Cold-Blooded Chapter 2: Serpent's Awakening
It has been two days since the boy named Orochimaru made his mark on Fairy Tail by humiliating the infamous Demon of Fairy Tail; Mirajane Strauss. A couple of hours after said humiliation, the pale boy found himself recruited into the guild and stamped with the guild emblem on his right shoulder. Currently, he was busy ignoring the challenges being yelled out at him by Mirajane and the pink-haired kid, Natsu Dragneel
"Fight me, Orochimaru!"
"Get ready for a beating, you freak!"
Orochimaru sighed. He didn't know why Mirajane insisted on calling him a freak but if he had to guess, it would be because of the involuntary flinching he does whenever she called him that.
Aside from those two, he didn't have a problem with the other members of the guild. Gray Fullbuster and his constant stripping may get on his nerves at times and Erza's insistence that all rules should be followed at all times (despite her and Mirajane's frequent catfights) can get annoying, but he still found himself not quite enjoying, but appreciating their company. Perhaps, he was simply tired of being alone for what seemed like an entire lifetime.
Then, there was the guild master. Orochimaru has already seen Makarov's ability to grow to titanic proportions and he had the feeling that the tiny, old man has even more tricks up his sleeve. Orochimaru couldn't help but look forward to becoming strong enough to fight someone of Makarov's level.
Perhaps, Master will let me participate in the S-rank trials, he mused.
That thought in mind, he strode over to the job request board and scanned it for a decent mission. A request to take down a some bandits that were terrorizing a small town caught his attention. He plucked the piece of paper from the board and brought it over to the master.
"A bandit camp?" Makarov asked, staring at Orochimaru. The pale boy shrugged.
"You should at least bring someone to watch your back."
Orochimaru frowned. He had nothing against the other members of the guild, but they barely knew him and he barely knew them.
"Who do you suggest, Master?" he inquired, pretty sure that the manipulative, old codger already had someone in mind. Makarov's grin confirmed his thoughts.
How annoying.
Those were Orochimaru's thoughts as he drowned out the nervous stuttering of his white-haired partner. Lissy-something. Mirajane's shrieking about taking care of her sister didn't help matters much.
"S-sorry about my sister…"
Orochimaru stifled the urge to groan. The girl had been apologizing for her sister's action for the last hour or so.
"Enough."
It was not a shout, not even a loud statement. It was a whisper but it had the desired effect of shutting up Lisa-whatever.
"Right. We should be nearing the bandit camp. According to the leader of the client town, the bandits should be somewhere in…that direction," he said, pointing to the direction where loud cheering could be heard. "You just hide or something. I'll go and fight them. Underssstood?" he hissed the last part, the entire tone of the sentence dissuading any thought of argument.
An uncomfortable silence ensued, then…
"You don't know my name do you?"
"Does it matter?"
"Lisanna."
More silence.
The two of them peeked over the bushes they were hiding in and stared In disgust at the rowdy bunch of bandits, all of whom were drinking and yelling. In the middle of all the tents and makeshift shelters was a fire and a cage full of women and children dressed in rags. Lisanna gasped quietly and Orochimaru narrowed his serpentine eyes.
A memory of an unidentifiable person conducting horrendous experiments on infants erupted from the back of Orochimaru's mind and he hissed as rage bubbled forth from within him. The man in his memory was a monster and these bandits were no different.
Lisanna gasped when she saw the women and children in the cage and she knew what will be, or have been, done to the poor prisoners. She glanced at her partner when she heard him hiss. His eyes were slits and his hands were clenched. A minor aura of bloodlust emanated from the pale boy. She blinked and her partner was gone.
Orochimaru welcomed the unfamiliar instincts that enveloped him whenever he found himself in dodged the clumsy attacks and weaved in and out of the enemy's disorganized ranks with the flexibility of a snake. He ignored Lisanna's call for him to stop, the bandits' gasps of surprise and the crying of the people in the cage and focused on the fight. He knew where and when to strike an enemy for the most effectiveness. He knew when to switch with his mud clones and he knew how to counter the enemy's clumsy movements.
But instincts and mud clones could only take you so far against half a hundred opponents and Orochimaru found himself sporting various wounds. Nothing to serious, but enough to hamper his fluid movements and allow the bandits more opportunities to strike.
He hissed in frustration as the bandits jeered and called him names.
Freak.
Creep.
Monster.
The same words that resonated in his mind during his first confrontation with Mirajane. Recalling how he survived that encounter without so much as a bruise, Orochimaru racked his head for any more unfamiliar memories that might prove useful in his current situation. One memory answered his call. It was a small memory, nothing more than a large piece of paper. But he knew that this memory was significant. It was a memory… of a contract. The contract. Orochimaru grinned.
