Chapter 29
"So she's a fuinjutsu master now?"
Raidou's voice took an almost incredulous note as he stared at Genma, who merely snorted and tossed back another gulp of shochu.
"Yep. Kakashi said she booby-trapped the forest when he chased after her. Explosive tags that triggered and blew up trees when he passed by them, and even a freaking barrier that sprung up when one of his ninken got too close. And according to Shisui she managed to disrupt his chakra just by sticking one to his forehead."
"Yikes," Raidou breathed with a sympathetic hiss. "Damn. Poor kid must've been traumatized meeting her."
"She's definitely something," Genma muttered, taking another shot. Raidou had just returned from his own month-long mission and the two had wasted no time meeting up to share on the latest news. After catching him up on the hottest gossip, it had only been a matter of time before Genma's own disastrous mission came up.
Even though his original mission fell under the usual ANBU secrecy guidelines, Amagiri's defeat and the reappearance of Ringo Sute had made the emergency rescue a bit more open than usual. While the finer details had still been classified, like who exactly had been involved, Genma could still share some details. It was understood among ANBU that as long as missions hadn't been given the highest classification that they could vent to other operatives and confidants, and man, did Genma need to vent.
Fighting Amagiri had been a nightmare in itself given the man's reputation and track record. Even with their surprise attack clearly throwing the man off his game he'd still been quick to react, and threw around his signature hot water jutsu with increasingly reckless abandon as he became more desperate. The number of close calls had left him covered in goose bumps. One stream managed to singe the tips of his hair and required a trim when they got back.
Beyond that, seeing Ringo Sute had brought back a slew of bad memories. Their only encounter had been when his team had been cornered by the Seven Swordsmen. Even now, he could still feel that cold pit of ice he'd felt in his stomach while knowingly staring down his own impending death. Sute's presence had been just a brief blip, a small respite from the terror filled with confusion and wariness.
"She knew their names," he muttered lowly, drawing Raidou's attention.
"You mean Kakashi and Shisui?"
"No. Gai and Ebisu. Back when we first met." He could see Raidou minutely tense, his friend well aware of that fateful encounter. Everyone knew how Maito Dai had somehow managed to take down four of the Swordsmen in one go, but Genma hadn't ever told him the full details. He preferred not to dwell on it, especially as Sute's reputation grew. "She knew their names, but she didn't know mine."
Raidou exhaled a quiet breath, frowning as he turned his gaze to his own cup of shochu. "Doesn't mean anything. That 'Oracle' moniker's just a load of bull if you ask me. So she guessed the Fourth Hokage would be the Fourth. Big deal."
"She took one look at us, and told Biwa Juzo he'd probably die," Genma retorted with a rueful snort. "Don't think it's just a coincidence that we were the deciding factor for her."
"Genma, just stop," Raidou sighed, and Genma fell silent as he finished off the cup. Even now, he couldn't say whether he put much stock in the "Bloody Oracle" title either, but sometimes he just couldn't help but wonder. Every now and then when he felt particularly low or like he might die, he'd remember the blank look she'd directed at him after rattling off his teammates' names, and the odd certainty when she told Juzo he'd likely die that day.
Genma wasn't a superstitious man, but he hoped to hell he'd prove that silent dismissal wrong and outlive everyone.
"Sute-senpai, will this really help me as a medical ninja?"
"Of course it will. Do you really doubt me?"
"Of course not! It's just..." Kabuto trailed off, his nose wrinkling slightly as he looked at the terrarium where Mushi-Mushi currently coiled atop a branch under the warmth of the heating lamp. He looked rather comfortable there, but offered no resistance when Sute reached in to pull him out, his tail curling around one arm while she cradled his head with her other hand. Kabuto stiffened minutely as she turned to him with the snake draped between her arms, a bright smile on her face.
"Milking snakes is always a useful skill!" she proclaimed cheerfully, and relished in the barely-noticeable flinch the younger boy gave as he stared wide-eyed at the giant venomous mamushi. Guess he's not used to snakes yet.
