The Serpent God

Chapter 4: Finding your killer

Main Characters: Jiraiya, Orochimaru, Tsunade

Minor Characters: Naruto, Kakashi, Sakura, Gaara, Neji etc

Warnings: somewhat AU, Yaoi(eventually)

Disclaimer: Don't own Naruto

*

Gaara ran through the blooming garden, his breath coming out in uncharacteristic short gasps of fear as he tried to draw oxygen into his lungs. The chilling fear running through him, making his limbs feel sluggish, stood in stark contrast to the surrounding garden, with garish flowers growing on each bush, and heavy, red apples hanging from every tree. The green grass felt soft under his bare feet. Diving behind a bush he tried to still his panting, and he desperately racked his brain for his shinobi skills. He drew a blank.

The sand had abandoned him, and as he crouched behind the bush trying to think of a plan to escape his enemies, who were the likes of which he had never seen before, he felt very much alone. Abandoned by everyone; his siblings, his village, all of them had cast him out. His heart was pounding in his chest, beating harder still when he heard the rasping voice of the leader of his pursuers.

"Stop!" There were the sound of stomping slowing to a halt, and he held his breath as he hoped that they hadn't found out his hiding spot. That bastard seemed to have some kind of sixth sense when it came to tracking him down. "He's around here. Split up, men, and find him!"

Gaara had to bite his lip not to bolt the second he heard the stomping resume, reminding himself that he'd be an easier prey if they spotted him now. Soon, to his great relief, the stomping grew distant, and he slumped down in the grass, shaking like a leaf. He had to move, he told himself. He had to get away from here before they returned. Taking a deep breath he turned around slowly, peeking out from behind the bush, and fell back with a loud yell.

"Ah, there you are, little rabbit!" the leader roared triumphantly, and at the same time Gaara could hear rustling and stomping behind him. Jumping to his feet he spun around and realised he had been surrounded. The sounds of evil cackling made him whip his head around, again facing the leader. "There's no escape, little rabbit! Now we'll make you…fabulous!" the giant red, high heeled shoe screeched, and launched at him. Gaara fell back with a cry, and suddenly they all jumped at him; a tsunami of black, purple, red, yellow, and silver ladies shoes that blackened the sky.

"NO!" he cried, and fell out of his bed with a thump. As he lay on the cold stone floor, staring at the underside of the bed, he could feel his heart thumping madly in his chest, and he was still panting. Just a dream, he thought distantly. It was just a… fucking dream! After the initial rush of relief, a surge of anger ran through him. God damn dream! He hated dreams! He hated sleeping! Why the hell would people want to put themselves through this shit?!

"Gaara?" his brother's voice came from the door, and by the ray of light sneaking into his room, he figured Kankurou had opened the door to check on him. Had he been that loud? "Ya ok there, little bro?"

Angrily struggling to sit up, Gaara glared across the room at his older brother.

"Heh? What's with the pout? And why are ya on the floor?"

Intensifying his glare, Gaara replied: "Fell off the bed… shut up."

Kankurou was grinning, but at least kept from laughing him in the face as he had done the first time this had happened. Probably mostly due to the fact that he had been dodging sand projectiles for the next thirty minutes after that, until Temari had intervened.

"Come on, Gaara. Let's get down to the kitchen, Temari's making breakfast," Kankurou said quickly, his voice thick with barely contained glee at Gaara's misfortune.

Gaara grunted in reply, and pushed himself to his feet. He rubbed his eyes, something he had found quite necessary after sleeping, and reached for a shirt. After slipping it on he pushed past his brother, probably a bit more forceful than he needed to, and walked ahead of him downstairs.

"Good morning, Gaara," Temari greeted him as he came into the kitchen. "Sleep well?"

Again he only grunted in reply and took a seat by the table, deciding that other people's unnatural interest in his sleeping habits were annoying.

"He fell out of bed," Kankurou chimed in helpfully, grinning like the idiot he was, and Gaara glared at him again.

"Again?" Temari smirked. For some reason his sleeping problems seemed to bring his siblings a lot of mirth, and he felt his cheeks heat up. Dammit, he was blushing… it was yet another one of those things, much like his dreams, that he had no control over, and it annoyed him. "What was it this time? Giant pink bunnies trying to hug you?"

It was a joke to them, Gaara grumbled in his mind as he crossed his arms over his narrow chest and glared at them both.

"No." he answered curtly. Since Shukaku had been drawn from his body, these two had been getting increasingly bold towards him. At first he had just figured it had been due to the fact that directly after his revival his powers had been weak. It had taken him weeks until he had been able to draw enough chakra to use his sand for anything but picking up lighter objects, and even now nearly six months later he was still far from at his full strength. Anyhow he was still stronger than either of them, and yet neither of them had given up their task of teasing him. It was infuriating.

