved in this operation?"

"I came because my mentor came. I'm his lab assistant."

"Go on," Shikamaru prompted after a few beats of silence.

She huffed again. "I didn't know anything about the project. I still don't. A few weeks ago, he came into the lab one morning all excited, and told me that we were going to get to work on a breakthrough. That he'd just gotten recruited for some fieldwork- he couldn't say what- that was going to make his name big. And of course, as his top lab assistant, I'd have the first dibs on going along if I wanted to be involved in something big." She rolled her eyes and looked dramatically all around her, then down at the log, then back at her captor. "So here I am."

"And you have no idea what kind of 'something' that was supposed to be? No clue what kind of breakthrough would have your mentor so excited?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Well, scientifically speaking, nothing I can prove." The challenge in her voice dared him to contradict her one more time. "But, knowing him, I would hypothesize at this point that it was going to be something carbon-based."

"As opposed to…"

"As opposed to inorganic study, you nitwit! He's a top researcher in the field of organic chemistry. That's why I'm working at his lab—who'd want to study something boring like the rocks and air all the time?"

"I see. And what did you presume was the reason for our attack?"

She rolled her eyes again. "I presume your village got wind of our groundbreaking work and wanted the information and the glory all for yourselves."

Interesting. Either she's lying about something, or she really hadn't seen the inside of the lab yet or had any instructions. Those metal tables looked a little too big for just your standard petri dish, or even a collection of petri dishes.

Shikamaru finally moved. He reached into one of his vest pockets and pulled out a syringe. He held it up in the sunlight so she could see it, and her eyebrows rose. So did the chuunin's.

"Tomori-san, was it?" Shikamaru asked. "What is this?" He wiggled the capped syringe, full of a clear-blue liquid, between his fingers.

"I don't know," she said flatly. "It's something I was told to hold on to until later."

"I see." He uncapped the needle and put a tiny bit of pressure on the plunger. A few drops shot out from the tip. "No hypotheses?" he asked, eyeing her.

She shrugged. "Probably a solution of one kind or another. Maybe a blank carrier solvent waiting for the active compound to be drawn in and incorporated."

Yeah I'll just bet it is, Shikamaru thought. Solution for what kind of problem? He knew that wasn't overtly what she meant by using that word, but it reminded him that this was a life-and-death game he was playing with the scientist. He'd bet anything those tables had been meant for his team.

He stood up and sauntered toward them, then drifted around to the back of the log the captives were tied to.

"I'm afraid I can't just accept ignorance on this one," he said, watching her out of the corner of his eye. He could feel the tension radiating off of the chuunin, who now had his back to Shikamaru.

The Konoha nin reached out and secured a handful of the other young man's hair, firmly but not roughly. He watched Tomori carefully from his peripheral vision as he pulled the young man's head to the side, then placed the tip of the needle against the exposed skin of his neck. She was watching him, but trying not to look like she was watching him. He felt the chuunin's heart rate speed up, but the boy was trying desperately to be a good little prisoner.

He'd sufficiently terrified the chuunin already, without even trying too hard. Go figure. And the woman was more annoyed than intimidated, despite all his efforts. Again, go figure.

Shikamaru pushed the needle into the chuunin's skin and felt him try not to jump or struggle. Apparently he was wound pretty tight.

Tomori's eyes widened a tiny bit, and he saw her swallow and glance away. That almost looked like…panic in her face? It was fleeting, but split seconds count when every detail is crucial. And details are my specialty.

He began to slowly push the plunger down, injecting the fluid into the captive's body.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tomori finally demanded. Shikamaru paused, not pressing anymore but also not removing the needle from its lodging.

"The same thing you do," he answered. "An experiment. I hypothesize that a demonstration will tell me what kind of drug this is." I know that's not quite the way it works in her mind, but the more annoyed she gets, the more likely she is to give me something useful.

She glared at him. "I do not inject unknown and potentially dangerous substances into people!"

He raised one eyebrow. "You only do known ones? Is that it?"

"Stop twisting my words!" she fired back. "Are you that much of an idiot, that you'd risk killing your other information source before you even ask him a single question?"

Shikamaru looked between her and the chuunin who was still at his mercy. "I still get information this way," he pointed out, putting on an innocent expression. "Since you don't know or won't tell me what drugs you had in your pocket, this is the only other way to find out quickly." He began to slowly push the plunger once more. "It probably isn't lethal, since you would've been using it on your test subjects, and dead test subjects aren't usually very useful."

"Stop!" she shouted at him, her eyes finally wide and locked on the place where the needle punctured the Chuunin's skin.

Shikamaru had injected about a third of the liquid, and he could feel the chuunin beginning to relax. He paused again, looking at her expectantly.

"It's…not a blank. It's a primer," she huffed. "Probably."

"Now you tell him that?" the chuunin growled. Apparently he was relaxing more and more as the liquid spread through his system.

