[rp log] Broken Memories [closed to Asuka and Yuugao]
[[takes place two days after Yuugao's unfortunate double date...]]
Just another mission. Yuugao kept himself absolutely still in the traitor’s apartment. In Fukuoda Ritsuko’s apartment. His gaze lowered for a moment and he could see her in his mind’s eye. His captain had known that they’d been classmates in the academy. Besides, Yuugao was good at this and Asuka was capable of getting the chuunin to talk. He wouldn’t have to cut her up, he’d been told that with a nod of the head.
Somehow, he didn’t feel very relieved.
She’d been working an espionage mission the past year and then hadn’t returned. It was assumed she was dead. Until a replacement spy was sent in and spotted something curious - her previous counterpart was alive and well, if not wearing a different hair color and style of clothing. A pretty pathetic excuse for a disguise, the kunoichi had noted.
Traitor, he reiterated. She’d gone and betrayed Konoha all to save her skin. And now she was working for the very men she’d been spying on.
Now, a day after receiving their mission and another day to locate their target, it was just ANBU’s turn to clean up the little mess they’d discovered.
Two hours of waiting finally paid off as the key was inserted into the lock and the door handle turned. Fukuoda Ritsuko, the newest missing-nin from Konoha, entered and sighed heavily. She’d been working an espionage mission and then faked her own death to save her own skin. She’d been caught by the very men she had been spying on.
She closed the door behind her and stiffened for a moment, scanning her surroundings before feeling reassured that her security hadn’t been compromised. A handful of steps later and Ritsuko was jerked off her feet and thrown/pulled abruptly against the wall, her body pinned, immobile.
Five wires held her to the wall and restrained all of her limbs, her hands now above her head. The ANBU cat twisted his fingers a little and tightened the strings as she struggled against them. “Move any more and it will start to cut,” he said, standing and holding the wires steadily. He’d been hiding just out of sight in the next room and now felt secure revealing himself.
The woman struggled against the wires anyway, wincing slightly as the wires did just that, digging into her skin and causing her to bleed.
"What do you think you're doing?" Ritsuko hissed, anger and fear contorting her face and coloring her voice. But despite her words, she knew exactly what the masked ninja was doing; it was apparent in her expression.
Another ninja disengaged from the shadows of the bedroom doorway; her mask was vaguely bird-shaped, painted with intricate blue swirls that almost resembled flames. Her hands were lifted before in chest in the Ram seal.
"I think you know," she said, voice muffled by the mask.
Chuunin though she was, Ritsuko felt the touch of chakra on her senses as the jutsu was activated. But with her hands bound, she could not form the Kai and break the jutsu before -
A feather drifted past her eyes, and that was the last thing she saw before waking up again in the woods outside the city.
Yuugao stood back a few feet, watching the perimeter and keeping himself focused. He never had been very fond of torture - that was for the T&I department and he hadn’t joined it for a reason. He enjoyed toying with his prey, but…not like they did. Ibiki had flatly refused him when the recruiter suggested the bright new rookie. Yuugao couldn’t have been more relieved.
The forest was quiet and his nose twitched once. Asuka was smoking - just like the rumors, he mused - but he kept his mask firmly on. He’d done his part of the mission, now it was his senior’s turn.
To think he’d known her when she was in the academy… he glanced over as she woke and for a moment he could remember her with a high ponytail, strutting around the schoolyard like she owned the place and -- he blinked away the memory. Now was certainly not the time to regain his soft spot. She’d betrayed them. And she was now receiving her just reward.
The first sign of the prisoner's waking was the twitch of her arms as she tried to bring her hands back around to the front of her body. But that wouldn't happen; her wrists were tied firmly together. So were her ankles, to further restrict her movement; she wouldn't be going anywere any time soon.
In the time it had taken to get Ritsuko out of the apartment and into this secluded area, Asuka had contemplated the last time she'd done any field interrogations. She had never been in T&I, true enough, but there were times when a little brute force was necessary to get someone to talk. And she had always been good at brute force. Still, the last time she'd gotten a mission that pretty much said 'break them until they spill the truth and then kill them' had been... years ago. She wasn't quite sure if she could get back into that kind of ninja mode again after being out of practice so long. And Yuugao had pretty much flat out stated that this wasn't his forte - and Intel had definitely flat out stated that they didn't want to waste their time on this woman. So there was no choice but to get it right the first time.
It couldn't be that hard to remember, though. An emotionless slate peppered with cruelty and a dash of sadism would probably do the trick. Asuka smoked and meditated on the concept until their prisoner stirred.
"Nnnn..."
At their feet, the slowly waking woman uncurled, flexing her fingers as she realized she was bound. Dark eyes fluttered open, slowly focusing - first on the cat-masked ninja across the clearing, and then to the unmasked woman standing over her.
Asuka smiled down at her, unmasked. "Morning, sunshine."
And then kicked her in the stomach. Hard.
Ritsuko had started to reply, but could only manage a low groan at the strike. She wouldn’t talk. Not if she had to die first. She glared up at Asuka and set her jaw, preparing herself for the inevitable. She wouldn’t be alive if they had wanted her dead, after all.
Yuugao shouldn’t have been so surprised by Asuka’s first move, but it still made him stare for a moment longer. Traitors got their comeuppance, that was life. And this girl - woman, since she was his age - was nothing more than that.
"So." Asuka crouched next to the woman as she curled up weakly in pain at the strike. Smoke drifted upward from the cigarette dangly loosely between her lips. "The polite thing to do next is introduce ourselves. Fukuoda Ritsuko, ANBU. ANBU... well, we alread know who you are."
