What do you mean, the last chapter ended oddly? Why, there was nothing suspicious about it at all. Medic nin conspiracy? Well, of course there's a medic nin conspiracy, they're ninja, but it's not like it's important at all, or like they've gained the power to penetrate the fourth wall.

No, I'm not laughing nervously or glancing down at the empty air by my throat where there is absolutely not anything resembling a knife, why would you ask something like that? Especially if you like breathing…

Sadly, shotguns haven't been invented yet (but taxidermy has). What's Sasuke going to do when the Uchibis start dating, or the equivalent...

This jumps ahead to after the exams, but it's a series of events I'd had in my head since around the beginning of the fic, and trying to do things in order has caused me to write fewer things, since the bunnies don't get cleared out and make room for new bunnies. I can change the chapter order later, but if things don't get written, they don't get written.

Sasuke tried to glare, knowing it was less effective through the blindfold. He tried to muster every ounce of Strangling Intent he could, but the aura radiating off his target was downright nauseating.

It reminded him of how Hinata got sometimes, but that couldn't be right. Uchiha were demons: they weren't capable of something like love. Obsession and acquisitive intent, sure: Sakura was tolerable because she'd never loved him, even when she was still enough of a civilian to tell herself that it was love instead of greed. She saw him as an extremely valuable possession, which appealed to his pride as a Uchiha. He was Konoha's most eligible bachelor, and Sakura was smart enough to know it.

He'd hoped that she would serve as a role model for the girls he had to raise, since Hinata was obviously too squishy, but this? Was evidence that plan had backfired horribly. "Orochimaru?" he demanded for the third time.

Ran stamped her foot, glaring at him. "Why can't you be more supportive of my delicate feelings, aniki? He's meant to be mine! I found this really awesome cookbook in the Shrine, Ammy helped me find all the ingredients I want, and Naruto's been giving me stealth lessons so I can sneak into his village and bring him boxed lunches at work! That'll absolutely make him mine!"

Hinata couldn't possibly have had any idea, the dog was the not-damned dog, but Naruto had done "What," Sasuke asked flatly.

"Well, I didn't tell him who I wanted to poison,' Ran explained.

"Poison?"

He heard a book opening and his cousin pointing helpfully at the page. "He's so evil," she said, sighing dreamily. "I want him to be mine for ever and ever, so I might have poisoned Shigure and brought him as a present because he's annoying," and Orochimaru had to like her if she brought him a victim: who didn't like victims? "But if Orochimaru is immortal and doing research on humans like big sis Sakura, then he'll be looking at people who aren't me." The fangs were bared now, and the killing intent might have been disturbing if Sasuke wasn't busy sighing with relief.

"I'm going to kill him and have him stuffed and mounted so I can look at him and think about how wonderfully evil he is and have him all to myself so he'll never think of anyone else but me for ever and ever," Ran continued happily. "I asked Hinata-nee-san, and she said the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and at first I thought she was just talking about avoiding the rib cage when I stab him, but then I realized that since he's so good at murdering people, it would take a really long time to wear him down in a fight, and fighting fair is for Senju, so she must have meant using a poison to stop his heart!" She might be able to kill him now that way, instead of having to spend years training first! True, crushing her first crush in a bloody battle where people got all sweaty and got their clothes cut off like in the jutsu books they weren't supposed to know about was really romantic, but working hard wasn't cool at all.

"Alright," Sasuke said. "You have my blessing."

She shrieked with joy and tackled him: fortunately calling her attack gave him enough warning not to stab her. "You're the best, aniki!"

He'd thought he was going to have to not just give one of them the talk, but talk them out of a relationship. What if they bred? He had too many damn kids to look after already! Thank goodness this was just the demonic homicidal tendencies acting up instead of actual (ick) love.

"I'm making Mandragora Soup with…" Sasuke tuned out the fangirling, activating the Smile and Nod autopilot, and with the blindfold on he couldn't see the printed image of a smiling priest next to the recipe, with the testimonial 'One bite will slay even a golden dragon!'

Of course, little did Sasuke know that 'you're amazing and it makes me want to murder you' was the basis of all Uchiha relationships. If asked, Sasuke would have said that the person he wanted to murder the most was Danzo, but that would be an irritating chore, ridding himself of an irritant more than anything. The person he knew he'd have the most fun killing was Naruto. His best friend.

Even if they'd bonded over childcare instead of 'you're really strong and killing you would be fantastic,' which was the reason Sasuke had followed Itachi around all the time.

Since Uchiha normally only had best friends, or attempted to have them, in order to kill them later, obviously they selected them by who would be the most fun to kill.

Romantic relationships were the same, except there it was more likely that seduction techniques would be among the methods employed to try to distract the victim. So it was really too soon for Sasuke to relax and tell himself that there was no need for any horrible mental images, Ran wasn't going to be doing anything perverted to the snake, just murdering him and mounting him on a wall somewhere.

It was Ibara-no-hime sitting up, stretching, idly blocking a sword-stroke while yawning, and giving him a look that said 'Wow, that's it? You suck in bed even worse than you suck as a ninja' before wandering off in search of someone who knew how to make love to something other than their own hand that made Ryusuke so determined to spend the rest of his life trying to kill her (even just a little death!) that he proposed.

