Breaking Bad

“Agh, don’t you know that’s a bad habit?” Saturn Sentobi whined as he held the old man by his long greyed hair and gritted his teeth trying to suppress an outward expression of his sheer frustration. It had been a while since the rebel was taken into custody by an odd trio of Kumon shinobi for causing trouble on the Main Street, voicing out harsh criticisms about the ruling dictator Noboru Kaito to whom Saturn and all loyal Kumon shinobi had pledged allegiance. The old man was among one of the three protestors who were arrested and taken in for questioning by Saturn along with the Genjutsu using kunoichi from the Omigawa clan and the Kaguya clansman who wielded lightning in his bones. The rebel was now bound to a wooden chair in the center of a dark room, his wrists tied behind his back by thick brown ropes. He was blindfolded and his legs were bound by a rope of the same thickness and texture. His jaw parted to reveal half of his bleeding red tongue, the other half he had swallowed.

This was supposed to be a simple job for the Fortuneteller. He was to read the mind of the rebel to investigate his true intentions, and to find out which faction of bandits and bad actors was backing his bold riot on Main Street. He was to simply place his hand on the man’s body to extract the information that was needed, and he could report what he learned to the authorities so that he may be compensated for the mission. In this way, there was no need for harsh violence in the act of interrogation. Simply extracting the intel from the culprit was Saturn’s specialty. Thus he confidently volunteered for the mission ahead of his peers. Yet he had made a fatal error. He had been careless. One of the two others that were apprehended with the old man - two women one young and one older - was previously interrogated in the same room. He had been careless when he placed his soft hand on the younger woman's forehead to read her mind using his niche mind reading abilities. In doing so, he had made the mistake of revealing the nature of his powers to the older man that was captured along with them. From the two female conspirators, Saturn only learned that the younger was solely influenced by the two older culprits, one of whom being the older man in question. The only way to gain any more information was to check the man he had carelessly left for last. In his panic, he had sent the older woman off to a different room, to be dealt with by one of his peers with whom he had arrested her on the main street during the riot. Unfortunately for him, the older man was a tough character who put up a strong fight. The young girl was shortly taken to a prison facility by the authorities, and the older woman was handed off to Saturn's comrade, and Saturn was left alone with the third and final conspirator. It was then, right as he had begun to read his mind, when the man did the unthinkable.

As Saturn placed his hand on the man’s chest and asked him gently to remain still, he started to learn something that could be fruitful for his investigation. There were larger players in the game who had influenced the man who had inspired many others like him to protest with him. He had backing from a specific group of organized bandits. This was priceless information to the Genin who wished to report this to the authorities in order to contain the brewing rebellion before it could escalate and bring forth events of larger magnitude that could not only tarnish the image of the active Raikage, but also cause civil unrest among the Kumon citizens. Upon learning this, Saturn’s heart rate increased and he had let out a louder exhalation. It was a breath that had alerted the man to his actions. In retaliation, he chomped his teeth down on his very own tongue, inflicting a mind numbing amount of pain to himself to the point where Saturn could no longer read his mind past the pain that he had introduced to it. As he attempted to repeatedly read his mind over and over, the seasoned veteran repeatedly grinded what we left of his tongue on his incisors, tickling his brain with sensations of pain that trapped the mind reader in a labyrinth of ignorance in his reluctance to peek past the veil of the gross, gory pictures painted by the hostage wilfully. What was more was that he had even swallowed his own tongue to defiantly attempt to refuse the interrogator’s will. It was a disgusting situation that the mind reader wanted no part of, but he was deeply invested. If he could not produce any fruitful information from his wild gambit, he could be prosecuted for ill treating this prisoner while holding this man hostage as he was after all the Genin’s own responsibility after taking up the mission.

A glass pane shielded the room from a hallway outside, from which one could peer inside into the room. It was impossible however to peer outside from within the confinements of the dark interrogation room. Saturn was beginning to run out of ideas. The mission was on the brink of failure. The gruesome sight before him was a sight for sore eyes, but the seasoned Genin was used to seeing such things. Although it was not a very pleasant sight - far from it - he had bore witness to incidents much more gory and unsightly. Yet, he was still troubled and disgusted at the sight of ungodly amounts of blood and the disfigured tongue that flopped in the old man’s foaming mouth. It reminded him of a certain pirate that foamed in his mouth in the same way at Mikadzuki Beach when his body was dragged to the bottom of the sea by a ferocious kunoichi known as the Cetacean Sage, dubbed the whale of shepherds by the Fortuneteller. That vision aboard Bartholomew’s ship had trained Saturn’s stomach to resist from churning all the way, but he could only resist so much.

