The Snowclad Watcher
Key
Primary Cast
Pink - Sen Yamamoto
White - The Snowclad Watcher
Red - Natsuo Uchiha
Green - Kamiko Karatachi
Secondary Cast
Blue - Unnamed Young Boy
Purple - Unnamed Chūnin
Part 1 - Sen Yamamoto
It was two weeks before the rest of Team Tsugumi would arrive - four weeks since Sen had begun scoping Konoha and the other Genin teams that would be participating in the Chūnin exams. It was a warm night, especially for someone from Shimogakure, the moon was out and the sky was an almost pitch blue. Konoha was asleep - as much as a shinobi village can be - the only sounds the chirping of nocturnal birds, heartfelt drunken goodbyes on the street below or barely audible rushes of air as night watchmen leaped into position across the tiled rooftops.
Sen carefully finished the calligraphy about the scroll - she wasn't any good with seals or rituals, but it was enough - the brush's motions were slow an deliberate, she couldn't afford even the slightest slip for this to work. Her desk was a mess of discarded scrolls and other trash - three earlier, failed attempts at creating the seal, a half-finished, cold box of ramen from the village, an ashtray containing a still-lit cigarette, a single kunai, a black/white mask and an unmarked, half-full container of small white pills.
Finally satisfied with the seal, the kunoichi placed the brush back into the inkwell and took the cigarette from its housing. Taking in a deep draw and exhaling, she added more to the fine layer of bitter smoke that hazed throughout the small hotel room she had been staying at, not even bothering to waft the acrid grey mist through the half-open window in front of her. She was in thought - the small poisonous stick in her mouth helped. After a moment of contemplation, she decided what would, and what wouldn't be needed in the scroll.
A quick string of signs followed - snake, rat, dragon, dog, tiger, bird - then she pressed her right fingers into the centre of the seal on the scroll. Her chakra flared and her brain races as literal thoughts channelled down her spine, into her arms, her hands, her fingers and eventually the paper. It was a relatively long but well-considered amount of information gathered on one of the Genin, Takeru Suzuki. She'd had trouble pinning the boy down - he was too fast and too spontaneous to track - and most of the memories flowing though her fingers were anecdotes taken from others as well as one awkwardly fast conversation with the boy from two days prior. The jutsu lasted a minute, longer than it needed to but the delicacy of the information meant she needed to be sure it was done absolutely correctly. She rolled up the scroll, sealed it with a coded mark and put it on the pile beneath her desk with the others - each bearing a different name.
The next was Takeru's teammate, Humari Miko - a medical genius that had, unfortunately, decided to be a ninja instead of a doctor. She'd considered pleading with the girl to change her avenue of employment, but hadn't - they were the same, in a sense, Sen should've been a librarian or a scholar, Lady Tsugumi and her mother had persistently reminded her as much, yet here she was, a Genin participating in this ridiculous competition to become a Chūnin.
"She's going to be a problem,'" a familiar voice appeared from behind her - it was the voice of a younger girl, not entirely unlike Sen's.
The konuichi didn't break her stride as she dragged the last of her cigarette, putting it out in the ashtray as if to accentuate her response. "She's a child," another, final blow of smoke, "and besides, she's a healer, not a fighter."
"You're being too nice, you're always too nice," the other voice came gently closer, but without the sound of footsteps - its reflection was barely visible in the window's glass thanks to the haze. "She's a Genin, a shinobi - worse, she's from Konoha - you think she hasn't been taught how to fight? What the best points are on a body to slow, to paralyze, to hurt... To kill?"
"You've seen how she acts, she's not a killer, not yet, maybe never."
"Maybe not," another silent step, the reflection remains ghostly save for the feint outline of its white silhouette, rounded, hooded and cloaked, "but she has all the answers to Ghidorah's poisons - you don't want him to feel useless, do you? After you and Junki spent so much time trying to give him self-worth, this girl could take it all way without even realizing. Without even knowing what he is..."
"A boy."
"A monster."
"A boy!"
"Will she see it that way? If he never gets a chance to prove it, she'll never care."
A moment of silence, Sen looks down the desk - the mask is missing, as expected, but the canister is there. She reaches for the canister and the pills inside. Her hand is stopped by a chilly grasp. The voice has moved in front of her now, perching on the desk with legs bent at the knees. Its form is hidden by the long, thick, white cloak - its face a black and white mask of porcelain texture. Two hollow eyeslits stare down at the konuichi.
"We don't need to go there just yet, hear me out? I promise I'm trying to help this time." The figure doesn't move, doesn't even breathe as it speaks, but its voice is very real.
