"Haruto-kun… follow me." Hiruko said softly. "I haven't shown you my true lab yet. Let's go."
"True lab? Where's that Hiruko-san?" Haruto's body asked.
***
"Why's he speaking to you and making you speak Haruto?" Megumin suddenly asked, puzzled.
"...probably for the ANBU watching me.. Or maybe even watching him?" Haruto responded and Edward nodded.
***
In the real world, Hiruko had pressed his hand on a wall causing a seal to appear on it before it sank in place and opened up to a secret room.
At this moment the ANBU watching Hiruko all paused.
'This is his secret room?' Kakashi asked himself.
'But… we already know about this room… it was built during the construction of the R&D Department and we've checked it… there's no one in there… no children, no harmful experimental subjects.'
Suddenly a sense of discordance gripped Kakashi.
Something was already going wrong with the Third Hokage's plan… yet he couldn't put his finger on it.
Even so, Kakashi signaled the ANBU in hiding.
'Follow them.'
As Kakashi's eyes lingered on Haruto he prayed to his friends' departed souls in his mind.
'I hope I keep Haruto-kun safe, Obito…'
'I hope I can keep him safe Rin.'
Haruto, whose body was being controlled by Hiruko to do as he pleased with it, could only feel tense and remain on his toes, ready to take control over his body as soon as the situation demanded it.
Hiruko entered the secret room while dragging Uchiha Tatsuya with him.
The interior of the secret room was not much different from Hiruko's office apart from the strange specimens it had hanging around on display in tubes inside the room.
This room too was well lit by operating theater lights and had several instruments neatly lined up in front of the operating table so that Haruto could help Hiruko as he had done on all his previous experiments.
It took Hiruko a second to haul Tatsuya Uchiha onto the operating table in the room at which point he simply urged Haruto.
"Haruto-kun, bind him with the restrictive belts. Make sure there is no way he can even flinch when I cut him open. He needs to be punished for what he has done."
"Yes Hiruko-san."
Without a single question, Haruto worked diligently to tie up Uchiha Tatsuya to the operating table. He strapped his hands in a reinforced leather belt that was wrapped around a steel sleeve so that Uchiha Tatsuya couldn't escape no matter what happened.
While Uchiha Tatsuya was bracing himself for the pain, Hiruko quietly pulled out a scalpel.
The sharp edge of the blade glimmered under the bright operation lights as Hiruko brought it down in a sharp slash, splitting open Tatsuya's chest for everyone to look around its insides.
"AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!"
Haruto winced inside the template inventory space, while he had seen Hiruko operating on a dead body before a live one was totally different. Especially when Tatsuya was currently squirming in pain while glaring at Hiruko.
"Good…" Hiruko nodded, caressing Tatsuya's face who activated his three tomoe sharingan in response to the pain.
"You activated your sharingan earlier than I expected… well why don' I reward you for that…" Hiruko said with a chilly smile on his face.
PUCHI
Hiruko suddenly stabbed the scalpel he was using into Tatsuya's side and twisted it in place causing immense pain.
"AGGHHH!!"
Hiruko calmly caressed Tatsuya's eyes before speaking in a gentle tone, "Good. Now that the scalpel is stuck in your body I won't torture you again for five minutes. In the meantime, let's see if it is possible to steal the specialized yin nature chakra from your Sharingan."
Hiruko performed a few handseals and spoke the name of the jutsu he performed.
"Yin Release : Chakra Extraction Jutsu."
Hiruko placed his hands above Tatsuya's eyes and caused a pale grayish energy to separate from Tatsuya's eyes and move into a seal scroll that Haruto held close by.
***
"Haruto-kun!!! Kill that bastard!" Izuna shouted.
Although chakra extraction from the Sharingan probably didn't hurt Tatsuya, Izuna felt beyond humiliated that someone was experimenting on someone else's Sharingan.
Everyone else in the enigmatic space sat with tense expressions.
They had already realised that Haruto was being controlled courtesy Tobirama who recognised the jutsu that Hiruko had used on Haruto.
So they were currently extremely tense, worrying that Hiruko planned to act as if Haruto was his co-conspirer so that he could escape unharmed while using the young boy as his hostage.
"What do you think is Lord Third's plan, Lord Second?" Sakumo asked with a confused expression on his face.
Why would they sacrifice a perfectly good Uchiha shinobi of the village?
Tobirama frowned and then spoke up after mulling over his thoughts, "I suspect there is a time sensitive issue that has reached him… perhaps there is another matter relating to Hiruko that has surfaced. Maybe he has kidnapped shinobi to experiment on and he needs to quickly find those shinobi."
"That would make sense…" Minato nodded, "The third might have expected Hiruko to take the Uchiha to his secret base where he kidnapped those other shinobi he wanted to experiment on… and the ANBU would tail him to capture him then."
"But it is a nonsensical plan…" Tobirama huffed, "I would've asked the ANBU members to infiltrate the ROOT and find those shinobi that way instead."
"The ROOT?" Mito questioned and Tobirama just nodded, "Hiruko doesn't look strong enough himself to be able to defeat and capture several shinobi… he must've had help… and the only person who you've all described that fits the profile is Danzo… ergo ROOT."
Everyone fell into a soft dull silence.
Kushina was still worried about Haruto.
"Will he be alright?" Kushina asked softly, her voice only a whisper but clearly audible to everyone.
"We can always try and wake him up by sending him a thought…" Sakumo said calmly, trying to look at the positive side of the situation but he wasn't sure of the method himself.
Tobirama's silence didn't help and everyone fell into a strange lul.
***
After eight hours of continuous torture and experimentation, Hiruko finally spoke out loud, "Haruto-kun… it seems I have failed to replicate the sharingan… but it seems we have completed out objective of giving Tatsuya here a deeply painful departure… Let's finish the job and kill him now. Would you like to do the honors?"
Haruto, still being controlled, smiled with blood stains on his face. "Yes, Hiruko-san… I'll finish him for you. You must be tired."
Haruto picked up a scalpel and walked closer to Tatsuya.
Haruto placed the scalpel onto Tatsuya's neck and stared deeply into the man's eyes.
The man was spent.
His gaze looked dead and his body was numb, it was hard to say if the man would ever recover from what had happened today if he were to live.
It was a miracle that the blood loss hadn't killed him already since Hiruko had stabbed him every which way possible. The man had only remained alive probably because of Hiruko using the Mystical Palm technique sparingly.
"Why does he want to kill him?" Edward asked Haruto and Megumin. "Wouldn't keeping him alive be more beneficial for his plan? Didn't you say that he needs to absorb the bodies to absorb their kekkei genkai? Why would he want to kill him?"
The two of them remained silent until Haruto chanced upon the reason.
"Because-"