Warning for human experimentation (including on children!) is still in effect.

xXx

Tori sat in the corner of her cell, staring at the organs on display in front of her.

In the best case scenario, someone– and by someone she meant 'almost definitely Keizo'– wanted to scare her. In the worst case scenario, he was threatening bodily harm that he intended to follow through on.

She couldn't ignore this. She had to act.

The cell doors could not be opened from the inside unless you were a ninja trained to break out of locked rooms, which Tori wasn't, so she had to wait for Snarly-nin to come let her out. When he did, he didn't comment on Tori's futon filled with horrors. She dutifully followed the line of murderous children to the mess hall, grabbed one of the metal trays, and left the hall. She marched right past Snarly-nin as if it was her right to do so, and he didn't say anything.

She kicked off a shoe to jam the door to her cell while she loaded the organs onto the tray. Then she took her tray of human remains to the lab and slammed them down on the seal Keizo was currently working on.

"Next time put down a tarp first," she hissed.

She went back to her own bench, pulling open the drawer she'd hidden make-up and hair ties in. The hair ties she'd found scattered all over the lab– Orochimaru liked to tie his hair back to work, in his only demonstrable commitment to standard lab safety– and she'd gathered a few for herself.

Before she was done twisting her hair back in a bun, Keizo appeared behind her, silent as a cat. She jumped as her elbow brushed the front of his lab coat.

"You were so confident," he said, quieter than he normally spoke, all tight and controlled. Tori froze with the hair tie halfway on, suddenly remembering the sting of Keizo hitting her face. "I just wanted you to know, fuuinjutsu relies on conviction. You didn't prove anything and you're not that clever. Orochimaru-sama was letting you placebo yourself."

Tori very carefully kept her face straight. She finished tying her hair back.

"Just so you know," Keizo concluded, then moved away.

Just so you know, so it's not a placebo anymore, Tori finished for him.

"You sound awfully overconfident yourself," Tori said back. She didn't say it very loud, which was lucky because once it was out of her mouth, it seemed like a deeply stupid thing to say to a mean ninja man whose spleen she'd stolen.

Keizo didn't respond, and Tori very awkwardly went back to what she was working on, which was getting a scent containing seal to work. It didn't look like anything else she'd learned, but it was useful for surgeries that went wrong and were therefore… extra smelly.

She was practicing with a bottle of beta-mercaptoethanol, which smelled like the devil's farts. It was good motivation to get the seal right, and so she was concentrating so hard she didn't even notice Keizo had left until he was back with a child.

The kid was one of the new recruits– the little girl who'd been so offended over Tori's missing eyebrows.

"Prep her for surgery," Keizo commanded. "I have a lot of work to make up."

The girl stared at Tori, wide-eyed.

"But…" Tori started.

"Prep. Her," Keizo gritted out, and Tori did.

In all the surgeries Tori had seen here, the standard procedure was to cover the face with a cloth that had a complicated seal for keeping the patient alive and anesthetized. When she had the girl properly sedated and laid out, Keizo come over and removed the cloth.

"But–" Tori said, and Keizo put a scalpel in her hand.

"Make the first incision," he said.

Tori stared down at the girl's face. It was the face of a child. The face of someone Tori had shared meals with. Her stomach churned.

"Go on," Keizo urged. "Cut her open. You've done it before."

Tori's hand shook as she hovered the blade over the girl's skin. "Her chances of survival are higher with the stabilizing–"

"I don't care," Keizo said, cutting her off. "We're doing it this way."

Tori went through with it, robotically. She cut the girl open, and then Keizo shoved her aside to apply his seals. He did it faster and sloppier than normal, and didn't stop even as the girl's organs began to swell. Her abdomen bloated as tumors grew, and her limbs twitched as her eyes fluttered, and then–

Tori walked out. Her head felt like it was floating. If Keizo said anything, she didn't hear.

Her feet took her on autopilot to Orochimaru's private lab. It was quiet in there, with cool, soothing lighting, and she stood among the rows of jarred organs and very quietly allowed herself to have a panic attack.

"Ah, Suigetsu said you'd been sneaking around here," Orochimaru purred.

He stood at the end of the aisle, wearing a white yukata that might have been his pajamas. He had bags under his eyes, not quite covered by his make-up.

Tori started to stammer out an apology, flinching away as he approached, but Orochimaru simply said, "If I didn't want you in here, you wouldn't be."

Tori shut her mouth. Orochimaru leaned over her to examine the jar she'd been looking at. It was some ninja's brain and spinal column.

"Imagine," Orochimaru said, tapping the glass with one manicured finger. "This is all that you are, just a bundle of nervous tissue."

"Is it?" Tori asked, and Orochimaru looked down at her. "Um, I mean, because… because, chakra seems to hold some personality…"

Orochimaru tilted his head at her. "What do you mean?"

Tori meant that she knew you could put your chakra into something and come back as a ghost when plot convenient, but instead she said, "I mean, you can transfer bodies without moving your nervous system, right?"

