A strange new life

5.21

Absentminded, I cleaned my hands against the apron. Lines of red decorating the white fabric. My forehead was damp with sweat. I worked very hard for the past hours, but I was almost done. With firm steps, I walked to the last tube. Holding a kunai, I struck the container. Glass broke and green goop poured out.

My hands shot inside the broken container and supported the corpse before it fell down as well. I unplugged the many sensors tied to her body. Those things were small, wicked needles-like thingies that gave me the heebie-jeebies. Soon after, I pulled the tube out of her mouth. It came away flecked with blood and more. I was past trying to keep my hands clean. That ship sailed with the autopsy. Thus the apron.

I took the corpse in my arms, walked back to the middle of the room. With deliberate care, I placed her together with the others. From embryo to adult, I left none behind. Around the bodies, six kunais were placed in a rough circle, inside a formation of four other kunais. Each of those kunais had a tag on them.

No, I wasn’t about to explode my clones. I liked explosions, but it had its time and place. Those six tags were a modified version meant to produce fire. The outer ones, a simple barrier setup to contain the blaze. The second barrier also prevented the fire from burning all oxygen underground and giving me CO poisoning. That led me into a rabbit-hole trying to understand how to make jutsu fire still burn in an enclosed space. Despite all those implications, the answer was simple: Burn chakra, instead of oxygen. Modifying the seal hadn’t taken long when I decided what I wanted to do. I wasn’t about to take the corpses back to the village. No chance in hell I would deliver this many versions of myself to those codgers.

I guess that after the emo phase, I finally hit the teenage angst phase. Rebelling against authority. How normal of me.

With one last look at the bodies, I stepped out of the prepared area, activating the seals.

The blaze burned for hours. In the end, all that was left were ashes. My work wasn’t done, however. While the pyre burned, I went about dismantling and storing the beast of an old computer. The thing was too unwieldy to store in one single seal. I tried my best to not break anything, but I might have forced some cables out of their place with a little more fervor than delicate bulky machinery should be dealt with. I guess I’d trust the Intelligence nerdy ninjas to fix the thing.

Imagine that, Shinobi IT Geeks.

When I was done, my eyes felt heavy, and I was tired. I think it was already the next day when I was finally finished with everything I wanted to do. The lab looked like a hurricane swept past it. Broken glass everywhere, green goop making the floor slippery, a huge patch of burned stuff in the middle. A few cables and wires stuck out where the computer once was. The operation table tossed aside.

I placed the last explosive tag by the door. This time, it was the best of my best supplies. I hadn’t skimped on it either. By the time I was done, there would be no more lab, and hopefully no trace of the travesty perpetuated inside. All that would be left were my memories, trauma, and stuff I stored on my seals.

I didn’t see Yamato when I walked outside the lab. Had he left me alone? I took the path leading toward the entrance, but before I could have walked more than a few meters, Yamato phased through the walls. Damn, that was another jutsu I really wanted. At this point, I was considering if I should really lean into the daughter's disguise. I mean, dad Yamato would have to teach me his jutsu, not just the mokuton stuff, right?

I didn’t stop. Yamato matched my pace and together we walked to the hideout entrance. Before we left I stopped. There was this angry part of me that didn’t want to obey my orders and follow the mission, but if anything, now wasn’t the time to rock the boat. From what I remembered, Tsunade would be a good Hokage. I was more than willing to give her the benefit of a doubt before taking more drastic actions. Not that I had any idea what those drastic actions would be. I hadn't thought that far ahead yet.

I would argue my case with her. I didn’t want the information and knowledge I found in the lab being disseminated. It just felt wrong.

Facing the jounin, I produced the many scrolls with all the stuff I deemed I could take away. Held it in both hands with a death grip. All rolled neatly into a pile of seals. The contents of the labs I had sealed away with the improved version of my storage seal. It might be naive of me, but if the village took it away, I could at least use the fact that without me they couldn’t access the contents as leverage. Leverage for what, I wasn’t sure yet.

Out popped my comms board. My threads wrote my message. “I burned all of the corpses.” A lie I hoped Yamato would forgive me for. I kept one. “A few of them had white eyes, but most didn’t. I didn’t take any.” That at least, wasn’t a lie. I had no idea what changes Orochimaru made to those clones, more than that, they were dead for how long? Were those eyes even still alive? I wasn’t about to try plucking an eye from a weeks old corpse and plug it into my head.

That sparked a different thought: what about the eye from Orochimaru? What kind of setup were they using to keep it alive? Do dojutsu eyes even need to be kept alive? Had I made a massive mistake by burning everything? It had been a spurn of the moment decision, one I didn't regret, but now I was left wondering.

I shook my head, wrote more words. “Gathered all the documents I could find. Dismantled the computer and stored it away.”

Yamato didn’t say anything.

I pushed the rolled scrolls toward him. “Here.” My threads wrote.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Yamato nodded, extended his hands, but didn’t take the scrolls. He pushed it back to me. “Keep them. Once we’re back at Konoha, I might be able to delay things for a couple of days. Do you think that would be enough to make a copy you could use?”

When I walked out of that lab, I was ready for some push back, maybe pressure from Yamato for the information, an order to give away everything I found. My hands tightened around the parchments. It crinkled under my grip. I hadn’t expected him to try to fudge things again in my favor.

I couldn’t look the man in the eyes, but I nodded. Maybe I blinked away some dust in my eyes. His hand found my head and ruffled my hair. I grumbled, slapped away the offending appendage. He chuckled. Why people liked doing that I would never understand.

“Hayase still isn’t done with cataloging the vault, but he learned some important things.” Yamato looked towards the outside, took a step in that direction, I followed. “The sun is almost up, we can talk about it over breakfast, what do you think?”

Nodding, I erased my board. There was one more piece of information I needed to pass on. Threads worked their way into writing the words. “I jury rigged the whole lab with my best explosives. A few dozen of them.”

Yamato read my message, stumbled. Blinked. “Those explosives you used in the battle?” I gave the man a serious look, shook my head. His shoulders sagged with relief.

I erased the words on my board, wrote others. “Those were my good ones. I meant what I said. Only my best.”

His hand pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice sounded strained. Body tense. “When are they going to go off?”

I shrugged. Who did he think I was? “On command.”

Yamato’s shoulder sagged again. “Hinata-san, we’ll need to talk about acceptable levels of destructive force sometime soon.”

I shrugged again. There wasn’t much to talk about. Explosion made things go boom. The bigger the boom, the better.

Outside the house, patrolling the perimeter, we found a tired looking Hayase. When he noticed us leaving the hideout, he walked closer, then came to a screeching halt when he saw me. He pointed at me, then looked from Yamato to me a few times.

“Why are you wearing a bloody apron?” The chunin demanded.

I looked at myself. Hands covered in dried blood, apron splashed with red and bloody handprints. 

I scratched my head. Oops?

We sat around a small table in the dining area of the camp. On the table, crumbles of cupcakes and an empty tea thermos. I was still tired, and a bit sleepy, but the sugar fix gave me a few motes of energy back into my body.

Hayase was still giving me strange glances from time to time. Even after I removed the apron, took a bath, donned a new outfit, and made sure the blood under my nails was gone, it still didn’t seem enough for him. Might be because I played that off as an everyday occasion, answering as if walking out of a madman hideout covered in blood was the most normal thing in the world.

Huh, who would have thought that was where he drew the line.

Yamato took a last sip of his tea, placed it down and looked at me. “Hinata-san, report.” He ordered.