The chuunin only stared back, silently defiant. The older woman couldn't help but smile again.
"Since we're going to be here for a while, might as well get to the point. You, Ritsuko, are wanted for betraying your village - for falsifying your death in order to gain reprieve with the people you were spying on and turning against Konohagakure to supply your new allies with state secrets." Asuka pulled the half-smoked cigarette from her lips and held it between her forefinger and thumb. "As you can probably guess, we're here to find out just what you told them. Care to fill us in?"
The defiant glare never wavered.
Asuka sighed. "I didn't think so." She brought the burning cherry of the cigarette down on the bare skin of the chuunin's biceps.
Funny. This was coming back a lot easier than she thought it would.
Ritsuko winced and instinctively jerked her arm away, rolling more onto her back in the hopes of forming seals out of their sight and perhaps getting away. Though she really doubted she could elude two ANBU. She was a chuunin, but she wasn’t stupid. But she had to try.
Yuugao didn’t miss her movement and the first seal she formed. A few easy strides and he stepped on her fingertips, crossing his arms and ignoring the glare she shot him. “Might as well talk. It’ll hurt less.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she hissed and pulled her hands out from his foot, not sure who she should direct most of her anger towards. “I won’t break.”
Sure you won’t, Yuugao frowned as even her heard the familiar wavering in her voice.
The jounin flicked her cigarette away after inflicting the burn. It hadn't held in place long enough to do serious damage, but she'd be sporting a scar from that, sure enough.
Well. She would if she was going to live through this, anyway. Which she wasn't.
"If you say so." Asuka tilted her head and considered the prone woman for a moment, before reaching out to grab her by her hair. It was silky and soft between her fingers, and she could feel some of it break as she used the handful to haul the woman onto her knees. Ritsuko struggled and flailed in the process, but as her extremities were tied she didn't have much choice in where she wanted to go.
Getting back to her feet as she likewise got the prisoner into a kneeling position, Asuka released the handful of hair and picked out the pieces stuck between her fingers. "Just to warn you, though, our orders won't let us leave until we know what information you've leaked. So keep in mind that everytime you refuse to answer a question, I'm going to break a bone. And when I run out of bones, I'll start breaking joints."
She flicked the pieces of hair away, letting them drift away in the air, before crouching behind the chuunin. "For your information, there are about two hundred and six bones in the body, and over two hundred and thirty joints, so..." Asuka separated Ritsuko's right pinky finger and swiftly, with hardly any effort, snapped the delicate interphalangeal joint between the distant and middle finger bones. "I think we can do this for a while."
Yuugao took a step back to give Asuka more space and stayed silent, though he had to admit he was glad to be on this end of the interrogation. How Asuka knew so much about the human body, he could only guess. If someone took enough interest in T&I and wasn’t squeamish…he didn’t know why they would’ve been rejected. Certainly not Asuka, who seemed to be used to doing this.
But who was he to question what worked?
Ritsuko only let out a little gasp, biting her lip to keep herself from making any more noise. The numbers that Asuka gave were not comforting, but she couldn’t just give in. She was stronger than this. She could take a little pain… though with how relaxed the woman seemed, it might very well be a lot of pain.
The chuunin was tough, but not too tough. Asuka might have been behind the woman, but she could hear the sobbing whines Ritsuko was making by the time she had made her way over to the thumb. The prisoner was crying, doubtless, trying to hide the sounds but not quite able to. It was a good thing, probably, that she could not see Ritsuko's face. She was going to need another couple of cigarettes after this.
"So." Asuka paused yet again, as she had done between every break, fingers moving from swollen, broken fingers to the larger metacarpal bones of the hand. "How about this time? What secrets of Konoha have you been selling?"
“Nothing I’m going to tell you,” she hissed and tried not to think of how her lip was bleeding from how hard she'd been biting down, her hand hurt like she’d never imagined - all of the nerves were burning and screaming at her to give up, to let go of her resolve - and she still had a lot of bones left.
Another bone snapped - she could almost hear it this time - and a scream broke out before she bit her lip and curled inwards. She doubted her hand would ever look the same. How did people do this and survive? She was kunoichi, she could take it, but it hurt so much…
“Numbers,” the word slipped out before she even knew what she’d said.
Asuka let her fingers pause on the break, not taking her hands away. Here was the point where older woman could stop and give Ritsuko a chance to give up some information, give a little mercy and cut back on the amount of pain she'd have to suffer before she was killed, or break another bone to ensure she kept talking. Even with as easily as the cold sadism for doing this came back to her, Asuka still hesitated.
In the end, she opted for mercy.
"What numbers?" she asked, leaning forward slightly to speak into Ritsuko's ear.
“K-Konoha’s numbers,” she whispered, trying to stifle back the whimper that wanted to escape. “Nothing else.” She closed her eyes and forced herself to cry - surely they’d get this over with quickly and there would be nothing else to it. At least she wouldn’t have to sit here and take anymore pain or talk from the ANBU with the stench of cigarettes on her breath.
Yuugao cocked his head. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just seen a tear. On Ritsuko’s face. He blinked again and reaffirmed it. That was odd, he was pretty sure he’d never seen her cry…
From her position behind Ritsuko, she couldn't tell if the prisoner really was crying - but it had sounded like it for a little while. Asuka would not have been surprised to see the tears now.
She did not pull her hands away from the younger woman's hand, left her fingers on the break, but had no intention of continuing forward. If she kept talking then there'd be no need to break any more. Hopefully Ritsuko would see that.