"Ah, yes," Orochimaru. "You are also your heart, I suppose, the source of chakra."

"Poetic," Tori said, and Orochimaru laughed softly.

"You found your heart," Orochimaru said. It wasn't a question. "And you've been reading all my notes. How nosy."

Tori felt herself tense again, but then Orochimaru let out another soft, humming laugh.

"They were fascinating," Tori mumbled. Orochimaru raised a delicately shaped eyebrow at her, and Tori continued, "You cloned the Shodaime Hokage's DNA into an infant just by applying the cells. I can barely wrap my head around it. In my world, we'd have to use, like… zinc fingers or a retrovirus, and even then you can't just write in an entirely new genome to a complex organism..."

"Ah," Orochimaru said, gesturing for her to follow him back towards his work table. He settled into a chair. "Poor Keizo has been begging me to let you go, you know. But how can I, when you always say such interesting things?"

Tori had to work very hard not to let panic show on her face. Orochimaru leaned back in his chair, studying her.

"Speaking of Keizo," he drawled, "why aren't you in lab?"

"Oh, um…" Tori averted her eyes, and mumbled out an explanation about Keizo behaving aggressively towards her, to the point where it even made his own work sloppy. "I want to work hard, I really do," she concluded, "but I don't know how I can if I have to be worried about my safety every second of the day."

"Hm, that is a tricky situation," Orochimaru said sympathetically. Tori felt hope bubble in her chest, and then he said, "I wonder what you'll do?"

"I'm not– I can't–" Tori stuttered out. She didn't have any power here, socially or physically, she didn't have any allies, and she wasn't tough enough to deal with it on her own.

"Nonsense," Orochimaru interrupted her, waving a hand. "You're smart, you're creative. I'm sure you can find a solution. In fact–" he leaned forward, gold eyes warm with excitement, "I am fascinated to see which of you manages to kill the other first."

Tori's legs went weak. Kill? Kill?

"I think I'll tell Keizo he can do what he wants with you next time he asks," Orochimaru continued, drumming his fingers on the table. "So I suppose you have until then to find your solution. Unless you think you can fend off a ninja actively trying to kill you?"

He smiled at her.

Tori heard herself say she needed to get back to work, and then left.

This was… this was bad.

She paced the halls randomly, thinking furiously about her predicament.

She didn't want to die. She definitely didn't want to be murdered by Keizo of all people. She had been complicit in enough murder and death by now to be confident she could kill a person for her own survival, provided she had the opportunity. But how could she get such an opportunity?

Or… maybe she could find an alternative solution. Would Keizo still want her dead if she transferred out of the lab? Probably, and probably Orochimaru wouldn't let her. Was there a way to get Keizo transferred to another hideout, maybe…?

Tori nearly collided with someone as she rounded a corner. He was sweaty and carrying a water bottle and a banana, probably a post-training snack. He neatly sidestepped her, and it took Tori's brain a couple seconds to register she'd just walked past Sasuke.

He'd already paused and turned around when she called his name in desperation.

"I've been wanting to talk to you," Sasuke started to say, and Tori interrupted with, "I want to make a deal with you."

Sasuke paused, looking her up and down. She probably looked extra frazzled. "A deal?" he repeated.

"Yeah," Tori said. "You do me a favor, and then I tell you everything you want to know."

"What type of favor?" Sasuke asked.

"I just need you to take care of someone for me–"

"No deal," Sasuke said, and moved to walk around her.

Right, okay, Sasuke was still a good shounen protagonist who didn't kill people at this point. Tori knew that, stupid–

She blocked his path, holding her arms out like some sort of demented crossing guard.

If Tori had had more time to think things through and plan, she might have asked for protection from Sasuke, or for some sort of weapon or blackmail she could use against Keizo. But in that moment she was panicked and desperate, and so she went with the next idea that sprang to mind.

"You want to know about your brother, right?" she said, and Sasuke's eyes widened slightly. "Give me that banana, and I'll tell you everything you want to know."

Sasuke glanced down at the fruit in his hand, looking beyond confused for a moment. Then his face cleared and he said, "Deal."

Tori told Sasuke about Akatsuki, that they wandered around in pairs committing dastardly deeds for money and searching for jinchuriki. She told him where he'd eventually meet Itachi. He asked about Itachi's eyes, and she told him about Susanoo and the eternal Mangekyou sharingan.

Caught in the moment like this, Tori did not tell him about Danzo or Itachi's illness or Obito, because he did not ask. She wanted to move through this conversation into the next part of her plan as quickly as possible, and it did not even occur to her to tell Sasuke any more than what he was asking for.

"Do I win?" Sasuke finally asked.

"Yes," she said.

Sasuke forfeited his banana, and Tori shoved it into her pocket and ran off. Dinner was soon, and she needed to talk to someone there.

xXx

Tori sat down across from Haruka in the mess hall. "I need you to do me a favor," she said.

Haruka snorted and did not even look up to acknowledge Tori's presence.

"I can get you a banana," Tori said.

Haruka paused in the middle of breaking up a chunk of gross dry fish into her rice.

