The Sins that Birth Hatred

(Kamui's Point of View)

Deciding to start with the scientists in the first room, Kamui came up to the incapacitated man who had dissected the young pair. As she moved closer to the body, she hesitated, her mind contemplating how this needed to happen. She debated using the standard version of her genjutsu to pull the memories out without experiencing them from the scientist's perspective.

Then, she thought otherwise, her flames of curiosity burning in her mind. Why would these monstrous humans perform such heinous experiments on these people? Did they wrong them at some point? Was there a hatred she wasn't aware of in a similar vein to Suzune? How can she fairly deal with people like this if she didn't know how they thought…...?

All these questions and more decided her next course of action. She would use that jutsu once again. She would relive their experiences.

What she had seen in this compound really hit her mentally. These people were willfully committing atrocities here that made her skin crawl at their insidiousness. Worst, the expressions she saw on their faces, especially the one actively assaulting the hybrid woman were of ecstasy. It looked like they relished every moment of being here. It was so different than Suzune, it worried her. She really hoped there was a story, an explanation beyond willful debauchery and madness. The academy instructors made it a point to remind all shinobi of the possibility of encountering these types of predators on a frequent basis, regardless of gender. Even with that, she hadn't been prepared to see this so early in her career. Every time she thought about it, it fueled her burning need to find out more, to know why these people turned out the way they had.

["Kamui, this is an awful idea."] Yume commented from inside her head.

'Why? Don't you think my questions are valid? Shouldn't I take this opportunity to learn more about how these people operate?' Kamui asked, committed to her current course of action.

["Kamui, this isn't the time to do this? You're not ready to see something of that magnitude."] Yume stated a little more forcefully, trying to talk her host out of this madness. Experiencing the deeds of these humans from their perspectives would be madness, especially after seeing a sample of what they had committed.

'If I don't understand how they got here and what they turned into, how can I stop others from doing the same? These were good people once. Don't you think I should find out how they turned into this?' she asked, her determination unfaltering.

["Kamui, you need to understand. I know these questions are important, but you have to be careful with situations like this. From what we've already seen, these people are abominations in human form. Truthfully, I don't know what would happen if you continued down your current course of action. At the end of the day, the two beings that became the core of my being were both susceptible to hatred. Beyond that, you'd have to use the sharingan to accomplish the task, a tool known to promote the negative emotions in its wielder, especially if they're experienced with it active. Needless to say, it's too dangerous."] Yume elaborated, almost pleading at this point.

Kamui paused for a second.

"Is there anything wrong?" Her sensei asked, noticing the hesitation in her step.

Turning her head back to look her in the eye, Kamui shook her head.

"No sensei. I'm fine, just a little nervous of what I'll find is all." She replied with a smile, thankful at her sensei's concern for her wellbeing.

"Well, don't push yourself too hard. There are other ways we can go about it if you don't think you can do it." Yugao mentioned, surprising Kamui at how soft her sensei was being. She was always stoic and mission focused. Over the course of the mission, it had slipped her mind that Yugao was actually a really caring person. It was just that missions forced her to slip on the façade of a hardened veteran. If only their world allowed her to be like this all the time….

Kamui nodded with a small smile and turned back, recommitted to her decided course of action, for the dangerous path.

'Yes, I'll do it. How can I say I want to change the world if I'm not willing to put myself through risks like these? This will bring me one step closer to my starting goal of becoming a worldly person.' She thought, steeling her conviction to experience these scientists' memories.

["So be it. Do what you will. I will do my best to support you from in here. I can't promise too much, but I can help control your chakra to prevent it from going out of control. It tends to do that when someone gets as livid as you're likely to."] Yume resignedly stated, giving up on trying to change the girl's mind.

Kamui looked at the scientist in front of her and muttered, "Let's get started."

Kamui took the next twenty minutes to rip through the memories of every scientist they had captured. During this effort, Yume stepped in and seized control of her chakra to prevent it from going wild during the process.

To facilitate the process in the safest way possible, Kamui coordinated with Yume to process these memories quickly, while forcefully diluting her own emotions during the process. Understanding the danger, she knew that letting herself react fully to what she witnessed wouldn't be safe nor appropriate. Dangerous missions weren't the time to get emotional. Even then, she could only maintain the effect for a short period and that only leveed the raging hurricane of emotions, not eliminated it, so she had to be careful. Truthfully, this was the first time she was testing it on something this potentially traumatizing, so this wasn't safe by any means.