"Give me specifics," she said. "Numbers on what?"
Her eyes always gave her away, no matter to how she how hard she tried to conceal it. And so Ritsuko forced herself to cry, it’d been her fail safe method of lying - no one suspected it, they could always take her for overemotional. She used whatever she had to her advantage.
Except Yuugao had called her on it once at the academy - and she’d sworn him to secrecy.
“Population,” she hesitated and tried not to think of how the blood from her lip was dripping onto the grass. “Jounin numbers,” a sob, “genin,” her shoulders shook a little, “last status I’d heard of Konoha’s strength. Three month old information, but enough to go by...”
Yuugao was sure of it now. Ritsuko was lying through her teeth and doing a fine show of looking like she’d really broken. He clenched a fist and looked to Asuka, hoping she sensed it, too. And if she didn’t…then he’d just have to intervene. Again.
Asuka leaned back on her heels and considered the information she was given, but did not let go of the other woman's hand just yet. She had to take into consideration that there was only so much that a chuunin was going to know, spy or no spy; chuunin rarely ever got the S-class secrecy rating, and that was the information that could really do some damage if it got out. But a chuunin could get up to an A-class secrecy rating, and Ritsuko had, before she'd 'died.' There was still a considerable amount of information that she could pass on that would be potentially dangerous to the village.
The question was, did she really know that information?
"What else?" she asked, pressing her thumb on the fractured metacarpal. The pressure was light, but more than enough to make the damaged nerve endings scream.
“Nothing else!” she screamed before it turned into a whimper and she continued to cry, closing her eyes tighter. “Just some numbers, they let me live because they thought I was attractive…”
Yuugao watched Asuka intently. She seemed to be considering things and then eased her grip. She believed it. She actually fell for it. Well, everyone else had…
He moved quickly, wrapping his fingers around Ritsuko's neck and hauling her into the air before he slammed her into the tree. “Liar,” he hissed, ignoring her scream of pain and the reverberating whimpers. He pressed harder, smirking as her eyes widened and she struggled against him. “You don’t cry.” He leaned closer, pressing his mask to her ear. “Unless you’re lying.”
She tried to pull away, desperately trying to get loose. Her hands - her broken fingers - were stuck between her back and the tree. The pain was excruciating. “I’m not ly-” she gasped again and trembled as he pressed harder.
“I know you, Ritsuko. Do you want me to break your arms this way?”
She had barely taken her hands away when Yuugao moved, grabbed the chuunin and hauled her up against a nearby tree. Ritsuko shrieked, or tried to best she could what with being thrown around by her throat.
The move surprised her, but she covered it quickly; had the other ANBU seen something she hadn't? She'd gotten the impression that this just wasn't his cup of tea, but if he was joining in then there must be something he'd caught that she'd missed. Perhaps an expression that moved across Ritsuko's face... or something about her tears, considering what she'd barely heard him whisper.
As Yuugao threatened to break her arms, Asuka rose to her feet, pulled out her pack of cigarettes and tapped another out.
"Shouldn't push him," she said lazily, adjusting to the situation as though she'd expected him to move like that. "I was being easy on you, but him, he's not so patient."
Even through all of the blinding pain, Ritsuko remembered the voice. And she remembered him. “Y-Yuugao-kun…you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t do this to me.” She gasped and closed her eyes to try and hold back the scream that wanted to break out.
“I’m ANBU, Ritsuko. And I will do my duty.” He pushed a little harder. “How old was your last information? That’s when you started lying.”
Ritsuko tried to get loose and kept her mouth shut, only to give in and start whimpering again. “Can’t…bre-eathe,” she whispered as her vision began to darken.
He dropped her then, let her slide down to slump at the tree trunk, scowling down at her as she coughed and leaned forward. “Are you going to lie again?” he crouched and tipped up her chin.
She looked up at the mask and shook her head.
“Then start talking.”
Their prisoner stuttered out what she'd told them before - population density, the break down of jounin, chuunin, genin, academy numbers, it was all maybe a few weeks old, a month tops, really - before hesitating again, squeezing out a few more tears. Asuka lit her cigarette, took a few steps and crouched down in front of the bound woman.
"Ritsuko," she said, holding the cigarette before the chuunin's face, burning cherry pointing up. "It would be awful hard for you to keep crying if I burned out your eyes, you know."
Sucking in a breath, the woman seemed to get the point. She kept talking.
Yuugao watched her closer now, looking for any sign of dishonesty and was glad that Asuka had gone along with his sudden actions so smoothly. He hadn’t thought he’d be so harsh, but he certainly couldn’t have been gentle.
Ritsuko kept talking, her unbroken hand twitching every once in awhile as she tried to keep the broken fingers from touching anything else. She finished and kept her face down.
This time, when she finished, there was no crying. Some sniffling perhaps, but that was to be expected; severe pain had a tendancy to clear the sinuses. Asuka, in the meantime, had finished her cigarette, and hadn't even been particularly hurried... Ritsuko had shared quite a lot of detail, for her confession to take that long. And all for little more than a broken hand.
She wondered if that was all it had taken for the woman to switch sides once the Grass politicians had realized she was a spy.
Asuka looked up at her masked comrade, stubbing out the butt of her cigarette in the dirt, and he nodded. Short, simple, no words; he thought she was done as well. If Ritsuko had left anything else out at this point, they'd probably never get it from her. Not unless they took her back home, and Intel had already stated they didn't want to waste their time on a bit-case like this.
That was it, then. She fixed the information Ritsuko had spilled in her memory and drew a kunai from the holster at her thigh.
