"Good morning, Akane. The weather's nice today. I know I should be underground in the lab, but Orochimaru-sensei is out, and Dr Yakushi tells me it's important to avoid burnout. I can't help thinking that every day I take off from research, somewhere out there people are dying. But Kagome-sensei did always say that forcing yourself to do sealing work past your limits was a great way to get yourself and everyone around you eaten from the inside out by artery crawlers.
"Now I think of it, today's a good day to take a walk to the Uplift Mausoleum. It's been a while since I refreshed the Kagome memorial trap arrays. I don't think people ever understood what a special man he was, you know—not just as a sealmaster, but as a loyal friend and cousin. Until the very end, he was convinced we'd been taken over by lupchanzen. I like to think that if we'd able to hold him down just a little longer, we could have calmed him down enough to explain. Though, then again, I don't know if Orochimaru-sensei would have spared a potential threat. You remember what happened to Naruto.
"I think we all assumed, before that day, that it was going to be a coin flip. But I realise now, there was never a chance of Orochimaru-sensei losing. He'd been an elite jōnin back when Naruto's
father was in his nappies, and above all, he'd known well in advance that it was coming. There's a Mori saying in Mist, about sufficient preparation trumping any number of S-rank ninjutsu. I do wonder sometimes if, as the team planner and surviving sealmaster, I could have found a way to leverage Naruto's skills enough to close the gap. But by then, of course, I'd picked my side. Naruto was a great guy, but he was never going to save the world.
"We got another letter from Noburi, by the way. He sounds so bored. Apparently, now that the Cats have surrendered, sweeping up the lesser clans just feels like cleanup work. I guess we could send him after another bloodline clan to switch things up—we haven't got anyone from the pirate lords yet. Part of me wishes Orochimaru-sensei had given me the modifications too so we could go on Akatsuki hunts together, but I know full well my work down here is more important. Besides, the casualty figures are already racking up, and killing people is just going to lead to more work further down the line.
"Still nothing from Keiko, though, not since Mist went dark. She was always the smartest of us—she disbanded the KEI
before the harvesting began, which avoided so much unnecessary conflict, and she never tried to argue Orochimaru-sensei out of his ethics. I wish she'd reply to my messages. We could work so well together.
"Team Uplift is never coming together again, is it? Even if we bring everyone back to life. That thought's really taken the wind out of my sails. I was going to go see if Mari's having one of her good days, but I guess I'll save it for another time. Maybe once I'm done inspecting the bodies in the mausoleum, I'll check in on Mori, make sure she's eating properly. I think Keiko would like that.
"Thanks for listening, Akane. Also, I know I've said it before, but thank you for being my first. After you, everything else was easy."
-o-
Orochimaru calmly pulled out a plain red cloth, wiped his hands off, then stored it away. His hands briefly flashed with green light.
Hazō stayed kneeling on the floor. He didn't have the strength to move, and even if he could, it was far, far too late.
"Why?" he demanded hoarsely. "I know you're stronger than this! Why did you have to make it lethal?!"
"As I told you previously," Orochimaru said, stepping disdainfully away from the pool of blood, "your life has no intrinsic value, positive or negative. However, I cannot allow interference with my work."
That was all their rebellion was to him. Interference with his work. Interference which now lay dead or dying on the cold laboratory floor.
They'd almost had him. Hazō wanted to believe that, if only because there was nothing else left to believe. Naruto's surprise attack had been flawless. It would have killed the Sage of Six Paths himself. But, even as it connected, even as the Rasengan destroyed everything that could be destroyed, Orochimaru was briefly
something else. In the part of his brain dripping with hatred, Hazō asked how something so inhuman could be qualified to save humanity.
A glimpse of
that had been all it took. At his full strength, Naruto would probably have shrugged off ten times the horror. But after torment at the hands of the ultimate genjutsu user, followed by months of psychic trauma, followed by the Basement… Naruto had turned out to be a lot more fragile than he let on.
Orochimaru followed his line of sight. "I will return him to the boy in the tower once I have taken steps to make him more obedient. The unique opportunity more than compensates for your waste of my time."
