Hiruzen Sarutobi had watched boys become men on battlefields.
He had watched men become monsters in laboratories.
He had watched monsters put on nice clothes and smile for diplomats, and then shake hands like their fingers hadn't ever been inside someone else's ribcage.
So when the feathers began to fall—soft as snow, too pretty for a shinobi arena—his first instinct wasn't wonder.
It was counting.
How many heartbeats until panic became a stampede. How many bodies packed into the stands. How many shinobi placed at what angles. How many exits. How many children. How many foolish civilians who would try to run up the stairs because that was where authority sat, as if power could shield them like a roof.
The genjutsu came down like a curtain.
Not violent. Not crude. Elegant, almost courteous—sweet and coaxing, the kind of weight that didn't demand surrender so much as offer relief.
Hiruzen did not accept invitations.
His chakra snapped through his coils with practiced cruelty. The illusion shivered as it brushed him, tried to cling to the back of his eyelids like a warm hand—
—and broke. Not with fireworks. With a simple refusal.
Below, thousands slumped.
Heads lolled. Bodies folded forward onto knees like praying. Others collapsed sideways into neighbors. A sea of sleeping mouths, open and helpless. The worst kind of helpless: the kind that didn't even know it was dying yet.
Hiruzen's fingers tightened on the railing.
To his right, the Fire Daimyō's attendants were already falling. One dropped a lacquered fan and it clacked against stone like a tiny, stupid bell.
ANBU moved—fast, efficient—catching bodies before they hit. Hands under shoulders, hands under the Daimyō's arms, hands pulling the soft important weight of politics away from the edge of the box.
The world outside the Kage seats began to shift into two speeds at once. The slow, syrupy collapse of the genjutsu. The sudden sharp movements of those who resisted it.
In the center of the box, the Kazekage remained upright.
Too upright.
His posture didn't soften into sleep. His breathing didn't change. He sat like a man listening to a song he'd paid for and was pleased with the melody.
Hiruzen turned his head.
The Kazekage's eyes met his through the painted mask.
And something in Hiruzen's chest went cold—old and familiar.
Not fear.
Regret.
Because he recognized that chakra signature the way you recognized a smell you'd tried to forget. Not the shape of it—Orochimaru could mimic shape. It was the texture, the slick wrongness under everything, like oil over water. Like warmth that did not belong to any living thing.
Hiruzen let himself look directly at him.
"Orochimaru," he said quietly.
The Kazekage's mouth curved, and the smile underneath the mask was already visible in the way his eyes sharpened.
"Good," the man replied, voice pitched wrong—too smooth for Rasa, too amused for a leader pretending at diplomacy. "I'd hate to disappoint you, sensei."
The word sensei landed like a knife placed gently on a table: polite, deliberate, meant to be noticed.
Hiruzen didn't flinch. He couldn't afford to. Not with the Daimyō pale and slack in ANBU arms. Not with the elders either dozing or fighting the genjutsu through sheer spite. Not with the village's lungs filling with smoke below.
"You took his place," Hiruzen said.
"Oh?" Orochimaru tilted his head, as if genuinely impressed. "And here I thought age had dulled you. You still see beneath the costume."
"Costumes are your weakness," Hiruzen replied. "You always wanted to be seen."
Orochimaru's smile widened like a crack opening.
Hiruzen's eyes flicked once—fast, automatic—to the shadowed edge of the box.
Danzō Shimura sat there as he always did: half swallowed by darkness, face calm, one visible eye half-lidded in contemplation.
Not asleep.
Not startled.
Watching.
Hiruzen filed it away without changing his expression. Later, if there was a later, he would pry that calm open with both hands.
Down in the arena, shinobi began to move in coordinated lines.
Not Leaf.
Sound headbands flashed like bruises. Sand uniforms slipped between rows, knives low and intimate. This wasn't a riot. It wasn't a panicked skirmish.
It was a plan being executed on schedule.
Hiruzen's ANBU captain landed in a crouch beside him, breath controlled, eyes scanning. "Hokage-sama—"
"Evacuate the Fire Daimyō," Hiruzen said.
The ANBU hesitated. "But—"
"Now."
The captain vanished in a blur with attendants and their sleeping charge. Another ANBU moved immediately for the elders, hands already under shoulders.
Danzō didn't rise.
Didn't even glance at the Daimyō.
Hiruzen did not allow himself the luxury of anger yet. Anger burned chakra. He would need every thread.
He returned his gaze to Orochimaru.
"Why," he asked, "now?"
Orochimaru's eyes gleamed. "Because you're old."
