Chapter 52: Sakura Awakens
The first thing Sakura noticed upon waking was that she was alive and not in any pain. The second thing she noticed was that she was not lying in a bed, but on a cold stone floor.
This confused her. If the invaders had won, she should be dead or being tortured. If she had been rescued, she should be in the hospital, or – or
something. Did that mean she had been… captured? She felt a momentary spike of adrenaline as she recalled Kabuto's betrayal, but that did not clear up her confusion, because it hardly seemed plausible that he had carried her here after she defeated him.
Then she remembered the presence that had risen up behind her, and she was forced to suppress a shudder. It had been like a, a snake, or a monster – some kind of unholy creature that defied description. A parasite that had slithered its way straight into her mind and made itself a nest there, until its thoughts were hers and she belonged to it, and its presence was all she had ever known…
Sakura closed her eyes even more tightly. She was suddenly very sure that she did not want to be awake.
"Get up. I can see you shaking."
Sakura tried to remain perfectly still, afraid to even breathe, but then something yanked on her arm and she opened her eyes with a gasp of surprise. She was in some kind of underground cave – no, a room, but one that was somehow carved out of solid rock, as if some god had decided to simply take a chunk out of a mountain rather than go through the effort of building a home from scratch. The woman who had woken Sakura had startling red hair and wore white medical robes along with spectacles, but the look in her eyes gave the impression that she was more comfortable with taking lives than saving them.
"Get up," the young woman said again. "We've got injured. Let's go."
Sakura tried to splutter some words of protest, but before she knew it she was being dragged through the metal gate and out into the corridor. The walls were still carved out of solid rock, but this time there was an intricate curved pattern etched into the stone which repeated itself over and over, flowing smoothly from the floor to the ceiling without interruption as it stretched on into the darkness.
"Where are we?" Sakura glanced behind her, but the exact same pattern continued in the opposite direction, creating a disorienting effect. The candles lining the walls on either side of her cast the corridor in a dim orange glow. "I'm not in the Land of Fire anymore, am I? What happened? Where is-"
"Shut up." The woman pushed her forward, and soon they had arrived before a different door, this one made of wood. Sakura felt another rough shove in the small of her back, and she stumbled forward into the darkness of the room. "Lord Orochimaru has no use for scared little girls. Make sure to save at least three of them, or you'll be the next to need saving."
"Orochimaru? What-" The wooden door slammed shut in Sakura's face, and perhaps it was the sudden sound that did it, but her sense of alarm finally managed to pierce through the fog in her head. She had been captured by
Orochimaru, a genius who stood out even amongst the Legendary Three. A traitor and sworn foe of Konoha, spoken of only in whispers, abductor of innocents, master of human experimentation and terror the likes of which parents deemed inappropriate to even scare their children with.
Behind her, she could dimly make out the sound of moaning.
She turned around slowly, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out operating tables stretching out in front of her. On each of the slabs lay a patient, for lack of a better word – it did not look like they had received much in the way of care. Some of them were still wearing their grey armoured vests, but through the fog in her mind Sakura could not remember which Village those belonged to.
"Help me," one of the injured ninjas groaned. "Please, it hurts so much…"
"Hold on," she said, falling back on her medical training. "I can help you. Let me just see what I've got to work with." She cast a glance around and managed to find a gas lamp stationed on a desk beside her, and when she turned it on she was finally able to get an idea of what she was looking at. There were four patients, each with what looked like markedly different injuries: Internal bleeding, horrendous burn wounds, one with a missing limb and another who seemed to have inhaled some kind of poison gas.
I can do this, she thought, trying desperately to steady the beating of her heart. She shuffled towards the closest patient, the one who was coughing wetly, blood trickling from his lips with each ragged breath. "Can you tell me what happened? Do you have any idea what you might have breathed in?"
The reply was a wet cough, flecks of blood splattering Sakura's white medical robes.
"Never mind him," the much larger and heavier ninja next to him groaned. "Can't you see he's a goner? Help me, damn it – I'm missing a fucking arm!"
"I decide who gets treated first," said Sakura, feeling suddenly more confident now that she was talking to someone who clearly knew less than her. The burly man's stump was not bleeding by the looks of it, and judging by the way he talked he was clearly not about to die. She turned back to the coughing man and formed the seals for a diagnosis jutsu, but on a distant level she realized that she had no idea what to do even if she did figure out the poison that had been used.
