大蛇丸

"What do you make of this?"

"Hmm." Orochimaru hummed in his soft, raspy voice. "It appears, sensei, that we have a corpse trapped inside an unbreakable storage seal."

"Why?" Hiruzen asked pointedly, the Hokage's hat that the Fourth had worn only the day before now sitting on his head. Orochimaru felt a pang of resentment at the way the old man was demanding information from him, demanding his help as if he owed it. He owed the old man nothing. Even with the Fourth dead, the old man had chosen to take on the Hokage's position instead of passing it on to his student who had coveted it for years. The monkey didn't even want to be Hokage. 'Unfit to lead.' His mentor had said of him behind his back two years before, striking down the nomination that he would have had otherwise.

Orochimaru smiled pleasantly. "I'm afraid, sensei, that I do not have sufficient information in my hands to be able to come to any reasonable conclusion. Tell me more about this Dead Demon."

"I suppose.." The old man leaned forward and placed his elbows on his desk. "The Dead Demon is a powerful spirit contracted by the Uzumaki."

"A contract? A summoning contract?"

"Precisely."

"Uzumaki you say?" Orochimaru tilted his head thoughtfully. "I assume the contract was brought over by one of the Uzumaki immigrants. Uzumaki Kushina herself, perhaps?"

"Indeed."

"I would further assume she had shared this contract with a number of close relations. Sensei. You are one of those few, are you not?"

"I am." The old man sighed. "Sharp as a blade, you are, sharper than I will ever be. I'm glad. You have heard how Minato met his end?"

"Only vague details. Ah. I see." Orochimaru's eyes lit up as he made the connection. "The late Lord Fourth gave his life to seal the Nine-tailed Demon into the body of an infant child. The Dead Demon! The cost of invoking it was death."

"Not exactly."

Orochimaru narrowed his eyes. "Am I wrong?"

"No, you are correct." The old man took the scroll up into his pock-marked left hand. "However, death would be merely a side-effect. The immortal soul. That is the cost for summoning the Dead Demon."

"The soul?" Orochimaru's interest in the Dead Demon contract wilted. It would be of no use to him. The lives of the bodies he would be possessing were trivial, to be tossed away at whim. His soul, however, was not so expendable. "Tell me, sensei. What is it you have summoned me for? I am a busy man."

"Orochimaru." The old man sighed condescendingly, and Orochimaru loathed him all the more. "Patience has never been one of your strongest suits."

"Is that so?" Orochimaru mused. "On the contrary, sensei, I can be very patient."

"When you are willing, yes." Hiruzen frowned, knowing that he was losing the interest of his former student. "I want you to help me find the Dead Demon's mask. Kushina's last words to me alluded to such an object. I would pursue the task myself, but I will be very busy for the next several months. The village is in a precarious situation. The damage we've suffered has not been so fatal since the defection of Uchiha Madara. I have no time to indulge in personal matters. Consider this a direct mission assignment from your Kage."

"And why assign this task to me?" Orochimaru suggested resentfully. "Why not Jiraiya?"

"Orochimaru." Hiruzen chided sternly. "No matter how much you have grown and how much you have separated yourself from us, you are still the Genin I had taught, and you are still one of the most intelligent human beings that I know of. I chose you because I believe you to be best suited to the task. I chose you because I trust you. Think of it as you would one of your many research projects." The old man placed the scroll back onto his desk and picked up his pipe. "Please, I want to give you the opportunity to show me that I can rely on you. Can I rely on you, Orochimaru?"

Orochimaru's sarcastic smile that he had worn since he'd arrived had all but vanished as he glared at his old mentor. ""I will see what I can do. Leave it to me."

With that, the legendary Snake Sannin stalked off to whatever wiles he had been engaged in before he had been called to the Hokage's office.

What a waste of time.

