Guldrin’s Gluttony: Family Bound by Speed & Food

Danzo's arrival the next morning was as unwelcome as it was inevitable. His presence was like an infection, a slow-spreading rot that poisoned everything it touched. That insufferable tapping of his cane echoed against the sterile walls, a rhythmic reminder that this was his domain, his kingdom of shadows, and they were merely subjects under his suffocating rule. 

The old war hawk was as methodical as ever, his one visible eye scanning the room with the cold calculation of a vulture circling over carrion. And today, it seemed, he had brought gifts.

Scrolls. Chakra paper. Various instruments, all designed to measure and manipulate chakra. The tools of a Shinobi, of a craft that Guldrin had neither asked for nor had any interest in pursuing. Yet, here he was, standing at attention like some obedient soldier as Danzo stepped forward, his presence oppressive, suffocating.

"Today, you will be learning to perform jutsu," Danzo announced, his voice dry and authoritative, each syllable sharpened with expectation.

Guldrin's lip curled in disdain. He had no love for jutsu, nor the convoluted, blood-soaked world of Shinobi politics. The very idea of learning under this man was enough to make his stomach churn. He wanted nothing to do with Danzo, nothing to do with whatever twisted plans the man had in store. But then…

Danzo spoke again, this time with an edge that sent ice crawling down Guldrin's spine.

"Before you waste my time with pointless defiance, let me remind you-" his cane struck the ground with a deliberate crack, the sound reverberating like a judge's gavel, "That I have your little girlfriend under my control."

The room went still.

Shiro's gaze darkened at the words, her muscles tensing beside him. Guldrin, however, felt something much worse. A slow, creeping heat began to coil in his gut, his pulse drumming in his ears, hands curling into fists at his sides. He had long since come to understand Danzo's nature, but even now, the man's audacity was beyond infuriating.

"The second you decide to refuse," Danzo continued, tone calm, composed, as if discussing nothing more than the weather, "is the second I place her in the Clan Restoration Act." He let the words sink in, his smirk slight but evident. "Perhaps her offspring will be more receptive to my goals."

Silence.

Pure, undistilled rage boiled under Guldrin's skin. His breath was slow, and controlled, but inside, he felt like a wire pulled too tight, straining under the weight of fury.

His fury.

Shiro, for her part, was eerily quiet. But her body refused to break the illusion of false Genjutsu she had crafted over the months. Her fingers nearly twitching. The way her eyes glowed in the dim room, the almost imperceptible way her breathing changed, it all told the same story. If given the chance, she would tear Danzo apart, piece by piece, starting with his tongue.

But they both knew that wasn't an option.

She had to play the brainwashed soldier for this man… 

It wasn't time…

Not yet.

"So, what will it be, Subject X?" Danzo sneered, leaning slightly on his cane. "Feeling compliant today?"

Guldrin wanted to spit in his face. He wanted to lunge at the old bastard, grab that stupid cane, and shove it so far down his throat that he choked on it. But that wasn't an option. Not while Shiro's safety was on the line.

Not while he couldn't break the seals holding his strength, nor when they didn't have a sure-fire escape plan.

The muscles in his jaw tightened. He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to think.

For now, he had no choice.

"What do you want me to do?" he bit out, his voice level, controlled, hiding the storm brewing beneath the surface.

Danzo gave an approving nod, as if Guldrin had made some great, wise decision instead of being forced into a corner.

"Good," the old man said simply, his cane striking the ground once more. "I have chakra paper, the basics of jutsu, and access to nearly every elemental affinity you could imagine." He gestured toward the items with a slight tilt of his head. "Your job is to comply with all instructions, to follow commands, and to learn. Quickly."

Then, a pause.

"And remember, Subject X," Danzo murmured, his gaze sharp, "your little girlfriend's life depends on it."

With that final, venomous remark, he tossed a bundle of scrolls onto the floor between them. The unspoken order was clear.

Guldrin's fingers itched to snap the bastard's neck.

Shiro, standing beside him, radiated fury, her clenched fists trembling ever so slightly. But she said nothing. Because she knew. Just like he did.

For now, they had to play the game.

For now.

With measured steps, Guldrin crouched down, picking up the chakra paper. It felt thin, weightless between his fingers, yet held the promise of power. He had read about this before, how the paper reacted to a person's elemental affinity. How it could burn, crumble, split, soak, or wrinkle based on the energy infused into it.

He stared at it for a long moment, then sighed.

"Start by holding the chakra paper," Danzo instructed.

Guldrin did as he was told, fingers tightening around the delicate sheet. The second he did, a sudden, sharp pain shot through his thigh.

A kunai thrust by Ino.

Cold steel buried into his flesh without warning, sending a jolt of agony up his leg. His breath hitched, but he did not cry out. He simply stared.

Danzo's expression didn't change.

The old man's voice was steady, cold, completely unfazed by the fact that he had just ordered Ino to drive a blade into the flesh of a teen. "Now," he said, as if this were the most casual thing in the world, "focus. Feel whatever energy fuels that unnatural regeneration of yours and funnel it into the paper."

Blood welled at the point of the wound, warm and thick, gliding down Guldrin's skin in lazy rivulets. The scent of iron filled the air, sharp and metallic, a stark contrast to the musty, stagnant atmosphere of the underground chamber. The pain was there, dull and persistent, but Guldrin had felt worse. Much worse.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, forcing down the flicker of irritation that curled at the edges of his thoughts. Fine. If this was what the old bastard wanted, then he'd do it. But not because Danzo ordered him to, no, Guldrin had his own reasons for playing along.

