Bolded = Speech. Italics = Emphasis.

Abandoned.

The light was blinding.

That was all that he could think of. Anko raised his arms to shield his eyes from the source of the brightness. Or at least tried to. His arms felt like lead, heavy and awkward. And his head. He could barely think, the splitting pain reared its ugly head erratically, as he felt his features twist in an attempt to mitigate the pain, even by a little.

There were footsteps around him. Sounds of crates and bottles being shuffled around that he could just make out. It was muted as if someone had set off explosive tags next to his ears.

"He's awake."

He felt a pair of gloved hands working their way over him; searching for wounds and checking his pulse. A shadow now cast over his face, the stranger hovering over him. He ignored the blinding pain still racking his entire body and blinked the spots out his vision.

The room wasn't actually bright. The sole source of light in the room being the open door which he laid a half dozen paces from the frame, and two shut windows with only the slightest slivers of light peering through.

The stranger leaned over his face, brandishing a brown flask. Their face hidden by the porcelain mask of the ANBU. They dressed like the shadows Anko had often caught glimmers of trailing the Hokage; a grey flak jacket, Konoha's red flame tattooed onto their shoulder.

"Drink." The stranger put the flask closer to his face. Their tone left no room for argument as if he was a dangerous prisoner instead of a fellow shinobi. He was in no mood or position to argue.

Anko drank. Until he drank, he didn't know how dehydrated he felt. It felt as though his throat was a desert, greedily drinking in the torrential rains, soaking every last drop into the thirsting soil beneath. The other shadows flocked to him and his stranger as Anko finally took a gasp of air.

"Nothing left here. Just used equipment. He must have run some time ago. At least half a day."

"Seal it. We're taking all of it. The Hokage and Intelligence might find something we don't."

"His apprentice is still here. Surely even he wouldn't leave him here."

"Orochimaru might return. You've heard from the other squad about the schtick. Abandoned labs, nothing left. The second they stepped out an explosive tag goes off and takes out half of them. He's probably a distraction."

Orochimaru. Sensei. The second the name was mentioned a sharp pain in his head erupted and his hands flew to clutch his head.

The Shadows turns their eyes to him.

"Genin Mitarashi. Have you seen Orochimaru?"

"He was…" Anko racked his head through the jumble of memories flashing across his mind, trying to ignoring the pain that was akin to hammer blows on his skull. Orochimaru sensei was here. There was another man. A white snake. This was one of his labs. One that Anko hadn't been to before. A day's travel from Konoha. What was the time now? Judging from the position of the sun that he could barely glimpse, it was likely noon. It had been evening the last time he was aware.

Orochimaru had told him to come here ahead. Anko had assumed it was another one of his experiments that he wanted Anko to start preparing the lab for. The man had been a mentor, a role model, and a teacher to Anko, and in return, Anko was his persistent assistant and his favoured, and only he might add, pupil, once Ito decided to transfer to Torture and Intelligence along and Kozue had broken his leg in the Chunin Exams last year. Anko had craved the pale Shinobi's approval; he was an orphan, just trying to survive day by day, fighting like an animal, avoiding the Chunin patrols, before he met the academy recruiter, who promised him a better life; a career.

And while not even close to a father figure, the pale Jonin had been to the closest thing to one, and Anko obeyed his instructions to the letter, even when the experiments grew more questionable by the day. Jutsu detailing reincarnation, reanimation, sacrifice.

Anko had told himself it was all theoretical. There was no way Orochimaru Sensei would sacrifice someone, he told himself. This was merely how Shinobi of his calibre operated, he was sure the likes of his Sensei's teammates and Minato Namikaze were no different; beyond the understanding of regular men and women.

He jolted back in realisation. The Shadows around him instinctively reached for their swords and kunai. He remembered.

Orochimaru Sensei said he was leaving. Konoha could no longer restrain his ambition, he said. The elder snake summoner talked of his ambition, his work on the cursed seal. Finding immortality. Anko remembered deftly listening, out of his depth. He wanted to ascend beyond the confines of mortal limitation. To that end, staying in Konoha was "no longer beneficial" he said before his neck extended and lunged forward towards his neck and –

He frantically reached for his neck over the inaudible protests of the ANBU. The cursed seal. The two puncture marks where the man had branded him with his teeth marks barely visible under the black ink of the seal that tattooed itself on his skin.

