Hidden Leaf, Hidden Talents 112 (Patreon)

The Uchiha kid’s eyes were doing all the screaming his mouth couldn't. His entire body went stiff against the leather straps, and that shaky, ragged breathing I’d been hearing suddenly just... stopped. He was holding his breath, dead still, like a mouse that just heard a cat click its claws on the floorboards.

The footsteps were quiet, but I’d know that rhythm anywhere. I’d spent months trekking through mud and rain behind Orochimaru, and that specific sound was pretty much hard-coded into my brain at this point.

Then, the air in the room turned heavy. Calling it "killing intent" feels like an understatement. It was more like a physical wave of pure, unfiltered malice that slammed into the walls so hard the torch in my hand actually flickered. I’d felt his pressure before, usually while standing behind him on the front lines while he cut through enemy squads, but there is a massive difference between being on the team and being the target. Most regular jonin would’ve froze for a few seconds. Against a guy like Orochimaru, three seconds is plenty of time to die, get brought back as a science experiment, and die all over again. Luckily for me, I’ve spent so much time soaking in death that my body just treats this stuff like a bad weather. It’s annoying sure, but it's not going to stop me from moving.

Then the door swung open.

Orochimaru strolled in with a katana gripped in his right hand, and the second I saw it, every instinct I had regarding sharp objects screamed at me. It was one of those “Oh, we’re in trouble” moments, and my body knew it immediately.

I’ve spent my whole life around blades. I’ve handled cheap scrap metal, high-end steel, and everything in between. You eventually develop a sixth sense for it, kind of like how a chef can tell exactly what’s in a sauce just by getting a whiff of it. But this thing? This wasn't steel. Honestly, I’m not even sure if it was metal in any way that made sense to me. The edge caught the light from the lamps and seemed to vibrate, putting off this faint hum that my brain immediately translated to ‘Whatever you do, do not let that touch you.’

Kusanagi no Tsurugi. The Grass-Cutting Sword.

I’d heard the rumors. I mean, who hadn't? It’s the legendary blade that’s supposed to be able to slice through literally anything. It was one of those relics that had been off the grid for decades, and I’d always figured at least half the stories were total garbage. That’s just how legends work, people keep adding layers of hype until the actual truth is buried under a mountain of tall tales.

But looking at it now, in person, in a room that already smelled like a butcher shop? Yeah, I was starting to realize the stories might have actually been underselling the thing.

The second Orochimaru saw my face, the heavy pressure in the room just vanished. It was like someone flipped a switch and killed the power.

His face did something I’d never seen before. He didn't look pissed, he just looked totally deflated. It was the face of a guy who realized the absolute last person he wanted to see had just stumbled onto his biggest secret.

"Shinji," he said. "What are you doing here?"

I didn't answer right away. I just took a slow look around. I looked at Choichi’s body on the table. I looked at the Hyuuga woman with the empty eye sockets. I looked at the dead Uchiha, then back at the live one, who had somehow found enough energy to start shaking again.

"I think the better question is what you’re doing here, Senpai," I countered.

He didn't give me a straight answer. His slit-pupil eyes scanned me, probably trying to figure out how long I’d been standing here and exactly how much trouble he was in.

"How’d you even find this place?" he asked.

"Does that really matter at this point?"

"I suppose not." The corner of his mouth curved up. "I'm going to assume you have questions."

"I see three dead Konoha shinobi on tables and one living boy with tubes in his arms," I said, gesturing vaguely at the horror show. "I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of the general picture, Senpai."

"You see bodies. I see answers," he said, stepping further into the light. "You're a medical nin, Shinji. You of all people should understand that knowledge doesn't come free. Every technique Tsunade ever taught you exists because someone, somewhere, opened a body and looked inside."

He gestured around the room like he was showing me a lecture hall instead of a nightmare.

"Genius, talent, bloodlines, decades of hard-won knowledge, all of it gets erased in a second by one bad jutsu. Then everyone cries, digs a hole, and calls it respect." His smile thinned. "I simply think respect is a poor excuse for wasting perfectly useful material."