He closed his eyes, retreating inward, reaching for the source of that ever-present force within him. It was always there, humming beneath his skin like a second heartbeat, a deep, steady rhythm that never truly faded. It wasn't chakra, not in the way others understood it. It was something deeper, something ancient, something that had taken root in him long before he even had a name for it.

Guldrin guided it downward, letting it pool in his fingertips, feeling the familiar thrum of power coiling and waiting, like a predator crouched in the darkness, ready to pounce. The moment it met the chakra paper, something happened.

A sharp, electric crackle filled the air.

The paper reacted, it convulsed, violently splitting down the center with a jagged tear, as if an unseen force had struck it like a bolt of lightning. The middle of the page crumpled inward, hollowing out in an instant. And then, something stranger.

The two halves of the split paper did not flutter to the ground like ordinary parchment. Instead, one side burned into a blinding white, while the other sank into a pitch-black abyss, as if devoured by shadow itself. Then, just as quickly, both were swallowed in a swirling dance of deep crimson and eerie violet energy. 

The remnants of the paper didn't fall. They didn't dissolve. They simply ceased to exist, wiped from reality as if they had never been there in the first place.

Danzo's single visible eye narrowed, betraying a flicker of something dangerously close to shock. That was rare. This man, this ancient war-hardened relic of Konoha's foundation, had seen nearly everything there was to see in the world of shinobi. And yet, whatever had just transpired before his eyes had thrown him off balance.

Guldrin felt the weight of the man's scrutiny, the insatiable hunger for knowledge behind that calculating stare. This was not a man who would let something like this go unanswered. If he didn't already view Guldrin as an enigma worth dissecting, he certainly did now.

That was fine. Let him wonder.

Danzo did not speak immediately. Instead, he turned his attention toward the second subject in the room. "Next," he said, his tone unreadable. "The Subject XX."

Shiro.

Danzo thought she was still caught in the Genjutsu. A convenient assumption.

She didn't resist. She didn't hesitate. With mechanical precision, as if she had been commanded like a puppet on strings, she raised her hand and, without flinching, dragged a kunai across her palm. The thin, red line appeared instantly, blood beading along the fresh cut, but her expression remained eerily serene.

A small, satisfied nod from Danzo. "Now, funnel your energy into the paper."

Shiro's fingers barely twitched as the chakra paper made contact with her skin. And then…

The reaction was immediate.

Unlike Guldrin's violent split, Shiro's paper did not crack or break apart. It rotted. The very moment her energy touched it, the paper began to darken, curling inward upon itself as though something vile had seeped into its fibers.

The color bled from stark white to a putrid, sickly purple, as if infected by a disease too unnatural to name. It pulsed once, just once, before the entire sheet crumbled into nothing. No ash. No embers. Just… absence.

What was more unsettling was the effect on the floor.

The paper, or rather, whatever Shiro's energy had become, had not simply vanished. The remnants that touched the ground did not settle harmlessly. Instead, a slow, creeping corrosion spread outward, eating away at the stone as if it had been doused in acid. The air thickened, sharp, and toxic, an unmistakable presence of something deeply, fundamentally wrong.

Danzo's fingers twitched.

He was a man who prided himself on being prepared for every possibility. A man who had contingencies upon contingencies, who had spent a lifetime manipulating, controlling, and mastering the hidden horrors of the shinobi world. And yet, here he was, facing something he had no immediate explanation for.

Fascinating.

For a long, heavy moment, silence stretched between them.

Then, Danzo slowly exhaled, steepling his fingers as he studied the two children before him. "Interesting," he murmured, his voice betraying none of the intense calculations undoubtedly running through his mind. "Very interesting."

Guldrin met his gaze evenly, refusing to let any hint of emotion flicker across his features. He knew what was coming. This wasn't over. Danzo would probe deeper. He would test them, study them, and push them further. Because that's what he did. He took things apart to understand them. To control them.

But Guldrin wasn't something that could be controlled.

Neither was Shiro.

And that, he suspected, was going to be a very big problem for the old man.

Danzo's single visible eye flickered with an unreadable emotion as he observed the results. His lips pressed into a thin line, and though his face remained as impassive as ever, there was no mistaking the glint of intrigue in his gaze. He had anticipated something unusual, he wasn't a fool, he knew these two were different, but even he hadn't expected this.

Guldrin glanced at the remains of the chakra paper, or rather, the lack of remains. There was no residue, no ash, nothing but the empty space where it had once existed. 

He knew enough about this world's rules to know that the paper should have reacted in a predictable manner, revealing his affinity in a way that was well documented. Lightning, fire, water, wind, and earth, those were the common ones. But this? This was something else entirely.

His fingers twitched at his side. His thigh still ached from where Danzo had stabbed him, but he'd long since learned to tune out pain. That was another thing that made him different, something that had set him apart since the very beginning. His body, his very existence, was wrong in ways this world didn't understand.

Danzo shifted slightly, the tap of his cane against the stone floor reverberating in the room. It was an idle sound, one meant to maintain control, to remind them of his presence. "Fascinating, utterly fascinating" he murmured at last, stepping forward and retrieving another sheet of chakra paper from within his robes. He held it between his fingers, glancing between the two of them.

Shiro's reaction had been just as strange, if not more so. The way her paper had been swallowed by a corrosive force, eating away at the ground, it wasn't anything he had ever encountered before. He knew kekkei genkai, he had studied countless bloodlines, and yet this... this was not in any of his records.

"You two," Danzo said, his voice carefully measured, "are unlike anything this village has seen."

Shiro tilted her head, a slow, calculated movement. She was still playing the part of a mindless doll, feigning complete obedience. She had been doing it for so long now that even Guldrin sometimes wondered if she enjoyed it in some twisted way, taking control of how they perceived her.