He dared to trace a finger on the mark. Pain unlike Anko had ever felt burned through his body from his shoulder as the seal glowed a bright red, and he screamed. Two of the agents leapt back, while two others moved to neutralise him, pressing him down against the stone floor, kunai drawn and raised.

"Where is he? Where is that Snake Bastard?!" He roared. The man branded him like an experiment. Outmatched as he would be against one of the Sannin, Anko felt rage. Pure unadulterated rage that made killing the man the only thought in his mind. Fury at the Snake, for his betrayal, of Konoha, of him. The agents showed no sign of being inclined to answering his question.

Anko gritted his teeth. He would need to be careful to make out of this alive. That's what the snake meant. He needed to show he was no threat, unlike his renegade former Sensei. Breathing in and out, he calmed himself, drawing on every fibre of his being to shut the pain out and tried to relax under the hold of the Shadows, battling against the signals his pain receptors were sending his brain. No sudden moves. He couldn't afford startling even one of them, let alone all four.

The agents seemed to recognise his intentions, and the two holding him down let him rise until he was sitting. The woman reached into her pouch, handing him painkillers whilst the other two stood down as well. He nodded in thanks, still struggling for air.

The pills fought against him as he forced them down his throat as he swallowed. The blinding pain all over faded, if only slightly. The headache remained.

"Orochimaru –", he said between heavy breathes, "he's defected, he's abandoned this lab. You have to find him! He's trying to attain immortality!"

"We know. The Hokage caught him conducting illegal experiments and he broke out of Konoha two days ago. He's been declared a missing nin. We're a search party trying to hunt him down." The stranger who initially found him spoke.

"Two days… He planned it all." Anko seethed.

"That begs the question. Are you an accomplice to his escape, Chunin Mitarashi? Why are you here? What is that mark on your shoulder?" The eyes behind the mask stared at him.

"Orochimaru sent me here from Konoha three days ago, under the pretence of preparing an experiment. There was nothing here. He appeared a day after I arrived. I was incapacitated by him since yesterday evening. I didn't know about his illegal experiments. I thought it was all authorised by the Hokage. I don't know what this," he gestured towards the seal, "is or does. He attacked me as he left."

The agent nodded. "Very well. You will have to verify your story with the Analysis Division. Please accompany us back to Konoha."

Somehow, he didn't feel like he truly had a choice in returning to Konoha, even if he wasn't so inclined.

"You will have to have your chakra sealed. Please understand that this is merely a safety measure against that seal on your neck. You were releasing far higher than natural amounts of chakra when those black marks expanded."

He sat in silence as one of the Shadows revealed a chakra sealing tag, and placed it over his neck.

Just as quickly as Orochimaru had entered his life that day in the academy, he had departed. Once again Anko nothing but the clothes on his back and rage in his veins.

Yeah, my writing pattern's not great. I spend 6-7 days thinking about writing, before writing it all in a day.

Kabuto's sensei who was on team Orochimaru isn't named, so I just gave him a name at random (Kozue), and the third teammate being Ito.

The 2 guys 1 girl configuration that a lot of fanon writers ran with as set in stone never made sense to me. What if a certain class has a 4:5 ratio, or a 3:1? A military establishment like Konoha or any of the hidden villages would not turn away able bodies just because. It's not even canon since Team Choza in the canon is all guys. If only just that, at least Boruto refutes this much by making more prominent non-2:1 teams. That said, the third member of team Orochimaru is some nameless shinobi, so I thought, might as well.

Kakashi's generation is pretty interspersed beyond names since we barely saw any of them beyond Kurenai/Asuma/Kakashi, so Kozue and Ito are going to have to carry and play larger roles beyond never seen again shinobi #152.

Definitely trying to pump these out asap. Unlike the other chapters, I've already started the next, so hopefully, it'll drop in a day or two.