Snap Back To Reality 65

Orochimaru came back into my life with the force of a cyclone. There were very few men that demanded the attention he did. He was like a particularly needy cat, who dropped in once in a while to force me to interact with him, and at other times just disappeared of to do who knows what. Today he walked into our lab with an intensity I had almost forgotten he held. He threw on his lab-coat and gloves, before making his way to the door without even a look in my direction… but then he stopped and turned my way. I put down the research notes and assessed him for a moment.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked.

It took a moment to register the fact that he was asking me to go with him. It had been too long since this air of chill had frozen me still, as if to remind me I was in the presence of a predator and not this needy cat I'd begun to see him as. His yellow eyes seemed to catch my gaze and I felt my limbs move before my thoughts could even catch up. As if on autopilot followed behind him without further prompting.

We moved into the once-empty depths of his private, hidden lab. I itched my arm, wondering why I hadn't forewarned Fugaku of this particular labs potential use. I just could not fathom that he would bring anyone back in here considering how compromised this place had become. As I entered the room, I expected many things; the low groans of captives, the shapes of dozens of humans chained and hanging in their cells, their hopeless dull expressions, or the fiery panic I'd been used to—but not this empty silence. There wasn't anyone here. I looked back at Orochimaru with silent questioning and he pulled out a syringe.

"Hold out your arm," he ordered.

"What is it?" I asked, eyeing the syringe and then the exit.

This was going too fast. I didn't have the time to address any call signs to begin my mission. There was no prior warning. And he looked like he needed an answer here and now. I felt the panic from being rushed muddle my thoughts.

"Ever the inquisitive mind. Do you trust me?" he asked.

"No."

I managed to draw out a genuine laugh from his throat, but he forcefully pulled out my arm and I felt locked in his vice grip. I eyed the clear fluid with a snarl.

"I'm inquisitive because I'd like to know what the fuck you're putting in my body," I said.

"You're right not to trust me little neonate, but for once you have nothing to fear. When have I ever modified your body without your consent?"

I hesitated. "Never."

He put the needle to my arm, kneeling in front of me to get eye level with me. I searched his face for any kind of malice, anger, maybe even joy because he sure as hell was sick enough to get a kick from someone else's pain… but nothing. He looked neither angry, excited, happy or on edge. For a moment I felt inexplicably like trusting him, which went against every bit of logical bone in my body. His grip on my arm loosened as if to tell me I could let go, but I didn't. I locked my arm in place and was given a rare genuine smile from Orochimaru that brought forth something instinctually warm.

What was I doing?

"I knew you were the only one," he said.

That felt like too overwhelming a thing to say to me in this intimate position. Those words gripped at me harder than his power ever could. I stood there unsure again. What was going on? Why was I staying? What in the name of Kaguya's big moon titties, was I doing sharing a moment with Orochimaru… mysensei,the man who… whowhat? Took me out of ROOT? I floundered to find the reason but couldn't grasp it, and yet my body stood still under his handling.

Even as the needle pricked into my arm and he injected the unknown substance into me, I felt as frustratingly reassured as I was afraid. I expected pain, the burning searing pain of a fire jutsu in my veins, or the bubbling toxicity of poison, I expected I would die a fool, having trusted someone as ridiculously untrustworthy as Orochimaru, but I didn't. I didn't feel any sort of pain, but rather my body seemed to relax, and I felt a warm numbness reach over my arms and spread across my entirety, as I lost my footing.

"W-what was it?" I asked, feeling my tongue begin to stiffen.

Orochimaru caught me, his hand on the back of my neck tilted my head up so I could look at him in my panic. "It was simply something to knock you out."

Oh… what had I been so afraid of? Maybe what was coming after? Everything had begun to coalesce together in a moment of confusion, and then my brain blanked. I couldn't feel, then I couldn't hear, then I couldn't see, and then my thoughts left me entirely.

I'd come to understand that Orochimaru was possibly a megalomaniac, maybe delusional, and a hundred percent an amoral narcissist… yet a part of me could somehow look past all that and still see a person. Sure it wasn't hard to recall him torturing me for misbehaving, or the absolutely inhumane shit he partook in on the daily, but it had mingled in with the moments he'd instructed me with patience, the rare occasions where he complemented my ability, and that one moment he'd looked at me and deigned to gift me with his Clan markings. So when I woke up to the familiar sounds of ominous machinery and his terrible face, it was rather calmly. Yeah, he'd drugged me, sure he could experiment on me without my knowledge in this vulnerable state, but I'd woken up on a couch, in a lab, and not on a metal table bound down in chains with my chest splayed open… so maybe I wasn't so stupid for trusting him.

