Sakamoto Shiina, proud leader of Team Gensō, smiled grimly. The enemy ninja had just collected ten tags from the obelisk. A great haul for her team, and bad luck for him—with that much chakra expended, he'd be easy prey. All things considered, the ambush couldn't have been executed better if she'd had hours to plan. One of the enemy team was now little better than a civilian (even taijutsu relied on sufficient chakra flow to the muscles), they'd wasted the advantage of higher ground by failing to post a lookout, and Mitsurugi had scanned the area for traps and found nothing so much as a caltrop. Meanwhile, her team had plentiful cover to approach unseen and time to sketch out a plan of attack with hand signals, as well as to identify any potential sources of interference such as natural hazards (i.e. most things in the forest) and impending changes in the weather.

At her signal, Team Gensō prepared to use their speciality Cross Slash formation. A sudden stealth strike at the centre of the enemy group would create an opening through which her teammates would attack in mirrored diagonal movements. She would then identify the greatest remaining threat, and take advantage of their distraction to—

"Temari, Kankurō, looks like we have visitors," the chakra-drained ninja announced. "Just in time, too."

Shiina held herself perfectly still. Everything that happened next would be determined by one question: did the enemy know their location?

"Gaara," the enemy kunoichi said with an odd nervous edge to her voice, "remember what Baki-sensei said. No killing—"

"It's OK, Temari. No one will know. I don't sense anyone else in the area, I've blocked the cameras, and I've set up interference against anyone viewing us directly from the tower."

"But the Byakugan—"

"The Hyūga have been staying far enough away that I can't sense them, so I think they must be scared of us. They're not going to accuse us of anything without evidence. And there won't be any evidence."

The extended discussion was throwing Shiina off balance. She'd expected an immediate counterattack, or at least a defensive formation. An internal argument wouldn't even be good for stalling her team, since it made more sense to attack while the enemy was otherwise occupied. The safest bet was to assume it was some form of psychological warfare, and take a second to think, instead of immediately acting and potentially doing what the enemy wanted.

Was the fact that their targets had been alerted reason enough to abort the attack? No, Shiina decided. They were still three against effectively two, and Team Gensō needed a victory. They'd spent too much time failing to find viable targets, and it was impacting on their tag count and, more importantly, on team morale. Lack of faith in one's own power dulled blades, weakened muscles, and even, according to some authorities, slowed the flow of chakra. It would be catastrophic in the middle of an already challenging exam.

Before she could act on this decision, Gaara turned straight towards her hiding place. "We know you're behind that copse of trees. You can come and face us now."

Shiina gave Hina and Mitsurugi hand signals to circle round while she drew the enemy's attention. Then she took a deep breath and stepped out into the open, sword drawn.

Temari and Kankurō started to move into their own formation, but Gaara waved them away.

"No, please, let me do it myself. I think that girl there is going to be interesting," he said, pointing at Shiina.

The two ninja gave Gaara resigned looks and found places to sit further up the hill, as if the coming battle no longer concerned them.

Shiina's intuition was screaming at her. Something was wrong. The enemy should have been barely conscious, not acting with the leisurely confidence of Konnō-sensei during the combat section of the Hidden Waterfall graduation test.

But that made the Cross Slash even more appropriate. She'd take him down fast, before he could pull out whatever trick he had up his sleeve, and then her teammates would be perfectly placed to exploit the other two's lack of combat stance.

Shiina took a couple of steps forward.

"Phantom Element: Warrior of Light Technique!"

She vanished into thin air.

Gaara's response was not alarm, or even incomprehension, but what looked oddly like an appreciative smile.

"Ooh, I haven't seen this Bloodline Limit before. It must be very rare. This is exciting!"

There was no battle tension in his expression, only a focused curiosity that Shiina, moving as stealthily as possible while half of her mind was busy weaving frequencies of light, found more unnerving than any amount of killing intent.

