Kyohei deliberately tapped his finger on the table in front of him, sending a loud echo through the barren walls of the interrogation room located in Konohagakure’s prison. Agitated and sleepy, the Uchiha had yet to receive a straight answer as to why ANBU operatives showed up to his apartment in the dead of night, woke him from his sleep, and dragged him to the prison. Well, it didn’t particularly surprise him that some in the village’s administration might find this a more appropriate residence for him, but that couldn’t have been the case in this instance. If he was the prisoner in this instance he wouldn’t be sitting here with his hands completely free.

“I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes! Is someone going to tell me why I’m here or not? I have work in the morning!”

Once again Kyohei was met with silence, irking him further. He knew that there were people observing from the outside; he had used these rooms dozens of times during his own cases, but for some reason he wasn’t being given any information even though he did not appear to be the “bad guy”. The Uchiha slid down in his chair in frustration, leaning his head back to rest against the back of the chair before letting out a deep, exaggerated sigh, the kind of gesture one makes when they want their behavior to send a keen message to onlookers that they are losing their patience.

Being inside of this prison made him uneasy. He had not visited the facility since his return to the village. He had intended to stay as far away from this place as possible, and now it seemed like confronting his issues was inevitable. He had put plenty of men in here, but none of them on a scale that would require him be brought in at two in the morning with no notice. When asked to give testimony or case information regarding a perp he put behind bars, he would always receive an official correspondence. If he was being brought here, something had happened. And the only person he knew here that would demand any urgency on their own was Orochi Enaka.

“What the hell am I getting into this time…”

---

385 | 385

Silently, Risu looked at the celldoor in front of her, she had thought her time in prison would've been short, guessing that at some point someone would come and ask questions, perhaps even demand her execution. She did not care though, death was Always a swift and easy way out compared to actually living it all through, facing the odds despite the lack of them being in your own favor. It was pretty obvious that that was the case with her original plan, in which she wanted to confront Enaka and ask for those final pieces she needed to continue towards her goal.

She had been foolish to belief the odds were in her favor, as now she was stuck in konoha's detaintment facility, while her uncle roamed free to do as he pleased again. In a sense she had to admit that he'd probably been free wether she had been stopped or not, but this was not the exchange she had hoped for and those responsible for the failiure of her plan would surely have to pay, not to mention the guy who called himself a hyuga doctor, destroying her tonketsu in the process and taking away that which made her a force to be reckoned with in the first place.

Now, Risu was just a simple prisoner of both konoha and her own body, a status in life which she had hated before and now even more.

To her surprise, her celldoor opened and two guards dragged her out of her cell, binding her with shackles that should've suppressed chakra, but which were in the young woman's case as pointless as wearing sunscreen during the night.

It looked like they needed something from her, which she could've guessed with ease, but she had expected them to keep the interview in the cell. Risu would not have answered them, they could ask and threaten, but they had no way to open her up, a single thing she had to thank her uncle for, she had grown rather resilient to any interrogation tactics they could throw at her or at least... that was what she thought.

“I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes! Is someone going to tell me why I’m here or not? I have work in the morning!”

The door to the interrogation room opened and one man in the typical uniform of konoha's interrogation and detaintment unit entered, putting a clipboard with paper and a pen on the table in front of Kyohei. "You're work is here and now, we've got someone here that you need to interrogate at all costs. Spare no expense, she has released over a dozen prisoners, killed at least a handful of guards and other shinobis and now she's going to be brought here and you'll be interrogating her about the whereabouts of Orochi Enaka and those that have somehow managed to capture her and put her in her cell."

The man left and a few moments, all Kyohei could hear was the rattling of chains on the ground as footsteps came closer to his room. Eventually, two guards entered the room and placed a disheveled looking woman wearing a gray shirt and shorts onto the chair opposite to kyohei's. The woman, seemingly still under some sort of genjutsu to keep her calm and cooperative had long black hair, an eyepatch and more importantly a single yellow-golden snake-like eye watching the man in front of her with quite some curiosity. "... This can't be happening, right?"

602

It was exactly as Kyohei had suspected, something related to Orochi Enaka. The hairs on the back of the Uchiha’s neck raised to full attention upon hearing the man imply that Enaka was free once more. The man had long expected that Enaka had only been detained for this long of his own volition and the fact that he now was now on the loose sent a shudder down his spine. Perhaps it was wishful thinking for the fair-haired man to hope that particular ordeal was a part of his life that he could bury permanently, but now any secret wishes he had for such an outcome disintegrated into thin air.

If the man was out, it only made sense for him to seek what remained of his organization and resources, as well as those individuals close to him that were intimately familiar with his operations. No doubt his first destination would be Hataro, who Kyohei had failed to kill over a year ago and had vanished completely since. There might be other lieutenants who Enaka might reach out to, but the only thought that ran through the Uchiha’s mind was that it was only a matter of time before he was paid a visit as well. In that moment any sense of normalcy that he had managed to restore in his life was gone. There were preparations to be made. He didn’t have time to be interviewing some random soldier that Enaka had sacrificed to free himself.

