Zombie Cat Science

Alt titles: Zombie Chakra Science or Black Cat Science.

note: Decided to split the chapters of the oneshot into actual chapters. Enjoy.

2Catnapped

It was horribly wrong, but I actually had a lot of fun, even if I had only rags to sleep on, a couple of jutsu scrolls to read, and very little food to eat. They, not Orochimaru but other people here, did something strange to my tongue; without meaning to, it seems like I had entered some kind of contract to keep my mouth shut about this place to non secret organization members, or the seal would mute me? Something like that. They didn't exactly go into detail.

They tried to intimidate me, too, sending in a menacing looking ninja who I stared blankly at and yawned when he blathered about testing me and my worthiness to live, as I could care less. He seemed to get confused and mutter something about 'completely immune to killing intent'. Well, yes, I'd gotten a strange and powerful sense that he wanted to hurt me, an oppressive, murderous aura, but I didn't actually care if I died, so what was that supposed to do, make me quiver in fear? I think I managed to frighten him somehow, but I have no idea how as I thought I was being perfectly friendly when I waved him good-bye.

Speaking of contracts, I introduced Orochimaru to the concept of controls and made sure he kept some snakes unaltered so if mass numbers of snakes died, we could see if it was from the injection or from other factors. It was simple and logical, but there ended up being a big flaw in the plan.

The summons liked to go poof by themselves, especially the more intelligent ones. Some straight refused to come back. So Orochimaru had to test by periodically re-summoning and seeing which ones couldn't come back because they died. He came up with some strange technique (or maybe it was part of the contract for all I knew) for forcing summons to appear that made me frown. If some of these summons were intelligent enough to make themselves go poof and refuse to come, then they were intelligent enough to consent or not to the experiment and I felt they should be let go. Orochimaru was not one for ethics, though, and it felt like an uphill battle trying to come up with new reasons not to do something. "Ah, if they're intelligent and they don't want to cooperate, couldn't they screw up your experiment somehow?"

"I would make them regret it."

"Some of these snakes look exactly the same, and they can have a different snake summoned in their place. You might be getting the wrong snakes and never know it!" I pointed out. "You should use the stupider ones. They aren't intelligent enough to deliberately mess with your variables. Oh, and maybe if we use painkiller, they'll stay longer without poofing away."

Orochimaru scowled. I don't think many people would have championed for the ethics of proper snake treatment, and he hadn't been expecting it from the creepy girl child. Not that I identified as a girl, but, eh, I was stuck like this for the moment. "I can simply knock them unconscious. I don't need to go to such efforts."

There was often a ninja in the background watching us, and I usually ignored them, but I caught one silver haired fellow in the corner of my eye looking less than pleased. Did they just not like me questioning Orochimaru, or was it something else? The scowl stayed there long after I agreed with him cheerfully, "Well, unconsciousness works as a pain killer. That should do. You should still go after the less intelligent ones, or the more intelligent ones might start refusing to come. If they have enough intelligence for that."

"If the more intelligent ones refuse to come, that suits me fine. I will use the stupid ones." Hey! We came to agreement! Awesome.

–

It all paid off when the snakes died en mass. Sort of. "See? Now you can refine your formula and try again. If these had been children, you'd have run out of subjects by now."

"You are annoying me, Neko," he said in a rather emotionless tone, appearing beside me without warning and slashing a kunai against my arm. I yelped. Totally uncalled for! Abusive jerk. But I obeyed the unspoken message and became silent for the moment, glaring at him. Then, just as suddenly as his aggression came, it stopped and he pulled away. "Come, Neko."

I walked behind him obediently, trying to memorize the halls. It was a twisting maze underneath Konoha, and of the many chambers I was really only familiar with the main laboratory and my 'room' of sorts. We came to a new area, and there was another child there, with sunken cheeks, brown but slightly bloodshot eyes, and dirty blonde hair. They were underfed and their pale skin hadn't seen the sun in awhile, not that I was one to talk.

"It would please me if you fought, Neko."

"Oh? What kind of experiment is this?"

"Simply a test, Neko. You remember the jutsus I've performed?"

"Yes. If you're asking me to perform them, I've never done a technique before." I could feel my chakra, though, however little it was. It was easy to, what with how foreign it felt to me.

"It might help you to try," he practically purred. "Except the summons, you can't do those without a contract."