"And you do that by cutting open your own comrades?"

"I do it by refusing to let their potential rot underground for nothing," he shot back. "The only difference between what I’m doing and what your textbooks celebrate is that I’m honest about the cost."

Then he really started going off. He started yapping about how the human body is basically a prison and a ticking clock. According to him, immortality wasn't some fairy tale, it was just an engineering problem that hadn't been solved yet. He claimed the real crime wasn't what was happening in this basement, but the "senseless waste" of letting brilliance decay because people didn't have the stomach for the dirty work. He went on about how his project was going to rewrite what it meant to be alive, and how a few sacrifices were a small price to pay for the "gift" he was giving the world.

He even tried to recruit me, acting like he was just asking me if I wanted to grab lunch.

"Just think about what we could accomplish together, Shinji. With your Iryoninjutsu, which, let’s be honest, is already on par with Tsunade’s, combined with my research, we could actually solve the problem of death within our lifetimes."

I let him finish. I'm a good listener like that. And it wasn’t because he compared me to Tsunade. I mean, sure, that was a nice ego boost, and I definitely mentally screenshotted it for later, but that’s not why I stayed quiet.

I let him talk because I was waiting to see if he’d say anything that would actually change my mind.

He didn't.

"Senpai," I said, cutting him off. "I think I’ve heard enough."

The torch was still burning in my left hand. I tossed it aside. It hit the stone floor, bounced, and rolled over to the far wall, making the shadows on the ceiling jump and dance around.

My right hand reached back and pulled my blade free. I looked over at the Uchiha kid. He was staring at me with these big, bloodshot eyes, barely hanging on but still clearly hoping for a miracle.

"Hey," I told him, keeping my voice low. "Keep your eyes open for me, kid. Don't fall asleep just yet. If you close them now, you might not open them again. Just keep watching. I’ll make this quick."

I turned back to Orochimaru and leveled my blade at his chest.

"Surrender, Senpai. Put the sword down and come back to the village with me. If you play nice and serve your sentence, maybe, just maybe, there’s a world where you walk out the other side still wearing that Konoha headband."

Orochimaru looked at the blade pointed at his heart, and for a split second, I saw something that actually looked like regret on his face.

"That’s a real shame," he said softly. "I really did think you, of all people, would be able to understand."

"Oh, I understand plenty," I countered. "I just don't agree."

His grip on the Kusanagi shifted. It was subtle, just a few millimeters of his fingers tightening, but I caught it like a flash of light in a dark room.

He moved fast. Like, terrifyingly fast.

One second he was standing twenty feet away looking disappointed, and the next, the Kusanagi was already at my throat.

KIINNG!

I caught the blow. I kept my tanto at a steep angle, letting that legendary blade slide along mine instead of taking the hit head-on. Even then, the impact rattled my arm, and I actually heard my blade scream.

No, seriously. The steel made this thin, high-pitched whine like it was being pushed way past its breaking point. I caught a glimpse of the edge for a second and my stomach did a somersault. One hit. One single exchange, and there was already a notch in my steel deep enough to fit my thumbnail in.

Okay, that’s not good.

The Kusanagi didn’t just cut through stuff, it basically ate it. My tanto was solid steel, probably the best conventional blade you could "borrow" from the outpost storage, but bringing "good steel" to a fight against a mythical weapon was like bringing a really nice umbrella to a hurricane. It was better than nothing, but I was still about to get wrecked.

Orochimaru pressed the advantage with three quick cuts that flowed together like water. I ducked the first, parried the second off the flat of my blade, losing another chunk of the edge in the process, and leaned back so far the third one actually gave me a haircut.

Okay, new plan. If I keep trying to block like this, I’m gonna be holding nothing but a handle in about ten seconds.

So, I let lightning flood the blade.