It only took a few minutes for Ritsuko to bleed out once her throat was slashed. Asuka let go of the woman's hair, where she'd been held still as she convulsed and gurgled for breath, and let the body slump to the side.
Yuugao had watched the actual death and felt mostly disinterested. It was easy enough to distance the memory of a cocky little girl to the whimpering mess that was leaking her life out of her neck.
He let out a breath and lifted his mask once Ritsuko was entirely gone. “Sorry about butting in.”
She wiped the bloody kunai off on the back of the dead woman's dress - about the only part of her that wasn't drenched with blood - before rising to her feet.
"You weren't butting in." Asuka glanced at the younger jounin, slipping the kunai back in place and smiling slightly. "Team work and all that, right?"
“Ah, teamwork.” He glanced over at Ritsuko’s body and then turned to the side. “I knew her in the academy. She thought I was cute, so she followed me around a bit. And I figured out that her eyes gave her away when she lied.” He glanced back at Asuka. “So she cried. And everyone else believed her.”
He shook his head and pulled his mask all the way off, sighing. “Do you want me to dispose of it?”
Aaah, so he had known her. Asuka had assumed that he had seen something she hadn't, but knowing her in the past would also give him an edge. Would also make things more difficult for him as well. Perhaps that was why he had been put on this mission.... or why he'd not so subtly stated he didn't want in on the interrogation.
The older ANBU glanced back at the body, curled up and bloody at the base of the tree. They would need to make certain there was nothing else Grass Country could take advantage of, and that meant cleaning up the corpse so there was no DNA to examine. That would be a messy chore and...
Well, there was no need to dig the knife any deeper, she supposed. Mercy could be a blessing.
Asuka shook her head. "No, I've got it. But the sun is coming up soon, so we don't want to get walked in on. Keep watch out there for me?"
This way, at least, he'd have the opportunity to leave line of sight if he didn't want to watch any more.
“Yeah, already have trip wires up.” He then jumped up onto a tree branch to simultaneously avoid watching Asuka work and also widen his line of vision. He wasn’t surprised that he’d been able to follow through, it wasn't like they’d been very good friends. But he had actually known her and little details and…
He shook his head and idly fingered the edge of his mask - a little blood had gotten on it from when he’d whispered in her ear. A quick glance around to make sure no one was approaching and he rubbed the drying blood with his thumb. It was by no means the first time his mask had gotten dirty, but it bothered him this time.
Yuugao sighed again and glanced down to see how far along Asuka was. His stomach quirked for a moment and he lifted his eyes sharply. Staying still was making him anxious, so he circled the perimeter, checking the integrity of all of his trip wires. Nothing had been touched, they were undetected as far as he could tell.
The process of cleaning up a corpse while on ANBU detail was always... messy. There simply wasn't any clean way to do it. Oh, you could certainly just burn the body, but that was unreliable; unless the fire was very hot, not every part of it would burn properly. Even the bones had to be destroyed, and to complete this in a short amount of time a little more hands-on work needed to be done.
Asuka didn't contemplate the grossness of the job she was doing, or the fact that she hadn't done this in ten years - hadn't thought she'd ever do it again. She just pulled off her gloves and set aside any items she didn't want to worry about getting bloody and started in. It was just a job, after all.
A job that took nearly two hours, plenty of chakra, a scent-disabling jutsu to cover the smell of the fire, and blood up to her elbows. Yuugao didn't show back up until the fire had started its work in ernest, and Asuka had stepped away to wash off her hands with a canteen of water. There wasn't much to do about the blood that had stained the one side of the clearing, save setting the whole area on fire, and with the dry summer heat that might not be wise. They'd probably have to take the risk, though.
He’d had plenty of time to clear his head when he came back with the assumption that Asuka was done. He spotted the last of the blood and crouched at the end, looking to Asuka and then back to the blood. “I can handle this if you’d like. You’ve done more than your share of the work.” He picked up a little kindling and darted his eyes to her again.
“Thanks.” He knew he could’ve handled the job, but he wasn’t soft for enjoying being able to avoid the experience. A little consideration was always appreciated.
The older woman glanced up from where she had knelt, rubbing the blood off her arms with applications of water. It wouldn't do much good until she actually got home and to a shower, but it was better than nothing. Better than letting it dry.
She gave him another faint smile from over her shoulder before looking back to her hands. "Knock yourself out. And it's no big deal - just another job."
Or, well, just another job that came with being ANBU. Not normally one that you'd perform on people you knew, but... yeah. Better to not even go there, right?
Yuugao burned the rest of the blood quickly enough, a little surprised that he’d expelled so little chakra on this mission. By this point, he was usually much more tired. How tired must Asuka be then? He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t pulling his weight. But she’d said nothing, hadn’t even given him any glances.
There was no need to worry. None. He sighed and wiped his hands once on his pants, standing and looking to Asuka. “Ready to go?” The sooner he could go home and sleep this off, the better.
By the time he'd finished with the last of the evidence, the major fire had burned down to reveal nothing but ashes, and Asuka had cleaned the blood off her hands. Not quite like the whole situation had never happened - there was one less lacky in the political chain and an empty apartment and several hours lost to interrogation, but it might as well have never happened.
If it weren't for the fact that leaving Ritsuko in Grass's hands might have been more dangerous than taking her out, then she might have wished it had never happened. But you couldn't take these things back, so. What was there to do?
She gathered her things, stuffed her gloves in her utility pouch, and picked up her mask from where she'd left it. The smile she aimed at Yuugao in response, like all the others, was slight and faint. "Ready when you are."
