His mother named him Orochimaru.
His father was a quiet man who he never got to know. His mother called him Chuunin-sama, and he preferred to not engage in conversation with his son.
He didn't mind, particularly.
His mother was a whore. She was talkative and cheerful, which he took for granted. It took him several years to understand that she wasn't really cheerful. He loved her, because she loved him.
One day, his father killed his mother - for reasons he didn't understand then, and for reasons that now filled him up with an odd combination of rage and tragedy - for the futility of it all served to bewilder, frighten and embolden him all at once.
He killed his father.
It had been swift and precise. The Chuunin - he never found out what his name was - walked down the streets of Konoha and settled for some simple food to eat - rice along with some vegetables and a healthy dosage of Sake.
Orochimaru showed absolutely no fear or remorse when they brought him in front of the Hokage, asking him why he poisoned his father.
The Hokage looked at him and through him.
"Why did you kill him, Orochimaru-san?" He spoke normally, but the child noticed the older ninja's eyes locked onto his face - looking, searching for something.
The truth?
He'd give it, then.
"I loved my mother."
A slow smile languished on Sarutobi's face.
"How would you like to be a ninja?"
It was terribly depressing.
In more ways than one.
Their enemy, a squad of elite Jounin from Iwa. They held some title, and the sneers and grins on their faces - a medley of cocky and bloodthirsty, spoke of the surety they felt in their victory.
Sarutobi-sensei had asked them - his students, to wait, hiding. To the Iwa Jounin, this was a fight of one man against four.
The Hokage offered no preamble.
The ground below the Jounin turned to sludge and lightning struck the ground thrice - like an inefficient assassin - and a dragon made of flames (or was it the dragon that made the flames?) roared forward - and amidst the backdrop of the twilight sun on the barren, torn border of Iwa - Orochimaru found the scene to be a haunting, beautiful tableau.
A wail of agony rose maddeningly in pitch before it ended abruptly.
They were truly elite Jounin, mused Orochimaru - three of them had survived the first three seconds of combat.
The fight was over, and everyone knew it. Terror danced in the wide eyes of the three remaining Iwa nin as they desperately fought it and reassembled themselves into a formidable defensive position.
The God of Shinobi saw the fear in them.
He made his intent to murder them known.
They died before they had the time to scream.
Sometimes, Jiraiya scared him.
When they'd first met, he'd weighed him and considered the dobe of team Sarutobi as exactly that, a dobe.
A powerful idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.
It was only reinforced by the boy's unending attempts at getting into various places involving women in several stages of undress, and by his idealistic worldview - his insistince on the possiblity of the reality of peace.
Then he talked to him.
It wasn't like his discussions with Sarutobi-sensei - talks that ranged from nature of poetry to the tragedy of existence - his sensei left him confused and introspective.
He understood Jiraiya.
Jiraiya was a ninja. A creature forever murdering those around him in the hope that one day, he would be the greatest ninja - and that by this value and this property, he could live in peace - the hallowed dream that none of them had ever truly seen.
He jumped, elated. He smiled at his teammate - and explained to him how humanity existed to progress in the hope that one day, this neverending progress would end. The only solution, he expanded, was to reach a stage beyond this perpetual nightmare - to ascend to perfection.
Jiraiya looked amused.
"A world without ninja," he asked softly,"is that not perfection, Orochimaru-kun?"
The paler of the two gave the other a pity filled stare - was this the boy's limit? Could he comprehend no more?
As he met his eyes, he was surprised to see the same pity in the other's eyes.
For all their power, might and glory, they would never understand.
He respected and adored his sensei. Jiraiya was the brother he never had. Tsunade was the first woman he had ever experienced anything physical with - and though that time was past, he cared for her.
And he hated the fact that he would lose all of that.
But he would do it. His goal was perfection, and his path would be arduous.
He always knew this.
He walked calmly, slowly. He knew there was no rush.
His fingers ran over the files, and he deftly picked out those that were the most important, and most useful. A larger scroll on his back held the sealed remenants of some of his more gruesome experiments.
He set it all aside.
He didn't know if he would survive this encounter.
A dull roar from far away told him that the catacombs were breached. He smiled as he recognized the sound - Rasengan. Jiraiya was here, then.
Normally, scores of ANBU would have descended and moved to deal with one of Konoha's greatest children turning rogue. But this time, there would be only two people.
He knew his team.
He greeted the white-haired nin as he walked in. Recieving no response, he threw a kunai.
They used to do this playfully, as genin.
As it hurtled forward with lethal intent and speed, it wasn't quite the same.
The kunai sunk into the target's forehead with an easy thunk, before nothing but a cloud of white smoke remained.
A corona of pain erupted as he felt the larger nin's fist jackhammer into his back - and he felt the rage and the sorrow.
It wasn't a killing blow. It wasn't meant to be.
He got up slowly and considered his opponent. He'd have to be careful - Jiraiya was a master of deception and cloaking - Konoha's spymaster for more than one reason.
"There's no need to calculate a stratagem to defeat me, Orochimaru-kun," Jiraiya's voice was a cocktail of bitterness, nostalgia and humour - almost like there was a joke that he didn't know about. "I'm not your opponent."
His world burst into fire and screams.
Somewhere in his mind, where he couldn't feel the pain, he felt that this wasn't a very tasteful joke.
He fought desperately - summoning snakes, whirling the legendary blade, Kusanagi - erupting into a burst of explosive Taijutsu - to try and beat his opponent.
It didn't work.
He was fighting a god.
His every move found itself shattered and obliterated, or turned against him. His own blade had poisoned him. His taijutsu met a staff of diamond and then things broke.
It was almost enough to break him.
But in every strike that the Hokage launched, in every jutsu that formed in his older-than-before fingers, he noticed a change. A shade of strength, lost forever - to the endless of abyss of time.
In five years? Ten years? The Hokage would be an old man. He would lose his strength. The God that had loomed above him in his youth would dissappear and all that would be left was a pale shadow - a disgrace to the memory of his sensei.
For a shadow of a moment, Orochimaru hated the sensei he had always adored - hated the man that failed to understand that this was all for him.
Then he burst out into laughter, lying there, broken - but not beyond repair, alone with the two people in the world he cared the most about.
"You're going to become old, Sarutobi-sensei," he continued, despite of the pain. He needed to make him understand. "And then you'll die."
As his statement concluded, and the snake-nin collapsed further into himself, unable to hold himself. The Hokage stared at him, long and hard.
He looked at him and through him.
He was looking for something.
The truth?
Orochimaru remained silent. Sarutobi Hiruzen would never truly understand him, just as he had never truly understood the Hokage. He saved his last gasps - he knew conciousness was running away from him - to address the man that had stood by and watched what could only be described as his torture.
"You understand?"
Jiraiya nodded, slowly. "It only makes it worse."
He awoke in a strange land with a fresh set of clothing.
Konoha was to the north.
He walked south.