Chapter Text
“Fancy meeting you here,” Orochimaru basically purred.
“Same,” Tori answered back, her voice dry even as her mind raced. She wanted to run, but that was pointless. He’d catch her immediately if he wanted to harm her, and showing fear to Orochimaru was like bleeding in shark-infested waters. Instead, Tori steeled herself, commanded her heart to slow and her body to stay calm, and said, “I see the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.”
He laughed, and in Sasuke’s body there was just slightly less of a rasp to it than normal. His voice was almost the same, and the more Tori looked at his face in fascinated horror, the more she could see little traits of Orochimaru bleeding into Sasuke’s delicate features.
How does his transfer jutsu work? Tori wondered.
“I think I have you to thank for this, don’t I?” Orochimaru mused, staring down at Sasuke’s hands and clenching and unclenching them. “Sasuke told me he’d decided to kill me because you told him where to find his brother. Fortunately, he miscalculated our relative strengths, despite my… health problems.”
Orochimaru raised his eyes to hers, and the sharingan flickered on and off. Tori’s heartbeat continued to gallop along despite her best efforts, and she focused very hard on keeping her posture loose and body relaxed in spite of it.
No fear, she told herself. If he wanted to kill her for accidentally siccing Sasuke on him, then there was nothing she could do about it anyway, and she’d rather go down with her dignity intact.
Orochimaru was not as scary as Pein or Obito. He was not as scary as the Shinigami. Tori could handle this.
“I think it worked out well for me,” Orochimaru drawled. “Since he’d planned to wait for me to weaken even more to kill me. Funny you didn’t mention that in your visions.”
“Well,” Tori answered levelly. “You never asked.”
“Hmm,” Orochimaru answered, eyeing her up and down. Sasuke’s face was sharper, smugger, and more analytical with Orochimaru puppeting it. “You look good.”
“Thank you,” Tori replied stiffly. “Eyebrows really help. Sasuke has a fantastic pair, by the way.”
Even as the words came out of her mouth, Tori thought she’d gone too far. That was the sort of sassy comment she used to keep to herself. Somewhere along the way, she’d gotten used to verbalizing them, even to unstable criminal ninja.
Orochimaru raised Sasuke’s impeccable eyebrows at the comment, but the smirk didn’t slip a centimeter.
Since he didn’t seem to be interested in murdering her on the spot, Tori asked, “So is there a reason you’re at a Shinigami’s shrine, or…?”
“Ah,” Orochimaru answered, then turned and approached the shrine again, gesturing for her to follow. “I’m researching something.”
Tori moved into the cavern and directed herself toward the shrine, feeling like an outside force piloting her own body. She wanted Obito back. Or, no, maybe that would make this worse?
She wanted to run. But some sick part of her also wanted to talk to Orochimaru.
Tori stepped up next to him, glancing down at the stopwatch in her pocket the same way she’d discreetly check a cell phone. She’d been in the cave twenty minutes already.
“That’s clever of you,” Orochimaru observed, and Tori looked up to find him studying her. “This cavern is filled with natural gas. We wouldn’t want to stay here long. Bold of you to be holding a lit flame, although I suppose villagers must do it all the time.”
Well.
“That explains a lot,” Tori muttered, feeling almost disappointed by the mundane explanation, and Orochimaru let out a short laugh.
“I have a little problem I need solved,” Orochimaru continued conversationally. “But someone saw fit to remove or destroy half of my research, and now I’m stuck looking into more… esoteric sources.”
Tori, who was the one who’d removed or destroyed much of said research materials, held his gaze shamelessly.
“No offense,” Tori said slowly, “but a shrine seems like an especially esoteric place. Unless, maybe, you’re having some sort of existential problem?”
Orochimaru cocked his head slightly, hair swaying around his face. Orochimaru might have wanted him for his eyes, but Sasuke did have a very pretty face.
“Not quite,” Orochimaru said. “Although it is a problem of souls.”
He stepped forward to examine the seal script covering the little shrine with his new sharingan, leaving Tori to stand there and ponder his statement. It seemed to her that Orochimaru, who’d gone around sealing himself into all sorts of things and hopping bodies at will, had full mastery of his own soul. So, maybe the problem was that there was some other soul he had to deal with? An edo tensei experiment gone wrong?
Orochimaru winced ever so slightly, stepping back from the shrine’s altar. He rubbed absentmindedly at one eye, now dark without a sharingan.
Ah, alright. That soul.
“Is Sasuke still kicking around in there?” Tori asked curiously.
Orochimaru gave her a deeply weary look.