Simple. Childish. Delivered like a punchline.
"And because," Orochimaru continued, voice bright as poison, "you're still trying to keep all your little pieces in place. Alliances. Treaties. Theater." His fingers rose, slow and theatrical, to the edge of the Kazekage's mask. "You've built a village out of rules and called it peace."
Hiruzen's expression did not change.
"You built yourself out of hunger," he said, "and called it truth."
Orochimaru laughed softly. "Ah. Still moralizing. Even now."
He peeled the mask away.
The skin beneath was pale and stretched too smooth over bone. His eyes gleamed with delighted emptiness—the look of a child who'd finally gotten permission to break something expensive.
Orochimaru. Not Rasa. Not a Kage. Not a diplomat.
A genius. A traitor. A wound Hiruzen had let fester because he'd loved the boy too much and feared the man too little.
The box seats suddenly felt smaller.
"Hiruzen," Orochimaru said, and his voice lost the mimicry entirely. "Welcome to my exam."
"Still calling it an exam," Hiruzen said, standing with the ease of someone who had been standing up for war his entire life. "Because if you call it learning, you don't have to call it murder."
Orochimaru's gaze sharpened, pleased rather than offended. "And if you call it duty, you don't have to call it failure."
Their words slid around each other like blades testing for weak points.
Hiruzen moved first.
Not dramatic. Not loud. A simple shift of weight and intent, chakra rising under skin like heat under coals.
Orochimaru's hands blurred through seals.
Four Sound shinobi dropped onto the corners of the rooftop box like nails hammered into a coffin lid. Their hands slapped tags onto stone—black, shimmering—at four points that mattered.
A barrier flared to life.
Violet-tinged, clear and absolute. The air pressure inside it changed instantly. Hiruzen felt it in his ears. Felt the way sound thickened, as if the world had been wrapped in glass.
Outside the barrier, Konoha kept moving—Leaf ANBU leaping, civilians being dragged, shinobi clashing. But the chaos came muffled, distant.
Inside?
Inside was just him.
Orochimaru.
And the coffin they'd made out of politics.
Hiruzen's mouth went dry—not from fear, but from recognition.
Four Violet Flames Formation.
They weren't trying to kill him in the general chaos. They were isolating him. Making sure Konoha's head couldn't bark orders while its body burned.
Orochimaru watched him take it in and smiled wider.
"You taught me well," he murmured. "Even your enemies know how you think."
"And yet you still have to lock the door," Hiruzen said. "Afraid someone will hear you beg?"
Orochimaru's eyes flashed with amusement. "Begging is for people who think someone will save them."
Hiruzen exhaled once.
"Enma," he said.
Smoke erupted beside him, thick and snarling.
The Monkey King appeared mid-grumble, already irritated. "Hiruzen—what the hell is—"
His eyes landed on Orochimaru.
The irritation sharpened into something that looked like hatred filed into a clean edge.
"…So it's you."
Orochimaru's smile was delighted. "Hello, Enma. Long time."
Enma's fur bristled. "I should've bitten your throat out when you were twelve."
"You tried," Orochimaru said cheerfully. "You missed."
"I was being polite," Enma snapped, and then the staff formed in his hands with a metallic sing as he transformed. "I'm not polite anymore."
Hiruzen didn't let them waste breath. He moved with Enma, not commanding him so much as syncing to him—two weapons that had learned each other's rhythm over decades.
Strike. Counter. Snake. Staff.
Enma's staff extended, slamming toward Orochimaru's chest with enough force to crack stone. Orochimaru slipped aside like liquid cruelty, sleeve fluttering as if he were only avoiding rain.
A snake shot from his cuff—fast, white, fanged.
Hiruzen's shuriken flicked out. The snake's head pinned to the roof with a metallic thunk before it could bite.
Orochimaru's eyes brightened as if he'd just been entertained. "Still efficient."
"Still wasteful," Hiruzen replied, already moving.
He did not chase Orochimaru's body. He chased Orochimaru's options.
A tile shifted under Orochimaru's foot—Hiruzen had already read the angle, already thrown a kunai where the man would land, not where he was.
Orochimaru twisted his wrist and the kunai stopped midair—caught, not by fingers, but by a snake's mouth snapping shut around the blade.
"Predictable," Orochimaru murmured.
"Only to those who think they've grown," Hiruzen said.
He drove Enma's staff down, not at Orochimaru, but at the barrier tag near the corner.
The staff hit stone with a crack that rang even through the muffling glass. The tag held. The formation shimmered but didn't break.