A month had passed since she and Amano had returned to Kiri as the sole survivors of their ANBU unit. Thanks to her medical knowledge and the antidote she'd retrieved from Amagiri, Sute had managed to save his life, but the return trip had taken a few days longer than expected since his condition had been too unstable to travel. Even now he was in the hospital, being treated for the last of the effects of the poison.
Just like the last time Sute returned with a majority of her team dead, she had been taken off the field and placed onto hospital duty, though not until after being whisked away for questioning. An entire ANBU unit being wiped out merited serious investigation after all. Even Amano had been roped into the intensive interrogations the moment his condition stabilized enough to actually wake up and speak coherently.
Unlike the last time though, Sute answered the questions with near total honesty. She made no secret of her temporary truce with the Leaf ninja dressed in partial ANBU gear, fully admitted to pretending to side with Amagiri in order to get her hands on the antidote. She told them all about Amagiri's connection to Orochimaru, and his plans to take Shisui to the Sannin to use as a test subject.
That said, she didn't tell them everything. She omitted the hand seals Amagiri used to speed their trip down the river, and the fuinjutsu used to power his signature hot-water ninjutsu. He didn't hint at his Uzushio heritage, or lightly question about her title as a Bloody Oracle. The timeline she presented had the Leaf ninja reach the hideout rather quickly after their own arrival, giving her no time to see Uchiha Shisui for herself, let alone heal him.
They never saw her again after parting ways during the owl's attack. Kakashi never managed to find her when he tried to chase her through the forest, and he never tried to convince her to return to Konoha with him.
(She never heard the name "Yorozuyo" and the word meant nothing.)
A lot had happened during that mission to give her a lot to think about, but right now, she needed to focus her attention on Kabuto.
Her encounter with Amagiri had been the first time she'd received any sort of confirmation that Orochimaru was specifically aware of her existence. She knew his interest in her would be inevitable. After all, she was a poison mistress, highly skilled medical ninja and fuinjutsu master, a perfect trifecta of talents for people engaged in human experimentation. Between that and her Bloody Oracle moniker in Konoha, it had only been natural he'd take an interest in her, if not as a vessel then as a potential subordinate.
And all of that didn't even take her mokuton into account. Once that got out, his interest in her was sealed.
One day they would inevitably clash, but for now though she couldn't do anything about it. At the moment she was still safe in the confines of Kiri, the only influence he had here in the form of Kabuto. Whether Orochimaru had sent the boy or someone else did—a possibility looking increasingly likely—either way any information he gained would eventually find its way back to the snake. And Sute intended to use every advantage she had.
As far as anyone else could tell, she had all but taken him under her wing as her personal apprentice, often tracking him down in the hospital to critique his work as an "intern." No one could see the subtle game of cat and mouse the two constantly played, their words chosen carefully as each tried to tease information from the other without revealing too much of their own hands. At the end of the day Kabuto was a spy sent to amass whatever secrets he could, whether on behalf of Orochimaru or some other master, and Sute wanted nothing more than to glean his own in return.
More than that, it was a delicate dance only she was fully aware of, the young boy still unaware she knew of his spy status. It gave her an edge he would never be able to match, always able to keep several steps ahead as she easily identified his attempts to fish for information. She got to choose exactly how much to share—and that meant she had plenty of time to mess with him too.
Take today for example. Honestly, recruiting Kabuto to help her milk her snakes had made her a bit wary since it had to be done at her home, but Sute needed to restock her supply and it always went easier with help. Besides that, she reasoned it would increase his own measure of her apparent trust towards him, which would only make him more relaxed and thus more likely to slip information to her in the long run.
"Grab the tube," she instructed, gesturing to the table where a cardboard tube rested next to a jar. Kabuto did as told hesitantly, eying Sute cautiously as she stepped forward. He stiffened as she began coaxing Mushi-Mushi towards it, pushing his head towards the hole until he began slithering into it of his own accord. As far as she could tell Kabuto had yet to encounter many snakes, because the boy was highly on edge the entire time and visibly trying not to fidget too much.
