Author's Note: This chapter is one that might skirt the Mature rating.
While Orochimaru had to admit to a certain amount of satisfaction when he impaled his former partner with the Kusanagi and watched the puppeteer bleed to death on the ground, his attention was only partially focused on Sasori. The former Sand-nin had greatly expanded his repertoire of puppets since they had parted ways eleven years ago, but Sasori had a tendency to vary on similar themes and lacked true innovation when it came to designing his weapons, so there had been an almost disappointing lack of surprises in their battle. In the end, observing the Kyuubi boy try to tear Deidara apart turned out to be a far more interesting enterprise.
Even during their first encounter in the Forest of Death, Naruto's chakra capacity had been unbelievable, though almost entirely uncontrolled. Now…
Orochimaru watched Naruto blast through Deidara's magnificently ugly farce of a bird with a blaze of blue chakra, the Big Ball Rasengan narrowly missing its intended target and instead destroying the flying monstrosity with a rather impressive explosion, sending both blond shinobi flying in opposite directions. Deidara landed heavily, but Naruto hardly seemed to notice the impact, and kept his unnerving red eyes fixed upon his opponent. Orochimaru smirked. ((Looks like Jiraiya managed to teach the brat something useful after all.))
It only took the former Leaf-nin a few seconds to recover from the fall, and before Deidara had even gotten his bearings, Naruto was already moving. At first, the explosion specialist seemed unsure of himself, his left eye visibly twitching, but the look of apprehension quickly turned into a vicious grin when Naruto, less than ten yards away from the Akatsuki, stepped on something hidden in the sand and the ground imploded around him.
((Hm. An explosion trap. Clever. I didn't even see him set it up.)) Apparently, neither had Naruto, but though decent planning wasn't apparently the jinchuuriki's forte, stamina was. Deidara was still smiling in his usual sadistic satisfaction when Naruto appeared out of the smoke and tore the Akatsuki's throat out bare-handed, the sound that accompanied the action not even remotely human.
Naruto snarled, crouched on all fours and breathing harshly, as Deidara uselessly tried to stem the flow of blood gushing in streams out of the hole in his neck. Underneath the growl that next came out of the jinchuuriki's mouth, words could barely be made out. "That one was for Gaara." What happened next startled even Orochimaru, as Naruto reached towards the Akatsuki with his right hand and casually ripped out Deidara's eyes out of their sockets simultaneously with the tips of his claws. When Naruto next spoke, his voice sounded broken. "This one's for Kakashi." The former Stone-nin was no longer capable of screaming, but the pathetic whimpers that escaped instead were almost worse.
Deidara was still writhing, still painfully alive, when Naruto stood up and calmly walked over to where Orochimaru was leaning against a rock outcropping. It wasn't until then that Orochimaru noticed the blood leaking out of a substantial hole in the jinchuuriki's side. "So the explosion caught you after all. And here I was thinking you managed to get out of the fight completely unscathed, Naruto-kun."
The blond shinobi's voice had almost completely reverted to normal, but still possessed an unnerving element of inhumanity when he replied, "You could have helped, you know."
"What, and ruin your fun? My manners are better than that, Naruto-kun."
The jinchuuriki snorted and began to lick the blood off his claws. Orochimaru couldn't help but wince, not out of disgust but some lingering sense of propriety that he had never quite managed to get rid of.
Okay, maybe a little bit out of disgust. There were still bits of eyeball attached to the former Leaf-nin's nails. "Must you do that?"
Naruto grinned, the sight made morbid by the blood now staining his mouth. "What? Does it make you uncomfortable, Orochimaru?"
"It's unsanitary."
The former Leaf-nin let out another derisive snort. "Germs are the last thing I need to worry about." He continued his rather grisly grooming ritual, but not before sending a challenging smirk in Orochimaru's direction. The snake sannin felt himself involuntarily bristle. Naruto had obviously learned more than techniques from Jiraiya. Like how to get under Orochimaru's skin.
The older shinobi tried to distract himself from his annoying accomplice by wiping down the Kusanagi, but all the jinchuuriki did was make himself more obvious. Orochimaru gritted his teeth and ignored him.
After a few minutes, Naruto apparently felt he had bothered the snake sannin enough (that or his claws were finally clean) and went rummaging through his pack for some bandages. Orochimaru, forgetting his prior irritation, raised one eyebrow as the blond shinobi pulled off his shirt and started to rub disinfectant into the wound in his side before wrapping his torso in the sanitized cloth. The damage to the jinchuuriki appeared even more severe than it had when Orochimaru first noticed it.
"It is unfortunate that you were injured, Naruto-kun. I hope it will not substantially slow you down."
It was with a mouth full of bandages that Naruto replied, "I'll be good by tomorrow." The cloth ripped easily as the former Leaf-nin pulled roughly with his teeth, and Naruto finished taping himself up before returning the wraps to his bag.
"I don't believe that wound will be healed by tomorrow, Naruto-kun. Not unless Tsunade is somewhere in the vicinity."