Finally stepping into position, she completed the technique, reappearing in a flash of light as she swung her sword directly at Gaara's neck.

The blade stopped. Not blocked, not deflected, just stopped. In the instant before she leapt back, she glimpsed a very fine line of sand hovering in the air, a curve matching the shape of her blade, and only slightly wider than its edge.

It was not impossible to defend against her ability—she'd learned that the hard way on the mission where she'd unexpectedly encountered a missing-nin trained to hunt by sound (and had to flee while Konnō-sensei covered the team's retreat). Could she have once again bitten off more than she could chew? Yes, Shiina admitted. The enemy had been able to detect her and react immediately, with an instant technique that had not been telegraphed in any way whatsoever. She could see why his teammates let him fight her on his own.

"That was really impressive," Gaara said cheerfully. "What else can you do?"

Shiina would not let him see her growing unease, but nor would she try to cover up for it with bravado. This was not one of those civilian films about ninja which commoners watched as serious action and real ninja watched as "so bad it's good" comedy (a genre to which Mitsurugi had introduced her, though he'd made the nearly fatal mistake of doing so on their first date). In the real world, feelings were something precious to be saved for friends and loved ones, not brandished with wild abandon or faked as a tool in battle.

So she was silent, and cold, and her eyes betrayed nothing as she prepared her most powerful offensive ninjutsu.

"Phantom Element: Celestial Legion Technique!"

She vanished again, but only for a split second. In the blink of an eye, the obelisk hill was surrounded by dozens of identical copies of her, all weaving around each other in perfect coordination as they moved in on Gaara.

Countless blades slashed against Gaara at the same time, enough to completely fill his vision.

But only one was real, and only one was blocked.

Shiina retreated again, her hands trembling slightly as she took in what had just happened. The Celestial Legion was a masterpiece a full level of power above her first technique—it manifested faint sound, scent and vibrational cues to go with the visual illusion, making it almost an external genjutsu. It had been designed to counter enemies with enhanced senses.

"That was very pretty," Gaara said with backhanded approval, "but it didn't really do anything different to the first one. Do you have anything else?"

Was there any advantage to continuing this engagement? No, Shiina conceded. Team Gensō's strongest was overmatched, and that was before seeing what Gaara's teammates could do, or indeed what his own offensive powers were. It was time to run.

Fortunately, she was ready for this possibility. She'd spent many nights dwelling on the humiliating experience of her own powerlessness after the battle with that missing-nin, and it had taken Hina's rambling yet eerily insightful advice to make her see the answer.

The purpose of a genin was not to be strong and know dozens of techniques. Jōnin like Konnō-sensei, or even Lady Shimakaze herself, weren't the strongest because they knew many techniques, but because they had decades of experience that taught them how to use what they knew flawlessly. No, a genin had but one purpose—to survive long enough to learn what the shinobi world had to teach them.

So the Celestial Legion had been almost an afterthought. Instead, Shiina had ransacked the secret scrolls until she found something else. In its full form, it was said to be a forbidden technique of the Deva Path. Even the partial form was supposed to be dangerous enough to be considered a suicide technique. But the very edges of it—all Shiina had been able to grasp—were enough to accomplish her purpose. They were enough to keep her team safe.

"Phantom Element: Seraphic Radiance Technique!"

The battlefield was immersed in blinding white light, not a flash but a constant unbearable glow coming from some unknown point. The air audibly hummed with power and the earth trembled. There was a pervasive smell of incense that overwhelmed every other scent.

This technique was both the signal and the guarantee for emergency retreat.

Several seconds later, it faded. A blindfold made of solid sand disintegrated from in front of Gaara's eyes, and similar ones from Temari and Kankurō's.

Shiina had not retreated. Before she could move, thick bands of compressed sand, emerging out of nowhere, had caught her ankles and her wrists. She was completely restrained as they lifted her to be bound in a crucified position in mid-air.