Kyohei’s attitude would completely change when the prison-side door swung open, revealing the subject of interrogation. The Uchiha froze in place, unable to muster even a word of protest of inquiry to seek answers for the endless number of questions that seemed to surge into his head all at once. The woman standing before him was Orochi Risu. In that prison get up and with the eyepatch she didn’t look exactly as she did when he had seen her last, but there was no mistaking that the image of the person standing before him was her.

Unsure if this was real or an illusion meant to play at his emotions, Kyohei activated his sharingan, intending to cut out any deception and see only the truth of what was before his eyes. In an instant his eyes would turn a deep crimson, three black tomoe circling each pupil. The Uchiha’s visual prowess would shatter any doubts about what he was looking at. Even her chakra was the same…

“…Risu?”

---

424 | 809

The two guards looked at Kyohei and at the sight of him activating his sharingan, it seemed they understood that the special jounin was more than ready to proceed with the interrogation, yet some formularities had to be cleared first.

"Sir, you know the rules I suppose," One of the men spoke up, while the other bound the woman's shackles to the chair she was sitting on. "You are not allowed any physical contact with the criminal in question. You are expected to try and gain the information the village requires. Finally, if you would find yourself in a dire situation, you are allowed to use ninjutsu in any form to restrain the criminal."

When all documents were handed over to Kyohei, the two guards left the room, closing the door behind them and leaving the Uchiha to his own devices.

"That's a name I haven't heard in a long time," The former Anbu captain spoke calmly, yet with a coarse voice, showing that something had rather recently shaken her up pretty badly. It was also obvious to Kyohei that as he used his sharingan, that her chakra had deminished drastically, to the point that it seemed as if she was just another ordinary person rather than a shinobi of the caliber she was supposed to be. "Can we get this over with, I don't have anything to say to you goons of Konoha..."

Risu had not looked at the man who spoke her name, obviously lacking any interest in what was going on, yet as she finally looked up, the words got stuck in her throat and she fell silent again. It seemed fate truly was cruel. She had tried so hard to leave everything in Konoha behind, she had tried so hard to make people forget her, so she could carry the burden herself, yet now she was sitting right in front of the only person she never wanted to see in her current state.

She had loved the man in front of her so much, that she could not bear to have him share her burden, it was one of the reasons why she left konoha, knowing fully well that with her in the village, the shadow would still haunt them, the village's darkness would still try to consume them. Now here she was, back in the village, sitting right in front of the man who had taught her so much about life and love. He looked so normal, so untouched by that which had gotten a hold of her over time, he seemed to be at peace and now here she was, probably shattering that peaceful life with her presence and the calamities she had brought with her. "Kyo...hei...you look...well."

She couldn't look directly into his eyes, the guilt of her past actions weighing heavily upon her. Yet though she didn't want to, tears started to flow down her cheek, showing that despite her ardent desire to let the uchiha live in peace, she still did feel something for him deep down in herself. "I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I shouldn't have...I'm sorry Kyohei."

532/1134

Kyohei said nothing at first to respond to Risu’s words. Part of him still did not want to believe that what he was currently experiencing was real. He would be lying if he said her return was something which he did not secretly wish for on some level, a wish he kept tucked away deep in the most distant recesses of his mind, but not like this. In that moment his mind was incapable of imagining a worse set of circumstances for their reunion. She was in shackles, Enaka was free, presumably by her doing, and he the burden of sorting out all of this would fall into his lap even if he had not been brought in on this night. He was too close to the situation to simply not be dragged in to the whole affair somehow.

“You disappeared… and when I came back you were still gone...”

Kyohei lowered his head before he spoke, refusing to watch Risu cry initially. No tears would fall from the Uchiha’s eyes in kind. The man had well over a year to sort out his feelings regarding everything that had transpired. He had accepted that he would never see this woman again. He had accepted that she was gone. He had even managed to convince himself that she was dead; it was the only closure he could give himself to explain her disappearance. It was easier to believe her dead. If she had been killed it meant that she had not turned her back on him so casually.

“I thought you were dead because back then. I believed that was the only thing that would cause you to abandon me. That’s what I told myself…”

The heat being expelled from Kyohei’s mouth distorted the air with every word he spoke, an instinctive reaction to the rising levels of rage swelling up inside the Uchiha. The man would raise his head to meet Risu’s gaze once more, but the only things that would be picked up from his eyes were flames of rage and steel resolve. His anger was clearly visible on his expression, even if one could manage to pull themselves away from his blood red eyes. He would slam his palms down onto the table between them before continuing to address the woman.

“But now I’m here and Enaka is free again. What the hell is this Risu? What did you do?”

---

408 | 1,217

The heat could be felt by the former Anbu captain, her singular eye looking straight into Kyohei's eyes, but he was right in a sense though. She HAD died, she was no longer the one he knew, no longer the simple, sweet girl with a troubled past and a tyrannical uncle. Orochi Risu had been swallowed by the shadows she had created herself, drowned in the blood she had spilled and in its place, Lamya had risen, the strength of the mask she had been hiding behind for so long had almost taken a will of its own and the more she hid behind the fake visage and the name Lamya, the less she was Risu and the more she became eroded by the very thing she swore to fight.

