A/N: Hello! This chapter may seem a little random but these are Tooru's thought and feelings. Not all of them, since she herself doesn't know everything she is feeling right now. But enjoy!

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Chapter 32: Punishment Thoughts

Small Cell

So cramped, so cold.

There isn't even enough room to shiver. I cannot stretch out and I feel my emotions shutting down again.

I stare at the wall, I cannot sleep and I am allowed no food. Only water when Kakashi has time to spare. Which, with his work load, won't be too often. And I thought half a day was bad. A full day so far is worse.

I am the worst. I should have never been caught. I should have been able to stay hidden. I don't even know how I go caught. Yet I did.

I was caught leaving. Nothing after that should have happened.

Maybe my dreams were telling me something. I don't belong among those who have emotions. I can't let emotions cloud my judgement like all the other shinobi before me. Lord sixth doesn't have much choice in the matter, lord third started it all. Emotions should never be mixed with fighting. I am a pawn. I am the dog, I obey commands and I have to make sure everything goes off perfect.

But this is for the better of the village. I have no way of ever having a family. This is something that no one can ever start. I can never be with someone, the emotions would overwhelm me and no one wants to deal with that. That was showing in the dream. Once I started feeling things and seeing how I was working that way, I folded under the pressure. I panicked. I can't be with anyone.

This cell is to remind me of that. I have no way, or hope for that matter, of ever making a family. All because Lord Third wanted to keep me a secret. All because I wasn't aloud to have friends. All because I was never going to meet anyone else.

I hate that I survived that day. I hate that I can hear everyone crying. I hate the sounds of the blades ringing in my ears.

Flashback:

'Tooru, you have to make it back, listen to mommy'

'Tooru run!'

"You have to make it back'

I hate everything that I have become. I hate being so isolated from people. I want to be free. But the cell reminds me I can never be free from anything. I am a dog and a dog must obey. I know Lord Third would have given me a worse punishment. I know Lord Sixth is being too easy on me.

Lord Sixth should not be going easy. I am nothing to the village.

Lord Third saw something in me and wanted me to be strong, so no one would harm me. I know that is what he told me.

"Tooru, come with me please," the old man said after the park one day, the day Choji shoved a chip in my mouth.

I nod and follow closely behind him. I am a child still but a recent jonin, I have the skills but my balance is still a little off, but it gets better each day. I keep messing up on missions. I know that Lord Third is disappointed in me. I know that. I just wish that Lord Third would help me.

"Listen Tooru, were you scared back there?" Lord third asks me.

"A… a little. Why lord third?" I stutter.

He gets a look in his eyes, something that I had never seen before. I tilt my head and wait for him to reply to me. What is the question. Lord Third wants to help me? That makes me excited.

"I might," lord third begins, "Have a way for you to never be scared again. I just need to know that you trust me Tooru."

"You know I trust you lord third, you have helped me so much I don't know what I would do without you," I reply.

That's when he finally looked at me. A look that should have sent me running. A look that looking back told me everything I needed to know about what he was planning to do with me. The day he made any trace of my life vanish from anyone who was not a genin yet. The adults knew but they were never allowed to tell the children about me. I started to live with strict rules and a harsh training program that no one else had ever seen, and that no one even knew about. I was forever to be alone.

I am a shinobi.

I am the shadows.

I am nobody in the village.

I trusted Lord Third at that was a mistake on my part. My clan trusted me, and I let them down. I got them killed. A whole clan is gone because I wasn't fast enough.

Shikamaru, he can never understand how I feel. Naruto can't understand. Neji can't. Not a single one of them could understand the position that I am put in. Not a soul can recount the horrors that I have had to deal with in the years I have been working behind the scenes. Nothing in the village would get done as fast if I wasn't able to work the way I do.

And if I messed up, something would happen to me. A punishment, they were never the same. I have scars on my back from whips. I had to train with bruises forming all over my body, all because I let Naruto or a child see me. I could never bring up the punishments. Soon though the physical punishments were not enough, for they had numbed my body to pain. So mental punishments began.

Water on the forehead, mind numbing facts. In ice cold rooms. The list kept going and going. Being asked thousands of questions with only a second to answer. I was not allowed to have emotions, they were beaten out of me at a very early age.

An age when mom said she would listen to me.

I wish I knew what she was like when she wasn't in a cage.