"Your body is quicker to wake up. That's good. It is becoming resilient," he said, a smile taking his lips, a purely scientific smile I told myself.

"Was this some kind of trust exercise?" I asked, rubbing my drowsy head.

"Quite the opposite actually. I don't trust you at all."

"Touché. Ok, so then why drug me?"

He turned to the room behind him, and I finally took proper note of my surroundings as I stumbled out of the couch and took the wall to the left of me as a crutch. It wasn't dark, neither was it bright, but it was lit dimly enough to see, and the fluorescent lights above illuminated what could only be described as some kind of cryo chamber. Inside was green liquid, maybe a sort of thick gel like substance, because it held up the vague shapes of small naked bodies hooked to wires and breathing tubes behind. I couldn't look away, and to ease this bubbling trepidation, I walked toward it, slowly, each step put over the other in careful deliberation. Then I touched my hand against the frosted glass and wiped away the condensation to peer inside something that felt forbidden. There inside was a child. A small five-year-old girl. Her body looked twisted and deformed, her head just a little too swollen on one side, and one arm entirely too small and stunted in growth. Her features were eerily similar to mine, and she was bald. I turned to look at the dozen other pods and knew it was filled with children too.

"I thought you stopped experimenting on people," I said lamely.

My throat felt dry and only the cold against my hand stopped it from becoming sweaty. I turned to Orochimaru. He seemed taller in the shadows, and his yellow eyes stood out strikingly in its iridescence in the darkness. He drew forward languidly, a wide smile on his face.

"I had for a while—been restricted by Konoha. You were right about one thing. I do not truly wish to be Hokage, not if it takes me from my work and my goals."

"But why children?" I asked, hoping to possibly reason with him. "Adults would give you better results. Their tenketsu systems are developed and more similar to your own. Children are—"

Before I could continue my tirade, Orochimaru carded his fingers into my hair, running the sharp of his nails against my scalp. I froze in place as his palms rested heavy against my head, like a hot warning before he applied just enough pressure to twist me like a puppet to look up at the frozen child. "—Are weak, pitiable perhaps? Do not conflate science with your empathy, neonate. These children aren't for me. They're the failed artificial bodies I was making for you."

I felt any semblance of control I had left me as my eyes widened and I gave away the pure shock. He chuckled, fingers finally withdrawing their hold on me. I turned to give the deformed child another take and noticed she did look like me. I didn't expect the body to blink from within the pod. I couldn't help the gasp that escaped my throat as I stumbled back and turned to Orochimaru with confusion and terror.

"These bodies were failed, but viable enough to transfer some children's souls into. I didn't want to mangle your mind in the process. So far they've been unsuccessful. They fail to retain any cognitive recognition."

"Why go to all this trouble?" I asked.

"This body of mine is neither male nor female, nor is it even human. I have transcended whatever bounds nature had placed on me. There is no system Hina-chan, there are no unbreakable rules, no chains to hold back progress. Nature doesn't care if we follow the system it dictates, we simply pretend it does."

For how much of an evil, truly terrible man Orochimaru was, he was certainly smart. What he said resonated with me the same way Shisui's words did. Because he was right in a weirdly twisted way. Because we weren't rigidly bound to nature's laws, not in the way animals were. But I didn't feel any kind of excitement from this understanding, or any form of desire to be more. I was never a loud woman, or a brash woman, or even an outgoing woman. I had always just been… well… I was a recluse, sometimes I enjoyed hanging out with friends, but most of the time I was a dedicated worker with very little ambition outside of these vague ideals of a safe domestic life. Then when I worked, I felt somethingmore, maybe the spark of genius or madness, this obsessive nature that hid behind a brick wall built on logic and acclimation. A spark of something most would call evil.

But overall I was beginning to realise that I didn't have some golden character, that my protection and love extended only so far as I could save myself, and that those moments of self-sacrifice was a lie. Because I did love my family, and I adored my precious people because it was my duty to do so because love was an obligation that came attached with feelings… because people only held as much value as you placed on them.