Lisanna stood transfixed as her partner nearly decimated the entire camp with combat prowess alone. She, like most members of Fairy Tail, thought that the new guy had more thi8ngs up his sleeve other than his cloning trick. A couple of minutes later and it was becoming apparent that Orochimaru had no ace-in-the-hole and that he was about to succumb to the multiple wounds that littered his skin. She was about to swoop in and save her comrade when everything exploded.
A cloud of dust covered the entire clearing and she saw several bandits shielding their eyes. As the dust cleared, gasps of shock can be heard all over the camp. Lisanna was embarrassed to realize that one of those gasps was hers.
Back in the clearing, Orochimaru stood beside a snake. A brown and green snake as large as a horse, hissing every now and then. Orochimaru was calmly peeling off his wounded skin to reveal unblemished skin. Then, he grinned at the bandits, a wide grin that showed off his eerily pointed teeth. Summoning a snake the size of a large horse was no small feat and the spell to shed his skin didn't help matters with his magical reserves either. In fact, he was about ready to keel over n exhaustion. Still, he couldn't let the bandits know that.
Within the cage, a small, black-haired girl watched the events unfold with wide eyes. She has heard stories of powerful mages capable of great feats but she never expected she'd see one in person, let alone be rescued by one. Her eyes hardened.
He looks exhausted. I have…I have to help him!
As she thought this, her eyes shifted from pale blue to a dark violet and the bars of the cage twisted to create an opening. Surprised at her own achievement, she barely noticed the other prisoners excitedly run out of the cage, trampling several bandits in their haste. The massive rabbit that would have looked cute had it not been glaring at the bandits sealed the deal
"Let me get thissss ssstraight," Orochimaru began as he stared at the two girls in front of him, one dressed in rags and the other staring at him smugly, "you somehow managed to open the cage by staring at it and you," he changed targets, "have a sister who could turn into a demon while you become a rabbit? An honesssst-to-goodnessssss giant rabbit."
"Yep. Aren't I cute in that form?"
"If you call sssstomping around those bandits cute…" he turned to the black-haired girl. "Assss for you, that wassss probably the most disgusting thing I've ever sssseen." He said. The girl just stared at a bandit and the bandit bent until his spine cracked in two and his head shoved into his ass.
Not that it fit, he mused. The monster in his memories did more horrifying things than that but he didn't actually count that as something he'd seen.
"I'm sorry. I just wanted to help."
Orochimaru nodded. They would've had a harder time with the entire thing had the girl not freed the prisoners and caused mass mayhem with her mutilation of a bandit.
"Let's take her to Master. He might give her a roof to sleep under." The same way he did for me, he added mentally, recalling the two-bedroom apartment that Master sold to him for a down-payment of fifty per cent of his next several mission rewards.
The girl squealed in delight and hugged the pale boy, much to his shock. He looked down to see the girl already closing her eyes.
"M'names… El-Eleanor… g'night big brother…" she mumbled. Orochimaru stood still, shocked at being called a big brother while Lisanna giggled.
"Let's go Big Brother. Let's take your new sister home." She said before skipping away, leaving Orochimaru carrying a slumbering pre-pubescent.
"You summoned a snake? As big as a horse? And then shed your skin the same way snakes do?" Makarov asked Orochimaru who nodded slowly.
"Then, this girl," he said, pointing at Eleanor who was shovelling food hungrily down her throat, "Killed a bandit by staring at her…"
"She didn't mean to. She has yet to learn to control her powers." Orochimaru softly interjected. Makarov nodded.
"Right. And she decided that you'll be her big brother?" Orochimaru nodded again.
"Then there's only one thing to do." He turned to Eleanor and stared at her. The little girl cowered under Makarov's stare. Orochimaru was about to intervene when Makarov smiled.
"Where do you want your guild emblem, little one?"
Brother and sister stared at the old man like he was crazy.
"Here at Fairy Tail, we don't care about your pasts or your secrets. I'll never forgive myself if I let a young one fall to the darkness when I could have done something to guide them into the light. We are all family here. That is the way of Fairy Tail." He exclaimed. Lisanna, the only one other than Orochimaru and Eleanor in the room nodded in agreement.
Eleanor beamed at the old man and had him stamp her on the same place her big brother had his and babbled on about the being the best mage and little sister there ever was. Orochimaru's head twinged with pain at those words.
I'll get Sasuke back from you, that's a promise of a lifetime! Dattebayo!
You hurt my precious people…I…I will never forgive you!
Orochimaru could feel the rage in the speaker's voice even if it was a faint memory.
Precious people, huh?
As he watched the scene of Makarov listening to Eleanor's hig speed babbling and Lisanna laughing at the confused look on the guild master's face, he decided that perhaps, working with other people wouldn't be so bad after all.
AN: And that's a wrap. More memories resurfacing. The extremely clichéd bandit camp chapter. And potential problems when Orochimaru figures out who the monster in the memory was. As for Eleanor, I only thought her up when I was about to finish the chapter. I have a list of potential OC's for any fic that require OC's with strange abilities. You can't always fall back on controlling an element or super strength and all that rot, can you?