A/N: Another chapter awesomely edited by Ashimodo. Also a quick shout of thank you to all the favs, follows, and reviews. You guys are awesome!

Warning for some underage drinking in this chapter, unless you live in the few countries that are cool with drinking at 16.

Chapter 21: Scums of the Seven Seas

Orochimaru stared at the monitor as the shaky image flashed across the screen. Naruto had beaten Hidan and Kakuzu without losing a limb. None of his teammates were severely injured. And Juugo was under control. The sannin could sense the confusion coming from Kabuto, who was watching the monitor only a seat away from him. A smile graced his lips. The reaction was to be expected, he supposed. Nobody had before managed to impose clarity on Juugo when he was in his murderous rampage without completely reversing him to his human form. That was why Juugo himself insisted that he be locked away with as little human contact as possible. But now he could be controlled. Orochimaru's thoughts raced through the doors of possibilities as they swung open one after the other in his mind.

Kabuto must have sensed his good mood, because he asked, "Is there something particularly amusing, Orochimaru-sama?"

The Snake Sannin chuckled. "Many things, Kabuto-kun."

"...Is it because of Sasuke-kun?" Kabuto ventured.

Orochimaru shot a look at his assistant. Truly, Kabuto thought Uchiha Sasuke would be amusing to him? Appealing, yes. The sannin had enjoyed watching Sasuke fight the Sound Four. He had indeed grown into a formidable fighter, as an Uchiha would. Orochimaru couldn't help but feel the pull to have the boy again, but he didn't order his capture.

It was how those beautiful eyes looked when they turned to Naruto that made him stop.

Orochimaru had known from the beginning that there was a bond between Sasuke and Naruto. They were teammates, after all. They also had darkness in their hearts that made them susceptible to manipulation. Sasuke's darkness wasn't complete the first time they met, not enough to be used against the boy. Naruto's darkness was more consuming, more breathtaking. Orochimaru thought that, given time, Sasuke would be ready as well, like a ripe fruit for the picking.

But that look, however brief it was, told Orochimaru that the plan might have been foiled. He didn't know if he should curse Jiraiya for this. His former teammate had always been too easily seduced by the light to see the darkness within. He shouldn't have been able to reach Sasuke at all. Yet, there was the boy, changed beyond Orochimaru's recognition. Uchiha Sasuke the Avenger was nowhere to be found, not when he looked at Naruto like a child desperate for attention.

No, it wasn't amusing. It was a disaster.

"Yes, Sasuke-kun's arrival is interesting indeed, but that is not the most interesting thing, is it?"

Kabuto's eyes shifted to Juugo on the screen. Now he was looking at the right place. "You were aware of this, Orochimaru-sama?" he asked.

"Yes, Kabuto-kun," said the sannin with barely concealed glee. "It seems that the experiment is going well."

His assistant looked surprised. "An experiment, Orochimaru-sama?" he said.

The sannin smirked. "The one Naruto-kun has been performing on the side with Saya and Karin. Intriguing, isn't it?"

Kabuto looked like he didn't believe what he had just heard, which did not surprise Orochimaru in the slightest. When he'd first decided upon Naruto, he had never thought of him as anything but a vessel of the Nine-tails. Three years in, many people - including Kabuto - still saw him as nothing more than a blustering failure. But Orochimaru knew better. Naruto didn't show much promise for academia, but he asked questions, and many of them. Orochimaru didn't have the patience to teach him, so he assigned Saya to him instead. She might be one of Oto's failed geniuses, but Saya was at least clever enough to make herself useful as a teacher. It was Saya who came to the conclusion that Naruto was simply a creature of action rather than contemplation, that he needed experimentation. That had been their pedagogy since, and it had worked wonders for the boy.

"I let Naruto-kun keep Juugo as a pet because he is very interested in the man's condition. He has been studying Juugo since they first encountered each other at the Northern Base. We know that Juugo's condition was due to chakra overflow, but no one is certain why he has multiple personalities. Naruto-kun hypothesized that as our emotions affect our chakra flow, the reverse is also true. Therefore, an outside control of the chakra flow during Juugo's rage can suppress the murderous personality and allow him to be in control of his actions."