If a baby's world was one of synesthesia, then chakra was like something that had been shoe-horned clumsily into the senses, manifesting in early days as part of that synesthesia with echoes and melodies and feelings and colors, and eventually dulling down as one grew older until, if one was unlucky, it vanished from one's senses altogether. Since I'd been pretty cognizant of the world as a baby, like my perfect musical pitch I hadn't allowed it to disappear. It was now just a feeling or a color to me, sometimes both, and I had some sense of other people as well though as I didn't know how to train myself in it I worried I was going to lose the ability. Orochimaru was a bright beacon, a slithering feeling of great pressure. I could tell he had quite a bit of chakra in him. Sometimes I felt other ninjas with great power, or they were in the same room with us and the experiments; I was especially wary of them.

My opponent had a bit as well, more than I did. I faced him uneasily, attempting to adopt a balanced stance that gave a small range of myself to hit, presenting my shoulder rather than holding my chest forward.

He ran at me, and I just tried to dodge, not entirely successfully, taking in what they were doing. The hits hurt, dammit, and in retaliation I swung my leg low and tried to trip them. I was only half successful, the boy having quite good balance and managing with only one leg to stay upright, so I pushed against him. He toppled over, but rolled us both and now I was in danger of becoming underneath where it would be all over for me.

I scrambled up, especially when I saw him pull out a kunai and try to stab me. What the hell! Hearing footsteps, I saw Orochimaru wasn't even going to stay and watch. Again, what a jerk. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Yes," answered the kid, who wasn't who I was directing that toward, but close enough.

Oh gods, by Thor and Loki and She-Hulk what a disturbed kid. I immediately felt sympathy. "Why? To please someone? You don't have to."

"I do. I am ordered to." They attempted to knife me again. I grabbed and pulled it down, trying to yank it out of their hand, and failing that threw myself on top of their arm to pin the kunai to the ground. They swiveled and scratched me with what little freedom of the wrist they had, but I didn't care. (By they, by the way, I meant 'he'. I tend to lapse into thinking of people gender-neutrally, especially if I don't know their preferred gender pronoun.)

"Why do you do as ordered?"

"Because I must." Very minimal on the information here. I could tell they would be a joy to argue with. He seemed to use chakra, because suddenly we both bounced off the ground and he flung me off him. I twisted around and faced him warily.

"Why?"

"Because I am a tool."

"Why?"

"Because I was chosen to be a tool of Root."

"Root is the organization here then? Fascinating." I liked having info confirmed.

The footsteps had stopped, not far ahead of the doorway. Orochimaru stated quietly, "Such a fool. Don't give information away to the enemy. Kill him, Neko."

"No!" I exclaimed, far more annoyed than he was. "I do not see the point of this experiment, Orochimaru, and I don't think this one has consented to die," I argue.

"I c-consent, if I fail this fight," came the little boy's voice in front of me. Then he lunged at me with the kunai, taking advantage of my bewilderment to land a blow.

What in the world? Who... someone even more suicidal than me? Is it possible? "Coerced consent doesn't count," I argued. "No one asked you if you wanted to leave or gave you another option, did they? How about instead of fighting to the death, we be friends instead? If the purpose is to get stronger, killing a sparring partner won't help, for then you won't be able to spar against them again."

"Friends?" the boy said, like the word was totally foreign on his mouth. He stopped attacking, however. I flicked my gaze to the doorway, where Orochimaru had decided to lurk.

"You know, people who like one another."

"Child, do not blather such nonsense. I know you to be more intelligent than that," Orochimaru said, anger beginning to creep into his voice. "I will kill the boy myself if I must."

Well, that was one of the most stupid things I'd ever heard him say, and the irony was he was the one accusing me of nonsense. "You still have not explained why he must die, Sensei. But if I have inferred correctly, you believe no one actually likes one another? Or you believe liking does not exist? I admit qualia are impossible to fully test, being entirely in other people's heads, but that's exactly why you shouldn't jump to conclusions what it feels like to be someone else, Orochimaru. People frequently make the mistake of assuming everyone is exactly like them. But even you must like something, right? Favorite food, maybe? Why else would you want to live?"

"You call me sensei, yet you constantly lecture as if you are the one teaching me," he hissed. "I tolerate your insolence far too much, pest."

"You don't have an answer?" I goaded at his pride.

"Liking is a weakness. It will not help you attain true power, and it allows other people to manipulate and use you. And when people die or reject you, it only causes you grief and pain," for a moment he actually sounded pained, and I wondered who he had lost. Family? And with that face of his, I could easily see him being rejected by many people before they even got to know him.

