Heya, I'm back!
I actually only meant for this chapter to take like a week after the last one, but I ran into a few walls and decided to just take it easy. I hope it's worth the wait, all the same.
I'll skip the yapping and let y'all just hop right into it:
The creak of Tsunade's table had long-since begun to needle Naruto's senses. Seated before her work, contours of stress dressing her face, Tsunade cut her glare from one among the nigh-endless stream of documents, her sneer and frigid eyes both melting away at the sight of him; in their place, some pang of concern shamelessly studied the deep, blackening blemishes beneath his own eyes.
He tried to ignore her analysis for a wilting moment, fumbling with the thick binder in his lap.
Just say something already…
She had called for him nearly a whole hour ago, demanding an update on his progress with the seal.
Fine enough; he had plenty to say.
But when he'd arrived, she'd taken one look at him, then claimed to be too busy to see him immediately, leaving him only to wait on her convenience. Instead, she'd shooed him over to the couch.
"Just take a nap or something," She had rather pointedly suggested. "I won't be long."
Well that was a lie…
"She seems rather stressed," Kushina observed, a lilt of pity in her tone for the Slug Sannin. "I'm sure her responsibilities have only gone up, since she had you stop all that extra clerical work that you were doing for her."
Well, if nothing else, that made him feel a little less pissed at her for making him wait…
"Have you not been sleeping?" Tsunade suddenly asked him, now finally putting a voice to her concerns.
He didn't need her stressing even more…
"I'm good," Naruto tried to wave her off, but Tsunade only scoffed, unimpressed.
"That isn't an answer to my question."
"Tch! What is this, an interrogation?" He scoffed, now refusing to meet her eyes. "I'm fine."
"Don't sass me," Her order was steel, and he wilted a little at the judgment in her tone. "Have you been sleeping? Yes or no?"
"... No." Naruto shook his head, specks of blush further belying that truth. "Too much to do."
It was hard to rest properly while so much was on the table. Even with clones working in the background to expedite his work, the mental cost of maintaining them was a pick of ice in his skull.
I'm good though," Naruto repeated again, this time a bit more forcefully.
"Uhuh…" Tsunade only raised a delicate brow, seeming utterly unconvinced.
"Oooooh, you're in trouble!" Kushina teased him, and not even he was quite so burnt out as not to share in her amusement.
Honestly, he was just glad she was feeling good enough to joke at all. She was shouldering half the burden, after all…
Though he could absolutely do without the stink-eye Tsunade was now giving him.
God, even when she said nothing, Naruto found himself feeling chastened under her open judgment.
Wait, was that why she was making him just sit around? Was she trying to keep him away from his work?
"If that's her deal, then I agree with her!" Kushina chuckled, lounging splayed out on her back; her arms clasped behind her from atop Kumoko's oversized head. The giant spider seemed to have merely deferred to pointedly ignoring her, having long-since abandoned any effort at actually removing her from its presence. "You really need to work on your work-life balance a bit better, dear."
Yeah, yeah…
It wasn't like he wasn't trying to relax. He had cut down his clones significantly to take some strain off his brain; he was even trying to take at least semi-regular breaks, at least to eat twice a day or hang out a little, if only so Tayuya would stop pestering him so much about it.
But even when he was supposed to be recharging, it was hard not to think about his work.
And he really didn't need Tsunade on his ass for being terrible at relaxing- not when she looked just as burnt out as he did. Though, she at least seemed a bit happier, since Shizune had finally returned…
His fingers arched upward, seeking purchase with the freshest adornment, fixed to the lobes of his ears. Tsunade noted the motion and grinned.
"They look good," She muttered, and Naruto colored at the rather earnest show of warmth.
"Y-yeah… Thanks."
Earrings. Shizune had called them a gift, bestowed to her on his behalf by the young lord that she had escorted back to the capital. Rocko Shamora or something-
"Ryuko Oshimura," Kushina corrected him with a chuckle.
Yeah, that…
Shizune's comment came to mind, then.
"He said he had them commissioned in your image. You know, that's quite the honor, Naruto-san!" She had marveled with him, pressing the small, decorated box into his own dumbfounded hands with both of her own.
Latched to his ears were two brilliantly gleaming black pearls; clutched around their round shapes with all eight spindly limbs, one each, was a pair of rose-gold, spider-shaped figurines. Their eight eyes gleamed with the deep, reflective light of amethyst.
"They suit you."
Naruto wasn't quite sure. "Hehe… They're a bit much, even for me-" He snickered behind his palm, fighting a losing battle against the grin at his lips. "But- er, if you think so, I guess it's fine…"
More than anything, he figured it was just right to show some respect to the token by wearing them.
"For any lord to gift you so directly- it is a sign of confidence from the ruling family," Kushina advised him. "And not just you, but in Tsunade as well. By bestowing such a gift upon you, Young Lord Oshimura is honoring Tsunade for protecting him in Tanzaku- and he is expressing respect to you and your deeds, as someone who represents her."
So in other words, it was less about him, and more about showing support to the village; he was merely a vehicle for that.
Kushina nodded
Heh… "T-that's a whole lot of pressure, ya know." Naruto shook his head, ignoring Tsunade's own raised eyebrow. "C-can we just talk about this?" He raised his binder, shaking it with some insistence. The arch of Tsunade's brow said far more than words could have; he ducked his head, a strip of embarrassment coloring his nose. "Look, I'll head home after this and try to take a nap after. Now quit looking at me like that!"
She simply rolled her eyes. "Fine." Gesturing loosely with her hand- "Let's hear it, then."
And with that prompt, he hastened with the binder. Inside revealed a small sea of paper within, all haphazardly strewn together in some methodology that only he could comprehend. A thousand-and-one explanations cut ahead of one-another in his head, their order helped only loosely by the object in his hands.
His fingers still ached with the memory of binding them all.
"So I've been making sure to draw fresh iterations of the available curse marks- er, that being Anko, Tayuya, and Tayuya's friends."
"And the Uchiha?" Tsunade interrupted.
Naruto scowled. "He's ducking me, and I don't have clones to spare, tearing through the village for him. Sakura's on it- she told me she'd tip me off when she found him."
"I'll issue a summons," Tsunade offered, but Naruto only shook his head.
"Sasuke's a diva; if a bunch of strangers start cornering him it won't end well."
Doubly so, with the awakening of those wacky new eyes of his. He doubted Sasuke would willingly hurt anybody unprovoked, but he really didn't want to chance any accidents.
"Sakura and I will handle it." Tsunade nodded, so he continued. "But the reason I keep redrawing them is 'cuz they keep changing; I was trying to see if I could find some commonality between those shifts."
It made sense to her. "I take it you found it?"
That sparked a grin, wide and proud. "Yep!" Her apprentice began flipping through pages at rapid speed, dozens of diagrams flitting in and out of her vision until he stopped at one particular page. "See- this is what Tayuya's mark looked like, the day she and I started. And this-" He began to flip again, closer to the front of the mass of pages before stopping once again on an identical-looking image. "-Is what it looked like as of this morning!"
Tsunade blinked twice, rising from her seat and closing the distance. She hunched over, even her keen eyes not quite seeing what he was seeing.
"Er- right here." He pointed more insistently. "Actually-" He shoved the binder into her hands, fumbling into the lines of his obi to extract a set of thick-rimmed goggles; their lenses were almost comically large and faintly tinted pink, the whole set bound together by a rugged, burgundy strap. "-Put those on and look again."
She blinked again, trading him his binder for the goggles and flipping them in her hand. "Did you make these?"
