Danzo
He was being hunted. More than usual at any rate and what separated his current attackers from the usual ones is that none of them were human. And tended to fade away shortly after being destroyed, laughing and saying they looked forward to seeing him in Hell. Worse in many ways were the damn things that kept killing his tools and stealing their faces before attacking him. He could dispatch them with ease yes, but they kept destroying his tools. His ROOT. To say nothing of the fact that he faced blinding headaches and bleeding eyes the moment he dismissed his Baku summons, limiting his range of actions to its presence.
Even as they continued to infiltrate his bases and ambush him, as they wore him down and laid siege to him. He was not sure which threat to the village possessed such forces, as their mocking laughter the few times that they had been captured, as they ranted on about such sweet sin his soul was steeped in. Lies, as everything he did, was for the good of the Leaf. Enemy propaganda, attempting to weaken his resolve in such a pitiful manner? He sneered and moved, twitching and looking in every shadow for one of THEM to appear once more.
Perhaps there was a rogue Nara, or perhaps the Nara needed to be culled and their secrets taken if they were capable of producing such assassins. Particularly as he had been able to find no such traces with his few roots among the clan of shadows, which in light of what was happening now was deeply suspicious. He would need to investigate all the clans, prepare contingences and speed up the rumors. After all, there could only be one source of power and authority in the village, and so the clans would have to be destroyed, the bloodlines maintained for military uses only.
Unknown and unseen by Danzo, each of his stolen eyes was restlessly darting back and forth, searching, seeking and leaking a poison made of mistrust, of hate and fear and loss directly into his soul, the thin shades of those he harvested in his greed standing around him like a ghastly entourage, whispering to him every moment, encouraging the worst choice, the ones most likely to enflame his paranoia, to make him sloppy, to rush him towards his doom. Why would they want this thief who organized their deaths to live after all?
Orochimaru
Now, he was fairly sure that he was one of the leading experts on how souls worked, at least among Ninja after the fall of the Uzumaki. He was one of the few that researched techniques involving them in any depth or rigour at any rate, and that understanding was central to how his immortality technique functioned, the reason he was able to keep a part of the past hosts bloodlines and powers, a form of the soul expressing itself onto the biological. But now? The souls grafted to his own were waking from their suppression.
If it was just the one or two, he would be able to handle things with no issue at all, for they were dead and he was alive. He could bring more to the contest than they could, particularly over time. However it was not just one or two souls awakening and revelling inside of his spiritual stomach, but all of them. At once. This not only disrupted his chakra control, introducing instabilities in his chakra, but he had to split his focus, to fight multiple opponents in a realm where they could partially control it as he did, because he had grafted their meager souls onto his own. In a way, making them aspects of himself.
A part of him wondered if this was due to some unforeseen variable, or perhaps this was some spiritual form of delayed indigestion? He was not sure, as he was being overwhelmed, forced into the bile of his soul, into he accumulated greed, sin and bad karma that each of the souls inside of his collective had accumulated... even as his cursed seal pulsed, as the fragments of himself were pulled, dragged from their hosts, taking with them each scrap of sin, each morsel of bad karma.
He screamed as he drowned and was torn apart, as he digested himself and was born anew, before he digested himself again. A loop of blazing agony that seared and consumed him. Spiritually. Physically? Well, he was cracking, bleeding and shifting, the body reduced to primordial plasm, to pure potential and energy as he formed an ouroboros, a serpent devouring himself even as they shed their scales. Nobody would ever know that Orochimaru died there, his soul impregnating itself, devoured itself and gave birth inside the cycle before it was dragged down, screaming into the abyss.
Still, she blinked as she opened her eyes... and wondered what the hell just happened?
Sarutobi Hiruzen
There were some that wondered why he was giving young Matto so much trust, to be allowed to work inside of the tower. To be sure, he was hardly the same sort of eye candy that his normal secretary was, but the Black Flames Of Paperwork Processing made up for that. As did the fact that he was able to send a legion of 'scutwork devils' to sort out the Jonin and ANBU archives. Granted, the village did now need to make regular donations to charitable works, but when a hidden name of a Kami was invoked and a spirits summoned and bound to oversee the archives, to automatically sort and process them?
One could easily overlook the blazing loops of light and eyes, the circling wheels made of hands that made signs of authority and order with each movement, the constant hymns in an unknown language pressing down against reality as they brought order to the mess that was the eldritch maze of paperwork and mission details. Small things really, and it had nothing to do with the fact that his crystal ball now had a recording feature and could look at international hot springs. Not in the least.
Which of course, is why he was looking at Mitarashi Anko holding the one that was delivering him from the tedium that was paperwork in a headlock. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
Frankly, his hearing was going, as she spoke. "So, the brat said he had some technique that needed a link to my old sensei." Ah, she was squeezing the boy, as he thrashed. "Something about karma catching up to him and my seal being able to act as a stand in. So, the brat offered some dango and I thought hey. why not?" She blushed. "Ah, there was some chanting, pressed some oil to the seal and..." She giggled, as there WAS no seal on her neck. "Well, a little more chanting, posturing with a toy sword and a ghost of the bastard peels its way out the seal and is dragged screaming some place north of the village. Then the snakes popped up, as apparently I need to kill one of his infiltrators in our ranks to be the sole holder of the contract."
Ah, that is what he thought she said, as he looked over them, his face hard, as he listened to the details. A part of him mourned his old student. But... a greater part was sadly amused at what the requirements for his student to be dragged off and down to Hell would be, and just how far he would have needed to have fallen.