(It should perhaps come as no great surprise that my chapter mushroomed in size just a bit. Thank you to ScarredPunLover, MetalDragon, Sunny, and KoreanWriter for their help brainstorming and editing.)
In moments like these, when the enemy and his schedule afforded him the chance to stand some place high and gaze out over a battlefield, Orochimaru always returned to Ame.
The Land of Rain, that dreadfully well named place, had seemed to Orochimaru like the great settling pond into which all the world's mud and misery drained, all under an eternally cloud-choke sky. The discharge of two great rivers flowed into that land, saturated its already spongy soil, and sat, just sat, at the intersection of Earth, Sand, and Fire.
Sat, and rotted.
In Orochimaru's eyes, the battlefields around Amegakure had been the doorway to a drowning hell he could never have imagined. The endless sleeting rain and the boiling heat of fire fused into an unholy mixture of heat and humidity that sapped away the soul's very will to live. The mosquitos and leaches, multiplying by the tens of thousands in the fetid bottomland, could drink a man pale and bloodless, while the razored leaves of the grass and reeds could flay him to the bone.
Not that much of that lush greenery remained in Ame. He had been there to see it wither and curl in fire and dessicate as water jutsu ripped moisture from the very air.
He had been there to see it all.
By the time the Second Great Ninja War began, Orochimaru had worn the Leaf upon his brow for eighteen years, had been in active service to Konoha since the age of six. Nothing he had seen or done in those almost two decades of service to the Leaf had prepared him for the unmitigated disaster that was those early days in the war, when hundreds of ninja from three Great Villages and half a dozen lessers had clashed, each backed by armies numbering in the thousands. Above all else, it had been the scale that had undone him; he had killed, he had burned, he had engaged in cross-border raiding and assassinated great lords and mighty criminals, but he had never witnessed hundreds of jutsu hurled every minute across carpets of the dead.
He had fought the ninja of Taki, of Suna, and of Iwa, as well as the few remaining clans holding aloof from the Hidden Village system, but even in the most frantic of those fights, even in the worst of the raids, when ten to twenty nin on either side closed to dance their poisoned daggers against their counterparts, there had always been something of order to it, something of an unspoken code.
There had been rules, back then, back before the War. A way things were done. Oftentimes, those raids had ended with only a handful of deaths or injuries spread across the two sides; sometimes, the fighting was limited only to an almost ceremonial exchange of projectiles, before the one side or the other would give way, honor assuaged.
The Second Great Ninja War had been no place for such half-measures, had possessed no time for honor. From the moment that the Sandaime Hokage, the man who had taught him all there was to know about being a shinobi, had ordered Orochimaru and his comrades across the border of Ame as part of a flanking maneuver to strike the Iwa army pouring into the Land of Grass, the entire war had been nothing but disaster, mitigated only by the technical victory Konoha had eked out in the end.
What Orochimaru was looking out over was not Ame, not that forever wet place where nothing but mud and muckweed could prosper. Instead, he was looking out from a hilltop observation post over the Land of Hot Water, or at least the twenty-mile wide Mutosi Valley, whose winding Mutosi River marked the border between Hot Water and Fire.
The view could have been a window back into an Ame fourteen years past. It looked, to Orochimaru's venom-yellow eyes, just about the same.
Once heavily forested, almost a year as the front line of the war between Kumo and Konohagakure reduced the greenery to isolated pockets of bedraggled sickly-looking trees and lone stragglers surrounded by the splintered remnants of their groves. Likewise, the forest loam, dark and rich, had been churned into a thick, sucking muck in which no prospective saplings could set down roots. A mirror, Orochimaru knew, to another battlefield five miles southwest of his current position, back in the Land of Fire. That wasteland marked the deepest thrust the main trunk of the Land of Lightning's army, and which remained, two years later, littered with rusting armor and discarded weapons, pitiful memorials for the soldiers who had rotted away into nothing there, bereft of pyre or grave.
That other wound in the land would never fully heal; it would only scar over, just as the battlefields of the Second Great War had only scarred over. The land itself had been injured, no less so than the Land of Fire that claimed it. Here too, Orochimaru could see the first contours of the scar-to-be. Most readily apparent was the shift in the course of the Mutosi River, its bed shattered by the jutsu that had forced unnatural shape and form onto the clay of its banks and into its own flowing waters.
But that was far from the extent of the scars the land bore.
Streaking across the land in jagged lines, Orochimaru picked out the fortifications turned mass graves, when the jutsu-manipulated soil had flowed like water back into the excavated trenches only to harden into stone around the conscripted levies trapped within as all of the water was abruptly withdrawn from the soil.
He saw the black tarry splotches in the mud, where plasma had streaked down from the sky to incinerate some unlucky target as well as the very air and ground he had stood upon, or perhaps where a touch-activated explosion tag had slagged an unwary leg and flash-broiled the dirt.
Across the broad valley, a tentative silence prevailed. It was far from a complete silence; the headquarters camp at his back was a bustle of noise as soldiers drilled, smiths repaired bent armor and ground new edges onto swords and kunai, and draft animals stomped and snorted against the sticky wet autumn cold. Ahead of him, the trenches full of crouching conscripts reinforced by the occasional samurai and their retainers like steel bars in concrete also hummed with activity, though at a much lower volume.
Nobody wanted to draw attention to themselves and call down the lightning onto their heads.
The wind shifted and, like an old friend, the familiar smell rose to greet him.
Sweet and stinking, the smell of the dead in their thousands rose to meet Orochimaru's nostrils; his tongue flicked out idly to sample the taste, and found it unexceptional.
