Chapter 59: volume 2, chapter 10: Parallels, filicide & preventative measures.
The return to consciousness was an abrupt jolt of foreign chakra in my system. I opened my eyes to a sight that would give me many sleepless nights.
Tano lay on the table that Akuro and I had been studying at. The books had been cleared away for him to be sprawled over it. He had been cut. He had been cut deep. An open wound ran the length of his torso, passing through muscle and bone, exposing the red of his viscera, his heaving lungs and beating heart, furiously pumping with pain and agony. I met his gaze, and he stared back at me with horrified, bloodshot eyes.
I felt bile rise in my throat at the display of monstrous brutality.
"It is so much easier to diagnose a problem when you can see it, don't you think?" Akuro's voice spoke from my left, his cadence having changed drastically, gaining a feminine lilt and losing all signs of the humility he had been faking.
I jerked, trying to turn, and realized I was restrained, held in place by what felt like coiling ropes. A quick glance down made my sphincter tighten at the sight of dozens of snakes wrapped around my entire body, from the tips of my toes to the peak of my neck.
I didn't respond to Akuro's question. I was in shock and out of my mind with terror, but I had learned from the last time I was kidnapped. There were contingencies in place now. I started gathering my chakra to activate a seal on my left inner thigh that served as an emergency signal for my sensei to come to my rescue.
"Ah, ah, ah. Let's not be hasty, Izuku," Akuro said.
Tano groaned in agony. My gaze snapped up to him, and I saw a line of ninja wire running from Akuro's index finger into Tano's fucking chest, wrapped around his goddamn aorta.
"What do you want?" I asked through gritted teeth, letting go of the chakra I had been gathering.
"What do you think not having the muscular strength to support itself, and being completely powered by chakra, would do to a heart?" Akuro said instead of answering, coming to stand beside me and inspect Tano like he was a museum exhibit.
I didn't respond. That was not an answer to my fucking question. I expanded my senses and felt the buzz of fuinjutsu in the walls, blocking out the senses of those outside the room. That explained why my sensei hadn't bust in here to clean his clock.
"I had always wondered," he continued despite my silence. "but setting up the conditions for such an experiment would be so bothersome. Such luck that we came across a natural occurrence, isn't it?" he said, turning to me with that same sincerity he always wore. It felt like an insult now.
I still didn't respond. My mind raced, trying to figure out his game, why we were still here and not already on our way out of the capital to meet his boss.
"You need to play, Izuku, otherwise what's the point?" Akuro said petulantly.
"Who are you? One of Orochimaru's lackeys?" I asked, trying to think and talk. I didn't have any jutsu I could cast seallessly and with the cutting power to sever ninja wire quicker than he could notice. Maybe if I could get my limbs free, I could unseal a fuma-shuriken and cut off his hand.
"You wish to know?" Akuro asked, his voice gaining a strange quality as he walked around to stand in front of me, blocking my view of Tano.
"I would think that was obvious given that I asked the question," I gritted out, my mind wondering at the possibility of using chakra strings to cut the wire—a long shot with my level of chakra control, but not impossible.
"Why? Does who I am matter? Does it somehow change anything?" Akuro asked, leaning forward, his breath buffeting my face. It smelled off—sweet, but in a poisonous way.
"It would make the lies easier to swallow," I replied through gritted teeth. I had thought he was my friend. I would be lying if I said this betrayal didn't sting.
"You are genuinely offended by my deception," he noted, looking amused. "How novel and un-shinobi-like." Then he shrugged and stepped back.
"But if it is some form of understanding you want, then fine—"
He raised the finger that held the ninja wire wrapped around Tano's heart to his lips. A pale finger reached out from between those closed lips to take the thread. That finger was followed by four more, then a slender palm that wrapped around Akuro's lower jaw and pushed downward, creating enough space for another palm to emerge and push up against his upper jaw. Then, with the sound of ripping flesh and cracking bone, a head emerged from the gaping jaws of the imposter eunuch.
