"I do hope you realise you've just condemned that girl," Sai grunted, straining against the snakes wrapped around his body. Wriggling wasn't doing him any good, so he stopped struggling after a few seconds. "You should not have betrayed us, Hyūga Neji."
Sai could summon neither chakra nor his strength.
Moments earlier, he had sent Neji ahead to guide the way into Orochimaru's lair— only for the white-eyed boy to whirl around without warning.
Neji's palms had sliced through the air like lightning strikes, striking at each of his Tenketsu with unerring precision. Snakes had then spilled forth from his sleeves, coiling around Sai's limbs and sinking their fangs into his flesh, flooding his bloodstream with paralytic toxins. Sai had never meant to trust his temporary accomplice, not even for an instant— yet an instant was all it had taken for Neji to bring him down…
"I betrayed you?" said Neji coldly. "I was never on your side."
The only side he would ever take was Tenten's— his key to the prison called Branch Family.
"Well done indeed," Orochimaru's raspy voice rang out from the semi-darkness behind Neji. "Now, what have we here…?" He sniggered. "Ah… if it isn't of the old hawk's nameless playthings…"
Four sets of footsteps echoed down the corridor littered with wall-mounted torches, steadily growing closer. But Neji did not need to turn around to confirm that his newest master was breathing down his neck.
He had rung the hideout's silent alarm earlier, after all.
"Sakon, would you kindly take our friend here to that room?" Orochimaru went on. "There is no point in interrogating this one."
What lay in the rooms on the lowest floor, Neji could not say; the ceiling there was covered in sealing formulas that obscured everything below from his penetrating sight— and, truth be told, he had no wish to know what went on below that threshold.
Neji drew the summoned snakes back into his sleeves, leaving the unsettling two‑headed boy free to scoop up Sai's limp body and carry him away into the darkness from which he had come. Neji then turned to his temporary master, bowing slightly as he waited to be dismissed back to his post.
Surprisingly, Orochimaru was flanked by two teenagers— a boy and a girl of no more than fifteen— whom Neji had never seen in all his time at the hideout. The rather busty girl wore an ANBU‑style deer mask, which was impenetrable to his gaze, just like the hideout's special rooms. But the boy's face was uncovered… he had a pair of Byakugan!
"Neji-kun, I trust you've recovered well from your operation?" asked Orochimaru, licking his lips. "If so, perhaps you'd be interested in a little change of pace?"
Neji suppressed a shudder, sensing Orochimaru's eerie gaze creep over him as if he were being licked from head to toe. The choice he had been given was but an illusion, so he had little choice but to accept.
"My eyes have completely recovered, thanks to your care, Lord Orochimaru," said Neji, struggling to maintain a level tone. "What are your orders? I will follow your instructions to the letter."
For reasons Neji could not fathom, Orochimaru had transplanted a new pair of Byakugan into his eye sockets, only to replace them later with his originals. How Orochimaru had acquired more Byakugan, Neji neither knew nor dared to ask. Byakugan could only be procured from the Hyūga's main branch, and Neji was the only exception to that rule.
"As you can see, I have taken in a troublesome pair of problem children," Orochimaru said lightly, gesturing towards the two. "They know precious little of the shinobi world, so I daresay it might be rather … interesting… to form a four‑man cell to help them catch up with their training. Rather nostalgic, don't you think, Neji‑kun?"
It was standard operating procedure throughout the shinobi world for teams to work in squads of four— a convention that the other villages had shamelessly plagiarised from the Hidden Leaf soon after the hidden village system was first established. Tried and tested, the approach had produced fine shinobi for generations, and so it had remained unchanged ever since.
Neji nodded.
Even though he found them both ridiculous, Neji held fond memories of fighting alongside Guy‑sensei and Rock Lee. Tenten had taught him that fate was never set in stone, and so he hoped that the stubborn fool who refused to accept his lot in life would one day see his dream fulfilled.
"Why don't we introduce ourselves?" Orochimaru purred. "You all already know me, so why don't you go first, the two of you?"
"I am Hyūga Shin!" declared the white-eyed boy, glaring at Neji. "Don't you forget it!"
The girl remained silent, so Shin punched her in the arm.
"…Uchiha Tsubaki," said the masked girl, speaking haltingly, as if she weren't used to talking. "…Don't you… forget it…?"
That voice… those double Ds… that pink hair… didn't those features remind him of someone he knew!?
Neji involuntarily glanced up at Orochimaru, who met his eyes with an eerie smile that sent another shiver running down his spine. He had a sneaking suspicion that one of these two strange shinobi would soon become Orochimaru's next Living Corpse Reincarnation host— and the longer he studied them, the more certain he became that they had been Sai's intended assassination target.
"My name is Hyūga Neji," said Neji, jolting as he realised that the others were waiting for his introduction.
"Excellent, then our four-man squad is complete," said Orochimaru, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Our first destination is the Land of Wind, but since I have some business in the region in a few days, we won't be leaving just yet. So, until then, I suggest you get used to each other."
And having said those words, he turned on his heel and strode back the way he had arrived, leaving behind Tsubaki and Shin with a puzzled Neji. Why was Orochimaru suddenly talking about nostalgia, and forming a four-man squad?
Neji just couldn't understand.
Still, he had guessed one thing correctly, though; Orochimaru definitely intended on taking over one of their bodies— Tsubaki's, Sakura's genetic clone. But the problem with doing so lay with neuroplasticity; though she appeared the same age as the original, Tsubaki's mind was almost that of a newborn. She had been taught the basics with cannibalised versions of Yamanaka-style Ninjutsu, but she would need to consolidate those learnings in a concrete manner.
Were Orochimaru to possess her now, her undeveloped brain would, over time, reduce him to a drooling idiot— so he would have to wait for it to mature, for her synapses to weave a proper neural network he could one day hijack.
After all, he had only half a year left before the full three‑year deadline was up. He could always remain in Kimimaro's body, for it was perfectly compatible with him— but if he waited too long, changing bodies again would become far more difficult…