Title: The Truly Terrifying Thing About Morino Ibiki

Author: obfuscation, baby!

Spoilers: None, if you know who Ibiki is.

Ratings: PG-13?

Warnings: Passing mentions of torture and other icky stuff.

Summary: 31 truths about the head of the Konoha Anbu Torture and Interrogation Force.

Disclaimer: Morino Ibiki and the entire Naruto universe belong to Masashi Kishimoto and whomever he chooses to license them to. In other words, not mine.

Author's Note: This is a somewhat modified version of something I posted in my livejournal a while ago. I reworked it a bit, to make it a little more presentable, and figured I'd post it here. As always, reviews are encouraged (and make me do a little happy dance). Please let me know what worked for you or didn't and why (and please, please, please tell me if you spot any grammar mistakes)-constructive criticism helps me make this and future fics better. Also, many thanks to fairady over at livejournal for beta reading (and to glanceinward for the assist).

Author's Note EDIT: Okay, apparently there has been some confusion: THIS IS NOT CANON! In other words, my "truths" are not based upon official information from Naruto. To the best of my knowledge Ibiki's background hasn't ever been talked about in the anime or the manga. Basically, my boyfriend was speculating about the Morino Ibiki character, and I used a list of "truths" to flesh out one of his ideas. This is my take on Ibiki, not Kishimoto's. In other words: I made it up. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion. : )

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The Truly Terrifying Thing About Morino Ibiki
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1. Morino Ibiki, head of the Konoha Anbu Torture and Interrogation Force, is one of the most widely feared shinobi alive today.

2. No one knows for sure, but most people think that he has fought more than a thousand shinobi since graduating from the academy at the age of eight.

3. They are wrong—the number is well over three thousand.

4. He has only ever lost twice.

5. His first loss was to a Cloud Nin nearly twice his age and experience during the first battle of his first Chuunin exams.

6. At the next year's Chuunin exams, Ibiki was the last one standing. He was ten.

7. Two weeks before his seventeenth birthday, Ibiki was defeated a second time. He was ambushed by enemy nins and captured. He never even saw the face of the shinobi that took him down.

8. Morino Ibiki learns from his mistakes. He has not been defeated since.

9. Ibiki was held as a prisoner for six months during which he was tortured heavily.

10. He did not break.

11. The day he turned seventeen, Morino Ibiki ate his first raw rat.

12. It was not his last.

13. Ibiki never believed that he would die in captivity.

14. He was very nearly wrong.

15. Ibiki was quite close to death when a healer woman helped him escape. She only thought of doing so because she believed she would be punished for failing to keep him alive. Ibiki knew this and took advantage of her fears.

16. She was later killed for her treachery. If Ibiki knew this, he would not be sorry.

17. It was only after he escaped that Ibiki learned who had captured him. It took him more than a month to make his way from Stone country back to Konoha.

18. He also learned that it's tough to walk when the bones in your feet have been crushed.

19. During his grueling recovery, Ibiki was interrogated again, this time by a Konoha specialist. The Anbu had specific orders to find out when and how they had broken him and how much information had been compromised.

20. It took Ibiki almost five months to convince the man that he had not broken at all. Despite everything, Ibiki enjoyed every minute of that time.

21. As soon as the medic Nins cleared him for duty, Ibiki joined Anbu. Less than a month later, he was promoted into the Konoha Anbu Torture and Interrogation Force.

22. Ibiki is the only member in the history of the force to have bypassed the obligatory year of general Anbu service.

23. No one knows for sure, but most people think that he has interrogated more than five hundred prisoners since joining T&I at the age of eighteen.

24. They are wrong-the number is nearing fifteen hundred.

25. He has broken every single one.

26. Morino Ibiki became a Chuunin at ten, was a Special Jounin by fifteen, joined the Anbu Torture and Interrogation Force at eighteen, and was head of it by twenty, but even if he lives to be a hundred, he will never be a true Jounin.

27. He has one single peculiarity that stands in the way of further advancement.

28. No one except the Hokage has ever known the reason why he is not a Jounin.

29. No one has ever been brave enough to ask.

30. This is probably for the best. If everyone found out, most people wouldn't fear him as much anymore, but the smart ones—the ones who really thought about what it meant—would find it difficult to face him without trembling.

31. The truly terrifying thing about Morino Ibiki is that, despite all that he is and everything he has done, he has never killed another human being.