Chapter 36: Training With Kabuto

or

My Spleen Is Supposed To Be Inside

Uchiha Sasuke was unhappy. There were plenty of reasons for this, but somehow, they managed to link up to his brother. It wasn't that his brother was the cause of all bad things, just that these seemed to be his fault, since all of them were because of his nephew, and therefore his brother. What was worse was that his brother was only partially at fault, so in the end, it was the whole clan that had made his life difficult.

A year ago, he'd been approached by some of the strangest freaks of nature he'd ever encountered, and he lived in a village with Maito Gai. They had informed him that if he wanted to make use of the . . . tattoo (he tried not to think about a fifty-year-old biting him and cooing about it any more than he had to) on his neck, he would need to come with them to the creepy pervert's place to learn from him. Since his best friend and adopted cousin was set to head out of the village anyway—to be trained by one of the Sages, no less—Sasuke had decided that he'd kill two genin with one shuriken and learn from Orochimaru (while carefully avoiding any . . . advances).

Not being stupid, he'd decided to confide in his friend that he (Sasuke) was going to be "betraying" the village in the morning and he (Naruto) should be ready to deal with that and that he (Naruto) would be acting head of the clan until he (Sasuke) got back. He (Sasuke) had started clarifying that bit about whom he (Sasuke) referred when Naruto started getting really confused. In his (Naruto's) defense, it was a fair thing to get lost on.

It had been awkward to deal with Sakura on his way out, though. He couldn't explain that he wasn't really leaving for good, so he'd been disturbed when she'd asked to come along. That had annoyed him enough that he'd kicked her very hard somewhere rather rude and knocked her out in the middle of the street. With any luck, it would teach her not to betray the village.

Sasuke hadn't seen what had happened during the hunt to catch him, but from what the Sound Four had explained, Jiroubu had managed to catch the entire retrieval team in some sort of rock formation which Naruto had responded to by pulling so much chakra out that the Sound ninja had been forced to abandon the technique and make a break for it. After that, reports got rather confused.

Sasuke had failed to enlighten his new "friends" on the abilities of his fellow Uchiha, so they had been left trying to explain the thousand Naruto that had overrun the forest looking for them. To Sasuke's amusement, it had done nothing to convince Sound that Naruto was a threat, since the clones mostly got in each other's way and managed to prevent any of the Leaf ninja getting anywhere near the Sound Four. He'd known his friend was a good actor, but this had been utterly ridiculous—Sasuke was amazed at how Naruto managed to perfectly sell the utter incompetence and completely prevent a single casualty. No one even twisted an ankle.

It had been a bit weird, though, when he'd been watching the tail end, since he'd been doing it while standing at the top of the Uchiha Madara statue in the Valley of the End. Actually, what had been weird was that his eyes had stung like hell and he'd had giant hands on his back. They hadn't even been useful hands, though gliding was kind of cool—but he'd have preferred ones that could form hand seals or hold things.

Then had come the mixture of frustrations upon discovering that most of his instruction would come from Kabuto and upon discovering that Kabuto had plenty to teach. The boy was horribly emotionless and somehow cheerful at the same time, all the while demonstrating a broad variety of ways to maim and kill those of nominally greater skill. His instructor also had what could best be described as an insane idea of how to learn stealth techniques: Kabuto had ordered him to ambush Orochimaru.

It took almost a day to understand that Kabuto was serious about the matter and only ten seconds to understand how much it hurt. The other thing about Kabuto was that he had some freakishly good skills at certain parts of medical techniques. He spent quite a lot of time that first month healing Sasuke's various internal organs after they had been shredded by a Sage who wasn't good at being surprised. Unfortunately, Kabuto's skills didn't include pain management.

On the rare occasions that he paid much attention, Orochimaru was a capable teacher, but Sasuke always wondered if the man was focused on lessons or on . . . well . . . Sasuke. It was creepy. Especially talking about his body. But the man was brilliant in a sort of razor-sharp way and gave ample proof that he had genuinely been a contender for Hokage—if it hadn't been for the whole creepy-pervert-megalomaniac thing.

