Chapter 8
Headmaster Iwa refused to discuss anything further until they had eaten, since Rei had skipped breakfast and lunch that day in preparation for her sparring match. She had absolutely refused to vomit in front of her classmates, so she'd bought a food pill from one of the older students and had eaten that instead. It was supposedly nourishing, but disgusting.
Rei was thoroughly surprised that her shaking calmed when she had some decent food in her stomach. She picked up a steaming roll with great reverence and ripped off a chunk with her teeth, swallowing it with the minimum amount of chewing required. She hadn't eaten this well in… She didn't think she had ever eaten this well.
Mangetsu was obviously amused. "Will you hear us if we try to talk to you?"
She didn't trust him. She didn't trust any of them. "I'll listen," she said through a mouthful of buttery potatoes. She'd never had butter before, and had had to ask Mangetsu for its name. He'd made what was obviously a pitying expression, but Rei was well aware that it was probably a façade. Blood Mist Shinobi didn't feel pity.
She couldn't relax around these men, no matter what they said.
Headmaster Iwa put down his fork and sighed. "Where to start," he muttered. Rei ignored him and kept eating.
"Let me begin, Headmaster." Niko Sensei still had a full plate of food; he hadn't taken even a single bite. "Rei, I need you to understand why I did what I did." Suddenly, the potatoes grew hard in Rei's stomach, and she set down the last bite of her roll. "Will you let me explain?"
He hadn't actually violated her. Rei knew that. But she couldn't shake the feeling of being held down, being out of control of her own body. She couldn't forget what Risa had gone through.
She didn't answer, just continued looking at the food that was becoming more and more unappetizing by the second, so Niko Sensei cleared his throat. "The day you were grabbed on the street, I sent my dog to chase off the man who had you. You had fallen on the ground, and I knelt down to help you up." He hesitated, searching for words, and finally said, "I still can't really put into words what I felt. It was like… a vacuum. Like my chakra was being sucked out of me."
Rei finally looked up at him, but he was staring down at his own hands, which were clenching and unclenching in his lap. "I took you back to the Academy, and pushed you inside. When I put my hand on your shoulder, you panicked, and that feeling grew much stronger. It took me a few moments to recover before I could go sit with the other sensei."
"He came to me immediately following the meal," Headmaster Iwa said. "He told me of his suspicions, and I instructed him to protect you until I could get approval to add a student to our team."
Rei held up her hand, feeling powerful all of a sudden. They were talking about her, using her for something important. Ending the cruelty of the Mist? With her help? "What team?" she asked.
"All in good time," Mangetsu said quietly.
"Anyway," Niko Sensei said, "as you are aware, B-ranking students are fair game for abuse. It's one of the many tactics Shinobi of our village are authorized to use in order to break the resistance, the emotional push-back from students in training. After a while, you stop feeling anything because that's the only way to protect yourself." He inhaled, his breath unsteady as it left his lungs. "The only way to keep other men from your bed was to be in it myself. I outrank most of them, and just knowing that I had selected you for my own use would keep them away. That was why…" His words dropped off, and he fell back into silence.
Rei's mind was bursting with new information, but they weren't done. "The night he visited you," Headmaster Iwa interjected, "he was on a mission from me to determine as much about the nature of your chakra as possible. And also to keep other Shinobi at a distance from you."
"If any other Shinobi at the Academy had discovered what kind of chakra you have, you would have been killed on sight," Mangetsu said. That information hadn't registered in Rei's brain completely before he continued. "The Mizukage is… radical. He's undoubtedly the most powerful Shinobi in the nation, and there are only a few types of Jutsu that he might be vulnerable to."
All three men looked at Rei meaningfully. "A person who can drain another of their chakra would be one of those that the Mizukage would fear," Niko Sensei said.
The shock of what they were telling her had dulled her senses, but Rei understood. "You're… deviants from the Mist?"
"Mhm," Mangetsu confirmed. "We are only a few of a larger group of Shinobi who are very angry at the way that the Fourth Mizukage runs the Hidden Mist. And we're hoping that you will be, too."
Rei's words rushed out before she could stop them. "If he finds out, Lord Fourth will have you killed. He'll hang your bodies on display." Lord Yagura was known for his brutal tactics against defectors, and Rei wasn't particularly keen on being on the receiving end of them.
There was no silence after her harsh words. "I'd rather die than let children be raped and brutalized as part of their 'training,'" Mangetsu said. "I have a six-year-old brother. I can't even imagine…"
"Were…" It was on the tip of Rei's tongue to ask if he'd been assaulted as a boy in the barracks, and just the thought sent a flush up to the roots of her hair. She was anything but comfortable now, but she didn't feel like she was in imminent danger, either.
Mangetsu was quiet for a long moment, and Niko Sensei was drawing in a breath to speak when the younger man exhaled hard. "When I was twelve, my parents died and I moved into the B barracks. Fair game. And I won't let the same thing happen to Suigetsu. That's why I'm doing this." His own face was reddening now, and his voice wavered when he asked, "What would turn you against your country, Rei?"
Rei had the answer as soon as the question left his lips. She still didn't trust them, but she had to admit that she would rather be uncomfortable with these men than in terror in the barracks every night. "I've never been for this country."
