This chapter is dedicated to @Noiir
~~
The iron door of the southern hideout was opened with creak sounds, echoing down the subterranean stone corridors. Kabuto Yakushi adjusted his spectacles as he navigated the labyrinthine-like facility. This isolated island prison was a dumping ground for test subjects, prisoners, and the wretched souls unfortunate enough to catch Orochimaru's eye.
As Kabuto strode past the cell corridor, the silence suddenly turned into erratic noises.
"Come here, you fool! Let me rip your throat out and drink your blood!" screamed a haggard inmate, as he gripped the rusted iron bars, shaking them with an unhinged laugh that bounced off the dripping ceiling.
Hearing the outburst, the surrounding cell inmates joined in as raspy insults, desperate pleas, and maniacal curses flooded the corridor. Yet, Kabuto didn't even break his stride he neither turned his head or change an expression. To him, the inmates weren't even people anymore; they were background fodder waiting to be expended, not worth his precious time.
He continued down the hall until he reached a reinforced steel door marked with hazard symbols. This was Karin Uzumaki's private laboratory. Kabuto did not bother to knock as he pushed it open as he was hit with the air that smelled of antiseptic, and tang of failed chemical reactions. Karin was pacing furiously around a workbench, muttering curses under her breath.
Just as Kabuto stood behind Karin with his hand of his hip. Karin shouted: "Shut your damn mouths out there!"
Unlike Kabuto, the prisoners genuinely feared Karin. To them, she was the red-haired demon who casually strolled down their cell blocks to forcefully take blood samples, administer bizarre experimental serums, and leave them shivering with fever.
*Silence*
Kabuto slid the door close behind him. Karin didn't even bother to look up, her fiery red hair tied back in a messy ponytail, damp with sweat from hours of frustrating labor.
"What do you want, four-eyes?" she spat, her voice dripping with exhaustion and frustration. "I've already told you... cloning is a delicate science you should know that as a fellow researcher it takes time, and none of your inputs are working. Go tell Lord Orochimaru that his grand cellular division project is stalling. And while you're at it, get me more test subjects. Half the last batch died before I could even map their neural pathways."
Without waiting for a response, she aggressively yanked off a pair of stained latex gloves, tossed them into a biohazard bin, and aggressively reached for a fresh petri dish. She was desperate to salvage a failing cell division, trying a completely new method of forced mitosis instead binary fission.
Kabuto watched her calmly, leaning against the cold doorframe. "Karin, drop the sample. This is an urgent mission. You are needed by Lord Orochimaru's side."
Karin froze at Kabuto's words, the petri dish slipping an inch in her grip before she slammed it down onto the ground with a clatter.
"So now you want me?" she snapped, turning around. "Here I am, stuck in this damp hellhole with bozos cell inmates as my company, completely cut off from Sas—"
"Sasuke is also there," Kabuto interrupted smoothly, his voice dropping low as he reached down toward his waist, his fingers brushing against a leather pouch containing a specialized medicinal vial provided by Kimimaro.
When Kabuto lifted his head to hand her the supplies, Karin was nowhere to be found.
A sigh echoed from the hallway outside. "What are you even doing in there? We have to get going! Move it, or I'm leaving you behind!" Karin called out, already pacing near the outer exit gate, tapping her foot impatiently.
~~
Kabuto and Karin flickered across the water, making their way toward the abandoned hideout post. Karin's demeanor shifted completely, the foul-mouthed scientist vanished, replaced by a lovesick girl whose heart fluttered at the mere thought of her obsession: Sasuke.
"I can finally get to see Sasuke-kun again," she whispered, her hands clasped tightly against her chest, as she entered a dreamy trance remembering his smile which in turn put a grin across her face. "I'll never forget the day he saved me from that savage bear attack during the Chūnin Exams. He was so incredibly manly, so fearless... and when I heard he came back to Lord Orochimaru, my whole world lit up."
She spun around on her heel, jogging backward to face Kabuto as they moved through the overgrown brush. Kabuto ran with his hands tucked into his pockets, giving absolutely no reaction, staring straight ahead as if he were by himself.
Karin didn't care about his silence she was too lost in her own fantasy. "His cold, dark eyes were just... oh, gods. He was completely different than before, so much stronger, so much more brooding. I wonder how much he's changed since the last time I saw him."
She kept talking. And talking. And talking. Kilometer after kilometer, Sasuke's name every animal heard... Karin's relentless yapping became a stream of unfiltered adoration, recounting every minor detail of every second she had ever spent breathing the same air as the Uchiha heir.
By the time they reached the halfway point, Kabuto's patience had officially worn thin. He couldn't take another second of the endless monologue.
Kabuto focused his chakra as he channeled a high-level form of medical ninjutsu... a technique heavily inspired by Lady Tsunade's terrifying Body Pathway Derangement. By shifting his chakra's properties to mimic electricity, he generated a microscopic internal electric field to scramble the nervous system.
Before Karin could notice, Kabuto tapped his own ear, deliberately severing the nerve impulses traveling to his brain via the vestibulocochlear nerve. In an instant, the world went completely dead silent. Karin's lips were still moving rapidly, her expression animated as she continued her speech about Sasuke, but not a single sound reached Kabuto's ears.
"It was so pleasant, he had developed this technique with the help of Orochimaru to avoid Itachi Uchiha's Genjutsu by cutting off optic nerves making one temporarily blind. Here he was using for such trivial reasons."
~~
As the dilapidated hidden outpost loomed larger, Kabuto mentally reconnected his neural pathways. His hearing was back just in time to catch the tail end of Karin's sentence.
"...and then he just looked at me with those magnificent, brooding eyes—wait, hush."
Karin suddenly stopped walking, her body tensing up. She closed her eyes as she activated her innate sensory technique, the Mind's Eye of the Kagura.
A moment later, her eyes snapped wide open filled with awe. "I can sense him... it's Sasuke," she breathed out, her chest rising and falling rapidly. "But wait... who is that other person standing right beside him? His chakra signature is enormous, but it's completely unfamiliar. It feels... suffocatingly dense. He is stronger than... Sasuke."
She turned to Kabuto, her brow furrowed with anxiety and anticipation. Kabuto adjusted his glasses, his lips curling into an enigmatic, knowing smile as he said his first words from the start of the journey.
"You'll know," Kabuto said with a mysterious tone, "when we get there."
~~
A/N: Finally I wrote the chapter. I have been busy with my other fic which is at an interesting part. But the premise I set here is just as good, it would be a crime to leave it like that.
I am starting to write advance chapters will let you know once at least 10 chapters are written.
you can support me @ patreon.com/aizenDuchiha0