Hey. Sorry this one took so long to come out, I was feeling particularly lazy (I was actually just playing a shitload of Elden Ring).

Anyways, without further ado and whatnot.


Chapter 4: Kind


The Land of the Sea was a rather beauteous location; even Orochimaru, someone who'd never truly cared about such things, could appreciate that. Scenic ocean views that seemed to stretch out infinitely, while small, green islands dotted with plant and animal life littered the landscape in abundance. Add in a rich, thriving culture of fishing and trade, and one had an ideal location for a Village.

One also had a fairly decent location for a base, which was precisely what he'd used it for.

Approaching the place by land was impossible (which by itself made for decent security), which was how both he and Anko found themselves channeling chakra into the soles of their feet, and stepping atop the waves as they made the long trek towards the isolated island.

"So, uh, Sensei," Anko's voice struck him rather worriedly. "How much longer are we walking? Cause I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this water-walking thing going."

"Another fifteen or so minutes." He answered honestly, gesturing ahead of them towards where their destination jutted out of the horizon line. "You should be able to see it, no?"

"I can, just…" Anko flinched as her right foot sunk slightly into the water, and she audibly took a deep breath as she recovered. "Just not sure how much more of this I can take."

He felt a small bit of annoyance hit him at that. He was not here for her. Truly, Anko's presence served only as an excuse to come in the first place. If she was going to be slowing him down, then she should…

His stomach squirmed.

"Come here."

Anko looked up at him, before nodding and taking a step towards him. Once she was within range, he moved chakra into his fingers, forming a sort of seal. In the next moment, he touched them to the left side of Anko's chest, causing the girl to gasp slightly.

"I've adjusted the flow at which chakra arrives at your extremities." He said, standing and beginning to move again. "That should keep you above water, at least until we arrive."

Anko, seemingly keen to test that hypothesis, jumped off of the waves exuberantly, causing the water on the surface to splash all around, and just generally causing a ruckus. "Huh! This is awesome, Sensei! Thanks!"

"It is nothing." He rolled his eyes. "Come. We have work to do. And if you expect to learn, then I will not be covering for you again. From here on out, you will sink, or swim based solely upon your own effort."

Anko didn't respond verbally, but she ran to catch up with him, filing in beside him as they travelled the rest of the way.

/-/

The Lighthouse base, as some of his minions called it (lending in large part to the fact that he'd taken an abandoned lighthouse to use as the base), had gotten rather dusty since he'd last been there.

He supposed that made sense. Not counting the few minions who passed through simply to make sure the… population was kept in check, no one truly frequented the place for longer than a few days every couple of months. He himself had not been here in nearly three years.

…Or… had it been longer? Truly, time had a habit of escaping him in this day and age, and it wouldn't truly have surprised him if he'd not been back in several years longer than that.

First things first, he'd need to find some way to distract Anko so that he could go check in on the so-called problem he'd been notified about, and that meant finding something for the girl to be doing that wasn't incessantly following him around.

He had a decent idea to start with.

"Well then. Let's begin your training immediately."

"Huh!?" Anko almost immediately began to complain. "Sensei, we just got here! Can't I like… rest for a minute or something."

"Will an enemy shinobi wait for you to rest?" He raised an eyebrow in her direction. "Or will they pounce upon you at your weakest?"

Anko grumbled under her breath, but nodded solemnly, stepping forward as she cracked her neck. "Ok, sure. What am I doing?"

He appreciated that the girl made no further complaints, it would make this much easier.

"Have you any idea how to perform the summoning Jutsu?"

"Uhm… I've certainly heard about it, but I've never performed it myself, no." She admitted. "Master, you and the other Sannin are the best users of the summoning Jutsu on the planet, right?"

He appreciated the boost to his ego such a statement gave him, and in his experience, there'd been no others who could quite match the three of them in summoning Jutsu.

Well, no one alive, at least.

"Indeed. We are the masters of the summoning Jutsu. Our three-man deadlock held off entire armies on its own."

"Woah."

He leaned down towards her with an almost devilish smirk. "Would you like to learn that power?"

He'd never seen Anko nod quite so furiously.

"Then do exactly as I say."

/-/

Across the next hour or so, Anko continued to try and fail to bring a small snake from out of Ryuchi Cave. Nothing like Manda, that bastard (as useful as he was to Orochimaru, he was undeniably thus) would've eaten the girl whole for daring disturb him. But a smaller, younger, and more docile variant of snake would suit the girl's purposes, whilst also being far easier to call forth.