Shikamaru pulled the needle out of his victim's neck, and he relaxed much more. Shikamaru almost felt sorry for the kid. He'd had to get a couple of injections in his neck over the course of his lifetime, and if it ever happened again it would be too soon. That shit hurts.

"We always use a primer before we do an experiment," she explained, still using an irritated tone. "It changes the organism's pH balance, and therefore makes every carbon bond slightly less stable than normal to prepare the body to accept the new compound more easily. It's also usually laced with a sedative."

"Sounds highly dangerous, actually," Shikamaru muttered, eyeing the stuff remaining in the syringe.

"We don't use it on people! We've only ever used it on animals—rats, rabbits, the occasional frog. And it would be nowhere near the amount that was in that syringe."

Her eyes widened slightly, but she did her best to hide it. If Shikamaru had blinked, he would have missed it completely.

She didn't know. She thought it was going to be animal testing, but the amount in these syringes…she just figured out that this is probably the dosage for a human. Here's my chance, if I play my cards right.

"What kinds of experiments do you usually do with your mentor?" he asked, knowing the prompt would lead her mind to consider doing those same things to humans.

"I…we…" she swallowed. "Chemical engineering. Boosts to stamina, strength…" her face grew slightly paler than before, "pain tolerance…and then we study the changes from the…the subject's…body, the naturally produced compounds, and extract them to synthesize and replicate them. To be used as performance enhancers. For other…for others of the same species."

"And what would be the practical application of such an achievement?" Shikamaru prompted.

"The practical…" she took a breath. "Enhancing shinobi performance."

That was more direct than I expected…Should I force her to acknowledge everything now? I don't really want to be that cruel, but it's no good if she realizes it by herself later, when she has time to think and rationalize it.

"Where were the animals you were supposed to be testing it on?"

She stared at Shikamaru as if she was actually seeing him for the first time. Her eyes drank in his pointy hair, his serious eyes, his tense face, his crossed arms, his tilted hips from standing with his weight on one leg.

"Don't tell me…" he could see a glistening in her eyes, but he kept his expression neutral, showing just enough concern to remind her he was just a person, like her. "You," she whispered. "We were supposed to be…oh kami…on you. Your team. He told me the facility was going to supply our test subjects."

"And did your mentor know what kind of test subjects they would be supplying?"

She squeezed her eyes shut, and the chuunin decided he'd been silent long enough again. "Hell yes he did," the ninja muttered under his breath.

Shikamaru cuffed him upside the head. "I told you, you'll have your turn. Shut up."

"You're lying!" Tomori shouted at him. "He didn't know! He couldn't have known!"

"I saw him give you those needles," the chuunin fired back, remembering after the fact to shrink away from Shikamaru. The genius just watched this time, though, to see what kind of reaction his words would bring.

"He did…give them to me, but he couldn't have known! He wouldn't break ethics like that!"

Shikamaru gave the chuunin a preemptive light backhand, just enough to stop him from saying whatever was on the tip of his tongue. "That's enough from you," he muttered, then looked back at the scientist. "You're young," he told her, and she looked up at him. You're probably a few years older than me, but still...young. Still naive.

An image flashed through his mind of a classmate who defected to become allies with a certain snake, then of the stories he'd heard of that snake when he was thought to still be loyal to Konoha. He thought of Kakashi, his friends' goofy sensei, in full interrogation mode, and how sick he'd felt upon seeing it. He thought of his own sensei, Asuma, bluffing to a little girl's father that he would kill her unless the father gave up information. He thought of himself, lazy to the gills, with just enough motivation to study the very topic that terrified him so much and surprising even himself in the process.

"People we think we know can do unimaginable things, depending on the motivation," he told the young scientist.

Flashback

"Oi, you guys," Shikamaru greeted as he approached Sakura and Ino. Everyone had finished lunch a little while ago, and now the two girls were sitting near the tents, chatting.

"Hm?" Sakura asked at the same time Ino responded with "What's up?"

"I need a favor. It's troublesome, but I'd like to know what this is." He held up one of the syringes from the scientist's lab coat pockets. "Do you have a way to find out?"

Ino took the syringe from him and held it up to the light, and both medics squinted at it.

"I'd have to do some tests. I'm not sure if we have the right stuff out here." Sakura said, then looked back to him. "Sorry. I'll try, but we may have to send it back to Konoha for analysis."

He shrugged. "It's ok."

"Why do you need to know?" Ino asked.

Shikamaru scratched his head to buy himself an extra second or two before answering. Is there any way I can avoid telling them what I'm planning?

"I'm working on a plan to find out too, and I'd like to confirm the answer I get."

"What kind of plan?" his teammate asked.

He sighed. "Honestly, I'd really rather not say." He met Ino's eyes, begging her just this once to let him have his secrets.

Meanwhile, Sakura's eyes drifted to her sensei, who was sitting against a tree nearby with his ever-hidden nose buried in a book. Ino noticed and immediately caught on to her train of thought.