"If you think about hurting her-"
"Not at all!" the young, girlish voice is far to sweet, far too innocent for the creature that still grasps at Sen's wrist. The stareoff lasts nearly a minute before she retracts her arm away from the medicine - the creature, sensing her response, withdraws its own gnarled, frostbidden limb back beneath the snow white cloak.
"We both know where she lives - I've seen you mapping the house, the guards, their shifts, their faces. All I'm saying is we should go and take a look at her family's scrolls - they're bound to have something on that medicine of theirs locked up there. Nobody gets hurt, and you can give Ghidorah a way to prove himself without-"
"I can't, I'll be caught - if something happens to me they might take Junki and Ghidorah out of the exams, I can't do that to them."
"You lack confidence - that's fine, like I said, I'm here to help. Just let me take care of it." The creature's gaze somehow feels warm, innocent, even helpful. It reaches up to the porcelain mask and slowly draws it away from the robe.
Part 2 - The Snowclad Watcher
The Miko houses slept as they always did. Most of the family members had retreated to their rooms, the feint light of candles disappearing from behind paper walls one by one. Now the night was the domain of the black, held in check only by the dull light of the moon and the candles held by the shinobi and night-time servants that patrolled the walkways and inner corridors. Like any shinobi village, it was well-watched at night - watchmen, automatic seals, strategically placed alarm bells and even watchful bonded beasts were commonplace in the shinobi world - as a family of some renown, the Miko residences were watched even closer.
The masked, robed thing was an expert sneak, but even it knew that it couldn't slip past the dozens of eyes, jutsu and traps on that skill alone. Instead, it had conferred with Sen and had mapped out the place over days. The investigation was cautious, but thorough, and every day it got closer to the houses by mapping every face to every time-shift, every wall, every door, every bell, every seal, every animal. The investigation was far from complete - it'd take an Anbu a month to discover every secret passageway, hidden weapon and shrouded watchtower - but The Snowclad Watcher didn't need to know everything, just enough to get to the scroll room.
The creature pressed itself tightly against a stone wall as it listened - its other senses calming until it could hear its own heartbeat, then the heartbeat of those around the corner. Two Chūnin - not from the Miko Clan but often volunteering as night watchmen to fill in the empty nights - their shift was changing about now and, as usual, they were leaving early. The Watcher had three minutes before their replacements turned up, it reckoned, though such couldn't be guaranteed - it didn't have any mystical powers of foresight, it was just clever enough to guess.
A dash beneath a nest of watchful birds, a long climb over a wall to avoid a small pond of croaking frogs and a tight squeeze between raised floor foundations and a difficult climb up a wooden tower later and the thing found itself in the room it was looking for. This wasn't where the Miko kept their most secretive information, that place even Sen hadn't discovered - but it was an accessible repository - Sen had seen a young child and her elderly mentor collect a small stack of mundane-looking scrolls when she was last talking with Himari and had shared this information with The Watcher.
No candles were lit as the Watcher weaved the handsign of the bird - the dark parted to a monotone grey beneath its gaze, enough to distinguish detail but not colour and with little enough chakra to hopefully avoid the watch of any sensors in the area. Not a second went by before it began pilfering everything it could - most of the containers were sealed with physical lock or tag and it had neither the skill nor confidence to tackle them without adequate preparation. The loose scrolls would do. It took them, one at a time, opened them carefully to avoid any surprises and read them head to end in moments - it didn't need to think about the contents, it would remember. As expected, basics and minutia, not enough to even remotely guess at the secrets of the Miko clan, but it was a start.
"Antidotes, antitoxins, anatomical charts, poison theory, extraction techniques..." the creature's breathless voice beamed as if through grinned lips, "I told you Sen, Ghidorah doesn't stand a chance."
Part 3 - Natsuo Uchiha
Natsuo was late, as usual - he expected another scolding from the other Jonin - calling him lazy, airheaded, telling him he couldn't tell the time from a clock. He knew they were joking, of course, just like they knew he'd never be late to anything really important. This time it was Sambu's turn to deal the cards, he didn't get to join in on the Jonin's gettogethers often - one of his Genin, Tomoki Tanaka, was allegedly quite a handful and had even tried to sneak into the game last month - at least he wouldn't know the tricks they'd figured out last time.
Of course, last time nearly turned into a fight when they realized Kiko could smell the differences in the cards - Ezaki nearly blew a gasket on that one. The Uchiha smiled to himself as he plotted his next move, even as he walked down the cold night street - Genjutsu was forbidden and they'd caught him counting cards with the Sharingan ages ago, but he was pretty sure they'd all forgotten him in favour of the newly promoted Jonin they'd be hosting tonight - a Hyūga of all things, who even lets someone with a Byakugan into a card game?
