Chapter 52

"I'm bored." I dejectedly kick a stone that happened to be in my path as everyone is walking.

"And this is my problem how, exactly?" Sasuke blandly says as he scans the surroundings. Again. For the sixth time in two minutes.

"Because you're my friend." I retort with as much blandness as he used. "Entertain me."

"Entertain yourself. One of us has to pay attention." Sasuke dismisses me with practiced ease.

"Please, Orochimaru-sama has minions for that." I wave him off and one of the minions behind me scoffs. "Anyways do you really think anyone, sane or otherwise, would attack this group? There's like thirty of us! Not to mention Orochimaru-sama of all people, then his bodyguards, then us, then everyone else who I really hope are capable. If not whatever, we can always use them as meat shields."

"Hey!" A minion speaks.

"What?" I casually turn around and start to walk backward solely so I can stare at him. "Do you want to entertain me? Cuz I've got some ideas."

"Uh..." The minion's courage wavers.

"Hold on." I sling my backpack off and start to rifle through it. "I know I put it somewhere. There's no way I didn't bring it, so where is it?"

"What the hell are you looking for?" Sasuke asks as he rips his eyes off of potential ambush points and hiding spots.

"A specific scroll." I randomly discard one over my shoulder and it bonks into the head of the minion that spoke up. "Oi! What the hell is wrong with you pick that up!" I shout at the minion and surprisingly he listens.

"And what is in this mysterious scroll?" Sasuke dryly asks, but there's a hint of playfulness underneath. He's enjoying the rapidly whitening minion squirm as things escalate way past what he expected.

"A rake, two watermelons, a lot of plastic sheets, precisely 13.75 meters of rope, a rubber ball and a wheelbarrow. Oh and matches! Can't forget about the matches."

"Alvarcus." Orochimaru's cool voice penetrates the quiet conversations of the rest of the group. "Stop terrorizing the meat shields."

"But I'm bored!" I whine and stomp my foot for added affect. "I need something to do and he was practically volunteering!"

"That's irrelevant." Orochimaru hasn't even bothered to look back to scold me. "Stop it."

"Fine!" I huff out.

Jirobo casually slides over to me. "Just out of curiosity -"

"No!" Sasuke shouts out. "Just don't! Don't ask what he was going to do with all of that stuff. Don't. Trust me."

"Ah. Okay." Jirobo moves back to the other two members of the Sound Three.

"Wow. Way to kill every single chance at fun I get." I groan at Sasuke. "Seriously? Why can't I get five minutes of enjoyment?"

"Because your enjoyment is weird and creeps out a lot of people, especially those who don't know you're kidding around." Sasuke blandly explains as if he's dealing with a petulant child.

"But I wasn't kidding!" I hold up an innocent looking scroll. "I do have all of that stuff in a scroll!"

"I'm not going to ask." Sasuke sighs. "I know better."

"Fine. I'll just find another way to entertain myself." But how? What can I possibly do?

I slowly start to inch my way closer to Sasuke over the course of the next five minutes until we're almost standing shoulder to shoulder.

"Can I help you?" Sasuke irritably asks as he pins me with a stern look.

I simply smirk at him, then proceed to poke him in the shoulder. "Tag. You're it."

Sasuke's glare intensifies as his hand bundles into a fist.

"No tag backs." I cheekily taunt him.

Sasuke storms off towards the Sound Three and all of them are chuckling among themselves at my antics. As he's walking between them his hand lightly touches Kidomaru on the back. "Tag. You're it."

Sakon and Jirobo scatter.

"Oh it is so on!" Kidomaru shouts out in glee.

"I'm actually surprised." I offhandedly comment as the entire group enters the new base.

We're somewhere that is relatively close to the Land of Waves. This is Orochimaru's Southern hideout and also the place that he stores the majority of his prisoners. Or as he likes to call them his test subjects. We spent the better part of a day getting here and if it wasn't for the slow pace we had to set for the more lackluster shinobi and prisoners we could have cut that time in a quarter.

An impromptu game of tag had absolutely nothing to do with it.

"And what is so surprising?" Sasuke asks as Orochimaru is barking out orders to everyone who came with him and a group of shinobi that welcomed us all into the base.

"Well, nothing went wrong. Usually shit always goes wrong. We were practically tempting fate with everyone that was traveling."

"You're not wrong. Stuff always goes wrong around us. I don't know if we have the best luck ever or the worst. It's a miracle that we've made it out of all those situations unscathed."

"Speak for yourself." I point an various parts of my body. "Here. Here. Over here. Oh and there. Not to mention here. Plus all the times that I got stabbed in the chest. Yeah I didn't get away unscathed, I just didn't slow down from it all. I suppose there was that one time I got away from Sasori unscathed but that's one of many. I never did come to terms with that."

"You've really got to work on dodging." Sasuke points out.

"SHH!" My eyes widen in fear behind my sunglasses and I shrink on myself. "Dodge training is the worst. Don't let anyone hear you say that! I don't want to go through it again!"

"I don't know what you get so worked up about. I've been put through dodge training, it wasn't that bad."

"That's because if Orochimaru filled you with over two hundred kunai you'd die."

"Oh. Ouch." Sasuke winces in sympathy.

"Yeah. Ouch."

Meanwhile, with Orochimaru

"Karin." Orochimaru quietly says so that Alvarcus and Sasuke don't hear him. "Come here. I have a task for you."

The only kunoichi here with red hair confidently steps forward. "Yes, Orochimaru-sama? Whatever it is that you have in store for me I will gladly accept."

"Sweet child, it's nothing that difficult." Orochimaru smiles down with sinister sweetness at one of his more successful test subjects. Then he subtly points towards his students. "Tell me how they feel to you."

"Of course." Karin pushes her glasses back up her nose and turns to look at Sasuke and Alvarcus. "They both have a shockingly large amount of chakra for someone our age. Actually in general really, I've seen jonin with less chakra than either of them. But the one on the right dwarfs everyone else here. I think he has even more at his disposal than you do. I've never felt anyone who has that much chakra before."