"I said forget about him!" The burly man grabbed Sakura with his remaining arm, moving much faster than she would have expected. His hand closed around her wrist and he yanked sharply and painfully, causing Sakura's shoulder to twist in its socket. "Listen little girl, you're gonna heal me, or else I swear I'll-
aaaggh!"
Sakura had instinctively pressed the fingers of her free hand into the man's bandaged stump, causing blood to spurt out, and he released her with a scream. She took the opportunity to grab the man's fingers with her other hand and bent them backwards, causing his face to contort in pain.
"I've never told anyone this before," Sakura said softly, "but the reason I became a medical ninja was because I was starting to enjoy hurting people. It started with my friend, Naruto – I used to bop him in the head whenever he was annoying, and I told myself he deserved it, but the fact is that somewhere along the line I'd learned to solve my problems with violence. I didn't like that vicious side of me, and so I made a decision to change." She leaned her face in closer until she was almost whispering directly into the man's ear. "Someone earlier made me go back on that decision, and I was so annoyed by it that I set him on fire and watched him burn. Now, Orochimaru-sama only instructed me to save
three patients, and I'm seeing four people here, so what happens next is up to you."
The man's face paled, and he fell back onto his slab, not even the pain in his stump seeming to register anymore. Sakura suspected that it was the mention of Orochimaru's name that had done it, more than anything else. She remembered the sense of overwhelming awe she had felt in Orochimaru's presence, and could not imagine what it would be like if those feelings were to be turned to pure terror instead. With that thought in mind, and considering the prospect of failure, she thought she understood.
"Okay," she said, trying to steady her breathing as she looked at each of her patients in turn. "How shall we do this…"
She was looking at it from the wrong angle, she decided. It was not a question of what she
needed to do, but only of what she
could do. There was no sense in worrying about impossibilities. With that in mind she reached for her medical pouch, and realized in surprise that she was still carrying it, along with her bloodied white medical robes which had been shredded by Kabuto's glass shards.
All her supplies, even her scalpels, were still there just as she had left them.
Fine, she thought to herself.
If these people mean to test me, then I'll show them what I can do.
She gave a twitch of her fingers, and then her supplies started to fly out of her pouch as if by magic, her chakra strings invisible even to her own eyes. She sorted them out with mechanical precision, ignoring the wide-eyed stares her patients were giving her.
Bandages, soldier pills, ethanol, gauze… She activated the storage seal that Naruto had insisted she carry with her, even though she had balked at the price.
One blood transfusion packet, universally compatible. She immediately wished she had bought more.
She activated her water whip technique, using the chakra-neutral blood packet as a source. Blood was ninety per cent water, so even though it took a bit of extra effort it was ultimately no different from drawing upon a muddy pool. Soon the blood was coiling around her like a snake, twisting and shifting in accordance to her whim, and she sent it to strike at the burn victim. As the blood snake bit into his arm and forced its way inside, his eyes opened and he began to scream at the sight of his wounds.
I can't afford a distraction right now. Sakura formed the seals for her heaven-viewing genjutsu, and soon the burned man sighed in ecstasy, not even making an attempt to dispel the technique. Another casting of the water-whip technique sent a stream of medical ethanol to clean his burn wounds, while chakra strings set about applying gauze and bandages almost on automation.
"How are you doing that?" The bruised and battered woman next to him gazed at the scalpels and tools which were floating through the air all around her. She was beaten badly enough that she must have a broken rib and a punctured lung at the very least, but all she had eyes for were the floating sheets of paper with emergency instructions which fluttered above her. "Are you one of God's angels?"
"I don't think so," Sakura said. She glanced at the woman's forehead marker, which carried four vertical stripes to symbolize rain. Did they practice mono-theism in their Village? She realized she did not know very much about the country. "Not unless your angels are also killers, just like the rest of us."
"Ours is," the older woman said, her eyes seeming to mist over. "Such beautiful destruction…"
This unnerved Sakura in a way she could not quite put to words, but there was no time to think about it. The man who had been poisoned had closed his eyes and was no longer coughing, and that could not possibly be a good sign. She formed the seals for the hell-viewing technique, and soon after the man shot up madly, coughing and spluttering up blood as hellish visions of snakes and wordless terror filled his mind.