Doing this again... was going to take some getting used to.
Just another mission. Yuugao kept himself absolutely still in the traitor’s apartment. In Fukuoda Ritsuko’s apartment. His gaze lowered for a moment and he could see her in his mind’s eye. His captain had known that they’d been classmates in the academy. Besides, Yuugao was good at this and Asuka was capable of getting the chuunin to talk. He wouldn’t have to cut her up, he’d been told that with a nod of the head.
Somehow, he didn’t feel very relieved.
She’d been working an espionage mission the past year and then hadn’t returned. It was assumed she was dead. Until a replacement spy was sent in and spotted something curious - her previous counterpart was alive and well, if not wearing a different hair color and style of clothing. A pretty pathetic excuse for a disguise, the kunoichi had noted.
Traitor, he reiterated. She’d gone and betrayed Konoha all to save her skin. And now she was working for the very men she’d been spying on.
Now, a day after receiving their mission and another day to locate their target, it was just ANBU’s turn to clean up the little mess they’d discovered.
Two hours of waiting finally paid off as the key was inserted into the lock and the door handle turned. Fukuoda Ritsuko, the newest missing-nin from Konoha, entered and sighed heavily. She’d been working an espionage mission and then faked her own death to save her own skin. She’d been caught by the very men she had been spying on.
She closed the door behind her and stiffened for a moment, scanning her surroundings before feeling reassured that her security hadn’t been compromised. A handful of steps later and Ritsuko was jerked off her feet and thrown/pulled abruptly against the wall, her body pinned, immobile.
Five wires held her to the wall and restrained all of her limbs, her hands now above her head. The ANBU cat twisted his fingers a little and tightened the strings as she struggled against them. “Move any more and it will start to cut,” he said, standing and holding the wires steadily. He’d been hiding just out of sight in the next room and now felt secure revealing himself.
The woman struggled against the wires anyway, wincing slightly as the wires did just that, digging into her skin and causing her to bleed.
"What do you think you're doing?" Ritsuko hissed, anger and fear contorting her face and coloring her voice. But despite her words, she knew exactly what the masked ninja was doing; it was apparent in her expression.
Another ninja disengaged from the shadows of the bedroom doorway; her mask was vaguely bird-shaped, painted with intricate blue swirls that almost resembled flames. Her hands were lifted before in chest in the Ram seal.
"I think you know," she said, voice muffled by the mask.
Chuunin though she was, Ritsuko felt the touch of chakra on her senses as the jutsu was activated. But with her hands bound, she could not form the Kai and break the jutsu before -
A feather drifted past her eyes, and that was the last thing she saw before waking up again in the woods outside the city.
Yuugao stood back a few feet, watching the perimeter and keeping himself focused. He never had been very fond of torture - that was for the T&I department and he hadn’t joined it for a reason. He enjoyed toying with his prey, but…not like they did. Ibiki had flatly refused him when the recruiter suggested the bright new rookie. Yuugao couldn’t have been more relieved.
The forest was quiet and his nose twitched once. Asuka was smoking - just like the rumors, he mused - but he kept his mask firmly on. He’d done his part of the mission, now it was his senior’s turn.
To think he’d known her when she was in the academy… he glanced over as she woke and for a moment he could remember her with a high ponytail, strutting around the schoolyard like she owned the place and -- he blinked away the memory. Now was certainly not the time to regain his soft spot. She’d betrayed them. And she was now receiving her just reward.
The first sign of the prisoner's waking was the twitch of her arms as she tried to bring her hands back around to the front of her body. But that wouldn't happen; her wrists were tied firmly together. So were her ankles, to further restrict her movement; she wouldn't be going anywere any time soon.
In the time it had taken to get Ritsuko out of the apartment and into this secluded area, Asuka had contemplated the last time she'd done any field interrogations. She had never been in T&I, true enough, but there were times when a little brute force was necessary to get someone to talk. And she had always been good at brute force. Still, the last time she'd gotten a mission that pretty much said 'break them until they spill the truth and then kill them' had been... years ago. She wasn't quite sure if she could get back into that kind of ninja mode again after being out of practice so long. And Yuugao had pretty much flat out stated that this wasn't his forte - and Intel had definitely flat out stated that they didn't want to waste their time on this woman. So there was no choice but to get it right the first time.
It couldn't be that hard to remember, though. An emotionless slate peppered with cruelty and a dash of sadism would probably do the trick. Asuka smoked and meditated on the concept until their prisoner stirred.
"Nnnn..."
At their feet, the slowly waking woman uncurled, flexing her fingers as she realized she was bound. Dark eyes fluttered open, slowly focusing - first on the cat-masked ninja across the clearing, and then to the unmasked woman standing over her.
Asuka smiled down at her, unmasked. "Morning, sunshine."
And then kicked her in the stomach. Hard.
Ritsuko had started to reply, but could only manage a low groan at the strike. She wouldn’t talk. Not if she had to die first. She glared up at Asuka and set her jaw, preparing herself for the inevitable. She wouldn’t be alive if they had wanted her dead, after all.
Yuugao shouldn’t have been so surprised by Asuka’s first move, but it still made him stare for a moment longer. Traitors got their comeuppance, that was life. And this girl - woman, since she was his age - was nothing more than that.
"So." Asuka crouched next to the woman as she curled up weakly in pain at the strike. Smoke drifted upward from the cigarette dangly loosely between her lips. "The polite thing to do next is introduce ourselves. Fukuoda Ritsuko, ANBU. ANBU... well, we alread know who you are."