"Yes, Alvarcus does have simply outstanding reserves at his command. But compared to some of the foes I've defeated he has only a drop of chakra. Remember, skill can triumph over brute force." Orochimaru smiles to himself. He's happy that his child is receiving praise. "Yet that is not what I asked. I asked how they feel to you. You have a unique ability to get a feeling of who someone is as a person just by their chakra. So, how do they feel?"

"Of course." Karin looks at the other shinobi first. "The one on the left -"

"His name is Sasuke." Orochimaru supplies.

"Sasuke, he feels..." Karin's eyes widen slightly as she focuses more intently on the unsuspecting shinobi. "He feels confident. I've never seen anyone who is so sure of themselves. He's proud of all that he's done and accomplished both on the battlefield and off of it. But underneath that there's a burning anger waiting to spread into an inferno of hate and rage. There's also a strong sense of loyalty and protectiveness toward Alvarcus, he truly cares about him as if they're family. He's... beautiful. I've never seen anyone like him before. I want him! He is going to be mine! Oh yes, I'm going to make him mine no matter how long it takes! In the end it'll be so worth it."

"And Alvarcus?" Orochimaru prompts the almost drooling Karin.

"Ah. Yes." Karin tears her eyes off of her new boy-toy to look at the other shinobi. "He feels... sad? That's new. On the surface he's unshakable. He feels like someone who has waded through the depths of Hell itself and conquered every demon that tried to kill him. He's someone who will never yield, never surrender. He will go on until the end, until he has achieved victory at any cost. But that's just the surface. At first he felt so strong, yet underneath all that strength and bravado he feels lonely. I get this feeling of deep and all encompassing sadness. He feels that he's committed horrendous crimes against himself and everyone he's ever known. I think that he regrets almost all of his actions. It's like he thinks he doesn't belong. Not just here, but anywhere. It's like he doesn't think he deserves to be... alive?"

"Really?" Orochimaru turns to look at Alvarcus who is currently elaborately and zealously explaining something in great detail to Sasuke who would rather be doing anything else. "He's sad, he feels alone?"

"That's not all of it, just some of the bigger parts of him." Karin says as she continues to analyze Alvarcus. "He has a brilliant streak of playfulness in him too and a strongly rooted sense of loyalty. He's really quite the interesting specimen but what stands out about him is that he just feels alone. It makes me want to protect him."

"How interesting." Orochimaru muses to himself. "I suppose I did have a hand in that, Edo Tensi is such an unique jutsu and I went and changed it further. Oh well, it's nice to know that my child is loyal to me."

"Orochimaru-sama!" Karin happily clasps her hands together! "How lovely! I had no idea you had a child! Oh I bet he's spectacular!"

"Would you like to meet him?" Orochimaru gently lays a hand on her shoulder.

"Can I? Are you sure that I'm worthy of such honor? To meet your son? And that... mmmm... hunk of a man?" Karin lecherously looks at Sasuke.

Orochimaru quirks an eyebrow at Karin's unusual behavior, then shrugs to himself. It's not like whether or not she beds Sasuke will effect his plans for the Uchiha at all. "Of course. I'm appointing you to be their personal healer, it's only natural that you meet them."

"Yay!" Karin's eyes go wide and she giddily shakes in happiness.

With Sasuke and Alvarcus

"And that, my dear friend Sasuke, is what I was going to do with a rake, two watermelons, a lot of plastic sheets, precisely 13.75 meters of rope, a rubber ball and a wheelbarrow. And matches! Why do I keep forgetting about the matches? They're what started me down the path of a pyromaniac, they are very important!"

"I hate you." Sasuke forces out through clenched teeth. "I hate you so much right now. That's not what you're supposed to use any of those things for."

"Says who?" I playfully ask.

"Society as a whole!" Sasuke snarls at me.

"Pfft who cares about what they think! It's a completely viable use of a rake to -"

"Alvarcus, Sasuke, I want you to meet someone." Orochimaru's voice cuts me off, much to the relief of Sasuke and everyone else in hearing range. I've scared a whole bunch of people. It's awesome.

Okay I acknowledge that I have a problem but I'm not going to fix it. It's too much fun!

Orochimaru is gently steering a kunoichi towards us by her shoulder. She's around our age, give or take a year at the most. She has a pair of shockingly crimson eyes that are behind a pair of glasses. Yet neither her eyes or her glasses are her most stunning feature, that award goes to her vibrant red hair. It cascades past her shoulders and frames her face nicely with one side laying flat and the other spiking outwards. She's wearing a muted long sleeved lavender shirt, a very small pair of shorts and... black thigh high stockings?

Well whatever, it's not like I haven't seen stranger outfits. Just look at Orochimaru and the Sound Three, they have giant rope belts. That's really weird no matter where you come from.

"Alvarcus, Sasuke, meet Karin. Karin, meet Alvarcus and Sasuke." Orochimaru introduces us to the previously unnamed kunoichi, even though I knew exactly who she was the moment I saw her.

"It's nice to meet you Karin." I warmly smile at her. She sends me back a smile of her own.

"Hn." Sasuke grunts out.

"Oh great now that's back." I mutter under my breath to myself. "I thought I broke him out of that. This calls for extreme actions."

"H-hello!" Karin squeaks out to Sasuke as her cheeks gain a pink hue to them. "I'm Karin, it's a pleasure to meet you!"

To anyone else, Sasuke doesn't react to Karin's obvious attraction to him. But I am not just anyone, I've been on his team since day one. I know Sasuke better than anyone, that includes his tells. No one else noticed it, but there was a tiny twitch of his left pinky finger. That was him restraining himself from running away.

Sasuke has found another fan-girl. Or should I say another fan-girl has found Sasuke?

"Glad to see that the three of you get along." Orochimaru cheerfully says. "Unfortunately I had to send Kabuto away on a mission so he is no longer here to fix the both of you after training or your own stupidity."

Orochimaru makes sure to look at me.

"What?" I calmly say. "I don't usually do that. It's a rare occasion. Well except for... a lot of times. Okay you've got a point. Eh whatever not like they leave any lasting damage. They're purely aesthetic and as long as my face stays scar free then I think I'll be alright."

