The dead were dead.
That's what he kept telling himself. But his fingers and toes still twitched in the darkness. His rinnegan still pierced through the murky black. His stomach bubbled; he belched, and black fog crawled out of his throat, raking the taste of death across his tongue. His organs were rotting. He wasn't even breathing.
He sat up, feeling lighter than a feather. Like his own movements didn't expend energy. They just made him ever so slightly thirstier.
His sword had been placed across his chest, and he used it to slice open the door to his crypt. That was a mistake. The sun embraced him, gripping his flesh and scalding it like acid rather than fire. This burning was too pure, too chemical to be from fire. It wasn't enough to raise susano'o up; sasuke was forced to duck back into his burial site in order to escape the agony. But even as he did so, his leathered flesh began to flake away, pink and vulnerable tissue left to replace it. He was regenerating. With far greater efficiency than that blond idiot, even. Their struggle wasn't over. A victor hadn't been truly decided.
He just had to wait until the sun went down.
"Sensei…"
He was too wrapped up in the scene before him to hear his student. His eyes were locked on the recently robbed grave of uchiha sasuke, whose body was missing entirely— presumably taken by someone interested in the Sharingan— with a thousand thoughts flying through his mind. How was it that out of all the konoha shinobi connected to hashirama's dream, only he alone had regrets left? Only he had failed sasuke. And now, under his tenure as hokage, someone had not only desecrated the grave of his precious, tragic student, but the rinnegan would be wielded against the hidden leaf sooner or later.
"Sensei. "
Naruto would be crushed, of course. He already was. Sasuke's death was still fresh, and (unsurprisingly) publicly celebrated, just as itachi's was before him. That was like rubbing salt into his deep wounds. And the same people often would slap him on the shoulder and congratulate him for the deed.
Naruto had his fair share of reprimands for decking someone over the issue already.
"Sensei! "
He broke out of his stupor this time, flipping his cape as he turned his head. No one would be more devastated than sakura. And yet she was the one who was standing strong. There was sadness in her eyes, hidden by anger. She wanted action. Not tears. "Get pakkun on the trail, please. I'll go after whoever did this. "
Kakashi considered it. Sakura's yin seal had already refilled itself— an astounding feat, given tsunade failed to do the same thing, and she was a senju. She couldn't imagine many shinobi would be capable of doing anything against her unparalleled self-healing. But it wasn't her strength that held him back.
"You and tsunade are needed at the hospital. I'll send pakkun out with shikamaru." He held up a hand before she could protest. "We're only two days out of the biggest war in history, and you're the best healer on the field. The world can't afford you to take more than even the cursory glance i'm allowing now just to keep you and naruto in the loop. But we will recover sasuke. And the person who did this…" he placed his hand on sakura's shoulder. "They'll more than pay. "
Sakura bit her lip, glaring at the ground, before nodding once. "Just… when you send the bastard to ibiki, let me in the room. I want to try a few things on him myself. "
Who was he to deny her that?
As the last rays of the sun faded away, sasuke pulled himself from underneath the rubble he'd hidden himself beneath. It wouldn't be good for the others to realize he was still alive before he figured out why the sun was burning him so harshly. It made combat almost inadvisable against naruto, no matter how well he could regenerate. Their last fight lasted until daybreak. If that happened again, the sun would finish him. He had to isolate and neutralize this weakness… and that meant seeking out orochimaru.
But as he walked along the road, he felt sluggish. Like his chakra wasn't replenishing from his last battle. Even his preternatural strength and endurance was failing him now. And the pit in his stomach was only worsening. It was like and yet unlike hunger all at once. It was entrancing, but not all-encompassing. It ached and gnawed at every sense, but he could never quite put his name on where it originated. His fingers and toes and teeth tingled. His sight, usually tinted red by the kinetic vision of the Sharingan, was instead the usual static color palette of the world.
He fell to his knees.
"Are you okay?!"
The stranger hadn't been able to say much more than that before sasuke's teeth were in his throat.
Blood dribbled beneath sasuke's collar as he feverishly fed, having no concern for his victim. He only sought to end the hunger. And it was the best decision of his life. Pink ecstasy flooded through him as his body rejuvenated itself. Old skin and slight blemishes, that his healing couldn't quite shake away before, knitted themselves apart, creating a smooth, nougat palor. His skin seemed to blush with life, the stiffness in his joints and muscles leaving. He powered on his Sharingan, staring at his hands. Instead of his usual purple chakra pool, his chakra was dark scarlet with indigo stains. The energy swirled underneath his skin in layers. Like… like…
"Blood…" he whispered, looking over at the stranger's corpse. He needed to get rid of that. Dead men probably couldn't be charged with murder, but he was pretty sure people didn't eat blood and have red chakra. Someone would put two and two together quickly.
He hadn't come back from the dead at all. No… in reality, he was still just as dead as before. The only difference was where he was compared to everyone else who'd died. At least, insofar as he'd seen.
He didn't have time to deliberate, though. He had to get to orochimaru.
It was karin who greeted him at the hideout. "Sasuke…?" She whispered, almost in disbelief. But her arms were around his neck, her head buried in his shoulder, tears being spilled onto his jacket. "You're alive… I thought that naruto killed you!"
