Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?
Who is he? Who is she? What are they going to do to me?
In Konoha's secret interrogation room, the Kumogakure ninja who had been lucky enough to experience life as the one-armed Yang Guo had his sole remaining arm and both legs bound. He blearily studied the masked duo before him.
His welcome came in the form of a bucket of ice-cold water. With a splash!, the whole bucket emptied straight onto his head. After that, he had no choice but to wake up.
If he had not been tied up, he would have shot straight out of his seat. Ninja or not, there was no way he could have ice-cold water dumped over his head without reacting.
"Hey there~ Awake now?"
Holding the empty bucket, Chinatsu greeted the Kumogakure ninja in a teasing tone. Beside her, Kakashi had been holding a kunai, intending to stab the ninja a few times, but after seeing her bucket, he quietly put it away.
In a sense, the bucket really did seem more effective than the kunai.
Ninja were frequently wounded, so they generally had excellent pain tolerance. A few stabs with a kunai might not achieve anything.
Of course, Kakashi had originally planned to stab the man's precious family jewels. As long as he did not go too far, Medical Ninjutsu could patch him back up anyway...
Although Kakashi had not removed his mask, the Kumogakure ninja could still distinctly feel waves of cold menace radiating from him.
Still, compared with Kakashi, he was far more concerned about the bucket of ice-cold water in Chinatsu's hands...
Kumogakure ninja: This woman is vicious!!!
Chinatsu: What are you staring at? Got a problem? There's more where that came from!
Chinatsu raised the bucket slightly, and the bound Kumogakure ninja abruptly ducked his head. The movement was so funny that she could not hold back her laughter... no, she had not even tried.
The Kumogakure ninja was utterly exasperated. This woman gave off the air of a complete amateur, yet that very amateurishness made him deeply uncomfortable.
He stared at the two people before him, trying to perform one-handed hand seals with his remaining hand. Kakashi noticed everything. He deliberately waited until the ninja was almost finished before driving a kunai into his thigh. The pain made his hand tremble, ruining the seals.
"Stop trying these little tricks. You should know you're lucky. You still have a chance to live. Tell us your entire plan, then obediently admit your own wrongdoing at the upcoming talks between our villages. Do that, and you'll survive."
As Kakashi spoke, he gave the kunai embedded in the man's thigh a full turn, as though stirring a mixture of vegetables and fruit pulp.
It hurt! It hurt like hell!
Watching from the side, Chinatsu inexplicably felt a sympathetic pang, as though someone had bored a hole in her thigh too.
And this scene... why did it somehow remind her of that iconic scene from a certain famous foodie anime?
[1000 − 7 = ?]
Yet even under such agonizing pain, the Kumogakure ninja held out, gritting his teeth without showing the slightest sign of talking.
"Move aside! My turn!"
With that bold declaration, Chinatsu dumped another bucket of ice-cold water straight over the Kumogakure ninja's head.
No sooner had one bucket emptied than another followed.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
The Kumogakure ninja was completely stunned. He felt as though his brain had been rinsed clean.
Of course, if it were only water, he would eventually get used to it. That was why Chinatsu had added a little something extra, such as... chili water~
Wounds + chili water = a perfect match!
"Aaaaaah!!!!"
What was hell? This place was hell.
A Yamato Nadeshiko? What a joke. She was a devil!
Watching the Kumogakure ninja writhe in pain, Chinatsu secretly smiled beneath her mask.
She knew it was rather rude to laugh at a time like this, but sorry... she just could not help it (ﾉ∇︎〃 )
Finally, under Chinatsu's ruthless torment, the Kumogakure ninja could take no more. Opening his burning lips, he cried, "I'll talk! I'll talk!!!"
Once he started, he could not stop. Like seawater pouring through a broken dam, the words came flooding out.
Kumogakure ninja: Heh heh, I'll talk for now, then change my story and deny everything when they make me testify in person. I just need to get through this first. I'm a genius!
Chinatsu: You really are a goddamn genius. Too bad you won't get that chance.
After finishing, the Kumogakure ninja inexplicably wore a proud, smug smile. Chinatsu smiled back, raised both hands, and gently began to applaud.
Meanwhile, Kakashi stepped over to the Kumogakure ninja and untied him.
The Kumogakure ninja was a little bewildered. He had told them everything they wanted to know, but was that alone enough to get him untied? Was it really that easy? If I'd known, I would have talked sooner. All those buckets of water were for nothing...
The Kumogakure ninja was secretly delighted, and Chinatsu was delighted too. Both sides were happy, though his happiness would not last long.
"Let me confirm one more time. Everything you just said was true, correct?" Chinatsu asked with a smile, still clapping.
"Huh? Yes, of course it was true."
"And it wasn't false testimony we forced you to give, correct?"
"I already said it was all true. What's with you people? You're really getting annoying."
Now free of his restraints, the Kumogakure ninja answered without thinking. He might have been able to argue that testimony given while bound had been coerced, but after repeating it once untied, he truly had no way to deny it.
"Excellent. Thank you for your testimony~"
Chinatsu stopped applauding, then brought her hands together to form a release seal.
Genjutsu, release.
The scene before the Kumogakure ninja's eyes changed dramatically. This was no Konoha interrogation room. It was the Naruto Building!
Beside him, the diplomatic envoys from Kumogakure sat looking thoroughly aggrieved. Across from them sat the Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, his hands clasped beneath his chin and his expression grave.
Faced with testimony like that, the Kumogakure envoys could not utter a single word in their defense. All they could do was furiously curse the idiot who had testified!
Finally realizing he had been tricked, the Kumogakure ninja collapsed onto his backside with a thud. He truly had never imagined this was a genjutsu.
After all, as a ninja sent abroad on a mission, he certainly had some resistance to genjutsu. He was confident he could withstand most of them.
However, one of the Sharingan's major functions was to enhance genjutsu. They had assumed only two Uchiha remained alive, both of them children, so they had left the Uchiha out of their calculations entirely.
That had been their mistake.
Hiruzen Sarutobi gazed sternly at the Kumogakure envoys opposite him and slowly opened his mouth.
"Very well, we can now resume our discussion. However, the topic will no longer be compensation from Konoha, but compensation from Kumogakure to Konoha, won't it?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi unleashed the full force of his presence as Hokage!!!
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