That was until he saw it - what 'it,' even was he couldn't tell - but the Sharingan noticed the blur of white just enough to catch it. Whatever it was, it was moving too carefully to be a guard, was too big to be a bird and didn't have the normal colours of Konoha. "Could be an Abnu. They've been busy since the other villages elected Konoha for the Chūnin exams."" the Uchiha stopped to consider his actions, the rat-at-at-at of his foot against the floor as he contemplated out loud. "Besides, I've got to see what the new guy does at the game or else I'm going to fall behind again."
A shrug and a step, cool and uncaring - followed by a dejected sigh. "If it is Anbu, they'll get mad at me for blowing their cover again. If it isn't..." the Jonin pressed his hands together and in a flash disappeared from all sight - much to the shocked, judgemental scoff of an elderly lady and the silent amazement of her grandson enjoying a walk in the night air. "Someday I want to be as cool as that guy, obaasan!
Another scroll, another read - take, memorize, put back in its place, take, memorize, put back in its place. "Useless, useless, useless. At this rate I'll never live up to my promise, and you'll never live up to yours, Sen."
The creature stops and turns, a sudden feeling of being watched rushing up its spine. With one hand, it slips a kunai free from its holster, hidden beneath its cloak - with another, it forms a one-handed bird sign as chakra visibly flares into its eyes, the dark thin sockets beginning to burn with a feint blue. It scans the room and the rooms beyond, searching for chakra like a hunter looking for a small animal - fearless in all but anticipation. Gentle signatures returned from the scrolls and their seals, but nothing else. Satisfied, it turns back to the scrolls as the blue fire in its eyes extinguish - keeping the kunai in its hand, just in case.
"You could always pull that girl in a little closer, make her hesitate when the time comes." the thing grins - more than a metaphor this time, the mask splits with a porcelain crack into a wide, welcoming smile. Sen's thoughts lance into its head with the force of a slap.
"Be quiet."
The thing's mask smiles wider, the gentle chipping rising to a loud rumbling crack like the splitting of a tree under tension. "It's not like it wouldn't be the first time. Remember that other girl?."
"Be quiet!"
"You told her she was safe, she needed to hear that. Anything to make her afraid of turning you in to those Kumogakure assassins. You were the only one left - well, you, Tsugumi and those children. But I distinctly remember that wasn't enough, you know what I remember..."
"Shut up!"
"I remember that I tried to protect us. You were too nice, you wanted to let her go. We nearly got caught because you stopped me! You know how stupid that was!"
"..."
"Nothing to say? Remember, Sen, I'm the one keeping you alive. You think I enjoy this? You think I enjoy remembering every night what we did, what we failed to do? If it weren't for me you'd be cowering in some library or rotting in some ditch. If it weren't-"
Too late, too distracted, the thing's arm was bound behind its back and a kunai pressed through the stark white robes into the spine. Not nearly deep enough to kill, but deep enough to hurt, deep enough to stain just a little of the cloth crimson.
"You know, I don't often catch spies talking to themselves. I also don't usually find them raiding scrolls for children. Are you sure you're in the right place?"
Silence. Tension. Fear. The creature trembles a little in the Uchiha's hands as he scans the room with the Sharingan. No traps or seals - at least that shouldn't be there. The chakra level of the ninja he'd pinned wasn't very high, but she could be hiding it - his thoughts were more towards immediate threats like active jutsu, traps and weapons. She had a kunai, now dropped to the floor with a careful but forceful shove, that was one thing at least.
"P-please help me-" a young girl's voice, trembling with terror came from the creature - far too young for the ninja he was holding. She was shorter than him, but she wasn't a child. He held his grip as his crimson orbs continued to dance, if this was a trick he wasn't going to fall for something so simple.
"Th-that man, th-that Osamu. H-he has me in a Genjutsu, I-I c-can't stop or else I'll-" Natuso wasn't born yesterday, he'd seen comrades die to these sorts of traps before. Even if they were telling the truth - a thought that stopped him from finishing the job - he couldn't risk being caught out. Still, that Osamu was a shady character.
Natsuo thought on it for a moment, but a moment was enough. In trying to take everything in and watching unseen angles, he didn't register the one-handed sign fast enough to respond. The puff of smoke forced him on the back foot, immediately adopting a defensive stance and diving out of the room towards pre-checked cover, ready for whatever trap was sprung. The loud thud of a log hitting the floor told him everything he needed to know and - with a quick check from the Sharingan for Genjutsu or transformation - he ignored the clumsy substitution in favour of the environment. There were two exits from the household he'd mapped as he approached, the fast one and the quiet one - fortunately, he was fast enough to cover both.
