Orochimaru was not having a good day.
His arms were in unfathomable pain, and he could feel his current vessel failing on him faster than expected. That filthy, fucking monkey who he once called a sensei, Hiruzen, had truly done a number on him. Orochimaru cursed that the old fool's soul was trapped within the Shinigami, as that meant he couldn't revive him with edo tensei and kick him in the dick to relieve his frustrations.
It's not like he could even cast the edo tensei if Hiruzen's soul was available, anyway. That bitter, old drunk he once called a teammate, Tsunade, refused to help him and forced himself and Kabuto into a fight involving that doofus sexual predator he used to call his other teammate, Jiraiya. Why couldn't that big-chested failure just heal him? Sure, he wasn't actually going to revive Dan and Nawaki for her (at least not really), but she didn't know that. She wasn't even in the village when he attacked; she had quite literally denounced her allegiance to Konoha decades prior, and he hadn't contacted her or stumbled into her at all within that time. She had no reason to not trust him!
…Okay, maybe she did have reason to distrust him on principle alone, but that's beside the point, damnit! He had offered her the opportunity to see her loved ones again, and she even went to the trouble of drugging the buffoon to meet with him alone, only to try to kill him in the attempt. Had Kabuto not been there, she damn well may have succeeded. She basically broke a pinkie swear, and if Orochimaru found anything unforgivable, it's breaking pinkie swears.
Speaking of pinkies, his had just detached and was swept into the drain of his shower.
"Fucking hell, that's going to clog," Orochimaru hissed. He had officially reached his wits end. He needed a new body, and he couldn't wait any longer for those four fuckwits to return with Sasuke.
"KABUTO!" he shouted over the running water.
"Yes, Lord Orochimaru?" his right-hand man responded dutifully after hurriedly shuffling into the bathroom.
"Retrieve Guren," he responded. "I can no longer wait for Sasuke. I need to do the transfer, now!"
"Erm, well…" Kabuto hesitated. He could already sense where this conversation would head, and the pit forming in his stomach wasn't helped by the sound of the shower shutting off.
"…Well, what, Kabuto?" the man hissed with barely veiled danger.
"Guren is currently out on a mission in Kiri to investigate the rumors of Yagura's bastard child and potentially retrieve him, remember?" Kabuto hazarded to his boss. "You sent her out on that mission last week."
Silence followed as Kabuto began to sweat. Guren was the most likely vessel behind Sasuke now that Kimimaro was effectively a walking corpse, and Kimimaro was just sent to help expedite the retrieval mission, a mission that was very likely to be his last. They had enough of his DNA for edo tensei if necessary, but Orochimaru couldn't inhabit an edo tensei body…
Could he?
Questions for later, Kabuto would rather focus on avoiding decapitation via Kusanagi today, if possible.
"Where is the Hozuki being kept?" Orochimaru finally spoke up with a tone that promised violence if he didn't like the answer he was given.
"Currently? Kusa, nearby the village where you suspect that young Uzumaki girl is stationed."
Another silence followed, and Kabuto was slowly edging back towards the doorway. Orochimaru could apparently sense this, as he always had a sixth sense for when his subordinates tried to escape his wrath, but he begrudgingly kept a lid on it for the moment. Finding a vessel was paramount.
"Are there any noteworthy test subjects or useful prisoners available?" the snake man asked through gritted teeth.
"None of the prisoners or any surviving test subjects are particularly remarkable, unfortunately. Shall I set up a battle royale anyway to select one?"
Rather than the suffocating silence that filled the air between responses during the conversation, there was only a thoughtful pause this time. Kabuto could not see his master behind the shower curtain, but he still wasn't sure he liked whatever he was thinking.
"No, that won't be necessary. Do you remember the specimen we collected on our way back from Tanzaku?"
No… there's no way…
"Fetch the ninja ostrich."
Kabuto, not for the first time, wished that Nono had killed him.
Sasuke was not having a good day.
He had successfully defeated his boneheaded teammate (ex-teammate now, he supposed) to finally get away from the village and his pursuers. He wouldn't pretend that it was easy (his crooked nose and several bruised ribs would never let him hear the end of it) or that he enjoyed it, but it was necessary. He needed power; his last encounter with Itachi was indication enough. He wouldn't get any stronger sitting around with his thumb up his ass in Konoha, and Orochimaru had already given him a taste of real power. This was all just another stop on the path to killing Itachi.
This was all necessary.
At least, that's what he kept telling himself whenever he breathed too hard for his ribs' liking. That four-eyed freak from the Chunin Exams- who was apparently a double agent the entire time- hadn't healed him more than a cursory checkup when they met to rendezvous to Orochimaru's base. He would've demanded more from the silver-haired teen, but the air of frustrated resignation hanging around him and the fact that he casually sliced a boulder in half out of said frustration with what Sasuke assumed to be a chakra scalpel stayed his hand.
Upon reaching the base, Kabuto ushered Sasuke in with little fanfare, and Sasuke immediately recoiled at the stench of death, snakes, and lemon pledge.
He much preferred Pine-Sol, but he could live with this if he got the power he needed to kill Itachi.
This was all necessary.
Kabuto briskly led him through a maze of dark, torch-lit hallways on the way to, presumably, Orochimaru's main chambers. Kabuto didn't speak to him, still radiating a doneness that the young Uchiha could very much empathize with. He didn't mind the silence, either. Spending extended periods of time with Naruto and Sakura meant that silence was a privilege, not a right.
After what felt like an exceptionally convoluted system of meandering hallways, they finally arrived to what Sasuke would hazard a guess was a throne room. However, what faced them upon arrival was an odd image. The figure sitting on the throne was tall, though not quite as tall as he remember Orochimaru to be. At first, he wrote it off to be an effect of the man sitting instead of standing, but then he stood, and things got even more strange.
He remembered Orochimaru to be tall, thin, pale-skinned, and otherworldly terrifying in the Forest of Death. The man(?) standing in front of him and Kabuto decked to the nines in bandages was thinner… at least above the waist. Is that even a waist? Why is his neck so long? And is that a beak…?
Sasuke could not figure out what in the absolute fuck was going on, and a glance at Kabuto in his periphery only confirmed to him that the sight in front of him was the cause of Kabuto's disposition.
"Ah, Sasuke, how wonderful to finally have you here," the man-bird-creature spoke up with his signature serpentine drawl.
Okay, that hasn't changed, at least was Sasuke's thought. He didn't know if hearing him speak again made him more uneasy or actually comforted him. He didn't get the chance to parse those thoughts before Orochimaru (he still wasn't entirely sold that this WAS Orochimaru) continued:
"I must admit that I'm feeling much better than I did merely a few hours ago. I think we can start your training as soon as tomorrow. Kabuto, please get him settled while I stretch my new limbs."
And with that, he turned and strutted away. Sasuke confirmed that he was not, in fact, imagining the feathers poking out of his wrappings, nor was he imagining the long, avian legs bent backwards that carried him out of the room.
This was all necessary.
He would gain as much power as he could.
Itachi would die.
The Uchiha Clan would be avenged.
This was all necessary…
I should've stayed in bed.