Chapter 34
Yondaime belatedly realized that Shimeru, standing a safe distance away, had been silent for a long time. Probably thinking about Chounin. He tried to think if there was anything he could give Shimeru to do, to snap the man out of his daze.
There was.
He turned to his guard, putting on his full command persona. "Go back to Suna. Report what you've seen here. You're our only credible witness, Shimeru. You have to survive this."
"Hai!" Shimeru took off running.
Yondaime took a deep breath and nodded. That was one less person to worry about. And now they would be covered when they came back and reported that the Sound alliance was a trap.
That left…
Yondaime looked down at Kabuto. "Why are you so calm?" He exerted a little pressure for motivation, squeezing down on Kabuto with his gold dust.
"Because you're doing it wrong," Kabuto wheezed.
Yondaime let up. "Wrong?"
"You can cut down Orochimaru if you want, but if won't make any difference," Kabuto said.
"Why?" Yondaime kept his questions short and clipped. This was not a conversation. It was an interrogation.
"Because he has become his True Essence," Kabuto said. Yondaime didn't have to squeeze. Kabuto continued on his own. "A jutsu that is not forbidden, but is extremely ancient. The same jutsu that created the tailed beasts."
"Are you saying Orochimaru is a tailed beast?" Yondaime demanded.
Kabuto laughed. "No." His amusement wavered in the face of Yondaime's expression. "I am saying, however, that he can fold himself inside of other people like one."
Yondaime's eyes widened.
"There were dark days in the ancient past," Kabuto said. "A time when bijuu chose their hosts, and not the other way around. When tailed beasts were in control. Orochimaru took lessons from their uprising. If he is cut down in human form, he will merely be reduced to spirit form, capable of possessing whomever he chooses." Kabuto's teeth flashed in a humorless smile. "It may be Jiraiya. It may be Baki. It may be you, or I…"
"Why are you telling me this?" Yondaime asked.
"Because Orochimaru is dangerous," Kabuto said in a low voice. "And perhaps I am frightened." He shifted, turning his head. "Perhaps everything is not as it seems…Sabaku no Kyou."
Yondaime flinched. "How did you learn that name?"
"The same way I got this post," Kabuto said. "As part of ROOT, Konoha's underground ANBU forces."
Yondaime went numb with shock. "Underground ANBU?" he whispered.
Kabuto nodded. "ANBU forces so secret that no one is allowed to know we exist. The organization went truly underground when Sarutobi Hiruzen, the third Hokage, officially disbanded ROOT, in order to give his friend Shimura Danzo cover and deniability." The same cheerful, soulless smile surfaced. "Two important things for a secret organization."
"Then why haven't you…" Yondaime began, horrified.
Kabuto's smile widened. "Stopped him? I can't. I'm inferior. My job is to occupy an observation post and cooperate with whatever Orochimaru wants." He snorted. "Jiraiya-sama probably doesn't realize that I left a trail of clues for him on purpose, so that he would eventually catch up to this point. I'm afraid, though, that I didn't leave enough clues about Orochimaru's plan and capabilities. I was hampered somewhat by the –" He choked down a laugh. " –loyal and fanatical Kimimaro."
He glanced over at the lifeless bones sticking up from under the sand. "Nice job, by the way. Truly superior. You might stand a chance of defeating Orochimaru if you're at full strength."
"Right now?" Yondaime prompted, looking over at the distant battlefield. Small figures still fighting.
Kabuto shook his head. "Jiraiya-sama doesn't stand a chance. He's just going to release Orochimaru's spirit into the world. Then we'll have a new problem to deal with."
"What if he knew?" Yondaime asked. "If he knew what was going to happen, could he do something about it?" His mind raced with possibilities. Sealing ceremonies. We learned how to control the bijuu, after all.
Kabuto's expression froze. He slowly turned his gaze towards the distant battlefield. "He might be clever enough to adjust…"
"What will you do if I leave to join the battlefield?" Yondaime demanded.
"Escape," Kabuto said. "That's my job."
"But you won't attack?" Yondaime pressed.
"Not at this moment," Kabuto said. "I'll think up a likely excuse if I am later confronted by Orochimaru."
Yondaime retracted his gold sand. It peeled away from Kabuto's body in drifts.
Kabuto got to his feet, smirking. "Right now, you have bigger things to worry about than me, ne?"
Yondaime realized this was a request for a cover story. He nodded. "I'll merely say that they needed me more in battle than as a guard. Go." He turned and created a gold disk, then leapt onto it and took off for the distant battle, full speed. The wind stung his eyes and blew back his hair. He planted his feet and squinted. I'm coming.
xXx
Jiraiya turned to his shadow clone. "Take that thing somewhere safe!" He pointed to the sword in his clone's hands.
