章 33: Soul Extraction, Destruction, and Detection
Tendrils of ice wrapped around Anko's limbs like a snake. She nearly tried resisting out of reflex, but willed herself to stay still. It helped that she couldn't feel the cold from the tendrils for some reason.
'Really... it would be really nice if I could use wood release openly.' Kamui mentally complained.
["Oh, stop whining and start already. We'll work together for this process. Extracting the memories from the soul and sealing them in an object will be tough. We'll need to synchronize for that."] Yume stated causing Kamui to mentally nod.
After a few seconds, Anko's body was completely bound up to her shoulders. Her tied up form was connected to various points on the wall, suspending her in the air. Honestly, she looked like she was wrapped in an icicle cocoon.
"Is this really necessary?" Anko asked in trepidation. She was no stranger to torture, so she didn't really understand why she needed to do this. Ibiki had the same question in his mind as he watched what appeared to be Kamui over-preparing for whatever it is she was planning on doing.
"I don't know. I've never had someone else's soul extracted from me before. I'm actually doing this so any pain you may experience doesn't disrupt the memory extraction that'll happen once I pull it out of you." Kamui commented, her eyes taking on a focused gleam as she took one final look at the entity she was about to extract.
Everyone nodded in agreement. With that consideration in play, it made sense why she couldn't take any chances with Anko. Although the over-preparation was likely unnecessary, the intel was key in this situation. Considering how much concentration Kamui implied she needed to properly extract it, it wouldn't be good to have Anko's flailing getting in the way.
Kamui placed her right palm on Anko's shoulder and started pouring her intent into Anko. With her eyes, she watched the malicious chakra and soul fragment squirm at her touch. It screamed at its inevitable death. It even tried to wreak havoc on its host's body in a final act of pettiness; it could not though. At the end of the day, it was just a small fragment of a larger whole confined to a prison. Since Kamui had already prevented the seal from fully extending into its host's body, the damage it could inflict was limited.
Slowly, Kamui and Yume pulled the soul out of the seal. It could have been an instant process, but that had the possibility of damaging both the soul and Anko with their inexperience in this process. At the end of the day, this was Kamui's first soul extraction. Even with Yume's assistance, extracting it recklessly could be dangerous. They needed to make sure both were intact.
From the others' perspectives, as Kamui slowly distanced her hand from Anko's neck, a squirming white snake bound in silvery-white tendrils was being drawn out. It was actually pretty large, taking up a sizable portion of the office floor upon its extraction. One thing most of them noticed was the thick muzzle made of chakra placed on the snake's mouth. Could she be trying to prevent it from attacking?
Some of them initially thought that what Kamui had explained was a bit fantastical. The fact that an S-Rank criminal's soul could be sealed inside one of their Konoha ninja for so long was concerning to say the least.
Unlike the others, Anko didn't have any thoughts on the matter. Pain dominated her mind as her reason was suffocated from the feeling of having a part of her ripped out. That was the infuriating part of this situation, the only part she could currently consider. This fragment of her traitorous sensei felt like a part of her. The feeling of violation she felt at that was only matched by the self-loathing it brought her. The only comfort was that it was being ripped out.
About a minute later, the snake was fully out of Anko, who promptly passed out in her bindings. From its size, they could tell that it was just big enough to swallow a full-grown man; it was revolting. Funny enough, once it was out, the curse mark dissolved from Anko's neck. Clearly without the core, the rest of the seal had lost its function. Minato made a mental note to request an examination on Anko's body to check for changes.
Not minding the unexpected boon, Kamui sealed some of the chakra from the snake and stored it for the follow-up investigation. Since the snake was the vessel for the soul fragment and acted as the core of the seal, it produced the chakra they were looking for.
Before moving on to the next stage, she willed the bindings to slowly lower Anko towards the ground in front of the other occupants in the room. Ibiki approached the fainted snake mistress and began doing a preliminary examination to assess her condition. Since no one could leave the room, the unconscious Anko had to settle with him, which wasn't actually that bad of a deal.
He may not be a medical ninja, but his expertise in the art is amongst the highest in the village. How can one be feared for his ability to break the minds of his victims if he can't prevent their deaths during the interrogation? The methods of physical brutality they employ can easily cause it after all. With this mindset, he made sure he had any skill potentially necessary in his craft. Of course, he always had medical staff on hand for the other interrogators, but he took pride in his ability to be a mobile one-man shop.