Immobilised, vulnerable, she could do nothing to shield herself from Gaara's gaze. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to decide what to do with a new toy that had failed to perform to specifications. She could only hope that the rest of her team had made it out. As long as Hina still had the tags, she and Mitsurugi had a chance of passing Stage 2 even without her.

"I take it that since you tried to run you have nothing else to show me?" Gaara asked.

Shiina, doing her best to resign herself to her defeat, craned her neck to try to check that the others had fled and not done something stupid like hanging back to try to rescue her. But her position left her with little ability to look around.

"Oh, don't worry about your teammates," Gaara said reassuringly. "I poured some sand down their lungs while you were doing your Celestial Legion technique."

For a couple of seconds, Shiina could not process the meaning of those words. They were not words that belonged here. She had come to this exam prepared to protect her team from humiliation, from injury, at worst from disastrous accident—the things Konnō-sensei had warned her would be the price of failure. She had not been ready to protect them from deliberate murder.

She had not been ready.

"It's OK," Gaara said, in a voice that unnaturally, impossibly, sounded like he was trying to be sympathetic. "I know I've made you wait in order to satisfy my own curiosity, and I apologise for that. I will kill you now. By the way, he says your chakra is going to be very interesting."

The words sounded distant, meaningless, to Shiina. Shiina who had taken responsibility for her team, declared herself leader, accepted their loyalty, and led them here. Here to a place from which there was no way back. Here to a place where laughing, airheaded Hina and incurably dorky, inexplicably charming Mitsurugi would stay forever.

Her eyes refocused as she realised her own fate still hung, literally, in the balance. It was too late to save her teammates. She did not deserve to save herself. But for as long as the shinobi world had existed, even the damned—especially the damned—could tread the path of vengeance.

Could she do it? Yes, Shiina tried to convince herself. If she could find some way to bargain for her freedom, just for long enough to give her an opening…

But Gaara stripped that illusion away. A shape made of sand began to coalesce in the air in front of her chest. Her words died before they were spoken as she comprehended what she was seeing.

The hollow, razor-edged tube began to spin.

The enemy looked her in the eyes. "Thank you very much for showing me your abilities, especially that last one," he told her seriously. "My life would be very boring without people like you."

All Bloodline Limits gave their bearers some sort of slightly altered physiology to allow them to access, and endure, their powers. The Phantom Element's particular gifts included an enhanced nervous system that could withstand extraordinary demands, and, it turned out, retain its function all the way to the final point of brain death.

Shiina could hear a constant, high-pitched noise that she vaguely identified as her own screaming. There was also a burning sensation that was probably pain. She could see the other two enemy ninja, turned away, hands over their ears. If they were so horrified, the fading voice in her mind wondered, why didn't they try to stop him?

She could see, dimly now, as her own extracted heart floated towards Gaara in a bowl of sand. He picked it up with care, held it over his mouth, and squeezed. Another inconsistency, she thought. Why did he grimace at the taste of blood, when he was the one who'd chosen to drink it?

Shiina, on the ground now, could see a miniature sandstorm growing around Hina's body, a whirlwind that stripped skin from flesh, flesh from bone, and finally reduced the bone to dust, vanishing even the bloodstains until the only proof that Hina had ever been was a solitary set of tags.

What was left of Sakamoto Shiina willed the storm to come for her, and, as if granting a last wish, the storm obeyed.

"So," she heard Gaara ask as she was wiped from existence, "want to go see what else we can find?"

-o-

Kinō Satoshi of Leaf Team Twelve studied the note in his hand.

Dear friend,

You do not know me, but I know of you and your romantic woes, and write to express my heartfelt support for your cause. Saitō Aisa is a lovely young woman, and it is a tragedy that the two of you have been forced to keep your relationship secret. But I do understand that if you did not, the age difference between you would surely invite condemnation and ostracism from persons less enlightened than myself. Nor is her older sister's public oath to turn the full wrath of ANBU on anyone seeking to "take advantage" something to be taken lightly.