Yet now she wore no mask and she could not hide behind the strong image she had created, with nothing protecting her from the anger and rage being shown by the Uchiha in front of her. A single tear left her eye when she cringed slightly when Kyohei's anger and rage burst forth in a rather scorching heat filling the room.

"It's...pointless, isn't it...Uchiha Kyohei?"

Her single eye became dull, not much unlike a certain pair of eyes Kyohei had looked into a long time ago, a pair of eyes devoid of emotion or remorse. This was the extend of what the woman in front of him had gone through the past couple of years. She had been touched by the darkness that inevitably touched all ANBU and while some were saved from it, most of them turned into the very thing they swore to protect Konoha from: monsters.

"I intended to confront him, figure out his final secrets, all for the sake of my own freedom," A soft chuckle left lamya's lips while she looked straight into Kyohei's eyes, her pupil turning into a thin slit. "It so happened that I was close to reaching him,
but two shinobi...just two...managed to not just stop me, but humiliate me and rob me of the very thing I wanted to break free from this cursed life of mine...they took my power, they took my power, Kyohei!!"

Her nails dug deep within the table's wood, the table itself creaking as she grabbed it tightly and applied some pressure to it. However, she calmed down rather quickly, slumping down again and letting out a long sigh and refusing to look the Uchiha in the eyes again. After all, she had lost everything now and only now she was fully aware of how weak she truly had become. "I was going to kill him, I thought I was finally strong enough to do so, after that...I would disappear, like I had promised to myself. I saw your name on the memorial...I'm glad you're not dead, even though you probably wished I was..."

494/1628

What would follow was a series of incomplete explanations, scratching the surface of what might resemble a story, but continually jumping to the next incomplete thought before any true insight could be gleaned. As if the situation Kyohei found himself in was not frustrating enough, he now had to deal with half-told stories and incoherent thoughts. Risu had given him leads, but nothing he could sink his teeth into. It would be up to the Uchiha to latch onto what scraps of a narrative she had provided until he was able to paint some kind of picture. He had little concern for what information the interrogation might have needed, he didn’t answer to that division, but this situation was fated to spill over into his life.

Kyohei would continue to press for answers, intent on keeping this interaction on track as a function of his job, not addressing the personal side of it all. This setting was neither the time or place to hash out the intimate details of his grievances with an ex-girlfriend. Of most interest to the Uchiha and his line of inquiry was the presence of two unnamed shinobi that had intercepted Risu in her plans. If they had been representatives of the village her testimony would have been decidedly different, with her easily being able to identify them as such. From what the man could discern from her statement, there were two outside actors that had illegally entered Konohagakure’s prison on the same night as Risu’s plans, purposefully foiling her plot and allowing Enaka to run free. Aside from Enaka, these two men should immediately become the primary focus of the village’s efforts to control the situation. It was as clear to Kyohei in that moment as it was when Enaka was originally imprisoned, he and his accomplices, which now included two mystery shinobi, were too much of a threat to simply be placed in a box. The only thing that would put an end to this menace is death.

“What two shinobi? Who? What do you mean they took your power? Tell me exactly what happened.”

---

357 | 1,574

The realization came to her, it hit her like a ton of bricks. It was so obvious and clear to her now, she was right all along and so was Enaka: the world is not a beautiful place worth protecting, it's a cruel and utterly frightening place were those living in it simply clawed and crawled at and over others just to confirm their own existence and remain out of the grasp of death which loomed at every step on the way. She had lost Kyohei, he had already used her absence to climb up and over another ledge towards the top, towards freedom.

Her single eye suddenly seemed filled with life, a deep madness and darkness taking shape within it, as she looked the Uchiha straight in the eyes. Yes, that was how it was supposed to be, that was how her life was supposed to be: a struggle for survival, a struggle to which the cost was inconsequential. She saw it clear as day now, she had not simply become a monster, she had always been one and only now did she finally embrace that reality, now that she had lost that final tether that kept her to the village, to the wretched rules of the shinobi world.

“What two shinobi? Who? What do you mean they took your power? Tell me exactly what happened.”


"Just some man calling himself Tsuyo Hyuga and another mysterious man who had quite some potent chakra...let's just say it was interesting...to know that a Hyuga could use a technique that allows them to not just temporarily block someone's chakra output, but actually destroy the tenketsu," Lamya started laughing, pressing one of her hands against her face while she had an expression filled with madness upon her once elegant face, which had now seemingly distorted and twisted itself into a visage only a snake would have, a mad snake at the very least. "They were not from Konoha...but then again a hyuga and possibly an Uzumaki, I reckon it shows that those we know to be part of Konoha's shadow are not the only ones. Now I wonder...how long it would take me to get out of here and taste my freedom yet again, hmm?"

380/2028

“That’s enough, Risu! Get a hold of yourself!”