Sasuke had been amused when Kabuto had actually been shocked by a change in wardrobe. Having decided that the Uchiha as they had been were insane and generally unpleasant, Sasuke had decided that things like pointless, stubborn pride weren't so useful (although given that he'd brought Naruto into the clan, there was a good chance that was going to stay a family trait) and so he'd exchanged the purple and white garb that he'd been provided with for an outfit made of black and dark orange. He knew only one person who seemed to treat infiltration against highly skilled assassins as a form of recreation to prevent boredom and had adopted his best friend's method for avoiding detection.

That hadn't been enough to actually surprise Orochimaru, but it was enough that Kabuto was pleased with his progress and had focused more heavily on all the wonderful ways to inflict horrible injuries on other people. Sasuke wasn't sure where Kabuto had learned, but they were obviously crazy, since the boy's idea of teaching was to grievously wound Sasuke and then heal him and have him try to do it back. Thanks to the Sharingan, it was working (and sometimes, he even dodged) but it was still painful as hell and probably a bad sign that this was considered an acceptable training technique in Sound.

The Sound Four were a perpetual thorn in his side. He couldn't stand a single one of them. They all had serious problems (and this was Sasuke saying it). And they had somehow taken it as a personal offense that he was trained by Kabuto and Orochimaru (who refused to explain why he continued to employ four annoying pests as his elite bodyguard when Kabuto and Kimimaro would make better choices) and generally didn't like him. He was forced to put up with Not-Choji's complaints, Not-Aburame's chattering attempts at backhanded humor, Not-Kiba's attempts to give him orders, and Makes-Me-Long-For-Sakura's profanity filled rants and violent assaults (although it was nice that in Sound he was allowed to just stab her if she tried to hit him). He had enjoyed the look on her face when he'd accused her of being 'hot and cold'.

Kaguya Kimimaro had been a great help in his medical training by acting as a dummy for some of the more esoteric instruction—that was to say: the things that Kabuto didn't teach him by horribly maiming him repeatedly until he could replicate the healing technique being demonstrated on some random missing-nin who'd had the misfortune of being near wherever it was Kabuto looked for the poor bastards.

Sasuke had been trying to get Kabuto to reveal who had trained him, since he planned to do the world a favor and kill the crazy fuck before anyone else was so scarred by this training method. Actually, Sasuke had been planning to kill quite a few people in Sound, too—Kabuto was somewhere at the top of that.

Then he'd been training (on his own for once. Kabuto had been doing something and Sasuke really didn't want to know what that boy considered important) and he'd heard that voice just as his Sharingan showed him that in a second, he would be unconscious and before he had a chance to dodge, he was. He had vague memories of bouncing on a shoulder through some of the labs he'd been ordered to stay out of on pain of whatever Kabuto could come up with. Since Sasuke had a pretty good idea of what that crazy bastard could come up with . . .

The next thing he was certain of was lying on the desk of Tsunade, being stared at in confusion. And there was something in his mouth and the ropes tying him felt really uncomfortable. He thought he was going to die when the owner of that voice . . . was that his nephew?—told Tsunade to tell the Hokage that Sasuke was back. Dear gods, he was expecting to be turned into a smear on the mountains outside.

Everything became a blur for a while, probably out of protection for his mind by keeping him from remembering Sakura—but he remembered that there was a gift on his bed in the hospital. It was some sort of sturdy fabric outfit and a note from his nephew saying that he (Sasuke) should wear it so no one killed him before he (his nephew) was allowed to—which his father (Itachi) was sure to approve of any day.