Kabuto blinked. Orochimaru could see that he understood the implication of this experiment for Naruto and his immense chakra reserve, the Nine-tails.

"I see you are following, Kabuto-kun," said the sannin with an amused smile, but he went on. "In order to compete with that power, the controller must inject an amount of his own chakra into Juugo and manipulate it to suppress the murderous rage."

"By injection of chakra," his assistant began, "I hope you do not mean-"

"Oh, I do mean it, Kabuto-kun," Orochimaru said. His lips pursed back in delight. "Naruto-kun has created the Uzumaki cursed seal."

/***/

Juugo was touching the seal on the back of his neck again. He'd done that several times since returning to human form. Saya suspected it must ache after being active for a long time. They had tested it in some simple training, usually with Suigetsu as the target, but they hadn't yet tried it in any real combat. Juugo had been coping well with the seal and Naruto's intervention, but they still had no idea how it might affect him during prolonged activation. There was also the psychological effect that they hadn't yet taken into account. Juugo normally objected to the use of violence. Although he had agreed to support Naruto in a fight, it did not mean it wouldn't bother him, especially when it was influenced by an outside will.

Naruto noticed this too. He turned to ask Juugo if he was all right just as they were to go into the tunnel. Juugo nodded. Naruto still looked worried, but he turned his attention to wading the knee-deep water as they entered the passageway. Suigetsu and Karin complained about taking this way back into Oto since it was littered with Water Lilies, traps designed to capture shinobi walking on the surface of the water. The combination of the Water Lilies and other traps made this the most difficult doorway in the system, but Naruto insisted that they take it in case the Leaf ninja tried to follow them.

Saya didn't know much about Naruto's time in the Hidden Leaf aside from that he was their Nine-tails' vessel. She understood very well that they would come after him sooner or later. But Leaf had never made bold moves before, let alone sent somebody right into Oto's territory.

And then there was that interaction between Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke.

She was surprised at how desperate the Uchiha heir seemed when Naruto dismissed him. There seemed to be resentment from Naruto's side, but she couldn't quite tell, not when Naruto had never mentioned the raven once since she knew him. She didn't want to pry too much into his past when Naruto did not want to talk about it, but she would have to now that Leaf was going to be a problem.

But first they had to report to Orochimaru. They went straight to the war room after they got out of the waterway. Otogakure was already back to life when they arrived. It seemed that the news of their victory had travelled faster than they did. She wasn't surprised, really. She would be more surprised if Orochimaru let his prized pet out of his sight for too long, especially with the Akatsuki as their enemy. She was sure, though, that whatever was filmed wasn't intended for the consumption of the entire village. It seemed that the line got tapped anyway. She wouldn't even be surprised if there was a betting pool in the mess hall as they fought.

The affair in the war room was much more sedated than outside. No loud shouting or cursing, but she could feel the relief. They had all seen the battle. They knew Naruto won, another shiny notch on the kid's list of accomplishments.

"Naruto-kun," greeted Orochimaru with open arms, and Naruto obediently went for the hug like a good boy. Saya could see Kabuto sitting further away with barely contained frustration. Saya smirked to herself. Kabuto was never very good when he felt his position was threatened. Naruto might not want to take Kabuto's place, but he sure was close enough to make Kabuto squirm, and the result, if Saya dared say, was entertaining.

"Congratulations to all of you," said Orochimaru to the rest of them, fixing each of them with a stare for a precisely calculated length of time, before turning his gaze to Naruto. "Especially to you, Naruto-kun. You did very well."

Naruto just scratched the back of his neck with a wide goofy smile on his face.

"Yes, nice work indeed," said Kabuto with much less sincerity. Saya could feel the tension in Kabuto's gaze as he looked at Naruto. "No one else would have taken down two Akatsuki members with as big a bang as you did, Naruto-kun."

Saya discreetly sent the man a glare. That was a backhanded compliment from Kabuto all right. And really, if Akatsuki didn't warrant a bang, who did?

Naruto just smiled back with coldness in his eyes as he said, "Thanks, Kabuto-san. It's nice of you to acknowledge my style once in a while."

Kabuto's eyebrows twitched, but his smile remained in place.

Naruto was able to refrain from huffing and sticking his nose up like Saya knew he wanted to. An improvement, if she might say so. Naruto never took Kabuto's criticism very well. Saya didn't put too much weight in the man's words. She had always been of the opinion that the medic nin didn't understand combat strategy very well. There were a lot of people like him in Oto who believed a well thought-out strategy was a complicated set of plans with three layers to them, every one of them as clever as the other. That would have worked for a board game, but in real combat, a strategy was knowing your capabilities and knowing your enemy's. It was knowing what to do and when to do it. It was having a simple but effective plan of actions with little possibility of failure. It was about being flexible and accounting for uncontrollable events through straightforward and effective reactions. If it meant confronting the enemy directly and eliminating them outright, then so be it.

Saya used to be all about complicated gameplay and powerful jutsu until she was about Naruto's age. A decade on and she had yet to have a change in perspective as profound. She'd been called a genius in Oto when she'd first arrived, up to the point where she realized that they all had it backwards. The mind game was fun, but it cost too much energy and time to be efficient. That was when she ditched Oto's way of thinking and opted for simplicity. That was also when her reputation in Oto started to decline and she went out of favour. To Saya, that was the best thing that had happened to her.

She liked to think that her kind of strategy was why her team's success rate was nearly triple that of the other teams of the same rank, but she would have been delusional. If each team's members weren't as good or as dedicated to their goal as they were, if they didn't trust each other or trust her, none of the strategies would have worked the way they did. Naruto understood this, too. That was a strength Naruto had that both Kabuto and Orochimaru didn't: he acknowledged that he needed other people to succeed.

But she wasn't going to tell Kabuto that. Information, after all, was power.

They were dismissed minutes later to get some rest. The experiment that Naruto was supposed to be in was postponed in favour of having him fit and ready for the next session. Both Karin and Naruto seemed to breathe a little easier as they left the war room for the mess hall to find something to eat.

"I'm famished," Naruto muttered, slumping forward with exaggerated hunger. "I wish baa-san's shop was open right now. I could use a good bowl of ramen."

"I'm sure Kane no Mura is still in lockdown. The protection team needs time to clear the area," Saya told him.

Naruto huffed. She knew he knew it, he simply didn't want to go to the mess hall for rationed food. The prospect of being around so many unruly people put Juugo off and he asked to return to his cell. Naruto objected, but he also knew more than the rest of them how being in the crowd affected Juugo. Naruto seemed to tune into the man's mood easily, and sometimes Saya wondered if they had more in common than the extra chakra they had to wrestle with. Naruto had been the one to seek Juugo out after he learned about the cursed seal. He'd been the one insisting that Juugo should be freed despite the fact that the man didn't want to be. It was Naruto who had come to Saya about the possibility of a cursed seal of his own that would allow Juugo to be in control of himself - with Naruto's help. She hadn't wanted to mess with something that complicated, but Naruto had a way of flashing his baby-blues that made it rather hard to say no.

Even now when things were going well, Naruto was still concerned about how Juugo was feeling. As they approached the cell, Naruto patted his back and said, "Let us know if you feel anything strange, all right? And I mean anything. Seal or no seal involved."

Juugo's eyes softened a little. He nodded but didn't say anything as he walked inside and allowed Naruto to lock him in. The blond just sighed as he shut the door, twisted the key, and put it on a cord around his neck. This key belonged to Naruto, as Juugo's life belonged to Naruto. Saya knew how much the blond hated the fact that a human could be treated like property, that sometimes freedom wasn't a choice. Confinement was Juugo's safety net, so Naruto let him have his peace.

After that they headed to the mess hall, one of the few places in the village for the shinobi to hang out. A room full of competitive young people who weren't too concerned with manners was bound to be a scene of chaos. As they sat down at one of the long tables for some much deserved meal time, she could hear someone saying in not so quiet a voice that "The scums are back." Suigetsu glared right back at them and Saya had to clear her throat. Looking at somebody wrong could cause a fight in Oto. People here were always competing with each other and not necessarily in a healthy way. Egos made them jealous easily, especially if that someone didn't really fit the ideal of a great shinobi. After all, Naruto was an idiot, Karin a lab rat, Suigetsu a test subject, Juugo a pet, and Saya an underachieving prodigy.

Naruto had reacted badly when he first came to Oto, but he'd gotten used to it quickly enough. Suigetsu had a harder time, mostly because he was a proud person but in part because he hadn't been quite desensitized yet. He'd been with them for just a year. That was the time Suigetsu was finally released from the confinement tube. Saya remembered months of him and Naruto arguing, because Naruto tried to get Suigetsu out but Suigetsu wouldn't accept any terms Naruto put forth. Names were called. Family members were insulted. Middle fingers flew back and forth. Karin complained for weeks about headaches from having to work while the two screamed at each other for hour after long, agonizing hour. But somewhere along the line, Naruto became Suigetsu's friend. If left to his own devices, Suigetsu would chop the head from the shoulders of anyone who dared insult Naruto.

She was relieved that Suigetsu just gave her a glare and went back to his meal instead of grabbing his sword and going for the offending ninja. That was when another group of shinobi came by, but this time to congratulate them. Of course, their intention was to congratulate Naruto. He was, after all, Orochimaru's current favourite and every other person who realized they couldn't beat him wanted to be in his good book. Some of them looked like they wanted to kiss his shoes just to get the point across. Naruto's smile was considerably strained around these people, but stayed in place. He would diffuse the tension by pointing to them and saying, "It's the team, man. It's the team," sometimes with his mouth full.

Karin would usually reprimand him for being an embarrassment to the Uzumaki bloodline with the attitude of an older sister disciplining her younger brother. In truth, they weren't even cousins. Naruto didn't even look like an Uzumaki. But they bonded quickly over the fact that they were the only two known Uzumaki in Oto and they disliked Kabuto with a passion. Naruto liked to hear Karin telling him about their family history, about the legend involving the Uzumaki, because no one had told him anything when he was younger. Naruto called his time before he came to Oto "a long bad dream," but he never told them what actually happened. They got a glimpse here and there, but Saya thought now was the time to try to get the whole picture.

She invited all of them to her room for some refreshments after the meal. That was their code for the alcohol that she kept under the bed. Naruto didn't drink, but Suigetsu and Karin definitely did and Naruto usually didn't like being left behind. She had tried to make him drink once or twice just to get him to learn his body's reaction to alcohol, but he firmly declined. That didn't stop her from offering, though.

Like always, the blond just shook his head. "No, you know I don't drink," he said with an apologetic smile and reached for a relaxing blend of herbal tea instead.

Saya didn't bother him any further. She just set the bottle down on the table and said, "You never tell me why you don't."

Naruto shrugged. "I just don't want to do something stupid, that's all," he said.

"I never said you have to get drunk," Saya countered.

Naruto huffed. "Nah, you don't have to get smashed to do something really stupid under the influence, Saya." There was a hard glint in his eyes that told her the topic was over. The hard glint that she saw every time anything related to Konoha came up in their conversation, no matter how innocuous.

Typically, she would let it go, but she had too many questions that needed answers. "How about you tell us a little bit about your friend from Konoha, then?"

Naruto basically spat his tea.

"Yeah, tell me about Uchiha Sasuke," Karin piped in excitedly.

Naruto immediately made a face. "Why do you care?" he said. "He's just another shinobi."

"It's because Karin got the hots for him, Boss," Suigetsu said with a laugh. Karin's punch flew right to his head and a splash of water flew across the room.

Saya rubbed her temples. "Could you please stop teasing Karin," she said. It was good and all that Suigetsu couldn't really get hurt since he was able to liquefy himself, but the water went everywhere. "Anyway," Saya began, trying her best to take them back to the topic. "Naruto, he knows you, doesn't he?"

Naruto stared at his cup and then shrugged again. "We were on the same genin team, that's all," he said before taking another sip of the tea.

"Ehhh? Really?" Karin said. She could barely contain her excitement anymore. "Tell me what you know about Uchiha Sasuke. How old is he? What's his horoscope sign? What are his likes, dislikes, hobbies, and dreams?" she demanded. Saya just sighed. A glass, and Karin had already lost most of her self control.

Naruto glared at her for a moment, but Karin just watched him with an expectant look. After a few seconds he sighed and said, "I don't know his sign. He's my age. He doesn't like a lot of things and rarely likes anything. He doesn't have a hobby and his dream is to kill a certain someone." Then he took the sip of his tea. We he looked back, Karin was still watching him. "That is seriously it."

"But that's nothing at all!" she whined.

Naruto rolled his eyes. "You tell the bastard that. That was what he said." He went back to his tea. Karin pouted but didn't push the topic further. She might be pushy when it came to a subject she was interested in, but she knew when to back down with Naruto. He had a surprising tolerance to nagging, but his patience definitely wasn't endless. And when it ran out it tended to be...dramatic.

Saya knew she had to handle this carefully or Naruto would just clamp up and not speak at all. "So you guys were pretty close then?" she asked casually as she poured some more moonshine into her cup. She couldn't help noticing that Naruto's shoulders seemed to stiffen.

"We weren't," he said after finishing his tea, "not the way we are at least." And at that he smiled at her. It wasn't one of his shit-eating grins that he liked to put out when dealing with everyone else in Oto. It was softer, something more genuine, although Saya couldn't help but feel that Naruto was using that smile on purpose. She wasn't going to fall for it.

"I thought Konoha is big about teamwork, " she said offhandedly.

Naruto just snorted. "That's what they said," he replied. His shoulders were still stiff and his gestures dismissive. Saya sighed. So he still wasn't going to talk about it then.

"So that means you don't know whether he's going to come back again," she commented offhandedly.

Naruto eyed her and lifted his eyebrow.

Karin barged in loudly again at that point, "What! He'll be back?"

"If he's after Naruto, then yeah," Suigetsu chimed in as he poured himself another cup. He looked a little red now and a little too pleased with himself. He was even giving Naruto one of his salacious smirks. "I wonder why."

Naruto just glared briefly at him before turning back to Saya. "You think it's going to be dangerous from now on, don't you?" he asked.

Saya nodded. "If one Leaf shinobi was here, that means the Leaf knows where we are. The only reason they are not going for open attack is because they fear causing a war." She paused. "And they probably fear you."

"Yeah," Naruto said, his face unreadable, "that sounds about right."

/***/

Kabuto was quite surprised to be summoned to the his master's study late in the evening. As always, he knocked then pushed open the door without waiting for permission. Orochimaru was sitting on a chair at his desk, reading a scroll. The sannin usually worked late into the night on one thing or the other, although he seldom spoke to anyone during this time. It was a period of private contemplation. Just like a snake, his mind was most alert in the evening.

Kabuto assumed then that it must have been something about an experiment they were performing. But once the scroll came into sight, he froze. The handwriting on it was terrible but unmistakable. He could see many diagrams and drawings about chakra. They looked childish, and maybe that shouldn't have been a surprise. Naruto was thirteen when he'd written that scroll as a report to Orochimaru.

The whole thing started on the first day the boy arrived. The Sannin had recently transferred to a new body and his subordinates, as typical during the period of adjustment, had been unable to look at him without suffering some level of unease. Naruto had been the only person aside from Kabuto to look him in the eye. There wasn't a shred of fear in the child as the Master of Oto led them past his many test subjects in various stages of experimentation. Kabuto had thought the child didn't know who it was in front of him, and so told him about the transfer. Naruto asked for the reason. Kabuto told him about the curse the Sandaime Hokage put on Orochimaru's arms.

The child scowled at them both and asked, "Why do we need the hand signs to perform jutsu anyway?" Kabuto had snickered at first. Hand signs and chakra control were such fundamental topics that any question about them only confirmed the ignorance, or rather the low intelligence, of the inquirer. But then his gaze fell on Orochimaru. There was a look of intrigue on the sannin's face that told Kabuto something about that comment had struck. Kabuto didn't know what might have, not until three months later when Orochimaru first showed him this scroll with an amused smile on his lips. Kabuto had read it, found it surprisingly insightful, but couldn't see it as anything but an esoteric venture.

That was until Naruto broke three genjutsu in succession without so much as moving a finger.

Maybe he should have realized then that Naruto had an interest in experimentation. At that point, he just thought Saya was the driving force behind it all. She was the one who explained to them the limitation of the handless jutsu, namely the level of chakra control needed to perform one, which usually rivaled that of a medic nin. It was like trying to control the heart rate by willing it so. While meditation worked to some extent, it was much harder than using physical activities or medications. Kabuto was quite disappointed by the outlook, but it didn't seem to dampen Orochimaru's mood. If anything, he seemed joyous. He even patted the brat on the head as he congratulated him on the results.

Kabuto didn't see Naruto's other projects. He wished he was at least told about them. The knowledge that the fox brat had been doing experiments, something that was normally Kabuto's specialty, left him rather uneasy. He'd rather know this when it was going on than later when he had no idea how many disasters Naruto had created. But above all, he wanted to know how Naruto had spent time with Orochimaru. Kabuto had always assumed that the sannin met the boy out of obligation. But the fact that Orochimaru had this particular scroll out for the evening, a scroll that did not have any connection to any existing research, told him of the grip the boy had on the Master of Oto, and the matter at hand.

"Orochimaru-sama?" he said quietly, breaking the heavy silence in the room. "You have something you would like to discuss?"

The Snake Sannin placed the scroll still open on his lap and turned his attention to Kabuto. The reading light cast shadows on the lines of his face, giving the impression that he had been thinking long and hard in the privacy of his own mind. "Yes, I need to ask you something, Kabuto-kun," said the sannin. "How long would it take to completely wire Naruto's chakra pathways to the Kyuubi's?"

"Another year at least, if we do not want to risk releasing the Nine-tails unwittingly," Kabuto replied. He didn't like where this was going. He knew a year was a long time now that Leaf and Akatsuki were on the boy's trail. What's more, they hadn't tested the cursed seal control on Naruto yet. Who knew at this point what the combination with the Kyuubi's chakra might do.

Orochimaru was tapping his fingers slowly, dragging them almost soundlessly across the surface of the scroll as if lost in his own thoughts. He was thinking of options, and Kabuto knew there wasn't a lot out there that would work in less time than their original plan.

Finally, the sannin looked up. He asked, "And how long would it take to finish the current work?"

Kabuto swallowed. "A few months, Orochimaru-sama."

The Master of Oto nodded. He took one last look at the scroll on his lap then rolled it closed. The bundle of paper was placed on the desk with all the other scrolls, just one among many. "It is decided then," said sannin. "Complete your work as quickly as possible, Kabuto-kun. As close to my third anniversary as you can, and report back to me."

Kabuto nodded. He honestly did not like this outcome, but he knew as well as Orochimaru that there wasn't much choice. They had discussed the options before they started the cumbersome task of rewiring the pathways. But their time was up, and they had to fall back to their last option:

Orochimaru would take Naruto as his vessel.

/***/

End of Chapter 21

A/N:

LeyCoo Thank you so much! I do try to sow as many seeds as reasonable before reaping the end product at the big build, because otherwise I don't think it would make sense. So let me know if something doesn't, okay? :)

Guest You have Ashimodo to thank for that fight scene. He was kicking my ass about how sloppy it was before the rewrite. In terms of raw power I think both Naruto and Sasuke are about the same as the canon (maybe Naruto has a little more because of the Kyuubi). The techniques are definitely going to be different. I'm on the side of diversifying Sasuke's techniques, but, yes, he still has the lightning fetish. I have to warn you that I'll be taking a lot of liberty with Taka. There's not enough about them in the canon, so I'll have to make some up.

ZyiareHellsing I know right! Naruto's totally a fox. He had that tendency before the time skip and lost it afterwards, so everybody forgot about it. But he totally does.

nekomode I'm sorry to hear. I hope you're well by the time this chapter is up. I've been slow in editing the previous chapters, so you didn't miss much. Don't worry.

Reign Of Sorrow Valana Corpj123 Thanks, guys!

badslangbumerang Here's ya load, ma man. I'll keep 'em flowing, if I can. (Accidental rhyming, yo!)

Guest Awwww, I'm glad I made you cry...That sounds so wrong, doesn't it?

Alviniju Gosh, I so, so love your speculation. How should I answer this? You will find out in the next chapter actually, so I don't think I should be saying anything aside from Kabuto's smart. So there's not much Orochimaru can from especially when Kabuto is also working with both him and Naruto.

SupernaturalHearts I've heard from somewhere that in Germany that Sasuke's ass-bow is referred to as ass-pretzel. That totally destroyed me. XD