Thankfully the autumn has already begun; it must have been unbearable a few weeks ago, while the summer still lingered.
Casting a sidelong glance, Orochimaru was just in time to catch Anko pulling a face, before she hurriedly rearranged her features back into the typical stoicism befitting a kunoichi. Had they been alone, Orochimaru would have chided her for her lack of control; after all, this was far from the first time his students had followed him onto a battlefield.
Pausing at that thought, Orochimaru took another taste of the fetid air, rolling it across his tongue. It was just as foul as he remembered, but hardly unendurable.
…Perhaps that has less to do with how bad the air is and more to do with how much time I have spent cooped up in formaldehyde-stinking laboratories over the last year.
Perhaps I won't chide Anko later on after all.
"Well done, Captain-Major," the Hokage said, turning to his other side, and the man there, more because he keenly felt the obligation to say something, and commenting on the stench was both unhelpful and merely pointing out the obvious. "You and your forces have done a splendid job, driving the Cloud back across the Mutosi and out of Fire's lands."
A polite murmur of agreement rose from the gathered aristocrats, ninja, and samurai officers, most of whom were prudent enough to stand well back from the crest of the hill. Some had accompanied Orochimaru on this trip to Eastern Headquarters, while others had joined Captain-Major Oyama Daisuke in giving the visiting dignitary a "tour of the Front."
As if glancing over the field itself from the tops of a few hills would give even the slightest insight into the mired trees and drowned meat down at the foot of these hills with their commanding vistas.
"Thank you, Lord Hokage," replied Captain-Major Oyama, bowing low from the waist, showing perhaps a bit more deference than was strictly proper for a man of his rank and authority. Perhaps the correct amount of deference for a man planning to prevail upon his visitor for support back at court, or perhaps the deployment of another battalion of ninja straight from Konoha to give some new offense a few extra teeth. "We are honored by your kindness."
"And all of the Land of Fire is honored by the tenacity of her defenders," the Hokage replied without missing a beat. All trite nothings, but of the sort a man in his position was expected to say. "But, now that I have seen the battlefield, let us reconvene in your headquarters tent, Captain-Major Oyama, and plan the next thrust against the Kumo oathbreakers."
As the last few formalities of the "tour" concluded and Oyama left with his retinue, heading back down the hill, his next appointment approached.
"Team Orochimaru," Orochimaru said to his private stock of cannon fodder, also known as his genin team, "go find some way to make yourselves useful for the next few hours. We will reconvene for supper, at which point I will be expecting reports. Show up late or without anything to report and I'll disavow you."
"Yes, Teacher," came the dull chorus from Akimi and Nagamasa, along with the decidedly more enthusiastic "You betcha!" from Anko, predictably.
By the time the small knot of men and women wearing Konoha hitai-ate had crouched into bows at the Hokage's feet, the hillside was clear of any potential eavesdroppers, either overly curious genin or malingering soldiers. Orochimaru's orders and the ring of quietly menacing Anbu were more than enough to carve out some privacy for the Hokage, and for his Jonin Commander.
At the center of the bowed arc knelt a shinobi literally cloaked in obscurity, distant and aloof even by the standards of their clandestine profession. A large, body-swallowing coat in green and black concealed much of his form, with a tall collar and drawn up hood concealing most of what remained, leaving only his hands visible to observers. In the depths of his shadowy hood, the reflective lenses of a pair of glasses glimmered like a beetle's carapace.
Much was made of the tendency common to all of this man's kinsfolk to hide themselves away behind thick layers and lenses. Some believed it was a display of hubris, an attempt to set the swaddled forms above the rest of the village in their aloofness. Others opined that it was an expression of agoraphobia, joking that of course beetles needed shells to scuttle beneath in the bright light of day. Some hypothesized that it was all just in service of aesthetics, and that the Aburame simply delighted in making themselves mysterious.
Unlike all of those fools, Orochimaru knew that the self-assigned uniform of the Aburame clan was less of a fashion statement and more a safety precaution, worn for the sake of their teammates.
"Lord Yondaime," greeted Aburame Shikuro, acknowledging his new lord from where he knelt on the muddy hill, gazing up at Orochimaru from behind the smoked mirrors of his sunglasses. "Jonin Namikaze brought word of your ascension when he came through on the way to his… errand. Congratulations, and welcome to Eastern Headquarters."
Well, an errand is quite the mild way to characterize a declaration of the resumption of hostilities, but considering how Minato was essentially just making a delivery, not an inaccurate one.
"How good of him," Orochimaru replied, and gestured for the Jonin Commander and his officers to rise. "Any reaction yet from Kumo? Any… reply? Everything here ssseemsss rather… quiet."
To any veteran worth their salt, be the soldier, shinobi, or samurai, there were few things more unnerving than quiet in a warzone.
"Locally, very little has happened," confirmed Shikuro, knocking the mud from his hands. "Just the usual raiding and infiltration attempts, about on the same tempo as before."
Orochimaru nodded, accepting the report, with all of its desperation and death swept away under the banal description of "the usual."
In his time, he had fought against the ninja of six other villages, including all four of the other Great Villages. He knew exactly what passed for "the usual" in such times and against such enemies.
"What about reconnaissance?" Orochimaru pressed. "How far out are you running the patrols, Shikuro?"
"Five miles for the nightly infiltrations," said the Jonin Commander. "All the way up to the walls of Kumo's current headquarters, an onsen town called Asoko. Sometimes our teams even manage to intercept a courier. Occasionally, I'll send a squad further into Hot Springs to see what Lightning is up to behind the front lines.