Risu had always been somewhat unstable. There was always something lurking beneath the surface. Whether that be an inherent quality or a symptom of Enaka’s influence on her Kyohei had never been able to solve for himself, but he was always aware of its presence. He had seen that side of her as far back as their first mission down in the mines in the countryside of The Land of Fire where a stray explosion had knocked the sense out of the young woman and unlocked a crazed state that was hardly recognizable. While they were together the Uchiha had thought that side of her mostly under control, doing his best to alleviate and prevent the kind of stress or trauma that might elicit such a change in personality, but in their time apart it seemed as though it had reared its head once more.

“There is nothing funny or amusing about the situation we’re in right now. We will find a way to deal with your tenketsu, but I need you to focus. Enaka. Did he say anything? What is his next move? What intel do we have?”

How many years had it been since that fateful night where Kyohei looked over Risu’s still body, making a deal with the devil in order to safeguard the woman who now sat across from him as a criminal? Despite the difference in circumstances between now and then, the news the Uchiha received this night caused the same sinking feeling in his stomach to set in. This time, however, Kyohei could not simply get her out of this mess, at least not without her cooperation. He and she had no shortage of personal issues to work out. Whether or not they even liked each other at this point might still be up in the air, but he had not stopped loving her just because they were apart. Kyohei could not simply walk away from this, whether he was to be dragged in or not, but this was not the setting to hash out every intimate detail of their relationship. Not with all of these prying eyes no doubt lingering outside of the interview room.

“I can’t protect you from him like I did last time unless you help me. Please.”

---

391 | 1,965

The slit pupil in Lamya's remaining eye trembled for a moment, her eyelids slowly closing and opening again, showing that at least she had calmed down a bit. However, the fact that she had calmed down a bit was far from being anything positive. With an eerie smirk on her face, she looked at Kyohei, almost reaching to the depths of his own soul, it was as if she saw right through his entire being, the kind of glare only a real, coldhearted snake could have. "But Kyo, I already have such a good hold on myself. Unlike the old me, I see the world as it is and am no longer restricted and clouded by my pitiful self of the past."

She chuckled softly when the Uchiha told her that they could deal with her chakra issue later, but he seemed rather desperate to know what her uncle had told her, which was a given, since with Konoha's greatest criminal and probably their most powerful shinobi in recent history on the loose, who knew what he would have planned for the village hidden in the leaf.

"What he told me, is that which you should expect from him. He ofcourse congratulated me for failing to complete my mission, laughed at the irony of the situation, the fact that I was captured and he managed to get free," Lamya sighed and tilted her head to the side, looking at Kyohei with a rather seductive expression, a feint smile on her face as she licked her lips. "What he plans is probably the same he had planned from the very first moment he turned his back to konoha: complete domination, the death of all the feudal lords and a new shinobi world. Though given his situation and the information I have, I reckon he'll move to Kirigakure as soon as he can, just to get in touch with the Mizukage. Which is what I would've done if I hadn't been captured... it's after all the most logical step."

Intensely, she watched Kyohei, hoping to see if he could figure her out, figure out what she had become in the time she had been away. Perhaps he would see it her way, understand that he was living in a village that was as blind to the truth as it was corrupted by its own feeble rules and restrictions. "Protect me from my uncle? Yes... you have done that in the past,
but as you said, I have been gone for a long time and things have changed, you have made this rather clear to me. Though for now...maybe, you could indulge me just once and tell me this:
why did you lie to me?"

Straightening herself again, squinting her eye while smiling brightly, so brightly that it was as fake as her uncle's usual smile. "Uzumaki Myra, she was quite tough,
but in the end...like all who oppose me...she cracked and she spilled everything she knew. Do you know what she confessed to me, Kyohei?"

She knew, Lamya seemed to know a certain secret of the Uchiha, something which he had hidden from her while they were still together, when she was still afraid of the darkness that remained hidden from her. "I found it hard to believe, to find files on you, records of things you did in the past...it's funny, how even the most straightforward people can end up being real monsters themselves."

585/2613

Uzumaki Myra… that was a name that Kyohei had not heard in quite some time. Among all of Enaka’s dogs, she was far and away the most palatable. The way Risu spoke about the Uzumaki in her little monologue put an uneasy feeling in Kyohei’s stomach regarding the woman’s fate, but ultimately that was not a hill worth dying on. The Uchiha brushed off the mention of the woman and instead focused his attention on the claims of information about him personally and his apparent deceit.

If Myra had access to all of the information on Kyohei that Enaka seemed to have, it was likely that Risu knew everything about his time as a part of Enaka’s organization and even his childhood, assuming what she was saying was true. Either way, times had changed. Kyohei was no longer running away from his past and had no reason to keep his time in the Black ANBU secret from her. Whether or not she had something incriminating with respect to him was irrelevant in the position she was in now.

“It doesn’t matter what was revealed about me. I never claimed I was a saint. But I regret nothing. I stand by everything I’ve done. I only ever did what was the right thing in that moment. Call me a monster if you’d like. There are some things that knights in shining armor simply can’t do. Now you said Kirigakure. Why?”

