Chapter 6: 1001 Ways to Use Sage Chakra
From behind the guise of a Kusa shinobi, Orochimaru watched his former apprentice with something akin to joy in his eyes. When she smashed carelessly through the window, his gaze zeroed in on her face. When she cut the Uzumaki's cheek and licked his blood in an affectionate parody of his own greeting to her so many years ago, his heart skipped a beat. When she told them all that they were going to die, he felt his blood rush to his cheeks.
They were going to have so much fun together!
"Before you go and get your scrolls, there's something else you should know!" Anko shouted at the genin. "As proctor this year, I've been given the option to, metaphorically, spice things up a bit! Therefore, I have bribed, threatened, cajoled and blackmailed several officials into allowing me to dump a metaphorical pound of cajun into the mix."
Two men exited the tent with the scrolls in it, carrying a large wooden chest between them. The set it down on the ground in front of Anko.
"See this?" she crowed, hauling the lid open. "This is a box with five hundred prepared exploding tags inside. Points will be added to your final score for creative usage, while points will be deducted for collateral damage. Remember, the Forest of Death is an old-growth forest, and the trees and animals here are endangered! Also, they might endanger you, so that's two for two in my book."
She gave a winning smile, and Orochimaru wondered if this was what love felt like.
"What are you waiting for? Come and get 'em!"
There was a mad dash for the chest, as almost all of the genin teams rushed for the tenuous prize. A few held back, including his own and Team Yahiko, but most were quickly entangled in a melee on the grassy turf. There was a mad scramble for the tags, with every ounce of ninja cunning and force employed to ward off potential foes. Soon, the ninja were disengaging as two of the combatants were embroiled in a struggle over the last few tags. One of them performed the handseals for a fire jutsu...
One of the Ame genin had the presence of mind to summon a massive wall of earth over the combatants, just before the remaining tags exploded. There was a puff of smoke from within the dome, and then it collapsed, revealing a black scorch mark on the earth.
"Huh," Anko said, scratching the back of her head sheepishly. "I really thought that stunt would pan out a little better... I was hoping for more fatalities. Now, go get your scrolls! I'll see you in a few days, if you survive that long." Rather than teleporting, Anko sauntered lazily into the forest, with the crowd of genin still slightly stunned by the callousness of the two boys' deaths. Four of them slunk away, bereft of a teammate and virtually without hope, while the rest trudged into the tents like a crowd of the condemned.
.:.
"What's the plan?" a Grass kunoichi asked, rubbing her hands together earnestly.
"I say we hang back and—GLK!" the third Kusa ninja said, abruptly dying midsentence. Orochimaru pulled the dagger from his neck, then turned to the witness. She stared at him, wordless, until he cleaved her entire body in two with one stroke of the Kusanagi.
His Scroll of Earth safely tucked into his belt, Orochimaru took off into the forest at a pace that far outstripped that of his 'competition'. He headed directly for the place where he knew Anko Mitarashi to be, laughing deliriously as he bounded through the dangerous forest. He needed to carefully arrange the outcome of this test in order to put who he wanted in the last round, and that meant some tampering. Tampering with the results, with the order of the scrolls handed out (he'd ensured that Team Seven possessed a Scroll of Earth), and tampering with the proctor.
Anko's curse seal was effectively anchored to her chakra network, like a parasite under the skin. It was beyond even his abilities to mend the breach, but a master of fūinjutsu could probably undo his influence entirely. Sadly, she'd not had the benefit of an expert, and so the mark festered beneath a weak barrier. Now, he was going to do what he'd sworn to do all those years ago: create the ultimate vassal. Loyal to a fault, cunning, with the ability to draw on his own power, Anko had been meant to be a lieutenant in an army under his command. That is, until he discovered the curse seal's fatal flaw: its mortality rate.
Hopefully he could remedy that. It seemed that an individual's chance of surviving was tied to their level of chakra: the more chakra the target had, the more likely they were going to survive a sudden influx of sage chakra. Of course, if the introduction of the natural chakra was staggered and time-delayed, the body could slowly grow accustomed to the larger pool of chakra. He hoped.
Orochimaru located Anko twenty minutes later, her curse seal leaking a distinct amount of his own chakra that he could trace. He dropped into the clearing just behind her, forcing his much-maligned body to start entering a partial sage mode.
"Proctor?" he asked softly, allowing his host's original voice to overshadow his own.
"Kid?" the purple-haired kunoichi muttered incredulously. "But the exam started half an hour ago! How the hell'd you get here so fast? And where's your team?"
"They're... they're dead," 'Shiore' said, his lower lip quivering. "A pale man with a longsword killed them. I- I think it was poisoned!"
Anko stared at him. 'Orochimaru is here?' she thought to herself, disbelievingly. "Was he tall? Did he have long, black hair? Did you see his earrings?"
"They were shaped like tomoe," the ersatz Kusa genin confirmed. "Why? Is that a bad thing?"
"How the hell did you escape?!" Anko demanded, reaching into her pocket to take out a radio. In response, he threw a senbon into her hand, striking a nerve and temporarily stiffening the muscle to the point of uselessness.
"I didn't, missus," he said, grinning widely. "Orochimaru got me too!"
In an instant, Anko's face went carefully blank, just as Orochimaru's reverted to that of the sannin.
"My dear student, today is a glorious day!" Orochimaru declared. "Today is the day that you become what you were meant to be!"
"I am a shinobi of Konoha," Anko declared quietly. "Not even you could change that."