"Here," the Aburame pulled out a scroll from his voluminous coat which Orochimaru accepted, "the latest map from the Analysis Unit here at Eastern Headquarters. Current as of two nights ago."
Ah yes, thought Orochimaru, untying the string holding the scroll closed and deftly disarming the seal that would incinerate the map and the map's holder if they were fool enough to handle the thing with insufficient wariness, the Analysis Unit, your old stomping grounds. Right, Shikuro?
While Konoha primarily dealt in steel, fire, and skilled personnel with immense capacity for the precise application of both or either, the Village Hidden in the Leaves also had a thriving secondary role as a sort of information clearinghouse. All across the Lands of Fire, Grass, Waterfalls, Tea, Sea, and Rice Fields, wealthy men from all social backgrounds paid handsomely for information. Merchants paid for information on market conditions in distant lands or for details on road conditions and bandit activity along major trade routes. Criminals paid for the secrets of rivals and allies alike, keen for leverage or sniffing for vulnerability. Nobles paid for the hidden details of eligible bachelors and bachelorettes, shopping around for partners in marriage and alliance.
All of these requests and more passed over the Hokage's desk for approval, and regardless of whether or not the contract was accepted, the details were conveyed to the Intelligence Division for cataloging, processing, and execution. If the contract was accepted, or if the request had raised the interest or wariness of the Hokage, missions would be issued to teams of specialists from the active divisions, such as hunter-nin teams and spymasters with far flung agents. Once those active divisions returned with information in hand or with potential sources in need of further processing by the Torture and Interrogation Unit, their take would pass into the hands of the so-called "inactive divisions," named as such by their more field-based brethren.
These ninja, who admittedly tended towards a more sedentary disposition, worked in offices with tightly sealed doors and vague names like "Applied Codes" or "Strategic Reconnaissance." Each of these siloed groups tended to focus on analysis of their particular speciality, ranging from cartography to sociology to cryptography, and would prepare reports from the raw intelligence acquired by the active divisions that covered elements pertaining to their speciality.
All of those reports would end up, eventually, in the hands of the Analysis Unit, who were tasked with reassembling the general view from the disjointed and specific facets. Then, they would boil their conclusions down into summaries, which would in turn pass back into the hands of the Hokage's Office, where they would end up on Orochimaru's desk for his review. At which point, the information would be relayed to interested parties, added to Konoha's own files, or sometimes slammed away under his private seal.
It was all quite tedious, but nevertheless very important. The Intelligence Division was arguably the backbone of the village, after all, or at least its eyes, ears, and fingers. They kept the village's official bingo book of high profile enemies and outstanding bounties updated, their work informed every decision about whether or not to accept a contract and how the resulting mission should be ranked, and they kept the Hokage appraised of how the world turned.
And in the process, they generated such vast seas of paperwork that Orochimaru had already begun to have stress dreams about drowning in his own shed skins, each of which dripped with neatly inked calligraphy requesting his careful consideration.
And that's before the damned Signal Interception Team that Teacher ordered even enters the picture to demand more of my time with all of their reports and their endless requests for more funding!
Orochimaru shuddered, and realized that he'd been gripping the scroll in clenched hands, to the clear unease of several of the chuunin in attendance. Shikuro, at least, had the good sense to keep any disquiet he might have experienced to himself, taking shelter behind that Aburame dispassion that always hovered on the very edge of being inhuman.
Good thing he's wearing those glasses, Orochimaru thought, shoving his own momentary unease away before even a hint of it could reveal itself, looking away from the Jonin Commander's flat face to peruse the map. Nobody should ever be forced to look into an Aburame's eyes, especially not a man expected to dine with Captain-Major Oyama and his staff in two hours.
Eyes packed to bulging with maggots, the Hokage reasoned, should strictly be a post-dinner experience, if they must be experienced at all. Praise be to whoever convinced the Aburame to adopt concealing their eyes as a clan signature.
As expected, the map was precisely drawn by a steady hand using a thin brush. Orochimaru suspected it was Yamanaka work; that clan generally enjoyed a reputation for their deftness with a brush.
Which makes it all the more baffling that they've never taken tofuuinjutsu, he noted as he poured over the carefully hatched polygons denoting distributions of soldiers and samurai from Lightning, comparing the topological lines against the mental picture of the Mutosi Valley still fresh in his mind. Perhaps I could convince the clan to offer a few of their youngsters to Jiraiya as prospective apprentices? I did warn him that I would be expecting him to take on students…
"Very good," the Hokage said crisply, rolling the map back up and returning it to Shikuro. "Captain-Major Oyama is waiting to discuss the strategic situation with me; you will be joining us, unless your subordinates urgently require your supervision?"
"No, Lord Hokage," the Aburame jonin agreed, and with a gesture from Konoha's theater commander, the knot of squad leaders dispersed back to their units.
"But," Orochimaru continued, setting a companionable hand on the Jonin Commander's shoulder, itself a small powerplay considering how few people in Konoha were ever inclined to set hands on an Aburame even in anger, "before we go talk to the samurai… Tell me."
It is such a delight to be the one issuing vague and cryptic commands, the Sannin couldn't help but note, having been on the receiving end of similarly open-ended demands quite often over his years of service. It's always interesting to see just what they dredge up.
And he was quite interested to hear what Shikuro had to say. While not the clanhead of the Aburame, he was still a highly respected shinobi, both in the squirming eyes of his kinsmen and in the regard of the broader village. That respect had been enough to merit command over a full te of ninja, one hundred of the usual four-man squads organized into sonae of fifteen squads apiece. Just under a third of Konoha's entire active muster, all under the command of the famously enigmatic Aburame Shikuro.