"He did," the last uchiha said blithely, pulling away from her. "Where is orochimaru? I need his assistance."
"Are you still obsessed with killing naruto?" She asked with a glare. "I don't know how you made it out the first time, but you won't keep getting lucky! You need to take me with you next time!"
He probably would. While he likely didn't need her healing power, she was a powerful sensor. "I still plan on killing naruto and the tailed beasts. I need to handle a few other problems first, though."
Karin studied him for a moment, then waved him forward. "Come on. Orochimaru-sama is this way."
He was sequestered away in his laboratory, digging into the guts of a human corpse. "What a surprise. Sasuke-kun is still alive. It seems you take after me more than kakashi, after all."
Sasuke's eyes narrowed at that comment, and orochimaru's finger twitched, as if he knew he was overstepping. "…What can I do for you?"
"What do you know about dead men who eat blood?"
Karin's skin seemed to pale. Orochimaru stopped smiling. "So, skipping right to it, huh…?" He looked over at karin, before starting to walk towards an adjacent room. "This is going to concern you, too, karin… if you still intend to marry sasuke-kun."
"What are you talking about orochimaru-sama?! Where did you get such a ridiculous idea?? I'm far too busy to tie myself down to sasuke of all people!"
Sasuke ignored her outburst, following behind his former sensei. "Go get suigetsu and jugo, karin. I'm reforming taka to handle my business this time."
Orochimaru led the young man down a flight of stairs into a cellar. The snake sannin lit a handheld candle; sasuke's eyes pierced the darkness well enough on their own. Though sasuke had to admit, there was something... Off-putting about that fire. The same sort of off-putting as the sun. The way orochimaru seemed to wait for any reaction to it… this unnerved him more than anything else.
The stairs tapered off into a dungeon. Blood caked the tiled floors and peeling walls. The hallway opened into several offices on one side, and several supply closets on the other. Beyond this was the main cellar itself. Eight bodies were pinned to the wall by what seemed to be wooden awls sharpened to points. Blood slowly seeped from the wounds, and they looked old, but the bodies showed no sign of infection nor decay… or even movement.
Orochimaru sliced open his hand with a kunai. Sasuke felt himself drooling a little. The sannin slung his palm towards the bound figure in the middle, and as soon as the droplets hit their nose, they snapped their head up, roaring a shrill shriek that sent a terrible tremor through his back. Not of fear, but of surprise. Beasts shaped like men, howling at the mere sight of blood.
He was one of them.
"They're called shiki," orochimaru explained. "Corpse demons. There's an obscure word for them. You might have heard it before, might not. Vampire."
The word was vaguely familiar. Perhaps it had some religious connotation that fell out of practice when he was young. It conjured images of demise, of teeth as knives and fangs as swords, manclaws tearing manflesh.
"What's wrong with them?" It was jugo speaking. He nodded his head at sasuke. "Karin filled us in on what little you've already shared. It's nice to be a team again."
"They're dead," sasuke answered jugo's question, and he could almost hear the way karin's and suigetsu's hearts dropped. "That's right, isn't it, orochimaru?"
Orochimaru nodded. "I don't know where the sickness comes from, but it breaks down the body's cells and makes them all dependent on blood consumption. So far, i've found sunlight and bleeding them out to be the only effective way of warding them off. Decapitation can work, but I've seen some of them survive that, too. They don't age. They don't breathe. It's like fighting a machine."
"Have you developed a cure for the disease yet?"
Orochimaru glanced at him. "Sasuke, this disease kills you outright. What's left… what eats the blood… it isn't the same as who died. I don't know why you're different, but the only cure to this is to die again."
Sasuke nodded. "And I suppose drinking blood is too heinous for you to take the easy way to immortality?"
Orochimaru chucked. "Something like that. I wasn't aware someone could control the effects of the disease so well at all. I wasn't even doing research in that direction; I simply was sick of coming across these things and being unprepared for them."
"Are they popping up more often?" Suigetsu asked, leaning on his kubikiribōchō. "Shouldn't we be worried? Most of us probably won't be immune to this shit like sasuke is."
"Don't misunderstand. Sasuke is not immune." Orochimaru pointed at the captives. "He can spread this affliction to others, and I'm uncertain they would respond to it as well as he himself did. I imagine the difference is his rinnegan. There must be certain qualities about an individual in order for such a drastic change to overtake the disease itself. I don't think I can predict something like this, but… these shiki might become a problem greater than kaguya in less than three years."
"That gives me less time to kill naruto than I thought," sasuke said with a frown. "I need to be hokage by the time these things become a public issue. It'll terrify people in the wrong way if they connect me to these things too early."
"The risks of politics, Sasuke-kun. They rarely mix well with dead men." Orochimaru began to walk towards the stairs again. "I don't know enough about your new state to truly say what it means for you. But if you have any sense at all? Hide from the light. Do not antagonize Uzumaki Naruto or Konoha. They'll deal with the shiki. Wait until the ashes blow away, and then become king of the wastes leftover."
"You don't understand me at all, Orochimaru." Sasuke followed behind him, a dark look in his single visible Sharingan. "I intend to stop the suffering now. Not in 10 years. Certainly not in a hundred."