Jiraiya peered down the shaft. It dissolved into pitch-black about ten metres down, giving it the illusion of being bottomless. It had taken him more than a day to track Orochimaru to this abandoned inn at the outskirts of Konoha. There was no question that Orochimaru was down there, or had been there in the past few hours. The fresh scale in his hand left not a doubt in his mind about it.
Jiraiya considered whether to fetch Tsunade and tell her that he had found Orochimaru, but decided against it. This was personal between him and snake-boy. Tsunade would make it about Nawaki, and it would get out of hand like it always did, when it was about Nawaki. Not such a good thing in an enclosed space.
The first shadow clone down the shaft was shredded by a dense network of razor wire. The second met its end with corrosive acid in its face. Jiraiya flinched as the shadow clone dispelled and its experience flooded back through his mind. The third clone narrowly avoided the fangs of a dozen poisonous snakes launched from a hidden niche only to get blown up by removing the seal on an explosive tag.
When the fourth clone dispelled itself, Jiraiya knew that it had gotten past all the defenses into this secret lair of Orochimaru's. He carefully navigated himself past the spent and dismantled traps into what seemed to be the main chamber of the lair. It was pitch dark but there was a pervasive putrefaction underpinning the usual underground smell of wet soil. Clutching his hands together in a tiger seal, he performed a toad eye jutsu.
His breath stopped in his throat as the surroundings came into focus. It was a chamber perhaps as large as Sarutobi-sensei's office. That was where all resemblance ended, however. It seemed to be a combination of torture dungeon and autopsy theatre. Mangled bodies hung on wall-mounted hooks like meat at a butcher. Shinobi headbands hung off most of them, some with the symbols of foreign villages, but others, he noted with mounting horror, with the stylised leaf of Konoha. Jiraiya felt his hair bristle when he realized that some of the bodies were moving faintly and moaning.
"See anything you like, idiot?"
Jiraiya pivoted around, kunai in hand. Orochimaru's gaunt frame was relaxed, a familiar sneer on his face. Even in the pitch darkness, he seemed unnaturally pale.
"What have you done?"
Orochimaru spread his hands. "All this? It's necessary. Success is near at hand."
"What?" Jiraiya growled.
"Immortality, Jiraiya!" Orochimaru's voice, high with glee, reverberated off the damp walls of the chamber. "The ability to leap from body to body as easily as shedding clothes. The true God of Shinobi is one that conquers death!"
"And Suki, she deserved to die, so that you may live past your time?"
For a moment, the name did not seem to register on Orochimaru. Then he shook his head. "You're not such a moron after all," he said, smirking. "But no, I didn't kill her for this."
The barefaced admission threw Jiraiya off. He hadn't expected his teammate to come right out and admit his guilt. There were a million things he wanted to shout at Orochimaru, but instead only one word passed his lips.
"Why?"
"Just to see if I could," Orochimaru said with cool detachment.
With a wordless cry of fury Jiraiya launched himself at his teammate. Orochimaru made no attempt to dodge, and Jiraiya's fist connected with the pasty flesh of his face. As Jiraiya drew back his fist for another punch, Orochimaru began to shake with unrestrained mirth, a deep-throated, maniacal cackle bursting from his mouth. His elongated incisors and lolling head made him look more like a snake than Jiraiya could ever remember.
"You idiot. Always charging in without a plan." Before Jiraiya's eyes, Orochimaru lost definition and dissolved into a mass of small snakes, which slithered away in every direction. Jiraiya lunged madly at them, but caught only one in his hand.
"Fuck." Jiraiya fell to his knees with a soft slosh. "FUCK!" He punched the wet ground impotently, his fist clenched so hard that he felt his nails draw blood.
A faint rumbling shook him out of his rage. As he scanned the room for threats, the rumbling became progressively louder. The chamber seemed to contract fractionally, and then the ceiling and walls were falling apart everywhere.
Shit. Jiraiya made a mad dash for the entrance of the chamber, trying not to think about the poor souls on the walls behind him. With any luck the collapse would kill them and put them out of their misery. He pulled himself out of the shaft just as it closed up behind him.
Jiraiya scowled at where the shaft used to be. It was, no doubt, some sort of earth jutsu of Orochimaru. The ground had sunk a few inches, but otherwise there was no trace of the chamber ever having existed.
"Sensei-"
Sarutobi-sensei averted his gaze. "Let it go, Jiraiya-san," he said softly.
Jiraiya was taken aback. Sarutobi-sensei was not usually one for honorifics. Jiraiya could only recall twice in all these years when Sarutobi-sensei had spoken to him in that tone, or called him 'Jiraiya-san'. The first time had been accompanied by the most oppressive killing intent he had ever experienced, after Jiraiya's insubordination had cost the life of a fellow genin. He loved the old man like his father, but to this day he felt a reflexive cringe whenever he thought of it. The second time, years later, had been different. Jiraiya had caught his sensei on the awning of one of Konoha's many bathhouses spying on the women bathing underneath, and he had begged Jiraiya not to tell his wife the Lady Biwako.
Jiraiya could see from Sensei's sad smile that this was one of the latter situations. "You knew?"
"I… suspected," Sarutobi-sensei said, wincing.
Jiraiya tossed crushed snake he had been clutching in one hand at Sarutobi-sensei. It slid across the Hokage's table, leaving a bright trail of blood across the desktop.
For a long moment, Sarutobi-sensei did not speak. "We are at war, Jiraiya-san," he said finally. "We need people like Orochimaru, who will terrify our enemies and do things we'd rather not do."
"Some of the victims I saw in his chamber were Konoha-nin. For Konoha's sake, this needs to stop."
"For Konoha, or for Suki?"
Jiraiya slammed the desk hard. "Does it fucking matter?"
"No." Sarutobi-sensei met his gaze, and Jiraiya could see the sorrow in his eyes. "He is like me, you know. The last scion of our clans, and exceptional prodigies in our time. I thought I saw in him a younger me. Perhaps that's why I let it go this far."
His sensei seemed to have something else to say, so Jiraiya waited for him to say it.
"I would ask you to keep this quiet for the moment," Jiraiya saw how much it hurt his sensei to say what he was going to say next. "I will deal with him personally."
"Are you asking, or ordering?" As our sensei, or as Hokage?
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
Sarutobi-sensei nodded, understanding. "Please."