"It's perfectly ripe," Tori said. "No green but still firm. I'm tempted to eat it myself…"

"Do you honestly expect me to believe you have a banana?" Haruka asked. She met Tori's eyes then, the line of her mouth hard and displeased.

Tori leaned back in her seat and poked the banana under her shirt, exactly the way she'd seen people in movies show off their gun under their clothes.

Haruka stared at it and her face twitched as she fought back the expression of lustful yearning that briefly flashed across her features. In a deeply unhappy voice she said, "What sort of favor?"

"I'm having, um," Tori said, "a sort of… interpersonal problem."

"I can't kill our warden," Haruka said flatly, as if Tori was stupid enough to think that was an option.

"No, it's the other lab tech," Tori answered. "I even have permission from Orochimaru-sama to get rid of him, I just, you know, can't."

"I don't really see why you can't," Haruka drawled, returning to mixing up her food again. "Other than you being a coward and a weakling and a moron. But alright, give me the banana and I can make that happen for you."

"I have your word?" Tori asked, leaning forward over the table. She extended her pinky finger.

"Oh my god, are you really doing that?" Haruka asked incredulously.

Haruka shook her pinky anyway. The banana was passed under the table, and for a quarter of a second, Haruka looked exactly like a kid in a candy store before she wrestled her scowl back onto her face. Tori went to bed feeling more hopeful than she had in a while.

Unfortunately, that night the entirety of the Village Hidden in the Sound went to complete and utter shit.

xXx

When the morning lights came on, Snarly-nin never came to let her out and herd all the new recruits to their assigned placements. Although it had never happened before, Tori wasn't immediately worried. Leaving her in isolation with no explanation seemed like something that would happen in Oto.

She curled back up on her futon and drifted back off to sleep.

She didn't know how much time passed, but eventually she had to pee and became annoyed with her predicament. When she couldn't hold it anymore, she squatted over the drain in the floor and attempted to aim.

It was very fortunate she had a towel.

Eventually she couldn't even nap any more, and she was hungry and thirsty, and the scenario still didn't seem off to her until there was a lot of noise outside her cell– yelling and then some crashing.

It was quiet for a long while after that, and hunger bit at her stomach and nervousness started to hitch in the back of her mind. They wouldn't let her starve to death, surely. Or, no, she'd die of dehydration first, wouldn't she? How long could a person go without water?

The lights went out again, signalling the end of the day, and Tori laid back down on her futon and thought about how terrible it would be to die like this.

It took weeks to die of starvation. This was just torture, surely, and eventually Kabuto would pull her out and coo condescending things to her while he stuck an IV in her, and possibly make her beg for food, and it would be humiliating but she wasn't going to die–

There was more yelling, suddenly, and she bolted up and threw herself through the pitch black to the door.

"HEY," she yelled, banging on the door as hard as she could. "HEY, what's going on?!"

The yelling paused, and voice said, "Who's that?"

"Tori," Tori replied. "Tori Mendoza."

"Oh," said the voice. "Nevermind."

"What do you MEAN?" Tori yelled back. "What's happening?"

The voice was gone though, the yelling moving down the hall, and Tori pressed her ear to the door. She caught a lot of shouts to hurry up and before that glasses snake comes back, and then someone closer to her door said, "...he's really dead?"

Another voice answered, coming closer as it spoke, and Tori caught the last part of the explanation: "...found his body."

"Who? What if they're lying?"

"I don't know, the cleaner. You really think civillains are good enough to lie to a shinobi?"

"But which cleaner–"

"Fuck, Touma, I don't know who cleans Orochimaru-sama's rooms–"

The voices were too far away to be heard after that. It didn't matter. Tori's brain was in the process of rebooting, her body stuck frozen with her face pressed up against the door.

Someone was dead in Orochimaru's room. That was not weird, in itself. In fact, that just sort of sounded like an inevitability. It wasn't something to start a ruckus over.

Unless it was Orochimaru himself who was dead, which seemed unlikely. If he could come back after Itachi had literally sealed him away with a mythical sword, then being a corpse wasn't likely to slow Orochimaru down very much at all. Besides, what in this stupid ninja world could do him in, anyway? The mysterious illness that made him "indisposed"? Tori had just sort of assume it was the chakra version of organ rejection, easily solved by hopping bodies, even if Sasuke wasn't available–

Oh.

Sasuke.

In the manga, Sasuke had definitely ambushed an infirmed Orochimaru and killed him, once he'd decided it was time to go after his brother.

Because of her, now Sasuke knew where to look for Itachi.

"Oh no," Tori whispered into the dark.

xXx

The lights came back on, and Tori concluded that she was abandoned and in very real danger of starving to death in her cell after all.

No one was coming for her. She had to get out herself.

This was literally the second time since she'd gotten to this world that she'd accidentally created a situation where she was locked in a room while the world outside went nuts. If she got out, she was definitely learning to pick locks, or break them, or… or however you got out of locked rooms.