Orochimaru sighs. "I don't even know why I bother. Since Kabuto is gone Karin here will be his replacement. Go to her should you need healing. She's very talented at it."

"Cool." I turn back to her. "We're going to be seeing a lot of each other, I get messed up a lot!"

"Don't worry I'll make sure to patch you up." Karin does a once over on me. "Though we will have to schedule a physical so I can get acquainted with how your specific body is supposed to be." Then she turns to Sasuke and stars form in her eyes as she imagines something scandalous. "You too. Strictly for my job of course."

Sasuke fails to suppress a full body shiver.

I've got to fuck with him!

"Of course of course!" I happily throw an arm over Karin's shoulder. "Naturally you'd need to get as much information as possible, right? So this should be an extra... thorough exam. After all it's to make sure that you can help us as best as possible, right?"

"YES!" Karin shouts in glee as she's eyeing Sasuke like a piece of meat. "I must do a good job, Orochimaru-sama himself requested that I take care of you both!"

"And we don't want to let Orochimaru-sama down, now do we?" I pat her on the back reassuringly.

"Alvarcus stop." Sasuke demands. "I will get you back."

"I would never want to let him down!" Karin shouts out. "We should take care of this right away!"

"Why that's a great idea!" I agree with Karin while smirking at Sasuke. I don't care if he thinks he can get me back, this'll be good for him. And I'm getting a sense of satisfaction out of it but that's just a bonus! "Go ahead and start with him. I can wait."

"MINE!" Karin darts forward and snags Sasuke by the hand. "Let's go!"

She starts to drag the unwilling Sasuke deeper into the base to traumatize him.

"Alvarcus! I won't forget this! I will get you back! Just you wait, revenge will be sweet!" Sasuke yells just before Karin drags him around a corner. "Sleep with one eye open if you want to! It won't stop me!"

"Are you sure that was wise?" Orochimaru asks me as he's smirking to himself about Sasuke's situation.

"This is his punishment." I solemnly tell my Kage. "He should have known better."

"Known better than what?" Orochimaru turns his full attention to me. "What was his mistake? I can correct it during training if I need to."

"Oh don't worry about it. This is something that I'm an expert at fixing." A demonic grin forms on my face. "This is just the beginning, if Sasuke is smart he'll stop right now before it gets worse."

"Before what gets worse?"

"He said 'hn.' I've broken him out of that habit a while ago, I will not allow him to regress."

"What?" Orochimaru says in one of his rare moments of confusion. "Never mind. Let's just go on a tour of the base for now. I'll send someone to show Sasuke around later."

Hours Later, Alvarcus's New Room

"Wow this place is huge." I grumble to myself as I dump all of my scrolls out of my backpack and onto the ground. "I can't believe it took that long to see it all. Though he did show me every laboratory that was empty so I could pick my own, that did eat up a lot of time. I still don't know why he listed every single experiment that's gone on in each individual lab."

I squat down and start to sort the pile of scrolls.

"Right. Well... this is going to suck."

I grab one of the larger ones and unfurl it. With a quick pulse of chakra the seal unleashes it's contents.

"Holy shit that is a mountain of clothes." I groan to myself. "I've got to put all of that away now. Stupid Weavers and making boatloads of everything. Why do I need a cubic meter of shirts? WHY?"

I'm going to do this the easy way. I sit cross legged on the ground and let hundreds of chakra strings extend out to the waiting mountain of shirts. Then one lifts into the air and moves into the closet, it's even hung up and everything. "Alright! Let's do this! Full speed ahead!"

Shirts fly through the air in a symphony worthy of the world's greatest orchestra. Even with the assistance of multiple chakra strings and the ability to put multiple shirts away at once, it still took a solid twenty minutes.

"And done!" I snag another scroll and unseal its contents. "Kami damn it. There's just as many pants as there are shirts. This is going to be a long day."

"You have no idea how right that is." A menacing voice snarls from my doorway. Whoever the speaker is, they're pissed beyond belief.

"Oh hey Sasuke." I casually greet him like nothing is wrong as pants start to fly through the air. "You look... violated. She wasn't too rough was she?"

"Why would you do that to me?!" He angrily shouts at me. "Why! You know how I feel about fan-girls!"

The symphony of flying pants comes to a crashing halt as I turn my gaze onto Sasuke.

"Hn." I mimic his grunt.

"That's why?" He irritably yells. "Because I went hn?"

"Yes." I calmly clarify. "I will not allow you to slip back into your old ways. How else are you supposed to make friends?"

"I don't need friends, I've got you." Sasuke points out.

"Yeah well having only one friend isn't healthy." I retort. "And before you say it I know that makes me a hypocrite, but I do have Shirokumo too so I'm currently better off than you."

"You know what? I'm not going to say that." Then Sasuke turns scary. He tilts his head so that shadows dance on his face and his unnerving red eyes stare out of the blackness at me. "I'll just say this."

"Oh scary!" I taunt him. "I'm trembling in my boots!"

"Now that she's done with me it's your turn with Karin."

"I'm ready whenever you are Alvarcus!" Karin calls from behind Sasuke. I had no idea she was out there.

"Oh. Shit."

Sasuke laughs demonically in sweet, sweet victory.

"Wait it took her hours to finish with you? Damn I bet she was very thorough. No wonder you look violated!"

Sasuke instantly wilts as it's my turn to laugh in victory.

"Name." Karin demands.

"Alvarcus Mar." I supply. "Do you have to wear a lab coat?"

"No, I just want to." She taps her pen onto her clipboard twice. "Age."

"Thirteen. So why did I have to lay down on a gurney for this? I'm not actually in need of medical assistance right now."

"Helps me get in character." Wow she's weird. "Height."

"Uh... not exactly sure but around 150cm. Did you have to put on rubber gloves? That's sending a very scary message."

"Don't worry, I'll be gentle." She promises as she taps the clipboard again. "Weight."

"Wow that's terrifying. There are some things I'm not going to allow. That includes every possible action that you'd need rubber gloves for. And... uh... I have no idea."

"How do you not know how much you weigh?" Karin exclaims in disbelief.