It wasn't anything revolutionary. Any elite jonin worth their salt who had lightning affinity could do it, fancy chakra blade or not. You just pump lightning-natured chakra through the metal to jack up the vibrational frequency, and suddenly your standard-issue steel starts punching way above its weight class. The blade started buzzing in my hand, humming at a pitch so low it felt more like a headache than a sound, and the edge went from "standard sharp" to "dangerously mean." More importantly, it gave my sword a fighting chance. It wasn't an even match, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but instead of getting sliced up like room-temperature butter, my blade could at least take a hit without falling apart.

CHIIIIIIIIII!

Blue sparks erupted along the steel. The metal whined as the chakra sharpened the edge way past its physical limits. The next time our blades met, it sounded completely different.

KRRRSHHHH!

Lightning sprayed everywhere as the two swords ground against each other. Much better.

Orochimaru’s eyes narrowed just a fraction, and then he really turned up the heat. His shoulders were barely moving, yet his sword was suddenly trying to relocate several of my internal organs.

I blocked high.

Twisted low.

Slipped past another slash.

Then I tapped my foot against the floor.

DOTON!

The ground right under Orochimaru exploded into jagged stone spikes.

FWOOOM!

He twisted mid-air with this disgusting, boneless flexibility, weaving through the spikes like he didn't even have a skeleton. One of them managed to snag his sleeve, but the rest just hit air. As he landed, his wrist flicked.

SHNK!

The Kusanagi pulled its signature move and elongated instantly. The blade shot toward my face like a silver missile, but luckily, I'd already read everything there was to read about this blade back when it was still fiction. I tilted my head and let it scream past my ear.

And that was my chance.

Lightning chakra snapped through my nerves, hot and sharp, doubling everything for one tiny, stupidly dangerous second. My vision sharpened. My heartbeat stretched. Orochimaru’s wrist was still moving, still retracting the blade, still thinking he had time.

He didn’t.

My fist slammed into his wrist.

Then another.

Then another.

Chain punches hammered straight into his chest before he could retract the blade.

THUD THUD THUD THUD!

I finished the combo by driving a kick into his gut with everything I had.

BOOOOOOM!

Orochimaru went flying backward, crashing straight through the wall. Stone shattered, shelves on the other side collapsed, and by the time I could even blink, he was already flipping back onto his feet like I’d just given him a playful shove.

Behind me, I heard a loud CRACK. The Uchiha kid's bed finally just gave up on life, folding sideways under all the pressure. I glanced around. The lab looked like a earthquake had hit it, and most of that was my fault.

Alright. This room can't take much more of this, and neither can the kid on the floor. Time to wrap it up before I accidentally bring the ceiling down on all three of us.

I started to lift my hand, but Orochimaru blurred. He was on me in a blink, the Kusanagi screaming toward my neck. I barely got my blade up in time to keep my head attached.

KIINNG!

KIIIINNG!

We were moving so fast we were basically just blurs at this point. Every single time my fingers even twitched toward a seal, he was right there, closing the gap like his life depended on it. He was not about to let me pull off a Shadow Clone.

CLANG!

CRASH!

KSHHHH!

He shut down every hand seal attempt before I could finish, forcing us back into a messy, high-speed brawl.

But if he thought stopping my clones was going to save him, he was dead wrong.

I dialed the lightning higher. Way higher. I let the electricity surge through my body until my nerves were literally screaming at me to stop.

Third Accel!

The world around me suddenly lurched into slow motion as I pushed the nintaijutsu further than I probably should have. Twice as fast wasn't enough, I needed three. Chakra blasted through my nervous system like a live wire through copper, and suddenly everything tripled. Even my own arms looked like blurs to me. The blade in my hand turned into a streak of blue-white light as I swung faster and faster. And for the first time that night, Orochimaru started running.

Shunshin left, shunshin right, desperately flickering away every time I closed in, popping up somewhere else in the room just to flicker again half a second later because I was already on top of him.

KIINNG!

KSHHH!

CRAAASH!

My muscles felt like they were tearing themselves apart from the inside. It was pure, white-hot agony. But then I channeled everything Tsunade-sensei had drilled into my head.

