Naruto: The Outsider's Resolve-Chapter 10.4 (370)

Deep inside Taiheiyo Evergreen Forest, Takuma and Krait hid in the bushes as they stared at a large hatch obscured by the forestry just enough to hide it from anyone who didn't know what they were looking for.

"That chakra signature is coming from here?" asked Takuma as he looked around and felt that the density of trees in the area was almost double that of the forest average everywhere else, as though they were planted to cover up the location. It made sense why the investigations didn't find anything. They were truly deep in the forest without any indication of the presence of a man-made building.

Krait nodded as his chakra-sensing worms wriggled all over his hand. "There's a structure in there, and seeing that the worms can't enter, it's either made from concrete, metal or reinforced with Earth Release ninjutsu. But the source is definitely coming from whatever is underneath that hatch."

Takuma weaved hand seals before stamping his hand into the ground.

Earth Release: Earth Tremor Sense Jutsu

He closed his eyes and felt the response from the chakra laced with seismic vibrations come back to him. He breathed out in surprise when he roughly felt the outline of a humongous underground bunker beneath his feet.

"What do you think is in there?" he asked after communicating his findings.

"Well, we can only find it by looking inside. Double-check your equipment, we are going in there," said Krait as he began to check his weapon and equipment packs.

"There's no need for us to go in there." Takuma stopped him. "I know the Shadow Clone Jutsu. We should send one in there as a scout." It was made for reconnaissance; it would be the first time he used the jutsu for its intended purpose.

Krait was silent for a moment before nodding. "Let's do that. I'll also send some of my insects in for more coverage."

"Smart move," Takuma nodded. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com

He weaved hand seals and felt the two energies rush out of his body. A puff of smoke later, a shadow clone stood beside him. Krait held his hand out, and several bugs flew out of his hand and settled on the clone's clothes all over his body.

The clone flinched and took a step back. When he realised that the bugs were only sitting on his clothes, he stopped and apologised to Krait.

"It's okay," Krait accepted the apology. He craned his neck, and a blue bug flew out from his collar to the hatch. "If that lands on the hatch, there might be fūinjutsu on the door, but if it comes back, you are clear to enter."

They waited for a minute before the blue fly returned.

"I'm off then," said the clone as he cautiously walked to the large hatch, a double-door entrance the size of a queen-sized bed. There was a smaller hatch in the bigger panels. He pulled it and wasn't surprised to see that it was locked. The obstacle was quickly resolved with an augmented stomp, which snapped the locking mechanism and bent the thick metal panel.

It was time to find out what was inside the unknown bunker in the middle of a forest.

———

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Takuma climbed down the dark flight of stairs under the hatch. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the light pouring from the broken entrance helped. The stairs were as broad as the full hatch and went down at least two to three floors before he reached a corridor illuminated with dim green bulbs.

Seeing the lit bulbs made him believe there were more than chakra-enabled beasts in there.

He approached the double doors at the end of the corridor and squatted under the see-through glass panels. He took out a small mirror, held it up to look through the reflection, and saw another corridor—this time illuminated in normal white light—split into two directions. More importantly, he saw a room with a large glass window with a view of the corridor, resembling a typical guard station.

The double doors were locked. Fortunately, the chair in the guard station was unoccupied. He quickly got to picking the lock, which was only accessible from the other side, but that wasn't a problem for him. A minute later, he felt the mechanism click and the doors opened.

He hurried inside and briskly walked to the edge of the corridor. There was no knowing when a guard might return to the office. He looked around the corners, and when he saw no one, he quickly went into the station for any clues.

He found a guard duty list with around twenty names in a drawer. It was a bigger number than he would've guessed as hidden facilities in the middle of nowhere needed a smaller crew than a place in the middle of a city as the facility's remote location did most of the protection. The great number of people who knew of the facility not only posed a security risk, but the facility being in a remote area was a problem from a supply and logistical standpoint in terms of keeping them fed.

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Whoever established the facility valued it enough to put in a larger crew. It made Takuma wonder what was happening in the bunker.

There was nothing more of importance in the guard station, so he moved inwards into the bunker. The interior was brutalist, solely built for function. As he turned around the corner, he noticed one of Krait's insects took flight and went in the opposite direction. He wished for its success before proceeding forward, only to instantly run into a problem when he heard footsteps coming from around the corner.

He put his hand near his weapon pouch, ready to retrieve and strike out with a kunai at a moment's notice as he silently backed away and turned around the corner to hide himself. He kept his ears sharpened while looking around for options. He saw air vents, but they were too small to fit even his smaller teenage body.

He stopped around a corner, ready to slash out, but the guard didn't turn into his corner and instead kept on walking. He glanced at the guard's back and saw a man dressed in the dark grey version of Leaf's standard gear without the flak jacket. It didn't surprise him because the design was reliable, field-tested, and mass-produced. The many contractors who supplied Hidden Leaf also sold it to others with modifications like colour.