“He’s being very annoying,” he said. “My research showed Uchiha chakra is unusually well-attached their eyes, but…” He sighed deeply. “Sasuke was such a cute student-- he fought me for nearly three days over this body, and he’s still trying to fight me. It’s a shame, but I think he needs to go.”
Tori watched as Orochimaru pulled his hair free of its tie and redid it, complaining to Tori that Sasuke’s hair was much more rebellious than he was used to.
“I could make some product recommendations,” Tori said helpfully.
Orochimaru eyed her critically.
“Your hair does look much better than it did in Oto,” he said.
Before Tori could get dragged into a completely banal conversation about hair, she asked, “Why are you telling me all this? About your… problem?”
Orochimaru’s lips twitched upward, and he moved right into her personal space. Tori’s lips thinned, but she didn’t step back and held eye contact. It seemed like he couldn’t reliably use the sharingan, anyway.
“Because,” he said, voice deep and scratchy, “I think you are like me in one very important way: if you think a problem is interesting, you’re going to try to solve it. And Tori, you are… a very creative problem solver.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Tori replied. Was she… no, she was not blushing. She was not accepting this as praise.
“Come,” Orochimaru said, placing one hand on her shoulder and turning her back towards the cave’s exit. “We’ve been down here long enough.”
Tori felt tense as she climbed back out of the cave, Orochimaru plodding along leisurely behind her. She’d mostly just accepted that any physical feat she tried would look ridiculous next to the grace of a ninja, including but not limited to something as simple as going up a rocky incline. She felt judged, though, clinging to the cave wall while Orochimaru took the uneven path like a Sunday morning stroll.
Thank god the Akatsuki hideout was nothing but stairs. She was sure that, had she tried this when she’d first arrived, she’d be at least a little winded by the time they were outside.
As soon as they were in the cool shade of the forest, Orochimaru’s hand was suddenly in the hair at the back of her head, pushing her head forward. Tori made a strangled cry of discontent but didn’t fight him. He wasn’t actually hurting her, and if she struggled, not only would she not win, but he might be inclined to harm her just for fun.
He leaned over her, carefully combing and parting her hair around the nape of her neck with his fingers. He did it gently and carefully, and it might have even felt good if he weren’t also pushing her head down into an uncomfortable position.
“No scorpion seal,” he finally murmured, letting go of her. “Interesting.”
Tori stumbled away from him the moment he let her go, brushing her hair back into place. She turned to face him, studying his face as her brain worked overtime to figure him out. He was eyeing her up and down with the same sort of curiosity he might aim towards someone’s open chest cavity. On Sasuke’s pretty face, it almost looked inviting.
A scorpion seal? Like one of Sasori’s? Why would he expect that?
“What did Kabuto tell you?” Tori wondered out loud. She could make guesses, but Orochimaru was a person apt to answer questions when the mood hit him.
“Ah,” Orochimaru replied, moving forward and linking his arm through Tori’s elbow. “Let’s walk and talk. It’s about time for lunch, isn’t it?”
Tori didn’t argue with him, just walked along beside him in a confused daze. What the fuck was happening? Was she actually safe? Surely she wasn’t.
It’s not like this is worse than taking poison from Sasori or letting Deidara fly me somewhere wasted, she decided.
“Kabuto said you knew about our work with Sasori,” Orochimaru said conversationally, leading her towards the path through the forest that would take them to the town proper. He let out a single laugh. “He said you turned him over to Sasori without hesitation.”
“Well,” Tori answered levelly, “I don’t really know what he expected.”
Orochimaru laughed again. “I forgot how funny you are,” he said and sounded downright cheerful. Tori would count this as a win.
Orochimaru watched her out of the corner of his eyes, taking on a more calculating look that set her hair on end.
“Now, Tori,” he said. “Imagine you were me, and your best, most trustworthy spy is convinced your lab assistant can truly see the future and knows others’ deepest secrets. What do you think I’d do?”
What a loaded question, Tori thought. She kept her face blank, eyeing Orochimaru right back. He didn’t seem upset or angry, but he watched her with anticipation, like this was some sort of test.
“I suppose,” Tori said flatly, “if I were you, I’d either want that person dead, or I’d want them on my side.” She paused, waiting for a reaction, but he continued to just watch her. “And if I were me, I’d hope you decided on the latter.”
His lips twitched upwards. This could be because he thought she was funny, or because she was on to something. He still didn’t speak, so she kept thinking out loud.
“Either way, you’d have to find me,” she reasoned. “Or maybe not you personally, but someone working for you. Especially if you also wanted my insight on your Sasuke problem.”
Who was still working for Orochimaru, with his little ninja village now in the wind? Kabuto? Surely Akatsuki would notice other ninja crawling around…
“I did meet a snake,” Tori realized, remembering the whole hotel debacle when she’d been traveling with Sasori and Deidara. Orochimaru’s smile turned downright wicked. “Are you kidding me?”