---

247 | 2,212

"It doesn't matter indeed," Lamya chuckled, her expression growing slightly softer, almost as if she finally after such a long time understood the Uchiha's reasons, the truth behind the actions of his past and present self. "We all have our crosses to bear,
we all have our pasts and our futures... I don't blame you for anything Kyohei, not when you stood face to face with someone like my uncle. Had you been any less daring and any less intelligent,
you probably would've died on the spot. It just shows that I did not fall in love with just an ordinary man, it proves that you are more than just another shinobi. You have something most of your comrades do not have: determination to see things through, no matter the cost and no matter the consequences."

Leaning back a bit, tilting her head a bit to the left and smiling at the uchiha, the former Anbu captain seemed to be hinking about what she'd answer. If she revealed too much, there was a great chance that Kyohei's information could lead to konoha's Anbu finding out just how much she really knew and she'd probably end up being tortured by the detaintment corps for the sake of getting that information, yet if she played it smart and kept her answers informative, but vague enough to leave room for speculation, it would keep her safe.

On the other hand she knew how smart and crafty Kyohei really was, even though by all means he was below lamya in terms of strength and physical attributes, he had a suave and intelligent way of carrying himself, easily figuring out people's emotions and their state of mind and whenever he got angry, he'd even be a handful for those of the likes of her uncle or Hataro. Yes, this man was dangerous as an opponent and right now, that was exactly what he was. It actually made Lamya blush ever so slightly, with her breathing becoming a bit more rapid, her temperature rising slightly, as her single eye started to gobble up the expression on the Uchiha's face. Even now, with him being so cold and distant, he still managed to push her buttons.

"You never were the knight in shining armor, Kyohei," Again she chuckled, licking her lips softly as she looked at the Uchiha intently. "You were the eagle watching the snake from above, that's what you were and always have been."

She started to tap onto the table with her fingers, laughing softly. "Why Kirigakure? Why indeed, perhaps because no village would be foolish enough to send their anbu to that place, maybe because it's a safe place or maybe because he might actually be planning something even bigger than his original plans. I do not know, after all... My uncle IS Orochi Enaka and who could ever know what that man is thinking, hmm?"

496/3109

“Stop laughing…”

Kyohei stifled his own reactions as Risu spoke, particularly as the conversation veered towards her love for him, an idea which enraged him at this point, given how things had fallen apart in her absence. She sat there acting as if nothing had happened, going about her own business and following her own plans all this time without any regard for those she left behind. After all this time these were the circumstances under which they were reunited, and she was laughing. She was laughing. Laughing at all of the sacrifices he had made for her sake. Laughing at him obediently waiting for her as she ran off in the middle of the night going who knows where. Kyohei’s fists clenched tight as his breath became more and more heavy, spewing heat into the air each time he exhaled.

“STOP LAUGHING!!!”

Suddenly, Kyohei’s fist would ignite as he struck the table between them, smashing the wood in half in one go. The flames exploded out to each side of the room between them, leaving black scorch marks all along the floor and up the side walls and creating a visual divide between the two of them. Once more his crimson red eyes would reveal themselves a byproduct of the rage boiling over inside of the Uchiha. Flickers of red flames spilt forth from behind the man’s teeth as he attempted to compose himself, reminding himself of the nature of this meeting after his outburst. He still had a job to do.

“I think both you and Enaka vastly overestimate how valuable of an asset a place like Kirigakure can be. A land dominated by irrational, warmongering fanatics can’t be relied upon. Even if he believed he could get those people to cooperate, he’d need more than a single village to make any kind of meaningful headway into the kind of ambitions that man has. Kirigakure would be nothing more than a bandage, a temporary hiding place for someone who would need enormous resources to rebuild his organization to even what it once was to continue his research. So the real question is, where are those resources going to come from?”

Kyohei was deeply familiar with the extent of the damage done to the infrastructure and resources done to the Black ANBU organization under which Enaka carried out his ambitions. Following Enaka’s incarceration, it was the Uchiha that led the special task force created by Sousetsu Senju to combat and dismantle the remnants of that organization. What had not been destroyed in the fighting had almost universally been seized by the village, either appropriating the financial assets or archiving the intelligence that the task force was able to recover. There was no way to tell how much of the Orochi’s resources would still be accessible to him, especially in the form of human capital that might still be in hiding, but he certainly would have nowhere near the same access… for now.

---

500 | 2,712

She continued chuckling after his first remark, yet when Kyohei raised his voice in anger, his sharingan showing themselves again and the table breaking in twain by his firey fist, Lamya actually shuffled her chair slightly back and a guard opened the small hatch in the door behind her to see what was the commotion, yet as the guard was part of the detaintment corps, he simply saw this as a rough handed interrogation and did not intervene at all.

"While you may think I might be overestimating the value of Mizu no kuni, do you truly think you could say the same of my uncle, Kyohei?" Letting out a sigh, the woman crossed her legs and raised her shackled hands to her quickly-made eyepatch, scratching it a bit, turning her attention back to the Uchiha in front of her with a soft smile on her face.
"Even if his resources have dwindled and his forces scattered by both Konoha's actions and mine... Orochi Enaka is still Orochi Enaka, a man who despite all adversity will always get what he wants. He wanted me and he had me, he wanted you and he had you. There's no point in denying it, but if there's any people around who would know better than to underestimate that man, it's us. Two victims of that man's manipulation and two people who have seen how powerful that man truly is. So, to be honest... do you really think he'd need any 'forces', any 'subjects' to convince a few of that country's warmongering clans?"

