Chapter-12

Chapter-12

Year 52 January, Orochimaru's Lab

[3rd Person's POV]

In a dim lit room filled with test tubes and plants of various varieties, there stood a tall figure with long black hair and pale white skin, his eyes were like that of a snake and it had a pale yellow color. That is Orochimaru, an elite jounin of

The Village Hidden In The Leaves. He looked at the dead rat inside the glass box, the rat's corpse looked liked the rat starved for weeks, its bones were clearly visible, and said with an expressionless face

"Subject-17 showed a high increase in physical strength, chakra, pain, and aggressiveness 10 seconds after the injection of supplement-19 and its muscle degenerated along with its fat resulting in a painful death after 2 minutes…. Experiment-12 Failed yet again."

He said as he pushed a button near the glass box which released a strong fire inside the box for a few seconds, After the flames disappeared all that remained of the rat's corpse was a small pile of ash. He still had the same expressionless face and turned his left and said,

"What do you think is the problem this time?.... Minato"

Behind him stood Minato with a notebook and pen in his hand as he recorded all the recordings, he stopped writing and started thinking for a few seconds while looking at his notebook, he looked up at Orochimaru and said,

"I think it's due to the imbalance of Yin and Yang inside the rat's body. When we injected it with supplement-19 which you created while using your snake's venom as a reference it increased the yang inside its body hence the increase in chakra and strength. However due to the lack of Yin to balance the increased Yang the body's natural instinct to survive increases the most easy emotion to manipulate, anger as Yin is increased when experiencing high emotions. But it's not possible for the slight increase in the Yin energy to bridge the gap between the High amount of Yang, Thus resulting in the breakdown of all the body parts except the bones."

[Explanation]

They were an unlikely duo as they had almost opposite personalities, Minato had a bright, sunny, and warm personality while Orochimaru had a dark, gloomy and cold personality. Jiraiya didn't even think that they would talk with each other.

When they met at the Hokage tower the day after the incident at the bath house where Kushina punched so hard that it broke his nose and 3 of his facial bones he was lucky that Tsunade was also there at that time. They were assigned to clear, which obviously meant killing the bandits in the trade route between Konoha and Fire Capital who raided a village near that place the previous day. When they reached there Minato still had a slight hesitation to kill them as all of them were sleeping except a few who were keeping guard. Seeing Minato's reluctance Jiraiya advised him that this is normal in the shinobi world and to not be afraid. Orochimaru who was hearing that lost his patience threw a glass bottle after summoning it from a scroll, The glass bottle was filled with a pale yellow liquid, it shattered as it landed on the ground and started releasing a purple smoke. Orochimaru immediately gave both Minato and Jiraiya a pack of brown powder each and told them to inhale the powder to survive the poisonous mist. Minato and Jiraiya both immediately did so as they heard the screams from the bandits and the sound of bodies falling.

After a few minutes all there was left was silence and Minato used [Strong Wind] to clear the poison and saw a gruesome sight that made him puke on the spot, All the corpses of the bandits had their eyes wide open which was fully red and blood leaking from their noses, eyes and ears. Their bodies contained scratch marks of their own nails signifying the intense pain they felt. When Minato asked why Orochimaru did that all he got for an answer was, "It's Convenient that way.' That day Minato didn't eat and just stayed at his home after returning from the mission till an curious red fox came to his house and started asking about the details, when Minato finished speaking about all those gruesome scenes he was tightly hugged by her and was dragged out of his house forcefully by her to cheer up his mood, which it did.

The next day they received a normal escort mission, They had to escort a minister to Fire Capital, and they completed the mission without any problems after 3 days and returned to Konoha to report to the Hokage. That day Minato asked Orochimaru to spar with him, to Jiraiya's surprise he agreed. Jiraiya decided to be the referee of that match, Minato was ready to activate his [Lightning Mode V2], his new version improving the old one further after achieving Nature Change in Lightning, the new one will improve all the old one's advantages even further while giving a new addition,

When fighting under a lightning cloud it attracts the natural lightning towards itself and for each lightning strike it further increases his speed and power while consuming chakra proportional to it.

As Jiraiya started the match, Minato gathered his chakra to enter [Lightning Mode V2] but suddenly felt a prick on his right leg, he looked down to see a white snake half buried on the ground biting his leg, that's the last thing he saw before fainting. That day both Orochimaru and Jiraiya received a verbal thrashing from an angry Tsunade.

But it was the opposite to Minato, he had stars in his eyes the next day he met Orochimaru and started shooting out his questions at a very fast speed and praised him, which made Orochimaru feel weird and Jiraiya sulk on the ground with tears in his eyes due to jealousy and pain.

Minato started following Orochimaru everywhere he went to ask him to take him as his student. It continued to happen for 2 weeks and Orochimaru finally relented and gave Minato a sample of his new poison and told him to find a cure for it to make him his student.

