The forest border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Rice Fields smelled of pine, damp earth, and impending necrosis.
Kabuto Yakushi sat on a fallen log, wiping a scalpel with a cloth that was cleaner than his conscience. He held the blade up to the dappled sunlight filtering through the canopy. The steel gleamed, flawless and cold.
He was late.
He was supposed to be at the rendezvous point an hour ago. Orochimaru would be writhing in agony by now, the necrosis from the Reaper Death Seal eating away at the cellular structure of his arms. The pain would be blinding. It would be making the Great White Snake hiss and thrash and strike at the shadows.
Kabuto smiled. He didn't get up.
Let it chew, he thought, tilting the scalpel so it caught his reflection. Pain clarifies the mind. It reminds the god that he is currently renting a very mortal shell.
He adjusted his glasses.
Most subordinates would be rushing. They would be panicked, desperate to soothe their master, terrified of his wrath. But Kabuto wasn't a subordinate. Not really.
He was the surgeon. And the surgeon decided when the operation began.
He thought about the invasion.
It had been a masterpiece of chaos. The sand, the snakes, the barrier. But the ending... the ending had been messy.
Hiruzen Sarutobi. The God of Shinobi. The Professor.
Kabuto had watched the aftermath from a distance. The roof tiles shattered. The barrier dissolving. The old man dead, a smile on his face.
"Disappointing," Kabuto murmured to the empty forest.
He didn't mourn the Third. He didn't hate him, either. To Kabuto, the Third Hokage was just a variable that had remained static for too long. A relic.
But looking back at the damage reports, Kabuto felt a cold, sharp spike of irritation.
You should have finished it, old man, Kabuto thought.
If Hiruzen had used the Reaper Death Seal to take Orochimaru's soul entirely, the game would be over. Orochimaru would be dead. The board would be cleared. Kabuto would be free to… wander. To find a new identity. To see what he looked like without a master.
But Hiruzen had been sentimental. He had hesitated. He had seen the student, not the monster.
So he had only taken the arms.
He had crippled the snake, not killed it.
"Half-measures," Kabuto sighed, finally sheathing the scalpel. "The curse of the Leaf. They always leave the root to rot."
He scoffed at the realization of his unintended pun and stood up.
He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the sensory input of the forest wash over him. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he didn't see the forest. He saw a different room. White walls. The smell of antiseptic.
Mother.
Nonō Yakushi. The Wandering Miko.
His memories of her weren't the warm, fuzzy things Naruto Uzumaki probably dreamed about. They were precise.
He remembered her hands. Not hugging him, but guiding his fingers over a wounded bird.
"The chakra must be a needle, Kabuto. Not a hammer. Find the seam in the flesh. Knit it. Don't force it."
She had taught him that healing was just a different form of invasion. To heal someone, you had to enter them. You had to understand their biology better than they did. You had to take control of their cells and force them to obey.
A spy and a medic were the same thing. They both slipped past defenses. They both worked from the inside.
She had given him his name. She had given him his glasses.
And then the village—Danzō, the Root, the system—had turned them against each other. They had made him kill her. They had made him a tool that destroyed its own creator.
Kabuto opened his eyes. The forest returned, sharp and green.
People like Naruto, like that pink-haired girl Sylvie, they talked about "not being tools" with such passionate indignation. They wanted to be people.
Kabuto found that naive.
Everyone was a tool. The Daimyō used the Kage. The Kage used the jōnin. The jōnin used the genin.
The trick wasn't to stop being a tool. The trick was to be a tool so dangerous, so specialized, that the hand holding you was afraid to put you down.
Be a kunai, and you get thrown.
Be a scalpel, and you get kept in a velvet case.
He checked his pouch. Three blood coagulation pills. A scroll containing the genetic data of the Sound Four. A bingo book with a new, high-priority target circled.
Orochimaru was broken. His arms were purple, useless meat. He couldn't weave signs. He couldn't perform the Transference Ritual to take Sasuke's body yet—the necrosis was affecting his chakra control too severely.
He needed a fix.
And there was only one medic in the world who could fix a spiritual severance caused by a shinigami.
"Tsunade," Kabuto whispered.
The name tasted like opportunity.
She was the Third's student. She was a Sannin. She was a legend.
But she was also a gambler. A drunk. A woman defined by what she had lost.
Orochimaru wanted her for her hands. He wanted her to heal the arms so he could resume his ambition.
Kabuto wanted her for the data.
He wanted to see what happened when you offered a broken person their heart's desire. He wanted to see if the "legendary" bonds of the Leaf were stronger than the selfish, human need to undo grief.
He adjusted his glasses again, the light catching the lenses, turning his eyes into white, unreadable discs.
He wasn't loyal to Orochimaru because he worshipped him. He wasn't Kimimaro, blinded by devotion. He wasn't Sasuke, blinded by need.
He was loyal because Orochimaru was the most interesting experiment running.
And now, the experiment had a new variable.
Pain, Kabuto thought, starting to walk. Let's see how it changes the hypothesis.
He moved through the trees, heading north toward the hideout. He moved silently, a gray shadow in a green world.
He didn't run. He didn't rush.
A good doctor always arrives exactly when the patient is desperate enough to agree to anything.
He smiled. It was a small, polite, terrifying expression.
The knife was returning to the hand.
But this time, the knife was curious to see if the hand would bleed.