"I bet it was a wet dream," Kankurou said sagely, wincing slightly when Temari hit him on the arm.

Gaara blinked."What's a wet dream?"

Kankurou blanched, staring at him with wide eyes. Temari laughed.

"Yeah, Kanky, what's a wet dream? Why don't you enlighten us?"

"Eh… eh… ah… well…" Kankurou began, as a bright red blush rose on his cheeks. He continued stammering for a few moments before he threw his arms in the air and exclaimed: "Oh hell no! I ain't doing this! "

With a huff he fled from the room, muttering something about 'damn redhead, not knowing shit.' Temari laughed heartily at him as she took the eggs she was frying from the pan, and scoping them up on a couple of plates, sat down across from Gaara. She handed him a plate, before taking a bite of her own egg, and sighed.

"Well, a wet dream, Gaara, is…" she began, but stopped midsentence when he held up a hand.

"I know what a wet dream is,Temari." he interrupted her, before stuffing a piece of egg into his mouth. It wasn't too burnt. She had improved her cooking skills. Or perhaps it was just a fluke. "I wasn't born under a damn rock."

His sister looked surprised. "But then why did you ask?"

Gaara looked up at her, careful to keep his face expressionless, and she promptly burst out laughing.

"Oh, that's just evil, Gaara…"

*

He had only been at the office for about an hour, when there was a knock on the door. Looking up from the paperwork, he called out: "Enter."

"Kazekage-sama," the anbu who came inside greeted with a bow, and held out a scroll. "You have received a message from Hokage-sama."

Gaara stood, and took the scroll from the other shinobi. When he had read it though he turned to the anbu again.

"Send for my siblings, and Baki-san. I need to speak to them."

*

The restaurant of the hotel was loud, smoky and dimly lit, filled to the brim with brutes, all of whom seemed to feel the need to roar louder than everyone else in the room as if that would somehow make their masculinity more pronounced. Orochimaru kept the hood of the coat he'd taken from one of the corpses of the men he had killed, up and thus his face hidden while he huddled in the corner of the room. In front of him there was a bowl of some concoction he could not identify, and he ate slowly, swallowing it down without tasting it.

It was warm in the room, and the chill he had been feeling since… waking up, had began to drain from his body, only leaving behind a dull ache in his bones. So when he had finished eating the broth of unidentified goo he remained where he was, curling up to feel more of that warmth. Perhaps he had dosed off, he couldn't tell, but suddenly he felt something touching him. Instinctively he pulled out the sword he had taken from the man he had killed, and lashed out at the offending hand that seemed to be digging through his pockets.

"What the fuck?!" he heard a man roar, and when his eyes snapped in that direction, he saw a bulky man a few feet back, clutching onto his bleeding hand.

The man must have been trying to rob him of the money he had taken from those men, he decided but didn't bother to get up from his seat.

"Ya little shit!" the man hissed, as he pulled out a kunai. "I'll get ya for that…!"

The man lunged at him, kunai swishing through the air, but it was stopped when Orochimaru blocked it with the sword. The metallic ringing was loud enough to make the rest of the brutes turn their attention their way, and for a second the room fell silent. Then it erupted into shouts once more, but still their attention was fixed on them, transfixed to see who killed who no doubt. As he was pushed back against the wall by the man's greater weight, the man's grinning face inches from his, the notion that he could just drop the sword and let that be his end ran through his head. It was tempting, so tempting. He felt his eyelids flutter close, and the strength leave his arms. The edge of the kunai touched his throat.

No.

His eyes snapped back open. He refused to let himself die like this, killed by some weakling brute who robbed those weaker, and even then seemed to wait until they were unable to defend themselves. His grip on the sword tightened, and he pushed back just enough for him to be able to roll out of the man's way, underneath the table.

Swiftly he lunged out with the sword from underneath the table and impaled the man.

As he quickly climbed out from underneath the table he could already hear the man's gurgling, soon to be dead.

"Kioshi!" someone shouted in fury. "The little fucker killed Kioshi!"

"Get him!" another voice joined in, and the next thing Orochimaru knew he was assaulted. Probably by the killed man's friends, he figured as he dodged another kunai and sliced up the belly of one of his attackers.

By the time the last of the brutes fell with a cry, clutching his skewered stomach, the rest of the people in the place had fled. In the aftermath of battle the room seemed almost spooky silent, and the only sounds to be heard were the whimpering of those who had not yet died from their injuries.