Danzo's grip on his cane tightened. "Again," he commanded, handing another piece of paper to Guldrin. "Do it again. I want to see if it changes."

Guldrin didn't argue. There was no point. He took the paper, let out a slow breath, and channeled his energy once more. 

The moment his chakra made contact, the paper reacted, this time, however, it was slightly different. Instead of splitting apart violently, the paper darkened, black veins crawling through it like ink bleeding into parchment. A second later, it collapsed inward, as though devoured by some unseen force, before vanishing completely.

Danzo hummed under his breath. "Consistent. And yet, different." He turned to Shiro. "Subject XX, again."

She obeyed, slicing her palm without hesitation and pressing her fingers against the fresh page. The paper writhed, as if in agony, before it too dissolved into nothingness, the corrosive effect even more pronounced this time, leaving a blackened scorch mark on the floor beneath it.

Silence hung in the air.

Danzo was calculating, his mind racing through possibilities. He had thought of many potential outcomes, but this? This was a deviation from the norm in a way he had never encountered before. And that meant one thing, opportunity.

"Interesting," he finally said, breaking the quiet. "It seems you are not bound by the same rules as others. That makes you... valuable."

Guldrin clenched his fists. He knew what that word meant coming from a man like Danzo. Valuable didn't mean respected. It didn't mean protected. It meant usable.

Danzo turned, walking toward a small table in the corner of the room. He placed his cane down and unrolled one of the scrolls he had brought. The markings on it were intricate, the kind of seals Guldrin had only begun to recognize. Danzo traced a finger along the lines, his gaze flicking back to them.

"Neither of you possess a single trace of chakra," Danzo murmured, his voice slow and measured, his visible eye gleaming with barely restrained curiosity. "And yet… you can use chakra paper. Something that should be impossible. And yet, the evidence is undeniable, right before my eyes."

He let that hang in the air for a moment, watching them with the sharp, assessing gaze of a man who had spent his life peering into the darkness, dissecting every anomaly that dared step outside the natural order. They were just teens, at least, in appearance. But there was something fundamentally wrong about them. Wrong, yet fascinating.

"Let's start with something simple," he finally said, tapping his cane against the cold stone floor. "Subject X, you will perform the Lightning Ball Jutsu. Follow the instructions to the letter, substituting chakra with whatever energy it is that you use."

Without another word, Danzo tossed a scroll toward Guldrin, the tightly wound parchment landing at the boy's feet with a dull thud. Then, with barely a shift in his posture, he turned toward the other child.

"Subject XX, you will perform the Water Bowl Jutsu. Read the scroll, follow the instructions, and direct the water toward the opposite wall."

His fingers idly adjusted the wrappings around half his head, and then, ever so deliberately, he allowed his cane to tap once more against the ground. A subtle signal. The slightest movement. And yet, the atmosphere in the room changed instantly. 

The tension tightened, thickened. He had exposed his Sharingan, intent on capturing every single movement, every micro-expression, every pulse of energy they might emit.

If they truly were something beyond the natural world, then this moment, this precise moment, could not be wasted.

Guldrin and Shiro exchanged slightly concealed glances, though neither spoke. There was no need. They had long since learned that words were often meaningless in the face of power, especially when wielded by men like Danzo. So, without hesitation, they each reached for their respective scrolls and unrolled them carefully, their eyes flicking over the intricate kanji that outlined the hand seals required for the jutsu.

They studied them. Memorized them. And then, they moved.

Fingers formed seals with practiced ease, movements sharp and precise. Guldrin's hands blurred through the signs for the Lightning Ball Jutsu, Bird → Snake → Monkey → Ram, while Shiro seamlessly executed the sequence for the Water Bowl Jutsu, Ram→Snake→Rat.

And then… nothing.

The silence stretched.

There was no spark. No crackle of electricity forming between Guldrin's fingertips. No shift in moisture, and no forming of liquid at Shiro's palms.

Just stillness.

Danzo's expression did not change, though his grip on his cane tightened ever so slightly. They repeated the process. 

Again. 

Again. 

And again. 

The hand seals were perfect—flawless, even. Their focus was unwavering. And yet, no matter how many times they tried, the result remained the same.

Nothing.

Danzo's Sharingan whirled, analyzing, dissecting. It was almost irritating. It should have worked. The seals were executed flawlessly, and the instructions were followed to the letter. But there was something, some invisible gap between what they were and what they should have been. Chakra was the foundation of all Shinobi techniques, the universal energy that connected all living things, the very essence of what made a shinobi a shinobi.

And yet, these two…

These two were something else entirely.

He didn't dismiss them immediately. Danzo was nothing if not thorough. They continued. Day after day, week after week, month after grueling month. He made them try again. And again. He assigned different techniques, different methods, and different exercises to force that energy of theirs to conform to the system he understood.

But the results never changed.

It was as if chakra itself rejected them, or, more disturbingly, as if they rejected chakra.

It was frustrating. It was fascinating.

And it was unacceptable.

One does not simply reject the fundamental forces of the Shinobi world. Not unless something else was at play. And Danzo hated the unknown.

So, he did what men like him always did when faced with the unknown.

He sought to control it.

One evening, as he sat in his dimly lit chamber, surrounded by reports detailing every failure, every anomaly, every impossibility regarding these two unnatural beings, a decision settled in his mind like a final piece of a puzzle snapping into place.

"If they will not bend to chakra… then we will force it into them."

It was a simple solution. If they could not use chakra in its natural form, then they would be given it, directly. Injected. Infused. Forced. If they adapted, they would become something extraordinary. And if they didn't…

Well.