He had a good face for being enigmatic, Orochimaru had to admit. It was curiously flat, as if someone had endeavored to plane away all of the usual ridges and bumps of the human face, and had only exempted the battered nose and pale lips as a concession to the demands of function. Those lips were pressed into the same flat expressionless line that Orochimaru considered synonymous with the Jonin Commander, having never seen the man without it.
Beyond that hard, flat face, free of any facial hair, there was very little to render Shikuro as visually distinctive. A powerfully built man, his bulk was swathed in a heavy hooded poncho, whose baggy folds obscured the set of his broad shoulders and likely concealed any number of useful tools. A scarf tied around the Aburame's head held his long brown hair back and, along with the hood and the sunglasses, gave his face the mien of a buried skull, surrounded by rich black dirt.
His hitai-ate glistened from the neck of his poncho where it sat, gorget-style, against the hollow of his collarbone.
"Tell you what?" Aburame Shikuro asked, inclining his head just enough to add the interrogatory to his toneless response. "The state of our readiness? We stand ready, Lord Hokage, though our ranks are somewhat depleted. Unit morale? All is well. The food is… passable."
It wasn't immediately clear if the last three sentences encompassed a single thought or two, but their general thrust was of satisfaction with the current state of affairs, if not enthusiasm.
It's the first point that could be an issue, particularly since that depletion is, at the very least, aggravated by the withdrawal I ordered of the youth from the ranks.
"Reinforcements will be arriving soon," the Hokage assured his field commander. "Suna has agreed to take over the westernmost zones from Northern Command. By now, Matsumuro should already be reconsolidating his forces and deciding who he can spare to second to your command."
Matsumuro being, in this case, Jonin Nara Matsumuro, Shikuro's opposite number holding the northern marches against Iwa and opportunistic strikes from Kumo.
"That is good," stated Shikuro, without anything resembling a smile disturbing his placidly blank face.
I wonder if thekikaichusquirming under his skin and teeming in his eyes are smiling for him?
Orochimaru had never had the opportunity to fully investigate the Aburame Clan and their peculiar mutualistic relationship with their kikai beetles; the Aburame were very insular and tended to be tight-knit amongst themselves, which meant he had yet to get his hands on a subject for destructive testing. Still, even without the full knowledge of their secrets, he had fought alongside enough Aburames to know that the bonds they shared with their hosted swarms represented far more than a hilt upon a sword. Host and swarm shared feelings and experiences, most definitely including pain.
Orochimaru could still remember when he'd first heard a kikaichu swarm shriek from two thousand throats as one of Shikuro's kinsmen died in silence, writhing as Wind Scorpion venom from a poisoned Suna kunai rotted him from within. The man's face had remained utterly stoic even as his body spasmed and jerked, but the clouds of winged kikaichu issuing from every pore of his dying body had screamed on his behalf, a whining piercing drone that Orochimaru had been unable to escape even with his hands pressed firmly over his ears. If he ever were to… to examine a specimen, then appropriate precautions would have to be made well in advance.
"Indeed," Orochimaru said, nodding encouragingly to the Aburame. "Anything else you would like to… report?"
Then, he stood there, smiling patiently as he held the Jonin Commander's eyes, waiting for Shikuro to speak again.
…And kept waiting.
I… appreciate myJoninCommander's professionalism, Orochimaru thought, shoving away his mounting irritation while strictly maintaining his pointedly unaffected posture. But clearly it would be easier to pull the teeth from his head than to coax the words I want to hear from his tongue. And while the Aburame are hardly expressive, that damned coat of his mutes any telling body language or tics.
"I had," the jonin said at last, "expected Jonin Namikaze."
"As the Sandaime's successor," Orochimaru silently completed for him, understanding exactly what the other man meant.
"Will thisss be an isssssue?" the Hokage politely asked, his accent touching his voice again as Manda's tongue flickered out from between his lips. Shikuro tasted acrid, bitter. Like ants. "Will you have issssuesss taking ordersss from me?"
"No," Shikuro replied calmly. "You are the Hokage, and thus, are Konoha. Your record speaks for itself. I am just… surprised, that the Lord Sandaime decided to change course so abruptly. There is…" he hesitated slightly, just the slightest discomfort marring his tone, "some discontent among my command. The war's conclusion seemed in sight one day, but only a week later, hostilities resume under the direction of a new leader."
"...You have heard word of what transsspired back in Konoha?" asked the Hokage, a thin eyebrow elevated in curiosity. "About the insssult Kumo offered usss?"
"Yes, Lord Hokage," confirmed Shikuro, "as has every shinobi and kunoichi under my command. There is some discontent, yes, but not very much. We still stand ready to fight. But, if it is possible and if the Northern Front remains truly closed a month from now, I would suggest introducing a system to rotate squads back to Konoha on a regular basis. Temporary leave passes are all well and good, but the services of camp followers do not soothe the longing for home."
That was… unusually florid for an Aburame, Orochimaru thought, taken aback. Perhaps a poet's soul resides somewhere inside the man after all, cohabitating with all thekikkai.
"I will consider it," the Hokage allowed, turning the idea over to examine it from another direction.
As students, we are taught to obey without question and be willing to sacrifice our lives for the greater good of Konoha. To take no break in tirelessly driving the enemy from our lands, and to end all threats to the village or the mission without hesitation or mercy. Yet… if I regard myshinobiand mykunoichias my tools, or as fuel for the bonfire of Konoha…
Tools require regular maintenance, do they not? Proper maintenance as well. You can get by with patch jobs, luck, and elbow grease for a while, but every now and then even the most robust machine requires a periodic teardown and rebuild. A full overhaul at regular intervals is best, or a spectacular breakdown at the least convenient moment is all but guaranteed.
