Challenge: Demons, use of Orochimaru
It was really only to be expected that after chasing Orochi for something longer than a human lifetime, Susano-o couldn't help but get a little attached. They had been enemies for so long that the line had blurred, and no matter how mortals tended to assign characteristics like 'good' and 'evil' to the immortals, the immortals themselves made little distinction. Living for an eternity tended towards a little fluctuation as far as morals were concerned.
Not that any human was aware of this. It was one of many things that had somehow ended up being omitted from the human records. Another was how the Susano-o and Orochi of them had become enemies to begin with, probably because no one wanted to think that a legendary feud could rise out of something as stupid as cheating at a card game. Even less people wanted to remember that Susano-o had done the cheating, and Orochi the one who had gotten pissed off and broken her sometime friend, sometime rival's nose, thereby starting the whole debacle. Immortals were slow to forgive, if only because they literally did have all the time in the world.
The thing that had ended it all had been misinterpreted (some say purposefully) by the humans too, which just showed how selectively blind the species was when you got right down to it. It actually had involved a great deal of sake, the humans had at least gotten that much right, but a sword had only been tangentially related to the issue, and then only as a topic of discussion and later as a way to make amends. Also, no matter what the human legends say, Susano-o ended up getting a great deal drunker than Orochi. And though the man acted like he had a stick up his ass ninety-nine percent of the time, the times he cheated at cards notwithstanding, it turned out that alcohol tended to make Susano-o very... friendly.
"You know..." and at this point the legendary hero slung an arm around his enemy's shoulders, sloshing sake in the process, "You're really, really, really..." he paused at this point before regaining his train of thought, "... hot. You know that?"
Orochi, who normally had personal space issues but had had enough to drink that she wasn't sure why, just raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
Susano-o grinned. "Yeah." He paused again, as if trying to draw a conclusion from this observation. "Since I'm not all that bad looking either, you want to go have sex or something?" He had wanted to ask this for something close to fifty years, but in this case, he found alcohol was something of a necessity. Susano-o just had too much common sense when sober to even bother considering propositioning someone who tried to kill him on a regular basis.
Orochi tried to think of a reason that this wasn't a good idea. All she could remember was something about cards, and that didn't relate enough to the issue at hand to register. "Sure. Got nothing better to do."
So they did. A few months later, Orochi started getting morning sickness, so Susano-o forged her a sword as an apology for getting her knocked up. And then other stuff happened and they both died, but no one ever found out what happened to their son.
----
"Hey, Orochimaru."
The pale-skinned, golden-eyed prodigy of the Sandaime Hokage looked up from his study of one of his teacher's scrolls with a scowl. "What is it now, Jiraiya?"
"You ever wonder who your parents were? Your real ones, I mean?"
Orochimaru looked at his teammate for a moment, considering. Then he turned back to his scroll. "No."