The door didn't even have a handle on this side. There was a metal disc that marked where the handle existed on the other side, and the seam around the door was so flush is was barely visible. There weren't even hinges on this side.

Snarly-nin had lectured them a few times about not breaking out of their cells, meaning he thought literal children were capable of it. Granted, they were ninja children, but Tori was smarter than a child, right?

Tori scanned the room for items to help her. Her neatly folded spare clothes and bed linens didn't seem very helpful, but she managed to pry the rusty drain cover up. A tool!

But what did she do with her tool? What would a ninja do?

She attempted to wedge the drain cover under the the metal disc of the handle to maybe pry it off, but it was set too firmly into the door. Then she tried sticking it between the door and the wall around where she knew the hinges were, but dropped it when it cut into her hand painfully.

She had no idea what a proper ninja would do, but she had an inkling of what a poorly trained ninja lab tech might try.

Tori cut her finger tip on the edge of the drain cover, and then set about painting a seal in blood on the door. Fuuinjutsu did not require ink– just something containing chakra molded into the correct the shape. Blood was ill-advised as it wasn't a stable conduit, according to one of the texts she'd read, but Tori was not currently interested in making a stable seal.

Fingers, it turned out, did not contain that much blood, so she had to stop halfway through and reassess. She cut the fleshy part of her forearm, then, and dipped a section of her hair into it, just like an improvised paint brush.

Her hair had gotten so long here it pooled in her lap when she sat, and twice had gotten caught on drawer handles in the lab. At least it was good for something now.

When she was done, she ran to the other side of the room and threw her futon over her as cover. She waited for several very tense minutes while nothing happened.

She was still very bad at timer components, it seemed.

She approached the seal again carefully– it was just the cooling seal, same as the one she'd exploded before, but with what was supposed to be a timer to set it off after she'd moved away. If it had exploded with just a little too much blood before, surely it would explode again if it were all blood.

She carefully rubbed off the circle threading through her array with her thumb, disarming it. She rubbed off some other parts and redrew others, and the resulting seal also failed to explode.

"Come on," Tori hissed at it, then tried making a completely new one, which her shaking hand ruined. She stepped back, took a few calming breaths, and tried a new strategy.

She made the simplest version of the seal, dabbing on an extra thick blob of blood at the very end. The blob would drip while she protected herself, completing the circle, and then it would go off.

The seal exploded when she was only halfway across the room, sending her stumbling over herself, banging her right knee painfully as she fell, and throwing wooden debris into her hair.

The explosion didn't take out the door, but it made a large enough hole that Tori was able to snake her arm through and reach the handle.

The outside did not look as a apocalyptic as she's imagined. Most of the cell doors were open, but the only other real sign of chaos was a mysteriously abandoned pair of shoes and Snarly-nin's dead body. His shirt was stiff and dark from dried blood.

It was eerily quiet. Tori felt a wave of dizziness that might have been from dehydration or not eating or blood loss, but it passed after a minute and she stumbled around to open the rest of the cells. They were empty– everyone else had already managed to escape themselves.

Food, then, Tori decided. And water. And a tetanus shot.

Outside of the Hall E, there was more evidence something had gone wrong. Splotches of blood, discarded weapons, another couple of bodies. She found a severed ear, just sitting in the middle of the corridor, and toed at it with her sandals. When she heard people running further down the corridor, and Tori pointedly walked in the opposite direction.

The clinic was in this direction, so she went there first. Other people had clearly had a similar idea, as almost all the cabinets were wide open, with all sorts of random supplies and papers spilled across the room.

Kabuto's desk had been left alone, though, which was weird because it was where he kept all his snacks. The second drawer had a package of some sort of vaguely spicy rice crackers, and as she ate, Tori contemplated that it might just be the greatest thing she'd ever tasted.

The clinic didn't have tetanus shots, because this place didn't have vaccines and was inhabited by madmen, but Tori found bandages on the floor and a tube of disinfectant that had rolled under an examination table. She dressed the cuts on her arm and finger between shoving crackers in her mouth.

There was a package of candied nuts in another drawer in Kabuto's desk, and Tori thought about how that might be the second greatest thing she'd ever tasted for about a minute before she remembered she'd literally stepped over a dead body to get here.

Oto. Imploding. Right.

She should run away. She had no idea where she would go, or what she would do there, but anywhere was better than here.

There had previously been a line of ugly beige backpacks on a shelf by the door, marketed for EMERGENCY DEPLOYMENT. Tori assumed they contained supplies for people who had to run out quick, and certainly all but one of the bags had been taken. The last one was crumpled on the floor, and whoever had moved it had elected to partially empty it and leave the rest behind.

Tori pulled it up and examined it. There was a canteen of water fastened to the side, some type of thin, silevery blanket folded at the bottom, a couple of glowsticks, a roll of senbon, and a plastic case that contained five pre-loaded syringes.

Tori examined the syringes and wondered if the bags were meant for field medics, or if local anesthetics were just normal ninja equipment.