“He was very upset you tried to blow him up,” Orochimaru replied. “He nearly died.”
“I think people really need to stop underestimating my ability to get them killed,” Tori griped.
“You are surprisingly lethal,” Orochimaru said in the tone of someone telling a very good joke. “Now, what did my dear friend Sasori do with you, if not kill you or plaster a mind-control seal on your neck?”
Tori focused very hard on keeping her steps even and her face blank as she debated her answer. Clearly the question implied that Orochimaru knew Sasori had kidnapped her, but not that she was currently affiliated with Akatsuki. This, of course, did not mean he didn’t know or didn’t suspect as much, because Orochimaru was a master manipulator and liar.
What to say, what to say…? Tori’s mind buzzed. It was probably better for her and Akatsuki to not admit she was working for them. Orochimaru would almost definitely press her for information, or maybe even ask for her to spy on them for him, and this would put her in a tricky, dangerous situation.
Then again, if she turned out to not be useful to his purposes, Orochimaru might just kill her, right here and now.
Where, oh where, had Obito gone?
Tori tilted her head back and drawled, “Would you believe me if I said I escaped?”
She’d stalled enough they’d gotten to the break in the tree line that marked the beginning of the town, and sunlight glinted in Sasuke’s dark eyes as Orochimaru studied her.
“From Sasori?” he said after a moment. “Absolutely not.”
Tori kept her mouth shut, waiting for more as he led her through the town streets. It had gotten warm while they’d been in the cave, and now that they were in the open sun, Tori could feel herself starting to sweat.
“It is interesting no one could find you afterwards,” Orochimaru eventually said, tone still pleasant. “Not that I invested many resources into it, with the current situation. But you are not so subtle you could hide by yourself, and if it were up to him, Sasori would not let you roam free without a seal.”
He paused outside a restaurant, eyes skimming a sign in the window listing specials. Then he turned to peer down at her, his arm linked through her elbow pulling her closer into him.
“So I think,” he said, voice smooth as silk, “you have found someone very powerful to work with.”
Tori held his gaze and did not say a word. She did not let herself tense or wince, although she was sure he could feel her racing heartbeat. They stood like that for what was probably only a few seconds, but felt like an eternity.
Finally, Tori inclined her head and said, “I may not be a ninja, and I may not be able to fight or flee or hide from one, but I learned from the best.” She smiled, as sweetly as she could. “Is it so strange to think I couldn’t convince Sasori to let me go?”
Orochimaru took half a step back from her, turning Sasuke’s head to snort with laughter.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “If you found someone more powerful than Sasori, then I don’t expect you to be stupid enough to confide in me about them. Stick with whatever story you want to tell. But I do think we should… catch up.”
He led her inside the restaurant and asked for a table for two.
Their waitress– an older woman with streaks of gray in her dark hair– gave them both a sort of mooning look as she handed over menus, and Tori abruptly realized what they must look like. With his Orochimaru-ness shining through Sasuke’s face, Orochimaru made his body look several years older than it was, and they’d walked in with their arms linked. They definitely looked like two young adults on a date.
Tori felt herself go cross-eyed as she stared down at the menu. That was… no… no.
No!
This was, somehow, worse than God telling her she was an abomination.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Tori said, doing her best to keep her voice even. She sounded hollow in her own ears, but chances were that her hearing had just gone wild from her brain freaking out. It happened.
Orochimaru hummed, picking up the tea menu. “Hurry back.”
Tori practically ran for the bathroom. It was a single room, with a chipped sink and a fake plant in the corner, and she fumbled the lock in her rush to put a barrier between herself and Orochimaru as quickly as possible. Not that something as simple as a locked door would protect her.
The bathroom had a small window, high up on the wall, made of frosted glass. It was small enough that Tori wasn’t sure she could fit her hips and butt through it, or even if trying to flee through a bathroom window would be a good idea, but she stood on the lid of the toilet to investigate anyway.
There was a dusty brown snake stretched along the window sill. It turned its head toward her and licked the air.
Well, that made that decision for her. She climbed down off the toilet.
Don’t panic, she told herself. This was fine. She’d have to go back out there and play at having a calm conversation eventually, but she had whole minutes to come up with something.
She stared at herself in the mirror above the sink. She really did look a lot better than she had in Oto. Even if her outfit was ridiculous, she’d picked colors she liked. She’d been able to do her ridiculous make-up how she wanted, and to style her hair and wash it with actual conditioner. She looked significantly less like she might burst into tears at any moment. She had finally grasped some semblance of control over her life, and she was not going to let it go.
