Headmaster Iwa's house was the command center of the foundation to take down the Mizukage. Rei couldn't believe it when he led her to the back of the house and slid aside a bookcase to reveal… a wall. With another meticulously placed palm and pulse of chakra, a panel of the wall slid aside to reveal a wide stone staircase that led deep underground.
Rei's jaw nearly hit the ground. She'd had no idea that technology like this even existed. As she followed the Headmaster down the stairs, she tried to quell her rising fear by asking questions. "Niko Sensei mentioned that the village's security has been bad since the war. How can that be true when you can do this in your house?" She was unable to keep the awe from her voice.
The Headmaster glanced back at her with a tiny smile. "Because the village doesn't know about it. So far, my house and a select few others outside of the village are the only buildings with this kind of security because I'm the one who invented chakra-touch identity detection. The Mizukage himself wouldn't be able to enter this house without knocking the whole thing to the ground."
"This is pretty amazing," Rei said. The staircase led them at least two stories down before they came to another thick door that needed a chakra signature to get through.
"We'll code your signature into the system soon enough. For now, just focus on making yourself at home."
Niko Sensei had quietly explained the situation with Rei's disappearing Curse Mark before excusing himself to take inventory of his weapons pouch. "Will Niko Sensei be staying here, too?"
"Yes." Through the door was another living room-type area, and it split off into multiple hallways. Rei couldn't believe that someone could build something like this undetected. "Sometimes others live here semi-permanently for their own protection."
The hallways were respectively labeled A, B, C, and D above each arch, and each door was numbered. Rei had never been in such a massive structure. "So, the kitchen is in room A4, and the bathrooms are number 8 on each hallway. You'll be staying in B6."
The room assigned to her made her apartment look like the dump that it was, and she felt a twinge of shame for thinking of it that way. The apartment was hers, after all. This room was borrowed.
The walls were a pale off-white to match the blanket on the bed. A plain brown dresser sat across the room from the bed's footboard, and a side table with a lamp was beside a standing mirror on the far wall. "Thanks," Rei murmured.
"You'll find changes of clothes in the dresser. It's been prepared for someone your size."
When Rei looked at him questioningly, he said, "Rooms have been prepared for a variety of people. We're a safehouse. You're safe here." Then he shrugged his shoulders like it was a small thing he'd just said. "Shower and rest up. Your squad will meet here tomorrow, then we can talk."
He left, smiling at her kindly, and shut the door behind him. Rei waited a few seconds before trying the handle herself, and she breathed a little easier when she saw that it was not locked. Sure enough, the dresser was filled with shirts, pants, and underclothes, and Rei grabbed a few at random and made her way down the hallway to the bathroom. She'd never had such a comfortable or long shower before. She dried herself with a fluffy white towel from the closet by the sink and pulled on the new clothes. They were a tiny bit loose, but Rei was nowhere near complaining. She shook her apartment key and three pieces of paper money Niko Sensei had given her earlier out of her dirty pants and put them carefully in her room's dresser beneath a pile of underwear. When she slipped beneath the blanket in her borrowed bed, she closed her eyes and only opened them when someone knocked softly on her door.
With bleary eyes and what she was sure was a matted head of semi-dried hair, she pulled the door open a fraction of an inch. Koichi's bright blue eyes met hers and she was awake instantly. "Good morning!" he shouted, making her recoil to cover her ears. He pushed the door open and let himself in, surveying the room. "Nice! Once you build up your savings, you could really make this place cool."
Rei dragged the back of her arm across her eyes, trying to force them to feel as awake as her mind. "I won't be here that long."
"Then we'll work on your apartment. Either way, you're not in the barracks anymore." That was true. A smile snuck onto Rei's face. "Anyway," Koichi said, "Niko Sensei and Butthead are waiting in the common room. Come on out when you're dressed and everything." He flashed her another bright grin before heading out. "You did great yesterday."
That same unusual warmth in Rei's chest propelled her forwards as she searched through the dresser for clothes suitable to wear outside. She settled on a pair of black shorts and a blue T-shirt with the Mist Village's insignia on the right breast pocket. She pulled on her boots, and though they were scuffed and dirty, they were familiar. After attacking her hair with a found brush and brushing her teeth for the first time in several days, she left her room.
