Sometimes I wonder if he tainted me. Before him, I had been a loyal shinobi of Konoha. Jealous as hell with the occasional wont to hurt those who had what I wanted, but loyal nonetheless. After him, everything went to shit, and by the time the last of my loyalty to my village was gone, I didn't care anymore.

Orochimaru had seen how I who had been on the fast track to success had been held back, how I had been held down because of him. He alone had been willing to reward me for doing the right thing. Willing to reward me the way Konoha should have been doing after what I'd done for them.

You see, they had the right of it when they had suspected that I had killed my teammate. But, if you had been in my position, if you had seen what he'd done the way I had, you would have too.

My teammate was a killer.

Let me rephrase that. All shinobi are killers, it comes with the job. What my teammate was was a murderer. For him, killing hadn't been a necessary evil. For him, death had been entertainment, something to do when he was bored.

Almost nobody cares for the little urchins who line the roadways and byways of the countries we traveled through on missions including our own, the little orphans who had not had the good fortune to be born in a shinobi village where they would be considered a potential investment. Almost nobody but me.

After witnessing an unnecessary slaughter in the backwoods of the country I called home, I decided to do what should be done and enact the retribution he should have received long before then in the middle of a pitched battle. My teammates who were willfully ignorant of his crimes suspected that his death hadn't been an accident but couldn't prove it because in the chaos of battle they had nearly accidentally killed each-other themselves.

After it was over, they carried their suspicions back to the village with them, and soon I who had been well on my way to becoming Jounin had been sidelined, had been forced to become a career Chunin of the sort who manned the gates, filled out paperwork, and yes, taught the Academy bratlings who were all around the age of and a little older than the children he had gotten away with killing until I had come along.

You know something, I had enjoyed killing him. Unlike all my other kills which I had to deaden myself to lest I go insane, I had actually enjoyed killing him. Sometimes, I think that maybe he had passed his thirst for blood along to me that day. It would explain why I had turned on the one person who stuck by me through everything no matter how many times I had hurt him.

Yes, I do believe he tainted me.