Obito-Sensei Chapter 82

Beyond Frost: Konoha's Prisoner

Kagami Kaguya had lost track of time.

It had never been a particular skill of hers, but it had also never happened before. She had lived a life run through with strife, but she'd never been locked away in a secret bunker for what must have been weeks, unable to sleep, plagued by the persistent pain of a half-missing arm as her mind was peeled apart day after day. What she was enduring was torture, but it wasn't as crass as peeling off her fingernails or poking out her eyes. She would have preferred that, even, since she could regenerate now.

But instead, it was questions. Constant questions, and a lack of sleep as she was interrupted at seemingly random with further interrogations about Rain's strengths and weaknesses, the Akatsuki's secrets, her Kekkei Genkai, and a hundred other subjects that Konoha clearly believed important. Her interrogators weren't the same every time. Sometimes their faces were concealed by painted masks, sometimes not. She was pretty sure there were five or six of them, two with long blond hair, the rest without much in the way of distinguishing features, men and women both.

Her chakra had been sealed away on what had definitely been the very first day; it was a brutal feeling jutsu formula that had been laid over her spine and locked up her body. Kagami felt sure that on anyone else, it would have slowly killed them, but on her strange body it had just halted her Dead Bone Pulse and her regeneration, leaving her missing arm a half-formed stub, nascent fingers poking out from what should have been the elbow. Aside from the seal, she was at least not physically restrained, just confined to a featureless square room. Ten paces by ten paces, a distance she had measured a thousand times over by now. There was nothing within except a pillowless bed and a toilet. Both were probably a measure of mercy, but Kagami found it difficult to be grateful given her present circumstances.

Even with her chakra sealed, her senses had remained acute, and she had started to recognize the different sounds that came from outside her prison. Part of that was memorizing the different walking rhythms of her captors, the presence of her three perpetual guards (though they too rotated through different shifts), and the various muffled voices that emerged. Ever since her body had been repaired by Nagato Uzumaki, everything had been like this, all her senses driven to an incredible extreme by the influx of chakra that her body seemed to endlessly produce. Even months later the memory of the glorious feeling of being set right, of invisible things within her body and soul finally aligning instead of grinding against one another, made her shiver.

Now, whether it was day or night, a new set of footsteps approached. Murmured voices emerged from outside the steel hatch that served as her door, and the guards shifted. Someone was going to enter.

The panel at the bottom of the door that her food was slid through opened, and she heard the voice of one of her guards clearly. "Back away from the door," she said, words that held no kindness or sympathy whatsoever. "Face the wall."

It was a rote tradition by this point, and Kagami had learned by now that not following the orders was pointless; disobeying just ended up hurting, and without chakra she was as helpless as a newborn baby against trained ninja. So she obeyed, raising her arms above her head and pressing her forehead to the cool metal wall. The door slid open with just the faintest sound, and two people entered before it closed.

"Turn around." The same voice. When she did, Kagami hiccuped in surprise.

One of the ninja that had entered was one of her guards, a woman with purple hair whose face was concealed by a Black Ops mask.

The other was Obito Uchiha.

She had never seen the famous ninja face to face, but every member of the assault force had been shown pictures of him when they'd been given instructions to radio to his designated assassination squad if he appeared. A stolid man with short dark hair and a long straight scar from below his left eye to his chin; he was unmistakable, though one of his eyes was covered by a medical patch. He did not look like the living legend that he was, but Kagami still felt an instinctive shiver run down her spine.

He glanced over at the guard. "You can leave," he said, and the ninja bowed. "I'm sure I'll be fine."

The guard left without a word, and Kagami stood there without a clue why the famous Uchiha could have come to visit her.

"Take a seat," he said, gesturing at the bed before he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. "I'm not here to interrogate you."

"I find that hard to believe," she said, trying to stay neutral but feeling some of her old bitterness rearing up. This man was the polar opposite of her, blessed from birth with power beyond human understanding; the Uchiha Clan's Sharingan certainly didn't bring the kind of madness that the Kaguya's Shikotsumyaku had. Nonetheless, she sat down, resting her half-formed arm against her side.

Obito eyed it with some curiosity, but didn't comment on it. "We have people for that," he said, and Kagami huffed. "I'm sure you're well acquainted with them by now. I'm just here to have a conversation with you."

"And if I don't want to talk?" Kagami asked, and Obito shrugged.

"Then I'll leave. It's a personal curiosity, nothing more."

Only someone as high up as him in the village hierarchy could speak with a prisoner like her out of personal curiosity. Kagami felt a spiteful yearning to throw the offer in his face, but the feeling was fleeting and buried by a crushing loneliness. She hadn't spoken to someone for a long time: she'd answered questions and had her mind probed, but that wasn't the same as a conversation. And beyond that, her family was dead: even Kimimaro was gone, and in all likelihood she would never return to her spacious new home in Rain. After a taste of power, she had returned to being nothing and no-one, a curiosity to be bandied between the villages.