Internal healing. The second something inside me snapped or burned, green chakra flooded the area, patching me up before the damage could even settle. Burn, heal, burn again, heal again. It was a vicious cycle, but it worked.

Orochimaru’s eyes widened. He realized exactly what I was doing, and for the first time since we started, he looked genuinely surprised. I used that split second of surprise to slip right past the Kusanagi and bury a kick into his ribs hard enough to fold him sideways.

BOOOOM!

Orochimaru skipped across the floor like a stone on water, smashed through another row of shelves, and finally rolled into a crouch. He sat there for a second, dust settling on his shoulders, looking a lot less like a legendary ninja and a lot more like a guy who just got hit by a freight train.

But he wasn't the only one feeling the burn.

My insides felt like someone had taken a blowtorch to every single muscle fiber I owned. I wanted to scream, or maybe just start swearing at the top of my lungs, but that would’ve totally ruined my image.

I call the first stage of my lightning nintaijutsu "Double Accel." It’s manageable. I push my speed and reflexes to twice their limit, and my internal healing just barely keeps pace. The damage comes in, the repair goes out, it’s a nice, balanced system.

Triple Accel though, that’s a whole different beast. Three times the speed means three times the strain, and my body was starting to fall behind on the bill. Every second I stayed at this level, the debt just kept piling up. My muscle fibers were shredding faster than they could knit back together, and my nerves felt like they were being sanded down from the inside. I was still healing, but the damage was winning, and that gap was only getting wider. So…

I needed to end this. Now.

Orochimaru must've sensed it too, because he used the opening to leap backward, landing on a cracked stone platform near the far wall. His expression looked strangely calm now. Maybe even a little resigned.

"I truly did hope you would understand me someday, Shinji.”

I didn't lower my blade. "Not happening, Senpai."

A small, unsettling smile appeared on his face. "How unfortunate."

Then his fingers twitched.

It was a tiny movement, barely there, but my danger sense went absolutely ballistic anyway. Something silver flashed in the corner of my eye.

I stomped the floor instantly.

DOTON!

Two thick stone walls slammed upward between us.

SHRRRKKK!

The Kusanagi tore through both of them like they were made of wet paper. Stone exploded everywhere as the blade punched through, still flying toward my throat without losing a single bit of momentum.

Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been a nightmare. I probably would’ve had to use Shinra Tensei and blow my entire secret just to stay alive. But with Triple Accel running?

Honestly, the blade looked like it was moving in slow motion.

I tilted my head to the side and let the steel streak past my face. Easy.

...And then I realized it wasn't stopping.

The Kusanagi was still flying. It was headed straight for the Uchiha kid right behind me.

"SHIT!"

Lightning exploded around me.

KRAKOOOM!

The floor detonated under my feet as I vanished, moving even faster than the flying sword. I grabbed the terrified Uchiha by the collar hard enough to almost yank his soul out through his throat, and ripped him off that collapsing bed a split second before the Kusanagi skewered the surgery table.

CRAAAASH!

The entire table just disintegrated into splinters.

I didn't stop moving.

My foot slammed the ground again mid-shunshin.

DOTON!

Walls started bursting out of the floor one after another, creating a jagged obstacle course behind me while I zigzagged through the basement. I had the Uchiha kid tucked under my arm, and he was screaming bloody murder straight into my ear.

Orochimaru still wasn’t done.

FUWOOOSH!

Massive wind blades started ripping through the chamber from behind us. The first wall I’d put up got shredded instantly. The second one exploded maybe half a second later. The third actually managed to hold up long enough to buy me a single breath.

Apparently, that was all the time I was going to get. Because then?

BOOOOM!

The lab started blowing up. Massive explosions erupted all around us, one after another, like a string of firecrackers from hell. The whole basement began coming down in sections as hidden traps detonated in a chain reaction. Fire roared through the hallways, support beams snapped like toothpicks, and thick clouds of dust and smoke blasted past me while the floor tried to shake me off my feet.

That bastard actually rigged the whole place!