"Hai!" Jiraya number two ran off with Kusanagi.
Orochimaru was furious, but Jiraiya and Baki attacked him from both sides at once, forcing him to give up control of his sword.
Baki and Jiraiya tried a combined wind and fire attack, using Baki's wind release to amplify Jiraiya's Katon. Orochimaru proved still the stronger at water release, though.
Still, Jiraiya pressed on.
"What do you think is going to stop me from dicing you into bitty bits?" Jiraiya asked. "Cause I guarantee you, you're wrong. I owe you a lot of pain, Orochimaru. I'm not holding back."
Orochimaru laughed. "Brave speech for a man who could never best me, even as children!"
"But I'm not alone," Jiraiya said. "I have my brother with me."
Orochimaru's eyes flashed. "Your bond is a joke. You can't be brothers just because you say so."
"On the contrary," Baki said. "We can. We're the ones who decide what we are to each other. Not other people. You have no right to dictate our relationship to each other, and neither does anyone else. That is something between him, and me. And we've decided: We're brothers. Moreover, age order doesn't count. I'm the older brother." He created a wind blade in each hand. "So you better get ready for an older brother's wrath."
He charged. "You've been picking on my little brother for far too long without any recrimination." Baki threw the wind blades in his hands like kunai, at point blank range.
Orochimaru dodged, his face frozen with disbelief. He avoided Baki's slashing attacks by a hair's breadth.
Baki formed more wind blades, undeterred, and kept up the attack, throwing whistling, cutting air.
Jiraiya jumped into the fight with Ame no Habakiri, giving Orochimaru two maddened swordsmen to evade.
Orochimaru didn't have time to form hand seals. He was forced purely on the defensive. Several of Baki's wind blades scored shallow hits, making him bleed. Jiraiya considered this an encouraging sign. The corpse body Orochimaru had inhabited hadn't bled at all.
"You miscreants!" Orochimaru snapped. "You have no idea what you are doing. If you strike me down here, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
"You know, that sounds familiar," Jiraiya mused. "But I think it was the good guy in the kabuki play who said that. So, no dice, Orochi."
"It's true," a new voice called.
Jiraiya glanced up at the voice and the blast of wind and sand.
Yondaime leapt off of his gold disk and immediately commanded his gold dust to wrap around Orochimaru, holding the man tight. That done, he looked to Jiraiya. "He's been goading you. He wants you to kill him, so that he can be released from his physical form."
"What?" Jiraiya stared at him.
"Kabuto said that Orochimaru has turned himself into the equivalent of a bijuu," Yondaime said. "A spirit creature."
Jiraiya flinched and looked at Orochimaru in shock.
Baki lowered his hands, dispelling his wind blades.
"Kabuto told you that, ne?" Orochimaru murmured. His expression dangerously hovered at cold rage. "I can't imagine why…"
"Maybe your companion wanted to live," Yondaime said.
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes. "I'll deal with him later. First, you, Kazekage-sama, have signed your death warrant."
"I would have recalled seeing something like that on my desk," Yondaime said mildly. "I think not."
Jiraiya snickered.
Orochimaru gritted his teeth and looked at Jiraiya with annoyance.
"So what do we do with him?" Jiraiya asked Yondaime. "We can't just let him go running amok because if we kill him, he'll get 'more powerful than we can possibly imagine'."
Yondaime snorted. "More powerful than we can imagine? Hardly. He's still the same man. Only in spirit form. He's no tailed beast. Kabuto clarified that point for me."
"You need better help, Orochi-chan," Jiraiya said. "Seems like Kabuto betrayed you completely."
"More like I just offered to crush him into a pulp if he didn't agree to tell me what I wanted to know," Yondaime said dryly, trying to preserve Kabuto's cover. "Everyone has self-preservation."
"My disciple, it seems, a particularly strong one," Orochimaru drawled. "Although misguided."
"Because you're getting out of here, right?" Jiraiya asked. "Even though we've got you trapped?"
"It never ceases to amaze me how you fail to put together the simplest bits of information," Orochimaru said. His eyes flooded with darkness. "What makes you think I can't shed my body on my own if I please to do so?"
A smooth black smoke emerged from Orochimaru's mouth like a cloud of ink.
"Oh, damn." Jiraiya backed away hastily. "What do we do, Yondaime? What do we do?"
"You've fought a spirit before," Yondaime said. "You know what to do. We seal him."
"In what?" Jiraiya exclaimed.
Yondaime wordlessly formed his gold dust into a jar.
A smile of amazement spread across Baki's face. "Brilliant, Yondaime."
Yondaime nodded.