"Because I have a kinjutsu that has a physical mass of it's own and I never weighed myself after I got it because I had more important things to do like fighting for my life and training so I actually stood a chance when I fought for my life?"

"Oh. Really?"

"Yes. Why would I lie about that?"

"That covers pretty much everything then." Karin puts the clipboard and pen down then smirks at me. She raises her hands up in the air then snaps one of the rubber gloves like a doctor preparing for an intense surgery. "Strip."

"Sorry what?" I gawk at her. There's no way she said that!

"Strip." She repeats with mirth dancing in her eyes.

"Why the hell do I need to strip!" I protectively cover myself from the crazy lady before me.

"I need to be familiar with your body if I'm going to be your personal medic. It will make my job easier to get a baseline while you're healthy. Strip."

"Can't you just run a diagnostic jutsu on me or something? I'd rather keep my modesty intact."

"I'll be doing that next. A visual representation of what you're supposed to look like will help should anything drastic happen to you. It helps me conserve chakra if I know how something should be, I can direct the flow better and more efficiently."

"Fine. But I'm keeping my underwear on." I relent to her demands. "You better have done this to Sasuke too."

"Oh I did. He took much more time to convince than you. He had the strangest scar on his arm though, it looked like someone cut it off then crudely stitched it back on." Karin gets a dreamy look in her eyes. "You wouldn't believe how chiseled he is."

"I'm repressing that. Repressing it very deeply, never to be seen again." I swing my legs off of the gurney and hop onto my feet.

"Oh be quiet!" Karin waves me off. "I'm sure Orochimaru-sama's child can contend with Sasuke. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

"You know that we're not actually related right?" I pull off my scarf. "Technically I'm adopted. That's the best term I've got for it."

"Holy shit." Karin goes wide eyed and all color drains from her face. She takes a hesitant step away from me and takes off her glasses. Then she rubs her eyes and puts them back on.

"I know right?" I agree with her. "Who would have guessed that Orochimaru-sama would adopt? Well I do sorta look like him – the result of some sort of chakra imprinting thing, not really sure exactly how that happened – but there's no blood relation at all."

I take off my shirt next, baring my torso to the world.

"Holy fucking shit." Karin pinches herself on the arm hard enough to draw blood.

"Yeah! Finally someone agrees with me. How does that even work? It's not like chakra makes up our physical appearances so how'd that even happen? Maybe he flooded me with yang chakra on accident? Or is it yin? I always get those two mixed up. I don't think that he'd make a mistake like that though. Oh well what's done is done."

I don't think I'll ever understand how the Edo Tensi works, not to mention my special case. I casually turn around to place my neatly folded shirt onto the gurney, inadvertently showing Karin my back.

"KAI!" Karin shouts while clasping her hands together.

"Uh... you alright over there?" I look over my shoulder as I take off my sunglasses. "Hm, probably should have taken the shades off first. Oh well, not like it harmed anything."

"KAI KAI KAI KAI KAI!" Karin chants like a mantra.

"Dude. Why are you trying to dispel a genjutsu? I can't even use most genjutsu. Whoops, shouldn't have said that. Stupid Alvarcus, real stupid. Don't reveal weaknesses like that!" There's just something about the shivering terrified girl in front of me that made me slip that out.

"That's not a genjutsu?" Karin rasps out like she's under great strain. "Please say that's a genjutsu."

"Uh... no? I don't even know what you're talking about." What's her problem?

"All that!" She points at me with a shaky hand. "Those are real?"

"Oh." I glance down at what she's pointing at: my chest. My chest that's littered with scars. From the long gash that spans the entire torso from one of my first uses of the Jiongu, to the fused shut flesh over my heart, to the fist sized scar Orochimaru himself gave me, to the minor stab wounds and slashes. Then there's my arms, they have light slash marks, deep puncture wounds and even circles from when I lost them. Not to mention all of the exit points for the Jiongu everywhere on me. "Yeah they're real. Sorry I should have warned you."

"A-and that one?" She taps the side of her neck. "It goes all the way around."

"Yep." I gingerly touch the scar. "Kinda gives a whole new meaning to losing your head when you've actually lost your head. Puts it all into perspective. It also gave me a healthy respect for sword users."

"Y-y-your back?" She forces out the faint whisper.

"My masks?" I turn so my back is towards her displaying the five white masks. "They're stitched on."

"W-why?" Karin's eyes are tearing up.

"It's better than having pulsing lumps on my back." I offer up a shrug. "I used to say necessity but I don't actually need them. I want them to make me less... freakish. Sadly I'm not sure how well they work though. I'm still..." I halfheartedly gesture at my body, "yeah. Plus the pure black eyes really don't help that image out at all."

"I-I'm so sorry." Karin says as a lone tear spills down her face. "I'm so sorry."

"Eh you get used to it." I pick my shirt up and put it back on. She doesn't need to see any more of me, plus it hides my scars from her so she can pull herself together.

"I'm so sorry." She says again.

"Okay stop that!" I round on her. "I get that you feel bad that I've been through hell! I get that you can't comprehend how I've lived though one of those wounds not to mention all of them! But I don't want your sympathy! I don't want you to look at me and feel pity! I am one of the most dangerous people on this whole island and I will not walk around with everyone looking at me like I'm broken!"

"But you are broken." She softly says. "I can feel your chakra."

"Great you're an empathetic sensor." I groan out. I forgot about that, I just remembered that she's got a huge range and acute sensor capabilities.

"You're not the only one." Karin looks at me through watery eyes. "I know how you feel. How you don't want others to look at you and see something broken."

"You have you're own share of things you'd rather have hidden, don't you?" I know what she's talking about already.

"Yes." She pulls back one of her sleeves to reveal countless bite marks. "I don't want pity either. I don't want sympathy. Because no one gets it, no one understands how it really is. But we do. These scars, these bites, are a mark of shame to me."

"I am not ashamed of my scars." I correct her thoughts. "They are a testament to my strength, my sheer will to keep moving forward regardless of what happens. That's how I feel about them. Others see failure crisscrossed over my body while I see victories. There's one fact that everyone seems to always overlook: I survived. I may not have won the fights but I did not lose. Even when I was stabbed in the heart, even when my limbs were severed with impunity, even when my head was taken from my shoulders I survived."

