CHAPTER 5: Curses

By the time Kakashi recognized the chakra signature within the mansion as one of the three legendary Sannin, another one in the same room disappeared. Through the eye Obito had given him, Kakashi was able to describe people as flames quite literally. With enough passion and spirit, the flames would be set ablaze - and the visualization made through the Sharingan was quite exact. When they die, the flames dim before finally blown into nothing. He hated that he was used to it.

Itachi blew away a part of the wall, attracting nearby guards and staff within the mansion - an insignificant audience that they'll take care of later. Their primary goal was to make sure Orochimaru stays within their grasp. The snake had been wanted for so long, it was a chance to finally strike him down.

But they knew it wouldn't be that easy. They arrived to watch their previous target fall down from great heights and Orochimaru retracting his neck from where it had fallen from. Kakashi zeroed in on the snake-like criminal with a lightning blade on his hand. He directed chakra on his feet, maximizing his speed to the direction of Orochimaru.

"Kakashi! I'd like to stay and chat, but I must leave soon," Orochimaru hissed, a chilling sneer sent Kakashi's way as his body slowly dissolved. Kakashi grunted as he sped up even more, but the moment he had struck his Chidori on where Orochimaru stood, smaller snakes had replaced his targets and they scattered as they slowly sink to the ground in a swimming mess.

"Damn it," Kakashi cursed. He turned back to see Itachi walking away from a woman in a kimono with a bloodied kunai on his hand - his sin glaringly obvious by the sight. His partner was headed towards their original target.

Kakashi stopped Itachi before he realized his actions. "Wait," he called. Itachi took a curious glance at his senior. "We'll take her prisoner."

The Third's command to hunt the thief under his jōnin rank rang in his ear. Itachi didn't question his orders, fortunately for Kakashi, and instead only knelt down to take the scroll they had been hunting for. He took a good look around to make sure they had left nothing behind. The fires of chakra around him had been sucked out dry, and he found it useless to pry the mansion from information. By the look of Orochimaru's quick escape, the dead man who commissioned the theft was not expected to have yielded the Sannin anything of value.

Kakashi eyed the spot where he stood, the snakes whimpering around cluelessly. He made a hand sign and pressed his palm on the ground, allowing the creatures to sink and be quashed by the earth he had convoked.

"Scroll retrieved. That's what matters," Kakashi sighed. He might have sounded like he was telling that to Itachi, but it was just his way of convincing himself. At the far end of his vision, he could see the mansion guards rushing towards them. "Just knock them out, prioritize returning with the scroll and prisoner as soon as possible." As Itachi had taken the scroll on his hands, Kakashi picked up the thief on his arm. She was lighter than she looked.

Itachi nodded, "Copy that."

Rei was sure she had opened her eyes, but her vision was pitch black dark. Her hands and feet were tied to the chair she was sitting on and the air was cold and humid - something she was familiar with. It was almost obvious that she was underground. She could feel the natural energy around her to portray a small empty space around her, alongside a few people on her twelve to three o'clock who were standing, fortunately for Rei, at the edges of her scanning limits. She sensed two familiar sets of energies; the Konoha Anbus who had chased her down.

As Rei recalled the last scenes of when she was conscious, her heart jumped. However, she was relieved that she couldn't feel the dark energy that was Orochimaru in her surroundings anymore. The very presence of the man heightened her anxiety and fears. That was not to say that she had immediately put her guard down. The spot on her neck still stung like a bitch and she wanted to take whatever was holding her sight hostage away.

With a little spark of chakra, she could light a flame on the ropes around her limbs and be free. But somehow, her body wouldn't listen. Perhaps its because her chakra had been badly drained prior to this, perhaps she was too tired to ignite anything, perhaps it was the bite that Orochimaru did on her, or the biggest possibility was that her capturers had sealed her. She was certain that she was held in a cell, and the people set a few feet away were her guards. The Konoha Anbus were still there.

"She's awake," one of them suddenly said. A few seconds forward and she heard chains and metal creaks as a figure approached her.

"Oh, look, it's Anbu-san," Rei retorted. The voice was definitely one of her hunters. "Did you get your scroll back, at least?"

"Yeah, no thanks to you."

"Oohh, cranky. But well, theft stopped, no harm done, right? Care to let me go?"

Kakashi pulled the cloth away from her eyes, only to look back to the darkest pair of eyes he'd seen. She flinched to the sudden brightness of the room and did a glance over to her surroundings. She especially eyed the seal around her in annoyance before confirming that it was indeed the Anbu who had chased after her.

When Kakashi first took a good look at her, flat on the ground yet alive, he was at loss for words. She looked like she could be Itachi's age; probably just a few years shy of Kakashi's age. However, now that he was looking into her eyes, incredibly conscious, he could tell that she had been living in the darkness deeper than he had. There was a pang of sadness in his heart as he had these thoughts.