I shunshin'd toward the shaft and shot us straight up through the opening like a rocket. We blasted onto the first floor without slowing down. Below us, the tunnel collapsed with a deep, grinding roar, sealing the basement shut.

For about half a second, I thought we were in the clear.

Then I felt it. Tiny pulses of chakra vibrating in the walls. In the floor. In the ceiling. It was everywhere.

"Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me," I muttered.

He didn't just rig the basement. He’d rigged the whole damn building!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The walls lit up from every direction. Every corner, every doorway, trap seals were going off in a perfect sequence. Fire started blooming from the floorboards and the ceiling, all of it converging right on the exact spot where I was standing.

Since I still had Triple Accel running, I got to watch the whole thing happen in slow motion. I could see the heat rolling in from the left, the shockwave expanding from the right, and fire crawling across the ceiling overhead. It was a perfect kill box closing in from every angle. Honestly, it was pretty impressive how thorough he’d been.

I just let out a long sigh.

"You really got me this time, Senpai."

Then the whole building just went up.

KAAAABOOOOOOM!

The structure disintegrated in a massive roar of fire and stone, belching a thick column of black smoke into the sky.

…

A few miles away at Konoha’s east gate, the guard with the mustache looked up from his crossword puzzle. He squinted at the distant flicker of light above the forest and stroked his facial hair thoughtfully.

"Huh. Fireworks in the middle of the day?" he muttered. "Someone’s celebrating the end of the war a little too hard, don't you think?"

His partner didn't even bother looking up. "Kids these days. No respect for the peace and quiet."

…

Back at the crater, the Uchiha kid was down on his knees, staring at Shinji’s back with his mouth hanging wide open. Scorched earth and burning debris were scattered in every direction, but right where he was kneeling, in a perfect six-foot circle, the ground was totally untouched. Just clean dirt without a single scratch.

He couldn't wrap his head around it.

He’d seen the fire coming from every direction. He’d felt the heat on his face, close enough to taste the smoke, and then Shinji had done something, he didn't even see what, and the blast had just... gone around them. It was like water splitting around a rock in a river. The fire, the stone, the shrapnel, all of it had parted and flowed past them, leaving this tiny pocket of calm in the middle of explosion.

He looked down at his arms, his legs, his shredded hospital gown. Not a single new injury. Not even a singed hair. How was that even possible?

Then he looked up at the man standing in front of him.

Shinji hadn't moved an inch. He was just standing there, one hand still raised, staring into the rising smoke.

The kid’s name was Tekka. He was seventeen, a newly minted chunin, and up until about an hour ago, he’d been pretty confident that being an Uchiha meant he knew exactly how the world’s power hierarchy worked.

When the village started calling Shinji a "war hero," Tekka and his friends used to laugh about it over drinks. Some clanless orphan gets adopted by Tsunade, pops a few shadow clones, and suddenly he’s the savior of the village? Give him a break. Everyone knew the Senju just needed a poster boy to keep morale up, and Shinji was photogenic enough for the job. To Tekka, that was just politics, not real power. The mass shadow clone thing was impressive, sure, nobody was denying that. Having a lot of clones made you useful, but it didn't make you strong. You could have a million ants and it wouldn't change the fact that they were, at the end of the day, just ants.

That’s what Tekka had believed. That’s what most of the younger Uchiha pridefully told themselves.

He stared at Shinji’s back now and felt every one of those beliefs crumble into dust.

He had just watched this man go toe-to-toe with Orochimaru, one of the absolute best Konoha had to offer, and not just survive, but dominate the fight. He’d seen a blade wrapped in lightning move so fast it basically blurred out of existence. He’d watched a human body move at speeds that his Uchiha eye could barely even track.

And then, when the building exploded, Shinji had just tanked the whole thing, and somehow Tekka was still breathing behind him without a scratch on him.