Still, as he took advantage of one of the interim moments of her practice where he was not required to make his way down towards the bowels of the base, he couldn't help but feel some small pause.

Something about all of this… He couldn't help feeling it felt wrong.

He'd never really been the type to trust his gut. He trusted in science, and the credibility of facts. His gut was… unreliable in comparison. And yet, as he rounded a corner, stepping towards the office of this locations… warden, he couldn't help the way he reached out with his senses, trying to find an actual reason to explain his feelings.

…Nothing.

There was nothing.

For some reason, this did not assuage him at all.

He stepped into his warden's office, sitting down in front of the man, and asked him of the purpose of his summons.

And…

"Summons?"

Immediately, alarm bells fired off in his head, he reached out again with his chakra, finding, once again, nothing.

That, too, meant nothing.

"Yes." He spoke again, tripping the wire inside of his sleeve and drawing the Kunai hidden within into his hand. "You sent me a notice dictating something was wrong, and that I should come immediately."

"I…" The man tilted his head, his eyes glazing over. "Yes. I did. Some guests of ours requested your pre…se…"

A moment later, the man's lifeless body fell forward, his head slamming against the table in front of him. Orochimaru did not bother to check if the man was alive or dead, given he recognized the Jutsu being used here. An ability that allowed one to Puppeteer the body of a dead Shinobi and force them into action for a short time.

He'd used it himself many a time.

Just as he finished recognizing that, he felt the room he was within begin to shake. The door at the back of the room latched closed, and Orochimaru cursed as he saw the small seal burning on the lock.

A moment later, the room came down atop him.

.

..

The good news was that being crushed under a few tons of rock was a rather survivable ailment for someone of Orochimaru's caliber. He'd turned himself into a thin, snake-like entity, weaving through the gaps between the rocks like his namesake. When he finally emerged from out of the now collapsed room, he first took in his surroundings.

The hallway itself had no signs of contamination, with the obvious exceptions of the seal on the door and the puppeteering Jutsu he'd seen before, which meant whoever had set this up was good. Not him good, but enough of a threat that he'd likely need his full array of techniques.

As he moved out into the hallway of the base, and once more felt no real response as he scanned with his chakra, he heard a shrill scream rang out through the halls, and his stomach writhed as he realized he recognized who it belonged to.

Anko.

His grip tightened on the weapon in his right hand.

A kunai might've been good enough, but…

He forced his stomach into action, unhinging his jaw and reaching up to his lips to take the hilt of the blade rising from out of it.

Better safe than sorry, he supposed.

As he held the Sword of Kusanagi in his left hand, he sunk into the ground below him, content to travel not through the hallways around him, but via the very walls of the lighthouse base.

As of now, he had no idea just what was going on, except for the fact that they were under attack. By whom, by what, how exactly they'd gotten in, how long they'd been here… he knew not. None of those things were particularly essential, however, to killing the idiots who thought they could assault one of his bases and escape with their lives.

His eyes, of course, didn't particularly function when entirely submerged inside stone. Thusly, as he moved, above all else, he listened. Any vibrations, any reverberations, anything that could let him in on the identity of who was attacking. Finally, as he travelled into the floor of the room Anko had previously been training within, he got his answer.

"Apparently they brought the room down on him, though given his pedigree I doubt that'll stop him on its own. We should get ready for combat." A man's voice hummed into the stone.

"What do we do with the girl?" Another man spoke.

"Dunno'." Orochimaru listened intently, unwilling to poke his head out until he'd gathered more information. "Not sure if the oh-so-honorable Lord Hokage would really fall into the standard hostage scenario. He'd probably just leave her for dead, but eh, can't hurt to try."

So, they knew who he was, and were here for him. That, at least, was useful information. It seemed, however, that they also knew of his… unsavory nature.

Troubling.

They even knew Anko was his apprentice, judging by their decision to take her and use her against him.

"Yeah, I getcha'. And hey, he built a whole prison cell for us to use anyways, so we can probably stow her away there."

"Yeah, the others are taking her there." He could hear the man shiver. "Still, some of the stuff in there is fucked up, and I've seen some shit."

"Yeah, agreed."

Orochimaru had heard enough. He regurgitated two senbon from out of his stomach, drew them into his hands, and stabbed them up from out of the earth, and into the bottoms of the men's feet, piercing through what felt to him to be standard shinobi footwear.

In but a moment, he heard as the two began frothing at the mouth, gasping as they tried to breath, the deadly poison on the tips of each point coursing through their bodies.

