Hey guys! Hope you're all doing well enough in these difficult times. "May you live in interesting times," huh?

Unfortunately, my school has decided that it is an unspoken rule of the internet that if you're on it, you must have literally nothing else to waste your time on, so all my classes have literally dropped like triple the workload on us and I am legitimately dying of education overload. Seriously. *sob* This is the last chapter I have in my buffer between my current writing position and my posted chapters, so I am no longer able to guarantee any sort of regularity in my update rate. I'm not entirely certain as to how it shows, but if anything shows up with this story as 'updated' beforenot an actual new chapter.

Don't worry, though! This is not to say that this story is in danger of being discontinued, because it most definitely is not! It's just, uh, no longer got a solid update schedule? Mmmm, let's go with that. Apologies in advance!

Ahh, now that all that depressing stuff is out of the way, we can get on to the story! As always, I love you all, you guys are the best, and I shall now shamelessly make my plea for reader attention! Read, review, fave, enjoy!

Warnings: Blood. Lots of blood. And death. Lots of death. (Actually, once again, not really, but maybe a touch of abandonment issues, if you get triggered by that sort of thing)

She was staring at the red-ones again, intense and focused, as if to make up for having to close her eyes during the change.

The red-ones stared back.

(The entire room stared back.)

Out of all those present, they were the only ones not surprised by her appearance, though they did appear put off by the severity of her wounds for a moment.

"Asuga." Zouge was the first to find his voice. Swallowing thickly, he patted the side of his bed. "Why don't you come up here off the ground? We're going to have to re-bandage your wounds."

She complied, only compromising to take one eye off the red-ones to half-turn towards her Master. Gathering her legs beneath her, she sprang up like a cat, catching the edge of the bed with her hands and curling her body up to bring her feet to her hands and pull the rest of her weight up. The instant she had her balance she was facing down the red-ones again, her back once more to her Master. She settled back into the same sort of sitting position as she had been in on the ground, insides of her knees pressed to the ground, legs splayed bent on either side, hands flat next to her knees. A simple shift of weight would allow her to pounce directly into an offensive lunge at a moment's notice.

Mindful of her injuries, Zouge reached out and gently caught her around the waist. Tugging lightly, he was relieved when she moved with him willingly, allowing him to pull her up into his lap, though still refusing to take her eyes off the red-ones. Flashing through a series of hand signs at some of the ANBU on guard, he caught the first-aid kit tossed at him, placating Asuga's reflexive twitch at the sudden motion with one hand, and gestured in thanks. Opening it, he began to re-dress Asuga's wounds.

A few moments of quiet passed before Enma gave an explosive sigh. "Alright, I'll bite. Whatever's between you guys," he waved a hand between Asuga and the red-ones, "I'm going to go ahead and guess it's more than professional opinion or trying to stab each other on the road. Out with it."

Sandaza scowled at the Monkey King but spoke. "The divine beast played a large part in the deaths of many of our fellows, yes, and is a product of our own work, but we feel strongly that such an unpredictable and uncontrollable variable should not- is too- Such a thing as it should not exist. It is an abomination. All the creatures were. They must be destroyed. All of them."

"So you're not gonna tell us."

The haggard man bristled. "It is not a biased statement. It is fact. We were kept separately, alone or in smaller groups. When Kono's group attempted their escape, he took one of the creatures to boost their combat potential." Sandaza eyed Asuga with such accusation that there was no doubting the implication. He did not say it, but the words were there, hung invisible in the air. "Their group had no combat-capable shinobi besides himself, and even he specialized more in research. In the end, the creature turned on them, and they all died. The creatures are savage things. Unstable, selfish, bloodthirsty, unable to think beyond their next kill."

Enma raised an unimpressed brow and turned to Asuga. "Anything to add?"

Asuga twitched slightly but didn't take her eyes off the red-ones. Nudging at the bond, she conveyed the impression of yes to her Master. She knew what they spoke of. She held more detailed information on it. She would share, if they wished her to.

Sandaza snorted. "Again, it cannot speak. Beyond whatever means you might have used earlier, human communication is beyond it. None of the creatures can speak. It was even part of the conditioning they did on the subjects before they lost all sense of reasoning."

"Asuga can speak," her Master calmly informed the others. "I taught her a bit before. She'd never spoken before that, though, or to anyone else." She didn't know how. She'd never learned. "Perhaps that's why she's hesitant."

"No, that is a separate matter. It's like I said earlier," Sandaza dismissed. "The semi-awakened state promotes aggression and proactive decision-making behavior. It's a defense mechanism to protect an injured master. Normally, they are conditioned and trained to only act on certain commands, while a control matrix enforces them. They do not understand words. Besides, this one's matrix is compromised. Watch. Stand!"

Face still in that blank, watchful expression, Asuga curled her upper lip back and bared the lower half of two startlingly large canines in a silent snarl, invisible hackles rising as she dug her toes into the sheets and shifted as if in preparation to pounce because this red-one dared command her, dared attempt to usurp her Master, dared to keep standing there with that self-satisfied triumphant sneer on his face-

Zouge was instantly there, gentle hand on her back below the nape of her neck-

"-wait, no, Asuga-"

She stilled, fangs still half-bared in warning.

"No need for that, come sit back down…"

She sat.

"Come on, look at me Asuga, ignore them, the others've got them, look at me…"

She blinked.

She covered her teeth and swivelled her head and looked at her Master.

Warm silver-grey met her. His expression was still carefully blank, but she saw the slight way the corner of his mouth curled when she looked at him.

"That's right, ignore them. Just now, you said that you knew what that guy was talking about? Tell me about it. It's okay to talk. Ignore them."

She blinked.

Opened her mouth.

"Tel, Ms-tarr…"

Zouge flinched as if smacked. "Ah… that's… Please don't call me that. I've got my mask, right? So..."

"Zo-geh."

"Right. So, please don't call me 'Master'…"

Asuga instantly wilted. "Mah-str- not- As-ga, did raw-ng?" There was no inflection in her words, only a lisping slur around the bulky eye-teeth, but the way her whole form curled in on itself and he could practically see her more bestial form's ears dropping like weights had been attached to the tips…

"Uh, no, it's not like that, it's just that… Ah, this is one of those things I needed to explain to you later. But it's not that, Asuga, you didn't do anything wrong. I just- you shouldn't need to call anyone that. Not in that kind of context. Ever. Okay?" He tapped her on the nose, eliciting a series of rapid blinks. "Anyone who makes you call them that is bad, and should not be listened to. Ever. Ever. Okay?"

She blinked. The wilting subsided slightly. "Yes, Zouge."

Zouge glanced over Asuga's shoulder at Sandaza. The man didn't seem able to decide whether to gape or scowl, and neither could his fellows for that matter. The man seemed to settle for mouthing impossible, impossible to himself under his breath.

"So, what was that you were saying before, about the, uh, red-ones?" he prompted again.