She dumped the roll of senbon– she had no idea how to use them, and now wasn't the time to try and learn– tossed in her bandages and disinfectant, and sipped the water as she went through the clinic for more supplies. Most of the obvious ones, like food and common medicines, were gone, but she did find a box of seriously strong painkillers. She chucked it into the bag, along with two ration bars she found in the back of a cabinet.

At least if she hurt herself, she had enough drugs to never feel pain again.

She refilled the canteen from the sink and wandered out of the clinic. If she was going to flee into the wild unknown, she probably needed other things, like… more food and… water purification tablets…?

She didn't actually know what she needed. She knew what she wanted, though, and that was the secondhand make-up Karin had given her, still in the lab.

She took a strange route to get to the lab, dodging around two teenaged shinobi arguing if they should hunt down someone for revenge or not, and then went straight for the drawer she'd been keeping her things in.

It wasn't even about the make-up, really. Tori had barely worn it in her regular life, and her eyebrows and lashes were mostly grown in by now. It was that they were things that were hers.

She justified it by remembering where she'd seen a flashlight laying around, and that the lab had tools to start a fire, and that hair ties were actually very useful. She shoved them all into her bag and then without even really thinking about it, shoved her lab notebook in too. It was her work, after all, even if she'd resisted doing it.

She blinked down into her bag. The lab notebook was needless extra weight, but she wanted it.

She wanted it, but it wasn't very very useful by itself. She dug up older notebooks, ripping out pages she wanted to keep and chucking the remaining books into a pile on the floor. It was hugely disrespectful to all the work Orochimaru had done, all the work he'd forced other captives like her to do, and…

And. Well, good. Let all of Orochimaru's research burn.

She dumped isopropanol over the pile and set it one fire. She marched out of the lab feeling overly satisfied.

She hoped he really wasn't dead, and that he'd come back and be upset all his work was gone. She hoped it hurt him. In fact, she decided that she could put off escaping for just long enough to go back to his private lab and burn evenmore of it.

The first thing she did when she got there was cross to her cloned organs and carefully set her heart in her backpack. It was hers, after all. She was taking it with her.

The notebooks up here were spread out, because Orochimaru did not organize himself in a way that made sense to anyone who lived outside of his brain, and Tori piled them all up on a table.

She had sudden doubts about destroying all of them. Most of it was, like, cool…

"HEY," a voice yelled, and Tori was sure both her real heart and her cloned one had an attack.

Suigetsu was glaring at her from his tank.

"What's going on?" he asked. "There's shouting outside, and no one came to feed me yesterday…"

Tori felt a pang of sympathy for him. "Orochimaru is allegedly dead," she said.

"Oh shit," Suigetsu said, wide-eyed. "Hey, hey, then you can let me out, right?"

"Um…" Tori's eyes drifted back down to her pile of notebooks.

Suigetsu deserved to be let out. It was only human decency, after all. But he was also a not-very-nice ninja, and Tori was worried about what he'd do once he was free. He might hurt her, or do something to attract the attention of people who might hurt. Then again, she had no idea what she was doing, and making friends with a shinobi would help…

"Tell you what," Tori said, moving over to the tank's control panel. "We'll help each other out. I let you out, you help me escape."

"Sounds fair," Suigetsu agreed immediately. He walked her through how to open the tank, a lot of water splashed over Tori's shoes, and then she was suddenly pulled down into a headlock.

"You're part of the research team, right?" Suigetsu said, sounding cheerful but also holding her very tightly. "People mentioned there being a civilian girl."

Tori went very still. She didn't know where he was going with this. She didn't say anything.

"Orochimaru-sama mentioned you were from another world," Suigetsu continued, "but I guess girls from another world can be plain looking too, right?"

Tori really didn't know where he was going with this now.

"Hmm, but you know," Suigetsu continued, and his arm tighten around her. He was still naked, and wet, and Tori was trying very hard not to think about how he'd angled her head down to stare at his bare hip, except that she could perfectly feel the way his muscled moved around her face and neck. "I really haven't liked anyone from the research department. They're all mean, and nasty, and they like chopping parts of me off…"

Right, okay, this made sense. Tori also hated everyone here because they were mean and experimented on her, after all. It was a very sympathetic sort of hate.

"I've never chopped parts of you off, though," Tori managed to squeak out.

"But you're one of them," Suigetsu shot back. "Maybe if I kill you, I'll feel a little better."

"W-well," Tori replied, "if you kill me, how am I going to help you get what you want?"

Suigetsu's grip loosened the slightest bit.

Thank god, Tori thought, followed closely by, What the hell does Suigetsu want?

"Sword," she managed to choke out. "I can get you Momochi Zabuza's sword."

Suigetsu let her go, and Tori staggered away, rubbing at her neck.

"Kubikiribocho?" Suigetsu asked, eyes narrowed at Tori suspiciously.

Tori had forgotten the sword even had a name. "Exactly," she said, fumbling toward her pile of lab notebooks. She'd just take them all. Yes, that was fine.

Suigetsu jabbed her in the upper back with his index finger as she shoved books into her bag. "And how do you know where it is?"

