This work is the culmination of countless hours of discussion with my good friend, Van the Enigma. This is largely his brainchild, and since he lays claim to no above-average skill with words, it falls to me to write it. I thought the first chapter's publication would make a fitting gift on this auspicious occasion.
Happy birthday, Van. Many happy returns.
This is our attempt at an original-character fanfiction. I have largely ignored this particular genre, finding the original characters to be hideously out-of-place within the Naruto fandom. Not only have we done our honest best to define these characters within the parameters of the fandom, giving them a real place and fitting them as best we could into the natural order, but I would like to take the opportunity to establish this as an Alternate Universe. Though that typically goes without saying, I choose to give it weight in this address. I don't want any crap.
NOTICE: This is fanfiction. If any of my characters resemble any other characters, living or dead, that is entirely intentional. I make no claim to their ownership and do not profit from their likenesses.
Rise of the SoundOrochimaru was never known for his patience, and nothing tried this scant resource more than his research department. Not once had they produced anything quite so brilliant as his own creations, marvels of bent physics that transformed the lost and broken of the world into its mightiest soldiers. The parade of developments that came with their most recent monthly report soared to new heights of mediocrity, a cascade of barely-noticeable improvements over existing methods and techniques, none of which was worth the investment that their implementation would require. By the end of the lengthy report, the snake-lord's chin was resting heavily on his fist, supported by the sturdy oak of his favorite chair.
"…bypasses the typical stop-and-go method of eye movement, allowing for more freed and fluid…"
"Madarame-san," Kabuto interrupted, sensing his master's displeasure. The lapdog lieutenant was standing behind Orochimaru, growing weary of the effort himself. "I see no point in continuing this report. Unless one of you has something groundbreaking, you may return to your laboratory."
"Sir," a mellow voice called form the back of the gaggle of researchers. Kabuto rolled his eyes as a tall, lean man with narrow eyes and red hair pushed his way to the fore, pulling behind him a dull gray gurney. Strapped to the rolling bed was a man, muscular but clearly civilian, with iron bars holding his head in place and his mouth shut.
"Kencho, research subjects like this man are expensive and difficult to come by. I hope you haven't ruined him with another of your organ-replacement procedures." Kabuto had never liked Kencho, who was far too grim for his taste. He laughed often, a cold and hateful laugh, but he only ever smiled when he had done something he knew he shouldn't have.
"Orochimaru-sama," the young man began, ignoring the impudent, unimaginative medic, "I've given up on altering the human body to enhance it's chakra usage capacity." A groan from the other researchers made it clear that his was not widely believed to be a worthwhile pursuit.
"Oh?" Orochimaru said, speaking for the first time in nearly an hour. "Well, get on with it, and spare me the technical jargon. Tell me what you've done, and I'll work out the hows and whys for myself."
"Very well, sir. I've developed a seal…"
"Another seal, Kencho-kun?"
"Yes, Orochimaru-sama, another seal, one that permits truly multiplied chakra usage in a subject. It allows even untrained individuals to forcibly open their Divine Gates, allowing the full potential of their individual chakra to be utilized."
The subtle gleam of interest that had entered Orochimaru's eyes at the mention of a new seal faded with that sentence. Orochimaru reclined into his chair, suddenly very tired. "Very good, Kencho-kun. Now, if you'll all…"
"I've not finished, Orochimaru-sama. The most important part is to come."
Kabuto ground his teeth, anticipating some burst of righteous anger from his master, but in his exhausted state it would not come. All Orochimaru said, following a long sigh, was, "What's the most important part, then?"
"The seal forms chakra lines spanning the subject's limbs that are used for mobility rather than the body's own muscles. No matter how much chakra is used by the subject, his own body will not disintegrate because, in reality, the body is at rest the entire time."
The assembled researchers gasped and murmured among themselves, and Orochimaru's eyes were wide. Kencho chuckled, though not loud enough for any of them to hear. Groan at that, you craven old men Orochimaru-sama hasn't shown this much interest in a project for years.
"Tell me more," Orochimaru demanded, leaning forward. Kencho's ego drank in his words before he began again.
"The seal is designed to keep the subject alive," Kencho explained, pointing to a mark on the right shoulder of the man strapped to the gurney. "It retains a quantity of chakra from the subject, which it uses to keep the heart, brain, and other vital organs alive and functioning. All eight gates can, thus, be safely opened at no threat to the subject."