She blinked. Tilted her head. "Cn-not trust. Asuga did n-t watch prop-ly b-fore, and Mas-ahh-Zou-ge and friends almost hurt when red-ones turned. Is not in nature to not-turn. In the end, always turn. Cannot trust." She pronounced the words carefully, rapidly grasping a better hold on what forms to shape her mouth into as she swiped a dry pink tongue over disproportionately large canines and worked her jaw, broken words coming out strangely rhythmic. "Can show memories. Asuga remembers. Asuga always remembers." She spared a stolen glance to blink at her audience gravely.

"Ah, yes, it is very helpful of you to agree to sharing so willingly," the Hokage smiled congenitally at the heavily scarred child. "But first, it is only polite to ask you things directly, rather than jump straight to rifling through your mind. Shall we do that first?"

A flicker of purple and gold- to the red-ones, to Zouge, to the Hokage, to Zouge.

Zouge nodded encouragingly at her, brushing the ragged edges of her hair out of her face between tying a knot on one bandage and beginning to wrap another. Reluctantly, Asuga shifted her gaze back to the Hokage's aged visage and kept it there, waiting.

"You said before that Zouge gave you the name 'Asuga'. Do you have any other?"

"Nno."

"You were brought to the facility like the others?"

"Yes."

"Where are you from?"

A blink, a tilt of the head. "From?"

"Where were you before you were brought to that place? The first place you can remember?"

"Asuga was… in white place. Cold. A place where the sky cried slowly."

"In that place, were you with anyone? Did someone take care of you?"

"Yessnno. Nnnot know, for sure. May-be She? Only remember… Cold, but, also, hot. Place was burning. Asuga was burning. Other people, they screaming. Running. Ones-that-killed came to take."

"Did you run too?"

"No. Asuga burned. Blackness came, and then others- ones-that-scavenged. Took Asuga. The masters came. When the masters left, took Asuga with them."

Zouge faltered slightly in wrapping a bandage around an arm. Asuga blinked again and glanced at him, cradled the echoing ache in the bond between them. His hands resumed their motions, slower, impossibly gentler.

The Hokage hummed, a deep look of something not-warm on his face. "How long ago was this? How old are you?"

A blink, a tilt of the head. Broken words less choppy now, beginning to smooth out. "Many seasons. More than Asuga has fingers. Have seen time of yellow-forest four times since. Asuga has seen yellow-forest five times, flower-grass four times."

"Would you like to go back to that place, where you were before?"

"Asuga goes where Zouge goes."

The Hokage shared an expression of rueful bemusement at that. "Is that so?" He considered her with old, sharp eyes. "Why? Why Zouge?"

"Asuga is weapon. Zouge is Asuga Master. Asuga goes where Master goes." She paused. Glanced at Zouge again, his fingers stiff on a loose bandage, though not quite faltering, still moving. "But Zouge says Asuga not weapon. Not- not really. Asuga not know how be not-a-weapon. So Asuga goes where Zouge goes, so Zouge can make her not-a-weapon. Because Zouge does not lie. Not to Asuga."

"Oh?" The amusement, dampened, was still clear and unrestrained in the word this time. "And how do you know that?"

"Zouge decided so, and so it is the way of things."

The Hokage laughed. Behind him, Enma was also grinning morosely, though held his amusement in, while a similarly humored light glimmered in the eyes of the Uzukage.

"Fair enough, I suppose. But you know, Zouge is a very busy man. What if he cannot take you with him?"

Zouge tensed, again, again, but still didn't stop winding the bandages around her torso.

"Asuga will wait. Asuga knows how to wait."

"And if you cannot be with Zouge? What will you do?"

"Whatever Zouge says."

"And if he does not say?"

She blinked again, slower, grimmer. They could see the way that the twin rings of her strange pupils contracted a fraction. When she spoke again, it was slowly, heavily, with all the weight of death behind it.

"Facility, was place should not exist again. Of all of facility, only Asuga and red-ones remain. Asuga never known want before. In facility, want worth nothing. Asuga knows cannot-want. Master said facility was wrongness. If cannot-want stay by Master, then Asuga should die." Flat, twin rings of purple and gold swiveled to Sandaza and the four others behind him. "Asuga and red-ones all should die. End to facility. Forever."

A full-body flinch jerked through Zouge, cut off halfway. He abandoned the strips of white fabric in his hands to circle both arms around Asuga's midriff and tuck her into his chest, heedless of the pull on his own injuries. Craning her head back, Asuga peered through the ragged tendrils of her hair at his face, startled but somehow not surprised. It was cast in shadow, and the corner of his mask had dropped to cover part of one eye, but she could see that the same blankness as before had slipped over his expression again and the line of his mouth was pressed tightly straight.

The others were surprised, too, she could tell. Had they thought she'd be afraid of death? A fair standard to assume by, but incorrect. For her, life had always been the treading of the line of death between reality and oblivion. She touched it every day. What was there to fear when she was always dying?

"And yet you do not ask for their death without your own?"

She sniffed, unconsciously reaffirming each scent detected to committed memory. "You, not want kill red-ones. Asuga carries most strong of the masters' seals. So long as are others can make seals, can use Asuga's seals, read-learn, counter red-ones' work. Red-ones weak. Could be used by others again. Asuga is strong, and bound to Zouge. Will not turn."

"And yet you subverted the control matrix," Sandaza broke in, accusing. Apparently indignance over her explanations had been enough for him to get over himself sufficiently to directly address her. "You undermine your beloved Zouge's control over you."

Not about to let slip the opportunity to return to staring down the man and his compatriots, Asuga promptly turned the full weight of her gaze back to him and, for the first time in over three years of association, spoke to the oldest red-one.

"No. Asuga bypasses pitfalls red-ones created in seals. If Asuga did not, red-ones' seals would have torn Zouge apart by now."

"By your own admission, too," Enma muttered from the side.

The commentary didn't quite garner a scowl this time. Sandaza was too unsteady from Asuga's direct address of him, not quite sure how to respond. He settled for denial.

"You don't know what you're messing around with. The system of seals you carry are interconnected, and they're all controlled by the control matrix, which can't be accessed without a master to activate it. You couldn't have done this before. You don't know what you're doing."

"Asuga does."

"You don't-!" Sandaza halted mid-step at the flare of warning from the Uzukage's signature. He clenched his fists and repeated, "You don't. You're just going to end up hurting your master by playing with what you don't understand."

Asuga's expression was just as flatly blank as Zouge's, completely unprovoked. A slight twist of her chakra- and then suddenly intricate patterns of inked calligraphy were rising to the surface of her skin, bold black lines over mottled scars. A flare of light flashed as black turned to white in a pulsing wave through the ink as if it were veins. All around the room, curious eyes followed the white as it coalesced in a single point and began tremulously tracing its way through the ink.

A pause over a pattern of dots encircled by a half-arc.

"Volume moderator. Chakra."

A slashed-through word composed of smaller characters.

"Flux suppressor."

A compressed string reminiscent of barbed wire.

"Basic additional chakra vein. Interspersed pitfalls."

A stylized flame pulled in five directions like the points of a star on the forehead, encircled by flowing lines and bracketed by more, mirrored horizontally across to her temples like some mockery of a diadem.

Asuga tilted her head, and blinked, slow. "Memories."

