Chapter 3: Tobirama Senju's Last Secret
After that final meeting with the Kazekage, Orochimaru left the village immediately. By now, Kabuto would be travelling to Oto with the 'delivery', giving him only a week to finish his business and get back to the main village of Sound. Well, more if Kabuto and Isaribi decided to stop for the Festival of Scarlet. It was easy to get in during those days, as the price of hotel rooms dropped dramatically, but getting out was another matter...
He turned to the east, mentally preparing himself for the journey across River Country and north to Konoha's borders. This was probably the most uncomfortable part of being immortal, though the benefits arguably outweighed the risks. With a strange hand seal that no observing shinobi would be able to identify, Orochimaru's entire body broke apart into white snakes. A plethora of vipers, pythons, anacondas, and cobras raced across the desert sand, each slithing at a pace they could keep comfortably for the next few days. With a few hisses, the last of them burrowed under the dunes and vanished, leaving no trace of the sannin.
A mile away, Kisame Hoshigaki watched the affair through the lenses of a pair of binoculars. He waited until Orochimaru was gone, the pulled out a small two-way radio.
"He's gone," he muttered.
The chatter cleared as the man with the other radio opened his side of the secure channel.
"Confirm," Itachi ordered.
Sighing, Kisame stood up and pulled his wide-brimmed hat lower over his face. The desert was no place for a sharkman to be, yet here he was. Doing Itachi's dirty work, as usual. Hell, if the kid had been his partner just a few months before joining Akatsuki, the Uchiha incident would probably be Kisame's fault too. Figures.
With a burst of shinobi speed, Kisame arrived at the scene in less than two minutes. He looked carefully for traces of sage chakra, a clear sign that not all of the snakes had left. When that failed, he dug fruitlessly in the sand for a few minutes, trying to unearth possible stragglers.
"Nuthin'," he said into the radio, standing up and brushing the dust off of his hands. "We good to go?"
"Very well," Itachi said. "Rendezvous in Suna Training Ground Twelve."
"The one with the tornado and the spiky things?"
Itachi made a noise that sounded vaguely like "Hn," and conveyed just the right amounts of annoyance and exasperation. "Yes. Over."
"Over," Kisame grumbled turning back to the oasis of Suna. As he left, muttering about stupid Uchiha and stupid accurate tornadoes, he failed to see a lone albino adder poke its head out from beneath the sand. With one precise flick of its tail, it disappeared underneath Kisame's Akatsuki cloak, leaving no trace of Orochimaru behind.
.:.
Konoha patrols were surprisingly easy to evade. Orochimaru was an expert in taking on new faces, but this was just too simple. The rules for dealing with potential intruders were complex and varied, because no chūnin guard could possibly be expected to memorize every face in the village. Not having a Leaf forehead protector meant little, as the person in question might have simply forgotten their. Having one, conversely, was also a bad indicator of alignment. However, in dealing with such lax security, disguising oneself as an adult genin was usually the best way to go.
"Hello, sir," said one of the guards. Orochimaru looked over his shoulder at the man, mentally reassuring himself that his transformation was complete. It wouldn't do to kill a Konoha ninja, which wouldn't go over nearly as well as it had in Suna.
"Yes?" the sannin said irritably.
"The records here don't say your name. Did you forget to sign the register?"
The words 'Are you an imposter?' were unsaid, but no less audible.
"It seems I must have," he replied vaguely. "May I do that now?"
He took the offered clipboard and pen, looking down the list for the next open space. He considered his disguise: purple hair, dark skin and dull green eyes. He wore a standard shinobi outfit, albeit one missing the trappings of a chūnin, like the flak jacket and pockets for scrolls. The resemblance was only minor, but he supposed it would stand up to scrutiny.
With a flourish, the disguised Orochimaru signed his name as Kizashi Haruno.
"Thanks, Mister Haruno," the chūnin said. "Your time is up in about five hours, so keep that in mind." He turned to leave, then stopped. "Say, did you know that this was Tobirama Senju's personal training ground?"
Orochimaru grit his teeth and forced himself to pretend to be interested. "No, actually."
The chūnin grinned, showing a gap where one of his front teeth should have been. "It's true! The Second Hokage used a suiton jutsu to make this lake, and he used the water in it to practice his water manipulation. Sarutobi says this was his most favourite place in the world. Pretty cool, huh?"
"Yes. Cool."
The guard frowned at Orochimaru's apparent lack of interest and walked away, clearly bored with 'Kizashi' and his attitude. Now that he was alone, Orochimaru stepped out over the lake with practiced ease, dropping his transformation.
"If I were Tobirama Senju, where would I put all of my little treasures?" he wondered out loud. "Let me see, I have no sense of humour, I'm a brilliant ninjutsu designer, a consummate politician, and I hate the Uchiha clan. However, I am a Senju, which means that wherever I put my legacy, it's ultimately sentimental. Sentimental, but out of the way. Hence, this silly little pool. Training Ground... Hmm, somewhere in the fifties, I think."