Had the poor sucker been born like that? Did he justify the harm he did to others because of 'wrongs' done to him? Were half of my sentences questions? The manipulate comment sounded like projecting, though; he'd clearly manipulated a few in his time. And power... hmm... power to do what?

I carefully responded, "Weakness implies a goal or a purpose, an objective standard to measure against. Water makes a weak barrier, for instance, but a powerful antidote to thirst. Yet, water has no inherent purpose and can be used for either, such as in moats. What you use something for is a preference. Not an innate and objective standard. Liking is a preference." I said, trying to avoid sounding like I was attacking him verbally despite my exasperation over his missing something so obvious to me, knowing what was obvious to me often was not to others. I know logic is not the strong suit of most people, but it isn't that hard, is it? This man was supposed to be a legend. "So I guess the question is, power to do what? What standard to measure by?"

"Immortality. When you have true power, you can indulge any silly whims you desire." Okay, not a bad point. Although that was a rather difficult set of aims to accomplish, wasn't it?

"Okay, that's your preference." I was going to add 'other people are not required to share it' but suspected that meant 'other people are fodder' in his vocabulary. "What are you going to do with immortality when you have it?"

"My goal in life is to learn all jutsu and deduce the hidden principles behind them. For this, I will need a great deal of time, and I am already in my prime." (1)

"Sounds fun. Forever is a long time though, wouldn't you run out of jutsu to learn eventually?" Well, people would probably make more, but after enough time, it would all be re-runs and re-makes, like endless sequels in a movie theater. A different person might have said 'that sounds pointless, just learn one super powerful jutsu that can do anything' or the like, but, I chanced that Orochimaru was like me. He understood the innate joy of simply learning something new, of finding something different in the world. To us, I suspected, learning all the jutsu was a joy in and of itself, not just a means to an end. And for that, the threat of no more jutsu to learn would be more devastating and thought provoking to him than an obnoxious attack at his intellect for not having the smarts to see how 'superior' one single jutsu would be. Something few people understood was that arguments are not necessarily about winning, but achieving your goal of nudging the other side closer to your side; otherwise, it's just ego stroking and proclaiming loudly how right you are. "And what will you do with all that power, all that knowledge? If unused, wouldn't it be the same as not having it at all? I suppose you could kill your enemies, but what about after that? How will you shape the world? And then what will you do after that?" He was not as bad tempered as I'd feared he'd be; he hadn't killed me yet, after all. I tried to say all this in as nonthreatening and neutral a tone as possible, inquisitive and nonjudgmental.

The snake-like ninja looked truly lost for a moment, though the expression was subtle, his eyes searching rapidly for something unseen to me. Perhaps he had never thought that far ahead, never confronted it. His vision seemed that of a child afraid of eternal slumber, of ambition but no clear end game in life, a person quite unlikely to make such a confrontation to endings.

I hoped I had caught him in a verbal trap. He could not very well say 'make a better world', not without defining what a better world would be like. If making people stronger was it, and people couldn't get stronger without stepping on others like he believed, then he'd be threatening his own position by strengthening others. If by making a better world he helped people with their likes and dreams, then he'd be admitting attachments were not useless. Provided he thought it out logically.

"I will set the world in motion. A pinwheel that does not move is no fun to watch. Perhaps I will destroy it after is of no more use to me," he mused. Well, crap, that backfired. Now he wanted to destroy the world like a cartoon villain. Although I had managed to get him thoughtful for awhile, at least that was something? "Though I think being God to this world should be quite entertaining." And a god complex. Joy.

"Or you could create new things, so there would be more to learn." I tried to fix the situation, although really the situation was always broken. He would have come to this idea eventually without any of my 'help'. "And if you were really powerful, you could try something new, like loving someone who poses no threat to you."

"Ridiculous," he scoffed. Yeah, okay, that last line was pretty damn corny. "Why would I love someone pathetic?"

"I can't speak for your personal preferences. But for me, a friend is someone who together you do enjoyable activities with. Who you enjoy speaking to. Most humans have an instinctive need for company, though some antisocial ones don't. It makes life enjoyable to them so they wish to keep on living. Without anything to like or aim for as a goal, you'd grow bored of living fast." Then, going against the usual kinds of friendship speeches, I added: "You don't have to trust your friends. You don't have to aid them, though that's a pretty terrible friendship. In a good friendship, you help each other, but at its most basic, you just do things you like together. I enjoy talking to you, so I'd like to consider you a friend, Sensei." For the moment, I was glad ninja children matured ridiculously quickly, or this would seem extremely suspicious at best that a child who probably hadn't even lived long enough to have experienced broken friendships was making reference to terrible ones. As it was, he looked uneasy.

