Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve: CH_372

Takuma spared the last guard and dragged his unconscious body to the nearest open room in case Krait wasn't able to capture a guard alive. He didn't follow after Krait and instead maintained a distance between them to act as a barrier between him and the guards.

He found a guard sprawled in the middle of a corridor but didn't find a pulse and guessed Krait had dealt with the man before moving on. He walked in the opposite direction and happened upon a door secured with an aldrop. He didn't think there would be a scientist or a guard inside since it was locked from the outside, but he pushed the door open regardless.

A sudden clinking of chains alerted him to a presence in the pitch black room. He remained alert at the threshold as he reached around for a switchboard next to the door and flicked on a light that illuminated the interior.

The room had yellowed tiles covering the walls' lower half while the upper half was painted white. The floor was also covered with big white tiles. A metal toilet was installed in the corner with a shower head and a sink, a few steps away in the open. A metal frame bed with a thin mattress was bolted in the innermost corner of the room, and on it sat a little boy, around ten. One of his dainty legs was shackled to the wall with a chain.

The boy dressed in clothes too big for him was sickly pale with a tinge of blueish-green, had baggy eyes, and his skin seemed to hang from his skeleton. He had long, webbed fingers, and his feet somewhat resembled flippers. It didn't take a genius to realise that the little kid was a victim of the experimentation that had given him some aquatic traits.

The boy retreated to his bed, his eyes overflowing with fear as he looked at the masked stranger with blood splattered on his clothes and mask. Takuma wanted to comfort the boy and convey that he meant no harm, but he wasn't sure how to go about it because the boy clearly had been abused.

"It's—"

Takuma opened his mouth to say something when something clicked in his mind. He turned his attention from the boy to the room and suddenly found it to be hauntingly familiar.

A sharp, stabbing pain exploded that started in the front of his head and instantly spread down to his neck, almost making his legs give out as a flash of memory evoked dreadful emotion in him. It was the suppressed memories he had seen before. He had his back pressed against a tiled wall. His body was trembling as he heaved in fear as a younger Kon yelled at him.

The memory had always been hazy, overwhelmed with spiking emotion, but it became apparent when he recognised the room in his memory to be almost identical to the one he was currently standing in.

He felt every fiber of his being screaming at him to physically get out of the bunker and not stop running until he was in his room at Maruboshi's house. His forcefully opened clenched fist as tensed muscles over his body worked against him. He stepped away from the room and took rapid breaths to calm himself.

He didn't want to feel this way; those weren't his memories. Questions flooded his brain. Had his body been in the bunker when he was a child? Had his body been experimented upon? Kon was a ROOT agent, but this bunker was doing Orochimaru's research. What was the connection there?

The pain rampaged in his head as he fixated on the matter, so when he heard footsteps, he experienced relief as his focus shifted elsewhere. Another trio of guards arrived. The one in the lead wore an eyepatch and a flak jacket, and seemed much stronger than the ones he had faced till now.

"Are there more children here?" Takuma asked as he threw a shuriken at the sink in the room. The tap flew off, and the jet of water began spilling out onto the floor.

"Why? Do you want to join them?" said the lead guard.

Takuma didn't reply and weaved hand seals. Before the guards could disrupt him, he walked into the room. The boy trembled in fear as he hid himself under the bed. The water on the floor began gathering into a mass. He gathered chakra into the left side of the body and augmented his charge into the wall facing the corridor.

The concrete and bricks collapsed as he went through the wall, and cracks extended into the floor and ceiling. He grabbed one of the guards by the face and slammed through the opposite wall into the next room before they could react. The mass of water rushed through the air and settled behind his back before splitting into eight tentacles—four of which dug into his weapon pack, retrieved four kunai, and stabbed the vital points, killing him.

Takuma turned and caught the lead guard's arm as a kunai stopped inches from his face. Four tentacles merged into two that grabbed the guard and yanked him to the side. The guard ripped away the tentacles but not before skipping a few steps to the side. The other four tentacles also attacked, but the guard deftly reacted and dodged all but one, which hit him in the face, stunning him.

It wasn't enough for a killing blow, but he managed to kick him to the side. He threw an explosive tag  at him before jumping out of the room where the other guard was waiting for him. He bent his back to go under a sword swing while bracing for an explosion impact that didn't come—which could only mean that the tag was diffused before it went off.