So, if I regard the people of my village as my tools…
"A rotation home would present a good opportunity to retrain the returning squads," Orochimaru said aloud, nodding in agreement with his own words, "a good chance to break poor habits formed on the battlefield and firming up the fundamentals while giving our veterans a chance to pass on lessons to our new genin and academy students… And I will concede your point, Shikuro; even the sharpest blade will dull and break without proper care and servicing. It is the same with our comrades… and if they are to break on the battlefield some day, it would be a shame if their experience and jutsu died with them."
"As you say, Lord Hokage," the Jonin Commander tunelessly replied. "Thank you for your consideration."
"...Now, as with any jutsu whose use involves total immersion within something other than air, it is of crucial importance to take breathing into account.
"You would think," Orochimaru went on, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent given over for his and his genin team's use for the one night they would be spending in the Eastern Headquarters Camp before returning to Konoha, "that this would not be a point I would need to remind you of. You would think that nobody could be so foolish as to forget that the ability to, say, swim through the earth did not include the ability to breath liquified soil as well.
"You would be gravely mistaken. I have seen ninja fail to account for how long they would need to hold their breath and have to resort to emerging well outside of the reach of their target, surrendering the element of surprise and leaving their gasping selves vulnerable for a shurikan to the skull.
"It should go without saying that, should this happen to any of you, I'll kill you myself if you somehow survive the head wound."
Predictably, Anko grinned at that. Akimi and Nagamasa at least deigned to show sufficient respect for his lessons to nod gravely in response.
Idiot girl. If she ends up gasping like a fish with a knife in her throat, it'll be her own fault.
Not that I actually expect her to be stupid in that specific way, Orochimaru admitted to himself. No, I expect her to stupid herself to death in a much more… bombastic manner. The idiot.
"Alright," he said, moving briskly along. "With that in mind, these are the signs for Earth Style: Hide Like a Mole Jutsu. Watch closely, because I'm only going to do this on–"
"Attack!" someone outside the tent yelled out, the sounds of a gong ringing out through the night. "Enemies in the camp! It's a raid! We're under attack!"
All four were on their feet in an instant as reflexes honed on, in the Sannin's case, battlefields stretching back decades came to the fore. Through the fabric of the tent, Orochimaru could see the shadows of his Anbu bodyguards taking up defensive positions in the vain hope that he would be content to merely sit by as chaos unfolded around him.
A fool's bet, the White Snake scoffed, a kunai already pricking a finger on his hand, the beading blood the cost of invoking his contract. From behind him came the distinct sound of Anko biting her forearm, making her own sacrifice. Who could respect a leader that cowers in his tent?
Besides, he reasoned, if I stay in place, mygeninwould be compelled to follow my lead, and that would be unfair to them. They deserve the opportunity to add a few Kumo scalps to their records. Some nice variety to go with all the Kiri filth. It'll be good for their resume.
"Nagamasa," Orochimaru prompted, but the boy was ahead of him, the veins around his eyes bulging like bloated worms as he called upon his ancestral power.
"Northwards, seventy paces," the Hyuuga spat, head orienting in that direction, eyes fixed on something beyond the shifting wall of the tent and the occluding night dark. "Five combatants, two of them ours. One of the Kumo is wielding a sword, the other two kunai, and all three of them are close in."
"Sssoundsss like our firssst ssstop," hissed the serpent at Orochimaru's feet, the steam from his summoning still wafting off the ten feet of rippling white scales. The Sannin hid the grunt of exertion from the massive weight of the summon under a thoughtful hum. The heavy constrictor was a massive creature packed with muscle and its bulk was far from insignificant, especially as it climbed its way up his side before finding a perch across his shoulders. Fortunately, long experience had turned the inconvenience into a familiar burden. He had worked with Gnopa before many times before, after all. "Take usss to him, Sssummoner."
"Akimi," Orochimaru called out, ignoring the snake's demand, "barrier overhead, now. Team Orochimaru, diamond formation, Anko as rearguard."
As they burst from the tent, the four-man Anbu team fell in around Team Orochimaru in a loose box, the masked figures moving with practiced precision.
Not that the discipline was enough to obscure the resigned frustration Orochimaru could feel wafting off the security detail's baboon-masked leader.
Not that Orochimaru cared in the slightest. It was the obligation of bodyguards to protect even the most unreasonable of bosses, and after so long spent trapped behind a desk or hashing out quiet side deals with various potentates, he had quite a bit of unreasonability stored up.
The camp was a confusion of dark shapes flickering in and out of the small pools of light cast by braziers and campfires, with the guyropes, stools, and other clutter of the camp adding an additional element of complication. Orochimaru would have dearly loved to move Nagamasa to the front of the formation, night being no barrier to his all-seeing eyes, but had no desire to follow his genin into combat.
Besides, using your eyes as a meatshield is a fantastic way to leave yourself blind.
Out of the dark, a shurikan streaked past, nowhere near Orochimaru's head. It was still enough to agitate the Anbu, the foremost two of whom redoubled their speed, almost sprinting ahead before a hissed command from their leader pulled them back into the defensive formatioon.
"Friendly down!" Nagamasa announced, his voice urgent. "One of our two is down. Looks like he might be dead."