"You saw his eyes - Uchiha, Uchiha!" the thing silently shrieked in its own head, anticipation now fully turned to fear. "Monster, monster! He'll kill us, he'll kill us!" The voice of Sen didn't respond. "Abandoning me now? Now of all times!? If I get caught we're all dead - me, you, Junki, Ghidorah, we're all-"
Another interruption as a knee struck the Watcher's chest. Another prepared kunai knocked from the hand and an arm pinned against the wall. This time Natuso made sure there'd be no surprise jutsu, he took both of the thing's hands and, fingers interlocked, pressed them against the wall above her. If she could weave signs like that, it'd be the first time he'd heard of such. A knee to the side proved his hypothesis - like an animal cornered, the white-robed spy resorted to whatever taijutsu it had now that its hands were disabled. The knee struck a few times, it hurt a little through the reinforced jacket, but it wouldn't be any more than a bruise at worst.
"Do that again and you won't like what happens next," the Uchiha's eyes bored into the slits of the mask, three tomoe became a single, patterned circle. He didn't need Genjutsu, not yet - if his suspicions were correct, this girl knew what those eyes meant, or at least enough to make the threat implicit. Her kicking stopped and her body slumped from the exertion - she spent a lot of her reserves on a mad dash away and evidently wasn't very good at it. "Well, you seem to know me, or at least seem to know when you're beaten. Why don't you tell me what you were doing?"
"U-Uchiha... Monster..."
He frowned as he pondered. Along the alleyway other shinobi were already stirring - flicking from the trees and rooftops to watch the commotion and, seeing their superior, leaping down to check the alleyways. "Natsuo Uchiha, sir! We've didn't notice the intruder - do you need any help? Are there others?" a Chūnin, one of three that made the first responders - fifty-six seconds, he thought, not as fast as he'd like but at least they're improving. It wouldn't be long before the Mika Jonin would arrive, he could already hear them sounding the alarm as they scrambled from their beds.
"I don't think so. Form a perimeter, tell Lord Mika I caught an intruder on his grounds and am taking them for interrogation. Send a message to Ezaki Tuto - he'll be pissed, but he I'd rather have him checking the barriers, he's better at it than I am."
The thing thrashed in the Uchiha's grip at the word 'interrogation.'
"Yes sir! Do you want someone else to take the prisoner?"
"No, I'll handle this." the Jonin's eyes turned back to the creature. Like avoiding an ambush on instinct alone it desperately tried to look away, but only took a single flash of eye contact. Second by second, the white-robed spy lost their strength and fell into a deep sleep.
Part 4 - Kamiko Karatachi
The harsh electric white light was the only source of colour in the otherwise dull grey stone room. Sen Yamamoto had awoken in an uncomfortable chair, staring across a featureless wooden table towards a steel-clad door. The pain in her back and chest was the first thing she noticed, followed by the total lack of sound save the feint buzz of the bulb. She knew where she was, or at least she had an idea - despite the panic that gripped her she immediately fell back on her modus operandi. She moved her arms, they weren't chained. She flexed her fingers, they weren't broken.
Bird - dragon - dog - rat - monkey - serpent - bird - release. She had little chakra left, she hadn't noticed until the last dregs of it started moving. It felt sluggish, slow, suppressed, like she'd expected - not enough of a barrier to stop all chakra flow just in case the interrogators needed to use jutsu, but enough to stop anyone from bringing the walls down. The walls were silent - no chakra escaped from them, she couldn't sense anyone or anything beyond the pale grey stone. They were sealed too, especially against Yin, all the better to neuter Sensor Types and stop them calling for help. A bead of sweat and a long gulp followed, but it was made worse once she noticed she wasn't in the room alone - he wasn't hidden very well, but she wasn't thinking very clearly either.
"Already? You think fast." the Uchiha was invisible in the shadows beyond the feint glitter of two piercing orbs - the menace of the Sharingan had left them, but they pierced just as coldly. "Yeah, the room's sealed. Even I can't do much in here, but in your case I think it's worse." He lifts himself from the wall and strolls into the light, bending downwards so the harsh glow of the bulb highlights his features. Sen recognized the face, Natsuo Uchiha, a Jonin of the Hidden Leaf with a storied history and - she presumed - an even longer hidden one.
"Acting tough is a drag, so I'll do us both a favour and settle those questions you're thinking." pulling a seat with his leg, the Jonin sits opposite of Sen. He's in a vulnerable position this way, he knows as much, and he suspects she knows as well. "You've been asleep for about six hours. We took the liberty of checking the hotels you were staying at. We found your papers, your hidden kit and..."