"Mhm…" He tried to wave off her interest with little more than a short explanation. "I was having trouble zooming in enough with a regular magnifying glass, so I tinkered a bit with my old goggles."
They were far from finished; at some point he would like to make a set from scratch, with a few extra supplementary lenses and a wider range of zoom. For now though, they were good enough for their purpose.
Tsunade crammed them on, grimacing in discomfort at the tightness of the apparel that was simply too small for her face; just as quickly though, that discomfort was gone, the eyewear adjusting to fit her properly only moments later.
It was damned good work, for being so obviously incomplete.
"Fiddle with that lens a bit and look at this!" He ripped the earlier page away from the binder, placing it side-by-side with the most recent iteration. "Look at the bottom-left corner. It's two millimeters thicker at this point, ya know!? Now see- if I place them all together, this is where we find the pattern!" He did so, pointing out various points that Tsunade was now beginning to understand.
"Here, here, and here." Tsunade awkwardly twisted the lens of his goggles this way and that at his discretion, and suddenly it clicked. "I thought it was changing 'cuz it was adapting, but I was wrong, ya know! It's processing!"
She wasn't sure she liked the sound of that very much.
"You're sure?"
"Believe it! The damned thing is processing; I can tell, 'cuz the changes are procedural- they follow a set, cyclical pattern! He built a whole automatic processing system out of the mark! A whole, independent, fully functional, funky fresh processing system with a bunch of scraps he tore from existing seals!"
"You owe him an apology for calling him a hack," Kushina told him, somewhat seriously. "It's phenomenal work."
Sure, sometime between catching him and sticking him in a freaking blender.
"Of course he did," Tsunade breathed, resisting the urge to press her temples. "Because Orochimaru can never do shit halfway."
Naruto nodded. "Incoming and outgoing info- all of it is processed and recorded- and shared too!"
"What kind of information?"
"Pretty much everything. Auditory; sight; hell, it even records biological data like genetic material and general diagnostics." Naruto pulled out several more documents and as she skimmed their surface, she saw that many of them seemed correlated to yin-release and that of the soul. "It looks like he imbued a piece of himself into these marks as a means to guard the core and optimize the flow of that information- basically setting aside a piece of his consciousness or whatever and picking and choosing what he wants to hold onto."
A piece of Orochimaru in each of those marks-
Tsunade grimaced.
"But there's something else."
"Oh, of course there is…"
Naruto continued on as if he hadn't heard her exclamation. "So Anko told me that Orochimaru has used the mark in the past to control her movements; Tayuya said he's used it to torture them before. So it got me wondering how he can do that-"
"He's remotely sending signals to marks within his proximity," Tsunade cut in, quickly, and Naruto grinned.
"Yeah! Like a radio signal, using himself as the broadcaster. All of the marks are capable of inputting and outputting information at his discretion. But then I realized something else-" Again, he started flipping through pages, stopping at yet another diagram and shoving it into her face. "This is Anko Mitarashi's mark!"
Even at just a glance, she could see well enough that there was a difference between hers and Tayuya's. "What's this supposed to be?" Tsunade scraped at the page with her nail, fingering a twisted ring of kanji that was bound to the very bottom layer; in comparison, it was completely absent from Tayuya's mark. "I feel like I've seen this before."
"I bet you have, with your old ass," Naruto snickered, ducking his head to avoid a halfhearted flick of her fingers. "Let's start with the core that it's attached to. It looks awfully similar to this, huh?" Again, he was flipping, haphazardly ripping away a laminated page that looked like it had come from a copy of a book; he slapped it right down beside Anko's mark, pointing insistently between them. "You see it too, right?"
"Yeah!" Looking at it now, she knew exactly what she was looking at.
It was an old cluster of seals, combined to create a rough broadcasting system that had been used by Cloud in the second war to operate their coms. There were some differences, but she was sure that she was right!
"Looks like Snake-man tore this one down and spliced it with a delayed transcriber that our Intelligence squads used to intercept and interpret coms in the third war! Then he inverted it again, and stitched the two together to create a- er, I guess I'd call it something of a two-way radio system, and that's what all the curse marks uses as its base! The rest of the seal's functions are built on top of this!"
"Then what of Mitarashi's mark? What's that, that's attached to it?"
"Master control." Naruto nodded, confidently. "All of the other marks can't actually control the flow of information, per se. They passively take in information from their surroundings, 'cuz that's their default setting, ya know? But they can't share or receive information with other marks except when made to do so by Orochimaru. This is why he wasn't able to know what Tayuya was planning in Tanzaku, even though we know now that he was suspicious of her. If Orochimaru isn't able to directly interact with them, either through physical contact, or by extending their passive broadcasting range via activation, then he can't access them!"
"But why impose such a limitation onto himself?" Tsunade asked him. She had some ideas, herself- but she was curious as to whether he could figure it out, himself.
"Er- I guess 'cuz it'd be a flight risk to just have all the marks able to give or receive information freely. Maybe he learned his lesson after Anko."
"But how does processing information serve his purpose, if he's not using them as spies?"
Naruto frowned, thinking over her question twice before answering. "I guess if- well, from what we know, Orochimaru typically only gives them to those within his inner circle; it's not like he's sending them very far from him, to begin with. In most cases he oughta be able to just check the marks manually from time to time, to make sure they aren't up to anything suspicious."
If anything, it was a bit odd that he hadn't checked in with Tayuya at any point to figure out what she was up to…
"But- uh…" Wracking his brain quickly, he simply threw out his best guess. "We know the marks are supposed to prepare his chosen to be his spare bodies, and Orochimaru plants the seal using his own DNA; maybe he preloads them with a bunch of information and that's what they're usually processing and using as a base to convert the host.
Tsunade frowned. If that were the case- "Shouldn't that also work in reverse?" Tsunade's eyes narrowed, and Naruto paled a bit at their slow realization. "Any information that the host might have- you said it oughta record biological data too, right?"
"Y-yeah…"
"That might explain why Tayuya's seal seems stunted."
The legacy seal's bottom line was to protect and rear their kin- to provide resources for their aid and guide them in times of hardship; it wasn't outlandish to presume that Tayuya's might have buried itself or deliberately stunted its manifestation to keep their secrets.
Though, the idea that the legacy seal could have evolved to develop that level of autonomy or foresight was its own can of worms.
Tsunade shifted her gaze to Naruto for a moment, observing his own shaky grin.
Then she let that thought drop for now.
"If Mitarashi's mark has this 'master control' that allows it to freely operate, then that's our 'in'." Clapping her hands, the Slug Sannin stood once again. "You need to find a way into that mark, ASAP. I don't care what you need, to do it. Use the damn scroll, if you need it-" Tsunade gestured with her head to the side room, where Naruto knew the village's infamous scroll of sealing lay. He'd only held the thing once, back when he was still far too ignorant to truly appreciate it for what it was. But he still remembered the sheer wealth of information that had lay within. The thought that Tsunade might trust him enough to even let him peek at the thing, let alone use it for study…
He stared at that place for a long moment, eyes so wide that they ached as he forcibly tore his focus back to her.
"We can't afford to have that mark within our walls any longer, so figure it out! If you can bypass its protections…" She trailed off, and Naruto needed only a moment to understand that she expected him to finish her thought.
"If I can get into hers, I can- I guess I could sabotage the flow of information to the other marks- maybe command them to lower their defenses so I can shut them down too!"
She knew she'd made the right choice, taking him under her wing.
"Get to it." A thought. "Tomorrow. Go home and sleep; in the morning, get to it."