That ought to keep him awake at least, she thought.
"Can you tell me what poisoned you now? Or actually…" She strengthened the connection, forcing her presence into his mind just as she had done with Kabuto. What she saw were visions of him laughing and… drinking something? Had someone poisoned his drink? She had assumed gas because there were no visible injuries, but now it looked like he had not been involved in the attack on Konoha at all…
Where
was she? Could it be that they were actually in the Land of Rain? How much time had passed, exactly?
She absently reached into her pouch for charcoal powder, and she forced it down the man's throat with another of her chakra strings. The man squirmed as the appendage forced its way into his stomach, but there was nothing else to it: She could not risk the substance getting into his lungs, and frankly she was out of time. Either the cure would work or it wouldn't, simple as that.
She set back to work on the others, but as she did so she became aware of a growing pressure in the air. It was the kind of twang you felt right before the strike of lightning, or what poetic-minded people liked to refer to as
killing intent. That was strange, because she and Naruto had both agreed that there was no such thing. The notion of being able to sense someone's intentions at a distance, and
only their intention to kill another person, had seemed too fanciful to credit. More likely it was simple subconscious triggers at work, like when you noticed something in the corner of your eye without quite realizing it…
She looked at the far side of the room, at the shadow which she had assumed to be a support pillar of some sort, but which in fact had the shape of a man, and which she had somehow failed to notice even though it was right there in front of her. On some level she must have known it was there, but much like a bad memory that could only be staved off for so long, once she saw it she could no longer look away.
"Kukukukuku…."
"Orochimaru," she said, though she had to swallow twice as the word would only come out in the form of a croak. "How long – how long have you been standing there, exactly?"
"That is a silly question," said the shadow, its voice silken smooth and sweet as honey. "After all, what would be the point of a test if nobody was there to observe it?"
"Then, does this mean I passed?" Sakura wanted to glance back at her patients, but her eyes refused to move away from the shadow, which seemed to drink in all light. "Did I… save them?"
There was another throaty, chuckling sound, which Sakura suspected was how Orochimaru
really sounded once all veils and illusions were stripped away. "Sakura-chan, you know as well as I do that the true purpose of any test is to impress the one who tests you, no more and no less. And what a splendid job you did! Your every action served to display your ruthlessness, even going as far as to injure your own patient, acting all the while as you imagined I would want you to act."
"That's – that's not true," Sakura said, stumbling backwards. This time she did manage to tear her gaze away, if only for a moment. The one-armed man was still bleeding from his stump, which she had entirely forgotten to heal, causing him to slowly bleed out. "I was just… I was just trying to save them."
"You wasted no time looking for anyone to help or aid you," the voice went on, as if she had said nothing. "You even made a snake out of blood for me, which I thought was a nice touch." A single sandaled foot stepped into the light, its inhumanly perfect shape forever etched into her memory. "But above all, you never once used your most basic and elementary technique, the Mystical Palm, to try and heal any of them." The figure stopped and seemed to chuckle sadly. "The thought of genuinely helping these people never even occurred to you, did it, Sakura-chan?"
Sakura could feel her features freezing, and she crumbled onto the ground, her back colliding against the desk. Waves of pressure were pushing against her now, growing stronger with every word he spoke. "That's not true," she whispered, more feebly now. "I'm… I'm a good girl. I'm not a monster."
"It's all right, Sakura-chan, I'm not judging you. After all, it's like you said: You were trained to be a killer, just like the rest of us." The shadow took another step towards the patients, and this time his legs and vest came into vision as well. He was a wearing a simple, unassuming uniform, though the colour of his armoured vest was black. That was the colour of the Village of
Sound, Sakura distantly remembered, though her mind could no longer draw whatever connections would have normally followed from that.
The Rain ninja looked up at Orochimaru, her mouth quivering in an unnatural way. "You won't get away with this," she whispered. "God will punish you, once he finds out what you've done. He will send his angel to rain divine justice down upon you…"
"My dear child," the figure said, chuckling lightly once more. "Your god cannot reach you here. I've measured his range." A pale, perfectly smooth hand reached out from the shadows, and as it stretched over the older woman her body began to contort and twist. Impossibly, she started to rise into the air, her limbs bending and flailing in every direction as she hovered over the operating table. Her mouth was still feverishly chanting prayers and damnations, but she must have been acting on automation because all hope and sanity had already left her eyes.
