Ominous Theories

Fog Swamp Lab (Reina's Point of View)

The three Kunoichi dashed into the next room, where Reina broke off from the group. The other two continued toward the next two rooms.

In an instant, she took in the appearance of the room in front of her. It consisted of multiple rows of large stone tables caked in spatters of red blood. Tied to them, were creatures in a similar vein to what they had seen in the last room. The scientists, who hadn't yet noticed their presence, were completely absorbed into their experiments. One was recording his findings concerning a spasming fur-covered ape man, a manic smile on his face, while the other was dissecting a young boy with three heads and six arms; all three faces were distorted in unbridled fury. Crumpled on the floor on the other side of the boy's table was a bunny-eared young girl who looked like she was the previous experiment.

'If we had just gotten here a little sooner….' traitorous thoughts passed through her mind, condemning her own slowness to seek Konoha's aid, condemning Yugao's approach to the mission so far, and condemning this world for putting this young set of children through something like this. Before they could get too far though, her rational kicked in. She was already going to kill these scientists, so the plan would proceed apace.

Taming her fury, Reina comforted herself with the fact that they'd be captured within a few heartbeats and dead within the hour. With a quick movement, she leaned forward, applying one of the silencing seals on the ground. Without losing a beat, she pushed toward the first scientist, the one experimenting on the ape man.

Not a second later, she was in front of the first scientist. With a flick, a hair-sized needle flew from her fingers striking the man's neck, while the sealing paper was attached to the back of his head. Before he could make any sounds however, she was already in front of the other. Doing the same thing to the distracted second scientist, Reina turned around and darted toward the other rooms.

This process was incredible easy due to the way these bases were run. There wasn't any security beyond the hidden traps and experiments. Even then, the traps were in locations where their research data was stored, rather than the walkways and general experiment areas the scientists frequent. It would be impractical to set them up there. This was one of the biggest downsides to having these kinds of hidden operations; they relied too heavily on obfuscating the various bases' location.

Moving into the next room, Reina noticed Yugao had already finished with hers and was moving just behind her. Truthfully, Yugao and Kamui probably could have handled this whole thing themselves. If she had to guess, this was Yugao's way of testing her as well. Then, she'd likely submit a report on the competency level of a Kocho Jonin. All things considered, Reina fully expected to get positioned as a Konoha chunin with her experience level. It shouldn't be too hard to promote, but she felt Konoha Jonin were more powerful than her on average.

When it came to the second room, she noticed a similar situation that she had seen in the last room, but with chimeras whose animal forms had wings. Improving their ability to fly seemed to be the goal of this facility. She hadn't realized the other room probably had a specific function until she saw this one.

The two moved into the third room where Kamui had finished her task. Her eyes were glowing in a brighter shade of amethyst than she remembered and from the looks of it, she was barley restraining her chakra from erupting in a sea of fury. Glancing briefly behind the girl at the room she had just secured, Reina noticed one of the scientists knocked out next to a cat girl lifelessly tied to a table, her form covered in semen and blood. On a nearby whiteboard, images of the reproductive system could be seen with notes strewn across it. As this was a just a glance, she didn't have time to pick up much more than that, but she did conclude on this room's purpose, natural reproduction research.

'Poor girl. To see something like this at that young of an age…. how unfortunate. Stuff like this was why we previously chose not to join any hidden villages.' Reina somberly thought to herself, her body still rushing sprinting toward the next room.

When she entered the fourth room, she once again broke off. This time, she didn't see any experiments. There were just two scientists that were surrounded by potted vegetation of various kinds. On the whiteboard, she noticed sketches of humans with plant-like features. Her guess, this room likely involved developing plant-based chimeras.

In a quick burst of speed, she managed to tag one. The other noticed quickly and tried to scream for help but, with the soundproofing seal she laid when she came in, it was pointless. He tried to reach for a mechanism located on one of the nearby walls but couldn't make it in time. Before he could even take his second step, his consciousness was gone, suppressed by the capture seal.

At this point, she really wanted to stay in this room and leave the others for the Kamui and Yugao. She couldn't do that though. Not only would it be going against the stated mission orders, but she was also certain that any curiosity she exhibited in this room would only put their mission in jeopardy. She needed to wait for Kamui to extract the intel from these scientists. There were likely traps on anything of interest and they needed to know where they were, or she might accidentally cause this whole compound to collapse.