Danzo had already taken countless samples from them over the months. Blood, hair, skin, and everything that could be analyzed had been stored away, preserved for further study. If they failed, if they died, he would at least have their corpses.

And corpses could still be useful.

So the preparations began.

He instructed his most trusted operatives, those who would not question orders, those whose loyalty had long since been carved into their very bones, to prepare the necessary means of injection.

A concoction was developed. A blend of pure chakra extracted from willing and unwilling subjects alike, mixed with stabilizing agents meant to keep their fragile human bodies from disintegrating under the foreign energy.

The tests had been brutal.

Many had died.

But Danzo was not concerned with their deaths. He was only concerned with results.

When the day arrived, Guldrin and Shiro were brought into a sealed chamber. A clinical, sterile room devoid of anything beyond the necessary equipment. No windows. No distractions. Only the cold hum of medical machinery and the quiet, ever-present gaze of the man who held their fates in his hands.

Danzo stood before them, his cane tapping once against the floor.

"You will be injected with chakra. Either you will adapt… or you will die."

His voice carried no emotion. No sympathy. No malice. Just cold, clinical certainty.

Guldrin rolled his shoulders, eyes half-lidded in that way that suggested he was unimpressed, despite the circumstances. "Well," he muttered, "at least it'll be interesting."

Shiro, on the other hand, simply tilted her head, a slow, eerie smile curling at the edges of her lips.

Danzo watched them for a long moment before gesturing for his men to proceed.

The needles were long, filled with swirling, luminescent chakra that pulsed with an unnatural glow. They were strapped down, not out of necessity, but out of precaution. Danzo was not a fool. He knew better than to underestimate the unknown.

The first injection went into Guldrin's arm.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then his body jerked.

Every muscle in Guldrin's body seized at once, a violent, uncontrollable spasm that locked him in place as if every fiber of his being had turned to stone. His veins bulged grotesquely beneath his skin, pulsing with a sickly, unnatural glow. 

Whatever was inside him, his very essence, was rejecting the invasive force with a ferocity that defied logic. His breath came in ragged gasps, each inhale a struggle against the sensation of something unseen twisting and writhing through his body, burrowing deep, trying to force itself into every corner of his existence. It wasn't pain in the traditional sense. It was worse. It was something wrong on a fundamental level, something that should not be.

And then, the second injection.

Shiro.

A single, sharp twitch ran through her small frame, her body jerking like a marionette with tangled strings. The air in the room grew heavy, thick with the kind of anticipation that made even the most hardened Root operatives uneasy. Their grip on their weapons tightened. They were trained for war, for assassinations, for ruthless efficiency in the face of chaos. And yet, the unknown… the unpredictable... that was something they had never been conditioned for.

A soft, lilting giggle broke the silence.

It started as a quiet hum, a note of amusement that slipped past Shiro's lips, barely above a whisper. But it grew. Louder. Richer. A melody of mirth that carried no joy, no warmth, only something eerily detached from reality, as if she found the entire situation laughable in the cruelest sense. 

The sound slithered through the dimly lit chamber, coiling around the ears of the men who were meant to feel nothing, who were trained to be emotionless. And yet, even they felt a shiver crawl up their spines.

Danzo's lone visible eye gleamed, the crimson of his Sharingan spinning wildly as he drank in every detail. Every muscle tremor. Every change in expression. Every reaction.

The experiment had begun.

And whatever happened next…

It would change everything.

Or so he thought.

The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had begun. And then…

Nothing.

No explosions of power. No breakthrough. No screams of agony or miraculous awakenings of untapped potential.

Just convulsions.

Shiro and Guldrin thrashed as if possessed, their bodies writhing against forces unseen, their limbs jerking in erratic, violent motions that no human should ever make. Their eyes, wide and unseeing, stared past the ceiling as if gazing into something beyond the physical world. Their skin rippled, muscles tightening and loosening in ways that made them look like broken puppets in the hands of an unskilled master.

Danzo watched, impassive. This was unexpected, but not necessarily a failure. Not yet.

"Fascinating," he muttered, tilting his head ever so slightly. He turned his cane, tapping it lightly against the cold stone floor. The sound echoed through the chamber, sharp and hollow.

Minutes stretched into eternity.

Their bodies refused to stabilize. The chakra coursing through them, forcibly injected into their veins, did not fuse as it should have. It did not integrate into their systems the way it had been theorized. Instead, it warred with whatever they truly were, an endless battle with no clear victor.

Danzo narrowed his eyes, his mind already racing ahead. Adjustments could be made. The human body was malleable. If one method did not work, there were others. It was simply a matter of time.

With a wave of his hand, he signaled to the medical team. "Place them in the recovery pods. Do everything you can to keep them alive."

The Root doctors, cold and precise in their movements, moved in with practiced efficiency. Metal restraints clicked open. Mechanized arms reached out, lifting the still-convulsing forms of Guldrin and Shiro with an eerie, inhuman gentleness, cradling them as one would handle a delicate experiment rather than a living being. Wires, tubes, and sensors were attached, monitoring every function, every failing organ, every erratic heartbeat.

Danzo turned slightly, directing his next command to a bespectacled man standing just beyond the medical team. The doctor, his expression unreadable, gave a slight nod. He understood his role in this.

"Document everything," Danzo ordered, his voice devoid of emotion. "Every reaction. Every failure. Every moment they suffer. If in a few months there is no progress, we move on to more drastic measures."

The doctor hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Danzo to notice.

"Drastic... measures, Lord Danzo?" the man asked carefully.

Danzo turned his gaze toward the two teens, now submerged in the viscous, nutrient-rich fluids of the recovery pods, their bodies still trembling, their unconscious minds trapped in whatever torment the chakra had unleashed within them.

