"Waiso, why did you kill the enemy Sin Eater!?" Meiko flipped out. The realization that this young man she was willing to accept into the Team Hokage fold may not have been whom he was presented as did not hit the more thick-skulled blacksmith all of a sudden.
"Sin Eaters may not be the most powerful of ninja specializations in terms of their combat proficiency but they do know some crafty tricks and are dangerous overall. Hanasaku was a fool to not kill this man immediately, especially when she has a Yamanaka on her squad who could extract the information before she disposes of him." Waiso spoke in a tone wildly different to the usual lispy and spraying manner in which he spoke. His tongue appeared to no longer get stuck in between the rows of his teeth.
"I'm not that good at intelligence extraction just yet…" Kiyomi admitted. "I've been mostly just dabbling in that jutsu up to now, the situations I ended up in demanded more combat oriented focus."
"Dangerous or not, you did not have to kill him." Hanasaku's feet shifted the dirt beneath them, the woman was subconsciously preparing for an engagement as even someone as simple as she was capable of seeing what was coming. Especially now when her injured and distressed state granted her greater awareness and self-preservation instincts that were long absent from her arsenal.
"I obtained the information from him, keeping him alive when he is the person who can mess with the seal on that scroll would be at the very least irresponsible." Waiso reached into his back pouch. The hands of Kiyomi and Hanasaku twitched out of sheer instinct like the two were gunmen preparing to unload on sunset. The entire standoffish manner of this situation just ticked the two kunoichi all the wrong ways.
The young man pulled out a small greenish scroll decorated with curly tendrils of darker emerald color. A storage seal as the eyes of anyone who spent even the bare minimum amount of time on the field could identify easily.
Kiyomi and Hanasaku allowed the geeky Sin Eater act, attacking him right now without finding out his true motivations and their relation to their mission objective would have been just as irresponsible as killing one's prisoner on such paranoid reasons and then antagonizing one's own team as if they were one's enemy.
Waiso unsealed a large holding jar. A container of verily scientific appearances with its top and bottom appearing to be made of stern and sterile steel alloys that were used in medical procedures. The middle part of the jar was just glass of unclear content with the goopy green liquid shaking inside being an even greater mystery.
"An organ storage jar?" Meiko mumbled. She had seen devices such as these for her father has worked on some of its parts. Namely, the switches that secure the objects inserted within while medical professionals worked on the cocktail of goop that preserved what was inserted within.
Waiso's mouth opened wide, to say that much would have been an understatement for the boy's mouth opened so wide that the constrictor snakes that swallowed their prey whole would have dyed their cheeks crimson in jealousy. It was as if the Sin Eater had no jawbones to restrict such motion at all. All this freak show just to insert the storage jar in between his teeth how a hardened fighter held their knives by their grip.
The freaky Sin Eater then proceeded to open up the seal where the Uchiha's body was stored with one of his, now freed, arms while the other one weaved a single hand seal just to unseal the body within.
"Don't!" Kiyomi grunted. She was worried that exposure of the dead body that was already dead for quite a while would ruin the chances of successfully removing its Sharingan eye once the body is returned to the village.
"Do not worry, preserving the eye is just as important to me." Waiso threw back at her with little care. It was almost like the three kunoichi were just a bother to the Sin Eater now who would have ideally just disappeared.
After a loud popping sound and a blast of smoke from the scroll, a normal occurrence with sealing procedures, a body of an unfortunate Uchiha slammed on the ground like a ragdoll. Waiso let go of the sealing scroll for it was now useless to him and raised his right arm. A certain look of contemplation ran through his face since he was no trained medical ninja capable of the complex transplant procedures who knew ideal ways of extracting the Sharingan eye while keeping its properties and ability to be transplanted intact.
After a moment's hesitation, Waiso extended his arm forward, elongating to where it reached into the Uchiha's throat, cracking something that opposed his highly elastic arm slipping down inside it. The three kunoichi observed speechless as the fingers of the teammate they thought they knew penetrated the Uchiha's neck from inside before buzzing quickly and twisting around like a buzzsaw, beheading the dead body.
Within mere microseconds after the deed was completed, a feat of speed none of the kunoichi were even aware their teammate being capable of, the Sin Eater inserted the head of the Uchiha within the storage jar to float in the gooey liquid. After the whole affair was finished, Waiso just sighed at ease before turning at his teammates with an ecstatic glare.
"You've been quite agreeable up to now. Maybe we can work something out still?" He wondered leaving an ominous hanging at the end there.
"We've only let you act upon your motives up to now because they went along with our mission objective. You are the Sin Eater. You've confirmed that there were no traps on the dead body, you've extracted it from the seal and even made carrying it back easier – you've done your job." Hanasaku huffed out through physical pain and weary.
"I see…" Waiso closed his eyes. The man sighed in disappointment. "I may have difficulty settling things between us in this shape. Allow me to slip back into my original form."
