Yo, guys.
So after a whole 'nother year I finally post something. I won't bore you with the details; you read the summary (or at least, I'm hoping you did o.O). Just a note, but this isn't to hate on Orochimaru but it does kind of ... take the mick. xD
Your thoughts will be greatly appreciated if you have something you'd like to say. :)
So, please enjoy this sad excuse for a humour fic I started way back in 2007, and only just got around to finishing.
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Orochimaru is known by many for his wacky experiments, each of them more twisted and unusual than the last. In fact, so severe is his impact upon people that it really isn't a surprise to anyone anymore that Kabuto can now be found locked inside a cage in the Hiding Sound Village, with numerous extra ears and Sound symbols burnt into his face to make up the composition of "Guy's Theme"; nor is it anymore a shock that Kimimaro – after being force-fed a bizarre, florescent pink-coloured milk – can now be found wandering around with his gender reversed.
But no one dares to predict what the old man will do next – no matter how outrageous anyone's speculations become, Orochimaru's monstrosities by default are always ten times more heinous than the most heinous of all their guesses, and leave people cringing with horror and disgust for years to come. Truth be told, no one likes to admit how likely it actually is that the nine tailed beasts – bar the Ichibi – had mutated and sprouted extra tails due to Orochimaru's fiddling and meddling.
But, as for the recipe for disaster Orochimaru is cooking up this time, well … he'd been planning on inventing a Transformation Technique that could fool even Sharingan users, meaning he could sneak up on an unsuspecting Uchiha Itachi as his partner, Kisame, and, in all senses of the phrase, come and go as he pleased. However, this time the old man hits the most baffling snag he's ever manage to hit, one summer afternoon during a trial run of this golden ticket to bishi-raping.
"Well, that is bizarre," He mutters to himself with amazement.
"It most certainly is," adds a most surprised-sounding Kabuto from the back of the room.
"Do shut up, Kabuto," Orochimaru blurts out as though on auto-pilot; befuddled, for his technique, as opposed to going disastrously wrong as with every other wacky experiment he's come up with so far, has done nothing; nothing at all, not even blow up a floor or two of his giant maze of a base. Most would be relieved by this result – as underground lairs tend to burn a hole in one's pocket, when one's hobbies happen to include conducting ludicrous experiments – but not Orochimaru, the Dr. Mephisto of his world. No result, in Orochimaru's mind, is shameful. If one can't even manage a simple explosion, or the mysterious vanishing of one's testicles, then how can one refer to oneself as something as hoity-toity as "one" or "oneself" at all?
Meanwhile, as Orochimaru ponders his bizarre lack of catastrophe further, waffling on to himself and having to promptly request on occasion that Kabuto keep all three of his noses out, things in the village of Hiding Leaf aren't going at all well either.
"Shizune!" roars an aggrieved Tsunade from her office, feeling absolutely furious with the latest wave of mayhem to hit the village.
Shizune hurries to the room, tripping over the carpet outside the door in her mad rush to get to Tsunade before the recently appointed Hokage can throw a hissy-fit. But the apprentice loses her balance, only to fall right through the open office door, and down onto her already mysteriously swollen nose with a great boomf.
"Shizune, what's the meaning of this?" Tsunade demands as Shizune peels herself off the carpet.
"I, I tripped, ma'am." Here Shizune laughs at herself to cover up her embarrassment — but seems strangely reluctant to stop laughing. It's also here she realises her leader has propped what looks like a photo-frame up in front of her, obstructing her face.
"Not that! Didn't you notice something a little more worrying going on around you on your way up here? Didn't you pass anyone in the halls or see yourself in the mirror this morning?" Tsunade growls. Shizune pauses in thought to try to figure out what has put Tsunade into another of her foul moods, and as none of Tsunade's belongings seem to have been repossessed, she doubts it has anything to do with a gambling loss. But then Tsunade turns around her photo-frame and realisation strikes; it's as plain to her as the thick pile of papers sitting upon Tsunade's desk, the ones the old woman has pushed back and forth and out of the way in procrastination for the past week.
"Ts, Tsunade-Sama, are you ill at all? You look a little green around the gills—"
"They are scales and I'm referring, Shizune, to the fact that I am covered in them! What's going on this time? I have the stupidest urge to crush puny little pretty-boys wearing armour; with blonde, curly locks and jutting, square chins! You are covered in fur and have paws as well as some form of snout!" Tsunade shoves the photo-frame forward and Shizune's first reaction of how ugly Tsunade's old pet was is shattered, when she realises she is in fact looking herself in a mirror. For some reason that is even to Shizune a mystery, she lets out such a sickly chain of giggles.
"And why in Jiraiya's name can I taste roasted peanuts in the back of my throat?!" Tsunade bellows like the dragon she now resembles, seldom taking a breath throughout her ranting rendering her face a sweeping mix of reds and blues as well as the scaly green she's somehow been afflicted with. Shizune, who has now taken to hiding at the front of Tsunade's desk out of the fuming, scale-covered Hokage's way – and so as not to see her knew horrendous appearance in what she thought was a photo-frame – shrieks a reply and manages to further Tsunade's annoyance by laughing like a mad hyena with spittle and tears flying everywhere.