She'd returned to the previous rhythmic enunciation of the broken-apart words, clearly reciting them more from memory than mental association between sounds and object.

Sandaza raised a quivering finger to point almost accusingly at her, if not for the sudden tremors wracking the arm. His eyes were wide, words mumbled and stuttering. "Im-impossible! The seals- The command matrix- Inaccessible- How-"

Asuga didn't really feel much like explaining to the red-ones exactly where they had gone wrong, considering they were likely capable of going through and altering things, but a brush of curiosity along the bond from Zouge had her elucidating a bit for his sake, words returning to their smoother flow once more, though remaining slow as she clearly struggled to put word to knowing.

"Seals on Asuga, seals not Asuga. Asuga's chakra, Asuga's body. Asuga retains direct access. Careful chakra manipulation can, just, not use certain pathways. Or use some not affected. Plus, all paths connected. If stall five smalls in shoulder," a pulse of white through black ink, indicating position, "can change flow, redirect to amplify in legs." A trickling tendril of dimmer white to toes.

"I- That's-" He could not deny it was possible in theory. "But the control needed for that kind of thing- And bypassing the contract feedback loop, the failsafe, and all the other pitfalls at the same time- It might work in theory, but actually doing it is impossible! You'd have to cut connection to the Eighth Gate, not to mention three of the others and keeping your chakra flowing through your brain manually, all simultaneously! That kind of thing is not physically possible!"

Well, when he put it that way, it certainly sounded impossible, Asuga had to agree. However, he'd made things much more complicated for himself than necessary. She hadn't needed to do all that, though she'd still had to do some other questionably healthy things.

Not like she'd tell him that.

She did convey as much to Zouge, though.

Sadly, it seemed he felt obligated to share. He sent her a questioning feeling, and she assented after a beat, still instinctively bewildered by the idea of agency. Surprise and more denial went around at the revelation of what Sandaza called an empathic bond that apparently had been rendered obsolete and nulled after previous versions.

Staring at the red-one blankly, Asuge leaned slightly into the warmth of Zouge behind her and tilted her head to check his heartbeat while he shared.

Coincidentally, Zouge glanced down as the motion pressed her cheek into his chest, smothering half her face flat into his torso, combining with her limp locks and large eyes to effectively give her the look of a drenched… well. Small, vulnerable child in the process of deriving comfort from a familiar authority-figure.

Thinking of something, Zouge discreetly flicked his gaze up to gauge the atmosphere. Around the room, behind imposing bone-white ceramic masks and stoic facades, a good number of professional killers merely watched on. As they were professionals, no matter what they truly thought, they didn't so much as twitch outwardly.

At least, not unintentionally.

A twitch of a deliberately exposed finger beyond a sleeve, the slightest shifting of weight, tilting of a head-

His brothers-in-arms were uncomfortable with the story they saw in the child. They agreed with him- this one should not be left to the 'red-ones.' Would not be, if any of them had any say. And while that usually would not be the case, ANBU did not become such without the confidence of their leader.

Said leader was speaking again, and Asuga's full attention had returned to him.

"I see. Regardless, it seems Asuga has a high degree of chakra control. Impressive." He offered her another encouraging smile, one that Asuga blinked again at. Why did they all seem to think she needed encouragement? "A few more questions, if you don't mind?"

Zouge didn't, so Asuga didn't.

"How long had they been in operation?"

"Not sure. Since before Asuga."

"Were you one of the bijuu experiments?"

"Don't know this 'bijuu'. Probably."

"Yes, she was. Their greatest success, too," Sandaza reiterated. The Hokage gave him a brief distracted nod.

"Were there any other creatures stronger than you?"

"Not know any."

"Are there any other affiliated facilities?"

"Yes."

The Hokage's brows shot up. He considered her. "...but not in use any longer."

"No. Was destroyed."

"How?"

She tilted her head, lifting it from Zouge's chest fractionally. Blinked, slow and just as deep as the older man's own gaze. "Me."

He waited for her to elaborate. If there had been a time for her to do something like pout, like any normal child, he felt like it would have been then.

She didn't.

"Didn't know it would cave-in."

"You or the masters?"

"Both."

Enma barked a laugh. "Oh, I like her."

The Hokage still looked curious.

"Can show."

He smiled at her. "That would be helpful, thank you. Now, one last question, and I'm afraid I have to ask. It's my responsibility as the leader of my people. You understand."

She did.

"You've already turned on your previous masters once. What's stopping you from doing it again?"

She was not offended. Of course, she didn't really know how to take offense, but this was different from what the red-ones were so fixated on.

"You not Asuga's previous masters. And you do not behave like them. Why do you fear Asuga will see you like them?"

Somewhere in the background, Sandaza grumbled, "That wasn't what he asked."

Asuga somehow gave the red-one a flat look without changing her expression even as she seemed to come to the conclusion that this was one of the things Zouge would want her to share. "...Master's orders are absolute. If Master orders Asuga to not bare claws against Leaf shinobi, even if Leaf shinobi kill Asuga, Asuga will not be able to do anything. But, if Leaf shinobi try mess with seals, anything safeguards built into seals are automatic. Not even Master can cause or stop those." Monotonous, a recitation of facts.

The red-one scowled at her, but mutinously said nothing.

The Hokage nodded to himself, turning her words over in his head. He glanced to one of the elites, the ANBU, watching. They stepped forward, bound blond hair glinting pale from the half-shadowed corner, and spoke, voice smooth and clinical. Two more appeared by their side.

"No lies, as far as she is aware of herself. Mental faculties sound, possessing significantly higher levels of intelligence for her age group than normal, though shows a concerning disregard for personal well-being and an emotional disconnect. I cannot speak in respect to her seals, but it should be relatively safe to enter her mind, though I would recommend her case be treated as a highly traumatized career ANBU's would."

On the first ANBU's right, an elite with dark brown hair stepped forward to report. "Seals are stable and mostly deal with manipulating her own existing network. Highly advanced work, a good deal beyond my ability to fully comprehend without more time. The memory seal is included among those."

The last of the three elites, one with lighter brown hair, stepped forward on the first's left. "She's severely injured. I imagine another examination now that she's in human form would give more accurate results, but from what I could tell her previous form also forcibly enhanced her musculateure despite obvious malnutrition and deprivation. The only things keeping her functioning was an absurdly enhanced healing factor and a frankly unhealthily large amount of circulating enhancement chakra. Beyond her general health, though, she should be fine for a mental examination. No severe damage to the head."

The Hokage nodded, and the three ANBU disappeared back into the shadows. Zouge tied off a last bandage, snapped the med kit shut, and gave her a light squeeze. "Whenever you're ready, Asuga."

She shifted in his arms, and he loosened his grip enough to allow her to turn and face him. Catching one of his hands with hers, she lifted it at him.

"Blood."

He obliged, nipping the skin on the thumb open with a chakra-sharpened canine and returning the hand to her hold.

Maneuvering the heavy limb- because Zouge was an ANBU, and he might have been injured but that didn't mean the rest of his body wasn't extremely fit- she held his hand over her forehead as the blood welled into a thick droplet and dripped onto the center of the seal. Satisfied, she pressed Zouge's palm over the drop of blood, large hand dwarfing her head, and channelled chakra into the seal until it glowed. Zouge's chakra rose to meet hers.

