Chapter 10: The Sinister Kabuto Yakushi
Inside the freezing Corridor of White Bones, the air was as thick as coagulated blood. Nara Shikamaru leaned against a ghastly white bone wall, every heavy breath a sharp, needle-like sting in the open wounds that covered his body.
He forced down the metallic taste rising in his throat, his dark blue eyes like tempered steel, locked onto the figure before him—Kabuto Yakushi.
"Are you all rested, Shikamaru-kun?" Kabuto's voice was as gentle as ever, a breeze through a forest, creating a horrifying disconnect with the hellish environment he now inhabited. He pushed his round glasses up his nose, the lenses reflecting a cold halo in the eerie green light, obscuring the cold, serpentine calculations swirling in his eyes. "Time is precious, you know. Lord Orochimaru has such high expectations for your 'Shadow Serpent'."
"Cut the crap," Shikamaru's voice was a low, hoarse rasp. He took a sharp breath, suppressing the agony from his wounds as his hands flew through a seal. The last dregs of his chakra, like a lit fuse, surged into the viscous, deep shadow at his feet.
"Shadow Release: Serpent's Glide!"
No afterimage. No warning. Shikamaru's form suddenly collapsed and blurred, melting into a flowing streak of ink darker than night itself. It hugged the cold ground, moving with an unnervingly fluid speed as it slithered silently toward Kabuto's flank.
"Oh? Not bad speed," Kabuto said, the same gentle, unchanging smile on his lips, as if watching an amusing show. He didn't even move his feet. Just as the inky serpent was about to touch the hem of his clothes, he casually lifted his right hand. A thin, shimmering film of pale blue chakra, as fine as a cicada's wing yet terrifyingly sharp, instantly coated his fingertips.
The Chakra Scalpel.
Sssshhlick—!
A soft tearing sound, so quiet it was almost inaudible, was enough to make Shikamaru's scalp crawl. Kabuto's hand moved with the precision of a master surgeon, faster than the eye could see. He didn't slash at Shikamaru's body, but with the pinpoint accuracy of a hot knife through butter, he sliced delicately at the edge of the flowing shadow.
"Ghhk—!"
A choked grunt of pure agony erupted from the spot behind Kabuto where Shikamaru's form was just beginning to re-solidify. He felt as if his very soul had been struck by an invisible sledgehammer. His half-materialized body distorted violently, flickering like a bad transmission.
He stumbled into view, his face instantly a deathly white, veins bulging on his forehead as a waterfall of cold sweat poured down his face.
His soul felt like it had been torn. In that instant, Kabuto's impossibly precise Chakra Scalpel hadn't attacked his body; it had directly severed the spiritual line that connected him to his shadow state. The pain of having his spiritual essence ripped apart was far deeper, far more soul-crushing, than any physical wound.
"The essence of your Shadow Release is the temporary assimilation and command of a shadow-plane via your spiritual will and Yin-natured chakra," Kabuto's voice, as calm and clinical as an autopsy report, echoed gently. He slowly lowered his hand, the blue chakra glow fading. "A very clever concept, Shikamaru-kun. Unfortunately, the point of spiritual connection is far too fragile. It's like..." He smiled, and in the green light, it was utterly sinister. "...an exposed nerve bundle on an operating table. The lightest touch is all it takes to make you scream."
Shikamaru was on one knee, his hands pressed to the ground to keep from collapsing completely. His head felt as if it were being repeatedly pierced by red-hot needles, bringing on waves of dizziness and nausea. This seemingly harmless spy... his methods were a hundred times more insidious and venomous than Kimimaro's straightforward physical annihilation.
"Again!" Shikamaru bit down hard on his tongue. The sharp pain and the taste of blood cut through the vertigo. His pupils contracted in pain and fury, burning with a renewed, frantic fire.
"Shadow Release: Shadow Step!"