Hazō felt tears he couldn't shed burning the corners of his eyes. Orochimaru's waste of time had been the greatest, most desperate battle of their lives. After Naruto, their one hope of victory, went down without a fight, Keiko
ascended. Where Orochimaru was an abomination, she was perfection. Her words flowed without pause, transforming a game of all snakes and no ladders into frantic speed chess. She knew every seal in their inventories. She knew all the applications of their ninjutsu, and combinations of both that they'd never considered. She was the reason Mari had been able to keep fighting after Orochimaru took her eyes. She was the reason Kagome-sensei had been able to rain down explosive after explosive without ever catching any of them in the crossfire. She was the reason that the three Bloodline Limit ninja were constantly in positions where Orochimaru couldn't attack without destroying their value as specimens. She was the reason…
…the reason they took a little longer to die.
That was Mari's blood he was kneeling in, so much from such a tiny body. He wanted to pick her up and hold her close while she was still warm, but he didn't have the strength to lift his arms.
Kagome-sensei was gone, simply gone. Some part of Hazō would be forever proud that the sealmaster's final technique had briefly staggered a physical god.
Noburi was slumped not far from him, unconscious, his barrel broken and oozing with a tar-like black goo that hissed where it touched Mari's blood. The exposed parts of his skin were slowly turning dark.
Keiko was in a corner, still breathing, but staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. Hazō didn't have to guess at the price she'd paid for her brief reversal of the Mori curse.
Akane? Akane had been Keiko's sacrificial pawn, flinging herself at Orochimaru without a second's hesitation as he came out of his other form. The surprise, perhaps that they were still fighting, bought the rest of them a second to get in formation. Then, casually, without changing expression, Orochimaru had placed his hand on the crown of her head, and the only mercy was that the screams were brief.
"My servant pool has been depleted," Orochimaru said, breaking into his thoughts. "If you still wish to be my assistant, I will accept your application."
Hazō stared at him in incomprehension. "You're inviting me to serve you
because you just murdered my family?"
"I would say that my chosen field of study has just become very relevant to you," Orochimaru said sardonically.
Hazō looked again around the room, his mind spinning. Everything about this monster of a man was inside out. Everything was jarringly, skin-crawlingly wrong. Orochimaru spoke to someone who'd just tried to kill him, someone he'd nearly killed in turn, and offered them a job. The warped, roiling impossibility that they called Orochimaru's body was pureblood human compared to his mind.
"Keiko and Noburi," Hazō said. "Spare them. Please. I'll do anything you want, willingly and enthusiastically. Just please…"
"They are rare Bloodline Limit holders," Orochimaru said, "and worth more than your cooperation."
Hazō cast around, desperately. He hated himself for the next words to come out of his mouth, immersed himself in guilt that he would never allow to fade away, but ultimately did not hesitate. "You've met Keiko's sister, Ami. She loves Keiko more than anything in the world. She's got a much stronger Frozen Skein, and she'll gladly turn herself in if it means you sending Keiko back to the Mori for treatment."
There was a second's silence.
"Acceptable."
Hazō's desperation eased just a little. He was halfway there, halfway to saving what was left of his family.
But Noburi's sisters weren't available for equivalent exchange. The Wakahisa, who continued to look down in him behind their acknowledgement of his status, would not intervene against Orochimaru on his behalf. With Jiraiya's death and the demise of what used to be the Gōketsu, Noburi had no political value that didn't stem from Orochimaru himself. He was a decent medic, but an unremarkable one at best, while Orochimaru had Kabuto and free access to Leaf's recruitment pool.
"He's the Toad Summoner," Hazō said, if only to buy time. "The previous summoner's chosen heir."
Orochimaru raised his eyebrows. "Has he been accepted by the clan?"
"No, he's still in training," Hazō admitted through gritted teeth. "But his chakra system is perfect for summoning, with his naturally vast reserves."
"Kabuto will receive the Toad Scroll," Orochimaru said. "Procure ice and use it to refrigerate the corpses in Cold Storage on the second floor. After that, clean yourself and report to Specimen Storage A, same floor, for further instructions."
"But don't you
want the ideal summoner working for you?" Hazō pleaded one final time.