How? What kind of jutsu was that? What technique could just brush off a massive explosion like it was a minor inconvenience? Tekka had spent hours in the Uchiha archives. He’d memorized defensive jutsu from three different combat manuals, and nothing in any of them, not even the high-level stuff, came close to what he’d just seen.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking. Looking at the back of a man he'd been dismissing as a total PR stunt, Tekka felt something that no amount of Uchiha pride could block out.

He felt small. Truly, insignificantly small.

And somewhere, buried under the fear, the awe, and the lingering, embarrassing smell of his own terror, a single thought took root.

‘So, this is what a real war hero looks like.’

The "war hero" in question finally let his arm drop. Then, for some reason Tekka couldn't even begin to wrap his head around, the guy actually smiled.

"Hook, line, and a very expensive sinker."

Tekka’s cracked lips moved, his voice sounding like sandpaper. "Um… what?"

Shinji glanced back at him. "Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself. Can you walk?"

Tekka tried to move his legs, but his whole body immediately screamed in protest. "I... I don't think so."

"Figures." Shinji crouched down next to him, his palms lighting up with a soft, green glow. "Take it easy. Let me fix you up."

Tekka felt the warmth seep into his chest, his arms, and his legs, literally stitching his broken body back together. It was surreal. This guy had just traded blows with Orochimaru, tanked a collapsing building, and now he was kneeling in the dirt healing some random Uchiha chunin who’d spent his free time talking trash about him. Forget war hero. This guy was a damn saint. Somebody owed him a temple and an apology, and if he ever ran for Hokage, Tekka would vote for him twice. The clan elders could kiss his ass.

...

Twenty-five miles northeast of that fresh, smoking crater, the soil in a small clearing between two skeletal oak trees began to ripple. With a wet, sliding sound, Orochimaru hauled himself out of the earth. The ground sealed up behind him instantly, looking as if it’d never been disturbed at all.

He looked like a mess. His flak jacket was shredded, his hair was a bird’s nest of dust and grit, and a nasty bruise was blossoming across his jaw. His ribs were currently screaming a very detailed list of grievances about what it felt like to be drop-kicked by a teenager.

He stood there for a second, brushing dirt off his sleeves, and let out a long, weary sigh.

"That was… unfortunate."

He’d known there was going to be a fight the second he sensed intruder standing in the middle of his lab. That wasn't the part that annoyed him. It was the timing. He’d been so close! Days of agonizing work on the Living Corpse Reincarnation, endless hours of mapping chakra and calculating tissue decay, and he’d finally started seeing real results. The framework for the soul transfer was right there. He’d even started picking out a date for the first live trial.

And now? All of it was buried under ten tons of rock and burning trash.

He clicked his tongue in irritation.

More troubling was the fact that Shinji had found him at all. The lab’s location was a secret known to exactly one person. It was miles away from any patrol route and completely off the sensor grid. He hadn't been sloppy.

Yet, Shinji had just strolled right in like he was visiting a convenience store.

If Tsunade had found out, he’d be surrounded by ANBU right now. But it was just Shinji. No backup, no team, no sign that anyone else in Konoha had the slightest clue. Shinji had tracked him down alone, using some method Orochimaru couldn't even begin to guess.

"Hmm, how curious.”

He was busy crossing detection methods off his mental list when his fingers brushed against something in his pocket. He’d felt it go in during the scuffle. He’d let it happen, too. When a boy goes through the trouble of being sneaky just to slip a note into your pocket instead of handing it over, it’s only polite to play along and see what he’s up to.

He pulled out a small, twice-folded scrap of paper. It was just ordinary stationery. He flicked it open with two fingers.

The handwriting was a total train wreck, and the first few lines weren't much better.

“Yo, Senpai!

By the time you're reading this, you've probably realized that me letting you run away was part of the plan. Don't feel too bad about it! Let’s be honest, there was no way you were going to win that fight anyway. I basically just saved us both the embarrassment of you losing on your own home turf.”

Orochimaru stopped. He stared at that sentence for three solid seconds, blinking, before he kept reading.

