"Yes, yes..." Takao pushed to a stand, slowly walking around the desolate, earthen cell. The smooth walls were carved out by the members of his organization and their mastery of the element. Reinforced, so that they were not so easily stricken down, and enhanced with a constant feed of chakra to create a barrier. It was a needless precaution for Takao, who stood within the cell, but more than necessary to protect those outside of it. Just because he was confident that he could withstand the potential for a volatile attack from within didn't mean that his confidence stretched beyond these walls. Their interrogation was not so private either, as the voices carried through the chakra-fed earth, allowing the operatives outside the walls to hear what happened inside.

"Black Ops training. Feigned bravery. Archetypal cheekiness. You're going by the book on interrogations. I'm not dumb enough to think that doing anything to you will get me the information I want. So it isn't what I'll do to you." From behind the cold, reflective shell of his mask, his voice distorted well beyond recognition. It was too easy to merely torture him with conventional interrogation methods. They never worked. Everybody and their decrepit, senile grandmother was conditioned against it.

"It's what I'll do to your people."

"It's what you'll force me to do to your people. Maybe I'll have to find another operative. Maybe I'll have to take less conditioned shinobi, ones that can't withstand the torture. Young genin are especially susceptible to talking, and if I go through enough of them, I'll get what I want. You can withstand torture and interrogation-- can they? Or maybe none of them will have the information I want and it'll be war. War that could be prevented right now, in this very room." Bitter words escaped in perfect monotone, no such semblance of lilt or shifting cadence. They were lies, but neither his voice nor his body language would show it. He was professional, he'd done this countless times before and had a lifetime left to continue doing it. This individual was merely one lost amidst a sea of others.

"Or, you can give me what I want. I don't want the blood of innocent people on my hands, and neither do you. I want Hastur's. So you have a choice. Doom countless of your countrymen to a worse fate and die here yourself, having accomplished nothing and perished in vain... or tell me what I want to know." He said.

"Help me save lives."

The desperate gripings of a cornered dog did little to stir a reaction in his stone-cold comportment. Behind the icy black shell of his mask, bitter eyes watched Myrddin and considered his words, but offered no reaction. When Myddrin finished, Takao let a painfully long period of silence befall them. His body didn't move, not the slightest twitch or fidget, completely still like a statue or a corpse.

"You haven't been paying attention." Takao's cold voice finally spoke, breaking the silence.

"Perhaps you're merely naïve to the realities of this world. The cruelties we must endure to survive. Morality is a fickle thing that many men fail to interpret correctly. They hide from facing the things they fear doing and shy away by claiming immortality." These words were falling on deaf ears, he knew that much. But they were not meant solely for Myrddin. There were otherse watching him. They needed to learn as well, to understand.

"If you must kill one innocent to save a hundred that would otherwise die, are you a murderer, or a saviour, or are you both? Was it immoral, or was it paragon? Was it right, or was it wrong?" Tough choices were the bane of shinobi. Every sane man feared the day when he had to make these decisions, and seldom were they prepared for the fallout.

"War is a terribly complicated beast. To save lives, more often than not, you must sacrifice others. This is a cruel reality. Only dangerous fools think that they can save everybody." Perhaps he was right and perhaps he was wrong. Takao had suffered through twenty years of the shinobi lifestyle, drudged his way through blood and tears as an operative of the ANBU, seen and done things that he didn't want to do, but would carry the consequences and memories until his death. His mind was not fully right, his world-view twisted, but his heart was in the right place.

"Do you think your interrogation ends when you're dead?" Takao asked, genuinely curious if his captive was so foolish to believe that information would die with him. Bodies were invaluable commodities in the shinobi world, laden with secrets ripe for the picking. Myrddin was no different. Takao stepped closer, towering over the shorter Cloud shinobi. His head tilted down, and bottomless pools of ebony stared from within the mirrored shell visor.

"You'll keep preaching about your fake God, but it makes no difference. If you won't give me what I want, then I shall take it from you."

He might have looked like a statue with how little his body moved, but he was far from one. He could see the anger bubbling in Myddrin, the hate boiling behind his eyes, perhaps triggered by the denouncing of his so-called God. The source truly didn't matter in the moment, for Takao prepared himself. Dark eyes narrowed and brows furrowed just as Myddrin sucked in his breath. In that moment, dark chakra crept from Takao's pores and expanded rapidly. It felt like an inaudible, bassy boom, hitting chests like a powerful shove. The overbearing presence of his overwhelming chakra pressure would make everybody in the area feel as though the very air itself was oppressing them, pushing them to the ground, and they wouldn't be able to move.

The chakra that seeped from his skin, the result of 'Black Origin Threshold', turned his body into a shell of steel. A clenched hiss escaped his lungs as his body braced for the impact. As the swathe of wind slammed forcefully into his tense form, it tore long strands of his clothing in twain and left a sizable scar across the shell of his helm, but not a drop of blood was shed. The room they were in was worse for wear, massive scars in the earthen walls left chunks to come crashing down, but the ROOT operatives scattered around the cavern worked quickly to keep it from complete collapse, and repaired the damage.

In the meantime, Takao's eyes leveled with the Rasengan. Black Origin Threshold would've halted Myrddin's assault just in time for the Rasengan to stop mere inches away from Takao's face. He didn't flinch or react. He merely stood still. Like a statue. Or a corpse.

"Four of you versus me alone wasn't enough." Takao said, his eyes shining bright from the fiery pools of Ibugan, just barely visible beneath the solid black shell of his helmet. "What makes you think that here, where all advantages are in my favour, is where you could do it alone?

His hand rose, gloved digits curled tight around Myrddin's wrist and he twisted, turning the joint in an uncomfortable direction and forcing the Rasengan-bearing hand away from his face. Takao twisted Myrddin's arm further if his initial attempt had been successful, making his control over the limb apparent. His aim was to inflict pain and intense discomfort, as much as he could, without readily damaging Myrddin's limb and its joints.

"Don't be an idiot, there's no reason to throw your life away uselessly here. Tell me what I want to know, then you can run along with your tail between your legs and go back to your fake God. You can tell him what happened here, what you told me, I don't care." He didn't, his words dripped with truth but he knew that seldom were such claims believable given the context of the situation. He was prepared for a fight but the information he sought was far more important.