The Juubi’s fractured howl had ripped the very air apart, the scent of sharp ozone mingling suddenly with the ever-present blood and dust. A great wind swirled around him, lines of powerful sealing magic digging and pulling into his abdomen, tearing him open—
Ripping him wide open, everting his everything like a black hole in reverse, the universe spilling forth from his collapsing, overtaxed body.
He thought of Kushina in that moment, how this pain must be his karmic payoff for what he’d done to her. There could be no greater pain imaginable, and he had become something of an expert on pain. This was like rusty blades over every quaking inch of one’s body. Inside. Everywhere.
When it finally stopped, when he was as empty as before and the Juubi long gone, his knees gave out and he fell onto the fragments of shale.
His last waking act was a small, pressured noise of frustration.
Held down—can’t move—hands all over, everywhere, touching, seeing…
“Shizune—fingertips on his occipital chakra array. Sakura, with me—”
“Yes, Tsunade-shishou. The chiasm and the tracts?”
“Optic chakra flow detected, Tsunade-sama. Ready on your mark.”
“Then let’s neuter this piece of shit. Three, two—”
Screaming. Someone… someone—
No… more. No more. “Please—”
He woke to a deluge of icy water dashed in his face. The natural physiological reaction was to gasp, and he did, jerking awake on a concrete floor, looking around wildly with eyes that could see, but could not see. There were eight Konoha-nin in the room with him, on guard and fighting ready, yet he couldn’t see the temporal contrails of their future movements, nor, more critically, the wrinkles in space-time that he used to anchor his Kamui. It was flat, simple, basic…what passed for “sight” among civilians.
A spike of pain lanced through his skull then, vision spiking white and ears ringing. He turned over, trembling, and vomited. He heard some faint, unpleasant laughter.
Something was very, very wrong.
Obito struggled to get to his feet, though his legs were treacherous and he could barely clamber to all fours.
A sharp kick to his gut had him collapsing all over again, retching and dry-heaving. He hadn’t seen that foot coming, nor been able to slip through the attack.
“Uchiha,” the owner of the boot said coldly, as Obito tried to look up at his assailant, “Welcome back to Konoha. I am Morino Ibiki, and I am here to assure that your stay is just as pleasant as a guest of your… station… deserves.”
A large shadow blotted out the light, and the man crouched near Obito, gripping his jaw painfully and turning his head until he was looking into a face nearly as scarred as his own, one vaguely remembered from earlier days.
“But first, we need information from you. You will give it to us.”
Obito sneered. Spat. Was punched across the face—close range and hard for his trouble.
“Now, now. As I’m sure you can imagine, the better you cooperate, the less we’ll beat the shit out of you. And I promise, Uchiha Obito, every single ninja in this room wants nothing more than to beat you senseless.”
The interrogations began, not with questioning but with humiliation. He was bound, stripped, blasted with cold, stinging water from a pressurized hose. He was forced naked to his knees, hooded, spread and opened and checked for contraband or hidden weaponry.
“Look at this freak’s body,” one of the younger ones hissed, even as they lifted his scrotum, turned his thighs the way they wanted for their search, overpowering him despite his resistance, “It’s such a mess. Disgusting!”
They pried his mouth open, looking for false teeth, for cyanide pills.
They found none, and yet one of the other interrogators used pliers to twist out a molar on his left side, the sudden pain of which caused Obito to howl as his mouth filled with blood.
They asked him, over and over, “Where is Yamato?” “Where is special operative Tenzou?”
He said nothing. Gave them nothing. What did it matter?
As his jaw ached and swelled, they switched to jamming bamboo shoots under his fingernails, small acid burns on his prosthetic skin—they knew he would heal there quickly, so they could do it over and over again without him fainting.
They were fools. Obito knew pain like he knew his mother’s scent. After a life like his, from the rock that should have killed him, to the pain of a love lost, to the soul-shredding agony of the Juubi’s extraction. Physical torture was nothing. He may have shivered, he may have cried out, but just as often, he laughed, dark blood dribbling down his chin, his limbs askew and twitching. He laughed. There was no reason to be kind, to give anything to these trash.
One way or another, he would die here.
The days were getting colder.
Somehow, this was the first thing to rise clear and unencumbered out of the murky haze of Obito’s thoughts. He was cold. Wet. He shivered.
The world—somewhere above, somewhere without—the world was moving forward, a polluted lie wobbling on a rusting axis.
The first emotion to pass through him was hatred. Strong, sure, familiar hate. His ballast in uncertain times. His war—over. His hopes—dashed. Yet the feeling receded quickly though, leaving him empty once more. It was still easier, he reasoned, not to feel at all.
Time was passing. His eyes itched.
He wasn’t sure if they were deliberately starving him, or if they knew that his prostheses sustained him without food. Neither seemed terribly unlikely.
Obito was thankful, at the very least, that they had not yet noted the tension he felt at being confined and indoors.
Then, on the third day, they did.
It was time for the water torture again. Seven days in, Obito had gotten used to the desperate burn of his lungs, the sparks flashing in his vision as he pulled in gasping breaths whenever he was allowed. The smothering, panic-inducing sensation of drowning. The near-constant headache that followed, blurring his thoughts so that the barrage of interrogation questions were diluted into background noise he could scarcely comprehend.
It was time for the water torture again. Time for more of that gleeful sadism glittering in Ibiki’s eyes. Obito closed his eyes in the dark of his cell, where they now held him bound, wrists, ankles, and neck, to the dank and frigid stone wall.
Then—footsteps. Obito heard them, long pauses indicative of a long stride, even—almost too measured—steps. Another guard most likely, but then—
Emotion convulsed across Obito’s face for a moment, the defeated snarl of a wounded animal. Not him.
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