"Eye transplants. Gene splicing. Experimental grafting. Anything and everything until we see results," Danzo said, his tone as cold and unwavering as ever. "Or they die."

A sharp intake of breath came from one of the younger medical staff. A mistake. Root did not tolerate sentimentality. Danzo did not acknowledge the sound, nor did he need to. The consequences of weakness would be dealt with later.

With that, Danzo turned, his long coat swaying slightly as he strode toward the exit. His work was done for now. The next phase would come in time. He did not bother with unnecessary hope or expectation. Science was a process. Success required sacrifice.

Behind him, the two teens floated in their containment pods, their bodies locked in a silent battle against the foreign power tearing them apart from the inside.

Deep within the fluid, Guldrin's fingers twitched.

Mana. Chakra. Two forces that should not exist within the same vessel.

And yet, something… shifted.

Not harmony.

Not destruction.

Something else.

Something unknown.

And as Danzo left, oblivious to the battle raging within them, a single, near-imperceptible smirk ghosted across Shiro's lips.

The experiment was far from over.

It had only just begun.

—

–

-

Every day blurred into the next. Pain, agony, suffering, these things had become so deeply ingrained in their existence that they no longer felt foreign. At some point, Guldrin and Shiro had stopped recoiling at the agony of the experiments. When it wasn't there, when the searing, bone-deep torment wasn't eating them alive, that's when they felt something was wrong. 

It had been nearly three years now. Three years since they had been trapped in this underground prison, subjected to horrors that no sane mind could ever conceive.

Danzo had expected them to break. He had expected them to either fuse with Chakra or die in the process. And yet, what had happened was neither. The Chakra injections should have either bound itself to them or torn them apart, but it had done neither. 

Instead, their mana consumed the foreign energy, breaking it down and rendering it useless. At first, it had seemed like a failure, a waste of time and resources. Danzo had nearly abandoned them, deeming them unworthy of further investment. But then, things changed.

Each injection, each forced infusion of Chakra, had taught them something new. Their bodies never accepted it, never fused with it, but they began to understand it. The energy was foreign, alien, but it wasn't impossible to grasp. It had taken months, even years, but slowly, they started to see the patterns. The flows. The way Chakra moved, the way it responded, the way it lived.

Shiro, with her Gamer class, had an edge that even Danzo hadn't anticipated or would ever know. At first, she couldn't use Chakra, not in the way a Shinobi did. But one day, something changed. Her system recognized it, labeled it, and gave her something she never should have had. Chakra Replication via Mana.

That changed everything.

Once she had the ability to replicate Chakra, it was only a matter of time before she could use it. She didn't need Danzo's injections anymore. The moment her system understood it, she could generate it on her own. And with that came a terrifying truth, she could use Jutsu. Every technique, every skill they had been subjected to, every forced experiment that had once been beyond their reach, was now at her fingertips. She could wield Chakra just as well as any Shinobi, maybe even better.

Danzo was ecstatic. A success. A true, undeniable success. He believed he had created the perfect tool, an experiment that had finally yielded fruit. He had no idea how wrong he was.

Then there was Guldrin. Unlike Shiro, he couldn't replicate Chakra. He couldn't mold it, couldn't wield it. For all intents and purposes, the experiments had been a failure on him. But that didn't mean he had learned nothing. If anything, his understanding had surpassed even Shiro's in a completely different way.

Chakra was just energy. A fuel source. A power system. The Shinobi used it to enhance their bodies, to shape their techniques, to weave their illusions and devastating attacks. But there was nothing special about it. Nothing that made it superior. If Chakra could do these things, then what stopped Mana from doing the same?

The answer was simple. Nothing.

Guldrin learned the principles of Chakra manipulation, studied the pathways, the techniques, the forms. And then he applied them to his mana. Where Chakra should have been, he substituted his own energy.

It worked.

And not just barely.

It worked too well.

Jutsu wasn't meant to be fueled by Mana. The techniques were built on the principles of Chakra, but mana functioned differently. It was denser, more potent, more volatile. Where a Shinobi had to carefully mold their Chakra and ration it, Guldrin didn't have that limitation. His mana didn't disperse the same way, didn't leak away with each technique. Every time he used a Jutsu, it came out stronger, faster, and sharper than it should have. And the best part?

No one could sense it.

To a sensor-type ninja, they were civilians. There was no Chakra signature, no energy to track. Even when he used his techniques, if he didn't perform the hand seals, he was nothing but a ghost in the system. Undetectable. Untraceable. Invisible.

Danzo had no idea.

But that didn't stop the old war hawk from taking precautions. He saw power, and Danzo never left power unchecked. One day, without warning, he decided to place the Cursed Tongue Eradication Seal on them. A mark of absolute obedience. A leash to ensure their loyalty.

It failed.

For the first time, Danzo had met something that Chakra couldn't control. The seal was designed to manipulate the brainwaves, to disrupt the Chakra pathways of those who were marked. But the problem was simple, Guldrin and Shiro didn't have Chakra pathways. Their bodies didn't function that way. The seal did nothing.

But Danzo didn't know that.

Shiro saw it coming. The moment she realized what Danzo planned, she warned Guldrin. And so, when the seal was placed, they did the only thing they could. They pretended.

They faked obedience, faked compliance. When Danzo questioned them, they fed him lies. Partial truths. He asked for their names, they gave them. He asked where they came from, blank stares. He demanded to know their past, confusion, and amnesia.

Danzo never suspected a thing.

Why would he? The seal was supposed to make lying impossible. The very idea that they could deceive him never crossed his mind.

It was the perfect deception.