Because when I looked at this child in front of me, I began to realise this cold dread within me, had been disgust and fear that deep down inside… I didn't care enough to stop this.

In the end that was what all normal people were; people who were selfish, people who languished in the idea of their own heroism and moral character. No one wanted to be the villain of their own story. No one wanted to be the bad guy. In the end, they weren't, not by some arbitrary value system, but because no one was truly any one thing. When I looked at the girl in the pod, I knew this to be true, because I wasn't going to save her, I was going to let Orochimaru do as he pleased, and no amount of justification could excuse the fact that I would kill children… that Ihavekilled children. This vague notion of my own goodness was absolutely destroyed in this moment.

I put my forehead to the cold glass and felt myself go cold. I couldn't forgive myself, I realised. I told Kakashi it wasn't our fault, but that was a lie, a lie so I could live with myself. It was my fault… maybe not what happened to Kusari, but everything else, from killing my parents, to accepting Danzo's vile missions, to murdering those children in ROOT, to the torturous experiments I conducted on unwilling men and women.

"What are we going to do with them?" I asked, ignoring the crack in my voice.

Orochimaru gave me a disapproving look. No doubt the conflict had written itself all over my face. I could barely stop myself right now. I didn't have the heart to look unfeeling or uncaring. This was my mission, and I could barely bring myself to pretend. I was the epitome of pathetic right now. I should be faking excitement, or simply getting to business, but instead I stood in front of this child as an accomplice to their torture, and I had the audacity to prematurely grieve as if my sorrow meant anything. Maybe she would survive, but I doubted it. Maybe I could save more lives in the future by going along with this, but it didn't make hers any less of a loss.

"I'm going to make you a new body," he said, turning his gaze back to the pod. "I will need a host for myself, a perfect body, but for you, I will create one of my own fashion."

I stopped still, looking at him in alarm. Slowly I flared my chakra into the seal Shikaku had given me to alert them of my position. This… this wasn't good. I felt the seal short and burst in my hands. Orochimaru was onto me like a snake snapping at its prey. I gasped as he held me up by my neck, his grip tight.

"Children are as loyal as they are treacherous," he said, hissing with a harsh smile.

"Y-You knew," I gasped, kicking at him to get away.

He pushed me up against the tank and exposed his sharp teeth towards my neck. I closed my eyes in fear, expecting a stabbing pain. But teasingly his teeth just grazed my skin without piercing. Instead of branding me, he laughed.

"I wouldn't waste your mind to the madness that follows with my cursed seal," he said.

I was dropped to the ground as several snakes wrapped around my arms and torso before turning into metal bindings. I glared up at the man, and couldn't help but feel betrayed. It was a hypocritical feeling, considering I was going to rat him out. But I had stupidly put my trust in one thing— that Orochimaru would never experiment on me against my will. My body had always been my own.

"Your little distress seal won't be found. I've disabled it," he said, pulling out a copy. "The Hiraishen, was it? Namikaze was going to come and save you child… and I'm sure that Uchiha put you up to this."

"What do you want? Why haven't you killed me yet?" I asked, gritting my teeth.

"Don't tempt me, little neonate. But I hadn't spent all those years building you up just to throw you away. Let's call this a repurposing," Orochimaru said, his smile disconcertingly wide.

"Don't—you wouldn't—"

"—Experiment on you? You know I would. Have you been lying to yourself all this time even though you were ready to sell me out? You should know me by now Hina-chan. I admit, I am fond of you. But a betrayal such as this deserves a fitting punishment."

I tried to use my windblade in a desperate move to escape, but it simply fizzled away. The bindings had chakra suppression seals on them. I kicked at the Sannin in desperation as he picked me up by my hair and dragged me towards a pod.

"Get off me! Please, don't do this!"

The panic I felt in my bones rattled me. This wasn't how this was meant to go. I was so stupid for even putting a hint of trust in him. I wanted to cry and scream as I was dragged into the cylindrical space. This time when he stabbed the needle into my neck, it wasn't so gentle.

"What are you doing?" I asked, scared to hear the answer.

"A fail-safe, if you will. To make sure you'll never betray me again."

"Get the fuck off me!" I shouted.

