The thing about being Orochimaru's apprentice is this: he is not a frontline fighter. She's sure he could be (and would be an absolute terror), he's just currently involved in some other domestic affair.
So, most of the time, Honōka feels like she's sitting on her thumbs waiting for her sensei. And then, when he does have time for her, he's frustrated and irritated with her lack of progress.
It's while she's sitting on her thumbs waiting for her sensei to finish in the downstairs lab that she meets Shimura Danzō.
She's in the room she dubbed the back office when every hair on her body stands and the door to the basement elevator opens. A man with an improbable amount of bandages wrapped around his head and right eye exits with an Anbu associate.
Everything about the man screams danger.
Honōka freezes, like an animal trying to erase its presence before the claws of a predator can reach it. It works a little too well. Neither notice her.
"Not nearly as much progress as I expected," the bandaged man grunts.
"Yes, Danzō-sama."
Oh. This is really bad, she thinks. She doesn't know if it's worse to reveal herself right then or go unnoticed and risk being discovered after hearing something that might get her killed.
She swings her legs and knocks her heel on the leg of the table she's sitting on. Sink or swim.
A kunai is hurled in her direction and she delays her reaction, remaining exactly where she is. The Anbu agent aims where they expect someone more experienced might move.
"Woah!" she shouts, playing herself up thickly. Always better to appear dumber than she is—especially around unknown adults.
The Anbu agent tenses to jump and she rolls off the table, flipping it as she goes down—cowering behind it. She's still partially visible, though. They can see that she's not planning anything dangerous.
"Wait, Goburi. I believe this child is Orochimaru's new protégé."
She peeks up, nodding vigorously. "T-tsunemori Honōka-d-desu…!"
He looks at her and her heart races. Oh. She wants to run and hide. A flicker of eye contact and she looks up, down, left, left, right, down again. Don't look, don't look!
The bandaged man's attention holds and she blinks rapidly, encouraging nervous tears to sparkle in her eyes—it's easy to do.
The elevator door opens again and his attention wavers from her to her teacher, who is subtly annoyed that the other man hasn't cleared off. Honōka does not drop her submissive avoidance act.
"Your student is spineless, Orochimaru."
Her teacher finds her, sending her a dirty look that the bandaged man incorrectly identifies as simple annoyance. Honōka knows the look is deeper than that—he's irritated that someone would call any student of his spineless when it is most definitely not true. He doesn't keep spineless worms around.
His next look borders on calling her out and she makes very, very, brief eye contact with her sensei. This is not a regular occurrence between them—she hates anyone looking her in the eyes—and he knows something is wrong the moment they connect.
He considers her for a moment longer, but not long enough to have the bandaged man's attention snap back to her.
"Sarutobi-sensei did choose her."
"I recall."
She nibbles on her lip and makes a show of trying not to fidget. Orochimaru clicks his tongue at her behavior, using his annoyance with the other man to fuel its authenticity.
"I have no time for you today, girl." He says. "Go work on your forms with Atsushi-kun."
She doesn't know who Atsushi-kun is and hopes they're the secretary.
"Y-yes, Orochimaru-sama!"
She makes her escape and runs away noisily—by shinobi standards. She kicks the swinging door open and grabs 'Atsushi-kun' by the hand.
"W-woah, woah! Where's the paper bomb, kid?!"
She hauls him out of the lab and into the bright sunlight with her. "Orochimaru-sama said you are to help me with my forms, Atsushi-kun."
That shuts him up. She stops pulling him by the hand but continues leading him, more or less.
"Where are we going to, uh, practice forms?" he asks.
"The Third Training Ground."
Which is where Orochimaru finds them an hour later, Honōka compulsively repeating her 'chikō' routine.
"How long has she been doing that?"
"Uh, the entire time, Orochimaru-sama."
"Dismissed, Atsushi-kun."
"Y-yes, Orochimaru-sama!" he leaves, saying "…my name isn't Atsushi…" under his breath.
"…"
Orochimaru waits until 'Atsushi' is well out of eaves dropping range before motioning for her to stop. She does one last stretch, reaching for the sky and pulling it down, breathing it in and pushing it down all the way to her toes and back into the ground.
Honōka shivers; she can't seem to get rid of the taste of danger.
"That man is bad news."
Orochimaru's cheek twitches. He has dimples when he actually smiles.
"Now, what would ever give you that impression?"
She shrugs. He drops his droll not-smile.
"We really must address that."
"Address what, Sensei?"
He shakes his head at her cheekiness.
"You clearly have some form of extrasensory perception. I have ruled out all the common forms and your descriptions, as always, leave much to be desired."
"Sorry," she says
"Do not say that which you do not mean."
"…"
A sigh.
"Describe what you felt when you encountered Shimura Danzō."
"Danger."
"No. What made you feel you were in danger, Honōka-kun?"
"…all my hair stood up."
"When you saw him?"
She shakes her head. "Before the elevator opened."
"And how did you know it was Danzō and not the man standing next to him?" he asks.
"The man with him didn't feel like anything."
Orochimaru pauses, considering.
"That is… rather accurate." He puzzles away on that thought a little more. "Besides 'danger', what did Danzō feel like to you?"
"A predator. Sharp. Angry." She tastes the flavor of the encounter again. "Impatient. Greedy. Measuring."
Disbelief creases her teacher's brows as he rolls the adjectives around in his head. Some of them agree with his own description parameters.
"I see… and how do I feel to you?"
"Right now, or in general?"
"In general."
She considers.
"Impatient. Particular. Sometimes a lot of things so fast I can't tell. Curious. Hungry. Intense."
"And right now?"
"You were amused, then not, then puzzled. Something confused you because it made no sense. Now, it's like you want to be angry but… oh, exasperation?"
Then he's doing the thing where he feels a lot of things at once, so fast it makes it impossible for her to tell.
"Empathy… you got all that from empathy?" It makes all the sense in the world until it doesn't. "That still does not explain how you could sense a substation two hundred meters away!"