Moving onto the next room, Reina noticed that Yugao had already moved to the seventh room, likely having received the answers she was looking for from her assessment. She could also see Kamui in the distance moving from her room to the next.

Seeing as how those two had the situation handled, Reina glanced to the room she currently found herself in. Again, there were no experiments inside. Instead, there were project notes scattered everywhere with pictures of various chimeras, an assortment of different combinations. At first glance, this was likely the room where they researched the possible combinations and discussed the results.

At this point, she was really starting to get concerned. This is a long-term base. They had speculated before, but what she had seen only confirmed it. Throughout the base, she'd noticed a few dates posted indicating that some of these efforts had been going on for years. She even caught a whiteboard listing a milestone recorded about a decade ago.

'How can something like this happen under our noses for so long?' she thought to herself.

Truthfully, she knew the answer. They had assumed everything that happened in recent months was the result of Ana's capture, but that was probably wrong. Ana's capture may have even been a symptom of a much larger problem.

'Please let it not be that.' She pleaded mentally, while arriving in the next room.

This room was much larger than the rest. It looked like a storage facility for various samples. Immediately, she noticed some of the sites were marked with the names of insects and various wildlife she knew were from almost every part of the island. The most worrying part was a container in the back marked with the word's Kocho Clan. That one was the most painful. If she weren't already rushing toward the next room, she'd be rushing to review as many of these as possible to help verify the painful theory gnawing at the back of her mind.

Finally, as she entered the final room, she noticed the two other Kunoichi standing over a blond-haired woman in glasses and a white lab coat. The room itself consisted of nothing but filing cabinets.

"I guess you found the record keeping site." Reina commented, masking her growing concern with the trademark gentle smile of her clan. It was one of the few Kocho clan techniques she was bad at, hiding emotional disturbances behind a smile. She normally didn't like keeping up a false façade, but with what she had seen on the way here, it was likely necessary.

"It looks like it. It doesn't look like we found the most interesting things though. What did you find?" Yugao commented, seeing straight through her false smile.

Reina's smile stiffened.

'I really need to practice the smile. If I had just used it the whole way here, she wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.' She thought in annoyed self-reflection, irked that the Jonin was observant enough to catch her change in demeanor.

Sighing, Reina decided to come clean.

"You've probably noticed on your way here, but we came across rooms for terrestrial dissections, flying creatures, natural reproduction, plant chimeras, fusion analysis, sample storage, and now documentation." Reina started, but was interrupted by Yugao.

"How did you notice all of that? Considering the speed that we were traveling, you shouldn't have had the time to notice enough details to make those conclusions. I could understand if Kamui made them since she has the sharingan but, how did you?" Yugao asked with interest.

Reina nodded at the question. She had expected them to notice by this point. Honestly, it surprised her that it took them this long.

"The chief characteristics of the Otsutsuki were their unique bodies, powerful eyes, and immortal souls. From those, they each had a special dojutsu and physical bloodline that passed down to their descendants. From what we've observed, the eyes and bodies either split off into separate bloodlines and retained a significant portion of their strength and potential, or the two stayed together and reduced in potency. There have been instances where an individual member reawakened their true potential, but those are rare." Reina explained, causing the two Konoha Kunoichis' eyes to widen in shock at the implications.

She continued, "As you might have surmised, the Kocho clan is one of the latter examples. Our poisonous bodies come with a pair of compound eyes identifiable as purple pupil-less eyes at the surface level; the structure is different when viewed in depth, but that's not visible to the naked eye. If you wanted to oversimplify them, they're a combination of the far-sight ability of the byakugan and the 'eye of insight' of the sharingan. From those two abilities, it neither has 360-degree vision, x-ray vision, nor the ability to see chakra. It's restricted to perceiving the material world."

The two Konoha Kunoichi were silent. To think that Konoha was gaining a bloodline even greater than they initially expected. Once again, it really emphasized the point that they needed to recruit this clan safely. Luckily, according to Kamui's clones positioned in the village, the sound four haven't surfaced. The Kocho clan were basically going about their business as normal, just with ogre-like creatures guarding the perimeter to prevent any escape attempts.

"OK then. I appreciate the honesty. Please continue with your original explanation.

Reina nodded, suppressing a genuine chuckle at the visible restrained curiosity on the young silver haired girl's face. Clearly, she had a lot of questions that demanded answering. They would have to wait till the mission was over though.

