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"What do you mean, it was not shinobi from Konoha!" A shouted as he slammed the desk in front of himself, snapping it while driving his hands through them.

"Shut your mouth, you old fart! And don't break the tables! They're made from specially treated wood!" Terumi shouted back as she threw a fan toward A who was sitting across from her.

"Please….calm do-" Minato tried to speak but was shut up with a glare from the two of them as they each looked at him with fury.

Pulling out another fan from her sleeve, Terumi flicked it open as she covered the lower half of her face with it, leaving only her emerald green eyes visible.

"Don't you have any solutions yet?" She asked.

"No. Not yet. Shinobi have already been dispatched to figure out what has happened. And from the latest communication I know of, the culprit was already captured."

"How do we know it's not just you trying to make things up to get out of this?" A asked in his bold voice, with his hands folded.

"We would've done a better job if we wanted to do this."

"My intel suggests that your shinobi had rivalry with the Kumo shinobi for reasons due to the Kumo Jonin having killed the Konoha shinobi's jonin in war. Have you not considered that as a possibility?" Terumi stated with a calculative inquisitive gleam in her eyes as if she'd found an unraveled thread to pull, like a cat playing with a ball of yarn.

A's muscles tightened while Minato shot a sharp glare at Terumi but then calmed down by sighing and then spoke, "Please don't make claims that you can't support fully. Although it is true that the Jonin did kill one of our shinobi's parents, that does not mean we've not trained the shinobi to keep aside their differences while working on cooperative missions."

Pausing to look at A, Minato continued, "And you should already know how we teach given how we've put forth our teaching materials for the next term for you to review."

"....." A struggled in silence for a moment which Terumi capitalized on to ask, "But that doesn't guarantee that your older Jonin's couldn't be radicali-"

"Enough." A interrupted with a single word as he turned to look at Minato and spoke with unwavering determination, "How much longer until your investigation team figures things out?"

"Shouldn't take longer than a few hours." Minato responded.

"Can we have the prisoner after you're done?"

"You can. But I've heard he wasn't captured in the best of conditions and is barely breathing so you'll need a healer on standby."

"Not even Tsunade can heal him?"

"....No. Not fully as far as I know." Minato said with a soft frown on his face with a partially contemplative look.

"I see."

"...and Terumi, although it is true that some jonin could still be radicalized due to the wars, we make sure not to promote anyone that has such tendenci-"

"That's alright, Hokage-sama. I was just having a bit of fun. I thought perhaps you might be interested in establishing a new trade center here in Kirigakure since our new shinobi are heavily indebted to Konoha for their assistance in helping stabilize our situation."

Both A and Minato became stunned for a moment as A retorted with "Crafty bi**h." in a low voice that the other two of them heard with varying expressions from snorting to eyebrow twitching.

...

"Are you alright?" Sakura asked Megumi as he vomited all over the floor for the nth time today.

Megumi faintly looked back, his pale face and sweat all over his cold body clearly showing signs of a fever, Megumi wiped the remaining bile off of his lips and shook his swimming head to walk to the shower to let some cold water run over himself and make him feel better.

Closing his eyes, Megumi's imagination ran wild as it flashed to create images of the exact scenes of torture as it had played out in front of his eyes when Mito worked on extracting information while Sakura healed Gakushi as Hashirama kept an eye on Megumi himself.

'Shit…why does torture have to feel so horrible….'

Feeling a surge of bile gather in his throat once again, Megumi just bent over as fluids rushed out of his guts through his throat as they spilled out of his mouths all over the shower floor.

Sakura patted Megumi's back that now also had wet clothes stuck to it and slowly pulled him out of the shower that was only making his body colder.

Dragging him to a relatively dry spot in the bathroom, Sakura dried his hair using a towel and then helped him change his clothes fully into fresh new dry ones as she pulled him out into the corridor.

Megumi's vision swam as his eyes and ears felt like they were underwater, with everything looking either blurred or sounding like a fish speaking.

"Mito-baa-san, I'll take care of him for now. Can you make me some soup?" Sakura asked Mito who was looking at Megumi as he swung around while leaning on Sakura's back.

"Hashi's making it using herbs he grew, so don't worry about that. Let me know when he wakes up again." Mito said as she walked away holding a new communication seal.

Opening the door to their room, Sakura laid Megumi down on the bed as she softly patted his hair while his head lay on her lap.

....

"Who would've known he'd have such a reaction to simply hearing someone scream?" Hasirama asked Mito as he stirred the soup pot.

"Well…Sakura did go a little bit overboard with rewiring all his receptors the wrong way…." Mito said, as she poured in her chakra to connect to a call using the seal.

"That little shit deserved it….and who asked him to turn his entire body into a puppet either way…the fool didn't even think what might happen if someone captured him alive." Hashirama spoke with a rare frown on his face as he thought back to what Gakushi had confessed to.

"Moshi Moshi! Tsuna-chan, can you hear me?"

"Is it done Gandma?" Tsunade asked in a hurry, immediately after she picked up the call.