Chakra pulsed out from them, roiling through the air.

Asuga closed her eyes.

The seal that the masters had ordered constructed to transfer memories had been a hack job, in truth. The seal work was excellent, of course, and could be credited with there being any functionality at all, though the science behind it was less than exceptional.

The mind is a highly complex organ, delicate in stability both physically and in the plane it allowed sentience to function on. Altogether, this meant that Asuga herself had a great degree of control over exactly what information was shared, if not the act of sharing itself. The memory seal had been constructed separately from the control matrix, so information could be conveyed to any with permission. It wasn't as if they could give her orders through it, anyways.

What she had previously told the Hokage and the others was not untrue. Her Master had the greatest control over the memory seal, and all senses could be shared. However, besides sight, which was the primary source of sensory perception for most humans, he did not control which were shared- she did. Naturally, she would comply with Zouge's wishes.

In this case, Asuga did not have either need or want to withhold anything from her Master. However, her decision to unilaterally share everything without restraint came with an unanticipated side effect, one that she would not realize until after the fact, purely for the simple reason that it was something she'd never considered relevant to herself before.

Asuga saw darkness, and made it her own. In the darkness, she reached out, into a different darkness, the solid darkness of the material world, and sought light. First, the warm, warm, glow of her Master's presence. Then the heat of the Hokage, strong and strong-willed. The Uzukage, swirling, stable, steady. The muted, newly familiar flickers of the friends and the other guarding ANBU. And, most reluctantly, the red-ones, wavering and skittish, bitter and resenting. Latching on to them all, she pulled them into her darkness.

It would not do to leave herself and her Master exposed and vulnerable outside of her mind, after all. The ANBU standing guard just outside the room would have to do as protection. Besides, considering how the Hokage had consulted the three ANBU previously, she could safely assume their judgement was relevant and carried sway. It would be easier for them if they did not have to rely on secondhand accounts.

Once, Asuga's darkness might have been complete. She had long since come to understand her designated role as a tool, a weapon, method and means. She had no particular likes or dislikes, only knowledge of what would be better to do and what would be better to avoid. Pain was an inescapable constant, so she held no particularly strong aversion to that, either. She did not love or hate. Not the masters, not even the red-ones, really. Impatience and patience was all the same. Social interaction was limited to receiving orders and defending her allocated portions of sustenance from others. There was no such thing as clothes, let alone fashion, thus, and there was no such thing as choice, let alone preference. And really, what need had she for cosmetic embellishments to merely another piece of her that the masters had carved out to suit their purposes? Occasionally, she saw daylight and plants and earth under sunlight and not torchlight, but she lived in the darkness- she was its creature. Such was the way of things, and there was neither acceptance nor denial of that fact. Fact did not need either to be fact.

And then her Master had come. Zouge. Light in darkness, star-touched and impossible and all things she did not really understand.

Her darkness, rare as she had visited it, had always been full and empty, complete and void. And yet, for some reason, this time it was not. It had changed.

There were stars.

Perhaps that was an inaccurate description.

There were stars, and then there was a Star.

Across the expanse of nightlike sky, a hurricane of stardust and moondust and brilliant, muted, twinkling pins of lights had scattered itself in a frozen image of untouchable light. No end to the vastness could still be perceived, but now there was a horizon for it to disappear to in pursuit of it, marked only by the sharp invisible line the sea of stars above faded at. High overhead, the silver-blue-white light of a single radiant Star shone down on all else of the void, watching, knowing.

And yet, at the same time, all this was not so. She could sense the light, the vast expanse and the concentrated point, and yet, it could not be seen. It was as if it was veiled. Behind what, she had no idea, but the conclusion was as natural as breathing and fit in her understanding of her changed darkness like a shard in a greater undefinable object. Blackness shrouded what light could be seen from a few brighter pinpricks, as if it were a tangible thing. The Star smouldered heatlessly down when its effulgence should have been clear and all-reaching.

Asuga did not understand any of this, but then she supposed she would, in time. She understood that, at least.

It occurred to her that that might have been exactly the point.

Curious.

Allowing such thoughts to pass from her mind, Asuga observed as new, not-her presences appeared within her self, her darkness, floating in the void. It was as strange as ever to have other minds contained within her own, but stranger for the fact that she had been the one to willingly invite them in for once. They were not invaders, but… others.

They took stock of her surroundings, the pale-blond ANBU in particular seeming to look and process and comprehend and file away thoughts for further contemplation. They seemed strangely familiar, no, knowledgeable, about what they were looking at. A specialist, then.

"Asuga?" Zouge called, head swivelling, eyes scanning. The others mimicked his actions.

Asuga stirred and reached for him, and the darkness stirred, reaching, too.

It was like chakra sense, really. Seeing without seeing. Just knowing. Obviously she had no eyes, per se, within her own subconscious. The others didn't, either, but they were present as manifestations of their selves. Their solid, individual forms were a reflection of that. And they were within her mind- within her self and her self was darkness and so they were left floating in a void where abyss met stars.

She was the void and the abyss and the stars and the darkness.

Curling a greater concentration of her self around Zouge, she settled around him like a familiar cloak of night, like when she had leant over his shivering, sickened form in the perpetual night of the facility. Tendrils of somehow luminous ebony circled ethereally around him, soft, quiet. He smiled, and lifted a hand to let the tendrils stream through his fingers.

"It's beautiful here, Asuga. Where are we?"

Minds think in terms of languages. Asuga, though, had never learned to speak. She understood speech perfectly fine, of course, but, seemingly as a side effect of not using the language herself, her mind had never quite developed the habit of 'talking' that thoughts usually took shape of. Instead, she thought in the most basic forms- ideas. Impressions of them, rather than molded words, were what was communicated by her mind. Retrospectively, this fact had probably only contributed to the belief that she was a sub-sentient beast.

-minds and mirrors and a thousand million things Asuga doesn't know, there and not there and here and not here, black emptiness, Asuga and not Asuga and everything in and not in between-

"It's her mindscape," the blond ANBU answered for them after a brief stalled moment where the visitors had been hit by the onslaught of unfiltered thoughts. "We are inside her mind already. Normally, people maintain a sense of the mind as either an organ or separate space connected metaphysically somehow to their physical bodies, so usually mindscapes take the form of some sort of bounded space cut off from the rest of the world, or else some incarnation of the brain. Theoretically, though, due to the malleable nature of the mind and the fact that there are no actual rules that say the mindscape has to look like one thing or another, it is possible for a space like this to exist as well. I've never seen anything quite like this, though. I've never heard of anything quite like this."

"That can't be right," Sandaza muttered, head tilted back to squint at the muted sky. Behind him, the other red-ones were looking around in a mixture of trepidation and confusion, as if they had been expecting a more hostile environment. Not something that was so harmlessly distant and undeniably pretty. "We've used the memory seal before during the test phases. It was always an empty black void before."