"Mine aren't that way." Karin looks at her arm in disgust. "They're a symbol of a little girl who couldn't protect herself. They disgust me. How can someone possibly think I'm anything but repulsive now?"

"Oh and I'm the epitome of the male specimen?" I snarkily say to her. "Hello! I've got masks stitched to my back, that's not normal or attractive! At this rate I'm never going to get laid! At least my face is pretty, don't you think so?"I dramatically flutter my eyelashes at her.

"Ha!" Karin lets one laugh leave her. "We're a pair of misfits aren't we?"

"Speak for yourself." I smile at her. "I'm not a misfit, I'm a badass. There's a distinct difference."

"Alright Mister Badass, I think that will conclude your first physical." Karin laughs quietly to herself at my antics.

"About time! We just met and you've already gotten me half naked!" I make my way over to the door, then something finally sinks in. "Wait. First?"

"Of course. We need to have check ups to make sure nothing changes." Karin's eyes gleam dangerously. "I have a whole bunch of rubber gloves I need to use on someone. Thankfully I've just been assigned two patients."

"NOPE!" I sprint out of the room.

"He's strange." Karin says to herself while looking at the door I escaped through. "To go through all of that and not feel like hate and anger? He has more than his fair share, but nowhere near what I would have expected."

The door flies open and I step back inside and snag one of the hanging lab coats off the wall. "I'm taking this!"

Then I sprint out of the room again.

"Haha you brat!" Karin laughs. "Keep the damn coat!"

"Summoning Jutsu!" I slam my hand to the ground.

"Oh." Shirokumo says as the smoke clears. "We've got a change of scenery. Is this the new base?"

"Yep." I confirm his guess. "In fact this is my new room."

"That would explain the couch." Shirokumo chuckles to himself. "Ah dammit! I've got to make a whole new web here now! I was quite attached to the old one too. Dang."

"Or... and I'm just throwing this out there... you could not do that?"

"Nope. It's happening." Shirokumo speedily darts up a wall and starts on construction. "Right now. It's happening right now."

"Fine, it won't bother me. It was for everyone who is bothered by having a massive web constantly hovering over their heads concealing who know what kind and how many spiders." I shrug in indifference and plop down onto my couch. "Oh this is wonderful. So glad I stole this."

"You've got issues." Shirokumo blandly says as he's spinning a web. "Anyways what's going on with you? Did you just call me here to check out the new room?"

"No, I've got a task for you." My mood shifts from its usual openness to frigid. "Keep tabs on Karin. Let me know if she gets any unsavory orders."

"Karin Uzumaki, the one with the interesting healing power via biting and is a highly accurate sensor. Why is she getting special treatment?"

"She's trying to befriend me." I icily explain to my loyal summon. "She's trying to get close to me."

"And that's bad how exactly?" Shirokumo halts his construction to observe me.

"I don't want another Tayuya."

"Right. That would be bad." He agrees with me.

The Next Day

"Alvarcus." Orochimaru sweeps into my lab with a grand flourish.

My laboratory is surprisingly bare. I have no need for advance state of the art equipment and as a result there's nothing of the sort here. I have no need for long and menacing operating tables. I have no need for anything impressive really. All that is in the large room is a lot of tables and cabinets. The tables line the walls while the cabinets are secured above them for storage. They're full of extra sealing ink, brushes and varying sizes of sealing paper and scrolls ranging from a small square tag to the huge scrolls like Jiraya carries around. The room is expertly lit with multiple lights to make sure no matter where I'm working I have plenty of light. Like I said, the room is hardly impressive but it has exactly what I need.

According to Orochimaru this was once where he used to create seals of his own. Then he'd take them and test them on whoever was nearby at the time. As a result of that he's relocated his own personal seal room nearer to the prisoners since he got tired of making the long walk over to them. Morbid yet practical.

"I've been hearing the strangest things about you." Orochimaru continues. "Have you been – is that a lab coat? Where did you get that?"

I look up from the seal array I'm working on. It's one of the massive scrolls, I've been working on this all night long. "Stole it."

"You're not even going to attempt to make an excuse?" Orochimaru actually sounds surprised.

"Nope. I'm working, I don't have time for games." I spin on my chair to face my Kage better. Hmm, I should rearrange the room so that I face the door while I work. That's a good idea. "Did you need me? I was kind of in the middle of something important."

"It can wait. What are you working on?" Orochimaru walks over to examine my massive seal array. "This is..."

"An attempt to link seals." I finish for him since he's lost himself analyzing my work. "I think I might have gotten it to work. Emphasis on think. A very strong emphasis on think, there's a high chance of explosions."

"Yes I can see that." Orochimaru traces part of the seal. "See this part? It's horribly inefficient. If you did something like this," Orochimaru picks up a brush and quickly draws a new piece, "then you'll run less risk of failure. That wasn't even a critical part."

Orochimaru looks up from my seal array, he does a quick once over of me then his eyes dart back to the array. He intently pours over the massive and intricate seal to understand it. After a surprisingly quick five minutes he looks back at me to stare at me with pride.

"I know what you're attempting to do now!" He gleefully claps his hands together. "You're going about this all wrong, just wrong!"

"Really? How would you do it? I know I made this complicated but it was the simplest solution I could think of."

"Interesting. Explain your reasoning to me. We can make this a learning experience." Orochimaru pulls up a chair next to mine as I begin to walk him through both my seal and my thought process.

"Okay, so first off you need to know what I'm doing. This whole thing is just one super complex trigger mechanism, in it's simplest terms it's supposed to activate another seal based on certain conditions. That's all this does, all the fun stuff is done by a whole different seal. Still with me?"

"Yes, but there is nothing 'simple' about this." Orochimaru shares a smile with me as we're intently discussing my side project. "Continue."

"Of course. It's nice to get another opinion, especially from someone better in the art than me." We both turn back to the seal. "My issue is that I can't feasibly define all of the necessary conditions for it to not activate with each individual seal I want to make. Basically there's just not enough room on my hearts to put both the fun seal that swallows people whole and the advanced triggering seal to make sure it doesn't swallow me whole. So I came up with this."