Thinking he had full control over them, Danzo welcomed them into his program. Willing test subjects. Loyal weapons. They learned everything he gave them, absorbed every lesson, every secret, every forbidden technique. They became sponges, taking in every scrap of knowledge, every hidden art, every classified method.

And then they improved it.

Hand seals? Useless. Redundant. A crutch. Once they understood the principles, they didn't need them anymore. All that mattered was the energy flow. The shaping. The intent. Their abilities grew at an exponential rate, far beyond what Danzo ever anticipated.

More than that, they learned something even more dangerous.

They were invisible.

Without Chakra signatures, they were undetectable to the Shinobi world. No sensor could track them, no technique could pinpoint their presence. As long as they avoided hand seals, they were ghosts. The perfect assassins. The perfect infiltrators. The ultimate weapons.

Danzo had no idea that he was training the very beings who would destroy him.

For three years, they played the part. Learned. Adapted. Grew.

Guldrin, despite his initial failure with Chakra, discovered something else. Sealing Jutsu. An art far more complex, and far more dangerous, than even the deadliest Ninjutsu. It wasn't about raw power, it was about precision. Control. A single miscalculation, a single misplaced stroke, and the entire technique could backfire.

But Guldrin never made mistakes.

He studied the art, refined it, and mastered it. The knowledge was painstaking, and meticulous, requiring absolute patience and dedication. But he learned. And with it, he realized something.

Seals could suppress power. They could contain, manipulate, and reshape energy itself. And if he could manipulate seals…

He could break them.

Every lock, every restriction, every contingency Danzo had meticulously embedded into their bodies, every insidious failsafe he had devised, it was all meaningless now. Guldrin had unraveled them. Not overnight, not without immense pain and struggle, but piece by piece, like an artisan deconstructing a masterpiece, he had learned to peel away the layers of control. He had taken the very chains meant to bind him and reforged them into weapons.

Danzo believed he was molding the perfect tools, crafting instruments of war that would serve him without question, without hesitation. But in his arrogance, in his obsession with control, he failed to see the truth. He was not tempering unfeeling weapons, he was refining something far more dangerous.

He was building his own destruction.

And he had no idea.

Yet.

The base was their crucible, the relentless training their forge. Pain had become a language they spoke fluently, hardship an ever-present companion. And like steel tempered in the hottest of flames, they had emerged sharper, deadlier, and with a singular, unwavering purpose.

The day would come when the veil would be lifted, when the facade of obedience would shatter, and then?

All Hell would break loose.

—

–

-

Time had long since lost meaning in the underground compound. There were no sunrises or sunsets, only the flickering of torches and the dim, artificial light of Danzo's facilities. Days, weeks, what difference did it make when every moment was spent training, learning, and surviving? The monotony was oppressive, the silence deafening.

Then, the world trembled.

A deep, guttural rumble shook the entire base. Dust cascaded from the stone ceiling like sand through an hourglass. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the oppressive order of the facility cracked under the weight of something greater.

Panic spread like wildfire.

The base shifted to high alert, masked figures moving with rigid efficiency. Even without knowing the full details, Guldrin and Shiro caught fragments of hurried whispers among the Root operatives.

"A giant white snake, attacking the village."

The words sent a jolt through Shiro.

Orochimaru.

The invasion.

This was it.

For three years, they had waited, playing the perfect roles, pretending to be the ideal pawns. And now, an opportunity had arrived wrapped in the chaos of war.

This was the moment everything would change.

This was the night blood would flow.

Guldrin's fingers tightened into fists inside the pod, a slow exhalation escaping his lips.

He was ready.

-

–

—

He had been preparing for this for years, meticulously carving out his escape plan with the patience of a predator stalking its prey.

Seals fueled by mana, undetectable.

They were his hidden ace, his secret rebellion carved into the very bones of the facility. His proficiency in sealing had reached levels that hadn't been seen since the fall of Uzushiogakure. Every corridor, every chamber, every unassuming surface within Danzo's domain had been inscribed with unseen threads of rebellion.

Seals that dampened sensory abilities. Seals that could detonate with the force of an explosive tag. Seals that disrupted chakra flow.

Each one placed with precision.

Each one waiting for the right moment.

This was the moment.

Guldrin reached out through the bond, the tether forged between him and Ino over years of suffering, the new bond they gained when she tried to mind-dive him, she was his loyal follower, and it was time to free her.

The instant the thought crossed his mind, the command surged through the link like a lightning strike.

And the shackles shattered.

It was like watching a floodgate burst open. Ino, the girl who had spent years caged in the cold, mindless embrace of Danzo's control, suddenly gasped as if breaking through the surface of deep water.

The weight of her stolen years came crashing down.

Memories, horrors buried beneath Root's programming, rushed back in a tidal wave. The things she had done, the lives she had erased, the countless minds she had violated for the sake of a mission.

If not for Guldrin's presence within her mind, she might have broken completely.

She would have collapsed into despair.

She would have ended it all right then and there.

But she wasn't alone.

She had him.

Her lord.

And she clung to that lifeline with everything she had.

There was no hesitation. 

No doubt.

Danzo had made her a perfect soldier, but he had failed to make her loyal without the seal.

Now, all that remained was a lethal instrument without a master, one who had found a new purpose, a new devotion.

She broke the pods first, delicate hands making quick work of the seals imprisoning both Guldrin and Shiro.

She was done being a puppet.

Her old life?

Gone.

Her parents?

A distant memory.

In the eyes of Konoha, Yamanaka Ino had been dead for years, a casualty of an unfortunate 'incident' involving the Jinchuriki, Naruko.

But it had all been a lie.

A fabrication to mold them both into the perfect assets, to remove attachments, to make them something empty, something that would obey without question.