A hundred days later, the culprit to the mysterious disappearances that had been reported throughout the village was discovered. The kidnapper, the one who had plagued the Fire Country for over a decade, had been none other than Orochimaru. He had been tracked and discovered by a squad lead by the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen himself.

And so it was not as a hero of the Leaf but as a fugitive that he'd found the Dead Demon's mask. And he hadn't done it to help fulfill his old mentor's request either. No. He'd taken the mask for himself, researched its whereabouts and its usage, out of sheer spite. It was clear to him now what Uzumaki Kushina had intended that night. The key words had been soul, body and Dead Demon's mask. With those last few words, the last Uzumaki seal master had concisely laid out enough information for even a senile and demented old man to make the correct connections.

As long as he had the mask, Orochimaru gloated to himself, the old man would never find it. It was too bad he couldn't have taken the scroll containing Namikaze Minato's body before he'd left the village. To conduct an invasion in the body that the old man had trusted him to bring back to life would have been the ultimate insult, the ultimate form of entertainment.

Unfortunately, not everything tended to go his way. Soon after Orochimaru had defected, the old monkey, once more made leader of the Hidden Leaf village, had hidden Kushina's storage scroll containing her husband's body in some secret location. Try as he did the few times he'd returned to the village under guise, he had not been able to find it.

A pity.

He stored the mask away, taking what little victory he could, and did not dwell much on it for the next twelve years. He had no practical use for it after all. It was only on the day of the Chuunin Exam invasion twelve years later, after having had his arms severed by the very same Dead Demon that he had scorned, a Demon invoked by the very same old man he'd so hated, had he thought on the mask in his possession.

Sarutobi Hiruzen had sacrificed himself to damage Orochimaru's soul, and as the Sannin cradled his now useless arms in his lap from the darkness of one of his many hidden facilities, he found himself wishing he had killed the old man sooner and in a more efficient manner. His desire to gloat and to show off what he had achieved to his former mentor had cost him dearly.

The new body that he had taken over had not been able to recover him the usage of his arms. The damage he had taken had not been physical but spiritual, and its potency stoked his old anger. Even in death, the senile fool continued to hinder him.

But he still had the Dead Demon's mask. He would merely have to put it on, invoke the Demon, and cut open his own belly. Then, all the souls that were contained within the Dead Demon's stomach would be released. The body he was wearing at that point would die, and he would assume a new one. Orochimaru thought on the prospect and cackled. He would take back his arms, and the old fool will have sacrificed his life for absolutely nothing. The sudden laughter and the spasm of movement associated with it caused a sharp pain to shoot up the snake-man's deadened arms, and Orochimaru's laughter melted into a grimace.

The release of both his mentor's soul and that of the Fourth would be an unfortunate byproduct of the restoration of his most precious limbs; a Shinobi was only a mere shadow of what he could be without his hands with which to weave seals. Oh he would have his hands back, there was no doubt. On the other hand, there was no guarantee that the soul of Namikaze Minato would return to its body, preserved or not. As for Sarutobi Hiruzen, the old man was undoubtedly dead. His body had long decayed past the point of resuscitation.

Despite the pain in his useless arms and the cold sweat that it caused him, Orochimaru began to exult. He would regain use of his arms and he would smash the village before it could recover from his recent attack. He couldn't help but raise his head to the ceiling and laugh at the thought. "I win!" He shouted to a ghost which could not hear or see him, his voice echoing loudly inside the dark cavern of his underground lab. "You're dead, old man, and the village you so treasured will fall! I win!"

Without wasting anytime, Orochimaru retrieved the Mask of the Dead Demon. Thus, due to a combination of chance and the machinations of his deceased wife, Namikaze Minato would be given another lease to life twelve years after he'd thrown it away, a sacrifice he willingly made both for his village and for himself. He would crawl out from a small, hidden opening located behind a metal statue, moving in a state of delirium and hope. In the darkness of predawn, an hour before the light of the Sun would begin to cast away the blanket of night that lay covered over the surrounding temple, a dead man came to life.