"I promise that this time, I will break the link before you pass out."

"Sure.", Kiba laughed. He couldn't care less. Until he couldn't move or walk properly, being passed out was actually more comfortable than being awake and bed-bound.

"We need to find out where the base is located and who all is involved so that Naruto and Shikamaru can start gathering intelligence on the operations with Konoha's ANBU as soon as possible."

He thought about it a little.

"Well, what I have in my mind are images of the base and the surrounding forest with a lake."

She frowned. And indeed, forest and a lake, how specific in a land like the Fire Country. Anyway, perhaps from the type of trees or some hills on the horizon, they could get the job done.

"Okay. That could help with the first part, we will see how far we can go. What about the people? Were there any around that you can clearly remember?"

"There was a man, the one who put me together. Him I remember well."

Ino smiled, so he assumed that this was good enough.

"Okay, so that is where we will start. Do you remember what he looked like?"

Kiba nodded. Ino apparently took that as an invitation. She sat down on a chair, extended her hands towards him and a second later, her body went lump.

"Think of the face, Kiba. I will help you with the rest through association."

He agreed mentally and started to focus.

The face.

It was not hard for him at all to recall that face.

It was the first thing he saw after he woke up. There was a ton of pain accompanying it and he felt like he was still on fire, but the expression of the older man told him that he was trying to help it go away. He could as well trust him since there was not much he could do.

"Wha-"

"Don't speak and stay still. You are injured."

Yeah, no shit.

He wanted to ask where the hell he was and what was going on, but the man stopped him again, this time by placing a bandage directly on his mouth even before he got out a single sound.

"Look boy, I am serious, do not stretch the skin on your face yet, you will undo all the healing. We will talk later."

The quizzical expression on his face was apparently sufficient though to convey his request.

"There was an explosion. You are safe here. Go back to sleep."

He did.

...

When we woke up again, he hurt a bit less. He managed to bring his head up a few inches so that he got a better view of what was around.

He was lying in an old, mostly deserted room smelling of an antiseptic and burnt skin on a bed which would have been probably much more comfortable were it not for his back injuries. Speaking of the latter, he saw that the vast majority of his skin was actually covered in bandages, and even the exposed skin still showed signs of burns.

Well, that made sense given that… given that what actually?

The man mentioned an explosion, but what kind of explosion was that? Why was he involved?

Where were his family and friends - and wait, did he even have any?

Only now was he starting to realize that he truly remembered close to nothing.

Panic soon overwhelmed him, and it took the man giving him some kind of medication for him to calm down. And fall back to sleep.

...

He was sitting on the bed, taking his medication for the first time completely by himself, without help, as his hands finally achieved sufficient mobility after two weeks, pondering about the things and events around him.

The man, who would never really introduce himself, became a constant in his life. He was all he knew, and he was always there when he needed hygiene or sustenance. He was also there when he was learning how to move his arms and walk. He liked the man, it was all he had.

Well, him and a talisman, which he noticed on a table near his bed a few days after he woke up there. The man explained to him that it was something he had around his neck when he was found.

But that was all that the older man would ever tell him about the conditions of the 'incident' as the man would call it. Whenever he requested more details, the man would refuse to speak or he would get angry.

It's not like he wasn't at this man's mercy given his state, so he stopped asking.

At the same time, someone did give him a talisman at some point, or at least so it seemed, which meant that perhaps there could be other people out there who knew him and cared.

After all, there were still a few remnants of memories in his head even if he didn't know how to interpret them. Visuals of a white dog running around, of a blond loud boy jumping around in bright orange clothing or of two not-at-all so loud teenagers looking at him, wearing long grey hoodies. Perhaps these were all real beings who were still out there somewhere and who he could try to find one day to get his life together. But he would have to get stronger and more independent first to be able to go chase those cues.

...

Sitting on the bed again another two weeks later, he was now taking his daily dose of pills with ease, his hands and legs now obeying him completely - and wondered what exactly he wanted to go chase those weeks ago. In any case, the man didn't approve, so it did not matter.

...

"I owe you. You saved my life.", he told the man.

"You have nowhere to go."

"I don't."

"Very well, then you will stay here, working for me, if you think you owe me. From now on, you will call me the Major. The job maybe be tough, but you will be compensated in kind."

He didn't question that. He would work for him. It's not like there were many options.