Hinata tore down the mountainside with a scream, crows scattering in a flock of feathers with her mad descent.
"Hinata!" Shino hissed, staring after her. He glanced back down to Kiba, who watched the exchange, wide-eyed. "Up! Now!" He growled, and Kiba complied, finding his second wind at the shock of their now-missing teammate's uncharacteristic rage.
"Akamaru!" His companion-dog stood at attention. "Find Kurenai-sensei and bring her here! Promotion be-damned!"
"Arf!" Akamaru was already speeding off before the order had finished leaving his lips, leaving the remaining two boys to glare down at the scene below. Raiga's entourage seemed to have finally begun to notice something was amiss, them glancing up out of sync to observe the Hyuga girl, who had completely aborted a sprint and instead careened downward like a bullet.
"For fuck's sake, Hinata! Of all the times to lose your shit!" Kiba groaned, scrambling down after the girl without a second thought; Shino was close-in-tow.
"My kikai will be sub-optimal in this weather," He warned, frustration evident in his tone. He reached up, yanking open the collar of his jacket and popping it down to his chest; reaching in, he pulled free a thick length of chain and began to wrap it around his fist. In his other, a trio of shuriken clicked into place between his knuckles. "We will flank the enemy while she is distracting them, so that they cannot converge on Hinata!"
"Got it!" Kiba braced himself, then began to spin as he descended down the mountainside, streams of limbs, chakra, and mud tearing up in a cyclone from his position as he advanced from a mere boy to a spinning bullet. "Fuck shit up before they fill her with holes! Say less!" He accelerated, completely leaving Shino in the dust, who had to fight not to press his own temples.
"Perhaps being a Genin forever wouldn't be so bad," Shino groaned, before he-too picked up the pace.
Hinata crashed down first, not even caring for subtlety; her body, clad in the tell-tale whorl of her Heavenly Rotation, impacted like a bomb, crushing a cloaked figure beneath its grinding force. His scream was snuffed out in the next instant as her surprise attack did its work, strewing his life away from her position and splattering haphazardly onto the cloaks of the surrounding onlookers. She dove from the carnage with a scream, limbs whipping about in a marriage of surgeon and butcher; bodies dropped in a line, its length carving straight for their head honcho. She did not pay any of the rest any further mind.
She wanted him.
Raiga's shock did not last long. He met her rush after only a moment, a visage of fury clad in its place.
"What foul cretin would dare to pervert my hallowed ceremony with further bloodshed!? Have you no shame!?" He snarled, the first of his swings going wide as she ducked under it.
"Shut up!" Hinata's scream was raw as she twisted to avoid the second, then rolled forward and past him to dodge the third. "I hate people like you!"
People like him, so self-important; so inhuman, as to make some spectacle of these peoples' suffering! And the gall, to treat it all like some ceremony- some great honor, while he made to lower his victims into a flooded grave!?
It was like looking at all the worst qualities of her father, except, suddenly Hiashi didn't seem half as bad, anymore. Not when devils like this seemed everywhere in the very same world.
She righted herself, throwing back an elbow that crashed into the pommel of his blade, then twisted to the other side to respond with the other, deflecting both of his own slashes before he could fully extend. Pushing off the pommel of the second, she spun in place and ducked low as another swing tried to cut her torso, rolling forward again but this time stopping short onto her hands as he attempted to anticipate her; her leg stabbed straight, smashing into the flat of his blade and driving him back; she reared around fully on her hands, swinging her leg to meet his next attack with her knee before he could even fully extend and driving his guard wide. Her gloved fingers took hold of the muddy ground, taking an anchor as she swung again, this time meaning to drive the back of her heel right into the side of his leg.
He was too tall for her, so she'd take him down to her level first, then take his head off next!
But Raiga began to spark, and even in her compromising position, her eyes recognized the rapid build of lightning-style chakra in his body. She aborted her swing, instead pushing and rolling back, heedless of the heaps of mud that soaked into her hair and face. A sharp twist of her body saw her clear just as a spark of light flashed just short of her ear, then she spun, and the following salvo arced right off her protective dome. Her ears rang as thunder followed, but her protection had muffled the worst of it. It pulsed outward, and she dove through its remnants, meeting her target with a flash of hands that he backpedaled away from with increasing haste.
Again, his body began to build up chakra, and she sneered, diving backwards and tucking her legs to flip twice as yet another flash tore between them, right onto the spot where she'd previously stood. She slid to a stop and, without looking, observed the sky, watching as the clouds blackened and congealed; thick sparks of energy roiled above, ready to fire down again at a moment's notice.
So there was a clear delay between those bolts of his. Roughly half-a-second between the surge of his chakra and its path to the skies, after which its impact was near immediate. Once it fired, it'd be too late for her to dodge.
Which meant she needed to be out of its path before the lightning struck!
"Try this!" Raiga shouted, a lick of glee touching his voice.
She traced its path before it even fired, chakra slinging her along the mud's slick surface and sliding to safety. She took a wide arc around another bolt, then twisted in place and leapt, spinning twice in mid-air to project yet another rotation that deflected the next.
Before her dome had even begun to disperse, she had already taken aim at Raiga, accounting for the blur of her rotation and even the repeated flashes of lightning around her.
"Rasengan!" It fired after Raiga, who stood, wide-eyed and unknowing in the face of the approaching death, its crash-course aimed directly center-masse.
Then, his ear twitched, and inexplicably, he ducked down low, the projectile gouging into the ground behind him and showering his back with the terrain. Immediately after, he rolled forward as well, barely steering clear even of the rasengan's sudden expansion.
"Hahaha! You almost had me there!" He laughed, the makings of thrill beginning to lift his sour mood. "What's your name, girl!?"
She did not respond, her suspicion on high-alert.
She'd thought she had a good gauge on his reaction-speed, but he had responded far faster, without warning. Not only that, but he had even seen through the second impact of the rasengan…
Was the surrounding lightning somehow bolstering his reflexes?
No. She could trace the route that his chakra took through his body as he channeled that lightning; it was all those blades of his.
She cooled her head further, her fury frosting where it had once roared and burned; her eyes groped beyond the hunch of his cloaked back, observing a second, separate chakra source clinging to him.
"Did you not hear me, girl? Tell me your name!" Raiga demanded again, his humor again beginning to take a downward spiral.
A symbiote, of sorts? She hadn't missed the way his ears had twitched, signifying a response to some auditory signal.
So a verbal warning then. A summon, maybe? They were awfully small; small enough to cling to his back, but large enough to leave a visible hunch even through his heavy cloak.
There also seemed to be some rather sophisticated attempt on his part to cover up that entity. Her eyes could note its presence, but not with the kind of detail her eyes should have been able to expect, otherwise.
"Don't ignore me-"
"Shut up," Hinata snarled, standing up straight. "Spare me the banter… I'm here to kill you. That's all you need to know."
Whatever his warning had been, it had come from something that had completely anticipated her attack. She needed to test its reaction-time; separate him from his advance-warning, then kill him quickly before she ran out of chakra.
She could do that.
Kurenai watched her students from afar, staring down at the rising commotion underneath the lip of the mountainside.
Of course she had followed them; hopeful as she may have been for their success, she wasn't nearly foolish enough to leave that to chance.
Besides, she was supposed to be observing them, huh?
She'd been- well, not disappointed, per se, but certainly unimpressed with the way they had handled the guards outside. It wasn't sloppy, necessarily. Kiba had bound his target pretty damn-well; even if he woke later, he was unlikely to get free. She even liked their logic:
Take some easy marks captive and interrogate them later to fill any information gaps that a cursory investigation could not satiate. Shino-too had been thorough when it came to incapacitating his targets, if a bit sloppy by simply letting them fall into the bushes and forgetting about them. Though she did have some good to say about their use of the water barrels to hide their remaining targets. It had been equal parts inspired, and hilarious.