The black smoke spiraled up, growing as they talked. It was unclear whether Orochimaru could hear them.
Yondaime withdrew his gold dust from Orochimaru's body, letting it fall to the ground with a crunch of sand.
"How big is he going to get?" Jiraiya asked rhetorically, watching the black smoke still growing.
Baki's eyes widened. He tilted his head all the way up. "I recognize this shape – It's –"
"A snake," Yondaime said flatly.
At that precise moment, amber eyes opened in the head of the shadow beast, and its form solidified to gleaming black coils.
"Aw, shit," Jiraiya said.
"Better begin the sealing ceremony soon," Baki said to Jiraiya. "Like now."
Jiraiya leapt out of the way of a coil that tried to crush him. "I'd like a little help!"
Yondaime tossed the jar he'd made to Baki. "Got it. I fight him while you and Baki do the sealing ceremony." He created a gold disk and leapt on it, swooping around a lashing tail.
"Be careful!" Baki called. He ran to Jiraiya, leaping high over a coil of the immense snake that Orochimaru was now.
"Cover me," Jiraiya said. "While I'm doing this I won't be able to make seals to defend myself…" He was pale, but resolute, weaving the first seals with his hands as he spoke. "If I pause, the jutsu gets broken…so just make sure I can still go on…"
"I'm not going to let you down," Baki assured him.
Yondaime circled Orochimaru carefully, avoiding any attacks. His first move was to wrap his gold dust around the snake's mouth, trying to seal it shut. He didn't want to be poisoned; neither did he want anyone else to suffer the effects of being poisoned.
Orochimaru snapped at the gold dust for an instant before it took hold, binding his mouth shut.
"Yeah, what's it like not having arms?" Jiraiya called, his hands moving in complicated patterns. "It sucks, doesn't it?"
Baki was forced to put up a barrier of churning wind as Orochimaru turned on Jiraiya and tried to wrap around the both of them like a boa constrictor. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that." He grunted. Sand churned around them as if they stood in the eye of a tornado. "I can't hold him back forever, you know."
"Sorry," Jiraiya mumbled.
Yondaime molded giant hands out of his gold dust and gestured, picking up Orochimaru's coil and flinging it back, using almost the full strength of his magnetism release in order lift Orochimaru's bulk.
"I need you to paint these on the jar," Jiraiya said quickly. His hands didn't falter. "Ram, boar, deer. Dragon, bear. Ox. Clockwise."
"With what?" Baki asked. "I don't have a brush or ink –"
"Unseal the scroll at my side, here. The left side. Red cap." Jiraiya gestured by shifting his weight, wagging his hip at Baki.
Baki quickly grabbed the scroll and unsealed it. He knelt on the hot sand, using the first brush he could grab, dipping it in Jiraiya's ink well and scrawling the symbols Jiraiya had instructed. "Done."
"Great," Jiraiya said. "Now comes the hard part." He could feel beads of sweat forming on his face. "This won't kill me, since we're not creating a jinchuuriki…" He added in a mumble, "Hopefully."
It wouldn't be the worst way to die – sealing Orochimaru forever so his evil never got out to taint the world was undeniably heroic – but Jiraiya would rather live to be able to enjoy his success.
Baki stood, watching the jar Yondaime had created carefully. The symbols he'd painted began to glow. "It's working," he said, mostly to himself.
xXx
Kankuro was openly chewing on his lip. "Oh, god," he groaned. "Why isn't Dad back yet?" It was two in the afternoon, and he was finally hungry. But now he couldn't eat because he was too nauseous.
"You need to eat something," Aio insisted. "You can't keep worrying on an empty stomach. It's not healthy. You'll make yourself sick."
"I can't help it," Kankuro said. He flopped over on the couch and draped his arm over his eyes.
"I'll get the cook to make you a spicy salmon roll," Aio said. "You'll eat that."
Kankuro couldn't disagree. Spicy salmon maki sushi was his favorite food. He couldn't resist it when it was wafted right under his nose.
Aio took that as an agreement and ran to the kitchen to recruit the cook into Plan: Feed Kankuro.
Kankuro knew it had been right of their father to leave Aio and Josei with them. Other people would have let Kankuro worry himself sick without saying a word, probably out of some misguided feeling of respect. Kankuro didn't need someone to respect him. He needed someone to take care of him.
And that is why I will absolutely die if I lose Dad. He'd already decided. He wasn't as strong as his dad. There was no way he could survive knowing who his true love was, having him, and then losing him, all in the space of a month. It was too much. Besides, Tousan had loads more time with Mom before he had to say goodbye. It isn't fair, Tousan dying now. Before I've even had a chance to finish growing up, so he can see what kind of man I'll be. It's not right.