If there is anything to be said about people, it is that they will go to unusual lengths to fill in whatever their eyes cannot.
If a person sees an empty space, they do not like it. Their brains scour for patterns—the only way they seem to have assimilated into reality to begin with—around the absence to invent roadways of reason. For every blank must have an explanation and that explanation should be made available to them, because humans know everything.
There cannot be any blanks. There cannot be any gaps.
Gaps mean something is missing, and it seems that is what humans hate most. The not knowing; the not seeing; not understanding something in their environment creates an off-shooting pattern of curiosity and fear. They are drawn to the gaps solely due to their hatred of them, a uniqueness of 'people'.
Orochimaru disagrees. Empty space means there is more left to discover.
Every person he has come across was a blank to be filled, and while the answer was not yet known to him at the time of meeting it was ever soon discovered, and thus the blank was remedied and the resulting pride reveled.
The world revealed herself so long as he asked nicely.
Orochimaru perceives gaps as opportunities whereas humans perceive gaps as failures, and that is what most chiefly sets him apart and what Orochimaru most chiefly relies on.
Because he, too, is an empty space, a particular gap that has sent his village spiraling since the day their eyes failed to see him.
And as something else far removed from humanity, Orochimaru finds that being an augur of their mysteries brings more fulfillment than every filled gap combined.
.
Sarutobi-sensei is, perhaps, the best example of human nature Orochimaru has yet to come across.
A man whose name carries a weight the person attached cannot, but no one sees that. They choose not to—as they do many a negative things.
Not seeing something can be as much a choice as witnessing it. Orochimaru discovers this when listening to people around him that turn their faces away.
Sarutobi Hiruzen can flatten the Kumogakure Spine in a single breath. They say his sweat grew into the redwoods of Fire Country after the war. Can you believe it?
He certainly cannot.
He has met Sarutobi Hiruzen and he is human through and through, nary a divine bone in his body. The first time they spoke, Orochimaru barely heard him. He talked so softly Fire's wind nearly ate it up, and this man is said to bring down mountains with words?
A difficult line to swallow, indeed.
Humans have a very odd tendency to place expectations on a person's name, relying on what they've been told instead of seeking the information out themselves. But who has the time for that? Not Konohagakure; definitely not any of her hundreds of seemingly-empty heads that stare at him in the street like they're witnessing the dead walk.
It is far more pragmatic to validate ideas that are already held. They will never understand. Orochimaru is smart enough to read the Elders' faces when he's in there.
And the person most horrified among them, the Redwoods of Fire himself:
Sarutobi Hiruzen.
.
He's strangling him on the floor with both hands. He tried kicking. It made it hurt worse. He can't move he's so scared.
He wraps his hands around Sensei's wrists and stares, slitted pupils thin as knives, sweat on his upper lip.
Sensei grits his teeth. "I'm sorry," he seethes. He spits through them. Orochimaru can't even blink.
I'm sorry, he reflexively mouths back.
The hands leave his neck with a blinding, beastly sob.
Sensei stumbles backwards, heaves, then his body winks into nothing.
.
AN: I am going through a very difficult time. I hope maybe posting some of my shorter drabbles may keep me encouraged. I plan on this being where I dump a lot of my Orochi rambles, clear or not. Maybe somebody could like them.