In that reality, getting on the good side of someone like Obito Uchiha wasn't a bad idea.

"Fine. But if you're going to ask questions, I want to ask questions too," she said. The Uchiha shrugged once more.

"That's fine; I can answer within reason," he said, and they both knew what he meant. Still, Kagami found herself struggling to find what she should say next. She ended up going with her first, and probably not best, instinct.

"You're Naruto's sensei, right?" she said, and the question surprised him. "Or were, before he went to Amegakure."

"I was and am," he said, eyeing her suspiciously. "He and his team were my first students. Them running off wasn't exactly what I had planned, but it worked out for the best."

"So it was a mission for them to defect?" Kagami asked, remembering everything she'd said to Naruto when they'd first met. "He was a Leaf ninja the whole time?"

"It's complicated for them all," Obito said bluntly. "Naruto said he knew you, but he didn't elaborate much."

"He saved my life," Kagami said, meeting bluntness with bluntness. "Even after I had given up on living." She clutched at her incomplete arm. "I don't regret joining up with Rain; Nagato fixed me: fully awakened the clan's power within me. Becoming one of his ninja was the least I could do to show my gratitude. But coming here to kill Naruto's mother… I feel like I should apologize to him. It wasn't fair."

"I'll pass that along," Obito said. She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic. "If it's any consolation, you didn't succeed."

"He really does have good luck then," Kagami said. "I didn't think anyone could kill Kimimaro. Kushina Uzumaki… she really was some kind of monster."

"Kushina's lovely. The Kyuubi's not," Obito said, and Kagami sensed that she'd hit a nerve and instinctively retreated from the topic. "I don't know if Naruto would agree with you about his luck, considering how many disasters he's been at the center of."

"He's survived every one of them," Kagami said quietly. "It's a curse to be struck by so much ill fortune, and a blessing to be made stronger by them, like he has been. I saw that when we first met, when he fought Yui Tono. I know the difference between good luck and bad."

"I'll take your word for it," Obito said with a quiet laugh, pushing off the wall a little. "Are you getting at something?"

"Nothing in particular," Kagami admitted. "I've just been thinking about it, in my time here. He's alright?"

"He's alright. Now, a question for you," Obito said, and Kagami straightened up, expecting an interrogation despite his apparently kind words. "Do you know much of the history of your clan?"

Kagami frowned, a thousand unpleasant memories and feelings dug up in a single stroke. "Why?" she asked in reflex, her tone far more biting than she intended. However, Obito didn't back away or chastise her, and so she continued. "They're all dead now, even Kimimaro. Once I'm gone, the Kaguya will be extinct." She felt her lip curl against her will. "And good riddance."

"They didn't treat you well," Obito noted. Kagami let out a bark of laughter.

"I was a princess, until they realized I was defective. Then, I barely escaped with my life." She grit her teeth, trying to forget the pain, the humiliation, the terror. Being forced to shred her own skin and break her own bones, again and again, until they were convinced she truly could not master it.

"Sounds nasty," Obito said, sounding sympathetic but not overly concerned. "But being the last one puts you in a unique position, since the Kaguya clan and their history has suddenly become interesting to me."

"Why?" Kagami asked again. "They were a bunch of losers and maniacs. There's nothing worth learning about them."

Obito sighed, scratching at the back of his head. "I won't bore you with a bunch of ancient history," he said after a moment, "since you don't seem like you'd be interested. But I've been investigating my clan's ancestors lately, and they've dug up credible evidence that the Uchiha, and other clans including yours, may have a direct line going all the way back to the Sage of the Six Paths. You've heard of him?"

She had, and from her own clan even. What he was saying just made Kagami's sneer wider. "So, what? You want to use me to justify the Uchiha's success?" she said, continuing even as Obito shook his head. "Give the Leaf even more of a historical mandate?"

"Couldn't care less," Obito said, his voice a bit colder. Kagami couldn't help but believe him; the contempt in his tone was too real, and too familiar. "We're similar, you and I: I wasn't exactly the Uchiha's golden boy until my eyes came into their own, so I think I understand you, if even just a little. I don't expect you to care about that, and frankly, you shouldn't. But if the Kaguya and the Uchiha and other clans are bound by history, then I think I can at least keep history from repeating itself by learning it."

Kagami cut down on her initial biting response, taking a moment to consider Obito's words. "You're saying the Kaguya clan may have been descended from the Sage as well," she eventually said, the words burning. She remembered countless midnight candlelit lessons, the oral history of the clan passed down to her by frantic old men desperate to see her as their messiah and not a broken and bleeding girl that couldn't overpower a child, let alone a ninja.