They fell to the ground in barely ten seconds, growing entirely still.

Their hearts stopped beating another twenty or so seconds later.

Only then did he emerge from the earth a few paces away from them, getting his first chance to actually see the bastards who'd dared make light of him.

Ah.

Earth Shinobi. What was more, Earth Anbu.

This was a high-level op, then. An Assassination attempt on the life of the Hokage would not be given to just anyone. These would be some of the best of the best the Earth had to offer. Even so, even if they were…

They know the secret of this base.

He cracked his neck, his eyes narrowing into slits.

…Which means they all have to die.

/-/

Chief Igatsuchi, one of the most feared members of the Earth's Anbu black ops and a rather powerful shinobi in his own right, stood in front of one of the most mutilated corpses he'd ever seen in his life.

He had seen some things in his day. One did not become Chief of the Anbu of any of the major Villages without getting their hands dirty, but this was… somehow different. The man, for he was fairly sure the pile of flesh in front of him had once been a man, had been so ground to pieces it was hard to even recognize where the limbs were even supposed to attach.

It was as if the flesh within the body itself had revolted, erupting out of this man like geysers from underneath the earth. What seemed to be the cause of this was a black marking that jutted out from his neck, taking a pattern like flames that seemed to cause the man's skin to boil and erupt. He tried not to think about what must've been done to him for this to happen, but…

"Sir, we've got the girl."

He welcomed the distraction as he turned to see one of the soldiers under his command. True to his word, he carried an unconscious girl atop his shoulder, placing her down below him.

"Good." Igatsuchi thought for a moment. "We'll set up a few more complex traps around her, then, and go ahead and place her under Genjutsu."

"Already done."

"Good, contact the two set to watch her last location. Let them know it's likely he'll come for them first if he's going to bother attempting to rescue her at all."

"Why not simply assault him ourselves?" One of the younger members of their band asked, and it was a decent enough line of questioning that Igatsuchi decided he had no real reason to not answer it. "We couldn't take the attack to him?"

"Because as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise, as long as we're inside one of his bases, Orochimaru has the edge on us. Forcing him to come to use, where we, at the very least, know the general vicinity, keeps him from utilizing too many tricks this place might be equipped with."

"And if he leaves?"

"Then we have his apprentice, and all of this evidence. We can study the girl to learn some of his secrets, and some Leaf intel. It's not perfect, but worst case, we gain information, and the Hokage's standing will be irrecoverably harmed by what we've discovered here."

"Yeah…" One of his members looked towards where the body of a child, no older than twelve, was chained to a nearby wall. The entire lower half of his body was missing, and that same black mark from earlier was etched into his neck. "Goddammit. This guy's a fucking monster."

"Mm." He hummed affirmatively. "Don't let your mind be clouded by emotions, though. We'll need to be ready to move at any time. Did you hear back from the one's guarding where the girl was?"

His comm expert shook his head. "Nothing. I think it may be safe to assume they were attacked."

He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth but couldn't much dispute what the man had said. Orochimaru was no easy prey.

"Right. Prepare for combat. Let Taiga know to pull back before–"

An earsplitting scream cut off Igatsuchi's line before he could finish it. Instantly, every head in the room turned towards the entryway to this little prison block, where the noise had originated from.

"Sir… that was Taiga's voice."

He swallowed on nothing as he nodded. "I know."

The few of his Anbu closest to the entryway unconsciously took a few steps back, drawings a variety of weapons as they prepared for what now seemed to be an inevitable battle.

"Remember our intel." He spoke to calm them. "Orochimaru is a powerful fighter, but not so much so in a frontal assault. Play around one another, and don't fall into his scare tactics. Activate your antidotal pills now."

His soldiers did as he commanded, each of them reaching into their coat pockets and drawing from within them a pill each had been given for this mission specifically. A concoction of immunizing ingredients that, even if they didn't fully protect them from some of the deadlier poisons Orochimaru might employ, at least might give them a few extra minutes in the fight if they were stricken.

Now… Now they waited.

It was eerily quiet for far, far too long for Igatsuchi's taste after that. What felt like a good half hour of standing, entirely on guard, as they waited for something to happen. He could see the tension getting to his men, all of them sweating heavily as their nerves overwhelmed them. If something didn't happen soon… the younger ones might do something drastic.

He intervened.

"Do not falter. That's what he wants. He can't handle us in a straight fight, so he's trying to wear us down. Show him that such a tactic will not work on us!"