A crash of something smashing against the floor made him look behind him, and he saw the barkeep come to a halt, slowly looking over his shoulder at him. The fat man cringed when he saw that he had noticed him, and tried to flee. Before he could reach the door though, Orochimaru yanked out a kunai from one of the bodies and threw it. The barkeep jumped back with a scream when the knife swished by his face and buried itself in the very door he had tried to run for.

He watched as the man's eyes darted about trying to find another way out, finding none. When he stepped closer the barkeep stiffened, and looked at him with wide terrified eyes.

"W… what do you want? I have money…! Take it all!"

Orochimaru shook his head, stepping up so he was at arm's reach from the man.

"Who is the strongest shinobi around that you know of?" he asked, and his voice came out in a mere whisper, hoarse and rough from not being used in so long.

"Huh?" the barkeep blinked, looking dumber by each passing moment.

Orochimaru gave him a steady look, silently daring him to ask him to repeat himself, and the man flushed in fear. As sweat broke out on his forehead the man began to stutter a nervous reply.

"Y… you, young sir…!"

Swiftly pointing his sword at the man's throat Orochimaru stared at the man.

"I am not fishing for cheap flattery," he hissed at the man's red face. "Give me the name of the strongest shinobi around these parts."

"I… I guess…" the fat man began, pausing briefly to swallow and wet his suddenly dry mouth. "The Hokage of Konoha."

Orochimaru shook his head. He could not return there. His refusal of the answer he was given must have been too much for the man's bladder, Orochimaru thought when the smell of urine rose up from the man. The snake crinkled his nose in disgust and pressed the blade to the man's throat more firmly, slightly breaking the skin so a small river of blood poured down his throat.

The man gave a high pitched whine and closed his eyes as if trying to wish it all to end.

"Another name."

The man began to sob and shake, stuttering in fear as he tried to prolong his life, tried to appease the boy that very soon, and very easily could become his killer. "I… I don't know… I don't… Gaara!" he suddenly shouted as if in triumph. "Gaara of the Desert… the Kazekage of Suna… he's plenty strong. A damn beast some say!"

Gaara? Gaara of the Desert. The memory of a child with bright red hair and black rimmed eyes flashed through Orochimaru's mind. He wondered where he'd seen that child before. Was it Sabaku no Gaara? Was he strong enough… to end his existence?

If he was not, Orochimaru figured in a detached manner as he let the sword fall from the sobbing mess of a man's throat, he'd be the one killing him instead.

Without looking back at the remains of the restaurant, and of the corpses within it, he left.

*

"They're dead." Kakashi announced and stood up from where he had been crouching beside one of the dead bodies lying carelessly discarded on the road.

Jiraiya nodded solemnly.

"Do you think it was Orochimaru?" asked Sakura, frowning in a way that for some reason annoyed the toad sage. There was something she was leaving unsaid; probably to avoid a confrontation with him, but the rest of the group seemed to be picking up on that silent notion anyways.

"It could be the work of someone else of course," Kakashi replied. "But the chances are that it isn't. Jiraiya-sama," the white haired man said, sounding serious as he turned towards him. "I think we have to consider the possibility that Orochimaru is still a threat. And even if he's not, there are also reasons to believe that he may not want to return to Konoha."

"Why wouldn't he?" Jiraiya snapped even though he knew that the other man was correct. "It's his home, and we…" he stopped himself from continuing. He sounded like the idiot he had been while still a teenager. He could see the signs now, unlike when he had been younger.

"It was his home, but…" Kakashi said but Jiraiya interrupted.

"I know." Konoha had been Orochimaru's home, but that was a long time ago. Such a ridiculous long time ago, yet now it felt almost as if no time had passed. Even back then Orochimaru hadn't liked being in the village, but had much preferred being on missions, either with himself and Tsunade or alone. Anything to be away from Konoha. "I don't care," he growled, clenching his fists. "If I have to I'll drag him back kicking and screaming."

There was a long silence before Kakashi shrugged.

"Well then," he said, sounding as aloof as usual. "Should we get going again then?"

*

Author's notes: Ooops sorry about the delay on this chapter, work and that pesky x-mas shopping has been getting in the way. It may also be some time until the next chapter, due to those very same reasons, I just thought I'd let you know.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you're all enjoying the story and the way it's going. Gaara will most probably be playing a rather large role in the story (what can I say? I'm a sucker for Gaara) though he won't be one of the main characters. Might throw him into some yaoi-ness too, but I haven't decided yet seeing as I usually prefer to focus on one couple per story. Only time will tell I suppose.

Don't forget to review!