Chapter One: Where The Hell Am I?

𝘚𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘰 𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘬?

The lanterns that hung outside his cell only flickered with a wavering flame, casting long shadows into the cell he had spent all his life in. So this wasn't anything new. What was new was the fact that he couldn't see his own hand in front of his face and that he was nearly completely restrained in this… wooden coffin.

There were many things Raio was proud of, things he quickly flickered back to in a slim hope of thinking of anything that would save him. One would be his eyes– his father had said he had something like 'Night vision'. The simple term had amused Raio, but not to the point of forgetting the pain of having his eyelids pried open with a foreign and cold metal tool. His father had compared them to the eyes of a feline; the pupil expanding to take in more light, and slitting when a harsh light was shone into them.

Kabuto had been standing next to him during the procedure. His presence would've been easier to ignore if he hadn't looked so fascinated.

His stomach growled to temporarily snap him from the visage. Ugh. When was the last time they fed him?

Regardless, it left situations like the one he found himself in unbearable. He had been stripped from his cell in a flurry of movement. Masked nin, flashes of silver hair, rough hands, and cold metal. Raio had lashed his chitinous tail erratically in response. Thrashing his bandaged arms, flexing his long and sharp claws.

A cold hand was pressed onto the small of his back. With it came a dense fog that pressed into his head and made his movements sluggish. It was like trying to force his thoughts through cheese wire, overpowering any attempt to resist. His eyes were frantic, and his heart was thundering, but he hadn't been able to move. An attack on his mind. Dozens of hands landed on him, pulling like they were trying to rip limb from join.

A collar, one thick and already digging into his throat, shut with a click around his neck. Shackles at his feet, handcuffs at his wrists. They restricted his tail too– curling it with chains and clasping it to a hook at the back of his neck.

They carried him. Fingers dug into his scrawny form, in which his skin webbed over his ribs like cheap saran wrap and every little groove of his spine was visible. He would have screamed. Begged, pleaded, asked what they were going to do now, that he was already exhausted from yesterday's trials, that they were going to kill him if they kept pushing him like this– but the incredible pressure that was building up and throbbing at the base of his neck was hammering through his brain, and there was little he could do to speak.

So now he was… here. Crammed inside what felt like a coffin, with rough unrefined wood trapping him in a space that barely allowed him to squirm. The pressure in his head leeched out and freed his thoughts so that it was easier to think. With a sudden jolt, a breath of air, Raio tried to sit up– succeeding in knocking the points of his keratin horns into the sturdy wood.

𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘐 𝘴𝘦𝘦?

Raio squinted his eyes, his long eyelashes fluttering in the dark, in an attempt to look at anything. The metal handcuffs keeping his hands bound together in front of him or the ragged scraps of fabric he was dressed in. He could feel it still. The scratchy, starch tank top, and the loose shorts that barely held together over him. The hunger compounded in his aching stomach.

His mind raced, becoming sharper and sharper as the effects of whatever had been done to him wore off. A multitude of possibilities came as an explanation, though his comprehension of such topics was shaky: 𝘐𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘬𝘳𝘢-𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨? A pause. That didn't sound right. 𝘖𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘧?... 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘪𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘯?

Then, quickly, panic seized his heart. Though this was different than anything else he had been put through– his keepers were nothing but creative.

He needed to get out. He needed to get out now.

Raio didn't know what was about to happen to him, or what they were going to do. Was this coffin of his going to fill with water and drown him again? Or was it going to catch flame? Were senbon going to come shooting through to nail him into it? Maybe this was another test. That's all it usually was. A test. A trial. Maybe they were going to leave him here until he succumbed to famine.

Putting it out of his mind to retain some semblance of free will, an idea of it, Raio shifted. Laying more on his ribs, he pressed his back and tail flush against one of the sides. The sharp turn where the side met the roof was uncomfortable as his chitinous tail was crammed against everything. If it were free, if he weren't restrained, it would be so easy to just puncture his tail clean through it.

This had been planned, Raio realized. This is why they hadn't been feeding him. The one pleasure he had in his laborious life, they had derived from him. It made him so weak, didn't it?

In a sharp pop and twist, Raio's thumbs popped out of their sockets in a quick and practiced way. The pain throbbed hot and pulsated through his hands, but faded soon enough to an ache.

Curling up in a ball with his knees to his chest, he put his bare foot in the link between the handcuffs and pushed down on it, pulling up with his hands. It barely budged. The only thing he accomplished was letting the edge of the cold metal press into his skin. He was in no danger of breaking skin, but his hands shook from the sheer force, and he quickly relented. It would do no good to have his hands swell before getting them out of the handcuffs.

𝘔𝘢𝘺𝘣𝘦 𝘪𝘧 𝘐…

Using the curved talons on his scaled feet, he slid a claw along the smooth metal until it slipped into something. A keyhole? In a show of dexterity, he jimmied it for a minute.

Click!

The handcuffs popped open. Raio let himself smile, triumphantly. What would be his reward for doing well this time? Would they finally allow him to eat?

Cradling his hands to his chest (knocking his elbows against the coffin he was in), he pushed his thumbs back into their proper sockets. Again the sharp pain soothed into a duller one. With his hands free and the useless piece of metal taking up precious space, he craned his neck to take the handcuffs in his sharp teeth to move it further up. Less space that way. He decided to take his collar off last for the same reason.

Contorting his body to reach the shackles chaining his feet together, he unlocked those with his index claw, then reached his hands far behind his back to unlock his tail. It was truly surprising that these restraints weren't harder to get out of. He couldn't see if they had Fuinjutsu seals scribbled over them in the dark.

Ah, then again. They didn't quite know that he knew how to pick locks, did they?

Raio chuckled to himself rather softly before reaching up to his neck, gliding his fingers over the metal before finding the lock mechanism engraved into it. 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘰.

Raio shimmied closer to the middle again, free of any chains or other restraints than this accursed coffin they had thrown him into. Every muscle he had rippled under his skin and begged to be let loose. His cramped tail, his curled legs, and even his neck from having to crane as to not let his ram-esque horns bulk against the wood.

There! His tail lashed before piercing straight through the wood. With it, the wood shattered in splinters, raining down on Raio. He only raised his hand to block anything from getting into his eyes, Desperate for any sort of light–

Thrashing, pushing outward with his malnourished arms, the pieces of wood easily fell out and to the side.

There was something very stark then, that Raio only realized once he had properly been sitting up.

The rotten and sweet smell of the dead hit him with the same realization that he was in an open-ended caravan. Other boxes and crates surrounded him, some shattered and trinkets spilling out that he didn't care for. Most pressingly there were four Chakra signatures outside the caravan, amongst the dead bodies and fresh blood Raio could smell.

𝘛𝘸𝘰 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨, Raio thought. 𝘕𝘰, 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦.

But everything hit him at once; the fact that he could sense these living humans came as a dizzying surprise, and so did the moonlight bathing him through the holes in the caravan's roof. Raio did nothing but stagger to his feet.

Though it sounded so far away, he could hear the four figures move. They were just outside the caravan.

"It seems like another one showed up." A monotone and cold masculine voice said, unlike anything Raio had heard before.

His vision was still blurred as he leaned against the wall of the caravan, his tail protectively curled around himself. Their life forces— they were so strong, Raio thought he was going to start dry heaving.

Then, one of the figures disappeared from the mass and blurred in front of him. Preparing to strike was a silver-haired man with a cloth garter covering the lower half of his face, and heterochromatic eyes that pierced through Raio. One black and the other a ruby red.