The former Anbu captain looked at the Uchiha with a calm and collected expression, showing that at this point she wasn't joking or making fun of him, merely pointing out that in a case like this, there was no such thing as an 'overestimation'.

"If I would call myself a monster, a demon... that man would still stand miles above me," She sighed and closed her eye, as she started to bite her lip in frustration. "No matter how brutal and how cruel I acted to the men of the Black Anbu that I could find, no matter how merciless and how vicious I showed them that I could be... most of them actually preferred to die rather than betray Him. To those he gets in his grasp, he becomes more than a leader or a lord... He becomes the Devil himself, a force they would not and could not withstand even if they wanted to. Now I ask you this question again: If he were to go to Kirigakure, would you think he's truly without resources?"

446/3555

Finally coming down from the adrenaline that was coursing through his veins only moments before from his violent outburst Kyohei continued to breath heavily, but was able to compose himself to answer Risu’s words. Something deep within him could not help but find humor in how bound Risu still was to this idea of her uncle being the pinnacle of power. Clearly their experiences in their time apart had taken two very different courses, with Risu constantly chasing down this idea of Enaka in her mind and Kyohei discovering something far more consequential. How little she truly knew.

“The Devil himself? It seems that our understandings of the world since you left have gone in completely opposite directions. Yes, both of us are intimately familiar with exactly how powerful and exactly how frightening your uncle can be. The difference between our views on him, though, is that you still seem to view him as this insurmountable boogeyman that you have since you were young. I know exactly what kind of a man Orochi Enaka is. And I know he’s not someone stupid enough to make moves without a plan in mind. But I also know that he is far from the scariest monster lurking in the darkness of this world. If you’re still stuck in the mindset that Orochi Enaka is the greatest threat to this world, then your fanaticism has blinded you.”

Enaka was an obstacle to Kyohei on a personal level, of that there was no doubt. This fairy tale that those around him seemed to enjoy propagating, however, that he was some unstoppable mastermind or manipulative genius was growing old very quickly. Enaka was a predator, but he was not an apex predator. He preyed on the weak and the desperate, people he felt he could use without posing a risk to himself. Those who have been indoctrinated with his lies incorrectly believed that the reason he seemed untouchable was because those who could pose a threat to him did not exist. Kyohei had learned all too well that this was not the case. And if Enaka was as intelligent as he claimed to be, he no doubt knew where his true place in the food chain lied. It was a truth he wished Risu would see, but for now there was another issue he wanted information on.

“Regardless, he’ll show himself sooner or later. Now… what did you do with Myra?”

---

409 | 3,121

"Ofcourse Enaka isn't the greatest threat to this world, but he has the potential to be so, his cunning and his avarice have shown us that much," The woman sighed a bit, wondering why Kyohei would deny the man's power, almost as if it was nonexistent. Surely there had to be even stronger people around, did they not have Aisu Ayakashi in Kirigakure or perhaps even the people from the olden days, surely those were far beyond even Enaka, but up til now... the only one who had come even close to Enaka's level was that strange Hyuga that had managed to cut off her own ties to her chakra, her tenketsu in a single swipe. "My intent is to kill him and surpass him, but I do not avoid the reality that it may never happen if he manages to get his hands on whatever in the Sage of the Six Path's name it is he desires."

Kyohei wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either in Lamya's opinion, surely perhaps it was rather detrimental for her to still be so obsessed with her uncle, but the Uchiha had not suffered at that man's hands nearly as much as she had, he had no idea how cruel he could be and thus by extension he also did not know how cruel she herself could be. Because the more she traveled around to find and exterminate the last remnants of his Black Anbu, the more she felt she was becoming just like Him, the man she had despised for so long. Was it stockholm syndrome or did she simply begun to see the bigger picture and had she finally come to a conclusion of her own. One thing she had been certain of for a while though: the village and its rules restricted her in her search for strength, power and jutsu.

"I killed her of course, she was a Black Anbu member after all," the woman opposite to Kyohei waved a bit with her hand, not really understanding the gravity or importance of the question, yet then it did hit her that he himself had been part of the Black Anbu as well. Was she his contact to Enaka or was he in direct control of her uncle?

Her pupils narrowed while she looked straight at the Uchiha, starting to wonder if anything had been real after all in her life or were her only choices the one she made when she thought to finally break away from the village. The former Anbu captain clenched her hands into fists and grit her teeth, letting out a sudden "tsk" before relaxing and starting to smirk at Kyohei. "Perhaps you want to know how it all went down in...more detail?"

467/4022

“He doesn’t even have the potential to be.”

Kyohei’s tone was stern and unwavering, betraying not so much as a hint of doubt or uncertainty in his words. Perhaps there was a time, years ago, where Kyohei saw Enaka the same way that Risu did now, but that time had long since passed. The Uchiha no longer feared the Orochi, his eyes seeing clearly the man for what he was, a bottom-dweller slithering along this world’s underbelly. A snake was a snake, and nothing more. The heights he sought would forever be out of his reach.