Upon finishing that sentence, Waiso threw his hands to the side, letting the clothes covering the upper section of his body to take a greyish color and the texture of wrinkly skin before unwrapping from the lower layers, same with the boy's glasses. The geek's entire body structure morphed with bones shooting out from under his skin and forcing his skin and inner flesh to stretch out, increasing Waiso's size to at least that of a taller adult male. His hair changed color to the elderly grey and then extended past its normal length and down his back, reaching all the way to the man's bottom. The large nose of the geeky kid separated into a more pointy construct of flesh with two flappy wings of what initially appeared to be cotton but then upon returning to their silver coloring and dangling down to where it covered the man's upper lip made itself out to be his rich mustache line.
"W-What kind of transformation technique is that? That's no usual Academy Transformation Jutsu!" Kiyomi lost her cool for a moment. Seeing the strange behavior of the man's flesh, bones and skin reminded her for just a moment of the odd way in which the body of her opponent in the finals of the Chuunin Exams – Tanko Shigin moved.
"Indeed, if I used something as primitive as that, you may have seen through it. Instead, I chose the easier option of merely molding my flesh about to take the shape of the young Waiso. It is a natural ability I have come to discover upon being discovered and returned to the village." The elderly man who was Waiso before spoke in a much more mature and husky voice.
His entire skin looked unnaturally grey and very smooth, no ridges or bodily hair anywhere except on his face that retained its hair and wrinkly appearance.
"Discovered? You mean you were one of the people who have disappeared and one of the few who were found and returned to the village?" Meiko scratched her head in confusion. All that transpired in front of her took way more processing power and deductive reasoning to put together. She had to slow things down and ask a thing or two before the confusion and lack of information cost her team the upcoming conflict.
"That's right. From what I've seen in the Chuunin Exams I am not the only one with these odd abilities." The elderly enigma stretched out his hands, flexing his impressively, for his age, athletic lower body as if feeling the newly found freedom and removal of limitations that wearing Waiso's face caused him.
"I bet you ain't even named Waiso…" Meiko growled through her teeth, she felt a little relieved knowing that the man she was looking at was just someone wearing another's face and just playing them instead of being her actual teammate with questionable character qualities. Shapeshifters and two-faced bastards possessed much softer faces that were much more punchable, as Meiko has learned over the years.
The elder smiled. It was not a mocking or show-offish grin but instead just an instinctual thing he had little control over.
"No. Waiso is a poor soul who has disappeared just as I did but, unlike me, he has not yet truly been found. It was a simple switcheroo trick to fool the village that Waiso was also rediscovered. My real name is Togure Kuchirubi," The man shook his head. He looked truly pitiful of whatever fate has befallen the real Waiso and as if he had worn the boy's face merely because of the convenience of the opportunity.
"Why bother with this shit? Why not help the village by providing information about what's been making these people disappear?" Kiyomi wondered with a hint of annoyance in her voice and her face. This old-timer appeared to make stupid faces as if he was actually kind and had ulterior motives that superseded any mission objective he took up as fake Waiso and yet he cared little to end the disappearances…
"I don't know how it is with the others but I only remember vague details of what happened while I was gone. Nothing helpful to the village, those that deal with the paperwork and investigation no longer even bother questioning those that reappear because the few bits they provide are completely useless. I'd like to help the village with that, I truly would…" the man nodded trying to appear genuine.
Meiko looked convinced but the others were less so. Kiyomi felt simply too bitter about the betrayal to give a crap if the geezer was secretly a good guy or not. The only reason she was not punching him in the face right now and making his brain splatter out through his ears was that she was still unclear about the caliber of this man's abilities. Hanasaku's mind appeared to be occupied by different things than the morality of the man that currently possessed the head of the Uchiha they needed to return to the village.
"Why do you need this head? You went through an awful lot of trouble for it: gathering intelligence about this mission and working things out to have the village pin you on us. Why? Do you just want the eyes for yourself?" Hanasaku voiced the truly important question.
"No. You probably did not know what I was doing when I disappeared. It's fine, you ninja always talk mighty but very few actually bother to check on the backgrounds of the little guys that go missing…" the man shook his head before beginning his explanation. He must have felt pretty hopeful that he could still work some kind of a deal out with the three kunoichi that did not result in all of them coming to blows.
"Oh shut up! Stop making yourself out like a victim! You're interfering with the mission objective of your mission and you impersonated someone else as well as lied to the Konoha Administration. You're no better than those nukenin we killed." Kiyomi snapped back at the man who for a moment contemplated the girl's words. While they were confrontational, he actually appeared to have been somewhat damaged by their sharpness. Perhaps he really did feel some sort of inner guilt after all.
