Snake Pit
Cephied Variable
Kabuto was a puzzle to be solved.
There are his devotees and then there are his containers and each one of them reads like badly written poetry. Orochimaru has a gift for finding the weak stone in the foundation. He knows what makes people tick. Like clockwork, they unwind for him, slowly and predictable, only to be looped around his fingers. Dancers in his grand opera, orchestrated tools with the illusion of free will.
Sasuke Uchiha is like this. He's a pretty little toy who's broken in all the wrong places and glued too tightly in all the right ones. He's wired like an eletric wind up doll and when Orochimaru says dance, he'll glare, growl and pretend he's in control of his life; then he'll dance.
But Kabuto refuses to be defined. He knows when the critisize, when to simper, when to insult and when to bend with the wind. He is water elemental personified; mutable and destructive, pure apathetic brilliance behind a disarming smile. It takes a certain kind of man to walk head on into the snake pit and emerge unscathed, but sometimes Orochimaru thinks that Kabuto might be a snake himself.
Orochimaru almost wishes he'd killed the boy when he had the chance.