He reaches to his back and draws some items from a pouch, placing them on the table. An unadorned black and white porcelain mask and an equally mundane-looking scroll - though the gibberish seal atop is unmistakably one of hers. The Jonin looks far too relaxed as she eyes them, leaning back in his chair as nearly all seriousness leaves his posture - nearly all. "I'll be honest, we weren't able to decipher the secret messages - yet - but we know these things burn up if you give the wrong key. The thing is..." the Uchina leans forward again, almost slumping on the table as he lets out a yawn, "all the Chūnin I've rounded up so far? They're no good with that stuff - kids, you know? I do know a few who could crack those scrolls open no sweat in Anbu though, so I'll make you a deal. You tell me what you were doing and maybe I don't have to call those assholes to talk to you."
"He's going to kill you himself." the signature snapping sound of the mask's maw opening into a grin resounds through the room, it smiles at Sen even from the table. Natsuo doesn't seem to notice - after all, how could he?
"You could already be in his little playworld. Think about it, you know what those eyes can do. You've got us in deep now, Sen, what are you going to do about it?"
"Kamiko Karatachi."
The Uchiha raises a brow.
"I... I'd like to speak to Kamiko Karatachi. I'll admit everything to her."
"What are you playing? He'll never fall for it."
"You know she's not one of ours, right?"
"Kirigakure, yes. She has the best sensing in the village right now - she can tell if I'm lying better than you can and I trust her."
"You trust her? I'm sorry if I hit you too hard but you're our prisoner, y'know? This isn't bonding time."
"See? He wants you all to himself."
"You trust her too."
Silence reigns for half a minute. The Genin sits meekly - tired and afraid. Confusion then contemplation plays across Natsuo's face, until another dejected sigh leaves the Jonin.
"Alright. You admit everything to Kamiko and tell her what you're up to and maybe I can see about telling Anbu it's all been handled."
"You failed us again." Sen is alone with the mask now, the Watcher taunts her from its wooden pedestal on the table, its grin gently cracking along the face. This time, the smile isn't smooth, it's a jagged ugly thing. "What's going to happen when Kamiko drags your confession out of you? You know she will, you know she can. She can see everything."
"She'll let us go."
"Let you go!? After what you did!? You'll be lucky to be alive after this!"
"We didn't do anything wrong, we didn't-"
"It's not like back home, idiot! Curiosity kills the cat out here! You learn one little thing about these barbarians' precious little clan secrets and they'll skin you alive!"
"They're not-"
"And they'll not stop at you either! Tsugumi, maybe she's safe, but Ghidorah? Junki? They're accomplices. The Hokage will want their heads for this as repayment. Congratulations, oh great Sensor Type, you've got everyone killed! Again!"
"..."
"Saying that, there is one way we can all get out of this happy. You want that, don't you? You want those two kids to become Chūnin, right? Well then they can't find them, they can't know, and they won't know if they can't ask you."
"What do you want?"
"I want the same thing as you. I want to stop remembering every single mistake we've ever made. I want to stop waking up every night thinking about the times we've gotten friends killed. I want to get out. I want to get out! I want it to end!" the mask's face splits as it talks, the mouth transforming into a jagged maw of teeth as it rises from the table and stares into Sen's soul, cackling and shrieking as its mouth expands and contracts in a wicked gnash.
"I want it to end!"
The kunoichi grasps her hair as she slams her head on the table, helpless tears staining the wood. It feels like it'll last forever until it suddenly stops. The voice disappears as the door steel door groans open. Through the portal a concerned-looking woman emerges. "Hello? My name is Kamiko Karatachi, I'm here to help." %%
"Why did you call for me?" Kamiko could sense the tension emanating from the Konohagakure Chūnin that now escorted her through the prison complex. She didn't need to be told where she was and could tell by the presence - or more accurately, absence - of the energies permeating the building. She was intimately familiar with the feeling of areas sealed against sensory jutsu, it wasn't enough to rob her of her own miraculous powers but everything here felt duller, greyer and hazy. The great slug inside of her was uncomfortable in places like this - though it had the wisdom to conserve its energy rather than complain, knowing that its host would sense its displeasure regardless.
What couldn't be stemmed were the echoes of isolation, failure and fear that had bled into the very stone itself - feint and distant through time but suffusing the area through the constant influx, internment and interrogation of prisoners for decades. Despite being as old as the village - certainly older than herself - it wasn't ancient, as attested to by its brutalist concrete construction and the dozens of pipes and wires stitched across the ceiling. She'd certainly been to nicer places.
