"Then we'll save her. Not for her sake…" Kimimaro's eyes narrowed, his smirk gone, replaced by something like a blade honed to stillness. "…but because she belongs to me now."
'Of course it reaches from afar. How else do you explain why Side Branch dogs never rebel during missions or wars? If freedom were possible just by leaving the compound, more would have simply vanished long ago. No… the seal was built to hunt them even across nations.'
Still, the fact stung.
He had layered suppressive seals into this hideout before, systems he thought would also mute her curse-mark's reach.
So, even if he had guessed about that before, he thought that Emi would still be out of reach.
Yet it blazed here anyway, a beacon straight into her brain.
Either the seal didn't need to locate her at all and simply obeyed the Main Branch's will… or worse, the activation itself could ripple without limits.
Kimimaro's jaw clenched. "This place might already be compromised," he thought grimly.
"We may have to burn this hideout and move the cult elsewhere. Later. First, she lives."
Ashina's voice pressed through the pendant, firm, instructive. "Fortunately, the intensity is much lower than if a Main Branch member activating the command stood near her. That buys us time. Gather as many hands as you can, and Reika especially. I sense this energy, and it is strange. Ethereal, not chakra, but carrying the Hyūga's resonance. To counter it, we must build a seal directly on her forehead to devour that stream before it reaches the brain. But that alone won't be enough. You must also mask her dōjutsu signature, erase its unique signal entirely. Then keep the two seals rotating, suppressing and masking in cycles as they would obviously not be enough in just one go."
Kimimaro's eyes narrowed. "Hn. A dual-layered cage to counter their cage. Fitting."
The cultists moved fast soon, though even Saya's grin had faltered into something like a grimace at the sight of Emi writhing.
Reika knelt by her side at once, her voice clipped and cold.
"Draw the base. I'll hold the outer pattern."
Several Jashinists, clumsy but trained to at least trace under guidance, rushed to prepare ink and talismans.
Saya stood by, jaw tight, watching Emi convulse, blood and spit running down her chin.
Even she, who laughed at most suffering, muttered low, "Tch… she doesn't even look human anymore."
Kimimaro crouched, pressing Emi's shoulder flat with the heel of his palm.
"Restrain her. Don't let her thrash, or she'll scatter the seal lines."
Two cultists grabbed her arms, another pinned her legs, and a gag was forced between her teeth to stifle her ragged screams.
Tears streaked her face; her nails had already torn skin along her own forehead.
Kimimaro's gaze didn't waver. "Perhaps they can't kill her outright from this distance," he thought grimly, "but that only means the agony lasts longer. A slow execution. A reminder of the leash."
"Faster," Ashina's voice cut like a whip. "Every moment is nerve lost. Begin the first spiral, feed the chakra into the nodes. Rotate suppression — erase — suppression again. Don't stop. Not until I say."
Kimimaro's hands moved at once, steady and deliberate, even as the girl convulsed beneath them, her scream muffled but still piercing.
This was actually the most brutal scene he had seen in this life, head-on.
Reika's fingers traced counter-lines in perfect parallel.
Around them, even the bloodthirsty cultists faltered, instinctual pity in their eyes as they witnessed pain few mortals could comprehend.
The question hung over them all, heavier than her shrieks.
"Will we finish before she burns out completely?"
The seals flickered, their lines trembling under the violent feedback of foreign, yet familiar chakra.
Emi's body convulsed harder, blood seeping from her bitten lip around the gag.
For a moment, Kimimaro thought it would not be enough.
Then an idea struck him.
His head snapped up.
Yeah, what was the most overbearing power and energy currently in his own arsenal that can theoretically defy and cancel out anything in existence?
The Yin-Yang release.
"Saya, quickly — summon the chalice!" Kimimaro barked. "Begin the transfusion. Now."
Saya's eyes widened, then narrowed with recognition. She didn't argue.
She tore open a pack at her waist, pulling free a giant silvered vessel etched with Jashin's mark, its rim already blackened by countless rituals, through a distinctive-looking scroll.
With practiced hand seals, she activated the sacrificial essence they'd harvested and had in stock now, letting it simmer inside the chalice eerily.
The fluid within shimmered with a strange and dangerous polarity, Yin-Yang balanced and unstable.