The moment Mushi-Mushi's head emerged from the other end she gripped the center of the tube with her free hand and squeezed it lightly, stopping him from moving further. Mushi-Mushi twitched and his long tongue slithered out, his tail wriggling with obvious agitation. "Move your hand to hold it here and squeeze," she told Kabuto, who had moved the tube a little further away from himself. "Don't squeeze too hard, use just enough pressure to keep him from moving."
"R-right." His voice had the slightest hesitation as he shifted one hand next to Sute's to grip the center of the tube, squeezing ever so slightly. She released her grip and when the snake failed to escape, she gently grabbed his other hand to move it towards the end with his head, leaving it cupping the bottom and safely out of the serpent's reach.
"Yeah, hold it just like that," she said with a nod, turning to grab the jar. She'd already stretched a thin layer of latex over the opening, and she lifted it to Mushi-Mushi's head. "Don't worry, sweetheart, this won't take long. Just bite down for me and then we'll let you go back to your branch, okay?"
From there it didn't take that long to coax him to bite down into the latex, his fangs piercing the thin "lid" and dripping yellow venom into the jar. Sute watched the thin layer of venom grow on the bottom of the glass closely, and once she deemed enough had been gathered she gently pulled the jar away. "Thank you so much, sweetie," she cooed, stroking the top of the mamushi's head with one finger.
"Um, what now?" Kabuto asked awkwardly, still holding the snake in the tube with a tense grip, and she nodded towards the tank.
"You can put him back. Just tilt the tube and let up on your grip." Kabuto nodded and went to deposit the fairly annoyed mamushi back in his terrarium, while Sute lifted the jar to examine the venom more closely. It really wasn't much, but she could stretch the meager amount and use it in a multitude of poisons. She had a few ideas for some new ones she'd been wanting to try, maybe she could use it for those.
Behind her she could hear Kabuto shuffling around quietly, no doubt examining the room. Sute kept the terrarium in her "lighter" poison lab, the one that didn't need copious amounts of sterilization and protective seals and gear, and which she didn't mind showing off to other people. The walls were plastered with notes on various ideas for new poison formulas and antidotes, as well as medicines in general. Poison and medicine went hand in hand after all, she knew how to use plants to heal just as much as to kill.
Sure enough, when she set down the jar and turned around she found him studying one page in particular, his eyes wide. Sute cast a cursory glance at it and mentally cursed at herself when she recognized it, though she kept her face impassive. She crept up behind Kabuto quietly, tilting her head as she leaned over. "See something interesting?" she asked, enjoying how he startled and jumped in surprise.
Once he recovered from his shock the boy smoothed out his face, glancing back at the page. "Those are notes on suspended animation, right?" he asked slowly, and Sute mentally cursed again even as she nodded.
"Good eye," she commended lightly, showing none of her internal frustration. Those notes weren't dangerous, per se, but she didn't want people to know she was looking into it. She only kept the page up because she knew most people who visited her house wouldn't understand it—but then, Kabuto wasn't most people. "I'm not too far in yet, it's mostly in the theoretical stages since I've been busy."
The boy's mouth thinned, glancing at the page with a slight crease in his brow. "But... why?" he asked after a moment. "It doesn't seem like something Kiri would care about."
It was a fair question. While Kiri valued each medic closely, it did not particularly care about the intricacies of their work beyond what was necessary to keep its forces alive and battle-ready. If a patient had severe injuries that would require extensive resources and time to treat and return them to fighting condition, they'd often be told to just write them off and do the bare minimum needed to keep them alive. More than once her colleagues had taken pity on a few of those cases and quietly put them out of their misery.
The sort of injuries that would call for the use of suspended animation would likely be deemed too extreme to bother wasting resources on, save for the most valuable shinobi. It would only really be used to transport injured comrades from the field to the hospital, but it would require a skilled medical ninja to execute and maintain anyway at which point it would probably be simpler to just try to heal the damage on scene.
