The smell of necrosis and sweat streamed from the elderly snake's room along with his cries and whimpers of pain. Orochimaru, though he seemed fine with doling out pain to other beings, was himself not capable of taking very much and tended to create too much drama whenever he did experience feelings of unpleasantry. "Kabutoooo~" came a long, complaining wail accompanied by cries of fear and discomfort.

The snake's young assistant pushed up his glasses with an impatient sigh as he finished up his medicinal preparations and left his personal laboratory, carrying a tray of those medicines in his hands. Half of him thought, Poor thing... whereas the other, darker half of him, the part that secretly wished to overtake Orochimaru, almost wished the snake had been killed by the Third Hokage rather than simply disabled. Day after day of constant complaints, snappiness, and general noisiness from his boss was getting on his nerves, to say the least. He wished to end his misery, one way or another.

"I'm coming, sir," Kabuto assured his boss from down the hall, walking with some fresh, unlit candles to replace the nearly burned-out ones at the snake's bedside. He soon arrived and set the items down with a sigh of relief, shaking out his hands from the weight. "Thank you for being patient, Lord Orochimaru." He blew out the old candles one by one and replaced them with new ones before taking up the pre-mixed medicine, giving it one more extra stir with a glass rod, and then taking a metal spoon and beginning to pour a small dosage from the jar into the spoon.

Orochimaru's nose wrinkled and he nearly gagged at the smell. Kabuto, who was wearing a mouth and nose covering so as not to catch his master's germs, did not notice the smell and instead questioned what was wrong. "Are you feeling alright, Master?"

Orochimaru glared at him. "Don't come near me with that putrid venom!" he snapped and recoiled to the other side of his bed.

Kabuto rolled his eyes. "Please, Lord Orochimaru, with all due respect, stop acting like a child. I deal with enough of those war orphans you test on and I don't need a 50-something-year-old baby to add to the mix."

Orochimaru slapped the younger male harshly on the cheek, using his tongue since his arms were currently no longer an option. The tongue was almost a worse punishment; it was like a wet whip, leaving a bloody line on the man's cheek. "Do not speak to me that way, Kabuto. Be grateful for all I've done for you. I didn't ask to be insulted, I asked for you to heal my arms. If you can't do it, I'll find someone who can. And I do know of one other person, but she's too... brash, I would say."

"Orochimaru... I mean, Lord Orochimaru... do forgive me, but the fact that I want to heal your arms is the precise reason you need to take your medicine. Come now, just hold your breath and it'll be over soon. It's something I prescribed for you, so the very least you could do is swallow it down. It would hurt my feelings if you didn't. Besides, the only other option is injections. And we both know how much you enjoy those."

"Enough, child, I understand you," the snake interjected in response. Despite the fact that he gave injections to most of the helpless children of the facility, he himself was extremely squeamish about having a needle inside his own body. He was the type of person that couldn't handle a single drop of the pain they dealt. "Just get this over with and I might not kill you."

Kabuto was used to these empty threats, so he just went along with it and said, "I will be forever grateful for your sparing of me, Lord Orochimaru." His voice was edged with sarcasm, though the old snake was too sick and out of it to notice. Orochimaru waited patiently as Kabuto measured the correct dosage and pressed the spoon to his master's mouth. "Open wide, sir."

Orochimaru opened his mouth that contained a row of snake fangs behind his human teeth and thick columns of stretched mucous. Kabuto resisted the urge to puke upon seeing the inside of his master's mouth and made a mental note to get him some decongesting medication in the future. Kabuto quickly inserted the spoon, tilting it to empty out the contents, and then held his master's jaw with one hand and his throat with the other to ensure and assist in his swallowing. He repeated this two more times until he finally had given his master the correct dosage of three tablespoons of his special tonic.

"Good boy, sir," he said with a very sweet smile and rubbed his master's shoulder and back lightly. "See, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

Orochimaru glared with eyes that would petrify and stun any normal person. "I'll definitely kill you when I'm well, Kabuto."

"Ah, but if you do that..." the aide raised a hand to the back of his head and rubbed it lightly, not sure how far he and Orochimaru would go with their little joke, "Who will heal your arms... and the rest of you which is sure to break down no matter how careful you are, old man~?"

Orochimaru smirked a bit as he thought of his big-breasted old comrade who was considered an even more skillful medical-nin than was Kabuto. "A woman named Senju Tsunade... you may have heard of her."

"Orochimaru... sir... you wouldn't dare use my competition! Besides, she's been out of practice for years, or so they say at the medical-nin convents."

"I will seek her out and use her, if you fail to heal my arms within the next week. That is how it will have to go, Kabuto my dear."

Kabuto hid his disapproving frown under his mask and pushed up his glasses. The light reflected off of them and his eyes were not visible. "If that is your wish, sir... I am in no position to stop you." Kabuto, feeling slightly hurt by the somewhat traitorous words of his best friend and master, turned around and collected his things before walking out of the room with them and heading back to his personal laboratory.