"Muh-hahaha! Muh … Might I suggest seeing a vet?!"
"Shizune!" Tsunade roars – literally – as fire erupts from the furious female of the Legendary Three's mouth.
Well, that certainly silences even Tsunade, whose desk is now charcoaled and crispy, and it may well have silenced Shizune were she able to control her howling.
But as luck would have it for the teary-eyed, mirth-struck Shizune, her fit of giggles dies down just long enough for an idea to spring to Tsunade's mind.
"Shizune, I am a dragon, and you are a hyena; go and get it from the place!"
Shizune makes great haste in shuffling out of the room to retrieve it, whirring down the corridor to the place with high-pitched, choking laughs that startle two ninjas she passes on the way.
While waiting for Shizune to return, Tsunade, glad to at least have quiet for a few minutes, sits in thought, pondering the situation. She has an idea of who is behind this whole mess, hence her having Shizune bring it to her, but she doesn't know why he would do such a thing. He isn't the type to play practical jokes on people, so what on earth is that idiot thinking, turning the Hokage and her apprentice into animal-people?
Tsunade swivels round in her chair and in need of fresh air to clear her head, opens her window as wide as it will reach—only to slam it back shut with new heights to her wrath, upon being greeted by a number of barks, meows, roars and screeches, among other beastly noises she daren't guess the origin of.
So not only has he turned Tsunade and Shizune into animals, but the entire population of the Leaf and beyond!
He must have developed a fetish for furry recently, Tsunade decides. He always did have an unhealthy interest in animals.
Moments later, Shizune returns with a small glass box layered by a thin, silky red cloth, but the apprentice finds it difficult to steady herself as she walks; it probably wasn't one of Tsunade's finest ideas to have someone in an unstoppable fit of hyena-giggles carrying a fragile glass box as well as the thing inside of it which will surely break, around the building. Regardless of whether it was risky or not, Shizune had brought it to Tsunade safely, and sets it down on the desk as carefully as she possibly can.
"Tsunade-Sama, might I ask what you're going to do?" Shizune asks, far louder than necessary purely because she is now straining as hard as possible to keep from keeling over in hysterics. Tsunade says nothing. She does, however, rest her elbows on the desk in front of her, and clasp her hands together, tapping the newly added, small yet sharp claws at the end of her two index-fingers together. She shows Shizune a cold stare. This is serious, so Shizune notices with a gulp; maybe she's planning on culling all the residents to solve the problem. She wouldn't have to worry about losing suitcases-full of money in casinos anymore, Shizune muses.
Tsunade spends a great deal of time staring at Shizune's stomach, looking very much like straining herself to develop the Byakugan in the process. Shizune supposes she's wondering whether this is drastic enough a situation for it, whatever it is, to be used … but in any case, wishes old dragon-breath behind the desk would hurry up and make a decision, as she's sure while Tsunade develops x-ray vision, that she is developing fleas.
Back in the Hiding Sound, Orochimaru is still sat, silent in thought in his chair, at a complete loss as to how he can trick Sasuke into letting him practice his new Sharingan-defeating technique on him.
"Sir?" Kabuto pipes up out of the blue.
"Do shut up, Kabuto," Orochimaru drones, in no mood whatsoever to be dealing with a three-nosed, twelve-eared creature who is, so Orochimaru had noticed earlier, beginning to look rather sheep-like, with wool blossoming here, there, and everywhere. He takes no more interest in this however than moth to the dark, assuming it has something to do with his own meddling with Kabuto's genetics.
"But, sir—"
"What could be so important that you feel the need to continually pester me?" Snipes the old man, with arms folded, one leg crossed over the other, back to the sheep-like teen and the face of a spoilt brat in a huff.
"Well, it's just that I can hear … voices," bleats the increasingly bizarre boy. Orochimaru says nothing for a time.
"Kabuto,"
"Yes, sir?"
"If you don't keep quiet until I specifically tell you you are able to speak, I'm afraid I'm going to have to shear you."
Nothing for a mere few seconds can be heard, all until a bristling and rustling sound that is a rather woolly Kabuto shuffling to the back of his cage disturbs Orochimaru once again.
* * *
"Shizune, did you drop this on your way up here?" Tsunade snaps through gritted teeth back in the Leaf. Shizune for a moment looks panic-stricken but soon enough merely sweat-drops as Tsunade, not waiting for an answer, throws the receiver from a telephone to the table, and shouts at it to work.
Because everyone knows that blaming the inanimate object always gets it to function correctly.
"Tsunade-Sama," sighs Shizune in an attempt to regain Tsunade's attention.
"What? Do you know something about this, Shizune?"
Shizune pauses.
"You had the mouth-piece to your ear, ma'am."
Tsunade silences herself a moment, feeling quite embarrassed. Acting as if she hadn't just performed in an incredibly idiotic fashion, Tsunade clears her throat and announces, as if Shizune hadn't already guessed, that she is going to make a phone call now.
Once again, Tsunade's fingers hover over the muddle of buttons on the phone Tsunade had requested – this being the it Shizune was sent for – and as she holds the receiver to her ear, and eyes the pad.