"The mind is susceptible to change, especially after large changes in life, or other significant or exceptional events." The blond ANBU turned their masked face towards Sandaza and tilted it consideringly. "Though I have never heard of such a thing as a completely empty mindscape, either."

"You are suggesting she was shielding herself?" the Hokage questioned, intrigued. "From a seal carved into her own skin?"

"Possible. No less unheard of as the rest."

"No, we were able to access her memories without incident," Sandaza refuted, repressing his agitation.

"A mystery for another time, then." The Hokage lifted a hand of his own, curious and probingly searching. Asuga sent a few tendrils of glowing darkness to swirl around it obligingly. "Zouge, I do believe Asuga said you would have the most control here?"

"It does seem that way." Zouge touched the bond between them, unsure how exactly to proceed, though he could feel the way the darkness curled around him flowed around and with him at the same time, bending to the slightest push of his will, though there were some shreds where he touched and felt a vague resistance, like the drag of water on clothed limbs. There was no doubt in his mind what the cause of that was. "I think what she meant, though, was that out of all other people, I have the greatest degree of control. She's… guiding me, I think. This is her mind, her domain. I'm pretty sure that means she's the one really in charge, here."

Sandaza was scowling something fierce again, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like it included the words 'told' and 'compromised' and 'seals'. Behind him, the other red-ones were shifting uneasily, a strange sort of aura or something of fear beginning to emanate outwards from them, not visible and yet tangibly there in a way that simply could not have been, in the physical world.

"Sandaza," the Uzukage addressed the man. "If you've tested the seal before, you know of its general functions, yes? Advice for Zouge-san?"

The red-one let out a low hummed grumble of blunted discontent. "We've been referring to the seal as a memory seal, but it's a bit more complicated than that. There are distinct types of memory, which can loosely be classified under short-term and long-term, though short-term memory is technically its own thing as well. Sensory, working, and short-term memory are all temporary stores of information, and essentially useless for the facility's purposes. Long-term memory, which includes episodic, semantic, and procedural, was of more interest, though procedural was focused on in other areas. We can't access sensory, working, short-term, or procedural memory using this seal, but we can access episodic and semantic memory. Episodic memory is your personal history, while semantic memory is your mental archive of facts.

"The seal essentially allows you to access whatever information might be there by using another linked piece of information. You could think of it as a sort of Q&A process. For example, the easiest way to call up an episodic memory would be to give a date. For semantic memory, a sort of keyword would be about the equivalent."

The Hokage was rubbing his chin again. "And how is the information passed? Do we view it here, relive the memory with her? Or perhaps it is directly passed into our own minds?"

"A complicated question. In short, both and neither. We're not completely sure about every aspect. It varies a bit depending on what the information is and how she came across it. For the most part, though, episodic memories fairly consistently simply replay themselves in her own mind. They do take longer, though, since they are experiences, not simple facts."

"I see… Then, shall we start with something on the simpler side? Perhaps… hmm… The last time you ate?"

The Hokage looked to Zouge, and Zouge looked to the-darkness-that-was-Asuga, and Asuga thought back a moment. The darkness rippled and flowed, and tendrils of glowing dark swirled as the knowing tumbled from her mind to theirs automatically the instant she came up with the answer.

-three days, needle liquid now-

"The path you took to reach Konoha?"

The darkness rippled and flowed again, but this time it took on form and color until a patchy sort of map-thing was floating before the group, darkness wisping from the edges. It reminded Zouge of islands stranded in a restless sea. A closer look revealed a few familiar outlines.

"The Elemental Nations," Sandaza grunted. He stepped forward to point out the jutting line of significantly more detailed landscape running southwards. The blurs of greens and browns even sketched out into individual trees in some places. "She's never been further south than the facility before now, so there's nothing there she can show you." He gestured towards the swirling clumps of black beyond the muted areas of colors.

"And that?"

Sandaza furrowed his brow as he turned toward a stray cluster of muted colors. "That's… It doesn't seem to be anchored relative to anything else… Perhaps, a stray location in her memory? No one had ever really bothered teaching the creatures geography, for obvious reasons…"

"Uzushiogakure."

Startled, all eyes went to one of the red-ones. It was the boy, surprisingly enough. Instinctively hunching defensively under the sudden scrutiny, the boy visibly mustered up his courage again. The words, for all their hesitancy, were clear in the void.

"Th-that building. The street across from Marioko-san's wife's sweets shop." He pointed, and swallowed audibly. "It's Uzushiogakure."

Unseen glances were exchanged. Nobody said anything further about the unanchored mass as attention was tactfully returned to the clearer portions of the map.

The Hokage eyed the almost ridiculously detailed elaborations in sharp interest. He made a few quick mental measurements and estimates; disregarding the large sections missing, it was accurate, and proportional in relations between locations.

"The facility," he tried, giving the surrounding darkness a questioning glance.

"You'll have to be more specific than that," Sandaza advised. "What about it? The location? The layout? The things that went on there?"

"The location. The place itself."

The map dissolved in a wave of swirling darkness, boiling for a moment before reconstructing itself. It was a single solid piece this time, and more magnified, though a few dark and muddied patches pockmarked it. Throughout the thick growth covering the landscape, what had to be utterly massive skeletons skimmed up through the spaces between the treetops like breaching whales. At the same time, another conglomeration of darkness gathered in a swirling mass to one side, quickly taking on sharp edges and precise lines and filtering excess black tendrils away until it was clearly visible.

Sandaza choked on the airless air of the void.

He reached out a trembling hand, not quite touching it.

He traced the outline of it through the air.

"All this time… But of course… And we- we never thought to-" He broke off with a bitter bark of laughter. "All that time, slaving away for those people, our only company mindless beasts, and we never even considered checking any of their degraded minds for a blueprint of the place!"

And indeed it was that- three-dimensional and precisely outlined down to the last ventilation shaft.

Sandaza slapped a hand to his forehead and dragged it down over one eye, bowing his head to cradle it with a nigh-hysterical giggle. The woman red-one, Kabeko, tentatively reached forward from behind him to clasp a steadying hand on his trembling shoulder. All the red-ones' faces bore surpassingly ugly expressions.

The Hokage stepped up to the blueprint, too, and watched in fascination as the lines of the facility let his hand through like it was but morning mist. "How is it that you know this?"

-earthen tones of blackness and moisture, claws piercing packed earth to strike ancient white bone, the ache of grit biting into rubbed-raw flesh beneath rough-hewn harnesses, meals of tough roots and tender grubworm pulp, plodding straining exertion until muscles pulled loose from bones and emaciated bodies fell and rose no more, the sputtering sparks of the first of a great many guttering torches to come-

"The other facility… came before this one…" the Hokage muttered. Asuga could see the connections being made by each individual present. Truly, her Master was not the only intelligent one. It seemed to be a common theme, outside of the facility, outside of the mindless throngs of selfish bottom-feeders and mindless creatures. "The facility you broke out of five days ago…" The Hokage's eyes drifted to her. "You helped build it."

All the creatures at the time had. The masters had helped in some places themselves, but it would not have been enough. What other labor would they have used?

Withdrawing his hand, the Hokage stepped back towards the group, a deeply thoughtful look on his face.