The job was though, he reflected as he was sitting by the lake one late evening, cleaning his hands and face.

The major's Lord owned a large laboratory, where they were developing various kinds of technologies, though his access to see what these were was restricted. There was usually a need for a variety of manual tasks such as carrying things around, but with those, he often had issues since physically, he was still not completely recovered. His superiors were, however, very happy to let him compensate for that by having him work over hours and draining him to the last droplet of sweat that he felt like he could spare to lose.

It's not like he minded. He had nothing else to do really and he owed the man his life. The man was still even helping him, letting him stay in the room and supplying him with things like bandages, pain medications, vitamins and other supplements for free that made him feel much better in his job. So if the man gave him boxes to carry, equipment to dismantle or places to clean with the water from the lake, he would do it.

...

The very lake changed his life today, in a way he would not expect.

They asked him to carry equipment to the other side of the lake to another base. So he did. Right across it.

"What in the hell was that?!", he heard the Major shout.

"What was… what?"

It wasn't often than the man shouted at him. It was actually very rare.

"You just walked on the water as if it was grass."

Ah.

"It is not difficult. You must just focus your chakra into your feet…", he heard himself explaining. He did not remember how he knew this, but it was just like writing or talking, something intuitive that just came up, probably from his past.

The Major's eyes lit up.

"You are a ninja.", he said, though it was more of a question.

Was he a ninja?

Maybe the lake reflected more about him than just his appearance.

"I- I don't know. Maybe?"

The Major approached him and looked him up and down.

A second later, he noticed a knife making its way to his face and quickly intuitively blocked the attack, instantly hitting back and managing to send the offender - his Major - to the other side of the field.

Blood drained from his face, thinking about the possible consequences.

"I apologize! I did not-!"

"Apologize not, kid. This is great news.", the Major stated, slowly getting up from the ground and removing the mud from his clothes. Despite the fact that he might have just broken his superior's arm, the man was for some reason smiling.

"You will get to meet the Lord."

"You are doing great, Kiba. Let's stop for now for a bit to take a break so you don't pass out again."

A second after he heard that unnatural addition to his thoughts, he was brought back to consciousness, finding himself lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. From the corner of his eye, he saw Ino slowly waking up as well.

His head spinning and feeling like he was going to throw up anytime were probably indeed good enough indicators that indeed a break would be useful. He wondered if the Yamanaka woman felt the same and if so, how she coped doing this all day.

He was now comfortable around her to the point of not minding her being present in his head, so maybe he would ask her at some point. Also about the ink smell which still puzzled him.

"Is the pace good for you?", she asked after a few seconds.

"It's a bit too much," he admitted, "but I don't mind, I am curious. I had some of these moments in my memory, but they were all blurry and kind of disconnected, so it's good that now they are finally making some more sense."

After a moment, he spoke again, still trying to process what he just saw.

"Actually, thinking about it, I don't think I saw all of this so clearly even when I was there, at that time. I remember that I was just constantly confused about everything that was going on. Maybe it was the head injury, maybe it made it hard for my brain to process things well somehow."

Ino nodded and pressed her lips into a thin line.

"Yeah, about that…"

She looked at Sakura.

"Could you please run an extended blood test on him? And I mean, really extended. Everything we can do when it comes to chemical traces in his blood."

Sakura raised her eyebrows at the odd request, but clearly she trusted Ino's judgment and proceeded to draw a respectable amount of blood from his arm.

Needless to say, it did not exactly improve the state of his dizziness.

Sakura apparently noticed and in turn brought him a cup of some white, semi-liquid substance to eat. After tasting it and noticing that it lacked both taste and smell, he looked at her puzzled. She laughed.

"Don't look at me like that. It's either this or I'll plug you back to IV."

He put his hands up in self-defense.

"No, no, I was just surprised that it is even possible to create something so… neutral."

Sakura raised her eyebrows and laughed again at his obvious attempt to try not to offend her. Somehow, based on her reaction, he could tell that trying to be inoffensive was probably not his usual behavior.

"You of all people should not be surprised. It's here mostly because of you."

Him tilting his head to the side was enough of a cue for her to continue.