His unit perked up somewhat at his little speech, and a few let out laughs as they nodded their heads, taking a second to breathe.

"Hah, you always know what to say, boss."

"Mm. Once we get back, dinner's on me." He answered back. "We'll go to that place that cooks up Mist cuisine. In honor of Taiga and the others. Was always their favorite."

His soldiers all nodded affirmatively, and they seemed ready to take on anything the world could throw at them.

They seemed completely prepared.

The one who'd spoken earlier, the youngest of them, hit the floor a moment later, grasping at his throat.

"Can't… breathe…!"

His unit immediately broke formation to try and assist him, and even though Igatsuchi knew it was the wrong move tactically, he couldn't help himself in doing the same. There was a chance the man could be saved if they acted fast.

"Help!" He rasped, clawing at his throat desperately. "Please help!"

"We've got you!" He tried to reassure the man, hell, the boy below him. "Flip him over, see if we can find where the poison was–"

In that exact instant, as his fellows turned the boy over, and he got a good look at his chest, he realized how much of a fool Orochimaru had made of them. Of course, their compassion, something the man did not at all share, would be used against them.

The dozen or so paper tags tied to the newest member of their little group hissed.

He tried to scream.

"PAPER BOM–"

The world exploded in the next moment.

Igatsuchi hit the ground hard, rasping for air and immediately categorizing two or three of his ribs as broken. His left arm, too, had taken the brunt of the hit, and he simply assumed it too was a lost cause at the moment.

Pain coursed through him, and his vision swam, but he forced himself to get up, and he had just enough time to realize his men's numbers had been shredded before a pale figure rose from within the earth just in front of him.

Orochimaru, in the flesh.

He looked…

Calling him a predator would've been too easy, but that was all he could think. His eyes glowed in the candle-lit darkness of the dungeon, his pupils dilated into tiny slits that seemed to regard him not as a person, but as a pest to be rid of.

Igatsuchi felt a rage course through him as his gaze went to where his men laid. Each of them, having been felled by Orochimaru's inhumane paper bomb trap. Each of them, who would never see their families again.

He roared as he summoned a massive blade from out of scroll on his hip and cast the Lightened Boulder Jutsu upon it. He could swing it with enough force to cleave through steel, and to him, it weighed nothing.

He did not have the heart to believe that it would be enough.

He charged Orochimaru in the next moment.

Two hits. That was all he managed.

One parried on the blade of Orochimaru's kunai, and another that was ducked underneath by his opponent, right before the man swung up with his blade, some straight sword with an intricate design, towards his neck.

It cut across his throat, spraying blood along the floor in front of him as his eyes widened.

He tried to breathe, to gasp, to do anything, but nothing came. His entire world filled with blood, and as he fell to the floor, he realized that was it.

His life flashed before his eyes, even as he tried to move. He pictured his men, his family, everyone he'd be leaving behind. He tried to move, to get up, to do something, but…

But he couldn't.

He couldn't.

He c…ouldn't…

c…ou…

/-/

Orochimaru watched the captain of the Earth Anbu gasp for air, grasping at his neck as he attempted to take in a breath. He sighed out annoyedly, deciding to simply finish the man before he could stain his floors any further. He buried the Kusanagi sword's blade in his skull and pulled it out a second later.

With the captain dead, that made all of them. He'd exterminated every single earth soldier within his base.

For the first time in nearly an hour, he could truly take a breath.

His gaze studied the room around him, recalling back to before the Third Shinobi World War had happened, when he'd last been able to find the time to visit here consistently. The tests that'd been done here then… looking at the way some of them still lined the walls had his chest tightening.

These had been tests for the Curse Mark.

Looking at it all now, though…

The dismembered figures of some of his earliest subjects, the way the black markings had caused their very blood to rupture from out of their bodies…

He perked up as he heard a small groan from the back of the room and turned towards it. Inside of one of the few empty cells within the dingy, poorly lit dungeon, was Anko. His student was tied to a small, rickety chair, likely the only thing they could find down here to wrap her to.

He got to freeing the girl from her bonds almost immediately, relying on that task to distract him from the way this room looked, from how it smelled, and by the gods did it smell. The rotting flesh, the dried, caked on blood… how had he never noticed such a thing before?

It seemed they'd not had the time to properly trap Anko's cell, and so in no real time at all, he got to checking her for abnormalities. He stretched open Anko's eyelid with two fingers, peering at her pupil and witnessing the way it was entirely glossed over. He nodded, having expected a Genjutsu, and clapped his hands in front of her face.