I gesture at the massive seal array.

"I made this to act as a master seal array. In a grossly oversimplification here's how it works: Once one of my hearts stop beating the seal on said heart will activate. That activation will call out to this massive seal array with a simple question: Can I activate the other seal? In this case it's the seal that swallows people. Then the master seal array is going to cycle through and check that the seal on my heart meets specific requirements that I've written down on the master seal array. Things like am I not next to the heart? Is Sasuke not next to the heart? Is anyone or anything I care about not next to the heart? Once the master seal array goes through the checklist it will answer the heart seal. If it passes, then it activates the next seal, the one that swallows people. If it fails, then my heart just dies and the seal remains inactivated."

Basically the seal on my hearts would ask the master seal 'can I go boom?' and the master seal would look at a long list of things and respond 'do it!' or 'fuck no!' It's way more complicated than that.

"There are some downsides to doing it this way though." I point to a specific part of the master seal array, one that is suspiciously blank. "The only way to synchronize the master seal array and a heart seal is to make the heart seal there. I've got to place my heart on it in this specific spot or they won't be connected and then there's no way for the seal to activate. That means I can't reapply the seal to a new heart during combat. No one is going to let me whip out this monster of a seal and draw a new seal on a heart I stole from their teammate."

"Another issue – while not really a problem it's more of a pain in the ass – is defining every single thing that I don't want to be swallowed up. Honestly that's why I'm using such a massive scroll for this, the actual master seal array won't take up a thousandth of the entire thing. What really sucks is that I have to specify so many things for it to check that I need as much room as possible."

"That's pretty much it." I turn to Orochimaru. He's been attentively listening to my every word. Not only was he analyzing the functionality of my master seal array but he was also studying me and my thought process. He's figuring out how I think. "Any questions?"

"Yes, just one." Orochimaru is in his science mode, hell we're both in our science modes. Being able to talk about seals with anyone is rare, to discuss such a massive project is even more rare. We're both truly enjoying this. "Why did you decide to make this specific solution to your problem?"

"I sat down and came up with all the stuff and people I don't want to be caught up in the seal that swallows things. It was long. Really long. Which is rather interesting itself, but that's a whole different conversation. Anyways, I needed a way to define all of that and like I said earlier there just isn't enough space on a human heart to list it all. Plus with the master seal array I don't have to add in a new person to the 'do not swallow' list on each heart. I'll just have to add it to the master seal array. It also saves me from having to redo the heart seals if I wanted to add someone to that list. It makes upkeep easier."

"Yes, I suppose that does make logical sense." Orochimaru turns his eyes to the already impressive list of people and things I don't want swallowed. "But it isn't that practical."

"Yeah, it's going to be a long list. It's doable, but it's going to take forever." I agree with him, it is ridiculous. But it's also the best I could come up with.

"I may have a better solution for you." Orochimaru says with a great amount of confidence. "There is nothing wrong with yours, it would work with just a little more tweaking. But my solution could eliminate some of the downsides of yours."

"I'm all ears." I give him my full attention.

"How large is the danger zone?" Orochimaru asks as he pulls out a blank piece of sealing paper off the stack I have on my desk. He's not even going to grab a scroll for this?

"Five meters." I observe Orochimaru quickly create a tiny explosive seal, at most it will just make a popping noise. "I figured I'd make the seal on the hearts only activate if they were six meters away from whatever I deem important. That gives a meter of leeway."

"Six meters it is." Orochimaru adds on to the small explosive seal, making his own trigger. "While what you were attempting would work and I'm honestly impressed you came up with it and even made it, it is overly complex and difficult to maintain. When you create another seal you have to add it to the master seal. Plus you'd have to write down everyone and everything that you didn't want your seal to go off around. True it could be considered efficient as a concept, but I would make it like this."

Orochimaru finishes the trigger and slides it over to me.

"That could work." I eagerly pick up the seal and twist it this way and that way to fully understand it. "What you're doing is instead of having the seal report to a specific master seal it's just looking for another instance of itself."

"Yes. This removes the need for the master seal array entirely." Orochimaru eagerly explains to me. "Instead of checking a ridiculously long list of conditions all it has to do is look to see if there's another like it within range. This version is much easier to apply, and with a lot of practice you could apply it during combat. This also removes the need for unnecessary upkeep to your master seal array, you can just give seals to whoever needs them at the time."

"Okay, I see your idea there. There's a problem with it though, I'd be handing out seals that swallow everything indiscriminately. Pretty sure not everyone is going to let me draw on their chests, especially the kunoichi. I really don't want to piss them off and casually asking 'hey let me get you topless so I can draw this on you real quick' would do that. Sure I can take a beating but that doesn't mean I enjoy it."

"I believe a specific Kusa kunoichi would say otherwise." Orochimaru playfully teases me.

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response." I evenly say. "So, how do you expect me to work around that?"

"What are we working on? What type of seal?" Orochimaru asks me some leading questions. He wants me to figure this part out myself.

"Another defense for my hearts, a crude and basic time-space seal that swallows everything around it that is activated by an advanced trigger."

"Wrong." Orochimaru's eyes dance in enjoyment. He's loving every moment of our brainstorming session. "That's the entire array, what we're working on is..."

"The trigger." It clicks. I get what he's hinting at, it's literally in front of my face. He's already shown me a solution before I even asked my question. "Just the trigger. The trigger doesn't care what seal it activates, that seal can be anything from my heart seal to your harmless explosive tag. And since the trigger is only looking for another trigger it can be used on any type of seal and still work as a beacon to make another trigger not activate."

"Exactly." Orochimaru mirrors my enthusiasm. "All you'll have to do is give someone a copy of the trigger then they're protected. That's much easier and the seal itself is much quicker to make and less complicated. There is no need to make some long and convoluted list of things that you don't want blown up."

"Brilliant!" I beam up at the Snake Sannin. "How did you come up with that?"

"I stole the premise from the Hiraishin, each marker acts like a beacon to the user. In this case the scale is much smaller and is for seals alone instead of the user, it's completely autonomous once you place a seal. That alone makes this much easier to create, I simply have no idea how the Hiraishin works other than some far-fetched theories."