But their mission had demanded elimination. Elimination as in 'not alive, anymore'. And though she could give them some slack, given their overall thoroughness, she tended to be a bit of a stickler for the letter of the mission, even if killing wasn't exactly her favorite option either.
A discussion should suffice. It was enough for now to see that they at least had kept it clean.
She had loved Hinata's rather inspired play, making expert use of the transformation in spite of her advice against it. It showed exactly the forward-thinking that she had wanted to see from the girl, and a level of confidence in her ideas that she genuinely had not expected.
She had even liked the way Kiba had gotten into character, using the faces they wore to their advantage, even if she wasn't exactly a fan of how easily he let himself break said character.
That was fine though; something for them to practice, together.
Kurenai had followed after her students under one of her best genjutsu, curious as to how they would handle this Raiga fellow. The name was familiar, and a second look into her Jonin-issued Bingo Book had confirmed his identity.
"One of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist, huh?" She really didn't enjoy the idea of letting her students face off against someone with such a reputation. But she especially wasn't keen on disrespecting her kids by jumping in without first giving them a chance.
Which left a dilemma for them:
Would they retreat to plan ahead? Maybe come to her for aid?
Or Would they storm him outright, to save the civilians?
Either choice had their merits. The former was safer, and she could hardly fault Kiba for wanting to regroup and make use of their full resources against an unknown enemy, using the information they had. If anything, it was a far cry from his typical recklessness, and she was nothing if not proud of him for taking her words to heart.
The latter was less safe, but could ingratiate the people to Konoha further by playing hero. Shino was surely trying to think ahead, both for his own morals, as well as for the long-term. This-too, she could appreciate, even if she did not necessarily enjoy seeing her kids endanger themselves any more than necessary.
Though, it wasn't like she wanted to see mere civilians being hurt needlessly- least of all people under their village's protection.
What she hadn't anticipated was Hinata's reaction.
Though, in hindsight, she really should have. The girl had been volatile for some time now. Perhaps it had been foolish of her to try lumping so much of it in as being related to Naruto. Now, seeing the state the sight below had left her in, and remembering the girl's reaction to her eyes, it was all beginning to come together.
Whatever her student had seen in her travels had scarred her- wounded some fundamental part of her darling student; it was to her shame that Kurenai was only just truly beginning to understand just how deep that damage went.
Even still, understanding as she would have liked to have been, she still had a job to do.
Her student had lost points with her for her volatile reaction. Understandable as it was, a Chunin simply had to be more sensible than that! Honestly, endangering not only herself, but her team by diving right into the fray!
Meanwhile, Kiba and Shino both had impressed her now more than ever, the two recovering well to not only support their teammate instead of leaving her, but also making use of Akamaru to find additional support in her.
"I suppose it's still a bit too early for you, Hinata." Kurenai let out a sad huff, shaking her head.
That was fine though. She doubted her student needed more responsibilities on her plate, at the moment. If anything, it'd give them more time to work together.
Kurenai stroked the whining Akamaru in her lap, cringing at the mud his caked-up fur had begun to stain into her dress. "It's okay, dear. Let's go lend them a hand." She stood, taking Kiba's companion animal with her as she did so. She was just about to dive down as well, when her senses blared. Kurenai twitched, then whipped around, her free hand already darting to procure a kunai; it 'clicked' into her grip, her arm already moving to intercept a lunging strike from a single-edged, bone-white blade.
"Can I help you?"
A low chuckle met her response, sounding from behind the pale-skinned boy who had struck at her. "As a matter of fact, yes." Its serpentine hiss coiled around her leaping heart. From around her attacker, he peeked his head, a wide, close-mouthed grin meeting her.
He was every bit as terrifying as the stories.
"I'd like a word with your student, if you wouldn't mind."
Molten ink began to peel away from the mark on the pale boy's chest, enveloping him entirely.
Her analysis was done, and Raiga's rage at being disregarded so brazenly had proved a slight balm to her own emotions.
"Normally, I like to know whose names I'm etching onto their headstones; I carve them all by hand, you know…" Raiga uttered, lowly, something close to hurt pervading his tone. "But you? You're a Hyuga, aren't you? Those eyes of yours are hard to miss!" Now, he began to chuckle. "Yeah, that'll do just-"
"I said shut up!" Hinata roared, shooting forward once again, fingers already digging into her utility pouch as she approached. A duo of kunai flew straight, their blinding speed demanding a response from their target. Raiga stepped forward, his blades poised to deflect.
"There's a kunai in the shadow!"
A vision sparked in his eyes: A third projectile hidden in his blind spot; it came outlined with a faint red hue. Raiga corrected his course, his weapons flashing accordingly; all three blades were scattered around him, planting themselves firmly into the mud; he had no time to pay them any further heed, as his opponent was nearly upon him. Her rush cut abruptly, the girl flitting to the side as he hastily swung to keep her out of reach; her chakra once again slid her across the mud, this time in a sharp arc that saw her directly behind him in an instant; she stopped her approach on a dime, using the hilt of one of her buried kunai to do so. Raiga blinked, the slightest bit of awe nearly freezing him at the maneuver.
"Behind. A Lunge!" His guide whispered, and Raiga rolled forward, ignoring the slight "Oof" of his companion as he avoided the girl's rush. She caught herself with far greater speed than he would have expected, swiping with her leg to kick up a heap of mud at him. He tried to guard it with his arm, but then-
"The kunai!"
What?
Then he saw it: The glint of steel- a dead giveaway to what she had done. She had hidden a kunai within the mud! Even with the surprise, the warning came just in time, and he was able to duck quickly enough that it only scraped his forehead.
"Hold on… Tiger, Boar, Ox, Dog, Snake…" His companion muttered, and Raiga knew those signs.
"A feint, huh!?" So she had primed that kunai to be used in an offensive body replacement, then. The sheer gall of this girl! He whipped around, his strike already en-route to cleave through where he knew she would be!
"Wait, Raiga-sama!"
But nothing.
She hadn't cast any jutsu, nor had she tried to flank him again.
Instead, she had fooled them both, just with the mere threat of a simple replacement technique!
"Still behind! I'm sorry!"
A bit late for that. Pain blossomed in Raiga's side as he moved, managing to redirect her crippling strike into something only marginally less. Fear wrapped around his throat and squeezed until his breath felt short as something vital in his body yielded, melting apart under the crippling impact of a highly concentrated gentle-fist strike; his temple throbbed under that agony, bloody mucus spilling from his nostrils and dribbling off his chin even as he scrambled forward to kick out at her. She deflected the blow with nary a flinch; another surge of pain ripped through his now blackening foot as she slapped his leg away, another strike incoming for his gut this time. His blades sparked to life again, and her chakra rose again to protect her as well as she pulled away, a half-formed rotation allowing her to retreat with little more than a fiercely spasming hand.
"F-f-focus, boy! A-are you t-t-trying to get me killed?" He babbled, frantically, struggling to pull to a proper stand atop his wobbling legs. His injured foot collapsed under him, bringing him down to one foot.
God, just that one exchange had done that much damage? The Hyuga truly were something else, huh?
"Sorry! Sorry!" He pleaded. "She's fast! But I won't let her touch you again!"
"Heal me!" Raiga demanded, and almost immediately, his pain retreated. He staggered for a moment as his foot firmed and his ruined liver mended; then he stood tall again, making a show of dusting himself off and spitting out a wad of blood.