It is true that an ANBU operative has many off-the-books ways to sabotage or even end a genin's career, while damage to a young woman's reputation in a village as small as ours could have equally disastrous effects for her future prospects. Thus, I can entirely sympathise with your need for secrecy, and do wish you only the greatest fortune in preserving it.

As I am writing to you in the spirit of friendship, would you mind fulfilling one small request of mine? I've sketched out a very primitive map of the forest below, and you will note that there is a diagonal line marked through a certain area. I would greatly appreciate it if you did not permit anyone to cross this line tonight, from sunset to sunrise. After all, friends are always ready to do favours for each other.

Rest assured that I will continue to cheer you on from the shadows.

Satoshi could not decide which was more terrifying. There were the contents of the note itself. There was the fact that he'd found it beneath his bedroll as he was packing it up this morning, suggesting that a ninja from a competing team had been in a position to do whatever they liked to him while he slept. And fully as frightening as either of these was the fact that, when he'd timidly suggested to his teammates that perhaps it might be tactically advantageous to set up an ambush over there tonight, both of them had gone pale and virtually tripped over themselves in their haste to agree.

-o-

Naruto faced Shikamaru across the valley, flanked by several shadow clones and positioned so that the fading light of the obelisk a few hundred metres behind him would at least mildly interfere with Team Ten's vision.

He hadn't expected Team Ten to go for a direct face-off rather than attempting an ambush, given how suited Shikamaru and Ino's powers were to a crippling first strike. Now the two teams faced each other on even terms, and that was dangerous for both of them. Team Ten had to have some kind of overwhelming advantage hidden away, and that was making him nervous.

Chōji's hand was on his Akimichi soldier pill holster. Ino, behind him, had her hands in position to perform the Mind Transfer Technique, her eyes flicking between the members of Team Seven so as not to give away her true target. Shikamaru wasn't doing anything, and that was suspicious enough to stop Naruto from making a careless first move.

Instead, Naruto was studying the terrain in his peripheral vision, noting sites to leave concealed shadow clones during the initial melee, and any rocks and boulders that would make good Substitution targets. Meanwhile, Sasuke was in an aggressive stance, Sharingan active, watching for the first sign of chakra use. Sakura had a set of shuriken ready to throw.

Seconds ticked away.

Everyone tensed as Shikamaru slowly raised his hands…

"We surrender."

Everyone, and that included Shikamaru's own team, froze.

"What?! Are you crazy?!" Ino demanded. "Even if it's Sasuke…"

Shikamaru looked at her, creating an opening as he briefly moved his attention away from Team Seven. He had to know he was doing it. What was his game?

"It would be a pain to fight them, but the odds are on our side. On the other hand, it's even more likely that one of us will be injured in the process. Meaning there are other teams that it would make more sense for us to fight."

"But… but…"

"If both of you vote for it, we can fight them. But it's an unnecessary risk."

Chōji weighed in. "Ino, has Shikamaru ever led us wrong?"

"Well… no, I guess. But the tags…"

"About that," Shikamaru said to Naruto. "I have a proposal for you."

"I'm listening."

"We've got five tags right now. For every tag you let us keep, I'm willing to offer you a comprehensive briefing on one of the top five other teams."

Without looking, he raised a hand to silence Ino. "Yes, I know. But believe me, these guys are going to clear Stage Two no matter what we do.

"So what do you say?"

Naruto glanced back at his team. "Any objections?"

None were forthcoming. Team Seven was doing pretty well on tags at this point, as Naruto's clone perimeter defence was proving worth its weight in gold when other teams attempted to ambush them during the obelisks' draining process.

"All right," Naruto nodded. "But if any of it is stuff we already know, it doesn't count."

Shikamaru found himself a comfortable position to sit down on the edge of a rock outcropping.