"Natsuo Uchiha requests your presence for an interrogation." The young man's voice was cold, matter-of-fact and professional. Beneath his stoicism Kamiko could see that he was a little confused, even a untrusting of her being in this place, she understood and mirrored his confusion. As a foreign ninja, it didn't matter how much of a reputation she had, being allowed in such a place without warning was certainly unorthodox.
"I am certain your own village can supply the expertise for such things. Besides, I am no interrogator." Her voice was reserved but telling - as a doctor she wasn't comfortable with her skillset being used to inflict harm. She'd been used as a truth-sensor many times before, but the thought remained unsettling.
"I do not know the details, only that Natsuo asked for you directly. We will take you to him now." He wasn't lying, that much she could tell.
The rest of the walk was taken in silence. As they entered deeper into the complex, Kamiko couldn't help but count the number of prisoners through the walls of their cells. Seventeen, give-or-take, a surprisingly low number given what she had grown used to during the war. That there was anyone here at all was a lesser evil, but she was glad that there were comparatively so few. Their signatures - what she could tell of them through the seals anyhow - seemed to be in decent enough health as well, it seemed as if the Leaf Village wasn't starving or torturing anyone at the moment, another good sign.
"Kamiko." Natsuo's tired voice cut her away from her trance, bringing her back to her own body as her eyes glanced around the dimly lit room. It was an office of sorts, with various pieces of surveillance equipment, documentation, layers of scrolls containing the signatures of sealed jutsu and less welcoming tools. Towards the end a one-way mirror looked out into an even more drab room in which sat a young woman she didn't recognize. The steel door closed behind her with a feint metallic shriek as Natsuo nodded the Chūnin out of the room.
"Natsuo. You're hurt," her assessment of his chakra was immediate as it was thorough. He was tired, low on sleep and a little hungry - that much was obvious - though there wasn't really much worry in his mind as usual. A small bit of pain was radiating from his left, below the ribcage, nothing to be worried about but it was unlike him to take a bad fall. Her prying ceased there, both out of courtesy for the Jonin's privacy and to avoid interacting with the other, more sinister energy he carried beneath his own. She didn't know what it was - she'd never dared to ask - but she and Saiken both had their suspicions.
"Just a little, nothing much," nonchalant as ever, Natsuo betrayed very little of his concern to others. Kamiko had found in their few interactions that, despite being more serious than he was willing to let on, his lax perspective wasn't exactly a lie - at least, not usually. This time he was a little worried, but remained unshaken.
"Hurt is hurt, that'll get sore if you don't do something about it now."
"Thanks mom but I'm a big ninja now. I can handle a little bruise," he smiled at his own joke, but the woman was too busy staring through the hazy glass to care for it.
"You called me here to... Interrogate this girl? She's very young."
"I've known girls half her age that killed for coin," his scoff was half-formed, he didn't mean anything by it, "but you're right, she is a bit young to be in here, seventeen if her papers are accurate."
"If?"
"She has three IDs, three different names, three different countries of origin. The only thing that's the same on these is the age but the birthdays are different too. She's also a kunoichi, a seamstress and..." he reaches towards a piece of paper on the table to remind himself, "a flower merchant."
"So you think she's a spy."
"I know she is, caught her red handed myself, she's very good at it too, the thing is..." taking a moment to find where he put the evidence, he draws two scrolls - different only by the nonsensical signs etched onto their ribbons, "she's been looking into things that aren't exactly super secret. Breaking into places she shouldn't and making out with stuff I wouldn't normally care about. The problem is where she's been - I need to make sure she hasn't seen anything really important. I need to know what's in these scrolls."
"I still don't understand why I'm here."
"She called for you. Said she'd admit everything to you, that she trusted you."
"I don't know this girl."
"I'd presumed as much, but she knows about you. The thing is - I'm not really an investigator, so if I can't be sure she's not a danger to the Leaf, I'll have to ask Anbu. If she is bad news, that was the right call, if she isn't..."
"Anbu would destroy her just to make sure."
"Exactly. Will you do it?"
Kamiko contemplates in silence about the girl, wondering what kind of situation she was prying into. A sigh confirmed her choice. "I have to."
The girl was radiating fear as she sat in the chair, hands over her head, tears staining the wooden table. The sheer turmoil she was in forced Kamiko to take a second as she entered - a long, deep breath to centre herself as she meekly entered the room. She wasn't afraid of this girl, but she was afraid for her and hoped that adopting a nonthreatening stance would help to calm the kunoichi. "Hello? My name is Kamiko Karatachi, I'm here to help."