Tori was fundamentally a different person than the girl Orochimaru had first let into his lab. Maybe she couldn’t beat him, maybe she couldn’t escape him, but she could definitely protect herself.
She looked herself over, assessing the tools she had. She found two of Sasuke’s hairs on her sleeve, follicles still intact, and the knife from Deidara tucked into her skirt.
Orochimaru really wasn’t used to Sasuke’s hair, or else it hadn’t occurred to him that Tori could use two measly hairs against him. Orochimaru had also not bothered to check her for weapons. He must have rightly assumed she wouldn’t be able to use them against him. These would have all been things he would not have had to worry about with the Tori that had been a terrified captive in Oto.
Tori studied her body next. Arms and legs were easiest to see, but she’d need a lot of space… and if she stood back far enough, she could see herself in the mirror from the hips up.
She washed the knife’s blade with hand soap in the sink, then undid the wrap-around dress and used paper towels to wash her bare stomach. The knife might be useless against a ninja in her hands, but she wasn’t completely helpless. Orochimaru himself had made sure she’d never be helpless again.
Tori sucked in air through her teeth preparing herself for pain. Then she very carefully cut into the exposed skin of her stomach with the blade.
The snake lifted its head in interest as she carefully carved the outline of a seal into herself. She didn’t know how smart the snake was, if it could realize what she was doing and slither off to warn its master. She worked quickly.
Orochimaru was not in his own body. She didn’t know the specifics of his jutsu enough to guess how well established he was, but there likely wasn’t a huge difference between extracting him than from extracting a sealed bijuu, or from extracting his chakra from a cursed seal. Both were things she felt confident she could do, and she even had hairs to key some chakra into her seal as a guide.
She was, of course, adapting her carefully constructed seal on the fly, and it was messy by virtue of being carved into actively bleeding skin rather than into carefully controlled ink and paper, but there didn’t have to be a guarantee they would work. In fact, it was unlikely it would work at all. She just needed the threat of the possibility it would work. Having an Uchiha body was one of the very few things Orochimaru actually cared about; he wouldn’t risk losing it.
That’s what he’d taught her, wasn’t it? You figured out what a person wanted, and then you offered it to them… or you ripped it away.
Tori carefully pressed Sasuke’s hairs into the correct part of her seal, which was somehow more viscerally disgusting than carving things into herself. If she got out of this in one piece, she was dosing herself in disinfectant.
By the time she was done, the snake was in the process of flattening itself to get out from under the bathroom door. Tori thought briefly, as she patted herself clean with damp paper towels, about stepping on it. She liked snakes, but not enough to feel bad about killing one that reported to Orochimaru.
Still, she didn’t want to piss Orochimaru off too much. She retied her dress and calmly walked out of the bathroom. Every step hurt, but not enough she couldn’t maintain control over her pace. She hoped her dress was dark enough that any blood seeping through wasn’t immediately noticeable to civilians.
When she got back to the table, the snake was across Orochimaru’s shoulders. Orochimaru gave her a deeply incredulous look as she sat down across from him.
“You did what?” he said.
“I brainstormed a solution to your problem,” Tori said, producing her little spiral notebook from her skirt. “Here, look.”
She carefully sketched out what she’d done to herself, narrating each piece as she went. Some of it she was sure Orochimaru would recognize as his own work. Some of it was fuinjutsu she’d pulled out of months of careful research. And some of it was all Tori— things she’d hammered into perfection by careful trial and error.
Of course, the seal she’d made up on the fly was a giant untested mess. Orochimaru watched her hands move with a sort of horrified delight and didn’t interrupt her once.
“Yes, I see,” he said when she was done and ripped the page free so he could study it.
If he saw properly, he’d note that the seal was definitely actually designed to rip him out of the body if he touched her, rather than Sasuke. It would also probably kill both Tori and Sasuke in the process, but. Whatever. If it got that far, she was likely already dead.
“This seems risky,” Orochimaru said finally, tucking the paper into his yukata front. “A one in ten chance of working, perhaps.”
“The same odds as your cursed mark,” Tori replied, pulling one of the cups of steaming hot tea someone had poured while she was gone towards herself. Then, because there were all sorts of ways Orochimaru could murder or kidnap her without touching her or before she could set off the seal manually, she added, “The standard threshold for assuming nonrandom effects is 5%, anyway.”
The alpha threshold for statistical significance had very little to do with whether or not a piece of magic ninja sealwork would work, but Orochimaru didn’t question her.
The point of her seal wasn’t that she could definitely ruin his day. The point was that the chance of her completely fucking up a goal he’d worked so hard on was just high enough he wouldn’t risk it. And for a careful person like Orochimaru in his most coveted body, the probability did not have to be very high at all.