"You are right, but that will change. You see, your disuse of the curse seal has cut out my control. Without that temptation, you could lie to yourself. Say you were a good little kunoichi, even when they spat on you and called you a traitor's whore. They were half right: you are a whore."
"What are you here for?" Anko breathed.
"That's not your concern, dear Anko," Orochimaru said carelessly. "Instead, you should worry more about whether you can survive the next couple of hours. I assure you, they will not be pleasant, but in the end you'll thank me. Of that, you can be sure."
She forced her hands to cooperate, making the beginnings of a seal that would cause a chain reaction of traps to go off. Unfortunately, Orochimaru was much faster than her, and before she could blink he was biting into her neck.
'Not again!' she despaired, before a flare of intolerable pain shot through her curse mark.
.:.
In varying states of anguish and depression, Team Eight walked home. Kiba stared straight ahead dully, but his faithful companion was not so forgiving. Akamaru barked and nipped at Hinata's heels, growling and circling her in an attempt to make her feel uncomfortable and leave. Shino moved at a sloth's pace, his footsteps slowing until he came to a dead stop in the middle of the street.
"Don't make a scene," Kiba hissed, grabbing the Aburame by the collar and pulling him forward. Shino remained where he was, using his deceptive weight and taijutsu prowess to shrug off Kiba's force.
"I am perturbed," he said quietly. "This is because I saw a... a friend in the examination room. I have not seen him in nearly six years. He vanished without a trace a month after we enrolled in the Academy. You can see why this might upset me."
Hinata stopped too. "Who was it?" she asked softly.
"I thought..." Shino started. He swallowed, and Kiba and Hinata knew that this was serious. "I thought I saw Torune."
"Who's that?" Kiba asked, letting go of Shino's jacket.
"He was an Aburame," Shino said mechanically. "He had a different species of insect cultivated in him. One he inherited from his father. They were dangerous and uncontrollable, and so Torune wore much heavier clothing than our brethren. We lived together for some time, and I came to regard him as a brother. Then, one day, he disappeared. I have kept a small culture of his insects alive, but that is all I have of him."
Hinata knew that all Aburame looked alike, in the carbon-copy fashion that all clans had, and that this Torune probably wore dark glasses and heavy clothes just like his kin. She thought she might have seen someone with that description taking the test, but if so she apparently hadn't found him interesting enough. Whatever method he'd used to cheat, it was generic enough that it couldn't identify him as Shino's relative.
"I'm sorry, but I don't remember seeing someone like that," she apologized. "He might have been there, but I didn't have the time to look at all of the other genin."
"Nah, just Naruto," Kiba guffawed. "Seriously, I saw you staring at him near the end. Right before he stood up, you were gonna offer him your answers, weren't you? Man, I wish I could'a thought of that strategy."
Hinata blushed heavily. Sometimes, she didn't give Kiba enough credit. Just because he was a loudmouth and incredibly aggravating didn't mean he wasn't perceptive. He was a ninja, after all.
"If I may ask, why did you opt out of answering the tenth question?" Shino asked abruptly. "The speed at which the second exam began as we left was such that it is highly unlikely the proctor was able to mark all of the tests. This leads me to believe that our answers to the questions were less relevant than how we got them; a full mark would have been to fill out the entire page. Had we stayed, we would have almost certainly advanced."
"I-I was worried a-about you and Kiba," Hinata mumbled embarrassedly. "If we were stuck as genin forever, w-we wouldn't be able to become clan heads. Hanabi a-and Hana would replace us, and you w-wouldn't have anyone. I c-couldn't take that r-risk. I'm sorry."
Kiba sighed. "Normally, I'd be kinda pissed at you, but for now I'm just gonna go home. Tell sensei I'll be coming tomorrow." He and Akamaru turned and walked away, one slouching and the other bouncing with unrefined energy.
Shino and Hinata walked some more, until they reached the point where they parted ways. Shino stared at Hinata for a while, then turned and walked up the street. Hinata watched him leave her sadly, then went her own way.
Five minutes later, she was blindsided by a tremendous strike to the back of the head. The blunt weapon instantly rendered her unconscious, though a pair of hands quickly grasped her under her arms to keep her from hitting the ground. This time, as the faceless assailant dragged her away, Hiashi wasn't there to save her.
.:.
Gaara watched impassively as Temari released the messenger bird into the treeline. Elsewhere in the forest, an explosive tag went off, followed by two or three more. It seemed that their strength varied, though someone versed in the fūinjutsu used in their creation could tell which was which. Kankurō was eagerly arming the Crow with tags, rigging the entire puppet with detachable explosives.
"We have orders to take out a particular team," she said, her voice sounding ragged and worn. "A group of Konoha shinobi."
Gaara raised one thin eyebrow. "No survivors?"
"It isn't specified, but since deaths are expected in this tournament, I say they probably expect it from us."
Temari sat down heavily, taking out her fan and leaning on it. This whole plan was bullshit, in her opinion. There was no way that two hundred shinobi could topple a hidden village, especially one as stable and powerful as Konoha. Her father was an idiot of the highest grade for taking he word of a madman, and Baki was just as bad. The Sand Siblings were divided on the issue, though Gaara's opinion always followed the trend of bloodshed.
"Where are they?" Kankurō asked blearily, referring to the Konoha team they were supposed to incapacitate.
"Here," said Gaara. Instantly, his older siblings looked up, just as their targets jumped out of the bushes: a purple boy, a scarecrow with blades for limbs, and a black-and-white tiger that seemed to be made of ink and shadow. Readying his sand, Gaara screamed a war cry, and the battle began.