The chuunin only stared back, silently defiant. The older woman couldn't help but smile again.
"Since we're going to be here for a while, might as well get to the point. You, Ritsuko, are wanted for betraying your village - for falsifying your death in order to gain reprieve with the people you were spying on and turning against Konohagakure to supply your new allies with state secrets." Asuka pulled the half-smoked cigarette from her lips and held it between her forefinger and thumb. "As you can probably guess, we're here to find out just what you told them. Care to fill us in?"
The defiant glare never wavered.
Asuka sighed. "I didn't think so." She brought the burning cherry of the cigarette down on the bare skin of the chuunin's biceps.
Funny. This was coming back a lot easier than she thought it would.
Ritsuko winced and instinctively jerked her arm away, rolling more onto her back in the hopes of forming seals out of their sight and perhaps getting away. Though she really doubted she could elude two ANBU. She was a chuunin, but she wasn’t stupid. But she had to try.
Yuugao didn’t miss her movement and the first seal she formed. A few easy strides and he stepped on her fingertips, crossing his arms and ignoring the glare she shot him. “Might as well talk. It’ll hurt less.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” she hissed and pulled her hands out from his foot, not sure who she should direct most of her anger towards. “I won’t break.”
Sure you won’t, Yuugao frowned as even her heard the familiar wavering in her voice.
The jounin flicked her cigarette away after inflicting the burn. It hadn't held in place long enough to do serious damage, but she'd be sporting a scar from that, sure enough.
Well. She would if she was going to live through this, anyway. Which she wasn't.
"If you say so." Asuka tilted her head and considered the prone woman for a moment, before reaching out to grab her by her hair. It was silky and soft between her fingers, and she could feel some of it break as she used the handful to haul the woman onto her knees. Ritsuko struggled and flailed in the process, but as her extremities were tied she didn't have much choice in where she wanted to go.
Getting back to her feet as she likewise got the prisoner into a kneeling position, Asuka released the handful of hair and picked out the pieces stuck between her fingers. "Just to warn you, though, our orders won't let us leave until we know what information you've leaked. So keep in mind that everytime you refuse to answer a question, I'm going to break a bone. And when I run out of bones, I'll start breaking joints."
She flicked the pieces of hair away, letting them drift away in the air, before crouching behind the chuunin. "For your information, there are about two hundred and six bones in the body, and over two hundred and thirty joints, so..." Asuka separated Ritsuko's right pinky finger and swiftly, with hardly any effort, snapped the delicate interphalangeal joint between the distant and middle finger bones. "I think we can do this for a while."
Yuugao took a step back to give Asuka more space and stayed silent, though he had to admit he was glad to be on this end of the interrogation. How Asuka knew so much about the human body, he could only guess. If someone took enough interest in T&I and wasn’t squeamish…he didn’t know why they would’ve been rejected. Certainly not Asuka, who seemed to be used to doing this.
But who was he to question what worked?
Ritsuko only let out a little gasp, biting her lip to keep herself from making any more noise. The numbers that Asuka gave were not comforting, but she couldn’t just give in. She was stronger than this. She could take a little pain… though with how relaxed the woman seemed, it might very well be a lot of pain.
The chuunin was tough, but not too tough. Asuka might have been behind the woman, but she could hear the sobbing whines Ritsuko was making by the time she had made her way over to the thumb. The prisoner was crying, doubtless, trying to hide the sounds but not quite able to. It was a good thing, probably, that she could not see Ritsuko's face. She was going to need another couple of cigarettes after this.
"So." Asuka paused yet again, as she had done between every break, fingers moving from swollen, broken fingers to the larger metacarpal bones of the hand. "How about this time? What secrets of Konoha have you been selling?"
“Nothing I’m going to tell you,” she hissed and tried not to think of how her lip was bleeding from how hard she'd been biting down, her hand hurt like she’d never imagined - all of the nerves were burning and screaming at her to give up, to let go of her resolve - and she still had a lot of bones left.
Another bone snapped - she could almost hear it this time - and a scream broke out before she bit her lip and curled inwards. She doubted her hand would ever look the same. How did people do this and survive? She was kunoichi, she could take it, but it hurt so much…
“Numbers,” the word slipped out before she even knew what she’d said.
Asuka let her fingers pause on the break, not taking her hands away. Here was the point where older woman could stop and give Ritsuko a chance to give up some information, give a little mercy and cut back on the amount of pain she'd have to suffer before she was killed, or break another bone to ensure she kept talking. Even with as easily as the cold sadism for doing this came back to her, Asuka still hesitated.
In the end, she opted for mercy.
"What numbers?" she asked, leaning forward slightly to speak into Ritsuko's ear.
“K-Konoha’s numbers,” she whispered, trying to stifle back the whimper that wanted to escape. “Nothing else.” She closed her eyes and forced herself to cry - surely they’d get this over with quickly and there would be nothing else to it. At least she wouldn’t have to sit here and take anymore pain or talk from the ANBU with the stench of cigarettes on her breath.
Yuugao cocked his head. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d just seen a tear. On Ritsuko’s face. He blinked again and reaffirmed it. That was odd, he was pretty sure he’d never seen her cry…
From her position behind Ritsuko, she couldn't tell if the prisoner really was crying - but it had sounded like it for a little while. Asuka would not have been surprised to see the tears now.
She did not pull her hands away from the younger woman's hand, left her fingers on the break, but had no intention of continuing forward. If she kept talking then there'd be no need to break any more. Hopefully Ritsuko would see that.
"Give me specifics," she said. "Numbers on what?"