As the old man’s tastebuds flipped and turned in his bloody mouth, mocking Saturn, he cringed in response, yanking the man’s hair aside before grabbing his shirt and pushing him to the floor while still bound to the chair. Upon hitting the floor and bouncing off it, the man would erupt in a manic laughter, trying to unnerve the Genin who tried his best to put up a tough act. “Cut it out, old man! I’m trying to be nice, I’m good cop, bitch, this is Kumogakure! You’re gonna meet bad cop next, you scum!” Saturn vowed before planting his foot on the man’s rib, choosing not to stomp on it whereas he was absolutely certain without a doubt that his bad cop would have done so without any remorse for the immobilised rebel. Leaving the old man on the floor, Saturn stepped out from the dark room and slammed its door shut before taking out a cigarette from the box he carried with him. Through the clear glass, he could see the man from the hallway, but it was not a two way window. Sparking his cigarette, he cussed and cursed, trying to come up with a way to make the suspect talk. With his psychic abilities greatly hindered by the man’s unyielding mental, he was now forced to resort to the ways of the old.

Three days had already passed since the stubborn rebel bit off his own tongue in defiance of Saturn’s mind reading. The clock was ticking. Having taken the initiative to carry out this mission, the Genin could not afford to tarnish his image and hurt his flawless record by reporting a mission failure. The rebel’s confidants who may have infiltrated the Kumon authorities may further come to his aid upon learning his situation and pose a much greater threat to the Genin if his interrogation were to be dragged on for much longer. If only he had taken some extra care in separating the three rebels before using his techniques, this situation could have perhaps been avoided. Now, he was in a race against time. There was no time to dwell on regrets.

When the door into the chamber opened again, it was a dark haired shinobi who emerged into the small room. Upon grabbing the chair on the floor, he used all of his might to heave the bound man into the nearest wall along with the chair, immediately breaking off one of its legs before it fell back down into the floor causing the man to cough up more blood and stick out his flopping deformed tongue. Immediately after, he would place a cloth on top of the old man’s face and pour water directly on top, waterboarding him for ten seconds before pulling off his blindfold. The rebel was now staring at a man of relatively tall stature and slim build with a spiky head of dark black hair. His eyes were a unique blue/green combination of teal and he wore his village headband tied around his neck in such a way that the village symbol plate is concealed under his hoodie. His clothes were dark; he wore a dark blue jacket with gold buttons and a large collared area worn over a shirt and matching pants that go to his shins. His shoes were black with exposed purple socks that came up to meet the pants. “I’m bad cop, bitch! You ready to talk?”

What followed was a brutal interrogation that did not shy away from cruelty. It was uncharacteristic of Saturn to employ such methods but after three days and three nights, he was growing desperate. When the rebel - as expected - did not cave, and instead spat onto the floor, the shinobi kicked him in the nose in a fit of rage and slammed the cloth back into his face before pouring another bucket over it, gritting his teeth as the man flailed and growled. Lifting the wet cloth veil, he then took out his metal flask and grabbed the rebel’s jaw before he poured his dark rum onto his severed tongue, emptying the bottle fully and shoving the cloth into the man’s mouth to make him swallow as he winced in pain. The alcohol was a strong blend that he had been using to cope while he carried out his interrogation. It was strong enough, for example, to make the man’s crushed tastebuds burn although it did also have a cauterising effect that could perhaps help Saturn when making another attempt to read his mind beyond the pain that he had instilled into every fibre of his being. When the rebel spat out the cloth in his mouth, the shinobi stuffed it right back inside before drawing his kunai and slashing open a diagonal slit on his chest. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do, scum.” He stated before pouring from a bottle of salt water directly into the fresh wound making it burn and churn. When he finally let go of the rebel, his three legged chair fell over, causing him to land on the floor with a hard thud. The shinobi then planted his shoe on the man’s chest to flip him over to take a look. “Talk, old man!” He had fallen unconscious.

It would prove to be another fruitless endeavour. After three more hours of questioning, the man emerged back out into the hallway from the interrogation room having learned absolutely nothing beyond what he had already learned on the very first day of questioning. All he knew was that the hardy rebel had backing from a larger faction of dissatisfied bandits, but he was unable to learn anything beyond this - there was no useful information to present to the authorities to justify the brutal interrogation that he had committed to over the course of the last three days. As he lit up another cigarette, his transformation technique deactivated to reveal that his ‘bad cop’ was none other than Saturn himself in disguise. As he let out a puff of smoke in his frustrated exhalation, he wanted to pull his unkempt blonde hair out. Calling for help at this point would mean accepting defeat. He had nothing to gain from calling one of the superiors to aid him in his mission. Not only would he have to show his hand and finally reveal the nature of his abilities to his familiar compatriot whomever that may be if he were to make the call, but he would be labelled as a failure and possibly punished for hindering the progress of the mission. The man in the room after all was far less useful without his tongue. If Saturn had not revealed the nature of his power to the rebel, he may have still kept his tongue and been able to reveal useful information to a more skilled interrogator. He would be even less useful however, if he were to die from starvation as he had refused to eat thus far.