She picked up the teacup and blew on it. Orochimaru blinked at her once, and then twice. There was an emotion Tori couldn’t quite describe blooming on his face, like pieces to some puzzle were clicking into place for him. Then he seemed to discard the whole thing, leaning back casually in his chair and smirking at her.
“I ordered for you,” he said. “You were taking too long making yourself into a human bomb. I hope you don’t mind.”
He didn’t try calling her bluff or asking to see the seal– predictable actions that were one reason for Tori making an actual, working seal rather than a safer, fake one. (The other reason for making a working seal was, of course: fuck this guy if he tried anything.) Instead, Orohcimaru started telling her about the history of the cave, perfectly normal conversation for the waitress to overhear when she brought their food.
Then as soon as the waitress left, he said: “It’s said that Senju Tobirama himself studied the cave.”
“Huh,” Tori said, eyeing the salted fish Orochimaru had ordered for her. She liked fish, but she hated having to pick around the tiny bones. “What for? The ghosts or the gas?”
“I believe the two are not as linked as you are likely assuming,” Orohimaru said, and Tori paused in peeling skin back from her fish. He smirked knowingly at her. “Tobirama claimed he found the basis for his Edo Tensei technique in that cave.”
That got Tori’s attention.
“The script in there?” she asked, going back to peeling her fish. Was she supposed to eat this? “It’s not doing anything, though. Is it?”
“No,” Orochimaru answered. “But someone must have carved it, and they wouldn’t pick those characters at random, would they?”
Tori blinked down at her fish, perplexed. So some person generations ago… could maybe raise the dead? Or at least do something really funky with souls?
“Of course, the modern sightings could be hallucinations due to the natural gas,” Orochimaru continued. He’d ordered himself an omelet, which seemed way easier to eat. “Or simply paranoia from the legends. You know how it is.”
“Right,” Tori said. “Sure.”
Her stomach was burning from the seal she’d carved into herself, but the fish did taste pretty good. She picked at it, and Orochiamru stared at her like he expected her to do something. Her cheeks turned hot with self-consciousness. She felt like she was being watched by a wild animal, who seemed sedate for now, but might unhinge its jaw and swallow her up at any second.
Where the fuck is Obito? Tori wondered. How could her luck be this bad, that Orochimaru would show up the second she was alone?
“So what are you doing in this little place?” Orochimaru asked. He sounded downright conversational, but Tori left like the question was some sort of trap.
“I’m…” she started, opening her mouth to lie. Then she abruptly decided against it. She wasn’t sure she could convincingly lie to Orochimaru. She could say enough of the truth to keep him interested and not considering risking her seal.
Tori glanced around the restaurant to make sure no one was eavesdropping. A snake might be, but she didn’t think any of the civilian villagers could hide that effectively.
“I’m scamming a woman into thinking she’s haunted,” Tori said. “You know, for fun and profit.”
Orochiamru raised his eyebrows. “A vulnerable town for such an effort,” he drawled. “I’m glad this is what you chose to dedicate your… talents to.”
So, clearly he thought she was ridiculous. Which. That was fine, really. She didn’t care if he respected her. But also she did.
“Actually, I also have a personal project I’d like advice on,” she continued.
She described what penicillin was and its history in her world, and then her various problems isolating fungi from its contaminates.
“Why is contamination a problem, if you are looking for a fungus which will kill other things growing on the plate?” Orochimaru asked. “Surely you are not clumsy enough to be getting so much contamination it overwhelms your fungus.”
“No, it’s…” Tori bit her lip. She’d been working on separating fish flakes from the tiny bones and piling it on one side of the plate like a child. “I guess it’s workable now, but once I find a penicillium fungus that excretes correct compounds, I want to artificially select for it to make more and more effective penicillin. To do that, I need to be able to separate out pieces of fungus. I don’t want bacteria or whatever hitchhiking and maybe interfering.”
“Ah,” Orochimaru said. “So you have a bigger goal than just finding the fungus. You’ll also want a clean sample to isolate your penicillin from.”
“Right,” Tori agreed.
“And I assume you cannot simply create a sterile environment wherever you’re based now,” Orochimaru continued. “No lab in your poor haunted victim’s house.”
“Right,” Tori repeated. Although, maybe if she whined enough, she could get like a fume hood or something in the Akatsuki base… surely Ame had its own labs…
“Hmm,” Orochimaru hummed thoughtfully. “An interesting challenge. Will it grow in liquid culture? You could use a vessel with a smaller neck to reduce exposure, and boil it directly.”