Something changed in that moment. In a few uncanny seconds the girl in the chair wiped away her tears, coughed away the hoarseness in her voice and returned a smile that almost seemed too genuine - the red drained form her face and her entire posture changed into something far less pathetic and far more casual and welcoming. It was a lie, of course, Kamiko could see the cracks even without her other senses - in those she could see the girl's chakra network shudder as she scrambled to put herself together. She was well-read on the kinds of techniques shinobi would use to hide their emotions, intentions and refocus their minds but regardless, the speed was a little offputting.
"Hello Kamiko-san. I'm Sen Yamamoto. I could use that help right now," she laughed a light, soulless, hollow chuckle that seemed completely at-odds with moments earlier. Spy or not, she was good at this.
"Alright, Sen, that's good. I was told you wanted me to be here - may I ask why?" Something was off - Sen's chakra network was clearly visible, if a little diminished by exhaustion, but the signals she was putting off were conflicted, complicated, paradoxical.
"You're a very good sensor, so good they say you can tell when someone's lying," that'd normally be the case, but something was off, like a static haze around her, "where I come from you also have a reputation of solving things peacefully. I figured - with your reputation - Natsuo would trust you just as much as I do and we could sort this all out."
"Oh? And just where do you come from?" progress in reading the girl's aura was slow - some kind of jutsu? She hadn't ran into anything technique that had disrupted emotional energy like this before. Still, the more she knew the girl, the easier it'd be to break through. Besides, everything else seemed to be going well so far, if a little too well.
"Shimogakure. Or, well, I was trained in the academy there as a kunoichi - before that I lived in the village around the Grand Library."
"Ah, that explains it."
"Explains what?"
"It's cold in here and you're barely shivering. I was starting to think it was just me."
An uncomfortable chuckle resounded from them both.
"So, you've gotten yourself into a little bit of trouble. As far as I can tell I can maybe help with that. But I'm going to need you to tell me the truth - I can tell when you're lying but that doesn't mean I know what the truth is from that."
"Sure. Can do." Sen's response seemed candid, but it didn't do anything to quell the disruption about her aura.
"Can I ask you to drop that technique? It's making it a little harder to tell."
Over the next few moments, Sen's expression changes - first from nervous laughter to nonchalant comfort, then to quiet contemplation and finally into a languid stare at the table, like the crossroads between depression and tension. Her chakra network registers all this beneath the noise, but it doesn't quieten it down at all - Kamiko feels like she's beginning to see through it just a little.
"It's..." her confidence almost gone, the girl retreats into her chair out of discomfort, "it's not a jutsu. Not anymore."
Sensing the inner turmoil, Kamiko gave Sen a moment moment to collect herself. As the moments turned to a minute and it was clear that the younger girl had lost her direction of thought, she decided to carefully probe. "Then what is it? I'm a healer as well you know, if there's something wrong..."
"It's complicated."
"I can handle complicated."
"It's my partner."
The words stirred something inside the Jonin - the great slug thing nestled within the seal perked up if only a little, goading its host with a primordial curiosity - for her part, Kamiko had come to a similar conclusion. There was no confirmation yet, but an invisible chill of fear ran up her spine. It made sense now, the way Sen's emotions were paradoxical and the way her mental energy was in flux - it wasn't random, it was being pulled in two different directions, it simply seemed chaotic when overlaid atop itself.
Not wanting to make any provocations in case the worst of her theories were true, the Jonin played the part of the unwary. If this child was a Jinchūriki, she could be in danger if pressed too far - if she wasn't, then it'd do no good to raise such an alarm. She considered her next words before following up on the inquiry.
"Your partner? Could you tell me about them?"
"Debate partner, technically," her cadence becomes a little more confident as she starts explaining, like her ability to rationalize helps her forget her situation. The Jonin does not interrupt her, only respond with a confused expression.
"In Shimogakure we don't have academy students learn the Clone technique. Not as harshly as they do here. Instead we learn a jutsu that lets us think from multiple different perspectives at once. It's a lot like a Shadow Clone - or so I understand - but instead of putting a copy of our own minds into a construct we keep it inside our heads, it's a lot simpler so even kids can do it to a degree."
"Interesting, I've heard of something similar. Please, go on."
"It's mostly used to debate with yourself."
"Debate with yourself?"
"Sometimes it's hard to make a decision on your own and you need to argue with yourself, right? Well, sometimes that's not enough, because in the end it's just a monologue, the argument isn't genuine. The technique allows you to temporarily split your thinking into two, each with a different belief. Both streams of consciousness think like you do and remember everything you do - exactly the same, except they've both made a different decision. That way you can literally debate with yourself and figure out which side has more merit."
"That sounds like it has a lot of uses."