"Each time you were hospitalized after missions, it was the same. Your senses would be over-sensitive and with a lack of chakra, you wouldn't be able to block them. There were just too many 'hospital smells that stick to all goddamn things' or whatever you called it back then, so the moment we would give you any kind of an easily digestible food - so, not a steak - you would just throw it up. Sometimes you would throw up even before tasting the poor food. You weren't the easiest patient, Kiba.", she smirked, though kindly.

He felt his cheeks and ears getting red from embarrassment.

"IV is expensive, so we developed the so-called 'Kiba-formula' which we now also use for some other ninja. Actually, Choji - eh, Ino's and Shikamaru's teammate - helped prepare it, since he is a great cook. It's a formula with minerals, vitamins and nutrients which is so blunt that there is absolutely nothing about it that can annoy you."

Shame was spreading through his body. But he was also now realizing how lucky he was that he had the opportunity to return to people who obviously cared so much about him. Probably there indeed was a point to all of this effort and he felt his motivation to continue go back up.

Two hours of small talk later, during which he finally asked Ino about the ink smell, they were ready to go back to the business.

He was standing in a dark room, the Major at his side and another, rich-looking older man sitting in front of them.

"The young man here used to be a ninja.", the Major introduced him to the other man, who he was supposed to call the Lord. Apparently this man owned the entire complex, though from the few conversations he heard around, he gathered that the man actually owned much more and held quite a lot of power in the country.

"That can help us greatly. Where is he from?"

"He has no idea."

"Good.", the Lord smiled.

Initially, he had no clue why someone like him - a ninja apparently - would be so valuable to these people, of course aside from him being able to do his job more efficiently through chakra control, or aside from him being able to take on more demanding tasks or missions. Though after all, if they needed ninja so much, they could just hire some, they certainly had the money for it.

That was until he learned the details of their work in the conversation that followed.

"Ninja villages are becoming too expensive and too authoritarian. With today's technologies, we can create tools that are even more efficient when it comes to self-defense compared to ninja, and cost close to nothing.", the Lord explained.

He could see the point in that. He did not know (or remember?) much about the Fire country, but he did know, from the chatter he heard around him during his work hours, that ninja services were indeed fairly expensive.

"We cannot afford them anymore, especially if they are easily replaceable. And that's what we are trying to prove here. Our mercenaries will be able to do the job at half the cost and without the expensive training with our technology. Self-defense will become cheap and accessible even for civilians. And at least the Hokage will no longer have so much power in his bloody hands in the Fire country once the combat and defense abilities are more distributed through technology."

So that's what all the laboratory work was about, he gathered. Before, he had never been allowed to look inside, but he knew that experiments on humans were involved due to the scream and smell of burnt skin and blood that he frequently noticed.

He was glad that now he had some explanations, but if their main aim was to, well, remove ninja, he wasn't quite sure why he was in the picture in the first place.

"What do you then want to use me for exactly, sir?"

It seems like the Lord was expecting his question.

"We are developing ninja tools. To make them efficient and powerful, we need ninja experience, especially with directing chakra. You will show us how to do it, by improving the tool design and help train our mercenaries to use these tools better through their own basic chakra control."

He wasn't quite sure he liked it, working on removing the breed he apparently belonged to, but at the same time, he knew there was no point in opposing the Lord in his ideas. He could see how improving access to safety made sense, and if it meant he wouldn't have to work 16 to 18 hours a day anymore on labor that his body was definitely still not physically ready for, he would take it.

...

This time, he was sitting on the lake in a lotus position, improving his passive chakra control while thinking about what he should teach the men tomorrow.

The work with the laboratory actually appealed to him, at least to some extent. Now having the time for training, he was able to once again get a proper control of his chakra and as a result, everything began to be easier as well. The Lord even started to let him rest a bit more when he saw that the additional energy translated into better training of his men. As a result, he was almost completely recovered from the 'incident' and kept discovering new skills.

...

It was on his fifth mission when one such skill came out completely of nowhere and saved his life. He was just about to drink some water from a well that was located right next to the building in which his next target resided only to find out that it was poisoned thanks to an insect signalling that fact to the rest of its hive. A pretty efficient trap, he had to admit. He found it surprising that he could understand the language of insects, at least to this degree, but just like with the other skills, he assumed that it simply came from his past and he was happy he could use it for his missions also today.

Pondering about these missions, he found it funny how much things had changed in a span of just a couple of months.