Stubbing the half smoked cigarette into the floor, Saturn letup another disgruntled sigh before gathering himself and grabbing a chair then barging back into the room. This time, it was good cop with a small paper bag. Immediately, he took the folding table that leaned against the wall and set it up in front of the dismantled chair and the cursing man on the floor. Lifting his chair up as he struggled against his bounds and vowed to kill Saturn, he propped the broken leg underneath the chair and affixed it, temporarily holding the chair up. Then, he placed the bag on the table and took out its contents, setting up two plates one for himself and the other for his captive. Then, he took out a steak and a burger, setting the burger up for the old man and taking the steak on his own plate. “I would fix your chair, but I’m hoping that I do not have to detain you here for too much longer.” He spoke politely as though he was a different man. In response, the hostage spat again on the floor. “Basht’d, zjhat wash jou earyiah, I chknow!”

“Look, you can believe whatever you want to believe.” Saturn stated, pointing his knife at the man using an assertive body language gesture that he had read about somewhere. Although his words sounded like gibberish, Saturn had spent enough time with his captive to make out what he was trying to say. “I’m a nice guy. Look, I got you a MckumoChicken. There’s some really good food around in Cloud Country, if only you’d look beyond your… past… misfortunes..” He stated before cutting off a portion of his steak and chomping down on it. Pointing his knife at the captive again from his passive seated stance in a chair of his own across from him, Saturn continued, “But instead, you choose to dwell on the past, and serve bad actors who only seek to cause unrest and chaos in the town.” He took another bite from his meal. “Oh, what’s that? You can’t eat because of your tongue? Can I have some then? Alright.” Saturn slid the captive plate over to his side of the table and took a massive chomp off of the chicken burger. “Mmm. Delicious.” He commented, licking his fingers then taking a sip from his hot black coffee. “Coffee?” He offered, but only received another gross spitball in response.

“Listen, neither of us wants to be here. I’m not going to say without a shed of a doubt that the Eleventh will spare your life, but if you cooperate with me now and help me find who’s behind this movement, we could perhaps come to a silent agreement.” He spoke with poise as he chomped down on the burger and the steak in alternate bites. Taking another sip of his coffee, he offered the man a smoke, which he obliged. Placing the smoke in the man’s sore lip, Saturn lit it up for his captive. “If you lead me to the hideout, I could retrieve a limb from one of the conspirators and we could perhaps fake your death. There are medics all over the world who could easily fix your tongue too.” Saturn cleverly proposed an idea and immediately witnessed a glimmer of hope in the captive’s eyes. To him, that was a sign that the mission was not yet lost. It meant that the stubborn man still had something to live for. Perhaps a deal could be made to learn the location of the hideout that he clearly knew.

“So, is that a yes? A perhaps, maybe?” Saturn pressed the issue, and the man kept his head down. “Who is it? A wife? A child? Someone is waiting for you at home, isn’t that right, Zeryusu?” The two shared a long moment of silence only briefly interrupted by the Genin’s loud slurping of his black coffee. He even took the time to ash the man’s cigarette for him before he conceded in a slight nod. Another silence ensued as Saturn finished his meal and wiped his mouth with a tablecloth. His face was heavily stubbled with dark blonde hair from the nights of work that he had to put in. “A deal? You want to make a fucking deal?” He finally snapped. Under the table, he kicked the broken leg of his captive’s chair, causing him to fall to the floor once again and hit his head. Throwing a bag over the beaten man's skull, Saturn performed one technique after another in a moment of bold ingenuity. The man was drunk and beaten, his will had begun to fade and his strength to resist Saturn's tactics was depleted.

First, the Fortuneteller summoned a clone to hold the man's chair up while he then used Mind Body Switch Technique to infiltrate the body of the prisoner. When he entered the old man's mind, he could feel the excruciating pain left behind by his severed tongue, and inflicted by Saturn's own gruesome interrogation methods. Wincing as he persevered, he was in awe at the man's will to fight and stay conscious for most of his beating. The shadow clone who held his chair up, planted its hands on the skull of the hijacked body of Zeryusu the rebel and the traitor and simultaneously, Saturn used the technique known as Sensory Deprivation from his new vessel, making him unable to sense or feel while information was fully extracted from his skull by the clone. When the complex procedure was finished, the man's body was released and he immediately began to struggle in his constraints, demanding to know what Saturn had learned. On the table, on a piece of paper, the clone had written down a location in the Mountains, where the rebels had established a hideout. It was a mission success.

Clutching the piece of paper, Saturn walked back out into the hallway and lit up a third cigarette, looking around for Meika, the kunoichi who had done most of the productive work in their preceding mission together when they had arrested the man and two of his fellow conspirators. Meika was tasked with interrogating the older woman, and Saturn wished to exchange notes to see if their intel lined up and if there was more to be learned about the group that they were dealing with. Under the surface, Saturn was relieved that the man had bitten off his own tongue. He was the only one who truly figured it out. The psychic had managed to hide the nature of his abilities from every person he had encountered thus far in his journey into shinobihood, and he intended to keep it that way.

In brief, Saturn started a tame questioning session with the arrested old male rebel that turned into a CIA style interrogation that lasted three days before he finally extracted the location of a hideout used by the bandits that backed the rebel group that was arrested on main street by Saturn, Meika and Ren Kaguya. Saturn then went looking around the facility for Meika who was assigned the older female rebel to interrogate to exchange notes.