Moving through the lot of them, the first thing she noticed, was a common trend between their lives; they were all medical ninja at one point or another. Whether by good or selfish intentions, they all eventually branched into unethical experiments. This happened to varying degrees between them based on their end goals for those experiments. Eventually, Orochimaru reached out to them through proxies and they defected with his aid to join his newly created hidden village.

At different points, with the oldest being fifteen years ago, all of them were transferred to this site to assist in what they understood to be one of Orochimaru's most prestigious projects, the creation of improved humans by integrating the traits of chakra-infused animals. This was inspired by the transformation the snake sage helped him go through during his training at Ryuchi cave. What he told them was that he would share this gift with his subordinates by allowing them to go through something similar. With his charisma, most of the scientists believed him. However, a few could see through his deception.

The end goal wasn't to gift his loyal minions with power; that was a side-benefit to create powerful subordinates at best. No, the perceptive ones knew he wasn't the generous type. He was an avatar of greed and self-interest. His minions were just a means to an end. Hell, the reason he managed to recruit so many semi-competent staff was that they had nowhere to go. Through 'mysterious means', they all ended up getting outed in their respective villages in the days leading to their defections. He was all they had.

The real goal of this situation was most likely to integrate the best traits of various animals into himself. He already had the white snake's powers, but he wasn't satisfied. He wanted more powerful traits and bloodlines, but the process was dangerous and testing it on himself would be foolish. It had to be perfected before he could use it on himself. Funny enough, the only conclusion they could come to for the third lab, was Orochimaru wanting to make an heir. If you look at it from a selfish mindset, that's really the only reason he'd dedicate so much effort to a natural reproduction study at this important of a facility. It's ironic that a man that believes himself to be so far above base human instincts, succumbs to the primordial compulsion to produce offspring. Looking at it with a different lens however, this could also be his attempt at making genetically similar bodies to inhabit in the future; though with cloning available to him, that's less likely.

Aside from the obvious study on chimeric creations, the lab served another main purpose, the growth and development of "Project Vessel." They didn't know much about where she came from or her specific relation to Orochimaru, but her purpose was obvious. For some reason, he wanted a perfect vessel and he seemed to think she fit the bill. The part that confused them was that she was neither a Senju nor an Uchiha, so the sharingan wouldn't be effective if transplanted. Well, she did have special eyes of her own, particularly if you consider that they managed to integrate the power of petrification into the Kocho clan's already powerful dojutsu. With that in mind, it's possible the man changed his dojutsu of interest, but the scientists weren't convinced. He was behaving a little too strangely.

In support of both projects, the scientists used human prisoners who were regularly brought to them as test subjects. Occasionally, they would receive Kocho Clan members from the nearby village courtesy of the sound four, the managers of this compound. In those experiments, the scientists conducted all manner of inhumane experiments, which quickly advanced their research into human chimeras; they even managed to integrate the dead bone pulse into one of the strongest experiments, a massive success by all metrics.

To keep themselves sane, they used the reproduction lab to relieve any stress they'd accumulated. This served both the male and female scientists well as there were all manner of specimens to sate any fetishes they may have developed. Truly, this place grew to be a depraved scientist's dream and they all enjoyed their time here, much to Kamui's revulsion.

The lab itself had been in operation here for the past eighteen years. Apparently, Orochimaru made a deal with the local village chief that helped them facilitate a covert operation. They weren't too clear on the specifics, but Orochimaru had some kind of deal with him where he kept patrols away from their base at specified times and assigned sacrifices to 'long-range recon' missions where they would be ambushed and captured by sound shinobi.

Most of the living specimens were kept at a large prison area in the conjoined caverns. There were many of them there that they had to manage. They even had a few sound shinobi that were normally stationed here to break the spirits of the specimens for the scientists and serve as guards for everything else. There was a notably high death rate due to the dangerous nature of the hybrids they interacted with, but that risk was accepted by all parties.

That changed recently though when Orochimaru started centralizing his forces in the land of fire. Outposts like this one, regardless of how important the experiments, were left relatively defenseless. Luckily, the sound four had come back recently, so they had an additional layer of protection. The weird part was that they made their presence known to the village and took control of it, an act contradicting all their covert efforts since this base's founding. None of the scientists had any idea of their motives as those four hadn't made contact with the base and the scientists didn't care enough to approach them in the open.