"Additional firepower is not my priority," Orochimaru said. "The corpses are deteriorating even as we speak."
Orochimaru said nothing more. Hazō watched him approach Noburi's body, stepping daintily so as to avoid stepping on the black ooze. The movement struck Hazō as grimly ironic.
Wild thoughts flickered through his mind. He could use his unnatural position as Orochimaru's assistant to get them out of there. He could free Naruto at least, or just get him to wake up before it was too late. He could get Dr Yakushi, who cared about political implications, to invoke the Nara. At the very worst, if he couldn't save anyone, he could at least be with Noburi. Hazō would do what it took to stop his brother from becoming another eternally-tortured skin farm man. Yes, however feeble his odds, Hazō's rebellion wasn't done.
But that was just a delusion, wasn't it? No matter what he did, Mari, Kagome-sensei and Akane would stay dead. Noburi wouldn't survive the ooze unless Orochimaru saved him for use in his experiments. Keiko might or might not survive, but they didn't call them sacrificial techniques because they were easy to come back from. Even if Orochimaru was permanently killed this very second, it would be too late.
No, all of Hazō's ways were cut off except for one. He'd failed to save his family. With Naruto soon to be turned, he'd probably failed to save all of Leaf. But he could still save humanity, and in the process he might manage to turn back time for those he'd lost. He couldn't save both humanity and himself—looking at Orochimaru, it was clear that the price of trying would be his heart and soul—but, after everything he'd just lost, what was the point of those things anyway?
Slowly, painfully, Hazō levered himself to his feet and, still covered in Mari's blood, staggered away to do his master's bidding.
-o-
One more...
-o-
The angles of space sliced through his flesh as if it was molten steel. He was an infinity of soap bubbles, so compressed they glowed like a sun. He was 5555555555555555555.3 unbounded. He was fractured, and every piece was its own cruel song. He was self, and self meant nothing. Matter was a single name exactly as long as the universe. Somewhere out there, something laughed.
"Hazō! Hazō, can you hear me?"
His eyes opened. They were physical eyes, capable of seeing light and physical matter and nothing else. He could hear words. They expressed conceptual meaning, individually or in combination, and were made by flesh or material interacting with air. He could hear them with human ears.
He was in bed, in a familiar bedroom. People he knew clustered all around him. People who couldn't be there.
"He's awake again! Hazō, you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"…Akane?"
Akane couldn't be here. Akane died. Akane
always died. Creatively murdered by Orochimaru. Reduced to a hollow shell by the prototype cure. Shredded by the first "victim" she rescued from the biosealing failure. Torn apart by the hunter-seekers discovering the last rebel hideout. Sacrificed by his own hand, in a thousand ways, for a thousand reasons.
Which one was he?
"You don't look well. Don't worry, you should have a little more time to rest before Orochimaru decides he cares enough to kick us out."
They were all here. Mari. Kagome-sensei. Noburi. Keiko. Akane.
Which one was he? Was this the past? Was there a divergence point that he had just unpassed? Did someone send him here? Did one of him send him here? Was it a sealing failure? A sealing success? Which one was he?
"Hazō?" Akane said carefully. "Could you say something, just so we know you're OK? You just staring at me without saying anything is making me uncomfortable."
Akane wasn't dead.
"Sorry," he said vaguely. "Could you give me a little time alone?"
"Sure," Mari said. "We'll be nearby. Call us if you need us."
Wait. He was so stupid. The research! Forget everything else, he
had to write down the results of the research!
But even as he opened his mouth to ask for something to write with, he could feel the hard-earned knowledge slipping from his mind, fading from a brain unready to contain it like tiny fish darting through gaps in a net. The memories went with it, detail after detail, leaving only a single Hazō behind.
Hazō stared at his family's retreating backs, at Akane bringing up the rear. In that moment, seeing her alive in front of him after so long, he felt a sudden, powerful impulse to embrace her/cut her throat/beg her for help/scream at her/make love to her/vivisect her.
Alone again, Hazō asked the empty room a question to which he would never, ever, get an answer.
"Which one am I?"
-o-
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-o-
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