She stirred a second later.

"…M-Master?"

"Indeed. Are you well?"

"Uh…" Anko seemed to take stock of herself. "Well, my head kinda hurts from where they hit me, and… my legs aren't really… responding all that well."

He nodded. It made sense that as their hostage, she wouldn't have been harmed too severely. Still, the Genjutsu they'd cast on her would likely keep her fairly weak for a good while. Luckily, they'd not really had much of a chance to try and threaten her after he'd arrived, on account of rapidly becoming pounds of flesh coating his walls.

However, before he quite put together exactly what it was he'd just done, Anko placed a hand over her mouth, retching as she looked away from the rest of the room, keeping her eyes firmly closed.

"Master… what…" The girl's body shivered. "What is this?"

Ah, yes. He needed an answer for that, didn't he?

"These…" He hesitated. Why did he hesitate!? "…Are people that those who kidnapped you trapped in here. I don't know why they'd do such a thing."

Anko looked like she so desperately wanted to believe that. Like she so desperately wanted to just accept that answer and move on. But something wouldn't let her.

Maybe it was the horror barely hidden behind her eyes, the way that, even as he spoke to her, her gaze kept darting towards the half-decayed body of a child that couldn't have been any older than her, whose skin was covered in cuts and gashes. Or maybe, it was that his story didn't entirely add up.

She was his student, after all. She was no fool.

"But… but isn't this your base? Why would they do that here?"

Ah, yes. Because why would they spend years and years experimenting on people, trying to gleam some sort of power out of them, in a base owned by the future Hokage of the Leaf. That didn't exactly make sense, even to a child, even to a Genin.

It was in that moment that he realized something. As things were right now, Anko couldn't be allowed to know what she knew. Which… left him very few permanent options. One of which was…

He could eliminate Anko.

He could kill the girl, say she'd been killed by the earth assassins who'd attacked the base, and none would be the wiser. Hell, it was a good excuse. After all, how would Anko have been expected to hold up against Anbu from another Village? Certainly, in a scenario such as this, that would be the almost expected result.

But…

And are you capable of doing that whilst protecting her?

I can.

His chest squirmed.

"Anko." He spoke, his voice taking on an almost hypnotizing effect. "I need you to look at me."

The girl resisted for but a moment, a miniature shaking of Anko's head all she mustered before acquiescing and meeting his eyes.

His eyes pulsed with a powerful Genjutsu. It was nothing quite like the Sharingan could manage, but it would be enough for a young Genin like Anko.

"I was not responsible for this." He commanded.

Anko's eyes looked glossy. "You… were…"

"I need you to repeat that back to me, Anko."

"You were not responsible for this."

"You will tell no one of this."

"I will tell no one of this."

"You will forget what you've seen today. Any horrors you remember were the result of the Earth Shinobi."

"I will forget what I saw today. The Earth Shinobi were responsible for any horrors I saw today."

He felt a weight lift off his chest. That Genjutsu, at least, would hold for a while.

"Good. Can you stand?"

The glossy sort of look faded as Anko's spirit seemed to return to her body.

"I… no, not really."

He sighed quietly, having expected as much. Still, as he bent down, and took the girl onto his back, he couldn't manage to escape from himself.

And when your Genjutsu fails? The part of him that had once been all of him asked disparagingly. What then will you do? As of now, you have only delayed making a choice. All you are…

Is a coward.

"Come." He tried to ignore the voice inside his head. "We're cutting off your training here and returning to the Leaf."

Anko didn't so much as complain. Instead, her body only further went limp along his back, her head resting atop his left shoulder as she nodded exhaustedly.

"Ok, Sensei."

And so, the two of them settled into a comfortable sort of rhythm as Orochimaru carried them out of the bowels of the Lighthouse Base, up outside, and across the waves back home.

/-/

To say that Orochimaru was conflicted upon his and Anko's eventual return to the Leaf would've been an understatement, which was odd, because even to himself, he'd never been one to show weakness. For him to admit that he was bothered was…

Unfamiliar.

It didn't help that a great deal of work had stacked up while he'd been away, and so he'd immediately gotten to work signing papers, agreeing to clauses, and ratifying treaties. All of which was incredibly dry and gave him ample time (that he certainly did not need) to focus in on the problems now threatening to eat away at the foundation of lies and deceit built beneath him that had once seemed almost untouchable. A foundation that had now, for the very first time, cracked.