Four faces turned to her expectantly as she approached: Headmaster Iwa sipped at a cup of something hot from the blue sofa; Niko Sensei had been filling out some paperwork at the dining table to the right, and he flipped the folder closed now; Koichi was throwing away a banana peel and smiled with his mouth full; Utakata had been twirling his bubble pipe between nimble fingers and caught it suddenly, tucking it into an internal pocket of his flak jacket.
"What time is it?" she asked quietly, waving off the new banana that Koichi offered her. "I'm allergic."
"Allergic to bananas?" He shivered dramatically. "That's a sad life."
She smiled weakly. "Yeah."
Headmaster Iwa beckoned her forward. "It's just before noon. You certainly needed your sleep. You all did." Setting his mug on the coffee table before him with a soft clink, he laced his fingers together contemplatively. "Any mission that we go on these days can be treacherous." Rei stopped on the other side of the coffee table and he stood, meeting her eyes. "Can I see your Curse Mark?"
His lips shifted into a frown when he beheld what she assumed was a tongue free of any mark. "Hmm. That's troubling. Let me think about this for a while. I'll need to confer with some colleagues."
When the Headmaster said 'a while,' Rei had assumed that he meant a few hours, maybe a few days at the most. But after a week of nothing but reading and training with Koichi, she thought her brain would melt. "How much longer am I going to be stuck down here?" she moaned, her head hanging off the side of her bed. Koichi threw a piece of popcorn at her and laughed when it bounced off her forehead.
"Hey, there's unlimited food and books," Koichi said from his place on the floor. "You can't be too upset."
"I need to do something!" She sat up quickly, glancing longingly at her boots. She hadn't worn them in days. "My muscles are going to rot away."
"Well…" Koichi pushed himself to his feet and tugged anxiously at the hem of his T-shirt. He hadn't come down here in his uniform since Headmaster Iwa had left. "I guess we could train in the Sealing Chamber."
Rei whipped her head towards him. "There's a Sealing Chamber down here?"
"Kind of. It's still in construction, and they've got to be really careful with it." He opened the bedroom door and peeked down the hallway. "If they vibrate the ground too much or too often, the village might start to ask questions that the Headmaster won't be able to answer. Come on."
It had become so easy to trust Koichi. In fact, everything had become easier. Rei had surprised herself multiple times in the last week by realizing that her shoulders weren't tensed or that she wasn't looking over her shoulder every few moments. "Are we not supposed to go down there or something?" she asked as Koichi led her to the door at the end of hallway C and checked again that they weren't being followed.
"Not really." He twisted the handle carefully and pulled open the door, revealing an extremely dark staircase. "The Headmaster doesn't like the Sealing Chamber being used for anything yet, but the arena is still being shaped, so we can't even get in that one yet."
"This is crazy." The stairs were rough and unrefined, and Rei almost missed her footing a few times. "Are there things like this all over the village?"
"No way." When they reached the bottom, Koichi pulled a penlight from his pocket and shined it around. Rei could only make out vague shapes, but she could tell that the room was built in a large circle, probably fifty feet in diameter. "Lord Fourth would murder anyone that had anything to do with something like that. He doesn't like secrets."
"Well, our secrets could get him killed, after all." Rei stepped towards the wall to the right, tracing her fingers over the pale engravings on the wall. "What is all this?"
Koichi joined her and illuminated the pattern. It ran the entire perimeter of the room, lending a mystical aura to it. The lines rose and fell like ocean waves, twisted over themselves serenely, then looped back into jagged spikes, no rhyme or reason to it all. "All I know is that it's a really ancient pattern, and it's supposed to signify something important. They're going to put one on the floor, too." He aimed the light at the floor, where the pattern had already been sketched out in chalk. "My mom is a Sealing specialist, and this room is pretty much her project."
"This is amazing." Rei didn't consciously decide to kneel; she just found herself on the floor, tracing the unfinished lines. She could feel the tiniest little dregs of energy drawing into her fingertips, like static electricity. "How does she do that? Put chakra in the pattern?"
"I dunno. Oh, there it is." Leaving her in her crouched position on the floor, Koichi walked across the room and picked up something small from a cluttered table, the only piece of furniture in the room. It snicked in his fingers, and then a tiny flame jumped to life in his hand. "We're not supposed to use anything electric down here." He touched the lighter to a torch mounted on the wall, and the whole room was suddenly revealed. Rei felt her breath whoosh out of her mouth as she took in the entire pattern.
"You gonna be okay?" Koichi smirked at her, tossing the lighter back onto the table.
"Yeah." She rose and touched the wall again, drawn to it with magnetic-like force. "I really am."