Unbidden, without any thought taking hold in Sakura's brain, she reached for one of the scalpels that had dropped to the floor.
The shadow seemed to tilt its head slightly. "What are you planning to do with that, Sakura-chan? Do you mean to attack me? You really should think clearly before you decide whether these people are worth sacrificing your life over."
The pressure suddenly fell away, and Sakura stumbled forward as though a physical force had been lifted from her. She could think again, and her first thought was that Orochimaru intended for the choice to be her own. Her second thought was about Naruto and Sasuke, and of her poor mother and father, who were waiting for her back home. Like her, they had always followed the rules, hoping to make up for lack of talent with diligent effort. They were both poor, never having made it past the rank of genin despite going through all the motions. If Sakura did not make it back home, they would never know what had really happened to her, able to do nothing but grieve and accept whatever lies they were told.
She looked at each of her four patients in turn. The burn victim she had spent so much effort on. The burly man, who she had injured and told to wait for help that never came. Finally she looked at the bruised and battered woman floating in the air above her, whispering feverish prayers to a god that did not hear.
"No," Sakura whispered, letting the scalpel fall from her hand. "Please do with them as you wish."
The figure seemed to smile, though Sakura did not know how she could tell with his face obscured in shadow. Then he stepped forward, and as the woman floated back down onto the slab, seemingly unharmed, Orochimaru's face was finally revealed in full. He looked… normal. Impossibly beautiful, yes, with perfectly smooth pale skin and long silken black hair that put Sasuke's to shame, but he did not look to her like a demon. Aside from his warm and kindly eyes, which looked a touch too golden to not be the result of some jutsu, he seemed… human.
"In that case," said Orochimaru, smiling as he opened his arms wide. "Welcome to the team!"
-o-
"And here we have our microbiology subsection," Orochimaru continued, still sounding inappropriately cheerful. Sakura followed him in a daze. The day's events still felt like a dream to her, and like most fever dreams it continuously teetered on the edge of becoming a full-blown nightmare. "It took me ages to figure out the true workings of that legendary technique, and even longer to translate it to its sealing equivalent, but after all these years I have finally done it." He strode over to an empty glass chamber and touched the seal inscribed upon the centre. "Behold, the fruits of true genius!"
The seal flared into life, and Sakura watched in muted horror as the scribbled lines began to crawl over the glass like a colony of ants, traveling down the sides of the cube and towards a small raised plateau in the middle. Soon a distorted shape appeared in the middle of that blackened space where the words met, appearing small at first but growing swiftly larger, as though it were approaching rapidly from very far away. Sakura fell backwards with a muted shriek, but though the worm-like crawling thing pressed its wall of flesh against the glass it would go no further, and could not reach her.
"What," said Sakura, her heart pounding as if it was about to burst, "what is that thing?" It looked almost like an earthworm, but it was
wrong in every way. Its outline for one was far too blocky and discrete to resemble anything natural, like its presence was itself an offence to this world.
"Oh, you don't recognize it?" Orochimaru glanced at her with a look of surprised disappointment. "Why, it's a microbe, of course! A bacterium, I think, to be exact." He looked back at the squirming abomination like a proud father. "Can you believe it? For the first time in all of human history, we are able to observe biology at a molecular level. And to think, the Akimichi clan only use their body-expansion technique as a
weapon." He shook his head in pure disgust.
Sakura turned her eyes back to the terrible creature that filled the glass cage, realization slowly dawning as she recognized its sketched form from her academic training. "A microbe? But… why?"
"Why?" Orochimaru looked at her in pure befuddlement. "Because… well, why on earth not? It's a giant microbe. Just look at that thing! We have those living
in our bodies, crawling and swarming around in their trillions, as many as we have human cells, sustaining our gut as we feed on their excrement. The human body, once thought to be singular, is in truth a swarm entity – countless independent creatures living and dying without ever realizing their existence serves to sustain a greater whole. A perfect society of chaos giving birth to order, until finally it all collapses and our body consumes itself from the inside out. We are many-as-one, and our name is Legion! Don't you think that's
interesting?"