It was as he was focusing in on this and that that he heard a knock on his door, and he looked up to see the face of a man he found himself both fearing and wanting to see.

"My, my, you seem rather busy." Hiruzen smirked his way. "Should I come back another day?"

"Please," he gestured to the chair in front of his desk, which sat empty. "I could use the distraction."

"Please? From Orochimaru of all people?" His master laughed quietly as he acquiesced, stepping forward and sinking down into the chair. "How odd. As I thought, something truly is bothering you."

Ah, good. He's as adept as ever at reading me.

"How could you tell?"

"You've just got this look on your face, like your mind is working on overdrive."

"Hmph, you could say that."

There was an almost uncomfortable silence that settled over the two of them for a while after that. Eventually, Hiruzen muttered "You're not going to tell me what's bothering you, are you?"

After a moment, he nodded affirmative.

"Hah, ever the problem child."

"Oh? Was that not Jiraiya? I recall that I was the easy one to train."

"Easy perhaps in that you absorbed everything I ever taught you like a sponge, but in terms of personality? Jiraiya was the easier of the two of you by a landslide. Outgoing, boisterous, but more than that, kind."

He didn't like the way those words reflected on him.

"Are you saying I am not kind?"

"Up until recently, I believe you'd have agreed with me."

A needling pain struck his stomach.

"You as well, then, believe me to have changed."

"Do you disagree with that assessment?"

"…I… No. I suppose not."

Another bout of silence.

"So, what happened?"

He sighed tremendously. His master had never been the prying sort, so for him to push this hard…

…Perhaps he could satisfy the man with half-truths.

"When we arrived in the Land of Sea, I took the two of us to a training site that I'd used before. However, when I'd arrived, the proprietor had already been placed under a puppeteering Jutsu. Bait, for me."

"You mean…"

"Yes. We were under attack by Earth Shinobi." He sighed out. "Anbu. Anko was taken to the basement. I assaulted them on my own, and killed them to a man, but Anko… she saw some things it would've been best she hadn't." He decided it would be best to lie in such a way. "I was not… kind to those I slew."

"Ah, exposed to the horrors of war, then?"

"Indeed."

Hiruzen hummed sadly. "I often wish this world was not so cruel, Orochimaru."

He said nothing.

"Did you attempt to comfort her?"

He remembered back to the look in the girl's eyes. The way she couldn't stop looking at the body of that child…

He wondered, quietly, if it made him a worse person for not being able to remember that particular experiment. If the fact that he had no recollection of mutilating that body the way he had further damned him.

At the very least, he couldn't see any way it would make him better.

"I am not… the type for comforting."

"Mm. But sometimes we must all act outside of the roles we've designated for ourselves."

He sighed.

"Must you always speak in riddles?"

"As I've said before, I must not. I simply enjoy doing so."

"How aggravating."

"Hah, and a straight declaration of your feelings. You truly have changed."

He shook his head, a small bit of annoyance building within him that he felt the need to expel.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Oh?"

"I mean…" He sighed. "Everyone… Everyone says I've changed. But what does that mean!?" He'd accidentally raised his voice, shown emotion, and winced as he realized that Hiruzen was looking at him differently now. "No, I… forget I said any–"

"You are kind, now."

His eyes widened tremendously, and he looked up at his master's expression to see him smiling gently at him.

"You know, both Jiraiya and Tsunade have been talking about you, lately. Jiraiya says how nice it is to talk with you again like they used to when you were younger. Egging each other on, supporting one another… and seeing you actually try and help Tsunade was the biggest thing of all for him."

His stomach felt like it'd had liquid nitrogen poured inside it.

"And for Tsunade herself… she talked about how you assisted Shizune in her ninja studies, and how you accompanied her on a trip to the cemetery…" His proud smile became a bit softer. "Did you know she had not visited Dan and Nawaki since the war?"

He didn't, actually. He'd assumed she went every once and a while from the practiced sort of route she'd taken. To think, that she'd gone to see them for the first time in nearly a decade…

With him.

"I believe that having you around made her feel braver."

Gods, his chest… he only barely resisted clawing at it desperately, trying to prevent his heart from beating out of him.

"You are kind, now."

He remembered back to the bowels of the Lighthouse Base, to the horrid experiments he'd conducted there to try and create what had eventually become the Curse Mark. The tens of hundreds who'd been sacrificed to his ambitions…

And now here he was, being called kind.