"Shikamaru, is it…you mean you're planning your interrogation strategy?" Ino asked quietly.

He sighed. "Yeah."

This time, Sakura picked up the questions. "How are you planning to incorporate this stuff," she raised the syringe, "into your strategy?"

He made a conscious effort not to look away from her. "I don't know yet. That's why I want to know what it is, so that I know the best way to ask about it."

Sakura and Ino looked at each other, and seemed to silently agree to drop the subject. Or postpone it at least. No way will Ino actually drop it…she'll harass me about it later, after she knows I've made up my mind about what I'm going to do. Sakura took the syringe to examine it more closely.

"There's something else," Shikamaru said resignedly, interrupting their silent conversation. Both looked back to him. "Do you have a sedative—something mild and harmless—that looks like whatever's in that one?" He gestured to the item still in Sakura's hand. He tried to achieve the light conversational air Chouji used when asking "you gonna eat that?" but he wasn't sure he quite managed it.

"Really Shikamaru? Drugs?" Ino scowled at him.

So much for postponing MY interrogation, he thought with a mild wince.

"A bluff," he said. "I won't use it unless I have to."

Sakura dug around in her med pack. "I only have one kind, and it's really strong. And it's not in that kind of needle."

Ino was still frowning, but she pulled her own pack over and opened the larger med kit Tsunade had instructed her to bring. "There's a milder one here, but it's still strong. It would need to be diluted to take up as much space as the stuff in that syringe. And you'd need to use a henge for the color."

"Could you do that for me? Except the henge, I mean. I can handle that part."

Ino nibbled on her lip and looked to Sakura, who looked over at her own sensei again. Then she nodded. "Ino, would you do this one? I'll see what I can figure out about the original."

Ino nodded, still looking troubled.

"Thanks," the genius said, and stood up to wander off.

Fifteen minutes later, Ino approached her spiky-ponytailed teammate. He looked up from the spot he'd found on the ground where he'd been gazing at the clouds and thinking. He stood up to meet her.

"Finished already?" he asked her. She nodded and showed him. In her hand was a syringe of the same style they'd confiscated from the scientist earlier, filled with the same amount of a different color fluid.

"Yeah. It's strong. Out cold for at least four hours if you...if one of them gets the full amount."

He moved to accept it from her, but she clutched it back, out of his reach.

Hm? He dropped his hand back to his side and waited for her to say whatever was on her mind.

"Shikamaru, what are you going to do with this?"

"I'm going to trick them."

"Like you tricked Genma with your fists?" she asked in a carefully quiet voice.

Shikamaru frowned. "I thought you and him weren't..."

"Don't change the subject! Are you going to hurt them to trick them?"

His frown deepened. "That's not my plan, no."

"Are you going to hurt them? Unarmed captives, and one a civilian? That other woman came back looking terrified after you and Kakashi-sensei 'talked' to her."

"We only talked." Her forehead crinkled as she narrowed her eyes at him, and he held his hands up, surrender style. "I swear it. We only talked. And we didn't do the scaring. She's been through hell for a civilian and had no idea why."

Ino nodded slowly and her forehead smoothed out, but her lips pulled tight. "So…these next two…will you hurt them?"

"I can't promise not to."

Her hand tightened around the plastic needle in her hand, and he pulled his hand down his face.

"Ino, I'm finding my style right now. You know I'm not into…well, making anything harder than it absolutely needs to be. That sedative you've made is going to help me avoid hurting them any worse than necessary, because mind games are my strength. You know that." She nodded, and he continued. "But I do have the will to protect my comrades, so…so I'll do whatever it takes. But no more than that, because I also have Asuma-sensei's respect for life and the will to be someone worth looking up to."

She met his eyes again, finally looking a little less troubled.

Shikamaru stepped toward her and held out his hand. "May I?" he asked.

Ino placed the item in question gently in his palm, and he closed his hand around it.

"Thank you," he told her. Thank you for trusting me, and for holding me accountable.

From the tiny hint of a smile on her lips, Shikamaru knew she understood.

End Flashback

"Would you have gone against your mentor, when the moment came?"

The research assistant broke off their eye contact and dropped her chin to her chest. She started to weep.

He'd done it.

She was broken.

But instead of a sense of triumph, he only felt a pang of something unpleasant deep in the pit of his stomach.

I know my own motivation. I just hope I don't lose myself, and become something unimaginable, in the process of becoming whatever is necessary to protect my friends and his teammates, and more importantly, the next generation.

A/N CLOSING NOTES: We'll learn the chuunin's name eventually, I think. Probably. And we can be a little rougher with non-civilians, you know? Especially if he's mouthy cause he's "drunk" on sedative. ;)

Hmm, poor Ino. I'm putting her through all kinds of emotional crap, aren't I?

Anyway, thanks for reading, and please leave me a review! :)