"Hidden Grass Team Coup de Grace is Hojō Mari, Fujioka Daichi and Shiki Umatarō. Hojō dresses in green with bracers and shin protectors. Fujioka has a red striped scarf. Shiki wears blue and orange, and is probably colour-blind.

"I'll start with Shiki. I would consider him the most dangerous. He's Lightning Element, and he uses it for improved agility and likely one-hit-kill melee strikes. He never takes his eyes off his opponents, and keeps his team covered whenever they're under threat. He can easily dodge missile attacks. He seems uncomfortable around women, but not around Hojō. He recently suffered a wound to his right forearm. He—"

"I'm not buying it," Naruto interrupted. "Assuming you haven't personally watched him fight, how could you have that much detail?"

"Fair question," Shikamaru nodded to himself. "He was using the Lightning Element to enhance his reflexes during the written test—there's a characteristic jerkiness about that kind of movement. He effortlessly avoided a number of miniature darts in his peripheral vision while engaging a different opponent. He never made eye contact with female opponents, and preferentially targeted male ones, but he had no problem regularly communicating with his team leader through a combination of eye movements and hand signals. Offensively, he showed a clear preference for single precision attacks over extended engagements, taking advantage of his greater speed. Where possible, he prioritised targets threatening his teammates, even when it was an inefficient use of his abilities. Despite being right-handed, he primarily used his left forearm for blocking, and the form of his motions—"

"Point made," Naruto acceded. "But there's no possible way you could've observed everyone in that level of detail."

"Of course. But then, we had three people watching carefully for specific types of tell. Besides, I made sure to prioritise those who were going to pass Stage One.

"Now, shall I go on?"

-o-

It was not long after sunset. Sakura was off setting additional traps within the shadow clone perimeter, while Naruto and Sasuke were standing around pointedly not looking at each other. The tension in the air felt like a static charge building up to dangerous levels.

Eventually, Naruto decided he'd had enough. In some ways, this was a terrible time for a confrontation. But on the other hand, a controlled detonation now might be better than having the whole thing blow up at an unexpected moment.

"Look, Sasuke, if there's something I did that you're pissed off about, will you tell me already? I don't think you've said a single normal word to me since Wave."

Sasuke gave him a look boiling with anger. "Something you did? No, Naruto, you didn't do anything. Not a damn thing, do you understand?"

"What do you—"

Sasuke advanced on him.

"Do you know what it's like when your memories and the world around you stop matching up? Do you know what it's like, suddenly seeing a stranger in somebody who mattered, and wondering if that's what happened to him?

"I looked for you as hard as I could at the Academy, trying to find some trace of the Naruto I remembered. And I found nothing. Like I'd invented a worthy rival for myself as a kid, and now I had to grow up and accept that he never existed and this clown was the best I was ever going to get.

"Year after year of idiotic pranks. Year after year of… of being a total loser, a laughingstock, a buffoon. And now, suddenly, I find out it was all an act?! That you'd been there all along, just lying to me, pretending everything from before had never happened?"

"Sasuke, no, I—"

"Don't you dare deny it. I know who you are now. You're a liar, a traitor, you're the worst kind of scum. You pander to the lowest common denominator and throw away everything you are just for the sake of their approval. I can't believe I ever saw anything good in you."

Naruto fixed him with a hostile stare. "Now hold on. You don't get to stand over me in judgement just because you don't like my choices. Maybe I didn't do right by you. But who in cold hell are you to say I can't do what I want to make my own place in the world?"

"Do what you want? All you ever do is do what you want!" Sasuke shouted. "You show off, you play games, never once caring how it affects anybody else! It's all about having fun, and it doesn't matter what happens to the people around you. I trusted you, Naruto!"

"I never lied to you, Sasuke! You're the one who chose to believe—"

Sasuke grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "You never lied to me?! You did nothing else! All our years at the Academy, you did nothing else! Every single thing you said, every single thing you did—they were all lies!"