Pale serpentine features. A head of long, lustrous black hair damp and weighed down by mucus, followed by a body built for sin. Long, sinuous and curvy in an almost boneless manner, with generous breasts and hips to match. All of that soft, pale flesh glimmering with viscous liquid.
"Orochimaru," I breathed, because it couldn't be anything else.
"Let us speak on more even ground," she said with a wide smile on plump purple lips. Evil had no right to be this hot.
My eyes went down to the pile of abandoned flesh on the ground, and I flinched when my senses picked up an independent chakra signature.
A living chakra signature.
"…He's still alive…" I gasped in horror as I picked up the tortured emotion radiating from that signature.
"Oh, you noticed? Ingenious, isn't it? Those senses of yours were such a conundrum when trying to infiltrate your inner circle, not to mention our old sensei," she said, her small pale feet splatting against the floor, leaving glistening footprints as she turned and bent at the waist, giving me an eyeful as she poked at the pile of tortured flesh.
"So I thought to myself if I could not disguise myself I would simply be someone else, brilliant isn't it?" she said, standing to her feet and smiling in a way that felt paradoxically guileless and so incredibly evil.
I noticed that only in my periphery as my mind analyzed how such a thing could even be possible.
"That… the medical ninjutsu expertise required to keep the flesh alive and producing chakra, not to mention keeping the chakra believably human enough to pass muster—you would have to maintain the spiritual half, and given his state he should be brain dead, how—" I stopped, torn between awe and horror as I realized how she had pulled this off.
"You bound his soul to his body… you can interact with souls…" I breathed.
"Yes!" Orochimaru exclaimed with a clap that made her jiggle. "Yes I can, Izuku, so you know how hard it was to devise such a jutsu?"
"Almost impossible," I said, dread rising even higher as I realized the mind that held me captive was extraordinarily demented and inventive in equal measure.
"Exactly, and yet I did it, and it is beautiful, is it not? The brilliance of it."
I would be lying if I said no. That didn't make it any less monstrous. Orochimaru seemed to notice this.
"Ah, still restrained by pesky morals, but I would be lying if I said it was not charming in some fashion. Your insistence to hold yourself back yet advancing regardless with all that deadweight. It almost makes me want to go back to the village to labour under their yoke just to match wits with you," she said, walking up to me and dragging a finger runny with slime up my cheek.
"Almost."
I gulped.
"You still haven't told me what you want," I said, trying to find some leverage to manipulate this situation.
"No, but what I want is nowhere near as important as what you want," she said, walking around me and out of sight, only for her soft pale arms to reappear in my vision as she leaned against my back, resting her head against the side of mine. She smeared half of my head in whatever covered her, and my skin tingled. From the corner of my eyes I could see her watching Tano with muted curiosity.
"This is where you ask my deepest desires and tempt me with them?" I replied, trying to keep her attention on me so she didn't get any ideas.
"Normally yes, but you have already told me what you desire, haven't you? You simply wish to know. Like I do," she whispered into my ear.
"No, not the way you want it," I replied, restraining a shiver.
"You don't?" She gestured toward Tano. "Look at young Tano, the discoloration at his arteries, the concave of his auricle. Look at how absolutely pathetic the organ is, yet it still beats. How?"
I didn't answer immediately. Orochimaru grew impatient.
She tugged on the wire. Tano twitched on the table.
"Chakra reinforcement!" I yelled.
"Yes, but is that all? Can it be all? You yourself know that chakra enhancement comes at a cost, that it causes fatigue and muscular damage. How has his body survived such strain despite his obvious weakness?"
"I don't know," I pleaded.
"Come now, you must have some idea," she said, wiggling her finger as though to tug on the wire again.
I grit my teeth and forced my senses open, prying my awareness wide as I fully unfurled my Ajna chakra. I pushed deeper into his chakra network than I ever had before, deeper even than during my earlier examinations, driven by the urgency of the moment.
And it was there—there—that I realized Orochimaru had been right.