With his heart thumping in his chest, Takuma made his way through the bunker. Each step was tense because he did not know what was around the corner. He found himself at a door with a glass panel. Inside, two men in white doctor's coats are standing around a gigantic moose with majestic antlers on a metal operating table. The megafauna was bigger than a specially gaudy pickup truck. The two men seemed to be taking various samples from the animal.

He heard footsteps and immediately moved to avoid getting caught. He moved deeper into the bunker and saw more rooms with more animals. However, it was immediately apparent that they weren't normal. He saw mice the size of small dogs, a wasp the size of a calf, and a massive wolf with two tails. It couldn't be more evident that these were chakra-enabled beasts—which might explain the inhuman chakra the sensory-nin had sensed.

As he had expected from seeing the duty list, guards were stationed around the bunker. All of them were lax as they sat on stools against the wall, which signalled that the bunker hadn't faced any danger in a long time—but that still presented its challenges as their stationary presence locked out routes from him. Fortunately, Krait's bug explored where he couldn't.

However, the next room he saw made him stop in his tracks. He saw a man lying on the operating table. Blood and gore dripped down from the edges of the table as the flesh from the right side of the man's body was stripped clean, leaving the untouched bones in view—it didn't look like the work of a human and it seemed that the body's flesh turned into sludge and simply slid off.

Takuma had seen his fair share on the battlefield; he had inflicted horrible things on people in the name of interrogation, but the sight before him made him tremble with horror. The two men in white coats, stained with blood splatter, showed no surprise or disgust in their eyes as they talked and observed the corpse.

It was human experimentation.

He couldn't watch anymore and walked away, but the sight remained seared into his eyes, which made his focus slip for a moment as he turned around a corner and froze up when he saw a guard sitting a few steps away from him. The guard was reading a book and had his head partially turned away from him, but not enough to be sure if Takuma would go unnoticed. Chaos sparked within him as he was torn between two instinctual options—sneak back behind the corner or attack the guard—causing him to freeze momentarily.

The guard slightly shifted his posture, which was enough for fight to win over flight, and he rushed forward with chakra gathering in his palm. The guard finally looked at him, but it was too late as Takuma's augmented fist socked him across the face, knocking him out on impact.

"Shit," Takuma whispered when he saw teeth fly out of the man's mouth. He had made the punch too strong and shattered the jaw too severely. There was already blood on the floor. He picked up his unconscious victim and dragged him to the nearest dark room to hide the body.

He slipped back into the corridor with the guard's ripped pant sleeve and used the water canteen sitting by the stool to wipe the blood. He frantically cleaned because even though the guards were stationary, the experimenting scientists could step out. Fortunately, he could clean it enough before anyone showed up because each encounter increased his chance of getting caught.

Back inside the room, he stashed the guard into the innermost corner.

The room seemed to be a document archive, making it the perfect location to find out more about what was happening in the bunker. He went through files, and most of them didn't make any sense to him because of the scientific jargon, mathematical formulae, and tables of data. However, he had read his fair share of research literature to better understand his ninjutsu arsenal and know where to look if he wanted a simple overview. He looked at the titles, introduction, and conclusion sections to piece together some coherent information, bringing cold sweat and chills down his spine.

He was right. They were doing human experimentation. They were studying chakra-enabled beasts and how to implant unique qualities seen in those animals into human subjects to create augmented humans. The research text was sterile as seen in academic literature, and that's what made him feel uncomfortable when he saw how they treated humans and animals like test subjects by stripping everything that made them living beings.

"...Orochimaru?"

His eyes widened when he saw the Snake Sannin's name pop up in one of the reports. He stopped to read the section more carefully and found that the research they were doing in the bunker was a fork of some past research Orochimaru had done.

Was this one of his illegal research labs? Hidden Leaf had done a widespread purge and confiscation of his assets when he fled and turned traitor, which included many of his research labs spread throughout the country, and while that fact was paraded in the news as a success, anyone in the know understood that they possibly couldn't have gotten everything.

This was such a massive discovery that he couldn't help but pause to think about the ramifications and how they would report it. But as he was thinking about it, he was suddenly hit by blaring alarm bells. He looked out and saw the corridors bathed in harsh alternating red and white light.

Takuma cursed as he stuffed a couple of files he had read into his clothes and rushed out of the room, only to have the door kicked in and a tagged kunai thrown inside. He was a moment too late to realise that the kunai wasn't aimed at him and what that meant.

It was a flash tag.

Takuma hurried to close his eyes, but it was too late as harsh light pierced his eyes. He instinctively began to weave hand seals as he saw vague shadows of figures he assumed to be the guards pouring into the room.