The rest of the note was actually a bit less insulting and a lot more intriguing. The boy was actually offering up some test subjects as a "sorry for kicking your ass" gift. Apparently, a few assholes from Root had tried to mess with him, so he’d locked them in a cave somewhere. There were coordinates scribbled at the bottom. Orochimaru glanced at the numbers before finishing the rest.

In exchange for "sparing" his life, Shinji wanted access to some of his research files.

And then came the hook.

Shinji made it very clear, under no circumstances was Orochimaru to experiment on anyone from Konoha. That was the whole threat. No explanation, no "or else," no list of consequences. The boy just assumed Orochimaru was smart enough to fill in the blanks on his own. Which, annoyingly, he was.

Then the very last line read:

“You should probably hurry, though. I didn't exactly leave them a packed lunch.”

Orochimaru read the note again, slower, letting the sheer cockiness of each sentence sink in.

A slow, genuine smile crept across his face.

"How wonderful." He folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket. Offering human beings as research material, gift-wrapped with coordinates and a joke about human lives. Most people would call that monstrous. Orochimaru called it finding a kindred spirit.

He’d been keeping an eye on Shinji for years now. The boy had that same peculiar talent he did, the ability to stand in a room full of people and make every single one of them believe they were seeing the real him.

And the fight they'd just had? The whole thing was a performance. Every hit that landed, every "opening" that almost worked, it was all just a show for that terrified Uchiha kid strapped to the table. The motive wasn’t hard to guess either. Shinji didn't want the village higher-ups connecting him to a high-profile traitor like Orochimaru. He was playing both sides.

His smile widened. "See? I knew it. Under all that charm, you're no different from me."

The boy wanted access to his research. That was the “deal”. And he hadn't been vague about it either. Hashirama cell integration, tissue regeneration, grafting compatibility. He’d written it out like a grocery list. Orochimaru almost had to admire the sheer audacity of this boy. He had waltzed into his lab, kicked him out of his own room, and then had the nerve to give him a list of demands.

The funny part was, Orochimaru didn’t actually have Hashirama’s cells on hand. Not yet, anyway.

But as he looked toward the horizon, he realized he had a very good idea of where to find them.

…

-Konan-

Meanwhile, in a forest about half an hour outside Tanzaku Quarters, a man was whimpering every time a teenage girl kicked him.

"Please," he wheezed, muffled from inside his paper cocoon. "I swear, I don’t know anything about the bounty business—"

Konan kicked him again. It wasn't even a hard kick, just a light tap to the ribs, but the guy flinched like she’d come at him with a kunai. He was wrapped from his ankles to his chin in layers of chakra-infused paper, arms pinned and legs bound. He looked like a giant, very stressed-out burrito.

"That bag you were carrying," she said, crouching down so they were eye-to-eye. "The head inside belongs to the man on page forty-seven. Nishida Toru. Missing-nin from Kusagakure, B-rank." She tilted her head, looking completely unimpressed. "Normal travelers don't usually go for walks with severed heads that perfectly match Bingo Book entries, you know."

"I found it! It was just lying there on the road! I swear!"

She rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh. And it rolled right into your bag all by itself, I'm sure."

A few sharp sheets of paper peeled off her sleeves and drifted toward his face, hovering right over his nose and mouth.

"You know, they say suffocation is one of the more peaceful ways to die," she mused. "I wouldn't know from personal experience, of course, but maybe you'd like to be the first to tell me how it feels?"

"Okay, okay! Fine! I'm a bounty hunter! It's my job!" His voice went up an octave. "But please, if the guys finds out I talked, I’ll be banned. I'll lose everything I’ve worked for—"

"Don’t worry so much. I'm not looking to get you in trouble," she said, and the paper stopped its threatening crawl. "Actually, I just want to become a bounty hunter myself."

The forest went dead silent.

"You... what?"

"A bounty hunter. Me." She pulled out a well-worn Bingo Book and gave it a little wave. "I find someone in here, I kill them, I take the head, and I get paid. The problem is, I just don't know where to cash them in."

The man stared at her. Then he looked at the book. Then he looked back at her, his eyes wide with disbelief.

