Stage Eleven: The Experiment Part One

Month 1: Week 1: Day 2

Orochimaru eventually summoned me through Kabuto. I shoved him into a wall and walked the course to Orochimaru's study. I could hear Kabuto behind me the entire time, staying a measurably safe distance from me, though I don't think any distance is safe, not when he is concerned.

I slid open the door to the Study. "You requested to see me, my Lord?"

"I did," he answered, motioning me to come inside the study. His eyes followed me inside, and then fell behind me to watch Kabuto slink in. He approached Orochimaru with a stack of papers and set them down on the desk, then turned to leave.

I walked to Orochimaru's desk, looking at the papers. They were the results of last night's sleep. My blood pressure and heart rate were stable, though low. My brainwaves weren't ecstatic, so dreaming didn't occur. I wondered about last night's dream. If the charts said that my brain didn't have large amounts of activity, would it be possible that I could dream in a low wave state?

"I watched you sleep last night," he stated. "You didn't move at all."

"Do I normally move, Sensei?"

He looked up at me. "No, but you're not normally asleep for eight hours. I heightened your dose based on the volume to time ratio."

"You dosed me with twice the normal amount," I commented.

"A little more than that," he answered. "But essentially yes. How are you feeling?"

"I feel ponderous," I answered.

"Why?"

"I'm wondering what happens after death."

"What sparked this thought?"

"Kimimaro did."

"You spoke to him. Did you feel anything else before that, or was anything unusual?"

"I didn't yell at him. No argument broke out."

"That is strange. Did you dream?" he asked, before looking at the charts.

"That depends, were you drinking last night?"

He looked at me with anger in his eyes. "You dare question my actions, child?"

"Then yes, I was dreaming." He didn't answer my question. I really needed to know. It could have not been a dream, and I wouldn't be able to tell unless he told me.

"You dreamed of me drinking?" he asked.

"I dreamed that we were drinking."

"You show no signs of activity."

"I know, I was wondering about that my self."

"Do you have any thoughts about this?"

"Have you ever studied my brain waves before?"

"No, I've never had a reason to."

"Having nothing to compare my dream state to my awoken state, then there's no evidence to say that I didn't have sporadic activity last night. There are minor flexuations in the activity at steady intervals."

"They are too minor to indicate dreaming, Child."

"Just as the dose of venom you gave me is too much for any human to have survived."

He surveyed the information, mapping out on the charts where flexuations were. "The study of your brain waves will have to wait. I won't have that information tainted by any side effects of the venom."

Month 1: Week 3: Day 15

I could feel my thought patterns changing. I could feel myself getting more tired as the week went on. By the time Saturday came around, I felt exhausted. My body had quickly become accustomed to the sleep, and it felt as though ten years was coming crashing down on my mind.

I knew that the dependency was forming. I could feel it in my veins. The venom took longer to wear off with the increased dose. I could still feel the effects on my mind in the morning. Orochimaru would ask me a set of random questions, varying from "What was the first thing you thought of this morning?" to "What colour was the dream predominately in?" Each week would host a set of different questions.

I was sitting on the corner of his desk, waiting for this week's random questions. He was looking over the paperwork, searching for patterns. I watched him work, studying every feature.

Accepting that Gaara was right had to be the worst mistake I had ever made.

"What do you remember of last night?" he asked

"I don't remember anything beyond handing in my paperwork."

"What of the initial bite?"

"I haven't remembered any of them."

"How does your body react when I would give you the normal dose?"

"Warmth, like fire spreads through me before I get the sensation of tingles from head to toe, then I get cold, and then I black out."

"You don't feel anything with the higher dose?"

"Not that I am aware of," I answered. Nothing other than lust, but that would just spark an anger that I wasn't ready to deal with.

"What is the general mood of your dreams?"

I couldn't find the right word that wouldn't piss him off. . "Happy," was the word I settled with.

"When you wake up, do you feel the desire to do anything?"

"No."

"You don't remember anything at all?"

"Nothing, my Lord."

"Do you remember waking up?"

"Not really."

"What is the first thing you remember?"

"Sitting here."

"You don't remember your summons, you stabbing Kabuto with a kunai, or setting him on fire on your way here?"

"Did I really?" I asked, shocked. If there is one thing I should remember, it's torturing Kabuto. "I have never set him on fire before."

