"Here. A reward for you."
Jin's voice was utterly flat, giving nothing away.
With a flick of his finger, the deep-blue pill traced a precise arc through the air and landed with a crisp tap on the rubble before Mei Terumi.
She looked down.
The pill was no bigger than a fingernail, and blue all over.
Within it, something seemed to flow like water. Just looking at it, she could sense the aura forcibly compressed and bound inside.
An aura that made her heart tremble.
Was this... the Tailed Beast Chakra of the Three-Tails, Isobu?
Gulp.
Mei Terumi's throat bobbed with difficulty. Her moist green eyes stared fixedly at the pill before her.
Her already fragile-looking features had now lost their last trace of color!
A reward for her?
How was this a reward...? It was clearly a deadly choice!
In an instant, countless suspicions surfaced in her mind.
Dark and twisted.
Was it poison made from Tailed Beast Chakra?
Or a puppet Curse Mark that she could never escape for the rest of her life?
Or some strange drug she'd never heard of, one that would turn her into a helpless victim at someone else's mercy?
That had to be it!
The young man before her must have thought words alone weren't enough, so he'd resorted to this to keep her in check!
After all, what could make someone more loyal than having control over their life?
Once she realized this, the relief she'd felt at being pulled back from the brink of destruction was instantly swallowed by an even deeper, colder fear!
There seemed to be only two paths before her.
Either... eat the poison and submit, saving the village.
But the price might be becoming a living puppet, stripped of all sense of self and controlled by