This time, he chose the shorter-range, more mentally-taxing teleport. His consciousness focused, and his chakra flooded into a narrow patch of shadow on the bone wall to his right. His body vanished. He reappeared almost instantly in the shadow on the wall, five meters away.
However—
"Too slow."
Kabuto's gentle voice was like a leech attached to his very soul, sounding right beside his ear the moment he materialized. He had appeared next to him as if from nowhere, his speed simply unbelievable. His hand, glowing with pale blue chakra, brushed against Shikamaru's side with the light, precise touch of a lover. It wasn't an attack. It was an examination. An injection.
"Ugh!" Shikamaru's body went rigid. A cold, slithering, snake-like foreign chakra instantly invaded his pathways from the point of contact. The chakra had no destructive power, but it was venomously viscous and sluggish, like pouring thick asphalt into a set of high-speed gears. His own chakra, which had been circulating at high speed, suddenly became heavy, stagnant, and unresponsive.
"The chakra pathway nodes are the hubs of power, and also... the most fragile of valves," Kabuto's figure retreated a few steps, explaining patiently, like a teacher. "Just a tiny bit of 'guidance' is all it takes to turn your own power into a set of shackles. Now, how do you feel?"
Shikamaru felt like his body was filled with lead. His chakra moved like sludge, and every attempt to command it sent a tearing, bloating pain through his pathways. He stared at Kabuto, his teeth grinding. Vicious. Venomous. This was a form of combat far more insidious than bone spikes.
"We're not done yet, Shikamaru-kun," Kabuto's smile deepened. He slowly took a small, sealed glass vial from his pouch. Inside, a thick, deep purple liquid roiled with tiny bubbles, emitting a sickeningly sweet and bizarre aroma. "Mental perception training is also very important. After all, your connection to the shadows requires an extremely keen mind, does it not?"
He gently uncorked the vial. Instantly, the sweet, strange scent billowed out like a tangible fog, quickly filling the entire corridor. The aroma hit Shikamaru's nostrils and in the next second, his brain felt like it had been dropped into a wok of boiling oil.
His vision twisted and spun. Kabuto's gentle smile split into countless jeering, demonic faces. The white bone spikes around them seemed to come alive, writhing like giant maggots. The cold floor turned into a bubbling swamp, with rotten hands reaching up to grab his ankles. His ears were filled with shrill, meaningless shrieks and wails.
A genjutsu. An extremely powerful one, delivered through a potent, nerve-acting hallucinogen. Vision, hearing, touch, smell—all of them were hijacked, corrupted, and dragged into a garish, malicious nightmare. The very foundation of his Shadow Release, his perception of the shadow beneath his feet, was thrown into utter chaos.
"Aaaargh!" A wretched scream tore from Shikamaru's throat as he clutched his head.
"Find the 'real' shadow, Shikamaru-kun," Kabuto's voice seemed to drift up from the bottom of a deep well, laced with a cold, echoing malice. "Struggle... in the swamp of illusion. It will be good for training your... mental resistance."
His world was a hell of the senses. He collapsed, curling up and rolling on the floor in agony, every movement causing him to crash into the real bone spikes, which brought fresh, tearing pain that was then infinitely amplified by his twisted senses. It was a never-ending cycle of torment.
Give up? Just sink into this sensory hell until my mind breaks?
No!
Asuma's bloody cigarette. Ino's stubborn tears. Choji's earnest eyes. His father's silent worry. And Kimimaro's ashen face as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood. The images, like red-hot brands, were seared into the deepest part of his soul.
"Re... ality..." Shikamaru gritted out. He stopped trying to fight the illusions. Instead, he plunged his entire consciousness inward, focusing on the one thing the genjutsu couldn't completely distort—the pain of his own body. The tearing agony from Kabuto's chakra disruption. The hot sting of his wounds reopening. The dull ache of his fused bones. These signals, born from his own flesh, were lighthouses in the black, stormy sea of illusion.
Pain... is... the anchor! His eyes snapped open, bloodshot and burning with a frantic clarity.