Lastly, Naga lost her mind about five months ago when Orochimaru performed another experiment on her. They didn't know what happened but, from his expression, it was clear that he didn't appreciate her losing control like that. She had been one of his finest weapons, able to fight the sound four in their base states together without any assistance. Losing her to madness was clearly out of his calculations. When Orochimaru left, he sealed the cavern and told them to keep her alive before leaving back to the land of fire.

The reason why the three kunoichi had met so little resistance was because all the remaining shinobi stationed here had died to the frenzied Naga's hands while trying to care for her. Every time they witnessed one of their colleagues dying, their love for this compound waned. Unfortunately, Orochimaru would hunt them down personally if his precious vessel died, so they had to keep at it. Eventually, even the scientists had to offer themselves to care for the murderous experiment. As a result, the remaining scientists grew even more debaucherous with their activities by the day, believing that any day could be their last.

Luckily, Kamui managed to find out where in the base Orochimaru kept his notes. Although one would think that he keeps his notes on him, that's not true. Instead, he keeps all his notes in a sealed chamber at the base where he created them. From the scientists' perspectives, this is likely a manner of organizing them since his storage seals weren't complex enough to give him fine control of what's stored in there; they're mostly meant to be single storage seals. The chamber's seal is programmed to destroy the notes should anyone without his chakra signature touch the container.

Finished with the final extraction and compilation, Kamui stared at the pathetic scientist in front of her. For such a heinous fiend, he looked disgusting, a skinny man with sickly-pale skin who viewed himself at the top of the food chain. Whether it be her personal sense of values, her draconic nature, or her sharingan's effects, everything inside her raged to let out their pent-up aggression, to take revenge for the injustice these devils had committed. At this point, the only thing keeping her from putting this man through the worst nightmare she could conceive of were the trembling restraints on her emotions. Even those were just barely holding in place.

Taking deep breaths, Kamui suppressed the raging torrent of what could only be described as hatred. This was a first for her; she never experienced hatred before on this level. She could feel it from others in the village, she even remembered her oldest brother's tainted aura after one of his longer missions but had never experienced it herself.

["Kamui, you need to take a break to catch your breath."] Yume advised, concerned over her host's mental stability.

"Kamui, are you OK? Could you explain what you saw? Talking it out always helps me relieve stress." Yugao suggested.

How could she not notice the emotional turmoil her student was going through. Her eyes were practically radiating power at this point. She could even see traces of other colors flashing in her irises. That said, her body language told an even clearer story. The arm gripping the man's neck was barely restraining itself from crushing his windpipe. The other was clenched hard enough to crush steel. Her jaw was clenched to the point that Yugao wouldn't be surprised if the girl chipped her teeth. Overall, it was clear this was the first time the girl experienced this visceral of emotions. Otherwise, she'd likely be restraining them, like she does most other times. What Yugao didn't know was that this was Kamui restraining them.

Reina remained silent, her expression in a small frown. She too was concerned for the young kunoichi. After all, she couldn't imagine having to go through the memories of the scientists herself and she was in her twenties. Doing so at sixteen was insane and this was without the knowledge that Kamui was doing more than just reading memories. That said, she would keep her silence; the girl's sensei was better fit to take care of the situation.

Eyes slowly dimming, Kamui slowly loosened up her demeanor. A few minutes later, she felt she had gotten back into a serviceable state with the additional traces of color fading from her eyes, though there remained a fire that hadn't been there before the extraction.

Looking back at her sensei, she silently muttered, "I'm fine. These people are abominations in human skin. The things they did here, the lives they've ruined, their expressions during the act... all of these things and more are the work of monsters…." Kamui explained both to the two here and to the partner in her head.

"Do you need a moment before you explain?" Yugao asked, willing to give her student some time to process her feelings.

Kamui shook her head.

"We can do it now. We're on a timetable. Every second counts and we still have to read through Orochimaru's journal." Kamui firmly stated, determined to continue the mission. They couldn't leave Naga in this hovel and the villagers still needed to be saved, especially if the village chief is responsible for the clan's current predicament.