"Interesting?" Sakura stared at the single-celled monstrosity, unable to turn away. She blinked long and hard and flared her chakra for good measure, but the living nightmare remained right there in front of her, steadfastly refusing to abandon its invasion of the waking world. "Yes, I… I suppose it is."
Orochimaru sighed and touched another seal upon the glass chamber. Fire burst into being as the giant microbe ignited on the spot, and Sakura's heart leaped in her chest once more as the abomination almost seemed to recoil and squirm away from the flames – but that was surely just her imagination. She
had to believe that that was all it was, for else she did not think she would ever sleep again.
The Snake Sannin shrugged and headed back to the exit. "I suppose it was too much to hope that you would see things from my perspective straight away. All that Leaf indoctrination did a number on your young developing brain, after all, and it'll take time to undo all the damage." He waved her along. "Come, I'll introduce you to the rest of the team. They're waiting for you in the main hall."
"Wait," Sakura, climbing to her feet and staggering after the Leaf's legendary traitor. "Orochimaru-sama, are you really saying you're doing all of this just for knowledge?" She hesitated, not quite believing the words that were about to come out of her mouth. "You're not… evil?"
Golden eyes turned to look at her in surprise, and she had to turn away before her mind could convince her that they looked boyish and wide with innocence. "Evil? Sakura-chan, I won't pretend that I don't know what you mean by that, but I have to say, I struggle to think of a definition of that word that would not also include someone whose chosen profession involves murdering people for money."
Sakura opened her mouth to protest, but in truth that fact really had been bothering her. "But you're a missing-nin," she said instead. "You betrayed us and attacked the Village."
"Ah yes," said Orochimaru. "And there's that lovely phrase,
missing ninja. You know, if there's one thing I do appreciate about our old home village, it's the sheer brazen nakedness of its malice. Children are taught to murder without a shred of shame, and if any of them go missing, let's say because they have a mental breakdown over all the murder that they were forced to do, they're automatically assumed to be traitors and ordered to be killed on sight." Orochimaru tilted his head slightly, allowing his long streams of silken black hair to cascade over his shoulders, and Sakura once again had to distract herself from how impossibly
beautiful he looked. "I wonder how those conversations go over… something like, 'oh hey, looks like little Oro hasn't reported in today. Well, I suppose we'd better go
kill him. Or perhaps we should capture him so we can
torture him in our
torture division, just in case he talked to anyone at any point. Better to be safe than sorry." He threw up his hands. "Oh, but I'm the evil one, sure!"
The Snake Sannin turned and headed through the corridor, and Sakura followed blithely, the swirling pattern on the walls twisting and turning all around her as she walked. "But, you conducted experiments on people. The Third chased you out of the Village because you were studying forbidden techniques."
"Under orders!" Orochimaru raised one finger as he walked, not bothering to turn around. "I was
ordered to try and replicate the First Hokage's Wood Release, and was provided a fully equipped laboratory with no oversight to do so. The Third was my teacher – he knew perfectly well what he was asking for. It was only after my little experiments started to become politically inconvenient for him that he showed up with Anbu in tow and went all 'oh Sage, I cannot
believe that my student Orochimaru was doing unethical experiments with the test subjects I provided him in this dark secluded corner of the Village'. And then of course I
escaped," he said, making quotation marks with his fingers, "and set up a new laboratory a few miles outside the border and, oh look, suddenly nobody cared again."
Sakura kept walking, the patterns on the walls swirling and dancing all around her. Orochimaru's aura had softened ever since he had invited her into the team, but it was still
there, pressing up against her body like a warm tide. She could flare her chakra to force his presence away, but it came flooding back in the moment she let up, soaking her mind and body in a warm bath that washed away all worries.
She pushed his chakra away again with a sheer effort of will, her brow straining with exertion as she forced herself to muster a logical counter argument. "Even if that's true, you're still Jiraiya's sworn enemy. And Lady Tsunade said you killed her, her husband." A bead of sweat poured from her forehead. She brushed it away distractedly. "And, for Sage's sake – your symbol is a snake! Common sense says that, that…" That she should not be challenging him on this, but she could not help herself. For the sake of her sanity, she
had to know if she could trust her instincts or not, all of which were screaming at her that she was talking back to a living god. "Common sense says that you're evil," she finished weakly.