Orochimaru was salivating. If this seal was viable, and it could be implemented in expendable soldiers, it was exactly the backup he would need for his shinobi of the Cursed Seal. The Divine Gates had always been a honeycomb he could quite reach, present in all people yet too deadly to utilize.
"It is an extraordinary seal," Kencho concluded. "It's acceptance rate is more than 60, and unlike your Cursed Seal, it is entirely permanent." He turned to look at the seal, a simple circular arrangement of black rhombuses in the shape of a flower. "I call it the Lotus Seal."
I heard him incorrectly just then, Orochimaru thought, or else he misspoke. "What do you mean, 'unlike my Cursed Seal'? The Cursed Seal is permanent as well. Removing it kills the subject, almost instantly."
Kencho blinked, turning back to his master. "Uh…I'm sorry, Orochimaru-sama, but you are mistaken. Didn't you get my progress report from, oh, three weeks ago? Four weeks? I don't know exactly, but the Cursed Seal can now be removed without complication. I'm sure I sent you that report."
Orochimaru decided at that moment to change his policy of tossing those reports into the fire. Orochimaru waved his hand at the other researchers. "You all may go. Leave us." The throng of old men and crones left the meeting room, leaving the ruler, his lackey, the doctor, and his hapless patient. "Whose Cursed Seal did you remove for your experiments?"
Kencho choked back a laugh. "Sir, I don't even know his name," he said, elbowing the prisoner on the gurney. "It was some unimportant soldier of yours, one that hasn't been sent out in a year or more. Rather lackluster, as I recall."
It didn't take long for the name to surface in Orochimaru's mind. "Mikuru?"
"Yeah, that's it. Feisty at first, tried to escape, but we got her."
Orochimaru didn't mind that so much. Losing Mikuru would have been a net gain if he had traded her head for a good sandwich. That wasn't the problem. "Who else knows of this development?"
"Just my soft-brained assistant. I thought it'd be best if the troops didn't know without your approval of the new seal."
The new seal. The words rubbed Orochimaru like a cat's claws on a sunburn. The Cursed Seal was more than a power source for his minions, it was the leash that kept them subservient. The chakra within it was his own, of his own kind. The addiction to power it fueled was born of his own greed, and it kept those urchins-turned-monsters he called shinobi desperate for his power. If it could be removed, then the reinforcement of that addiction was gone. They could leave him, join his enemies…hell, they could turn on him!
"Explain the process by which the Cursed Seal is removed," Orochimaru said slowly, leaning forward and watching Kencho intently.
"It's simple, really," Kencho said, though it was a hollow phrase. The young man was gifted in the creation and manipulation of seals, his body covered in a macabre collection of arcane designs. Some, including his own Cursed Seal, had been given to him after he entered Orochimaru's service. Others he had given himself, rumors of how he concentrated through the screaming pain involved in the process circulating among the more foolish citizens of the Sound, those that found anaesthetic too tame an answer. The majority of his seals, however, were stolen from slain enemies brought in for examination. Seals cannot be activated on a corpse, so he would cut them from the dead flesh and graft the sections onto his body for study. The less potent were carved off and discarded once their secrets were extracted. Those that proved useful still adorned his body on patches of skin that didn't quite share his sun-starved pallor.
Kencho went on to explain the process of deactivating, isolating, and finally removing a Cursed Seal. Despite Orochimaru's misgivings, the process really was horribly simple. Even the less talented researchers could perform this procedure, perhaps even the assistants, and from the description he guessed it would take less than a day. Kencho was not the brightest among the research staff, his gift for sealing aside, but he had stumbled upon something that could break the entire city, and Orochimaru's plans for it as well.
When Kencho had finished, Orochimaru stood and approached his minion. Kencho was loyal, he was sure. If Orochimaru knew anything from raising the boy, it was that he hated betrayal more than any other offense. However, he had no mind for politics or the designs of great men. Schemes were not to his liking, he was far too honest. Asking him to keep quiet would work for a while, but eventually he would be asked what had transpired while he was alone with his master. If others knew how vulnerable the Sound was to this threat, they would be ruined.
"Kencho, I'll ask you not to say anything about the Cursed Seal or this Lotus Seal. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Orochimaru-sama. What do I do if anyone asks me about it?"
