Ch366. Orochimaru's ego

Orochimaru entered the Forest of Death as the second part of the Chunin Exam started and found himself on the verge of a dilemma.

On one hand, he could go after his original objective and hunt down Sasuke Uchiha to give him his present.

On the other, he felt an almost unexplainable itch to punish his wayward subordinate. Orochimaru knew he would not be sleeping well until Tayuya knew the error of her ways.

Yet, this presented a unique problem for him. The second he starts a fight, he will be on a timer. He had no idea if somebody would sense his chakra when he started to use it with so many sensors in the village. He also had no idea how long it would take for Konoha ninjas to discover the bodies of Taki genins.

The smart thing to do would be to go after Uchiha and test him for a bit before retreating. No need to give Konoha a reason to fortify before his plans even start, right?

But Tayuya...

'I guess the Uchiha can wait. I may still make it after I deal with Tayuya and even if not, there is an entire month in-between the second and the third part of these exams. Time to give the poor Tayuya a visit.' Orochimaru amusedly thought, knowing his future actions were decided for him already. His ego simply could not let this slight go.

Orochimaru ran through the Forest of Death, looking for Tayuya's team. He might not be the best sensor out there but he had enough experience to track them down in under an hour.

Hiding in the foliage, Orochimaru's eyes landed on his target. She no longer wore the standard sound attire, instead, she sported unassuming black pants and a black shirt. Clothes that allowed her to blend in with the civilians.

For a second, Orochimaru appreciated the concept. Ninjas had their uniforms based on which village they served so he obviously followed this trend without really putting much thought into it and made his own uniform for the Sound Village.

But seeing the Uzushio team looking perfectly civilian, no headband, no vest with many pouches, no clan symbol indicating their affiliation... Simply put, Orochimaru could see the usefulness of that.

Tayuya's teammates somewhat surprised Orochimaru.

The boy around fifteen was clearly a Kaguya, which should not be possible since they were supposed to be all exterminated except his own revenge-seeking pet Kaguya. And yet, here it was. A white-haired boy with clothes that were clearly not expensive and could be easily discarded, and red dots above his eyebrows indicating his bloodline.

Orochimaru couldn't help but lick his lips at discovering this treasure.

The girl was thirteen or fourteen and had Uzumaki crimson hair so identifying her was not a problem despite the lack of any symbol on her clothes. She was obviously an Uzumaki.

That in itself was also a good find. Orochimaru had to admit he was entirely too focused on Tayuya during the first part of the Chunin Exams so he didn't pay much attention to the other kiddies but...

He had no Uzumaki under his employ.

Since the Uzushiogakure sprang into existence, all Uzumakis as if disappeared. After his defection, Orochimaru didn't put much thought into acquiring an Uzumaki specimen at first. While Konoha had only one at the time, there were hundreds of them scattered across the world just waiting to be plucked. Everybody knew that.

And when he heard of Uzushio and decided it was finally time to procure one of them, if only to use him or her as a spy, there was not even one to be found. He spent two whole years looking for one with no result to show for it.

That's why his eyebrow started to twitch at the thought of Tayuya having any ties to the Uzumaki. Yes, she was strong but she was not interesting from the scientific point of view. It was not him who did her tests. There were thousands of more interesting specimens in his village and even more experiments in process at all times. He had no time to look at the DNA results of a pink-haired girl with limited potential.

'I'll have to make an example of whoever was assigned to be her doctor.' Orochimaru mentally grumbled.

"Come out." A voice suddenly snapped Orochimaru out of his thoughts, causing him to lift his eyebrows as he noticed the redhead of the team staring directly at him. He briefly wondered if she was bluffing but her gaze was too focused on him. He briefly thought how could a genin discover him when...

A smile started to creep on his face as he remembered a mention of Uzumaki's supposed bloodline prowess. 'Is that the Mind's Eye of Kagura?' He possessively gulped and the importance ranking of the kids in front of him was shuffled in his mind, the Kaguya boy dropping to second place as the redhead was promoted to the top.

Nevertheless, it was useless to keep hiding when he was found out so he calmly revealed himself to the group.

And was promptly shocked when Tayuya recognized him despite his Taki kunoichi skin attire.

"Snake bastard..." Tayuya tensed, preparing for a fight.

'How cute...' Orochimaru's lips twitched at the sight. He doubted she got strong enough to pose a challenge in the short time since she defected.

"Well, well, you grew disrespectful in the months we haven't seen each other." Orochimaru playfully said.

Tayuya wryly smiled, "And you haven't changed at all. Still the same shithead."

The only indication of Orochimaru's shock at her blatant rudeness was him blankly blinking at her as silence spread between them alongside the tense atmosphere.

Tayuya expected Orochimaru to give back some witty remarks. As his 'bodyguard', she spent enough time near him to know he never failed to have the last word.

That's why she was quite surprised when he suddenly lunged at her at incredible speeds. Clearly, her defection and lip disservice must have been too much of a shock to the man who loved instilling obedience.

When he heard Tayuya's response, Orochimaru decided he had had enough. The girl should have been shaking in her boots, knowing her end is coming because of what she has done but instead she dared to give him snark?

What did she think she was? An Uchiha?

He was almost upon her, noticing she didn't move even an inch yet, clearly unable to react to his speed. It was a pitiful display and the reason why she was expendable while serving him.

His mind already disregarded Tayuya, writing her off as dead, Orochimaru did not pay much attention to her as his fist was about to collide with her head. Instead, he focused on his follow-up. Should he kidnap the Kaguya boy and the Uzumaki girl? Should he leave them be for the time being and wait for a better opportunity?

His musings were interrupted when he suddenly heard a snap of fingers and instead of feeling the familiar wet crunch of his enemy's head being mauled by his punch, Orochimaru found his vision swirl before his brain registered the pain surging in his body, much to his shocked bewilderment. He was trying to put together what was happening, barely managing to figure out his body was uncontrollably flying through the air when it suddenly hit an obstacle with a dull thud.

Orochimaru's body collided with a tree, snapping it in two because of the force of shockwave used to fling him away, and a cloud of dust was sent into the air while the upper part of the thick tree slowly fell onto the ground, scaring the birds in the treetops and sending them flying away with an incessant fearful chirping. The impact of the upper part of the tree with the ground also cleared the cloud of dust as it generated a gust of wind, giving the three genins a clear sight of their opponent.

Orochimaru groaned, feeling as if he was just punched by Tsunade. He got barely any chance to regain his wits when his instincts screamed at him. Years of listening to them quickly turned his body into autopilot and before he could even think about it with his muddled mind, his body ducked, evading being decapitated by a bone sword.

The instincts didn't stop flaring however and Orochimaru had enough presence of his mind to jump away rather than attack. This appeared to be the correct decision as not even a second after he did that, chains burst from the ground, skewering the place he was just a moment ago.

Before he could get a breather, he heard the sound of a flute playing in the distance, dread inexplicably passing through his body. He heard this sound many times and knew it was Tayuya's attack but... He snarled to push these feelings away and focus on the unexpected challenge in front of him.

Something was wrong. How could these genins keep up with him? How could they surprise him so much?

Something... was very wrong!