Her eyes always gave her away, no matter to how she how hard she tried to conceal it. And so Ritsuko forced herself to cry, it’d been her fail safe method of lying - no one suspected it, they could always take her for overemotional. She used whatever she had to her advantage.
Except Yuugao had called her on it once at the academy - and she’d sworn him to secrecy.
“Population,” she hesitated and tried not to think of how the blood from her lip was dripping onto the grass. “Jounin numbers,” a sob, “genin,” her shoulders shook a little, “last status I’d heard of Konoha’s strength. Three month old information, but enough to go by...”
Yuugao was sure of it now. Ritsuko was lying through her teeth and doing a fine show of looking like she’d really broken. He clenched a fist and looked to Asuka, hoping she sensed it, too. And if she didn’t…then he’d just have to intervene. Again.
Asuka leaned back on her heels and considered the information she was given, but did not let go of the other woman's hand just yet. She had to take into consideration that there was only so much that a chuunin was going to know, spy or no spy; chuunin rarely ever got the S-class secrecy rating, and that was the information that could really do some damage if it got out. But a chuunin could get up to an A-class secrecy rating, and Ritsuko had, before she'd 'died.' There was still a considerable amount of information that she could pass on that would be potentially dangerous to the village.
The question was, did she really know that information?
"What else?" she asked, pressing her thumb on the fractured metacarpal. The pressure was light, but more than enough to make the damaged nerve endings scream.
“Nothing else!” she screamed before it turned into a whimper and she continued to cry, closing her eyes tighter. “Just some numbers, they let me live because they thought I was attractive…”
Yuugao watched Asuka intently. She seemed to be considering things and then eased her grip. She believed it. She actually fell for it. Well, everyone else had…
He moved quickly, wrapping his fingers around Ritsuko's neck and hauling her into the air before he slammed her into the tree. “Liar,” he hissed, ignoring her scream of pain and the reverberating whimpers. He pressed harder, smirking as her eyes widened and she struggled against him. “You don’t cry.” He leaned closer, pressing his mask to her ear. “Unless you’re lying.”
She tried to pull away, desperately trying to get loose. Her hands - her broken fingers - were stuck between her back and the tree. The pain was excruciating. “I’m not ly-” she gasped again and trembled as he pressed harder.
“I know you, Ritsuko. Do you want me to break your arms this way?”
She had barely taken her hands away when Yuugao moved, grabbed the chuunin and hauled her up against a nearby tree. Ritsuko shrieked, or tried to best she could what with being thrown around by her throat.
The move surprised her, but she covered it quickly; had the other ANBU seen something she hadn't? She'd gotten the impression that this just wasn't his cup of tea, but if he was joining in then there must be something he'd caught that she'd missed. Perhaps an expression that moved across Ritsuko's face... or something about her tears, considering what she'd barely heard him whisper.
As Yuugao threatened to break her arms, Asuka rose to her feet, pulled out her pack of cigarettes and tapped another out.
"Shouldn't push him," she said lazily, adjusting to the situation as though she'd expected him to move like that. "I was being easy on you, but him, he's not so patient."
Even through all of the blinding pain, Ritsuko remembered the voice. And she remembered him. “Y-Yuugao-kun…you wouldn’t…you wouldn’t do this to me.” She gasped and closed her eyes to try and hold back the scream that wanted to break out.
“I’m ANBU, Ritsuko. And I will do my duty.” He pushed a little harder. “How old was your last information? That’s when you started lying.”
Ritsuko tried to get loose and kept her mouth shut, only to give in and start whimpering again. “Can’t…bre-eathe,” she whispered as her vision began to darken.
He dropped her then, let her slide down to slump at the tree trunk, scowling down at her as she coughed and leaned forward. “Are you going to lie again?” he crouched and tipped up her chin.
She looked up at the mask and shook her head.
“Then start talking.”
Their prisoner stuttered out what she'd told them before - population density, the break down of jounin, chuunin, genin, academy numbers, it was all maybe a few weeks old, a month tops, really - before hesitating again, squeezing out a few more tears. Asuka lit her cigarette, took a few steps and crouched down in front of the bound woman.
"Ritsuko," she said, holding the cigarette before the chuunin's face, burning cherry pointing up. "It would be awful hard for you to keep crying if I burned out your eyes, you know."
Sucking in a breath, the woman seemed to get the point. She kept talking.
Yuugao watched her closer now, looking for any sign of dishonesty and was glad that Asuka had gone along with his sudden actions so smoothly. He hadn’t thought he’d be so harsh, but he certainly couldn’t have been gentle.
Ritsuko kept talking, her unbroken hand twitching every once in awhile as she tried to keep the broken fingers from touching anything else. She finished and kept her face down.
This time, when she finished, there was no crying. Some sniffling perhaps, but that was to be expected; severe pain had a tendancy to clear the sinuses. Asuka, in the meantime, had finished her cigarette, and hadn't even been particularly hurried... Ritsuko had shared quite a lot of detail, for her confession to take that long. And all for little more than a broken hand.
She wondered if that was all it had taken for the woman to switch sides once the Grass politicians had realized she was a spy.
Asuka looked up at her masked comrade, stubbing out the butt of her cigarette in the dirt, and he nodded. Short, simple, no words; he thought she was done as well. If Ritsuko had left anything else out at this point, they'd probably never get it from her. Not unless they took her back home, and Intel had already stated they didn't want to waste their time on a bit-case like this.
That was it, then. She fixed the information Ritsuko had spilled in her memory and drew a kunai from the holster at her thigh.