Tori swatted his hand away. "Haven't you been paying attention? I can see people's future. I can see where you find it a year from now."

Suigetsu frowned at her for a long time, studying her face with his purple eyes. Then he grinned. "I like you, lab girl," he said. "Lead the way."

xXx

They raided the lockers for supplies, but not before Suigetsu executed some sort of water jutsu that made all the tanks of organs explode, flooding the lab. It was… satisfying.

Tori had never been to the locker rooms before– they were meant for active-duty ninja preparing for or returning from missions. There were three or four other ninja poking around it in, but Suigetsu threw a scruffy looking genin into a wall and the remaining scavengers fled.

The lockers were mostly picked over– as were the adjacent supply rooms where ninja could pick up rations and weapons.

"Aw man, they took all my stuff," Suigetsu whined from what Tori assumed was his own locker. "My favorite water bottle was in here."

If Tori were him, would be more upset about all his clothes being stolen, since he was still standing around in the nude.

"Who cares?" Tori said. "Once you get out, you can buy whatever water bottle you like."

Suigetsu looked thoughtful for a moment as Tori pulled out someone's sweaty shirt and held it out to him.

"We don't have any money," Suigetsu said, dropping someone's dented water flask into the duffel bag he'd found and ignoring Tori's offering. "What a civilian thing to say. Missing-nin steal."

"Oh," said Tori, wadding up the shirt and shoving it in her bag. If nothing else, it would pad her cloned heart. "I forgot about money."

Suigetsu did manage to find a pair of pants and a hoodie– thank God– and Tori added a handful of squished an expired ration bars to her bag. She figured she'd get Suigetsu to take her to a town and then she could… hmm.

He had a good point about them not having any money.

She rummaged through her backpack and pulled out the box of the painkillers she'd swiped form the clinic. "Could I sell these?" she asked, waving them under Suigetsu's nose.

Suigetsu raised an eyebrow as he dropped a half-full sheath of kunai into his bag. "I mean, not legal– oh." A mischievous, toothy grin spread across his face. "You could get a pretty penny for that."

"How much, do you think?" Tori asked, casually dropping the box back into the backpack as she opened another locker. She found a set of toiletries.

He gave her a price. Tori had no idea how much that was relative to, say, the cost of rice. She nodded and examined the toiletry set's toothbrush. Was she daring enough to use a used toothbrush?

"You're going to share profits with me, right?" Suigetsu asked. Tori kept the toothbrush and they moved on to the weapons supply room.

Tori rolled her eyes. "Sure, if you actually get me out of here alive."

Suigetsu casually walked up the wall to grab a very large sword that was mounted on the wall. It was not a particularly practical weapon to flee for your life with, which was probably why it was one of the few weapons still there.

"I think we should split them 70/30," he said, experimentally swinging the sword through the air a few times.

"I get the 70%, right?" Tori answered dryly. She didn't want anything in the room – she was more likely to chop off her own hand than defend herself with anything in here.

"Obviously not," Suigetsu said, jumping back down to the floor. "I'm doing all the hard work, after all."

Tori scowled at him as he brushed past her to see what they could find in the ration's closet.

"And you would still be stuck in a tank if not for me," Tori countered. "Plus, I found the damn pills."

There were no food supplies left, but Suigetsu filled several flasks with water from a tap. They argued the entire time, and all the way up to the exit of the hideout. Most people seemed to have already evacuated– they only saw a handful of shinobi scurrying around, and no one tried to stop them.

"I don't get why everyone was fighting," Tori said as they picked their way over a pile of bodies right at the front door.

"Ah, well, probably some higher ups wanted to keep order," Suigetsu said, "and then, you know, people wanted revenge on the higher ups, or they got into a fight over who got my very awesome water bottle..."

The door out of the hideout was set into the face of a cliff, wedged open by the body of someone Tori vaguely recognized from the dining hall.

"Shit," Suigetsu said as they stepped out into sunlight. "I forgot the outside was so bright."

"Me too," Tori said, and they stood blinking stupidly at the forest around them for several minutes.

It was bright, and the sunlight was warm, and everything was so green, and the air was fresh…

"We should run," Suigetsu said. "Can you run?"

"No," Tori said. "Not like a ninja."

They awkwardly finagled Tori climbing onto Suigetsu back. He whined the whole time about it being humiliating and how it forced him to carry his sword all wrong.

"It's not like I'm happy about being carried," Tori snapped back at him. "Makes me feel like a child."

Suigetsu didn't answer, but instead tensed under her.

"Suigetsu?" Tori asked tentatively.

"Shit," Suigetsu answered, and then shot into the trees. Tori let out a startled yelp and clung tighter to his shoulders.

"The glass-bastard is back," Suigetsu called over his shoulder at her. "I don't know why he'd follow us when the whole hideout is up in flames, but just in case– what direction are we going?"

"Whatever direction Wave Country is," Tori shouted back, right into his ear.

Suigetsu changed course slightly, and then after a couple of minutes said, "Fuck, he is following us."