Orochimaru chuckled. "Did you really think I'd use paper you could swat away?"
"I think you like theatrics," Hiruzen said. "So I check the stage."
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed in delighted approval. "There it is. The Professor. Always testing the mechanism."
Hiruzen's hands flashed through seals.
A burst of earth rose—roof tiles lifted and split, turning into a swarm of stone fragments that spun around him like a controlled storm. He didn't throw them all.
He threw three.
Not at Orochimaru's body.
At Orochimaru's hands.
One clipped his wrist. Another grazed his knuckles. The third struck a seal-tagged bracer hidden under his sleeve with a sharp ping.
Orochimaru's fingers paused for half a breath.
Hiruzen took that half-breath like it was oxygen in a fire.
Enma's staff snapped forward, catching Orochimaru at the ribs and driving him back with enough force to skid him across stone.
Orochimaru's smile finally faltered—not from pain, but from irritation at being touched.
"You still hit like a man trying to convince himself," he hissed.
Hiruzen's gaze stayed steady. "And you still talk like a boy trying to convince someone else."
Orochimaru's tongue flicked across his teeth as if tasting the insult.
Then his neck stretched.
Not metaphorically. Not figuratively.
His throat elongated with a wet, impossible motion, head shooting forward like a snake striking. His jaw opened too wide, and for a heartbeat Hiruzen saw teeth where teeth should not have been.
Enma swore violently and swung the staff like a club.
The staff caught Orochimaru's face mid-lunge, slamming him sideways. Orochimaru's stretched neck snapped back with an elastic recoil that made the air shiver.
Enma snarled, "Disgusting."
Orochimaru wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his mouth with a gloved thumb. He looked almost pleased.
"It's funny," he said softly, eyes bright. "You always hated my curiosity. As if the universe cares what shape it takes."
"It's not your curiosity I hated," Hiruzen said. "It's your cowardice."
Orochimaru tilted his head. "Cowardice."
"You run from limits," Hiruzen continued, voice even, controlled. "From endings. From consequence. You call it evolution so you don't have to admit you're afraid of being human."
Orochimaru's smile returned, thinner now. "How comforting. You can still dress disgust in philosophy."
Hiruzen's gaze flicked past Orochimaru, beyond the barrier, down into the village he could no longer command properly.
Muffled screams. A tremor. Smoke rolling over rooftops like a hand smearing ink across paper.
He felt Konoha's pulse through the stone under his feet: a stutter. A surge. A wound opening.
Orochimaru followed his eyes and laughed softly.
"Still trying to be everywhere," he said. "Still trying to hold every string with old fingers."
"You chose this," Hiruzen said. "So you could watch."
Orochimaru's eyes gleamed. "Of course. It's educational."
"You're enjoying it," Hiruzen said.
Orochimaru spread his hands, mock-innocent. "You're the one who built a village where children die for adults' decisions. I'm just… reminding you of your own curriculum."
The words hit harder than any snake.
Hiruzen's jaw tightened.
"You want to blame me," Orochimaru went on, voice light, cruelly conversational. "For the wars. For the orphans. For the compromises. For the way you smiled at the Daimyō while burying shinobi quietly in the dirt." He leaned forward slightly, like a teacher confiding in a student. "Tell me, sensei—was it worth it?"
Hiruzen didn't answer with denial. Denial was for people who still believed in purity.
He answered with truth.
"Yes," he said.
Orochimaru blinked. Just once.
Hiruzen stepped forward, staff angled, chakra rising in a calm, lethal line.
"Yes," Hiruzen repeated, and his voice grew sharper, the way old steel grew sharper when it finally stopped pretending to be gentle. "Because the village is more than my mistakes. More than your grievances. More than your obsession. It was worth it because I can still choose to protect it."
Orochimaru's smile widened again. "Even now? Trapped in a box you can't break?"
Hiruzen's eyes didn't leave him.
"You've always misread the point of a box," Hiruzen said. "It keeps things in."
Orochimaru's gaze flicked, quick, to Enma's staff, to Hiruzen's stance, to the corners where the Sound shinobi maintained the barrier.
"…And it keeps things out," Orochimaru replied.
Hiruzen smiled faintly—barely there, more a baring of teeth than warmth.
"And you," Hiruzen said, "are in here with me."
For the first time, Orochimaru's delight sharpened into something like anger.
There. A crack.
Hiruzen attacked that crack.
He didn't rush in like a younger man. He used angles. He used pressure. He used the roof itself.