"Not a bad onslaught, girl." He grinned, his blood-stained teeth on full display. "Someone like you surely has a wealth of potential. The people here are profitable- I'd pay you well, if gold would suit you."
Hinata said nothing, the pulse of her byakugan only growing more intense. The flow of her blood continued to rise, her chakra swelling with her pique until it tinged her eyes the slightest shade of pink.
"Or not, then…" Raiga sneered.
Hinata barely even heard him, once-again considering what she knew.
So that advance-warning system was a person, then. A child, if the words she'd read on his lips had any bearing.
And she hadn't missed the way that smaller chakra spiked downward as his wounds restored themselves, either. Of course someone as scummy as this would be exploiting a child for his gain.
Her vision considered the fighting forms of Kiba and Shino. The former seemed to be making quick work of his share of Raiga's people; he tore through them with a combination of fists, claws, and feet, eyes searching frantically among the masses to keep track of Shino and herself. Shino put his recent work with ninja tools to use; his kikai seemed unwilling to emerge against the heavy pour of the skies, and so his limited experience with his weapon was beginning to show.
Akamaru was nowhere to be found, which meant Kiba had likely sent him after Kurenai-sensei. The former two were working their way through the enemy, but they wouldn't be of aid for some time.
Frankly, she wasn't sure if she wanted their help, either. Not for this one…
Hinata took a breath, then released it.
When Neji had asked her to go all out, it had been a struggle, like trying to unknot a ball of yarn. This time though, her anger was her needle, stabbing into the mass and plucking at its seams; she came apart with just that one breath.
Her chakra roared to the surface, crackling faintly against her skin as she dropped down to her favored stance. "Next time, I won't miss."
"Heh…" Raiga twitched, a bead of sweat dribbling down his neck and mixing with the rain. "Fine, come on, then!" He goaded her, throwing his arms out in clear challenge. "If you think you can kill me, then let's see it!"
Oh, she had every intention to.
The mud blew away as she rushed him again, this time gliding across controlled bursts of chakra, just like Neji had shown her in their fight.
"Intercept her!"
In Raiga's mind's eye, he could just about see the path the girl was taking, even exactly where he'd need to strike to catch her with his lightning.
Lightning struck down, aimed right for where she would be, but she saw it coming, tilting just enough and cartwheeling; she passed right by the blast, unscathed, save for a few singed hairs.
"She's reading the lightning's path with her eyes before it strikes."
Really? The intuition needed to do that repeatedly in the heat of combat- just where had this girl come from? He'd never met a Hyuga half as prodigious!
Her cartwheel had taken her just a few feet from him, and that's when Raiga changed things up.
He pointed after her with one of his blades, and Hinata's eyes widened as she saw what was coming. She ducked, just as the lingering electricity from the last strike flew towards her back. Still sliding, she readied herself as Raiga caught the reduced bolt on the tip of his blade, now stepping forward and slinging the thing towards her in an arc; as it traveled, it spread out, taking a shape akin to a golden, electrified net.
"Lightning Style: Flux-Bug Trap!
Chakra-based or not, if it was electric, she bet she could redirect its path!
Another trio of kunai flew ahead, each embedding firmly into the ground ahead of her as she leapt.
Lightning always followed the path of least resistance on its way to the ground. Even electricity, guided by chakra, had to follow that rule once it collided with something!
Raiga's net sparked loudly against the deployed kunai, twisting the metal on impact as its surge flowed downward.
"Clever!" He praised her, but quickly had to refocus and flee, because she was moving too. "Fine! Let's see how you fare without those eyes of yours!"
On queue, shock began to set in for Hinata as the world around her began to close, a thick, reddish cloud enveloping her and collapsing her vision until she felt claustrophobic!
Moreover, she knew exactly what was coming. The smell of ozone was stronger than ever, and the air above had begun to crackle. But without her eyes to trace its path, dodging was a gamble.
The skies flashed, and she rolled, its blast smashing down just behind, exactly where she had stood.
Hold on- but not where she was going? Was he merely playing with her? Or was he, perhaps, firing unassisted, once again?
"Yes!" Raiga laughed with glee. "Dance! Let's see how long it takes for me to fry you like the little bug that you are!"
Another flash, and again, luck was on her side.
"Third time's the charm!"
But she knew undoubtedly that the next one would hit. Turning on her heel, she began to spin. "Eight Trigrams: Heavenly Rotation!"
The skies struck true this time, cooking the mud around as the third bolt battered her defense.
"Aw!" Raiga whined, but his grin was wider than ever. "New game, then! How many of those can you make before you run out of chakra!"
Not many. A fourth bolt crashed down, and her second rotation wobbled as it struck home.
"Unlike you, I bet I can do this all day!"
Hinata winced, knowing the man wasn't bluffing. From what she remembered, those blades of his seemed to draw on natural lightning from the surrounding storm clouds, using only small traces of his own chakra to stimulate the build-up of lightning and then guide its path.
Meanwhile, she at best had another two rotations left at the necessary output; after that, she wasn't confident she'd be able to deflect a head on strike.
And even just one would likely be fatal.
To conserve as much chakra as she could, Hinata deactivated her byakugan.
And as her second spin came to a close, it was then that she realized she couldn't see the mist anymore.
So it was not a physical obstruction, but some kind of chakra barrier!
Immediately, she remembered Naruto's words.
"So in essence, barriers are all about using your chakra to 'claim' a space… You basically stretch out your chakra and span it over an area and everything within that area becomes subject to your chakra."
So a barrier that impeded the perception of her dojutsu…
But barriers required constant maintenance, and unanchored barriers especially were particularly hard to sustain.
And with few other physical objects present to anchor it to- certainly none that they could have interacted with, Hinata was betting that Raiga's little friend was either holding an unanchored barrier stable, themselves, or even more foolishly, had used themselves as the anchor! Either way-
"Number five!" Raiga shouted, his blades already beginning to raise again. But she had no intention of giving him the chance. Her fingers snapped up to meet him, taking aim
"Rasengan."
Raiga's rightmost blade spiraled away from him; a moment later, his arm flopped down, close by.
There was a half-second's pause as the madman blinked, staring off to where his severed arm had flopped to the ground.
Then his face scrunched up, a thick vein bulging in his neck as a muffled scream tore away from him. He bit his lip so hard it bled, a mixture of spittle and blood soaking over his jaw as he spasmed.
"How dare you!?" He howled, wobbling for just a moment at the sudden loss of blood. His eyes began to roll up, but then he stopped himself from falling, his remaining limb and blade already moving to punish her. "I'll take everything from you!"
Hinata's byakugan bulged back to life, a second wind hitting her as her battle spirit rose anew. Already, she could see that the child's barrier had begun to recede. "You won't get the chance."
She vaulted toward him, her reinvigorated byakugan allowing her to effortlessly trace the patterns of his lightning, which she noticed now took longer to charge, with one of its pair now discarded; she crossed right, then rolled over her shoulder and vaulted over the discarded mass of meat that had once been Raiga's arm. He began to flee, not wishing to let her close.
But she wouldn't be giving him a choice.
"I'm sorry! I can cut off her eyes again! I swear, I won't mess up this time!"
"Don't bother!" Raiga snarled, and his tool obeyed. "Idiot boy! She'll just take my other arm! You need to heal me!"