"Still the same three hostiles?" Orochimaru asked, and when Nagamasa confirmed his supposition with a jerked nod, said, "Anbu, Team Orochimaru will handle these few. Range out and intercept any other Kumo nin nearby. Let none come to the aid of these fools."
After all, he reasoned, if these Cloud-nin managed to only down one of ours, with the dual advantages of numbers and surprise on their side, in the time it took us to run here from the tent, well…
They sound like ideal teaching material.
For a moment, the baboon-masked officer in charge of the Anbu detachment glared at Orochimaru through the slits of his mask, a bodyguard clearly frustrated by his principal's insistence on endangering himself.
But, to be Anbu was to be a tool in the Kage's hand, and the squad captain was a superb instrument in the Yondaime Hokage's arsenal. Two hand gestures to his fellow masked nin later and Team Orochimaru was alone.
With a gesture from Orochimaru, the genin team burst into a full out run. From around his shoulders, Gnopa hissed with delight, scenting the fresh blood already hanging on the air.
Then, they were no longer on their way to the fight; instead, they were there, in a small clearing in the orderly sea of tents, just outside the tail-end of a one-sided fight. By the light of the smoldering coals of a brazier, spilled across the far side of clearing by some unattentive hand, Orochimaru could see several bodies sprawling from the tents, wide red mouths gaping at their throats.
Knives in the night, he knew, having been on both sides of many such raids in the past.They all look like commonashigaruthough, nosamuraiorshinobihere.
None of mine lost.
Except there was a shinobi bleeding on the ground, a scraggly bearded man wearing the flak vest of a chuunin and a Konoha hitai-ate tied around his bicep. The flak vest had proven poor armor against the sword still in the hand of the Kumo kunoichi striking down into the guard of a desperately backpedaling Konoha-nin, blade flashing wetly in the light of the coals.
Vanishing back into the bloodspattered ranks of tents, Orochimaru lead his students through a weaving course, clinging to the shadows and cover as they neared the struggling knot of combatants. Between breaks in the canvas, the lone Konoha kunoichi's desperate battle unfolded in flashing glimpses, vanishing in eyeblinks as Team Orochimaru darted ever closer to their still unwary prey.
And prey they were, for the White Snake of Konoha was on the hunt again. The office of the Hokage and all of its troubles were cast, at least for a second, from the Serpent's shoulders, discarded like old skin. In the cold furnaces of his belly, chakra steamed like newly shed blood, breathing new warmth into his coals. His tongue flicked, tasting fire and blood, and his muscles twitched, their eager anticipation a reply to the scent of suffering on the air.
Every part of Orochimaru's world narrowed into focus; the man was gone, along with all of his cares, and the coiled viper was ready to strike.
Just before they broke into the clearing for a second time, the embattled kunoichi noticed the dark figures, shadows even against the flame-torn night, sprinting from the welter of guyropes and camp furniture. Her breath hitched, just for a breath, and then she threw herself back into the struggle, strength renewed.
Even through the confused darkness, Orochimaru saw hope blossom in her eyes, bright as stars and, potentially, as short-lived as a gnat.
The trio from Kumo were no fools, though; closer to the lone Leaf, they also saw the dreadful hope in her eyes and knew exactly what it meant.
Help had arrived, but not for them.
All three broke for different directions in an explosion of movement. The two on the flank each pivoted, guarding the flanks while giving their sword-wielding leader space to put her longer blade to work at the vertex of their triangle furthest from the enemy they could see. In Orochimaru's eyes, it was clearly a practiced formation, designed to allow the kunoichi with the sword time to assess their evolving situation while her two towering companions guarded her flanks.
Instead, the ground opened up beneath her, and liquified dirt swallowed her legs.
She yelped, caught by surprise, and began to yell something. A curse, an order? Whatever it was, it died stillborn, choked off by the kunai lodged so deeply in her throat that the blade skittered as it found bone.
From several paces away, Orochimaru caught his second kunai from the air in a fighting grip, the first of his two thrown knives proving more than adequate for the first piece of trash the night had offered him as prey. That simple trick had been enough to test the measure of these Cloud raiders, and he'd found them gravely wanting.
Next to the dying Cloud kunoichi, one of her companions, a massive man who had a full two heads' height on Orochimaru, grunted a curse as first one senbon needle clanked off his knife and out into the camp's darkness, and then a second.
Anko, it seemed, was unwilling to allow her teacher full mastery of all the fun and games afoot, and had not bothered to wait for his approval before striking.
Good initiative, said teacher noted approvingly, and one lost Cloud already down. That was as much thought as Orochimaru spared for his petty victory; it was hardly worth anything else, especially not when further prey was afoot. His eyes were already scanning the clearing for the two Kumo shinobi, or for any sign of enemy reinforcements. Somewhere off to the left, he heard the sounds of violence, swiftly cut off. Good, my weasels are hunting down any rats who might scurry my way.
He spared a glance for the corpse of the Kumo nin, buried to her knees in the middle of the clearing. Blood, aromatic to Manda's tongue and still warm with a life just taken, bubbled from around the buried hilt of kunai, undoubtedly frothy as air displaced from her rapidly filling lungs escaped in the seep. Fortunately, I still have two specimens for my students to test themselves against. Not that I expect that test to be of any great difficulty…
Seemingly by unspoken consent, Anko and Nagamasa split from his sides, dashing at the Cloud–nin.
Anko rushed at the man who had deflected her senbon, a giant of a man who stood head, shoulders and chest above the twelve-year old kunoichi charging at him with still more razor-tipped needles glinting from between her fingers. Orochimaru knew that there was far more to her assault than her needles, though – for one, the viper she had summoned earlier still lurked out of sight, most likely coiled tightly around her arm in the concealing sleeve of her coat. For another, Akimi was only a few paces behind her, dropping to a knee and reaching for the ground, preparing a restrictive barrier that would keep the enemy from escaping Anko's lashing fangs.