"This is great! I've been trying to make this for almost a week now and that was as far as I got. Though I am kinda miffed that you just waltzed in here and had a solution ready within minutes."

"There's no need to feel dejected." Orochimaru attempts to comfort me. "I've been working with seals for decades, you don't even have six months of experience. It's miraculous how far you've come in that time. I've seen highly capable seal users that couldn't begin to even think of your solution, let alone craft it!"

"You sure you don't want to help me with the Sword of Totsuka? That would make things go a lot quicker." I plaster a shit eating smile on my face. "Please?"

"No. That is your project." Orochimaru doesn't cave.

"Fine, fine. So did you need something? We got distracted." Totally okay with that though. He solved one of my problems.

"Oh so we did! This is why we shouldn't share laboratories, we'd constantly be distracted." He's got a point there, once we started to talk seals we disregarded everything else. "I've heard some very interesting rumors about you."

"Already?" I tap my chin with a finger and look off into the distance as if I'm deep in thought. "I don't remember doing anything noteworthy yet."

"I was told that you ransacked one of the kitchens and made off with various ingredients, ranging from distilled water to cooking oil, to vodka. Care to explain that? Especially the last one."

"Oh they're over there." I haphazardly gesture to the other side of my large lab. Numerous beakers are all filled to the exact same amounts of various liquids. There's two rows of ten sitting on the table.

"So they are." Orochimaru strolls over to them and reads all of the labels. "But why are they here?"

I shrug as I fiddle with my own version of Orochimaru's trigger. "I'm attempting to make the Sword of Totsuka."

"And?" Orochimaru prods me to continue.

"It's a chakra blade made of liquid. I'm going to test how well each of those liquids holds chakra, hence the labels and the precise amount of each. I don't want skewed data because I used twice as much water as I did vodka. I've already channeled more chakra than most chunin have at their disposal into each one. Next is to see which one holds the chakra the longest."

"Understandable. What was the point of using so much chakra though? I get that you of all people don't need to be stingy with it, but isn't more than a chunin has a bit much?"

"The time frame was too small. Just adding in enough chakra to power an E-ranked jutsu and each liquid only held that chakra for less than a second. Even adding enough for a C-ranked jutsu didn't provide me with enough of a time difference to truly get accurate data, so I said fuck it and dumped in a shit ton."

"But why vodka?"

"The swords traps people in a drunken genjutsu. Why not vodka? There's also rum, gin, tequila, whiskey, brandy, and a few beers too. There's more variants of alcohol there than anything else."

"Where did you find all of that? How did you even get it all? You're thirteen!"

"I'm a shinobi?" I quizzically look at Orochimaru.

"Oh. Yes. Funny how you forget the little things. I'll be going now, it's obvious that you're preoccupied. Plus the longer I stay here the more I feel myself wanting to join you and I've already stayed far past what I intended. Unfortunately there are things that require my attention."

"Yeah and I'm going to go write on my hearts. That is a weird concept." I stand up and shrug off the lab coat then remove the rest of my layers until my torso is bare.

"Until next time, my child." Orochimaru tenderly says as he prepares to leave.

"See ya. We should have a powwow like this again sometime, it was nice to work with someone competent."

"Oh believe me, I look forward to that much more than you do. You have no idea how hard it is to find competent help these days, especially with something as niche as fuinjutsu." Orochimaru closes the door behind him.

I push out my water heart and just the heart. The stark white mask swings upwards as if it's on a hinge and a tentacle of black threads creeps out of my back while remaining parallel to the ground. The tentacle arcs fully around my body to bring the beating heart before me.

I daintily dip my brush into ink and start to write my first original seal onto it.

SLAM

"Oi Alvarcus come quick holy fuck man!" Kidomaru shouts once he sees me holding a thumping heart in my hands.

"Will you be quiet? I'm trying to focus here, one misstep and boom everyone is dead." Not really, but I wanted to see Kidomaru drastically pale. Which he did. Totally worth it. "Now, I've got four more hearts to go then I've got to make a handful of beacons to give to people. What do you want? This better be damn important, if it's not then turn around right now."

"Uh... when will you be done? I can wait." Kidomaru offers.

"Fine. Sit down and shut up. I don't know how long this will take." I reel my water heart back in and my lightning heart takes its place.

I've got to come up with something to stop people from barging into here. No one would dare go into Orochimaru's lab uninvited, I want mine to have the same status. But he achieved that by conducting a lot of human experiments and letting the screams of his victims scare away any prying eyes. I don't want to go down that route.

My earth heart swaps with my lightning heart.

Maybe I can set up elaborate seal traps? Tacky, but it might be effective. I don't want to waste that much time and effort though, seals take time to craft and can be very tricky. I'm going to go with something that I already know, I have so much on my plate already that I don't want to waste any time. But what?

My wind heart switches with my earth heart.

I could ask Shirokumo to make a massive web maze right in front of the door? That would keep almost everyone out, only those who are foolish would attempt to get through. Or the brave who want to test themselves. I don't want it to become a pastime activity to try and break into my lab.

My fire heart swaps with my wind heart.

Perhaps the Spiders have someone that knows some trick to help me? I don't know like a gate spider? Is that a thing? I'll have to ask. Well that might be a bad idea. I don't know how the strain of keeping that summon here indefinitely would be. A Nest Egg is nothing, but keeping someone like Arachne here for days is too much even for me.

"Done." I reel in my fire heart and set down my brush. "So what did you want?"

"You're lucky it wasn't time sensitive." Kidomaru yawns. "I came here three hours ago."

"Oh. No shit?" It took that long to apply all of those seals? No wonder it's rare to see someone create a seal during combat. Sure I went extra slow since it's my first time but damn! Three hours!

"Yeah. Three hours of watching you paint hearts." Kidomaru drones out. "Now come on, there's something you should see."

"Oookay?" I put all my clothes back on and follow Kidomaru out of my lab. "So where are we going?"

"A specific place." Kidomaru is intentionally being vague. "It's something that Sakon, Ukon, Jirobo, Sasuke and I all worked on. Like our own little secret."

