A strange new life

5.17

In my seven years of living my best ninja life, I tried my damnedest to never think about that first day and what it really meant. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a case of “trauma begone!”, it was a severe case of “trauma be repressed!”. This attitude had already bitten me in the behind once: I could barely function in the brief fight against Orochimaru in the Forest of Death. There, I was subjected to the role of kunoichi in distress, and Emosuke had to save me, much to my chagrin.

Now, here I was, trying my hardest to enter the lab. Only, my body wouldn’t obey me.

There was this quake that hit me every time I tried to take a step forward, and this unseen marathon I ran that took my breath away, leaving me gasping, not to mention the invisible booze I drank. That was the only explanation of why the world spun around me.

I closed my eyes. Tried to recenter myself. Took one, or maybe ten deep breaths. Opened my eyes, took a step toward the door. I whimpered, but pushed forward. The part of me that was the original Hinata stirred, wailed in my mind, distressed. Weird, why now? She’d been quiet for years.

It wasn’t easy, but I think I did my best here. Quakes, marathons and booze didn’t stop me. I crossed the door, looked inside the room. The light I carried illuminated part of the lab, and the many vat tubes lining the walls. Near the door, there was one of those antiquated computers, like those eighties’ looking DOS based machines: big and bulky and utterly useless.

I approached the table, peeked at the corpse. It was a young woman, face covered in seal inscribed fabric, black hair spilling from behind the cloth. Given her proportions, she looked around my age, maybe a couple of years older. All of her body was inscribed, the lines moving from the skin to the table and beyond. Some of those symbols were familiar. I didn’t know what they meant, but I recognized Orochimaru’s sealwork. I had, after all, a prime example etched on my own bones.

My gaze inevitably found its way to the rolls of vat tubes. They continued down the room, further into the darkness where the light wasn’t enough to illuminate them. It was macabre, like those silly drawings of monkeys turning humans representing evolution. The vat nearest the door contained an embryo. The further deeper into the room, the more developed the person inside. From embryo to an unformed baby, to a small toddler, to a young girl and more.

It was surreal seeing the same girl in various stages of growth. The same round, soft face, black hair, button nose. It was evident the girl inside the vat was dead. There was no power in the whole complex. There was no movement from the person inside the tube. The green goop wasn’t all that clear anymore, patches of red and brown mixed with the green.

I refocused on my task, or I tried. It was really hard to think. The small, quiet voice I always thought of as the original Hinata was neither small nor quiet anymore. I could barely hear my own thoughts amid all her screaming.

Turning, I took a step toward the computer. If I could make that thing work, I might get information regarding the experiments. I moved, but there was something wrong with the world. It tilted and hit me on the face with the ground. I blinked, surprised. My throat really hurt. I closed my eyes. My head buzzed.

The screaming hadn’t stopped.

Yamato pushed his chakra yet again to form another wood clone. The vault was proving harder than anticipated to open. The main door was rigged with so many traps that he didn’t dare try bypassing it. If destruction was their main goal, he wouldn’t have hesitated to force the door open, but the situation was too delicate for the brute force approach. Which left him no other choice than to burn his chakra and clones trying to find a weak point around the vault.

It was slow, draining work.

All in all, things were going well. Apart from Sai’s injury, there was no other surprise. Right now, Hayase and Sai were outside, keeping vigil over the hideout entrance, while he and Hinata explored the place with the help of clones.

Yamato had to give it to the girl. Using clones for recon and infiltration was a textbook example of clone usage. Using them as disposable trap detection tools was something else. Which worried him now that he had more time to think about the situation.

Wood clones were like automaton puppets. They could function at low levels without input, or controlled directly making them a copy all but indistinguishable from the original. Shadow clones on the other hand, were independent copies. From how Hinata talked about it, there was no communication between them, but she received the clone's memories and impressions after it dispersed.

That Hinata was willing to send a copy of herself to die in traps, and didn’t show any sign of being uncomfortable with the pain and trauma of dying was deeply disturbing. There was no mention of any destructive behavior on her dossier, aside from the almost masochistic levels of training. Most took that as a good sign: more training meant stronger shinobis. But was that indication that something was wrong with the girl? Yamato had tried to remedy that excess on this mission. Forbade all excessive training, gave the stealthy nature of their mission as an excuse.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

It hadn't worked like he expected. Not a day after, Hinata showed signs of stress. He turned things around, relying on Kakashi’s advice to keep the girl centered. Strategy meetings and formal, structured shinobi communication. The result was better than he had hoped for.

By all accounts, she didn’t show any symptoms of being affected by her past. Which didn’t make sense. Even Yamato, some two decades later, wasn't unmoved exploring those secret labs when he was with ROOT, then ANBU.

Yamato maneuvered the clone closer, going for the same fault-line in the rock he found early. With luck, he could use that to bypass the traps.

A noise in the back of his head stopped him. He heard someone panting. Yamato riffled through the sōshinki he left with his team. Hayase was talking with Sai about some code or another. That boy really liked his ciphers. Sai sat quietly, pretending to listen. Yamato shook his head. Another of Danzo’s victims. A good thing they managed to find the boy before he was taken by ROOT. No, the noise that caught his attention was from Hinata. Which was why it was so strange.

The girl was like a wraith. She rarely spoke; her clones being the ones that often talked most. Most of the time, even things like breathing or panting were muted by the seal inside her throat.

Yamato concentrated on the transmission seed, feeling for the situation on her side of the hideout.

Hinata was walking down a corridor. She seemed out of breath, but not in danger or being attacked.

He pushed the connection to the back of his mind again. Yamato took no pride in spying on Hinata, but orders were orders, even if the real reason he did it was to make sure the girl was safe, otherwise he wouldn’t have let her explore alone. He knew the girl was strong, but he wasn’t about to let her face Orochimaru’s traps without support. She was under his care, no matter what the council thought about her.

His clone, who had stayed unmoving while Yamato checked things, started to move again. He concentrated on the earth around the clone. Doton: Iwagakure no Jutsu wasn’t his favorite jutsu, even if it was extremely useful. Finger pointed toward the faultline, he urged the clone’s finger to transform into wood, questing for an opening.

There was a whimper, then a low wail, which soon turned into hoarse screaming in the back of his mind.

Yamato bolted up, concern spiking. The attempt to enter the vault was discarded. His hands flashed with seals: Ram, Dog, Rat, Bird. The tunneling technique wasn’t meant to be used on walls, but all of the hideout’s walls were carved from stone. He opened a straight tunnel toward where Hinata was.

The noise coming from her hadn’t stopped, if anything, she screamed even louder. A quick peek through the link didn’t show what was the problem. She was in a huge room, there was no one attacking her.

It took four more jutsu to finish the path. By now, Yamato didn’t need his transmission seed to hear the girl. He burst inside the room, kunai in hand, ready to fight for his life and protect his charge.

Yet, there were no enemies.

The room was large, a laboratory. Hinata was on the ground, holding her head, screaming. There was an operation table in the middle of the room, with a surprisingly familiar corpse on top of it. Yamato’s eyes scanned the room, looking for enemies, then he saw the vat tubes.

And the girl inside it.

And Hinata’s dead face, from toddler to adult.