Sandaza gave another hysterical little giggle. "It's all- all so clear now! The- the irony- These past three years, all of it, it's all just a big, fat joke! Just irony incarnate! Captured for our minds and skill in our craft, yet the senseless beasts we used as chattel sat right under our noses, knowing everything we would have needed to get out! Mindless chattel with the path to escape all laid out, but all rational ability to use it taken from them! Beasts strong enough to tear us limb from limb, subjugated and defanged! Those masters- they had to rely on us for brains and the creatures for brawns, they had nothing themselves, nothing but a collar and leash and one or two higher than average combat skills and inferior numbers- And the one beast stable enough to aid us in our escape was placed right in front of us as the bane of our existence!

"Did you even kill Kono?" Sandaza dropped his hands from his face and wheeled on the swirling darkness, wide eyes peering into the void with a wild glint in them. He turned on the spot, seeking some form of representation of the divine beast's presence to fixate on. Finding none, he shouted into the darkness instead. "You didn't, did you? They just told you to tear his corpse apart and give the pieces to us, didn't they?" His voice dropped sharply as he began muttering to himself instead. "They conditioned the creatures to avoid eating shinobi bodies in case of precautionary measures, like poison, or self-immolation. Those people- they never did anything but use us, manipulate us; they lied to us at every turn, about little things, about big things- What would have stopped them from lying about how they killed one of us?"

Staggering, as if the mental manifestation of himself could have suffered from something so physically petty and mortal as hyperventilation, Sandaza's face crumpled into an expression of such fatigue that one might have believed he would pass on the next moment from sheer exhaustion from life. The remaining red-ones scurried up to his side, reaching out hesitant hands to steady him. He was no longer shouting. He was talking to her again.

"I- we're not stupid, or blinded by selfishness, however it might seem to you. Maybe we were at times, but- We know you and all the other creatures got the much worse deal. You were supposed to be free from it all though, free in your ignorance, your regression into savagery. And it had the quicker end. But you- The oldest of the projects- You didn't- Somehow, impossibly enough, you kept your mind. And you- You couldn't leave even knowing perfectly well how to leave."

The oldest red-one lapsed into a weary silence, every one of his years and more dragging at the creases in his face.

So there was a limit to the level of self-denial physically possible. Or at least, there was in this case.

They waited for him.

"I'm… sorry." He reached limp hands up to rub at his face tiredly, and half-heartedly added, "I'm not apologizing, not in the- not the way you might want me to, but- This whole thing is just such a mess. I'm sorry you got caught up in this, I'm sorry that my people got caught up in this, I'm sorry that all those others got caught up in this and died mindless savages after tearing each others' throats out with their bare hands and teeth and- It's not- I- We were just trying to survive." He stated it as a fact and not a plead for something like pity. "We all were. You, us. You understand that, I know. They said that you were semi-sentient, that when you reacted slowly to orders it was because you were trying to think and failing instead of just reacting to conditioned commands automatically, but that wasn't it at all, was it? You- you were trying to understand. To resist. The reasons, the why's… But the command collar, and the secondary command positions in your command matrix- And the training- So you did what they told you to. I read your file. So many times, I- Can't believe, should've- You wouldn't have known any different. You'd never known any different. I knew that, have known it, but it was just so easy to-" He sighed, a great heaving thing. "This whole thing is just such a mess."

Surprisingly, there wasn't much Asuga found disagreeable in all that he'd spilled.

She still didn't much care. It was irrelevant. They were irrelevant.

He smiled at her, she knew, though his eyes did not seek hers, and it was ugly and unhappy. "I'm sorry that they found you. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have succeeded in as much as they had."

They all let the older man have a moment, the heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, struggling with himself. A long minute later, he let out another explosive breath and pushed both hands up and into his hair, running them through it, pushing it backwards and out of the way as he forcibly straightened from his standing slump, clearly packaging the sudden influx of frustration and comprehension away for later. He looked at his Uzukage. Nodded. The Uzukage nodded back, and looked at the Hokage. Behind him, Enma was watching the proceedings with face stoic and eyebrows hidden in his hairline.

"Since it seems you've reached an understanding and we've all got an idea of what to expect now, shall we begin?" The Hokage took back control of the situation, sweeping the loaded topic aside for professionalism before it had a chance to turn volatile again. "Asuga? We don't need to see the entirety of your life, just whatever you feel comfortable sharing. We'll trust you to decide which events are relevant or important. You can start whenever you're ready."

-start… (black and blood and scorching cold and freezing heat and pain pain pain) where to start?-

"All stories have a beginning," Zouge murmured into the swirling black. "Try there?"

She did.

Darkness- night- night-turned-day?

Cold and hot and white and black and red and all the shades in between.

Crisp frozen air, acrid ash.

The sky was crying slowly.

They were standing in the middle of a field of snow, no, a forest, no, a village.

A burning village.

Zouge shared a glance with the others. The kage were examining their blurred surroundings with curious airs, while their respective subordinates had formed up around them before doing the same, automatically adopting placements that were neutral but could easily shift either defensively or offensively at a moment's notice. All their bodies were clearly defined, but each held a faded, transparent sort of quality. Where they stepped, they did not sink. The snow remained undisturbed. They were spectators in an untouchable past.

Blue-silver on the ground, murky brown-black all around.

Moonlight.

Firelight.

Silence.

Screaming.

He shivered, and paused when the others did the same simultaneously. It was hardly cold enough for the knee-jerk reaction to override his, or any of their, conscious control over their bodies. Something like that could make or break the kinds of missions ANBU were sent on. They had extensive training in managing their fine motor functions.

"It's hers," Sandaza grunted, explaining to the array of puzzled shifting. "What Asuga feels. She's really going all out for you guys. All five senses- no chakra sense, but then maybe she's a bit young for that at this point." He trudged forward, feet passing right through the little crests in the carpet of wind-swept snow instead of breaking and scattering the tips in shallow showers of white ice. They followed.

"The murky areas are not directly part of the memory we are currently in. They're the impressions of the surroundings recalled from familiarity with an area. If you go up closer to, say, a tree, you might get an impression of bark or a knot or two, maybe more, if she remembers it. The things that are sharp even from a distance, though, are the actual memory- the points where time and space tie together in her mind."

Black figures, black shadows, smears in the night, scrawny and brawny and ragged and hungering.

Sandaza pointed out the vaguely human-shaped blobs running past, heading in the same direction as them. Their details were moving, morphing things, sometimes there, sometimes obscured. Where they stepped, no shadows were cast. "Some things, like those people, are extrapolated from what she knows for certain. If this is her first memory, the time from before the facility that she mentioned, then it has to have been from over four years ago, at least. Given that her approximate age is a bit short of six years, she can't be much more than a year or two old at this point. She couldn't have actually seen them and then moved fast enough to arrive before them to be wherever they're headed to run into her. She is smart enough to figure out where they must have been in the meantime when remembering, though."

Pain, pain, searing pain, searing like fire, searing like ice.

Pressure.