Reina nodded and continued her explanation.

"In those spaces, I noticed multiple dates of experiments these scientists conducted. I didn't have time to see the specifics, but they suggested that this base has existed for over a decade at the very least. Then, in the sample storage room, I noticed names of animals from almost everywhere on this island. Part of that collection included Kocho Clan samples, though I fear checking which members they belong to. With all this information, there's a dark conclusion gnawing at the back of my mind…" Reina's voice trailed off into a whisper.

Yugao decided to keep silent, knowing the answer, but deciding to be tactful for Reina's sake.

Kamui though….

"So, you have a high-positioned plant in the clan?" She asked with a straight face.

Hearing this, Yugao slapped her forehead in embarrassment, while Reina let out a profound sigh.

"Really now…." Yugao muttered in mild frustration. "I guess tact was never part of the academy's curriculum..."

"What? I thought we were supposed to communicate clearly on dangerous missions." Kamui asked, confused at how tact could factor into this situation. Spies weren't a new thing and unless a family member was the plant, it shouldn't be too hard of a pill to swallow.

Sighing once again, Reina decided to enlighten the young lady.

"Kamui, my father is the leader of the Kocho Clan. Since our village is small and composed of a single clan, he assigns all the missions and has done so for the last two decades. For this base to have gone unnoticed this long with the diversity of samples in their library, he's the most likely spy candidate." She somberly explained.

Kamui's eyes widened at the piece she just realized she had forgotten. Remembering back, Reina had introduced herself as the heir. For this operation to exist that long at this scale would be almost impossible unless the spy could control troop movements away from the criminal activity and explain occasional disappearances as mission deaths.

While there were probably a few advisors that could do something similar, her father was ultimately the prime suspect.

'I guess I really do need a lesson in conversational tact… or just in situational awareness.' Kamui thought to herself.

"Right… can we please move on to the phase where Kamui rips out their memories, so we can end them. I'm sure I'm not the only one itching to do it after what we saw here." Reina suggested, shifting the subject to collecting the rest of the intelligence.

Kamui agreed eagerly, while Yugao did so a little more stoically.

"That's fine. We'll regather our facts once she's done. With that, we should be able to build a picture of what's going on with this lab before we engage Naga." Yugao stated, agreeing to move forward with the plan.

Hearing this, Kamui decided to pose an alternate suggestion.

"Actually, do you mind if I engage Naga alone? I get the feeling that doing so with the three of us isn't the best course of action. Something about the vibe her aura gives off tells me that it'll require my specific set of talents to handle. If you get involved, you just might get caught in an ability you have no defense against.

"In the meantime, could you take the chance to gather any relevant documents in storage seals? We're going to need to do that anyways and it'll save some time if we do both tasks at the same time." She requested, knowing that whatever Naga was wasn't something the other two could combat. It wasn't a matter of skill, it had more to do with the nature of the beast she was being merged with.

"I don't mind." Reina said, deciding to readopt her clan's signature smile, needing it to hide the pain from the conclusion she had drawn earlier. She was clear that she wouldn't be of any help against Naga. They were both poison wielders due to the Kocho Clan's bloodline, but Naga's was bound to be stronger with her physical alterations. That's not to mention the absurd levels of physical prowess they were expecting from her; well, they expected absurd levels of physical prowess from most of the top-level experiments here.

Yugao, on the other hand, took a little longer to respond. She recognized Kamui's argument in the fact that the girl had likely seen something in Naga that reminded her of herself. Specifically, it was probably a special power that could tip the scales in one's favor. Looking at it from that perspective, she didn't have much confidence in being able to provide any non-lethal assistance. Her combat style just didn't suit taking on monsters and that was what Naga was now, a large snake monster. Sighing, she came to a decision.

"Alright, but I'll be watching the fight. I'll have a few shadow clones help Reina out during the search. Just keep in mind that if you get yourself in a bad position and fail to call for backup, it will go in as a skill-set deficiency toward your chunin promotion pre-assessment." Yugao concluded, accepting her student's suggestion.

"Great!" Kamui exclaimed, glad that she could take the option that ensures the safest route for everyone involved.

"Alright. Kamui, it's time to pull that intel from the prisoners. Get to it." Yugao ordered, hurrying her excited student.

Quickly nodding, Kamui set about her work