"Lie," came the answer from Kabuto, still standing behind Orochimaru's chair.
Kencho gave a distraught look, but nodded all the same. Orochimaru smiled. "I knew you'd be loyal to me, Kencho-kun. Go back to your lab now, I want another sample of your brilliance. Perhaps something compatible with the Cursed Seal?"
Kencho nodded again, walking blankly toward the door, but Orochimaru knew it would be some time before he came to grips with lying to his comrades. It didn't matter. He wouldn't have to endure their questions long.
Slowly, purposefully, Orochimaru walked back to the gurney, looking down on the man strapped to it. From below, his white face looked like the moon in a field of shimmering black hair. He loosed the bolts holding the plate beneath the man's jaw, freeing him to open his mouth. The prisoner said nothing, only looking up at this abomination of a man.
Orochimaru examined the man with a confident smile that held no hint of warmth. "So," he said, "what's your name?"
A campfire was a rare thing for Team Gai, and it was truly welcome. A long mission in Kumogakure, an ostensibly rain-soaked and unrelentingly gale-torn city with little warmth to be had for outsiders. Tenten indulged a long, satisfying stretch within the ring of firelight, loosing her hair to dry in the heat. Neji sat quietly, nursing a wound in his side that he had sustained a week earlier and that would have to wait another day before proper medical care could be administered. Gai was reciting the lyrics to his fifty favorite songs, part of a wager he had made with himself upon leaving the city of Clouds.
Lee alone was restless. He hated the feeling of not accomplishing anything. He glanced off into the endless forests of Fire Country and mused. It wasn't long before an idea found him, one that struck him as a marvelous way to pass the time.
"My friends," he began, "I have a story to share with you."
"I've had nightmares that begin this way," Neji replied. He had read that somewhere, but he was fairly certain Lee hadn't, and so it was still a viable burn. He gave himself a point in his mental tally.
Lee laughed. "It's a story of these very woods, and the terror that lurks in them."
"If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?," Gai sang, then paused. "Ah, my wonderful youthful young apprentice, you have a ghost story for us? If I'm alive and well…" Gai had stopped calling Neji and Tenten his 'students' years ago, after they became jounin, but Lee would be his apprentice for life, or so he hoped.
"I do indeed, though this is no campfire tale. This comes from the files of the Hokage herself. It is the tale of the Snare."
Neji snorted. He had heard of the Snare before. It was a ridiculous tale, and one hated by the Hyuuga especially for their part in it.
Tenten, however, had never heard the story before, and so kept her attention on Lee. That was all the encouragement he would need.
"It started about four years ago, not so very far from here. A group of Leaf shinobi were making their rounds by night, a group of four. One of them stopped during the patrol, gazing off to the north. The others soon stopped and looked as well, but they saw nothing.
'What's the problem?' they asked their comrade.
'I saw something over there,' he said, 'but I don't know what it was.'
'Was it a person?' they asked.
'Maybe,' he said, 'maybe not. We should check it out.'
So they went north, on and on. Whenever they thought to turn back, another one would see something in the distance, some faint glimmer of yellow and white. They pressed on until the hour before dawn, when the sky on the eastern horizon began to turn from black to blue. That was when they finally found what they were chasing.
It was a man, or at least it had the shape of one, wrapped in the dark garb of ANBU and with the mark of the Sound on its brow. He had only half a mask, his mouth covered instead by a devil's beard. His eyes were dark in the large holes cut for them, though he looked sad and angry and frightened all at once. Every bit of him screamed menace, and the Leaf shinobi wasted no time attacking him.
When they struck, however, they each attacked a different place, though each thought they had attacked the enemy. The first shinobi, the one that had been the first to spot the enemy from afar, turned to his comrades for an explanation. The furthest from him lay on the ground, bleeding from the neck, eyes wide as a frog's. Then came the music."
Tenten, who had been hanging on the story, leaned in when Lee paused. "What music?"
"The music of a flute. The next shinobi tried to fight back, but his hand seals failed him, and the enemy slashed his neck as well. The third shinobi put up a better fight, fighting hand-to-hand rather than with ninjutsu, and so the enemy had to pull his flute from his lips to fight back. For a moment it looked as though he would win, but then, sudden as a flash bulb, the enemy's dark eyes lit up the woods. The Leaf looked around for a moment, as though blind, before the enemy slashed his throat as well."