This time Orochimaru did turn around, quirking a single perfectly arched eyebrow as he pointed a long pale finger at her chest. Sakura looked down, unsure of what to expect, only to see that there was a green snake embroidered upon her tattered white medical robes – though it was hard to recognize its shape beneath all the blood that covered it, only some of which was her own.
"But that's the symbol of Konoha's hospital," she said, already feeling the argument slipping away from her. "It symbolizes healing and rebirth."
"Oh I see," said Orochimaru, continuing down the hallway once more. "If I use a snake as my symbol it's because I'm evil, but if you wear a snake on your gown it's because of
reasons and
context. One of the hallmarks of empathy, my dear Sakura, is that you also extend it to people who are different from you." He reached into his armoured vest and fished out an unassuming necklace, carrying a single expensive-looking green gem. It swayed softly from his finger as he walked. "Do you know what this is?"
It took Sakura several long seconds to remember. "That's the First Hokage's sealing crystal! It's said to be worth as much as three mountains."
"Well, it's not as if there's much of a market for mountains," Orochimaru said. "But it's valuable indeed. Go on, guess why. See if you can make the connection."
Sakura realized she was being
tested, and immediately her academic mind shot into action, chasing away the clouds that were fogging her thoughts. "It contains remnants of the First Hokage's chakra," she said, feeling a thrill of excitement at getting it so fast. "Are you saying that Tsunade's husband was a part of your secret mission, and that he lent it to you so you could replicate the Wood-style technique?"
Orochimaru smiled at her, and it was the greatest thing she had ever felt. Endorphins flooded her body as his aura projected pure pride and joy, and this time she made no effort to resist the effect.
"Very impressive! Well, I might have coerced him into it a little, but I certainly did not kill Danny. In fact, he's still alive!" He paused. "Depending on your point of view. But yes, I figured that isolating the First's unique chakra was the key to the mystery." He slipped the necklace back into his vest. "I thought that if I could drain a test subject of all their chakra, and then drip-feed them just a tiny bit of Hashirama's, their bodies would adapt to the foreign energy until eventually they'd become able to produce it themselves. It's the exact same principle behind demon-host seals, in fact." He let out one of his dry throaty chuckles. "Do you know what Uchiha Madara did to try and achieve the same goal?"
Sakura drew a blank. "No. What?"
"He stole a piece of the First's skin that was cut off during battle, then tried to sew the necrotic flesh into his own body." He laughed as Sakura nearly tripped over her own feet in horrified amazement. "No, he was not just an idiot – don't think so poorly of your ancestors, Sakura-chan! He simply did not have access to the same medical knowledge we have now." He motioned at the laboratory that they had left behind, and Sakura supressed a shudder as she remembered the abomination they had left to burn there. "That's why it's important to conduct experiments even if you don't know
how the knowledge will come in handy. Genius stems from being able to make connections between different areas of knowledge, and if those details are missing then there is nothing to base your theories on. The fact that Uchiha Madara was willing to experiment at all means he might have been quite brilliant if he had been born in a different era, but instead he died in a primitive land shrouded in ignorance and despair, being able to boast only that he was slightly smarter than his fellow monkeys."
Sakura stared at the Snake Sannin's back in fascinated horror. She was starting to think that even if the effects of his aura were artificial, there was nothing fake about the raw presence itself.
Orochimaru beckoned her. "Come, we've arrived at the main hall." He pushed open an impressively large oaken gate, and Sakura followed him inside, half-apprehensive and half burning with curiosity. The first thing she saw was the giant snake carved out of solid rock which extended from the far side wall, twin candles glowing inside its eye sockets to create the impression of an ethereal, vengeful predator about to strike down at her. Beneath the snake was a raised platform with a wooden railing extending to either side. The floor bore the same swirling, reddish pattern as before, but the walls this time were made out of great cobbled rocks, each individual stone larger than Sakura herself.
"You've already met Karin," Orochimaru said, indicating the first of the shadowy figures that stood gathered beneath the mouth of the snake. "She's currently in charge of assisting me with medical procedures. At one point I made the rather unfortunate decision to send my best medic away on a long-term undercover mission, and I've been desperate ever since for someone to fill the void. Oh, little Karin does try, bless her heart, but it's not quite the same."