"Yes. Although we haven't received much, we do know what their basic plan is, for now."

"Oh? It wasn't just disrupting our work to sow differences between the two countries?"

"No. Or rather. What the shinobi we captured was ordered to do was, over the next few months, no matter what the circumstance, he was to make sure someone always died no matter the costs."

"OVEr the next few months!?" Tsunade almost shouted but calmed down when she realized there were other people around her who could listen to her if they paid attention and bgan to whisper once again.

"Yes, over the next few month. He was asked to not stop until there was an order to do so."

"Then why go back to Amegakure?"

"Because he had to cool off and get the heat off of his back for a while to target the next group he could find, and also because he was supposed to be monitoring the start of some big project in Amegakure."

"Big project?"

"Not very sure, since by the time we came to that there wasn't much of him left to use anymore to get him to speak, but from what Megumi guessed he said it would have to do with manufacturing prosthetics most likely."

"...I see. Anything else?"

"No, that will be all." Mito said kindly.

"Also! Mito-baa san! Can you ask Megumi to send the shinobi to our location once he is in a stable condition? The Raikage wants to interrogate him once again."

"A..." Mito shifted her eyes a bit as Hashirama took over, interrupting with, "I'll ask him to do it. We'll contact you once again once we're ready. Make sure to use genjutsu to block his memories of Megumi and Sakura, try and keep them a secret for as long as you can."

"Okie Grandpa! I will try and do what I can! Thank you so much!" Tsunade exclaimed as she cut the call in a hurry to go inform Minato of all the information that had been passed on to her, leaving Hashirama and Mito to stare at each other helplessly trying to figure out a way to get Megumi to do much of anything right now.

….

Tugging on the chains that had bound him, Megumi came awake to the sounds of the rattling of metallic instruments that had been tossed onto the floor.

Feeling the sharp movement of wind, he ducked backward, only to realize there were never any chains that bound him, he just had no control over his body anymore.

With his eyes forced open, they crossed with the paths with perhaps the only other eyes he most familiar with in the entire world, watching as they lit up with the same exact aquamarine green, glowing in the dark under the soft light that emitted from seals placed around the walls, attached to the same smooth face that was framed by thick locks of pink hair.

A sharp sensation in what felt like his liver caused a choking scream to escape his mouth as blood soon filled it and his lungs, only to all vanish away in under a minute when a small hole was created in his throat with a simple stab of a kunai to let blood flow out freely.

The pain, though, remained.

It remained even when a new kunai was stabbed into his abdomen as it was split open and mixed with poison that burnt his flesh, making it feel as if his entire body was being consumed by a never ending fire.

"Like that?" He heard the Sakura in front of him say as she forced a senbon right into his spine and twisted it around, using chakra to stimulate it all at once, making his body spasm with pain as she slowly but surely added more of the toxins that spread throughout his working blood circulatory system, only to reach his brain and turn the world into a jumble of organic hell that was composed of living breathing flesh composed of small mounds of eggs with transparent walls that looked like they held living beings.

As soon as Megumi's eyes fell onto these being trapped inside the eggs, their entire eyes turned black as their mouths shot open only to spew out floods of black liquid along with a terrifying banshee like scream that voiced the torment of the mind, it's torment at having been trapped in eternity, looking at Megumi like its only reprise to freedom.

Megumi forcibly watched on as both his parents fell out of one of such eggs, dragging their bodies out using their hands as they wormed around the organic floor, squishing and pushing themselves forward as they stretched their hands out toward him and screeched out something using their degenerated vocal cords.

"#*@!"

"M^%!"

"#eGI!"

"Megi!"

"Megi!!!!"

Snapping out of his daze, Megumi woke up with a sudden start as he looked back into the familiar aquamarine green eyes that reflected a deep sense of worry in them.

Looking around for a few seconds, Megumi regained his composure as he looked back at Sakura, who was looking at him with worry from above while his head lay on her lap.

"F**k! What was that! Was I poisoned!?"

"Yes. I didn't notice earlier, but since you basically didn't have any chakra in your body…..you couldn't resist some of the poison you inhaled during….well….during the interrogation."

".....*sigh*....I see…Thanks…."

"Sorry, I should've informed you earlier about it….."

"No…it's my fault….I should really read those academy books sometime soon to brush up my basics…."

"..." Sakura looked down at Megumi with a soft look and wrapped her arms around him, only to lift his head a little to kiss him softly on his forehead and lay him back on her lap once again.

"Mito-baa-san told me to tell you to teleport that guy to Tsunade-sensei once again, as soon as you wake up."

".....I see…..I'll do that….I'm sorry I delayed your kekkei genkai awakening again…."

"Didn't I tell you! Everytime I think of doing it something suddenly happens! Every single time!"

"Well this time it happened to me-"

"And you're a part of me! So it happened to me too! So shup!" Sakura argued and lightly slapped Megumi's sweating head. "And go take a shower now! You stinky!!!"

"You stinky too 'cause I was on you!"

"No! You stink more!"

"No you!"

".....No…

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