Tori gripped Suigetsu's shoulders tighter. She didn't think Kabuto was much of a fighter, but she also wasn't sure if Suigetsu could take him or not.

Suigetsu sped up and said, "You sure we need to go to Wave Country?"

"Yes," Tori said, focusing on Suigetsu instead of the rising panic that Kabuto might catch her. Why would he need or care about her? Surely if they got far enough ahead, he'd give up on them. "Zabuza died on the bridge between the Wave Country and Fire Country, and his grave is nearby."

A kunai whizzed by them, and Suigetsu swore some more and started zig-zagging through the trees.

"And what, you think he was buried with Kubikiribocho?" Suigetsu asked through gritted teeth.

"It marks his grave by the bridge," Tori said.

Suigetsu grunted, then dodged another two kunai. Tori found herself vaguely hoping that she'd filled her backpack with another random stuff it would defend her against a shuriken in the back.

"Just so you know," Suigetsu said after a bit, shifting her weight on his back. "This is nothing personal; you're just heavy."

Tori was already falling when her brain proceeded what he'd said. The bastard had dropped her, effortlessly prying her arms from around his shoulders.

Stupid, she thought, you already told him what he wanted.

A branch broke her fall, then she broke the branch, and it deposited her onto the forest floor. She landed on her back, and for a few terrifying seconds she couldn't breathe.

Kabuto appeared over her, glaring down at her prone form. Tori glared back up as her lungs finally forced air into her body.

"I see you've been busy," Kabuto said lightly, even as he grabbed her harshly and dragged her from the ground.

Tori didn't say anything. Instead, she focused the entirety of her mental energy on not crying out of fear and frustration and anger. She'd been so close to escaping.

Kabuto's hands glowed blue and he pinched the nape of her neck. Tori felt her entire body go numb and collapsed. She couldn't even yell in panic as she fell forward back towards the ground.

"Don't worry," Kabuto hummed as he caught her. "That will wear off. I just need you to be still while I go to meet a friend."

He heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, then set off bounding through the forest.

Tori's mind was racing. Where was he taking her? What friend? She could think of nothing he'd need her for. At least when Kakuzu had hauled her off to Orochimaru, she'd known what was happening. At least she could still move, still talk. As she was, she could barely breathe.

She had never been more terrified in her entire life.

Eventually Kabuto stopped and gently placed her on the ground. They were still in the middle of the woods.

"Hmm, I'll need you to be able to see…"

From her position, Tori could only see his feet as he paced around a bit. Then he leaned over and dragged her across the ground and through a bush, propping her up into a sitting position against a boulder. He then proceeded to arrange and rearrange her like a ragdoll until he was satisfied she could see through the bush into the clearing properly.

It was demeaning and humiliating.

"Now Tori-chan," Kabuto said, addressing her cheerfully. "I'm to meet a very important person here, and I need you to watch them for me. See if you can tell anything about their future plans."

He beamed down at her, and Tori wished she could move enough to spit on him. He kept talking, "I thought you were faking your abilities for a long while, but, well, after Karin-san… you're not quite clever enough to fake that, are you?"

Deep in her stomach, Tori felt her fear and humiliation hitch and convalesce into hatred.

Kabuto walked back into the clearing, and sure enough she had a perfect view of him as he flashed some hand seals. There was no visual evidence of any jutsu, however, and he simply stood there.

Tori, without proper control of her jaw, had started drooling on herself. She was going to kill him. With no way to work her rage out physically, she simply stewed inside herself, fantasizing about stabbing Kabuto in his smug face.

At the very least, she decided, she was going to convince him his weird jutsu had prevented her from seeing anyone's fate. Make him feel like he'd screwed himself over. She imagined the look on his face when he realized how he'd shot himself in the foot, and it was almost as satisfying as smothering him to death with a pillow.

(Okay, it wasn't nearly as satisfying.)

Suddenly, Kabuto made a subtle shift in his demeanor. His posture became less cocky and his aura meeker.

Sasori entered the clearing.

He was wearing Hiruko, his hulking, beady-eyed puppet. He looked like small mountain draped in a black and red cloak.

If Tori had been able to move, she would have gasped.

She had completely forgotten that Kabuto had been a double agent, pretending to be Sasori's lackey.

Oh no, she thought. Oh fuck.

"You're late," Sasori rasped.

"My apologies, Sasori-sama," Kabuto answered, bowing his head. "Oto has been very chaotic, and I had some trouble getting away unnoticed."

Kabuto smoothly gave Sasori a very detailed report of on-goings in Oto, and Tori knew for a fact several key points were complete bullshit. Kabuto did confirm that Sasuke had killed Orochimaru and then disappeared into the night.

Tori missed most of Sasori's spitting rage in reaction to that when something crawled onto her hand. Her hand twitched, the prickly feet of the creepy-crawly disappeared, and a beetle flew past her face.

Tori rolled her eyes down as far as they could go, staring at her hand. It had moved. She concentrated and it twitched again. She tried moving other parts of her body. She felt a toe curl.