The worst part was that now he was being attacked by piles of paperwork that Naruto had been in charge of as Head of the Uchiha. He got the feeling that this was supposed to be a punishment—he personally felt that having Sakura as his nurse was much more unpleasant. The girl took far too much enjoyment in doing regular checkups every hour. And he had yet to hear back about his complaint that full-body checks were not necessary at each of these. If he found her attractive, this might qualify as a pleasant experience, but he just didn't find the girl attractive. (If pressed, he'd have dithered on what he did find attractive, since his exposure to pretty girls was rather limited in Sound, where everyone was a freak, but he'd probably name that instructor from the exams—except that she clearly had a bit of a snakey-feel to her and he didn't really want anything like Orochimaru near his groin)

How Naruto had kept on top of . . . of course that lucky bastard tossed Shadow Clones around like they were party favors. His best friend and adopted cousin was infuriatingly able to deal with all of this crap. And from what Tsunade had said to him when she visited, Naruto had single-handedly, and from outside the village, done more to annoy pretty much everyone who needed annoying than anyone ever had. Tsunade was almost gleeful about some of the things Uchiha Naruto had managed. On the other hand, her litany of complaints about some of the laws Naruto kept proposing . . . (they pretty much all had to do with broth-with-noodles-in)

Kakashi had been aggravating as well, with his admonishments about abandoning Leaf. It wasn't as though Sasuke could have told anyone the truth and not had it get back to Orochimaru. Besides, he was learning a lot from Kabuto (and Orochimaru on those rare times he could be bothered to help teach). And there was no way he wanted to deal with running the Uchiha until Naruto was back and could officially be adjutant.

After trying to sneak up on Orochimaru, a couple of ANBU wasn't really much of a challenge, all things considered . . .

—OUT TAKE—

==The Guest Instructors==

"Class," said Hari, apparently unaware of the giant man with blue skin and gills standing next to him. "Today, we have a guest instructor."

Kisame bowed slightly. "I am Hosigake Kisame, former member of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and current member of the terrorist organization known as the Akatsuki." He paused when Hari elbowed him in the side. "Oh, right. My name is Kisame Hoshigake. Freaks."

The Seventh-Years blinked.

"I'm told you lot are an IGUANA-level class, so I don't need to take it easy on you." Kisame looked at Hari. "Why can't they be normal things. Like ANBU?" The blue man turned back to the group. "What do you want, waving-hand-boy?" He pointed at a muggleborn at the back of the room, using Samehada with the same casual ease that most teachers use a ruler.

"Do you perform alternative music with things like PVC pipes and stuff?"

Kisame blinked for a moment. Then he walked down the aisle of desks, picked up the boy absently and began to leave the room. "We're having class by the lake. Chop chop."

X

X

"Today," said Dumbledore, "I want to thank our guest instructor, Professor Kisame Hoshigake, for his demonstration of advanced water techniques. I'm sure we were all impressed by the entire lake leaping up as a gigantic shark and eating the giant squid. Except for Hagrid, who I really hope will stop complaining soon.

"On a similar note, I want to thank Ms. Jessup for her demonstration of the useful muggle technique of mouth-to-mouth in reviving her classmate after he was held underwater by our guest for almost three minutes for asking a stupid question.

"Also, I did not know Acromantula were possible to shred with just sharkskin. I'm not sure this new method will catch on, but it was a fascinating study. Please don't come back."

(A/N John)

This is one of those chapters that just sort of happened. I knew I needed some stuff, so I started and then it got a bit weird.

(A/N 2 John)

Definitely enjoyed doing the outtake, which I remind everyone is not-canonical.

(A/N 3 John)

That is my final word on that subject.

(A/N 4 John)

On the subject of Sakura: I understand that there are people who dislike her with an intensity rarely rivaled outside of otaku culture. I can fathom this in regards to pre-time skip when she's utterly useless. Afterwards? Not so much. This is the girl who punched a goddess in the face.

You're not required to like her. You might not want someone to end up wither her. Whatever. Just keep in mind that she makes Tsunade look like an amateur. Oh, and she punched a god in the face!

(A/N 5 John)

Since I saw it come up: Hari will not be ending up with Luna. If there are pairings—and believe me when I say I'm not sure about that still—Luna will not be involved. I don't mind her, but her crazy does not fit Hari's.

Luna is challenged with reality, Hari just has no conception of morality. That is all.

John Out