"I- I don't know if I can fix something like that-"
"Heal me!" He roared, anxiety beginning its creep once more; he lashed out wildly with his lone arm as Hinata chased him down through the mud. His now-single blade flashed, lashing out in a rapid dance to ward her away, but she was having none of it; she tailed him relentlessly, her own limbs snapping out to harass him as he continued to backpedal and dodge with minimizing breathing room. They danced across the pit in decreasing and increasing fervor, a shark and its prey carving their path through the increasingly limited space; Raiga's blades and Hinata's hands dominated the distance between them both as they sparked about.
"You're not getting away!" Hinata snarled, hot on his tail.
A cascade of mud tore up in a winding path around their makeshift arena, bodies of Raiga's people collapsing and frying as collateral from their combined violence. The two blurs assembled again across from one another, one of them already on a juggernaut's path to strike him down. Lightning struck again, but she was already long past its placement, leaping and twisting, then sliding on her knees and tilting her torso back to duck under two sparking crescents. Another moment, and she was back to her feet; another moment after that, and she was before him.
"I-it's another feint!" The boy gasped.
Raiga's warning lagged just a bit, and that tight timing had him nearly lose his balance. He was forced to abort his attack so as to respond as she leapt above him. Hinata rotated in mid-air, hands already moving to respond to Raiga's own fresh attack. Her palm clapped against the flat end of his blade, parting it just enough for her to slip in. Then her kick snapped out, ripping through his cloak; an instant after, she twisted in mid-air, snatching the now-revealed body with her free hand and casting it safely into the muddy ground.
"No! Ranmaru!" Raiga howled as his ally bounced and rolled along the ground with a cry. He whipped around to face Hinata as she landed behind him, fury in his eyes, but then they rolled back as her palm stabbed into his gut. Something vital unraveled from within him, uncoiling from its place and swelling on its way up. Bloody chunks spilled over through parted lips, his nose leaking as well after a moment as he slid a few feet and found himself utterly grounded, hands and knees.
"Raiga-sama!" What now was revealed to be a small boy called out to him, clamoring towards them on his hands and elbows.
"W-wait…" Raiga gasped as her footsteps drew her closer to him. "Hold on. Ranmaru, help-" Her hand snapped up to level between his pinpricked eyes, fingers clenched in a familiar motion.
"Rasengan."
Hinata grimaced as the center of his head 'hollowed, its yield splattering the mud behind him without delay. Raiga's corpse wobbled for a moment, then flopped over, the weight of his body strewing the mire beneath. Behind it, just short of the splash zone of her execution, that tiny, rail-thin child stared at what was left, his scarlet eyes wide and unblinking. Then his loss seemed to click; those swollen, unblinking eyes flickered off and on, then their light succumbed all at once. Tears began, but his own body fell first, a dead faint consuming his consciousness.
Several seconds passed- two bodies downed while Hinata loitered above them both, fingers still outstretched and byakugan eyes still pulsing with fury that no longer had a target. The rain's deluge battered her, her dousing blue locks clinging to her face so thoroughly that her own bangs almost completely covered her face; the sky's tears rolled over her head, streaming down her face and soaking through her clothes, and taking with it bits of the blood and grime that clung to her.
Then her arm went limp, falling down to her side to mirror the other; her knees fell out from under her; hell, even her neck felt weak, her head bowing beneath this heaviness as she fumbled with the knowledge that she had just murdered a man.
Not merely killed him in a scuffle, but executed a foe who could not have possibly fought back any longer.
Not because she needed to; not to protect her comrades- or even to protect herself.
She simply had wanted him dead…
Well, he was…
Her hands fumbled up to her face, dirtied palms and fingers trying to wipe her tears that came far too fast and forcefully. A painful hiccup burned in her chest, her shaking shoulders aching as they jerked with her first sob.
A second sob hit her, and this one took with it all the strength she had left. She fell to her side as well, curling into herself and wailing; mud stained her anew, coating her hair and her face and all else.
How she wished the ground would split apart- that the mud would swallow her up and consume her.
So she wouldn't have to see her team's disappointment for abandoning the plan- for dragging them so thoughtlessly into her spite match.
So she wouldn't have to go home and look Naruto in the eye- explain to him that she had lied to him- had betrayed him, and the pact they had made!
Explained to him that she was just as cruel and petty, and evil as any other ninja. That there was nothing special about her after all; she was as weak and spineless as she had ever been- too weak to stick to her guns, the first time they had been even remotely challenged.
Because she didn't regret killing Raiga- not for a second.
But she hated that she had done it for all the wrong reasons; she hated even more that she had endangered Kiba and Shino to do it…
"O-oi," A voice sounded above her. Amidst the rainfall and storming, she had to really focus to realize that it was Kiba. "Hinata!?" He scrambled over to her, diving down to his knees and digging her out of the mud. "H-hey! You good?"
She wanted to lie- to tell him that she was fine…
"No," She choked out, her tears redoubling with a new wave of disgust as she met his gaze- saw the sheer concern in his stare. Her vision swam, this sickness creeping up her chest and expanding in her throat. Her eyes rolled back, and she yanked herself away from him, keeling over, off to the side and hurling.
"H-hey!" Kiba grabbed at her shoulder with one hand, once again turning her his way once she was done; his other began messily working to peel her hair out of her face for her. He looked back for just a moment, seeming to pale just a bit upon observing Raiga's fallen corpse. "Hey, hey, hey… It's going to be alright, ok?"
"Indeed." Another clamor, and Shino dropped down beside her, his own bare arm circling around her. Hinata noticed a moment after that his sleeve had been torn. A few shallow scrapes littered his bare arm, and the leftmost lens of his shades was cracked, but not fully broken. She looked Kiba's way again and noticed now that he-too seemed a bit roughed up. "Everything is going to be alright. Why? Because the enemy has been subjugated and we all live with minimal injuries. The execution was rough, but ultimately, we all did well."
Then he glanced back as well to regard Raiga's body, now also taking note of the small boy- Ranmaru, Raiga had called him.
"A child… We will collect him and regroup with Kurenai-sensei."
"Here, let me grab these for you," Kiba squatted down, taking hold of the first of the late Raiga's blades. "I know these things anywhere- we got the same name, after all." He padded over to the second, stepping over the discarded arm to collect the second. "I know you probably don't wanna hear this right at this moment, but they're yours now… We can't just leave these things lying around."
No words came to her mind, so she didn't bother. She allowed Shino to haul her up, stumbling on two left feet and muttering some halfhearted 'sorry' after slamming fully into him, but he did not complain. He steadied her, slinging her arm over his shoulder for support and waiting for Kiba, both of the discarded weapons sandwiched between his bicep and torso.
"Alright, let's get out of here." He took her other arm, the three turning to leave together.
"Actually," A voice cut in from behind, and the trio whipped around to respond to the sudden intrusion. Hinata's eyes went wide, regarding the pale-skinned young man, who now kneeled before Raiga's body. For a moment, he did not so much as look at them, merely observing the gaping hole in the deceased Raiga's skull with some morbid interest. Finally looking up at them- at her, he announced- "My master has business with you."
Kiba frowned, making to step forward. "Yeah? And who the hell's your master-" He jolted, stopped dead by the iron grip that Hinata had laid on his shoulder. "H-hey, what's up-" He froze again, now struck dumb by the terror in her eyes.
"You belong to Orochimaru," She near-whispered, her byakugan glaring daggers into the proudly worn mark on his chest. It reeked of that very same putrid chakra that had denoted the Yamata no Orochi.
"Correct. My name is Kimimaro." He nodded, even bowing his head, politely. "Lord Orochimaru is my master… He would very much like to speak with you."
"U-us?" Kiba now drew back a bit, still remembering himself just enough to place himself before his two teammates. "What do you want with us?"