The panic did nothing to stop him from strapping an oxygen mask on me. The injection was making me drowsy. Time seemed to go by in a funny way from then on, like glimpses of moments, being pushed into an eternity and then gone in the blink of an eye. I saw green. Vaguely the panic registered in the back of my mind, begging me to keep fighting. But then the pain came, and it seemed to occupy every thought I had.

Was this how those subjects felt, strapped to a table, unable to get their bearings as someone rooted around inside of them? It was a brief moment of empathy within the agony that burnt into my very veins. The helplessness felt impossible to recover from.

It was almost relieving to be met with darkness.

When I woke up again, my eyes stung painfully. The world was blurry, and I felt like I was floating. It was only after a long moment of getting my bearings and coming back to a somewhat clearer mind, that I realised I was in fact, floating. In some kind of tank, similar to the one I saw that child in previously. It all hit me at once, but despite the panic that took my mind I could only blink tiredly. My whole body ached, my limbs were floaty and hard to control, and everything felt distant.

A shape moved across the room, vaguely human-like. I could only blink slowly, in a haze until the figure drew closer, revealing Orochimaru's face. He smiled at me through the glass and I felt my heart stutter.

"You survived. Good," he said.

What the fuck did he expect then, I wanted to voice aloud. But I could barely make a sound against the tube that was shoved down my throat so I could breathe.

"If you're cognisant blink twice," he said.

I decided to close my eyes and turn my head away with whatever strength I had left, just to be contrary. His chuckle heckled my nerves.

"So you are aware. Good, then I'll get down to business little neonate. It's time you grow out of your weaknesses, the things that are holding you back. Mainly your body."

I didn't want a new body. I was perfectly fine with my own. He didn't seem to care about that though. I wanted to cry and rage, wondering why I was back here again. Stooped low once more to become someone else'sthing. No matter what fucked up shit I'd done, Orochimaru had never broken my trust. If he'd killed me for betraying him, I wouldn't have held it against him. But this—this was everything I feared, the lack of autonomy, the sheer objectification. Was I never a person in his eyes? An individual?

"Giving me puppy dog eyes isn't going to work Hina-chan. You know I don't find you particularly cute. Though that is a given for all children so don't take it personally."

If he was just going to rant inanely, it would be better to just let me go back to sleep. As if reading my thoughts he turned the notes he was holding towards me as if to show it to me. It was the notes on the procedure.

"There's about a 55% chance that you'll die during the next part. The odds for this procedure are much higher than the ones I usually conduct. After all, I don't want you to die. Once it's done, your body will be—enhanced. It will have the same healing capacity that I have infused with a rare white snake's DNA. But this—this is the fun part," he said, casually flipping the page.

It was only the fog over my brain and the sheer immobility of my body that forced me to remain calmly in place as he showed me what came next. It was the same procedure I'd helped him with countless times. I remembered each stroke. The way you had the peel off each layer of skin, from the epidermis to the subcutaneous layer, then came the muscle sinew, and then…bone. Down to the exposed heart, where the seal would be placed.

Imoved, my weightless limbs twitching for release as I hit the glass weakly. Orochimaru's grin did not drop, though his brows furrowed in a display of unhidden anger.

"Scared? That's good. Do you know why I'm doing this? It's because children don't know who they really are. They're carved by the hands of the adults around them. I was made by Sarutobi Hiruzen. He cultivated my mind, my body, and my spirit. He threw me into war and molded me in it. He taught me just how precious and fleeting life is. It's why I work so hard to overcome the tragedy that befalls us all."

I hit the glass one more time, searching his eyes for an ounce of empathy. His smile fell.

"I thought you of all people would understand."

I didn't understand. I cried into the green liquid I couldn't breathe against. The horror of knowing what was coming made me thrash until my limbs lost whatever burst of energy they had left. I looked down at myself in defeat. Once again naked and left to the whims of someone stronger. I finally thought I'd become better than this. I was going to right me wrongs. Make amends for all the lives I'd taken and do the good thing regardless of my feelings.

So why had it come down to this

I found my eyes closing once more.

The next time they opened it was on the operating table

AN

This chapter has the biggest change from what I've written previously. Once again sorry if this got dark. Even I wasn't willing to write the scene where Hina is being operated on. Sure I've done the scene when she's doing it to other people, but I'm too attached to this broccoli to physically write that kind of torture. So all that will happen in the next chapter is the description of the aftermath if anything. Yes, there will be some significant body modification in this version.