Chakra enhancement was not a jutsu.
Jutsu required shape transformation and nature transformation—chakra altered into something else to produce a defined effect. Enhancement, by contrast, relied solely on chakra's inherent properties and its compatibility with the body it inhabited, using the natural push and pull of chakra flow to exceed biological limits. Even with extreme control, that strain accumulated. Muscles tore. Organs degraded. Damage was inevitable.
Which meant that using enhancement on something as delicate as a heart—continuously, for years—should have killed him.
And yet Tano lived.
The reason revealed itself as I probed deeper.
There was structure there. Not raw reinforcement, but a jutsu—a lattice of chakra layered over the beating organ, held in place through basic shape transformation.
But the true impossibility lay in the nature transformation.
My theory of esoteric chakra types had already been proven viable—I had believed those chakra expressions that could only arise through bloodlines or fuinjutsu under extreme conditions. I had believed them rare to the point of myth.
But there was always an exception.
Somehow, in the act of clinging to life, Tano had accomplished what I thought impossible. The chakra sustaining his heart had transformed into something else entirely—something I could only describe as heart chakra. Conceptual in nature, perfectly compatible with the organ it sustained. Enhancement strain simply… did not arise.
It wasn't forcing the heart to work harder.
It was being the function the heart could no longer perform.
Worse—or perhaps more astonishing—the phenomenon was spreading.
His lungs already bore the same adaptation: lung chakra, mirroring breath and pressure with flawless synchronicity. Elsewhere in his body I sensed the early inklings of other variations, nascent but unmistakable.
"He's a living jutsu," I breathed, the exhilaration of a discovery coursing through my veins.
"Oh, he is?" Orochimaru replied lightly, dragging my attention back to the present and sending my crashing back to the earth. "I don't see it, but then again I would never doubt someone with your gifts."
"I was going to use him as insurance for your good behaviour," she continued, amused, "but he might actually be of some use."
My senses, open as they were, picked up on a flare of inhuman determination. I snapped my gaze away from Orochimaru just in time to meet Tano's eyes. They were burning—clear, lucid, utterly unafraid. His fist was already clenched around the ninja wire.. The message was clear as I met his gaze.
Do not hesitate.
He took his own advice.
With a sharp jerk, the ninja wire tore straight through his heart, sending blood splattering.
"Oh, my," I heard Orochimaru mutter.
I suppressed my shock and horror and flooded the alarm seal with chakra just as she struck, lightning-fast. I felt jaws close around my shoulder, stopped only by my robes. The fuinjutsu shattered under the force, but it bought me enough time.
I turned, baring a ruthless grin into the snake bitch's eyes as the wall behind her exploded outward. A whirlwind of furious black bo sent her flying through the far side of the room.
My sensei had arrived.
The ensuing conflict was so fast and so furious that by the time I looked up, half the room was rubble. The snakes that had once held me were now splattered mist, staining my clothes and filling my senses with the smell and taste of minced meat. Across from me, another hole had been torn into the room, opening into the night beyond, where more sounds of conflict rang out.
I ignored all of that, diving across the floor to Tano's twitching, bleeding form.
"No, no, no, no," I muttered as I unsealed tags and used them to pull his torso together, leaving only a small window into his chest—exposing his spasming, haemorrhaging heart. I reached into that opening and cast Mystic Palm, trying to hold his aorta together.
"C'mon," I whispered, pushing the basic medical jutsu as far as it could go, flooding regenerative chakra into his heart. I felt a moment of relief when I sensed it working—then tensed in horror as almost tumorous tissue formed beneath my hands.
Medical knowledge raced through my mind. Muscular dystrophy prevented the regeneration and repair of muscle tissue. Injured muscle formed fibrous scar tissue instead of healing.
The heart was a muscle.
The aorta was closing, but it was calcifying. Blood wasn't moving.
He was still dying.
He was going to die.
No—he wasn't. I wouldn't let him.
With a flex of my will, a ninshū bond formed between us.
