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After ANBU cleared out of his house, Takuma shut the door to his room behind him and pulled out the chair from his study table. Sunlight streamed through the window, creating a bright spot on the floor while gently illuminating the silent room.
"Come out."
He closed his eyes and focused inward, where he saw a near insignificant amount of his chakra twist and move without his permission as a strange genjutsu began to take hold of him. He opened his eyes to see Grey sitting against the opposite wall. Perhaps it was just a trick of light or genjutsu, but the ghost's side of the room seemed darker.
"Are you happy?" Takuma asked. He felt relief because he had avenged Rikku and killed the guy who tried to kill him multiple times—but Grey's relationship with Kon was something entirely else.
"I do, and maybe that's a problem," Grey said as he leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.
"What does that mean?"
"It's complicated," Grey sighed heavily. He lowered his head and stared at him. "Go on, you've been waiting patiently. Ask what you want to know."
They hadn't talked to each other since the time Grey had asked Takuma to kill Kon in exchange for discussing the former's past. Neither side had attempted to reach out; both of them wanted some time alone.
"ROOT, Project Sprig, Runt, Kon—you seem to have a lot of history I wasn't aware of. As far as I knew, your parents were merchants who, unfortunately, were part of the casualties during the Nine-Tails Incident," said Takuma.
"Don't have any memories of my parents. That's probably a fake background to assimilate me into the society. A lot of children were made orphans on that day," Grey said with a melancholic look. "You look like you have something to say."
Takuma stared at him for a moment—the talk of parents making him remember his own parents—before pulling his shirt up to reveal a torso full of scars—some marks of battle, others remnants of unknown surgeries from a forgotten past.
"It's not that hard when you have the proper clues, I guess. You were part of some experiment conducted by ROOT?" Takuma said. He noticed that he didn't feel any migraines. After getting punished for trying to even think about Grey's past for years, he had some complex emotions about the lack of pain.
"That's what I think as well."
"What do you mean, 'what you think'?"
"I was a test subject and a kid at that; they didn't have a reason to explain anything to me. Even if they did, it's not like I would've understood anything," Grey replied with a shrug. "All I know, those fuckers," he paused, displeased that he had cursed, "were the epitome of evil because of the vile things they did to me."
He hesitated for a moment before snapping his fingers. A rush of memories flooded Takuma's head, and his face went pale as he sat silent like a statue. He felt an unbelievable thirst and hunger, which suddenly turned into a torture of oscillating hot and cold. He felt the terror of the darkness and the overwhelmingness of light. Noise made him jittery, while silence heightened anxiety. Each snippet of memory was accompanied by a torrent of volatile emotions that never let up. Not a single memory he saw had any normalcy; everything he saw seemed to be done to keep Grey on edge.
"Stop—stop, I get it!" Takuma yelled at the stream of memories cut off, leaving only the lingering chaos from what he had already seen.
"Why… Why do all of that to a kid?" Takuma asked with a beyond shocked expression. He saw numerous people in the memories, but not one of them showed any warmth. Instead of protecting and nurturing, they subjected an innocent life to a hell devoid of any and all compassion.
"Can't say. They never did succeed. Maybe it was just torture. It's possible they derived some sick pleasure from it," Grey said. He seemed desensitised and detached, but no one could truly separate themselves from such a past.
"S-So the wall?"
"You're lucky that my wall exists. You've already live a pretty miserable life if I'm going to be honest; imagine having what you saw, but a lot more, just rotting in there as well." Grey tried to lighten the mood, but everything about him seemed visibly duller and tired.
Takuma didn't speak for the next couple of minutes, trying to process and sort out the chaos in his mind. He thought the wall was a threat, but it was actually the thing keeping the real at bay, which meant Grey, who was controlling the wall, needed to exist as well to control it.
He felt weak as a bout of powerlessness hit his body. He felt helpless to resolve his problems.
"How did you get out?" he asked, forcing him to trudge through.
"Someone screwed up and I was somehow alive when ANBU arrived at the facility." Grey raised his hand to snap his fingers, but Takuma hurriedly stopped him. Grey smiled with a tinge of bitterness but nodded understandingly. "The village did its best to rehabilitate me before I was sent to the orphanage. For a moment, I had hope as well. Thought that if I became a shinobi, I would become strong enough to protect myself."
Takuma would've thought that after Grey's experience, he would've stayed away from everything shinobi.