Takuma threw in a feint to create an opening before nailing the guard hard in the stomach with an augmented punch. All eight tentacles grabbed onto the man, and Takuma threw him towards the hole, just as the eye-patched lead guard stepped out. He wasn't surprised and pushed aside his peer effortlessly, but it gave Takuma just enough time to weave a short set of hand seals for Lightning Release: Shock and stuck the current into his tentacles.

Eight Tentacles: Shock Mode

Takuma felt an anger boil his blood.

Ever since he occupied the body, he had tried to detach himself from life before his arrival. He did not inherit the memories and didn't care about them as they had nothing to do with him. Moments of curiosity had tempted him, and he was always punished with pain for entertaining them.

Until that day at Yu, he had made peace that he would never know his body's origins. But then the memories which eluded him suddenly crashed into his life. He was told that he was a son of two merchant parents—but after he got those visions, he knew that couldn't be true. Someone had gone into trouble to fabricate a life history. Even after knowing all that, he still felt comfortable not knowing about those things. He had imagined what he would do when he met Kon—and the idea of killing the man instantly remained more appealing than keeping him alive for information about his past.

But when he saw that boy, his condition, the fear and apprehension in his eyes, he felt something that displeased him. It wasn't empathy—it was familiarity—as though he had been in the same situation as the boy. Takuma's body might have been in a similar position, but he was not, yet he felt intense emotions that weren't his own.

Something about seeing the boy made him come to terms with reality; no matter how he tried to ignore the past, as long as he occupied his body, there was no escaping it. He needed to confront it head-on if he wanted to be free.

The lead guard used his fellow guard as cover and pushed him towards Takuma, who ran towards him. Takuma ignored the guard stumbling towards him and kept his eyes on the lead guard in the back who began weaving hand seals. He followed suit and weaved hand seals as well.

The tentacles caught the stumbling guard and discharged all of their current into him, knocking him out, which was lucky because Eight Tentacles: Shock Mode caused more intense pain than damage.

The two shinobi completed their hand seals and launched their jutsu.

Fire Release: Great Fireball Jutsu

Water Release: Wild Water Wave

A swirling ball of intense fire that scorched the walls and instantly raised the temperature collided with the rampaging wave of water. The two jutsu cancelled each other out, plunging the room in steam. But if one looked carefully, a significant amount of the wave remained liquid as the fire wasn't able to boil it off.

'Bastard,' Takuma thought. Eye-patch hadn't hesitated to sacrifice his fellow guard. If he hadn't countered with Wild Water Wave, the guard would've been burnt to a crisp.

Takuma's ears perked, and he jerked his torso back to avoid the blade of a kunai.

"Bad move, buddy," he whispered to himself.

He trained to fight under the cover of Water Release:" Hiding in the Mist Jutsu.* He focused on his ear, and his hearing became sharper as he heard the faint footsteps, rustle of clothes, and the faint hum of metal cutting through the air. He sidestepped another kunai and narrowed his eyes to see a faint outline.

He didn't need any more than that as he punched out. Eye-patch avoided by pulling away, but Takuma was already ready as a pulse of concentrated chakra shot out and smashed into the lead guard's face.

"Gah!"

Four tentacles holding kunai attacked the lead guard, who did his best to thwart them, but ended up being disarmed. Takuma stepped in with a standard augmented punch that knocked the air out of him. To his credit, the eye-patch stood his ground and tried to attack him, but Takuma comfortably blocked him. He tried to back away, but the tentacles yanked on his feet with enough force to stop him for a moment.

As Takuma's charged fist made contact with the lead guard's face, he felt the facial bones bend and then crack under his knuckles—and that was before the chakra burst out and completely shattered the skull.

The man hit the ground as the steam began to clear up.

Takuma wanted to find out more about his past. He wanted the memories, knowing that they wouldn't be pretty or they wouldn't be suppressed. Going after ROOT and Kon was the apparent option until right now.

The bunker was connected to him somehow, and he wanted to know how.

Takuma went into a room and removed the weighted vest under his shirt and ditched the supplementary wrist and ankle weights. The feeling of freedom and weightlessness improved his mood a little later.

He heard a large number of footsteps coming his way and stepped out. He was ditching the plan to capture a scientist and a guard. He was going to capture this bunker and get the answers to his question.