Then I was Tano, and Tano was me.
I let the shared memories flow into the background and focused on reaching him. He barely registered the connection, too lost in agony and what must have felt like his impending death. His mind was mired in panic, fear, pain…
And relief.
Tano's life had been hard. He had contemplated ending it more than once, and now that death was here, some part of him wanted to lie back and accept it.
I wholeheartedly disagreed.
The hand I had inside his chest squeezed the organ, forcing it to keep pumping.
"Not today, Tano. Not today," I said, willing my determination to stoke his own—to reach him through the storm of agony and despair.
"You've been holding your body together your whole life, and you're going to keep holding it together. That's an order." I gritted the words out, pouring myself into them, pushing my chakra control to its absolute limit to empower the medical ninjutsu.
"You hear me? I said that's an order, samurai!"
Something sparked in his mind. I felt it—and pressed harder. His honour. The promise I had made him earlier. I had promised he could be a samurai.
And there is no samurai without a lord to serve.
I had made one promise. What was one more?
"That's an order from your lord, samurai," I snarled.
The words were tinder to flame.
Determination surged through his chakra, stoking it to life. The heart chakra beneath my hands flared, and his heart pumped with renewed force. His aorta was still more fibrous tissue than muscle—but it didn't matter.
It pumped anyway.
Because Tano wanted it to.
Because he wanted to live.
I exhaled and nearly slumped in relief—but we weren't out of the woods yet. Now he needed chakra support. I sealed his chest shut, dropping Mystic Palm and shifting to the Chakra Transfer Technique.
Shouts echoed from nearby. The clank of armour followed as others arrived—hopefully with medical specialists in tow.
I glanced into the dark, dizzy with relief and fading terror.
I hoped Sensei finally put that snake in the ground.
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Hiruzen heaved his old bones into a swing of his staff that created gale-force winds and cut down the surrounding forest for half a mile.
As had been the case for most of this chase, Orochimaru was torn to shreds of skin—yet from those shreds she emerged regenerated, naked and unmarred. Hiruzen had the vaguest idea of how that jutsu functioned, and it was brilliant, as was to be expected of her.
Even now, despite coming for her life with all his might, his heart still swelled with pride at her accomplishment, just as it clenched at the creature she had become. Hiruzen would like to say he couldn't recognise her, that he couldn't find the little girl who clung to every word he said beneath the guise of the monster she now was—but that would be a lie.
Practically raising someone, seeing them develop into who they were with all their quirks and flaws, seeing them at their highest of highs and lowest of lows—it left you with a very clear image of who they were and what they were capable of. Hiruzen had always known she could become this. He had always been aware of what lurked beneath the surface. He had simply been too blinded by pride and love to see it.
That put the blood of the citizens of Konoha she had killed on his hands almost as much as hers. And while time had not dulled that pain—nor the love he bore for the curious girl with an affinity for snakes whom he had turned into one of the most dangerous kunoichi alive; he wasn't sure that kind of love could ever fade—it had taught him to recognise the weakness of it. Of the lives his affection had endangered.
He had a duty. He had failed it once.
He would not fail it again—no matter how much it hurt to carry it out.
"Sensei! You seem to have regained your fire, congratulations!" Orochimaru exclaimed between moments of annihilation, when she had a mouth and a set of lungs intact enough to make the comment.
Hiruzen's response was to destroy her. Again.
Then she reformed. Again.
"Not a word? You really are determined to kill me," she said with faint surprise, but without any actual hurt behind her words. Why would she? Orochimaru had always been pragmatic in her expectations of others. If anything, Hiruzen was sure his initial hesitation to take her life had confused her more than his current actions.
He was determined not to fail her expectations again.
Now… could she regenerate from ash?
Katon: Fire Dragon Jutsu!
The clearing was illuminated by the golden form of a curling dragon of fire that burst from his lips and swept in a wide circle, turning the area for hundreds of metres around Hiruzen into a furious inferno.