“Huh,” Tori said. “I have no idea. I’ll try.”
“You’ve grown things in liquid, right?” Orochimaru said. “Bacteria, you said. For… oh, you’d store genes in them. Tori, your stories were adorable and fascinating…”
Tori ate her fish while Orochimaru reminisced about her trying to explain her old lab tasks to him, like he was telling her embarrassing stories from her childhood. It did sound ridiculous, when he laid it out, to have some gene she wanted to study in a ring of DNA, and then to stick that DNA in bacteria so the bacteria would make copies of it for her, and then re-extract the DNA from the bacteria, and then stick it in mammalian cells, and then have to continuously poison the mammalian cells with antibiotic so they’d keep her little DNA ring, which also contain a resistance gene for this express purpose. Orochimaru could just stick a whole organism in a fuinjutsu array with some DNA and genomically integrate it.
And, well, hundreds of people had died horribly from him doing that unsuccessfully, but still. It worked sometimes.
Tens of those people who’d died horribly had done so in part due to Tori. She frowned at her fish bones as she chewed. It would be good if she could get some information out of Orochimaru, and he was being pretty chatty right now. She needed to steer the conversation back towards whatever had happened in Oto.
“You know,” Tori said when there was a lull in Orochimaru’s speech. “It’s going to bother me forever that we never got the osteogenesis project working. You know I ran into some guy whose spleen we cut out?”
“Really?” Orochimaru asked, bemused. “Which one?”
Orochimaru also seemed not to remember that guy at all, and Tori almost felt bad. She had sealed his soul into a wall or… something… but it seemed even sadder to her that his life had been so irrelevant to the man he’d dedicated his life to.
“I guess a lot of old Oto-nin are just basically missing-nin now,” Tori said.
“Mm,” Orochimaru agreed, and then did not elaborate with any details about people he’d kept in touch with like she’d hoped.
“I wonder how many of them are experiments?” Tori asked hesitantly. “Like… I don’t know, it just seems like such a waste if any project you got to work had just run off.”
“Ah,” Orochimaru said. His face seemed almost contemplative, like he knew exactly what Tori was angling for but might indulge her with the answer anyway. “It seemed like you didn’t enjoy human experimentation, Tori.”
“I mean, I didn’t,” Tori agreed. “But like I said. It bothers me that I worked hard on something and never got to finish it. What if I spend a ton of time gathering fungi and never find penicillin?”
Orochimaru dipped his head to the side.
“Science is like this sometimes,” he said. “We may not have resurrected the Kaguya clan bloodline limit, but we pushed forward with the technique.”
“The technique?” Tori asked. “The gene editing technique?”
“Yes, I’ve only gotten a full-body version to work once,” Orochimaru agreed. “And that was an exception because… ah, did I ever tell you about the Meristem Phenomenon?”
“No?” Tori said. It did sound familiar, but maybe just because ‘meristem’ was a term for… plant… somethings. Stem cells, maybe.
Also, only once? Tori retracted her previous thought about it working sometimes. She’d really just helped kill all those people for nothing, huh.
Maybe this is why the Shinigami hates me, she thought, which was an inane thought, because people worse than her definitely existed in this world.
“Tori?” Orochimaru asked, and she looked up at him.
“Sorry,” she said. “You mean Tenzou, right? Your one success?”
Orochimaru looked vaguely surprised for a moment, then cleared his face. A confident smile spread over his features.
“I didn’t tell you about that,” he said, sounding pleased.
Yep, I’m definitely a real psychic, Tori thought, smiling feebly back at him.
“Anyway, the Meristem Phenomenon was first observed by a gentlemen ecologist under Hashirama’s reign,” Orochimaru continued. “It’s a process by which some plants parasitically clone themselves. You should look into it.”
Tori squinted at him. That was definitely not what ‘meristem’ meant in her world. What the hell did that even mean?
“Parasitically clone themselves?” she repeated incredulously. “What, like a virus?”
Orochimaru leaned forward, his-- Sasuke’s-- pale fingers taking Tori’s notebook from where she’d left it on the table, a pen clipped to the cover. He turned to a random page at the back and wrote a note, and then casually flipped through its pages.
Tori didn’t react at first. She’d been warned with threats of severe violence about walking around foreign countries with confidential information, so the notebook didn’t contain anything about Akatsuki. It was mostly just notes on her Icha Icha theories and the seal script in the Shinigami shrine.
Orochiamru paused on a page, eyes moving back and forth as he read, and Tori abruptly remembered several theories revolved around him.
“Um,” she said, alarm bells going off in her brain. “Could I have that back…?”
“Fascinating,” Orochimaru deadpanned, then set the notebook down between them. He tapped it with one finger. “Look up that book I recommended, would you?”