So yes, Kabuto had a fair point. She hummed thoughtfully as she silently weighed how to best answer him, not wanting to reveal too much of her intentions. Telling him too much would prove to be a hindrance in the future once he returned to Orochimaru's side, rendering any knowledge he had as the Sannin's by extension. And any information on Sute's skills would give him an advantage when they finally fought. Sute knew the Snake would find her skillset too enticing to ignore once she defected, and she knew it would take a lot of work to survive any encounter with him.
For now though, Kabuto was just a rookie spy. Just a kid more focused on trying to survive long enough to pass on his information than actually gaining it, and that gave her some slight leeway. "It's more about keeping my options open," she finally allowed.
"Your options?" Kabuto parroted curiously, and she nodded, choosing her next words carefully.
"I have some experiments I want to try out. Experiments that will work better with a live subject than dead, or at the very least one that's fresh. Transporting a living person is hard though, especially a shinobi. So the best option is to knock them out and put them into suspended animation so they can't fight back."
Kabuto's eyebrows scrunched together as he listened, a thoughtful look on his face. "But... if the training's the problem, why not use a civilian subject instead? They can't really resist, right?"
"You don't bring civilians into shinobi business," Sute snapped curtly, her face hardening and her eyes growing dark. Kabuto flinched at the sharp rebuke, his eyes wide as he stepped back, and Sute breathed a small sigh before continuing. "Civilians already have enough on their plates without having to fear getting kidnapped by shinobi for less-than-ethical experimentation. Our lifestyle causes them plenty of trouble just from the wars and dropouts who turn to crime, we don't need to add to their concerns directly."
Kabuto was silent for a long moment, just staring at her in shock before adjusting his glasses. "That's surprisingly thoughtful of you," he murmured, and hastily added, "Not to imply you seem particularly cruel! Most Mist ninja just don't seem to care about civilians, even in the hospital."
Most Mist ninja didn't grow up in a civilian world with a serial killer father with interests on par with Orochimaru. Sute kept the thought to herself, instead shrugging and saying, "I have to draw the line somewhere. Despite my specialties, I'm not a bloodthirsty psychopath. I'd actually like to be able to sleep at night," she added with a wry twist to her mouth.
She turned back to the jar of venom and picked up a tape roll, leaving Kabuto to stew over her words. Sticking a piece of tape on the jar's side, she uncapped a marker and scribbled the date onto it before carrying it to the cooler in the corner of the room. As she lifted the lid to store it with the others, she almost lost her grip when Kabuto finally spoke up behind her. "Can you teach me about it?"
Sute fumbled to catch the jar before it could fall and break, twisting her head to stare at him in shock. The silver-haired boy had a surprisingly earnest look on his face, his eyes stony behind his glasses. "Why do you want to learn?" she asked after a beat, carefully placing the jar inside before turning to face him fully.
"I... Like you said, I want to keep my options open," he replied, pausing to think for a moment. Already she could tell that would be the most she'd get out of him, and she hummed quietly as her eyes narrowed, deep in thought.
"Kid, this is a pretty intensive topic," she finally said. "I don't really want to spend time going into all the specifics with you. Besides, there's other stuff I want to study that takes priority."
"Like what?"
"How to disguise a corpse as someone else." The blunt admission surprised him, his resolute expression breaking with a startled blink. Sute saw no reason to lie, she had been casually pursuing the topic for a few years now but hadn't devoted much time to it. Without easy access to corpses to practice with, she hadn't many chances to really do anything beyond the theoretical research.
She expected Kabuto to ask why, and was already preparing another vague explanation of "classified activities". However, rather than do that he took a deep breath and stood straighter, meeting her gaze squarely. "What if I teach you?"
Sute perked up a bit, allowing her curiosity to show on her face. "Oh?" she asked. "You know how to do it?" Kabuto nodded tensely, fists clenching at his side.
"My... Kaede, taught me," he said haltingly, spinning the lie on the spot. "We had to leave our home suddenly once due to some people searching for her, and she left two fake bodies to buy us time to escape. She taught me how to do it afterwards, just in case we had to do it again." He took a deep breath, his voice firm as he finished, "If you agree to teach me about suspended animation, I'll teach you everything I know about it."