Grey joined the academy at six years old, like everyone else. At least, he thought he was six years old at that time because his forged documents said so. Before joining the academy, he had spent six to seven months in rehabilitation with some child specialists, and then he was moved to an orphanage for another half a year before he joined the shinobi academy and received his own apartment.
Takuma didn't voice the implication. If Grey didn't remember his parents, then it could mean that he was part of the experiment from an extremely young age.
"I'll be honest, even before I showed up and ruined our grades, you weren't doing a much better job." Even without Takuma, who had to learn everything from scratch, the previous report cards still told a story of a poor student with bottom-of-the-barrel grades.
"Well, forgive me, but it's difficult to focus and feel motivated when your own memories are torturing you, so go fuck—" Grey erupted with emotions, but managed to catch himself quickly. He closed his eyes and pursed his lips as he internally tussled to take control of the turmoil of his feelings.
"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for," Takuma apologised.
Grey didn't respond to his apology. His eyes told that he wanted to move on and change the current topic of discussion.
"The abnormal genjutsu resistance. Is that a result of the experimentation?" Takuma asked. He had done his research to find the source of his condition and had failed. Even Mikoto, the Lady Uchiha, with her considerably larger reach and resources, wasn't able to find any relevant clues regarding the whys and hows of his beneficial situation.
"As I said, I didn't see or hear anything that would've allowed me to infer or deduce any information."
"What about at the academy? A teacher must've used genjutsu on the students as a demonstration. Did you feel anything back then?"
Grey thought about it before shaking his head.
"Curious," Takuma said.
"It must've been a result of your intrusion," Grey said with a frown.
"Could very well be just that. If it's not the body, then it's not unreasonable to assume that it was the soul." Souls were real in this world. Even without remembering much, he recalled the freaky ninjutsu that could summon souls from the afterlife to create undead. "Maybe that's why neither Mikoto nor I were able to find anything. Maybe it's something particular to me because of my unique circumstances."
He glanced at Grey. The ghost had openly claimed that he had access to Takuma's memories, but he had carefully probed him, and Grey only had memories from his life in this world as Takuma. Grey didn't even know the existence of his memories from his previous life and world, much less have access to them. He didn't know the reason behind it, but after the discussion, he felt that his soul was involved in some way.
Souls were real, but their existence wasn't widely known. In all of his time in the shinobi world, he hadn't read or found a single book or paper which discussed the concept of soul in any meaningful way. However, he had yet to search the ANBU archives on the topic. After failing to find anything, he had somewhat forgotten about souls, and well, he had been too busy to do miscellaneous research.
"It's nice to have some clarity on your past," Takuma said after a while.
Though he didn't find the exact nature of the ROOT experimentation, it was a start. He couldn't discount the possibility that the genjutsu resistance was a result of the experimentation, and whatever they had done had somehow triggered the body's temporary death.
"And if ANBU was involved in your rescue, there must be a record about it somewhere. If I can somehow find out, maybe we will know more about the experiment. Maybe we will find out about your parents?"
He paused and looked up at Grey, realising he might have spoken carelessly.
So, he continued, "...Would you be fine with that? I'm curious, but if you don't want me to go looking, then I won't."
It was clear that Grey still carried heavy trauma from his past. It was possible that his existence was the result of that trauma. Perhaps digging into it was not something he would want to do. Takuma wanted to know more about the body's past because it was akin to knowing about his medical history, and if there was something deeply wrong in there because of the extensive experimentation, but he would rather push it and make an enemy of an entity that held great power inside his mind.
"That... would be nice to know," Grey said. His expressions, though, didn't betray his thoughts or feelings.
Takuma decided to take his words at face value, but the problem was how to proceed with the relevant information. He didn't know where to look or who to ask. He also didn't want to make any noise because he was at a critical juncture in his ANBU career, and his past as a former ROOT test subject could be used against him by claiming that he was a sleeper cell or undercover agent for ROOT. It would be absurd because he had damaged ROOT too much to be on their side, but reputation and perception were tricky things, and he didn't want to take a risk.
Fortunately, he was willing to take some time.
There was more he wanted to ask, like what exactly Grey was, but despite everything, they weren't that close, and he could feel that Grey's existence was a touchy topic.
"On that topic, if you want to know more about it, you actually have a perfect opportunity to do so," Grey said.
"Oh, how so?"
"You should just ask the Hokage. I met him a couple of times before. He was there, you know, the day I was rescued."
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