And if Ryosuke hadn't been so busy using swords other than the one he was born with, he might have remembered anatomy class well enough to convince the kuniochi he wished to crush that he hadn't failed at it for life and if she ever wanted to have even half-decent sex ever again she was going to have to get herself some concubators in the marriage contract. Nothing was worse than getting all turned on by someone viciously trying to kill her and then being left with blue ovaries because of some lightweight with no idea what he was doing or the endurance to last long enough to start figuring it out.

Since his attempt to make her jealous just resulted in her patting the women in his harem on the shoulder and saying 'you poor, poor dears' (just to mock him and inspire him to try harder to kill her, of course: pity was un-Uchiha) and giving them directions to shops where necessary items could be obtained? If his crush was sleeping with people other than him, obviously the only option was to kill them all.

"Kabuto. There are fangirls in the air ducts. Deal with it," was the order that sent his minion out of the office after a bow.

"Why are there fangirls in the air ducts?" Orochimaru demanded as he breathed and tried to calm his (stolen) rapidly beating heart. 'Why do we even have air ducts!' he would have asked, if the contractors hadn't insisted that every evil base had to have air ducts, and offered a very appealing booby trap arrangement designed to bait infiltrators and deposit them in his labs to provide him with test subjects.

Since they would have charged extra for the seal work necessary to keep the air breathable at this depth without ducts, it was really the only option.

Of course, since this was a ninja construction company, he'd known that they were planning to use the air ducts to infiltrate and spy, but there were only so many seal masters that skilled in the world. He'd expected Jiraya in the women's baths and obviously placed additional traps there, not looking up in his office when he heard giggling in time to see a small head vanish into a vent. Fangirls leaving bento boxes on his desk painted with cute fuzzy animals? Ugh, how childish. The good thing about children was that they were easy to lure with promises of candy, dango and cool powers, but…

He peered closer. Had that bunny been disemboweled?

"Day three," Inner Sakura narrated. "I have discovered six more incredibly inventive booby traps. Right now, I'm too busy to study them, but I had Ran use her Sharingan to examine their inner workings so she can reconstruct them for me later." What Sasuke didn't know about Sakura drop-kicking the children into spike traps… Well, he'd probably be fine with it, since Sakura was sending in a few of Orochimaru's minions first just to make sure Ran wouldn't be in too much danger, and every ninja needed to gain experience with booby traps. At least Ran was experimenting with the hazards of relationships in a controlled setting with supervision and proper control groups, like the bundle of unconscious Sound ninja Sakura was sitting on.

Stalking was also excellent training: Sakura was far from Naruto's equal in the stealth department, but she and Hinata were the second and third best in their year, thanks to their respective first crushes.

"Orochimaru fed it to one of his minions!" Ran said happily as she chopped up the still-squirming eyeball and attached ichor-dripping demonic nerve Ammy had brought back to the compound and dropped on her doorstep. "He noticed the lunch I made him! The ninja I captured and tortured even said that he immediately analyzed the poison!" Orochimaru was thinking of her, maybe even right now!

The traditional thing was to kill everyone that Orochimaru had ever loved first, but since Orochimaru had never loved anyone but himself, killing him would make him all hers! Killing all his minions, though, slowly leaving him all alone in the world with no one else daring to breathe the same air as him, even daring to look at her evil, evil victim… Well, except Sakura, so she got to live. For now. Also, Aniki would be pissed, but ninja that weren't Uchiha were just tools anyway, and a tool looking at Orochmaru didn't count.

Next to her, working at a counter that didn't have a smoke hood over it to keep the vapors from escaping and poisoning the entire compound, Hinata sighed happily. Hearing another young girl in love was making her think of Naruto.

Ran sighed happily too, and continued to cut the screaming carrots into cute little shapes. Maybe Orochimaru hadn't been stupid enough to eat the Mandragora Soup with Lamb Chaos, but she was going to keep experimenting! And if you had to eat vegetables, then who wouldn't want to eat vegetables that had been magically been granted sentience and little mouths that let them scream in agony?

And if killing your best friend got you the Mangekyo Sharingan, what kind of power would killing the person she would love if she was capable of that emotion give her? She couldn't wait to find out! And then she'd be reminded of Orochimaru and how wonderfully evil he was every time she killed someone...

Synchronized happy sighs filled the kitchen.

In Okami, there's a fetch quest where Ammy gets ingredients for the imp that's Orochi's head chef, which has this major crush on him. Since the Uchiha are something like Okami's imps, having the love of evil hit one of them that way's been an idea since way back. I was thinking just ninja lunch delivery, but the yandere amused.

Slayers reference, although it would be really hard to get actual ingredients and directions out of that particular chef. He probably just said "It's a secret," and they were stuck trying to reverse engineer the recipe.

A dreamy young Uchiha girl with a crush drawing disemboweled animals on things instead of hearts and roses... Or rather Silphium seeds and roses. The modern Valentines heart symbol doesn't look like a real heart because it's not meant to be a heart: that symbol is actually the seed of the Silphium plant, the ancient Roman equivalent of the birth control pill. The Romans were so 'Hades yes' about being able to have all the sex they wanted without worrying about having to worry about the risks of pregnancy and death, that the image of the Silphium seed is still the single biggest symbol of romantic passion worldwide even over a thousand years after that plant was harvested to extinction. I suppose the modern equivalent would be drawing squares with circles inside all over notebooks...