Enma's staff extended and pinned Orochimaru's sleeve to the stone for half a second. Half a second was enough.
Hiruzen's hands flashed through seals and the roof tiles rose again—this time not as shrapnel, but as a wall that cut Orochimaru's line of sight to the barrier corners.
Orochimaru's eyes narrowed, immediately understanding.
"You're trying to disrupt the formation," he said, almost admiring.
"Of course," Hiruzen replied. "You wouldn't leave yourself without a door."
Orochimaru's laugh came out bright. "And you wouldn't be you if you didn't try to lecture the storm."
He slammed his palms down.
Snakes erupted from the seams between tiles, dozens at once, bodies weaving into a living net. They didn't bite blindly. They moved with intent—aiming for Hiruzen's wrists, his ankles, places that would steal his seals, his stance, his breath.
Hiruzen let the first wave come close.
Then he moved his chakra like a blade.
Fire bloomed in a tight arc—not a roaring inferno, but a controlled breath that turned the leading snakes to ash and forced the rest to recoil, their bodies hissing and writhing as if insulted.
Enma's staff swung low, sweeping snakes aside like weeds. "Stop breeding," Enma growled.
Orochimaru's eyes glittered. "You know," he said conversationally, "I used to think you were the strongest man alive."
"And now?" Hiruzen asked, already stepping inside Orochimaru's guard.
"Now I know you were just the most stubborn," Orochimaru said.
Hiruzen struck.
Not at Orochimaru's face.
At his centerline. A blow meant to break posture and force defense.
Orochimaru blocked with his forearm—skin too smooth, muscles too elastic—and for a heartbeat Hiruzen felt how wrong his body had become. Like striking something that wasn't made of honest flesh.
Orochimaru leaned close, eyes bright as a child's. "Tell me, sensei—when you die, will you still pretend you didn't want this? Will you still pretend you didn't want to see how far I could go?"
Hiruzen's eyes hardened.
"I wanted you to stop," he said.
Orochimaru's smile turned sharp. "Liar."
Hiruzen didn't deny it.
He answered with a different truth, quieter and worse.
"I wanted you to come home," he said.
For the first time, Orochimaru's expression shifted into something almost… human.
Almost.
Then it was gone, replaced by laughter too quick and too bright.
"How sentimental," he purred. "That's always been your fatal weakness."
"And yours," Hiruzen replied, voice like stone, "is that you think sentiment makes you safe."
Orochimaru's hands blurred again.
The barrier shimmered with a pulse—reinforced. Tightened. The Sound shinobi at the corners clenched their teeth, chakra flaring as they fed it.
Hiruzen felt the walls of the coffin thicken.
Orochimaru watched him take that in and smiled.
"You understand now," he said softly. "This isn't just about killing you."
Hiruzen's gaze stayed locked.
"It's about making sure Konoha dies without you," Orochimaru continued, almost tender. "A village raised on your lectures finally learning the lesson you refused to teach."
Hiruzen listened past him, past the muffled glass, past the distant screams.
He felt the tremor again—subtle, deep, wrong.
Something moving under the stadium. Something planned.
Hiruzen's teeth ground together.
"So Shibi was right," he thought, and the thought tasted like ash.
Orochimaru noticed the micro-flinch and laughed softly, delighted with his own timing.
"Still trying to be everywhere," he teased. "Still trying to save everyone. How exhausting."
Hiruzen straightened, staff steady in his hands, breath controlled.
He let the exhaustion exist.
Then he crushed it down into purpose, the way he always had.
"You want an exam?" Hiruzen said, voice calm. "Fine."
Orochimaru's eyes gleamed. "Oh?"
Hiruzen's gaze sharpened, and for a moment the "old man" vanished. The Third Hokage was a battlefield again—cold, precise, terrifying.
"Show me what you learned," Hiruzen said.
Orochimaru's smile widened into something feral.
"And show me," Hiruzen continued, "if you can face your teacher without hiding behind tricks."
Orochimaru laughed—bright, delighted, offended.
"Still trying to make this a lesson," he said.
Hiruzen's eyes didn't move.
"It always was," he replied.
Outside, muffled, the village screamed again—louder this time, like a second wave of terror had finally found its lungs.
Inside the barrier, the two most brilliant men of their generation circled each other on a roof turned coffin lid, trading not just strikes but truths sharpened into insults, each word searching for the seam where the other might finally split.
Hiruzen Sarutobi lifted his staff.
Orochimaru lifted his hands.
And Konoha burned below them, unseen but felt—an entire world held at bay by violet glass while its guardian fought his own greatest mistake.