“Someone has to watch your back,” I lied. “Besides, I can get us over the wall without setting off any alarms. Now come on, we’ve only got a ten minute window here.”
Bemused, the brooding avenger let me have my way. Fifteen minutes later Konoha was rapidly receding behind us, and thanks to my finessing the wall wards no one even knew we were gone. By the time the Sound Four intercepted us I was pretty sure we’d get away clean, which was important if I didn’t want to have to face a determined Naruto trying to bring us both back.
The Sound nin were a little surprised Sasuke wasn’t alone, but they didn’t much care as long as I didn’t slow them down. The way they stuck him in a seal-covered barrel to ‘finish evolving his seal’ said a lot about what the thing was really doing to him, but I wasn’t there to interfere with Sasuke’s dive into stupidity. I had bigger game in my sights this loop.
It took two days to reach the hideout Orochimaru was currently using, and Sasuke was still in the barrel when we arrived. This was definitely intentional, since I’d seen the Sound ninja apply several layers of suppression seals to the thing as we traveled. I found out why when we arrived to find a rather weak-looking Orochimaru being attended by Kabuto in a lab full of exotic medical equipment.
“Excellent,” he chuckled as his minions set the barrel at his feet and bowed. “My new body has arrived just in time. Well done, all of you. But I see we have an unexpected guest. Did you come here to be with little Sasuke, Sakura?”
“Hardly,” I snorted. “I can read the seals on that barrel, sir. For that matter, I could read the seal you put on him. I knew he wasn’t strong enough to resist, so I’ve just been waiting for him to lead me to you.”
“Oh? And why would a loyal ninja of Konoha seek me out, hmmm?”
“Because those idiots back in Konoha won’t teach me anything,” I fumed. “I have an undocumented bloodline that gives me perfect chakra control and the ability to read seals as easily as normal writing, and they haven’t even noticed. Hell, Kakashi won’t even teach me a useful combat jutsu, let alone let me get involved with seal work. I’m hoping a ninja who’s renowned for his research into forbidden techniques won’t be so reluctant to let me use my abilities.”
“You can read seals? What does Tayuya-chan’s say, then?”
I glanced at the mark on the foul-mouthed redhead’s neck, and sang:
“Gather the darkness of the subject’s heart as an invitation to the powers of evil. Throw open the first four gates of life at hatred’s command, and let their power swell this fragile mortal form with demonic might. At hatred’s second call let the next three gates fall…”
I felt the words trying to coalesce into an active seal array, and stopped before they could find a target to latch onto. “Um, sorry, saying the words is the same thing as building the array, and I don’t have the chakra to power it. But I can read it all the way to the end, with the bit about devoted contentment and despairing doubt.”
“What an interesting talent,” he chuckled in that creepy way of his. “Very well, girl, we’ll give you the chance to be of use. But first, my new body. Kabuto, prepare the transfer chamber. Tayuya-chan, please entertain our guest while I’m indisposed.”
Working in Orochimaru’s labs was a weird experience. I’d thought his servants would be ruthless mercenaries, like the missing nin Hinata and I had encountered while looking for Akatsuki. Some of the flunkies were, but the ones closer to him were more like some kind of religious cult. It was enough to make me wonder if the Snake Sannin was another victim of the curse of despair, with some tortured back-story that drove him to think he was somehow doing good by destroying Konoha.
That lasted until I saw what kind of experiments he was conducting.
“You’re too soft-hearted,” Kabuto chided me a month later, as we looked over the remains of the latest set of cursed seal experiments. Most of them were horribly mutated from the seals, and crippled from the free-for-all battle Orochimaru had just put them through. “I’d think a girl who turned her first crush over to Orochimaru-sama to use as a host would have less empathy for random thugs and criminals.”
“Sasuke dug his own grave,” I answered. “These people were just convenient victims. What are we even trying to accomplish here?”
The prissy medic-nin sniffed, and looked down his nose at me. “Methodical testing of variants is essential to finding a more useful form of the Heaven Seal,” he informed me. “It takes dozens of test cases to find each workable improvement.”
I rolled my eyes. “Or you could just have me look at them. Jeez, half these things aren’t even grammatical. If you want the stage one transformation to give more durability all you have to do is change the third stanza to say so. Maybe ‘skin like iron’ or ‘form a tangible shield of chakra’ or… hmm. Ok, I guess there are a lot of variants to try, but we don’t need to waste our time on useless shit like ‘tough more bone please’!”
Kabuto fumed, Orochimaru grinned, and from then on I was in charge of seal design.
A lot of the Snake Sannin’s work was like that. He tried to be systematic in his research, but most of the time he didn’t know what he was doing, so his projects tended to kill hundreds of test subjects without getting anywhere. I think he was sadistic enough to see the casualty rate as a positive thing, a little recreational torture to while away the hours between major plots. But he was happy enough to get actual results instead, especially since my designs often went wrong at first.
Some of the things I had to witness made me sick, but I consoled myself with the thought that he’d be doing his experiments whether I was there or not. The girl I was playing had a weak enough stomach that he quickly decided it was more productive not to make her watch his more horrific deeds, which helped a lot. But my conscience still troubled me, and I resolved that when the loops were done one of my first projects would be putting an end to this madman and his little band of sadists.
Still, it wasn’t long before Orochimaru was personally instructing me in advanced sealing techniques and giving me open access to the notes from many of his past projects. I was the perfect tool in that respect, a harmless genin whose apparently instinctive knowledge of Celestial was guaranteed to generate unexpected insights in any project I looked at. It was a pretty sweet arrangement from my side too, since I was learning all sorts of interesting things from his research. I figured sooner or later he’d show me the scroll he’d learned his sword trick from, and in the meantime I might as well make the most of my opportunities.
I was expecting to have plenty of time, since I hadn’t heard of Orochimaru getting involved in anything significant in the years before Nagato made his move. But I hadn’t accounted for the one crucial change I’d made in the timeline…
“You should never have touched my brother, Orochimaru,” Itachi said with the slightest touch of anger. “Now you will die.”
Orochimaru cackled madly. “But I have a Sharingan of my own now, Itachi! This time I shall defeat you.”
I sighed, and tiptoed away. I knew exactly how that one was going to turn out. Orochimaru thought he was bad news, but he didn’t even have the Mangekyo. Come to think of it, he could probably never activate the higher levels of the Sharingan. They all required sacrificing bits of humanity that he’d cast aside long ago. His parents were dead, he didn’t have a true comrade to murder or a brother to steal eyes from, and he couldn’t even produce children who were genetically his own. How ironic, that in his mad quest for power he’d already thrown away the ability to gain what he really wanted.
The floor shook as I made my way into the Snake Sannin’s private lab, and began unlocking the seals on the shelf of scrolls he’d never let me see. I knew who was going to be standing when this fight was over, and it wouldn’t be Orochimaru.