“You say he’s seeking some connection to the Sage of Six Paths? That is not a power that one can acquire through intellect or ambition. Enaka is merely the latest in a long line of lowly shinobi desperately reaching towards the sky in hopes of touching the gods themselves. Funny that people like him always seem to come from The Leaf Village. One would think that those closest to the epicenter of this whole setting would have more sense than to try the same failed strategies over and over again. Sooner or later he will have to reveal himself and when that time comes he will learn as all of his predecessors had, that the world was a much bigger and scarier place than even he could have imagined.”

The general population had never been intimately familiar with the specifics regarding the nature of heroes of legend and the specific nature of their Otsutsuki lineage. Enaka, in the vein of Konoha shinobi such as Danzo Shimura and the Sannin Orochimaru, was obsessed with acquiring and consolidating this power for themselves. However, they were simply born to the wrong parentage. Their natural bodies would never be capable of harnessing such powers, so naturally they turned to science, the only avenue they felt available to them to alter their bodies. In their pursuit of knowledge and power, they transformed themselves into formidable shinobi, but even so their obsessions remained unobtainable. Enaka had a similar obsession with such power and desperately grasped for the closest thing to that power available in this world, the Sharingan. His endeavor would ultimately end in failure too, no doubt.

“And no, I don’t need the details. It’s unfortunate that in your shortsightedness you resorted to killing one of the only people that might be able to help you in your own ambitions… as she did mine. Myra Uzumaki was as interested in Enaka’s downfall as you seem to be. I myself owed her something of a debt. What did you do with her body? The least I can do is give her a proper burial.”

---

452 | 3,573

"Perhaps we both have a different perspective on it all," The woman simply smirked a bit. Just as Kyohei seemed to be tired of certain people thinking Enaka was one of those few at the top of the world, she herself was tired of hearing kyohei act all high and mighty now that the man he was dragging through the dirt wasn't the one in front of him. Surely he was right in the sense that it was pointless and almost ridiculous for Risu to continue to cling on the idea that her uncle was some force impossible to overcome, but was she truly?

She did not see her uncle as an impossible hurdle, but unlike Kyohei was obviously doing, she did not underestimate the man either. Usually Lamya's strategy was to know her opponent better than they themselves did, before actually and willingly engaging them, but even now with all the information at hand she was not entirely sure that she could've taken him down. Not that it truly mattered, because if there was one thing which Kyohei said that actually made a whole lot of sense, was the fact that her uncle just like all the others simply did not have that basic template necessary to actually become the next sage of the six paths.

"The world IS a dark and scary place, that's why so many desire the sharingan,
to see the world as it truly is...quite ridiculous though, who'd even want a sharingan, when it's use is only there in it's natural bearer and not when stolen," Her single eye turned straight towards Kyohei's own orbs with a smile, squinting her eyes and showing that she indeed meant what she said, a sharingan belonged to an uchiha and only an uchiha could utilize that particular dojutsu's powers to its fullest.

"No details, hmm," The former Anbu captain seemed a bit disappointed, her lips curling downward, while she started to frown a little. To be fair, after she had interrogated Myra, Lamya did feel a tinge of remorse, having had to handle the woman so roughly, but then again, maybe that woman just like everyone else made the easy assumption that if Lamya was no longer working for the village, she had to be doing Enaka's dirty work, as if there was nothing else an Ouroboros member could do. "Uzumaki Myra has been given the death of a shinobi at the hands of a former member of the Konoha ANBU, Kyohei, you know what that means."

The former head of the Ouroboros clan sighed, leaned back a bit and crossed her arms in front of her chest, with the chains from her shackles rattling loudly for a moment. "Some people seek the truth, others are content living in a lie. Now then, Kyohei...I did my part and the guards aren't watching, so what's next, burn me to a crisp, beat me to a pulp or kiss me, either way is fine. As long as I know that what I did was justified, nothing matters to me."

523/4545

Kyohei grabbed a hold of Risu’s jaw, holding each side of her face between his thumb and index & middle fingers. The Uchiha held the woman firmly, moving his wrist from side to side and pulling her head in any direction he pleased. This woman had turned her back on him. She sat before him now as a criminal and a shadow of her former self, helpless before him. Despite that, the man could not help but allow memories of the past to creep into his mind, recalling days past when he also toyed with her body as he pleased.

Kyohei moved his fingers from the sides of Risu’s jaw to her chin, pulling her face upwards to look at him standing directly above her. The Uchiha’s thumb strayed upwards, hooking over the point of her chin and began pulling downward, beginning to pry her lips apart. The man would lower his face towards hers, close enough that the warm moisture of their breaths could be felt on the skin. Staring his subject of interrogation directly in the eyes, Kyohei would find himself leaning in more and more without even realizing it. As much as he would have liked it not to be the case, he still wanted her.

“Kiss you? If you had just come home to me rather than disappearing and winding up here, I would have done more than just kissed you.”