Orochimaru looked down at the glassy surface of the pond, undisturbed by his footsteps. "There aren't any little hiding places down there, it would be too easy to empty the lake," he mused. "Not much else here, except for that waterfall a little while upriver. Ah, I remember Tsunade pushing Jiraiya off that cliff when sensei wasn't looking... then I pushed her, of course and Jiraiya tried to grope her, so she tried to crack his skull open, and that was when sensei summoned Enma..."
He trailed off, a wicked grin on his face. "You were a master of jikukan ninjutsu, weren't you?" he asked the phantom Hokage. "Eh, I should have expected overkill from you, Lord Tobirama."
He formed the ram seal, extending his senses outward with the exercise he learned in Ryūchi Cave. Sure enough, what little senjutsu skill he had informed him that there was a large concentration of natural chakra in the centre of the lake, just below the surface. Delighted, Orochimaru slammed both palms against the surface of the lake.
"Kuchiyose no jutsu," he said, improvising the technique that dragged things between planes by haphazardly affixing a dragon seal to the end and latching the technique onto the anomaly. The node of chakra pulsed in time with his summons, and as the dimensional barriers broke a wooden chest bound with iron bobbed up to the surface of the lake. Orochimaru happily seized the chest and dragged it to the shore.
"Are you what I think you are?" he asked the inanimate object, negligently tearing off the lock that was designed to keep high-level shinobi out. Inside were two things: a stack of paper, presumably covered in the ideas and creations of the Second. The other was what appeared to be the handle of a sword missing its blade. It was a very pretty handle, almost more like a torch than anything. A voice in the back of Orochimaru's mind said 'Vajra'.
"Hmm," said the sannin. He promptly threw the handle back into the lake.
'I knew he was sentimental, but keeping the handle of a broken sword?'
Orochimaru produced a length of ninja wire from a pocket and bound the chest up. He looked at the chest with mild disdain, then unhinged his jaw and swallowed it whole. Three nightmare-inducing minutes later, the cache had disappeared inside his belly, and Orochimaru looked unusually satisfied.
"Could have used some salt," he commented to himself, before dissolving into hundreds of tiny white snakes.
.:.
The Vilage of Hot Springs was not, in fact, rioting in celebration of the dark god Jashin. Isaribi heaved a sigh of relief, before Kabuto happily informed her that cabals usually operated at night, abducting people from their beds and spiriting them away to be disemboweled and left to die in mass graves, where dying children were crushed beneath the weight of the bodies piled on top of them.
Isaribi figured that the population of Yu wasn't actually high enough to support such bloody festivities. Kabuto enjoyed needling her, and there was nothing to suggest that today was any different. Nevertheless, she resolved to sleep with one eye open and a knife under her pillow.
The two of them stopped at a hotel, charmingly named 'The Bleeding Heart', complete with a signboard bearing a picture of a human heart with a sickle through it. The owner was a weedy little man who wore glasses and spoke in a high-pitched whine.
"Take the package up to our room and keep it safe," he said, as soon as they got their room keys. "I have a few errands to run here, and I trust I can leave you alone for a few hours, neh?"
"Of course, Yakushi," Isaribi said, "but even if you couldn't, what would you do? Seal me away? Chain me to the bed?"
"Actually, I would force-activate your transformation," Kabuto said flatly. "I'm sure they don't take kindly to demons in Yu. It might be difficult to escape with all those ninja and Jashin priests on your tail."
Isaribi sat back on the bed, sulking, and Kabuto left in high spirits. He slapped a seal filled with pressurized knockout gas on the other side of the door just in case, then left the hotel.
Yugakure was a village of low wooden buildings and rocky outcrops. It had been built into the terrain, and the roads swerved around natural obstacles like trees and hills. It was also a tourist destination, which might have been counter to its status as a hidden village, but also gave it one of the most powerful economies in the world. Visitors from as far away as the Land of Earth came for the relaxing atmosphere and relatively rare insight into the life of a shinobi.
Of course, it was toned down for the civilians, but even the less flashy jutsu were enough to stun the crowd. Their best showmen were genin and chūnin trained extensively in taijutsu, running in mock tournaments similar to the chūnin exams. If you wanted to see ninja fight without risking your life, this was the best option.
As Kabuto neared the centre of the village, it became more and more apparent that the festival hadn't started yet. Yu was built over a massive geothermal vent, and dozens of hotsprings spewed steam over the preparations being made. Striding through the fog, the medic made his way towards the nerve centre of Yugakure's operations, ignoring the gallows and guillotines being erected on street corners. In truth, almost all of the people executed here were criminals, men of ill-gotten power whose deaths were showcased in the goriest three days on the continent. Unfortunately, the Festival wasn't handled in a particularly professional manner, and there were always rumours of civilians disappearing in the middle of the night in the month leading up to the festival.
Shrouded in fog, Kabuto's destination was the office of the Head Jōnin. It was a flat rectangle of a building, built of ceramic and concrete. Only one door lead in and out, though unofficially there were many secret exits and divisions. Although it occupied an entire city block, the office was like an iceberg: it hid 90% of its mass underground. Kabuto knew that beneath his feet, the thrumming activity of hundreds of ninja ran like the heartbeat of a giant.