Nagamasa, for his part, met his chosen foe with no weapon save for his bare hands; suffused in the blue glow of sharpened chakra, no other weapon was required. Pale eyes bulging, hands lashing in precise strikes towards joints and blood vessels pounding barely beneath the skin, he was the very embodiment of the Hyuuga Clan, for all that the Caged Bird Seal lurked behind his hitai-ate.
Satisfied, Orochimaru slowed his own rush and came nearly to a halt, slowly pacing forwards between the two fights. He glanced left and right, noting how Nagamasa easily redirected a stabbing kunai just the slightest degree to the side, sending the jab whiffing harmlessly past his arm, and seeing how Akimi's hands were in motion again as he began setting up a genjutsu that would further hamper his enemy.
"Children," Orochimaru remarked to the Konoha nin he had just saved from death, almost melancholic as he halted by her side. "They grow up so fast, don't they?
"Why," he sighed, shaking his head and shrugging Gnopa off his shoulders, the great snake hissing irritably before slithering off to flank the man dueling Nagamasa, "it feels like it was only just yesterday that I was overseeing their first D-rank mission! Now, here they are… I guess I really will have to give them permission to attempt the Chuunin Exam this year after all."
"...Were you not going to?" the woman ventured, and then belatedly added, "Lord Hokage."
Orochimaru eyed her for a moment, searching for any signs of disrespect, but saw only the numb shock of a near-death experience.
"No, not really," he said, turning back to the twin duels. "I might have held it over Anko's head a bit longer – she tends to work better with a goal in mind, you know, but honestly? They've been chuunin level for a while now. I'd be wasting their talents if I kept dragging them after me much longer."
"...If you say so, Lord Hokage," the kunoichi, a genin, now that Orochimaru bothered to look, said after a moment. "Umm… If you don't mind me asking… What was their first D-rank mission?"
"Why do you asssk?" Orochimaru inquired absentmindedly, and then cursed when he realized he'd lost control of his tongue again. He had been watching as Nagamasa overextended himself and nearly took a kunai to the elbow as a reward. "Any particular reason?"
"Well…" the kunoichi shuffled for a moment. "I mean, they're your team, right? The personal students of a Sannin, the White Snake of Konoha. I'm kinda curious about what that was like."
Probably wants to know if there's any secret lessons, came the jaded thought.Hardly surprising, considering how many rumors there are about the "LegendarySannin," as if Hanzo hadn't been at least halfway sarcastic when he named us as much.
Or…another thought offered itself, one stemming from many long long years spent in Jiraya's company, perhaps she's just eager to indulge thatothergreat vice forninja, besides gambling and drinking to forget. Starved for a treasure we hoard with equal vigor as our secret techniques.
Gossip.
"Extermination," Orochimaru bluntly said, and grinned as Anko's viper at last made itself known, flying from her sleeve and sinking fang-deep into the Cloud giant's massive bicep. "I took them to a textile warehouse with a rodent problem and set them to think of a solution to the issue that would leave the product undamaged. I was curious about what their dynamic would be, and about whether any of the three had the slightest trace of brain."
An explosion of movement caught Orochimaru's eye as Gnopa made his presence at last known. With a stealth incongruous for a snake with scales as pale as milk and a width twice that of a man's arm, the summoned python had crept to the very feet of the hulking Cloud-nin trading blows with Nagamasa. Now, in a thunderblow of meat and bone, the terrible serpent had lifted the upper third of his trunk up from the ground and slammed forwards into the man's legs, immediately shattering his bones and sending the Cloud raider tumbling to the ground.
Great coils of opalescent scale over thick cords of muscle flew as Gnopa spiraled up the Kumo shinobi, up to the man's chest. The giant struck out, his kunai stabbing down at the blunt head resting almost companionably on his shoulder, but the angle was bad and the blade glanced harmlessly away from the constrictor's armor. That one, feeble strike was all he managed before Gnopa undulated, the muscles under his glimmering skin moving in waves as they flexed, crushing down with unyielding force. Orochimaru heard the rasping wheeze from the dying man as the contractions drove his final breath from his lungs, saw eyes rosy with ruptured capillaries dart wildly about for help, fingers twitch desperately for some saving action, bloody spittle foam on his mouth as he struggled to rise up on shattered legs to escape the white nightmare.
Then, the doomed man's rib cage imploded with a sickening wet crack.
He was aware, that doomed Kumo shinobi, and still very much alive within the gleaming coils of the dread predator crushing the life out of him with effortless, contemptuous ease. Alive and aware until Nagamasa stepped forward, brushed his fingers across his blanching brow with deceptive gentleness, and shredded the man's brain.
"Anyway," Orochimaru turned back to the genin, his only by village, not by tutelage, "it turned out that they were all quite clever. The teamwork took some effort, but we got there in the end. In the field, at least – you could not begin to imagine the bickering whenever they're not on a mission."
"I… see," the kunoichi nodded stiffly, eyes still fixed on the dead shinobi. His eyes, nose, and ears had begun to bleed as well as the slurry that Nagamasa had made of his brain seeped out. "Extermination. Right. I see. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity, Lord Hokage."
"Think nothing of it," Orochimaru grandly replied. "You did a satisfactory job surviving until my team and I arrived. Well done."
"Thank you, Lord Hokage," she said again, her voice subdued. "Nopperabo wasn't so lucky."