"I look forward to working with you," Sakura said to the young woman, giving a hesitant bow. She did not remember agreeing to anything of the sort, but she supposed there was no point in bringing that up. Being forced to work for a rogue ninja was not great, but it could have been a lot worse.
"Bite me," Karin said, before turning her head with a huff.
"Oh, what's this? Could it be that our Karin is feeling a little jealous over losing her place at my side?" The Snake Sannin ruffled her blazing red hair affectionately, and the older teen froze at his touch but offered no resistance. In fact, Sakura thought she could see her lean in slightly, trying to edge closer to her master without anyone noticing. "Don't worry Karin-chan. You're special, after all – I could never replace you like that other, worthless trash." He perked up. "Speaking of trash, those three genin in the corner are Dosu, Zaku, and Kin. Don't even bother remembering their names, Sakura-chan, they're completely irrelevant."
"Hey!"
"Leave it, Zaku," the dark-haired girl of the group sighed. "The master appears to be in one of his moods."
"I only have one mood," Orochimaru said, sounding mock-offended. "But speaking of moody people, this is Jūgo. Say hi to our new friend, Jūgo!"
The largest of the gathered figures was crouched on the ground, clutching his brilliant red mane of hair and rocking slowly back and forth as he muttered to himself. "Please, I don't want to murder you… Please don't make me do it. I don't want to kill anymore!"
Sakura blinked. Was he threatening her? If so, there was something very
off about being threatened by a teenager who was rocking himself like a baby. Even by the standards of everything else that had happened that day.
"Jūgo has a little bit of an anger problem," Orochimaru explained. "You see, apparently the local country folk are under the impression that I'm some kind of living god – entirely undeserved, of course – and so they come to me with their problems, praying to me for aid. Jūgo here suffers from an overabundance of natural chakra, which has the unfortunate effect of transforming him into what is effectively a tailed beast state and causing him to do, well, the sort of things that tailed beasts do." He raised his hand like a priest, and Sakura could feel a wave of calming chakra washing over her. "Be at peace, my child."
"Thank you," the bulky teenager said, sanity returning to his distinctly orange eyes. "I'm very sorry," he said to Sakura. "I just, sometimes…" He shook his head. "I can't be trusted. I'm sorry."
"That," she said, "that's okay." She glanced over to the last figure, uncertain of what else to expect. The lanky teenager was about the same age as the others, she noticed, though she was sure that Orochimaru's youthful appearance at least was in no way natural.
"I'm Hōzuki Suigetsu," the teenager said, sipping something from a cup without looking at her. He was leaning against the raised platform, the shadow of the snake above him obscuring most of his features, though when he talked Sakura could see that his teeth were filed into points. That meant he was from the Hidden Mist, she realized, and possibly a member of the Seven Swordsmen at that. "As you might've noticed, everyone here is completely friggin' crazy. You should try to escape while you still can."
Orochimaru chuckled in that throaty way of his. "Suigetsu is the joker of our team," he said. "It's part of why I invited him into our group. You know, to inject a little levity into our affairs and stop things from getting too serious." He tried to clap the water ninja on the shoulder, but the teen's body parted like a liquid and his hand passed right through.
"I was completely serious," Suigetsu said, solidifying to hold the exact same pose as before. "Also, you didn't invite me – you kidnapped me from my Village."
"Oh, go play with your swords," Orochimaru grumbled. "In fact, all of you – get back to work. Don't you kids have anything better to do than entertaining us? Sheesh." As the assembled group turned and began to disperse, the Snake Sannin fished another object out of his pouch and tossed it to Karin. "Oh right, take this to the medical lab and seal it so it doesn't decay. I'll figure out what to do with it later."
Sakura's eyes instinctively traced the object as the young medical ninja caught it in her hands, but it took her several more seconds to realize what she was looking at. The small vial that Karin now held was filled with clear green liquid, and inside it floated a single crimson eye. It was gazing directly at her.
"Who," said Sakura, her voice beginning to tremble, "whose eye is that, exactly?"
In her heart, of course, she already knew the answer – there was only one eye in the vial after all, and if she felt any faint relief over the fact that it was probably not Sasuke who had died, it was quickly overshadowed by the growing rage that was building up inside her.
Sakura turned to the Snake Sannin, who seemed to sense her shift in tone.
