He opened his eyes in a dark enclosed space with nothing but illusionary objects around him.
Orochimaru blinked his eyes, recalling what had happened for him to be here, and where here exactly was.
"That was odd…what a strange child." He recalled what exactly happened and said with both confusion and anger inside him.
"Well well… I wasn't expecting you to find your way around here this quickly."
A voice attracted his attention from his reverie. When he turned around, he found a boy, the same responsible for him being here, sitting on top of an illusionary structure which he could only figure was a shrine.
It was hard to figure out since it was extremely dark around; everything was either covered in the shade of dark or wasn't as transparent as they couldn't be. It was like being covered with fog all around.
"Do you know what you have done, you insolent child." Orochimaru hissed.
Because of this boy, his soul fragment had entered into a wrong vessel. Yes, his curse seals contain a part of the Snake Sannin's soul. Not every curse seal does though, most people are in possession of a curse spirit of earth, which didn't have his soul.
The seal which hosted his soul was the Curse Seal of Heaven. Only two people had it, his earlier disciple, Anko Mitarashi, and the other was meant for Sasuke Uchiha, his perfect vessel, but now this boy stole that from him.
Needless to say, Orochimaru was livid. He had all the reason to be angry.
But, did the boy responsible for this entire situation care ?
Nope !
Not at all.
Sukuna just chuckled seeing the livid face of the Snake Sannin, "Infact I do, I do know exactly what I have done. You intend to occupy Sasuke Uchiha's body, didn't you. Let me guess, you happened to see what Itachi was capable of and thought that power could be yours, all you have to do is take over a Uchiha's body."
Orochimaru stiffened, because that was exactly how it happened. He long ago joined the Akatsuki organization and later, when Itachi joined, Orochimaru got curious about him after learning Itachi had the legendary Mangekyo. The same kind of eyes which made Madara Uchiha the rival of Hashirama Senju in his time.
Though the man lost, it was known, but still, to be able to fight as an equal against Hashirama Senju, what kind of power would those eyes hold. For a scientist like Orochimaru, the allure to learn, to find out, to obtain the power for himself, was too great.
So he attacked Itachi, he specially thought he could since Itachi was only a boy back then, that too with only one working hand.
However, with a single glance from the Uchiha, he was petrified. He lost utterly shamefully.
He knew that he couldn't get those eyes from Itachi, so he left Akatsuki later on, intending to get those eyes from other Uchiha. There were still many left to find a suitable vessel for him to take over.
"How do you know that." Orochimaru's snake-like eyes slanted further, voice coming out like a hiss.
"How I know, you ask… hehehe. It matter to you. What you should be asking rather is where the hell we are. I'm certain you are curious, yes !"
Orochimaru gave the boy one long hard look before once again roaming his eyes around the area. What greeted him was the same dark illusionary world like earlier.
Indeed, the boy was right, he had no idea where this was, but if he had to make an educated guess, this was most likely the boy's mind scape.
The only problem was, it was too dark and empty. And no ordinary shinobi, let alone a genin, should have access to his own mindscape like this boy did.
"Welcome, this is my inner domain. One which I still have a hard time projecting outside, to my utter frustration." Sukuna sighed at the end, but immediately changed his tone back to cheery again.
"However, you're the second person beside me ever seeing it. The first one had his hand cut off that day. And I didn't even use it back then, guess what, you're gonna be the first to see what this thing can do, excited ?!" Sukuna's eyes grinned with a maniac gleam.
Orochimaru didn't get it, what a domain ? He understood the literal meaning of the word, but he had a feeling that the boy meant something else here. More than that, he cut off the hand of the person who saw this place before him…
Itachi's image flashed into his mind. Orochimaru knew that it was rather immature to consider this boy was responsible for that injury Itachi faced. He himself had fought the Uchiha when he was just a mere boy, in fact, and knew how strong Itachi was.
But a thought behind his mind, perhaps instincts, told him that they were connected. Otherwise, why would the boy bring this incident up ? Or he was just thinking too much.
Ultimately, Orochimaru let the matter go. He didn't care. Since now he was here, he wished to teach this brat a lesson for his insolence back then. For this brat, he now had to tear his own soul one more time to make Sasuke his vessel.
A punishment for this insolent was warranted.
Sukuna seemed to know what Orochimaru was thinking. Only a fragment of soul he might be, but he too was Orochimaru. It wasn't that hard to figure out what was going on inside that head of his.
"You seem to not understand your position, Orochimaru. Let me help you see what kind of condition you're in currently." He said casually and flicked his finger randomly in the air. Not even directly at him.
But the next second, a deep gash bore open on Orochimaru's stomach, and the man was thrown back like a ragdoll.
His eyes widened as he landed on his back, blood oozing out of his stomach. His breath was caught at the sudden attack. He didn't even see it coming.
Sukuna just chuckled at the astonished face of the Snake Sannin. It's not always we get to see him make a face like that.
However, he wasn't going to explain the sure-hit effect of his domain to him. He would rather not.
He saw the rising figure of Orochimaru and narrowed his eyes. That attack was like his normal Dismantle, enough to cut open any shinobi with normal defenses.
Orochimaru, however, was only cut, and he was healing back up.
'He is a soul alright…' Sukuna muttered with distaste.
The power of his attack had little to do with this. Even if he used Cleave, which by the way he had yet to configure inside his domain with binding vows, he most likely wouldn't hurt the Sannin.
He clicked his tongue when Orochimaru was back up again, checking out his own healed-up wound in confusion.
"Tch, seems like I just have to figure out the outline of the soul and how to attack it while I'm stuck here with this guy." Sukuna just grumbled to himself. He knew how to do it, Sukuna's memories made sure of that, however, knowing and being capable enough to do it had much distance between them.
He previously lacked a test subject, especially a soul, to try it on. Now, he had a lab rat.
"Fine then, let's see if I can really end this in 5 minutes as I promised the girls." He grinned.
xXx
A/N : Yeah, he can't damage souls yet, however, now he has a test dummy to learn it. So, I'll take it as an improvement.
As for what's going on outside. Well, we'll see in the next chapter.
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