Capítulo 44: Breach
Underground Cave (Kamui's Point of View)
The three kunoichi ran through a winding corridor. Its walls were made of stone styled in a motif of winding patterns. So far, the entire complex was poorly lit with the only lights being the torches that lined the walls, stone snakes winding up their handles to add a little bit of aesthetic flair. All things considered, this complex had such an obvious snake motif it wasn't even a question of who it belonged to.
"It's a wonder that a shinobi as proficient as Orochimaru in maintaining vast numbers of disposable hideouts would go through the trouble of making such an elaborate base. We haven't even gotten very far, and the build quality is surprisingly elaborate." Kamui commented in astonishment.
She had warned the group of quite a few suspicious passageways during their short time in the complex. Her earth pulse had proved to be worth every effort she had put into learning it. She absolutely needed to take it to the next level once she got back to the village.
"I'm pretty sure this entire compound was made using a jutsu. Master Jiraiya has a similar jutsu that can turn an entire space into a frog's stomach. This is probably a similar, but more permanent jutsu he received from his snake summons." Yugao stated her opinion, confident in her assertion.
"Fair, that's really the only way this complex structure makes sense. If you expect to abandon a structure within a couple of years at the longest, elaborate design isn't exactly a priority, especially if no one will see it aside from the shinobi trying to kill you." Kamui distractedly replied, marveling at the structure of the hallway around them. She really needed to learn a similar jutsu. Imagine being able to make impromptu bases like this wherever you go.
'Maybe I can steal it from Orochimaru?' she thought to herself in anticipation. 'If dad lets me, I'll rip the knowledge out of his head faster than he can say sharingan. I'll just ask Yume to retain a copy of the jutsu. Then again, dad might have already retrieved it from the memories I collected earlier.'
"How would he create it though? Shouldn't something like this make large tremors as it's formed? One of the consistent features of the island is the lack of earthquakes of any kind. There simply haven't been any in our clan's recorded history of this island. There certainly haven't been any in the last couple of years." Reina asked, concerned at how a compound as large as this could be created without alerting her people.
Yugao shook her head.
"We don't know. This isn't the first hideout he's made this way; we have quite a few speculations, but we can go over those when we get back to Konoha. It looks like we're finally coming into a clearing." Yugao calmly responded.
Reina nodded in agreement. They had been in a straight passage for the past four minutes and she had seen this clearing for the entire time they'd been in it.
"Kamui, how close is this clearing to Naga's position?" Yugao asked.
"It actually appears to lead into a series of rooms that are connected to multiple large caverns; one of which has Naga laying curled up in a similar manner to a snake. At least, I'm pretty sure that's Naga. On the other hand, the other large caverns have several dozen other living beings. I don't know if they're human though. I'm getting an odd picture. I don't know what I'm looking at exactly, since I lack any context of what's inside." Kamui replied with interest. If she had to guess, those rooms were likely to be some form of control environment. If the trio were lucky, they could find some old research notes cataloged by Orochimaru. They also had to be very careful of the possible threats they could encounter.
"What?" Reina asked suddenly, surprised at the unexpected presence of other living beings. It was getting increasingly harder to believe that this whole operation went on beneath their notice.
"Anything else?" Yugao asked, not surprised there would be more.
Before Kamui could reply, Reina interrupted, "You don't sound too surprised."
She was honestly a bit concerned with how calm Yugao was at the revelation. Shouldn't she have had a more visceral reaction?
"When Kamui briefed us on her vision, my initial assumption was that this is some form of research base. Orochimaru is not a new criminal. We've built a solid profile on how he operates in general. We may still struggle to get a handle on the specifics of his movements, but it's very clear that an experiment like the one Naga is being put through would need to be done at a research base. To run such a base, there are certain staffing and equipment requirements. When we arrived and saw the dense brush around the entrance, we gained some answers on the minimum length of time they'd been here. Now that we're going through, the question on why the entrance was so unused despite the need to frequently bring in supplies was answered. Kamui?" Yugao calmly explained, prompting her student to provide the rest of the information.
Kamui nodded in acknowledgement and replied, "From what I'm starting to see, I think we may have entered from one of the emergency escape tunnels. As in, it wasn't that Jirobo was needed to safely enter it; it was built so anyone with earth release could safely exit with the process triggering the lab's collapse, destroying all the remaining samples and evidence in the process. I hadn't seen it before due to my currently limited detection range, but as we get closer, the layout is starting to suggest that.