"Tsunade-Sama," Shizune enquires, "Who are you going to phone? Is there some sort of doctor who can change us all back?"
"Possibly. This phone is only ever used in emergencies," Tsunade explains. "Simply because it means contacting foreign villages we may not be on good terms with, or more specifically: for contacting double-crossing, backstabbing villages I won't reduce myself to mentioning."
With a snooty look in the form of her lower-lip jutted out, Tsunade picks up the receiver, holds it up to the side of her face and then lets her index-finger hover over the many rubbery buttons. One button bears the Sand symbol seen on alliance-breaking-Sand-ninja foreheads, which if pressed contacts the Kazekage; another bears the Sound symbol seen on Orochimaru-loving, moral-ignorant Sound ninja, the button of which Tsunade has seen fit to drawn a moustache upon; and so forth, with every other symbol for all other villages scattered about the pad, all of which connect the person pressing them to the leader of whatever village the button symbolises. Tsunade presses one of the buttons and waits for a ringing sound to fill the ear piece.
Now normally, you would expect a ringing sound to be heard coming from a telephone, but what can now be heard throughout Orochimaru's darkened room is not a ringing sound, but rather:
"Orochimaru's Theme".
Orochimaru, smirking with great pride upon hearing his own theme song filling the room, at once realises that what Kabuto must have heard earlier were the eerie voices heard in the background of his master's song; it had come from Orochimaru's it, shoved under a box somewhere in the next room behind Kabuto's cage. But this tune is much closer than the one Kabuto had been scared senseless by; Orochimaru waits for a few seconds so that he can admire the unusually loud tune that symbolises his being near, occasionally flicking his hand in manner of a conductor at an opera house.
After having quite finished admiring the music, the still baffled Orochimaru reaches into his pocket and pulls out a shiny and expensive-looking black mobile-phone, with not only a sticker of himself stuck to the casing's back, but an on-screen wallpaper of himself, posing, nude. This gadget of his is special, because like the phone Tsunade is ringing him on it has no numbers on it whatsoever, but instead the symbols of other villages and five other buttons with colours on them.
Kabuto, who is now whining at the back of the room about how he doesn't have a theme song like Kakashi, Sasuke, among other people, or a mobile-phone, is promptly told to shut up by the most amused Orochimaru who has taken to humming along to his theme. While inspecting the message telling him who dares disturb his evil day, he notices the Leaf symbol flashing and a pixel, chibi Tsunade with sharp teeth and horns, blinking on and off at him. Probably calling, he muses, to pester him for using up all her white make-up powder again.
When he finally clicks the accept button, Orochimaru at once realises he'd taken too long to admire his theme song, for he has missed Tsunade's call. She'll be even snippier with him for this. Kabuto merely snickers at this, but is yet again told to shut up.
Orochimaru doesn't seem too bothered by this, however, and leans back in his chair once more only to press a combination of coloured buttons and then the button bearing the Leaf symbol — he was educated the other week, you see, by a most disgruntled Sasuke of how to reverse charges, something the young Uchiha has taken to doing when phoning his older brother to breathe down the phone at him in a terrifying manner without saying who it is, and then hanging up.
The old man, very proud of his new little trick, holds the phone to his ear and waits for Tsunade to answer.
Back in the Leaf while Tsunade waits impatiently to be phoned back by Orochimaru, Shizune begins giggling in such a strange manner as "The Fifth's Fight" sounds throughout the room. Tsunade grumbles, because that is the closest thing she will ever get to her own theme song.
Ever.
"Why on earth did you take so long to answer the first time?" Tsunade's voice snaps from her end of the line. Orochimaru can only roll his eyes and frown in utter disgust at the volume of Tsunade's complaint – their connection already makes it so that a whisper pierces the eardrum.
"Never you mind—"
"You were admiring that damn theme song again, weren't you!" This correct assumption only brings a look of embarrassment to Orochimaru, who yet again hisses at Kabuto to be quiet, for he was snickering again.
"Now let me guess; you were the one who turned everyone into animals, weren't you!" Tsunade sneers. Orochimaru pauses; he was hoping she was only phoning to inquire as to where her make-up has disappeared to this time. He'd even come up with a good excuse; he'd just tell her Sasuke took it to pretty himself up for the old man due to an almost pitiful ache for him—
"Are you still there?!"
"Ahem," Orochimaru, blushing, takes a moment to compose himself and shuffle back into a comfortable sitting position, before finally replying. "I wouldn't say everyone."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm still human-looking."
"As human-looking as you're ever going to get."
Orochimaru frowns and slams the receiver down at once. He folds his arms, pouts in his chair and growls to himself.
"At least I have a theme song."
"Two, actually."
"Shut up, Kabuto."
***
Well, thanks for reading. : ) Hope it made someone laugh.
Think maybe it finished too abruptly? If so just let me know and I'll dig around in the ol' brain for a better ending. I doubt Tsunade would be impressed with the way it ended. =D
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, or anything/anyone mentioned in this fic nor do I profit in any way from this fic. All I own is the writing.