Kimimaro pressed his palm against Emi's chest, directing the transfer through his own commands, alongside Saya.
The essence surged into her body fast, not healing, not curing, but acting like a dam, negating the seal's corrosive flow more, long enough to buy them precious moments.
The screaming slowed, her convulsions dulling into ragged spasms.
The glow on her forehead dimmed fraction by fraction, no longer searing white but a dull red.
"Keep feeding it," Kimimaro ordered flatly, while his other hand etched another spiral of suppression seals across her temple.
Reika worked opposite him, cold efficiency cutting through her usually detached mask.
Together, they layered suppression, then absorption, node after node filling with that strange foreign energy until the glow finally guttered out after hours passed.
Silence.
Emi slumped, her chest still rising faintly.
Her eyes rolled back white, Byakugan dormant.
The gag slid loose as her jaw went slack.
She was alive, but motionless.
"Coma," Kimimaro muttered, his gaze hardening.
He immediately shifted, placing both palms on her forehead and then on her chest.
Green light shimmered to life, his Yang-infused medical techniques knitting tissue, stimulating blood flow, and stabilizing her pulse.
The cultists around them shifted uneasily, muttering until Kimimaro cut them off with a cold look. "Enough. She lives. Return to your posts." His tone left no room for questions.
Reika lingered behind him, arms folded.
Her voice was steady but softer than usual. "How is she?"
Kimimaro didn't look back. "She'll survive. With enough healing, her body will recover." His jaw tightened as his chakra pushed through her nerves. "Her brain… that is another matter."
The thought festered. His fingers trembled faintly before he clenched them into fists.
He had nearly lost her, not just a useful asset, not just a vessel of secrets and potential power, but his possession.
His own little 'pet', that made his days more lively during the last few days, his only personal entertainment and venting avenue.
The anger simmered cold in his chest, bone-deep.
"I will not have what's mine toyed with," Kimimaro thought, his green eyes cold.
"Main Branch, you've etched your crime into my ledger. One day, I'll carve the return payment into yours."
Ashina's voice in the pendant was cool, analytical.
"I think the suppression seals finally reached a threshold. Her signature can't be detected anymore. I was right: the Caged Bird works on the principle that every Byakugan carries its own distinct energy. Block hers, and their greater power source can no longer pinpoint and attack. But listen well, Kimimaro. If she survives and you want her Byakugan functional in the future, then you must prepare more absorption seals. Stronger, more advanced ones, with greater capacity. Otherwise, every time she activates her dōjutsu, that hidden current will try to flow again — and if it does, it will tear her apart."
Kimimaro's gaze rested on Emi, now drenched in sweat, her face pale against the bedding of the hideout. For a long moment, he said nothing, then exhaled through his nose.
"Maybe," he muttered, "they'll stop on their own. After all, we already have samples of that energy sealed away. I doubt the Main Branch would keep pouring something so ethereal and secretive just to crush a single girl. Even so…"
His hand flexed, bones twitching under the skin of his forearm. "I'll make those seals myself from now on. My craftsmanship is sharper than dozens of clumsy hands. Today, we didn't have the luxury of time. Next time, we will."
He looked down at Emi's limp frame, his face hard to read. "What I'm not sure of is whether we were too late. If her brain cooked too much, if she wakes up broken…" He trailed off, jaw tightening. "Then she's useless to me."
For a man who purposefully cultivated a heart of stone, the words felt like iron in his mouth.
It's not that he didn't have empathy; it was obviously impossible, since every human had it, it's just that he kept it locked away, convinced it was weakness on the road to the summit.
Yet the sight of Emi convulsing under invisible supernatural torture, the like he had never seen before, in both lives, or thought possible, had pressed something inside him, something he hadn't wanted touched.
His eyes narrowed, conflicted. "It's like a toy," he thought darkly. "Even if I play a bit rough or casual, it's still mine. If someone else breaks it in front of me, it isn't just a loss. It's disrespect. A spit in the owner's face."
His hand hovered a moment over her brow, the faint warmth of his chakra brushing against all kinds of unpleasant-looking seal tags she had there now.
"Survive, girl," he muttered.
"Or I'll have to start looking for another toy… and I don't like replacing what's already mine."