He tried to stop the next few words from pouring out of him, but he couldn't. His lips parted, and he spoke the infernal statement into being before he could stop himself.

"Master, do you think even someone like I can be a good person?"

Hiruzen wore a shocked expression as he regarded him silently for a few seconds. He seemed to respect the weight of that question, the weight of his student's very heart, bared entirely naked, entirely unlike himself, that he took quite a long time determining just how to answer him.

"Do you want to be a good person?"

What a question.

A long time ago, the answer would've been obvious to him. Was "being a good person" going to get in the way of his ambitions of immortality? If the answer was yes, then in a heartbeat, he'd have said "No".

But now… his ambitions, his desire for immortality, to gather every single Jutsu available, to take a Sharingan so that he could master the Uchiha's Jutsu… all of these things felt almost… insignificant.

But why? Because Jiraiya had smiled at him? Because Tsunade felt comfortable around him? Because Shizune, the impressionable youth, had looked awed with him? Because Anko had said that it was his teaching she desired, and not that of any other? Because Tondo and Akari had made him dinner, and invited him back? Because little Yugao had hugged him; thanked him for protecting her mom?

There were so many other bases like the Lighthouse Base. So many others where experiments just as heinous had been carried out, some even more so. He was a killer, a murderer, torturer, the very worst of the worst. He was the kind of person who should be sacrificed to bring back someone like Dan, or Nawaki, like he'd discussed with Tsunade.

So how could he ask whether or not he could be a good person?

Of course, he couldn't be. Of course, he…

He…

"I…" He swallowed heavily, feeling like his heart was caught in his throat.

And then he answered.

"I think I do."

Hiruzen smiled, nodding slowly at that as he stood out of his chair, and gestured for Orochimaru to follow.

"Come with me. We're going for a walk."

"…I suppose?"

"Hah, trust me, my former student."

/-/

It was late evening by the time they made it out into the Leaf's streets. The light was fading, not unlike the very first night he and his former master had once discussed his gaining of the position of Hokage. The brilliant orange and red hues that covered the shopping district were, even to him, rather breathtaking.

He wondered when it was he'd begun to look more at things like the views of nature, and determined rather quickly that it, too, had to have been a recent development.

"So," Hiruzen cleared his throat as they travelled languidly. "When you look around you, what do you see?"

He did as he was told, gazing at the many stalls that surrounded him, at the people who manned them, at the shops that were more or less busy. What he saw was what he expected.

People.

He communicated as much and earned a laugh from the previous Hokage.

"Yes, indeed. But more than that, what do you see?"

"I am… not sure I understand the question."

His master laughed, before taking the time to kneel down and ruffle the hair of a child who'd come up to him. The boy laughed, before running back to his friends and continuing to walk.

"The people around you, they look to you."

He was right. As they passed by, just as those few children had the other day when he'd been with Tsunade and Shizune, they waved, or bowed, or came up to him and wished him well. This time, it was he who they seemed to want attention from. It was he their parents watched expectantly, he who ruffled their hair, even if it was awkward. He who offered advice on how to be a ninja.

A few children, much like little Yugao, seemed to find his appearance frightening, but even they nodded their heads out of respect.

He… was…

"You are the Hokage of the Hidden Leaf." Hiruzen confirmed for him, grinning at him. "Do you know what that means?"

He took a guess. "That I am in charge?"

"Hah," His master laughed at him like he had long ago, when he'd been young and inexperienced. "Certainly, from a very basic standpoint, that's correct. But deeper than that, do you know what else you are?"

He had no further guesses. "…Go on."

"You're responsible."

His eyes widened somewhat.

"These people… as I said earlier, they look to you. You are their example. You dictate what is customary for a Leaf Ninja, you decide whether or not we are a respected or reviled people. You decide, ultimately, whether or not the Leaf Village continues beyond your rule."

A pit formed in his stomach at his master's words.

"And I know without doubt that you can handle that responsibility. Do you know why?"

He didn't. He had no idea why the man could possibly assume he of all people could handle something like this.

"Because you are trying to be better."

He met the man's comforting gaze with his mouth hanging open somewhat, and by the gods must he have looked like an idiot. Stood slack-jawed in the middle of the shopping district, the evening sun shining right upon him.

So what?

That question kept ringing out in his head, but it didn't originate from the part of him that had once been 'all of him' like it usually did. This time the voice was… different.

It did not seem to hiss like 'all of him' did. It sounded almost…

Afraid.

So what? It asked again. So, what if we're trying to be better. What we did cannot be made up for.