"I was looking for a band to join. Mercenaries, criminals, I did not care at that moment… I was not sure they would not just kill me outright, just an ordinary civilian man, just a family man with nothing to lose but nothing to offer them either. I was useless and useless things do not have long lifespans in this world of ours. I remember very little else but the desperation and despair I felt while I roamed the woods outside Konohagakure, maybe that was what attracted whatever demons are making these people disappear? My despair." The man pondered.
"Despair?" Meiko wondered.
"I had received the news that my son was dying a week ago. The only thing to save him was proteins that a very specific group of people produce. Fifty years trying to conceive a child and then the one little miracle is only there dangling for a mere moment before the cruel hand that holds it by the string pulls it away from us again…" the man lamented.
"I'm guessing that protein has something to do with the Sharingan?" Kiyomi blinked. Her own hatred for the Uchiha helped her supply of tolerance for the bullshit sob story of this criminal scumbag.
"That's right. How many of these as elite as they are entitled individuals do you think were willing to check into a hospital every other day to endure painful eye injections for a useless old geezer civilian and his son? Honestly, when I returned I began to think like the miracle that granted my family the child in the first place was not done with me yet. All these opportunities: my son had survived up until my return, past expectations, albeit his time was running dangerously short with each day defying expectations, these mysterious abilities I returned with, the fact that an Uchiha got himself killed so soon after my return… I could not screw all these lined up opportunities up. Not with my son's life on the line." The elder shook his head with stone-hard determination in his eyes.
One thing was obvious – he'd not surrender the eyes easily. He had a reason he wanted them and he was willing to fight for that reason.
"I see, so you're willing to go into hiding with these eyes. Let your son live the life of a runaway, rather than die as a sickly child." Hanasaku looked down. The pain and exhaustion in her voice were overshadowed by some odd sense of empathy and warmth. "We cannot let you have those eyes."
"Even if the village would transplant them onto another ninja, making them a killing machine instead of saving a life?" the geezer was slightly taken aback by Hanasaku's call after her apparent ability to relate with the man's motives somewhat.
"That is the mission we were given." Hanasaku nodded firmly. She did not look proud or happy about that decision but she did not waver for a moment before making it.
"Good reasons or bad, you're a criminal. Love or hate these eyes, they're something the village wants." Kiyomi joined in on her mentor's decision.
Meiko lifted her hand up, holding a solitary kunai knife in it before mumbling a feeble "Weapon Transformation Jutsu!" before her weapon transformed into a hammer that became enveloped with a cloak of chakra. While she offered no words to the man trying to save his son, her fortitude was strong enough to coat even a weapon that was not made of her father's easier to coat with chakra alloy.
The story and the topics contained within it became heavy to talk about, growing increasingly so with each word let loose. The two yarn-spinners began taking pauses of varying degrees of awkwardness and lengths. Mana sighed as an acknowledgment that the situation that her friends ended up in was quite a convoluted and morally grey in some aspects.
"So… Do you think we made the right choice?" Meiko wondered. It was evident that while she described herself as possessing ample resolution to resolve the conflict back then, currently she was reflecting on her stance and the events that followed on an increasing rate and for tormenting periods of time.
"Of course we made the right choice." Kiyomi did not let Mana answer and the magician was quite thankful her friend for it. After all, she herself went through in Shukuba, she was beginning to doubt more and more of the things and morals she took for granted before. Truthfully, she was not sure if she could confirm and satisfy the hopeful glares of her two best friends so she was truly glad that she did not need to answer that question, at least not immediately.
"That bastard was a criminal." Kiyomi clutched her fists, grabbing her own hospital bed cover by the handful as she sank in the falling strands of her untidy, golden hair.
With a longing glare out the window into the creeping gloom of the dying winter evening, Mana wondered if her honest answer to that question might have cost her the friendship with her two past teammates. In addition, she wondered if this was the extent of the tension, which was enough to break lifelong bonds such as those she shared with these two girls.
"So what now?" Hanasaku stepped forward, raising her fist, which she used to clutch at her rotting wound from where an entire eternity of aging hit her previously. Thusly, she showed that, at least partially, she has recovered from after that unfortunate battle with the rogues from before. "Are you going to take all three of us on now?"
"That is why I unveiled my true face, and yet I foolishly hoped that I'd be able to make you see reason…" the old man lowered his head letting his protruded eye ridges cover the orbal mirrors to his soul. "Nevertheless, these old bones were intelligent enough to observe all three of you fight from afar. I have observed your abilities, your strengths and weaknesses and I shall not allow your interference destroy my miracle!"
Despite his thunderous declaration, the old man remained stationary in a wide open stance. He did have a point, the man who wore Waiso's visage did indeed stay back most of the time and studied the fighting styles of all three of his companions extensively whereas his own remained a mystery to all three of the girls. What the old geezer made out to be a weakness in combat was actually just a clever ploy all along…
Regardless, the clash that would decide the fate of the copy wheel pair of eyes was inevitable and drawing nearer.