"Let you go?" Kakashi asked in return, his thoughts shoo-ed away as he sat on the chair opposite to Rei. "Don't be silly. You worked for Orochimaru, though it seemed like he'd betrayed you, I still can't let a wanted man's accomplice run free," he said, eying her up and down. "Let me guess, you're his freelance thief?"

Rei shrugged. She never intended to keep anything a secret, but questions were transactional. If he wanted answers, then she should get paid for them.

"I'm hungry," Rei said instead. "You don't plan to starve me to death, do you?"

"Oh, trust me, once I'm done with you, they'll send you to another guy who makes a living plucking fingernails. You'll wish you starved instead. You don't want that, right?"

"Fuck no, but we all gotta make a living, don't you agree? You gotta work, I gotta eat, and I respect the man's guts to take on the dirty work. Hate the sin, love the sinner."

Kakashi leaned back to the chair with his arms crossed, unamused by her cursing but amused by her perspective. The girl was hard rock. Though he could tell that there was nothing he could take from her that he couldn't conclude on his own. His best guess was that she was probably paid to steal, not knowing who the buyer was.

"So tell me. What happened to your neck?" Kakashi pointed to her right side, where she instinctively wanted to feel with her hands, but couldn't.

"I blacked out before I knew," Rei replied. That part was true. But there was more to it. She could feel Orochimaru right on her neck - like he was breathing into her but without his actual presence. And with every imaginary breath, the pain would rise, like a kunai wound that gets deeper by the minute. It was fueled by foreign chakra that her body didn't know of, eating her insides like some kind of parasite.

She could tell that Orochimaru had marked her. It felt like a door was on the edge of her neck, waiting and painfully screaming for her to open it. As clueless as she was to all the shinobi skills that exist out there, she could tell that whatever it was underneath the mark was powerful, and she could feel her body trying to reach out and absorb whatever energy or chakra was sealed in there quite hungrily.

She didn't really feel too good about letting Kakashi know that, though.

However, her answer provided Kakashi more answers than she knew he'd get. The curse mark was just like Anko's. It didn't need a genius to put her on a suspects list. That being said, Kakashi could tell that she wasn't a part of Orochimaru's henchman - just a paid thief he found interest in. She wasn't ordinary, that was for sure. When Kakashi found her in that mansion, her neck was cut off like it was bitten off by a wild animal. She was bleeding heavily on the grounds of the place. However, the skin on her neck healed in a minute. She had stopped her own bleeding - Kakashi didn't know how, because he had checked and rechecked that she was unconscious when he found her. It was that, and the fact that she was not receiving long term side effects from the mark - which he was sure Orochimaru's experiments had all gone through with that (or so he read) that led him to be wary of this thief and what side she was on.

"This is not your first offense, I take it?"

"No comment," Rei answered, a grin plastered on her face.

"Alright," Kakashi sighed, leaning forward from his resting position. He took his Anbu mask off to Rei's surprise. She found herself staring into a face almost entirely covered by something, still, even when the mask is off. "I want to offer you a sales deal."

Rei raised her eyebrows in response. Was taking the mask off action his way of convincing her to trust him? It wasn't very effective.

"What's the point of taking off the mask when you have a mask underneath? No, actually, scratch that - why'd you wear two masks in the first place?"

"One for uniform, one for style," Kakashi shrugged her off. "Anyways, the deal. That mark over there - its basically a waving flag to get Orochimaru to find you, capture you, and dissect you to his free will."

"And so?"

"He wouldn't carelessly drop by Konoha to pick you up, but he will if you stay rogue."

Rei replied, "And who says I'm rogue?"

"Its obvious you are. No village headbands, payment from unknown buyers, and a bad taste for a checkpoint bar, The Waves was one slimy pit, don't you think, Hooded Shadow?"

The secret's out. Oh well.

Rei rolled her eyes. "I don't know who made that name, but that's a cheesy ass name. You can't prove this Hoodie dude is me."

Kakashi couldn't tell her how wrong that was. One Uchiha at the back had God-blessed eyes that could uncover anything in this world. It didn't take much for him to take a quick detour to The Wave and get the bartender to spill.

"You can't keep denying yourself. You did quite a number on Konoha - aren't you proud of your work?"

"If you think I'm a psychotic asshole with a knack of murder and theft as art - you're wrong," Rei said. "Its just business."

After a small pause, she added with a smirk, "Its not that much different from what you do."

Kakashi's lips, though unseen, was grimly held in a straight line. He couldn't disagree with the thief. He had done similar things for his village. Kakashi discarded the subject.

"Tell me, what's your name?"