"And you're bringing me in on it?" This is new. I wonder what it could possibly be?

"Something like that yeah."

Kidomaru and I stroll casually through numerous hallways until we come to one that has Sakon, a sleeping Ukon, Jirobo and Sasuke standing at the end of it. They're all impatient and every single one of them lights up when the see us.

"About damn time!" Sasuke shouts down the hallway. "Three hours! Three! What kept you so long?"

"He was painting hearts." Kidomaru laughs at his own words. "He insisted that he had to finish before coming."

"... Really?" Sakon asks me with a confused look. "What color?"

"I applied a seal to each of my five hearts. That's what he meant to say." I growl out. I will not have my reputation tarnished because of some idiotic joker! "And if he knows what's good for him he'll never bring it up again. So Kidomaru, do you know what's good for you?"

"Probably not." Kidomaru grins.

"At least you're honest." I sigh.

"I like to think it's one of my better qualities." Kidomaru slows down walking, letting me take the lead.

"You've got -" I cut off mid step. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. It's not that I'm feeling killing intent. It's not even that I feel like there's someone out to hurt me. It's everyone else's grinning faces and the feeling of my foot breaking a string. "FUCK YOU ALL!"

It's too late to dodge. The falling bucket has already spilled its contents and said contents are barely thirty centimeters away from me. I have no hope to dodge, I wasn't ready. My guard was down.

SPLASH

The sound of a metal bucket clonking to the ground is accompanied outrageous laughter. Every single one of them is laughing like no tomorrow, like they have no care in the world. I don't blame them, if our spots were reversed I would be laughing hysterically right along with them.

Okay I lied, I do blame them.

"Really?" I try to wipe the substance off of my face. "Pink paint? That's what you picked?"

"HAHAHA! YOU SHOULD SEE YOUR FACE!" Kidomaru is rolling on the floor laughing while holding his sides with all six of his arms.

"Priceless." Sakon says between hearty chuckles.

"I think he looks better this way!" Jirobo wipes a tear from his eye.

"I told you, didn't I? Revenge would be sweet." Sasuke laughs evilly.

"Yeah yeah well done you've got me." I flick my hands and some pink paint splatters onto the wall. "So obviously Kidomaru made the tripwire, if it was normal shinobi wire I would have seen it. I'm going to guess Sakon had the paint, you seem like an artsy type. Jirobo just helped set everything up. That leaves the mastermind, Sasuke."

"You got it!" Jirobo flashes me a thumbs up.

"Mmm... sweet, sweet revenge." Sasuke says in superiority.

"Are you enjoying yourselves?" I try to strain some of the bright paint out of my hair. It just made it worse.

"Yes. Yes I am." Sasuke's eyes flash crimson.

"I accept." I cockily smirk at him.

"Accept? Accept what?" Sasuke's proud face morphs into one of confusion.

"Your declaration of war." My gravelly voice harshly resonates down the silent hallway.

"Fuck me." Sasuke whispers out in fear.

"Not my type." I smirk. "Better start running."

"SCATTER!" Sakon orders as everyone else flees down different hallways.

Four black monstrosities rip themselves out of my back and kneel before me.

~You're going to let me play with them?~

My black eyes stare at my loyal minions of destruction. "Fetch them for me."

"FUCK FUCK FUCK!"

"WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO!"

"WHY DID I AGREE TO THIS!"

"SHUT UP AND RUN YOU FOOLS!"

Orochimaru is sitting at his desk, writing away like there is no tomorrow. He's already completed a mountain of paperwork, the bane of all Kages. He's almost done then he gets to go play with some of the prisoners. Strictly for science, his own personal enjoyment is an added bonus.

Yet his paperwork is different from the normal Kages. While their paperwork has things to do with running a village, Orochimaru's has to do with his future plans. Most of them are ideas that he wishes to test, a few are orders for acquiring more test subjects, and there's even a detailed schedule for Alvarcus's and Sasuke's respective training programs.

For obvious reasons Alvarcus's is much more thorough and detailed than Sasuke's.

"Dump paint on me." A faint voice wafts through the air.

"MMMM!" A muffled scream follows the faint voice.

"You all should have known better." The voice speaks again.

"Mmm!"

"MMM!"

"MMMMM!"

'There's four distinct muffled voices. Just what is going on?' Orochimaru muses to himself.

"I'll teach you better."

'Is that Alvarcus?' Orochimaru rises up, paperwork forgotten unfinished on the desk, and flings open his office door.

"What?" None other than Alvarcus snarls at Orochimaru.

Orochimaru can't quite process exactly what is happening just outside his door. For starters Alvarcus is covered head to toe in bright pink paint. Not one bit of him isn't the obnoxious color. With each step that he takes he leaves behind a trail of footprints. With every twitch of his hands paint flies off him to stain the walls pink. Everything he touches joins in his unfortunate condition.

But what's really interesting is not what's happened to Alvarcus but what he's doing.

He's currently dragging four things behind him. At first glance they look like nothing more than just a heaping mound of white, nothing too strange especially by Orochimaru's standards. But then all four of the mounds wiggle in unison, there's someone inside of them. Alvarcus has used one of his many summons to bind four people. The mound farthest on the left has what looks like two heads, the middle left one is a hulking man, the middle right looks like someone bound six individual arms then bound all of them to his chest, while the farthest right has a faint tinge of crimson escaping where the person's eyes should be. Alvarcus has caught and bound the Sound Three and Sasuke and he's is currently dragging them to... wherever he's going.

"Nothing. Carry on." Orochimaru steps back into his office and shuts the door to the muffled screams of the four captives. They thought they were saved. Instead they're ignored and left to their fate.

"You're right." Orochimaru hears Alvarcus address one of the captives. "There isn't enough bumps in this hallway. Let me fix that."

A pitiful whine escapes from each captive as a loud stomp echoes down the hall.

"There. That's much better." Alvarcus drags his captives down the hallway and around a corner.

"Well that was eventful." Orochimaru sits back down at his desk and resumes filling out paperwork like nothing ever happened. "I wonder what I'll have for dinner?"