"I think we can enter the first room. There are living creatures in there, but they don't seem to be connected to the ground; they're suspended in giant cylinders. I can't really explain what I'm seeing, but I'd bet they're experiments too."
"Right. Keep your guard up. I fully expect the next room to be armed with hidden traps. If you encounter hostiles, move to capture rather than kill." Yugao ordered, getting nods of acknowledgements from the two other kunoichi.
With that, the three of them proceeded into the first room.
Stepping into the room, the first thing the trio noticed were a set of giant tubes housing a host of different sleeping humans. Well, human wouldn't be exactly accurate. Instead, there were chimeric humans who appeared to be fused with various wild animals.
There were a good variety from lions, to tigers, and even toads. There were those whose bodies were literally bipedal versions of their given animal, like the lion man on the leftmost side of the room. There were also those who only had a few animal features, like the girl with a warty face and webbed fingers. The test subjects were all lined up in a spectrum showing Orochimaru's desire to control the amount of influence the animal DNA has on the subject.
The most prominent tubes seemed to be the four in the center of the room. One empty one in the center and three occupied ones surrounding it. They all appeared to be snake chimeras of different types.
One of them was a pale-skinned woman with chestnut-colored hair at the roots that bundled together and shifted into a tangled mess of sleeping black snakes. On her back, she had two crimson-red-feathered wings, arms and legs covered in black scales, and a long black tail with a red underbelly. The tube was marked with the words "Stone-eyed Serpent."
The second was a man with dark skin and a snow-white-scaled lower body completely transformed into a snake. His arms didn't exist and instead branched out into three large sleeping white-scaled snakes on each side. Another off feature was that he had two human heads with snow white hair. This tube was marked with the words "Eight-Headed Serpent".
The third was a man with long light-blue-colored hair and pale white skin. He had a large build with dark blue scales on his arms and legs. He had two thick prominent horns curving from the back of his head around to the front. "Unknown" was written on the tube.
The empty one appeared to be intact suggesting that it was emptied intentionally. It had the word "Vessel" written in the center.
"Wow…. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the man was trying to turn himself into a snake…." Kamui commented in awe.
Despite being in awe of what was in front of her, she made sure to set up some safety measures. Her intent-fused chakra seeped out of her bracelets and took control of the air around them, preventing any sound from escaping their immediate area. Of the two others, only Yugao caught the act. Reina was too caught up in the spectacle.
"There have been reports about him being able to extend his neck to ridiculous lengths and turn his lower body into that of a snake. We just thought that was something he learned from the snakes…. It looks like there might be more to it." Yugao commented in a contrasting revulsion, a little more informed at the horrors that Orochimaru must have committed to achieve these 'successes.'
"He can do what?" Reina asked, disturbed at what something like that would even look like.
"He's exhibited the ability to manipulate his body in multiple ways that should be impossible to the average human. When Kamui described the process that Naga was going through, it sounded like a failed version of what he must have performed on himself." Yugao explained.
"Why would someone do that to themselves…" Reina muttered, disturbed at the thought of someone doing that to their bodies intentionally.
Ignoring Reina's revulsion, Kamui asked, "How long has he had these body manipulation abilities?"
Yugao crossed her arms and contemplated.
"If I remember correctly, he first started showing those types of abilities over two decades ago. He learned them in the years before his defection." Yugao replied, her eyes narrowing at the problem presented with her earlier theory.
"If that's the case, then why would he need to turn Naga into a vessel with snake-like abilities? If he already has those abilities, then why would he need to cultivate an arguably more unstable version of himself?" Kamui pondered.
"I don't know. Let's move to secure the other rooms and then we can search for relevant notes before confronting Naga." Yugao ordered, deciding that it probably wasn't a good idea to speculate before securing the area.
Kamui and Reina nodded in agreement.
With that, Kamui put her questions to the back of her mind and focused on the surrounding area. With the confirmation that this was a lab-type structure, it'd be easier to make sense of the figures she'd been detecting in this series of rooms and caverns; context was her best friend in these early stages of her sensing ability as the figures she could detect weren't perfectly clear yet.