Kimimaro's lips pursed with distaste, observing Kiba's clear act of defiance. "Not you," he pointed at the boy and shook his head. "And not you, either…" Now, he pointed at Shino.
"Just you." His finger slowly traced through the air, settling squarely between her pale eyes. A thought, then as if remembering something- "And the boy as well, please."
His tone was polite- pleasant, even. Had she not known better, she might have even taken the request at face value.
"Not a chance," Kiba growled, pack tactics taking the lead over even the crawl of fear. "You can't have her."
Kimimaro barely seemed to hear the boy, instead shifting his glance after Shino, now. "And you?"
Shino swallowed. "I will have to ask that you leave."
Finally, he looked to Hinata, his polite eyes hardening with the cold creep of ice. "And what say you? Will we be doing this the hard way?"
Where was Kurenai-sensei? Surely she would have stayed close; there was no way either, that Akamaru couldn't have reached her by now…
Then she noticed something about their visitor. His eyes were bloodshot, a thick vein pulsing in his temple. He sniffed, then wiped his nose; she could swear she saw blood come away from the back of his hand.
And she knew in an instant that he would kill her comrades.
Her fingers snapped out, and Shino and Kiba both fell.
"Hina-!? Kiba squeaked, collapsing into the mud on his side, but even his voice would not emit; his frantic eyes demanded answers that she did not have the heart to give. She cut a glance to Shino, whose glasses cracked apart on the impact, his own brown eyes watching her, silently.
She shook her head.
"I'll go…"
Kimimaro smiled. "You're quite perceptive."
She followed after the older boy- Kimimaro, forcing back the ice in her veins and refusing to think about what awaited her, so as to not lose her nerve. In her arms, she carried Ranmaru, unwilling to let the pale-skinned boy handle him, himself.
Said boy led her up the wet, sludge-like mud of the pit with nary a word, not so much as casting a glance her way.
Even with his back so clearly open, she did not dare strike out at him. Her chakra was down to the red, and even if she weren't she didn't exactly favor the chances of a guy who might have faced Kurenai sensei with little wounds to show for it.
He forced his away over the lip of the cliffside, turning her way and offering his hand. She was so struck by the act of chivalry that she merely stared for a moment, the older boy blinking twice and retracting the limb a moment later without a word.
"And there she is…"
She had never heard his voice before, but as she crossed the lip, herself, to come before that man, she could only think that she had never heard a voice that so thoroughly matched the face of its source.
He was pale- so much so that his skin seemed close to chalk. His thin, angular face matched the lanky, serpentine arch of his body, even as he sat before a tiny fire, a layered, bamboo umbrella posted just above him.
"Hello…" She near-wheezed, struck breathless at the sight of him.
A low, sardonic chuckle met her greeting, the narrowed eyes of the Snake Sannin meeting her; they gleamed, two molten yellow oceans of interest that washed over her in an instant. She was adrift in his focus, paralyzed as he picked her apart, this way and that, observing her- consuming her with that gaze.
"Good evening."
She couldn't even look away from him; her body wouldn't move, no matter how much she begged it to. She was trapped in her own head, some haze of terror consuming her so thoroughly that she even forgot to breathe.
Then he released her, giving a very pointed look at his own feet, which she felt compelled to follow. A gasp lodged in her throat as she took in the mangled body of her sensei.
Kurenai was littered with swollen, purpling bruises; they splashed across her body in the dozens like splotches on a canvas. Her arm was a withered branch, stripped and twisted to the point of near-separation- her sleeve completely shredded under whatever force had ruined her. It was only the faintest twitch of agony, and the pitiable wheeze that followed from the woman that convinced her that she was alive.
But even then, Hinata could not so much as shout her name.
"Not to worry, dear. Your sensei is quite the tough woman." He seemed almost eager, the lines of his face twisted with an almost child-like interest. Looking past Hinata, Orochimaru snickered a bit, observing the shame-addled face of Kimimaro; the bulging vein in his head; the bloodshot eyes…
The signs were subtle, for he held himself well. But he knew well that his dear boy was in a great deal of pain.
"Perhaps your encounter with her will teach you not to rely so recklessly on that blood-limit of yours, my dear Kimimaro; she made quite the fool out of you."
Kimimaro only bowed his head, leaving Orochimaru to once again take interest in Hinata.
"I suspect dear Kurenai Yuhi will make a recovery…" A pause, then he thumbed his cheek and grinned, almost sheepishly. "Well, I suppose that remains to be seen." Orochimaru tilted his head, now looking at her curiously. "Nothing to say?" Then he snickered into his hand. "Oh dear… My apologies. You may speak."
And just like that, it was like oxygen had returned to her. Her lungs hammered against her chest, some sickness filling her sinuses that she fought to hold back. Only when the stinging had died and her roiling stomach had partway settled, was she able to choke out- "W-what do you want?"
Orochimaru seemed to really ponder that question for a moment. "What, do I want, hm? I want many things… Shall I prepare for you an itemized list?"
Well honestly, it wouldn't hurt.
"Y-yes please?"
"Ha!" Orochimaru's humor came suddenly and without restraint, the man even throwing his head back to laugh loudly. "You have a good survival instinct, don't you, dear?"
For the life of her, she just wasn't seeing the connection there. Orochimaru babbled on, heedless of her confusion.
"You saw signs of genjutsu-related injuries on my dear Kimimaro here and smartly concluded that he had defeated your sensei. Then you struck down your own teammates and surrendered to save their lives. How…" For the briefest of moments, his face twisted, filling with something bordering on revulsion. "Honest…" He shook his head again, then he smiled, and for the life of her, she could not sense an ounce of deceit or even mockery in it. "My dear Kabuto has been waxing poetic about you since your little dance with him in Tanzaku. After seeing you play down there with Raiga-san, I do believe I am beginning to understand what it is that he sees in you. To take down one of the Seven Swordsmen- heh, even a washed-up hack like poor Raiga-san…" The Snake Sannin tutted, his attention trailing from Hinata's face to regard the unconscious body of Ranmaru. "Believe it or not, that man was once one of Mist's finest ANBU… Though I suppose that isn't quite the feat it oughta be when you have someone to play the whole game for you, no?"
He was looking at her as if he expected a response, but for the life of her, she wasn't sure what he wanted to hear her say. Ducking her head a bit, she simply nodded. "Er- y-yes…"
"I wanted to thank you as well for being gentle with young Ranmaru," Orochimaru prattled on, his eyes now alight with glee. "Such a sweet boy; it would have been quite a shame to have lost such a valuable specimen. He's quite fragile, you see."
A specimen?
Revulsion burned in her, but she wisely kept quiet.
"And how are my children?" He asked her suddenly, and Hinata froze for a moment, baffled again by the sudden divergence.
"Er- y-your children?"
He tilted his head, raising a brow. "Tayuya, Kidomaru, Sakon, Ukon… Tell me how they fare, living their peaceful lives in Konohagakure." Impatience twitched in his fingers, and she knew he would not like to repeat himself. "What say you?"
"F-fine!" She squeaked, forcing herself to stand tall, even though she really wanted to curl up and disappear. She didn't dare lie to a man like this, though it felt like a betrayal, just to mention the redhead to her once-master. "T-Tayuya especially- I think she's happier."
"Happier, hm?" Something forlorn filled that man, now. He hung his head, silently, and for that split moment, she let her vision go adrift. Kimimaro had drawn behind her now, far closer than she remembered, and far, far closer than she was comfortable with. "I suppose that's fine…" Orochimaru shook his head.