His stomach was ice once more.

"You… have given me much to think about, Master." He spoke through clenched teeth. "I'm afraid I must retire for the evening, however. I have much work to be done that I missed during my absence."

Hiruzen nodded, certainly seeing through his excuse, but being far too kind a person to call him out on it.

…Kind…

"Well, I hope you can enjoy your evening, Orochimaru. Perhaps, if it would help, the four of us, myself, and my former students, could all go out for a meal one of these days. It's been an awfully long time since we were together."

Usually, he felt he would've put such a thing off, but now…

"I'm sure we could all find some time."

Hiruzen beamed.

"Then I'll look forward to it."

/-/

It was late as he signed his name on a sheet of paper for the final time that night. He could hear the mating calls of bugs outside, while the moonlight streamed in through his window. His desk was illuminated only by a single candle, which even now had lost half of its wax to the bottom of the holder.

But at the very least, he was finished.

Luckily, none of his work had required him to be terribly attentive, and so he'd been zoned out for much of it. Mostly, he'd been thinking upon the day's events. His talk with Hiruzen most importantly.

It was as he was once more reminiscing on that that a figure materialized out of thin air in front of him, and it was only the fact that the man kneeled down in front of him, and wore a mask that was familiar, that prevented him from meeting a rather swift end.

"You would be wise not to approach me in such a manner again." He warned the Root member. "What is your purpose here?"

"Lord Danzo requests a meeting with you."

"Now?" He raised an eyebrow.

"As soon as possible." The man confirmed.

He exhaled pointedly, standing from his desk, and cracking his back for the first time in a few hours.

"I will go. You are dismissed."

One thing he appreciated about the members of Root was that they were entirely void of complaint. The moment he'd told the man to leave, he'd disappeared out of thin air, flickering away.

He made his way to the Root compound in no real hurry. Danzo was no friend, even if the man had his uses, and speaking to him often resulted in him being tasked with things he did not particularly feel like doing.

And so it was that he entered into the main chamber of the Root compound, a four-way crossroads suspended above a seemingly endless chasm, hovering over darkness itself.

"Orochimaru, we have much to discuss." Danzo began without wasting time. "Your absence this past week was unexpected. I take it you were summoned by one of your bases?"

He nodded. "The Lighthouse Base was trapped by Earth Anbu. They baited me there by pretending that there was a problem. I killed them all."

"Hm… even still, it is unknown whether or not the Earth has managed to take back the information of what they saw to the Tsuchikage." Danzo massaged his chin with his singular exposed hand. "Well, I suppose that only accents the importance of what we must discuss tonight."

"Oh?"

"Indeed. I have a proposition."

A proposition? Now that had Orochimaru intrigued, if not also mentally groaning, knowing that whenever Danzo had an idea or a plan that he felt the need to discuss with him, it was usually Orochimaru who ended up executing it.

Even if such things often paid out in the end for him, it didn't mean he assuredly wanted to do them.

"Recently, I'm sure even you have noticed Hiruzen's presence in our proceedings." Danzo began, a frown present on his face. "Your election to the position of Hokage was supposed to be the break that the Leaf Village needed, what would truly propel our Village to greatness. Finally, united as one mind, we could strengthen our walls, make the Leaf Village the strongest of the Major Villages."

For some reason, despite the compliments Danzo was throwing at his feet, Orochimaru couldn't help but swallow nervously.

His throat burned for some reason.

"Yes, sure, what is it you're trying to say?"

Danzo nodded. "In the past, I saw Hiruzen as a necessity. More than that, I saw him as a friend. The Light of the Leaf to my, or perhaps our, darkness. Someone who would counterbalance us. But I see now for what he truly is."

Danzo faced him fully, scowling wretchedly.

"Hiruzen is a weakness."

Orochimaru hid the way that comment made his stomach crawl.

"With him around, offering council, the Leaf is weak, a shadow of what it could be. With you at its helm, and I at your side, our Village should be at its apex… but before we can manage that, there is something we must do…"

He already knew what Danzo would say, even as his nails dug into the skin of his hands as he clenched them into fists, his knuckles turning white.

"That weakness must be eliminated…"

"Hiruzen must die."

End Chapter 4


So, yeah. End of the first arc, start of the second? Sort of? Maybe more... end of the first act, start of the second. Like I said, this story isn't particularly long. Probably about halfway through at this point, if a little less.

Think around 10 chapters, give or take one or two either way.

Anyways, I'll see everyone next chapter!