The heat died down to reveal a smouldering dome of dirt, which existed only for the fraction of a second it took for Hiruzen to smash it to pieces, revealing an empty bowl carved into the earth. A brief expansion of his senses allowed him to catch the fleeing chakra signature of his former student swimming through the ground in a masterful rendition of the Earth Diving Jutsu.
Doton: Earth Rend Jutsu!
With narrowed eyes and a grunt of effort, the earth for miles in that direction was bathed in his chakra and erupted as though two tectonic plates had smashed into each other.
Within the mile-long fissure, a speck of white fluttered through the air among tumbling rocks. Hiruzen was beside that speck in two consecutive body flickers. The look of wide-eyed surprise—and slight fear—in Orochimaru's eyes when he was upon her broke his heart.
But it did not stay his hand.
Enma glowed a bright blue in his grip as he sheathed his bō in chakra and swung downward, turning Orochimaru—his misbegotten daughter, his lost student—into pink mist.
Another body flicker carried him to the edge of the fissure he had torn into the earth. He stood there and spread his senses.
He found no chakra signatures. No lingering motion. Nothing.
She was gone.
The grief he felt in that moment was matched only by the death of his wife, by the loss of his firstborn son, by the death of his sensei. His heart twisted with such agony that he found himself hoping for tears to come to his dark, dead eyes.
None came.
What a creature he was.
He turned and began the journey back to the capital, still bursting with energy yet bone-tired nonetheless. He decided then and there—
Jiraiya was getting this fucking hat. He was done with it.
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Under the looming shadow of the towering corpse of an ensanguinated god, the swirling gaze of a man who thought himself divine stared unblinking at a small white kettle.
It was a strange kettle. It gleamed porcelain white, but a closer look revealed it was not porcelain at all. The fine lines that mimicked cracks were scales, and beneath them pink flesh undulated, alive.
Suddenly, the kettle began to writhe and churn.
Then it began to scream.
The sound was long and harrowing—voiceless, yet ringing, as though a legion raged within the flesh-pot. The screams rose higher and higher, filling the chamber, and the would-be god watched without expression.
Then—silence.
Crack.
The kettle split down the middle. Pink flesh burst outward, pumping and squirming as faces briefly formed and dissolved, limbs pushing free only to be dragged back in. With a wet, violent splurt, the mass finally took shape and spat out a white, nubile form.
Orochimaru lay on the floor, utterly motionless.
Behind her, the thing of flesh and noise she had emerged from gave one last, voiceless scream before withering into dust.
She did not remain still for long.
It began as a faint trembling in her shoulders, then low, choking coughs that broke into full-bodied, raucous laughter. Her entire frame shook as she laughed, breath hitching, sound tearing free.
Purple swirls watched wordlessly.
Eventually the laughter faded into quiet chuckles, a grotesque counterpoint to the tears of terror streaking down her face.
"So?" she said at last, drawing a shaky breath. "You saw what I saw. Are you convinced now?" she asked the other occupant of the room.
"Your former teacher is powerful," he replied, "but he is no match for the strength of a god."
Orochimaru did not sag, did not flinch. She knew there was more.
"But you are right. The longer we wait, the more resources will be wasted on their subjugation."
"I have heard your words," he continued. "I concede your point."
"Konoha will know Pain."
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A/N: Izuku meets his darker half!
Tano serves as study material!
Orochimaru is sexy! Evil! But sexy!
Lord Izuku gains a samurai! Now if only he was an actual Lord!
…Hiruzen slays a part of himself for the good of the village….he does not succeed….
What has Izuku learnt from his first brush with true evil?!
What does fate have in store for young Tano?!
Will Orochimaru's ploy succeed?! What is her Ploy?!
STAY TUNED TO FIND OUT NEXT TIME, ON FOR THE LOVE OF KUNGFU!
P.S. Thank you for reading, if you enjoyed it please comment and like, if not please comment why. Again, thank you for reading! Have a nice whatever-time-it-is, wherever you are!