Reina and Yugao nodded seriously, silently agreeing with the girl's attitude and resolve. Standing still was a poor way to handle turmoil of this nature, so the girl's approach was sound, in the immediate sense at least.

The next thirty minutes were spent going over the details of what Kamui had ripped from the scientists' minds.

Hyuga Compound (???'s Point of View)

In a dark secluded room, a sixteen-year-old girl sat haggard on her chair. Her skin was dry with a sickly-pale white color. Her greyish-white hair hung loose to her knees with two long waist-length bangs framing her face. She wore a simple short-sleeved white shirt with a deep V-neck and ragged black pants. Prominent on her forehead was a green 'X' bordered by two hooked lines, the cage bird seal. One other interesting feature was a red set of hooks interlocking around her neck, an additional seal her family used to keep her in place.

The girl sat and watched the sleeping children in front of her. The youngest was a one-year-old boy with the beginnings of black hair forming on his little head. The other was a two-year-old girl with a mix of white and black hair.

'My children…...' She thought with equal parts resignation and love.

This was all her life afforded her. At this point in her life, she couldn't even remember what the sun looked like. Her purpose was simply to exist as the womb that birthed the next generation of the main house.

'As long as you two live happy lives, this is enough for me'. She finished. Her mind quieted, allowing her to participate in one of the few pass times she could do when her children slept, listening in on the ongoings of the compound, something only her dear brother and uncle Hiashi knew she could do.

Suddenly, her breath hitched, her white pupiless eyes widened, and her fists clenched at the conversation her lord was having with her uncle, one of his many slaves.

"Hiashi, tonight, you are to take the boy and dispose of him. So far, he hasn't expressed any signs of being special like his sister and his latent chakra is even weaker than a normal Hyuga toddler his age. It's better we end him now before he has a chance to disgrace us further. No need to feed the incapable." An aged male voice sternly ordered, sending every hair on her body on edge.

"But father, you can't be serious. He's just a child. He could just be a late bloomer. Even if you only consider his lineage, he's bound to show some powerful traits." Hiashi pleaded, clearly disgusted at the heartless act he was being ordered to perform. He could be ruthless in his training and commitment to tradition, but this was excessive by all metrics.

"Did I stutter!? My orders are final!" The man roared, stopping any further rebuttal from his son. He continued in a more moderate and calculative tone, "Besides, we can always make more. As the head of the Hyuga clan, it is my responsibility to create the strongest generation of main family that I can. It may take time, but the future of our clan will be grand. By getting rid of the failures early, the ones that do survive will do so with greater potential on average. That way, we won't have any Hinata's in the bunch. If we did things your way, we would be using the girl like the Uchiha did their little monster, wastefully. In another sixteen years, our family will not just have one monster, but a main house filled with them. If you understood these basic concepts, you would still be the head of the clan and maybe it'd be your seed that fostered the next generation." The man explained condescendingly.

She could hear the gritting of teeth. Clearly, her uncle wasn't too happy with her lord's commands. Finally, his tension stopped; he relented.

"Fine, I'll do the deed at midnight, but be careful father. One day, the village will know about this and we will answer for everything that has went on in this compound." Hiashi angrily stated before storming off.

She could hear the aged voice sighing.

"My son." The man muttered to himself. "After all this time you still don't understand. Might makes right in this world. If we produce results, who will say anything? That's how this village has run since Hiruzen took office. His seat may have been stripped, but he was the only true Hokage, the only one that truly understood what it meant to be a shinobi and his legacy lives on even today through Konoha's clans. When the time comes, they will side with us." He muttered, fully believing in his chosen course of action.

The girl trembled with both excruciating fear for her children and rage at the would-be killer.

'What can I do? I can't let them kill my baby!' She mentally screamed, desperation filling her very being.

["Then we won't. The timing may not be ideal, but I would not have us lose our precious child for the sake of timing. In any case, the moon is full tonight and your powers will be at their peak. Make ready."] A voice melodiously ordered in her head.

'Right.' She responded, determined to risk it all.

Quietly, the two marks that bound her faded, the chakra sustaining them being absorbed into her. Unknown to her, chakra began pooling in the center of her forehead.

'If we can just escape, I can live happy with my children and this nightmare will finally be behind me. They will be safe.' She fondly thought, excited at the prospect of finally being free.