During her efforts, she focused on the entities most likely to be scientists and tried to separate them from the experiments. In the room next to theirs, she could pick up multiple signatures, but only two of them seemed to be either sitting upright or walking. This description went for three people in the following room and two more people in the third. In all, there were about seven rooms outside of the one they were in that matched that description. When looking at the caverns that didn't have Naga inside, it was impossible to tell. There were far too many signatures moving about.
Yugao and Reina just stood there waiting for Kamui's efforts to complete. By now they had deduced roughly what the girl was doing. Even without an explanation, they could tell it had something to do with detecting entities through the earth. It was the only vector they could think of outside of a hidden byakugan that could detect things in the way Kamui had been able to. It was likely to be a topic of discussion when they got back to Konoha, but their curiosities had been temporarily sated during their trip.
Finishing her scan, Kamui refocused her attention on the group.
"Were you able to identify the scientists?" Yugao asked.
"Yes, there are no more than three scientists in each of the rooms in this space. They look to be working on subjects either strapped to tables or dead. The caverns had too many creatures walking around to tell for sure. It was almost as if there was a small community of experiments living in them." Kamui explained. She went on to elaborate on some of the specific structures she had seen and even described where specifically the scientist appeared to be in the rooms.
Having received the briefing, Yugao nodded.
"Hmm…. Interesting. I would have thought that someone as selfish as Orochimaru wouldn't be able to employ such a large research staff." Reina commented on the side.
Yugao shook her head in disagreement with Reina's premise.
"You're mistaken. His overall goals have always been achieving immortality and learning every jutsu to ever exist. He willingly brags about it whenever he's asked. Both of those goals are extremely time-consuming efforts. As a result, anyone pursuing it would need to devote a lot of time and resources to make any significant headway. Part of that is dividing the labor between multiple scientists. If he had to do all the work himself, his goals would be pipe dreams at best." Yugao explained, wanting to help the two understand how logistics played a part in a target's operations.
She especially needed Kamui to understand, since this wasn't something they taught in the academy, much to her displeasure. When she had asked the fourth about it, he said that he planned to incorporate it into the curriculums of the future iterations of the advanced classes.
"That… makes a lot of sense." Reina replied, a little stumped at the information she didn't bother considering herself. It was a downside of being part of a village separated from any human conflicts, she rarely had to consider an enemy's logistics requirements while on mission. Most of her enemies were beasts of some kind or another.
Kamui, on the other hand, didn't say anything. This was something she had already considered.
"Alright. Let's get moving. Reina, you take out the scientists in the first room, I'll move for the second, and Kamui will take the third. Once you're done, Reina will take four, I'll move to five, and Kamui to six. Whoever's able can take seven. Remember to be silent and swift. Regardless of what you see in there, capture first and vomit later." Yugao ordered. Then, she turned her attention to Kamui, "Kamui, can you pass Reina those prototype seals you worked on?" She requested.
The reason for the odd order of attacking the rooms was the fact that they were all chained together, so they would alert the scientist in any room they breached. It was safer to take out each room in the chain in order. While Orochimaru was never known to have strong scientists, it would be wise to keep aware of hidden defense mechanisms or worse, a base self-destruction mechanism. All these were things that didn't need to be said between the three at this point.
Kamui focused on her sash and willed a small stack of square palm-sized seal papers in her hand. One had a set of chains drawn in ink. The other had a mouth with a red X drawn over it. Once done, she passed them to Reina, who accepted them with interest.
"Reina, as soon as you enter the room, apply the silencing seal to the wall. It'll prevent any sounds from leaving the room. It's why sensei and I didn't have any problems with talking in this room. I applied a similar effect to our immediate area when we entered." Kamui explained, pointing to the seal in Reina's hand with the mouth drawn on it. She continued, "Then, apply the other seal anywhere on the capture target's body. It'll knock them out and bind them in place. Once placed, just leave them there and we'll come back for them. I'll have a shadow clone keep an eye on the entire complex to ensure nothing happens to the captured scientists."
Hearing this, Reina's eyes widened in astonishment. Despite her budding wonder however, she kept quiet. They were on a mission, so she'd ask her questions later; she'd certainly have plenty of time after they saved Kocho village. She also took note to pay more attention to her surroundings. The fact that she didn't notice when Kamui put up that silencing effect terrified her a little. Finished processing everything, she turned to Yugao.
"I'm good to go." Reina stated.
"Good. Let's move. Reina, you're first." Yugao ordered.
With that, the trio proceeded to storm the other rooms, intent on securing as much intelligence as they could.
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