Nearby. Third-Person POV
Uchiha Sasuke, bouncing off one tree to the next, just couldn't find a damn opponent. Hours went by, but the only things in his way were animals so fucking brazen they were basically asking to get smacked.
And yeah—Sasuke smacked them. Hard. But no scroll showed up… and the wildlife itself was usually annoying as hell, and sometimes straight-up disgusting.
Like those huge leeches—hiding behind the leaves, they'd literally drop from above the second they felt someone's chakra.
Sasuke got unlucky enough to run into a whole damn "rain" of those slimy freaks. Thank god his reflexes were good enough to dodge that filth—things like giant maggots, the size of a medium dog.
So, moving through the upper routes in the canopy, the guy kept searching for opponents. Not just to take their scroll anymore, but also to dump the anger he'd been stacking up.
Stopping by a river, Sasuke crouched down to drink. Dropping all caution, he cupped his hands and dipped them into the water. After gulping down the slightly muddy but fresh water from his dirty hands, he only then bothered washing them. And right when he was about to splash his face, he sensed someone not far off.
He sprang up. Spinning mid-jump, the Uchiha locked his eyes on the trees ahead—only for a familiar blond to step out a second later. Except something about this meeting felt sketchy.
"Oh, Sasuke-kun, you're here too?" the blond said, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. "I still couldn't get a scroll, haha. How's it going for you?"
Sasuke smelled bullshit from the first second. The way his "teammate" moved was different—not a lot, but enough. But the second he finished talking, it was obvious: that wasn't Naruto. That was a disguised enemy.
First, Naruto went to tail the Sand jinchūriki, so he should've been busy right now. Second, even if he'd somehow finished, Sasuke would never in his life believe that blond monster—somehow listed as his former classmate for god knows what reason, and who'd been beating Uchiha's ass for a third of his goddamn life—couldn't snag a scroll in a minute.
So instead of answering, the black-haired boy didn't hesitate. He flashed through six hand seals and finished on Tiger.
"Katon: Phoenix Flowers!" Sasuke roared, lungs full, and spat out a dozen small, fast fireballs at his target.
"The hell are you doing?!" the blond yelped, hopping back.
The fire shots zipped by within inches of his body, and twisting like a snake on a hot skillet, he barely dodged them in time.
But for Sasuke it was just a feint to close the gap. Even while moving in, he started another set of seals, and once he hit the right distance, he barked out the next technique:
"Katon: Fireball!"
The blond didn't get to jump away in time. A torrent of roaring flame swallowed him and slammed into the ground with a heavy thud. For a few seconds, a five-meter patch was nothing but fire—until it died out, leaving a small crater of scorched earth… and in the center stood a humanoid figure made of burned clay.
"A clone?" Sasuke asked, staring at the charred spot.
"Curious… and what gave me away?" a quiet, hissing female voice sounded from behind him.
He jolted and turned.
"You think I'm gonna answer you?"
In front of him stood a kunoichi with long black hair and a Grass forehead protector. Black clothes, a beige tunic over it, cinched in a weird way with a purple sash. She was standing by a massive tree.
Pissed off his attack didn't land, Sasuke went straight to the next one.
His eyes went red, two tomoe spinning in each.
Forming a concentration seal, the Uchiha met her gaze—and with his dōjutsu, instantly slammed a genjutsu onto her mind.
The enemy froze.
Sasuke used it immediately.
He pulled thick metal wire from his sleeves, one end hooked to shuriken, and with wide swings launched it forward—snaring the kunoichi and pinning her to the tree.
Then he clamped the free end of the wire in his teeth and started another series of seals… when he noticed, surprised, how his opponent's mouth suddenly opened way too wide.
Not that she managed to do anything else.
"Katon: Dragon Flame!" A stream of fire, a couple meters thick, raced along the wire. It engulfed the kunoichi in scorching flame, turning her to ash in a second, and in just moments burned a massive hole straight through the tree—five meters across.
Breathing hard, Sasuke shut off his Sharingan. His chakra had dropped noticeably, and there was no point wasting more when the fight was obviously over.
Only—holy shit.
From above, from that same tree—nearly burned through at the base but still standing—came the sound of clapping.