"Let go," Naruto growled. "You're the one who stopped talking to me. You're the one who started acting like you were better than me, just because I managed to find myself a niche and you didn't. You're the one who decided that your precious revenge was more important than being a real person with real desires and thoughts and feelings that didn't all revolve around your bloody brother!"

Naruto tried to slap Sasuke's hands away. Sasuke pushed him. In the struggle, it was unclear who threw the first punch.

What followed wasn't a taijutsu battle of ninja against ninja. Skill, tactics, even victory itself became irrelevant as two angry kids punched, kicked and grabbed each other for all they were worth, expressing through violence feelings that words couldn't convey.

-o-

It was some time later that both of them lay exhausted on the grass, the adrenaline spent.

"Sasuke, I…"

"You abandoned me," Sasuke said in almost a whisper. "You were my rival, the only one, and you abandoned me."

The image of Itachi, or at least an adult Sasuke with extra evil, flashed through Naruto's mind.

"I'm sorry," Naruto said. "I don't know how it happened. I was just trying to fit in with the other kids, and then before I knew it… there was this distance between us, and I didn't know what to do, and then it seemed like you were happier on your own."

Sasuke sighed. "I'm sorry too. I've spent all this time training to fight for what I wanted, but when it came to you, I just gave up and let it happen. I never tried to have a serious talk with you, man to man, when that could've solved everything."

He stood up, adjusted his rumpled clothes, then offered Naruto a hand.

"Rivals?"

Naruto took it and pulled himself up.

"Rivals."

Naruto fixed his even more battered clothes, and wondered how many bruises he'd have tomorrow.

"I'm sorry about insulting your revenge too," he said. "I think I know what that's like now."

Naruto hesitated. The things he'd found out were major village secrets, although admittedly the Hokage hadn't said so outright. Then again, the reason they were major village secrets was supposedly to protect his identity as a demon host, and that ship had sailed as far as Sasuke was concerned.

"This is just between you and me, but I found out not long ago that someone deliberately freed the Demon Fox to cause the Night of Tragedy. My parents had to give their lives to seal it into me in order to save everyone."

He paused.

"Yeah, my dad was the Fourth Hokage. How about that?"

Sasuke goggled.

"Plus I've found out that someone in the village made the decision to keep that secret in order to screw with me. Thanks to them, instead of growing up the son of a hero, I grew up, well, me.

"Both of those people have to pay for what they did."

Sasuke nodded with understanding.

"I didn't get it before," Naruto said, "but sometimes people can't be allowed to get away with what they've done, even if they're so powerful and so well-hidden that you have no idea how you could possibly take them down. So I'm ready to help with your revenge, and I hope you'll help me with mine. When I become Hokage and you're a jōnin, I can appoint you a hunter-nin, and give you all the resources you need to track down Itachi. Maybe I can even come with you, and hold off his four elite generals with all the power of Uzumaki Naruto himself while you face him in a final showdown in his inner sanctum."

Sasuke smirked. "Two things wrong with that picture. I like the hunter-nin idea, but I'm not going to need your help to get there. And by the time you become Hokage, Itachi will be dead of old age and I'll have better things to do, like reviving my clan. Though I can't deny I'm curious to see what kind of Hokage you'd make. I respect the Third, but I get the feeling that all he wants is to keep Leaf the same for as long as possible, and that's not the village I want to live in."

"Actually," Naruto remembered, "speaking of reviving your clan, I've been meaning to—"

His eyes widened as if forced open. Then he screamed and collapsed, unconscious.

An unfamiliar figure emerged from the shadow of the trees.

Sasuke took combat stance and activated his Sharingan.

"What did you do to Naruto?"

The figure, a slender man with long, black hair, unnaturally pale skin and no forehead protector, looked straight at him.

Sasuke felt as if twin shards of ice were piercing his eyes. Barely melting, the cold water ran down through his body, paralysing every organ and freezing his heart and lungs. An arctic wind tore through his mind, sweeping away every thought and leaving only the expectation of certain death.

