She's with Orochimaru in his lab. There's a storage room filled with scrolls and ninja tools off the back hall.
"Kunai, shuriken, or perhaps senbon?" he asks.
"I can throw them."
"Which are you most proficient with?"
"Yes."
He reels in an impulse that feels not nice. She shivers.
"Which do you prefer then?"
"…" she considers. "I don't like them."
She thinks Orochimaru doesn't have much patience to begin with, so she's not surprised when he wheels on her with an unimpressed not-glare.
"Pick. One."
"Kunai. I like putting wire through the pommel."
"Do you like shinobi wire?"
"Traps are fun."
A moment passes in silence as he finds the kunai and shinobi wire that are most suitable for her, by his quick estimates .
"How is your kenjutsu?"
She gestures. So-so.
"…not a weapon specialist then."
She's sitting on a table, kicking her feet idly. Orochimaru continues pawing through increasingly obscure looking weapons. She thinks it would be pointless (detrimental even) to tell him she's just not good with weapons. She drops them or forgets them or they slip and land way off mark.
Then he's pinching her cheeks between his thumb and index finger, expression livid.
"Are you even listening to me, child?"
She wants to nod her head, but the pressure from his fingers is right on her molars. It hurts.
He clicks his tongue and lets go, anger evaporating. "This is exactly why I told Sarutobi-sensei I did not want any students."
"Do you think there's a return policy?" she asks, deadpan, and massages her jaw.
He tilts his head at her, silky black hair parting to one side. He's pretending to consider it.
"Shall I ask sensei?" he says.
There's just something so inappropriately funny about the whole situation. She laughs. Orochimaru rolls his eyes at her.
"Pay attention, Honōka-kun. I hate repeating myself, and I should not have to explain anything twice."
She nods.
"I'm sorry. I was distracted."
"By what?" he's not mollified by the casual admission. "There is nothing to be distracted by here, given your disinterest in weapons."
Ah—he's missed the point. It's because there's nothing of interest that her mind wanders to other things. Speaking of…
"Is there a substation nearby?" she asks.
He frowns at the non sequitur and opens his mouth to reprimand her for her wandering attention again, then stops. His interest piques.
"There is. Why do you ask?"
"It's distracting." She's pretty sure the electrical current is only part of what contributes to the lab's complex flavor profile.
"Distracting in what sense? Is it a sound? A feeling?"
She gestures. So-so.
"Use your words, child, or so help me…" He's provoked by that gesture, it would seem. Her skin crawls at the empty threat. She thinks it's empty. Probably.
"It's staticky. My skin feels crawly, and the air smells like metal."
He sighs. "Come along, Honōka-kun. Have you ever had your five senses evaluated?"
She shakes her head and jumps off the table. Technically, yes—just not as Tsunemori Honōka. She hasn't noticed if anything is different. Not glaringly different, at least.
Orochimaru's idea of a good time is spending hours repeating the same tests over and over—and then being dissatisfied with the results.
"Average…" he mutters to himself, like it's a dirty word. Every test result was more or less in the normal, expected range. It crosses his mind to consider that he's been played, or so the suspicious look he shoots her way says.
He asks one last question.
"What direction do you think the substation is in?"
She points. He frowns. Frustration again.
"What makes you so certain?" he asks.
"Bzzz."
He flicks his hair out of his face with more force than is strictly necessary and is seized by another idea mid swish. He stalks over to his desk and rifles through the drawers, producing a blank sheet of square paper.
"Mold chakra through this."
She does. Nothing happens. Orochimaru scowls.
"Come now—I have seen you mold chakra through your entire body for the body flicker technique."
"I am molding chakra," she says.
"Nonsense." A spike of irritation. "Something should be happening if you are doing it correctly."
His irritation is rubbing off on her. She reaches out with her other hand and lays a single finger on a glass beaker. High frequency chakra and glass don't play nice. The beaker shatters in a brilliant spray of shards.
She checks his expression after her own mini tantrum. He's doing that mental-debate-in-fast-forward thing again. Uwah.
"Could it be a kekkei genkai? No—even the Uchiha have nature affinities… advanced nature transformations still favor one or the other enough to not confuse the results too badly…"
Oh, he mumbles when something stimulates his interests enough. Neat.
He comes to a conclusion after another moment.
"This chakra paper responds to even the slightest amount of chakra to reveal the latent elemental nature of the user. For this test to 'fail' can mean one of three things."
He takes the paper from her.
"One. The paper itself is faulty."
It splits clean in two. Not option number one then.
"Two. Your chakra has no impurities—no elemental influences. Thus, you have no nature affinity."
She waits for the third option.
"Three. Something else that I have not yet thought of."
He snorts—as if it goes without saying how unlikely that is.
"I am currently inclined to believe it is option two. After all, you are inexplicably immune to genjutsu as well. Historical evidence suggests the ability to mold elemental chakra comes from outside the body—from nature itself. If your body filters out all external sources of chakra before internalizing them—that would explain why genjutsu fails on you and why you have not a speck of elemental chakra."
She considers.
"Would that mean elemental ninjutsu are impossible for me, or just that I'll have to learn how to stop 'filtering' my chakra before learning how to mold elemental chakra? And would doing that make me vulnerable to genjutsu attempts in the process?"
"Excellent questions, Honōka-kun." He sounds genuinely impressed with her. Then his mind back tracks and he frowns again, vexed.
"That does not explain how you are sensing a substation nearly two hundred meters away…"