Creepy chapter, and why the snakes are rather more ethical in their experiments this time.
Chapter Text
There was something wrong with the order of the world. The toddler stared unblinkingly up at the glaring overhead lights. It was certain that it was not misplaced, yet it was. It wasn't supposed to be strapped down to cold metal. It should not be looking up at a masked face. It should not be under the scalpel. It should not…
Time passed in a haze. The toddler was confronted with kind faces and cruel ones. It was ahe. He was given a pet. A puppy. It was wrong. It was too warm, too small, too stiff. It was wrong. But right. The puppy was friendly, welcoming, faithful. He hugged the puppy that grew into a hound, the only certain thing in an ever-changing world, the only promise of kindness without strings attached. He named the dog Dog, but the word Inu called to mind something other… a mask of white and red, frozen in a snarl.
Inu and him, against the world. He was trained. That was expected. But why did they have faces? There should only be blank ovals with round eyes, set onto uniform bodies.
The toddler was a boy. They took Inu. Cut Inu open from shoulder to haunch.
So much blood.
Heal.
They ordered.
Heal.
He obeyed.
Edo Tensei was the reincarnation of the dead into the impure world. For all his genius, for all his achievements, for all his complexity, he was remembered for one, single thing.
Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold,
And be eterniz'd for some wondrous cure:
Summum bonum medicinae sanitas,
The end of physic is our body's health.
Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that end?
Is not thy common talk found aphorisms?
Are not thy bills hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escap'd the plague,
And thousand desperate maladies been eas'd?
Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man.
Couldst thou make men to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be esteem'd.
Perhaps the fools who immortalized him were correct, for did he not Edo Tensei? Blood-bought understanding of the intricate workings of the flesh mapped out a path for his verdant power to follow. Beneath his hands, flesh knit back together, as if the river of time had bowed and flowed uphill.
Then, sunlight leached out of leaves, so that only icy-blue remained.
Thricefold have I been bound, you may not be my master.
His body was young, but he was the apprentice of the Wandering Miko. Forms were illusions, substance mere vessels for that nebulous essence called will. A shrunken shape merely meant he was a smaller target.
Kabutowas a dragon, and he had mastered death.
Dimly he was aware of screams that came not from his hand. The door was thrown open. In strode a man and a woman, their steps shinobi-soft. The woman wore an immaculate coat of white, and light crowned her head in gold. By her side was a man paler than death, his eyes marked with lavender and his hair a dark void over the robes of a more elegant age.
Nono, the bodhisattva, and Orochimaru, the immortal serpent. Angel and Devil. Spy and Scientist. His two parents.
He smiled through bloodstains. "We've got to stop meeting like this."