The steel wire bit deep, coiling around my waist until it sank past the fabric of my clothes and sliced into the flesh beneath.
"Aren't you a smart kid?" Ibiki's voice was a cold rasp that echoed off the imaginary prison gate.
"Wait... wait... I will tell you. Just stop hurting me!" I screamed, the sound tearing from my throat. I was hyperventilating, and utterly unmoored. I didn't understand why he wasn't stopping. In the stories, when you gave up, the torture ended. But Ibiki's eyes remained flat dead, and entirely unbothered by my begging.
"Don't worry. No one will ever know a thing," Ibiki murmured, leaning in close. His breath smelled of stale coffee and tobacco even in this imaginary prison. "So, tell me. What is a kid who isn't even a genin doing on a mission? Sightseeing?"
Before the last word fully left his mouth, with a sickening twist of the wires, he wrenched my hand entirely out of its socket, tearing muscle and tendon away from my torso. The pain blinded me.
"Why are you doing this?!" I sobbed, my voice cracking into a pathetic shriek. "Let me answer... you dumbass!"
Ibiki paused, feigning a look of theatrical surprise. "You know, I was just curious myself. I have never actually tortured someone your age before. I wanted to see what it would take to hear you scream. My apologies if it came too suddenly."
Every single nerve ending in my body hurts. The agony was crushing my chest, making it impossible to draw a clean breath. Yet, through the shock, the desperate instinct to survive pushed me to speak. "I was eager... I wanted to join the mission," I wheezed out, blood bubbling at the corner of my lips. "I wanted to prove that my training was worth it. That I was ready to be a shinobi."
Ibiki chuckled, a low sound that quickly grew into a mocking roar. "Oh boy, you really know absolutely nothing about being a shinobi, do you? I think I really need to show you what it actually means. Don't worry... this might hurt a little."
Ibiki shattered and maimed all the other three of my limbs, reducing them to useless broken appendages. I couldn't move an inch. I was entirely pinned and reduced to a hollow vessel that could do nothing but scream until my vocal cords tore.
"Okay my eardrums hurt now, let's get to our main objective," Ibiki said, casually wiping a stray splatter of my blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "Silly me, forgetting the important stuff."
He leaned over his scarred face casting a long, monstrous shadow across my vision. "I hear from Minato and Lady Tsunade that you are the true mastermind behind the Kumo. It seems your little friend Darui messed up and relieved your identity. Tell me... do you hate him?"
"No... no, I... I don't hate him," I gasped out, my vision blurring at the edges. "I willingly... I chose to be captured. It was my decision."
"Are you sure about that?" Ibiki asked, his voice dripping with a mocking sadness. "Because he should be safe and sound right now, back home, enjoying the peaceful life you handed him on a silver platter. While you are stuck in the dark here with me."
"Just ask me the questions and finish it," I pleaded, my spirit entirely broken. "Please."
Ibiki flipped through a small leather-bound notepad, his eyes scanning the pages. "See, I have been doing my own research for the past few years. I've been looking into how Killer Bee and Kushina suddenly vanished from the battlefield without a trace. And a suspiciously similar scenario just happened with Kakashi. What kind of secret technique does Kumo possess that makes a feat like that possible?"
My brain was short-circuiting. The sheer volume of pain made it impossible to string a coherent thought together. "I don't know... I already told that old lady Tsunade! I know nothing about a person like that!"
"Is that so?" Ibiki's expression hardened. The steel wires coiled upward, wrapping tightly around my throat, cutting off my air supply. "Let's try that one more time."
With a sudden violent jerk, the world spun. There was a horrific ripping sound, and my perspective plummeted to the floor. He had separated my head from what little was left of my torso.
~~
I snapped my eyes open, a gasp tearing from my throat as I woke up.
My heart was hammering against my ribs. I was drenched in sweat and my breathing was shallow and ragged. I frantically looked around the room, swallowing hard as the familiar, dark contours of my bedroom came into focus.
It was still the middle of the night. I remembered, with a small wave of relief, that I had started sleeping in a separate room from my mother for a while now.
I needed water. My throat felt like sandpaper.
I willed my body to sit up, but nothing happened. A cold dread flooded my veins. My body wouldn't move. It was the exact same, hollow terrifying feeling of paralysis from that time... the sensation of having lost all my limbs. I couldn't believe it was back. I thought I had conquered this. I thought I was past the trauma.
I just need to fucking get some water, I thought fiercely, trying to force a spark of life into my muscles.
This was one of those moments where I desperately wished I could speak. If I could just cry out, someone would come. But no matter how hard I strained, no words came out.
~~
A/N: So here we are a nightmare episode which I thought would be obvious. Ibiki just want to torture Kaien because he has never tortured anyone this young, so he is excited. As repulsive as he is, it is all the MC character development.
And the Killer Bee and Kushina disappearing incident happened in the last war, when Kushina was captured Renga teleports both of them to Kumo for safety.
Upto 20 Advance chapters available @ patreon.com/aizenDuchiha0