Danzo had taken everything from her.

Now, she would take everything from him.

She would burn Konoha to the ground if it meant repaying every ounce of suffering they had inflicted upon her.

But first…

First, they had to escape.

—

–

-

The first explosion hit with the force of an earthquake, shaking the very bones of the underground facility. The once-immaculate halls, polished with years of silence and secrecy, now trembled under the weight of fire and fury. 

The shockwave rippled through the compound like a vengeful spirit, tearing through the foundation, sending cracks sprawling along the reinforced walls. Overhead lights flickered wildly before dying out completely, plunging everything into an eerie half-darkness lit only by the flickering flames from the destruction.

Screams erupted in the distance, short, cut off by the unmistakable sound of steel meeting flesh. The world, which had once been ordered and controlled, dissolved into chaos.

Guldrin's seals had done their work.

Every carefully hidden sigil, every meticulously placed array, ignited in a violent chain reaction of destruction. The floor beneath them cracked and buckled. Training rooms, once temples of pain and discipline, collapsed into themselves, trapping their inhabitants in the very place that had forged them into tools. 

Steel doors meant to keep intruders out now locked the Root operatives in, turning the underground fortress into a labyrinth of death.

Shiro was a phantom in the madness. Her mana threads, nearly invisible in the dim torchlight, lashed out like silver lightning, slicing through everything they touched. Root operatives, highly trained killers conditioned to feel nothing, fear nothing, were reduced to panicked prey. 

Some fell instantly, their throats neatly severed before they could react, while others found their limbs tangled in the deadly strands, their bodies pulled apart in ways nature had never intended.

Guldrin wasted no time. His hands moved with practiced precision, tracing patterns in the air, activating seal after seal with nothing but sheer will. Each motion twisted the battlefield further in their favor, barriers flared to life, cutting off escape routes, doors slammed shut behind fleeing Root agents, sealing them in. 

The facility, once a prison designed to break and mold its victims, had turned against its own creators.

And then there was Ino.

She moved through the carnage like a blade caught in a storm, her movements fluid, deliberate. Every step was calculated, every attack precise. Years of siphoning the knowledge of others, of stealing their skills and techniques, had made her something more than human, something deadly. 

She fought with the expertise of a hundred different masters, her stolen knowledge manifesting in a terrifying display of efficiency. One moment, she was using the gentle touch of a Hyuga's palm strike to disable an opponent with a mere brush of her fingers; the next, she was twisting like an Uchiha in midair, kunai flashing as she carved through another enemy's defenses.

They were cutting through Root like a scythe through brittle, dry wheat.

Danzo had spent years perfecting his tools. He had honed them, broken them, reshaped them into killers who followed orders without question.

But he had never expected them to turn their blades against him.

Guldrin stepped into the fray, and the slaughter intensified. His movements were unhurried, and methodical, there was no wasted energy, no unnecessary force. His combat knife coated in red lightning whispered through the air, and where it passed, bodies fell. 

Heads rolled, blood splattered against the cold steel walls in wide, gruesome arcs, painting a morbid masterpiece of death. The metallic scent of freshly spilled blood mixed with the acrid stench of burning metal and gunpowder, creating an intoxicating atmosphere of war.

He was aware of his pulse, of the steady drum of his own heartbeat, but beyond that, he felt nothing.

No remorse.

No hesitation.

Only purpose.

A Root agent lunged at him from the side, but before the kunai could even get close, a thin wire flashed, and the man's head separated from his shoulders in one clean motion. Guldrin glanced up just in time to see Shiro retract her mana thread, the deadly filament glistening with crimson under the dim firelight. She gave him a ghost of a smirk before vanishing back into the chaos.

He didn't have time to admire her efficiency. Another operative came at him, this one faster, smarter. Guldrin pivoted, sidestepping the attack before driving his knee into the man's gut with enough force to lift him off the ground. The air left the Root operative's lungs in a wheeze, but before he could recover, Guldrin twisted, his blade slicing through the exposed throat. The man crumpled, clutching at his gushing wound, eyes wide with disbelief.

Guldrin didn't stop to watch him die.

His blood sang with something old, something primal. His instincts sharpened, and his vision tunneled. Every move felt precise, and natural, like he had done this a thousand times before.

And maybe he had.

Maybe this was what he had always been meant to do.

Across the battlefield, Ino cut through another Root operative, stepping over his body with all the grace of a dancer. She flicked her wrist, sending a kunai flying into the eye socket of another enemy mid-charge. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes burned with something fierce, something vindictive. For too long, she had been their pawn, their experimental blade of the mind.

Now, she was their executioner.

The ground trembled beneath them as another explosion detonated in the distance, signaling the complete collapse of another sector. The walls groaned, cracks splintering across their once-unbreakable surfaces. The entire facility was coming down around them.

And then, a scream.

Not just any scream.

An unholy wail, raw with agony, filled with something beyond physical pain.

Guldrin turned just in time to see one of the surviving Root operatives writhing on the ground, his body twisting in unnatural ways. His skin blackened, veins bulging grotesquely as he clawed at his own face, his mouth stretching wide in a silent, never-ending scream.

Shiro stood over him, her mana wires gleaming with a sickly purple glow.

Her eyes, once the soft gold of sunset, had darkened, deep, bottomless pits of the violet abyss.

She didn't blink. Didn't move. Just watched.

Watched as the man's body continued to convulse.

Watched as his skin peeled away, as his insides liquefied, as he collapsed into himself in an explosion of gore and mush.

Then, and only then, did she turn to him, her voice barely above a whisper.

"We should go."

Guldrin didn't argue, and Ino followed like a loyal follower.