The waitress approached them, presenting Orochimaru with the check. He took the leather booklet and shooed her away.
“You’re working, aren’t you?” he said, then set the check book down next to Tori’s notebook. “I think I’ll take my leave. Kabuto should be done distracting your friend by now.”
“Uh,” Tori said. Holy fuck, did he mean Obito? Did Orochimaru have the slightest idea who Obito was?
“I don’t know who that man was,” Orochimaru continued as if reading her mind, smirking as her eyes widened, “but I advise you not to mention our… encounter to him. It would seem awfully suspicious for you, wouldn’t it?”
“I…” Tori started. She’d felt confident before, but she’d lost the plot somewhere around Orochimaru reading her notes on Jiraiya’s psychosexual obsession with him.
“I am rather pleased to run into you,” Orochimaru said, standing. “This is an interesting start to the solution to my problem.”
He held up the fuuinjutsu array copy she’d given him.
“Perhaps you can show me a more complete version when we meet again,” he said, eyes dancing with mirth. “That book might help you, I think. The ecology one, not Jiraiya’s amusing stories.”
Orochiamru left then. He paused as he passed her, reaching out to pat her shoulder, then stopped himself last moment.
“That one in ten chance,” he said, teasing. “Wouldn’t want to risk it.”
He walked out of the restaurant. Tori stared after him, feeling like she’d just made about fifty mistakes and she didn’t even know what they all were. He’d… he’d won that exchange, somehow, and she hadn’t even known what game they were playing. Now she was stuck with the check and her stomach was actively bleeding.
And Itachi is going to kill me, she thought miserably. She pushed her plate forward and set her forehead down on the table.
“Miss…” the waitress said, sounding disappointed. “Did he…?”
“You can charge it to Lady Fujiwara,” Tori mumbled. “And… add on a dessert. Any dessert.”
They brought her a slice of cake, but Tori could only bring herself to eat a few bites. So, she’d accidentally sicced Sasuke on Orochimaru when she’d told him where Itachi was and gotten him possessed by Orochimaru, all in exchange for a banana.
Did I kill Sasuke for a banana? Tori wondered, staring at her upside down reflection in the spoon.
Except no, Sasuke wasn’t dead. He’d had some sort of… three day mind-battle…? And was now just trapped in his own head. Or. Eyeballs. He was trapped in his eyeballs, maybe. The ridiculous mind-battle was perhaps why Orochimaru had been mistaken for dead, as Tori imagined one didn’t just get up and walk around while doing that. Aside from all this likely putting Tori right back on Itachi's kill list, what really alarmed was that she’d… maybe… handed him part of a solution to getting rid of Sasuke? She’s made it to rip his chakra out, but of course one could modify it to extract Sasuke’s instead.
She hadn’t thought about this other angle at all when she’d done it. It would be riskier, to pull the native host out, and so Orochimaru couldn’t just go home and copy her seal right now, but certainly it could be the base of something.
Tori’s hand went over her stomach. Her dress was dark enough it wasn’t obvious, but her entire front was wet from blood. Her skin stung.
Surely she hadn’t given Orochimaru unique knowledge. She wasn’t that clever, not compared to him. He would have figured it out himself eventually. Heck, maybe he even already had a seal design he was working on. He’d only said those things to upset her, because he was an upsetting person.
It was fine. She was fine. She was panicking over nothing, really. She’d been protecting herself, fueled by the tiny chance of yanking away the one thing Orochimaru had wanted, and her threat had been successful, if only briefly. She’d seen it in Orochimaru’s eyes, a slip-up in his usual cool demeanor. She didn’t regret it, even if she felt bad for Sasuke.
And that Orochimaru had known she’d been here with a partner… was that really where Obito had gone, to Kabuto’s “distraction”? For twelve whole days? Obito said he’d been summoned away by Zetsu. Orochimaru’s story didn’t make sense with that. Orochimaru had gathered she’d been with someone, but this part about “distracting” him away had to be a lie. She was overreading his statements: he knew she’d been spotted with a man somehow, and had simply known that man was elsewhere by virtue of finding her alone. Saying Kabuto was distracting her partner wasn’t meant to explain Obito’s extended absence, but rather make it seem as if Orochimaru was jointly dealing with her partner while she was busy eating lunch with him, in order to exaggerate his illusion of control over her. That was probably part of why he’d warned her not to tell Obito she’d met him, so that she wouldn’t compare notes with Obito and realize Orochimaru hadn’t had control over that side of the equation at all. There was no need to panic over this either, he just wanted to upset her and control her actions even after he left her.