"Not bad, not bad," the same hissing voice said, rougher now, after the claps.
Sasuke looked up and saw a figure that looked a lot like the enemy he'd just "burned." Except the skin was paler, purple stripes ran under the eyes, the irises had turned gold, and the pupils were stretched into snake-like slits.
"But you're still too weak," he said coldly, and then…
A terrifying pressure of chakra dropped onto the forest. The ground shuddered low, the air went icy, filling with a freezing purple aura.
For a second, Sasuke's heart felt like it stopped—then clenched painfully. Unstoppable horror seized his whole body, forced him to his knees, and wouldn't let him move. His head dipped on its own, like it wouldn't even allow him to look forward.
Only now did Sasuke realize that before this, his opponent had just been pretending to be some ordinary genin—hiding the nature of a monster whose power didn't even compare.
Orochimaru jumped down. And yeah—it was him. Sasuke recognized him from the Academy textbooks.
"You're still young, Sasuke-kun," he said in a voice that crawled under your skin. "I'm giving you a trial. At the end, you'll get a crumb of power." Orochimaru's long tongue slid across his lower lip, slow and nasty. "You just have to endure…"
His steps came closer.
"And then, if you can, come to me. I'll give you true power!"
Finishing all fired up, the Sannin formed a seal—then his neck shot forward insanely fast. His head flew the last few meters and sank its fangs into Sasuke's neck, leaving a mark near the bite: a seal shaped like three tomoe.
"I'll be waiting, Sasuke-kun," the rogue hissed one last time before his body merged with the ground and vanished.
The chakra pressure and bloodlust disappeared.
"…aAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Still on his knees, Sasuke took the seal like a fresh jolt of energy. He grabbed the bite spot and a gut-tearing scream ripped out of his throat.
Collapsing fully, he kept screaming from unbearable, never-ending pain. No matter how hard he clutched his neck, no matter how much he tore his voice up, it didn't ease. It felt like red-hot spikes were slowly burning through his whole body—starting at the neck and reaching all the way down to his toes. Agony swallowed his mind, dragging him into despair that got more and more unavoidable with every second.
Uzumaki Naruto's POV
Even standing a kilometer south, the distance didn't stop me at all from watching the whole Orochimaru-vs-Sasuke scuffle from start to finish. Gotta say, the Uchiha did pretty decent.
Sure, if the Sannin took him seriously, the "fight" wouldn't have happened in the first place. But watching Orochimaru get caught in a genjutsu by a twelve-year-old snot—even if only for a couple seconds—had to punch his ego right in the teeth, heh.
Sakura and I headed to our teammate and soon found him already knocked out from the pain. He'd fallen onto his back in a pretty weird kneeling-but-bent-the-other-way pose.
"What's wrong with him?" Sakura asked curiously. Then she walked up and nudged Sasuke's head with her tabi-clad foot so she could see the seal, the bite holes, and a small puddle of blood.
"It's a gift!" I announced happily. I stepped in and cheerfully lifted Sasuke up with threads, turning him with his back to me so I'd have easy access to the mark.
"A gift?"
"Yeah. Not so much for this brunette, more for me—and, by extension, you."
I slapped my palm onto the skin where the seal still was, immediately pushed chakra into his body and the fūin, and started analyzing.
"Alright, alright… the properties are slapped in rough as hell… this 'construct work' is about as close to polished as Konoha is to Suna. Mm-hm, and Orochimaru's chakra here messes with the host's mind… ah, nope, that's fine—meant to be like that. Smart, smart: angry and stupid are easier to control. So it does a brain rewrite too! And this genome's pretty interesting… no—this genome's really interesting!"
I was thinking out loud while I poked through it. Then I stopped, looked at Sakura, and realized she didn't really get it.
"Ahem. Basically, Orochimaru slapped a Cursed Seal on Sasuke. There's a genome in it that's eating his life energy right now and partially reshaping parts of his body in its own image. Later that genome will start absorbing natural chakra! But in a janky way. And the Jūin also has Orochimaru's chakra in it—it'll corrode the host's personality and make it easier for that snake to manipulate the Uchiha. So yeah. Interesting! Right?"