"Nopperabo?" Orochimaru frowned at the unfamiliar name, and then followed her eyes to the chuunin with the bloody chest. "Ah, yes."
He spared a glance back towards Anko and Akimi, who were both standing over the spasming body of the other Cloud shinobi and poking idly at the man as the necrophying venom of one of Manda's get liquified the flesh from his arm.
Ah, kids will be kids, the Hokage thought, suppressing a nostalgic smile. They really shouldn't be playing with their food, but… Perhaps they've earned a little indulgence.
And while they're indulging, I'll handle the unpleasant part.
Pulling a sealing scroll from his belt, Orochimaru made his way over to the body of the unfortunate Nopperabo.
"Were you close?" he asked the trailing kunoichi. "Teammates, perhaps? Friends?"
"No, Lord Hokage," she denied, shaking her head. "He's from Team 12. Just an acquaintance. We were just playing cards…"
"Gambling is forbidden," Orochimaru drawled, but waved his hand as the woman paled. "No matter; it is fortunate you were both awake, unlike those other poor fools in the tent. You gave a good account of yourselves; you did, at least. I arrived too late to see Nopperabo in action."
"He fought hard," said the kunoichi, her voice clear and definitive. "If he hadn't gotten in that bitch's way, hadn't taken that sword… He'd probably be the one talking to you, not me. He saved my life."
"...He certainly had the Will of Fire in that case," muttered Orochimaru, saying what he thought his Teacher would have probably said in the face of that pronouncement. It cost nothing to praise the man now that he was dead, after all, and denigrating him in the face of a shell-shocked comrade would accomplish nothing.
Even if achuuninshould have had either thejutsuor the dexterity to keep from being spitted on a blade. I wonder if drinks were served at this card game?
That didn't matter now. Stooping, Orochimaru pressed the sealing scroll against Nopperabo's slack-jawed face and activated the seal. In a puff of smoke, the cadaver was gone, sealed away into the stasis of the scroll.
"Here," he said, handing the scroll to the kunoichi. "Go find his squad. No need for them to stumble around in the dark trying to find their lost comrade. Then go and report back to your own. Let them know you're still alive."
"I… I will, Lord," the Leaf-nin said, hand rising to her heart in a salute. "Thank you, Lord."
"Stay safe," he replied with a negligent wave, and turned his attention back to his students as the kunoichi also vanished in a puff of smoke.
It was time to assess their performance.
To his delight, Nagamasa had assumed the role of the watchful guard without any need for instruction or guidance. His hands still glowed through the veins in his temples had smoothed out as he gave his eyes a chance to relax. Still, he was peering off into the shadows of the tent sea, searching for any lurking enemies.
Orochimaru noted that the Hyuuga had chosen to watch for enemies from a point several paces away from where Gnopa, jaw dislocated, was beginning the arduous process of eating his dinner. It was difficult to tell, what with the clearing's poor light and the typical Hyuuga reserve, but Nagamasa looked distinctly queasy.
Within Akimi's barrier, Anko was busily sawing away at the dead man while her teammate looked on with academic interest. To Orochimaru, he didn't seem so interested in the scalping – which he had seen plenty of before after skirmishes against Kiri – but in the sheer volume of the Cloud ninja. He seemed to be eying the man's surviving arm, evaluating its reach.
I wonder if he nearly got Akimi at some point? Reached past Anko to try to grab at the softer target, the one whose barrier kept him from fleeing and whosegenjutsublurred Anko's form and made it impossible to track her movements? It would explain his interest in the meat, now that the threat is gone.
"I commend your diligence, Anko," he called out, stepping to the very edge of Akimi's barrier, "but you should know that the bounty offered by Konoha only applied to ninja from Kiri, not just any scalp you happened across."
"But you're the Hokage, so what you say goes," chirped Anko, grinning over her shoulder at him. "How much will you – 'scuse me, the village – give me for a nice Cloud-head, eh?"
"The katsudon's on me when we return home," Orochimaru said grandly, and then turned to Akimi. "Would you like a sealing scroll, Akimi?"
"Hmm?" The bespectacled boy looked up from the corpse. "Not in particular. Why?"
"Well, dissection is generally easier in a controlled environment," Orochimaru reasoned, hopeful that this could be a sign at last that Akimi was awaking to the same interests he and Anko shared. "It really wouldn't be any trouble, if this specimen interests you…"
"No, thank you Teacher," Akimi said, shaking his head and collapsing his barrier. "I was just thinking that he was a pretty tall drink of water, you know? Nothing that special."
"Says the twerp," jeered Anko. "Sounds like some sour grapes if you ask me, short-stuff."
"Laugh it up while you can, Beady Eyes!" Akimi replied, heat touching his voice and his cheeks. "In a few years, I'll be laughing down at you!"
"Enough." The one word was enough to bring the brewing argument to a quick end. "The camp is still under attack; we have more work to be about. Nagamasa?"
"My eyes remain functional, Teacher," the Branch Hyuuga replied, coming to stand by his leader. His momentary discomfort, Orochimaru was pleased to see, had clearly subsided. "That said, I believe that the remaining raiders are retreating. Also, your Anbu have reconvened and are waiting for orders."
"Yes," Orochimaru agreed, having spotted the four masked faces lurking near the edge of the clearing. At least they had put out the spilled embers before any of the tents had caught fire. "Well… In that case, I suppose we had best return to our tent. No doubt reports will soon be arriving to explain just how much damage Kumo accomplished, as will Jonin Commander Aburame, ready to tell me how best we can respond in kind."