"That’s it? That's why you hunted me down through three miles of woods and turned me into a human rice ball?"

"Well, you were running," she pointed out simply. "So, naturally, I chased you."

"I was running because you were chasing me!" he yelled.

"Well, yes. That’s generally how a chase works."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. He looked genuinely distressed, like a man trying to find a hole in her logic and realizing there wasn't one.

"So, uh, think you could let me go first?" he asked.

The paper unspooled in perfect, synchronized folds, tucking itself back into her sleeves like it was never there. Takeshi sat up, rubbing the circulation back into his arms, and gave her a long, hard look.

"Name's Takeshi," he said, rolling his shoulders to get the kinks out.

"I’m Konan," she replied, giving him a polite little bow that felt incredibly out of place considering she’d just had him gift-wrapped for the afterlife.

"Okay, Konan." He dusted off his pants and picked a piece of paper out of his hair. "So let me get this straight. You don't want my money, you don't want my target, and you're not trying to kill me."

"Correct."

"You just want career advice."

"Mm." She nodded.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You know, most people just buy someone a drink for that."

"Sensei says I'm too young to drink."

"Haaa… right. Okay." He sat cross-legged on the dirt and waved a hand at her. "Let's start with the basics, then. How much do you actually know about the bounty business?"

"Quite a lot, actually," she said, sounding weirdly proud of herself as she fanned the Bingo Book like a deck of cards. "I find the target, kill them, take the head, and collect the money. It's very straightforward."

"And then?"

"And then... I have the money."

Takeshi just stared at her. For a long time.

Then he sighed like a man who'd just been told his retirement got cancelled. "You literally have zero clue how this industry works, do you?"

Konan’s brow furrowed. "What do you mean? I just explained the entire process. Find, kill, take the head, get paid. That’s the whole job. I’m just missing the address for the 'get paid' part."

Takeshi looked at her the way a teacher looks at a student who just confidently announced that the sun is made of cheese. He rubbed his forehead, took a breath, and started explaining.

As it turned out, the bounty world wasn't a "kill guy, get money" vending machine. There wasn't a guild hall, no HR department, and definitely no membership cards. Which was disappointing, because sensei had made it sound like there would be membership cards. The whole business was freelance and totally underground. It was a playground for ex-shinobi, rogue mercs, anyone else crazy enough to hunt people who actually end up in a Bingo Book.

The books themselves were just the tip of the iceberg. You could score one on the black market, loot it off a corpse, or get one from a contact if you were lucky. But owning a book didn't mean you were in the club. You still had to know where to drop off the "merchandise."

That’s where the exchange stations came in.

They were tucked away all over the map in places nobody would ever look. We’re talking the back rooms of sketchy tea houses, basements under gambling dens, and, according to a very disgusted-looking Takeshi, behind a specific urinal in a public restroom. Every station had a broker who ran the show, verified the kill, and handed over the cash. No names, no receipts, no paper trail. You walk in with a bag, walk out with a stack of bills, and you never saw each other.

"The brokers couldn't care less who you are," Takeshi explained. "They only care that the head matches the picture and that you don't bring the cops to their doorstep. That’s the golden rule. Show up, do the deal, disappear. People who can’t handle that don't live long enough to retire."

Konan was nodding along to every word, looking intensely serious, like an apprentice watching her master fold the perfect crane. When he finally stopped talking, she stood up, brushed the dirt off her knees, and gave him another small bow.

"Thank you very much, Takeshi-san. That was very helpful."

"Yeah, whatever," he muttered. "Just... maybe next time you want to ask someone a question, try asking before you chase them through a forest and tie them up?"

She actually took a second to think that over.

"I'll keep it in mind," she said.

Then she turned and strolled away, Bingo Book tucked under her arm, humming "bling-bang-bang, bling-bang-bang, bling-bang-bang-born~" all the way down the trail.

Takeshi sat there in the dirt for a good while, staring at the red marks the paper had left on his skin.

"Kids these days," he sighed. "Absolute psychos."