Sute hummed, folding her arms as she considered the offer. Sharing her research with Kabuto left a bad taste in her mouth, giving him a potential tool down the line when they would meet again as enemies. Worse, it would give Orochimaru a potentially invaluable tool for his own nefarious research.
But at the same time, wouldn't they inevitably look into this anyway? Preserving subjects as long as possible would be a high priority for them, and she doubted her own findings on the subject would be revolutionary. The ripple effect would be bad, but on the other hand, learning how to disguise a corpse now would give her an advantage in the immediate future. She doubted his technique was perfect—even as an adult in Shippuden, his work with Sai's corpse had ultimately been identified by Yamato—so the more time she had to tweak it, the better.
And besides, she was supposedly Kabuto's unaware "mentor." She had no reason to refuse from his standpoint. Doing this would only cement his trust further.
A twisted sort of smile flitted across her lips, her true selfish intent hidden behind an almost kindly façade. "Alright, Kabuto," she agreed. "You've got yourself a deal. Now sit down and get something to take notes, I'm not going to repeat myself."
An almost childish delight filled the boy's face even as he scrambled to obey, anticipation evident in the way he hurried to comply. Sute silently smirked to herself as she plucked her notes from the wall, skimming over them to figure out a good starting point.
One month later, she arrived to the hospital for her shift to be accosted about whether she knew where Kabuto had gone, being told the boy had left the previous day and never returned.
Two days after that, the remains of a half-eaten body were found by a lake near the foot of the mountains, the face too mangled to identify but the build and clothing matching one Wakahisa Kabuto. It only took one glance at the remains to determine that he had been mauled by a bear, a rare but not unheard of occurrence. Genin or not, he was still quite young and clearly hadn't been equipped to deal with an attack from a bear twice his size.
They held a brief funeral service the next day, only a handful of medics from the hospital attending. With no relatives to claim the body they opted for a simple cremation of the remains and left it at that, his name soon fading from their memories.
(Only Sute had noticed the extra scar on the body's left hand which definitely hadn't existed before, but she never told anyone. She continued her studies on disguising corpses in secret using the notes he'd given her, just as she expected him to still work on the suspended animation theories she'd shared with him. She had no idea if he might end up using it, or if he'd even be able to ever utilize it. Her research into the subject was still in such early stages after all, and she herself wouldn't perfect a working version for another two years.)
(She wouldn't find out until years later just how this decision would alter the course of history.)
Goodbye for now, Kabuto. I'm sure you can all figure out why Sute wants to know how to disguise corpses. The ripples of what she taught Kabuto in exchange will be pretty significant though.
So real quick, a few things. One, I got some FANTASTIC fan art of Sute from XKatelyn-LeeannX! You can find it on the profile for XSailorNekoX over on DeviantArt!
Second, are there any other Danganronpa fans here? If so, consider checking out PotatoSorcerer's stories! He's been working on a series of stories called Another Hope about a character named Albert Wright who ends up in the DR universe. It's largely a rehash of the games with some added twists and extra world building tacked on thanks to Albert's presence, and it's definitely a fun read in my opinion. It has a good balance of angst and humor, and Albert's a pretty well-rounded character. We've been talking over PMs bouncing ideas for the series for a while now, and his current story is going to have some MAJOR surprises in store. So please check it out! ^^
And on a final note: this Friday I'm starting at an internship working on web and mobile app design! I don't know what my schedule will be like yet, but for now, Bloody Oracle will be going on a brief hiatus. I have only part of one chapter written up after this one, and I want to finish this next arc before I start posting again. This next arc will be the last one before Sute's defection.
That said, I also plan to start posting this My Hero Academia fic I've had on the backburner since last August. The draft's at ~15 chapters right now so, yeah. It won't cut into my writing schedule, even as I get busier. So if you're in the MHA/BnHA fandom, be on the lookout for that!