His missions started a few weeks after he begun training the Lord's men, when the Lord finally had enough trust in him to deploy him on missions alone. Usually these missions were either to hunt someone down and bring them to the base or to simply kill them, making use of his tracking skills that the Lord quickly noticed to be his strength.

The first time he found himself on one such kill mission, he was surprised by the resilience his target displayed, having initially presumed the man was simply a civilian. When his target dodged a few of his precise attacks with a kunai, he found himself instinctively performing a couple of hand signs, launching himself into the man in a quick spiral and ripping him in half with relative ease.

At first, he was taken aback. Shortly after however, he figured that this had also come from his past and through rigorous training and exposing himself to more and more danger during his away missions, he forced himself to recall a number of other useful techniques as well.

And now apparently, he could interact with insects. At least they kept him some company during his missions, along with the talisman that he still always carried along - because going to missions just by himself felt wrong. And maybe that also came from the past.

The curiosity over his roots never really left him, but at the same time, the Lord would always grow suspicious when he took longer to return from his missions than what he deemed necessary, meaning that traveling around to search for his origins was out of the question. In addition, unlike when he was gone on missions, back at the base, somehow he nowadays never found the mental capacity and sharpness to think too much about the things around him, which he put down to the amount of work.

Plus, it didn't take him that long to find friends in some of the mercenaries that he was training, so despite never really learning much about his past, he did have at least some sense of belonging.

And it was not just him. People at the base would never talk about their past, only sometimes mentioning "the war" as the reason that brought some of them there, making him wonder just how many of them ended up there in a similar way he did. All of them seemed to have missed something major in their lives, and working on something, on some common goal, felt like they were filling that void. He had little in his life at that point, but he still had at least something and would do what it took to not lose that.

...

So if it took killing the Hokage as he was asked to several more months down the line, he would do it.

The memories were starting to flow in faster and faster, and he realized he was being overwhelmed. He heard Ino trying to shout something at him, but it was too much at once for him to process.

He opened his eyes quickly and launched himself into an upright position - and the moment he did so, he realized it was not the brightest idea. Thank god, the good medic Sakura was by his side, healing the damage that he had just caused by the sudden movement and placing him back to a stable position.

He saw the Yamanaka woman - Ino - jerking up as well, having been obviously thrown back into her own mind.

"So-sorry, it was just too much.", he apologized to her, after realizing that it was probably him who kicked her out from his mind and broke the link.

"It was…" she agreed.

He thought his head would explode. They both remained in silence for a few minutes, both of them absorbing all that they had just seen. Both of them knowing that they got what the Hokage needed and realizing what it implied.

He could tell that Sakura was curious and wanted to ask what in the hell just happened and why the mind jutsu broke down again, but she stayed silent, giving them some space.

"We must talk to Naruto.", Ino started. "This is a real security threat to the village, if all of this is indeed going on. The man is trying to overthrow the entire shinobi system, not just the Hokage.", she summarized in a single breath.

He saw her looking at him intently, as if expecting a confirmation. When he said nothing, her expression softened.

"Kiba, I know what you are thinking, but these were not your friends. They abused you with tough labor, exploited you and once they found out who you were, they sent you out to kill your actual friends."

He closed his eyes and sighted. He knew that but it didn't make it any easier.

"I- I know. In principle. I just - I have, had, nothing else at that time, you must understand that. These were the only people I knew. They helped me when I was completely alone, and I did agree to work with them myself. Do what you must with them, I gave you the information you needed, but don't wait for my blessings."

Ino looked at him sternly, probably realizing that it would take a bit more for him to just openly condemn everything and everyone that he had at that point had.

Why did they care about his consent anyway?

"Sakura, did you have the time to run the tests?"

Sakura nodded and left to obtain the blood test results. She returned to the room with two long scrolls and gave them to Ino, and to him, she also handed another cup of the weird blunt odorless food so that he could get some energy back.

Ino buried her face in the scrolls and in a few moments, he saw her eyes lit up.

"Here, look.", Ino pointed at one part of the scroll. Sakura looked and breathed in heavily.

That comment obviously didn't make him much wiser. The two women noticed and turned to him shortly after.

"Kiba, they had been giving you a memory erasing chemical, it's still in your blood in quite some amount actually. That's why everything felt like a blur and it is now so hard to get out. It was the plan all along to force you to stay there, by drugging you and making you forget."

He was sick but this time, they would not blame the food.