Then the sensation abruptly disappeared. Sasuke fell to his knees.

"Killing intent," the man said in the level, slightly distant voice of an academic lecturer, "can be cultivated like any other art. Consider that your first lesson. Consider also what happens when it is multiplied by a number of shadow clones, and experienced all at once."

Sasuke forced himself to his feet. If this enemy had made sure to disable Naruto before revealing himself, then was Sakura in danger as well?

"If you are wondering about the girl," the man went on, "she has just had an unfortunate encounter with a venomous snake."

Sasuke gritted his teeth and made sure his Sharingan was back on.

"Fear not. She will merely be enjoying some healthy sleep until dawn, and most predators know to avoid the scent of the Leaf reticulated viper's venom. I consider death wasteful."

The intruder had overwhelmed Sasuke with a single look. Sasuke was aware that this was a battle he could not win, but even so, he was not going to flee and leave him alone with Naruto. Not after everything.

There were signals used by Leaf ninja to request emergency assistance. It seemed strange to use them when the other Leaf teams were currently his opponents, and he didn't like the idea of revealing his location to all the foreign genin either, and it was horrifying to think that his best -case scenario was drawing the attention of that lunatic in Itama Tower, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

Sasuke recalled the appropriate signal flare pattern, and did his best to aim so that the attack, while seemingly aimed at the intruder, would go past him and up into the night sky.

"Fire Element: Phoenix Fire Tech—"

"Hidden Snake Hands!"

A spiralling mass of what seemed to be real, living serpents streamed out of the man's sleeves and through the air with impossible speed, knocking Sasuke down before disappearing into the grass.

"A good idea, my dear Sasuke, but I'm afraid you're several decades too early to challenge me. After all, I have engaged your brother in mortal combat and am still alive, after a fashion."

The man knew who he was.

"Who the hell are you? What do you want?"

"My name is Orochimaru," the ninja gave a slight bow.

Sasuke had a sudden thought. He clapped his hands together.

"Dispel!"

Nothing happened.

"Ah, yes," Orochimaru gave a soft laugh. "I heard about Ibiki's little test. I am most pleased with how that boy has matured. And of course now none of you will ever know for certain whether what you're experiencing is real or genjutsu, which is a very healthy attitude for a shinobi."

Something clicked in Sasuke's mind. He'd seen this man's picture, looking even more evil than right now, near the back of the Bingo Book where all the truly worst S-rank criminals were to be found. His page had listed a variety of identifying features, but it had neglected to mention that he enjoyed the sound of his own voice. Which was good. It was a chance to stall for time.

"I remember now. You're a member of Akatsuki!"

"Former member, I'm afraid. We had a certain… disagreement."

"The disagreement that made you fight Itachi?"

"In part," Orochimaru admitted. "But that was in the context of a broader conflict over long-term policy. You'll understand soon."

Sasuke glanced down. Naruto still wasn't waking up. As soon as he did, one of them could go for the nearest obelisk while the other kept Orochimaru occupied. That pillar of light would be a signal nobody could ignore.

"That's all fine," he said, "but what are you doing in hostile territory talking to a mere genin?"

Orochimaru gave a satisfied smile. "I am here to extend an invitation to you, Uchiha Sasuke. You and I both know that you cannot stay in Leaf forever. Everything you can learn here, Itachi already knows, and I assure you he's had time to learn many more secrets since.

"I, on the other hand, am willing to take you on as my apprentice, and freely share my decades of knowledge with you without making you jump through pointless hoops of rank and secrecy levels."

The situation was surreal. A mysterious stranger had appeared out of nowhere and was offering Sasuke the thing he wanted most. But he remembered one of the Academy's very first teachings: if something seemed too good to be true, it almost certainly was.

"Why on earth would you want to do that?"

Orochimaru looked oddly amused.

"Why, my dear Sasuke, to save the world."