Naruto shrugged. "I always heal overnight."
For a moment, the sunlight shone directly into the jinchuuriki's eyes, and the pupils contracted into recently familiar red slits. Suddenly the blond shinobi's assertion seemed a lot more plausible. "The Kyuubi."
"Well, yeah." The former Leaf-nin sat himself down in the sand and began pulling more supplies out of his pack. Within a few minutes, a small fire was well on its way to boiling the pot of water situated over it, Naruto standing by with his instant ramen in hand. Orochimaru rolled his eyes. It never failed. The boy was obsessed with the food, had in fact eaten it at every meal during their thus-far two week partnership, excluding that one notable night the restaurant hadn't served ramen and Naruto had ordered an exceedingly rare steak. Orochimaru still hadn't gotten the bloodstains out of his purple kimono.
The jinchuuriki glanced up from momentarily from his inhalation of the salty noodles to mumble through a full mouth, "Hey, Orochimaru, you want some?"
"No."
"What, you eating those rice balls again? Don't they get boring?"
The snake sannin shot his traveling companion an incredulous look. "You've been eating the exact same flavor of ramen for over a fortnight."
"Yeah? So?"
Either Naruto truly didn't get it (all too possible. The blond shinobi was occasionally so dense Orochimaru was convinced of brain damage), or he was trying to be annoying again. Either way, it didn't really pay to explain to the boy the irony of the situation.
Orochimaru was only halfway through his own dinner when the jinchuuriki, having sat still for something less than ten minutes, decided he was bored. Which meant, in Orochimaru's experience, that Naruto wanted to talk. At length. Usually about nothing of any relevance at all. It was times like this that the snake sannin wished the blond shinobi would just leave the demon on at all times instead of letting his adolescence surface whenever he wasn't trying to kill someone.
"Hey, Orochimaru… you can have Itachi, if you want."
Considering the last Uchiha had been the major sticking point in their negotiations, Orochimaru was caught off guard by the non sequitur. "What? Why?"
Naruto shrugged. "I've decided that I don't really care Itachi killed Sasuke. You do, so… you can have him."
Orochimaru smirked to cover up his uneasiness about where their conversation was going. The jinchuuriki wasn't naturally very generous. There had to be a catch. "As I recall, Naruto-kun, the reason I finally conceded Itachi to you is that the Kyuubi would make it difficult for the mangekyou Sharingan to successfully work on your mind. Is there something you forgot to tell me?"
The blond shinobi's eyes narrowed, and the red abruptly darkened to a color Orochimaru could only compare to dried blood. "I didn't say you had to fight him. I said you could kill him. You'd do better against Kisame, anyway. The Samehada works too well against me at close range."
"And I suppose there's something you want in exchange, Naruto-kun?"
Naruto grinned, but a mouthful of bloodstained, razor-sharp teeth made the expression appear more threatening than friendly. "I don't, but the Kyuubi is getting a little… you know. Edgy."
Orochimaru had always been adept at observing changes in the chakra of shinobi, but just then the snake sannin wished he'd neglected that particular skill. Uzumaki Naruto's chakra as of late tended towards a light violet shade, a mix of the human and demon life forces, whenever the former Leaf-nin felt his life wasn't in immediate danger. Watching the blue leech itself out of the boy's chakra, watching Naruto willingly give up most of his control to the Kyuubi when there weren't enemies present, was one of the most disquieting things Orochimaru had seen in years. In the corner of his mind, the snake sannin retracted his prior irritation with the human side of the blond shinobi and started wishing fervently for its rapid return. "Naruto-kun, what do you think you're doing?"
Naruto spoke as if he hadn't heard him. "Blood in the air and nothing around to kill always makes him edgy. Blood's everywhere, right now. There's even some on you, Orochimaru."
Wait a second, that didn't make any sense. He hadn't allowed any of Sasori's blood to touch him when he-
It was then that Orochimaru noticed, rather belatedly, something sticky on his left cheek. He touched his face only to realize that one of Sasori's attacks hadn't missed as cleanly as he had thought, as a clean cut ran horizontally starting right below his eye, the minor injury stopping short an inch before his ear. The blood was his, even if the pain had never registered, and the jinchuuriki's grin had darkened.
Abruptly the snake sannin's unease turned to anger. He couldn't believe he was allowing himself to be intimidated by a child who hadn't even been born yet when he left Konoha. But a fight here and now would benefit no one, and Orochimaru forced himself to relax and meet the blond shinobi's eyes evenly. "Thank you for the offer, Naruto-kun, but I would just as soon leave Itachi to you."
Whatever the Kyuubi wanted, this didn't seem to be the opening he was looking for, for in response Naruto just snorted and again went rooting through his pack, this time for his sleeping bag. "Whatever." Blue again seeped into the boy's chakra, and the snake sannin felt himself let out a quiet breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.
Orochimaru didn't allow himself to fall asleep that night. Some foxes were nocturnal.