Orochimaru wrote in the margins of his notes. "What do you remember of the week?"

"I get tired as the week goes by, like a curtain is slowly lowering on my mind. I remember doing medical work with Kimimaro, yelling at Kabuto because he bumped into me, yelling at him again for following me, I remember seeing you every night, and reading countless scrolls."

His yellow eyes seemed to glow as he watched me. I could smell a subtle change in him. "My Lord, something is different." My mind shifted back to Sasori, thinking that maybe I was tricked again.

"What is different?" he asked.

"Your scent has changed."

He looked at me for a moment, and then wrote his observation.

Month 2: Week 5: Day 40

Orochimaru was watching me train with Kabuto mid afternoon. I could feel a change in my reflexes. I was slower, less coordinated. Orochimaru seemed to notice this too, especially when Kabuto managed to land a kunai in my shoulder. This was ridiculous. I couldn't stand this experiment anymore.

"Do you feel any slower?" Orochimaru asked after watching me heal the wound.

"I feel a lot slower. I also feel hazy, like my vision is getting blurry. My sinuses are stuffy, and my body hurts."

"Describe the pain."

"Muscle fatigue is the only thing that has ever brought this pain before."

"How is your mental state?"

"I'm slower to think. I stumble for answers, I can't process things as well, and my memory isn't the greatest it's ever been."

"Is there any other physical troubles?"

"I feel nauseous."

"Are you hallucinating?"

"Not yet," I answered.

"What do you mean, not yet?"

"Have you ever had the feeling that something important happened, but you can't remember what it was?"

"No, I have not."

"Have you ever thought something happened, but it turned out to be a dream?"

"That's a hallucination, Child."

"No, it was a dream."

"Are you sure it was?"

I thought about it. All last month I kept having the same "dreams" that I had the first night of the experiment. I kept noticing subtle changes in the people around me after the "dreams" too, but whenever I would ask them, they would always say nothing happened. I wouldn't say the entire dream, but I would ask about something minor.

"Well, not really," I answered.

"Then you were hallucinating." He wrote that down too.

I slammed my head on his desk. I could hear more writing before he asked if I was all right. I answered. "Is this damn experiment over yet?"

"You're almost half way there."

My head started throbbing.

"Anything else that happened before you went to spar with Kabuto?"

"I felt dizzy."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

"I did."

"I wouldn't have let you fight."

"I told you that my head was spinning."

He paused. I bet he looked at his notes. "No you didn't."

"I'm pretty sure that I did."

"I would have prevented you from fighting," he stated. I could tell he was annoyed.

I would have pressed it further, but he already ruled that I was prone to hallucinations. I wanted to slam my head again, but I didn't feel like moving. "Is laziness a symptom of anything?" I asked.

He wrote a few more things down. "Loss of interest is a sign of depression."

Was I depressed? "Screw that." I sat back up.

He looked at me with an arched eyebrow. "What?" "Fuck depression."

"Language, Child."

"I know, I know. Watch my mouth or else."

He wrote some more things down. What the hell was he writing? I looked over the desk to the stack of papers, which said "increased aggression and mood swings." Mood swings, that's just what I needed. If I weren't all doped up on his spit, he would have slapped me. I wish he had. It might have cleared my mind. "I feel like I have a hangover."

"Why do you feel like you have a hangover?" he asked. "Were you drinking?"

"No, I don't drink. I just realized that this is how I feel in the mornings after you decide that you want a few shots of sake."

He wrote that down. "You only just realized that you feel like this is a hangover?"

"I told you my thought process was slow."

"Do you consciously think?"

"I try not to. Thinking makes my head hurt more than it already does."

"Why does your head hurt?"

"I slammed it into your desk a moment ago."

He glared at me and wrote some more. I thought, Just slap me you ass hole. How could you force me to go through this? Madness, this is all fucking madness! I'd like to see you inject yourself with poison for three months. I wonder how much it's going to take before it kills me. I'm going to overdose and die. Right here on your desk is where I'm going to die. I put my head down again and groaned.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"I feel like dying," I answered.

"Why?"

"You sir, have successfully tortured me."

I felt his fingers through my hair, and he lifted my head off his desk. "You're not going to die."