He ignored the sights and sounds. All of his perception focused inward, locking onto every source of real pain in his body. Using that pain as an anchor, he began to forcibly filter out the corrupted sensory data, peeling away the layers of illusion to find the faint, cold "pulse" of the shadow beneath his feet.
Just then—
Shlick!
A sharp sound cut through the chaos to his left. A real attack. Kabuto's Chakra Scalpel, timed with venomous precision for the exact moment his mind was most vulnerable.
There was no escape.
Or was there?
Shikamaru's eyes flashed. He didn't try to dodge. He compressed all his mental energy and slammed it downward into the shadow he had just barely managed to lock onto.
"Shadow Release: Counter-Scale!"
It wasn't a movement. It was an explosion. The shadow at his feet boiled and erupted. A chaotic, violent, repulsive storm of shadow energy burst outward in all directions. The blast had no physical force, but it was a powerful mental shockwave, an invisible tempest of disruptive energy.
"Hm?" For the first time, Kabuto's gentle smile froze. His Chakra Scalpel, inches from Shikamaru's skin, hit the wall of chaotic energy and faltered. The finely-honed chakra on its edge wavered, almost dissipating. The disruptive effect of his own chakra inside Shikamaru's body was momentarily washed away by the raw power from the shadow-plane.
That instant was all he needed.
"Shadow Release: Serpent's Retreat!"
Under the cover of the shadow explosion, Shikamaru's body collapsed into a distorted, messy blur, thrown backward by the shockwave, slithering across the floor even faster than before. Kabuto's delayed scalpel sliced through the air where he had been, catching only a piece of his tattered shirt.
Ten meters away, Shikamaru solidified, fell to one knee, and vomited a mouthful of blood. The mental backlash was immense, but he was alive. He had torn a hole in Kabuto's perfectly laid trap.
The Corridor of White Bones fell silent.
Kabuto slowly lowered his hand, watching the last wisp of chaotic shadow energy dissipate from his fingertips. He pushed his glasses up his nose, his expression no longer just playful, but now tinged with a heavy thoughtfulness and... the undisguised excitement of a researcher who had just found a priceless specimen.
"Magnificent," Kabuto's voice was still gentle, but for the first time, it held a note of genuine, cold admiration. "Using pain as an anchor to establish your position in reality. Filtering out the illusory interference to lock onto the essence of the shadow. And finally... detonating the shadow energy to create a diversion and escape. A truly astounding display of combat instinct and adaptability, Shikamaru-kun."
He clapped his hands slowly, the sound jarringly loud in the silent hall. "This is no longer a simple Shadow Release..." His gaze, sharp as a scalpel, scanned Shikamaru. "...this is a deeper... defilement and mastery of the shadow. Lord Orochimaru was not mistaken about you."
He paused, as if listening to an unseen command. A moment later, his smile widened as he produced several more vials from his pouch, each a different color and marked with a dangerous symbol.
"It seems the ordinary methods of 'care' are no longer sufficient for your rate of growth," Kabuto said, his voice filled with a chilling anticipation. "For the next lessons, we'll need to... increase the 'dosage'. Your mental resistance, your chakra resilience, and your absolute control of the shadow in the midst of chaos... all require a much deeper level of tempering."
He swirled the dangerous concoctions, their sweet, acrid, and rotten scents beginning to mix in the air.
"I hope you can last a little longer, Shikamaru-kun," Kabuto smiled, as if inviting a guest to tea. "I am very eager to see what sort of... twisted and powerful form your shadow will ultimately be forged into."
Shikamaru pushed himself to his feet, his body screaming in protest. Blood dripped from his chin. He looked at the dangerous vials in Kabuto's hands, at the cold, greedy light behind his glasses. He felt the fear, but beneath it was a will that had been forged in hell, colder and more stubborn than ever before.
He said nothing. He just stared at Kabuto, his dark blue eyes burning with an unquenchable fire.
Bring it on.