"It's too complicated for most Genin or Chūnin to do anything more with it, but you're right. Some of the masters back home - shinobi or otherwise - use it to speed up their thinking or to do two things at once. I even hear some people before the war could split themselves half a dozen times. It's not handy for fighting, so most villages aren't interested in picking it up, but if you come from somewhere where 80% is the bottom grade on a written test..."
"So how does your partner help you? They seem..." somewhat calmed after realizing that the girl wasn't likely possessed, the Jonin adopts a more curious and friendly stance again, though her eyes still dance to try and unravel the tangled mess about the girl - whatever this is, it can't be healthy. "Intense."
"They're there to keep a hold of my less savoury thoughts."
An eyebrow raised, the Jonin leans forward, starting to piece things together.
"I've been having a bad time, I don't want to talk about that, but, well," a nervous delay painted Sen's discomfort to her 'interrogator,' though this time without any false bravado or humour, "I don't like where my head is going sometimes. So I started offloading some of that onto a debate partner of sorts. To resolve at a later time when I had the strength to face down something I was less proud of. The problem is..."
A few seconds pass, the tension climbs and falls as the young girl's façade begins to melt away into shame, worry and more than a little self-loathing.
"I never got the time to resolve those thoughts, and they just kept coming, so I kept handing them over to her. The more thoughts I discarded, the more I gave to her, the further we became different. I... Can't forget, ever, I could tell you what I ate every day of my life, I could recite to you any conversation I've ever had or what questions were on every test - it's one of my 'special talents,' so everything I give to her she keeps, for good."
Eidetic memory, a relatively common gift in Shimogakure, maybe one in a thousand people had it. She was building a picture of what was happening now, but needed to be sure. "Forgive me for asking, but you seem to know a great deal about this condition, what's stopping you from dropping the technique? I can see it's taking a rather consistent and sizeable amount of mental energy to keep it up."
"At first I was worried that it'd hurt me - crashing too many thoughts together at once - nobody is really supposed to keep it up for this long. Days, maybe weeks at most. It's efficient enough that once you get good at it, you don't really need to concentrate on it, just supply the energy, but still."
"And how long have you had this partner?"
"Sixteen months."
"I see..."
"Eventually I decided to get rid of her, release the technique. But I couldn't."
"You couldn't?"
"She won't let me."
Kamiko's heart dropped in her chest like a stone. As a doctor and a sensor, she'd had to be therapist for plenty of war veterans. Some of them came back crooked, others broken, most of the time they didn't even realize how bad it was. It didn't matter how many times she'd done it, watching someone tearing themselves apart never got any easier. In an instant, she'd grown worried for this girl's safety to distraught at her condition. It took her a little strength to prevent water from clouding her eyes as she finished the puzzle. A hoarse cough, followed by a slow recovery.
"I'm sorry."
"I know."
Over the course of another hour, the subject gradually turned away from The Watcher - that's what Sen called her, or rather, what it called itself. She was still in deep trouble, and the least the Jonin could do was help her out of it. Now that she understood the Genin's condition, he should pierce through the unrecognizable haze of chakra enough to get a reasonably accurate reading and confirm she wasn't being lied to. She was, of course - Sen had been lying to her from the start, in little bits and pieces to protect herself, but more omission than deception - it wasn't enough to disprove her confessions.
It appeared that Sen was a member of Team Tsugumi, another foreign team joining the Chūnin Exams this year. Sen was collecting information on the other Genin to better give her own team a chance in the competitions involved, as well as satiating her own curiosity. This, in itself, was not illegal or foul play - it was even encouraged - to spy on other shinobi was a fundamental part of the career they were pursuing and it was unfortunately common practice for the Genin to commit espionage and subterfuge on one another long before even the first stage - only combat was forbidden.
However, her actions were not beyond reproach, and she had violated much security that the Hidden Leaf would consider beyond the bounds of acceptable examination practice. It took a while but, with Kamiko's help, Natsuo made sure that Sen hadn't taken any single truly compromising piece of information. With that, the Genin was given an ultimatum - any further attempts at breaking Hidden Leaf protocols would result not only in her actual trial as a spy, but in the exclusion of her team mates from the exams, she would also be watched more closely during her stay in Konoha. Deeply thankful for the opportunity, Sen would accept and would be allowed back into the village proper.
Intending to give the kid a chance, Natsuo would keep the evidence of the investigation under wraps and remain quiet enough on the scene to prevent a panic or raised tensions. The Jonin and, by extension, the Anbu would know, as well as the Hokage - but such a small incident was one of hundreds unlikely to warrant any attention. Still, Konoha is a city of ninja, it would be impossible to prevent at least some rumors slipping.