"If you truly want to be friendly to me... It would please me if you killed the child," Orochimaru said with a growing smirk.

"A blatant emotional manipulation to get what you want? I said friend, not lackey." However, this turn in conversation seemed enough to make the other child give up glancing silently between us to take another lunge at me. This time, I let them knock me down. "I grow bored of this. Go ahead and stab me." Complying, they stabbed straight in the gut. Fuck that hurt! "Ouch! Alright, you got me, I'm dying, satisfied?"

The blonde brainwashed child stood up and bowed. "That seems satisfactory. You will not survive that wound. Goodbye." They turned and walked off and I watched them go, panting in pain as I did.

I looked toward Orochimaru, pained, but thankfully I'd always had a high pain tolerance so I could still blather on with endless questions like he hated so much. "Did you get the result you wanted, then?"

"No." He sounded and looked quite agitated, his toy bleeding on the floor. Translation: I wanted you to try to kill him, and either fail at that so I could call you weak and dismiss your annoying words as unimportant, or succeed and prove yourself just like me. Not let yourself get stabbed and then have the audacity to smile at me like nothing happened! He struck me as the sort afraid of death, so perhaps my lack of fear miffed him a bit. Then his expression smoothed. "Most interesting."

"I thought of a route we could go to study immortality," I yawned. "But I guess I'll bleed out on the floor now." I laid myself back to keep from getting light headed and dizzy, and tried to staunch the blood flow a bit with my shirt and hands. After a moment of amused but pained thought, I attempted the Ox and Tiger seals, trying to do the healing palm technique. It was far above my current level of absolute novice, so I was not surprised when I didn't get anything more than a fizzle. I tried to manipulate Yin chakra for the required release, knowing I needed special chakra for the technique, but had trouble figuring out how to differentiate it from normal chakra. Did it feel different maybe? The jutsu should be easier to do on yourself, since you didn't have to worry about foreign chakra problems, but I still had difficulties. Now was maybe not the best conditions for doing your first technique in any case. Although Orochimaru seemed to hope earlier I'd be some sort of prodigy who'd pick things up with very little instruction.

...he might be right, but not without practice!

"You little fool, you aren't using the right chakra release." I heard him say, and turned my head to glare at him for stating the obvious but instead gave a look of surprise when I saw him walking toward me and crouching down. Had he ever crouched down near me before, even to look me in the eye? No; it had been beneath him. "Yin is spiritual energy, mental and imaginative. Yang is physical. Medical techniques demand you don't use both, but one or the other. Try to guess which is used for this technique.(2)"

Hmm. Perhaps it felt more physical or mental, and if I concentrated on that I could summon it? I tried for mental Yin, and was rewarded with a slight glow. The minute amount of chakra in my body meant it didn't last very long though, although it did make it easier to control; I had only placed it down against my wound for half a second before it winked out. I was left feeling exhausted, although that might just be the blood loss speaking.

To my surprise, he hovered his hands just above me, a glow blooming around them. I immediately felt better and breathed easier, although I was not sure why he was doing this. I knew it was not affection. Curiosity? If we were at all alike, he wouldn't be able to resist for that alone. And if it was fear of death motivating him through life, then my comment about studying immortality would draw him too.

To be honest, I wanted to figure it out too. Because if I was immortal, I wanted to figure out how it had happened.

If that was not enough shock for one day, he picked me up and carried me away. I took the opportunity for revenge by hugging him and getting blood on his clothes. Alright, that was not my first motivation for burying my face against him. I was still a relatively normal human, and craved basic human contact once in awhile. I hadn't had any in ages. He stiffened uncomfortably at the contact, but I was merciless about it and paid no attention.

He came to a new room I hadn't been before and put me down on an actual bed. "Rest," he commanded, like I was incapable of figuring that out on my own.

I closed my eyes too trustingly.

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-1– A near straight quotation from the manga. This is a fairly fascinating example of a character getting diluted over many adaptations and fanon taking over canon, as I've seen fanfic that clearly adapted from other fanfic where this was brought down to the line 'my goal is to learn every jutsu', missing the important part where he says he wants to learn its hidden inner principles. Although the anime might be at fault, since the dub changes lines, sometimes for the better, as Kakashi is a lot less verbally aggressive in the anime. 'I hate you' versus 'you are idiots'.

His desire for knowledge will be a very important theme for this fiction.

-2- I'm not an obsessive reader, in fact I never finished, but fairly sure this is canon.

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