Only when the flesh of his lips brushed against hers would Kyohei snap back into the moment and realize there was a line he could not cross, hurriedly pulling away. The Uchiha took a step back and recomposed himself, once again burying his personal, conflicted emotions regarding the situation he found himself. There really was nothing good that would come out of this whole ordeal, a suspicion that he had felt all along. He was obviously conflicted in this interview, but it was likely his familiarity with this subject in particular also that caused him to be selected. Any conceivable scenario that ran through his mind in which their personal grievances were to be aired here was problematic, so he let it go for now.

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

---

371 | 3,944

What did he do?

The woman was completely overwhelmed by what the Uchiha did to her, not giving her any time to react or to prepare herself. Grabbing her by her cheeks with just two of his fingers, moving her head from side to side before sliding his fingers towards her chin and lifting her face up towards his, slowly closing the breach between their lips.

Lamya knew she had mentioned it to him, issueing to kiss him as an ultimatum, but she wasn't expecting him to do it, not when she was joking, trying to upset and aggrevate him. this was actually quite confusing for her, for the woman who had thought she had finally cast aside all her bonds in exchange for freedom and power, yet now here she was; sitting in a simple chair, shackled and bound, while the Uchiha was directing her body to whatever wishes he had. "I...you...uhm..."

Just an instant, just a single fleeting touch, after so much teasing, playing with her lips, prying them apart, the only thing that happened was a swift, almost breezing touch between their lips. However, this very moment, this instant was enough to knock Lamya completely out of her element for a bit. It seemed that if one thing was still exactly the same as it was in the past, it was the fact that the woman could not handle unexpected turns in a situation, especially unexpectedly spontaneous moments like these.

"Hmm, yes well..." Silent, she fell completely silent, needing at least a few seconds to regain her composure, to let her blush subside and to return to the stoic and stern face she should've been showing in this situation. "Hrrm, anything else I'd like to say...yes, yes there is."

Risu smiled, slightly to try and annoy Kyohei a bit more, to taunt him and on the other hand simply because she had to smile, because it was the only expression she had after having had such a weird, surprising and overwhelming moment. "You don't think this prison will hold me for long, do you? Why not join me, leave this village that has lied to you, me and so many others for so long. Why don't you follow me, don't you want to be free of all these restrictions?"

It was a simple proposal, to see wether or not Kyohei was willing to give up his life as a member of the village in exchange for a life with her, a life of freedom, where his own choices were his to make and to live with and were not dictated by the village and its rulers. "All you have to do is leave, follow me and you'll be free."

Now what would the Uchiha do, what would he choose...if he would make a choice at all.

480/5023

Kyohei’s eyes narrowed in response to Risu’s words more so than her behavior or smugness in expression. The nerve this woman had to ask him to follow her after everything that they had been through. The word “follow” in particular revealed everything that the Uchiha needed to know about how she viewed him, how she had always viewed him. He spent many a night upon his return to the village playing their final encounters in his mind repeatedly, looking for where he had gone wrong. What was evident beyond the shadow of a doubt in this moment, however, was that nothing he ever did, no sacrifice he could ever make would ever elevate him beyond the status of an accessory in her eyes. Whatever he thought he had longed for had never been anything more than a figment of his imagination.

“I’ve given up everything for your sake once before, shackled my own fate to yours, and you turned your back on me. That was the only outcome that awaited me when I followed you. Our relationship was only ever one-sided. I was required to make every sacrifice while you did as you pleased and walked away from me as soon as it was convenient. How many other Uchiha men were there besides me? That was what you were after, wasn’t it?”

Reaching into his back pocket with his left hand Kyohei retrieved a thin, bi-fold, leather wallet and flipped it open in a single motion. Sliding the fingers of his right hand into the fold the Uchiha would pull out a small sheet of folded paper, having been forcibly creased for so long that the paper no would no longer spring upwards even if one were to lay it on a flat surface. What he had retrieved was an old picture of he and Risu together as teenagers, smiling for the camera during their trip to the Waterfall Village, a momento he had carried with him all this time. The man approached the chair and tossed the folded picture onto the woman’s lap.

“Where my path leads, you can’t go.”

Wasting no time waiting around for her response, Kyohei would march towards the door leading out of the interrogation room and slam the side of his balled fist against the steel door three times.

“We’re done here. Open up.”

---

399 | 4,343

When the time comes, even those closest together may seperate. No human remains unchanged through time, not through love and not through hatred. Humans change, their paths diverse, cross and drift apart. Now it seemed that Risu's path had drifted apart from Kyohei's path, making it obvious that she'd no longer have someone to walk with her or beside her.

She watched silently as he tossed the picture onto her lap, signifying his thoughts and his feelings with a single sentence: Where my paths lead, you can't go.

The woman looked at the picture, a snapshot from a time long past, where children dreamed great things and love seemed to last forever. Yet love was gone and in its place had come the cold and painful embrace of complete freedom, freedom forged in solitude and madness. Humans changed and so did the times in which they lived.

When Kyohei turned around and slammed with his fist on the door to get out of the room, the woman sitting in the chair, shackled by steel and iron chains simply looked up and dropped the picture to the ground when another guard got her up as well, ready to be moved back to her cell. "Times change and so do we. I hope you survive the coming storm..."

220/5226

Exit thread

training: