Author's note: Once again I've published two short chapters instead of one long one this week. If you're not sure what's going on, go back one. Together the two are the length of a normal chapter, I just wanted to break on the final moment of last chapter.


"Lovely tea," the Fox said, sipping delicately from the tiny bone-china cup. "Have you exerted enough social dominance that we can get to productive matters, or should I have another maki?"

"One more, I think," Orochimaru said, selecting a fish roll from the plate and popping it in his mouth. "Delicious," he said approvingly. "Thank you, Noburi. Delightful as always. You may go."

The sushi chef had been kneeling in the corner of the room, trying his absolute best to be invisible. At the word of dismissal he leaped to his feet and backed out of the room, bowing continuously.

Orochimaru patted his mouth with his napkin, folded it precisely, and set it in front of him before smiling at the Fox. "I'm prepared to talk Jiraiya into removing the seal and freeing you," he said. "There would be some quid pro quo, however."

"Of course," the Fox said. "What exactly were you thinking?"

"First, you agree to never harm any chakra-possessing human who does not directly attack you first," the Sannin said.

"Hmmm," the Fox said. "I'll consider it. Continue."

Orochimaru nodded. "Second, you agree not to cause indirect harm, physical or otherwise, to any chakra-possessing human. That includes, but is not limited to, destruction of buildings, lands, crops, or other properties, as well as over-hunting an area, sending or bringing dangerous lifeforms into the region, or affecting air, water, or weather systems."

"My, aren't you the suspicious type?" the Fox said with an amused smile. "No one has ever considered the possibility that I could control the weather."

"Can you?" the Sannin asked.

"Perhaps," the Fox said. "I prefer to keep the exact limits of my abilities a bit hazy. I'm sure you understand."

"Of course," Orochimaru said. "Moving on. You will make yourself available one week of every month to assist in projects of my choice. You will give your best efforts to those projects, which shall include placing all your knowledge, chakra, and other resources at the disposal of the project as directed by myself, the project leader, or such other personnel as I or the project leader shall designate."

"No," the Fox said. "If I were to agree to that, it would need to be more restricted. I would be willing to donate a reasonable amount of chakra, but I'm not about to let you drain me dry. Also, I'm not willing to provide any information that would be detrimental to myself or my interests."

"Provisionally acceptable," Orochimaru said. "Pending agreement on the precise nature of those limitations."

From her position at the side of the table, Anko seethed quietly. Orochimaru had politely 'requested' their presence at the negotiation, so the three of them were sitting seiza, watching two powerful beings negotiate their future. Beside her, Hinata sheltered behind the mask of her highborn manners and Shino had adopted the blank-faced inscrutability of the Aburame. She was sure that both of them were casting their sensory abilities about, looking for any available escape route or advantage. There was no way for them to privately communicate that information to her, however, and they needed to do something soon. The longer they sat here, the worse things got for everyone in the Elemental Nations; an alliance between the power of the Fox and the intelligence of the Snake would be a disaster of epic proportions.

Very carefully, she spun threads of chakra, extending them slowly throughout the room. Delicately, she wove a genjutsu net and allowed it to drift very softly into the minds of the Fox and the Snake. She kept it simple, showing nothing but what was already here. If she could just leave decoys of herself and the genin behind, the team could sneak out.

A battering ram of chakra tore her genjutsu to fragments and smashed it back into her face.

"Don't do that," the Fox said, taking a calm sip of his tea and not bothering to look at her.

"Indeed," Orochimaru said reprovingly. "That was both clumsy and rude, little bird."

Anko said nothing, struggling to maintain a calm facade and not to tremble. She could tell her face was ghost-white; the Fox had hit her harder than she'd ever been hit, mentally speaking. Despite that, it had obviously been no more than a casual flick.

"Back on topic," the Fox said. "At a general level, your terms are acceptable. I have a few requirements of my own, however. First, I will guarantee the safety of Team Anko in whatever fashion I see fit, and this shall take precedence over all other agreements between us; I will not be prevented from harming someone who is threatening my team."

"'My' team, is it?" Orochimaru asked in amusement. "Everything I've learned of your kind says that you regard humans as monkeys at best. Since when do you care so deeply for us that you would rate these humans' welfare important enough to endanger negotiations for your freedom?"

"That's a very unkind description of my attitudes," the Fox said reprovingly. "I have feelings for many humans. It's only when you act stupidly—as you are so irritatingly wont to do—that I get frustrated with you."

"I note that you said it was an 'unkind' description, not an inaccurate one," Orochimaru observed. "I further note that you did not specify what sort of feelings you have for us."

The Fox sighed. "These negotiations are never going to go anywhere if you insist on twisting my words," he said. "Yes, there are humans I have no regard for and would happily throw into the Outer Dark; there are also humans for whom I have respect. It depends entirely on their actions and their character."

"Mmhmm," Orochimaru said, not buying it. "In any case, you have demanded the safety of Team Anko be above the rest of our agreement. I will not grant that without restriction, but I am willing to negotiate appropriate boundaries. What else?"

"Second, this agreement will last for the duration of your life," the Fox said. "I will not agree to a binding of indefinite length."

Orochimaru smiled like a shark. "In that case, you will do everything in your power to extend my life," he said. "At a later time, I will add a list of requirements for the quality of life I must maintain—it does me no good to be kept alive as an insensate vegetable."