He really is a prolific manipulator, Tori thought. Who else would even bother with all these little lies and suggestions?
Speaking of which, should she tell Obito she met Orochimaru, or keep it to herself? Orochimaru was right that it would look really suspicious, that the second Akatsuki took its eyes off Tori, she was off getting lunch with her old boss… not to mention, if she admitted to meeting Orochimaru to Akatsuki, she’d also have to admit to Itachi that he was wearing his brother, and she had no idea how that would play out.
He’s gotten so under my skin in only a couple of hours, Tori thought, cheeks burning with humiliation at her own discomfort. Am I ever going to be actually free from him?
Had he even given her a real book recommendation? Tori opened her notebook and flipped to the page he’d scribbled on. There in his neat, beautiful handwriting was indeed what looked like a book title and author. Feeling queasy, Tori realized she was definitely going to look it up and read it, if only out of morbid curiosity.
Her stomach rolled, and she thought of how disgusted the Shinigami had felt when it had seen her. She wanted to puke.
Instead, she walked back to the Fujiwara residence. As soon as she stepped inside, Erin appeared from the shadows.
“Fuck,” Tori swore. “Don’t startle me like that!”
“Welcome home,” Erin murmured, not raising her eyes to Tori, but falling into step behind her as Tori paced back to her room.
Tori turned the corner to a hallway, and suddenly Satoshi was in her face.
“Reina,” he said, his breath stinking with tobacco. “I was looking for you. I have a kunoichi mission for you.”
He reached for her arm, and Tori wanted to scream. Really? Everything was happening, and somehow she still had to deal with creepy civilian men?
“That’s not a thing,” Tori snapped, ripping her arm out of his grasp. The motion made her wince as it tugged on her stomach wounds. Then to make herself sound more in character for Reina, she added, “Learn to behave yourself in my presence.”
“Lady Etsuko said Akatsuki will take any mission,” Satoshi said, reaching for her again. “What if I reported to your leader that you refused…”
Tori actually had no idea what would happen if Satoshi complained that she’d failed a mission parameter by not accepting his advances. Despite the insane sexual fantasies some people wrote in with their mission requests, no one had been stupid enough to try this on any other member.
Tori would like to think that Pein and Konan would dismiss such a complaint as “stupid as fuck, why didn’t you kill him?” She had, afterall, spent some time feeling all chummy with Akatsuki recently. But then again, they’d also made her take this stupid as fuck mission. They weren’t even paying her. Maybe she would end up punished, and her punishment would feel disproportionate to anything that happened to anyone else, because she wasn’t actually a ninja.
“You don’t want me,” Tori hissed out. “Look, I’m on my period.”
She pressed her figures into her dress vaguely above her pelvis, and they came away bloody. Satoshi’s face filled with horror, and he fled immediately. It was unclear if he actually believed menstruation worked like that, or if he was just freaked out Tori’s front was inexplicably covered in blood.
“Dumbass,” Tori muttered. She pushed forward to her room.
“Um,” Erin said, hovering behind her at the doorway. “Your dress… is that actually blood?”
Tori wanted to bang her head against something. Instead she sighed dramatically.
“I attempted to commune with the spirits in Pesao’s place,” she said dramatically. “I suggest you tell your mother not to go in that cave anymore. They are upset with her.”
Erin’s eyes widened. “Over my uncles?” she asked.
Oh my god, what the FUCK is this now? Tori thought.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Over your uncles.”
Erin’s lips quivered. Tori was too exhausted to feel bad about... whatever happened to Erin’s uncles, or why this was particularly upsetting to her.
“Find me some bandages, please,” Tori said. Then in a gentler voice she added, “And bring a bottle of sake. We can talk over a drink after I clean up.”
Erin nodded and scurried off, shutting the room door behind her. Tori stared down at her bloody fingers.
The Orochimaru problem, while stressful, was probably not going to bite her in the ass until at least Obito came back. She needed to focus on this mission and maintaining control over the situation, even with Satoshi slinking around.
Now, how to fake an exorcism with just fuuinjutsu and lies…? Tori’s eyes scanned the room, wondering if she had more tools. Certainly the fuuinjutsu cuts on her stomach would seem like a cool and compelling prop. She could tell the family to announce that all snakes in the town must simply be killed, for dramatics and also in case Orochimaru felt like spying. She could even maybe send someone off on a quest to find her book recommendation.
Her eyes settled on her bag. Sasori had given her a vial of poison, with instructions on how to dose oneself at sublethal levels. Tori wasn’t going to take it, but someone else could.
Thanks, Sasori, for being an unhinged control freak, Tori thought. If this works, I’ll let you have one of those insects in amber I asked for for stupid as fuck reasons…