Gleefully, Tori commanded her entire body to wiggle, seeing what else she could move. The jutsu was wearing off! If she got herself together before Sasori left, she could use the distraction to–

She slumped over to the side, a sad little gasp escaping from her lungs.

The conversation in the clearing abruptly stopped. She could no longer see through the bush.

"I told you to come alone," Sasori growled.

"I was sure I wasn't followed, I don't know what–"

"Take care of it."

Kabuto's footsteps were silent, but after a few seconds his face appeared through the bush.

His body was calm, but the look he gave Tori was livid. She stared back at him, her face and body completely lax.

A kunai whizzed by her face and she nearly flinched. Nearly because she'd been concentrating so hard on don'tmovedon'tmovedon'tmove that she wasn't sure she could do much of anything without half a second of mental backtracking.

Kabuto chuckled. "It was just a rabbit," he called.

He reached through the bush and grabbed a dead rabbit from next to her. That had definitely not been there before. He retrieved the kunai slightly further to the left – it had a weird-looking tag wrapped around the handle.

Kabuto stood and returned to Sasori, who seemed to accept his story.

Had the dead rabbit been a summons? Did Kabuto just walk around with dead-rabbit-summoning kunai or had he planned for this? What the hell was wrong with him?

For a moment, Tori was positive that Kabuto had god-like predictive powers and knew her every move. Hopelessness flooded through her.

Her entire arm moved as she slumped. She almost had control again.

She pushed aside her self-doubt. No, he had prepared the rabbit summons because he was fastidious and hiding someone in a bush had obvious risks. He had probably prepared for all sorts of worst-case scenarios, including one in which she regained control of her body before Sasori left.

Tori closed her eyes and tuned out Kabuto's theories on how Sound Country would react to Orochimaru's death.

Kabuto wasn't so inefficient he'd make preparations for unlikely scenarios, plus she doubted he'd had that much time to prepare. But 'likely' scenarios relied on what Kabuto thought she (and Sasori, she supposed) would do, as opposed to what she'd actually do.

Tori rolled over and pushed herself to her knees. Sasori was already snarling at Kabuto about only a rabbit.

"Hey, Sasori," she yelled hoarsely as she got to her feet.

Kabuto thought she was snivelling coward. He probably thought she'd try to crawl away, if she dared disobey him at all.

"Orochimaru got rid of your jutsu-thing ages ago. He's playing you."

He also probably thought she had enough self-preservation not to yell at angry S-ranked criminals.

He was wrong.

Kabuto made a motion, but then Hiruko's tail shot out at grabbed him.

"If you want to live, you better have a good explanation," Sasori hissed.

Kabuto disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Without even glancing at her, Hiruko fired several senbon in her direction. Kabuto reappeared before she could even dive for cover, blocking them with a kunai.

"I do need to keep her alive," Kabuto said lightly, his fabricated meek demeanor gone.

"So you are a traitor," Sasori snarled.

Kabuto ran at the puppet, dodging smartly around a few jabs from Hiruko's tail. One of Hiruko's hands emerged from the coat, spewing fire, and Kabuto skidded off to the side.

Satisfied the two were keeping each other busy, Tori turned and staggered off into the woods. She didn't have enough control over her limbs to run, but she managed to force her body into a sort of power-limp.

Later, assholes.

She almost immediately fell and stumbled down a steep slope.

At least it's a faster way to travel, she thought to herself as she used a log to push herself back into her feet. Her ankle groaned in protest.

Eventually the sound of Sasori and Kabuto's fight faded away as she put more distance between herself and them. She hoped Sasori killed him. Preferably with poison. Slow, painful poison.

If Kabuto managed to escape from him… well, she really didn't want him to find her again.

The pain in her ankle eventually faded and her body was more or less back to normal. Tori realized she was walking very quickly and very aimlessly through an unknown forest. She slowed down and retrieved a ration bar from her miraculously still intact backpack. She broke off half of it and chewed on the tasteless thing as she traipsed through the forest.

She thought about all the survival shows she'd watched. Those were all about starting fires and building shelters and lasting until someone found you… and she didn't want anyone to find her. Or, people on those shows would figure out a way to get somewhere where they could call for help. She had no idea where that would be either.

Eventually, she found a deer trail and decided to follow it. The deer had to know something, right?

The trail went straight down or up several annoyingly steep hills, but eventually it led to a pond filled with frog scum. It was getting dark, so she ate the rest of the ration bar and settled down under a tree with her thermal blanket to sleep.

In the morning, feeling sore and both physically and emotionally drained, she skirted the pond and found another trail, this one wider than a regular deer trailer.

A people trail?

After about an hour of walking, it led to the edge of a farm and then a wide dirt road with a road sign and she nearly wept with joy. She followed the sign for the closest town.

xXx

NOTES: Ah, Suigetsu, my precious murder son...

And ah, Sasori, my precious murder puppet man...

I'm not good at replying to reviews, but I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has reviewed, favorited, and followed. You all are seriously the best and I'm glad you've enjoyed reading! Next chapter we meet another Akatsuki. I bet you can guess exactly who!