"I'm saying I suspect it. The Uchiha records name the Sage's mother as a princess named Kaguya, and other circumstances have shown me a connection between your Shikotsumyaku and the Sage's power." Obito uncrossed his arms, raising one hand. "But it's precisely that, circumstantial. You inherited the Bloodline, even if it was defective until Nagato got his hands on you. Did your clan pass down any stories before they went and got themselves killed by the Hidden Mist?"

Kagami didn't answer right away; she sat there thinking, her heart burning, and her sense of time returned for that period of contemplation. A minute passed, and then two, and Obito Uchiha continued to patiently wait, regarding her without judgment or disgust.

"I didn't get much history," she eventually said after taking a deep breath. "We were given legends; the clan's mythology. Their history was so pathetic that it rarely was spoken about."

"Then tell me the legends," Obito said, his tone mild.

"The Kaguya were the world's inheritors." Obito shifted, but did not interrupt as she continued. "That's what we were always taught. The Sage stole chakra from the heavens and lost control of it, leaving it spread throughout the world as everyone learned how to use it. The clan's elders called other ninja thieves that had stolen the heavenly bounty without understanding its power. They considered the Shikotsumyaku a divine right that had survived in Kaguya blood, despite the impurities of humanity. So anyone that was born with it, even me at first, was venerated as a living god, and proof of the mandate to reclaim the world from thieves and vermin."

When Obito still did not interrupt, Kagami continued, the old unspoken words rushing out of her like bile. "The Sage didn't have a mother in any of those stories; the only role of Kaguya women was to bear children in the hopes that one of them would manifest the bloodline. If you didn't, your blood was obviously too impure. My mother died giving birth to me, but that was taken as an omen when I showed the signs of the Shikotsumyaku, that her blood had been sacrificed to empower me. I had been blessed by the Sage, given holy bones and sacred blood, and avoided the curse of the Shodai Kage, but of course…" She trembled, feeling like she was going to throw up. "When it became clear I was defective, that all reversed. I was an abomination; they demanded that I stay and breed more children, or be executed. If it hadn't been for Kimimaro's Bloodline, I…"

She found herself unable to continue speaking, and so stopped. Sitting there and trying to control her breathing, to push the memories away, Kagami felt humiliated and weak. Still controlled by her childhood fears, still gripped by phantom agony a decade gone now. She wasn't a ninja; she was just a woman with a body twisted by whatever insane experiments the Kaguya had done to themselves for generations, a superhuman physicality without the mentality to match.

It was pathetic.

But if Obito shared any of those thoughts, he gave no sign. He was deep in thought, leaning against the wall with his visible eye closed, and he did not speak until she had gotten her breathing under control.

"You said something there," he said, and she looked up at him, embarrassment heavy in her chest. "A weird turn of phrase. The Shodai Kage?"

"Yeah," Kagami said, managing to laugh. "Ridiculous. It was a story with the original meaning of the term; a shadow, not a leader."

"Tell me about it." Was there a sudden intensity there, or was she imagining it?

"It was part of the whole…" she choked, waving her hand as she tried to decide what she meant. "Original sin bullshit. The shadow came before the Hidden Villages, which made the modern Kage just another kind of thief, since they were stealing its thing. That was how the Kaguya saw everything. It was the personification of people being unable to control chakra, a darkness that stole anyone that tried to master the heaven's powers without permission. Anything bad that ever happened to the clan, a raid gone wrong, a disease outbreak, a hangover, they blamed the First Shadow. It was…" She paused again, blowing out a breath. "You know, an excuse. An excuse for bad luck or bad behavior or just plain stupidity. The Sage ascended into the heavens after humanity failed, but the light he cast left behind an everlasting shadow. That kind of nonsense. When I started traveling, I realized that everyone has something like that; a demon or a spirit or a people or a nation to blame all their troubles on."

Obito didn't say anything, and Kagami looked over at him, truly trying to read him for the first time since her emotions had carried her away. He was standing stock still, eye staring straight ahead. His face was pale.

"What?" she asked, and he blew out a short breath. "You look… what, there's not something like that in your clan shit too, is there?"

"No," he said abruptly, pushing off the wall. "I might come back to talk to you later. Thanks for your time."

"Wait!" Kagami said, and Obito actually stopped. "Wait. I don't…" She hesitated. "I don't want to be alone anymore. Can you get me out of here?"

Obito stared at her. "You tried to unleash the Nine-Tails on the village," he said, and Kagami suddenly understood how personal that was to him. "Frankly, it's a miracle you're still alive."

She wilted. "I understand," she muttered after a moment. "My apologies."

The Uchiha stared at her for a moment longer, before he rapped his knuckles against the door twice. He turned away as it started to slide open, but spoke as he left.

"I'll see if we can get you a window," he said, and then the door closed and Kagami was left alone in a timeless steel void once more.

She lay down, closed her eyes, and let herself cry.