"Awe," I groaned, then slammed my forehead back onto the wood. Thank you, laziness.

I heard him thrust a kunai into the wood. "Do you really wish to die?" he whispered. "Do you really wish to throw away all of my efforts to give you a good life? Have I not been merciful to you by taking you in and teaching you everything you know?"

"Not everything," I answered, before slapping my hand to my mouth.

"What did you just say, child?"

"Fuck," I spat.

I felt his slap before I saw it coming. I felt more awake after that.

"What did you say?"

"Well, as I have already shoved my foot into my own mouth, I should tell you that I met Itachi, who brought back memories of my childhood spent in Konohagakure, where I learned my basic training with him."

I didn't see his next attack, either. I found myself pinned to a wall under his force. This is a lot like how I pictured him killing me. It's quite uncanny, really.

Having no desk at my disposal, I slammed my head into his shoulder. "Damn it," I muttered. "I hate this, and I hope you know it."

"What do you hate, Child," he hissed.

"I hate having no control over what I say, or think, or do. Sometimes I am amazed that I am coherent enough to put a sentence together that someone else understands."

I felt the pressure lessen a bit from my shoulders, but I was still quite a bit uncomfortable. I was also disappointed that he was just going to let me talk him out of this. I mean really, am I that important? He should have killed me when I came back, instead of tricking me into this experiment. It isn't about me sleeping; he wants to know how long it will take my dependency to make me controllable. He didn't expect this to impair me the way it does. He just thought that I'd be like the others and get stronger. It's a drug damn it, nothing more.

"Have I not made you happy?"

"You were never supposed to make me happy."

He looked at me with pure confusion. I could tell he was questioning the choice of slapping me again or asking for clarification. I'd better give him the latter so he can get to slapping me.

"You're my reality. The more you don't give a damn, or seem to not give a damn, the more I can retain my sense of what's important. I don't get sidetracked or distracted by stupid things like love, or the desire to impress. The only reason you're trying to control me with this experiment is because you realized that the only thing keeping me here was free will. I'm not afraid of you. I respect you. You taught me more than anyone else can, and more than you realize. You taught me to only care about coming through by any means necessary. People don't matter, things don't matter, and the only thing that does is getting the job done."

"This experiment isn't about control."

"That's a lie and you know it. You want to see how much venom my system can handle before I completely shut down. You want to know if there is a point that makes me stay with you because my life depends on it, like Tayuya's did, or like Kimimaro's does. I'm not blind."

All the pressure that he let go of came back, pressing me back to the wall with all of his strength. "Do you dare question my motives, Child?" he growled.

"I don't question the facts that I already know."

I heard the door slide open and someone stepped in. "My Lord, is this a bad time?" Tayuya asked.

"Fuck my life!" I screamed.

Orochimaru moved a hand to my chest and put another over my mouth.

"Damn, what's her problem."

"I could have sworn you were dead!" I tried to yell through his hand. It just came out as, "I cold have swam you Mir head." Why doesn't anything make sense! I saw her die, right in front of me just last week.

"She's just drugged," he explained, "and quite defiant."

"That's unusual," she muttered. "She never goes against you."

"It's the drug."

"Which drug?"

"Venom."

Tayuya just looked confused. She set a pile of papers on the desk and walked out, closing the door behind her.

"What the hell is your problem," Orochimaru hissed.

"I thought she was dead," I answered.

"Why would she be dead?" he asked with anger.

"Well, I'm doped up. Nothing makes sense to me."

He glared at me.

"Can you put me down?" I asked.

He let go of me, and I allowed myself to slink to the floor. Hugging my knees to my chest, I looked up at him. His head tilted a few degrees and his eyebrow arched again. I then realized that I was wearing a skirt. I stood up and banged my head against the wall.

"How many times are you going to attempt giving yourself a concussion?"

"That depends on if my head decides to stop being stuck in molasses."

I felt his hands on my shoulders as he sighed. "This isn't helping you at all, is it?" he asked.

"That obvious, is it?" I answered. "I warned you that it would act like a drug."

He squeezed my already sore shoulders. "It's helping me understand a little more about you." I felt the sharp sting of his bite and the swirl of fire inside me. I collapsed against his chest in weakness. The last thing I felt was his arms under me and the gentle swaying motion of his gait.