"Hm," said the Fox, seeming displeased. "I suppose I can agree to that in principle, pending negotiation of the details." He sniffed in irritation. "Moving on, there shall be a list of people who are exempt from the protections of our agreement. First, anyone who is binding or helping to bind myself or one of my brethren. Second, anyone who is pursuing, storing, or disseminating research intended to bind us. Third, my siblings and I shall be free to carry on our agenda of purging the darkness from humanity."

"'Purging the darkness from humanity?'" Orochimaru said. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

The Fox raised an eyebrow. "Yes," he said. "That is what I'm calling it. Your population as a whole mirrors the nature of a single indivdual—long bouts of healthy growth, interspersed with periods of sickness. When the sickness becomes cancerous it must be cut out; my brethren and I have done that since we were the Ten-Tails and the Sage tore us apart."

"And why, pray tell, do you perform this generous service?" Orochimaru asked.

"Individual humans are weak," the Fox said. "Humanity as a whole is powerful. As with most things, your personalities and abilities are distributed on a bell curve. Given a large enough population there will always be a few who fall three or more sigma from the mean; for whatever reason, your race is far more prone to produce sinners than saints, so when someone is far enough from the center in morality it usually means they're a monster. A monstrous human would generally be unimportant, but since the Sage did his idiotic chakra-granting trick you have developed techniques that leverage your strength all out of proportion—jutsu, seals, even some of the mechanismics I've seen lately. Typically, humans use such power to dominate their fellow humans and harm the landscape. My brethren and I make it a point to destroy those who are both evil and powerful; over the last thousand years we've noticed a small but statistically significant increase in the proportion of humans who display adaptive social characteristics due to our efforts."

"Ah, I see," Orochimaru said. "So, you're doing it as a service to us, then? Helping to breed evil out of humanity?"

The Fox nodded graciously. "That would be a fair description of the results, but I won't claim we're doing it out of the tenderness of our hearts. No, it's simply enlightened self-interest; we don't want the planet destroyed."

Hinata sucked in a startled breath. The noise was soft, but clearly audible in the quiet room.

The Fox glanced over and gave her a needle-toothed smile. "Does that startle you, vixen?" he asked. "It's true. In the past, humanity came very close to destroying the planet. When I was the Ten-Tails I lived beyond space and time. I heard a voice one day, inviting me to come here and treat; out of foolish curiosity, I answered. I bargained with Kaguya to complete a mission for her, but her son, the Sage, tore me apart before I could do so. He ripped most of my chakra out, froze it into material form, and hurled it into the sky; it became the moon. Your planet had never had a moon before, and the tidal disruption drowned millions of coast-dwellers and caused earthquakes and volcanoes. Worse, he hadn't thrown it far enough. It was falling back and, had it struck, it would have cracked the planet open."

He sighed grimly. "Given how much the Sage had taken from me, I was unable to stop the impact myself. I joined with him in a massive chakra manipulation to push the moon into a stable orbit. It left me so weakened that the Sage was able to tear me apart into the nine Tailed Beasts and seal my component elements away in jinchuuriki; a thousand years later and I am still torn asunder."

His expression shifted, becoming pensive. "The worst part is that it will never get better. Kaguya is dead now, so I can't fulfill my contract with her, which means I can never go home. I'll simply live on, enduring this weakened, shattered existence until your sun eats this planet and I am left floating in the void until the end of time."

"If I may ask, Fox-sama," Shino said politely, "if your body was so massive that it would have destroyed the planet on impact, how was it that there were no ill effects from you walking on the surface?"

"Well it's not like I was material," the Fox said impatiently. "I was a being of pure chakra; the Sage ripped most of it away from me and condensed it into a massive chakra construct in order to keep me from re-absorbing it. I don't think he quite understood just how much power he was dealing with, and how large a construct it would produce." He snorted. "If the damn fool had finished the conversion without doing anything, the tidal forces would have shredded the planet. Fortunately, he was smart enough to see what was happening and throw the construct upwards while it was still condensing."

"And thus you have generously carried on a millenium-long eugenics program to breed evil out of humanity," Orochimaru said ironically. "Truly, a worthy goal. Thank you so very much for your assistance...although, I note that most of the people you destroy seem to be ninja."

The Fox blinked. "Well, of course," he said. "Among humans, only ninja have, or could gain, the ability to destroy the world. More importantly, you ninja actively train to be murderous, power-hungry monsters. For most of you it's not an issue, but when you give immense power to a psychopathic villain...well."

Orochimaru affected a wounded look. "That seems a bit harsh, don't you think?" he asked. "I've never liked the term 'villain'; it's so limiting, so defined by the beliefs of others. I prefer 'effective agent'."

"And aren't you adorable for it," said the Fox. "So, I assume you have no objection if I and my brethren continue ensuring that the world isn't destroyed?"

"Yes, actually," Orochimaru said. "You will not take such matters into your own hands. If you note a person or place that you feel needs to be wiped out, you tell me. If I agree with you, I'll take care of it."

"Hmmm," the Fox said disapprovingly. "I'll think about it. Moving on for the moment..."

The negotiations went on for hours; eventully Anko and the two genin began drooping. The Fox noticed immediately and broke off long enough to send them to bed in Anko's room back at their cottage, a sixty-member company of kage bunshin serving as a bodyguard every step of the way. The team was too exhausted from fear and stress to even try discussing means of escape; they simply fell into their bedrolls and were instantly asleep.