"This is ridiculous," Neji quipped, whetting the edge on one of his knives. "If all the shinobi died, who's left to tell the story?"
"That was only three shinobi who died. Remember, my friend, there were four to begin with."
"Yeah, but if he's too dumbfounded to join his comrades in the fight, he's got no hope of winning alone."
"Who's telling the story?"
Neji clammed up, and Lee continued. "The fourth shinobi backed away as best he could. When he tripped on a root, he turned and held out a kunai in defense. The enemy approached, but didn't attack.
'What's your name?' the enemy asked, his eyes once again mere shadows beneath his mask.
'Shiroi Toshiro,' the shinobi answered. He was afraid but didn't stutter. The enemy turned and left without so much as a word. Shiroi ran back to the Lead as fast as he could, but it took much longer than he expected. From the distance he traveled, he realized that he had been in the territory of the Sound when he and his comrades were attacked. He reported to the Hokage, and it was settled that the enemy had been one of Orochimaru's monsters, nothing more and nothing less. Shinobi were warned not to venture in that direction, and to be on guard against a Sound ANBU using genjutsu.
But the attacks didn't stop there. A Hyuuga envoy was waylaid on their way to the Waterfall. An Aburame was killed on routine patrol. Members of every bloodline-limit house were targeted, all lured from their typical rounds with some kind of distraction. They Hyuuga were hit especially hard, losing eleven members in less than fourteen months. Look it up when we get back, it's the truth."
"Really?" Gai prompted, now just as absorbed as Tenten.
"We've lost members to the Sound, just like everybody else. No single person can kill a dozen Hyuuga in their lifetime, much less in fourteen months." Neji didn't see how his teammates could accept such a wild claim, especially after working with him for eight years.
Lee ignored Neji. He was always contradictory in some way or another. Lee was just grateful he wasn't out to prove that nobody but he existed again. That had been a trying week.
The story continued. "ANBU named the enemy the Snare, for the way he lures people into his traps. Where he came from isn't known, but everybody has a theory. Most say that he isn't one person at all, but seventeen people, their most powerful and evil bits sewn together into a golem of flesh and given life by some dark, forbidden technique. Other say he was one of Orochimaru's host bodies, so tainted of his evil that it refused to die when its master left it, and so it roams the forests, killing those who might threaten the Sound. There are still others, those not afraid to whisper in the dark, who say that Orochimaru made a summoning pact with the devils, and that a drop of blood summons the Snare from Hell to do his master's bidding."
Neji sighed, but inside was a bit more satiated than he had been. It was easier to believe that a dozen of his clansmen had been killed by a demon than a man, and that it took the devil a more than a year to do it was something to be proud of. He pulled his blanket over his shoulders and shut his eyes, facing away from his teammates and the fire, but still listening.
"How long ago was all of this?" Tenten finally asked, when it looked like the story was near its end.
"What do you mean? Our patrolmen have gone missing these past fourteen months, many of them Hyuuga. This is a story to us, but in these woods it's more along the lines of current events."
Tenten's eyes opened, and before she could remember to look cool in front of her friends she looked around her for glowing yellow eyes. Lee smiled, knowing his task was complete.
"Well, it's time for us to get to bed," Lee declared. Gai nodded his approval and crawled to his spot by the fire, muttering the words to some ballad or other. Tenten sheepishly lay down, clutching a knife and keeping a keen eye on the forest. Lee grinned, childishly gleeful at his story's impact, and went to sleep.
Twenty-nine miles from where Team Gai had made its camp, something stirred in the green canopy above Hinata. This something was not the wind that had pricked her through the night as she tried to sleep, nor was it the squirrels Kiba said he'd be chasing while she was off on her mission. There was somebody in the branches above her, a stranger. His intent to kill was palpable, pushing her into a cold, muggy sweat despite the chill of early spring. Hinata tried to scream, but her throat tightened around the sound so only useless breath escaped. In an instant the man was no longer there, and in that moment Hinata felt the hope that maybe it had been a dream, that nobody had ever been there.
A warm splash of liquid wrapped itself around Hinata's shoulder. The red stain that accompanied the moist weight of the blood removed Hinata of any further hope. She turned, looking to where her escort had been sleeping. At that time, she did scream.