Seeing Anko being taken care of, Kamui started the process of memory extraction. Unlike the previous actions, this one was underwhelming for the most part. Aside from the snake's pained convulsions, nothing looked much different to the others. Kamui's sharingan focused exclusively on the snake throughout the process. She didn't want the soul fragment to escape in a moment of distraction. The snake was technically only a vessel and there was always a chance the fragment had the means of returning to its owner; that would be unacceptable.
About five minutes of tedious memory collecting later, a small marble lay in Kamui's hands. With a quick flare of chakra, she willed a small scroll to appear in her hand from her sash. Then, without even opening it, she willed her intent to seal the memory inside the scroll. Since she wasn't writing anything on it, she didn't need to open it. Tying the memories to the vessel was the easy part; the odd part was where Yume did something else through her. She used a technique on the bundle of memories that Kamui had never heard of. She would have to ask about it later.
Now that the memories were properly sealed, she tossed the scroll over to her father.
"I'm done. That should be everything. As a point of note, I didn't review any of those, so I don't know what's in there. That said, it's likely to have a lot of the intelligence you're looking for." Kamui stated.
Having caught the scroll, Minato appeared to seal it away in another storage scroll he wore in his flak jacket. In actuality, his palm had one of Kamui's sealing tattoos, so the scroll actually went to another seal hidden in another location on his body. He trusted everyone in this room with his life, but it was better to be safe than sorry. This was actually his procedure anytime he stores something important.
Even if someone were to somehow steal the scroll he kept on his person, they would only have taken a distraction and a reverse-summoning teleportation barrier that would allow him to bring anything in the surrounding area of the stolen scroll to his location. It was very expensive to make, but it was worth it as a useful form of deception.
"Alright, can you destroy the soul fragment?" Minato asked, impressed at how productive this operation was.
"Truthfully, it's less destroying and more severing its connection with Orochimaru; you can't destroy souls. Once severed, it'll no longer be a part of him and I'll seal it to prevent its summoning. So, yes I can." Kamui explained, trying to make sure her father understands exactly what was happening.
"Do it." Hearing that, Kamui nodded.
She focused on the connections she could feel between this fragment and the others and shredded them with her intent. It really wasn't hard. Without the owner, soul fragments were really fragile as they lacked enough power to put up an effective resistance. It's one of the reasons she called Orochimaru stupid when she found out what he had done to himself.
The others in the room shuddered as a ghastly scream whose voice sounded similar to Orochimaru roared in their minds. It was pretty short, but it was certainly there. If they weren't in a time-sensitive situation right now, the occupants would be asking Kamui a lot of questions on the process, especially Inoichi; you could visibly see his desire to ask more about what just happened. Considering he's from a clan specializing in the soul, it's not surprising.
Trying to hide his own revulsion of the sound, Minato spoke, "Well…. that was interesting…. Now, let's move on to the next phase."
Minato didn't give the others in the room too much time to rest before they proceeded to scour the village.
Ibiki created a shadow clone and had it take Anko to a secured location in the T&I compound. The clone would work with a few of his most trusted shinobi to perform multiple tests on her. They needed to make sure she was OK after the procedure, but they couldn't allow the curse mark's disappearance to be made public yet. The moles needed to be snuffed out first.
The hours that followed turned the village upside down. The scouring was done using the village's inspection barrier. Normally, it's an Uzumaki styled barrier used to detect chakra that's naturally emitted from those that are inside of it. In this case, Kamui created a separate village barrier seal to detect chakra levels based on the true amount of chakra in a given area, rather than the chakra being emitted like what was currently implemented. To do this, she included a portion of her own chakra into the seal, allowing it to perceive the chakra inside of a person like she would. The only caveat was that she had to manually operate it. Once the seal was operational, she included the sample of Orochimaru's chakra to the search function of the barrier.
They first scoured everyone for any signs of Orochimaru's chakra or intent. Then, they scoured again for chakra level differences between the two barriers. The candidates that had a significant difference in perceived chakra levels were then screened by the Hokage and his intelligence staff to identify other potential shinobi spies. From there, the two lists were delivered in a final report to the Hokage. Needless to say, the results were far beyond initial expectations.
[A/N: The next mission will be a long one and will start in a couple of chapters.]
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