To that speech, she just gave me an awkward, weirdly encouraging nod.
In this version of the world, Sakura under my guidance had barely studied any iryō-ninjutsu. Genjutsu, tai, Water Release—yeah, and even Wind Release these last weeks. But medicine? Not her thing. What felt weird to her was me treating a whole Cursed Seal—one that's apparently draining the life out of our poor "teammate," and on top of that is tied to something as legendary as natural energy, and was planted by a straight-up legendary ninja—like I'd just been handed a bag of candy. Still, when Sakura seemed to remember the stuff I'd pulled before, like body enhancements, the weirdness in her eyes vanished and got replaced with: 'Okay, I guess that's normal for him.'
After that little field study—literally in the field—I wiped the blood off my hand on Sasuke's clothes with a blank face, then sent Sasuke off with a clone to my lab. The shadow clone would keep analyzing him on the analyzer in better conditions, while I stayed at the exam.
"Uh… is that even allowed?" Sakura asked, basically meaning: won't we get disqualified for, well, one of our team members leaving the Forest of Death?
"Probably not. But we're not telling anyone," I said with a grin, shrugging. Then we started prowling the forest—finishing the last touches of the plan (which Sakura built herself, just using my info), and looking for a scroll.
The scroll part was the easiest: found a team of some Suna guys, took it, and that was that. Sakura got a bit jittery about what was coming up… but she crushed it fast.
To prep, she used a B-rank technique that, in a radius of a couple kilometers right above where Orochimaru was, gathered clouds and made it rain.
Soon enough, we were getting close to the goal…
Right now, with my sphere-vision, I saw Orochimaru run into his former student—Anko, one of the proctors. I wasn't tracking her, but from my meta-knowledge I remembered she was supposed to find the bodies of those genin "from Grass" with their faces cut off, and instantly recognize her teacher's disguise method. Orochimaru was a very kind snake, yeah—just like me. After that, Mitarashi ignored her assistants' warnings and immediately went hunting for the Sannin. And only recently she'd finally met him.
When Sakura and I got there, we saw Anko standing still on a big tree branch with an injured arm—and Orochimaru right next to her.
Before we arrived, in response to Anko asking what he was doing here, the snake said the Leaf was too boring and it was time to move some pieces around. Then Orochimaru started bragging to Anko that he didn't need her anymore—he'd found himself a new heir and toy: Uchiha Sasuke. And also how pretty this Uchiha kid was, and how he was better than her at everything. Then Mitarashi, apparently getting seriously hurt by it, tried to use the forbidden technique Mutual Death of Two Snakes to kill both herself and Orochimaru. But Orochimaru easily dodged using Body Replacement, wounded Anko's arm, and activated the Cursed Seal that had been sealed on her earlier so she couldn't do anything else. They ended their talk with Orochimaru basically saying she should've brought a whole ANBU squad if she wanted even a chance—after which he started slowly sinking straight into the tree.
Whoosh-whoosh.
With a light rush of air, Sakura and I landed behind Anko. That made Orochimaru stop sinking—and even pull his legs back out onto the branch where all of us were standing.
Because of Sakura's technique, rain started falling. Before, the canopy blocked it. But she tuned the jutsu so that with our arrival, the clouds dropped lower, right into the treetops—so right now water started smacking down on us with a loud patter.
"Or you could've called one of us," I said. Then I put a hand on Anko's shoulder and sent her straight to the Hokage's office with something like Hiraishin.
"Interesting…" Orochimaru said, watching what I did.
"Your little reunion is over. Now we're gonna beat your ass."
Orochimaru paused for a second, like he was checking if he heard that right. Then his mouth stretched into a snake grin.
"Turns out you, jinchūriki, are a more interesting specimen than I thought." His eyes flashed as he glanced at the spot where Mitarashi had been standing. And yeah, no surprise he knew who I was. "But even if you do have some… talent… that's a pretty arrogant statement for such a young shinobi."
"Hmph. Nah. You're just a stepping stone for my student, so don't run your mouth at us."
Orochimaru only raised an eyebrow.
"Sakura. Go smash his face in."
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