He brushed his way past the security check with a genjutsu, passed the carriage-like devices meant to reach the lower levels (he believed they were called 'elevators') and took the stairs at the back of the building. The inside was small, though not claustrophobically so, and consisted of a few levels. This was where Hot Spring ninja conducted espionage, stored files, interrogated prisoners, and did everything under the sun to keep their country safe.
Kabuto stopped first on the third floor down, which was the medical facility. He left the stairs, quickly moving through the organized chaos of doctors, nurses, medics and patients being treated for injuries in the field. In a secluded corner was an office, the door to which proclaimed:
Executive Director
Dr. Kabuto Yakushi, M.D.
.:.
"Is everyone ready?"
"We're in place. Give the signal before you start."
"Actually, we're not. Dosu keeps picking at his bandages and looking up at the clouds."
"Shut up, Kin!"
"He's probably thinking about Tayuuuuuuya!"
"Kin, stop poking Dosu. Dosu, get your ass in gear, yeah."
"I'm the team leader, so you can just shut up now."
"Whatever. Dosu, do it."
Dosu Kinuta, scrubbing all thoughts of a partially disrobed Tayuya from his mind, aimed the Melody Arm at the caravan passing through the gully below. In the Land of Earth, travelling at the bottom of a ravine was much easier and safer than crossing the ridges, but made ambushes that much easier. To combat this, they typically brought along almost twice as many mercenaries and ninja. Not that it made any difference to the Oto shinobi.
The sound waves from Dosu's arm disrupted the equilibrium of merchanta and warriors alike. On the other ridge, Zaku Abumi took careful shots with the weapons in his palms, each pulse of sound pulverizing a single target. A few of the ninja escaped, but most had their grey matter scrambled by the ambush.
"How many got out?" asked Kin Tsuchi, keeping careful watch for retaliatory attacks.
"Two," Dosu said into the radio. "The big one and the target. They're probably already on the way—!"
"Suiton: Mizurappa!" Kurotsuchi bellowed, blowing a massive stream of water from her mouth. Caught off guard, Dosu grunted in surprise as the blast knocked him off his feet and into the crevasse. He managed to take hold on the wall with his chakra, but the grip was precarious. Kin swerved and retaliated, throwing a handful of senbon into her attacker's rib cage. Kurotsuchi landed in a crouch, panting.
"Who are you?" the Iwa kunoichi hissed, clutching at her injured side.
"Our names aren't important," Kin said. "Only our mission. Surrender, and we will return you to Ōnoki unharmed."
"Mmm... No," Kurotsuchi said. "I think I'll kill you and bring your head to my grandfather. Sekkaigyō no jutsu!"
Kin bent backwards, dodging the hurled chunk of quicklime aimed for her face. The attack was a little off, which she attributed to Kurotsuchi's side wounds. Dosu managed to pull himself over the edge of the ravine with only his left hand, and with his right he fired an inaudible soundwave at Kurotsuchi. Stunned, the Tsuchikage's granddaughter was unable to dodge Kin's return volley of senbon. These ones were much more accurate, striking vital points across her body. She slumped into unconsciousness.
Dosu pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the ache in his left forearm. He reached for his earpiece, before realizing that it had fallen out in his fall.
"Hey," he said to Kin, "ask Zaku where the other guy went."
"You do it," Kin groused. She was crouching over Kurotsuchi's body with enough rope to hogtie and gag her, to stop her from using any Yōton techniques.
"I'M GOOD!" Zaku shouted over the gap, his figure small against the horizon.
"WHERE'S THE OTHER ONE?" Dosu shouted back.
"I DUNNO, HE'S PRETTY STEALTHY, YEAH!"
"Stop it, you're going to give our position away!" Kin complained. She took out a stasis scroll and sealed Kurotsuchi's body in it. With a warm glow, the kunoichi vanished.
"Relax, there's no one– WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" Dosu screamed fearfully.
Zaku was aiming his right hand at them, a look of intense concentration on his face. There was a muffled bang, followed by a much louder splat. A large man, who had apparently been sneaking up behind them for a surprise attack, no longer had a left arm. Akatsuchi stared at the massive wound in shock, giving Dosu the opportunity to grab the man's other shoulder and throw him off the precipice.
He didn't scream until the very end, and when he did it was small and weak.
"Huh," Kin said. "For such a fatass, he was pretty quiet."
"Let's just bring the girl back to Oto," Dosu muttered, embarrassed enough by being caught off guard and scared by Zaku's scarily accurate attack. "We have a schedule to meet, after all."
Suiton: Mizurappa— Water Release: Water Trumpet
Yōton: Sekkaigyō no jutsu— Lava Release: Quicklime Congealing technique.
Does anyone want me to put translations for techniques at the bottom? I'm sure you all know what 'Kage Bunshin' means, but what about some of the more obscure ones?