Zouge and the other ANBU twitched at the influx of sensory information telling them that the whole of his left side was literally on fire and in the process of being crushed to a pulp and jerked around to stare in the direction that something just told him Asuga was. Sandaza and the other red-ones made faces and gasped out moans of pain, bodies reflexively curling protectively around wounds that were not there. The Uzukage briefly flickered through an unattractive face of his own at the sensation, while the Hokage and Enma turned stony-faced and unreadable. Brushing past Sandaza, Zouge made a beeline for where the orange-red glow of flames was brightest. It wasn't far.

Red heat, creaking timbers, who, where, She?

Overriding the urge to flinch again, Zouge burst into the small open space around the front of a burning stone cottage. The surroundings were just as blurred as the previous ones, but as the others filtered into the open space they warped and twisted as if trying to give something to identify-

-and then suddenly they were in the memory.

A face, tense and grim, twin orbs of deep purple, calling, reaching hands, reaching, reaching, reaching back-

Roaring rising flame, hands jerking back, creaking snapping crumbling-

Stabbing pain, burning pain, crushing pain, hot red, wet red, red, red, red, black.

It was a strange, almost disorienting experience. The village they'd been traversing was still there, as were their incorporeal forms, but simultaneously they were experiencing something… else. It was like thinking while walking, in a way. The mental image was no less there than the visuals being taken in by the eyes.

Sudden understanding came to each of them then, that certain knowing that was just there. The previous flashes of impressions of the senses were as much memories as the new visions they were experiencing. It just hadn't seemed so at first because humans were accustomed to a single field of vision, as opposed to say chameleons with their monocular vision.

"Oh," Sandaza murmured from somewhere behind Zouge, and yes, oh. Because what Sandaza had said previously was slightly off. It wasn't just singular things like the shadowy forms from before that were extrapolated, it was the entire scene. After all, humans were not panoptic, not even the Hyuuga, and not in this manner of sight without a fixed point of view. They saw through their eyes, from a placed perspective. Somehow, the seals affecting Asuga's mental processes gave her a unique perspective of the world and her memories, and caused a sort of… split. What they were witnessing now were, on the one hand, her pure, unadulterated memories, and on the other, what amounted to a strategic reconstruction of the larger area.

That was a chunin-level mental skill in its most basic stages. The complexity to which Asuga was doing it was surpassing what most low-jounin were capable of- and she was sharing it through her mind, no less.

She must have thought about this particular memory a lot.

Clattering of little rocks, crunching of cold-white. A flash of orange heat on black, then gone.

It hurt, hurt, pain hurt, dark, where?

They watched as a civilian woman hesitantly picked her way through the fringes of the collapsed, burning house, a bundle of something black-tuffed, snuffling and whimpering, held against her chest, moving this way and that, craning her neck, attempting to either get a view of something through the crumbled stone and fallen timbers or check for incoming threats. It was hard to tell which. Perhaps both. Perhaps not.

From the opposite side of the open space to the group, a man stumbled out of an alleyway, shouting something-

Yelling, shouting, voices, far, close, closer, who? Where She?

-muffled and incomprehensible. He gesticulated widely at the house, fire-glow catching on a seeping gash down one temple, hollering unhearable words over the roar of flames and what was undoubtedly the background sounds of violence and sacking and pillaging. The woman called something back, a tinge of uncertain hesitation mingling with self-preserving fear in her expression.

Creaking, groaning, snapping, pressure, pain.

Another drawn-out death-knell from the wreckage alight with orange-red preceded another half-collapsing tumble of broken house and debris.

Dark but warm, warm, too warm, hot.

Blackness burning orange light.

The flames leapt for the fresh tinder.

The woman paused, stared into the centermost of the rubble.

Deep purple, wide, holding.

She.

Reaching back, but no reaching hands to reach for.

Far.

Too far.

Zouge didn't know what had taken him so long, but his brain finally made the connection.

Asuga was in the house.

Yelling, shouting, voices, far, close, closer. Many.

Whooping, hollering shouts, viscous and excited, rose up from an alleyway beyond a row of houses, nearing by the moment. Screaming lead it, wild and erratic and terrified and desperate. The man shouted again, and the woman no longer hesitated.

Purple, black. Gone. What? Where? Why?

Don't leave…

Clutching the bundle tight to her, the woman turned and fled, following the man, disappearing as a smudge into the murk without so much as a backward glance, expression afraid and without a trace of regret or worry for anything except what lay before herself.

Mere moments after the pair disappeared from sight, a trio of frantic young women rushed through the open space without pause, a pack of jeering, excited men reeking of blood and alcohol and ill-tanned animal hide close on their heels. Four long seconds of raucous voices, and then the shades of another night-wreathed alley was swallowing them, too.

The last precariously standing chunks of broken house shuddered, then, and finally caved. Cascades of dust, dirt, rubble, and snow tumbled down in a blurred plume of swirling orange-lit dust.

Somewhere sideways and slanted away in the backs of their minds, the black and fire and red and pain suddenly wasn't. Around them, the leaping tongues of hungry heat slowed in their dance until they seeped like cold tree sap, the color leeching until all was black and grey and tainted bone.

A pulse of something relievingly fami(Asuga)liar-

-and then the swirling darkness rose up like backwards rain to sweep away all that was not.

For a brief moment, Zouge struggled against the darkness, controlled panic.

Asuga had been in the house.

Asuga was still in the house.

("Asuga burned," she'd said. She'd said so.)

Asuga's mother had left her to burn.

Asuga's mother had left her to die.

Asuga's mother had known she was still alive, and had still left her to die.

And then he registered that it was not just darkness that he was pushing back against, but the-darkness-that-was-Asuga (somewhat distracted-feeling, but he couldn't blame her), and she was here and not left behind under the rubble of what should have been her home.

(Fire and precarious debris and they had to go back-)

He ran his fingers through the wispy ebony and just, breathed.

He still hadn't quite managed to recenter himself when the world did that ripple-thing again, and then color was leeching back into their sudden surroundings. They were different, this time- shifting, flashes, patches of past reality like islands in a sea of ink.

A flash of the collapsed house, burned-out and charcoaled. Ash on her tongue, in her lungs. Pain.

The open area in the ransacked town, now burned-out and shaded in monotone with soot and ash.

Time was passing. The sky cried as it changed.

The open space had shrunken to just a small circle now, no scent or sound or feeling. Just blurs.

The sky brightened and darkened, only tinting out of gradients of grey to mark the movement of a much more distant celestial firelight.

Night to day to night to day to night.

Asuga was fading.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

A flash of a cold, bitter expression on a cold, bitter, dirty face. Shrewd, calculating eyes. Grasping, pulling talons, no, fingers. Grimy, shriveled things, tinted in stagnated blood. Sacks of twisted metal objects and sooty cloth pieces.

The circle of the past reality expanded slightly, though little was defined. A number of moving figures slunk through the fuzzy landscape, three or four in total, themselves half-incorporeal and trailing thick clouds of muddled earthen tones. One was crouched among the ruins of the collapsed house, shuffling through the mess, clearly scavenging anything salvageable. The crouched figure, a gnarled middle-aged woman, paused a moment, and they saw what she saw- a small, mangled arm.