Rei scoffed, "Why? So you can write it down on that album of criminals?"

Kakashi replied without a hitch. "No - so I can stop calling you with a cheesy name. Heck, give me a fake name and I won't care. I just have to write one down for my report."

It was Rei's turn to hold her pause. Surely, she wasn't recorded as a living person under any country or villages. She knew nobody and nobody knew her. She had never used her real name to the point that she would probably forget about it, too, if Kakashi never asked. It wouldn't matter if anyone knew, either, because she was nonexistent. She always had been. She was born into the rogue path and it wasn't because she was somebody - it was because she was nobody.

"Rei," she answered shortly afterwards. "Write down Rei 零."

Kakashi looked at her curiously. "Like the number zero?"

"Exactly the number zero. Fitting, don't you think?"

She looked pretty casual as she said it. But Kakashi could sense the slight disappointment in her voice as she announced her name. Fake or not, and despite the irony of the meaning behind its character, Kakashi could tell that she held more meaning to her name than she cared to show. He did not pry into that, though.

"Last name?"

"Why do you need one?"

He shrugged again. "Formalities," he said. "Again, I don't really care if you make one up right now, we simply have to refer you as something."

Rei rolled her eyes, "Such honor."

"I get to give you a name if you don't give me one," Kakashi said again, his eyes and facial expression empty and ignorant as he watch Rei frown. "So what will it be?"

Rei eventually relented. "Kagemichi. Kagemichi Rei."

Kakashi almost burst out laughing if it weren't for the stoic expression on her face. "Kagemichi as in 影未知 shadow and unknown? And you dare say the Hooded Shadow was cheesy."

"You're right, it's cheesy as fuck."

Kakashi chose to ignore the raising tone of her voice. She had slightly clenched her teeth harder, and her face had gone slightly shallow, like she was disappointed and angry. Kakashi took one glance, picked himself up from his chair and walked away before turning back to her one last time.

"Well, Kagemichi Rei, nice to finally get to know you. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be off writing my report on you."

Rei rolled her eyes, not bothering to watch him leave and another man walked in, scars on his face and torture on the tip of his lips.

Her heart was thumping. She was anxious, burdened, nervous, frightened, and burnt out. She was wasted, or at least to a similar point. The scarred man did not touch any strands on her hair - he had been quiet and only performed several hand signs before his eyes had sucked every single memory she couldn't salvage.

Her breathing was erratic. Her palms were warm, sticky, and still tied up: this being another reason for her frustration as she could not wipe anything way because of the (somehow element nullifying) ropes around her wrists. The situation had pushed her mentality to a brink. Whatever energy she had left was forced to protect the last bits of private information she could hold. But even as she shut her eyes and focused in the darkness of her lids, the man with the scars could still somehow enter her head and scrape every bit of consciousness she had.

"It would be a lot easier if you just tell me everything I need to know," the man said, a rephrase of what he had previously asked of her throughout the grueling process of her torture.

"I told you," Rei took a second to catch her breath. "I have nothing to do with Orochimaru."

The man scrutinized her and her words, finding some kind of truth in her voice, but years of experience have forced a habit in him to always be doubtful no matter how much his instincts say otherwise. "Then you will do well by unblocking your head for me to see - it will hurt much less."

Rei glared at him. The tone of his voice did not give a sense of threat to her, on the contrary, it was genuine. But she refuse to go down without a fight. Her core weakness, the only thing that had kept her alive from time to time again was the only thing still intact. She could not let Konoha have it. She had long decided not to trust any village or any group of people promising peace and harmony - there was no such thing.

"I will try again," the man said grimly, disappointed almost.

Her insides were acting up. It felt like she was bleeding inside, and in a minute or so she could puke blood out of her system just to get rid of the nauseous feeling. That, and the fact that Orochimaru's whispers at the back of her neck was starting to increase in volume. A little more push and the chakra at the back of her neck would be freed.

"Let me in!"

The man had shouted, the veins on his forehead visible as he intensely focused his chakra to pick at her head and crush the doors open. Rei screamed as the pain dwelled on her, feeling like she was cut open and hung upside down at the same time. Seeps of chakra had leaked, she could feel a hot sensation trickling down her neck, crawling to reach more parts of her.

Suddenly, she could see what she assumed the man had seen as well. A vision of darkness, and Orochimaru's eyes glinting behind it. The snake-like slurs and hisses would haunt her well past a few days and the overwhelming intent to kill could have engraved her to the soil she was forced upon if she wasn't so experienced in death. She felt the sinister aura grab hold of her throat, and invisible energy had started to choke her.

Losing all kinds of control, Rei let go of her mind as she slipped into unconsciousness, feeling her heart grew weaker before it eventually stopped.