Seeing someone like him appear so somber, she couldn't withhold the question that fumbled from her lips. "Why did you betray Jirobo?"
Orochimaru blinked twice, his amusement then shriveling away; his lips tightened into a hard line, and the air around them chilled. Hinata could swear she felt the makings of frost crystalizing on her face as his glare settled on her; her breaths stilled, cut short by the poison in his stare.
"Such audacity," His chuckle was humorless, this insidious hiss following it as he rose languidly from his seat. He stepped carelessly over Kurenai's fallen body, each step after, drew him closer and wracked her body with a shudder, each more punishing than the last. "Do not speak so carelessly on matters you could not understand, dear."
He was going to kill her.
"T-t-then!" She fought tooth and nail against her own nature to force the words out, this deep, unspoken instinct demanding to her to keep him talking. "E-en-enlighten me!"
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow, then he snickered. "Enlighten you, mm?"
He always did love to teach.
"Very well…" He snickered, no doubt seeing her ploy, but playing along all the same. "My relationship with my children had become- well, strained would be accurate, I suppose… Of them, only Jirobo's loyalty truly remained intact." He let out a small, frustrated breath. "But even that was unsure…" He began to pace before her, and Hinata did not dare to interrupt the man. "Then he begged me to allow him to make himself useful to me once again- for me to grant him a new purpose… So I did."
Revulsion filled her, and she really could not help herself. "So you took everything from him."
Orochimaru raised an eyebrow. "Children belong to their parents, do they not? How else would I honor him, if not to devote all that he had to my designs? To do anything less would be cruel and loveless- an insult to his name!"
And she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he believed every word that he'd said.
"Jirobo had no further purpose to his name as he was. He had no identity- nothing to offer; not to me, and not to himself… But by using him to birth the Yamata no Orochi, I granted him new life- new purpose! I made him more than he could ever have dreamed of being, and in doing so immortalized him forever!"
Hinata twitched.
Something about the way he spoke just made the fire in her belly burn hotter. "You gave up on him," She hissed, her byakugan flaring to life anew.
Orochimaru paused, looking to her again and tilting his head. "My dear, that couldn't be further from the truth."
"He wasn't good enough for you as he was, so you tore him down and used his scraps to make a new child! You replaced him!" Orochimaru twitched, but she carried on, the fire in her belly scalding her better judgment. "How can you call that love? How is that honor, when there's nothing even remaining of him to know it?" Hinata lurched forward, this bubbling need to strike him rising, even though she knew he would kill her. "He died screaming- begging to be saved! In his dying moments, he felt that you had abandoned him!"
Her byakugan gave her a clear line of sight on Kimimaro's position, but even still, she was unable to respond as he snapped forward, himself, snatching a fistful of her hair and dragging her back. Ranmaru's unconscious body tumbled to her feet, but she had not even the wherewithal to feel apologetic as she was manhandled.
"Watch how you speak to him," Kimimaro hissed, his polite demeanor splitting apart to reveal the malice underneath. "Lest I cut your tongue out of your mouth!"
"Calm, Kimimaro," Orochimaru tried to soothe his pet, but Hinata would not be silenced. To hell with that!
"A parent's role is to protect their children," Hinata hissed, ignoring the albino boy even as he drove her down to her knees, right before Ranmaru's limp body. All the while, she refused to break eye contact with Orochimaru, straining against the iron grip at her scalp to do so. "How can you call yourself a parent, when your children are afraid of you!?"
Kimimaro drove her face into the muddy ground, a thick, bone-white thorn bleeding out from his palm. "I warned you-"
"Enough, Kimimaro," Orochimaru snapped. The boy flinched, releasing Hinata and drawing back; his features froze once again into a facade of calm.
"Y-yes, Orochimaru-sama…"
A terse quiet ballooned between them for a moment after that exchange, of which Hinata felt more an intruder than participant. Then Orochimaru squatted down right before her, playfully ruffling her hair as if to soothe her hurting scalp. Then, one of his long, pale fingers coiled beneath her chin to lift her mud-stained face; Orochimaru's sickly yellow gaze warmed just that tiny bit as her vengeful byakugan met him. "You remind me of her, you know…" Observing the confusion in her eyes, he snickered. "Tayuya, that is; so headstrong… That poor girl never could learn not to run her mouth. It got her into heaps of trouble…"
It had been his favorite thing about the girl. Sheer, unbridled moxie. She was bold- bolder even than Anko had ever been.
His heart ached at the thought of them. How remarkable they could have been- the both of them, if they had simply stayed by his side!
Ah well.
Then his mood flipped again, once more, completely without warning. A sheepish grin split his face. "Truth be told, I was planning to simply kill your team and send you on your merry way- they say tragedy builds character." Her heart leapt into her throat, even her byakugan receding as her fear overtook even her indignance, but he hardly seemed to notice; he only shrugged, this lackadaisical lilt to his tongue as if he had not just pleasantly suggested their death. His free hand ducked down, tracing circles on the base of Ranmaru's neck; with some horror, she realized that she recognized Orochimaru's signature brand on the boy. "But honestly, I'm just really pleased to have gotten to meet you."
Why?
"You were worth every bit of my time, I should say. You even made ducking that fool Jiraiya worth the hassle; for that, I thank you, truly." Then he sighed. "You have also given me much to think about, I believe. For that- he stood again with a slight grunt, wiping specks of rain off his clothes with a smile. "-I think I'll leave you with a gift."
A gift? Whatever he was offering, she didn't want it!
"Consider it an investment into your future, or call it buying you yours and your comrades' lives, if you prefer." His hands joined together to form a 'tiger' seal, the bones in his neck 'popping' before extending. Orochimaru's serpentine neck circled around her, a teasing grin on his face hovering inches from her own. "After all, I've never quite had it in me to let a good asset go to waste."
Then in a flash, his jaws clamped and her neck burned.
It was razor blades, injected through her neck. They spread throughout her body, carving their way through her veins in a mad dash to bleed every bit of her that they could! They plucked her nerves, the song of agony singing across them like sparks on faulty power lines even as the rest of her began to shut down. Molten red charred across her body and burned through her; slowly, it began to take shape, splitting off and segmenting across her figure like the bloom of many jagged lilies. Her skull pounded, tears and mucus and sickness too- everything that she was spasmed and screamed under that torment as she convulsed into the mud. Her limbs wrenched and buckled, seeking comfort in some leverage, but all she could do was slip in her uncoordinated efforts and bury herself further.
It was like dying in slow motion.
"I originally intended for this particular mark to go to Young Naruto-kun. But I suppose it wouldn't last long on him at all..." Orochimaru shook his head, some mockery of mournfulness in that gesture. "For now though, I suppose you'll make for a fine enough guinea-pig." A thought, then- "Oh, and send him my regards, please; I think he'll appreciate the look." Orochimaru righted himself, cracking his neck with a sigh of satisfaction. "I look forward to seeing him crack that one."
Oooooh, Orochimaru is really playing with fire!
What's with his interest in Hinata and Naruto? What's up with the curse mark? How/Why would this guy just waltz into Konoha territory so freely? And what will become of Hinata and her team?
I can't wait to show you all what I'm cooking for this arc; just be patient with me while I get the ball rolling!
For now though, leave me your thoughts via review. I read all of them, and I love responding and engaging with y'all when I can.
Special thanks to the goons over on the Discord for letting me soundboard some ideas and clear up my thoughts a little for this chapter. Much love to y'all.
See ya!
Oh, and no omake this time. I'm tired and kind've in a rush. Next time for sure though!