Zouge cringed internally at the none-too-gentle way that the woman pried at the limb, and then pulled at it to the form connected to it. They all saw the way the woman paused a moment later as a small, burned and bloodied torso emerged from the rubble. She pressed a thumb to the tiny wrist.

Asuga was still alive, but only barely. Her chances weren't good by any stretch of the imagination. Whatever the woman saw, though, seemed to be good enough to fold bony limbs in and stuff the dying toddler into one of her sacks.

It was no act of mercy. Zouge tried not to think of what use these kinds of rural civilians might have for dying children or dead bodies. These were clearly members of the lowest levels of society in a very rural area so it was unlikely they had the connections to be marketing corpse brides, and Asuga wasn't dead yet, so they weren't cannibals. Probably.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

Moving trees, grey skies, white. The sky had stopped crying. The air hurt to breathe.

The scavengers were trudging through a forest of muddled greys and black-greens and browns. There were more of them, if the additional handful of blobby forms moving in the same direction were indeed people. One might have been a dog. The few clear enough to make out as recognizably human were covered in haphazard layers of stinking rags and furs, and each held the thongs of roughshod sleds wrapped around dirt-crusted fingers, dragging the heaps of their loot behind them.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

Another house, small, unassuming, dirty. Ramshackle and looking as like to crumble to dust as the first.

The procession of opportunists broke up as they came to a cluster of huts, not bothering to say anything to each other as they scattered with their spoils. The gnarled woman who had taken Asuga stopped at a wretched construct about halfway to the village center.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

Cold. Tired. Hungry.

She worked.

Her fingers were bleeding.

They were staining the clothes pink.

The dirt-faced-one hit her. Yelled.

"Again," she said.

Again, she had.

Asuga scrubbed feebly at the tubful of patched clothes and rags, small, weak fingers stiff and bright red from more than just the chilled water despite the bucketful of boiling water that had been dumped in just minutes before to keep the tub from freezing. An obviously too-thin heap of rags draped her own gaunt body over the plaster of rust-stained bindings.

On the other side of the frozen path, another stick-thin child with a knotted nest of hair was scooping chunks of snow into a tub of his own. He was older by a number of years. A man came out of the neighboring hut, throwing a heavy hand carelessly out in passing to thump the boy in the chest and growl an order. The boy, sent tumbling, picked himself up on raw-scraped palms and set back to work. Zouge couldn't tell if he was shivering from fright or the layer of white now seeping into his rags.

Asuga scrubbed numbly for what must have been hours. When she finally poured out the tub, the water that sluiced out was too grimy to see any tint of red.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

Voices. Grumbled, sneered, calm, loud, quiet. More than one. Unfamiliar.

The gnarled woman was speaking the market-speech, but she was not in the market.

Asuga was outside the hut, seated on a boulder a few feet away from the gnarled woman. The gnarled woman was speaking with a group of three men that were clearly not villagers. Each wore a hooded cloak, thick pants and well-made leather boots peeking out at the bottom, and gestured with gloves. The man in the lead said something, and the gnarled woman scoffed, turning her nose up and countering with something biting about her dead husband.

Asuga was peering at her hands, turning them this way and that. They were dotted with split blisters and were raw and cracked along the crease lines, and wept yellowing pus. Further down, thick, fractured scabs scrawled over her wrists and under the flimsy cover of her rags.

She flexed her fingers and was rewarded with a pulse of both pain and warmth. She clenched and flexed again, heedless of the pain but hopeful it might drive off the inescapable cold.

Heat, bad heat, but good. Pain, meaningless.

A bolt of something cold and dreadful fell down Zouge's spine and curled deep in his gut as the thought trickled through to his knowledge. In that instant, he knew. This was the true start. But no- He fisted his hands. These were memories. He could do nothing but watch.

The peeling edge of skin along the deepest split across her palm caught the weak sunlight and glowed red as the light managed to seep partway through it. Asuga poked at it experimentally, bending it back in place and watching as it pulled away to allow the wound to gape open again.

Muttering, satisfied. Passing of things, clinking, metal. Looming shade, imbalance, movement. The world spun.

With a last gruff exchange, the tallest of the three men passed over a small pouch that tinkled of money. The speaker of the three jerked his head in Asuga's direction, and the shortest moved to loom over her. With an almost careless swipe of his arm, he scooped the tiny child up by the scruff of her rags and deposited her on his shoulder like a small sack of grain. As one, the men turned and left without another word.

In the distance, the setting sun was flooding the barren fields' undisturbed blankets of white with deep scarlet, weak heat on a stagnant puddle.

(Blackness as the dark rose up and took away the unreality. Drain-away. Grey gradients, leeched color.)

(The pain never faded.)

Notes:

As they progress further and further into Asuga's memories, it becomes increasingly difficult for both Asuga and them to keep viewing the experiences separate from themselves, partially from the depth of the submergence in her psyche and partially from the fullness of the extent to which Asuga shares herself in her subconscious efforts to will them to believe her and thus allow her to remain by Sakumo's side. Since she's never really had any choice in anything before, nor anything to actually want in the first place, the depth of her investment in her goals are to unusual extremes along the lines of I-would-risk-my-life-to-accomplish-this-or-die-trying. It's all or nothing for her. Also, we've gotta keep in mind that this is the first time she's attempting to share her memories herself, as an active participant instead of a passive one, and it's only natural she's encountering issues in moderating it, especially since they're her own personal past experiences.

Just to check in with y'all, though, quick question, one that I just realized was a legit possible issue the other day when talking with one of my regular reviewers: you guys know Asuga is human, right? Like, base organic origin. Was born as a homo sapiens. She's just got some wacked up chakra stuff going on that needs to eventually get sorted out. I promise it'll make sense, eventually! I know I've made the line quite blurry there, deliberately in fact, but I hadn't realized it might be a problem until now. I wanted to emphasize Asuga as an entity of existence first and foremost, because then we go back to the issue of ninjas-as-weapons and such, and her mental state, and urgh, even I'm starting to make my own head hurt just writing this.

Alas. Because:

literally trippy, in both the literal sense and the sense of the word literal. It's been one of the main reasons why the update rate has been so terrible; every time even I looked at the mess I was writing my brain just noped the heck out. It- it gets better as she gets older in her memories! Well. Kinda. *sweats*

Anyways! Regardless of all that! Thank you so much, for those of you who do, for taking the time to review! All the reviews I get, no matter how short or what it is you have to say, always make my day! Please please please review if you can, even a quick two-symbol emoji is greatly appreciated, and I do respond to any and all reviews, potentially with a returned two-symbol emoji! (Yes, this has happened! It's great!)

I haven't gotten any responses on what length of chapter you guys prefer, my beloved readers, and it's not too late to answer! Review or PM, either way is fine! But since I've gotten no responses thus far, I'm going to go ahead and keep going with the lengths I have now, at the same release rate of 1-2 months per chapter. Hope you guys don't mind that, haha… *sweats*

(Also, another quick question for y'all: would you prefer if I responded to you guys at the ends of chapters? I know FF's review system is a bit hard to get around, what with being redirected as a PM and all.)