That pain is something I can never forget. The first time I was in the cell was before the chunin exams a few years ago. I let them see me talking to their teachers, I was put in this cell. And now it is smaller since I grew a little in almost seven years I have been out of this cell. The water dripping on my forehead, it drove me insane for a while. I can never forget that I am a shadow.

The pain is all for the good of the village, lord sixth is too relaxed with me. Lady fifth held on to the punishment. Lord third is when I had the most punishment. Almost every month I would mess up, even now, looking back I have messed up so much that the punishments should have stayed in a steady way. I have no way to learn my place, I am the dog of the village. I must obey, I must always hold my own and I must stay hidden.

I am working behind the scenes and I know more than most people in the village combined. This position has no love to give or receive. I am the secret to the village, nothing more and nothing less. Love is something I have nothing of. I was foolish to think that I could love him, I know I can never be the person he needs and I am too far away from him to ever have anything.

I am only a tool to the village.

Shikamaru will leave after the group is gone.

Never will I ever deal with that group again.

I am a ninja of high standing. I don't have time to be bugged by these simple matters of relationships. I don't care if any of them like me, I am the person who help the village remain strong and steady. Lord third make a decision and I know he had made the right one. Danzo was taken care of and things in the village are going back to normal. The war was taken care of, now this group needs to be handled as well.

I need to stop thinking of trivial thinks. My mind should only focus on things that will help the village. I am the one to protect the village and take care of all the hard things. I plan and prepare for the next big threat in the village.

I take a breath.

The group, there is still something that I am missing. 14 members, all still registered in their villages. We have one now in the village. Which means we have information on the group. Something that we have not had in a long time with the group.

Starting a new village is something that I would expect from any group that is as powerful as this one. But something still isn't sitting right with me.

How did they know I was going to be in the clearing?

I missed the nod.

They knew I was there and made a plan without saying a word.

Cleaver. I wish I had that kind of communication with the people.

That could have happened. I mean, the thought of someone new in the clearing could have tripped something. Which could have been the reason for them to look over the area, and finding me when I am sleeping. That makes sense and very few assumptions have to be made in the situation. I close my eyes, and think about the group some more.

The leader, there is something familiar about them, but I cannot place my mind on it. I have meet so many ninja that keeping them all straight in my mind is a little hard at times unless I have had more than two interactions with them in a few month period. I cannot shake the feeling that the leader is from the village, but where he stands does not match up with the diagram that I drew for Shikamaru.

He is standing in the direction of Waves. Although, he does have the mind of someone from the land of waves, I don't think that is where he is from. I can tell the others are from the village the stand at, but the leader is too hard to read. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the leader and not the followers and their reactions to what the leader was telling them. I click my tongue, such an annoyance that I have, in a small cell and thinking about this group.

The leader's chakra, focus on that. It is similar to an ANBU members, so controlled and is able to suppress it with ease that it becomes a weapon itself. A ninja like that is hard to deal with, even for someone like me. If everyone in that group can do that than I can see why the Shikamaru from the dreams believed there is someone in the ANBU working for this group.

I can agree with him there. There is no way someone lower would be able to pull anything like this off. I snort. I know that I need to take a closer look at the actions, what has the leader done?

Bark orders so far. There is a strong plan that is happening right now, what is it? I just need to think about it. The actions should tell me. They gather information on each village, and they copy it. I know that no record has ever been moved but they seem to know a little too many secrets about each village. Since they know about me, which is something no one else knows, so the person getting information on the leaf was at least a genin 12 years ago.

A genin that knew about me, even if it was a small amount of time. They know. If the same thing had happened in each village than all the special members should be around my age. What do they want with us? Chakra?

But the chakra is still bugging me.

Why is it so familiar? I pull out my own, but I have so many mixed in. I need to figure this out. I have each clans chakra, it is not Uchiha. Not Nara's who's chakra. None of the outside villages match a clan that I feel. I even strip it all the way down to the core. That's when it clicks, my clans, Kato. An experiment? Could be. My family was killed when I was two, but that's what I think and from what Saskue has told me that is the truth. He never knew anyone else with my charka. But I do have many mixed in. The rat is hiding in plain sight, under everyone.

Who is he?

Mom would know. Mom knew everything going on outside of her cage. I wish I had the skills mom did.

Now I just need to figure out who the rat is.