Minato found a cure within 4 days,

Orochimaru's grin when he saw Minato's cure gave shivers to Jiraiya who was just teaching Minato how fire works and what it was.

Ever since that day Minato has been with Orochimaru for most of his day except on missions and spending time with Kushina.

[Currently]

They are trying to invent a new chakra pill that will be more effective than the current one to have an advantage in the war as they are the only side without an ally, Iwa has allied with Shuna and Kumo has allied with Kiri.

"Smart as ever Minato"

"So is the experiment a failure Sensei?" Minato asked after he threw the ashes of the dead rat in the disposer.

"No, nothing's a failure, we just don't know the necessary answer," Orochimaru said as he took a test tube that had a colorless liquid and looked at it.

"Say Minato, what do you know about Yin and Yang?"

"I don't know much about it, but I do have some assumptions, can I say that?"

"You are very much welcome to," Orochimaru replied and placed down the test tube to listen to it carefully, he knew Minato was very talented and if he has learnt anything in his life is that there's nothing like too much knowledge.

"I'll go with Yang first as it's more easy to explain, Yang is what one could call vitality, it increases the energy of one's body, like what we have seen in the rat, it had an increased amount of chakra, and strength if it had the corresponding Yin it could have been like a summoning creature."

"Continue" Now Orochimaru was completely hooked.

"Yin is something like mental energy, I don't know how to say it but it's like it increases the intelligence, IQ, reasoning, and stuff related to mind and soul. We can see it in the summoned creatures, right? Your snake obviously has high strength and intelligence when compared to a normal snake. It could be because of Yin and Yang, so if we find how they… Evolved from a normal snake we can find out the solution."

As Minato kept on talking the grin on Orochimaru's face kept on widening and his eyes gained a crazy glint,

"HAHAHAHAHA!!! How could I not think of this? You are really a Genius like no other Mianto!"

Minato was confused but still got flushed by his praise.

"Did you find out the answer sensei?"

"Yes! It's Senjutsu." Orochimaru replied as he quickly made his way toward the next room where he stored all the information he collected, Minato followed him and saw his sensei opening the seal of the door which, in his opinion, was not that hard to crack open even without his sensei's chakra moving on a unique pattern. He followed him behind after the door was unlocked.

Orochimaru took out a scroll from a separate section named 'Senjutsu'; the section had only a single scroll in it. He opened the scroll and read out its content loudly,

"Senjutsu also known as sage jutsus is a specialized field similar to ninjutsu and genjutsu that involve the use of 'natural energy'. The Senjutsu practitioners are called sages. They learn to draw 'natural energy; inside their body and blend it with their own chakra to create senjutsu chakra. This gives a boost to all their basic stats allowing them to use techniques that would otherwise be impossible."

Minato was amazed at the revelation, he didn't know about this and the second Hokage's notes never mentioned anything about this. Maybe he was not aware of it or he avoided it on purpose, or just that the pages were over.

This opens up a lot of opportunities in the future,

"What's natural energy sensei?"

"It's the energy that surrounds everywhere and each of the regions of the summoned creatures have an abundance of natural energy which is the reason for their high strength, fast growth, and long life. It is incredibly hard to sense it normally, the sages of the contracted tribes usually help in teaching this to the contractors."

Orochimaru explained as he closed the scroll and kept it back in the same place.

"So why didn't you try to learn it?"

Minato asked curiously to his sensei was talented and smarter than anyone he had ever seen, even his Mito-sensei was just strong and talented in seal and barrier arts but Orochimaru could easily learn all those if given the knowledge about it and will probably develop it even further.

"Well… the snakes are not exactly the friendliest of contracted beasts and the snake sage said that she will inject the natural energy inside my body by biting me and I will have to control it so that I don't change into a snake statue and according to her no one has ever survived that so I didn't want to risk it."

Orochimaru said as they exited the room and sealed it again while making their way toward the living room.

"So that's also a dead end, so what now? Wait till I get a good contract beast?"

Minato asked as he made himself comfortable on the couch present in the living room,

"Even though that's not a bad idea it will very much depend on our luck and if you got a contract beast which is as bad as mine it would be totally a waste of our time."

Orochimaru declined it, considering it seriously not realizing it was meant to be a joke

"But I got even a better plan than that"

Orochimaru said with excitement in his voice which made his already scary voice even scarier as he sat on the couch and leaned forward while resting his hands on the table before the couch.

"We both know a great deal about seals and how seals work, and just need help in figuring out the absorbing natural energy part right?"

Minato Immediately guessed what Orochimaru was implying and asked in a surprised voice,

"You want us to make a seal that absorbs natural energy?"

"Yes"

"You Know It's very dangerous compared to our previous experiments, right? This one could easily cause deaths."

"Yes"

"You know you're crazy right? Sensei."

"Yes, are you in?"

" Yeah, When do we start?"

"After the war starts."