It only took a few minutes for Ritsuko to bleed out once her throat was slashed. Asuka let go of the woman's hair, where she'd been held still as she convulsed and gurgled for breath, and let the body slump to the side.
Yuugao had watched the actual death and felt mostly disinterested. It was easy enough to distance the memory of a cocky little girl to the whimpering mess that was leaking her life out of her neck.
He let out a breath and lifted his mask once Ritsuko was entirely gone. “Sorry about butting in.”
She wiped the bloody kunai off on the back of the dead woman's dress - about the only part of her that wasn't drenched with blood - before rising to her feet.
"You weren't butting in." Asuka glanced at the younger jounin, slipping the kunai back in place and smiling slightly. "Team work and all that, right?"
“Ah, teamwork.” He glanced over at Ritsuko’s body and then turned to the side. “I knew her in the academy. She thought I was cute, so she followed me around a bit. And I figured out that her eyes gave her away when she lied.” He glanced back at Asuka. “So she cried. And everyone else believed her.”
He shook his head and pulled his mask all the way off, sighing. “Do you want me to dispose of it?”
Aaah, so he had known her. Asuka had assumed that he had seen something she hadn't, but knowing her in the past would also give him an edge. Would also make things more difficult for him as well. Perhaps that was why he had been put on this mission.... or why he'd not so subtly stated he didn't want in on the interrogation.
The older ANBU glanced back at the body, curled up and bloody at the base of the tree. They would need to make certain there was nothing else Grass Country could take advantage of, and that meant cleaning up the corpse so there was no DNA to examine. That would be a messy chore and...
Well, there was no need to dig the knife any deeper, she supposed. Mercy could be a blessing.
Asuka shook her head. "No, I've got it. But the sun is coming up soon, so we don't want to get walked in on. Keep watch out there for me?"
This way, at least, he'd have the opportunity to leave line of sight if he didn't want to watch any more.
“Yeah, already have trip wires up.” He then jumped up onto a tree branch to simultaneously avoid watching Asuka work and also widen his line of vision. He wasn’t surprised that he’d been able to follow through, it wasn't like they’d been very good friends. But he had actually known her and little details and…
He shook his head and idly fingered the edge of his mask - a little blood had gotten on it from when he’d whispered in her ear. A quick glance around to make sure no one was approaching and he rubbed the drying blood with his thumb. It was by no means the first time his mask had gotten dirty, but it bothered him this time.
Yuugao sighed again and glanced down to see how far along Asuka was. His stomach quirked for a moment and he lifted his eyes sharply. Staying still was making him anxious, so he circled the perimeter, checking the integrity of all of his trip wires. Nothing had been touched, they were undetected as far as he could tell.
The process of cleaning up a corpse while on ANBU detail was always... messy. There simply wasn't any clean way to do it. Oh, you could certainly just burn the body, but that was unreliable; unless the fire was very hot, not every part of it would burn properly. Even the bones had to be destroyed, and to complete this in a short amount of time a little more hands-on work needed to be done.
Asuka didn't contemplate the grossness of the job she was doing, or the fact that she hadn't done this in ten years - hadn't thought she'd ever do it again. She just pulled off her gloves and set aside any items she didn't want to worry about getting bloody and started in. It was just a job, after all.
A job that took nearly two hours, plenty of chakra, a scent-disabling jutsu to cover the smell of the fire, and blood up to her elbows. Yuugao didn't show back up until the fire had started its work in ernest, and Asuka had stepped away to wash off her hands with a canteen of water. There wasn't much to do about the blood that had stained the one side of the clearing, save setting the whole area on fire, and with the dry summer heat that might not be wise. They'd probably have to take the risk, though.
He’d had plenty of time to clear his head when he came back with the assumption that Asuka was done. He spotted the last of the blood and crouched at the end, looking to Asuka and then back to the blood. “I can handle this if you’d like. You’ve done more than your share of the work.” He picked up a little kindling and darted his eyes to her again.
“Thanks.” He knew he could’ve handled the job, but he wasn’t soft for enjoying being able to avoid the experience. A little consideration was always appreciated.
The older woman glanced up from where she had knelt, rubbing the blood off her arms with applications of water. It wouldn't do much good until she actually got home and to a shower, but it was better than nothing. Better than letting it dry.
She gave him another faint smile from over her shoulder before looking back to her hands. "Knock yourself out. And it's no big deal - just another job."
Or, well, just another job that came with being ANBU. Not normally one that you'd perform on people you knew, but... yeah. Better to not even go there, right?
Yuugao burned the rest of the blood quickly enough, a little surprised that he’d expelled so little chakra on this mission. By this point, he was usually much more tired. How tired must Asuka be then? He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t pulling his weight. But she’d said nothing, hadn’t even given him any glances.
There was no need to worry. None. He sighed and wiped his hands once on his pants, standing and looking to Asuka. “Ready to go?” The sooner he could go home and sleep this off, the better.
By the time he'd finished with the last of the evidence, the major fire had burned down to reveal nothing but ashes, and Asuka had cleaned the blood off her hands. Not quite like the whole situation had never happened - there was one less lacky in the political chain and an empty apartment and several hours lost to interrogation, but it might as well have never happened.
If it weren't for the fact that leaving Ritsuko in Grass's hands might have been more dangerous than taking her out, then she might have wished it had never happened. But you couldn't take these things back, so. What was there to do?
She gathered her things, stuffed her gloves in her utility pouch, and picked up her mask from where she'd left it. The smile she aimed at Yuugao in response, like all the others, was slight and faint. "Ready when you are."
Doing this again... was going to take some getting used to.