"Did you kill my teacher?"
"Hey, hold on," said Orochimaru, raising his hands defensively. "Kakashi was already dying by the time my subordinate found him. Not our fault! All Kabuto-kun did was carve out his eye which, yes, is a little macabre, but don't fool yourself – the White Fang would have killed me in a heartbeat if given half the chance. As far as I'm concerned, our nations are effectively at war: The Third placed a kill-on-sight order on me when all I wanted was to do science in peace, and the only thing I did in return was to get my old teammate Tsunade drunk so she wouldn't be able to heal him in time. So don't blame me for this!"
Sakura stared at the ground, the rage slowly ebbing away to make place for exhaustion. "Who else?"
There was a rustle of paper as Karin looked through a stack of files that she had procured from somewhere. "Aside from the Hokage and Hatake Kakashi, the only deaths of note are Hyūga Hiashi and his father, both of whom were assassinated in their own compound. Of those who took part in the Chūnin Exams alongside you… the genin Lee and Tenten, both clanless, each fell to the Kazekage's heirs." She flipped through the papers until she reached the very last page. "Your parents, also genin, assisted in the evacuation effort and did not take part in the battle. Neither is recorded as having suffered injury."
Sakura nodded, letting go of a fear she did not realize she had been holding. All things considered, things really could have been a lot worse.
Somehow, thinking that made her feel more tired still.
"Thank you, Karin," Orochimaru said. "That'll be all." He waited until she too had left before stretching and allowing his muscles to pop. "Ah, it's been a long day; don't you think so, Sakura-chan? We should probably try to get an early night in – after all, we have a lot of work ahead of us come morning."
Sakura stared at the legendary Sannin, who like all the mythical figures that had entered her life was nothing at all like she had imagined him to be – nothing like the way she thought things
should be. All the stories she had grown up believing, all the lectures she had scolded Naruto for not paying heed to, all of it had slowly crumbled around her. The entire process had happened so gradually that when the last brick finally collapsed she had barely even felt the impact, and it was only afterwards that she had noticed the absence of a wall.
"Orochimaru-sama," she said, because he was clearly waiting for her to say
something. "What is it all for? All the war, and the death, and the fighting between ninjas… even if you did not orchestrate the invasion by the Sand, you can't tell me that someone like you couldn't have stopped it if you wanted to. So what was the
point? What was it all for?"
The Snake Sannin let out a long sigh and used a pale hand to comb his long strands of silken black hair back in place. He had climbed up the dais without her noticing and now leaned on the railing, staring out seemingly at nothing. "I don't think people need much of a reason for anything at all," he said at last. "Usually they find it more expedient to act first and come up with an explanation afterwards. Who are we to pretend that we're any different?"
Sakura followed Orochimaru's gaze to see what he was staring at, and all of a sudden she realized that the walls of the cavern around them had fallen away, and the entire rest of the universe now stretched out before them. Her gaze extended unnaturally far, as if the world had flattened and there was no horizon to limit her vision. She could see it all: The wars, the fighting, tiny distant figures killing each other in their hundreds, while in between them were peaceful villagers going about their daily lives. There did not seem to be rhyme or reason behind any of it. Beyond it all were the stars, slowly twinkling in the sky, and the sun going round while they remained in the centre, continuing to shine even when it disappeared out of vision.
It was all an illusion of course, but somehow it felt almost more real than reality.
"The world outside is cold and dark," Orochimaru said, "but in here it is nice and warm. So why concern yourself with any of it? Humans will always be unreasoning, unthinking creatures, but if you study them from a distance they're not so unsightly." He released his hold on the railing, and as he stepped back the illusion around them faded to reveal a cavernous hall once more. "We are an island of civilisation in a sea of madness, possessing seals, laboratories and medical equipment that lesser countries can only dream off. I'm immortal, eternally youthful and with all the means and time in the world to learn every technique and secret science that the universe has to offer. And whenever I feel like getting some eager young talent to keep things interesting, there's always an enemy who's happy to send one my way."
He spread his arms as if to indicate everything around him, and when he smiled a wave of pure contented happiness washed over Sakura, with only the tiniest hint of grief and bitterness buried underneath. "So you see, Sakura-chan, there is absolutely no reason why I should be evil. I already have everything I want!"
.