The facility was collapsing around them, and they had no reason to linger. Danzo was nowhere to be seen, whether he had escaped or was buried beneath the rubble, it didn't matter. His empire was burning, and that was enough.

-

–

—

Guldrin had a debt to settle. A vendetta burned within him, deep and unyielding. Four Eyes, Dr. Shirakawa, the man who had experimented, dissected, and twisted lives without remorse, had to pay the price. He had to suffer. He had to be judged. The weight of that justice, that final retribution, rested on Guldrin's shoulders, and he would not falter.

But fate had a cruel sense of humor.

The explosions had torn through the underground compound, the sheer force rattling its very foundation. One particularly violent detonation sent a shockwave through the facility, causing steel beams to groan and concrete to crack. 

The ceiling gave way. Shirakawa, ever the unfortunate bastard, was caught beneath the rubble, half his body crushed under tons of debris. His once pristine white coat was stained red, his breath coming in ragged gasps as his life bled out onto the cold, ruined floor.

For most, this would have been a mercy. A quick death. A release.

But Guldrin wasn't feeling merciful.

He stalked forward, his footsteps slow and deliberate, his body thrumming with power. He felt it, the same connection, the same pull he had experienced when he had ended Braga. His angelic bloodline stirred, whispering to him of judgment, of balance, of sending this wretched soul to purgatory, where he would pay for every crime, for every horror he had inflicted upon others.

Yet this time, there was something else. Something darker. Hungrier.

His demonic bloodline stirred, and with it, Gluttony awakened. A deep, insatiable craving clawed at his very being, demanding, urging, pleading to consume. It whispered promises of strength, of power beyond imagination. It wasn't about sending Shirakawa to judgment, it was about devouring everything he was. His knowledge, his experiences, his very essence.

So Guldrin let it all free.

A surge of raw, untamed energy erupted from him, his wings unfurling in all their unnatural glory, one golden, radiant, and pure, the other black, dark as the void itself. His mismatched eyes burned with the fury of both his celestial and abyssal lineage, swirling with divine wrath and infernal hunger.

Shirakawa's gaze met his, and for the first time, the scientist who had spent his life experimenting on others, who had played god with the lives of so many, felt true fear.

Guldrin reached out, his hand pressing against the man's forehead, his voice a whisper of finality.

"You who have sinned. You who have stolen lives and reveled in unholy knowledge. You who have taken without remorse, twisted without regret. You, who should never have been allowed to live..." His golden eye flared, blazing like the sun itself. "Will be doomed to exist in a state between life and death. You will suffer. You will feel everything you have done to your victims a thousandfold. You will be judged."

His voice dropped to a whisper, but the power in his words shook the very fabric of the world.

"Guilty."

The universe seemed to hold its breath.

A pulse of golden fire and abyssal darkness erupted from Guldrin's hand, and Shirakawa's screams, horrible, wretched screams, pierced the air. It was no ordinary death. No simple demise. His very soul was being torn asunder, stripped layer by layer, his sins laid bare as he was pulled into something far worse than death. Purgatory would have been merciful. Hell would have been kind.

This was neither.

This was obliteration and reconstruction all at the same time.

His flesh withered, his bones turned to dust, and his essence was consumed by Gluttony's insatiable hunger. The power flowed into Guldrin, searing through his veins, flooding his mind with knowledge that was never his to possess.

By the time he was gone, Guldrin received a message from his system which had been quiet this entire three years, a notification in the depths of his mind.

"Ding, Gluttony has been unsealed, due to consumption, the user has gained: Scientific Knowledge, Experiences of Dr. Shirakawa's life, and Medical Ninjutsu (Converted to Medical Techniques)"

He staggered for a moment, his body adjusting to the influx of information, his mind racing as images, formulas, and techniques that were once locked away in Shirakawa's twisted mind now belonged to him.

He took a breath.

Then another.

And when he finally lifted his gaze, he felt it, something had changed. He was more than he had been before. More than just a being of light or darkness. He was both. A fusion. A force beyond either realm.

This judgment, gave him balance, the once imbalanced purity, now reaching an equilibrium.

But that was a thought for a different time.

Shiro and Ino were waiting at the compound's threshold, their expressions unreadable as the underground facility groaned around them. Fires licked at the walls, smoke curling into the air as the destruction spread.

"Is it over?" Shiro asked, 

Guldrin nodded, "Four Eyes is no more, banished to the deepest parts of Hell, his soul torn beyond recognition." Shiro just nodded, a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

They had done it.

They were free.

For the first time in years, fresh air hit their lungs, cool and crisp against their skin. The sunny sky stretched out before them, vast and endless, the sky's clouds felt almost foreign after so long in darkness.

It was like the world felt their escape, as if it knew what had been unleashed.

But there was no peace.

Not yet.

Danzo had spent years perfecting his tools, forging them in secret, molding them into the ultimate weapons.

And now?

Now, those weapons had broken free.

They were no longer tools. No longer pawns. No longer bound by the shackles he had placed upon them.

They had become something else entirely.

A force beyond his control.

And the reckoning was just beginning.

One day, they would return, and that day, Danzo would regret his folly, regret, a feeling he had forgotten, will be all he knows.

(I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I enjoyed writing it, RNG blessed me with many new directions, and I feel it has left me with many ways the story could go... Yes, Naruto is Naruko, and Yes, that means Sasuke is Satsuki... RNG chose this, but it will be important for reasons... If your question is, will they join the harem, the answer is I HAVE NO IDEA, if they do, it will make sense, stay tuned, and enjoy.)

 (Give me your POWER, Please, and Thank You! Leave reviews and comments, they motivate me to continue.)